“That way.” Lorellina nods at the passage to their right, which is already seething with bodies. “We can make it if we hold hands.”
“But what about Brandi?” Yestin whimpers. “What about Lulu and Lord Harrowmage?”
“Yes. Where’s my cousin?”
“Uh …” Noble looks back at the door to the prison cell, which is still spewing people. It’s clear to him that trying to push through that torrent would be like trying to swim up a series of river rapids. Even reaching the door might be difficult. Noble suddenly realizes that if he and his friends don’t start moving pretty quickly, they might lose their chance to move at all.
“We’ll worry about the others later,” he says. “Let’s go.”
“But—”
“Now!”
Yestin submits. Noble leads the way down the nearest corridor, hand in hand with Lorellina, who holds on to Yestin. They round a corner and pass the Kernel’s booth, which has already suffered a lot of damage. People are dancing on the desk. They’re smashing the windows and smearing one another with glue.
“This way!” says the princess. “Hurry!”
They reach their destination just ahead of the crowd, though Noble can tell that they don’t have much time: a minute or two at the most, probably. Then he discovers, to his dismay, that the trapdoor has been covered by a sheet of fresh wood.
“The Kernel fixed it, remember?” the princess remarks. “You were here when it happened.”
“I forgot,” Noble admits. He glances to his left and sees that the mob is closing in. What on earth is he to do?
“Kick it in!” Yestin exclaims. “Just give it a kick!”
“No,” a gruff voice says. “I’ve got a better idea.”
It’s the Kernel speaking. He’s skulking off to their right, at the far end of the corridor. His shirt is flapping loose and he’s missing several buttons.
“Come on,” he croaks. “Let me show you the way out.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
“Liar,” says Noble.
“Not this time,” the Kernel assures him.
“Hah!”
“It’s true, I swear.” The Kernel’s anxious gaze has already slipped toward the approaching stampede. “Please. You’ve gotta believe me. There’s only one way out of this place, and if you don’t use it now, we’re done for.”
Noble isn’t convinced. He’s angry about the prison cell. But Yestin doesn’t need persuading. “Come on!” he whimpers, pulling at Noble’s arm. “Hurry!”
“We have to go,” the princess agrees. She’s already moving.
“But—”
“This way, Noble!”
They scurry to the end of the corridor, then take a sharp right. The hallway in which they find themselves is almost identical to the last—except that it’s empty of people. “The only way to save this computer is to turn it off,” the Kernel is saying. He’s up ahead, straining to be heard above the noise of the approaching crowd. “That’ll put a stop to the damage. Then maybe someone can work out how to repair it.”
“Can’t you turn off the computer?” Yestin asks.
“Not without a direct command.” The Kernel disappears around another corner. Noble finally catches up with him in front of a metal door that looks different from the others. For one thing, it has no handle or lock.
The Kernel punches a button that’s sitting on the wall next to it and announces, “Mikey was playing Thanehaven Slayer a little while ago. Then he walked away and left the computer on, which is why we’re in this mess. But Mikey’s cell phone has Bluetooth—and it’s in DISCOVERABLE mode, right now. So we’ll send him a text message. We’ll tell him his computer is under attack and he has to turn it off before it crashes.”
“What’s a ‘Bluetooth connection’?” Noble inquires.
“And what’s a ‘cell phone’?” says Lorellina.
“Never you mind.” A sharp ping makes them all jump as the metal door in front of them slides open. Behind it is a small, square, windowless room. “Okay, here’s your ride to the delivery platform,” the Kernel quickly explains. “You have to take the Bluetooth connection to International Mobile Equipment Identity number 709348880021743.”
Noble blinks. “Mobile Equipment …?”
“Identity Number 709348880021743. It’s like a serial number, okay? And here—you’ll need these tokens to get onto the platform.” From one of his pockets, the Kernel extracts three small metal disks, which he distributes to Noble and the others. “I’m pretty sure this’ll work, now that the virus has altered your programming. You couldn’t have done it before.”
