“Sweep?” Michael repeated. “Nice word. I think you mean murder. Mass murder.”
Weber manipulated the outside controls of the Coffin and its door began to swing open. She looked over her shoulder at Michael. “Name me a war that doesn’t have collateral damage, inflicted by both sides. It’s part of the game. Setbacks to ensure a leap forward.”
“Game?” Michael didn’t even know why he was wasting his breath. There was no way he could reach her now. “How sick is it that you call this a game?”
“The Game of Lives,” she said, looking almost wistful. “You of all people should appreciate the metaphor. You always were a great gamer, weren’t you?” She glowed like a proud mother.
Michael tried a more reasonable approach. “Kaine knows how to reverse the Mortality Doctrine. So does Helga. Their consciousness can stay alive, here or in the Hive. You don’t have to just go in there and kill them!”
The lid of the Coffin had completed its opening. Weber pulled down a privacy screen that had been installed above each device. It muffled her voice as she spoke.
“For a plan like this, we needed dramatics, Michael. If everyone returned to their bodies and there were no devastating consequences, people would forget. A year would go by, two, five, ten. They’d start saying that it wasn’t so bad, merely a bump in the road. If it happened again, we’d just get our loved ones back. Why, it’s all nothing but a switch of a program, they’d say. Who needs the VNS?” Something bumped the screen—an elbow, maybe—she was obviously undressing for her foray into the Coffin. “We can’t have that. We need death, irreversible death, and lots of it, but stopped by their saviors before it can become another holocaust. This way, they’ll never forget. Never.”
“You’re sick,” he whispered. Talking to her felt pointless.
He heard the hiss of the Coffin coming to life, its lid swinging shut. As it did, the privacy screen rolled back up into its slot in the ceiling of the balcony above her. By the time it lifted all the way, the Coffin was closed, its lights blinking with life.
2
Michael sat in a chair, the two guards facing him. He couldn’t even distinguish between the two of them. They were like caricatures, all buzz cuts and square jaws and army fatigues. No one spoke. They just sat there, staring at the floor, the hum of a thousand Coffins vibrating in the air, making Michael tired.
What was he going to do? Michael sat and thought about Weber. He wondered what she meant to do with all these people in the Sleep. Was she going to destroy the Hive in one fell swoop, mass murder at its easiest and finest?
He sat up a little straighter. Shockingly, he hadn’t really thought of himself during all this. All her talk about how they needed him, how she’d programmed him…but he was in a human body, a Tangent himself. If she really planned to eliminate all the Tangents out there…
No, that couldn’t be part of the plan. At least, not yet. Weber needed Tangent-controlled humans. She’d said that she had her own Tangents in place around the world and had invited those world leaders who hadn’t bowed to the VNS yet to the Coffins today under some pretext—so that she could possess them as well. He wondered if she’d personally programmed all these coded demons.
He was safe for the moment. He had to be. He didn’t really understand why he was so vital to the Mortality Doctrine, but it seemed clear that he was. An ethereal connection, Weber had said.
That didn’t make him feel any better. He thought back over everything she’d said. There was no way he’d ever walk out of this building of his own free will.
Sarah.
The sudden thought of his friend gripped his heart. He thought of his other friends. Bryson. Helga. Gabby. He’d told them to go to the Mortality Doctrine factory in the Hallowed Ravine—that had to be it. When all was said and done, they had to shut it down, make sure these Tangent takeovers stopped forever. But had they made it there? Had he sent them to their deaths as well? He thought of his parents. Kaine said he’d killed them, but they were pieces of code, just like him. Maybe, just maybe…
He had to do something.
“Guys,” he said to the soldiers. “I need to use the bathroom.”
3
They let him. How could they not?
Both soldiers escorted him to a dimly lit side hallway. They passed several doors before they got to the bathrooms. One of the guards stood with him while the other checked the facility to make sure no master escape plan had been hatched. Evidently, he found nothing.
