The Rendering (19 page)

“From what? Power surges?”

“Cyberdroids. Roach has been busy.”

We buzzed along the “ground,” rocketing past file structures and directory guides.

Well, actually, we—Jamie and I—sat in her bedroom, staring at the computer. Jamie controlled the dragonfly and we saw the virtual world through its eyes.

Bizarre.

This was still the regular Net, though—we hadn’t reached Roach’s domain yet—so nothing was too exciting.

With one exception. One tiny exception.

On the computer screen, the skunks raced alongside the dragonfly.

They looked exactly like they did in real life, except surrounded by information swirls and data flows. Jamie told me that they’re completely digital inside the computer, but her laptop translated them into graphics, down to the last detail: the gleam of Larkspur’s armor, the triggers on Cosmo’s guns, the studs on Poppy’s leather jacket.

For the first time in forever, I almost relaxed.
This
I understood. Something finally made sense. Because looking at Jamie’s laptop, I saw a video game. And this one had weapons.

We approached Roach’s domain and slowed. The skunks checked their gear. Jamie wiped her hand and changed her grip on the joystick. And we went in.

The transformation blew my mind.

In the time since Roach had scanned in the people from our town, everything had changed. They’d been slaving away for him—each scanned person as powerful as a supercomputer with an advanced AI—working together like an ant colony building a massive hive, with tunnels and mounds and chambers.

Of course, they weren’t really building tunnels and mounds and chambers. That’s just how the laptop depicted the objects. Really they were building code, expanding Roach’s domain, expanding his power.

But everything looked … 
real
.

Impossible, but real.

Imagine an endless cartoonish assembly plant—and we’re talking horror cartoons, not Saturday morning—where the laws of physics didn’t work and pure information ruled.

Okay, this isn’t going to make much sense, but I watched things—impossible shapes with shifting colors—carried by conveyor belts into bizarre machines and transformed into new, different things.

Everything combining, expanding, condensing, mushrooming. Everything tWeAKed, everything

Including the people. Oh, they looked a little like people—two legs, two arms, and a head. But Roach hadn’t given them features.

No faces. No eyes, no mouth.

You know those balloon animals that clowns make? Imagine people who look like that. I’d never seen anything so frightening.

You think being chased by an ax murderer is a nightmare? Or falling from an airplane? Or drowning? This was worse.

Way worse.

Despite being faceless, these were real people—my friend Mason, Letitia Harrod, Stacy Nguyen, Jamie’s parents—slaving away in a virtual sweatshop, their free will deleted. Real people reduced to identical cogs in a digital machine, increasing the power of the madman who’d reduced them to this.

I felt clammy sweat on the back of my neck. “That’s …”

“Horrible,” Jamie finished. And I knew she was thinking about her parents.

On the screen, the skunks seemed to be sniffing the digital “wind.”

Then Poppy pointed and said, “The origin’s that way.”

Jamie took a breath. She tapped the joystick, giving a little waggle of the dragonfly’s wings to say thanks, and zoomed off.

We whizzed through the factory, through cyber gears and over data storage tanks and around code blocks. Poppy and Cosmo raced alongside—I couldn’t see Larkspur—ready to jump in if things got dangerous.

Jamie sped around, testing the dragonfly’s capabilities. And, to be honest, sightseeing. Because Roach’s realm was pretty incredible. Not beautiful, not inviting, but truly amazing.

Which is why we didn’t notice it at first.

The cyberdroid.

Something flickered on the edge of the screen.

“There!” I said.

Jamie turned the dragonfly to look—and even though we were just watching on the monitor, we screamed.

A creature with razor fangs and flayed skin and too many arms rose from the digital ground. It mutated as we watched. Skin melted and re-formed, claws curved and glinted.

“What on earth—” Jamie said.

A slimy tentacle shot toward the dragonfly, and the droid sprang forward.

Jamie didn’t stick around. She jerked the joystick, hitting full power and taking evasive action: twisting and twirling the dragonfly in cyberspace, trying to escape the droid.