Noble is hopelessly confused. He stares at the token he’s holding, then at the boxlike room, which is the size of a cupboard.
“You’ve gotta get to Mikey’s phone and leave a message on it,” the Kernel continues. “Tell him his computer is infected and needs to be turned off. Got that?”
“Yes,” says Lorellina.
“Then go. Go!” The Kernel steps back. “They’re coming!”
Still Noble hesitates. He doesn’t understand why he should be hiding in a cupboard if he’s supposed to be running away. Could this be another prison cell? Can the Kernel really be trusted? What if it’s all a trick?
“Come on, Noble!” Yestin cries. He’s already inside the cupboard. And when he asks the Kernel if they should go up or down, Noble suddenly realizes that the tiny room must be some sort of vehicle.
“Up,” the Kernel replies. “Press the UP button.” He’s almost shouting because there’s so much commotion from the mob around the corner. Noble decides to join Yestin just as the cupboard door begins to slide shut between them both. Luckily, the princess catches it in time.
“Come on!” she exclaims, throwing herself after Yestin.
Noble follows her across the threshold. Then he swings around to address the Kernel—but there’s no Kernel to be seen.
The door bangs shut on a view of tumbling bodies.
“Come on,” Yestin mutters under his breath. “Come on!” He’s jabbing at another wall-mounted button, which is emblazoned with a white arrow. Noble feels the floor lurch. Then the whole room begins to hum.
“What is this?” he demands. “What’s happening?”
“We’re going up,” Yestin informs him.
“Up?” says Noble.
“It’s an elevator. Elevators go up and down.”
Noble doesn’t know what to make of this. He glances uneasily around the room. It’s bobbing as if it’s afloat; there’s a grinding noise and a slight vibration.
“I hope this works,” Yestin remarks hoarsely. His lips are trembling.
“Did you understand what the Kernel said?” Lorellina appeals to Noble. She’s the color of salt. “Do you know what he was talking about?”
Noble shakes his head, then looks down at the token in his hand. Now he has a key and a token. Will either of them do him any good?
“We’re taking a message to Mikey’s phone,” Yestin volunteers. “I guess—I guess that means we’ll be uploaded onto it. Maybe.”
“But what does that mean?” asks the princess.
Before Yestin can answer, the elevator bounces to a halt. A bell chimes somewhere as the door opens, revealing a lot of grubby, tiled surfaces.
“Wait.” Noble’s arm shoots out to stop Lorellina from advancing. He cautiously pokes his head around the door and scans for any looming threats.
All he can see, however, is a steel gate barring the way to a large room with a curved ceiling.
“ENTRY TO PLATFORM ONE,” Yestin quavers. He catches the door, which is trying to shut again. “PLEASE INSERT TOKEN HERE.”
Noble frowns. “What?”
“Look. See? In the slot.” Yestin points at the complex arrangement of silver bars and skinny metal boxes in front of them. Then he catches sight of Noble’s puzzled expression and blurts out, “Can’t you read?”
“No.”
“Really?”
“What is this
place?” Lorellina interrupts. She’s peering around at the beige-and-green tiles all over the walls, floor, and ceiling. “Is this Mikey’s phone?”
“I don’t think so.” Yestin’s voice is hushed. “I think this is just the delivery platform. This is where we catch the Bluetooth connection.”
“How?” Noble queries.
“I’m not sure. But we should probably stick the token in that slot over there.”
So Noble leaves the elevator. With Yestin and the princess in close pursuit, he approaches the nearest slot and inserts his token, as instructed. There’s a dull clunk, but the gates don’t open.
“That bar moved.” Yestin points. “I saw it shudder.”
“Give it a push,” Lorellina suggests.
When Noble obeys, the three-pronged gate yields to his pressure, rolling aside to let him pass. Next thing he knows he’s through the gate and standing on a long, narrow platform at the edge of a ditch. An arched ceiling, blotched with damp, indicates that he’s in a very large tunnel. The ditch at his feet contains several metal rails laid on the ground. Each end of the ditch is lost in darkness, swallowed up by a tunnel that continues in both directions.
