Sarah nudged Bryson. “It was your discovery, Bigfoot.”
“Fine by me,” he muttered. He bent over, gripped the torn sides of the makeshift entry with both hands, then stepped into the darkness. On the other side he stood up and Michael could just make out his pants as he turned in a circle.
“See anything?” Michael called out.
“Not a thing,” he responded, his voice slightly muffled. “Not a single thing. But it’s open and airy. Come on in—we’ll hold hands and sing songs while we explore.”
Sarah hunched down and exited the hallway, and then Michael followed. Bryson was right. The air was cool, and there wasn’t anything there.
“It’s creepy in here,” Michael said. “Anybody have a flashlight?”
Bryson clicked his EarCuff and his NetScreen appeared in front of him. He adjusted the settings, and soon they had a nice bright square to light their way.
“Brilliant,” Michael said. He and Sarah did the same.
“I know,” Bryson responded.
The only problem was that even though they now had a pool of light around them, it didn’t reveal anything. Michael could only see darkness—nothing else.
“It’s like we’re on the moon,” Sarah whispered.
Michael squeezed her elbow. “Except that we can breathe, there are no stars, and there’s still gravity.”
“Yeah, other than that, it’s like we’re on the moon.” She stepped farther into the darkness and looked in both directions. “Which way?”
“Forward,” Bryson answered, pointing straight ahead. “The code sure seemed to suggest it.”
“Plus,” Michael said, “I don’t want anything more to do with that stupid hallway.” For a moment, he wondered whether it was the right decision and why nothing was trying to stop them. But it seemed to be their only choice.
“Let’s do it, then,” Sarah said.
So they walked into the darkness.
5
It was weird and quiet and spooky. They moved across the black floor, their footsteps, their breath, and the rustling of their clothes the only sounds. Michael looked back, and the hole into the hallway was now just a tiny spot of light in the distance. The programming for this place was so incredibly solid, he thought, because the perspective felt real and stayed consistent. In lesser locations you could feel the weaknesses in the coding—the surroundings might subtly shift, the colors change, or you might get skipping in the light source.
“What’s the purpose of all this?” Bryson whispered. They were all whispering now, as if something in the darkness might hear them.
“It’s the Path,” Michael answered. It was starting to make more sense to him. “Kaine knows he can’t keep everyone out of his secret place. And he knows the good ones will have hacking skills. So he has us playing into his hands. It’s a lot easier to funnel people into a series of firewall programs that’ll scare them, make them wanna go back. Or kill them and accomplish the same thing. Man, I hate this dude.”
“He’s not a dude,” Sarah said. “He’s a madman gamer.”
Michael changed his line. “Man, I hate this madman gamer.”
They continued on, but nothing changed and nothing new appeared.
Then Michael heard the ghost again and his heart sank. The group stopped.
“Michael.” That whimpering whisper. “Michael.”
A breeze picked up, but this time it wasn’t something that passed by. This breeze didn’t stop. It came in bursts and changed directions, pulling on their clothes and hair. The sound of moaning filled the air, even louder than what they’d heard back in the hallway. Michael imagined a man curled up in a ball on a sweat-soaked bed as he groaned in agony.
“Michael Michael Michael,” came the words again, and then again, from everywhere at once as the moaning continued. Michael didn’t know what to think. The voice was definitely louder.
“Remind me to avoid haunted houses from now on,” Bryson said. “And why are they only picking on you?”
A new sound pierced the air—a woman’s scream, unnaturally long and shrill.
“I can’t take this anymore!” Sarah yelled, her hands over her ears. “Let’s get out of here!”
Michael thought that sounded like a very good idea. He grabbed her by the hand and started running in the direction they’d been going. Bryson was right beside him—their NetScreens bounced, and the light bobbed ahead of them. The awful noise only grew, and the breeze stiffened into a strong wind.
“Michael Michael Michael …”
Michael picked up the pace, dragging Sarah along with him. And as they ran, the ground below them suddenly turned soft—with every step Michael’s feet sank several inches until he stumbled and fell onto the shifting surface.
It was black sand. The wind picked up, whipping the grit against his skin. The moans had turned into howls now, and the words blended together to sound like some indecipherable language.
“None of this makes any sense!” Bryson yelled. Michael could barely hear him over the noise. He was on his knees, looking around in disbelief.
Sarah was just getting to her feet. “We need to keep—”
Her voice was cut off when the ground below them collapsed completely and they plummeted in a cloud of sand.
6
For a long moment, Michael’s heart seemed to float in his chest and he prepared himself for death. He was back at the Golden Gate Bridge with Tanya, falling to the sea. But relief came when he not so much landed but felt a hard, cool surface against his back. And he wasn’t falling anymore; he was sliding. His descent began to slow as the surface beneath him turned into stairs, and he tumbled, struggling to stop himself.
Grunting with each jarring impact, he braced his hands and feet and finally came to a halt, his chin resting against the hard edge of a step. He closed his eyes and took a breath. And then someone landed on top of him.
