“Michael!” Bryson yelled, just as he tripped on a loose stone in the bottom step. He tumbled, flipped, jumped right back up onto his feet, and kept running. “I’d kill you if I wasn’t so happy to see your ugly mug!” He reached Michael and grabbed him, pulling him off his feet into the biggest hug he’d ever received.
Through a grunt, Michael barely managed to say “Good to see you, too.”
Bryson put him down and took a step back. “You look seven minutes from death, dude. Especially in the eyes. Let me guess—rough couple of days?”
“You could say that.” Michael glanced at Gabby, who had a genuine look of happiness on her face. He was liking her more and more, and the whole fiasco at the farmhouse felt like a distant memory or a half-forgotten dream. “But I think we’re doing okay. Kaine helped me, you know. I never could’ve done it without him.”
“Done what?” Bryson asked.
“The VNS…we don’t have to worry about them anymore. Or their mass murder program. Or Agent Weber. I…stopped her.”
Bryson and Gabby exchanged a look, both of them knowing that last phrase communicated a million different things. Luckily, they didn’t push him to explain because right then Helga came running out of the woods, having already spotted him, her face lit up. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she pulled Michael into a hug even more viselike than Bryson’s. She even swung him around a couple of times for good measure.
Once the world had stopped spinning and he was on his own two feet again, Michael laughed, as genuinely as he ever had.
“Man,” he said, “I don’t even know what to say. You guys are all right, I’m all right, we’re back together again. If only Sarah…” He faltered there, grief plucking at his heart. The pain was still heavy and hot, but it didn’t overwhelm him like it had at times before.
“I know, sweetie,” Helga said, hugging him one more time, holding on for a beat longer than normal. “I need to…well, uh…” She stepped back, and the look on her face was strange, mysterious.
“What?” Michael asked.
She looked away. “For now, it’s nothing.”
“What?” Michael pressed, his curiosity close to uncontrollable now.
“Later,” she replied emphatically. “I promise.”
Michael threw his hands up. “Okay. I guess we don’t need to spoil the party any more than we already have.”
Gabby stepped closer to him and lightly touched his arm. “What’re we doing here, Michael? Back at the tree house you were going nuts—all those KillSims, Kaine…we were scared to death. Then you sent us off, and ever since, we’ve been tramping around trying to find this factory you’re talking about. There’s nothing here.”
“She’s right,” Bryson added. “Not a thing, not a person. So what are we doing here?”
With a sinking feeling, Michael realized he didn’t know. Not fully, anyway. “I assumed this was where the Mortality Doctrine…factory was. Whatever you want to call it. This is where I came—this was the end of the Path.” He pointed to the center of the field in which they stood. “I was standing right there when the world spun around me and I was sucked into the Doctrine program’s vortex. Next thing I knew, I was a different dude in a real body. This has to be it.”
Bryson, Helga, and Gabby all turned in a circle to take in their surroundings, as if his pronouncement would make them see things differently. But everything in sight was programmed with superior code—it felt almost as real as Lifeblood Deep. Nothing stood out as unusual or menacing. Grass, hills, forest, the ruins of an ancient castle, and a cabin—all of which had been searched thoroughly by Michael’s friends.
They faced him again.
“What is it?” Gabby asked. “What is the factory? Where are we?”
Michael shrugged, eager to dive into the code of the place—something he was now ten times better at than he’d been two days earlier. “This has to be the heart of the Mortality Doctrine,” he said, almost to himself, then addressed his friends. “It has to be. The Hive is the storage; the Ravine, the actual program. We need to destroy it, make sure no Tangent ever takes over a human again. Ever. Wipe it out, along with every last remaining trace of its source code. Then we go back to the Hive, reinsert people into their own minds and bodies, and release the Tangents back into the Sleep. Simple as that.”
“Simple as that,” Helga repeated.
Michael just nodded. “One step at a time. I seriously think the hardest part is over. The VNS were behind all of this—they were the real enemy. And we don’t have to worry about them anymore. We can finish this thing, with or without Kaine’s help.”
