The Game of Lives (17 page)

KillSims reached for them with tendrils of darkness. Right before they could make contact, Gabby revved her jetpack and shot them into the air again, flying toward their friends. Michael looked back as three of the creatures
slammed into each other, forming a cloud of black fog, specks of white fluttering within. As Gabby landed, she kicked a KillSim away from Helga; Michael swung out with a fist to pummel another one and his arm bounced back, as if he had just hit a firm balloon. Just in time, Helga swung her magic sword, cutting another creature in half, giving them a moment's respite from the madness.

And then, all at once, Michael made a flurry of decisions.

“We have to split up,” he said, his mood lifting for the first time since he'd sat in the tree house and seen that Kaine had answered his message. Whether or not it was a good one, he now had a plan.

“What are you talking about?” Helga shouted, between thrusts of her sword. “We just found you!”

Michael shook his head. He glanced quickly to make sure they were still clear of KillSims; then he spoke as quickly and clearly as he could to his friends. “Make a Portal. To anywhere. Get out of here, then go find the Hallowed Ravine. That's where they're uploading the Tangents—it's where the Mortality Doctrine is. Send me a message when you're there and I'll meet you. Soon.”

He didn't know what they showed more strongly on their faces—confusion or rage.

Gabby started to argue, but Michael cut her off.

“Just do it!” he yelled. “Go! We don't have time!” He had no idea what had come over him, but he wasn't going to abandon the course he'd decided on back in D.C.

Bryson still looked as angry as ever. “And what're you going to do, boss man?”

Michael turned away from him and started marching toward Kaine just as he saw the Tangent destroy two KillSims with one mighty swing of his stick.

“Michael!” Bryson shouted at him. “Michael!”

Michael glanced over his shoulder. “Find the Mortality Doctrine! Right now I need Kaine! I need to…use him.”

Michael's time had run out. He sprinted toward the fighting Tangent, forming the code for an illegal Portal even as he ran.

4

He'd always heard that adversity sharpened the mind, honed the senses. He experienced it firsthand in the frantic moment he reached Kaine and pulled him through the makeshift Portal.

The VirtNet was a mess—he'd already discovered that. The code, Decayed. But he'd learned enough on his trek to the tree house to do what he needed to do. He worked on pure instinct, manipulating things seemingly with thought as he formed a Portal just to the left of Kaine, who still battled the KillSims ferociously.

Michael grabbed the Tangent by the shirt, yanked him toward the black rectangle, kicked a KillSim who dove at them at the last second. They slid through together. The instant Michael felt they were free of the woods, he collapsed the Portal behind them.

They landed on a soft, rubbery surface surrounded by a
pale purple light and absolutely nothing else as far as the eye could see.

Kaine lay next to him, looking up at the empty sky, breathing heavily. Michael rolled onto his back and did the same. Emptiness above. No color except that dull, faded purple. In his rush to get them out, Michael had brought them to the most basic level of VirtNet programming.

A few minutes passed in silence, and Michael wondered what he'd just done. Bryson, Helga, Gabby—they'd all been there. Why had he left them?

Then he thought of what he'd decided back in the streets of D.C. He needed to be alone with Kaine. And he needed his friends to get back to the Hallowed Ravine and find the source of the Mortality Doctrine.

He had a plan, and he couldn't waste any more time doubting himself. Too much was at stake.

“Get up,” he told Kaine. Michael pushed himself to his knees, then his feet. “Come on. We've got a lot to do.”

Kaine, looked startled, confused, and he didn't move. Instead he whispered, “I can't believe the Tangents have turned against me like this. All that time I worked. All the effort. And now that they've tasted the sweetness, they've gone off on their own.”

Michael raised his eyebrows in surprise. That certainly wasn't what he'd expected to hear. “Those KillSims. Who programmed them?”

Kaine glanced up, as if shocked to see that he wasn't alone. “What game are you playing, boy? Do you have any idea the kinds of things you're messing with?”

