Sarah appeared doubtful. “Seems too easy. Another thirty minutes and we’ll be ready. I expected to work at this for eight or nine hours, and then be lucky if we got in after all that.”
“Yeah, no doubt,” Bryson said. “You’d think he’d choose buff security over trying to trick people into just walking on by.”
Michael shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. I think what I said makes sense, though. Let’s just get in there and blow his mind to bits.”
Kaine was inside that stupid building—he’d helped trace the Tangent there himself—and he wanted to get this over with. Kaine might move his central programming if they wasted any more time. Michael kept working, excitement building to match his rage.
True to her word, thirty minutes later, Sarah turned off her NetScreen. With a click of her EarCuff she let out a huge sigh. “Okay. I’m ready.”
Bryson had shut down a few minutes earlier. “Me too. Cameras are all showing old loops from an hour ago. There’s a back door we can get to through a tiny alley next to the building. It’s unlocked and ready to welcome three crazy people eager to blow the place up. And there aren’t any guards on-site, as far as I can tell.”
Michael finished up just as his friend said those words. “All the alarms are shut down.” He clicked off his screen in triumph. “And you’re right, that was way too easy. Once we’re inside, we better be ready for whatever little booby traps he has for someone who does come snooping.”
“I actually think you’re right,” Sarah said. “I can’t see Kaine trusting anyone—gamer or Tangent—to work as a guard here. I bet there are plenty of traps. Who knows what’ll spring up once we’re in. KillSims for sure.”
“Are we still a go?” Bryson asked.
Michael spoke quickly. “Absolutely.”
Sarah paused before giving her answer. “One hundred percent.”
“Then let’s get on it,” Bryson said with a tight smile.
Bryson hadn’t been kidding when he said the alley leading to the back of the building in question was tiny. Michael had to turn sideways, his chest and back brushing against the brick walls as he shuffled along. He led the way, Sarah and Bryson right behind him, nothing but a canyon of concrete in front and decades’ worth of trash at their feet, making each step an adventure. The sun barely penetrated the high cliffs squeezing them in, and the entire walk had a spooky, twilight feel.
When they were about halfway to their goal, Michael paused and looked back. “So far, so good. Nothing’s jumped down and ripped our throats out.”
“I keep thinking,” Sarah replied, “about Lifeblood Deep. When they say they want to replicate the real world, they sure mean it, don’t they? Can you imagine? Michael, you didn’t even know it was fake! I just can’t believe how amazingly lifelike the programming here is. It’s like you have to follow the same rules as life in the Wake.”
Bryson made a scoffing sound. “Don’t jinx us. If anyone’s going to break those rules, it’ll be Kaine. I bet he’s just waiting for us to step through that back door, and then he’s going to throw everything that’s ever caused pain in the Sleep at us.”
“Always looking on the bright side,” Michael replied. He turned away and continued down the alley, stepping over a dead rat, hoping Sarah didn’t see it. It ended up being Bryson who squealed before he could stop himself.
They finally reached the end of the narrow passage. Michael was surprised by how far back the building went—it looked so small from the front. But it was the Sleep, and there were two giant skyscrapers throwing off their perception.
He steeled his breath, then leaned out from between the walls to take a look. Another alley, this one much wider, crossed the back of the building and the others beside it. Michael heard cars and people in the distance, but this area was deserted, dark, and silent. A sudden rush of wind sent the cover of a Dumpster swinging, and the noise made Michael jump. The hinges creaked until it slowed to a stop again. All was clear.
“Come on,” he whispered to his friends, stepping out into the wider alley. Bryson took over from there, leading them to the back door of Kaine’s building, the one he said he’d been able to unlock. It was a simple metal door with a silver latch for a handle. Three cement steps, cracked and worn, led to the entrance. Bryson pressed his back against the outer wall right next to the stairs, and Michael and Sarah lined up beside him. Michael fingered the hard edges of the Lance in his shoulder bag, eager to use the thing.
“Should we try to code in weapons?” Sarah asked. “Who knows what’s waiting in there?”
“It won’t work,” Michael said, and he knew that despite the suggestion, Sarah already knew they couldn’t. They’d had a hard enough time Squeezing themselves into the Deep; there was no way they could risk trying to bring something else in. “Use your fists and elbows, and if they shoot bullets, lasers, or bombs, duck.”
“Thanks,” Sarah responded. “Helpful.”
“Nothin’ to do but go in,” Bryson said, his chest puffing up with deep breaths that he blew out far too noisily. He gave a stiff nod to Michael and Sarah then pushed himself away from the wall and quickly moved toward the steps, ran up them. Sarah was next, then Michael, waiting right at the bottom. He watched as Bryson lifted the latch, hesitating just a second before doing so. It clicked and the door popped open.
All three of them froze, expecting some monstrous beast to emerge, roaring, ready to suck the lives out of them. But nothing happened. Michael leaned over to see a line of darkness where the door stood ajar. With a pang in his heart, he remembered a joke Helga had once told him, when he was a little boy.
When’s a door not a door? she’d said in her thick accent.
When? he’d asked
When it’s ajar.