“Have you really thought this through?” Helga asked him, a motherly tone in her voice. “Like, say, for example, what happens to me and you?”
Michael looked at the ground. He’d never allowed himself to follow that line of thought, though it had hovered on the edges of his mind since the first day he’d awakened in Jackson Porter’s body. He supposed it was time to address it.
“Whatever has to happen will happen,” he said coldly. He pictured the face of Jackson Porter, so strongly that for a second he thought it was real, a glitch in the code. But then it was gone. And it had made him jealous, even though he’d lived the vast majority of his life with a different face.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Helga asked. “The Tangents I partnered with to use the Mortality Doctrine—”
“I know,” he said, cutting her off. “I…I just can’t talk about it right now. I can’t.”
Silence fell on the group, and finally, Bryson broke it.
“So,” he said with a single clap of his hands. “Let’s get this show on the road, shall we?”
Michael nodded, trying to clear the image of his face—Jackson’s face—from his thoughts. “Okay, yeah, you’re right. Let’s get started.”
“Get started with what, exactly?” Gabby asked. “I still don’t understand what you want us to do with a bunch of grass and trees and an old junk pile of brick and stone.”
Michael focused on Helga. “You know the Doctrine program to an extent, right? I mean, you guys figured it out, used it. Right?”
Her nod didn’t show a lot of confidence. “I wasn’t what you’d call an expert in that field. Others did more than I did. But yeah, I got a good taste of how it worked.”
“So did I,” Michael responded. “When I was in the Hive, fighting it out against Weber and her own version of a KillSim, I saw it, saw the connections, saw how it worked. I mean, I understood it enough to send her into another person’s mind and terminate the connection.” He paused. “It killed her.”
If he’d expected rebukes, they didn’t come. Bryson actually started to pump a fist before he stopped himself.
Michael continued. “I think if we hook up, we can dig into the code of this place. But we need to dig deep. Deeper than ever. I know this is the heart of Kaine’s program. With all of us working together, we can find it, dissect it, and blow the thing apart. You guys in?”
Helga gave a firm nod. Gabby said yes with her eyes, not a hint of doubt there. Bryson gave two thumbs up.
“Let’s do this the old-fashioned way,” Michael said, stepping closer to Gabby and motioning for the others to move in. “We’ll hold hands, keep a solid connection between us. Let’s stay in constant communication. I wanna do this fast, and I don’t want anyone to be alone in case trouble comes.”
“Trouble?” Bryson repeated. “You expecting trouble from you-know-who?”
“He’ll understand” was all Michael said. He knew he should explain his plan to Kaine first. Things would go much better if they really did stay on the same side, but Michael didn’t want to burn any more time. “We can only do what we can do, right? He’s not here.”
“You’re just bursting with confidence,” Bryson said. “Look, man, if you think this is the thing to do, then I’m in. Let’s get it over with.”
“Come on, then,” Michael responded, holding out his hand. Bryson took it. Ga
bby took the other. Then Helga joined in to complete the circle.
“Seek and destroy,” Michael whispered as they closed their eyes.
6
Down, down, down they went, sinking into the code. It felt to Michael like slipping into a warm bath, a comfort after the awkward conversations with his friends. Blades of grass became lines of symbols, trees became towering blocks of data, the castle a jumbled mess of letters and numbers, the sky awash in that purple haze that so often represented the most basic formative programming of the VirtNet. Michael felt the reassuring pressure of Bryson’s and Gabby’s hands, felt the links between them all. They combined their skills and knowledge and began to dissect the massive amount of information in which they found themselves.
An hour passed. Two. Three. Michael kept a timer within his files, knowing how prone he was to losing track of minutes and hours when he was in the zone. He didn’t want to go too long without a break or they might make errors.
At four hours, no one wanted to stop. They’d discovered so much, come to understand so much. Michael was swept up to the point that he’d practically forgotten the dire circumstances that had made the task necessary in the first place.