“Go on in,” he said after completing his inspection. “We’ll be right here.”
“Thank goodness,” Michael murmured. “You sure you don’t want to hold my hand while I go?” They didn’t so much as crack a smile, and he went through the door. When it shut behind him, he leaned against it for a second, relishing the privacy. A quick look around showed him what the guard had already established—there’d be no easy way out. It was a small bathroom, with just two stalls and one sink.
He did his business—that part hadn’t been a lie—but he didn’t flush the toilet right away. He wanted a little time to himself, and he didn’t care what they thought. He’d stay inside until they came in after him.
Kaine. The name came to him unbidden. Kaine was on his side now. The Tangent hated the VNS as much as Michael did. Weber had created him, then turned against him, and now wanted to destroy him and everything he believed in. Michael tried not to think about the fact that he himself didn’t quite believe in the same things. For now, they were working against the same enemy.
Michael paced back and forth in the small area. All he had to do was get a message to Kaine somehow. He just needed ten seconds, with any kind of computing device linked to the VirtNet. Michael remembered an old cartoon: a lightbulb would appear over a character’s head when he got an idea. That was what he needed right—
He stopped pacing. The lights. A huge building like this, with all that fancy technology…the tech had to be centralized and operated via a VirtNet connection. Had to be.
A guard beat on the door. “Come on, hurry it up in there!”
Michael jumped. “Yeah! Sorry!” His mind spun. “Sorry, my stomach’s all messed up from the stress you guys put me through!” He winced at his lame attempt to stall.
“You’ve got two minutes!” the soldier yelled through the door. Michael was surprised they didn’t just come barreling in, though he figured not even a guard would have the stomach for what he might walk into.
He ran to the lighting panel, a black plate of glass on the wall. It was a simple interface—the lights operated automatically based on movement, but there were also images on the glass for turning them off and on manually, and to dim them in different quadrants of the room. Michael’s mind worked. He knew he could figure out how to hack into the network; he just needed time. Time he didn’t have.
“One minute!” the soldier shouted, banging on the door again. Michael jumped and accidentally turned the lights off. He quickly flipped them on again, hoping they hadn’t noticed out in the hallway.
He could do this. He took a deep breath and gripped the edges of the glass screen, digging his fingers into the crevices. Then he pulled. It took three tries to slide the unit a half inch from the wall. With more leverage, he was able to yank it out all the way. Michael carefully let it dangle from the optic fiber that connected it to the main system. When he was sure it wouldn’t snap, he took a look at the back of the console. There was a button to switch the interface on the glass from symbols to raw code. He quickly made the change, then shoved the console back into the wall. The black glass now displayed several lines of code that would look like absolute gibberish to most people.
Not to him.
He went to work, tapping and swiping at the code to dig down several layers, reaching past the simple lighting communications and diving into the actual systems of the building itself.
“What’s wrong with you, kid!” one of the men shouted from the hallway. “I’m coming in.”
; Without thinking, Michael reached over and engaged the lock on the door, something he hadn’t done earlier to limit suspicion. As soon as it clicked, both soldiers started pounding on the door.
“What’s going on?” the other soldier shouted. “There’s nothing you can do in there! Unlock it, right now! This isn’t some game, kid.”
Michael was busy with the code. He needed to get his message to Kaine. Let them break the door down, beat him up, lock him in a dungeon. He only needed another few seconds. Furiously, he worked at the symbols flashing on the screen, trying to find a conduit, any link to a messaging system, no matter how archaic.
The guards pounded on the door; it sounded like they were using their shoulders now. The metal slab quivered violently, but the lock held.
“Open the door!” one of them yelled.
Michael ignored them, his fingers moving faster than ever. He was almost there.
A gunshot rattled the room. Michael yelped and instinctively raised his arms to protect his face, as if that would do any good. A quick look at the handle and lock showed that it’d been damaged, but not broken yet. Even as he watched, the gun fired again, battering the lock so much it was pushed halfway out of its place.
