Agent Matt: Falcon Force

Chapter 11: Feel The Pain

"Ivan has told me all about you," Crow said.

"Apparently you worked for JIN 7. I have to say, that's a very novel idea. Are you still working for them now? Did they send you after me?"

Matt said nothing.

"If you don't answer my questions, I may have to start thinking about doing nasty things to you. Or getting Ivan to do them. That's what I pay him for. Pins and needles ... that sort of thing."

"JIN 7 don't know anything," Ivan said.

He and Crow were alone in the room with Matt. The guard and the man called Henryk had gone. Matt was sitting on the sofa with a glass of chocolate milk that Crow had insisted on pouring for him. Crow was now perched on the piano stool. His legs were crossed and he seemed completely relaxed as he sipped another cocktail.

"There's no way the intelligence services could know anything about us," Ivan went on. "And if they did, they wouldn't have sent Matt."

"Then why was he at the Gamer Zone? Why is he here?" Crow turned to Matt. "I don't suppose you've come all this way to get my autograph. As a Matter of fact, Matt, I'm rather pleased to see you. I was planning to come and find you one day anyway. You completely spoilt the launch of my Gamer Station. Much too clever by half! I was very

cross with you, and although I'm rather busy at the moment, I was going to arrange a little accident..."

"Like you did for that woman in Penguin Park?" Matt asked.

"She was a nuisance. She asked impertinent questions. I hate journalists, and I hate smart-arse kids too. As I say, I'm very glad you managed to find your way here. It makes my life a lot easier."

"You can't do anything to me," Matt said. "JIN 7 know I'm here. They know all about Falcon Force. You may have the codes, but you'll never be able to use them. And if I don't report in this evening, this whole place will be surrounded before tomorrow and you'll be in jail..."

Crow glanced at Ivan. The Russian shook his head.

"He's lying. He must have heard us talking from the stairs. He knows nothing."

Crow licked his lips. Matt realized that he was enjoying himself. He could see now just how crazy Crow was. The man didn't connect with the real world and Matt knew that whatever he was planning, it was going to be on a big scale - and probably lethal.

"It doesn't make any difference," Crow said. "Falcon Force will have taken place in less than seventy two hours from now. I agree with you, Ivan. This boy knows nothing. He's irrelevant. I can kill him and it won't make any difference at all."

"You don't have to kill him," Ivan said. Matt was surprised. The Russian had killed Mahon Ishida. He was Matt's worst enemy. But this was the second time Ivan had tried to protect him. "You can just lock him up until it's all over."

"You're right," Crow said. "I don't have to kill him. But I want to. It's something I want to do very much." He pushed himself off the piano stool and came over to Matt. "Do you remember I told you about pain Synchronization?" he said. "In Tomoeda. The demonstration... Pain Synchronization allows game players to experience the hero's emotions - all his emotions, particularly those associated with pain and death. You may wonder how I programmed it into the software. The answer, my dear Matt, is by the use of volunteers such as yourself."

"I didn't volunteer," Matt muttered.

"Nor did the others. But they still helped me. Just as you will help me. And your reward will be an end to the pain. The comfort and the quiet of death..." Crow looked away. "You can take him," he said.

Two guards had come into the room. Matt hadn't heard them approach, but now they stepped out of the shadows and grabbed hold of him. He tried to fight back, but they were too strong for him. They pulled him off the sofa and away, down one of the passages leading from the room.

Matt managed to look back one last time. Crow had already forgotten him. He was holding the flash drive, admiring it. But Ivan was watching him and he looked worried. Then an automatic door shot down with a hiss of compressed air and Matt was dragged away, his feet sliding uselessly behind him, following the passageway to whatever it was that Damon Crow had arranged.

The cell was at the end of another underground corridor. The two guards threw Matt in, then waited as he turned round to face them. The one who had found him on the stairs spoke a few words with a heavy Dutch accent.

"The door closes and it stays closed. You find the way out. Or you starve."

That was it. The door slammed and Matt heard two bolts being drawn across. He heard the guards' footsteps fade into the distance. Suddenly everything was silent. He was on

his own. He looked around him. The cell was a bare metal box about five metres long and two metres wide with a single bunk, no water and no window. The door had closed flush to the wall. There was no crack round the side, not so much as a keyhole. He knew he had never been in worse trouble. Crow hadn't believed his story; he had barely even considered it. Whether Matt was with JIN 7 or not seemed to make no difference to him ... and the truth was that this time Matt really had got himself caught up in something without JIN 7 there to back him up. For once he had no gadgets to help him break out of the cell. He had brought the bicycle that Samantha had given him from Tomoeda to Rome and then to Amsterdam. But right now it was parked outside Central Station in the city and would stay there until it was stolen or rusted away. Julie knew he had planned to break into the compound, but even if she did raise the alarm, how would anyone ever find him? Despair weighed down on him. He no longer had the strength to fight it. And still he knew almost nothing.

