She lay there—NerveWires inserted into her skin, LiquiGels covering parts of her body, an IV inserted in the crook of one arm—looking for all the world as if she were taking a nap. Her chest rose and fell with steady breaths.
“What are you doing in there?” he said softly. “Where have you gone?”
He looked at her neck. Wouldn’t that be the easiest way to end this problem? Kill her while she couldn’t resist? Cut the head off the dragon and hope the underlings realized she’d gone too far?
But no. He couldn’t risk that. He needed to find out what she was doing and where she was doing it. Who knew what kind of damage she’d already inflicted. He had to find her in the Sleep, understand what she was doing, and fix it. That was his job now. He had to fix it. Fix everything.
Michael opened up the interface to the Coffin, quickly scanned the information, memorized it. The Sleep was one screwed-up place, but he thought he could find her with the information provided. And lucky for him, three Coffins nearby had just been vacated. How fitting that his and Weber’s real bodies would be lying so close together as they settled this in the place where she’d created him.
“I’m coming for you, Weber,” he said to her as he input the command to close up her Coffin. He stared at her peaceful, unconscious face. “I’m coming for you right now.”
CHAPTER 19
DISSOLVING PODS
1
Once in the Sleep, Michael had to fight the code a bit. He was confident in the coordinates he’d stolen from Weber’s Coffin, but the deteriorating VirtNet didn’t want to cooperate. He swam through clouds of purple refuse and thick black material that was the basest programming he’d ever seen. He coded a corridor through it all, visualizing his way to the place Weber had gone, and was able to create a ground to stand on. As he ran down it, things suddenly appeared in front of him.
“Buy one, get one free!” a man barked at him, holding up a VirtBox of Sims that wouldn’t make too many moms of the world happy. Michael ran right through him—the man was like a ghost. “Buy none, get none, you jerk!” the salesman yelled at him from behind.
A lady dressed like an old-fashioned housewife popped up, selling cookie dough. She was blurred out by a series of fully immersive scenes from the latest 4D films, making him feel like one of the characters for a moment. He shook it off; something was now trying to mess with his mind. A kid appeared, begging for money. He was straight out of a Dickens book. Michael blasted through him, but others kept coming, selling everything from massages to antiques. The VirtNet was so damaged, ads and spam were sinking in from everywhere. It was an utter cesspool, and he had to tunnel his way through it.
The corridor he’d built stretched out before him as he ran. He coded and coded, focused on Weber’s location, pushing everything else outside the boundaries of his programmed pathway. Far ahead, based on all the input swirling around his mind, he created a door. A simple wooden door with a round brass knob. Michael leaped into the air, threw his arms forward, and flew, obliterating any other spammage that got in his way.
He landed in front of the door and sucked in an enormous breath. Light poured from its corners and it seemed to vibrate, pulsing with the power of whatever was behind it. Michael knew he’d made it. Weber was on the other side. He’d found her. He wasn’t even sure he knew how he knew anymore. He was beginning to feel like the code was a part of him and he was a part of the code. Just like the old days.
He didn’t bother knocking. The door was just an illusion anyway, created by him, a way of visualizing the path. It wouldn’t be locked. She didn’t even know he was coming, at least not this way, this quickly. He reached down, felt the cool hardness of the brass handle, turned it, and pushed the door open.
The light was blinding.
He stepped into it.
2
“Michael,” she said. At first there was only her voice and white light. “I won’t mince words. I’m shocked to see you here.”
He shook his head, rubbed his eyes, righted himself in the world of code that he’d been so recklessly manipulating. Everything around him trembled, then snapped into focus. He took another deep breath to steady himself and looked around.
Weber was only a few feet away. She stood in front of a glowing glass case. And she wasn’t alone. At least a hundred Auras stood around her. Michael knew they were there to protect her as she destroyed the world.
“You said you programmed me,” Michael said, trying to hide any surprise at where he’d ended up. The room was so ordinary—what was she hoping to accomplish in such an everyday place? He’d been expecting the Hive. “Why would you be surprised that I figured out a way to come after you?”
She cocked her head, as if he’d said something profound and she wanted to consider it for a moment. “This may surprise you, but I wasn’t…completely honest with you.”
“Shocking,” he replied.
“I did program you,” she said, still contemplative. “You and others. Don’t worry, you’re still special, but we’re not quite as mother-son close as you might’ve thought.”
Michael laughed. It was maddening how skillfully this woman was able to tick him off. “Do you think I really cared? What, you thought I’d feel something for you? Think of you as my mom? Just when I think you couldn’t be any farther from reality…” He really didn’t know what to add to that.
“You were the one who went the farthest,” she continued, acting as if she hadn’t heard a word he just said. “Of all the ones we programmed and placed into the Deep. The Path wasn’t just a test, Michael. It changed you, developed you, tied you to the Mortality Doctrine. It was all part of the programming. The complexity of it all is…it’s beautiful. Awesome. Horrifying. It’s everything.”
Michael shook his head. What she said—it made sense on some level. But none of that mattered now. She obviously needed him alive. It had to be the reason he was still breathing.
