Bryson laughed again. “Wow, that is so awesome that you two thought I’d saved the day. I should’ve kept my mouth shut and taken all the credit.”
“What?” Sarah insisted. “What did you hear?”
“A voice.” Bryson’s face had smoothed into something more serious. “Right before we were whisked away, back to the Wake. I heard a voice, clear as a bell.”
“What did it say?” Michael asked.
Bryson grinned. “ ‘You have friends among the Tangents.’ ”
By that night, Michael had two roommates, not just one. Bryson had stashed a couple of bags with clothes and such, and after retrieving them, they’d all headed to the apartment with a million things to talk about. Michael thought a lot about Bryson’s revelation as the day wore on, wondering about these mysterious Tangents that had freed them from the KillSims. He was curious, fascinated. And worried that somehow Kaine had just tricked them again.
“Check this out,” Bryson said as they finished their dinner, a gourmet selection of hot dogs and hamburgers. He rummaged through one of his bags and pulled out a rectangular device. One side was glass; the other was metal. He placed it on the table and it landed with a sliding hiss. “This, my friends, is called a NetTab.”
“What?” Sarah asked doubtfully, dragging out the word. “People haven’t used those things in years.”
“Well,” Bryson replied. “My dad is what you might call a collector. You see, Sarah, he collects things.”
She just rolled her eyes at her friend’s lame wit.
Michael picked up the device gingerly, as if it might fall to dust like some ancient Egyptian scroll. It seemed just as archaic.
“Is that really what this is?” he asked. “I’ve never even seen one, they’re so old.”
“Yes,” Bryson said as he took it away. “That’s what it is. And the thing still works, too. You can thank me later, but now we can keep up with what’s going on in the world without risking the use of our NetScreens.”
Michael liked the sound of that. He was beyond spooked now by Kaine and his minions, but they needed to get online. They needed to figure out what to do.
“Show us how it works,” Sarah said.
Bryson beamed like a proud father. “It’s not hard to use. The hard part is connecting to the Net using the old system. But dear old Dad isn’t just a collector. He’s also a friggin’ genius, and he’s got this puppy all hooked up. We can browse all we want and no one will know it’s us. This thing has no link to our identities.”
He pressed a button and the glass screen came to life, showing a background that looked much like a normal NetScreen. Except there weren’t any personal identifiers, just links to news sources and games.
“Let’s find out what’s going on in the world.”
Bryson tapped the device and they got what they wanted.
After an hour of scouring the NewsBops for any sign of Kaine’s Doctrinized Tangents wreaking havoc in the world, they had a laundry list of events that made them feel worse than ever. Things that were probably slipping under most people’s radars as coincidences or one-time occurrences, Michael knew were far more sinister. All three of them knew. If you took a step back and looked at everything, it was clear that Kaine was touching the world with his influence.
In Germany, a top official had switched political parties overnight, changing his stances on nearly all major issues. He stood in their parliament, ranting and raving about a legislative overhaul. But the story was buried, appearing as a sidebar on a comedy site. Everyone thought he’d just lost his mind.
In Japan, a Buddhist monk known worldwide for his humanitarian efforts had murdered more than thirty of his followers in their sleep with a knife from the monastery kitchen, slipping from room to room in the night. Just the day before, the monk had met with dignitaries from several countries, showing no signs of mental trouble, advocating for peace. But the meeting had taken place in the VirtNet, the monk surely in a Coffin.
A woman in Canada known for her charitable contributions to the community had been awakened from her time in the Sleep by a daughter who’d begun to worry about her. The mother scrambled out of the Coffin, raging mad. She killed all of her children, then her husband when he got home. All she would tell the police was that she’d been told to do it.
There were too many stories. And over and over neighbors and friends said the same things: “He was the nicest guy” and “She didn’t have a bad bone in her body.”
What really convinced Michael, though, were the nonviolent stories. What purpose, after all, could Kaine have in sending Tangents into human bodies only to have them do something horrible and get thrown in jail? Maybe those were evidence of the transfers not working.
He and his friends also found several reports on people changing their normal behavior or making rash decisions. Corporate executives moving huge numbers of funds or instigating massive layoffs or selling off subsidiaries. Government officials suddenly changing their ideologies enough to bring it to the attention of the NewsBops—though most weren’t as animated as the man in Germany. Actors walking off movie sets, sports figures resigning from teams, people left and right stepping down from jobs they’d held for years. There were so many stories that Michael almost—almost—didn’t flinch when they came across a report about one missing Jackson Porter, wanted for cyber-terrorism.
But Michael was able to push that to the side for now, focusing on the possible Tangent invasion. It was all too much, too close together. Michael had been a news junkie his whole life, and he’d never seen anything like this.
“They have to be Tangents,” he said for at least the tenth time as they read yet another example of some government type turning against his constituents. “This is crazy. How can people not notice a connection?”
“Think about it,” Bryson replied. He turned off the ancient device and slid it away in disgust, as if it were the cause of all the reports. “They don’t know what we know. You really think someone is going to just stand up and say, ‘I got it!’ ”—he snapped his fingers—“ ‘By George, I’ve got it! Computer programs are taking over the minds of all these people!’ ”
Michael rolled his eyes. “I know, but it just seems so crazy. Weird things like this happening all over the world at the same time.”
