Wildcard

  I look back at the door’s two hovels. They’re the slots where the marbles fit, harkening back to how Hideo and Sasuke had once played this game.

  “We need to collect them,” Hideo says. “One red, one blue.”

  Hammie looks out at the hovering dark marbles. She nods at the closest one, and before anyone can stop her, she crouches against the steps and takes a flying leap off the side, launching into the air in the blink of an eye.

  “Wait—!” Hideo starts to shout.

  She seizes the closest one to her, twists in midair, and shoves it into her pocket. As she falls, she shoots out her rope and snags it on a crack in the stairs. She swings in an arc down further on the tower, dangling to a stop below us.

  “Got one,” she calls up to us.

  Every single one of the sweeping red lights suddenly shoots toward us, flooding all of us in a scarlet glow. A deafening horn echoes across the landscape.

  This was a trap. The marbles are needed in order to get through the door, but making contact with those same marbles has also alerted Zero to exactly where we are.

  “Climb!” Asher shouts down at Hammie, right as we see a whirlwind of security bots cluster at the base of the tower.

  Hammie doesn’t waste another breath. She starts pulling herself up the rope as quickly as she can. Roshan darts down the steps two at a time toward her, but the bots are moving so fast that I know they’ll catch up to them before Hammie can get back to us.

  I glance at Hideo and toss him one end of my rope. He catches it. Then I swing down toward Hammie and Roshan. But the bots are swarming up too fast—they’ll catch up to them before I can make it. Below me, Roshan has reached Hammie and positioned himself in front of her as she pulls herself up onto the lone island of a step she’s on. He narrows his eyes at the approaching bots and crosses his forearms. His shield appears.

  The bots clash against it. Roshan winces as he’s pushed back, his boots digging hard against the stone steps, trying in vain to keep them from pushing him right off the edge. Hammie hops to her feet and lunges back up the stairs toward us.

  Roshan’s shield can’t sustain the hits anymore. The glowing blue circle shudders as the bots throw themselves once more at it, and then it flickers out. I scream something. They charge forward at him.

  “Hey!”

  My head jerks up at the sound of Asher’s voice. He’s leaped off the stairs to grab on to another marble. Half of the security bots shift direction toward him now, while the others slow for an instant, giving Roshan just enough time to turn and race up the steps after Hammie.

  I dart past them both as they rejoin Hideo at the top. Roshan glances at me. “Where are you going?” he shouts.

  I don’t answer right away. Instead, I stop beside Asher and crouch down, then pull a stick of dynamite from my utility belt. I fit it against the steps, right before the bots. “Move!” I shout at Asher.

  He already sees what I’m doing. As I turn tail, so does he, and we sprint up right as the dynamite goes off behind us.

  The explosion knocks us to our knees. Behind us is a gaping hole in the steps, so wide that it stops the bots from following us. They gather at the edge in a crowd—it won’t be long before they start leaping across the gap.

  “Put them in!” I hear Asher shout. Hammie and Roshan take the two marbles and shove them into the slots on either side of the door.

  The bots are climbing and clawing, making their way across the chasm in the stairs. They’re racing up toward us.

  The door swings open. Hideo grabs my arm. The bots are almost on top of us.

  Hammie leaps through the door, followed by Roshan. Hideo shoves me through the entrance. Beside us, one of the first bots to reach us latches on to Asher’s arm, its metal fingers closing around him in a tight grip. He kicks out at the bot’s chest—it loosens its hold, and he throws himself inside the door. I turn around just as Hideo barely makes it in, slamming the door shut right as the bots lunge at it.

  We collapse against the ground. My heart’s racing so fast that I find myself clutching at my chest, as if that would help me breathe.

  “Well,” Asher gasps out as he meets our eyes. “That was different.”

  Hideo winces, bracing himself against the door. His face is ghostly pale now, mirroring what he must look like in real life, and I know he’s growing weaker from blood loss. The image of his body glitches slightly—flickering in and out before solidifying again.

