The Rule of Thoughts (39 page)

It’s not real,
he told himself.
None of this is real
. How strange was that? After all the years, after all the gaming, after everything—for the first time it hit him just how odd life in the Sleep could be. How much their world had changed, a world that wasn’t even really his.

He placed the Lance on the catwalk just as Sarah said, “Uh-oh.”

He looked up at her. “What?”

“I think our luck finally ran out,” she said, staring at her NetScreen. A bead of sweat trickled down her cheek. “I’ve got heat sigs all along the outside of the building. At least a dozen, maybe more.”

Bryson clenched his jaw and shook his head. Michael felt a roll of panic in his chest.

“Whoever it is, they’re coming inside,” Sarah said.

Michael’s mind switched off. There was no time for thought, only instinct. No chance of turning back. Only forward now.

Place and trigger the Lance.

Kill Kaine.

Whatever happened after that didn’t matter.

Settling his mind to the task, he picked up the device carefully and examined it. He found the keypad, flipped up the cover, typed in the code. His friends stood patiently beside him, knowing better than to urge him to hurry.

A glance showed him that there was a ladder on the other side of the room. It led from the catwalk into the depths of the machinery. He headed that way.

“Our visitors are spread out across the bottom floor of the building,” Sarah said, amazingly calm. Michael knew she was doing it for his benefit. She had to keep him informed, but she’d try her best to make it sound like she was giving him directions to bake cookies. “They are clearly in search mode, scattered in some kind of military formation.”

Okay,
Michael thought,
not so much like baking cookies
. He made it to the ladder, leaned over the railing to search the maze of machines and wires and tubes. Those pulsing, blinking lights that seemed to be trying to lull him to sleep. Kaine’s central programming appeared to descend to the very depths of the Earth, a tunnel straight to hell. An apt description. And Michael was ready to blow it up.

Sarah continued her play-by-play. “They’ve started up both flights of stairs—the ones we used and a set on the
other side of the building. A few are also coming up the elevator. They appear to have divided into groups of three. They’re human, though, by the looks of it—not KillSims.”

They were coming. They were coming fast.

“Do they have weapons?” Bryson asked.

“Um, I think so,” Sarah responded, her voice hard to read.

Michael had turned around, his back to his friends, and lowered his foot until he felt the first rung of the ladder. He cradled the Lance in his right arm as he gripped the railing tightly with his left hand.

Vwoomp
.

Vwoomp
.

Vwoomp
.

The pulsating sound filled his entire body.

Vwoomp
.

Vwoomp
.

Vwoomp
.

He climbed down another rung, and then another. He kept going, being careful to hold on tightly to the Lance. His back scraped an outcropping of circuitry behind him—the whole place was a jumble of metal and wire. He took another rung down, his palms beginning to sweat.

Sarah and Bryson had walked around the catwalk at some point and were standing directly above him.

“They’re almost to the third floor—on the stairs,” Sarah called down. “The ones on the elevator—they’re here. The doors are opening now.”

Michael had gone down a few more rungs while she
spoke; he paused and looked up. Sarah was calm, Bryson a nervous wreck, shifting his weight from foot to foot.

Vwoomp
.

Vwoomp
.

Vwoomp
.

Michael kept going. He somehow knew he was almost there. Weber had said the location didn’t matter so much, just to plant the Lance somewhere in the heart of it all. That he’d know when he’d arrived. So down he went, his neck and shoulders strained, his arms aching.

And then he saw it.

He’d descended at least twenty feet. Twisting carefully around, hugging the closest rung with his left arm, the Lance still cradled in his right, he stared at a cluster of burning blue lights that slowly flashed along with the throbbing hum of noise—
vwoomp, vwoomp, vwoomp
—that filled the world around him. Everything was brighter, hotter, shinier in the cluster, packed in and thrumming. The air vibrated; he could feel it buzz on his skin, and goose bumps broke out across his neck and back.

If this place had a heart, this was it.

“Running down the hallway!” Sarah shouted down; he couldn’t even see her anymore. “You’ve only got a few seconds!”

Bryson finally lost his cool. “Hurry, man! What’s taking so freaking long?”

Michael ignored him, steadied himself on the ladder. He slipped the Lance down his arm a little, then carefully slid his hand to the corner of the device until he could get a good
grip on it. His fingers slipped from the sweat and the Lance almost fell from his grasp; he jerked forward and caught it against his ribs.

“They’re at the door!” Sarah yelled.

“Almost done!” Michael shouted up.

Time seemed to stretch out, measured between those pulses of sound.

Vwoomp
.

He strengthened his grip on the Lance, then held it away from his body, stretching his arm out, leaning forward into the cluster of lights and wires.

Vwoomp
.

Muffled shouts filtered down from above. A door slamming open.

Vwoomp
.

Michael found a little nest of wires among the throbbing lights and gently pushed the Lance into them, wiggling the device until it lodged firmly. Slowly, he let go, making sure it wouldn’t slip before he pulled his hand away.

Vwoomp
.

The thud of footsteps rattled the catwalk and a man yelled, a woman shouted.

