Etherworld (21 page)

“Do you think someone else is in the program?” Josh asks.

“No,” Patrick says, frantically typing. “All my changes are getting rewritten as I type. This looks like a . . . system error or something. No person would be able to make changes this fast. It's not . . . possible.” Patrick looks up, scared. “I'm sorry. I can't do anything.”

His words suck all the air out of the room, and for a second it's like none of us can breathe.

“Yes, you can,” Avery says to Patrick, cupping Nora's cheek with her hand. “You have to.”

“There's nothing more he can do, Ave,” Josh says, his voice cracking a little. “She needs more fluids, though. I think we should take her to the hospital and tell them not to disconnect her Equip.”

“They're not going to listen to us,” Josh says.

“Maybe they will if we take her to the doctors who are taking care of Maureen,” Avery says. “They were already making that connection between the comas and Equips.”

“We can use our private medical service,” Patrick says. “There's a doctor on duty. He'll have the ambulance pick her up and he can oversee her treatment. I trust him to take care of her and to be discreet.”

“Good,” Avery says. “We need to protect Nora's identity as long as we can; otherwise the police will get involved. And they'll never believe us. Everyone knows Patrick got fired from Orexis for ‘health reasons' and Regan just escaped from the loony bin. They'll just end up detaining us all, and we'll never be able to destroy Elusion.”

“What do you mean you escaped from the loony bin?” Josh asks me, alarmed. I realize there's so much he doesn't know yet. Everything that happened at the Orexis lab—my showdown with Cathryn, discovering that my father's body is missing—and what Patrick and I learned about Bryce at his apartment. But now that Nora's life is hanging in the balance, how can I unload all of that onto him?

“Patrick had Regan admitted to the psych ward because he thought she was batshit crazy. Then Zoe helped her break out, and the cops are looking all over Detroit for her, so Regan's on the run from the law now too,” Avery answers for me, as poetic as ever.

Josh turns around and glares at Patrick, who's still on his tab arranging for the medical service to pick up Nora. “You had her incarcerated?” he asks, his voice full of disgust. “How could you do that?”

“It's okay,” I say. “Let's deal with that later.”

Josh touches my cheek and then focuses back on Avery, who can't tear herself away from the girl she loves, no matter how upset she is about what might have been going on with Maureen.

“You guys go take down Elusion,” Avery says. “I'll take care of Nora.”

Josh and I are sitting across from each other on board Patrick's seventy-foot luxury yacht, motoring out from the Detroit River into a muck-filled Lake Erie. A new weather system is blowing in, pelting the glass-enclosed cabin with big drops of dingy rain.

“I wonder what's taking so long. Pat's been down on the lower deck forever,” I say.

Josh stares at the built-in touch-screen monitor on the table that separates us. It's displaying our coordinates, which Patrick entered in not long after we launched. A red line is moving along charts filled with latitudes and longitudes, carefully monitoring our progress.

“I don't know,” Josh says, distracted. His thoughts are with Nora, like mine are with my father.

We all decided that Patrick's leisure cruiser was the best place to regroup and come up with the next step. Usually it's anchored outside the Detroit Yacht Club, but under the circumstances, we thought it best to take it out onto the lake.

“Do you want to go check on him or something?” Josh asks, tapping his fingers impatiently. On the way over here, Patrick and I filled Josh in on everything he missed, and it's obvious from the clipped way Josh is referring to Patrick that he's furious with him.

“He said he'd be right back,” I reply.

“That's his MO, though, isn't it? Say one thing and do another?”

“He's made some mistakes,” I say, “but he's trying to make things right.”

“By pulling you out of Elusion and then throwing you in the hospital when you asked for his help? Do you have any idea how bad things could have gotten if you hadn't escaped?” Josh asks.

