The Rule of Thoughts

  The secret entrance halted with an echoing screech of metal that rang though the air, then immediately started moving up again. It had only come halfway down.

  “Did you do that?” Michael asked Sarah.

  Before she could answer, a man’s voice boomed at them from above. Michael turned to see the cop leering down.

  “What the hell are you kids doing? Get back up here!” He pulled out a gun, but the horse shied away at the sound of groaning machinery. The cop worked at the reins to steady the animal. In a few seconds they’d be safe, cut off by the rising section of parking lot.

  “Stop this thing!” the cop yelled. This time he did point the gun as best he could. “What’s going on? Are you …” His words faded and a look of recognition came over his face. He knew. He knew who they were.

  The secret door slammed shut, plunging them into darkness.

  Thank you, Gabby, Michael thought one more time.

  Sarah’s NetScreen flashed to life, casting its green glow over the dank garage in which they stood. Michael didn’t know what to say. Everything was a jumbled mess in his mind. But at least the place looked familiar.

  “Why did the platform stop halfway down? Did you program that or something? You’d turned your screen off.”

  He knew the answer before Sarah replied. “No. I couldn’t even tell if Gabby’s stuff was what made it open in the first place. I was working on it, but it might’ve just opened on its own.”

  “Maybe someone let us in,” Bryson said. “And now we’re trapped.”

  “Isn’t this what we wanted?” Sarah countered. “We’re in, aren’t we?”

  Michael sighed. “Yeah, but I bet some beefy security guards are on the way. They could lock us up before we get within a hundred feet of Agent Weber.”

  “Not to mention the dude on the horse,” Bryson added. “He’s probably calling every cop in the city. Do we have the worst luck on the planet or what? Just one lucky break. That’s all I ask.” He blew out a frustrated breath. “A cop on a freaking horse. You’ve gotta be kidding me. Seriously.”

  Michael almost laughed, the final proof he needed that he was losing it. He had no idea what to say.

  “Well,” Sarah said, “it’s not going to help if we sit here and wait. Come on. Let’s at least try to get inside—we can hide or something.”

  “Ladies first,” Bryson offered, sweeping out an arm and bowing.

  “Not the best time to test out being a gentleman. I’m happy to let you go first.”

  Michael rolled his eyes and headed for the exit, a set of doors he remembered from his virtual visit to the place. Bryson and Sarah fell in line behind him.

  Not so shockingly, the doors weren’t locked. Someone had let them in.

  Bryson made an exaggerated exclamation of joy. “Hey, that lucky break I asked for!”

  Sarah huffed. “I hope we get something a lot better than this.”

  Michael swung open the door and stepped into a hallway dimly lit with distantly spaced emergency lights glowing along the ceiling. It was just like the Lifeblood version of itself.

  “Do you remember the way to her office?” Sarah asked.

  Michael shook his head. “No,” he said absently. He was thinking. In the middle of a workday, why wasn’t the place abuzz with life? The VNS should have been busier than ever now, what with everything Kaine was up to.

  “Do we really want to keep going?” Bryson said. “This is obviously some kind of trap. And even if it isn’t, no one else is here, so why would that Weber lady be here? Maybe it’s company picnic day.”

  “We’re not turning back now,” Michael said. “I don’t care if it’s a trap. I need to talk to her, and this is the only way it’s going to happen.”

  Sarah shushed him, raising her hand as her brow creased in concentration. She was straining to hear something.

  “What?” Bryson whispered.

  Michael heard it. A faint, distant clicking sound. Growing louder, getting closer. More of a tapping. He suddenly knew exactly what it was.

  “Footsteps,” he said. “Someone’s coming. And I’ve heard those shoes before.”

  “What do we do?” Bryson asked. “Should we hide?” He tried a couple of nearby doors, but they were locked.

  Michael crossed his arms and waited. “There’s no reason to hide.”

  The footsteps grew to a crescendo just as a figure appeared around the corner up ahead: a tall, stylish woman in a skirt. Long hair flowing over her shoulders. It was too dark to see her face very well, but Michael had no doubt.