Kerchunk. The gate behind Noble revolves again to admit Yestin.
“This reminds me of home,” Yestin remarks. “There should be a train along here soon.”
“A train?” Noble repeats.
“Shhh!” Lorellina has also forced her way through the revolving gate. Now she lifts one hand and cocks her head. “Do you hear that?”
Noble listens. Sure enough, a faint squealing noise is growing louder. It’s coming from the mouth of the tunnel to his right. He can feel a slight vibration in the platform beneath him.
“That’s it,” Yestin announces. “That’s the train.”
“Step back!” Noble warns, just as a disembodied female voice rings out.
“The next connection is for 709348880021743. The next connection is for …”
“We have to catch that connection!” By now Lorellina is shouting, because the squeal is rapidly becoming a roar. “What should we do—block its path?”
“With what?” Noble looks around frantically for something to throw into the ditch. But there’s nothing except the gate, which is firmly bolted down. And even though he probably has the strength to rip it apart, he certainly doesn’t have the time.
“It’s okay,” Yestin loudly assures him. “We don’t really have to catch this train. We just have to get on it.” The noise has become almost deafening. There’s a blast of hot air and a giant whomp and suddenly a vehicle like a huge silver truck emerges into the light, shrieking horribly as it slows down. “There are doors, see?” Yestin bellows. “They’ll open for us!”
Nodding, Noble covers his ears. He can see the doors—and the windows. The train’s interior is well lit and completely unoccupied. He watches empty seats roll past him at an ever-decreasing speed. There seem to be hundreds. At last, the train sighs and stops.
Its many doors slide open, hissing like snakes.
“I hope this isn’t a trap,” Lorellina remarks.
Noble shrugs. “We can’t go back now,” he observes, stepping onto the train. When nothing happens to him, the others follow his example. They all sit down warily on a row of hard blue seats.
“Doors closing,” says the disembodied female voice.
With a jolt and squeal, the train begins to move again. The well-lit platform rapidly flickers out of sight. Soon, there’s nothing beyond the windows but impenetrable blackness.
“This train is bigger than the shuttles on our spaceship,” Yestin comments.
Noble doesn’t say anything. He’s worked out that they’re sitting in only one small part of the train, which seems to be made up of a dozen or so vehicles strung together. Thanks to all the windows, he can see into the two adjoining vehicles—which appear to be empty.
He can’t be sure, though. Someone might be hunkering down behind the seats.
I wonder if it’s possible to pass along this train while it’s moving, he thinks.
“Are we in Mikey’s phone now?” Lorellina asks suddenly. Noble is so preoccupied that it takes him a few seconds to process her question, by which time Yestin has already answered it.
“No. We’re heading for Mikey’s phone.”
“Good.” The princess sounds relieved. “Because there’s no one here to give our message to.”
Noble grunts. He’s listening to the clackety-clackety that’s coming from beneath the train and wondering if he should be worried about it. Perhaps not. Then Yestin says, very softly, “I hope we can get back.”
Lorellina stares at him. “What?”
“Well … if our message reaches Mikey, we might not have time to go home. Not before his computer’s turned off.”
Lorellina seems unimpressed. “So?”
“So we can’t get into the computer once it’s turned off,” Yestin explains.
Noble and the princess exchange horrified glances. Then something occurs to Noble. “We used all our tokens,” he says. “What if we need more of them to catch the train back again?”
“I knew this was a trap!” Lorellina is becoming more and more agitated. “The Kernel is a liar! We should never have agreed to deliver his message! Why would we want Mikey to turn off his computer?”
“Because if he doesn’t, it’s going to crash,” Yestin insists. When Lorellina lifts her lip in a sneer, he adds, “Didn’t you see what was happening back there?”
“I saw. And I was told to blame Rufus. But what if the Kernel was to blame?”
“No.” Yestin shakes his head. “Believe me, that wasn’t the Kernel’s fault.”
