Level One

  The San Pedro Grand Hilton was either the best or second-best hotel in Belize, depending on which guidebook you read, but for Cooper’s money, it was number one. The bar was directly on the beach, less than 100 feet from the surf, so you could order your drinks from the sand and the waiters would bring them out to you. It was boiling hot that day, and Cooper was just finishing his third mai tai, so he was considering a move to one of those little dried-grass huts that dotted the beach to take a little catnap, only he was too damn comfortable right where he was. For once, everything was almost perfect.

  The only real problem he had, other than the fact that his drink was running low, was the daydreams. Every time he was right on the verge of falling asleep, Cooper suddenly found himself in some dank-ass, Spartacus-themed sex dungeon somewhere, being dragged across a bare stone floor by a bunch of kids in sandals. Then he would be back on the beach in San Pedro, shaking the ice in his glass to get the waiter’s attention, then back in the dungeon, where the kids were now stripping off his clothes and examining his injured body, then back to Belize, and so forth. This went on for an annoyingly long while, but Cooper did his level best to ignore it, as he really was extremely comfortable there on the sand, and anyway, his trips to the dungeon seemed to be getting shorter and farther between. But all that changed with the stick.

  It was about 5 feet long and made of a single piece of carved wood, something dark and solid-looking, like mahogany maybe, though it had been polished until it almost glowed. The shaft was about an inch thick and almost perfectly smooth, except that it also had a carving of a snake winding around it, with its tail at the bottom and its head at the top, right next to a little pair of wooden wings. The snake had a strange expression on its face, like it knew something he didn’t. Cooper never got a clear look at the person holding the stick. All he remembered later was the stick itself hovering in the air above him. He would also remember a strange rushing sound, and a weird shimmer in the air around the snake’s head, like a desert road on a hot day, though those could have just been more hallucinations on a day chock-full of them.

  After Cooper saw the snake stick, everything changed. Before that, Belize had been so close he could smell the ocean. Afterward, the beach faded, and his trips to the dungeon got longer and longer, until finally Belize disappeared entirely and Cooper was stuck back in shitty, awful reality.

  When he fully awoke, Cooper was on a rough tile floor inside some sort of prison cell made entirely out of wicker. Actually, it wasn’t all wicker. Two of the walls were the same type of stone as the rest of the maze. But the other two and the ceiling were made out of little twigs woven together into mats, like a rich lady’s patio furniture. Also, his hands were tied with some sort of twine, and he was naked except for his BVDs. His duffel bag had disappeared, as had his wristwatch. On the plus side, he felt amazing. Like he probably could have got up and run a marathon if he wasn’t tied. The scratch on his shin had disappeared completely, as had the swelling, purple streaks, and everything else. There wasn’t even a scar that he could make out. Same with his wrist. It was good as new. No stiffness or soreness or anything. It was pretty goddamned miraculous considering.

  Then again, back on the minus side, Cooper was in jail. It was a weird, slap-dick kind of jail, but it was still a jail. And that meant he had failed. The hijack was a bust. There would be no beach in Belize for him. Most likely, he would be spending 20 to life as a guest of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. It was better than dying, sure, but only barely, and it was a hell of a pill to swallow after having just made the single cleanest getaway in the entire history of robbery. Of course, nothing was set in stone yet. Local cops don’t always talk to the Feds, especially out in the sticks. And whatever sort of police force might exist in an insane, magical, underground Renaissance Faire in the middle of the Cascades, it seemed likely that they wouldn’t be totally plugged in to current events. So at the very least, it was still possible Cooper could still walk away if he played his cards exactly right. But the money was gone. He was sure that he would never see any of it again.

  Cooper spent a little while feeling sorry for himself. Then eventually, he got bored and decided to work on his story. In his duffel bag, there was a wallet that contained both a fake driver’s license and a Master Charge card bearing the name Dan Smith. The birthday on the driver’s license was Christmas Day 1942. The address was 832 G Street in Reno, Nevada. His story would be that he was a traveling insurance salesman on a hiking trip in the Cascades who just happened to explore the wrong cave. As for the money and the blood and the two dead men, he’d just deny everything. Let them prove it was him.

  Once he had his story straight, Cooper sat back and waited to be interrogated. He figured it would happen soon. Rural cops, he had always found, are usually in a big hurry to interview you. Probably because they don’t have much else going on. But in this case, it didn’t happen that way. No one came to check on him. Cooper waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. Still, no one appeared. It wasn’t like they had gone far. Cooper could see flashes of movement through the slats in his wicker cage, and he could also hear snatches of quiet conversation in a language he didn’t recognize. Apparently, they just weren’t in any hurry to talk.

  Finally, after he had been awake for at least 15 minutes, Cooper couldn’t take it anymore.

  “Hey!” he shouted.

  Immediately, all the movement outside the cage stopped. Cooper heard hushed conversation from somewhere nearby. He gave them another minute before hitting them with another…

  “Hey!”

  That second “hey!” did the trick, because seconds later, the door of the cage shuddered and in walked the same ridiculously attractive girl he had seen in the hallway just before he passed out. She was still wearing the same dress and the same expression, though the leather sleeve on her arm - and the bird - were both gone. Instead, she held in her hands the canteen Cooper took off of Laughing Boy, plus a little wooden bowl filled with what looked like raisins. She put both down in the middle of the cell. Then looked at Cooper seriously.

  “Hooba fooba?” Bird Girl said, or some shit like that.

  Cooper frowned. Whatever he had been expecting her to say, it wasn’t that. He took some time to consider his reply before finally going with…

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  “What?”

  Bird Girl picked up the canteen and the bowl, moving them closer. Cooper saw that the bowl did, in fact, contain raisins. His mouth began to water.