  Agent Weber clickety-clacked her way down the hall until she stood right in front of Michael. He could see her eyes now, dark, unfriendly. She had them trained on him so fiercely it seemed as if she saw only him.

  “Michael,” she said in a commanding voice. “Not exactly how I thought we’d meet up again, but I guess it will do.”

  “I … We have to talk to you.” Michael’s words tumbled out. “About a lot of things. But why did you act like you didn’t know me before?”

  She smiled, then turned and started walking away. She spoke to him over her shoulder.

  “Come. I’ll explain everything, but we need to hurry.”

  Michael and his friends followed Agent Weber down hallway after hallway. Finally, they took an elevator down several floors, then climbed a staircase. Weber remained silent the entire journey. The VNS seemed shut down, its rooms dark and deserted. It was unsettling, especially as they descended deeper underground. Michael highly doubted that every employee had decided to take the same day off.

  The reason for the empty facility ended up being the first question Weber answered, one of the few.

  “All my agents and analysts are inside the VirtNet for a three-day job,” she said. “They Lifted from their homes—we only have a skeleton crew here to run things.” They entered a small, simple office furnished with nothing but a round table and four chairs. There was another door at the back of the room, made of metal with a heavy locking mechanism, which piqued Michael’s curiosity. “I don’t need to tell any of you that the stakes have been raised in the Kaine affair. We’re sweeping the virtual world—every speck of it—until we find him.”

  Michael expected Weber to offer them seats around the table, but instead, she walked to the heavy door and turned to face them. “I know you have questions, but the answers are … difficult. I had no choice but to pretend I didn’t know you back when we last spoke. There are … factions within my agency that disagree with my course of action. I don’t trust them, and they don’t trust me. Yes, you contacted me over a secure communications line, but it was only secure from the outside world. Many within the VNS might have seen our conversation, and I couldn’t let that happen. You have no idea just how secret your mission was.”

  Michael thought he understood perfectly. “In other words, you guys screwed up big-time and you’re trying to cover it up. Make us go away.”

  Agent Weber was a beautiful woman, no doubt. But something washed over her face when he said that, that made her terrifyingly ugly. It was gone in a flash, and she was answering Michael.

  “Like I said, we don’t have time to talk. There are many, many levels to this, Michael. The politics are only a small part of it. Ultimately, what matters is the security of the VirtNet and the safety of the people who frequent it. That’s my mandate, and I’ll do anything—anything—to fulfill my obligations. Do you understand?”

  Michael flinched and took a half step backward, then tried to recover and make it look like he’d just repositioned himself to get more comfortable. This lady was scary, and he found it hard to trust her. But he didn’t know where else to turn.

  Bryson chimed in. “You keep calling him Michael. Why? His name is Jackson Porter, right? You know everything, don’t you?”

  That flash of anger showed on her face again as she directed her look at Bryson. “Listen to me. We don’t have time for this. Yes, Kaine duped us. In a monumental way. In ways you don’t even un
derstand. Yes, I know Michael was a Tangent and was inserted into the body of Jackson Porter. I know it’s happening all over the world. I know we need to stop it. Now, are you here to help me or waste my time?”

  “How can we trust you?” Sarah asked. “After you led us to the Path, led us right into the trap Kaine set for us?”

  Weber showed no anger this time, just a look of genuine frustration. As if she had a thousand things she wanted to say and no time. “If the three of you would just take a moment to reflect on the sequence of events, I think you’d see that we were fooled just as you were. We tried to find Kaine, and we used you. And it worked. Not in the way we hoped, but it did work. We got our answers—we know more than we ever could have otherwise. Now our problem is to figure out how to stop him before things get out of control. His influence is spreading even though we don’t know his ultimate goal yet. And I’m not just talking about the Tangents he’s humanizing.”

  “What else?” Michael asked. He reminded himself not to trust her too quickly, but she seemed sincere. He could see the stress in her every movement. She was scared, and that was a good thing in Michael’s book. “What could be worse than that?”