Michael screamed, letting out all the frustration he’d felt over the past several hours, and with one huge burst of adrenaline, he threw whoever it was off of him before he could stop himself. Just as he let go he saw that it was Sarah, and he watched, horrified, as she somersaulted before coming to a stop several steps below him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, embarrassed. Nothing like a good friend to toss you down a flight of stairs. “Lost it there for a sec.”
She looked up at him, a grimace twisting her features. She opened her mouth to speak and then seemed to think better of it. Michael noticed Bryson then, lying awkwardly on his back, his NetScreen hovering a few feet above him.
Michael curled his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. He could only imagine the bruises he’d have when he Lifted. The Coffin was expert at physical punishment.
“That hurt,” Bryson said. He was staring at some far-off point.
Michael looked around and saw nothing but the same endless darkness. “Yeah, it did,” he agreed. “And I’m pretty sure it should be impossible for Kaine to create such a complex place. How can he create a program like this that all three of us can barely penetrate and read? Much less manipulate?”
“I don’t know,” Bryson responded. “Maybe he had a lot of help. Or maybe there’s something about him that we just haven’t figured out yet. But it’s pretty crazy. I think you’re right that the only weaknesses we’re seeing are the ones he wants us to—so that we’ll be funneled along the Path according to his plan. I’m jealous of the rat.”
Sarah started whimpering, and when Michael looked he could see that her shoulders were shaking, her head buried in her arms. Whoa, he thought. Things had gotten really bad—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Sarah cry. He moved to console her, and every inch of him complained. He gingerly made his way down each step until he was by her side, then reached out and rubbed her back.
She looked up and met his eyes. Tears streaked her face, but even in the dim light Michael could tell that she wasn’t angry. At least he was in the clear.
“You okay
?” he asked, fully aware it was a stupid question but not sure what else to say.
“Hmm, let me think about it.… No, I’m not okay.” She made a poor attempt at a smile, then shifted to sit up next to him, wincing as she did. “What just happened?”
Bryson was the one with the answer. “Well, we were in a long hallway, then a black room, then walking on sand. Then we fell down a slide that turned into stairs. You’ve never done that before?”
“Can’t say that I have,” she answered weakly. “You guys are right about the code. And Kaine. It’s all really weird.”
Michael studied the staircase below them, trying to see where it ended. But just like the hallway, it disappeared into darkness.
He hated what he was about to say, but it was their only option. “We have to keep going. We gotta get out of this place.”
“Why?” Bryson asked bitterly. “The next one’s just going to be worse.”
Michael shrugged. “Right. And we’ll get through that one and then the next one. Go and go and go until we make it to the Hallowed Ravine and figure this all out.”
“Or die and go back home,” Sarah said softly.
“Or die and go back home,” Michael repeated. He was mad that all the time they’d spent in the Sleep didn’t seem nearly enough experience to get them through this massive firewall. Angry and hurting, he stood up and started walking down the stairs.
7
Nothing changed for two hours. Nothing except the sand that had fallen with them, which finally vanished from the steps the farther they pushed on. The endlessness continued. Steps and more steps. Down, down, down they walked in cool darkness, the glow of NetScreens lighting the way. Any attempt to find a shortcut or a way out in the programming just led them in circles—nothing made sense.
Finally, they made the decision that they needed to sleep.
“We’re each roughly about the same size as the steps,” Bryson pointed out when they stopped.
No one said anything as they lay down. Michael had never before felt so tired. Both his mind and body needed rest.
Yet, strangely, sleep didn’t come for Michael. Maybe it was the bruises, or maybe he was just on edge—too consumed with waiting for whatever was going to come next—but he couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, his mind wandered, and for some reason he thought of one thing and one thing only.
His parents.
He didn’t know where it had come from. He missed them, sure. And he was worried about them finding out about the whole Kaine affair.
But then something occurred to him. It was so jarring, so hard to believe, so disconcerting, that he sat up straight and had to struggle for air. Luckily, Bryson and Sarah were asleep. He couldn’t have handled questions from them—he wasn’t sure he had the answers.
Michael closed his eyes and concentrated, rubbing his temples. He had to just be shaken up, not thinking right. He took a deep breath and calmed himself, went through a very methodical line of thinking. He thought about each and every day of his recent life in reverse order, running through a mental list of what had happened.
One week. Two weeks. Three weeks. A month. Two months. Day by day, going back in time, trying to go through the checklist of his everyday existence. His memory was stronger than he would’ve guessed—there were lots of things, lots of events, that he could bring back. But there was one glaring, monumental detail that seemed impossible to recall. How could he have gotten so wrapped up in his life that it had gone unnoticed until now? So wrapped up in school and the VirtNet?
There was no mistaking the thing that bothered him so much.
Michael literally couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his parents.
CHAPTER 15
A DOOR IN THE DISTANCE
1
And Helga had never come back, either.
Michael didn’t know which bothered him more—that something terrible was going on with his parents and nanny or that he was so wrapped up in his entertainment that it had taken him this long to notice. He was equally horrified and ashamed.