Michael jumped back to the code. Frantically working.
There. A service line, meant to automatically alert workers when there were malfunctions in the lighting system. Michael easily expanded it to reach the outer realms of the VirtNet and tagged it to Kaine. Then he typed a quick message, even as another gunshot exploded the lock into oblivion, tiny pieces of shrapnel raining against the mirror above the sink.
PINPOINT MY LOCATION
The door slammed inward, almost breaking off of its hinges.
WEBER HAS COFFINS HERE, BRING TANGENTS
The first soldier entered, gun raised, swept the room with his eyes.
COME SAVE ME NOW
“Stop!” the guard yelled, pointing the gun at Michael. The other one ran forward, reaching for Michael with both hands.
Michael swiped the message into the VirtNet, then yanked out the connection fibers just as hands roughly grabbed him by the shirt and lifted him, then slammed his body onto the tiled floor.
An ugly face hovered just above his. “What did you do? What did you do?”
The wind had been knocked right out of Michael’s chest. He gasped for air but couldn’t talk. The tip of a gun touched his forehead, cold and hard.
“What,” the man repeated, enunciating each word. “Did. You. Do.”
Michael coughed, trying to get the words out. “Nothing…I…was just…I tried…but…nothing.” He scrunched up his face as if he was about to cry. “Why can’t…you just let…me go? Please.”
“Get him out of here,” the guard with the gun said. “I’ll see if I can figure out what he did.”
His partner dragged Michael away by the feet.
4
Soon the three of them were back in their chairs, Michael staring at the floor. But he could see all too well in his peripheral vision the barrel of the gun pointing straight at him. The men had lost any semblance of subtlety.
“Tell us what you messed with in there,” the guard with the gun said. “We’re not idiots. Tell us or we just might have to shoot you in the back of the head, tell the bosses that you ran for it.”
Michael had tried hard to fake tears, but nothing would come. Even with no tears, though, it wasn’t hard to show how much the incident had rattled him. “Look, I’m being honest. I was desperate. I tried to see if there was anything I could do. But it’s just a bunch of lighting stuff. I swear. No one has to know.”
“Yeah, except you ripped out the fibers connecting everything!”
Michael shrugged, keeping his eyes glued to the floor. “I can go fix that if you wa—”
“Shut up! Do you think we’re morons?”
Michael kept his expression blank. Oh how badly he wanted to say “Yup.”
“Let’s just chill,” the other man—the one without a gun—said. “No one’s going to fire us because we let a kid use the bathroom. And seriously. What could he have done? Send SOS messages with the lights? He’s only a child. Look at him. He can’t be that smart.”
Yes, I can, Michael thought. He didn’t dare look up for fear his eyes would give away just how much he was enjoying this. Kaine would come. He knew it.
Things settled after a few minutes, and the guards lapsed into silence. Michael leaned back a little in his chair and folded his arms. It didn’t take long for his good mood to evaporate. With every passing second, he began to doubt a little more. How could he have been so sure, even for a moment? Even if Kaine did get the message, who was to say he’d come save him? Why would he? It wasn’t like they were suddenly a magic duo committed to fighting crime and evil world takeovers.
A hiss interrupted his thoughts, loud in the stillness of the giant room. All three of them looked to the source—one of the Coffins, its lid swinging open as little trails of mist curled over the edge. It was three devices down from the platform where Weber’s lay, still blinking and humming. There was another hiss, then another, then another. Four Coffins total, opening up, scattered about, but all within fifty feet or so of where Weber remained Sunk.
Neither guard seemed alarmed. They had no reason to be. These were the people they worked for. It probably seemed totally normal that some of them would come back.
“Are you gonna tell them?” one guard said to the other.
“Yeah, fine, whatever. At least it’s not Weber herself. Just her little crew of wannabe bosses.”
