The Rule of Thoughts

  “Yep,” Bryson replied.

  Sarah responded as if she’d known the plan all along. “We can break into the schematics of the building, too. Maybe there’s a way out that we’re not thinking of.”

  “Hey, you guys are stealing all my thunder,” Bryson complained. “This is my plan, don’t forget. You guys wanted to run like chickens with their heads cut off.”

  Sarah snorted, a sound Michael hoped she never repeated. “Yeah, and maybe then we’d be at a coffee shop right now, watching the action from across the street.”

  Bryson stopped at the fifty-fourth floor. “This ought to do.” He reached down to twist the leverlike door handle, but it didn’t move.

  Locked.

  Michael heard someone shouting, but he could barely make out the words. Something about heading to the top floor.

  “Locked?” Bryson huffed in frustration. “Seriously? It’s locked?”

  “They probably did it from the main controls,” Sarah said, surprisingly calm. “We just need to crack their system.” She had already squeezed her EarCuff, and her NetScreen opened up, hovering in front of her.

  “You better do some serious renetworking, then,” Michael said. His nerves were twisting tighter by the second. “Hurry!”

  Sarah was focused. She typed furiously at her projected keyboard, swiping fingers at her NetScreen wildly. Michael wanted to say “hurry” again, maybe scream it a few times. It was all he could do to stop himself from joining her on his own NetScreen, but opening just one link was dangerous enough. Kaine seemed to lurk around every corner, both virtual and real.

  A woman shouted from below, the words a haunting echo that filled the air. “Three of them! Up there! Heat sensors caught—” She was drowned out by an uptick in the thumping drumbeat of footsteps, the squeak of shoes on the cement.

  “Anything?” Bryson asked Sarah.

  She frowned but didn’t answer. Michael looked over her shoulder, but it was hard to tell what was going on. All he saw were words and schematics and flashing firewall screens, moving too quickly for him to make sense of it. But he trusted Sarah.

  The noises from below got louder. They had to be only a few stories away now. Michael thought he could actually hear them breathing. And their pace had quickened, if anything, the impact of their steps rattling in his brain.

  Sarah finally spoke, her voice tight and clipped. “Almost there. One of you has to get into the system. I need help attacking their sensors. Michael, click on!” She hadn’t paused in the slightest working at her controls.

  “They’re almost—” he started.

  “Do it!” she yelled.

  Even as he pinched his EarCuff, he knew the people rushing toward them had heard her. They paused, just for a few seconds, probably motioning to each other for silence. But then they thundered once more up the stairs, maybe two levels below them now.

  Michael looked at his screen, hoping they’d finally figured out how to enter the Net without Kaine latching on to them. Sarah had already sent over a series of codes, and he pushed them into action. Just as he was swept into the systems of the building security—a barrage of words and images—he heard the distinct, mechanical click of the door unlocking. The cops, security guards, whoever was coming, were right below them, almost within sight by how close they sounded. Manipulating the system would amount to nothing if there was actual visual confirmation.

  Bryson opened the door and stepped through, Sarah right on his heels, barely glancing up from her screen. Michael followed, eyes fixed to his own screen, knowing Bryson would close the door for them. It was dark inside, the light from the stairwell cut off with the click of the door closing. The lock engaged immediately, Sarah working it from her end. From what he’d seen in the system so far, Michael could tell that everything in the building was centrally controlled. That was to their advantage.

  He jumped when someone started pounding on the door, working at the door handle.

  “I guess they saw us,” Bryson said with a deflated voice.

  “I took over the system,” Sarah responded, sounding for all the world like she’d done something as simple as flushing a toilet. “It’ll hold them off for a little while.”

  “It won’t stop them from breaking the stupid door down,” Bryson replied.

  “Good point.” Lit by the glow of her NetScreen, she turned and ran down the dark hallway. Bryson followed, as did Michael, barely looking up from his work, trying to get a feel for the building’s security programs.

  Behind him, their pursuers started ramming the door with something very heavy.

