Threshold

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

BELOW THE SUMMIT OF K2—THE YEAR 2040

I do not see you now, but yet I feel.

Becca Wilde was at twenty-eight thousand feet above sea level along the China-Pakistan border. “I cannot see you, but I know you’re there!” she screamed through her balaclava.

She screamed and fought through her fear. Snowing sideways minutes after sunup, a daybreak gale-force whiteout on K2.

She was attempting a unique ascent of the ancient mountain that experts said could not be done—even with a full team of Sherpas.

She took another step along the precipice with a heavy pack on her back—she pressed on. She slammed the crampon on her right boot into the ice. In the Death Zone—Becca pressed on.

“I see you now,” she said.

Six feet in front of her, a shadow ghost image appeared against the white. Tensing, her lone Sherpa guide tightened the rope that held them together, drove his ice ax into the incline, and waved her on.

Another burst of wind from the storm that had taken them by surprise an hour earlier shook them. The icy snow stung any unprotected flesh, punishing the openings between her goggles and hood, sharp like a hundred needles.

Visibility fell to three feet, and the blur of the man in front of her vanished. Becca stopped and tightened her grip on the rope, and her heart plummeted in her chest, pounding against her ribs.

They were exposed, battered by unrelenting reminders that death would be the result of any misstep. Nothing lived at this altitude. Every living organism froze up here. Died up here. Stayed up here. Forever.

Eighty-mile-per-hour winds, gusting higher. Driving the snow, swirling, pushing, forcing. Reminding Becca this place was hostile. Telling her to escape this elevation. Escape.

She had prepared for the ascent, every detail. She had been ready when they’d departed camp at two a.m. in the moonless black. Four hours later, the sun had revealed a radiant horizon, a burst of amber turning the unknown murkiness into snowscapes and black rock and ice and stone. And it was just after daybreak that a blizzard wind roared up the sides of the frozen granite walls below them. Caught them vulnerable where mistakes couldn’t be made.

The Sherpa stopped and fought to remain upright on the precipice, a plunge of thousands of feet on both sides. K2 was angry this morning. It was hungry, its fatality rate second among the eight-thousanders.

K2 had never before been conquered during the winter, and they were on the Chinese side, the suicide climb. Yet she was there, caught two hundred feet below the summit where marauding tornadoes of ice pounded her body and plundered her ambitions like a demon from a dark hell. This mountain was known by another name, a name derived from moments like this—the Savage Mountain.

Becca stopped, using all the strength in her thirteen-year-old body to brace against the wind. She felt mountain sickness rising inside her. Head throbbing, dizziness, confusion. She had already vomited twice. Her body was racing toward altitude-induced pulmonary edema. She knew that she must descend quickly.

We must turn back.

Temperature plummeting. Visibility gone. Everything around her looked the same. A whiteout.

“We must retreat,” Becca yelled to her Sherpa. “Where are you?”

Are we lost? I’m freezing.

Fighting nausea, she lowered the balaclava and spit, her saliva instant ice. A glimpse of her Sherpa. He lost his footing. Becca reacted, reached out, the force twisting her, pulling her down, and she fell spread-eagle on her stomach. Another burst, a hundred-mile-per-hour force, a tsunami of wind. The Sherpa was jolted sideways, fell backward, and slid over the edge. Into the abyss.

“Tenzing!” Becca screamed his name. “Tenzing!”

The rope holding them together jerked her forward, then snapped down over the edge. She rotated herself onto her back, then, stiff-legged, drove both crampons into a rock bordering the cliff, the rope pulling her to the precipice—pulling, pulling. She used all her strength to hold her body flat to the ground, boots driving hard into the rocky ice. The rope taut, the weight unrelenting, pulling her body toward the edge.

Hold on, or I’m gone.

The deadweight of the Sherpa was too much—her body began lifting from the ground, her fulcrum fading, her will waning.

Fight, Becca. Fight.

Head spinning, strength vanquished, dizzy, succumbing, death inches away. Not this end. Not this.

Then the rope went slack.

