The Rule of Thoughts (32 page)

The lights that kept the strange world of code illuminated were flaring, then winking out of existence. One by one they were popping like burst lightbulbs. The darkness deepened, or maybe those weird shadows were getting bigger. Either way, it didn’t matter. Something was wrong.

“I don’t think we can wait for Weber,” Michael said. “We need to get into another program.” He already knew exactly what Sarah’s response would be, and that she’d be right.

She didn’t disappoint. “There’s no way. There’s no link from here—this place is nothing but a dumping ground. It’d take us just as long to figure out an escape as it did for us to work backwards to find Kaine.”

“Even if we could get into another program,” Bryson added, “where would we go? Chances are we’d still be about to get chomped on by Kaine’s kill programs, and end up washed right back down in this cesspool. And maybe we wouldn’t quite live through it a second time.”

Michael grumbled. “You guys are downright pleasant to be around.”

Lights flashed all around them, increasing in rapidity, as if struck by a virus that multiplied exponentially. And the shadows grew. The darkness rolled in like a fog, blacking out the world, which had once been full of purple light.

“How much time?” Michael asked anxiously.

“When did I become our official stopwatch?” Sarah responded, but even so, she checked her NetScreen. “She
should be pulling us out in twenty minutes. Keep your diapers dry.”

Michael held back a smile that would have given her too much satisfaction. When had she become so uppity?

“That’s going to be twenty long minutes,” Bryson muttered under his breath.

As if some cosmic holder of the code heard his remark, a wind picked up. The purple fragments began to swirl into wispy clouds of a darkening blue. The gusts, stronger and stronger, tugged at Michael’s clothes, his hair. The lights continued their dance, flaring, then dying. More than two-thirds of them were gone now, the darkness almost complete.

And then, in a thunderclap of an instant, everything picked up.

The wind blew with the force of a hurricane, ripping at Michael and his friends. Clouds and streaks of black mist swirled around them, and a discordant symphony of sound filled the air, threatening to deafen Michael once and for all.

And then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw it. He jerked his head around to get a better look. A hole of darkness, deep and pure, the blackest thing he’d ever seen, yawning wider and wider until it was dozens of feet in diameter.

And somewhere within it, Michael thought he saw yellow eyes.

A boom sounded behind him, a concussion of noise that shook the substance he floated in, pushed him several feet
forward in the purple code. He turned around to see
another
hole opening, maybe a hundred feet away, but this one wasn’t black. This one glowed with an ethereal orange light that cut through the darkness. Figures appeared within it—silhouettes of people of all shapes and sizes. They were moving, heading straight for Michael and his friends.

He spun again to see the black hole—the eyes. Shadow upon shadow. There were figures there, too; he could sense them more than see them. Coming. Coming fast. Dark shapes suddenly leaped out of the gaping hole.

Stunned, Michael didn’t have time to feel fear. He reached out and grabbed his friends, pulled them closer.

“What in the world!” he shouted.

“What do we do?” Sarah shouted. “We still have ten minutes before Weber Lifts us out!”

Bryson wrenched free of Michael’s grip and held up his fists. “We have to fight. That’s not long to hold them off!” Michael didn’t know what to do but get in a defensive position himself. He held his arms up, feeling totally useless. Figures emerged from both sides: people from the orange light, creatures of darkness from the black hole. What would happen, he wondered, if they did get killed? This place seemed like a wild card. And what if Kaine was behind it all? What if the life could be sucked out of them?

He wanted to run, but there was nowhere to go. The wind roared, noise filled the air, and from two opposing directions, enemies charged in.

His life was ridiculous.

There was but an instant of time to decipher those who charged at Michael and his friends. From the blackness came dark-skinned creatures, loping and slithering and pouncing, all shapes and sizes, no beast the same as another, and none Michael had seen before. They looked like KillSims morphed into twisted, unnatural shapes with yellow eyes.

From the blinding orange light came more recognizable—if strange—characters. All of them appeared to be from famous VirtNet games: warriors with axes; fully suited astronauts with laser guns; giants with wooden clubs; a woman on a deathcat, brandishing a staff lit with fire; a mechaknight on his robotic horse; a sunpyre and his brood of white lions; the fighting priest of Grendelin; and countless others. They charged in formation, rallying behind someone who was obviously their leader.

It was a woman. Tall and powerful, decked out in all kinds of futuristic, gleaming armor, she had four arms, and four weapons. In one hand, she gripped a thick cylinder with spinning blades on the end. In another, a shaft of pure blue light, pulsing as if ready to fire. In yet another, a menacing black box with a gaping hole at one end. And the fourth arm cradled a long barrel that looked exactly like a cannon from ancient wars.

As she ran, bricks appeared beneath her, one after the other, forming a path under her feet. The rest of her army charged atop their own surfaces—flat beams of light and rocky gravel and patches of stone or grass. Their battle cries filled the air and their eyes shone with anger.