“Some of this stuff might be copycat work,” Sarah said. “But a lot of it has to be Kaine. I’m guessing he had a test batch—Michael and a few other Tangents—made some tweaks after he saw what happened, then a week or two later sent a whole bunch out at once. I just don’t get what he’s trying to accomplish.”
Michael didn’t, either. “Yeah, some of it seems so random. Nothing’s consistent. I can kind of understand the government stuff, the corporation stuff—he might be planning to have others to come in and take over. But why all the violence, too?” He shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter, when it potentially mattered more than anything in history.
“Chaos,” Bryson said in a spooky whisper.
Michael just looked at him, waiting for him to expound on his dramatic pronouncement.
“Chaos,” he repeated. “Maybe Kaine wants nothing more right now except good old-fashioned chaos.”
“Why?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he wants all the humans to start a big war and kill themselves.”
“That doesn’t make an ounce of sense,” Michael countered. “What’s the point of the Mortality Doctrine if he wants to wipe out humans? Doesn’t he want to be a human?” It was Bryson’s turn to shrug. “I guess that’s the question of the year. He said all that stuff about immortality—did he mean as a human or as a Tangent? Which is why we need to figure out this dude’s ultimate plan.”
Sarah stood up and stretched, pressing her hands into her back as she leaned away from the table. Michael heard something crack.
“We all need to chill and rest today,” she said. “Get some sleep tonight. Because tomorrow we have a very big day.”
?
??Oh yeah?” Bryson asked. “What exactly are we doing?”
Sarah stood up and turned to go, casually answering over her shoulder as she walked away.
“We’re going to see the VNS.”
Every major city—and most smaller ones—had a branch of the VNS located within its limits, though often it was unmarked. But by midafternoon the next day, Michael and his friends had located the local VNS office and were standing in front of it. It was a nondescript, run-down building in the seedier part of town, where it wasn’t unusual to see drug dealers and bandits roaming the streets. Which was why Michael asked the cabbie to wait for them while they went in.
“Are we sure this is it?” Bryson asked.
“Positive,” Sarah replied. “Anyway, what can it hurt to knock on the door?”
Bryson tapped his chin with a finger. “It could hurt if some hopped-up drug monkey was in the middle of a deal and decided to shoot whoever knocked on his door. That would hurt.”
“Yeah, that would definitely hurt,” Michael agreed. The argument was pointless, though. They all knew very well that they were going inside that building, no matter what.
Sarah headed for a grimy glass door under the awning that ran along the front wall. The metal handle hung askew from only one attached bolt. “Then I’ll do the knocking, you wimps.”
Michael and Bryson raced to be by her side when she did so.
There was an old doormat—not something you usually saw at an office building—lying crookedly in front of the entrance, one corner chewed off by a dog or rat, the frayed edge matching the exterior of the building perfectly. The mat itself said WIPE YOUR FEET, which Michael thought was perfect for an entity like the VNS, getting straight to business.
Sarah reached out and rapped her knuckles on the door. It rattled, and the loose handle knocked against the glass, but it didn’t open. Michael studied the doorframe, all dusty metal surrounded by warped wood with chipped brown paint. He started to wonder about the place—it seemed a little over-the-top for a front. He remembered visiting—and by “visiting” he meant “being kidnapped and forcefully taken to”—Agent Weber’s office, and how it had been underneath the football stadium. The VNS liked lurking in the shadows, it seemed.
Sarah finally knocked again when no one answered, this time harder, making everything shake just a little more vigorously.
“Come on, come on,” Bryson whispered.
Something clicked on the other side of the door and it swung open, one of those old-school bells attached to the top ringing with the movement. Somehow, to Michael that seemed even more out of place than the building itself, for an establishment that supposedly protected the world’s most important source of commerce and entertainment. The man who’d answered the door was even more absurd.
Short, chubby, with gray-flecked scruff on his face and wispy hair combed over his flaky scalp, the man wore a stained tank top—yellowed, with even yellower spots—revealing hairy arms that looked as if they hadn’t seen the sun in twenty years. Brown suspenders kept his brown pants from falling down, and a stubby cigar—not even lit—hung from his mouth like he’d forgotten about it hours ago.
“Who are ya, what do ya want?” he asked in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.
Sarah had taken charge and she kept it. “We’re here to speak with an agent about something important—something very important. And it’s related to the VirtNet.”
Michael wanted to sigh. As much as he loved Sarah, it hadn’t been the best introduction ever. A little hokey.
“We have an appointment with an agent,” Michael said on instinct.
The man popped the cigar out of his mouth and started coughing, great, heaving, retching sounds that made him seem as if his chest might explode. Michael winced.
“What’s that?” their host grunted, still clearing his throat.
It was Bryson’s turn. “Look, man, you don’t have to give us the runaround. We know this is a branch of the VNS, and we have some very serious stuff to talk about. Please bring us to an agent—we don’t have much time.”
At least he threw in a couple of pleases, Michael thought.