Her body slammed back to the ground. She gasped, starving for oxygen.

He released the carabiner. To save me.

“Tenzing,” she screamed again into the blizzard.

She was alive, a moment-to-moment reality. No past, no future.

“I can’t lose consciousness, or I’ll die. Can’t stay at this altitude.” An affirmation of desperation.

The sun blocked by the storm. Faded light now. Frostbitten hands and feet. Engulfed by the storm.

“I have to descend. Which way?” she said, not realizing she was speaking aloud and wasting precious oxygen.

Becca struggled to her feet, driving her expedition poles into the ice.

“One foot, then another. I must descend,” she said.

She stood on the Savage Mountain, unsure of how to safely descend. Disoriented. Confused.

Then she felt it. Amid the altitude sickness. A Presence. Something unknown. Something was there with her. Tenzing was gone, so it was something else.

“I can feel you. I sense you. Who are you?” Becca called out.

She saw nothing. She turned left, then right, then looked behind her. Nothing. She closed her eyes.

I feel you. Where are you?

She opened her eyes. Nothing in front of her. Then something out of the corner of her eye, forty-five degrees to her right. A shadow against the white.

“Tenzing, is that you?” Becca screamed through the wind.

But she knew Tenzing was dead. Darkness closing in. Frostbite. Altitude sickness worsening. Visibility was two or three feet. She took a step and it was solid.

Take that step.

In front of her, a shadow. Human? She could not be sure. An outline of a person? Unknown. But something was there. She was out of breath. Ten breaths for every step.

No oxygen up here. No air.

She closed her eyes.

I feel you. You’re guiding me. You want me to step toward you.

Becca took another step. Then another. One wrong step would be fatal. She opened her eyes.

“Where are you?” Becca said. “I can’t see you anymore.”

She closed her eyes and stepped. Opened her eyes.

“This pack’s too heavy. Can’t carry…can’t carry the weight. Point…point the way. Tell me the way. I must descend,” Becca said.

She slumped to her knees, removed the backpack, dropped it into the snow. Her heart racing, body leaking life with every passing second.

“Going into shock. Have seconds left. Which way?” Her voice was quaking now, barely audible.

Becca jammed her expedition poles into the snow again until they hit ice.

“Push. Push up. Up. Stand, Becca. Stand up. My heart. It’s too fast.”

She wrapped her hands in the pole grips and pulled up.

“Pull. Stand up, Becca.”

Using all her remaining strength, she stood—the howling wind driving her toward the precipice.

“I can walk, I can live, I must fight on.”

Heart racing, battering her bones. Thumping. Pulsing. Blood pressure soaring. She turned and looked back.

“I can’t see you.

I can’t see you.

I can’t see you, but I know you’re there—”

Another step, a crampon slipping, and she lost her footing in a blink—falling toward the edge of the precipice, her body slamming down onto the ice.

Sliding.

Grabbing.

Sliding.

“Oh God, I’m not ready— Oh God…”

Weightlessness.

Everything went black.

Then white.

A pounding.

Pounding.

Pounding on her chest.

Bright white.

VENTURA, CALIFORNIA

Jerrod, a surfer type, was doing chest compressions on Becca who was sprawled on the floor. They were in one of the simulations rooms at RadNtel, a technology company in Ventura, California.

“You’re there,” Becca said. “You’re there.”

Her eyes glazed over and rolled to the back of her head.

“Eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen,” Jerrod said as he continued CPR.

He pressed her cheeks, covered her mouth with his, and exhaled hard, twice, then resumed chest compressions.

“Breathe, Becca, breathe,” he said.

Two other software developers stood over Becca with horrified looks on their faces.

“She had another seizure, then she went wet rag,” one coder said, a Marilyn Manson type, wearing black on black, with studs, chains, piercings—a TSA nightmare.

“I just hit up nine-one-one, dude. They’re coming, Becca. Keep breathing, kid,” another coder said.

They were in one of the dozens of RadNtel prototyping rooms where fully immersive environments were tested for the Stream, the virtual reality global phenomenon.

