In seizing control of everything, Zero is taking back his freedom and more. It’s his revenge against Taylor for all that she had stolen from him.
Taylor’s death.
“But there’s more to it than that,” I go on. “You set Hideo up to kill Taylor, didn’t you? You made sure she was with us because you knew how Hideo would react to seeing her. You wanted to bring his creation crashing down around him, and you wanted to see Taylor realize the moment she’d lost in her own game.” My voice turns more desperate now, angrier, as I make the connections. “You wanted her dead, and you wanted Hideo to do it.”
Zero is silent. Something about my words has plucked a string in him. I barrel on before he can continue.
“You wanted to show him how flawed his plan was from the start.” My heart trembles as I talk. “You wanted Hideo to realize how he had corrupted the NeuroLink with his algorithm, and the only way you could show him that—the only way to get through to the brother you love—was to force him to demonstrate it in front of the entire world.” I take a deep breath. “And that’s because Sasuke wanted you to do it. Because he’s still there, somewhere inside you.”
I don’t know how much of my words reach Zero. Maybe he doesn’t care at all. He’s nothing more than a web of algorithms controlling a machine, after all, and whatever is still human about him has simply been translated into code.
But Zero tenses at Sasuke’s name.
In that moment, I know. Everything Jax and I had assumed is true. Sasuke is still in there. He had, in his own way, tried to stop his brother from destroying himself.
“You’re not entirely gone,” I whisper.
“You like to solve things, don’t you?” Zero says.
“Every locked door has a key,” I reply.
Zero turns slightly, as if he’d studied the tattooed words running along my bared clavicle. Behind him, Jax has turned to face us, the new lenses in her hands and ready to be put on my eyes. I don’t dare look directly at her. When is she going to make her move?
Zero leans toward me, his presence overpowering. “We’re not so different, Emika. Your desire to control and solve is the same as mine. There’s nothing you’d like more than to be able to control your world. All the terrible things that have happened to you have been things you couldn’t do anything about. Your father’s death. Your time at the foster home. Hideo’s betrayal of your trust.”
Zero makes a casual gesture in the air, and suddenly he conjures a virtual image of my father standing in the room, his familiar smile on his gentle face, his silhouette against the door, outlined in light. He reaches over to pin a bit of cloth on a bustier. I can hear him humming.
The sight threads through me with the precise pain of a needle. Dad glances at me and grins, and all the air rushes from my lungs. Some illogical part of me reaches out, desperate to touch him. That’s him. He’s real.
No. He’s not. Zero is rendering him here right in front of me, showing me what life could be like if Dad were still here. He’s showing me the inside of the NeuroLink linked directly with his mind, how he will soon be able to control everything I see, everything in the virtual world for everyone.
“Wouldn’t you rather have saved your father into a pure data form, to make him live forever?” Zero presses. It’s a genuine question, without a hint of malice in it. “Wouldn’t you like to see him walking around in your life, just as I walk around in yours? Is this half-life so bad?”
I don’t dare admit out loud that he’s right. That his words tempt me more than I can say. Is it so bad? I imagine Zero as Sasuke, a little boy who could live out the ghost version of his life, grow up and go to school, play games with his brother and laugh with his friends. Fall in love. If Zero wanted, he could make this reality for himself now, creating a virtual version of this life for himself. He could live out a million different lives.
I tear my eyes away from the sight of my father. Tears blur my vision. Zero’s manipulating me. If he gets the new lenses on me, he can trap me in this false reality and make me believe anything.
“Go to hell,” I whisper with a snarl.
Zero finally, mercifully, leans away from me. He nods once at Jax, who has the new lenses ready for me. “Put her under,” he says. “I don’t have time to deal with her struggling.”
Jax meets my eyes. For a moment, I think she’ll do exactly as Zero says.
Then her hand darts to the gun at her belt. In one move, she whips it out, points it at the door, and shoots with barely a glance.
The bullet hits the emergency sensor.
Every light in the building shuts off in unison. The room plunges into blackness—then is washed in crimson red as emergency lights flare on.
The door clicks open at the same time an alarm begins to wail overhead.
Jax swings her gun toward the button on my gurney, right next to my head, and fires. Another perfect hit. My metal cuffs snap open. I almost collapse to the floor.
She points toward Hideo’s gurney, firing again. He’s freed, crumpling to his hands and knees.
In the scarlet glow, Zero’s silhouette is an ominous black hole. Even though he’s embedded in a machine, I can sense the surprise coming from him.
Adrenaline born from terror surges through me. I scramble to my feet and sprint toward Hideo.
Zero’s head snaps to Jax. “You’re with them,” he says, his voice low and deadly.
Jax doesn’t answer. She just faces him with her steady look and raises her gun again. “No,” she replies. “I’m with you.”
Then she shoots him.
28
Zero’s reflexes are inhumanly fast. His body snaps sideways—Jax’s shot misses his neck and instead hits him in the shoulder with the scream of metal tearing through metal.
Jax fires again, but Zero lunges for her at the same time. Her second shot strikes his leg, sending up another shower of sparks. His leg twists oddly, throwing off the grace of his movements.
