The Rule of Thoughts (15 page)

Sarah must have felt him tense up. She pulled away from his embrace and turned to look.

“I guess he meant it,” she said, her voice neutral. Her
words made Michael think of ice. Big chunks of ice, cold and hard. “Bryson? Get up.”

For a second Michael had totally forgotten about their friend. He’d been so quiet, sitting on the ground, not moving.

“Hey,” Michael said. “You okay? We’ve got a problem here.”

He moved closer to Bryson, then pulled up short. The shadows had been hiding what he could now see clearly.

Bryson’s eyes were closed.

Michael allowed himself to feel a tiny dusting of hope again. Bryson had done the smart thing and gotten straight to work on the code as soon as Kaine had disappeared. And Bryson was brilliant when he really got down to it. He’d been the one who shut down the crazy old lady trying to kill them with the flying ropes in the
Devils of Destruction
lobby.

And Michael really,
really
didn’t want to fight the KillSims again. Not after what had happened at the Black and Blue Club.
Come on, Bryson
, he thought, pushing it out there like he was appealing to God.
Take us away
.

The creatures were much closer, their muscular, wolflike bodies bounding along the ethereal purple ground, growling electronic snarls. Their footsteps blended now, a constant, thunderous thump of static. Bryson was their only chance. Sarah took Michael’s hand, and silently, they faced the monsters coming at them. What had to happen was obvious.

That lump of fear lodged in Michael’s throat had doubled in size, making it hard to breathe. There were at least ten
KillSims. He thought about trying to pull a weapon in, something stolen from a game, but he didn’t have enough time, especially with the code being so hard to touch. Plus, his identity had made everything complicated—the weapons and skills he’d amassed in his old life were behind layers of firewalls. And siding with Kaine was not an option. They’d just have to do their best to hold the monsters off long enough for Bryson to work some magic. Break them out.

Hunchbacked, muscled beasts of shadow. Pounding the purple ground with their enormous paws, jaws snapping, the world full of noise. Kaine had given Michael one chance to show he could trust them. They’d failed his test, and the Tangent wanted them ended. Life sucked out, brains dead, bodies to follow soon after. Game over.

Sarah let go of Michael’s hand and braced herself for a fight. Legs bent, body crouched, hands up, balled into fists. Michael thought her expression alone might murder a couple of the beasts. He tried his best to follow her example, but in his heart he knew there was no way they could win like this. He held up his fists anyway, sweat beading his fabricated skin.

When the KillSims were ten feet away, a large black hole suddenly appeared in the surface before them, jolting Michael and Sarah to the ground. The KillSims were moving so fast they couldn’t stop. Michael lay there watching the creatures, one after another, fall into the abyss at their feet. Their static growls faded quickly as they vanished into the black chasm, and in a matter of seconds they were gone.

Michael didn’t even have time to register what had happened. As soon as the creatures disappeared, the entire world around them started to fade, the code reappearing like
a swarm of bees. Then, in a flash, there was nothing, and Michael found himself back in the Coffin.

They were out. In the Wake. Safe. Bryson had done it.

They’d won. The smallest of victories. A tiny hill compared to a towering range of snow-capped mountains, Michael knew, but a victory all the same.

Watch out, Kaine
, Michael thought.

Unfortunately, Bryson wasn’t around to celebrate. Michael would’ve happily endured the inevitable gloat-fest.

Michael and Sarah sat at the small kitchen table of the apartment they’d rented. They’d cleaned up and eaten a quick meal of instant lasagna. It tasted like crap, normally, but simple hunger made it a delicious feast.

“What did he mean about having connections?” Sarah asked after wiping her mouth with a napkin. “And that you were put in the body of Jackson Porter for a reason?”

Michael shrugged, his thoughts too wild, too all-over-the-place, to come up with an answer. The one thing that came to mind immediately was Gabriela. Her dad lived in Atlanta, which was where VNS headquarters was located. Michael had been through too much to believe that could possibly be a coincidence.

“We have to find Bryson before anything else,” Sarah added. “We need to make sure he made it out. It couldn’t have been long before Kaine saw what was happening. He could have swooped in to end things himself.”

Michael tried to laugh the suggestion off. “Come on. You know Bryson. He would’ve made sure to save his own hide just as soon as ours. He’s probably eating hot dogs and patting himself on the back right now.”

“Yeah.” Her deadened voice showed she hadn’t been convinced. “We need to find him, talk to him. And as soon as we can. Kaine’s not going to let us just walk away from this.”