  Sarah wound her way through the labyrinth of hallways like someone who’d worked there for years, following the floor plans on her screen. She stopped in front of the elevators, red emergency lights glowing from the ceiling like demonic eyes. The booming impact of the battering ram seemed to shake the entire building.

  “What’re those people using?” Bryson asked as Sarah worked away on her screen. “Did they bring a freaking tree up the stairs?”

  Michael didn’t answer, waiting patiently for Sarah to tell him what to do. She finally did.

  “Okay, here’s the plan,” she said. Michael had no idea how she could be so calm, as if she were about to lay out the next few plays in a backyard football game. “Bryson, push the down button. Michael, I’ll focus on the heat sensors, make them think we got on and went down a few floors. We can’t go all the way down or we’ll blow our only advantage when they see that no one’s on the elevator when it opens up.”

  “What should I do?” Michael asked.

  “You need to shut down the camera system. Destroy it completely. I can mess with where they’re seeing heat signatures, but there’s no way we can fake the video. Just wipe the whole thing out, every camera in the building.”

  “Will do,” he answered, already digging through the system to find the location of those controls. Sweat trickled down his face, and the constant thump against the door in the distance felt like a hammer in his head.

  The elevator dinged and the middle car opened.

  “We all need to step inside for a sec,” Sarah said, doing it first. “Bryson, hold the doors open until I’m ready. I think I’ve almost got it figured out.” Michael had never seen her fingers fly at such a lightning-fast speed. Her whole face glistened from the effort, and the tendons in her neck stood out against her skin like straws, as if every one of them were about to snap from stress.

  “Got it!” Sarah yelled, realizing too late that yelling wasn’t the best idea right then. “Push the thirtieth-floor button,” she said quietly.

  Bryson pushed it and it lit up. Michael had been working at his screen and finally slipped past the firewall protecting the camera controls. He shut it down so that anyone looking would think it’d been caused by a power malfunction, maybe spurred by the crash of the police hovercar.

  “Cameras are down,” he said, filled with relief as he clicked off his NetScreen. They didn’t know where the cameras were or if they’d been spotted by them yet, but it was good to have one less thing to worry about. A loud crack sounded with the latest impact of the battering ram.

  “Now let’s go hide,” Sarah whispered, already on the move. Michael and Bryson followed her into the hallway, turning right into the red-tinted darkness. The elevator doors closed behind them. “I faked the heat sig on that car, and then I’m gonna wipe it out completely once it stops on thirty. With that and the cameras shot, they won’t have a clue where we are.”

  Michael was just about to ask her how long she planned for them to hide when a ringing, metallic crash shook the air, followed by shouts and a rush of footsteps.

  “We need to hurry,” Sarah said flatly, an understatement if Michael had ever heard one.

  The green glow of Sarah’s NetScreen lit the way as they scurried through a spooky world of cubicles and desks and potted plants—the employees had long since evacuated. The sounds of pursuit echoed throughout the floor, shouted directions and the r
ustle of footsteps on carpet. People were spreading out until it became impossible to tell what noise was coming from where. Michael could feel every thump of his escalated heartbeat in his throat and ears, the blood pumping. Finally, Sarah stopped at a large breakroom, where a full kitchen and several tables had been set up. Michael knew they couldn’t risk going any farther—there were too many people following them, and they were too spread out.

  “Under those cabinets,” Bryson whispered, pointing at some wide doors under the long kitchen counter, where a toaster and coffee machine were tucked away.

  “Perfect,” Sarah replied. “I’ll keep throwing them off.” She opened a cabinet in the middle and dropped to her knees.

  Michael went to her right, crouched down, and opened one of the wooden doors. There was plenty of space, just a few paper plates and plastic utensils scattered along the bottom. He pushed them all to the side and crawled in, turning to sit and face the door. He pulled his knees as close to his chest as he could and reached out and closed the cabinet. The sudden darkness tempted him to squeeze his EarCuff and bring up his NetScreen again, just for the comfort of it, but he resisted. He waited blindly, concentrating on slowing his breath and heartbeat and listening for activity.

