Wildcard

  “Here,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice from shaking as I shrug off my jacket and loop it around his waist. Through the wound seeps a frightening pool of blood.

  Hideo lets out another clenched moan as I pull the jacket tight against the gash. His breaths are coming in short gasps, and his face is shock white, beaded with sweat. I crouch with him and clutch his bloody hand, overwhelmed by how helpless I feel. Everything is falling apart.

  It takes me a second to register what Hideo’s whispering. “I’m sorry,” he says over and over again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  My dream. His quiet voice, his hands pulling me close. I squeeze his hand tighter and rest my head against his, cringing at his cold, clammy skin, before looking at him again.

  His eyes meet mine. They are so overwhelmingly dark. “I just wanted . . .”

  “I know,” I choke out, forcing back the tears in my eyes that threaten to spill over. “Concentrate on breathing. Give me time to get into Zero’s mind.”

  Hideo closes his eyes, his lashes resting against his cheeks. I fumble in my pocket for the lenses that Jax had tossed at me. Finally, I pull one of the boxes out and twist off the caps to stare down at the new lenses that will connect me with Zero.

  “Link with me once you’re in,” Hideo whispers as my gaze goes up to him again. He gives me a weak but resolute nod. I nod back. One of the lenses trembles against the tip of my finger.

  If this goes wrong, it’s all over.

  I bring up my hack to hover over my palm again, making sure it’s still here and intact in my account. I hesitate a final time. Outside, a clang against the door makes the entire room shudder.

  Hideo and I exchange a silent stare.

  Then I remove my old lenses, and put in the new ones.

  A tingle rushes through me. Quickly now, I tell myself as I instantly bring up the cube. Before the system can wholly connect me with Zero’s mind, I open the cube and let it run.

  It bursts into a sphere around me. The panic room vanishes.

  I find my virtual self standing in the middle of a black field. It stretches in every direction, a tangible darkness that pushes against the boundaries of my mind, threatening to close in like the deep ocean against a diver. I brace myself against it. Maybe Jax and I had been wrong all along. I’m never going to be able to keep Zero from seizing control.

  But the sphere around me holds, pushes back.

  At the same time, a single door materializes before me. I know immediately that it is a door leading into Zero’s mind.

  Zero’s mind. It’s here. I can step in. A flood of hope rushes through me. I reach out and send a Link to Hideo.

  He doesn’t respond right away, and for a moment, I fear the worst. He’s already gone.

  Then he accepts it. A familiar wave of his emotions reaches me, and then he’s here, standing beside me in this virtual hellscape. In virtual reality, he doesn’t look injured, but his movements are slightly jerky, as if he were cutting in and out in the blink of an eye, his real-life pain affecting his connection to the NeuroLink.

  “I know this glitch,” Hideo says as he steps closer to the door. “One of our engineers had pointed it out, early on, and I’d tasked Kenn with making sure it was patched properly.” He narrows his eyes at the mention of his former friend’s name.

  “Then he lied to you,” I finish, and Hideo nods grimly.

  For the sake of money, or promises of freedom, Kenn had sold the glitch instead to Taylor.

  “Maybe it will all come back to haunt him,” Hideo adds. “And this will turn out to be the glitch that saves all of us.”

  I put a hand against the door’s handle. “Let’s hope so,” I reply.

  I push it open. We both step back as the door itself disintegrates into nothing, revealing behind it the first glimpse into the world of Zero’s mind—pitch-black, like staring into deep space.

  I step forward first. My feet float over an expanse of nothingness beyond the door. Hideo follows me through a second later.

  The first change I notice on me in here is that I’m clad from neck to toe in black armor. Hideo is dressed the same. He looks so much like Zero from the neck down, in fact, that I’m unnerved by the sight of him in my peripheral vision.

  An invite from Hideo appears in my view. Play Warcross? it asks.

  I accept it.

  The darkness around us ripples. It blurs silver and gray before a virtual world finally materializes, a twisted place formed from Zero’s mind corrupting the NeuroLink’s Warcross databases of worlds.

