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Malik was, had always been, a controlled person. He was not hasty or careless. He monitored his own mind and thoughts the way he would monitor any other complex computer, calibrating his mental speed, guarding against false data. He felt emotion, strong emotion at times, but that had been all the more reason to control himself.
But a rage had been building within him, and to Malik that rage felt like a fire he could not fully extinguish but which he had to contain lest it burn him up inside as surely as fire had burned his body. Each time he felt the Watchers, he raged and told himself sternly that he should accept. Each time he’d witnessed some new horror he had felt like someone had thrown gasoline on that fire, and he was the fire department, limiting, containing.
Then he had nearly been burned again and had, for the first time in his life, panicked. Panicked! Screaming, flailing, unreasoning panic.
And then had found himself on his knees on the steel deck of a helicopter, begging for Shade’s life. And almost miraculously, she had done it. With the last of the dying light in her mind she had found the way to escape death.
This time.
Now Malik floated in n-dimensional space with Francis’s hand in his. The scientist within Malik still observed, but he observed through the wild flames of his own fury.
“Come out and talk to me!” he raged, his words becoming multicolored swirls that floated away like the smoke of a cigarette.
He searched for and soon found the flat, blank, featureless circle he believed to be a connection to the Watchers. He impatiently fought off the slug-like defenses and moved closer to the circle, which receded with each forward step and yet drew slowly, slowly nearer, as though it took ten of his steps to equal one.
“Talk to me, you cowards!”
The circle of nothingness grew larger, fractionally at first, almost imperceptibly, then it grew faster, expanding until he at last reached out a hand toward it, a burned hand, his true hand.
And suddenly he was no longer in the weird vortex of disconnected bits of his 3-D world. He stood now in a space that was white, nothing but white above and below and to every side. Like he’d been dropped into a bucket of white paint, or a box of cotton balls.
He glanced down and with relief saw that Francis was still there, still holding his hand.
“Come out and talk to me!” Malik cried, and this time his words were not vapor but just sound, flat, dying quickly without echo or resonance.
“Impressive,” a voice said. A human voice. A human voice with something familiar about it.
A distant dot of color appeared on the white nothingness, a human shape it seemed, but far away, though its voice was close and intimate in Malik’s ears.
“Who are you? What are you?” Malik demanded.
“No one thought it possible, but I suspected you might just be able to manage it . . . Malik.”
Malik was not surprised that the distant creature knew his name, but hearing it aloud in this place was disturbing.
“Are you still okay?” Malik asked Francis.
Her eyes were wide, her face pale. She stood beside him on one good leg, a rigid cast holding her broken bones in place. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Do you see that . . . person? Are you hearing him speak?”
“Yes,” she acknowledged.
So at least if this was some hallucination it was one they were both experiencing. Malik began moving toward the distant creature, but like the gray circle, the creature seemed to recede almost—almost—as fast as Malik advanced.
“What is it you want, Malik?”
“I want you to stop torturing me and the people I love. Do you have any idea the horror you’ve caused?”
The figure seemed to nod; he was still too far distant for Malik to be sure. When he spoke, his voice was so close he might almost have been whispering into Malik’s ear. “Strictly speaking, I did not cause any of this. Though, yes, I admit to guilt. I admit to hubris. But I have done nothing that you would not do, Malik.”
“I know my universe is a simulation,” Malik said. “And you are its creator.”
This time the head shake was near enough that Malik could be sure of it. The creature definitely had the shape of a man, a fit man of perhaps middle age. A black man, Malik thought, though what did such distinctions mean when dealing with aliens?
“Twice, just twice has any creature within the sim become aware enough to escape the simulation. You, Malik, are the second. The first was an impressive little boy named Pete Ellison. You’ve heard the name.”
Malik nodded, curiosity distracting him from simple anger. “Little Pete. Of the FAYZ?”
