“Nice and slow,” the guy said. “Up we go. Don’t try anything. I promise you, the next shot won’t miss.”
Michael nodded, then gave one last glance over his shoulder at the Lance, planning to obey the man completely. And hope that Weber would get them out of all the …
Suddenly his chest went cold. He’d just started to turn away from the Lance when it caught his full attention again. Riveted, he stared, not sure exactly what he was seeing. The whole thing was … melting. Its corners were no longer square, its edges no longer sharp. The wires drooped off the sides as the metal of the device warped and bent, turning into a goopy soup of molten silver. It started to seep through the wires it was wedged into and then transformed into droplets that fell like rain to the circuits below.
Michael stared as some of the droplets fell sideways. Some fell up. In a matter of seconds, the entire Lance had melted into tiny drops of silver that flew in all directions, defying physics. Michael could only think that some type of magnetism had occurred.
He looked up at the guard with the gun and realized he was staring, too. But then the man met his gaze.
“What did you do?” he asked, more nervous than angry. “What was that thing?”
“Honestly?” Michael responded. “I have no idea. Someone who gets paid a lot more than you do told me to put it there and press a few buttons. So I did.”
The man had no chance to respond. A riot of sounds suddenly filled the air. Then sparks erupted from the device. The pulsing hum stopped, only to be replaced by what sounded like great sheets of metal warping.
“What’s going on?” the man shouted, fear lighting up his face, which now glistened with sweat.
Michael was scared himself. All he could do was shrug.
“Get up top,” the guard ordered, then started climbing the ladder.
Michael reached for the next rung above him, and as soon as he clasped it, everything began to shake. The sounds got louder.
Michael climbed as the entire building shook violently. The blue sea of lights scattered among Kaine’s Core programming flared and flashed, popping and exploding, and sheets of circuits began to break off the walls and fall, rattling off other parts of the core as they plummeted. The heat rose quickly, scorching Michael as he clambered up the ladder.
He pulled himself up onto the catwalk behind the guard to see Bryson and Sarah, hands cuffed behind their backs, being herded toward the exit. The structure swayed back and forth as the world quaked and every person with a free hand held on to something for support. Flames licked up from below as the core collapsed in on itself. The noise was unbearable.
The man who’d come after Michael had his gun in Michael’s face. He shouted, “We get out of this building, and then we deal with you! Now go! I’ll be right behind you the whole way!”
Michael nodded. Agent Weber would Lift them out of Lifeblood Deep. She would.
And so he went. Around the catwalk, stumbling and lurching. He held on to the rail like the other guards, though hot, furious air blew up from the crumbling center of the room. Sweat soaked his whole body, and he kept moving, the guard pressing the gun into his back, pushing him.
He made it to the door. Exited into the hallway.
Something exploded behind them, a quick ripping of sound and air. The building heaved.
Michael ran down the hallway, around a corner. He tripped, caught his balance, ran to the stairwell, to his friends and the other guards.
Down they went, leaping from step to step.
Another explosion.
The building jolted.
Michael fell.
Got back up.
He was at the landing of the second floor. Down more stairs. They reached the first floor, stumbled into the hallway. Around yet another corner. They were going in a different direction this time, heading for the front door instead of the back. Several explosions tore through the air. Michael and everyone else fell down. Got back up. Dust choked them. They kept moving, made it to the exit, out into the sun and the streets.
Other men and women with weapons waited outside. Beyond them, crowds of people had gathered to watch the commotion. Fire trucks lined the streets, and cop cars, both wheeled and hovering, sat abandoned, their lights flashing.
Michael’s mind spun and his muscles burned. He could barely see, sweat blurring his vision on top of the sudden brightness. Now that they were out of the building, the man who’d pushed him along grabbed him roughly and dragged him farther away, to an area where others were taking Bryson and Sarah. To a big black truck, whose doors two men had just opened.