  “Herka derka dinka donk?”, Bird Girl said, or whatever, in what was either a different language or gibberish.

  “I have no fucking clue what you’re saying,” Cooper explained in slow, careful English, ”but I would love it if you would untie me so I can have some raisins.”

  Tragically, Bird Girl didn’t seem to understand. lnstead, she grimaced, picking up the raisin bowl and the canteen and disappearing back out the door of the cell. Cooper sighed. He was really hungry.

  Several minutes passed before Bird Girl returned. When she did, she brought help with her in the form of two teenage boys. The boy on the left was huge, with thick eyebrows and bushy hair that made him look like Lurch from The Addams Family. The one on the right was shorter, thinner, and hatchet-faced, with a massive forehead and big, dumb cow eyes that made him look like a young Spiro Agnew. Like Bird Girl, both were painfully thin despite their size, like they were trying to cut weight for the wrestling team. Rather than gladiator gear, they were wearing ragged sandals and a sort of weird blue kilt that looked suspiciously like a miniskirt. Above his miniskirt, Lurch was also wearing the San Francisco Giants T-shirt Cooper had been saving for later. Spiro, meanwhile, had on Cooper’s wristwatch and suit jacket.

  “Nice clothes,” Cooper said, but there was no reply. As it turned out, neither of these assholes spoke English, either.

  “Hooba fooba,” Bird Girl commanded. It didn’t sound menacing, but whatever she said, the two boys immediately jumped on top of Cooper, pinning him to the floor.

  “What the-” Cooper began, but his ‘fuck’ was cut off when Lurch’s hand clamped down over his mouth. Underfed as they had looked, the boys turned out to be much stronger than Cooper had expected. He probably could have taken either one of them in a fair fight, but together they were too much, especially with his hands tied. Bird Girl, meanwhile, was now standing over him, holding a little glass bottle full of some kind of brown liquid. She pulled the stopper on the bottle, and a bright, clean scent filled the air, reminding Cooper of peppermint Schnapps.

  Lurch took his hand off Cooper’s mouth. Instantly, Cooper started cursing the kid out, but that was a mistake, as seconds later, there was some sort of wooden funnel wedged between his teeth. The boys sat on his arms, holding his head still as Bird Girl kneeled over Cooper, pouring the contents of the bottle into his mouth.

  He would have spat the liquid out if he could have, but seeing as he now had hands clamped over both his nose and his mouth, his choices seemed to be swallow or suffocate. Also, he was starving, and the liquid didn’t taste half bad. A bit perfumey, but otherwise it might have been apple juice. So after a moment of consideration, Cooper just went ahead and swallowed, hoping it would at least get these freaks to leave him alone. And it worked. Once the liquid was down, Lurch and Spiro stood up and parked their asses against the wall while Bird Girl hovered over him with that same ‘who farted?’ look on her face.

  “Ganyu vanda man neem?” Bird Girl demanded.

  Cooper squinted at her. The liquid hadn’t tasted alcoholic, but clearly it had gone straight to his head. The world around him was swimming. And even though Bird Girl’s words were nonsense, Cooper couldn’t help but feel like he knew what she was saying.

  “Ize ganyu wandas danme?” Bird Girl repeated.

  It was kind of like when they interview foreigners on 60 Minutes. First you hear a bunch of monkey talk, then after that, some translator pipes up, speaking over the other person in clear, plain English. Cooper could still hear the ‘hooba fooba’ coming out of Bird Girl’s mouth, but at the same time, somehow, he could also hear what she was trying to say. Only he wasn’t actually hearing it. Instead, it was like he just knew somehow. It was as if the CIA was broadcasting a translation of her words directly into his brain. At the moment, it was just sort of a vague idea, but with every passing second, the translation got sharper.

  “What the hell was in that bottle?” Cooper demanded.

  “Alaska kweshunjeer,” the girl snapped. “Nautle miumdu yuzerv?”

  Cooper considered for a moment. He was pretty sure he knew what was going on. Bird Girl was trying to interrogate him. But since he didn’t yet know who she was, or what she was after, or even what drug she had just slipped him, Cooper decided the safest reply was yet another…

  “What?”

  “Lizzen dumai uerzs,” the girl said slowly. “Hoosier master? Izzadakayinz?”

  This time Cooper understood every single word except the last one. Still, he looked at Bird Girl through narrowed eyes, the way you would at a complete lunatic.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Cooper demanded.

  “Alas kwunmord I’m,” the girl said menacingly. “Duyu serve dakayinz ordone chu?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake.” This last part was involuntary. Cooper had just noticed that Spiro had a piece of flatbread in his hands. “That’s one of mine, isn’t it?”

  From there, things went south quickly. If he’d been smarter, Cooper probably could have shined those kids on for hours, pretending not to understand their questions. Instead, he got angry, loudly demanding the immediate return of his clothes, personal items, and every surviving piece of flatbread. To her credit, Bird Girl managed to stay calm, but Spiro made the mistake of telling Cooper to shut up - or something to that effect - and that earned him a lecture about how last time Cooper checked this was still America, goddammit, and where in the Constitution does it say you can lock some guy in a wicker cabinet and pour apple juice down his throat? Spiro responded to that by lunging at Cooper, and next thing you knew, Spiro’s friends were physically dragging him out of the cage while he and Cooper loudly traded insults in two different languages.

  After the three kids were gone, there was a brief period of silence during which Cooper had a moment to wonder who the hell these people were, what exactly they wanted from him, and what it might take to get himself free again.

  That lasted about ten minutes.

  * * * * *

  Name: Cooper of Vancouver

  Gender: Male

  Affiliation: None

  Age at Entry: 29

  Current Level: The Labyrinth (1)

  Jing: 10/10

  Qi: 9/9

  Shen: 0

  Status: Normal

  here.