Dream Walker by Shannan Sinclair Read Free Book Online Page B

I am not. I did my time, Raze. You may remember...I helped pioneer this field.”
    Raze was unimpressed. In the pioneering days of this business, Grant had made it as high as Level V operative, a major feat back then. But he became more and more obsolete as the skill sets required to do the job became more challenging. The Infiniti 8 rewarded Grant for his service and loyalty by making him CEO of Quantum Gaming Systems, the prime recruiting tool for Infinium’s main mission; but he was no longer viable as an operative.
    Especially now that they had someone like Raze.
    “Have you ever considered that maybe I didn’t go further because I didn’t want to go any further?” Grant asked.
    “No. I haven’t. And I don’t. You didn’t progress, because you couldn’t.”
    “Well, contrary to your belief, Raziel, I made a choice. I didn’t want to sell my soul. You didn’t have any problems with that, because you never had one.”
    “Don’t kid yourself, Grant,” Raze scoffed. “You may not actually do any of the real dirty work, but your soul is sold just the same. Only passively—because you’re a coward.”
    “I’m sorry if actually killing people turns my stomach.”
    Raze laughed out loud. “I don’t kill people, Grant. You know that. They’re already standing on the cliff. I don’t push them; I only serve to inspire them to jump. Their minds are already a fertile soil for their own destruction.”
    “You’re an angel of death.”
    “And you are still an accessory to all that we do here. You’re the ‘pioneer’ remember? We could have never done it without you.”
    They continued walking down the hall in silence. When they arrived before the next set of doors Grant turned to Raze again.
    “Good luck in there, Raziel,” he started to turn away, but turned back and leaned in closer to him. “Oh...and maybe you should watch your back.” Grant turned on his heel and walked back out the way they came.
    Raze watched him, unruffled. Grant was never able to accept that Raze had surpassed him, making him almost completely irrelevant. Grant was nothing but a sycophantic pawn in these halls and a mere gopher for The 8.
    After Grant was completely outside the inner sanctum, Raze turned back toward the doors. He placed his feet shoulder width apart, closed his eyes, centered himself, and concentrated on grounding.
    When he was ready, Raze held his hand in front of a glowing plasma screen inlayed in the door where a doorknob would normally be. He projected his energy frequency through the palm of his hand toward it. The Qi panel began to shift colors—swirls of ultraviolet, indigo, gold, and pitch black blending and turning together. When the combination of colors identified Raze, the internal door mechanism clicked several times and the locks within it disengaged. The door slid open and Raze stepped through into Sanctum Sanctorum.
    Located in the third level, subterranean basement of the building, the Sanctum Sanctorum was a cavernous room built in the shape of a circle. The rest of the building rose up from around this room. Stone walls towered up like a column from the ground chamber level to the tenth floor. The room was sealed by a domed skylight of multi-faceted cut glass above the tenth floor. Embedded in the center of the crystallized skylight was the company logo, a 24-karet gold infinity symbol overlapped with two, platinum, capital “I’s”. Seams of glass ran down the walls in geometric patterns, carrying the sun from the ceiling down to the chamber floor, separating the stone blocks with veins of light. It provided just enough ambient lighting to see by, but not in too much detail. The 8 refused to be scrutinized.
    It was a rare exception that anybody even knew The 8 existed. While every employee of Infinium Incorporated and its subsidiaries played a supporting role in its mission, only the elite, integral players understood its true nature. The actual mission of the conglomerate was beyond Top