“Weber,” Michael breathed, stumbling along, barely able to keep his feet under him. “Weber.” He swiveled his head, searching for a Portal, wondering if he could make a break for it. Something wasn’t right. He hadn’t thought this far ahead, but things were supposed to go down differently.
Plant and trigger the Lance. Get Lifted.
Suddenly, like a waking dream, Gabby appeared. She was in the crowd, pushing past people, running toward Michael. He stared at her. He didn’t understand.
“Jax!” she screamed, her face lit with terror, sprinting straight at him. Two cops chased her. “Michael!”
“Gabby?” he whispered, barely hearing it himself. What the hell was going on?
“It’s not real!” she yelled, just as one of the cops grabbed her arm. “I mean, it is real! They tricked you! I should never have helped—” The other cop slugged her in the head with his nightstick and she collapsed to the ground.
Unable to form words, Michael screamed, a bloodcurdling sound that pierced his own ears. It came from everywhere inside him, a banshee cry born of confusion and pain. He was pushed ahead, and he lost sight of Gabby.
They were throwing his friends into the back of the truck. Panic surged inside Michael. No, no, no. Everything was so wrong.
“Gabby!” he yelled.
He jerked his body, twisting away from his captor, trying to see Gabby. The man lost his grip and Michael staggered, turned, started running. Toward Gabby.
Wrong.
Everything.
Throngs of people surrounded her. If he could just get that far. Find her, help her, get lost in the crowd.
A woman stepped in front of him, dressed in all-black battle gear. She had a nightstick, too, and she swung the long, thin club directly at Michael’s face. It connected with his forehead, a crushing blow that made the world erupt into bright lights and pain. He fell to the ground, crumpling in a heap, the back of his head slamming into the concrete.
The sky and the tops of buildings swirled above him. He almost lost consciousness but held on, forcing himself to stay connected. His strength was gone. Gone.
“Gabby,” he whispered. “Weber. Where are you?”
And then he was being lifted into the air. Carried to the truck. Thrown inside.
They slammed the door closed, a long screech followed by a thunderous, echoing boom, leaving him and his friends in darkness.
Michael closed his eyes.
Michael floated in and out of consciousness. He woke up when they moved him, saw flashes of lights and faces, the blur of movement. His head hurt, a raw ache that reminded him far too much of the Decay. Of all that had been. Of Kaine. Nausea overwhelmed him.
He slept.
“Hey,” someone whispered. “Michael. You okay?”
Sarah. It was Sarah. He blinked a few times, opened his eyes fully. She was staring down at him. He was on his back, lying on something very hard. His head felt better, and the wooziness had subsided. With a groan he moved to get up, and she helped him. His heart sank when he saw where they were.
He was on a bench. He was with Sarah and Bryson in a dimly lit room with iron bars all around—a prison cell. There was no one else in sight. Had they been Lifted?
“Dude,” Bryson said. “That lady must’ve knocked half of your brains out of your ears with that blow. I saw it. You’ve been out for a while.”
“What …?
?? Michael groaned. It hurt to speak.
Sarah was next to him. Holding his hand.
“Everything was a lie,” she said. “They won’t tell us much. Just that we’re under arrest. The cops here are terrible.”
“What …” Michael said again. Maybe he’d suffered some serious brain damage and that was the only word he’d ever utter for the rest of his life. “Did you see Gabby?”
He turned to Bryson, who didn’t seem to have heard him. His friend was fuming, rubbing his hands together as he stared at the wall of metal bars. “Weber. She set us up. Set the whole thing up, top to bottom. I just hope I get a chance someday … Just five minutes. That’s all I need.”
Michael wanted to ask what in the world he was talking about but had to focus on breathing.
“We don’t know it was her,” Sarah said. “In fact, it doesn’t even make sense if it was her. After she Sunk us into the Sleep, someone else must’ve charged in and taken over operations.”
Bryson just scoffed at that.
