Eagle Strike (7 page)

“No…” Alex started to protest.

But the audience was already clapping, urging him on. A corridor opened up in front of him. Alex stumbled forward and before he knew it he was climbing up onto the stage. The room seemed to tilt. A spotlight spun round, dazzling him. And there it was.

He was standing on the stage with Damian Cray.

FEATHERED SERPENT

I
t was the last thing Alex could have expected.

He was face to face with the man who – if he was right – had ordered the death of Sabina’s father. But
was
he right? For the first time, he was able to examine Cray at close quarters. It was a strangely unsettling experience.

Cray had one of the most famous faces in the world. Alex had seen it on CD covers, on posters, in newspapers and magazines, on television … even on the back of cereal packets. And yet the face in front of him now was somehow disappointing. It was less real than all the images he had seen.

Cray was surprisingly young-looking, considering he was already in his fifties, but there was a taut, shiny quality to his skin that whispered of plastic surgery. And surely the neat, jet-black hair had to be dyed. Even the bright green eyes seemed somehow lifeless. Cray was a very small man. Alex found himself thinking of a doll in a toyshop. That was what Cray reminded him of. His superstardom and his millions of pounds had turned him into a plastic replica of himself.

And yet…

Cray had welcomed him onto the stage and was beaming at him as if he were an old friend. He was a singer. And, as he had made clear, he opposed violence. He wanted to save the world, not destroy it. MI6 had gathered files on him and found nothing. Alex was here because of a voice, a few words spoken at the end of a phone. He was beginning to wish he had never come.

It seemed that the two of them had been standing there for ages, up on the stage with hundreds of people waiting to see the demonstration. In fact, only a few seconds had passed. Then Cray held out a hand. “What’s your name?” he asked.

“Alex Rider.”

“Well, it’s great to meet you, Alex Rider. I’m Damian Cray.”

They shook hands. Alex couldn’t help thinking that there were millions of people all around the world who would give anything to be where he was now.

“How old are you, Alex?” Cray asked.

“Fourteen.”

“I’m very grateful to you for coming. Thanks for agreeing to help.”

The words were being amplified around the dome. Out of the corner of his eye, Alex saw that his own image had joined Cray’s on the giant screen. “We’re very lucky that we do indeed have a teenager,” Cray went on, addressing the audience. “So let’s see how … Alex … gets on with the first level of Gameslayer One: Feathered Serpent.”

As Cray spoke, three technicians came onto the stage, bringing with them a television monitor, a games console, a table and a chair. Alex realized that he was going to be asked to play the game in front of the audience – with his progress beamed up onto the plasma screen.

“Feathered Serpent is based on the Aztec civilization,” Cray explained to the audience. “The Aztecs arrived in Mexico in 1195, but some claim that they had in fact come from another planet. It is on that planet that Alex is about to find himself. His mission is to find the four missing suns. But first he must enter the temple of Tlaloc, fight his way through five chambers and then throw himself into the pool of sacred flame. This will take him to the next level.”

A fourth technician had come onto the stage, carrying a webcam. He stopped in front of Alex and quickly scanned him, pressed a button on the side of the camera and left. Cray waited until he had gone.

“You may have been wondering about the little black-suited figure that you saw on the screen,” he said, once again taking the audience into his confidence. “His name is Omni, and he will be the hero of all the Gameslayer games. You may think him a little dull and unimaginative. But Omni is every boy and every girl in Britain. He is every child in the world … and now I will show you why!”

The screen went blank, then burst into a digital whirl of colour. There was a deafening fanfare – not trumpets but some electronic equivalent – and the gates of a temple with a huge Aztec face cut into the wood appeared. Alex could tell at once that the graphic detail of the Gameslayer was better than anything he had ever seen, but a moment later the audience gasped with surprise and Alex perfectly understood why. A boy had walked onto the screen and was standing in front of the gates, awaiting his command. The boy was Omni. But he had changed. He was now wearing exactly the same clothes as Alex. He looked like Alex. More than that, he was Alex right down to the brown eyes and the hanging strands of fair hair.