  I hurry to him and touch his arm. We are running out of time, and his wound is our ticking clock. He gives me a slight smile that’s closer to a grimace. Then he nods at the new place we’ve arrived in.

  Hammie collapses against Roshan, letting out a long breath. I can feel my hands shaking in my lap. When I look around, I realize that we’re all sitting inside a glowing white space, with no walls or ceiling. Where’s this?

  My thoughts are interrupted by a sharp intake of breath from Asher. I turn to see him clutching his arm, right where the bot had touched him. His eyes are squeezed shut.

  “Ash,” Hammie says. “You all right?”

  Asher doesn’t respond. His arm trembles; all the color drains from his face. All of a sudden, he opens his eyes wide—and his irises aren’t their usual blue, but an unsettling silver.

  The blank, white world around us flickers, replaced for a moment by a new surrounding. We are suddenly within the interior of a house—banisters of curled iron, potted poinsettias, and broken glass all over the hardwood floor.

  I shrink away instinctively. Hammie starts to reach for Asher, but I yank her back.

  “Don’t touch him,” I warn.

  “What happened to him?” Roshan says.

  Hideo already understands it. “When that security bot touched Asher, Zero found his way in.”

  Zero had broken past Asher’s encryption and gotten into his mind. This must be a world constructed out of his memories.

  We look on in horror as the world around us continues to play one of Asher’s memories. The boy hurrying down the stairs isn’t Asher, but his brother Daniel, unmistakable with his shock of light brown-blond hair and piercing blue eyes. When he reaches the bottom, he shoves Asher in his wheelchair hard enough to send it bumping against the back wall.

  “Where the hell are you going now?” Asher says to him. He looks younger, like maybe this happened at least eight or nine years ago.

  Daniel doesn’t answer him. Instead, he turns to head off into the kitchen. At the sight, Asher’s voice shifts into anger. “You know what? Don’t tell me. I don’t need to know everything about your life when you obviously don’t give a shit about mine.”

  At that, Daniel turns back around. He looks so much like Asher, his eyes alight with the same fire. “You don’t need me to care,” he snaps. “Don’t you get enough attention?”

  “Just because you’re ignoring the divorce doesn’t mean it’s not happening.”

  “And what are you doing? Playing Warcross in your room?”

  Asher narrows his eyes, and his expression suddenly turns cold and hard. “What do you do that’s so much better? Maybe you’ve got some fans, but my local wins are what put food on the table.”

  This seems to hit Daniel so precisely that Asher hesitates, tightening his lips as if he knew he went too far.

  Daniel walks over to Asher, puts one hand on either of the wheelchair’s armrests, and leans down to his brother’s face. “You’re never going to make it,” he says. “You’re never going to amount to anything in it. You keep throwing yourself into this useless game, like you honestly think they’ll choose you as a wild card.”

  Asher doesn’t respond. He just pulls his chair away, forcing Daniel to step away again, and turns his back on his brother.

  I want to get out of this place right now—I want to take out these lenses and see the panic room around me instead of this warp
ed mindscape. I don’t want to know that, somewhere out there, Asher is just sitting straight in his chair, completely unaware anymore of anything going on around him.

  My hand’s still on Hammie’s shoulder. She looks so tense that she might break.

  Hideo gets up. “If you want him back, we need to keep going.”

  I tear my gaze from Asher’s blank one, turn my back, and along with the others, head off again.

  30

  Before long, we come across another door floating in the empty whiteness of this space. I reach it first, put my hand on the knob, and carefully turn it. Then I enter, followed by the others.

  We step out into a bustling, crowded, rain-washed street in Tokyo. I recognize the spot immediately—Shibuya Station, right next to the huge intersection that I’d once overlooked from my hotel window. Beside us is the statue of the dog Hachikō, where people huddle as they wait for friends. All around us swarms a moving crowd.