He’d loved her, just as much as he loved his parents. And Kaine had taken that away from him.
“Let’s go!” he whispered fiercely. “Now!”
Bryson tore the door open and the three of them slipped inside.
They entered a room that looked like nothing more than a storage area—big and dusty and full of boxes, mostly on warped shelves that sagged in the middle. A lot of the stuff looked mechanical—wires and pieces of metal and exposed circuit boards. For the few seconds it took to cross the room, Michael admired the almost perfect programming of the Deep once again. Crisp and real, even in its deteriorated parts.
But they didn’t stop and stare. Sarah had her NetScreen on, a map and schematics of the building glowing brightly before her.
“No sign of people,” she said, right before stepping into a long, dark hallway. “Anywhere. At least according to the heat sigs.”
“Are we sure this isn’t too easy?” Bryson responded. “I’m getting nervous.”
“Getting?” was all Michael would say to that. “Come on, Sarah, lead us to the mainframe. Or whatever his programming looks like here.” His finger itched on the surface of the bag, as if there were a trigger there that he could pull at any second.
“It’s on the top floor,” Sarah said. “In a column at the center of the building—looks like it goes down the entire length of the building, even into the basement, but the easiest way to access it is from above. Like a silo. I can’t really tell what it looks like.”
It sounded strange to Michael—but it didn’t matter. They’d come this far, and all they could do was move forward.
“The stairs,” Sarah said, suddenly bolting forward, down the hallway.
Michael was at her heels, Bryson right next to him. They turned a corner and ran into another dimly lit hall. Sarah stopped at the first door and opened it, went through. A stairwell. They started up, running, skipping every other step when they could. So far, no one had made an appearance. All Michael could hear was their own footsteps. If there’d been guards, they would’ve been on top of them by now—there was no doubt in Michael’s mind.
So, no guards.
Which meant there was probably something worse once they got to where they were going. H
e remembered the KillSim’s mouth, its jaws, its breath, its terrifying digital growl. He put it out of his mind and climbed.
Second floor, third floor. Another set of steps led to a roof, but instead of climbing, Sarah opened the door to the top floor and they stepped into a hallway. She had her NetScreen on, brightness up all the way, map shining. Down one hall into the next. Turn, then turn again. Still no sign of people. Still no sounds but their own. Michael studied the ceilings, the walls, the corners, searching for anything suspicious, but there was nothing. The building was like any other he’d set foot in.
Sarah stopped at a big metal door that appeared to be slightly newer than anything else. She yanked on the lever and the heavy thing swung open—Bryson had done his job well. A bluish light spilled into the hallway, pulsing like a heartbeat, and for the first time, they heard noise. A deep, mechanical growl that throbbed along with the light, keeping the same rhythm.
“It’s in there,” she said.
Michael didn’t hesitate. He stepped past Sarah and Bryson, directly onto a catwalk that circled the room. Below his feet he could see that he’d entered what Sarah had said looked like a silo on the map—a round room that seemed to descend for miles. The drop took his breath away for a moment, and the space itself was jarring. The pulsing light, the smell of ozone and metal. There was machinery everywhere: walls lined with circuits and buttons and switches and wires and pipes, all covered in blinking lights.
And that pulsating hum that sounded more like a heart now that he was inside and near the source.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Michael noticed Bryson and Sarah at his back and he jumped. It was as if he’d been temporarily hypnotized by the surroundings, but they hardly registered him, staring down into the humming throng of sights themselves.
“Okay,” Michael whispered, mostly to himself, as he got down to his knees and pulled the bag off his shoulder. He placed it carefully on the metal grid of the catwalk and unzipped it, opening its top wide. Then he reached in and pulled the Lance from its resting place, handling it as if one wrong move might set it off and kill them all.
It’s not real, he told himself. None of this is real. How strange was that? After all the years, after all the gaming, after everything—for the first time it hit him just how odd life in the Sleep could be. How much their world had changed, a world that wasn’t even really his.
He placed the Lance on the catwalk just as Sarah said, “Uh-oh.”
He looked up at her. “What?”
“I think our luck finally ran out,” she said, staring at her NetScreen. A bead of sweat trickled down her cheek. “I’ve got heat sigs all along the outside of the building. At least a dozen, maybe more.”
Bryson clenched his jaw and shook his head. Michael felt a roll of panic in his chest.
“Whoever it is, they’re coming inside,” Sarah said.
Michael’s mind switched off. There was no time for thought, only instinct. No chance of turning back. Only forward now.
Place and trigger the Lance.
Kill Kaine.
Whatever happened after that didn’t matter.
Settling his mind to the task, he picked up the device carefully and examined it. He found the keypad, flipped up the cover, typed in the code. His friends stood patiently beside him, knowing better than to urge him to hurry.
A glance showed him that there was a ladder on the other side of the room. It led from the catwalk into the depths of the machinery. He headed that way.
“Our visitors are spread out across the bottom floor of the building,” Sarah said, amazingly calm. Michael knew she was doing it for his benefit. She had to keep him informed, but she’d try her best to make it sound like she was giving him directions to bake cookies. “They are clearly in search mode, scattered in some kind of military formation.”
