The Game of Lives (22 page)

1

The sea of code vanished in a blink, replaced by the orderly world of the Hive. The scar of destroyed pods was a conspicuous gash of black in the orange light.

Michael pulled in a deep breath. He'd done it. He'd stopped Weber's program from annihilating every single life he could see, both the Tangent side and the human side. The problem was far from solved, but he'd accomplished the most immediate task. And Weber was dead. The true death. Her body now lay lifeless back in the Wake, her consciousness wiped from the earth and the VirtNet.

Exhaustion overtook him. He floated within the void of the Hive, limp. He wanted nothing more than to go back to the Wake, stay inside the Coffin, and sleep for a day or two. Let Gabby and Bryson and Helga figure out the rest. If the VNS was out of the way, things could be worked out with Kaine, right?

Michael floated in place for a while, his eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the orange light against his virtual skin. He was too tired to even think. Too tired to Lift himself. He just wanted some time. Some sleep.

Surely he could rest now.

Don't call me Shirley
, he thought with a smile.

2

Michael fell asleep at some point, waking and slipping back under several times. The Hive glowed and pulsed around him—which, combined with its soft hum, was like the world's greatest lullaby. During those short, groggy moments of half awareness, he thought of Gabby. Bryson. Helga. They were so smart. Maybe they'd already figured everything out.

Could it really be over? Michael smiled again, knowing it was too good to be true. Nothing had been okay in so long. Always, always, something was wrong.

He needed to check on them. He needed to talk to Kaine. He had to finish this.

Thoughts bounced around inside his weary mind.

He fell back asleep.

3

He didn't know how long he'd slept, but eventually Michael woke up, feeling refreshed and alive, if a little rough
around the edges. Floating there in the void of the Hive, he wished a coffee cart would swing by with some wake-up juice. He briefly wondered if he could code such a thing, steal a cup of grow-joe from one of the many virtual restaurants he'd plundered throughout the years. The thought seemed ridiculous now. Silly. Gloriously silly. He missed it so much.

He rubbed his eyes, looked around. He winced when he saw the dark gash in the Hive wall again, its emptiness so stark a reminder of the lives lost. And he'd just begun to feel a little upbeat. People were dead. Tangents were eliminated, gone forever. If only he could've been a little faster.

He sighed, looked at the other side of the Hive, where everything was whole and brightly lit. Pod after pod after pod. That made him feel a little better.

With another sigh, he realized just how sick of that place he was. Time to move on. He wondered about going back to the VNS building to see how Kaine's Tangents had done cleaning the place up, but decided against it. He'd gotten the rest he needed, and he missed his friends. It was time to find them. And if they hadn't already infiltrated the Doctrine and figured out a way to kill it, he'd help them. They'd do it together. With the VNS no longer breathing down their necks, it shouldn't be too hard.

For the third time that day, Michael accessed his history files to search for a previously visited location. This one was a little tougher. It had more firewalls than even the Hive. But he'd gotten there once, so he knew he could do it again. Once, the Path had taken him there, the place where he'd
first met Kaine, the place where he'd been born into a human body for the first time. The Hallowed Ravine.

He jumped into the code and made his way.

4

He saw Gabby first, and even though he barely knew her, her face brightened his day. Not until she stood before him, her Aura looking so much like her actual body, did he realize how lonely he'd been. For so long he'd gone at this all by himself.

“Hi,” she said, obviously startled at his sudden appearance. They stood on a rolling hill of wind-flattened grass, a thick forest at the bottom. “I…We…Where'd you come from?”

Michael shrugged. “Oh, I've been out and about. Saving people, killing bad guys—that sort of stuff.”

She stepped forward and threw her arms around him, hugging him as fiercely as if they'd known each other forever. He hugged back, thankful for the human touch. The light went on in his mind: no matter what happened, she saw Jackson Porter in him, and Jackson Porter was her boyfriend.

She pulled away and looked up at him. “It's good to see you. Any word on…I don't even know what to ask, actually. Did you do it? Whatever it was?”