  Hideo and I find ourselves standing on a stone bridge, staring out at a crumbling city that continues upward and downward forever, surrounding us. Everything is constantly moving—new stairs rise, old stairs break into falling stone, bridges connecting buildings form and shatter, towers morph into shape before collapsing. Dark, glittering marbles hover in the air. I feel an instinctive urge to reach for them, like they’re power-ups, while simultaneously knowing they are land mines that need to be avoided.

  My armor shifts too, and the equipment I usually have in a Warcross game appears, the familiar pouches and straps hanging from my belt.

  Shadowy figures move between the shifting buildings.

  Hideo looks at me. “We can’t get through this with just the two of us,” he says. “We need a team.”

  A grim smile hovers on the edges of my lips. “We have a team.”

  29

  It’s possible that I can’t reach Hammie, Asher, and Roshan at all anymore. They’ve each been Linked with me before—but when I bring up my directory, it looks like a blank slate, and my stomach sinks. Maybe they hadn’t come out of the arena without being tethered to Zero’s mind.

  Then, gradually, it fills in. Lists of names. My connection from inside this panic room is slightly slower from the thick layers of metal surrounding us, but it holds.

  I find my teammates, each one glowing a faint green, indicating that they’re all online.

  Asher is the first to answer. “Ems,” he says, his voice sounding like a whisper. An instant later, he accepts my invite and appears on the bridge beside us, his avatar also clad in the same black armor.

  Relief floods through me at the sight of him. Even though I know neither of us can feel it, I rush forward and throw my arms around him. He startles at my rapid movement, then laughs once and holds me at arm’s length.

  “Hey, Captain,” I greet him.

  He shakes his head at me. “Always my wild card,” he replies with a grin.

  Soon, Hammie connects, too, followed by Roshan. In spite of everything, they’re all here. I greet each of them in turn, while they exchange tense nods with Hideo.

  Asher glances down in unease at his armor and takes in the moving, shifting city all around us. “What the hell is this place?” he whispers.

  “The inside of Zero’s mind,” I reply. “We have to find Sasuke, so I can give him this.” I bring up the files that Jax had given me, the memories and iterations of him from the library.

  Hammie’s eyes meet Hideo’s for a moment, warily, before settling on me. “The arena,” she says urgently. “Everything just stopped—and when we came to, you guys were gone. Everyone in there looks like they’ve been possessed by a spirit. I guess that’s technically true, isn’t it?”

  Hideo exchanges a look with me. I hadn’t even had time to spare a thought for how people outside of the institute might be reacting to Zero’s control.

  “The entire Tokyo Dome is just a sea of silent people,” Roshan adds. His lips are tight with fear, and I wonder if he’s thinking of Tremaine, trapped under Zero’s control as he idles in his hospital bed. No nurses will be taking care of him if they’re just frozen in place. “We fled the arena and made it back to Asher’s place, but as we went, we saw subways full of people with blank stares. Roads filled with people standing outside
their cars, moving like machines.” He shudders at the memory. “We saw an old man in the street who looked like he wasn’t affected by the lenses. Maybe someone whose beta lenses didn’t get patched, or the odd person who didn’t use the NeuroLink. Zero must have ordered the others around him to get him. I saw him mobbed by a swarm of people.”

  A chill rushes through me at the image. “Then we don’t have much time,” I answer. “This hack is the only thing protecting us from Zero’s mind, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have other ways to get past it to us. There aren’t going to be any rules to this, and no one’s going to call a foul. We only get one shot to play the game of our lives.”

  If Zero manages to catch us, he could seize control of our minds and walk inside them, as surely as we’re in his. And with his current power, he could do whatever he wished. Erase parts of it. He could immobilize us, leaving us sitting quietly and staring off into space in the same way he’d done to everyone else. He could keep us like that forever, until we died in the real world. He could swallow us whole, if we’re not careful.

