The Rule of Thoughts

  Another pause, and Michael wondered if she was hamming it up just a bit too much. And then she finally said the one sentence that probably would’ve sufficed from the very beginning.

  “Kaine the Tangent is inside a game. He’s inside Lifeblood Deep.”

  Another flurry of questions and conversation erupted around the chamber. Michael heard a tap-tap-tap behind him and he turned to see Agent Weber walking toward the podium, holding a small remote device. She pushed a button just as she reached Sarah’s side and suddenly the rotating globe above them vanished, replaced by an aerial, three-dimensional view of a city, zooming in toward one section. Standing beneath it, and so close, sent Michael’s stomach pitching. He quickly looked away since he already knew what it was.

  Downtown Atlanta. Zeroing in on a small building no one would ever think twice about as they passed it. Kaine had hidden his virtual home right under the virtual equivalent of VirtNet Security’s noses. He’d probably done it just to make a point, to display his power.

  A small, stupid thing, but it made Michael hate him just a little bit more. The Tangent seemed to learn all his moves from old films.

  “Kaine’s presence is felt all over the Sleep,” Sarah said, not bothering to correct herself with the more proper term this time. She was too much in the zone. “But he’s just like any other Tangent, no matter how powerful he has become. He’s still a program, and he’s still made up of code, no matter how complicated, and that programming is centrally located somewhere, just like any other. He’s hidden it well. But my friends and I have become very familiar with him. And by comparing the sea of code we just escaped from and crossanalyzing it with all our other experiences, we were able to construct a back door to his home base. It wasn’t easy, but we did it.”

  “Who programmed him in the first place?” someone yelled from the audience.

  Sarah looked over at Michael. He shrugged, because it was a guess at best.

  “We don’t really know,” she said. “But it seems his origins go all the way back to the beginning of the Internet age. Programmed to learn and to grow, he’s been working toward sentience ever since, from what we can tell.” She cleared her throat and hesitated, obviously worried that they’d gotten off track. “Now back to his code’s location …”

  The giant image hanging above them zoomed in on the building in question—a small, three-story structure wedged between two skyscrapers. Being Lifeblood Deep, Atlanta was an exact replica of the real deal, and Kaine’s home had been classified as a historical building. That was the only reason it hadn’t been demolished a long time ago. The perfect hiding place for a rogue Tangent.

  “Because he’s spotted in the Sleep all the time,” Sarah continued, “I don’t think there’s any way Kaine has used the Mortality Doctrine on himself. It’s way too early. He’ll want a lot more testing done before he dares do it. So we’re pretty sure he’s here.”

  Agent Weber stepped up to the microphone, and Sarah moved aside as naturally as if they’d practiced. It bugged Michael. He was sure the agent wanted to take all the glory now that it was time for the meat of the presentation.

  “Thank you, Sarah,” the woman said, giving Sarah one of those professional smiles that said her mind had already moved on to the next thought. She turned to the audience. “I don’t think I need to tell you how much we owe Sarah and her friends. They’re under an incredible amount of stress. Suffice it to say that they’ve undertaken incredibly dangerous assignments for us on more than one occasion, and our debt to them is significant.”

  She paused, and the other agents took the cue, finally erupting into applause. Michael swore he even heard a couple of hoots out there.

  When it quieted down, Weber continued. “The information that our young friends have gathered is astounding. I think we can all be impressed—should be impressed. In twenty-four hours they’ve done something that none of us has been able to accomplish: they have isolated the central code of Kaine’s Tangent programming. I’ll be sending it to all of you so that we can begin the full analysis and develop a plan of attack. Our goal, and I don’t say this lightly …” She let that last word hang out there for a few seconds. “Our goal is to make a move within seven days’ time.”

  This elicited a wave of fierce whispering, as if the idea was preposterous. Michael frowned. Was that too much time or not enough? In his mind, they should be acting yesterday. Kaine could move his base at any time. But they’d need to be prepared.

  Weber held up her hands to quiet them down. “Time is of the essence. I’ll go through the final details and then let you get straight to work. As you can see from the map of Atlanta …”

  Bryson leaned in to Michael. “These people are gonna screw everything up. Gah-ron-teed,” he whispered. He stepped back, not waiting for a response.

  Michael hated how thoroughly he agreed.

  An hour later, Michael was sitting in a small room, at a table, eating hot dogs. Not the most glorious thing to be doing after attending a meeting in the War Room of the VNS.

  Bryson was next to him, picking through a salad, of all things. Sarah sat across the table, eating hot dogs slathered in chili and cheese. Weber had told them she needed to take care of a few details before they decided on a plan of action—after all, the three of them were fugitives from the law, even if they’d apparently convinced the VNS they were innocent of cyber-terrorism and kidnapping.

  When Weber dropped them off in the break room, she’d introduced them to a man from the cafeteria, then instructed him to get the three whatever they wanted. And so it was that they ended up eating hot dogs and salad.

  “I gotta admit,” Bryson said, talking through a bite of lettuce. “I tuned out big-time once that lady got going. Stuff we already knew anyway.”