I reach Hideo. He’s struggling to his feet, but his motions are slower as he fights against whatever drug is coursing through his system. I pull his arm over my shoulders and force him upright. We make a run for the door.
Zero turns to stop us, but Jax’s hits have broken parts of the suit, making him limp. Still, he’s terrifyingly fast. As we reach the door, Zero’s metal fingers close around a fistful of my shirt.
Jax is on him in an instant. Under the red lights, her eyes have the savage glint of a killer. She strikes his wrist as hard as she can.
She can’t break the metal, but it is enough to loosen his grip and for me to slide through. “This way,” she gasps out over the alarm as she shoves the door open and darts out into the hall.
Hideo and I rush after her. Behind us, Zero’s suit twists in our direction.
The halls are washed in bloody light. Around the bend comes the pounding of footsteps growing louder and louder.
Jax glances at me. “Everyone in this building is under his control,” she whispers. “Get out of the institute. Don’t go through the front—there are guards swarming around there. Do you remember the way to the side entrance?”
I retrace the path I’d taken through the building on my first night here, then nod. Beside me, Hideo is regaining some of his strength, but he still leans heavily against me. We’re not going to be able to move very quickly.
“Good,” she continues. “Get out, then find a way into Zero’s mind. When—”
She cuts off. Her stare darts over my shoulder, and I turn to see Zero’s dark silhouette behind us.
He flattens one metal hand against the wall. Overhead, all the speakers installed in the ceilings buzz with static, followed by his deep voice.
“You’re wasting your time.”
Every scarlet light in the building goes out, plunging us into total darkness.
I can’t see anything, not
even my hands in front of me or Hideo at my side. It’s as if we’d been swallowed by a void. At the same time, a round of clicks come from the building’s doors, the unmistakable sound of locks being activated.
I can be everywhere, Zero had said. And now, his mind is operating the institute’s security system, trapping us in.
From the speakers, Zero’s voice envelops us in this impenetrable darkness. “Why are you doing this?” he asks. His question is for Jax.
Jax doesn’t answer, but I feel her fingers close around my arm and pull me forward. “The panic room,” she tells me. “It’s the only place in this building not hooked up to the digital system. Get to the end of this hall and take the first set of stairs. Keep going up until you can’t anymore. When you reach the last floor, you’ll see two doors at the end of that hall. To their left is a third, embedded flat against the wall. You’ll have to open it manually. Lock yourselves in.”
The panic room. Tremaine had tried in vain to reach that room before he’d been caught.
I can hear in her voice that Jax isn’t coming with us. “But you—”
“Just do it. I’m going to hold him off.” There’s no sound of worry in her words, no sense of fear. She sounds exactly as she did the very first day I met her—cold and confident.
I want to scream at her to come with us, but instead, I feel Hideo’s weight leaning heavier against me as she steps away from us. Over her shoulder, she calls at us, “Why are you still here?”
I utter a curse under my breath and do as she says, turning on my grid system.
Instantly, the halls around me glow with a system of lines, showing me a layout of the hall, as if a dim light were still shining in here—
But it’s not quite right. Usually, when I use a virtual grid, it can overlay anything, guiding a user through fog or rain or snow. But in here, Zero must have tampered with what the NeuroLink is able to read about the institute, because my grid vanishes into misty patches, its data incomplete. The building probably has all sorts of virtual barriers in place, transforming the halls into illusions.
At least I can also see an outline of Hideo beside me. Jax has her back turned to us, her figure blanketed in green lines, and she’s facing Zero, a completely dark silhouette looming in the middle of the hall behind us.
Move. Hideo and I start staggering away. Somewhere in the halls around us pound the footsteps of approaching guards, caught under Zero’s spell. If they reach us, we’re not going to have Jax’s help fending them off.
Behind us comes Jax’s voice as she confronts Zero. “Remember when you couldn’t leave me behind?” she calls out.
“Get out of my way, Jax.” I hear the metallic thud of his suit’s footsteps and dare to glance backward.
Jax hoists both her guns, spins them in unison, and crouches down against one side of the hall, ready for Zero to attack. Her pose reminds me of when she had appeared beside me on feet so light she seemed ready to fly.
“It’s my turn now,” she replies. “And one way or another, this time we’re going to leave this place together.”
Hideo’s weight lifts from my shoulders as he summons the strength to move on his own. His hand finds mine, and in the dark, I take it, squeezing it as tightly as I can. We force ourselves to keep going.
Ahead, the hall is starting to shroud with virtual mist, making it difficult for me to see the grids of the hallway. I slow, sliding my hand against the wall. Through the fog dart glimpses of shadows, figures shuffling left and right, others looking like they’re running toward us. Sweat beads on my forehead.
“They’re not real,” Hideo whispers, his eyes fixed on them in the dark. “The grid’s not outlining over them in green.”
Sure enough, one of the shadows dissipates into smoke the instant it reaches us. Not real. I shut my eyes and keep creeping forward. The steps we’ve taken scroll through my mind in a list of numbers. Are we ever going to reach the stairwell? Maybe we’re not even going in the right direction—
Then my hand hits the groove of a door. I freeze, running my fingers along the metal bar spanning the door’s width.