No luck. That thing was coded to do exactly this—hunt and destroy.

Jamie zoomed into an alley between two sheer digital walls, then flew straight up some kind of hollow shaft. But the droid immediately grew tree-frog toes to climb the vertical surfaces, then oozed through tiny cracks into the shaft. It never stopped and never slowed.

Still, Jamie was no slouch. She faked the dragonfly right, then darted left and dove into a series of deep, narrow ditches and followed them at breakneck speed.

“Where are the skunks?” she said through gritted teeth.

“You lost them at that first corner,” I told her.

She grunted and pulled the dragonfly into a roll, maneuvering between a tangle of cyber cables.

But eventually it had to happen. She just wasn’t fast enough.

A thick wad of something gross flew out of the cyberdroid’s mouth and plastered the dragonfly to the wall.

“I can’t move,” Jamie said, biting her lip. “Maybe if I bypass the circuitry …”

She typed fast—frantically—trying her
CircuitBoard
magic. But there was no time.

The cyberdroid loped closer to the dragonfly and squatted on its haunches. It spat another wad at us, then leaned forward and stared.

“It’s no good,” Jamie said. “I can’t get away.”

“Look at its eyes.”

At first they’d appeared a blank white that somehow shone with malice—but now computer code scrolled inside the eye sockets.

“It’s tracing us,” Jamie said. “Roach is using the droid as a probe. He’ll hack the dragonfly code and find—”

“How cool is
that
?” Cosmo’s voice came through the speakers. “It spits!”

We couldn’t see him on the screen, but apparently the cyberdroid could. It launched upward and spun in midair, extending a dozen claws, ready for attack.

“How come Roach’s creatures get all the best toys?” Cosmo said.

“You want a phlegm-shooter?” Poppy asked. She flashed onto the screen, flying through the air, and landed a kick on the cyberdroid’s shoulder.

The droid howled and twisted, bounced off a data grid, and returned the attack.

For a moment, Poppy and the cyberdroid exchanged blows faster than the eye could see.

Cosmo ran forward, and we finally saw him on the screen. He’d somehow generated a whole new batch of weapons.

In cyberspace, I am able to provide Cosmo with most of the gear he requests. I am able to provide the same service to Poppy, incidentally, which explains—

Right, of course.

In addition to her new chain, Poppy had a new crowbar strapped to her right leg and her throwing stars strapped to her left. Plus a new leather jacket, with spikes and chains. And biker boots, of course.

Cosmo was in full commando gear, with camouflage, holsters, and a flak jacket. He was holding what looked like a Ping-Pong
ball gun, and his bandoleer was full of brightly colored gadgets.

He raced along a railing, then flipped into the air, past the cyberdroid, and landed with his gun ready.

“Get your own playmate,” Poppy told him, blocking a blow to her head. “I saw it first.”

Cosmo wavered for a second, then holstered his gun. “Sheesh, you get all the fun.”

Then the cyberdroid sprouted another arm, which grabbed Poppy by the neck and started squeezing.

“Hey!” She twisted and slashed the droid’s arm with her jacket spikes. “It’s growing arms.”

The droid shrieked and recoiled.

“The better to hug you with,” Cosmo said, and fired.

His gun looked silly and lightweight and harmless. But he’d modified the firing mechanism—those balls fired hard enough to stun a rhino—and he’d customized the ammo, too.

The ball shot toward the cyberdroid’s head, and the droid dodged and lashed at Cosmo with its spiked tail.

Yeah, its tail. That thing grew new limbs in the blink of a cursor.

Cosmo spun away and yelled, “Flash!”

Poppy pulled her jacket over her eyes.

Jamie and I didn’t know what was going on—and neither did the cyberdroid—until the Ping-Pong ball burst open with a tremendous flash of light.

On Jamie’s monitor, it was incredibly bright. In virtual reality, it was blinding.

