Dream Walker by Shannan Sinclair

Secret. Raze was one of those elite players.
    He walked across the black marble floor and stood before them. They were seated in eight gold thrones behind an enormous arc table of illuminated glass. He did not know any of The 8 by name, only by their numerical designation. Numbers 2, 4, 6 and 8 were women. They sat in the semi-circle around the right of him. Numbers 3, 5, 7, and 9 were men, who were seated around him to the left.
    An extra chair sat in center of the semi-circle, empty. In the 5 years Raze had worked directly for The 8, that seat had never been filled. There had never been a Number 1. It was a mystery—and one that would stay that way—for Raze was not in the position to ask questions, only to provide answers.
    “Hello, Raziel,” Number 7 said.
    “Good morning,” Raze replied.
    “What do you have to report to us today regarding the Parrish Project,” a female, Number 4, asked.
    Raze took a step forward. He’d already decided he was going to lie—well, withhold information , which in this world was the same as lying. It was a risk. If The 8 knew or was somehow involved in the situation that occurred today, they would know he was holding back. But chances were they didn’t have any knowledge of today’s events. They relied on Raze’s skills in The Fourth too much. Raze just needed to pacify them and buy himself more time to figure out what had gone wrong so he could remedy the situation on his own.
    He decided to start with the good news. “The main target of the project, Mr. Scott Parrish, has been eliminated and is no longer a threat.”
    This was the truth. The success of the morning’s operation had been confirmed through the media. Dr. Parrish had been found shot to death at his residence in Modesto. Now, for the bad news.
    “Unfortunately, Blake Parrish did not follow through with his assignment, as intended. There was a fluctuation in his frequency pattern after he shot his father.”
    Again, this was the truth.
    Raze continued, “This may have been due to interference from the Third, where the actual assassination occurred.”
    Not so much the truth here. It was a good thing that there wasn’t a frequency reader in the room, because Raze was sure it would have read the instability in his own energy patterns.
    “What could have caused such a flux,” asked Number 2.
    Raze noted the guileless tone of the question and the lack of suspicion in her disposition, so he proceeded, “It could have been one of a two things. First, the increased kick and the louder decibel level created by a weapon that Blake wasn’t used to using when playing Demesne could have shocked him out of the oscillation net slightly.”
    This was a stretch. Manchurian assassination techniques weren’t new and they had been perfected in the past two decades to withstand such differences as using simulated weapons during trial runs versus real guns in actual operations.
    “Or it could be attributed to the fact that our candidate was younger than most candidates.”
    This was more plausible. Blake, at just under 13 years old, was three years younger than their youngest Manchurian subject had been, a 16-year-old who completed a mass murder on a high school campus in order to eliminate just one targeted professor.
    “And while he was well-acquainted and enthusiastic about the product, Blake Parrish was not yet immersed in the culture or in an addicted state, yet. The intervention of Mr. and Mrs. Parrish could have provided enough of an antidote to counteract the game’s magnetism.”
    This was not true at all. Little Blake was totally hooked. No matter what intervention his parents had tried, Blake was always able to access the game. Raze had made sure of that. And he had been Raze’s perfect little puppet. That is until an extremely attractive glitch invaded Demesne this morning and interrupted the operation.
    Demesne was two things. It was a real video game—an intergalactic war simulator and role-playing game,