“What was she in?” Jerrod said, panting now, but still pumping.

“Extreme level three. Himalayas something,” Marilyn Manson said.

“Dude, Kip’s gonna be pissed. She’s not supposed to be in level three. Whose security did she use?” Jerrod said.

“Nada, dude. She knows how to hack it. He’s gonna tag our asses.”

Kip Wilde, thirty-nine, founder of RadNtel, was task-attacking a multiplex of windows displayed on a concave wall of glass panels. With a flurry of fingers, he was in his standard command-and-control mode. Kip was sitting at his twenty-foot-long semicircle desk when the call came in.

“Yeah?” Kip said.

“Kip, we already called nine-one-one. Becca had another seizure, and I think she stopped breathing when she fell out of her wheelchair. Jerrod is doing CPR on her,” Marilyn said.

Kip inhaled once, his breath locked up. He swiped the screen, and his assistant, Jinx, appeared in a window, late twenties, attractive.

“Clear the paramedics all the way to Lab Seven. It’s Becca,” he said.

He launched to his feet and ran.

Kip burst through the double doors of the prototyping room. Over the ocean of glass panels displaying a myriad of Stream environments, he saw the coders standing in the back. They waved him over. He zigzagged his way through the maze of workstations. Jerrod was kneeling next to Becca, who was coming to.

“Becca, can you hear me?” Kip said. He kneeled and held her head.

“You’re there. You’re there,” Becca said, her voice frail and fading.

“Who’s there? Paramedics are right behind me. Are you in pain? Can you hear me?” he said.

Becca’s eyes moved from her father to the ceiling. Then started to roll back.

He grasped her head. “No.” Terror in his voice.

The doors burst open. Three paramedics rushed in. Behind them, another first responder rolling a gurney.

“Here,” Kip yelled. “Over here!”

Kip lifted her, but she was limp.

“Becca, can you hear me? Stay here. Stay here, this is RL. You’re in real life,” he said.

Her lips started to move, and Kip put his ear to her mouth.

“I saw it, Dad,” she said.

She passed out.

Kip stood inside the emergency entrance of the Ventura’s Community Memorial Hospital. People coming and going, people injured, bleeding, moaning, screaming, crying, some standing, others lying on the floor.

He stood alone, waiting, looking through the glass door, beyond the circular driveway, over the buildings, into the sky, beyond the sky. He did not move. He was alone.

Until something caught his eye: Ronni, thirty-four, his ex-wife and Becca’s mother, running toward the entrance.

She saw Kip and scowled. He winced, knowing the guilt trip would come later like it always did when Becca did something Ronni disapproved of while in Kip’s custody. This time was different. No sugarcoating this one.

Just tell her straight and take whatever fallout there is now, tomorrow, the next day.

Kip exhaled. The double glass doors started to open automatically. Not fast enough, Ronni pulled them apart.

“We got her stable in the VR room. Got her breathing. Ronni, I think she’s okay. They’re taking her up to the intensive care unit in a few minutes,” Kip said.

Ronni bent over. Kip had seen this before, her catching her breath—and her sanity. He grabbed her shoulders.

“Where is she?” Ronni shoved his arms off and stormed away. He followed.

“They want us to wait until they take her upstairs to a room.”

She stopped. “Did she pass out? What? Did her heart stop? Oh my God, Kip.”

“I don’t think there was any brain damage, so she couldn’t have stopped breathing for long, if at all, before the paramedics got there.”

“Jesus Christ, what did you do to our daughter?”

Ronni’s eyes shot away from his face to the elevator. Her feet followed. Kip ran after her.

“She was in the Stream. A new environment. You know how she is. Something affected her physically. We’re not sure what. I’ll find out. I’m sorry. I was…working.”

“Goddamn it. No more Stream. I mean it.”

“We’ll talk to her together about that,” he said.

“No more Stream,” she said.

