The Game of Lives (7 page)

His voice croaked, and he felt like a weight was pushing down on his chest. He lay back down on the cot and rolled over, facing away from Sarah. She rubbed his shoulder, then leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. Miraculously, Bryson didn't say a word. Sarah waited a minute or two, running her hand along his back, then got up and returned to her own cot.

“Good night,” she said from across the room.

“Sleep tight,” Bryson replied.

“Night,” Michael managed to say.

“I love you guys,” Sarah said a moment later, and the night finally took them.

1

The next morning when Michael got up and wandered out of Helga's office, activity bustled throughout the barracks. The Tangent Alliance was hard at work packing up boxes and hauling them out to the cars.

Michael rubbed his still sleep-blurry eyes and looked around at all the movement.

“What's going on?” he asked Bryson, who was leaning against the wall, sipping a cup of something hot and steamy.

“Helga says some of us are leaving,” his friend answered. “And some will stay here—use the Coffins to meet up when we need to.”

“Which one are we doing?”

“We're going with Helga. You, me, Walter, and a couple others.” Bryson tipped his cup toward Walter, who was speaking to the woman named Amy. “I guess they want to try and meet with someone from the VNS.”

“What? No,” Michael said, wide-awake in an instant. “They're the last people we want to talk to right now. We can't trust them.”

“Yeah, well, I won't argue with you there. Though Helga said we'd stay away from Agent Weber. Anyway, she said once you woke up, we'd Sink into the Sleep and she'd try to catch us up on what we've missed. She wants to head out around noon.”

Michael didn't like it. He'd do what Helga wanted—except for agreeing to see Weber or visit the VNS.

“And get this,” Bryson continued. “Sarah's parents are refusing to let her go. They said their adventuring days are over. Sarah's been fighting with them all morning. I think they took it outside.”

Helga came through the front door before Michael could respond. Her eyes lit up when she spotted them, and she came over.

“Morning, sunshine,” she said, without a hint of teasing. “I hope you got some good rest. Why don't you eat breakfast and then I want to show you some things in the Sleep. Bring you up to speed before we make any final decisions on our next move.”

“I'm not hungry,” Michael said. “Let's do it now.”

Helga nodded. “Fine by me. Grab Sarah. Her parents already know most of it. And I'm sure she could use a break from them.” Her eyes said it all. They must've been having a tussle for the ages outside.

“I'll find her,” Michael said. “Get the Coffins ready.”

2

Sarah was alone, with no sign of her parents, leaning against a tree behind the barracks when Michael found her, and she'd obviously been crying. She deflated a little when she saw him approaching—almost as if she was ashamed to be caught in such a state.

“Hey,” he said, flashing her an understanding smile. “Are you being a rotten child again? Didn't anyone ever teach you to honor and obey your parents at all times?”

“You know I love them, Michael.” She sounded tired. “But it's hard to deal with this stuff with them around. I'm still their little girl, and there's no way they can just sit back and let me do what I need to.”

“It's like they don't want you to run off and get killed or something,” Michael said.

“Hey, whose side are you on?”

“Sorry.” He stepped closer and gave her a hug. “We'll figure it out, okay? Maybe we can talk them into coming with us. Helga needs us for whatever she has planned, and we definitely could use all the help we can get to find our way back to the Hallowed Ravine. And there's no way I'm doing it without you.”

She sighed. “It was easier when we were in the Sleep, or—” She stopped herself, and Michael knew exactly what she'd been about to say. It had been easier when her parents were kidnapped, being held against their will, and unable to stop her from doing anything.

“Come on,” he said. “First things first. Let's go see what
Helga wants to show us, and then we'll try again. I'm not leaving without you.”

She pulled him into a fierce hug and kissed him on the cheek. Her lips were as moist as her tears.

“This all confuses me so much,” she whispered. “Your life as a Tangent, your life in this body, all the weird crap that's going on. I honestly don't know what you are, but I know who you are. And I love you, Michael. I really do. Roll your eyes all you want, but whatever you are”—she grabbed both sides of his face and shook him gently—“I'm in love with him.”