He had been right. The Mortality Doctrine lived and breathed within the Hallowed Ravine program, like the basic building blocks of genetic code. Michael had never seen anything like it. If the Ravine had veins, the Doctrine was the blood that pumped through it. You couldn’t look at the code for one without seeing the other. All of it was linked together, like some beautiful man-made biological creation.
And Michael planned to destroy it.
“Let’s go out,” he messaged to the others. Sensing their reluctance, he let go of Gabby’s and Bryson’s hands and opened himself back to the visual side of things. The universe of code disappeared, replaced by greenery and blue sky.
Helga blinked against the brightness of the sun. “Well, that was…fascinating.”
“Weird,” Bryson said. “And cool.”
Gabby nodded her agreement. “I wonder if my dad knows about this place.”
Michael’s heart skipped a beat. He’d totally forgotten that her dad worked for the VNS. Had he been in one of those Coffins back in that enormous building?
Gabby obviously sensed his concern. “Don’t worry, Jax. I mean, Michael. I know my own dad. There’s no way he’s one of the bad guys. I’ve been messaging him—he’s safe and nowhere near the office. I guess you could say he called in sick.”
She gave him a weak smile, and it made Michael think of the last time he’d seen Sarah do that. She’d always tried to deflect his worries with a grin, too—even if it was a weak one.
“That’s good to hear,” he said.
“So what’re we going to do?” Bryson asked. “You really want to destroy this place?”
Michael nodded. “We don’t have a choice.”
“We need rest,” Helga said.
Michael couldn’t have agreed more. “And food, but we can’t afford to Lift right now. Bryson, you were always the best at it. Code us in some grub from Dan the Man Deli.” Back in the Coffin, they’d be fed with an IV—nothing to write home about—but here in the Sleep it’d all taste divine.
“You got it, maestro.”
7
They ate. They took naps. They spent two or three hours strategizing and planning. It was going to take a monumental effort—they all knew that. But not one of them doubted it could work. Linked together, with a lot of hard work and brilliant coding, they could destroy the Mortality Doctrine program. Michael knew it. They were hours from victory.
“When we’re done,” he told the others as they prepared to join hands again, “the Hive is the last step. But I think at that point we can ask for help. Lots of help. The world can’t expect us to do everything.” He was mostly joking, but he felt a stab of pride all the same. As absurd as it sounded, he had saved the world. With a lot of help from his friends. He smiled, and it felt good.
“Let’s do us some deconstructing!” Bryson yelled, followed by obnoxious hoots and hollers. Surprisingly, Helga joined in. Gabby just glanced at Michael, exaggerating a mortified look.
“Kids these days,” Michael said to her.
He held out his hands. Gabby and Bryson took them, then linked with Helga.
Michael’s eyes were halfway closed when a man’s voice spoke behind him, snapping them open again.
“Enough of that.”
Michael let go of his friends’ hands and spun around, but he already knew who it was. Kaine. The Tangent stood there in his youngest Aura yet, sharply dressed, tie loosened, sleeves rolled up a couple of times. He looked like some movie star on the cover of a StyleBop.
“Hey,” Michael said, hurrying to stand. “I was going to talk to you about all this—”
“Stop.” Kaine held up a hand, bowing his head slightly. His expression was unreadable. “Don’t say another word. This is the point when, for once in your life, you are going to listen.”
“Kai—”
“I said be quiet!” the Tangent screamed, his eyes flashing. “Act like a child, be treated like a child. Do not say another word, any of you! How could you do this to me, Michael?”
Michael realized at that moment how terribly he’d misjudged Kaine. Despite what he’d been telling himself, this end had been inevitable. Kaine wanted immortality, at any cost. Michael had to kill him or die trying.
Kaine folded his arms over his chest. “After all I’ve done for you. I saved your life. I helped you bring down the VNS. And now this.” He held his hands up to the sky, looking around at the world he created. “This is how you repay me. You want to destroy my very reason for existing!”
Michael wanted to explain, but he didn’t dare speak.