  Michael plopped a half-eaten dog back onto his plate. He’d had enough, though he figured that out a few bites after his stomach did. He leaned back in his seat and groaned. “Ugh. Ate too much.”

  “Oh, really?” Bryson said snarkily. “I would’ve never guessed.” He gave Michael’s plate a disapproving look.

  “Next time we’ll order one of your dainty salads,” Sarah responded. “And then a half hour later when we’re starving we’ll get some more hot dogs.”

  Bryson responded by taking a huge bite of his rabbit food; he chomped on it and moaned with pleasure.

  “You were good up there,” Michael said to Sarah. “Seriously. Official prediction: you’re the head of the VNS by the time you turn thirty. Then president of the country by forty. You heard it here first.”

  Bryson made a pssshaw sound. “If we’re all still alive.”

  It came off way more somberly than he’d probably intended, and the room plunged into silence. For just a few seconds, Michael had forgotten about all their woes.

  “Thanks for reminding me,” he grumbled.

  “Huh?” Bryson asked.

  “Nothing.” As if in an act of defiance, he took another bite of his now-cold hot dog. If his stomach could talk, he would’ve gotten an earful of complaints.

  The room went silent again as they all allowed themselves to be lost in their thoughts. Michael jumped when someone rapped loudly on the door. It swung open immediately—of course—and Agent Weber walked into the room.

  “Are we finished?” she asked a little too cheerfully to sound genuine.

  Michael exaggerated a groan while he doubled over, holding his stomach. He was getting too comfortable around this woman. Sarah snickered.

  “I’ll take that as a yes,” Weber pronounced. She moved closer to the table, looming over Bryson’s shoulder. He didn’t look up, though he obviously wanted to.

  “I’m glad you’ve had a chance to eat and rest,” their host continued. “Because we need to get going.”

  That perked Michael up. “What? Go where?”

  “I need to get the three of you back into the NerveBoxes.”

  Michael didn’t know if he’d heard that right. He exchanged confused looks with h
is friends. Sarah finally voiced what they were all thinking.

  “What do you mean? I thought you and the agents were going to run through the data before doing anything.”

  “Why do you want us in the Coffins, anyway?” Bryson added. “I thought our job was done. Isn’t that why we just spilled everything to your agents?”

  Michael stared at Agent Weber, waiting for answers. Once again they were on the edge of a huge cliff, about to be tossed over.

  “There are plenty of things my agents will be doing,” Weber said. “Trailing you, supporting you, providing backup the second you need help. Most importantly, trying to locate Sarah’s parents. I’ll stay here and work with them—for one thing, we need to hunt down any person who’s been transformed by this Mortality Doctrine. Start figuring things out. In the meantime, I’m sending you three back into the VirtNet to get the job done. You’ve proven yourselves over and over—I wouldn’t dare trust the lead on this to anyone else. You know Kaine like no others, and it needs to be a quiet operation.”

  Michael looked at his friends, who appeared as stunned as he was.

  “And I’ll take that as a yes on the mission, then,” Weber said, folding her hands together in victory. “Now come. I have something to show you.”

  The thing she wanted to show them didn’t even exist.

  Not in the real world, anyway.

  They were in Weber’s office, huddled around a large projection. It was a collection of images and words that were slowly swirling in a circle. Michael saw a picture of a dog—a golden retriever—with a little boy kneeling next to it, the biggest smile you ever saw splitting his face. So many thoughts went through Michael’s head seeing that picture, but mostly it made him feel like Agent Weber was a real person after all.

  Without any kind of introduction, she tapped and swiped at the projected sphere and moved things around until it all suddenly flew away and was replaced by one lone image: a long, rectangular metallic box, wires and anodes lining its surface. As Michael and the others stared, it revolved in place.

  “What’s that?” Bryson asked.

  Weber reached forward into the projection, and it looked as if her fingers touched the two ends of the box. She grabbed them and stretched the whole thing out so that it was much bigger. Michael had no idea how large or small the device would be if it weren’t just an image.

  “This is what you’re going to use to bring Kaine down,” Weber said, her voice filled with satisfaction. A little too much, Michael thought, even though it didn’t bother him. She obviously disliked the Tangent as much as he did. “This is a project I’ve been working on for a long time. A very long time. And it’s a grand achievement, if I do say so myself.” The woman stared at the box, pride on her face. Then she blinked hard and cleared her throat, as if she’d just realized there were other people in the room.

  “Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that … I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into developing this. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little excited that it’ll finally be put to use.”

  Sarah asked the obvious question this time. “What is it?”

  The agent sat back in her chair, leaving the image to continue rotating. “I call it the Lance. It seems to fit.”

  Bryson and Sarah didn’t say anything, just stared. Michael knew it was his turn to ask, but it seemed stupid. So he stubbornly waited for the agent to tell them what the thing did. She took a few moments to admire her creation before speaking again.

  “It’s a program, of course, the most complex collection of code I’ve ever been able to put together. I gave it this visual manifestation to make it as easy as possible to place and trigger.”

  Michael broke his silence, so intrigued now it was like an itch. “Place and trigger?” he repeated.