“Do it, Michael!” Sarah yelled. “Weber will Lift us out!”

Vwoomp
.

His hand slipped on the ladder behind him and he lurched forward, face-planting into the hot cluster of Kaine’s mind. He was tangled in a sea of wires, metal burning his skin. The Lance was right in front of him, the keypad at his fingertips.

Vwoomp
.

Sarah screamed, followed by a heavy thump that shook the catwalk above. Bryson released a strangled yell. Another thump. Rattling. Shouts. More footsteps.

Michael entered the first number of the code.

Vwoomp
.

A man yelled down, a booming voice that overpowered everything else.

“Stop what you’re doing! Now!”

Michael ignored him, pushed the next number. The next. The next.

Vwoomp
.

He felt the rattle of someone clambering down the ladder. His fingers slipped, found the next number, pushed. The next. The next.

Vwoomp
.

The man’s voice again, closer, louder.

“Do not move another inch or I
will
shoot!”

Michael pressed the last number of the code and heard a click.

A shot rang out, the bullet pinging against something right next to Michael’s ear.

“Okay, okay!” Michael shouted. He held his hands up to show he’d stopped. It didn’t matter. The deed was done.
Lift us out
, he thought, almost like a prayer to Agent Weber.
Please
, now.
Lift us now
.

“Untangle yourself and slowly back away from the
device,” the man said much more calmly. “Get yourself back on this ladder. Now.”

“Okay,” Michael said, but his eyes stayed focused on the Lance, waiting to see what it would do. As he maneuvered out of the nest of wires, he watched. Waited. Hoped. So far, nothing.

His feet finally found the ladder, and he planted them on the closest rung. He crouched on top of wires and ducts and pushed himself backward, then turned around, hugging the ladder, the man with the massive gun right above him.

“Nice and slow,” the guy said. “Up we go. Don’t try anything. I promise you, the next shot won’t miss.”

Michael nodded, then gave one last glance over his shoulder at the Lance, planning to obey the man completely. And hope that Weber would get them out of all the …

Suddenly his chest went cold. He’d just started to turn away from the Lance when it caught his full attention again. Riveted, he stared, not sure exactly what he was seeing. The whole thing was … melting. Its corners were no longer square, its edges no longer sharp. The wires drooped off the sides as the metal of the device warped and bent, turning into a goopy soup of molten silver. It started to seep through the wires it was wedged into and then transformed into droplets that fell like rain to the circuits below.

Michael stared as some of the droplets fell sideways. Some fell
up
. In a matter of seconds, the entire Lance had melted into tiny drops of silver that flew in all directions, defying physics. Michael could only think that some type of magnetism had occurred.

He looked up at the guard with the gun and realized he was staring, too. But then the man met his gaze.

“What did you do?” he asked, more nervous than angry. “What was that thing?”

“Honestly?” Michael responded. “I have no idea. Someone who gets paid a lot more than you do told me to put it there and press a few buttons. So I did.”

The man had no chance to respond. A riot of sounds suddenly filled the air. Then sparks erupted from the device. The pulsing hum stopped, only to be replaced by what sounded like great sheets of metal warping.

“What’s going on?” the man shouted, fear lighting up his face, which now glistened with sweat.

Michael was scared himself. All he could do was shrug.

“Get up top,” the guard ordered, then started climbing the ladder.

Michael reached for the next rung above him, and as soon as he clasped it, everything began to shake. The sounds got louder.

Michael climbed as the entire building shook violently. The blue sea of lights scattered among Kaine’s Core programming flared and flashed, popping and exploding, and sheets of circuits began to break off the walls and fall, rattling off other parts of the core as they plummeted. The heat rose quickly, scorching Michael as he clambered up the ladder.

He pulled himself up onto the catwalk behind the guard to see Bryson and Sarah, hands cuffed behind their backs, being herded toward the exit. The structure swayed back and forth as the world quaked and every person with a free hand
held on to something for support. Flames licked up from below as the core collapsed in on itself. The noise was unbearable.

The man who’d come after Michael had his gun in Michael’s face. He shouted, “We get out of this building, and then we deal with you! Now go! I’ll be right behind you the whole way!”

Michael nodded. Agent Weber would Lift them out of
Lifeblood Deep
. She
would
.

And so he went. Around the catwalk, stumbling and lurching. He held on to the rail like the other guards, though hot, furious air blew up from the crumbling center of the room. Sweat soaked his whole body, and he kept moving, the guard pressing the gun into his back, pushing him.

He made it to the door. Exited into the hallway.

Something exploded behind them, a quick ripping of sound and air. The building heaved.

Michael ran down the hallway, around a corner. He tripped, caught his balance, ran to the stairwell, to his friends and the other guards.

Down they went, leaping from step to step.

Another explosion.

The building jolted.

Michael fell.

Got back up.

He was at the landing of the second floor. Down more stairs. They reached the first floor, stumbled into the hallway. Around yet another corner. They were going in a different direction this time, heading for the front door instead of the
back. Several explosions tore through the air. Michael and everyone else fell down. Got back up. Dust choked them. They kept moving, made it to the exit, out into the sun and the streets.