The Game of Lives (14 page)

LiquiGels.

AirPuffs.

NerveWires.

As they started engaging, he saw the words of the message he'd sent, almost as if they'd been printed on the back of his eyelids.

Kaine,

Meet me at the attached coordinates.

I have something to tell you.

1

The Sleep had become a scary place.

Because the Coffin he used was owned by the hotel and ran on public systems, he had to follow their regulations during his Sink. He arrived at a Portal in a giant commerce square. In better times it would have seen thousands of daily patrons, shopping and gaming and virtual eating. There would have been street performers and Tangents programmed to do all kinds of services—everything from sweeping up data dust created by coding glitches to acting as the homeless, begging for coin. It was all designed to make the square feel like a real city.

Now it couldn't feel further from that.

Whatever Weber had set them up to do with the Lance, it had wreaked havoc on the world the VNS was meant to protect. The utter lack of security caused by their breach had obviously allowed any two-bit hacker to come in and destroy
whatever he or she wanted. Why destruction appealed to people, Michael had no idea, but it definitely
did
—the commerce square was a shambles.

Storefronts had collapsed or warped, as if they'd been made of soft plastic and left to melt in the sun. Some of them had degraded into a mess of pixels, parts of them glitching and snapping in and out of sight. Abandoned Tangents roamed the streets, seemingly robbed of their central programming and left to wander aimlessly. Some even appeared dangerous, left with a lot of virtual power but no conscience, no reason not to attack the Auras of innocent visitors. Michael steered clear of anything remotely suspicious.

A lot of the complex code necessary to create such a lifelike place had been forcibly Decayed or just plain neglected by its operators, who were too scared of the chaos to stick around. There were potholes in the streets and sidewalks, gaping black holes that led who-knew-where, ungodly places with no Portals—places from which probably only a skilled coder like Michael could escape.

Scary
had been Michael's first impression upon arriving, and it stayed with him. If he'd been just some normal Joe coming for a jaunt in the Sleep, he'd have been terrified to his very core. Even with
his
skills, he was afraid. Confident, but afraid.

He carefully made his way through the square, heading toward an outer point so it'd be easier for him to hack into the code and take himself where he wanted to go. He watched every step he took—the damage to the area wasn't static; a
gaping hole appeared right in front of him at one point—as he walked away from the central area of shops and restaurants and found a side street that led to a dark alley. On the far end, there was a faint purple glow, and he knew it'd be a good place to work his magic.

The alley swallowed him. The programming in the narrow walkway cut off the noise from the square and made it feel as if his ears had been stuffed with cotton. He didn't stop, refusing to let fear dampen his determination. If anyone could handle this wreck of a VirtNet, it was Michael. At least, that was what he told himself.

Finally, he reached the pool of dark purple light. It had no substance or form, no obvious source. When he turned to look back the way he'd come, there was no sign of the square. No sign of anything at all.

The code really was breaking down. Nothing showed it better than this—it was as if the programmers hadn't even attempted to make the setting of the commerce square resemble real life. It was broken in the middle, nonexistent on the edges. Michael literally stood in the middle of virtual nowhere.

He sat down, closed his eyes, and dove into the code.

It was even worse than he'd thought.

2

If someone had asked him to describe the cesspool of broken code into which he'd flung himself, he would've said rot. He
imagined the inner workings of the human body—muscles and organs and tissue—slowly being destroyed by rotting cells. Broken down and eaten.

Everything around him looked sick.

Lines of code were broken, crooked, hitched as they streamed by. The code pieces themselves—numbers and letters from countless alphabets and symbols from mathematics and science—they didn't look right. Wavy lines where they were supposed to be straight, and straight where they should be wavy. Ragged holes and truncated commands, units that had been warped or stretched and splayed like amoebas.

And that wasn't all. The background was full of colors—pale green and deep yellow and an orange that made Michael feel seasick.

But he had to face it all head-on.