  Soon there was silence. Michael didn’t know when it had happened, but at some point the alarms had stopped clanging. It showed how anxious he’d been that he hadn’t noticed. Besides the soft sound of his own small breaths, everything was quiet and still. And dark.

  Several minutes passed. He couldn’t get comfortable in the small, cramped space, no matter how much he shifted. His back ached and his muscles were stiff. He knew Sarah was in the next cabinet over, her NetScreen probably dimmed as much as possible, working on a way to get out of there. There had to be a way. And if there was, Michael had no doubt that she’d figure it out.

  Still, he hadn’t stopped sweating. His nerves were a jumble of frayed cords, ready to snap. People were out there, in the halls, throughout the building, looking for him. And not just as a missing person—they thought he was a terrorist, a kidnapper, an accomplice, a fugitive. Once the police had them, it wouldn’t be long before Kaine knew where they were. And then his people—who he guessed were former Tangents like Michael—would come next.

  There was a sound somewhere nearby, and not from the other cabinets. A cough or clearing of the throat. Michael froze and listened.

  The shuffle of footsteps, more than one person. They moved in bursts, as if they were sweeping the area bit by bit, going from one spot to the next. He couldn’t tell if the people were in the hallway or the kitchen. But then came the voices, and it sounded like they were just a few feet away.

  “Call in downstairs,” a man said in a tight whisper. “Get the latest.”

  “Just a sec,” came the reply. A woman.

  Michael felt his heart almost leap out of his chest—they were so close. He steeled himself. One wrong move or sound and they’d be on him.

  There was a chirp and a tinny sound of static that was barely audible. Then the woman spoke again.

  “Systems are all jacked up. Cameras are down, and the heat sigs are acting loopy. The sarge sent a team to the thirtieth floor for some reason but told us to sweep this one. Make sure they left.”

  “You really think the Sarge meant it?” the man asked.

  “What?” the woman replied. Michael closed his eyes and concentrated, as if that would help him hear better.

  “You know what I’m talking about.”

  The woman paused before responding. “Yeah. I think he meant it.”

  One of them made a clicking sound with their tongue, and then there were a few seconds of silence.

  “Whatever,” the man finally said. “Dead, not dead, I don’t care. As long as I get home for supper. I’m sick of this crap.”

  The woman snickered. “Cry me a river. Come on, let’s search these cabinets. It’s a perfect place to hide.”

  Panicked, Michael realized he had to reposition himself to be able to strike out when they opened his cabinet door. Quietly, slowly, he shifted to get onto his knees, his back scraping the low top of the space. He’d come too far to turn back now. When that door swung open, he’d launch himself like a KillSim, screaming bloody murder.

  Footsteps approached. A drop of sweat stung his right eye, and he swiped at it, waiting for the inevitable. Someone stood just inches away—he could sense their presence, almost like a shadow. He heard the person shuffle their feet right outside his door, then get quiet. Maybe he or she had crouched down, reaching for the handle of the cabinet that second. Michael braced himself, hands clenched into fists.

  Nothing happened. Seconds ticked by.

  One, two, three, four, five.

  Not a sound.

  Six, seven, eight, nine, ten.

  Nothing.

  Then the scrape of a shoe against the floor, still close.

  Silence.

  Michael realized he’d been holding his breath, as if it had been locked inside his chest. Carefully, he exhaled through his nose and sucked in a slow pull of air. Another scrape, then more of nothing. Neither of the people in the kitchen had said a word.

  What were they doing? His muscles cramped; he had the urge to open the door and get it over with. But he held back, straining to hear something, anything at all. He might as well have been in the depths of space. The silence was loud. More seconds passed.

  Then, just like that, the world was full of sound.

  A scuffle of feet. Creaking noises. Grunts. Soft thumps. Metallic clicks. Muted moans, as if someone had a hand over their mouth. Michael’s whole body tensed—he didn’t know what to do, what to make of it. His friends might be in trouble, but it seemed odd that neither one had called for help.