Okay, Michael thought, not so much like baking cookies. He made it to the ladder, leaned over the railing to search the maze of machines and wires and tubes. Those pulsing, blinking lights that seemed to be trying to lull him to sleep. Kaine’s central programming appeared to descend to the very depths of the Earth, a tunnel straight to hell. An apt description. And Michael was ready to blow it up.
Sarah continued her play-by-play. “They’ve started up both flights of stairs—the ones we used and a set on the other side of the building. A few are also coming up the elevator. They appear to have divided into groups of three. They’re human, though, by the looks of it—not KillSims.”
They were coming. They were coming fast.
“Do they have weapons?” Bryson asked.
“Um, I think so,” Sarah responded, her voice hard to read.
Michael had turned around, his back to his friends, and lowered his foot until he felt the first rung of the ladder. He cradled the Lance in his right arm as he gripped the railing tightly with his left hand.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
The pulsating sound filled his entire body.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
He climbed down another rung, and then another. He kept going, being careful to hold on tightly to the Lance. His back scraped an outcropping of circuitry behind him—the whole place was a jumble of metal and wire. He took another rung down, his palms beginning to sweat.
Sarah and Bryson had walked around the catwalk at some point and were standing directly above him.
“They’re almost to the third floor—on the stairs,” Sarah called down. “The ones on the elevator—they’re here. The doors are opening now.”
Michael had gone down a few more rungs while she spoke; he paused and looked up. Sarah was calm, Bryson a nervous wreck, shifting his weight from foot to foot.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Vwoomp.
Michael kept going. He somehow knew he was almost there. Weber had said the location didn’t matter so much, just to plant the Lance somewhere in the heart of it all. That he’d know when he’d arrived. So down he went, his neck and shoulders strained, his arms aching.
And then he saw it.
He’d descended at least twenty feet. Twisting carefully around, hugging the closest rung with his left arm, the Lance still cradled in his right, he stared at a cluster of burning blue lights that slowly flashed along with the throbbing hum of noise—vwoomp, vwoomp, vwoomp—that filled the world around him. Everything was brighter, hotter, shinier in the cluster, packed in and thrumming. The air vibrated; he could feel it buzz on his skin, and goose bumps broke out across his neck and back.
If this place had a heart, this was it.
“Running down the hallway!” Sarah shouted down; he couldn’t even see her anymore. “You’ve only got a few seconds!”
Bryson finally lost his cool. “Hurry, man! What’s taking so freaking long?”
Michael ignored him, steadied himself on the ladder. He slipped the Lance down his arm a little, then carefully slid his hand to the corner of the device until he could get a good grip on it. His fingers slipped from the sweat and the Lance almost fell from his grasp; he jerked forward and caught it against his ribs.
“They’re at the door!” Sarah yelled.
“Almost done!” Michael shouted up.
Time seemed to stretch out, measured between those pulses of sound.
Vwoomp.
He strengthened his grip on the Lance, then held it away from his body, stretching his arm out, leaning forward into the cluster of lights and wires.
Vwoomp.
Muffled shouts filtered down from above. A door slamming open.
Vwoomp.
Michael found a little nest of wires among the throbbing lights and gently pushed the Lance into them, wiggling the device until it lodged firmly. Slowly, he let go, making sure it wouldn’t slip before he pulled his hand away.
Vwoomp.
The thud of footsteps r
attled the catwalk and a man yelled, a woman shouted.
“Do it, Michael!” Sarah yelled. “Weber will Lift us out!”
Vwoomp.
His hand slipped on the ladder behind him and he lurched forward, face-planting into the hot cluster of Kaine’s mind. He was tangled in a sea of wires, metal burning his skin. The Lance was right in front of him, the keypad at his fingertips.
Vwoomp.
Sarah screamed, followed by a heavy thump that shook the catwalk above. Bryson released a strangled yell. Another thump. Rattling. Shouts. More footsteps.
Michael entered the first number of the code.
Vwoomp.
A man yelled down, a booming voice that overpowered everything else.
“Stop what you’re doing! Now!”
Michael ignored him, pushed the next number. The next. The next.
Vwoomp.
He felt the rattle of someone clambering down the ladder. His fingers slipped, found the next number, pushed. The next. The next.
Vwoomp.
The man’s voice again, closer, louder.
“Do not move another inch or I will shoot!”
Michael pressed the last number of the code and heard a click.
A shot rang out, the bullet pinging against something right next to Michael’s ear.
“Okay, okay!” Michael shouted. He held his hands up to show he’d stopped. It didn’t matter. The deed was done. Lift us out, he thought, almost like a prayer to Agent Weber. Please, now. Lift us now.
“Untangle yourself and slowly back away from the device,” the man said much more calmly. “Get yourself back on this ladder. Now.”
“Okay,” Michael said, but his eyes stayed focused on the Lance, waiting to see what it would do. As he maneuvered out of the nest of wires, he watched. Waited. Hoped. So far, nothing.
His feet finally found the ladder, and he planted them on the closest rung. He crouched on top of wires and ducts and pushed himself backward, then turned around, hugging the ladder, the man with the massive gun right above him.