Chapter 19: Simultaneously

As Dylan finished recounting to us his adventures underground, I sat back and exhaled loudly. “So he managed to get Maria. Hopefully, if she is gonna be our girl on the inside, she’ll stay safe. And Forrest…” I sighed. “This is getting more and more complicated.”

“Yeah, well, it’s about to get worse” Alice interjected, closing her mobile phone with a snap. “Brian just informed me that both Sean and Jessie have been captured by the head counsellor’s lapdogs.”

Luck frowned. It was the first time I had seen him look worried. “Jessie? That wasn’t part of the plan.” He sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “That better have been an accident, because if he did that on purpose…” Trailing off, Luck laced his fingers together and cupped the back of his neck. “Well, Sean’s in. That’s the most important thing. If Jessie fails us, Sean will come through. He always does.”

“You really trust him that much?” Dylan asked, looking  a little skeptical. Luck nodded. “I do. He and I have been friends for years, and he’s one of the best people we’ve got.”

“Okay…” Dylan still sounded a little unsure, not that I could really blame him. I mean, there’s not exactly a brilliant track record of trust within our team. Why should theirs be any different? But still…

“Don’t worry, we trust you” I said, hoping to reassure Luck and his team. Luck smiled at me. “Thanks, Chloe. That means a lot.” He turned to Dylan and said, “Look, I know you don’t know me from a bar of soap, but I am here to help you.”

“We all are” Alice said, smiling at Dylan.

“But you don’t even live in Labresci! How can you be a part of this?” Dylan folded his arms and stared at Luck. I had the feeling that he thought he’d just pulled out his trump card.

Luck met Dylan’s stare. “Do you want me to tell you? It could cost valuable time-”

“Don’t care. Tell me. I need to know for sure that I can trust you. Just because you know Brian doesn’t mean you’re automatically on our side, you know.”

Luck shrugged. “Okay, fair enough.” He put his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the wall. “As you may or may not know, no one in this group was actually at Camp Woodlands ten years ago. We only began investigating after receiving reports of some strange activity in this area.” He paused for a moment, then said “That is, no one except me was at this camp ten years ago. I was the only one who saw firsthand what happened, and as such, am one of the only ones who truly knows what the head counselor is really capable of.” He glanced at Dylan and I. “Aside from you two and the rest of your group, of course.

“As  to the reason I’m a part of this operation, I’ve explained part of it, but that’s obviously not the whole story. After the camp, I knew what I’d seen couldn’t physically be real, despite the fact that I was so young, so I started looking into technology to see if there was anything capable of altering reality.” He looked back at us again. “That’s how I got into virtual reality.”

Alice interjected here. “Luck sought out our organization at Labresci to find some answers. As you would clearly know, Dylan, our city’s primary focus is research and development in the scientific field.” Dylan nodded, I did too, just to look like I even knew what Alice was talking about, and she continued. “His reports matched the strange data we had recorded, so the powers that be decided we needed to look into this further. If the head counselor could use virtual reality on this scale, it was clear that it wasn’t for the general good of the people, if you know what I mean.”

Luck took up the narrative again. “Their news made me feel like I wasn’t going crazy, though it did raise just as many questions as answers, with the biggest being: why? What was the point of what happened?”

“From examining our data and questioning Luck extensively about what happened ten years ago, we determined that it was nothing more than a failed experiment. Whatever happened ten years ago was clearly not supposed to happen, and left some people with…” Alice hesitated and glanced at Luck. “…unexpected side effects.”

I raised my eyebrow. “What, you mean like, super powers? I totally missed out!” Luck snorted, and covered his mouth to try and hide it.

She waved her hands and shook her head. “Not like super powers, more like…attributes. Abilities that became enhanced due to their exposure to the head counsellor’s program.” Alice gestured at Dylan. “Like you. I heard from Brian that you were much better with technology after you returned from the camp.” Dylan opened his mouth to interject, but Alice got in first. “Not that you weren’t good with it in the first place. You know what I’m trying to say here.” She nodded in Luck’s direction. “And Luck over there got his ridiculous nickname.”

He laughed. “Yeah, that’s it. Dylan gets super technical and I receive the world’s most obvious nickname.”