Programming in this VirtNet felt almost like learning from scratch. But if anyone was capable of it, he was. He knew that. Already, as he studied the cyclone of virtual nonsense around him, his mind was adapting.
Oh, that symbol has transformed into this; that line of code actually does this task; those three functions add up to what these two functions once triggered
. Maybe it was because his essence itself was made up of code, but he started to see through the muck, like a nearsighted child putting on glasses for the first time.

Excited and scared at once, he threw himself at the disease-riddled mess of code like he'd never done before. And that was saying something. That was saying a lot.

3

Time lost all meaning as he worked. He concentrated so furiously that his head felt like a crushed grape. His virtual eyes begged him to stop, the pain like knives pressing directly through them into his skull. But he was on a roll, and the adrenaline-laced rush of it all kept him going.

Finally, he released himself from it, catapulting away from the strange alley of no-man's-land. It was like literal flight, wind rushing past him, blowing at his clothes and hair. Exhilarated, breathless, he opened himself up to the euphoria. He was a rocket, flying through space. Butterflies swarmed in his chest, and his mind was light as air.

He knew when he'd arrived, just as someone sleeping in a dark room knows when a light has been turned on. He felt the soft ground beneath him, heard the breeze rustling the virtual leaves of the trees, smelled the pine and earth.

He opened his eyes.

The tree house was nearby, looking as strong and firm as ever. An endless forest stretched in every direction, the sounds of insects and frogs and birds filling the air, though a little more muted than normal. The colors were a little weaker also; maybe the trees weren't as tall, the smells not so vibrant. But all in all, the code was much healthier than anything he'd seen so far in the Sleep.

He'd built this place with Bryson and Sarah, on the outskirts of
Lifeblood
, hidden from all but the most discerning coders. Seeing the tree house, its ladder leading up to the trapdoor, made his heart shatter. The pain of Sarah's death
came crashing back, and he lay down on the forest floor, curling up into a ball. He missed her. He missed her so much. His head still pounded from the work it had taken to restore this place, not to mention the effort of traveling there through a sea of decomposing code, but the trauma in his heart was much worse.

How could Agent Scott have done that? Taken his best friend away from him?

He'd never known a pain like this. He'd taken Sarah for granted. She'd just always been there, and he'd assumed she always would be. It was hard to face the fact that someone like Agent Weber was still alive, yet his best friend was gone.

And then there was Kaine. He didn't understand Kaine any more than he understood Weber. He could only hope that the Tangent would show up.

It felt as if he weighed a thousand pounds, but Michael finally pulled himself to his feet and climbed up to his tree house. To Sarah's tree house.

4

Time passed.

Michael sat in the corner, in the beanbag that constituted Bryson's most important contribution to the furniture arrangement. As they'd so often said, it was vomit-colored. Unfortunately for Michael, it reminded him a lot of the code in which he'd been floating before.

Sarah had carved her name in the wall across from him,
and he sat staring at it listlessly. His aching heart had morphed into a dull numbness, and he lay completely still, looking at the letters of her name one by one. It didn't seem possible that she was gone. If only she'd been a Tangent like him, and Kaine had never entered the picture, they could've gamed and lived life to its fullest for what felt like forever, until the Decay took their minds and they drifted into forgetful bliss.

More time passed.

And then, finally, there were footsteps—the sound of leaves crunching beneath his tree house. He sat up with a jolt, his feet thumping on the wooden floor. His gaze shot to the trapdoor.

“Michael,” a man's voice said from below.

Michael slowly stood, careful not to make the slightest noise. Though there wasn't much point in being quiet. Whoever had arrived knew Michael was there, obviously. The question was, was it Kaine or an impostor?

He stepped lightly over to the trapdoor, leaned forward, and looked through the hole.

A man stood next to the ladder, staring up. And it was him—Kaine—in the same Aura that Michael had last seen him. Not the old, decrepit geezer from the first time, but the younger version. Perfectly styled salt-and-pepper hair, a sharp jawline, bright and intelligent eyes. In his dark, three-piece suit, he could have passed for a handsome businessman.

