Squinting with concentration, he reached forward and literally dug in.
It took a while to get used to this new method of manipulating code. It brought Michael back to his childhood days—his fake, fabricated, programmed childhood days—when, while living his life within the virtual world of Lifeblood Deep, he’d played with toys. Actual, tangible toys. SealBlocks and ViviCars and SimLasers and the countless figurines of those games the “big kids” played in the Sleep. Kids weren’t allowed to immerse themselves in the VirtNet until they were eight years old. Everyone was worried about proper brain development and acquiring social skills, so they’d made a law, though the age changed every few years.
Back then he’d played with his hands, developing the imagination that would end up taking him so many places virtually.
It was like that now. Playing. Physically playing. Touching the building blocks of programming, feeling them, squeezing them, trying to reach into their essence and read their origins, understand the bigger picture of what they used to be a part of.
He’d been a part of Lifeblood Deep. Literally. No one was more qualified to do this than Michael.
Piece by piece, he examined. He deduced. He built. He manipulated.
He played.
Time sped by, Michael oblivious to it. He was lost in the fun of the programming. He might’ve worked forever, his body back in the Coffin weakening until even that device couldn’t keep him going.
A tap on the shoulder snapped him out of it.
“Got anything?” Sarah asked.
He waved himself around to face his friend. She seemed weary but satisfied. Bryson had drifted off in the distance, his enthusiasm for manipulating the code making him completely unaware of his surroundings. An indecipherable shadow loomed behind the purple lights beyond his body, as if a giant whale were making its way in their direction.
“I got a lot,” Michael answered, returning his attention to Sarah.
“Me too. I think it’s time we linked up.” She paused and looked around. “Well, guess we can’t do that here. Put our heads together, then.”
“Sounds good.”
They flapped their way toward Bryson, the insane-bird dance bringing smiles to their faces.
By the time they were finished, Michael’s entire body ached and his stomach was growling. It had taken both mental and physical effort to piece all their programming together, and he was starving. Such was the nature of the Sleep. Yes, the Coffin would feed him the nutrients he needed, keep him alive and fairly healthy. But that didn’t mean his mentally infused virtual body didn’t get to the point where he’d kill a roomful of people for a hot dog.
An entire world of logical code extended farther than Michael could see. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing, and the three of them had worked furiously in the last hour or so, copying the details of what they’d learned onto their own NetScreens so they wouldn’t forget. And so they could share it all with the VNS once they returned to the Wake.
Michael clicked off his NetScreen. As fun as the process had been, he was done. Officially done. There wasn’t a molecule in his body that didn’t ache for food, only before settling down for a long nap.
“I can’t believe this guy,” he said, almost used to the tinny echo of his own voice. “I guess I can understand why Kaine wants to be human. But wanting to wipe out half of the VirtNet doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”
“You know what I still don’t get?” Sarah asked. “Why he wants to be human. I mean, even if he downloads into someone our age, he’s gonna be dead in a hundred years. In the Sleep, he’s immortal, right? He could live forever.”
“Well,” Bryson said, “there’s the Decay that’ll hit him.” Sarah shrugged. “If he can download a Tangent’s brain into a human, I bet he can figure out how to avoid that.”
Bryson laughed. “That’ll be hilarious if he does all this, wakes up in some dude’s body, then gets hit by a bus the next day. I’d even go to his funeral.”
Michael shook his head slowly—something Bryson said had struck him. “No way,” he murmured as his thoughts started coming together. “No way it’s that easy—that Kaine just wants to try out a human body. Something else is going on. Something a lot bigger. Remember what he said about the Mortality Doctrine being a plan for immortality? I mean, he could be planning to switch his intelligence to a new, younger human every twenty years and keep a backup on the VirtNet in case he does get hit by a bus.”
“Well, at least we’ve got a line on him,” Sarah said. “We know where he’s been, what he’s done, and where he’s hiding when he … does whatever he does after a hard day’s work.”
“Do you think that guy even sleeps?” Bryson asked. “You did, Michael, but your programmers wanted you to think you were human.”
Michael shrugged, looking absently into the distance, where all those odd shadows grew and shrank and coalesced behind the spray of purple lights. Despite his fatigue, he was excited at the wealth of information they’d gathered from the broken code. The VNS should bow down and worship the Trifecta to Dissect-ya, he thought.
“How much time do we have left?” Bryson asked.
Sarah looked at her NetScreen, which was still illuminated. “About forty-five minutes. Let’s just hope we’re still connected to her. I don’t see a whole lot of Portals around these parts.”
“We’re connected,” Michael said, so confidently that they didn’t even respond. Sometimes he just knew.
Sarah started to say something, but her mouth snapped shut when the lights around them dimmed. It didn’t take long for Michael to understand, and an uneasy feeling crept into his belly.
The lights that kept the strange world of code illuminated were flaring, then winking out of existence. One by one they were popping like burst lightbulbs. The darkness deepened, or maybe those weird shadows were getting bigger. Either way, it didn’t matter. Something was wrong.
“I don’t think we can wait for Weber,” Michael said. “We need to get into another program.” He already knew exactly what Sarah’s response would be, and that she’d be right.