  I blink, thrown off by the change. There are people everywhere—huddled under colorful umbrellas, wearing face masks and hats, draped in coats and boots, shadows over their eyes. Cars splash into puddles as they drive by, and above it all tower bright advertisements showcasing smiling people holding up lotions and creams.

  Beside me, Hammie almost seems to relax at the sight. I feel it, too—it’s like we’re here, instead of inside Zero’s mind, walking in an illusion. But Hideo’s eyes are narrowed, and he exchanges a quick glance of warning with me.

  Roshan frowns at the scene. “This isn’t right,” he says.

  Only after he says it do I realize what’s bothering me, too. The scene isn’t quite accurate—some of the storefronts aren’t supposed to be here, while others are in the wrong order along the street. It’s as if Zero—or Sasuke—couldn’t remember it correctly.

  But what stands out the most is that no one walking around is saying anything at all. All we hear is the shuffling of feet, the rush of cars, and the blare of advertisements. There must be thousands of people here, and no one is saying a word.

  I swallow hard. Hideo holds out his arm, telling us to stay close. “We must be nearly there. I remember this,” he says, his gaze fixed on the advertisements. “Our mother and father took Sasuke and me here tonight so that we could shop for new boots. That trailer.” He nods at a giant screen curving around a two-story coffee shop that now shows a promotion for a new movie. “I was eight when that film came out. Sasuke was six.”

  Hideo’s right. These aren’t just the inner workings of Zero’s artificial mind anymore. We’re inside a distorted memory in Zero’s mind, I realize, a twisted fragment of what had once been Sasuke’s.

  Roshan steps beside me as we stare at the people looking back at us with their sightless faces. Their heads tilt toward us as they draw near. “Security bots,” he whispers.

  Just like the ones we’d faced earlier—except these are disguised as regular shoppers.

  Hideo starts carefully moving us forward. “Don’t let any of them touch you.”

  “Do you know where we’re supposed to go?” I ask.

  “Yes.” He nods toward a department store right next to the coffee shop, where a store worker is handing out coupons to entice potential customers. As we move carefully through the crowd, I see a couple walking hand in hand with two small boys, both of whom have their necks craned up at the movie trailer playing on the screen above them.

  My heart twists as I recognize them. It’s Hideo and Sasuke.

  We pass them, but I can’t see their faces. When I look forward again, they’re back to walking ahead of us, as if everything had just reset. It’s a perpetual, repeating memory.

  Hammie bumps into me from behind. I glance back to see her casting suspicious looks at the people walking around her. “Someone just lunged at me,” she whispers, quickening her stride. “Zero’s on the hunt.”

  After what happened to Asher, Zero must know the rest of us are in here somewhere. I hold a hand out at Hammie and look her straight in the eye. “Did they touch you?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” she mutters back, even though she’s rubbing at her elbow. “She just brushed my sleeve a little, that’s all.”

  My heart seizes. “She brushed your sleeve?” I say—but Hammie looks away from me and focuses on something in the crowd ahead of us. Her eyes widen.

  “Hey. Hey!” Hammie calls out into the crowd, startling us all, and then suddenly starts pushing her way through the throngs.

  “Hammie!” Roshan calls out. But she’s already off, heading away from the department store at a slant.

  “That’s my mom,” she says breathlessly, looking over her shoulder at us with a shocked expression. “That’s my mom! Right there!” She turns back to point at a woman wearing an air force uniform, with dark skin and dark curls like her own. “What is she doing in here? How does Zero know what she looks like?”

  I burst into a run. Hideo does, too—even though we both know it’s too late. It’s impossible to move as fast as Hammie without accidentally bumping into anyone. More passing people look at us—another person leans sharply in toward Roshan, forcing him to barely duck out of the way in time.

  Hammie! I want to shout, but I’m too afraid of drawing more attention.

  We finally catch up to her. But she’s just standing in the middle of the street now, her stare vacant and unseeing, her posture ramrod straight, her expression completely blank. Above us, the enormous advertisement vanishes, replaced by something that can only be one of Hammie’s memories.