“How do you know?” the princess demands.
“Because he runs the operating system. And the operating system would only do that if it had been sabotaged.” Yestin turns to Noble, his bony face puckered into an anxious frown. “You believe the Kernel, don’t you? It’s Rufus who was lying, not him.”
Noble doesn’t know what to think. He finds it difficult to believe that Rufus ever meant to cause any harm, even if harm was somehow caused. And he’s also convinced that the Kernel was lying when he promised to negotiate with Rufus.
On the other hand, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Rufus is right and the Kernel is wrong. Even Noble can see that. He’s starting to realize that the world is a much more complicated place than he ever expected it to be.
Suddenly, the train begins to slow down. It plunges out of the darkness and into the light. Its windows begin to frame views of another well-lit platform.
By the time it eases to a standstill, wheezing and groaning, Noble is already on his feet.
“Arriving at station 709348880021743,” the disembodied female voice announces. “Arriving at station 709348880021743.…”
“Our stop,” says Yestin, jumping up. He accompanies Noble and Lorellina onto a platform that doesn’t look very much like the last one. This platform has smaller tiles, arranged in more elaborate patterns. There’s a lot of finely molded ironwork. The elevator sits behind two doors, one of which is like the folding wall of a cage.
The button mounted beside it is made of brass, set in a beautifully engraved brass panel.
“Mikey’s phone must be a really old model,” Yestin observes, gazing around in astonishment. “Everything here looks antique.”
“You mean we’re inside Mikey’s phone?” asks Noble. “Right now?”
Yestin shrugs. “Maybe.”
“Stand clear. Doors closing,” the disembodied female voice declares. As the train doors slide shut, and the train itself begins to move, Noble wonders—with a sinking heart—if he’ll ever see Thanehaven again.
He doesn’t feel comfortable. Something’s not right about the air, or the light, or the colors. He senses that he doesn’t belong here. He certainly doesn’t want to stay.
“You mean this is where we have to leave our message?” Lorellina demands, glaring around at the empty platform
. “But where is everybody?”
Yestin opens his mouth, then hesitates. Only when the train’s departing squeal has become a distant whine does he finally point to a mosaic pattern above the elevator door. “That says EXIT. Maybe there’ll be someone upstairs.”
“Come on.” Noble moves forward. “Let’s go.”
He jabs at the brass button on the wall, instinctively copying the Kernel’s actions. Almost at once, there’s a clanking sound. Then the inner door of the elevator bangs open behind the bronze-colored mesh that’s protecting it.
Noble finds himself gazing through the mesh at another very small room. But unlike the last elevator, this one is richly paneled in dark, glossy wood—and is already occupied. A young man wearing a red uniform and white gloves smiles politely as he leans forward to push aside the bronze mesh door. He has a round, freckled, snub-nosed face and a blond crewcut under a rimless cap.
“Going up,” he chants. “Where to, sir?”
“Um …” Noble isn’t sure.
“Message for Mikey?” It’s Yestin who answers.
“Hop in,” says the young man.
Noble, Yestin, and Lorellina all manage to squeeze into the luxurious little elevator; then its operator slams the cage door shut behind them. Once the inner door closes, the operator presses another button, and the elevator starts to ascend jerkily, with a low-pitched whine.
No one says anything. Even the young man remains silent until the elevator comes to an abrupt halt.
“Here you are,” he says, once again leaning forward to drag open the doors. “There’s your in-box.”
“Where?” Noble can’t see a box. He’s looking at a very large room that’s seething with activity. Along the wall opposite the elevator about two dozen women are sitting on high stools, sticking wires into panels full of holes, then pulling them out again. All these women have short, curly hair and calf-length skirts; they’re gabbing away into mikes, making a tremendous din. Other women are sitting at rows of desks in the middle of the room, tapping away at black machines that look a bit like Mikey’s computer—except that they don’t have screens. Wooden doors and frosted-glass panels line the left-hand side of the room, while on the right-hand side is one long row of filing cabinets.