  Agent Weber shook her head. “I didn’t say anything was worse. But the problems inside the VirtNet are just as bad as the problems in the Wake. Kaine is taking over, in ways you’ll realize soon enough.”

  “We will?” Sarah asked.

  “Yes,” Weber replied. “Look, I went well out of my way to visit you, Michael, after we realized what had happened. We’re all on the same side. I had to tread carefully for reasons we don’t have time to discuss right now. I knew you would come to find me after our admittedly odd conversation over the communications uplink. The timing is good, and I need you—all three of you—more than ever.”

  Michael started to say something, but she held up a hand to cut him off.

  “No, please,” she said. Any sign of wanting to intimidate them had washed away completely. She was almost trembling. “We don’t have time, I’m telling you, we don’t have time! I need to get you three inside the VirtNet, and I need you to use those skills of yours. You’ll be protected like never before, I promise.”

  “Wait,” Bryson said. “What do you mean? You want us to go inside … here?”

  Weber seemed relieved. “Yes.” She turned and motioned toward the heavy metal door at her back. “Everything you need is waiting in there. It’s all set up.”

  The place looked like a morgue. Two rows of at least twenty NerveBoxes were lined up against both walls, looking just like the coffins from which they’d gotten their nickname. The low hum of machinery filled the dimly lit room, giving the place an otherworldly feel. It was almost like they were already in the Sleep.

  “I’ve prepped three Coffins for you,” Agent Weber said, marching toward the back of the facility. Michael and the others followed. “I’m afraid I don’t have much information to give—Kaine has eluded my best people from the start, and the deeper we dig, the more elusive he becomes. I wish I could’ve brought you in immediately, but it was just too risky. There are people who’d be very … upset if they knew I was bringing you in at all.”

  Michael didn’t let on how much doubt he felt. A huge part of him thought it would be the most absurd thing ever to trust this woman and get in a Coffin that was under her control. But this was the VNS. If he couldn’t trust them, whom could he trust? And if he left now, he was sure he’d spend the rest of his life in jail. At least this way he had a fighting chance.

  “You haven’t even told us what you want us to do,” Bryson said. “And don’t tell me that our only instructions are to jump into the Sleep and stop Kaine.”

  Agent Weber frowned at Michael’s friend. Somehow it was the sincerest expression she’d borne yet, half pity and half remorse. She appeared to feel genuinely guilty that she had to ask them to risk everything once again.

  “No, I don’t expect you to stop Kaine,” she said. “In fact, quite the opposite. If you do find him, it’d be way too dangerous for you to try anything by yourselves. I can’t afford to tag you like we did when you went on the Path.”

  “Because of your enemies inside the VNS,” Sarah offered.

  Weber nodded but then seemed to regret it, catching herself. “They’re not enemies. They just feel—they very strongly feel—that using a Tangent is out of the question. No offense, Michael, but you’re a creation of Kaine now. You can understand why some people would find it hard to trust you.”

  Michael shrugged. What she was saying made more sense than he cared to admit.

  “I’m just hoping you can find out where he is,” Weber continued, “without actually going there. If we can discover the location of his central coding—if there even is such a place—then I have a plan for how to destroy him. Literally destroy him. We have a program that could set off a chain reaction in his programming and erase him from existence. But it won’t work unless we find his central port.”

  She stopped then, seemingly done. Michael almost laughed. And he thought she’d given him hardly any instruction the last time. Mission Number Two looked to be a complete wild-goose chase. But he had his own reasons to pursue it, to find out more about Kaine: Sarah’s parents; his parents; discovering what, if anything, had happened to Jackson Porter’s essence. He could do that for Gabby, if nothing else.

  “That’s it?” Sarah asked. “You don’t have leads or anything?”

  Weber gave an apologetic smile. “Leads are exactly what we’re looking for.”