The man jammed the stumpy cigar back between his gray lips, then spoke around it. “What’s the name of the agent? And the passcode?”
Michael suddenly ached for the Sleep, where they could hack their way to finding that kind of information. Now the only thing they had to rely on was their wit and charm.
“Look, sir,” he said, “we don’t know the local agent’s name. And we don’t have a passcode. All we need is five minutes. I swear you guys won’t regret listening to us. Please.”
“Harmless as butterflies,” Bryson said with a goofy grin.
The man chewed his cigar like a stick of beef jerky. “Inside. Now.”
Michael let out a big breath and followed Bryson and Sarah into a musty, dimly lit lobby with three hard-backed chairs and an empty desk. The man told them to wait there; then he slammed the door, the bell dinging madly.
After he disappeared through a different door, Michael looked at his friends. “He’s … interesting.”
Sarah nodded slowly; Bryson made a shuddering look of fright.
Less than a minute later, the cigar-chomping man returned. He propped the door open and nodded for them to walk through.
“Agent Weber will see you now.”
Bryson and Sarah started to follow their host’s gesture, but Michael hesitated. There was no possible way that Weber just happened to be at this location, a barren dump in the middle of a seedy neighborhood. The man seemed to sense his doubts.
“Via uplink,” the guy muttered, as if he’d grown weary of speaking in life.
“Oh,” Michael responded stupidly.
He went along with his friends through the door and down a long hallway that became nicer—unstained carpet, fresher paint—and better lit the farther they walked, Cigar Man shepherding them from behind. He barked for them to turn left, then right, then down several flights of stairs, the floors unmarked. Finally, he led the group through another door, down another hallway, and into a small room with a giant WallScreen already lit up.
Michael took in a quick breath, his throat tightening, when he saw the giant face of Agent Weber staring at them. Her dark hair, her exotic eyes, the knowing look, as if she could read your deepest thoughts.
“Sit,” their host commanded.
There was a long table surrounded by padded chairs. Without a word, Michael and his friends sat down. He noticed that Sarah and Bryson were trying to avoid eye contact with the woman on the wall. As if she weren’t intimidating enough, Michael thought, now she was literally larger than life, hovering above them. He remembered the day she came to see him, personally, after he’d awakened in poor Jackson’s body. Seeing her had comforted him, at least a little, made him feel like he wasn’t alone and the VNS would help him figure things out. But then, he hadn’t heard from her or anyone else since—unless you counted the possible sighting in Lifeblood, by the tree house.
He felt a prick of anger, a thumping of his pulse in his temples.
“You may leave us now, Patrick,” Weber said, her voice booming from speakers all around them.
Bryson looked like he was struggling to hold back a smirk. He mouthed the word Patrick at Michael as if that were the funniest name he’d ever heard.
After the man and his cigar left, an uncomfortable silence settled on the room. Michael tried his best to maintain eye contact with Agent Weber, wondering where exactly the camera was located that allowed her to see them. Determined to show some guts, he waited for her to speak first. But she let it drag out.
Finally, she said, simply, “What do you want?”
Michael’s pulse thumped a little harder.
“What do we want?” he repeated. “I thought maybe you’d say something a little nicer, like ‘It’s lovely to see you safe and sound, Michael. I’ve been meaning to get in touch with you, Michael, but it’s just been crazy town at work. Please ac
cept my apologies, Michael. Oh, and sorry about dropping in on you in Lifeblood, Michael.’ Something like that.”
Agent Weber didn’t bat an eye. She merely continued to stare at him, almost as if he were a complete stranger. And even though he was in a stranger’s body, she’d seen him already. She’d come to visit him. And he deserved better treatment than this. Bryson and Sarah stirred in their seats but didn’t say anything.
“Please tell me what you came here to say,” Weber pronounced. “Patrick insisted it was important. The VNS doesn’t have time to play games with high schoolers, so be quick about it.”
This made Michael stand up. That pulse in his temples had become a jackhammer. “How can you—”
Sarah cut him off, her hand on his arm. He hadn’t noticed her move closer.
“Michael,” she said. “Let’s just tell her what we came to tell her. About Kaine, about the things on the news.”
“You really think I don’t know about Kaine?” Agent Weber said. “This is why you called on me?”
Michael’s anger turned into confusion. Why was she acting so strange? Did she not trust Bryson and Sarah yet?
“We were … kidnapped by Kaine,” Sarah said, staying amazingly calm. “He wanted us to work for him, to help him. He threatened us, and he took my parents.”
“And he promised us the worlds of the VirtNet,” Bryson added. “Immortality. Don’t forget that part.”
Sarah nodded. “That, too. If we did what he wanted. Someone helped us escape, and we’ve had weird things happen in the Wake, too. You obviously know Michael’s story, all about the Mortality Doctrine. And a lot of the crazy things happening in the news … it’s all related somehow. We … just wanted to talk to the VNS. I don’t understand why—”
“That’s enough,” Agent Weber said. Not loudly, but with authority. “I don’t need to hear any more, thank you.”
Michael was at a complete loss for words. On the screen, he saw Weber reach over and push something; then she told Patrick to come back to the room. The man was at the door a second later.