He nodded, feeling more confident by the second. He'd half expected to be greeted by KillSims when he'd arrived, something that had happened in this very place not that
long ago. But there were trees, and there was grass and a bright blue sky. Kaine must have really worked hard to protect the place from the ruination of the VirtNet.

“Yeah,” he said, “I think so. I think the VNS is done, and Weber's days of making our lives miserable are over for sure. What about here? Any luck?”

She gestured for him to look around. “We've been looking and looking, but there's nothing. There's an old cabin in those woods, and an abandoned castle on the other side of the forest that's barely standing. Not much else. Bryson's checking out the castle, and Helga's in the woods somewhere. I feel like I'm wearing a path up and down this hill.”

Michael let out an exaggerated sigh. “Do I have to do everything myself?” He quickly laughed it off, hoping she didn't think he was a jerk. “Just kidding. That's really good, actually. I'm glad you weren't attacked by KillSims or Rodents of Unusual Size.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. Let's go find the others. I need more hugs.”

5

Michael remembered everything about the Hallowed Ravine. The castle, overrun by VNS agents and Tangents loyal to Kaine and KillSims charging out of the ruins to attack him. He remembered confronting Kaine in the cabin, being dragged through the woods by that giant of a man. He remembered
the world spinning into chaos and dissolving around him.

But strangely, it looked like none of that had ever happened. The castle was still standing—old, yes, but in one piece. It was confusing, and Michael wondered yet again what had truly happened that day he'd been sucked through the Mortality Doctrine program and placed into the body of Jackson Porter.

Michael and Gabby walked into the wide clearing between the forest and the castle, and before he could let his thoughts get too dark, they slipped from his mind. Bryson came charging out of the entrance of the castle and bounded down the stairs with a ridiculous smile on his face, and Michael couldn't stop his own smile from forming.

“Michael!” Bryson yelled, just as he tripped on a loose stone in the bottom step. He tumbled, flipped, jumped right back up onto his feet, and kept running. “I'd kill you if I wasn't so happy to see your ugly mug!” He reached Michael and grabbed him, pulling him off his feet into the biggest hug he'd ever received.

Through a grunt, Michael barely managed to say “Good to see you, too.”

Bryson put him down and took a step back. “You look seven minutes from death, dude. Especially in the eyes. Let me guess—rough couple of days?”

“You could say that.” Michael glanced at Gabby, who had a genuine look of happiness on her face. He was liking her more and more, and the whole fiasco at the farmhouse felt like a distant memory or a half-forgotten dream. “But I
think we're doing okay. Kaine helped me, you know. I never could've done it without him.”

“Done what?” Bryson asked.

“The VNS…we don't have to worry about them anymore. Or their mass murder program. Or Agent Weber. I…stopped her.”

Bryson and Gabby exchanged a look, both of them knowing that last phrase communicated a million different things. Luckily, they didn't push him to explain because right then Helga came running out of the woods, having already spotted him, her face lit up. Tears streamed down her cheeks, and she pulled Michael into a hug even more viselike than Bryson's. She even swung him around a couple of times for good measure.

Once the world had stopped spinning and he was on his own two feet again, Michael laughed, as genuinely as he ever had.

“Man,” he said, “I don't even know what to say. You guys are all right, I'm all right, we're back together again. If only Sarah…” He faltered there, grief plucking at his heart. The pain was still heavy and hot, but it didn't overwhelm him like it had at times before.

“I know, sweetie,” Helga said, hugging him one more time, holding on for a beat longer than normal. “I need to…well, uh…” She stepped back, and the look on her face was strange, mysterious.

“What?” Michael asked.

She looked away. “For now, it's nothing.”

“What?” Michael pressed, his curiosity close to uncontrollable now.

“Later,” she replied emphatically. “I promise.”

Michael threw his hands up. “Okay. I guess we don't need to spoil the party any more than we already have.”