Applause exploded around the room. Alex could see journalists scribbling in their notebooks or talking quickly into mobile phones, hoping to be the first with this incredible scoop. The food and the champagne had been forgotten. Cray’s technology had created an avatar, an electronic double of him, making it possible for any player not just to play the game but to become part of it. Alex knew then that the Gameslayer would sell all over the world. Cray would make millions.

And twenty per cent of that would go to charity, he reminded himself.

Could this man really be his enemy?

Cray waited until everyone was quiet, and then he turned to Alex. “It’s time to play,” he said.

Alex sat down in front of the computer screen that the technicians had set up. He took hold of the controller and pressed with his left thumb. In front of him and on the giant plasma screen, his other self walked to the right. He stopped and turned himself the other way. The controller was incredibly sensitive. Alex almost felt like an Aztec god, in total control of his mortal self.

“Don’t worry if you get killed on your first go,” Cray said. “The console is faster than anything on the market and it may take you a while to get used to it. But we’re all on your side, Alex. So – let’s play Feathered Serpent! Let’s see how far you can go!”

The temple gates opened.

Alex pressed down and on the screen his avatar walked forward and into a game environment that was alien and bizarre and brilliantly realized. The temple was a fusion of primitive art and science fiction, with towering columns, flaming beacons, complex hieroglyphics and crouching Aztec statues. But the floor was silver, not stone. Strange metal stairways and corridors twisted around the temple area. Electric light flickered behind heavily barred windows. Closed-circuit cameras followed his every move.

“You have to start by finding two weapons in the first chamber,” Cray advised, leaning over Alex’s shoulder. “You may need them later.”

The first chamber was huge, with organ music throbbing and stained-glass windows showing cornfields, crop circles and hovering spaceships. Alex found the first weapon easily enough. There was a sword hanging high up on a wall. But he soon realized there were traps everywhere. Part of the wall crumbled as he climbed it and reaching out for the sword activated a missile which shot out of nowhere, aiming for the avatar. The missile was a double boomerang with razor-blade edges, rotating at lightning speed. Alex knew that if he was hit, he would be cut in half.

He stabbed down with his thumbs and his miniature self crouched. The boomerang spun past. But as it went, one of its blades caught the avatar on the arm. The audience gasped. A tiny flow of blood had appeared on the miniature figure’s sleeve and its face –
Alex’s
face – had distorted, showing pain. The experience was so realistic that Alex almost felt a need to check his own, real arm. He had to remind himself that it was only the avatar that had been wounded.

“Pain synthesis!” Cray repeated the words, his voice echoing across the Pleasure Dome. “In the Gameslayer world, we share all the hero’s emotions. And should Alex die, the central processing unit will ensure that we feel his death.”

Alex had climbed back down and was searching for the second weapon. The little wound was already healing, the blood flow slowing down. He dodged as another boomerang shot past his shoulder. But he still couldn’t find the second weapon.

“Try looking behind the ivy,” Cray suggested in a stage whisper, and the audience smiled, amused that Alex needed help so soon.

There was a crossbow concealed in an alcove. But what Cray hadn’t told Alex was that the ivy covering the alcove contained a ten thousand volt charge. He found out soon enough. The moment his avatar touched the ivy, there was a blue flash and it was thrown backwards, screaming out loud, its eyes wide and staring. The avatar hadn’t quite been killed, but it had been badly hurt.

Cray tapped Alex on the shoulder. “You’ll have to be more careful than that,” he said.

A buzz of excitement travelled through the audience. They had never seen anything like this before.

And that was when Alex decided. Suddenly MI6, Yassen, Saint-Pierre … all of it was forgotten. Cray had tricked him into touching the ivy. He had deliberately injured him. Of course, it was just a game. It was only the avatar that had been hurt. But the humiliation had been his – and suddenly he was determined to get the better of Feathered Serpent. He wasn’t going to be beaten. He wasn’t going to share his death with anyone.

Grimly, he picked up the crossbow and sent the avatar forward, further into the Aztec world.

The second chamber consisted of a huge hole in the ground. It was actually a pit, fifty metres deep, with narrow pillars stretching all the way to the top. The only way to get from one side to the other was to jump from one pillar to the next. If he missed his step or overbalanced, he would fall to his death – and to make it more difficult it was pouring with rain inside the chamber, making the surfaces slippery. The rain itself was extraordinary. As Cray told the audience, the Gameslayer’s image technology allowed every raindrop to be realized individually. The avatar was soaking wet, its clothes sodden and its hair plastered to its head.