“I think I do. Now answer my question.”

“So you're giving the orders now?”

“I'm sure done taking them.” And Michael meant it, too. He was fed up with the entire world
—both
worlds.

Kaine let out a grunt and sat up, rubbing his face. Then he stood to join Michael, his smartly cut hair and his polished suit not so smart or polished anymore.

“Does this mean you're joining me?” the Tangent asked. “I've convinced you?”

Michael shook his head. “Doesn't mean a thing, brother. Tell me. Who made those KillSims?”

Kaine seemed almost pleased to get some things off his chest. “You know exactly who. The same people—and I use the word
people
loosely—who came at you in the forest, where Helga and her other hoodlums had camped out. I programmed some of them, improved the code on the lot of them. Raised them. Gave them a chance at a real life. And now they've spit in my face and gone off on their own.”

“So we have two enemies,” Michael said, thinking aloud.

Kaine barked a laugh. “More like one very big one.”

“Here's what's going to happen,” Michael said, satisfied at the conviction he heard in his own voice. “You and me are now a team. We're going to take down these rogue Tangent buddies of yours. And then we're going to take down the VNS. Deal?”

Kaine actually took a step back in surprise. “I…uh, yes. Absolutely. I've said it all along. I need your help.”

Michael shook his head once again. “No, that's where you're wrong, Kaine. I'm the one who needs help. And you're
going to do it. The Tangents. Then the VNS. And I'm in charge.”

Kaine was so obviously shocked that he barely managed a nod.

Michael had to hold back a smile. If only the Tangent knew the third part of his hastily conceived plan, he'd never be standing there, agreeing to go along.

“All right, then,” Michael finally said. “First things first. Let's go kill us some Tangents.”

1

Michael hadn't really meant it—he didn't want any part in meting out the “true death.” He knew there had to be some way to reverse the Mortality Doctrine.

Kaine walked next to Michael, silently crossing the raw expanse of the VirtNet.

“You're right,” the Tangent said, looking down as he walked. “We need to kill all the Tangents who broke away from me. They're just an annoyance now and are merely causing trouble.”

Michael glanced at Kaine, happy for the reminder of how soulless he was. “Dude, I wasn't really serious. We can't just go around killing everyone. There has to be another way to stop them besides this…true death thing.”

It appeared that, without having come out and said it, they'd agreed on the first order of business: they had to stop the people behind those new black-cloaked KillSims. At
least Weber and the VNS weren't actively trying to eliminate them. But these rogue Tangents, though—Michael shuddered when he thought of those creepy kids and the toughtalking Trae at the barracks. They had to be dealt with, or Michael and Kaine would never get to the bigger issue—the VNS.

Kaine stopped walking. “Where exactly are we going?”

“Nowhere. I'm thinking.”

Kaine turned to him. “Listen.” He rubbed his chin, lost in his own thoughts, and Michael stopped as well. He didn't know when it had happened, but at some point Kaine had stopped being an enemy, entirely. He'd stopped being just a piece of code also. Something about him had turned almost…human.

Kaine shook his head. “I didn't think I was ready for this yet, but maybe these Tangents are the perfect test subjects. Though, if it goes wrong, don't blame me. It's all I've got.”

Michael had no idea what Kaine was talking about. “What?” he asked.

“The reboot.”

“Reboot?” Michael was thoroughly confused now. “Isn't that some word they used like fifty years ago with plug-ins? What does it even mean?”

Kaine folded his arms. “You need to learn your history, son.”

“At least I recognized it. But what does it have to do with anything?”

“Reboot,” Kaine said again, only this time Michael heard something like dread in his tone. “It's part of the plan I
showed you. One of the keys to living forever. When you've lived out your fifty years within the VirtNet, you're rebooted into a new body in the real world.”

Michael recalled the visions Kaine had shown him. The lines of kids getting into the Coffins. “So are you saying we should…reboot…who? The people those rogue Tangents stole the bodies from?”

“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 had 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.