Prisoner of Glass (18 page)

“You took him.
 
You took Oscar.
 
So I would better resemble Isis.
 
Didn’t you?”

“No, that was not us,” Titus said.
 
“That was the Vizier.
 
The Vizier took him — or had him taken, I should say.”

She looked down at the sleeping Vizier, violent thoughts flooding her cerebellum.
 
“The Vizier?
 
Why?”

“Because he needed us to take
you
.
 
He could not leave the Glass Prison on his own.
 
It would be inauspicious.
 
He needed an Isis to break him out.
 
You could say he needed the stars to line up just so.
 
So, he arranged for Oscar to be abducted, knowing that would cause us to take you.”

“You people are all sick.
 
Sick in the head!
 
I should just kill you, you know.
 
I should just rip your eyeballs from your skull, for what you’ve done to me.”

“I know.
 
But you can’t, because I’m not really here.”

Not …?

Titus’s form wavered.
 
He had been a projection of some sort all along.
 
Elspeth cursed him vigorously.
 
His ghostly image frayed and faded and was gone.
 

His voice called out after his vanished image:
 
“You will find your way Elspeth.
 
I know you better than you know yourself.
 
That’s why we chose you.”

James Card roused from a deep sleep. “Elspeth,” he called out in the darkness.
 
“Are you alright?
 
Who are you talking to?”

“Nobody,” she sagged.
 
Nobody important.
 
“Go back to sleep.”

And still.
 
She had now seen that she had been someone’s pawn all along.
 
A pawn, just like in Pantheon Chess.

Well.
 

She would be a pawn no more.

THE END

About the Author:

http://markjeffrey.net
   
Twitter: @markjeffrey

Mark Jeffrey is a serial technology entrepreneur and author. He has co-founded five internet companies and written seven books.
 
His other novels include MAX QUICK: THE POCKET AND THE PENDANT (Harper Collins, 2011), MAX QUICK: THE TWO TRAVELERS (2012), MAX QUICK: THE BANE OF THE BONDSMAN (2013), AGE OF AETHER (2012) and ARMAND PTOLEMY AND THE GOLDEN ALEPH (2011).
 
His first non-fiction book is BITCOIN EXPLAINED SIMPLY (2014).

Most recently, Mark co-founded web television network ThisWeekIn.com with Jason Calacanis and comedian / actor Kevin Pollak. Investors included Sky Dayton, Matt Coffin and Jarl Mohn (founder of E! and Liberty Digital). Mark served as CEO from its inception in Jan 2010 until May 2011.

From 2007 to 2010, Mark was the founding CTO of Mahalo.com, Inc., a human-powered search and learning site backed by Sequoia Capital, CBS, News Corp, Elon Musk and others.
 
Prior to this, Jeffrey co-founded a business social networking company ZeroDegrees, Inc. in 2002 and sold it to IAC/InteractiveCorp in 2004 with more than one million registered users.

His first company, The Palace, Inc., was backed by Time Warner, Intel and Softbank and sold to Communities.com in 1998. The Palace was a popular avatar virtual world environment which had 10 million users at its peak. He was also the co-founder and CEO of SuperSig, Inc. in 1999, which focused on app-like functionality embedded in email.

His first novel, MAX QUICK: THE POCKET AND THE PENDANT, was published in hardcover and ebook by HarperCollins in May, 2011. The book was initially podcast as a series of episodic mp3's and received over 2.5 million downloads.

Mark Jeffrey holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire.