Etherworld

by Claudia Gabel

  To: Heywood, Josh

  1:58 p.m.

  OK. But this is the last favor until we talk about Maureen.

  FOURTEEN

  “GIVE ME ONE GOOD REASON WHY I shouldn’t punch this asshole the minute we see him?” Josh says.

  We’re standing near Patrick’s car, parked in the middle of a cul-de-sac in the Woods Sector, the most exclusive suburb of Detroit. Each one of the nearly fifty homes is encapsulated in its own individual protective Zeoform “bubble” that lets the owner regulate air quality and temperature. Even though we’re directly in front of Bryce’s driveway, we can’t go any farther, blocked by the clear yet impenetrable wall of the bubble. Behind the three-story granite house, I can make out deck chairs and a glimmering infinity pool.

  “He deserves worse than that.” Patrick pushes his hair out of his eyes, and then narrows them on Bryce’s house.

  “Do you think he has David hidden somewhere on the grounds?” Josh asks.

  “Doubtful. If my mom really is involved in this, there’s no way she’d keep David in close range,” Patrick says, “especially if she thought people were on to them.”

  “Also, doesn’t Bryce have a wife and kids?” I ask. “I don’t think he’d want to get his family involved.”

  “He’s going through a divorce, but still, you’re right,” Patrick says. “What kind of person doesn’t want to protect his own family?”

  Patrick’s tone is resigned, and I know he’s thinking about his own mother when he says that.

  “The gate’s wireless biometric,” Josh says, pointing toward a thin line in the plastic. It forms a large half circle, big enough for a moving van to squeeze through. On the other side of the dome is a winding stone drive, surrounded by more leafy green trees.

  “Is there a visitor access button anywhere?” I ask.

  “No. He included an access code in his text,” Patrick says, pulling out his tab and typing something in.

  The half circle becomes more obvious and the gate lifts, sliding into the plastic above. We enter the terrarium-like space, and as the gate shuts behind us, we take off our O2 shields, hook them onto our belt loops, and breathe in the purified air.

  We head toward the front door fast and determined, with me in the lead, spurred on by a nervous energy that makes me feel more awake than I have in days. While I’d like nothing more than to level Bryce with all my outrage, another approach might work better.

  “I know you guys want to kick Bryce’s ass, and believe me, I do too.” I climb up the front steps and take a deep breath. “But the mission here is to find out everything we can about my dad and Elusion. Roughing him up isn’t going to help. After all, he must have asked us here for a reason. So we have to try and be calm, okay?”

  “Fine,” Patrick says through a frustrated sigh.

  “Avery sent me the statements from those Swiss banks, so we have that in our back pocket if he doesn’t come clean,” says Josh, placing a warm, comforting hand on my lower back.

  “And if he does, I’ll make sure I get it all on my tab.” Patrick pulls the device out of his pocket, turns on the audio recording function, and slips it back into his pocket, where it could remainin undetected.

  But before we can request entry to the house or finalize any more interrogation tactics, the door slides open. Bryce is standing in front of us, holding a tulip-shaped glass in his left hand and reeking of alcohol. His dark brown eyes are puffy around the rims and his face is unshaven. He’s wearing a faded sweatshirt that has the Orexis logo emblazoned near the left shoulder and a pair of beat-up moccasins—a far cry from the suits I’ve seen him in at the office.

  “Come in, come in,” Bryce says, waving at us and slurring his words. “Please excuse the mess. I’m sorry, terribly sorry. I just didn’t have time to clean up.”

  When Bryce gives us a warm smile, I glance at Josh, who looks just as confused as I am. It’s as if Bryce is acting like we’re here for some kind of social call.

  Bryce moves away from the door and Patrick lunges at him, but Josh holds him back. “Remember what Regan said,” Josh whispers.

  We step inside a grand foyer with a crystal chandelier and follow Bryce down a hallway. A photo wall comes to life, unleashing a cascade of family pictures—his two sons playing basketball on an indoor court; his ex-wife dancing with him at a wedding; a professional portrait of everyone, taken behind the dining table at Thanksgiving.