Michael's feelings swam a million miles above the ground, leaving him completely speechless. He just nodded and kissed her, kissed her all the way, with everything he had, something he'd never done before. His heart swelled and the world spun.

She pulled back and looked at him, fresh tears brightening her eyes, but this time she looked happy.

“I'm not letting you leave without me,” she said. “Come on, let's go inside before my mom catches us and has a hissy fit.”

3

A half hour later, still buzzing from that kiss, Michael Sank into the Sleep with his friends, Helga as their guide. When he opened his eyes, the four of them stood on a flat plane of crystal-clear glass that stretched as far as he could see in every
direction. The sky above was a crisp midnight-blue, and it felt to Michael as if they were right below the highest reaches of the atmosphere. Beneath their feet, geometric shapes of white light spun and shrank and grew, bouncing off each other against a dark background. Michael stared, mesmerized—it was like standing inside an enormous kaleidoscope.

“Welcome to the wild blue yonder,” Helga said, stretching out her arms proudly. “My own little bit of heaven.”

“It's real inviting,” Bryson muttered sarcastically as he looked around for somewhere to sit.

“This is just the basic interface,” Helga replied, not hiding her annoyance at Bryson's smart comment. “Pretty much anything can happen from here. It's my equivalent of the old entertainment centers people used to pay for in the public VirtNet houses.”

Michael felt a little sway of vertigo whenever he looked up or down, so he concentrated on Helga's face while she spoke. Still, those swirling shapes beneath his feet created a sense of movement that made his stomach turn.

“So how does it work?” Sarah asked. “And why are we here?” Her Aura heavily resembled her real self, and her face showed that the question of what to do about her parents still weighed heavily on her mind.

Helga gathered them around her and pointed at the glass on which they stood. “Everything in this place is directly connected to my thought process, which took a long time to fine-tune. Under better circumstances, we could have a lot of fun in here, and I'd love to show it off, but for now, I just want to show you some of the things you've missed.”

She looked down and focused on a large rectangle of bright light, pulling it closer to the surface. It stretched until it surrounded the group of four, and when Helga tapped her foot, a moving picture appeared within the rectangle, like a WallScreen. It was an aerial view of Atlanta, and suddenly the picture was moving—zooming in closer to the city. Michael's stomach lurched and Bryson yelped, throwing his arms out and staggering to get his balance.

Michael looked up at Helga and caught a sly smile on her face just as she spread her fingers, then threw her arms into the air. The motion brought the images up and out of the surface beneath their feet, and sent those images flying into a perfect three-dimensional rendition of the city of Atlanta around them. It was all Michael could do to keep his eyes open; the transition was so dramatic it was almost too hard to watch.

Helga, using her whole body like a remote, moved like a dancer to manipulate the imagery around them. A twirl of her fingers to spin the orientation of the city, the sweep of an arm to shift them down streets in an instant, leaning left or right to steer them. They traveled without any sensation of motion—a trick that took Michael a bit of time to get used to. Finally, though, his queasiness dissipated, and he could appreciate the incredible detail of what he was seeing. Beyond impressed, he couldn't help but wonder, had his nanny been a closet programmer the whole time he'd known her?

Helga swept the group around a huge skyscraper, and suddenly the building to which Agent Weber had sent them with the Lance came into view. Or the remains of that
building, anyway. What they saw was the aftermath of the destruction they were responsible for. Most of the structure had collapsed, and thick black smoke poured from its ruins. Crowds had gathered to witness the devastation, and police, firemen, and medical teams surrounded the perimeter.

It was all an exact re-creation of what had actually happened. Michael watched himself and his friends being dragged toward the police vehicles. His own face looked even more stunned and confused than he remembered feeling.

Michael's breath caught when he saw Gabby, Jackson Porter's ex-girlfriend. Ex-girlfriend? Current girlfriend? Neither sounded right. But he focused on her now, knowing what was about to happen, dreading having to see it again. The cop approached her, lifted a nightstick, swung. It hit her in the head, knocking her unconscious, and she went limp. Michael cried out in shock despite expecting the violence.