“He thought I had nanopsychosis,” I reply. “That why he didn't believe—”

“Don't defend him,” Josh says quietly, cutting me off. “He's supposed to be your friend. He's supposed to help you. Instead he keeps making things worse, and he never apologizes for any of it. And all that hero stuff with my sister? He's just trying to save his own ass. He doesn't think about anyone but himself.”

“I know it seems that way, but give him a chance, please,” I say, taking Josh's hand. “He's on our side now, I swear to you.”

Before Josh can pledge allegiance to my best friend, the door to the lift slides open and Patrick appears, carrying a few high-end protein drinks in his hands. He places them down on the table in front of me.

“Any word from Avery about Nora?” Patrick asks.

Josh shakes his head, narrowing his eyes at him.

Patrick hesitates and then walks to the other end of the table and starts examining the navigation charts. “Look, Josh, if I could turn back time and change everything, I would. But I can't.”

Josh shoves back his chair and stands up, walking toward the window. “How could you do that to her?” he asks, nodding in my direction. “How could you put her in a psych ward? Don't you know her at all? You don't even know when she's telling you the truth?”

“I know you're mad. You have every right to be. But how about we try to put it behind us?” Patrick says, his eyes still trained on the ship's electronic charts.

“Regan tried to tell you what was going on and you refused to believe her. You just . . . treated her like some little girl that needed protection.”

“How dare you speak about my relationship with Regan?” Patrick says. “I've known her for years and you just met her last week!”

“That's right. And I could see the kind of person she was the minute I met her. You've known her all this time and you have no idea who she is or what she's capable of.”

I know I should interject, but I'm stunned by Josh's analysis of the situation. He's right. He did seem to understand me from the get-go. I trusted him for a good reason.

“You've hurt the people I care the most about,” Josh says, angrily crossing his arms over his chest. “You're going to have to earn my trust back.”

“Saving your life isn't enough?” Patrick finally looks up, his face red.

“
Regan
saved my life. Not you!” Josh argues.

“Stop!” I shout, standing up. “We don't have time for this. We have to move forward and work together. Nora and my dad are still in Elusion, and Orexis is picking people off one by one. Arguing isn't going to solve anything.”

Josh's eyes meet mine, the anger in his face softening as he flashes me a smile, kind of like he's proud of me. Patrick runs his fingers through his hair and plops down next to me as Josh takes a seat across from us.

I breathe in deep and begin doing what we came here to accomplish. “Let's review the facts, the best we can.”

“Regan's dad is alive and is hooked up to an Equip, probably somewhere in Detroit,” Josh says, looking into my eyes. “He and his followers are carrying out an attack plan on Elusion so that it will self-destruct.”

“They're also using Etherworld as a refuge, so their brains will be protected from an overdose of stimulus,” I add.

“Okay, stop right there,” Patrick insists. “Regan says that everyone entered Etherworld through David's domain using some kind of algorithm that gave them the destination codes.”

“Everyone but us,” Josh says. “I told her about the possible connection between—”

“The Phase Two Escape and David's domain? Good guess, but it's not possible,” says Patrick. “Every app contains safety protocols to protect the user and prevent anyone who's not specifically invited from getting in. David's safety protocols weren't touched.”

“So how did we get there?” Josh asks.

“That's the question,” Patrick replies. “What was causing the program to rewrite itself like that?”

“You mean when you were trying to bring Nora back?” asks Josh.

Patrick nods.

“What about Bryce? Maybe he was behind it,” I say.

“I told you, no person could do that,” Patrick says. “It was too fast, and I've never seen that code before. Besides, why would Bryce—or my mother, for that matter—want to trap kids in Elusion? Kids that neither of them have even met before? The bad publicity is hurting sales.”

Silence fills the room, except for the sound of the boat's Florapetro-fueled engine whirring in the background. Patrick is right. Cathryn and her partner in crime are trying to cover up the danger. They wouldn't want to make it worse.