  It seems too hard to believe. How could such a family man hurt anyone, especially one of his coworkers and a bunch of innocent kids?

  Bryce staggers into a room and points toward a sleek couch. “Go on, have a seat,” he says, kicking aside one of the many tall-neck bottles that are littering the carpet.

  “We don’t want to sit down,” Josh says.

  “Are you sure? You’ve come a long way and everything.” Bryce takes another sip of his drink. “Guests should be comfortable, right?”

  “Where’s my dad?” I ask.

  Bryce bows his head, not wanting to hold my gaze. “Cathryn said you found out what we’ve done somehow, and I . . . I feel so, so horrible. About everything. It’s . . . unforgivable. Completely unforgivable.” He swallows. “Your dad is at Orexis. Room fifty-twenty—”

  “We checked this morning,” Patrick says. “He’s not there.”

  “It’s just an empty lab,” I say.

  “He was there last night,” Bryce says, a little surprised. “I was monitoring his vitals and I saw something . . .” His voice trails off. “I went to talk to Cathryn. She and I argued, and then she fired me.” He shakes his head, as if he still can’t believe it. “Had security walk me out. I haven’t been back in that room since.”

  “And you expect us to believe that?” Josh says. “You were in charge of this whole operation. You were in that lab every day. And suddenly you’re just out of the picture?”

  Bryce sets his glass down on the marble mantel of the fireplace, his fingers trembling a little. “I was never in charge. Just hired help, constantly overlooked and underappreciated.”

  “We don’t have time for this,” I say to Josh and Patrick. “I think we should search his house, just to be sure my dad’s not here.”

  “Look all you want,” Bryce says. “Mi casa es su casa.”

  Patrick stands guard over Bryce, making sure he doesn’t do anything to surprise us—though that would be a miracle, given the state he’s in.

  I take Josh’s arm and lead him out into the foyer. Then we duck into the living room, where the entire back of the house is open to the pool—part of the lush, protected world within the dome. I scan the wide, empty spaces surrounding the modern furniture, as if my dad might suddenly materialize, but as we move out of the living room and on to the next room and the next, it’s obvious that he isn’t here. If Bryce is telling the truth, he may have vanished for real this time. Josh wraps an arm around me, but it doesn’t help.

  When we return, Bryce shoots us a smile that sends a chill through me. “How could you do this?” I say, my voice cracking. “My dad trusted you.”

  “I used to deserve that trust,” Bryce says wistfully. “I was a good person. And I would’ve stayed that way, if I’d never worked at Orexis.”

  “What do you mean?” asks Josh.

  “I was doing all this research on trypnosis. Groundbreaking research. Research that was changing science and technology. But Patrick and David were the ones getting all the credit,” Bryce explains, his words tumbling over one another. “They were the faces of the product. They were the ones calling all the shots. It was tearing me apart, watching everything I did go unnoticed. Tore my marriage apart too.” Bryce sighs. “Cathryn was the only one who saw how unhappy I was, and Jesus, did she take advantage of that.”

  Patrick gets right in his face. “How?”

  “She promised to promote me,” he replies. “I’d be VP of the entire company if I got Elusion through CIT and helped her keep David under control. I just . . . I had no idea it was going
to go this far. I was just supposed to lock him in Elusion until we found a way to stop the malware. Everything else that happened wasn’t exactly planned.”

  “That’s no excuse for what you’ve done,” I say. “You’ve ruined so many lives. People have died. You never went to the police. You did nothing to help him.”

  “I know. I wanted to put an end to all this, but I was in too deep. I had to think about my family, and what the truth might do to them,” he says. “And now we’re too late.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “We might be able to defeat a person. But Elusion, well, that’s something else. And make no mistake—Cathryn may be helping, but Elusion is calling the shots.”

  Patrick’s eyes get big when Bryce starts talking about Elusion like it’s human—and for a moment they stare at each other, a look of recognition passing between them. All the theories that we’ve been formulating have finally been verified.

  “How long have you known?” Patrick asks.

