As their hands touched she felt two worlds superimpose themselves on each other, both featuring her, both fighting for domination. He was holding her back from being lost in the nightmare completely.
In one she was driving a car, two children in the back seat. The song on the radio and the constant singing from the back was crawling up and down her spine, tensing the muscles. She had to turn it off. She reached down and took her eyes from the road.
In the other she was kneeling in a forest by the side of a lake, side to side with a strange man, both of them head down, hands planted uselessly over their ears. A woman dressed all in black was walking slowly back and forth in front of them.
“The power of music comes from its links to emotion. They cannot be recognised without being aroused. The emotions move into both the music itself and the listener, hmm? The virus is not separate from its victim.”
Her voice sliced through them, curling around and through the notes that filled their heads. Cass could feel herself sinking back into the other world, the other nightmare.
She tuned the radio and felt the loose gravel edge of the road under the front tyres. She looked back up and a curve in the road seemed to race up towards her. She simply couldn’t react in time.
“As it takes you over you too will become part of the music, part of its power. You take on the form of the virus and help its spread.”
The car leapt off the road into deep grass that swatted the windows as she hit the brakes and gripped the steering wheel. The singing in the back was still there, they were too young to realise what was happening.
“Soon there will be nothing left but the virus. No Grid. No Boulevard. Nothing but empty hardware waiting to be put to use by the only one still capable.”
The singing only stopped when they hit water, water washing over the windscreen, the car jerking them all forwards in their seats, twisting the belts that held the two child seats in place, hiding the buckles away from prying hands. There was a moment when the car stopped that she looked up and breathed. Then they began to sink.
“I will create a new world, with new rules, ones which cannot be bent or broken. Users will not simply visit, hmm? They will always stay.”
The girls in the back were crying now, fear rising up in them as the water level at their feet crept ever higher. Cass twisted her way out of the seatbelt and tried to close the windows, stop the flow, but it was rushing up from the floor now. She had to get them out.
“Only I will have the knowledge and power to change. This world will become all there is. A universe of dreams with only one dreamer.”
The belts nudged away from her numb fingers. The water was very cold, slowing everything down. The buckle wouldn’t unclip. The girls were sobbing, begging her to help them with their eyes. She put both hands on one and wrenched, trying to lift her head up out of the water as the car nosedived down. She could feel thoughts of escape rise up in her blood, taking over what her mind knew she had to do.
“There is no need for faith when you are given the certainty of death.”
The noise had stopped now, the water had filtered it all away. All she was left with as they continued down were two sets of eyes staring at her, now past her, now at nothing at all.