She didn’t disappoint. “There’s no way. There’s no link from here—this place is nothing but a dumping ground. It’d take us just as long to figure out an escape as it did for us to work backwards to find Kaine.”
“Even if we could get into another program,” Bryson added, “where would we go? Chances are we’d still be about to get chomped on by Kaine’s kill programs, and end up washed right back down in this cesspool. And maybe we wouldn’t quite live through it a second time.”
Michael grumbled. “You guys are downright pleasant to be around.”
Lights flashed all around them, increasing in rapidity, as if struck by a virus that multiplied exponentially. And the shadows grew. The darkness rolled in like a fog, blacking out the world, which had once been full of purple light.
“How much time?” Michael asked anxiously.
“When did I become our official stopwatch?” Sarah responded, but even so, she checked her NetScreen. “She should be pulling us out in twenty minutes. Keep your diapers dry.”
Michael held back a smile that would have given her too much satisfaction. When had she become so uppity?
“That’s going to be twenty long minutes,” Bryson muttered under his breath.
As if some cosmic holder of the code heard his remark, a wind picked up. The purple fragments began to swirl into wispy clouds of a darkening blue. The gusts, stronger and stronger, tugged at Michael’s clothes, his hair. The lights continued their dance, flaring, then dying. More than two-thirds of them were gone now, the darkness almost complete.
And then, in a thunderclap of an instant, everything picked up.
The wind blew with the force of a hurricane, ripping at Michael and his friends. Clouds and streaks of black mist swirled around them, and a discordant symphony of sound filled the air, threatening to deafen Michael once and for all.
And then, out of the corner
of his eye, he saw it. He jerked his head around to get a better look. A hole of darkness, deep and pure, the blackest thing he’d ever seen, yawning wider and wider until it was dozens of feet in diameter.
And somewhere within it, Michael thought he saw yellow eyes.
A boom sounded behind him, a concussion of noise that shook the substance he floated in, pushed him several feet forward in the purple code. He turned around to see another hole opening, maybe a hundred feet away, but this one wasn’t black. This one glowed with an ethereal orange light that cut through the darkness. Figures appeared within it—silhouettes of people of all shapes and sizes. They were moving, heading straight for Michael and his friends.
He spun again to see the black hole—the eyes. Shadow upon shadow. There were figures there, too; he could sense them more than see them. Coming. Coming fast. Dark shapes suddenly leaped out of the gaping hole.
Stunned, Michael didn’t have time to feel fear. He reached out and grabbed his friends, pulled them closer.
“What in the world!” he shouted.
“What do we do?” Sarah shouted. “We still have ten minutes before Weber Lifts us out!”
Bryson wrenched free of Michael’s grip and held up his fists. “We have to fight. That’s not long to hold them off!” Michael didn’t know what to do but get in a defensive position himself. He held his arms up, feeling totally useless. Figures emerged from both sides: people from the orange light, creatures of darkness from the black hole. What would happen, he wondered, if they did get killed? This place seemed like a wild card. And what if Kaine was behind it all? What if the life could be sucked out of them?
He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. The wind roared, noise filled the air, and from two opposing directions, enemies charged in.
His life was ridiculous.
There was but an instant of time to decipher those who charged at Michael and his friends. From the blackness came dark-skinned creatures, loping and slithering and pouncing, all shapes and sizes, no beast the same as another, and none Michael had seen before. They looked like KillSims morphed into twisted, unnatural shapes with yellow eyes.
From the blinding orange light came more recognizable—if strange—characters. All of them appeared to be from famous VirtNet games: warriors with axes; fully suited astronauts with laser guns; giants with wooden clubs; a woman on a deathcat, brandishing a staff lit with fire; a mechaknight on his robotic horse; a sunpyre and his brood of white lions; the fighting priest of Grendelin; and countless others. They charged in formation, rallying behind someone who was obviously their leader.
It was a woman. Tall and powerful, decked out in all kinds of futuristic, gleaming armor, she had four arms, and four weapons. In one hand, she gripped a thick cylinder with spinning blades on the end. In another, a shaft of pure blue light, pulsing as if ready to fire. In yet another, a menacing black box with a gaping hole at one end. And the fourth arm cradled a long barrel that looked exactly like a cannon from ancient wars.
As she ran, bricks appeared beneath her, one after the other, forming a path under her feet. The rest of her army charged atop their own surfaces—flat beams of light and rocky gravel and patches of stone or grass. Their battle cries filled the air and their eyes shone with anger.
Michael took it all in, in what could only have been a few moments. Time seemed to slow to reveal one of the strangest sights he’d ever seen. He thought that it really did slow, as if the programming itself, this cesspool of countless destroyed virtual lands, wanted to witness the spectacle. Michael’s friends were still beside him, seeing what he saw, their movements sluggish, as if they were flies trapped in molasses.
And then, with a burst of wind and a screeching noise, everything ripped back to full speed.
The warriors rushed in. From one side: yellow eyes like raging fires, set in snarling and snapping, slithering and pouncing, blacker-than-black forms. From the other: heroes from decades of gaming, charging along on their magic paths. The fierce woman leading them was only a few dozen feet away from Michael and his friends, and she yelled at the top of her lungs, a sound like crushing rocks and booming thunder.