  I’m ashamed that, even after all this time, I still half expect the Riders to step away and opt out of this. After all, this isn’t just some normal Warcross game. Why would anyone want to take that chance with me? Who would put themselves in danger alongside me?

  But Asher just whistles at the shifting city. A glint appears in his eyes, the irresistible draw of a challenge pulling at the competitive part of him. He had stared down at me with that look during the Wardraft, when he’d chosen me despite the fact that I was completely untested and unranked.

  “Good,” he answers. “I wouldn’t dream of sitting this one out.”

  Hammie doesn’t even hesitate before she taps her chest twice in the signature Warcross salute. “In,” she says.

  “In,” Roshan echoes, his eyes steady on mine.

  Hideo touches my shoulder, then nods at the landscape around us. “He knows we’re in here,” he says, studying the changing structures. He gestures at the shifting architecture. “See how he’s already trying to block obvious paths with obstacles? He must be shielding himself.”

  Hideo points out a door embedded against one tower’s wall, with no stairs leading up to it at all. There are other doors in strange places—underneath stairs, on ceilings, open doors displaying nothing but cement. Doors everywhere. It’s dizzying, which is exactly what Zero wants.

  But Hideo’s hand stops in the direction of one last tower. I can just barely make out a door standing alone on its flat rooftop, the entrance hidden almost entirely by pillars. Dark marbles hover along the edges of the tower, spiraling around it in a silent pattern. A stone staircase runs along the side of the tower, from the very top all the way down to the end of the bridge where we stand.

  “There,” Hideo says to us. “There is a pathway up to that door, even though he’s trying to hide it. It might be our way forward.”

  “How do you know?” Roshan asks. “Why would Zero even give us a path to anything in the first place?”

  Hideo turns to him. “Because,” he replies, “that’s not Zero. That’s Sasuke, calling for us. I can recognize his way of thinking here, designing a way through all of this.”

  I look back up toward the door. Now I see it. This is a landscape of two minds fighting each other.

  “So we go up there?” Asher says. Already, he’s trying to break down how we’d do it.

  “So we go up there,” Hideo confirms.

  A clicking sound behind us makes me turn. In the darkness materializes a shape that reminds me of Zero—nothing but black armor from head to toe. A second emerges beside him, followed by a third. There must be a dozen of these security bots coming out of the shadows toward us.

  They don’t seem to know exactly where we are, but they’re facing our general direction. As more gather and they start to move faster, I break into a run toward the tower with the stairs.

  “Go!” I yell.

  We all bolt in unison down the bridge. As the world around us senses our movement, a thunderous crack sounds from above, and I lift my head to see black clouds forming in between the towers that disappear into the heavens. Lightning forks between them.

  One strikes a building ahead of us. It breaks off a boulder of cement from the side of the structure, sending it tumbling down to our bridge. We skid to a halt as the boulder smashes into the middle of our path, blocking us from the tower and scattering debris everywhere.

  If Sasuke is the one creating this path for us, then Zero is the one trying to destroy it.

  “Stand back,” I shout as I pull one of the sticks of dynamite from my belt. I sprint to the boulder, light the dynamite, and toss it at its base. Then I dart as far back as I can get.

  The explosion rocks the bridge and I’m thrown facedown. Stone and dust fly in every direction as the boulder disintegrates into pieces. I squint as I hop back onto my feet and run to rejoin my teammates. As I near them, they emerge out of the cloud of dust to the security bots hot on their trail. Two of the bots are closing in fast.

  “Move, move!” Roshan shouts at me, waving for me to keep pace with the others as they run along the cleared bridge. He skids to a halt, his leg sweeping a half circle on the ground as he turns to face the oncoming figures.

  His forearms come up in a cross. A glowing blue shield bursts out from it. He lunges at the first figure, shoving it back with all his strength.

  The bot goes flying at the impact from Roshan’s shield, tumbling in a crash of metal until it falls from the edge of the bridge and disappears. Roshan brings his arms apart—the single shield reforms into two, one strapped against each of his forearms. He smashes one shield hard into the second running figure.