“Elusion was built to adapt,” Patrick continues. “For instance, the ExSet feature was designed to provide the user with an exhilarating experience: jumping, swimming, falling, and so on. Each time the user returns to the app, the experience needs to be more exciting. The wristband is monitoring the user's biosigns and the visor the visual response; then the data is sent to the program, which tabulates the information so that it can provide the best experience for the user. But there are limits to how it can react, and it can only make a certain amount of choices based on the data it's receiving.”

“But what does that have to do with the rewritten codes?” I ask.

“David once told me that Elusion's like a tree, in a constant state of development. And like a living organism, it's made up of a series of codes, like DNA sequencing,” Patrick continues. “But what I just saw in that trailer back there . . . was impossible. In between me freeing Josh and trying to break Nora out of Elusion, the DNA markers in your father's domain didn't change. They were replaced. The entire firewall was rebuilt. There's no way I can break through that.”

“Back up,” I say. “Did you refer to Elusion as a living organism?”

“Just in theory,” Patrick says quickly. “No system contains the seven characteristics of life. At least, not yet.”

“Wait, you mean the traits we learned about in basic bio?” Josh asks.

“Right.” Patrick taps the glass table and types something into the touch pad that appears on the screen. The oceanographic chart quickly changes into a diagram labeled
The Seven Characteristics of Life
. The word “life” is in the center in red, with black arrows around it leading to seven other terms in green.

“Organization, metabolism, adaptation . . . ,” I say, reading.

“Growth, response to stimuli, homeostasis, and reproduction,” Patrick finishes.

“Elusion is organized,” Josh begins.

“By dumps made up of basic code,” Patrick adds.

“But Elusion doesn't have a metabolism,” I say.

“Actually, it kind of does,” Patrick says. “It's fed by electromagnetic radiation, just like all other Net systems. Unlike other systems, though, it creates new simulations, gets more users, and takes in more power.”

“We know it responds to stimuli,” Josh says, staring at the screen. “That's an inherent part of the way the app and the Equip respond to the user. And that might even explain—”

“The reaction of high responders,” Patrick breathes. “And that leads us to . . .” Patrick types on the screen, and the word “adaptation” flashes in bold. “I woke Josh up by exploiting a weakness in the code, momentarily disrupting the system. What if Elusion figured out what I did and compensated? What if Elusion fixed itself?”

“What are you suggesting, Pat?” I ask, with a nervous laugh. “That Elusion is alive?”

The boat plunges into a wave, and we all grab on to the table to steady ourselves. I'm nauseated not only from the sudden motion but from the realization that Elusion might be more powerful than any of us could have imagined.

“I'm not suggesting it has a heartbeat,” Patrick says. “You have to think outside the box. Elusion was created to adapt. Maybe it's taken that adaptability to the next level.”

“Are you saying it can make its own decisions?” I ask.

“Spontaneous cognition,” Josh mumbles. “When a machine actually begins to think for itself.”

None of us speak for a moment.

“Maybe Elusion took us to your dad's domain because it knew how much we wanted to find him,” Josh says. “It went beyond the program's original boundaries to give us the best possible experience.”

I can't help but wonder if this piece of the puzzle is what my dad might have been keeping from me and the other Elusion survivors.

“But if my dad knew Elusion was capable of something like that, why would he keep it a secret? Wouldn't he want us to know what we were up against?”

“Not necessarily,” Patrick says. “If we're right, and Elusion is sentient, knowing the truth might have put all of you in danger. The moment you set foot in an Escape, the program would be able to tap into your thoughts, and use everything you know to its advantage.”

I think back to my dad's instructions at the mines, about believing we could accomplish our mission. Would any of us have been able to do that if we were aware of how powerful Elusion had actually become?

Patrick is right. My dad had been trying to protect me and everyone else in Etherworld. But what about his safety?

“Claire was . . .” I pause, remembering how she dissolved right in front of me. “She was sent back right after she hit the target. Do you think it's possible Elusion did that on purpose?”

The three of us exchange a worried glance. “We should track down Bryce. He was the last person who saw David alive in that lab,” Josh says.