“Yes!” Kaine replied. “It’s just not how I’d planned it. And I haven’t tested it in the cycle yet. But it might be the only way to rid ourselves of those traitors before they get in our way again.”
“Wait a second,” Michael said. He thought about what Weber had done at the World Summit. How those guards had just dropped to the ground, dead. And Helga had done the same thing to one of Trae’s group outside the barracks. But hadn’t that been the true death? “Back at the summit, Weber sent some kind of message to the VirtNet and these guards just dropped. Is that what we’re talking about?”
Kaine shook his head. “No. That’s what you’ve been insisting we can’t do—the true death. The true death kills both the Tangent and the human—the body and the consciousness. I’m telling you that we can prevent the deaths of the original humans. We can reboot them—use the Mortality Doctrine to send them back into their own bodies.”
Michael almost smiled at how ridiculous his life had become. “And that would kill the Tangents? They’d be gone forever?”
Kaine shrugged. “That’s the problem. I don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t tested it yet. In theory, we should be able to swap intelligences in and out of biological brains indefinitely without harm so that we can all live for eternity in body after body. The Tangents should upload back into the VirtNet. Should being the key word. But there’s still a lot of work to do.”
“Okay,” Michael said, “so you’re sure we can put these humans back into their own bodies, but you’re not sure what will happen to the Tangent?”
“Something like that,” Kaine said, a twinkle of excitement in his eye. Michael felt uneasy. It seemed like they were playing God, rolling the dice to see who lived and who died. Like it was all some sort of game. “And I’m pretty sure I know some programming that would take care of the Tangents.”
Michael let out a sigh. “All right,” he said. “Then let’s do this. I guess they aren’t real, so no one’s going to miss them anyway.”
A look of disgust washed over Kaine’s Aura. It was only there for an instant, but it made Michael feel terrible. He was talking as if he’d been a human all his life instead of having taken Jackson’s body. He really was playing God, which seemed like the very thing he and his friends were trying to stop. What made him better than these other Tangents?
Then Sarah’s face surfaced in his mind. Her expression when she’d been shot, the life draining out of her. He thought of all the other people who’d lost their lives to this Mortality Doctrine, and he steeled himself. He couldn’t let it keep happening.
“Okay,” he said to Kaine. “Show me what we need to do.”
2
Kaine spun them through the diseased realms of the Sleep, launching past glitching cities and broken code. Numbers and letters and symbols scattered like leaves in a windstorm, and pixels crumbled around them. Kaine’s prowess in coding was something Michael still watched in awe. He’d always known Kaine was good, but the Tangent manipulated their way through it all with the ease of splashing through a puddle.
The journey took less than a minute. They vaulted through eroding mountain ranges, black seas, and razed cities. Code was collapsing everywhere.
They flew through a soundless darkness, interrupted by violent explosions of light, and suddenly the vast wall of the Hive appeared before them. It stretched seemingly endless in every direction, glowing orange; it looked like some kind of alien planet.
Jackson’s here somewhere, Michael thought. He’s still alive.
Michael flew through the air, Kaine’s grip still tight on his arm, guiding him closer and closer to the wall. Gradually, a section oddly different from the rest of the Hive became visible. A speck of green grew as they approached and turned into a square about twenty feet across. Lights flashed and streaked across its surface, which bubbled and rippled like a pot of boiling water. Misty smoke whirled in jetties. All of it only added to the otherworldly feel of the place.
Kaine pulled them to a stop right in front of the strange scene. Michael looked deeper into the bubbling haze and saw that what he’d thought were lights were actually symbols of code, breaking apart and forming back together. It looked like nonsense.
“What is this?” he asked. “Some kind of living NetScreen?”
Kaine laughed. “That’s almost exactly what it is. It’ll take you some time to get used to it, but once you start coding within the Code Pool, you’ll never want to go back to the old ways.”
“The Code Pool,” Michael said absently, studying the mysterious goop in wonder. How was it possible he’d never heard of this before?
Kaine answered as if he’d read his mind. “Only a few people can even see this, much less know what it is. But I’m afraid we don’t have much time for me to explain things at the moment—they’ll be here any second.”
Michael tore his eyes away from the mesmerizing dance of the Pool. “Wait…what? What am I supposed to do? Who’s ‘they’?”
“My former friends, the rogues,” Kaine replied easily, as if these Tangents didn’t want both of them dead. “As well as a few current friends. I suspect it’s going to get ugly, but I think we’ll be okay. As long as you can get your part done.”
“What part?” Michael was getting more and more nervous.
“I’ll message you what you need to know. You’ll have two jobs: finding their storage unit and severing the connection. But you have to follow the procedure I send you so that the human minds they stole are Doctrined back into their bodies, processed through the Hallowed Ravine. I know it sounds a little complicated, but I think you can handle it.”
Michael stared at Kaine, wondering how they’d gotten to this. This Tangent had once been his mortal enemy, and now they were talking like a couple of IT workers at the company picnic.