I shove myself against it. We burst into the stairwell, where the grid in my view abruptly reappears in crystal clear lines, highlighting the steps that wind up. In the hall we’d just left behind come the pops of gunshots.
Jax.
I force myself to move as Hideo seizes the banister and leaps up the stairs. His movements still seem exhausted, but at least he’s able to keep pace with me. We go up, up, up until we’ve sprinted three flights and the stairs end. I throw open the stairwell door and stumble into a new hall.
The first thing I see is a pair of figures hurtling toward us. My eyes go straight to the green grids overlaid on their figures. They’re real.
Guards.
The thought hits me just in time. I drop to a crouch and roll to the other side of the hall, swinging my leg out and catching one of them right at the ankles. He loses his balance and falls forward with a grunt.
The second guard twists around and points a weapon in my direction. I duck, bracing myself—but an instant later he goes flying as Hideo tackles him, ramming him against the wall. The guard throws a fist at Hideo’s face, but Hideo is too quick—he dodges, twists the man’s arm around his back, and shoves hard.
A sickening crunch, followed by a shriek of pain. The guard drops his weapon with a clatter. Hideo swipes it up, tucking it at his belt, and rushes to me as I scramble to my feet. Already, the sound of more guards behind us is approaching fast.
The panic room should be at the end of this hall.
We sprint down the gridded corridor. Ahead, it fades again into thick virtual mist, but there’s no time to stop and think about it now. We hurtle into the blind spot.
“Almost there,” I gasp out. But when I look to my side, Hideo’s green figure has also vanished from sight, swallowed in the fog.
I keep my hand running along the wall, feeling for doors. Hideo, I whisper, sending it through our Link. He doesn’t answer. Had everything connecting us shut down when we stepped into this zone?
A presence near me makes me reach a hand out. “Hideo?” I murmur.
It isn’t him. Instead, a steel silhouette emerges from the fog. Zero.
Jax. Had he gotten past her? He must have. Had he—the thought jolts through me, too terrible to linger on.
He seizes my arm and hurls me. I go flying across the hall and slam hard into the floor on my back. The impact knocks all the wind out of me. My eyes go wide. I gasp like a fish on land. Above me, Zero comes striding out of the mist, his masked face turned down in my direction.
I scramble backward on my hands and feet, my teeth clenched, edging next to the wall again and hunting desperately for the doors at the end of the corridor.
We’re not going to make it.
Zero raises an arm and aims down toward me. I try in vain to roll away.
As I move, another figure materializes beside me. Hideo. He’s in a crouch against the floor, and his green-gridded eyes are turned up to Zero, narrowed in rage. His bruised hands are clenched into tight fists. His voice emerges in a growl. “Don’t. Touch. Her.”
He throws himself at Zero with all his strength. It’s enough of a surprise attack to knock Zero backward, and the two of them hurtle to the floor in a crash. “Hurry, Emika!” Hideo shouts.
I hop to my feet and run my hand along the wall. Come on, come on.
And then I find it. The shape of the first door. Then, the second. My fingers halt on the groove of a third sliding door. The panic room.
I whirl to look back down the hall. Through the patches of fog emerge Hideo and Zero. Zero has the advantage of brute strength in his metal suit—but Hideo is fast on his feet, nimble where Zero has been slowed down by the injuries Jax has inflicted. Hideo kicks out at Zero’s metal chest, sending him back a step. Zero rec
overs too quickly. He whips a hand out and grabs Hideo’s neck, shoving him back against a wall. Then he raises a fist and hurls it into Hideo’s stomach.
Hideo lets out a choked cry.
I fumble for the panic room’s door handle until my fingers finally close around it. “Hideo!” I scream out as I yank the door open with all my strength. Farther down the hall, more guards are arriving on the scene.
Hideo glances in my direction. He clenches his teeth, pulls his legs up to his chest, and kicks at Zero as hard as he can. Once, twice. The third time, Zero’s fingers loosen slightly from around Hideo’s neck. It’s enough for him to slip free. Hideo hits the ground and runs toward me.
I reach out, seizing his arm as he approaches me, and pull us inside the panic room. I slide the door shut right as Zero gets to the entrance. The last thing I see before I snap the physical hinge across the door, locking us in, is the sight of Zero’s shielded face.
Then we’re in, the door sealing us behind a thick barrier of steel.
I fall backward onto the floor and scramble away from the door. On the other side comes the sound of pounding—Zero, or his guards, trying to break it down—but we must be behind so many layers that it’s hard to hear anything. Inside the room, panels line one wall, showing a series of views of the lab. My breaths come out in wheezing gasps.
Hideo utters a soft groan behind me. I turn to see him slumped against the wall, one hand clutching his side. Only now do I notice the dark red staining his shirt.
I drop to my knees beside him. “Shit,” I whisper, touching his arm. He winces as he gingerly moves his hand enough for me to see the wound. Between his trembling, bloodstained fingers is a deep gash, likely made by a blade.
Zero hadn’t just hit him in the side with his fist. There must have been a sharp weapon embedded on him, too, and it had ripped open Hideo’s flesh.