Chapter 60

LEAP FROM THE GALLOWS

Oceanwide Plaza Tower 1, Downtown Los Angeles, California, United States

Taking the stairs two at a time, Gen didn’t stop until she was on the twentieth floor. But as she took a few steps out into the open space, she knew that she hadn’t cleared all the challenges. The next virtual reality would try to steal her mind. Her vision blurred and then new images took over, erasing what she’d been seeing and replacing it with something much more sinister than anything she’d been served up thus far.

Gen’s hands were cuffed by chains. She was wet and cold but worse than that were the guards ushering her forward. And like the past had come alive, Gen was haunted by the visuals around her. It was as if she’d been dropped in 15th century London.

The village square was a sea of jeering faces, their eyes alight with a cruel hunger as they watched Gen being led to the gallows. The stage stood ten yards away. On it stood her executioner, his face masked. Beside him was the method in which he planned to end her. A platform with a post and attached to it, a noose. This was Gen’s worst fear—and somehow Charlie Sloane had figured it out and was delivering that reality to her.

The packed-dirt ground beneath her feet was damp with the morning dew, the chill of it seeping through her thin, tattered shoes. The air was thick with the stench of unwashed bodies and rotten produce. The pungent odors mingled with the bitter trace of woodsmoke from the nearby houses.

A stiff breeze tugged at Gen’s hair as she stumbled forward, her hands bound tightly behind her back. The cold, unforgiving chains chafed against her skin, a constant reminder of the fate that awaited her at the end of this grim procession. Her chest vibrated with the rapid pounding of her heart, as if it were trying to escape the grip of fear.

Although Gen knew that she was supposed to be asserting her true reality, it was incredibly difficult with anxiety crashing down on her. Her thoughts raced. Her breath hitched in her throat. She felt helpless to fight this, just as she was to escape the chains on her hands or the noose hanging close by.

The sky above was a leaden gray, heavy with the promise of rain. The buildings around the square reminded Gen of the architecture she’d grown up with in medieval London. And the people, well, they were incredibly angry at her, as if she’d betrayed them somehow.

As she neared the gallows, the first fat drops were already beginning to fall, spattering against the muddy ground. Gen felt a shiver run down her spine. The wooden structure loomed before her, its beams dark and weathered with age. The noose hung limply from the crossbeam, a stark reminder of the countless lives that had been snuffed out in this very spot.

The executioner stood waiting, his face hidden beneath a black hood. His hands were gnarled and scarred, a testament to the grim work he performed day after day. As Gen mounted the steps to the platform, the jeers and taunts of the crowd grew louder, their voices blending into a discord of cruelty and anger.

Everything was happening so fast. Gen never had a moment to close her eyes and focus. She didn’t know how she’d escape this false experience that seemed absolutely real.

Too quickly she was beside the executioner. She felt the rough scratch of the rope as the noose was lowered over her head, the coarse fibers scraping against her skin. Resisting seemed futile and only pulled Gen away from where her efforts had to be.

She told herself this wasn’t real. She tried to remember the skyscraper and the way it felt. She reminded herself that this was a nightmare, an illusion meant to destroy her from the inside out.

But she failed to make the reality disappear. As the executioner straightened the rope around her neck, about to pull it tight, she realized that this experience was winning. The sudden pressure against her throat made her gasp for breath…and it felt so real.

The world seemed to narrow to a single point, the distant horizon blurring and fading as the reality of her impending death settled over her like a suffocating blanket.

In that moment of utter despair, when her mind seemed to be working against her, Gen figured it out. She was behaving like this experience was real. By going along with it, she was endorsing it. But all she had to do was fight it with a stubbornness that would prove it was false.

Gen yanked her head back, pulling it free from the still loose rope. She jerked out of the hands of the guards. Looked at them with pure conviction. And then she did what no one would dare to do in that situation. Gen simply ran forward, and leapt from the gallows, believing she was free because it wasn’t real.

When Gen landed, it wasn’t on the muddy earth of the ground. It was on the dirty carpet of the twentieth floor. The vision of the gallows and the village square disappeared at once and Gen was left, alone, looking around alone at her true reality.