“What just happened?” Sarah shouted. She hadn't seen the attack originally, and they'd never had a chance to discuss it.

“Why would they have done that to her?” Michael asked in a tight voice. He still didn't understand, and he felt terrible that he'd almost forgotten about her in the last couple of days.

“Whoa,” Bryson murmured. “It's like that cop singled her out.”

“Why?” Michael whispered, not sure to whom exactly he directed the question.

The scene below suddenly shrank away and in front of
them appeared a holographic image of a woman, dressed smartly, with perfectly styled hair—an anchorperson for the NewsBops.

“Breaking news this morning,” the woman said in a lyrical British accent. “Representatives from VirtNet Security have finally gone public with their official findings from the terrorist incident one week ago. It happened at their secret mainframe facility hidden within a historical building in the city of Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States. Three teenagers, wanted for prior crimes, have been charged with the incident, having used a highly sophisticated device that set off chain reactions through the entire security system of the VNS. Charles Rooney, outside VNS headquarters, has more of the story.”

Her image dissolved into a million digital blocks and was swept away as if caught by a sudden gust of wind. A man replaced her, gray hair, mustached, his tie loosened and his face red and sweaty.

“The report came down just minutes ago directly from a VNS spokesperson,” the man said. “And all are in agreement that the news is quite shocking. VNS have hinted at significant damage from day one, but the devastation is evidently much more widespread than even the most dire predictions. Details on just how the device managed to inflict such damage are still being withheld, but it appears to have been comprehensive and quite viral in nature. As you'll see in the following clip from the VNS press conference, the VirtNet has become a dangerous place indeed.”

It was the man's turn to dissolve and blow away, and this
time Michael took two steps backward when he saw who was on the screen.

Agent Weber.

4

She stood behind a bank of microphones, only her shoulders and face in view. She wore a tailored suit jacket, and her hair was done up in an elegant twist, and everything about the way she held herself said that there was nothing to worry about. But those dark eyes of hers gave it away to Michael. She was scared. Terrified, even. Michael still didn't understand why she'd betrayed him, or why she'd come to visit him in the aftermath of it all, trying to smooth things over. Most importantly, he didn't understand why she'd want to secretly ruin the VNS and the VirtNet.

But there was one thing he
was
sure of: he despised her.

After what seemed like an unnaturally long pause, she began reading from a prepared statement.

“Thank you for coming today, and thank you for your patience while we've exhausted our every resource investigating this horrific incident. There is at least some comfort in knowing that the perpetrators of this act are confined in prison as we speak. As for the far-reaching effects of what they've done, I'm afraid the news is not good. Now we must move forward to rectify the situation.”

She lifted a hand to indicate something behind her, but whatever it was, Michael couldn't see it. She continued.

“A full report has been made public, but the basic conclusion is this: the VNS infrastructure has been temporarily rendered nonfunctioning. At this moment, there can be no oversight of VirtNet activities. Monitoring, security, reporting capability, and code-safety protocols have all been damaged, and effective immediately, we are no longer in service. We want to stress that it's our intention to return to fully operational status, but it will take some time. I'm relieved to say that it will be a matter of weeks, not months. We will work twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, until this enormous task is complete.”

She paused then, looking uncomfortably at her unseen audience for several long moments. Michael assumed she was being assaulted with questions they couldn't hear.

At some point they must have quieted, because she finally resumed speaking. Michael watched with rapt attention, wondering where all of this was leading them. Something told him his near future wasn't going to be a happy place.

“Now, I'm afraid I have another piece of very troubling news to report. Again, we have provided a more detailed written statement, but here is the basic situation: the entity known as Kaine, a Tangent of unknown origin, has gained an unprecedented level of sentience.”

Another dramatic pause. “More importantly, and urgently, and as a direct result of the terrorist actions against our facility, Kaine has eluded us and executed a process by which the codes of certain Tangents have somehow been, for lack of a better word, downloaded into the minds of
flesh-and-blood humans. By doing so, these people now serve as hosts for rogue-coded programs.