His partner shushed him. “Dude, don’t play with fire,” he fiercely whispered.
Privacy screens came down to hide the four people Lifting from the Sleep as they got out and dressed. Michael waited impatiently, hoping that Kaine had done exactly what he’d wanted him to do. Used the Mortality Doctrine to come save him. But had it happened too quickly?
The privacy screens rolled up, one by one, revealing three men and one woman, all of them dressed as professionally as Agent Weber herself. They smoothed out their clothing, then walked toward Michael and his two guards. No one said a word. Michael had a hard time breathing, thinking about each and every pull of air.
One of the men who’d Lifted out of a Coffin stepped up to the guard holding the gun. He glared at the weapon, his meaning obvious.
“I, uh…,” the guard stammered, then put the gun in its holster. “Sorry. It’s just that…the kid wasn’t very cooperative. He became a flight risk, Agent Stevens.”
“Yes, I’m sure,” the man replied, standing close enough to the soldier to tower over him. “Trust me, I know this one. Very resourceful, isn’t he? Hand me your weapon.”
The soldier did a double take, not expecting the command. “Huh? My gun? Why?”
“Agent Weber has been observing your…proceedings from our place in the VirtNet. She’s ordered us to come and have you stand down. I’m sorry to break the news. Hand me your weapons, and please go home. I’m sure she’ll arrange a meeting with you and your superiors soon to get everything sorted out.”
“This is a joke,” the soldier grumbled, but he did as he was told. He pulled the gun out of his holster and handed it to Agent Stevens.
Stevens looked at it for a moment, turning it over in his hands. “Resourceful indeed.” He gripped the handle of the gun and pointed it at the soldier’s head, put his finger on the trigger, all in a split second. The boom of it firing rocked the air, echoing throughout the chamber. Before Michael could turn to look, Stevens spun and aimed at the other guard, fired. He missed. The guard scrambled for his own weapon, shock transforming his face, but Stevens didn’t miss the second time.
Michael sat in his chair, ears ringing, stunned. He looked up at Stevens, who turned toward him, the gun held out before him, pointed at Michael.
“Why so surprised?” Stevens said. “Isn’t this what you asked me to do?”
“K-Kaine?” Michael whispered. “I…I didn’t think…I
…”
“You thought I’d possess this man’s body, then come and nicely ask these fine guards to let you go? Seems like a poor plan.”
“Why…why are you pointing that at me?” He nodded at the gun.
“Oh. Sorry.” Stevens—Kaine?—lowered the weapon. “It’s just that I’ve never gotten to do that in a real person’s body before. Kind of crazy, isn’t it?” He looked at the gun again as if it were a precious object, eyes wide. “I’m not Kaine, by the way. He sent the four of us to save you, just like you asked. We were in the queue of the Mortality Doctrine program, ready to go. It just took a quick adjustment to send us here instead.”
Michael stood, feeling the world spin around him. The events of the last couple minutes had roiled him, but he had no time to think about it. Weber was in the Sleep, wreaking her havoc. He had to stop her.
“You need to pull the plug on all these people,” he said, gathering his thoughts. He started walking toward Weber’s Coffin. “Don’t kill them! Just…just initiate an emergency Lift, then pull the plugs. Maybe ask Kaine to send you some more help before you do. Whatever you think you need. Just…take care of it. Please. We have to stop whatever it is all these people are doing.”
He reached the steps leading up to Weber, then turned back to the others. The three men and woman were looking at him, a little perplexed, probably trying to figure out why this teenage boy was barking commands at them.
“Ask Kaine first if you need to,” Michael said, throwing all the authority he could into his voice. “He and I are working together now. Why do you think he sent you here?”
Stevens nodded. “We’ll get some more backup, find weapons, start Lifting people. What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to take care of Weber.”
5
He opened her Coffin without Lifting her, using the emergency release for the door. His thoughts were still leaping ahead of him, racing a million miles an hour.