  The hit is so strong that the figure actually crumples, its chest caving in, as it falls onto its back with a heavy crunch.

  Roshan’s shields vanish as he brings his arms down and whirls to catch up with us.

  As we near the base of the tower’s staircase, it shudders. My gaze sweeps from the top of the tower down to the bottom of the stairs. As I look on, a huge chunk of stone breaks off from the stair base and falls, crumbling into pieces. More cracks cut up along the staircase.

  We skid to a halt at the broken base. The intact staircase hangs high over our heads, too far up for us to reach. It will be impossible to climb up this way. As we look on, cracks continue to cut along the side of the tower.

  Hammie breaks into a smile at the sight. Where others might see a disadvantage, she sees footholds.

  “Can you do it?” Asher says to her. Even as he says it, some of the cracks widen while others narrow, and new ones lace across the stone.

  Hammie doesn’t hesitate. “No problem.”

  “I’m going with you,” I say, undoing the rope at my belt. I toss her one end of it, and she straps it tight around her waist. “Once we reach the staircase, we’ll drop the rope down.”

  “What’s this, another showdown between us?” Hammie grins sidelong at me before she launches herself at the tower. Her fingers dig into the first crack on the wall as she pulls herself up. “You know I’ll beat you.”

  “I’ll let you beat me ten times over if we can just keep ahead of this breaking wall!” I call after her, before following in her wake, the rope dangling between us, and start climbing.

  Below us, Hideo turns to see the security bots pass where I’d cleared the boulder from our path—they break into a run toward the base of the tower. He turns to face them, pulls out the blade hanging from his side, and twirls it once before them. Asher and Roshan brace themselves, too.

  I look back up to where Hammie is climbing a foot above me. One of the cracks she’s gripping suddenly seals back up like a zipper, nearly slicing off her fingers. She lets go just in time and goes tumbling.

  I yank out one of my knives and stab into the groove I’m using, bracing myself hard against th
e wall. The rope between us pulls taut—it nearly takes me with her, but my knife holds, and Hammie jerks to a stop several feet below me. Instantly, she scrambles for the wall again and finds her footing.

  I struggle on. The intact staircase comes into view. I inch my way over, then make a giant leap for it. My upper torso hits the stairs, while my lower half dangles over its edge. I grab until my fingers find a solid crack in the stairs, and I haul myself up. Hammie reaches it right after me.

  Down below, Hideo lunges at the nearest bot to reach them, cutting its metallic body in half with a shower of sparks.

  Hammie loosens the rope from her waist and tosses it down. She wraps her arms around my waist. “Okay,” I shout at them. “Up you go!”

  Roshan goes first, followed by Asher. Hammie and I flatten ourselves against the stairs as each of them comes up, pulling themselves onto the staircase. Hideo comes last. He leaps for the rope and barely manages to avoid one of the bots that grabs for his leg. I reach down and take his arm as he makes his way onto the stairs.

  We race up the staircase. As we go, the world around us shudders again. Scarlet beacons of light suddenly turn on from the rooftops of the other towers, sweeping across the moving city like prison spotlights. I concentrate on the climb. The steps crack underneath our feet as we go.

  Hammie arrives at the top first. The door glows blue around its edges, a startling contrast to its grim surroundings.

  She pushes against the glowing door, but it doesn’t budge.

  “I think we need a key or something,” she mutters as she shoves herself against it again. We push along with her, but it doesn’t so much as shudder. I look back down at the steps, some of which have crumbled away, and then back at the door. There are two round hovels against either side of it.

  Hideo steps away from the door first. “I recognize some of the pieces here.” He nods at the dark marbles hovering in the air, and when I look closer, I notice that they glitter a deep scarlet and sapphire.

  Immediately, I know what he means. These are from the game that Sasuke had once made up with Hideo, when they’d gone to the park and thrown red- and blue-colored plastic eggs all across the grass and then raced to retrieve them. When Sasuke had been stolen away. Remnants of that memory are now scattered in here, distorted into a nightmare.