Kaine shook his head in disgust. “What a stupid, stupid thing you’ve done, Michael. It was your idea to send my people to the very place where your body rests in a Coffin, right now, right this second.”
Fear—fear like he’d never known before—exploded in an icy burst within Michael.
Kaine gave him the coldest glare he’d ever seen.
“And I’m sure at least one of them doesn’t care if you live or die.”
CHAPTER 22
GODS AND MONSTERS
1
Helga marched past Michael before he could stop her. He thought for one terrible moment that she was going to attack Kaine, but instead she dropped to her knees in front of him. The Tangent never flinched.
“Please,” she said. “Spare this boy. I’m begging you, Kaine.”
“What is this?” He stepped away from her in disgust. “Some kind of tri—”
Before he could finish, Helga lashed out with a wire-thin rope hidden in her sleeve. Kaine had barely reacted before it wrapped around his neck, cinching tight. She gave it a hard pull and he crumpled to his knees. In an instant Helga had him facedown and she was tying his wrists behind him.
Michael watched in disbelief, not sure what to do. He took a step forward, but stopped when he saw Kaine’s face. Instead of the look of anger Michael expected to see, Kaine was perfectly calm, almost smiling.
“Really?” he asked, his speech muffled with his face pressed to the grass. “You really think some whip conjured from a cheap game is going to stop me? Here? In the place I built?”
Helga rapped a knuckle against his ear, just hard enough to garner a wince from the Tangent. “Nope,” she said. “But it distracted you enough for me to throw up a firewall to your communications. Go ahead and order your goons to slash my boy’s throat. Try it.”
To Michael’s shock, panic flashed across Kaine’s face.
“It won’t last very long, now, will it?” Kaine said. He puffed out his cheeks and everything around him suddenly blurred with motion. He flew off the ground and landed on his feet, while Helga was sent windmilling backward through the air until she slammed into a crumbling castle wall. She fell with a crash among the rocks and lay still on the grass.
She’
s okay, Michael thought. It’s the Sleep. She’s okay.
He was still looking at her when she disappeared, fading from existence. It was a good sign. It meant she’d been Lifted out. This place was like a game, after all.
Michael turned his attention back to Kaine, who still looked troubled. Maybe Helga had pulled off a miracle that would last just long enough to give them the time they needed to fix this mess.
“Listen,” Michael said. Gabby and Bryson had moved closer, standing on either side of him. “I know you’re angry. But can we talk this through?”
Kaine’s eyes narrowed. “No. We can’t. I saw what you did to Weber. I heard the things you said here. Your intentions are clear, and they’re not acceptable. There’s no room for negotiation, Michael. I’ve given you chance after chance to join me in a noble cause. And it always comes back to this. You, standing before me, thinking you have the right of it. Thinking that you can…win this game of yours. Well, as they say in your gaming halls, game over.”
“Man, I hate this guy,” Bryson said loud enough for Kaine to hear.
Kaine ignored him. “I had such a plan. For the benefit of everyone. And all I’ve been met with is betrayal. Weber, the VNS, now you. You’re tied to all this, Michael. You’re a part of it. You should be able to recognize its potential more than anyone. And yet you came here to destroy it? Do you have any idea how much that hurts me?”
Michael didn’t want to fight. He didn’t know how to fight Kaine even if he wanted to. It had been an uneven match from the start. His only hope was to reason with him.
“It’s not an answer,” Michael said. “You’re right—I totally get the Mortality Doctrine now—better than most. I’ve seen what it does to people. To the world. And I’m telling you—nobody can be trusted with this much power. Nobody. It has to end, Kaine. It has to.”
Kaine stood there, taking one deep breath after another, as if he were about to dive underwater for a long swim. “If that’s what you think, then you don’t understand, son.” He looked at Gabby, then at Bryson, then back at Michael. “I’ll give you one last chance. Help me make this dream a reality. Immortality, Michael. No more physical death for humans, and no more Decay for Tangents. We’ll all live forever. If you don’t see how…glorious that is, then something’s wrong with you.”
The Game of Lives Page 23
