The Game of Lives (19 page)

Weber smiled and continued eagerly, as if convinced he loved hearing every word she spoke. “But now we have enough support and enough Tangents in place. We've even planned for those humans who are still wild cards—we've invited them here today, to make a”—she formed quotation marks with her fingers—“ ‘presentation' within the VirtNet. Let's just say that when they wake up, they won't be themselves. Strategically brilliant, really. We've reached the tipping point. Any further delay and we may lose our chance.
So today, with this firepower”—she pointed toward the cavernous space above them—“we will go into the VirtNet and complete our plans.”

Her smile vanished, and Michael felt his stomach twist into a knot. He couldn't stop himself from saying the next words.

“What?” he asked, hearing the tremor in his own voice. “What're you going to do?”

“It sounds worse than it is when you say it out loud,” she replied in a whisper that echoed through the room, up and up until it faded into silence. “But I've always said, it's what happens in the long run that matters. And isn't it? A few sacrifices now to ensure a better future?”

Michael took a step backward, away from her. The soldiers moved with him, right at his sides.

“You're crazy,” he said, half to himself. “You've gone totally insane.”

She looked at him with a faint smile. “Quite the contrary. I'm saner than I've ever been. I only felt crazy when I began to doubt the plan we'd set forth. All that back-and-forth, all the doubting, all the…indecision. Now that I'm back on course, fully committed, I'm more alive than ever. My mind has never had such perfect clarity.”

“What're you going to do!” he shouted at her.

She didn't flinch. “
We
, Michael. We. I'm not alone in this. I never have been.” She turned away from him and motioned to the bottom row of Coffins. “This is my army. Those who've been by my side from the beginning. Those who trusted my vision and helped me get to this point.” She then swept her
arm at the remaining Coffins filling the giant room. “Soon these humans will be under Tangent control. The collateral damage will be significant, I admit. But those who aren't needed…Well. They aren't needed anymore.”

“Just tell me!” Michael yelled. “What're you going to do to them!”

She spun around to face him again, her gaze sharp.

“I'm going to give them the true death,” she said, “these Tangents that people believe Kaine poured into the world. I'm going to kill them all. For the good of our future—a future run by the VNS.”

1

Michael trembled with anger. He felt powerless. He couldn't even find words to express how he felt.

“Keep him here,” Weber said. “Keep him safe and watch him like a hawk. And whatever you do, do not let that boy near a NerveBox or computer of any kind. Understood?”

“I think we can handle a scrawny teenager.” One of the guards grabbed Michael by the arms and the other man reached up and ripped off Michael's EarCuff.

Michael bit his lip, refusing to cry out from the pain. He glared at Weber, knowing he should be shocked at what she'd become. But hadn't he always seen it? Had there ever been a time when he truly trusted her?

“I'm Sinking now,” she announced to no one in particular. “With this final sweep of Tangents, the deal will be sealed. Humanity will credit us for saving them. When I Lift out, the world will be a different place.” She walked toward
a Coffin along the nearest wall, one that was actually on a pedestal above the others, with three stairs leading up to it.

“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.