Why had Crow invested so much time and money in the game system he called Gamer Station? Why did he need the flash drive? What was the plane doing in the middle of the compound? Above all, what was Crow planning? Falcon Force would take place in three days - but where, and what would it entail?

Matt forced himself to take control. He'd been locked up before. The important thing was to fight back - not to admit defeat. Crow had already made mistakes. Even speaking his own name on the phone when Matt called him from Saint-Pierre had been an error of judgement. He might have power, fame and enormous resources. He was certainly planning a huge operation. But he wasn't as clever as he thought. Matt could still beat him. But how to begin? Crow had put him into this cell to experience what he called pain synthesis. Matt didn't like the sound of that. And what had the guard said? Find the way out - or starve. But there was no way out. Matt ran his hands across the walls. They were solid steel. He went over and examined the door a second time. Nothing.

It was tightly sealed. He glanced at the ceiling, at the single bulb burning behind a thick pane of glass. That only left the bunk...

He found the trapdoor underneath, built into the wall. It was like a cat flap, just big enough to take a human body. Gingerly, wondering if it might be booby-trapped, Matt reached out and pushed it. The metal flap swung inwards. There was some sort of tunnel on the other side, but he couldn't see anything. If he crawled into it, he would be entering a narrow space with no light at all - and he couldn't even be sure that the tunnel actually went anywhere. Did he have the courage to go in?

There was no alternative. Matt examined the cell one last time, knelt down and pushed himself forward. The metal flap swung open in front of him, then travelled down his back as he crawled into the tunnel. He felt it hit the back of his heels and there was a soft click. What was that? He couldn't see anything. He lifted a hand and waved it in front of his face. It was as if it wasn't there. He reached out in front of him and felt a solid wall. God! He had walked - crawled rather - into a trap. This wasn't the way out after all.

He pushed himself back the way he had come and that was when he discovered the flap was now locked. He kicked out with his feet but it wouldn't move. Panic, total and uncontrollable, overwhelmed him. He was buried alive, in total darkness, with no air. This was what Crow had meant by pain synchronization: a death too hideous to imagine.

Matt went mad.

Unable to control himself, he screamed out, his fists lashing against the walls of this metal coffin. He was suffocating.

His flailing hand hit a section of the wall and he felt it give way. There was a second flap! Gasping for air, he twisted round and into a second tunnel, as black and as chilling as the first. But at least there was some faint flicker of hope burning in his consciousness. There was a way through. If he could just keep a grip on himself, he might yet find his way back into the light.

The second tunnel was longer. Matt slithered forward, feeling the sheet metal under his hands. He forced himself to slow down. He was still completely blind. If there was a hole ahead of him, he would plunge into it before he knew what had happened. As he went, he tapped against the walls, searching for other passageways. His head knocked into something and he swore. The bad language helped him. It was good to direct his hatred against Damon Crow. And hearing his own voice reminded him he was still alive.

He had bumped into a ladder. He took hold of it with both hands and felt for the opening that must be above his shoulders. He was lying flat on his stomach, but slowly he manipulated himself round and began to climb up, feeling his way in case there was a ceiling overhead. His hand came into contact with something and he pushed. To his huge relief, light flooded in. He had opened some sort of trapdoor with a large, brightly lit room on the other side. Gratefully he climbed the last rungs and passed through.

The air was warm. Matt sucked it into his lungs, allowing his feelings of panic and claustrophobia to fade away. Then he looked up. What he saw made him wish he was still in the tunnel.

He was kneeling on a straw-covered floor in a room that was bathed in yellow light. Three of the walls seemed to have been built with huge blocks of stone. Blazing torches slanted in towards him, fixed to metal brackets. Gates at least ten metres high stood in front of him. They were made out of wood, with iron fastenings and a huge face carved into the surface. Some sort of Mexican god with saucer eyes and solid, block like teeth. Matt had seen the face before but it took him a few moments to work out where. And then he knew exactly what lay ahead of him. He knew how Crow had programmed pain synchronization into his game.