Kip and Ronni looked into Becca’s hospital room. Wearing an oxygen mask, she turned to see her parents, then smiled. Ronni and Kip smiled back. Three nurses surrounded the bed, busy setting up the IV, and reviewing the numbers, blood pressure, heart rate, and oxygen levels. A nurse left the room and greeted Kip and Ronni.

“You can go in now, folks,” she said.

“Thank you,” Kip said.

Kip and Ronni entered the room. Ronni held Becca’s hand.

“I’m fine, Mom,” Becca said, her voice muffled through the mask.

Ronni gave her a sad frown face.

“You had a seizure, do you remember?” Kip said.

Becca removed her mask. “Everything. Dad, I’m fine. Take me home.”

“The doctors need to run tests, so we’ll see…”

“Soon as we can, Becc,” Kip said.

“I love you, honey,” Ronni said, wiping away tears, trying but failing to compose herself.

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

Becca turned and looked at Kip.

“Dad?”

“Yeah, sweetie?”

“It—it was the-there. On K-K2. At the extreme. Ri-right on the edge.”

Kip quick glanced Ronni, knowing he had some explaining to do.

“We’ll talk about it later, okay?” he said.

“What was there, honey?” Ronni said.

“Dad, it wasn’t in the code. N-not in the code. I felt it. I think I may have even seen it,” Becca said.

“What?” Ronni said.

“The p-presence,” Becca said.

Kip rubbed Becca’s forehead. “You rest now,” he said.

Ronni glared at Kip. Two doctors entered the room. Kip glanced over, welcoming the interruption.

Minutes later, Kip and Ronni looked into Becca’s room as the doctors examined her. Ronni turned sharply toward Kip, back of her hand to her forehead. Kip knew that gesture. Knew that look. Here it comes.

“What was she into?” Ronni said.

“She was on K2, the mountain. Trying to summit in a storm.”

“She’s too weak to do these things. This has to stop. It affected her physically, Kip. It’s dangerous.”

Ronni turned her back to Kip.

“I’ll talk to her about it. I can restrict her access, filter it.”

Ronni spun back around. “Was she referring to her pretend friend she talks about or something else?”

“She, well, we talked about this thing. We talked about… It was several days ago. My expedition ten years back to K2. For real. When I tried to summit. The third-man factor,” Kip said.

“The third man?” Ronni said.

“Yes. She read one of my interviews from that time. In Men’s Journal, I think. So she kept pestering me about it. You know how she is? Tenacious. She’s your daughter.”

“Don’t patronize me.”

“She wanted to do an experiment. I think.”

“So you knew about this? Like what?”

“You know she feels things. Or feels a certain thing. You know about that.”

Ronni stepped in close, glaring at Kip. “Who is she interacting with in the Stream? These VR freaks. It could be a pedophile for all you know.”

“Mostly teenagers and their avatars. Harmless. Or an AI.”

“An AI?”

“All the newest Stream environments, the Seventh Heavens, have new features. You may’ve seen me talking about it on the news.”

“I try not to watch.”

Kip smiled. Ronni did not. “The developers can program their own AI to manage the environments. Too complex to do it otherwise,” he said.

“So she was interacting with another AI, not Arturo? Great,” Ronni said.

“I’m not sure. I’ll find out. The important thing is that she’s okay.”

“Okay? She has autism and a failing body, Kip. I think we need to go back to court. You’re irresponsible. And you’re responsible.”

An hour later, Ronni kissed Becca’s forehead. Kip and Ronni left her hospital room.

“I’ll be back after your tests, honey,” Ronni said.

“O-okay, Mom,” Becca said.

Becca watched her parents leave and waved to them. Once out of sight, she closed her eyes.

“Arturo, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Becca. I am here,” Arturo replied.

Arturo was Kip’s master artificial intelligence entity. Kip and an elite team of developers had created his AI over the last several years. Arturo retained master control of the Stream and was one of the most advanced AIs in the world. He also communicated with Becca via the device her neurologist had implanted in her brain to mitigate her ALS.

“You have new restrictions on your travel in the Stream. Your father just instituted them. Your architectural environment remains accessible,” Arturo said.

“Take me to the Convergere.”