  “That Elusion was sentient? Since you told me that Regan saw David in the Thai Beach Escape.” Bryce gets up and wanders over to a black cabinet that automatically opens when he steps in front of it, revealing a huge selection of liquor. “I did the troubleshooting you asked me to do and saw how Elusion had overridden the programming code and sent Regan into David’s domain.”

  Bryce grabs a bottle out of the cabinet—and I yank it out of his hand.

  “But that doesn’t explain why Josh and I were locked in there,” I say. “Or why it was trying to kill us when we were looking for the portal into the firewall.”

  “All I can tell you is that if Elusion wanted to kill you, it would have. I think Elusion locked you in there for the same reason it sent you there: user data suggested you wanted to see him.” Bryce stares at the bottle in my hands, but doesn’t reach for it.

  “Josh and I weren’t alone,” I say. “Other kids are stuck in there, too. They said they got into his domain by creating a chip that cracked the algorithm—”

  “Wait,” Bryce interrupts. “A bunch of kids broke through the fractal encryption code?”

  “That’s what they think, at least,” Patrick says.

  “It’s possible that when they entered David’s domain, something was triggered inside Elusion that accelerated its evolution,” Bryce says.

  “So you’re saying the chip might have been—” Patrick begins.

  “Divine inspiration?” Bryce asks. “Possibly. It might have planted a seed of independent knowledge in Elusion, which was all it needed.”

  “They taught Elusion how to send people to my dad’s domain by hacking in?” I ask.

  “Not just anyone. A high responder, someone who was more susceptible to trypnosis. Someone who had been into David’s domain before and wanted to see him more than anything else. Like you,” Bryce says, looking at me, his eyes wild. “This is . . . this is incredible.”

  “Incredible?” Josh growls. “People are dying and others are fighting for their lives!”

  Bryce looks down at the floor, as if ashamed. “I need to show you something,” he says, heading toward his quantum. We gather behind him, staring at the screen.

  “I’ve been monitoring David’s brain activity while he’s been hooked up to Elusion,” Bryce says. “It’s been almost nonexistent.”

  “That’s because David and the others are taking refuge inside a low-stimulus area on the other side of the firewall,” Josh says.

  “David built a fail-safe into his domain?” Bryce asks as he stops typing.

  “He built Etherworld to protect people from too much trypnosis exposure,” Josh says.

  “That helps to explain some of what I saw last night,” Bryce says, typing again. A straight, green line appears on-screen. “This is his level of brain activity at ten fifty-eight.”

  I feel a flash of heat wash over me. Right now, this line is the only thing I have left of my dad, at least in the real world. I reach for Josh’s hand.

  “And look at what happens less than one minute later,” he says. The green line spikes again and again, each time higher than the one before. “I wasn’t sure what was causing the spike in brain activity. But then I checked his blood levels and saw he was suffering from a dangerous increase in cortisol.”

  “That’s when I was pulled out,” I say. “We were in Elusion.”

  “Your dad had a big spike less than an hour before, although not quite as intense. It was right before we lost one of his Escapes.”

  “He’s hooked up to an autotimer that pulls him back to Etherworld when the danger to his brain is high,” I explain.

  “David also warned us that entering an Escape would cause our wristbands to reactivate,” Josh adds. “And that safety settings could go off, sending us home before the Escape was destroyed.”

  “And how exactly were you supposed to destroy the Escape?” Bryce asks.

  We all hesitate, not sure we can trust him.

  “In order to help you, I need the facts,” he says, raising his hands in the air as if surrendering.

  After a pause I say, “He’s hidden bombs behind the firewall. They have to be connected with triggers inside the Escapes in order to detonate.”

  “Of course,” he says. “Two separate mechanisms, two separate sets of coding. No wonder I couldn’t find them.”

  “And he told us that no one should be removed from their Equip before the protocol was complete,” I add.

  “He’s right about that,” Bryce says, pushing himself away from the desk. “Cortisol is a stress hormone, so pulling someone off their Equip in the middle of an increase is dangerous.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened to Claire?” Josh asks.