The gates had appeared at the start of Aztec Treasure, the game that Matt had played in the Gamer zone in Penguin Park. Then it had been a computerized image, projected onto a screen - and Matt had been represented by an avatar, a two-dimensional version of himself. But Crow had also built an actual physical version of the game. Matt reached out and touched one of the walls. Sure enough, they weren't really stone but some sort of toughened plastic. The whole thing was like one of those walk-throughs at Disneyland...an ancient world reproduced with high-tech modern construction. There had been a time when Matt wouldn't have believed it possible, but he knew with a sick certainty that once the gates opened, he would find himself in a perfect reconstruction of the game - and that meant he would be facing the same challenges. Only this time it would be for real: real flames, real acid, real spears and - if he made a mistake - real death.

Crow had told him that he had used other "volunteers". Presumably they had been filmed fighting their way through the various challenges; and all the time their emotions had been recorded and then somehow digitally transferred and programmed into the Gamer Station system. It was sick. Matt realized that the darkness of the underground passages hadn't even been part of the real challenge. That began now.

He didn't move. He needed time to think, to remember as much as he could about the game he had played at the Gamer zone. There had been five zones. First some sort of temple, with a crossbow and a sword concealed in the walls. Would Crow provide him with weapons in this reconstruction? He would have to wait and see. What came after the temple? There had been a pit with a flying creature: half butterfly, half dragon. After that Matt had wandered into the jungle, the home of the metallic snakes. Then he ran down a corridor - spears shooting out of the walls – that would be difficult. Then there had been a mirror maze guarded by Aztec gods and finally a pool of fire, his exit to the next level.

A pool of fire. If that was reproduced here, it would kill him. Matt remembered what Crow had said. The comfort and the quiet of death. There was no way out of this madhouse. If he did manage to survive the five zones, he would be allowed to finish it by throwing himself into the flames.

Matt felt hatred well up inside him. He could actually taste it. Damon Crow was beyond evil. What could he do? There would be no way back through the tunnels and Matt wasn't sure he had the nerve even to try. He had only one choice, and that was to continue. He had almost beaten the game once. That at least gave him a little hope. On the other hand, there was a world of difference between manipulating a controller and actually attempting the action himself. He couldn't move or react with the speed of an electronic figure. Nor would he be given extra lives. If he was killed once, he would stay dead.

He stood up. At once the gates swung silently open, and there ahead of him was the temple that he had last seen in the game. He wondered if his progress was being monitored. Could he at least rely on an element of surprise?

He walked through the gates. The temple was exactly how he remembered it from the screen at the Gamer zone: a vast space with stone walls covered in strange carvings and pillars, statues crouching at their base, stretching far above him. Even the stained- glass windows had been reproduced with images of UFOs hovering over fields of golden corn. And there too were the cameras, swivelling to follow him and, presumably, to record whatever progress he made. Organ music, modern rather than religious, throbbed all around him. Matt shivered, barely able to accept that this was really happening.

He walked further into the temple, every sense alert; waiting for an attack that he knew could come from any direction. He wished now that he had played Aztec Treasure more carefully. He had raced through the zones at such speed that he had probably missed half of the ambushes. His feet rang out on the silver floor. Ahead of him, rusting staircases that reminded him of a submarine or a submerged ship twisted upwards. He thought of trying one of them. But he hadn't gone that way when he was playing the game and preferred not to now. It was better to stick with what he knew.

The alcove that contained the crossbow was underneath a wooden pulpit, carved in the shape of a dragon. It was almost completely covered by what looked like green ivy - but Matt knew that the twisting vines carried an electrical charge. He could see the weapon resting against the stonework, and there was just enough of a gap. Was it worth the risk? Matt tensed himself, preparing to reach in, then threw himself full length on the floor. Half a second later and it would have been fatal. He had remembered the razor boomerang at the same instant that he had heard a whistling sound coming from nowhere. He had no time to prepare himself. He hit the ground so hard that the breath was driven out of him. There was a flash and a series of sparks. He felt a burning pain across his shoulders and knew that he hadn't been quite fast enough. The boomerang had sliced open his T-shirt, also cutting his skin. It had been a close thing. Any closer and he wouldn't even have made it into the second zone. And silently the cameras watched. Everything was being recorded. One day it would be fed into Crow's software - presumably Aztec Treasure 2.

Matt sat up and tried to pull his torn shirt together. At least the boomerang had helped in one way. It had hit the ivy, cutting and short-circuiting the electric wires. Matt stretched an arm into the alcove and took out the crossbow. It was antique - wood and iron - but it seemed to be working. Even so, Crow had cheated him. There was an arrow in it, but it had no point. It was too blunt to damage anything.