  More sounds of struggle: a flurry of footsteps, a crash like bodies hitting the fridge. The thunderous boom of gunshots. Someone shouted something he couldn’t make out, then ran, footsteps fading in the hallway. A man, close by, groaned in agony.

  Finally, unable to hold himself back any longer, Michael reached out to open the door, when everything fell silent again. His hand froze in midair, uncertainty flooding him.

  A few seconds later there was another grunt. Then heavy, uneven footsteps, crossing the kitchen floor, as if the person had been injured.

  Thump, drag, thump, drag.

  Getting louder, heading straight for the cabinet in which Michael huddled like a terrified kid hiding from a bully. He couldn’t take it anymore. Wishing desperately that he had a weapon, he pushed open the door and crawled out—he’d hoped to leap to his feet, ready for a fight, but instead he tumbled and tripped over the lip of the cabinet’s bottom.

  Sprawled across the kitchen floor, he looked up to see the figure of a man looming over him, eyes hidden in shadow. The man clutched at his chest with both hands. Michael started to scramble, trying to get his arms and legs under him, a bolt of fear like lightning in his chest. The man groaned, then fell, crumpling in a heap on Michael before he could back away. Then a last gargled breath escaped the stranger’s lungs and he went totally still.

  Michael froze, trying to digest what had happened.

  The red emergency lights from the hallway didn’t do a thing to cut the darkness in the kitchen. He crawled partway out from under the intruder and squeezed his EarCuff. His NetScreen came to life, casting its glow on the man who’d collapsed into his lap. A cop. He had blood on his face, on his uniform, smeared on the shiny badge pinned to his shirt, his hands, everywhere. And his eyes stared at the ceiling without a spark of life shining within. The man was dead.

  Michael looked up and realized that both of the cabinet doors of his friends were open, and Bryson and Sarah were still inside, staring out at him. Bryson looked as stunned as Michael felt, but Sarah had an odd expression on her face. Relief more than horror.

  “It worked,” she whispered.

  It finally hit Michael that he had a dead, bloody guy sitting in his lap, and with a shudder he pushed t
he man off and scrambled away until his back slammed into the far wall of the kitchen. The NetScreen bobbed up and down as he moved, throwing spooky shadows across the room. His breaths came in ragged bursts, and he looked at Sarah, not even knowing how to respond to what she’d said.

  She and Bryson were crawling out of their hiding spots and getting to their feet at the same time. Sarah was already working at her NetScreen before she was standing. Michael took in the rest of the kitchen and saw a dead woman perched up against the fridge with a bullet hole in her forehead. The woman was a cop, too. What had Sarah done?

  When he looked back at her, she returned his gaze as if she’d read his mind. She stopped typing and swiping, and her shoulders sank as her expression melted into sadness.

  “What happened?” Michael asked quietly.

  Sarah’s eyes fell to the man on the floor and she recoiled as if she’d just realized what had happened. Then she looked to the right and saw the dead woman. Squeezing her eyes closed, Sarah crumpled to the floor and buried her face in her arms.

  Michael and Bryson exchanged a quick look of alarm and then they were both beside her, helpless but there. Michael rubbed her arm, feeling like a fool. He didn’t want to push things, but he knew more cops could be on them at any second. Especially after … whatever she’d done. Two people dead. Two police. It didn’t get much worse than that.

  Bryson did the asking. “Sarah, what in the world happened? We need to get out of here.”

  “I know, I know,” she said, lifting her head. Michael had expected tears but there were none. Just a look of perfect heartbreak. “Don’t worry, I’ve got it all figured out.” She stood up and composed herself, brushing off her pants. “Just follow me and we’ll be out of here in five minutes.”

  “But …” Michael couldn’t find the words.

  Sarah walked toward the hallway. “I’ll explain along the way.”

  A half hour later, the three of them were walking through a subway tunnel, on a raised platform above the tracks, heading for an exit that was far from the scene of action. And Michael’s heart ached for Sarah.