Seeds of panic started sprouting inside Michael. “I’m not sure….” He didn’t know what to ask. And then Michael spotted figures in the distance, growing as they approached. Gradually, he made out people dressed as medieval warriors, trolls, and enormous panthers and other beasts standing on hind legs. There were samurai and paratroopers and armored space cadets from the future. It looked like a VirtGame gone supernova.
“Don’t worry,” Kaine said. “Those are mine. The others are on their way.”
Michael searched for words. “Which is…I still don’t get it. What if they bring those KillSims with them again? They will!”
Kaine reached out and squeezed his shoulder, looking at him very seriously. “Michael, there’s a link between you and the Mortality Doctrine that I can’t afford to lose. Neither can Weber and the VNS. You need to stay off the battlefield. And you’re perfectly suited to what I need you to do.”
Michael nodded, too many questions running through his mind to give voice to any.
“Good. Now just close your eyes and let the connection flow. Once you have all the information, things will start falling into place. It’ll come fast, so be prepared.”
“Okay.” Michael wanted to say so much more. He was scared—worried he wouldn’t know what to do—but then, if anyone could figure out what Kaine was talking about, it was most likely to be Michael. He closed his eyes and opened himself to the raw world of the code. “I’m ready.”
“Here it comes,” Kaine said, and information came in a torrent, filling Michael’s virtual vision like a blizzard. “And don’t worry. You won’t be vulnerable to attack while you’re working—I’ll form a bubble around you and we’ll fight them off as best we can. Just keep working.”
“Uh…yeah.” It was all he could do to get those words out, lost in the rushing stream of code.
“Let’s just hope the bubble holds.” They were Kaine’s last, not-so-reassuring words before the onslaught of information finally overwhelmed Michael.
And he gave himself to it.
3
For a while, Michael was having fun again. Wading through code, facing down puzzles, learning at a pace faster than thought could process. He h
ad been born for this—programmed with these abilities. And he relished the challenge.
The Code Pool was like the next step of evolution for coding, as if it had all transformed into something biological, his virtual body melding with it, becoming one. It reminded him of the human brain, which was really nothing more than a biological computer. This is what he existed within now, a living goop of code. Kaine’s instructions swirled in his mind like a whirlpool as he worked, manipulating the sea of pure information in which he swam.
Time was lost to Michael, but eventually he saw it. Lights, twisting in a pattern not unlike that of DNA, extending into the universe of code for what seemed like eternity. Individual strings shone so bright that they blended together in the distance miles away. He had to focus hard to find the specific strings provided by Kaine in his information dump.
Michael moved things with his mind. The lights twisted and spun and vaulted like comets, forward or backward, according to his will.
There.
He didn’t even know how he recognized it—how he identified the light’s data with that of Kaine’s—but he knew immediately that they matched. Michael was looking at a representation of a Tangent that had broken apart from Kaine’s initial group, joined the rogue alliance that wanted to topple him and continue the original plan to ruthlessly, and without mercy, take over the human race. Michael hoped Kaine had meant it when he’d said that was no longer his own wish.
Michael pulled himself closer to the light in question. Or pulled it closer to him—impossible to tell what was actually happening. He reached inside the brilliant streak of light before him with his mind. The code was like clay, and he kneaded it, squeezed and pulled, all according to the guidance Kaine had sent him in that torrential flow. At some point, it was there for the taking. A connection so isolated and fragile, perfectly formed in front of him. It was there, like a thin toothpick, held between his virtual-within-virtual hands.
Michael pulled it apart into two pieces.
A long string of light winked out of existence, without even a flash to glorify its exit.
Michael turned, surprised to see a perfect view of the battle between Kaine’s Tangents raging outside the Hive. Somewhere within that chaos, a man dressed as a World War II soldier exploded in a fiery burst of pyrotechnics, leaving not even a trace.
Gone. Dead.
Michael had just murdered him.
4
His heart grew heavier with every light he extinguished. But he kept at it, not allowing himself to listen to his conscience. He didn’t have time for it. One by one, he pinpointed the rogue Tangents he’d been provided and initiated Kaine’s Reboot. The stored human intelligence was sent back into its own body and the renegade Tangent was drained out, eliminated. Killed.
Each time he broke another connection, Michael glanced behind him, looked for the fiery explosion that marked the demise of the Tangent. Slowly but surely, the tide of the vicious battle being fought outside the wall of the Hive was turning in favor of Kaine and his faithful.
Michael had eliminated twelve of the Tangents, had seen the burst of flames—and the nothingness that followed—of the latest victim, and was turning back to his work within the goop of the Code Pool when something slammed against the protective Bubble that Kaine had programmed around him. It was like a giant bird hitting a window, making a loud enough thump that Michael recoiled and sucked in a gasp of air. A black mass lay splattered against the invisible surface, an amoeba of darkness.
Then a mouth appeared, rimmed with teeth. It reminded Michael of the algae-eaters that suck the walls of an aquarium. That curtain of black around it left no doubt what had come for him.
A KillSim. One of those new daggers-for-teeth KillSims.
He’d barely had the thought when another hit the Bubble next to the first one, flattening out like a pancake of tar. Its mouth appeared instantly. The teeth shone and scraped against the surface. Another one landed right after that.
Three of them.