He decided to take both the crossbow and the arrow with him anyway. He moved away from the alcove and over to the wall where he knew he would find the sword. He looked up, no sword. Suddenly a light shinned on something and the glint was blinding Matt. As he moved he saw the sword laying on the ground. The vibration from the boomerang hitting the wall must of shook it loose and it feel to the ground, Matt smiled at that thought he now had two weapons, a better advantage than in the game. Matt didn't dare imagine if he had decided to climb up to grab it the boomerang would slice him in two or hidden electrical wires could secretly wrapped around it. The stones themselves could be booby trapped and a stone would come loose. If he fell, he would break a leg. Crow would enjoy that, watching him lie helpless on the silver floor until some other missile was fired into him to finish him off. But thinking about it, Matt suddenly realized that he had the answer.

He knew how to beat the simulated world that Crow had built. Every computer game is a series of programmed events, with nothing random, nothing left to chance. When Matt had played the game in the Gamer zone, he had collected the crossbow and then used it to shoot the creature that had attacked him. In the same way, locked doors would have keys; poisons would have antidotes. No Matter how much choice you might seem to have, you were always obeying a hidden set of rules. But Matt had not been programmed. He was a human being and he could do what he wanted. It had cost him a torn shirt and a very narrow escape - but he had learnt his lesson. If he hadn't tried to get the crossbow, he wouldn't have made himself a target for the boomerang. Climbing up the wall to get the sword would put him in danger because he would be doing exactly what was expected. But in the real world things happen for a reason. To get out of this world that Crow had built for him, he had to do everything that wasn't expected. In other words he had to cheat.

And he would start right now.

He went over to one of the blazing torches and tried to remove it from the wall. He wasn't surprised to find that the whole thing was bolted into place. Crow had thought of everything. But even if he controlled the holders, he couldn't control the flames themselves. Matt placed the sword in his belt that was around his waist then he pulled off his shirt and wrapped it round the end of the wooden arrow. Then he set it on fire. He smiled to himself. Now he had a weapon that hadn't been programmed. The exit door was at the far end of the temple. Matt was supposed to take a direct path to it. Instead, he went the long way round, staying close to the walls, avoiding any traps that might be lying in wait. Ahead of him he could see the second chamber - the rain- drenched pit with its pillars rising from the depths below and ending at floor level. Matt stared at the camera and gave crow or whoever was watching, an obscene gesture and moved to the next zone.

He passed through the door and stopped on a narrow ledge; the tops of the pillars - barely bigger than soup plates - offered him a path of stepping stones across the void. Matt remembered the flying creature that had attacked him. He looked up. Yes, there it was, almost lost in the gloom: a nylon wire running from the opposite side to the door above his head. He thrust upwards with the burning arrow, holding the flame against the wire. It worked. The wire caught fire and then snapped. Crow had built a robotic version of the creature that had attacked him in the game. Matt knew that it would have swooped down when he was halfway across, rushing into him and knocking him off his perch, causing him to plunge into whatever lay below. Now he watched with quiet satisfaction as the creature tumbled down from the ceiling and dangled in front of him, a jumble of metal and feathers that was more like a dead parrot than a mythical monster.

The way ahead was clear but the rain was still falling, splashing down from some hidden sprinkler system. The stepping stones would be slippery. Matt knew that his avatar would have been unable to remove its shoes for better grip. He quickly slipped off his trainers, tied them together and hung them round his neck. His socks went into his pocket. Then he jumped. The trick, he knew, was to do this quickly: not to stop, not to look down. He took a breath, then started. The rain blinded him. The tops of the pillars were only just big enough to contain his bare feet. On the very last one he lost his balance. But he didn't have to use his feet - he could move in a way that his avatar couldn't. He threw himself forward, stretching out his hands and allowing his own momentum to carry him towards safety. His chest hit the ground and he clung on, dragging his legs over the edge of the pit. He had made it to the other side.

He reached the end of the corridor and climbed down into the third zone, the jungle. He was surprised to discover that the vegetation pressing in on him from all sides was real. He had expected plastic and paper. He could feel the heat in the air and the ground underfoot was soft and wet. What traps were waiting for him here? He remembered the robotic snakes that had barely managed to get close when he played the game, and searched warily for the tracks that would propel something similar his way. There were no tracks. Matt took another step forward and stopped, paralysed by the horror of what he saw. There was a snake, and, like the leaves and the creepers, it was real. It was as thick as a man's waist and at least five metres long, lying motionless in a patch of long grass. Its eyes were two black diamonds. For a brief second, Matt hoped it might be dead. But then its tongue flickered out and the whole body heaved, and he knew that he was facing a living thing - one that was beyond nightmares. The snake had been encased in a fantastic body suit. Matt had no idea how long it could have survived wrapped up like this. As terrifying as the creature was, he still felt a spark of pity for it, seeing what had been done. The suit was made out of wire that had been twisted round and round the full length of the animal, with vicious spikes and razors welded on from the neck all the way to the tail. Looking past the tail, Matt could see dozens of lines cut into the soft ground. Whatever the snake touched, it sliced. It couldn't help itself. And it was slithering towards him.

