Page 5 of Before the Summer He Found Her

I arch a brow. “What exactly is it that I’m trying?”

“Sit down and put the headset on,” Sasha says. “It’ll be easier to show you than to explain.”

Jeff and I share a look.

He shrugs. “You heard her, man. Sit down and try it. There are no words for this thing.”

“You’re not going to kill me, right?” I tease, settling into the spa chair next to the device and reaching for the headset. Laying back, and expecting this is some cool new VR, I start to lift the headset over my head.

Sasha places a hand on my arm to stop me. “Hold on a sec there, Leeroy Jenkins.”

I cackle, thinking of the potentially staged scene with theWorld of Warcraftguy who jumps into action, completely defying and ignoring his team’s intricate plans, resulting in their deaths.

My nose scrunches. “How am I Leeroy?”

She ignores me, tapping on a couple buttons, poking around the different machines that are foreign to me. I might be an IT manager and know quite a bit about networking and computers, but this isn’t a setup I’m familiar with. Then again, I’ve never claimed to know everything in my line of work, either. From what I deduce from the app on her tablet, she’s using the computer to process information from two other machines that monitor human vitals.

“Is this device going to gauge my emotional response to a VR environment?” I ask. “Are you testing spikes in different brain waves dependent on the stakes?”

“You’re on the right track,” she says, tampering with the machine directly below the computer. “I will specifically be monitoring your Alpha, Theta, and Delta waves while watching your temperature, heart rate, oxygen levels, and a few other bodily functions.” She hits another button, reaching into a drawer on the rack and removing a wire with a pulse oximeter attached. “You can start placing the viewer over your head now.”

“Delta waves?” I ask, hesitating. “So, you’re putting me to sleep?”

She shrugs. “You might fall asleep, or you might only fall into a deep state of relaxation.”

“I always fall asleep,” Jeff comments, grinning.

“Will I feel groggy for the rest of the day?” I ask as she clips the pulse oximeter to my finger, wondering just what this device actually does. If this is not a VR and, in fact, some sort of dream monitor, I’ll most likely pass.

Sasha shakes her head. “No. As soon as I pull you out, you should return to your normal waking state within seconds.”

“Alright, then,” I say with an edge to my tone. “This thing is safe, right?”

She starts laughing. “If you can handle your Oculus, you can handle this. No. Not a videogame.”

I swallow. Fair enough. What exactly did I have to lose, anyway?

“I guess I’m ready,” I say.

She smiles. “Great. Put it on then.”

Although I trust her, I hesitate for another second. There’s something uneasy in my gut, suggesting there’s more to all this than what she’s told me. Even so, my life has been non-stop work and stress for so long, I welcome the distraction this will bring, whatever it is. Placing the headset over my eyes, I brace for the unknown.

“Think of where you want to go, and that’s what you’ll see,” are the last words I hear from Sasha.

Instantly, I’m thrust forward. It’s as if I’m moving through a light tunnel, swirls cresting the sides of my vision. My head spins, body tingling all over. This isn’t a deep state of relaxation. And this is nothing like a VR—it feels like I’ve transported somewhere else. My entire body buzzes, the environment around me shifting. The tunnel dissipates, and I’m falling from the sky, screaming at the top of my lungs. Skydiving. Soaring toward my death.

“Fuck!” I yell, clothes flapping, cheeks pounding, adrenaline skyrocketing. My heart pumps in my chest.

Think of where you want to go, and that’s what you’ll see.

“Uh… uh… uh…” Panicking, nothing comes to mind. I’m falling. Falling fast. Toward a green field that stretches on infinitesimally. I say the first random thing that pops into my mind. “Pirates!”

Maybe not the greatest thing I could have thought of.

Instantly, I’m standing near the bow of a small, wooden sloop out at sea. A group of men, dressed in seventeenth-century mariner attire, stare at me with blank expressions on their faces. One man in particular, a guy with a thin moustache and a black, tricorne hat, steps forward.

“Captain Kidd, who’s this?” a man somewhere in the crowd asks, thick Scottish accent marking his words.

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