After a moment’s hesitation, I asked “So, you told me you were, like, super lucky and everything… but what exactly does that mean? Do you just go out on weekends and spend your time winning bar bets?”

Luck threw his head back and laughed. “Something like that.” He looked at me and said “Specifically? I guess you could say my…” He rolled his hand in a circle, searching for the right word. “…My tactical abilities were enhanced. I can find the solution to any problem, the winning move in a fight, the quickest way to checkmate, whatever. Any situation I’m in, I can see the way out and I know exactly what I have to do to get there.” He cocked his head. “Does that answer your question?”

I smiled. “Yeah, and thank you for putting it into words I understand.” Luck laughed again and Dylan shot me a look that could only say ‘what the hell is wrong with you?’ I rolled my eyes at him and returned my attention to Luck…and Alice.

“Naturally,” Alice said, picking up the explanation again, “we couldn’t ignore information like this. So when we heard about the camp’s ten year reunion, we decided that we needed to plant agents inside secretly, in order to glean what we could about the head counsellor’s plan.”

“Wait” Dylan interrupted. “The secretary took our pictures when we got here to confirm our identities, how did you get around that?”

“Brian” Luck and Alice stated in unison.

Dylan buried his head in his hands. “I should have guessed.” He sighed. “This goes deeper than I thought.”

I snorted. “You got that right.” I tilted my head back as I thought. “I still don’t get this virtual reality stuff though. I mean, what’s all that about? Why would the head counselor need it? What’s the point? The only decent thing you can do in a virtual reality is slay a dragon and earn experience points.”

Alice laughed. “I like your analogy, but no.” She held up her index finger. “The main point of virtual reality is that it alters, for lack of a better phrase, ‘real’ reality. If you think what you see is real, you will react in a way that is real, even if what you see isn’t real.”

I’m pretty sure I had an expression on my face at this point that singled me out as the dumbest person in the room.

“What you see affects how you act” Luck translated.

“Oooooh.” I heard Dylan suppress a snicker beside me. I punched him in the arm. “Just so I’ve got this straight, the head counselor is using virtual reality to alter our surroundings for reasons that are currently unknown?”

Luck nodded. “That’s right.” He winked. “Gold star for you, Chloe.”

I giggled a little, and was surprised to hear the sound come out of me. I was also embarrassed at how stupid I was sounding. Dylan gave me another look, one that I’m pretty sure read ‘that guy? Really?’ I stuck my tongue out at him. Immature, maybe, but I’d already punched him once and punching a guy twice when he’s just escaped captivity seemed a little low to me. Dylan rolled his eyes at me, then looked back at Alice. “So, do you have any idea yet as to how and when the head counselor will begin using virtual reality?”

Alice smiled and flicked her red hair off her face. “Actually we do. There’s a fireworks festival tonight to”, she quoted with her fingers sarcastically, “celebrate the completion of the camp. That’s when he’ll make his move.”

“We’ve managed to ascertain that he has everyone’s, um, brain fingerprint on file, so he can access their minds directly if he so chooses. This way he can control individuals”, Luck spread his hands out, “like us, who know what he’s up to and who could try to stop this.”

I appreciated his attempts to dumb the conversation down for me.

“Fortunately, he doesn’t have my information, so as long as I can stay underground long enough, I can figure out a way to stop this.” As she finished speaking, Alice’s mobile chirped and she held up a finger, pausing to answer it. I assumed that it was the ever elusive Brian. Who was this guy, frigging Superman? Was he just gonna fly in wearing his red cape and undies and fix everything? Somehow, I doubted it.

Luck pushed off from the wall and began rummaging through his bag. “Fortunately, again, the agency at Labresci has come up with a way to help us discern the real reality from the virtual one.” He made a noise of satisfaction, then pulled his hand out of his bag. In his hand was a pair of black framed glasses, like the ones used to watch 3D movies, but with darker lenses.

I felt my eyebrow rising again. “Glasses? Really? How in any way shape or form is that going to help us?”