Michael sighed. He had to agree. “Let’s go back into the Sleep, look for him again. Then decide where to meet in the Wake.”

Sarah stood up. “No. No way. Kaine’s too smart. We have to leave. Now.”

“Wait, what’re you saying?”

She was already halfway to the door, but she turned back to face him and looked disappointed that he wasn’t on her heels. “Michael, listen. We can’t go back into the VirtNet. We just can’t. At least in the real world we have a fighting chance against Kaine. We can hide without him tracing us here. Now come on.”

This time he obeyed.

They went to a nearby park and found a bench that was off the main path, hidden in a copse of trees. Michael kept reassuring himself that things were different in the Wake—Kaine wasn’t a god in the Wake. The Tangent and his KillSims couldn’t just magically appear any time they wanted to.

“All right,” Sarah said, patting her knees. “All right. We can do this. We just need to be super careful, stay on the run, keep changing our identities, whatever. And we can’t go back into the Sleep, no matter what.”

“But Bryson,” Michael said, hearing a slight whine in his own voice. “Like you said, we have to find him. We can’t just hang him out to dry.”

Sarah patted her knees again. “I know. Look, we can use our NetScreens every once in a while. Kaine can’t physically hurt us there; he can just use it to trace our location. Right? So we use it against him, logging on sporadically and in weird places. Hopefully Bryson will be just as smart. Let’s send him a message. Come up with some kind of code.”

She smiled, a sweet attempt to make things seem a little less crappy. Michael was glad for it.

“Okay,” he agreed. “It’s a plan. Stay smart and run. Sounds like a sweet life.”

“Should we use my NetScreen or yours?”

“Yours. I think Kaine might have a little better chance of finding me no matter how many times I make a new and improved version.” He thought of Jackson Porter then, and hated himself a little for being so glib.

Sarah squeezed her EarCuff, and as soon as the screen projected out in front of her, Michael could almost hear a clock ticking. With every passing second, Kaine might be on to them, moving in, sending someone to kill them.

“What do we want to say?” Sarah asked. “I’m drawing a blank.”

Michael’s palms were sweaty. “I don’t know. I’ve never met Bryson in the Wake. He could live in China, for all we know.”

Sarah scoffed. “Did Kaine fry your brain? We’ve talked about this before, all those times we were supposed to hook up somewhere.
You
were always the farthest away, so he should be close, even if he’s hiding out. We just need to be smart. Come on.”

Michael sighed and pushed his brain to actually work. Dan the Man Deli popped in his head, as did his favorite food there—the bleu chips. Stupid, maybe, but that was the connection that stood out the most, one Bryson would know for sure.

“Are there any restaurants in the Wake around here that serve bleu chips?” he asked Sarah. “That are, I don’t know, famous for it or anything?” His stomach growled when he imagined the heaping plate of baked potato chips smothered in bleu cheese and bacon.

She looked at him sideways. “Are you really
that
hungry?” But then she nodded to show she’d caught on. “There is, actually. Stoneground. Not as tasty as the virtual ones at Dan the Man’s, but Stoneground always yaps about how theirs are the best in the world.”

“Then that’s it,”
Michael said. “How about this:
Dan the Man’s. Wake. Mmmmm, dee-lish. My favorite. Especially for breakfast.”

She agreed, sent it, then logged out. They walked away from the park as quickly as they could without looking suspicious. Just in case.

It took three days for Bryson to show up. It felt like three years. Sarah had a picture of the real version of their friend that he’d sent her a long time ago, prominently displayed in her wallet as if he were a boyfriend; Michael was jealous, but he’d studied it a million times. They both needed to know what he looked like if—
when
—he did finally appear. Bryson wasn’t much different from his Aura. A little thinner, a little less … muscly.

Every morning, Michael and Sarah went to Stoneground and sat on a bench across the street, taking turns keeping watch. The restaurant didn’t even open until eleven o’clock, but that was to their advantage. It made it less likely that someone who figured out the message would pinpoint the place, since they’d mentioned breakfast. He just kept hoping Bryson was as smart as he always claimed.

The days were brutally long. Especially with no school, no job, and worst of all, no VirtNet. And the constant fear that a Kaine-controlled Tangent might show up at any time, ready to tie up loose ends. It made Michael’s nerves feel like piano wires, tightening every hour. He and Sarah talked. A lot. They also found an old bookstore and read actual paperbound books for the first time since they were little kids. They gave up on Bryson each day at noon—he’d come in the morning or not come at all—then trudged back to the apartment. Food tasted bland, no matter what it was, and time crawled along like a dying sloth.