“You told me you were going to kill them all,” Michael said, spitting out the last three words. “I’m not sure how you plan to do it, but I can’t let it happen.”
Weber folded her arms. “Your body is safe and sound in a Coffin somewhere. Like I’ve said, I need you alive. But here, in this beautiful place that your generation calls the Sleep, we can pretty much do anything we want to you. I know you know that. Look around, Michael. Do you really think all of these good agents and soldiers standing here with the VNS today are going to let you take even one step toward me?”
“Nope,” Michael said. What was taking Kaine’s people so long? “I really don’t think that at all. Looks like you’ve got them pretty brainwashed.”
There was a commotion in the back of the room. What started as murmurs of conversation became a series of startled cries, then shouts and screams. Michael felt a moment of pure joy when he saw the terror that flashed across Weber’s Aura. She turned away from Michael to look, and he could see it, too.
Her people were disappearing.
3
Nothing fancy or pyrotechnic accompanied the vanishings. Michael stood on his toes to watch as, one by one, the agents and soldiers Weber had mentioned with such pride ceased to exist within the room. There, then not there. Not even a pop of sound or wisp of smoke or blur of color to mark the instant transition. Torn from the Sleep, Lifted. The four Tangents Kaine had sent him were breaking every rule in the book back at the cavernous skyscraper.
Weber turned back to Michael, not even trying to hide her anger or shock.
“What have you…,” she began, then seemed to realize that she was mere seconds away from losing her army. “Quick!” she yelled to her posse. “Before they get to you! Grab Michael, take him down, kill him! Hurry!” Her Aura couldn’t hide the lunacy that blazed behind her eyes. She was breaking from the inside out.
Her cronies quickly obeyed. Michael had barely caught that fearsome look on her face before he found himself lifted into the air and thrown to the floor. The air left his lungs and he struggled to fill t
hem again, but bodies piled on top of him, punching and kicking him, pressing him harder into the ground. Hands wrapped around his throat and squeezed. He couldn’t even see who they belonged to; his vision was filled with arms and legs and hair and feet, as if they were all connected to each other, some monstrous creation from a mad scientist’s lab.
“Quickly!” he heard Weber yell. “Do it!”
Michael couldn’t tell what was worse, the pain of his pummeled body or the aching of his lungs, desperate for air. He coughed and sputtered, struggling against the hands that choked him. He couldn’t fight all these people, no matter how good at coding he might be. He tried to flail his arms, but both of them got pinned by bony knees.
His vision blurred from the lack of oxygen, but he saw one of the figures on top of him vanish, a disorienting pop of reality. He relaxed his body, gave in to their fight against time. Another person disappeared. Then another. He could feel the lessening weight pressed against his chest. Please, he thought, make the choker go next. It felt as if his eyes were going to explode, and fire burned in his chest.
Then, finally, relief. The pressure on his neck suddenly disappeared, and air rushed into his lungs. Colors blurred and rushed above him, but he could see enough to know. All of his attackers had disappeared.
He rolled onto his side, coughing and sucking in air. His entire body shook from the effort. He retched and spit. Then he caught Weber coming at him in the corner of his vision and he reacted, kicking out his legs and scrambling away. He flailed until his back hit a wall. But Weber had stopped. She was retreating, her face filled with horror, as if she’d come upon a rabid dog.
“You should’ve killed me,” he said, his throat raw. The anger took over, making him petty and vengeful. “Better yet, you should never have created me in the first place.” Still breathing heavily, still hurting in a hundred places, he pushed against the wall behind him and climbed to his feet. “I’m too smart for you. I’ve got too many people on my side. It’s over, lady. I’m not going to let you hurt one more person.” He took a step toward her to show the threat was real.
A hand went up to her chest protectively, and she backed away until she once again stood in front of that mysterious glass case with the glowing lights. She stared at him, not saying a word. She looked as if she was trying to figure out what she should do.
He took another step forward, not so sure himself of the plan. Getting into an all-out brawl with a grown woman wasn’t exactly how he’d envisioned saving the world. But he had to get it out of her—what they’d been on the verge of doing when he’d arrived.
“Just tell me the truth,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you. I could’ve easily just killed you back in the Wake, ended it the simple way. What were you going to do when I got here?”
“We had a plan,” she said, a glazed look in her eyes. “I stuck to that plan. We had a plan!”
“Listen to yourself,” Michael said. “You sound crazy. How can you be helping people by killing people? And taking over the world? It’s insane.”
Weber’s eyes met his sharply. “We needed you. But you’re really beginning to get in the way.”
Michael took another step, now only three or four feet away from Weber. He could almost reach out and grab her. “Let’s figure this out. What’s that thing behind you, anyway?”
“Circumstances have changed,” she whispered, sounding more delusional by the second. “I didn’t want to…I don’t want to kill you. Things won’t run as smoothly. But we can always rebuild the Doctrine. And reprogram the ones we lose. We can always adapt, can’t we?”
“What,” he said, emphasizing each word. “Are. You. Talking. About.”
“So be it,” she said, standing up straighter. She sounded as if she were having a conversation with someone who wasn’t there. “This can be on your conscience. Even though…even though you won’t be around for it.”