“Out of the way, pips! It’s not your day to die!”
Who were these people? Where had they come from?
Instinct took over Michael before his mind could catch up. He grabbed both of his friends, pulled them close. And then he reached out and scrambled the code, manipulating it with his mind, understanding on some deep level what he’d once done in the Hallowed Ravine. Everything around him was a fabrication, a visual manifestation of sequenced letters and numbers and symbols, including Bryson, Sarah, and himself. He attacked it all with nothing but thought.
He and his friends suddenly catapulted to the sky, three human missiles rocketing upward, just as the armies of light and darkness crashed into each other below like two out-of-control freight trains.
Michael stopped their flight several hundred feet above the clashing battle, suspended in the ethereal world of goop. His mind was a cyclone, spinning with a million thoughts, backed by a fierce rush of adrenaline through his body.
Sarah looked at him almost as if she were afraid. Of him.
“I just did what she told me to,” he said.
“Look!” Bryson shouted, pointing downward.
A couple of stragglers had separated from the battle—one a long streak of blackness with yellow eyes, the other a bulky mass with at least a dozen arms and legs. Both were coming at Michael and his friends, flying fast.
“Take us away, Superman,” Bryson said.
“Weber should be Lifting us out any second,” Sarah added.
Michael’s mind felt as if it was shutting down, as if the quick explosion of effort to code them away from the armies had sapped him of all mental strength. He halfheartedly tried to repeat what he’d done, but he knew it was hopeless as soon as he began.
“Sorry,” he muttered. “That was a one-act play, folks.”
“What in God’s name happened down there?” Sarah asked in a rush, as if they didn’t have two hideous dark beasts coming right at them, rising like heat. “Who are those people who came to help? And how did Kaine find us?”
“Maybe we can talk about it later?” Bryson yelled. “Looks like we’re going to fight after all.” He balled his fists—as if they’d do any good.
And then the creatures were on them.
The long, snakelike form went at Michael, its battering ram of a head slamming into his chest. He barely had time to see the flash of yellow eyes before he was hurtled head over feet through the darkening purple goop. Swinging his arms wildly, he righted himself just in time to see those eyes again, directly in front of him. A gaping mouth opened, black teeth glistening, and it snapped at him.
Michael jerked away, throwing his hands out to grab the horror by the neck. He squeezed its smooth, muscular skin, holding the thing back as it opened and shut its jaws, snapping again and again in its attempt to bite Michael’s head off. He dodged left, then right, wrenching the neck of the beast back and forth to keep it away.
The thing wrapped itself around the length of Michael’s torso, then his legs. Soon he was wrapped head to toe, sheathed in blackness, and the creature tightened its grip, squeezing the breath out of him. Michael gasped for air, searching for a way to get some help, but there was nothing. With every bit of strength he had left, he fought, trying to rip the foul thing’s head right off.
The flurry of movement sent the pair spinning like a corkscrew. Dizziness overwhelmed Michael and he lost his grip, the creature’s neck slipping from his grasp. In an instant, the creature opened its jaws and struck, lightning fast. It clamped down, and suddenly the world was black. Michael’s entire head was inside the beast’s mouth. Its jaws tightened and its teeth pierced Michael’s skin. He couldn’t even hear his own screams—it was all a muffled fog of terror and pain.
He flailed, half inside the mouth of the creature, as their death spin continued. Michael fought th
e overwhelming dizziness and struggled to grab hold of the enormous fangs puncturing his neck. His muscles tensed and his stomach quivered with nausea. The creature’s long, muscular body continued to squeeze the life out of him, tighter and tighter, making it impossible to breathe. The dizziness turned into light-headedness; stars and flashes swam in his vision. His pulse pounded in his head, and he remembered the KillSims. How they suck the digital life out of their prey.
How they’d killed Ronika and almost killed him.
This stupid thing wrapped around his body was some sort of cousin to the KillSims; Michael knew it. He wasn’t just dizzy from the spinning and the pain. It was an all-out attack on the essence of his life.
He tried harder, screaming with the effort as he pulled on the mouth of the giant snakelike beast. Its teeth started to move, to slowly slip out of his skin; blood oozed from the wounds on Michael’s neck. He pulled harder. Farther and farther apart creaked the jaws, the gap widening, the pressure on his head weakening, the dizziness and lights subsiding, feeling returning to his body, surging through him as though a dam had been breached—pain and adrenaline and elation and fire. Michael screamed again, and this time he heard it, a raw, piercing, strangled sound. And still farther he opened the creature’s mouth, the world of purple returning to view around him.
With every inch the monster’s jaw opened, Michael’s confidence grew. He could hear the cracking of bone, the ripping of tendons, the cry of the creature as it lost the struggle. The pressure of its body on his weakened, then fell away altogether. Michael braced himself for one final burst of effort, readied to tear the monster’s head apart.
But there was a popping sound. A sweeping rush of noise and a blur of streaming colors. The world tilted, bent, spun. Darkness swept it all away. And then Michael was blinking, gasping for air, staring up at the lid of Agent Weber’s Coffin.