  It’s of two girls, their curly hair hidden behind silk caps. The younger of the two is in bed, laughing uproariously as their father tries in vain to adjust her cap. The older one—Hammie, it looks like—is quieter, sitting at a small, square table across from someone who must be their mother. They’re both concentrating on a chess game. I watch as the mom moves her pieces each within the span of seconds, while Hammie scowls and shifts in frustration as she struggles with her own moves.

  “Why do you have to go again tomorrow?” Hammie finally mutters as she loses her rook to her mom’s bishop.

  “Yeah,” her younger sister shouts in a singsong voice from the bed as she purposely pulls her cap askew again, making her dad give an affectionate sigh. “Why d’you have to go?”

  “Stop repeating me, Brooke, I swear,” Hammie snaps at her sister, who just giggles in return.

  “I’m not gone for long.” Their mother leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. Her air force uniform is decorated with several medals. When Hammie finally decides on a good spot to put her queen, her mother nods in approval. “It’s just for a few weeks. You girls can even come to the base and see me off, if you want to.”

  Brooke bursts into protest as their father tugs her silk cap straight again. Hammie looks away from her mom. “You just came back yesterday,” she says.

  Their father raises a stern eyebrow. “Hammie. Stop making your mamá feel bad. I assigned you plenty of algebra homework to keep you busy for the next week. I can always give you more. Now, that’s your last complaint. You understand me?”

  Hammie opens her mouth, then shuts it sullenly. “Yes, sir,” she mutters.

  Their mother smiles at Hammie’s face. “It’s a good thing,” she teases. “Without me around, you can finally win a few chess games. Maybe you’ll even put up a fight when we play next time.”

  Hammie straightens, a little smirk sneaking onto the corners of her mouth, and suddenly she looks exactly like the teammate I know. The spark in her mother’s eyes seems to feed her. “Yeah, you’ll be sorry. Next game, your king is mine.”

  “Oh, big talk now.” Her mother laughs once, the sound full of warmth. “Listen—each time you play against anyone, pretend you’re playing me. All right? That should give you the fire to do your best.”

  The young Hammie nods at that. “Hell yeah, I will.”

 
“Hammie,” her dad scolds from the bed. “Language. How many times?” Brooke starts cracking up.

  Hammie might be too young to understand it, but I know what her mother’s really doing—reminding her that the game connects them, that her mother’s presence is there even when she’s not.

  The scene shifts again to the middle of the night, where Hammie sits by flashlight at the little chess table and plays quietly on her own, her brow furrowed in determination.

  Finally, the memory disappears, replaced once again with the endlessly repeating movie trailer.

  Hammie stays frozen where she is.

  It takes everything in me not to reach out and pull her back with us. I tear my eyes away from her, feeling my heart rip a little as I go. “Come on,” I say through gritted teeth, my hand on Roshan’s arm. He stumbles a little as we walk by, like he wants to grab her, too, but instead he forces his face forward again.

  Hideo marches beside us, twisting and turning his body as he weaves through the crowd. When I glance at him, his expression is stone-cold.

  I shouldn’t have brought them here. I didn’t understand how dangerous navigating Zero’s mind would be.

  But it’s too late to dwell on it.

  We finally reach the department store’s entrance. The model smiles at us with her blank expression. She holds out a coupon for us to take, but unlike everyone else walking into the store, I hold back and don’t dare touch it. Neither does Hideo nor Roshan.

  Her smile disappears. Then, suddenly, she raises her voice. It’s a warning call.

  And everyone near us starts rushing toward us at a frightening pace.

  “He’s found us,” Hideo calls over his shoulder. “Hurry!” He seizes my wrist and pulls me forward. Roshan dashes ahead.

  A door at the end of the floor glints, and we make a run for it. People behind us continue to rush forward, still expressionless and wordless.