Michael took it all in, in what could only have been a few moments. Time seemed to slow to reveal one of the strangest sights he’d ever seen. He thought that it really
did
slow, as if the programming itself, this cesspool of countless destroyed virtual lands, wanted to witness the spectacle. Michael’s friends were still beside him, seeing what he saw, their movements sluggish, as if they were flies trapped in molasses.

And then, with a burst of wind and a screeching noise, everything ripped back to full speed.

The warriors rushed in. From one side: yellow eyes like raging fires, set in snarling and snapping, slithering and pouncing, blacker-than-black forms. From the other: heroes from decades of gaming, charging along on their magic paths. The fierce woman leading them was only a few dozen feet away from Michael and his friends, and she yelled at the top of her lungs, a sound like crushing rocks and booming thunder.

“Out of the way, pips! It’s not your day to die!”

Who were these people? Where had they
come
from?

Instinct took over Michael before his mind could catch up. He grabbed both of his friends, pulled them close. And then he reached out and scrambled the code, manipulating it with his mind, understanding on some deep level what he’d once done in the Hallowed Ravine. Everything around him was a fabrication, a visual manifestation of sequenced letters and numbers and symbols, including Bryson, Sarah, and himself. He attacked it all with nothing but thought.

He and his friends suddenly catapulted to the sky, three
human missiles rocketing upward, just as the armies of light and darkness crashed into each other below like two out-of-control freight trains.

Michael stopped their flight several hundred feet above the clashing battle, suspended in the ethereal world of goop. His mind was a cyclone, spinning with a million thoughts, backed by a fierce rush of adrenaline through his body.

Sarah looked at him almost as if she were afraid. Of
him
.

“I just did what she told me to,” he said.

“Look!” Bryson shouted, pointing downward.

A couple of stragglers had separated from the battle—one a long streak of blackness with yellow eyes, the other a bulky mass with at least a dozen arms and legs. Both were coming at Michael and his friends, flying fast.

“Take us away, Superman,” Bryson said.

“Weber should be Lifting us out any second,” Sarah added.

Michael’s mind felt as if it was shutting down, as if the quick explosion of effort to code them away from the armies had sapped him of all mental strength. He halfheartedly tried to repeat what he’d done, but he knew it was hopeless as soon as he began.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “That was a one-act play, folks.”

“What in God’s name happened down there?” Sarah asked in a rush, as if they didn’t have two hideous dark beasts
coming right at them, rising like heat. “Who are those people who came to help? And how did Kaine find us?”

“Maybe we can talk about it later?” Bryson yelled. “Looks like we’re going to fight after all.” He balled his fists—as if they’d do any good.

And then the creatures were on them.

The long, snakelike form went at Michael, its battering ram of a head slamming into his chest. He barely had time to see the flash of yellow eyes before he was hurtled head over feet through the darkening purple goop. Swinging his arms wildly, he righted himself just in time to see those eyes again, directly in front of him. A gaping mouth opened, black teeth glistening, and it snapped at him.

Michael jerked away, throwing his hands out to grab the horror by the neck. He squeezed its smooth, muscular skin, holding the thing back as it opened and shut its jaws, snapping again and again in its attempt to bite Michael’s head off. He dodged left, then right, wrenching the neck of the beast back and forth to keep it away.

The thing wrapped itself around the length of Michael’s torso, then his legs. Soon he was wrapped head to toe, sheathed in blackness, and the creature tightened its grip, squeezing the breath out of him. Michael gasped for air, searching for a way to get some help, but there was nothing. With every bit of strength he had left, he fought, trying to rip the foul thing’s head right off.

The flurry of movement sent the pair spinning like a corkscrew. Dizziness overwhelmed Michael and he lost his grip, the creature’s neck slipping from his grasp. In an instant,
the creature opened its jaws and struck, lightning fast. It clamped down, and suddenly the world was black. Michael’s entire head was inside the beast’s mouth. Its jaws tightened and its teeth pierced Michael’s skin. He couldn’t even hear his own screams—it was all a muffled fog of terror and pain.

He flailed, half inside the mouth of the creature, as their death spin continued. Michael fought the overwhelming dizziness and struggled to grab hold of the enormous fangs puncturing his neck. His muscles tensed and his stomach quivered with nausea. The creature’s long, muscular body continued to squeeze the life out of him, tighter and tighter, making it impossible to breathe. The dizziness turned into light-headedness; stars and flashes swam in his vision. His pulse pounded in his head, and he remembered the KillSims. How they suck the digital life out of their prey.

How they’d killed Ronika and almost killed him.

This stupid thing wrapped around his body was some sort of cousin to the KillSims; Michael knew it. He wasn’t just dizzy from the spinning and the pain. It was an all-out attack on the essence of his life.