A fanatical look came over her face, eyes wild. “If you have even an ounce of sense left in that mind of yours, go back, Lift and leave us alone. Do not”—she held up a finger—“do not follow me. I swear if you do, I’ll kill everyone. Every last one.”
“What—”
She quickly turned from him and faced the glass box behind her. She put her hands on the lip of the stand it stood on and was suddenly pushing herself up, swinging her legs over the open top of the container. Michael bolted forward to grab her, but he was too late.
Then the strangest thing happened. As she descended into the container of lights, her body began to shrink. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, so that by the time she was fully in the box, she was the size of a small doll. She looked up at Michael, and for the briefest moment he’d forgotten he was inside the Sleep and was shocked by the sudden transformation. He watched as her tiny body disappeared into the lights floating in the box. Lights that Michael now realized made up a galaxy of stars.
He leaned over the edge of the box to look down. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of tiny lights, glowing and pulsing within a murky soup of darkness. And they all swirled together, creating an enormous orb. It was the Hive—tiny compared to the real thing. He’d only seen it from its true perspective, so large that those round sides appeared as walls.
True perspective, he thought. He was in the Sleep, for crying out loud. What did that even mean? It was all a world of code, nothing but letters and numbers and symbols.
Taking a deep breath, he put all his weight onto the stand and flipped himself into the lighted abyss. Just like Agent Weber, he shrank and fell.
4
Everything was a rush of sound and movement, spinning around him like a wild merry-go-round. Then the world righted, slamming into his consciousness like a brick onto wet mortar, and abruptly he stopped moving, his vision corrected, his mind calmed. He floated in a dark nothingness, several hundred feet from a familiar sight: the wall of the Hive, now as grand as the first time he’d seen it. The pods pulsed like heartbeats, a soft, comforting thump of sound along with each one.
There was no sign of Weber, or of Kaine and his army of Tangents. They were either done fighting or on the other side of the Hive.
But Weber. Where had she gone?
With a thought he vaulted himself through the purple air, stopping within a few feet of the glowing pods. He looked up and down, to the sides. From so close, he could barely even see the curve of the structure—which he now understood better than ever, after seeing Weber’s glass case perspective. He didn’t know what to do. If only that pool of code that Kaine had introduced him to would magically appear nearby. Somehow he had to dig into the information to see what Weber had planned.
Time had to be running out.
Michael flew forward, squeezing between two of the oval pods to enter the Hive’s inner area. A world of orange light surrounded him now, a little fainter from the far side. Still no sign of Weber. He sent himself forward, throughout the massive chamber of the Hive, scanning its walls of pods for any sign of Agent Weber.
He didn’t know how she planned to do it, but her intention had been made clear. She wanted to eliminate all the Tangents, including him when he was of no use anymore, severing the connection of the Mortality Doctrine. He’d be dead—the true death—and she could Lift back to the Wake and tell everyone that the VNS had saved the world and only they could prevent it from sinking into chaos again. As he flew, streaking up and down the curved, brightly lit walls of the Hive, he imagined the feigned look of pain on her face as she broke the news. Lives lost, but so many more saved.
He screamed in frustration, and the sound of his yell was swallowed by whatever substance surrounded him. Everything about the place was odd, different from what he was used to. It was programming on such a complex scale, it was beyond anything he’d ever dealt with before.
He flew in circles and found nothing.
Until.
There.
There.
A mere wink in his peripheral vision, like a fly buzzing by. A spa
rk of darkness. Michael stopped his flight, turned toward whatever had captured his attention. It was far away, on the other side of the Hive from where he hovered. He threw all of his will into being there, and this time it wasn’t like flight. It was teleportation. In an instant he was there.
There to witness the beginning of the end.
A pod stood empty. Surrounded on four sides by glowing, living pods of orange light. In the entire structure of the Hive, he’d never seen anything similar. He’d never seen an empty pod. And he knew it had just happened—that had been the dark blur of movement in the corner of his eye. Although he still didn’t understand how she was doing it, Agent Weber had just eliminated the first victim in her grand plan.
The true death.
Michael understood what it meant, and his chest ached. The human who’d been taken, and the Tangent who’d done the possessing—they were both dead now. Gone. Forever. Even without a full grasp of the coding or the Mortality Doctrine, he knew this was so.
As he stared at the vacant slot, thinking all of these troubling thoughts, the next pod over began to dissolve. Like black specks of disease or hungry insects, darkness spread across the surface of the orange light. In a matter of seconds, the entire thing was gone, replaced by emptiness. Though he might’ve imagined it, Michael thought he heard a faint scream, as if from far away, right before the last bit of orange light blinked out of existence.
He floated there, watching, trembling, as another one died, eaten by darkness. The swarm of blackness consumed it like an army of ants. Not a second passed before it began on the very next one, eating away.
Never in his life had he felt so utterly helpless.
He screamed until his lungs hurt.
5
The clock kept ticking—there was nothing he could do about it. Every moment that passed without acting meant another Tangent dead, another human dead. The order of dissolved pods did have a pattern, at least. It was spreading in a straight line, from right to left. Michael made a quick timing judgment and flew to a pod about twenty slots down, trying not to think about those he’d just passed.