  She nodded slowly. “Yes. I’m going to meet you inside the VirtNet, where I’ll literally hand you this program, in the form of this device. It won’t be as easy as I’ve laid out, but all you’ll need to do is get to the location of Kaine’s programming, insert the Lance, activate it with an eight-digit password to initiate the countdown, then get out of there. When it detonates, the Lance will annihilate the Tangent. Not only his central code, but it’ll set off a chain reaction that will wipe him out wherever his Aura may be.”

  She paused, letting the information sink in. There was an awful lot to sink in, Michael thought. Then she continued. “I’ve spent years programming this. I knew we’d need it someday. It will kill him. I know that’s a bold claim, but I stand by it. All we have to do is get you inside Lifeblood Deep, into its version of Atlanta, and into this building. The Lance will do the rest.”

  Michael was waiting for the inevitable catch. “And how do you expect us to get inside the Deep, much less the building, without being seen? The Hider programs make us blind to the code, for the most part.… If we do what we did in that purple sea, it’ll be like hanging up a big sign that says ‘Hey, Kaine! Come and get us!’ ” He didn’t like the hesitant look that was coming over her face as he spoke. “I’m guessing you have a plan?”

  Her expression matched exactly what she said next. “Yes. And you’re not going to like this part.”

  Michael waited for the bomb to drop.

  Agent Weber let out a huge sigh; her excitement about the Lance had disappeared. “There’s no easy way to get you inside. There’s a reason it’s called the Deep, and the Lifeblood section is the toughest by far. Its whole purpose is to keep you out unless you have proper access, and all three of you know how hard that is to get—even you, Michael. You’re not who you used to be. Alarms would spring up all over the place if we put you three in without taking … extreme measures.”

  Bryson and Sarah shifted in their seats, but Michael stayed stock-still. He was ready to hear just how bad things were going to get.

  “We have to Squeeze you in,” Weber finally said.

  Michael looked at Bryson, then at Sarah. They looked at each other, then back at him.

  Squeeze.

  Michael had only heard the term Squeezing a few times in his life, mostly in off-the-cuff remarks from little kids, talking about things they knew nothing about. People didn’t speak about Squeezing because it was illegal. It was nearly as bad as messing with someone’s—or even your own—Core programming. No one Michael had ever met had Squeezed or been Squeezed. He almost asked Weber to repeat the word, just to make sure he’d heard her right.

  But he knew very well that he had.

  Agent Weber was going to Squeeze them into Lifeblood Deep.

  God help us, he thought.

  Michael sat on the toilet lid, fully clothed. He didn’t need to use the bathroom, but he desperately needed to be alone, even if for just a few minutes. Agent Weber had been serious about wanting them to Sink back into the Sleep immediately, and his friends were pretty much ready to go. But not him. He wanted a little time to himself—time to gather his thoughts.

  Weber had dropped so much news on them, so many plans at once, that he could feel every single tick of his pulse, throbbing in his head, his neck, even down to the veins in his ankles. They’d done plenty of dangerous stuff, and going back out into the world and risking arrest just wasn’t an option. But he didn’t know if he felt ready for this.

  The Lance—that ordinary-looking rectangular metal box that was supposed to solve all of their problems. Going back to the Sleep right away, when they’d just risked their lives for what they thought was the last time. The job of finding that building in Lifeblood Deep, getting past its security firewalls, planting the device, triggering it, and getting away. It was so much to accomplish. Not to mention the Squeezing it would take to get them inside the Deep in the first place.

  Squeezing.

  It seemed like such a simple word for something that was supposed to be utterly terrifying, painful, horrific. Michael had never been through it, of course, but the stories out there were awful, and even if only half of them were true—and those exaggerated—Squeezing was not a
pleasant experience.

  The process itself was just like it sounded. Your Aura, wrapped tightly in Hider codes, would be jammed through a space the width of one line of programming. Even knowing all he did, he didn’t quite understand how the process worked, but in many ways it was a literal thing. To avoid the massively complex firewalls protecting Lifeblood Deep from outsiders, and to avoid detection, you had to squeeze yourself through a virtual crack in the wall. Most people described it as trying to walk through a wall by stretching yourself out so much that you fit between the atoms. It sounded impossible, but in the world of code, you could do just about anything.

  As long as you were willing to suffer the consequences.

  And evidently, Agent Weber had decided that Michael and his friends were willing.

  The bathroom door creaked open, then thumped shut.

  “Michael?”

  It was Bryson.

  “Yeah?” Michael mumbled. Did they really have to go? Now? Couldn’t they get one more night’s sleep? He laid his head in his hands.

  “We need to get some more fiber in that diet of yours,” Bryson said, standing right outside Michael’s stall door. “You’ve been in there for twenty minutes, dude. Sometimes it just doesn’t flow, my friend.”

  Michael snickered, bursting into a laugh before he knew it.

  “At least you’re still alive!” Bryson responded.

  Michael stood up, sighed, then walked out of the stall. “Uh, sir?” Bryson asked. “Aren’t you going to flush?”

  “No need. I was just sitting there, planning how to add more fiber to my diet.”

  Bryson gave him a good, hard look. “Hey, man, you okay? If it helps, I’m more scared than either of you two. I just hide it well by being obnoxious.”