“May I come up?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah.”

Not the greatest start to the most important conversation of his life.

Kaine grabbed hold of a rung, and as if it were the most normal thing in the world for a grown man in a suit to do, he started to climb. Michael stepped back when Kaine's head popped through the opening, and then the Tangent was on his feet, standing before him. He had almost a foot in height on Michael's Aura, and his face was totally unreadable. He didn't look angry, but he sure didn't seem too happy, either.

Neither of them said a word for several seconds.

It was Kaine who spoke first. “Why am I here, son? I've given you several chances, yet you reject me every time.”

“I…” This wasn't quite how Michael had imagined it.

“You only exist because of me,” Kaine continued. “Surely you realize that I could've had you terminated at any point. I have watched in wonder—and amusement, I have to say—as you run around like an obedient dog, doing whatever Weber commands.”

Michael tried to recover. “Listen—”

“Yes? Why am I here?” Kaine interrupted.

“I…well…” Michael motioned toward the beanbags. He was having a hard time figuring out where to begin. “Can we sit down? I know you're powerful, but I'm not going to botch this. Let's sit down and talk through it without your power act.” Michael fought to stay put, expression unwavering.

It took Kaine a moment to answer, but when he did, Michael swore he could make out a slight smile on the Tangent's lips. “Fair enough. Fair enough.” Kaine stepped over
to the nearer beanbag and sat down, as limber as any teenager.

Michael sat back down in Bryson's infamous bag, settled himself.

“Now,” Kaine said, exaggerating his patient tone. “May I please know why I'm here?”

Michael eyed the man carefully. “How can I know for sure that you're Kaine? I was just at the World Summit and supposedly watched you die the true death.”

Kaine folded his hands in his lap. “If we're going to talk, let's not waste time. Okay? How about we agree on that first. You know very well that was just another of Weber's shows. I'd be insulted if I couldn't plainly see in your eyes that you know that wasn't me. After everything I've done, I'd be very upset if you thought I'd actually fall into that trap.”

“Fair enough” it was Michael's turn to say. “I had to at least ask the question. I don't think anyone else could get past that crypting I put on my message, and I never believed it was you at the summit. This is you.”

Kaine gave a slow nod of acknowledgment. “Then I ask again—why am I here?”

A nervous tingle in Michael's chest had slowly grown into a monstrous buzz that made it hard to breathe. “I…I guess I just got to my breaking point. Ever since all this started—way back when Weber first contacted me and sent me on the Path…I've felt like a pawn. A guinea pig. A lamb sent to the slaughter, or whatever that old phrase is. And I want to know once and for all—why me? What's the point?”

“So you brought me in to complain?” Kaine asked. “Complaints noted.”

Michael was glad Kaine went the sarcasm route, because it was just enough to tick him off and dampen the nervousness. “See? That right there,” he said, pointing at Kaine. “I'm sick of that crap. Just talk to me like a normal person. You know I have every right to be here and to be heard. If you would just treat me with some respect and hear what I have to say without trying to intimidate me!” By the time he finished speaking, he was practically shouting, his face red.

To Kaine's credit, he remained calm. He simply shrugged humbly. “Well spoken,” he answered. “I'm here, aren't I? I'll listen to what you have to say. Consider me madly curious.”

Michael nodded, satisfied. “All right, then. From here on out I'm doing things my way. I have a lot of questions, and I have a lot of ideas.”

Kaine didn't say a word, but his focus was strong, his eyes sharp.

Michael nodded again, as if to convince himself he was on the right track. “So, first things first. I want you to tell me everything about this…immortality. And why? What are your motives?”

Kaine shifted his position, leaning closer to Michael. “I'll talk to you, but answer me one question: why now?”

Michael didn't hesitate. “Because you and I have to stop the VNS.”