Michael was becoming more convinced by the second that he had been hit too hard to recover. “Wait … what’s going on? What do you guys know?”
Sarah kept talking, but she didn’t seem to be talking to Michael. “They must’ve done it right after Weber gave us the Lance device. It was somehow linked to the Squeeze. I mean, we all passed out. Slept for who knows how long. They had plenty of time to do it.”
“I’m telling you, it was Weber,” Bryson said. He sat back against the cement wall behind the bench. “You can’t tell me she gave us that Lance thing and Lifted out of the Sleep, and then suddenly other people took over. That’s too convenient. She set us up.”
“But why?” Sarah asked. “We already had tons of reasons to be arrested. Michael’s supposedly a terrorist, and everyone on the planet thinks I did something to my … parents.” She faltered but quickly recovered. “Not to mention the umpteen times we’ve broken laws in the Sleep. It doesn’t add up. If Weber—or anyone else—wanted us in jail, all they had to do was turn us in. Call the cops.”
Michael just kept looking back and forth between his friends, trying to connect the dots. Bryson was slowly nodding, considering.
“Huh,” he said. And then he repeated it. “Huh.”
“Guys.” Michael shifted in his seat, wincing from the pain that lingered. “Call me slow. But what in the world are you talking about? What did Gabby mean back there? Have they even Lifted us out of the Deep yet? Where are we? What happened? Is this a real jail or—”
“Michael,” Sarah said softly, but firm enough to cut him off. “Michael. They tricked us. Someone did.”
“How?” he asked. “What did they do?”
Sarah looked terribly, terribly sad.
“We were never in Lifeblood Deep,” she said. “They had to have drugged us at some point—knocked us out after we got in the Coffins, I don’t know—and then Lifted us and dropped us in the Wake, in the real Atlanta. It’s the only explanation.”
Michael’s head started spinning again.
Sarah gave his hand a hard squeeze. “Whatever was in that building, we really did destroy it. In the Wake, Michael. And I don’t know if it had anything to do with Kaine.”
Michael lay on a tiny cot in a cramped room. The floor, ceiling, and three walls were made of stone blocks. A line of thick bars made up the fourth wall. The only light was a single lonely lightbulb, which buzzed and flared every few minutes. Michael stared at the ceiling, overwhelmed by a deep grief like he’d never known. He wished he were dead.
He didn’t know exactly why he felt so despairingly sad. Things had been bad going on worse for a long time now. But being locked away—and worse, separated from his friends, which the guard had done a couple of hours earlier—gave him all the silence and time in the world to think about his problems.
And think he did.
About his Tangent parents, gone forever. About Helga, his loving Tangent nanny, gone as well. Sarah, her parents still missing, accused of being behind their disappearance. Bryson, accused of helping her. Kaine, on the loose and taking over more bodies by the second, for all Michael knew. Agent Weber, the only person he’d trusted besides Sarah and Bryson, betraying him.
He thought about Jackson Porter. The boy’s life, stolen.
Michael, a murderer, whether he’d meant to be or not.
And Gabby. He’d dragged her into this. And all he could see was her crumpled, injured body lying on the pavement.
It was all too much.
Michael had always prided himself on not being the crying sort. That had changed recently. The lights above looked blurry, and when he reached up to scratch his cheek, his fingers came away wet.
He rolled over and faced the wall, curled up into a ball.
And then Michael cried. The kind of crying where his chest hitched and his throat closed up and his shoulders shook. The kind where snot flowed and the sound of sobs and sniffles broke the gloomy silence.
Michael wept.
At some point, he fell asleep. He only realized this when a clanging on the bars ripped him from empty dreams. Disoriented, he sat up on the cot.
A guard stood there, chewing gum lazily, his gun out—that was what he’d used to drag across the metal bars. When Michael was awake and attentive, the man put the gun back into its holster.
“You have a visitor,” the guard said, bored. “Two, actually. A man and a woman. Which one you wanna see first?”