He tried to think of what possibly could’ve happened. Maybe the VNS was involved somehow. Or Kaine and this Mortality Doctrine program. All the things that had so drastically changed his life over the past couple of weeks were, after all, related—though he didn’t know how to connect the dots.
But Michael couldn’t remember. As hard as he pressed his mind, he couldn’t recall the exact last time he’d been together with his parents. Everything he thought of—parties, meals, riding in the car—it always seemed overwhelmingly true that surely he had seen them since then. But there was nothing.
It was weird, and it terrified him. And haunting it all, Michael had to wonder if it had something to do with the KillSim. There was no doubt in his mind that the creature had done something to his brain.
He didn’t know what to do, what to think, but eventually he allowed himself to lie back on his designated stair and stretch out. The sheer exhaustion finally became too much and he fell asleep.
2
Bryson woke him with a gentle shake of his shoulders. Michael looked at his friend through bleary eyes.
“Sheesh, man,” Bryson said. “We’ve been awake for an hour. And you snore like a fat bear.”
Michael swung his legs around and sat up, yawned, rubbed his eyes. The black world of the staircase tilted for a second, then righted itself. Nothing had changed while they’d slept.
“Anybody else have weird dreams last night?” Sarah asked. “There was a guy in a bunny suit in mine. Don’t ask for more details.”
Michael hadn’t dreamed at all, but his upsetting discovery came back to him like a whammy. Why couldn’t he remember when he’d last seen his parents? Where were they? Why hadn’t Helga come home? How could he not have thought about his mom and dad being gone so long? He never talked to his parents much while they were away, but it was still weird. And he had no doubt that something was not right, in one form or another.
“Michael?” Sarah asked. “You okay?”
He looked at her and decided there was no way he’d tell anybody about this oddity. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just excited to walk down some more stairs. And starving so bad I’m thinking about eating one of Bryson’s legs.”
“Better shave them first,” Bryson responded, lifting a leg straight out in front of him as if to offer it. He put it back down, then said, “I had a weird dream. I’d never met Michael in it and was living a wonderfully happy life, with no one trying to kill me or damage my brain forever. It was sweet.”
“That does sound nice,” Sarah said.
Michael stood up and stretched. “Hardy har har. Let’s get down these stupid stairs.”
No one argued, and step by step they resumed their descent.
3
It was impossible to tell just how long it took before something changed. Michael tried counting the steps for a while, then seconds and minutes, just to keep his mind occupied with something other than his parents. His watch had stopped working at some point, and the clocks on their NetScreens kept doing weird things. The longer they descended, the crazier Michael felt. The monotony of it began building an anxiety that he had to work hard to push down. Occasional—and failed—attempts to hack into the seemingly impossible code only made things worse.
Then, finally, they found a door.
It was at the end of the stairs, where the space around them had narrowed until it formed a tunnel that dead-ended at an ordinary wooden door. The relief of seeing it overwhelmed Michael, and an irrational surge of giddiness made him suddenly erupt in giggles.
“Something funny?” Bryson asked, on the verge of a smile himself. “Better share it with the whole class.”
“No, nothing funny.” Michael was the first to the door, and he reached out for its round brass handle. “Just happy to be home.”
Bryson snickered at that, and Michael didn’t wait for more conversation. He twisted the handle and the door swung open easily. Then he stepped through to s
ee what awaited them.
Two long rows of people stood, backs to the walls, stretching down a hallway. And despite the fact that they all had their eyes open, every one of them looked dead.
4
Michael stopped right past the threshold of the doorway. He could sense his friends at his back, but no one made a move to urge him on. He was sure that they wanted to walk down the hallway as much as he did. Which was not at all.
Bare lightbulbs, like the ones from the haunted-house hallway, hung from the ceiling to illuminate the two lines of people, and Michael suddenly missed the darkness they’d been surrounded by for so long. The strangers stood as still as carved rock, every pair of eyes trained on Michael and his friends.
Michael focused on the ones closest to him. To his right was a woman, her skin as pale as the moon. She wore a white dress, wrinkled but clean. Her dark eyes bore into Michael’s, and it seemed that she might open her mouth to speak to him at any second.
Directly across from her, to Michael’s left, was a man in a black suit. He was just as pale as the woman and just as still, but his right arm was held out halfway from his body, the fingers spread apart.
Michael focused on the others lining the hallway. All of them ghostly white, all completely still, all staring at the new arrivals. Like the man, many of the people were frozen in odd positions. As if they’d been turned to stone in the middle of an activity.
“Hello?” Bryson called. His voice echoed down the hallway, and just before it faded, each person in front of them moved slightly. Michael’s heart skipped.
“What was that?” Sarah whispered, and a few of the bodies twitched. Then she said even softer, “All I can tell from the code is it seems the Path goes straight ahead. I can’t break through anything or see another way out.”
“What else is new?” Bryson added. “Me neither.”
Very slowly, Michael turned around to face his two friends. Then, so quiet he could barely hear himself speaking, he said, “Okay, but no talking. No sudden movements. Follow me.”