Hold, Michael begged the Bubble. You better hold. He returned to his work.
It was odd, his current environment. Unlike most of the VirtNet, the Code Pool didn’t obey normal physics. It existed in different formats and different locations at once. When Michael immersed himself in it, everything else disappeared, and he saw only that core substance of the programming language in which he floated. But every time he turned his head to look back—he saw it all. The Bubble of protection, the leeching KillSims, Kaine’s battle behind that, raging like an alien war in space.
He resumed his deadly work, ending Tangent lives one by one. It made him feel better to know that he was also giving life back to those who’d had their bodies stolen. Or so he hoped. What a changed world it would be if he trusted Kaine completely.
A horrific screeching sound broke his concentration just as he was about to snap another Tangent life away. He couldn’t help but look, almost losing his grip on that tiny stick as he did so. Behind him, one of the KillSims had pierced the shield of the Bubble with a single tooth, letting that awful noise in as it twisted and tore at the invisible material. It was worse than nails on a chalkboard. Michael fought the urge to put his virtual hands to his virtual ears, turned back to his deed, and snapped another line of code. Yet another string of lights winked out.
Michael faced the KillSim again. It had torn a three-inch gash in the Bubble now, grinding away. One of its companions had formed some kind of spike out of its black mass, a dark pick that it used to hammer at the shield. A low thump sounded every time it hit. Soon it was accompanied by a crackle, like a large sheet of ice beginning to break.
Time was running out. There had to be almost a hundred rogue Tangents left in the list Kaine had sent. Michael went into overdrive, taking leaps in his coding that weren’t exactly safe or foolproof. He decided the time for careful treading was over. If that protective barrier burst, there’d be no way he could fight off those KillSims before they sucked the essence from his body back home—especially with his strength drained as it was. He’d be a vegetable in no time.
He swept through the files of the Hive, finding connections to over a dozen Tangents and latching on to all of them. Working one by one was no longer an option. Scrapes and cracks and screeching continued behind him, like a glacier coming apart all at once. That Bubble was about to burst like a lightbulb under a boot. Feverishly, Michael gathered data, pooled it, swept it, manipulated, massaged it. He layered the codes, counting on pure instinct to keep everything in order, working too fast for his mind to make sense of it all.
Before long he held a bundle of fragile sticks in his hand as if he were about to draw straws. Each one represented a life—no matter how programmed or artificial, it was a life. How could he say any different? He’d been one of them. But they were different, he told himself as the KillSims pounded his thin membrane of protection. They’d been created to do harm. Created to wreak havoc on the real world.
But hadn’t he been created to do the same? In a way? He was the First, after all.
Michael!
The booming sound of Kaine’s voice came from everywhere at once. Michael tore himself from his thoughts and doubts, looked down at the bundle of sticks in his hand. The artificial lives, the threads to their intelligence and being, their lifelines.
He grabbed the two ends with both fists and snapped them all into two pieces. The air lit up with the explosions behind him. He turned to face it and watched fiery clouds of red and orange erupt across the empty space beyond the Hive. Then, as if opened to another dimension, they disappeared, lightning fast, darkness settling on the world once again.
So many dead.
So many saved.
He had to remember that. Kaine said that the original inhabitants of those bodies would automatically get reinserted into the VirtNet, resume their lives. What a wake-up that would be.
There were more. He hadn’t gotten all of them. But Kaine and the Tangents on his side outnumbered those who’d come to
attack, and it was plain to see that the tide of the battle had turned drastically in Kaine’s favor. Michael had done enough.
The KillSims kept coming. The one had opened its dark maw over a foot wide, and even as Michael looked at it, a sharp blade of darkness came swiping at his head. He ducked, letting it skim over him. Just.
The creature with the black spike hadn’t stopped hammering; cracks spiderwebbed away from its point of attack, thick and white and expanding. Michael pushed himself as far away as he could, but the Code Pool resisted. It was as if it didn’t want him sinking into its goop of code unless he was willing to work it. The dark blade swiped at him again, sliced some threads on his shirt.
“Kaine!” he yelled, not knowing if the Tangent would hear him. “You need to get me out of here!”
Michael saw him, just a glimpse through the white cracks and the bodies of the KillSims that had swarmed his protective Bubble. The Tangent had turned his head toward him, and their eyes met for a brief second, but then he disappeared from view. Hopefully coming to save him. Surely Kaine’s friends were enough to—
Michael’s vision bounced, then went blurry. It bounced again, as if he were on some amusement park ride that jolted his body. Colors smeared together, getting blurrier and distorted. Stretched, darkening, covered in mist, now brightening, everything turning white. He tried to call for Kaine again, but he couldn’t get the words out. Then he was moving, picking up speed, catapulting into a brilliant light, unable to feel anything. There was a terrible rush of noise.
What…? His mind couldn’t form the thought, much less speak it.
The atmosphere popped, and his eardrums felt as if they’d erupted. He screamed—the sound of it was close and contained and dulled, as if he were inside…
A Coffin.
Something hissed loudly; then a bright line of light appeared above him. NerveWires snaked out of his skin and back to their cubbyholes. His body was soaked from head to toe, and every part of him ached.