This woke Michael completely. He stood up. “Who … who are they?”
“Don’t know and don’t care. Which will it be?”
Michael thought hard. The whole situation was odd. Who could it possibly be? Finally he just said, “The man, I guess.”
The guard gave a bored nod, then walked away. Michael stayed where he was, heard a clang, a few whispers, then footsteps. Soon a different man came into view, alone, wearing jeans and a black shirt; brown hair, chin stubble, watery blue eyes.
Michael had never seen him before.
“Sure got yourself into a lot of trouble, Michael,” the man said. He didn’t say it kindly, but he wasn’t hostile, either. Just matter-of-fact.
“Who are you?” Michael asked.
“The name’s not important.”
Michael expected more, but the man went silent. He stared at Michael with his icy gaze.
“So …” Michael searched for words. “Just how bad was it? The police won’t tell us anything. We thought we were in the Sleep. Did … did we kill any people?” He’d been avoiding that thought, holding on to hope that everyone had gotten out okay. But they were certainly being treated like they’d at least tried to kill.
“People?” the man scoffed. “You did a lot worse than kill people. You killed the VNS.”
“Wha … what’re you talking about?” Michael’s chest hitched and he struggled to make sense of the man’s words.
The stranger gave a sad smile. “Only, killed is a strong word. Crippled is more appropriate. Severely. For a long time. Whatever that device you planted was … it was a beast, my young friend. It set off a chain reaction throughout all of their systems, like a physical virus, destroying everything as it traveled from station to station. Completely put them off the grid. How you knew where their mainframe was hidden, I’ll never know. And honestly, I don’t care. That’s not why I’m here.”
Michael stayed as still and silent as granite. As smart as he was, his mind couldn’t compute what he was hearing.
The man stepped closer to the bars and leaned in close. “Listen to me, boy. I came to see you because the world is changing. Changing under everyone’s noses. And you’re a part of it, whether you want to be or not. There’s no telling how long you’ll be in here, but I suspect the time will come, sooner or later, when … circumstances may set you free. And I want you to remember my face. Remember it well.”
“I …” Michael tried desperately to think of something logical to say or ask. “Do you work for Kaine? Agent Weber? Does this ha
ve anything to do with the Mortality Doctrine? Who are you?”
“Friend?” the stranger said in a contemplative tone. “Or foe? That will be determined in the weeks ahead.”
Michael had no response to that.
The man continued. “I’m going to leave you now. You’ll have plenty of time to think before things come to a head. I hope you’ve learned a valuable lesson from what happened at that building. About the nature of the VirtNet. About the nature of reality.”
“What do you mean?”
“When mankind can create a world that is so like our own,” the stranger said, “then how can we possibly ever know what’s real and what’s not real again? I could Lift you right now, pull you out of a NerveBox, and then you’d say, ‘Ah! I’m back in the real world!’ And then I could Lift you again, and you’d be surprised, but feel for certain that this time you’re in the … what do you kids call it?… the Wake.” The man brought his hands up and gripped the bars until his knuckles turned white. “I could Lift you a hundred times. A thousand. How, Michael, could you ever know again that you are truly, truly in the real world? For that matter, who’s to say there even is a real world?”
Michael was so bewildered that his knees went weak, almost making him crumple right onto the floor. And not because it was nonsense. But because it was the single most frightening thing he’d ever heard.
“Think on that,” the man said, stepping back from the bars. “Think about whether someone is evil because they want to bring immortality to humankind. Think on all these things and more. You’ll have the time.” He turned to go.
“Wait!” Michael yelled. “Just … tell me who you are.”
“I can’t tell you now, Michael. It would be … emotionally difficult for you. But I wanted you to see my face. Someday, someday soon, it will be important. Until then.” He gave a brief nod, then walked away, not looking back.
“Wait!” Michael yelled again, but the only answer was the echo of his own voice.