“Well, these glasses are special. They can separate the real images from the fake ones.” Luck tapped the side of the glasses. “There’s software built into these things that can identify the virtual images and identify them to the wearer. It does this by having the virtual images appear in old-school black and white.” He tossed the pair in his hand to Dylan before bending back down to his bag. “It’s a fairly simple solution, but a handy one.” He reemerged with several more pairs, and handed one to me so I didn’t have to try and catch them with my injured arm. I turned them over in my hands and held them up to my eyes.

“Hold on.” Dylan stood up, glasses in hand. “These things might be able to separate the virtual images, but if the head counselor has the ability to track us with our”, he looked at me and said sarcastically, “brain fingerprints, then these”, he shook the glasses, “are rendered useless!”

I was taken aback; I’d never heard Dylan this agitated. Luck, on the other hand, was unfazed. “Naturally. I was getting to the other part. Unfortunately for you, only we Labresci agents are fully protected. Well, as well as we can be.” He turned around and knelt in front of the bed between Dylan and me and pushed up the hair on his neck. A small white scar sat at the base of his skull in the hollow of his neck.

I ran one of my fingers over it and let out a breath. “What is this? The only way you could get a scar here is-”

“Surgery. Yeah, Alice, Sean, Jessie and I all have one.” He took in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “A computer chip with information similar to that in the glasses was imbedded into our occipital lobe.”

Dylan tapped the back of his head. “That’s this area back here, Chloe.”

“Thank you, Dylan” I replied tightly, not taking my fingers off the scar. “They put a piece of junk in your brain? Why?”

“Well, that piece of junk is all that’s gonna protect me and Alice from the head counselor.” He took my fingers and ran them up through his hair a few centimeters. “The occipital lobe is where the majority of visual processing takes place in the brain. It’s also the place where dreams come from, ironically enough.” He took my fingers down back to his scar. “By placing the information chip here, directly into the occipital lobe, it effectively helps the brain sort the virtual images from the real ones, leaving us virtually unaffected.”

“Wow” I breathed. “Dylan, I had no idea you guys at Labresci were so smart.” Dylan laughed. “Yeah, Labresci is nothing if not ahead of the times. I wouldn’t be surprised if the head honchos were investigating the virtual reality for more…monetary reasons than moral ones.”

Luck turned around and looked at Dylan. “As long as you know that’s not why we’re here.”

Alice approached us, phone in hand. She looked quizzically at us for a moment, as I realized Luck was still holding my hand and my fingers were still in his hair. I slipped my fingers from his and focused intently on the wooden post of the bunk bed. It was very well built. The carpenters should be recommended.

“We have to get out of here.” I heard the worry in her voice. “Brian said that the head counsellor’s puppets are looking for us and are heading in this direction.” She looked around desperately. “If Luck and I get captured, this is over.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll get you out of here” Dylan promised. I smirked. We? Just because you punched a guy once, Dylan, it doesn’t mean you’re suddenly a bad-arse.

At that moment, the door burst open and Kari flew in, followed closely by my arch-rival, Felix.

“Well, well, well.” Kari drew herself upright and sneered. “Looks like we finally found the lab rats from Labresci.” Felix looked at her incredulously. “Really? That’s what you went with? Kari, that is the lamest villain entrance line I have ever heard.”

Miffed, Kari flicked her hair back over her shoulders. “Well, it doesn’t matter, because we’ve found them and the head counselor is going to be-”

Kari never got to finish her sentence. That was because I sent her unconscious by slamming my forehead into the bridge of her nose.

As Kari slumped to the floor, I got low and drove my shoulder into Felix’s stomach. As he dropped, breathless, I brought my knee up into his face. Hard.

I turned around, finding all three of my companions doing their best stunned mullet impressions. “Come on, we have to go!”

Dylan gathered his wits first, probably because this wasn’t my first outburst of violence in his presence. He grabbed Alice by the elbow and pulled her out the door. “I know a place where we can hide” he said, stepping over Felix and Kari’s unconscious bodies.

Luck grabbed his duffle bag and stood up, shaking his head. “Man, Chloe, you are the craziest girl I’ve ever met!”

“I am?” Crap! There’s no way a guy like this would date crazies!

He stepped over Kari, and stopped in front of me. Leaning down, he whispered, “I kind of like that.”

“Kind of?”

Next thing I knew, he was kissing me, and I was kissing him back.

Maybe this saving the world stuff could wait… at least for a minute.