  Michael looked at Sarah, then Bryson. It was hard to read their faces, but he could imagine what they were thinking—the same things he was. A little fear, a lot of doubt. And, of course, he knew they, too, had that old feeling that swelled up inside: The urge to game. To jump in feetfirst and conquer the Sleep from top to bottom.

  But he didn’t say anything. He couldn’t be the one to decide this time; he’d already dragged Bryson and Sarah into too much. The decision had to come from them.

  “We have a big problem, though,” Sarah said. The tone of her voice told Michael what Weber might not have sensed yet: they were in, one hundred percent.

  “Just one?” Weber replied. “We should be so lucky.”

  Sarah ignored the comment. “Every time we’ve gone into the Sleep, Kaine has been able to track us down. No matter how many layers of protection we’ve coded around ourselves. He wants us for something. He wants Michael, anyway. We’ve been trying to avoid Sinking back in.”

  “Trust me, I understand,” Weber said. “All too well. Kaine is more powerful than we ever would’ve thought. But I think you’ll feel better once you’re in. Since we figured out that Kaine is a Tangent, I’ve spent hours building a new Hider program. It’s several layers deep—virtually invisible. No one will be able to tell you’re in there, I promise. Especially combined with the fake identifications I’m sure you guys have built yourselves.”

  Instead of responding, Sarah turned her attention to Michael. “What do you think?”

  “Consider me curious,” he said. Which was completely true.

  “The only drawback,” Weber added, “is that you won’t be able to see code like you normally would once you’re inside. That’s the only way it can work. To hide you from the code, the code ends up being hidden from you.”

  “Drawback?” Bryson repeated. “You saved that little nugget until the end? That’s more like a deal breaker! What good are we if we can’t manipulate the code?”

  Michael’s hopes had crashed as well.

  The agent’s face didn’t reveal a thing—she was solemn, her expression focused, her demeanor calm. “Don’t be a child. All I meant is that you won’t be able to access the code in the way you’re used to. You can still use your NetScreens—old-fashioned, I know. But three people as skilled as you are—I think you can handle it.”

  “Unless we get into a pinch,” Michael countered. “Whatever we can do on a NetScreen will be slow—probably too slow.”

/>   Agent Weber gave the slightest of nods, conceding the point. “It’s that or risk Kaine being able to find you. The choice is yours. Both have their pros and cons, I’ll admit.” Bryson said exactly what Michael was thinking. “I’ll take the pro of keeping Kaine off our butts, I guess.”

  “Then it’s settled,” Agent Weber said, even though Michael wasn’t sure they’d quite reached that point. But no one argued. “I’ll pull you out in twenty-four hours, see if you’ve learned anything. Now let’s get you in those Coffins.”

  Michael was a gamer at heart. True-blue, dyed-in-the-wool. He’d heard his dad say that once about how much he loved the Falcons, and he’d had no idea what it meant. But it seemed to apply to how he felt about Sinking. Before his life had been ripped to shreds by the VNS and Kaine, Michael had eaten, slept, and breathed gaming. It was the blood that pumped through his veins, program or not. It was a part of who he was, human body or none.

  Gaming had been everything to him, and his love for it took over as he lay down in the VNS Coffin. It was ridiculous, considering all the danger and trouble, but he felt an overwhelming, familiar rush as the device did its magic—Nerve Wires and LiquiGels activating, AirPuffs extending, bubbling, and injecting. His life had become a game, the stakes ever higher, and he was ready to enjoy the thrill of it in the Sleep.

  Agent Weber Sunk them to a Portal at an intersection of two streets lined with shops and businesses that he didn’t recognize. When he opened his eyes, the first thought he had was that it was good to be back. Weber had said that they wouldn’t be able to access the code like they normally could—and a quick check proved her right—but the world around them still had that overall feel of the code: the blurry edge of a building here and there, the static-like quality of some of the clouds in the sky, small sections of the road where you could see pixels if you looked hard enough. Not even the greatest programmer caught everything, and often they left glitches on purpose. Make it too realistic and people could really get screwed up in the head.