Literally. The droid clutched its eyes and screamed. I don’t know how long the blindness would’ve lasted, but—

Everything in virtual reality is based on digital code. Hence Cosmo’s flash balls affect the underlying format of the droid’s sensors, not actual eyes. The duration of the effect depends on the type of sensor it is utilized against
.

Oh, sure. What she said.

Anyway, Poppy finished off the blinded droid in a few seconds. A couple of throwing stars, and the droid dissolved into a heap of digital information.

Which looked a lot like bar codes melting in a pile of sludge.

Cosmo crossed to the dragonfly, pulled a knife from his boot sheath, and chopped at the gunk that plastered the dragonfly to the wall.

“This stuff is gross,” he said, obviously impressed. “Cyber drool.”

Where’s Larkspur
? Jamie typed. She couldn’t talk directly through the dragonfly, but the skunks could “hear” her when she typed.

“Doing some research,” Poppy said. “Him and Dr. Solomon are checking into … upgrades, I think. So you’ve only got two bodyguards.”

Upgrades
? I typed.
Is this about Hund
?

“I wasn’t listening. Too busy sharpening my throwing stars.”

“Great,” I muttered.

Cosmo freed the dragonfly and Jamie warily tested the controls.

“Still working?” I asked.

She smiled. “Perfectly.”

Then she typed,
Can you get a read on the information flow?

Poppy sniffed, then pointed to her left. “We’re downstream from a vast data source. Try that way.”

“Roach’s server?” I asked.

“Gotta be,” Jamie said.

“Look at this.” Cosmo showed Poppy a chunk of the cyberdroid spit in his hand. “This stuff is amazing. Self-regenerating, and—ooooof!”

Three dark, jagged shapes had shot onto the screen, and one caught Cosmo in the stomach and flung him backward. Two flew at Poppy, but her crowbar was out in a flash, her reflexes video-game fast, and she deflected the shapes.

“Cosmo? Are you all right?”

Cosmo backflipped to his feet. “What
was
that? Some kind of automated defense—” Then he yelled a warning: “Poppy!”

Before she could react, Poppy was lifted ten feet in the air and smashed back into the ground.

The cyberdroid had regenerated. Twice as big, twice as
fast, and twice as ugly. Drooling jaws opened, a wad of spit shot at Cosmo, and the droid lunged forward to crush him. At the same time, it spun Poppy with its two tails—yeah, now it had
two
—and smashed her into a nearby cylinder.

Cosmo dove aside and rolled, pulling a bright red beanbag from his bandoleer.

“Ever play Hacky Sack?” he asked.

He drop-kicked the beanbag at the droid and in the same motion drew his gun and flicked a switch, choosing which ball he’d shoot. This time he wasn’t messing around with a flash ball; he selected the serious artillery.

He took aim and—

A second cyberdroid roared from behind him and fired a dozen blades at his back.

Cosmo dodged, looking like an Olympic gymnast, and yelled, “Jamie! Get out of here! Now! Go!”

We went.

Jamie flew the dragonfly at full power, keeping low, keeping out of sight. Staying in shadows and behind cover.

Moving fast.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“If Poppy’s right, the data’s coming from this direction.”

“How about that?” I pointed to an ominous structure at the top of the screen.

“That’s a music playlist.”

“Oh,” I said, eyeing the grim shape. “Someone needs to lighten up.”

“Shh,” she said, trying to focus.

“Or maybe two someones,” I muttered.

The dragonfly darted around a glowing cactus thing, and Jamie said, “There.”

A flat black surface etched with signs and symbols, like a cave painting.

“That’s Roach’s server?”

“No.” She guided the dragonfly toward the wall and started manipulating the symbols. “That’s a window he forgot to lock.”

She connected one symbol to another, twisted a third, and solved a fourth, faster than I could follow. Then, suddenly, the dragonfly reared backward, and I saw a new shape, one she’d created: a swirling spiral.

Jamie aimed at the spiral and charged full speed ahead. On the screen, the dragonfly went right
into
the spiral and through the wall.