There was a sudden electronic squawk. A creature with butterfly wings and the face and claws of a dragon swooped down, trying to knock the avatar off its perch. Alex brought the crossbow up and shot it, then took the last three leaps to the other side of the pit.

“You’re doing very well,” Damian Cray said. “But I wonder if you’ll make it through the third chamber.”

Alex was confident. Feathered Serpent was beautifully designed. Its texture maps and backgrounds were perfect. The Omni character was way ahead of the competition. But for all this, it was just another computer game, similar to ones that Alex had played on Xbox and PlayStation 2. He knew what he was doing. He could win.

He made easy work of the third section: a tall, narrow corridor with carved faces on either side. A hail of wooden spears and arrows fired out of the wooden mouths but not one of them came close as the avatar ducked and weaved, all the time running forward. A bubbling river of acid twisted along the corridor. The avatar jumped over it as if it were a harmless stream.

Now he came to an incredible indoor jungle where the greatest threat, among the trees and the creepers, was a huge robotic snake, covered in spikes. The creature looked horrific. Alex had never seen better graphics. But his avatar ran circles round it, leaving it behind so quickly that the audience barely had a chance to see it.

Cray’s face hadn’t changed, but now he was leaning over Alex, his eyes fixed on the screen, one hand resting on Alex’s shoulder. His knuckles were almost white.

“You’re making it look too easy,” he murmured. Although the words were spoken light-heartedly, there was a rising tension in his voice.

Because the audience was now on Alex’s side. Millions of pounds had been spent on the development of the Feathered Serpent software. But it was being beaten by the first teenager to play it. As Alex dodged a second robotic snake, someone laughed. The hand on his shoulder tightened.

He came to the fifth chamber. This was a mirror maze, filled with smoke and guarded by a dozen Aztec gods wrapped in feathers, jewellery and golden masks. Again, each and every one of the gods was a small masterpiece of graphic art. But although they lunged at the avatar, they kept on missing, and suddenly more of the people in the audience were laughing and applauding, urging Alex on.

One more god, this one with claws and an alligator tail, stood between Alex and the pool of fire that would lead him to the next level. All he had to do was get past it. That was when Cray made his move. He was careful. Nobody would see what happened and if they did it would simply look as if he was carried away by the excitement of the game. But he was quite deliberate. His hand suddenly moved to Alex’s arm and closed tight, pulling it away from the controller. For a few brief seconds, Alex lost control. It was enough. The Aztec god reached out and its claws raked across the avatar’s stomach. Alex actually heard his shirt being torn; he almost felt the pain as the blood poured out. His avatar fell to its knees, then pitched forward and lay still. The screen froze and the words
GAME OVER
appeared in red letters.

Silence fell inside the dome.

“Too bad, Alex,” Cray said. “I’m afraid it wasn’t quite as easy as you thought.”

There was a scattering of applause from the audience. It was hard to tell if they were applauding the technology of the game or the way Alex had taken it on and almost beaten it. But there was also a sense of unease. Perhaps Feathered Serpent was too realistic. It really was as if a part of Alex had died there, on the screen.

Alex turned to Cray. He was angry. He alone knew that the man had cheated. But Cray was smiling again.

“You did great,” he said. “I asked for a demonstration and you certainly gave us one. You make sure you leave your address with one of my assistants. I’ll be sending you a free Gameslayer system and all the introductory games.”

The audience heard this and applauded with more enthusiasm. For a second time, Cray held out a hand. Alex hesitated for a moment, then took it. In a way, he couldn’t blame Cray. The man couldn’t allow the Gameslayer to be turned into a laughing stock on its first outing. He had an investment to protect. But Alex still didn’t like what had happened.

“Good to meet you, Alex. Well done…”

He climbed down from the stage. There were more demonstrations and more talks by members of Cray’s staff. Then lunch was served. But Alex didn’t eat. He had seen enough. He left the Pleasure Dome and crossed over the water, walking back through the park and all the way down to the King’s Road.