  “No,” I blurt out. “When she died, her bomb had just hit the trigger. It felt like . . . Elusion specifically targeted her.”

  “Is that possible?” Patrick asks Bryce. “Do you think Elusion is increasing their cortisol production intentionally?”

  “Elusion might be trying to protect itself,” Bryce suggests.

  “It’s trying to kill us before we can kill it,” I say, my voice just above a whisper.

  “Yes,” Bryce says. “If that’s what it takes for it to survive.”

  I don’t know how many minutes tick by before someone speaks again. Patrick finally lets out a breath and buckles over, placing his hands on his knees. “We have to get them out of there,” he says.

  “No, we have to go back inside the program and help them finish this. Or else Nora is going to . . .” Josh pauses. “If the program lives, she dies.” He turns toward me. “Regan, what do you think?”

  “Sorry, everyone,” Bryce says. “But Cathryn is one step ahead.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  “For the past few months, Cathryn had me working on an antiviral program to help Elusion build immunity and teach it how to fight back against sabotage.”

  “What kind?” Patrick asks.

  “It’s an inoculation program, similar to David’s malware. But this is made up of minigrenades, not bombs. They operate without a trigger and launch through David’s domain one Escape at a time. If it works, the Escapes will be immune to his destruction protocol.”

  “How long will the immunization process take?” Josh asks, his eyes darkening.

  “It should be finished at midnight,” Bryce replies.

  I swallow hard, thinking about how little time we have left. “And then what happens?”

  “Since Elusion can replicate itself, eventually it won’t need the Equip anymore,” Patrick says, interrupting. “It will be able to attach itself to any network it wants, so whenever anyone uses an electronic device, Elusion will be activated.”

  “So . . . as long as Elusion has access to an electromagnetic signal, it will be able to access people’s minds and take them into its virtual world, whether they want to go or not?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Bryce mumbles.

  “Are you crazy?” I shout. “Why didn’
t you stop it when you had a chance?”

  “I’m sorry,” Bryce murmurs, his shoulders shaking. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “But not sorry enough to send back the shitloads of money that Cathryn diverted into those Swiss bank accounts,” Josh says.

  “If Elusion becomes immune to the malware, it’s a death sentence for anyone else who’s still in Etherworld,” Patrick says.

  “You can speed up the destruction,” Bryce says quietly. “Then you might have a good chance of beating the inoculation program.”

  “How?” I ask.

  “I’m guessing David has to keep returning to Etherworld after each Escape is eliminated?” Bryce asks.

  “Yes,” I say.

  “So you need to figure out what Escapes are left and open a ping tunnel between them. Then he’ll be able to get from one to the other more quickly,” he says. “But you need to do it all from outside the program somehow, or Elusion might detect it.”

  “But you said you couldn’t even change the code, because Elusion was shutting you out,” Patrick reminds him. “I had the same problem when I tried to revive Nora.”

  “Elusion is probably using up a lot of energy defending itself against David’s bombs while absorbing the antiviral, so you might be able to find a weakness somewhere.”

  “But how do we figure out what’s going on in my father’s domain without going back there ourselves?” I ask.

  “An optical imaging plate,” Patrick says, his blue eyes lighting up. “It would create a hologram of David’s domain.”

  “So you can see inside it, like a crystal ball?” I say.

  “No, it’s kind of a cross between architectural blueprints and a satellite image. But it would be enough for us to determine which Escapes have been destroyed,” Josh says. “I think I can locate one.”

  Josh stares Bryce down for moment and walks away, motioning for Patrick and me to fall in behind him. “Let’s go, guys. We have work to do.”

  “One more thing. I might have a lead on where Cathryn took your dad.” Bryce begins typing on his quantum. “Orexis has been buying up real estate in the Oak Sector, commercial stuff like old shopping malls. According to the purchase orders, it was for company expansion, satellite branches outside of the city, that kind of thing. As of last week, Cathryn had cleared out parts of several floors in multiple buildings for renovations. I just sent Patrick her listing of real estate holdings. Maybe your dad’s in one of those buildings.”