He couldn't have moved if he had wanted to, but something told him that keeping still was the only chance he had. The snake had to be some sort of boa constrictor, part of the Boidae family. A useless piece of information he had picked up in biology class suddenly came back to him. The snake ate mainly birds and monkeys, finding its victims by smell, then coiling round and suffocating them. But Matt knew that if the snake attacked him, this wouldn't be how he would die. The razors and spikes would cut him to pieces. And it was getting closer. Wave after wave of glinting silver rippled behind it as it dragged the razors along. Now it was just a metre away. Moving very slowly, Matt pulled the sword from his belt that held his combats up. The sword was in good condition probably because no one ever used it. Trying not to give the snake any reason to attack him, Matt held the blade in both hands. He was lucky. He had used a sword before. He wasn't meant to have a weapon in this zone. That hadn't been part of the program. But despite everything Crow had thrown at him he still had the blade and now he was ready.

Matt cried out. He couldn't help himself. The snake had suddenly jerked forward, dragging itself over his trainer. The razors cut into the soft material, only millimetres away from his foot. He instinctively kicked out. At once the snake reared back. Matt saw black flames ignite in its eyes. Its tongue flickered. It was about to launch itself at him. He brought the blade round and swung it forward. There was nothing else he could do. The blade entered the snake's mouth and continued out of the back of its head. Matt leapt, back, avoiding the deadly convulsions of the creature's body. The snake thrashed and twisted, cutting the grass and the nearby bushes to shreds. Then it lay still.

Matt knew that he had killed it, and he wasn't sorry. What had been done to the snake was revolting. He was glad he had put it out of its misery. Now he knew how harry potter felt in the chamber of secrets when he killed the basilisk. Matt threw down his crossbow in a rage and it shattered to pieces.

"To hell with this and to hell with crow." He yelled. As he took deep cleansing breaths he began to see he was quite hidden from the camera, assuming there was one, in this room. He looked down at the snake and wondered was an escape possible; he knew what he had to do. Thankfully Julie's flask was still in his pocket.

A corridor ran off to the right, the walls close together and decorated with hideous Aztec faces. Matt remembered how his avatar had run through here, dodging between a hail of wooden spears. He glanced down and saw that there was what looked like a smoking stream in the floor.

Acid! What now?

He didn't dare cross the corridor until he knew how sensitive the sensors were. He took out his socks, rolled them into a ball and threw them down the corridor. As he had hoped, the movement was enough to activate the sensors that controlled the hidden guns. Short wooden spears spat out of the lips of the Aztec gods at fantastic speed, striking the opposite walls. One of the spears broke in half. Matt picked it up and felt the needle- sharp point. It was exactly what he wanted. He tucked it into the belt of his trousers. He had a plan to escape but he needed something else.

The computer game had been programmed so that there was only one way forward. Matt had been able to dodge both the spears and the acid river easily enough when he was playing Aztec Treasure. But he knew he would be unable to do the same in this grotesque three-dimensional version. He would only have to take one false step and he would be finished. He could imagine splashing into the acid and then panicking. He would be driven straight into the path of the spears as he tried to reach the next zone. No. There had to be another way. Matt forced himself to concentrate.

Ignore the rules! He turned the three words over and over in his mind. Moving along the corridor wasn't an option. so how about up? He put on his shoes, then took a tentative step. The spears nearest the entrance had already been fired. He was safe so long as he didn't move too far down the corridor. He grabbed hold of the wall and began to climb. The Aztec heads made perfect footholds, and only when he was at the very top did he begin to make his way along, high above the floor and away from danger. One step at a time, he edged forward. He came to a camera mounted in the ceiling and, with a smile, wrenched out the wire. There was a lot of it and he decided to keep that too.

There was one more zone left - the mirror maze. Matt knew that there would be Aztec gods waiting for him. Probably guards in fancy dress. Even if he got past them, he would only find himself facing the pool of fire. But he'd had enough. To hell with Damon Crow. He looked up. He had disabled one of the security cameras and there weren't any others in view. He had found a blind spot in this insane playground. That suited him perfectly.

It was time to find his own way out.