Gabby stepped closer to him and lightly touched his arm. “What're we doing here, Michael? Back at the tree house you were going nuts—all those KillSims, Kaine…we were scared to death. Then you sent us off, and ever since, we've been tramping around trying to find this factory you're talking about. There's nothing here.”

“She's right,” Bryson added. “Not a thing, not a person. So what are we doing here?”

With a sinking feeling, Michael realized he didn't know. Not fully, anyway. “I assumed this was where the Mortality Doctrine…factory was. Whatever you want to call it. This is where I came—this was the end of the Path.” He pointed to the center of the field in which they stood. “I was standing right there when the world spun around me and I was sucked into the Doctrine program's vortex. Next thing I knew, I was a different dude in a real body. This has to be it.”

Bryson, Helga, and Gabby all turned in a circle to take in their surroundings, as if his pronouncement would make them see things differently. But everything in sight was programmed with superior code—it felt almost as real as
Lifeblood Deep
. Nothing stood out as unusual or menacing. Grass, hills, forest, the ruins of an ancient castle, and a cabin—all of which had been searched thoroughly by Michael's friends.

They faced him again.

“What is it?” Gabby asked. “What is the factory? Where are we?”

Michael shrugged, eager to dive into the code of the place—something he was now ten times better at than he'd been two days earlier. “This has to be the heart of the Mortality Doctrine,” he said, almost to himself, then addressed his friends. “It has to be. The Hive is the storage; the Ravine, the actual program. We need to destroy it, make sure no Tangent ever takes over a human again.
Ever
. Wipe it out, along with every last remaining trace of its source code. Then we go back to the Hive, reinsert people into their own minds and bodies, and release the Tangents back into the Sleep. Simple as that.”

“Simple as that,” Helga repeated.

Michael just nodded. “One step at a time. I seriously think the hardest part is over. The VNS were behind all of this—they were the real enemy. And we don't have to worry about them anymore. We can finish this thing, with or without Kaine's help.”

“Have you really thought this through?” Helga asked him, a motherly tone in her voice. “Like, say, for example, what happens to me and you?”

Michael looked at the ground. He'd never allowed himself to follow that line of thought, though it had hovered on the edges of his mind since the first day he'd awakened in Jackson Porter's body. He supposed it was time to address it.

“Whatever has to happen will happen,” he said coldly. He pictured the face of Jackson Porter, so strongly that for a second he thought it was real, a glitch in the code. But then it was gone. And it had made him jealous, even though he'd lived the vast majority of his life with a different face.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Helga asked. “The Tangents I partnered with to use the Mortality Doctrine—”

“I know,” he said, cutting her off. “I…I just can't talk about it right now. I can't.”

Silence fell on the group, and finally, Bryson broke it.

“So,” he said with a single clap of his hands. “Let's get this show on the road, shall we?”

Michael nodded, trying to clear the image of his face—Jackson's face—from his thoughts. “Okay, yeah, you're right. Let's get started.”

“Get started with what, exactly?” Gabby asked. “I still don't understand what you want us to do with a bunch of grass and trees and an old junk pile of brick and stone.”

Michael focused on Helga. “You know the Doctrine program to an extent, right? I mean, you guys figured it out, used it. Right?”

Her nod didn't show a lot of confidence. “I wasn't what you'd call an expert in that field. Others did more than I did. But yeah, I got a good taste of how it worked.”

“So did I,” Michael responded. “When I was in the Hive, fighting it out against Weber and her own version of a KillSim, I saw it, saw the connections, saw how it worked. I mean, I understood it enough to send her into another person's mind and terminate the connection.” He paused. “It killed her.”

If he'd expected rebukes, they didn't come. Bryson actually started to pump a fist before he stopped himself.

Michael continued. “I think if we hook up, we can dig into the code of this place. But we need to dig deep. Deeper
than ever. I know this is the heart of Kaine's program. With all of us working together, we can find it, dissect it, and blow the thing apart. You guys in?”