CHAPTER 14
SPOOKED
1
He landed on a wooden floor with a hard thump, and a jolt of pain shot up his spine. Faded flower-patterned wallpaper, frayed and peeling at its edges, covered the walls of a wide hallway that stretched out in front of and behind him. Above, a lone lightbulb hung from the ceiling, providing a dull glow. Bryson was lying next to him, stretched out with his head down on his arms, and Sarah had already gotten to her knees, though she looked a little dazed.
“We sure like to cut it close, don’t we?” Bryson muttered.
Sarah reached down and poked Michael. “How’d you figure it out? Ten o’clock?”
Michael was feeling pretty good about himself, but when he moved, his whole body ached. Groaning, he sat up anyway. “That stupid riddle was just describing how the number looked. Think about it.”
Bryson and Sarah exchanged a glance, and Michael could see it click for both of them at the same time.
“A tower,” Sarah said. “Then a dark and hollow moon.”
“A one and a zero.” Bryson was shaking his head as if he was the dumbest person on the planet.
“Sorry I’m so brilliant,” Michael said. “ ’Tis a burden I must bear.”
Sarah started to smile, but it dissolved before anything so bright actually formed. “Do you think it’s true?”
“What?” Michael and Bryson asked together.
“Oh, come on. You know.”
“The one and done thing?” Bryson guessed.
Sarah nodded. “Yeah. If we die, that lady said we can’t get back onto the Path.”
Michael had kind of forgotten about that in the madness. “We’ll just have to be careful not to die, I guess.”
“And it could be worse,” Bryson added. “I half expected her to say they were going to break into our code—mess with our Cores. At least we know we’ll go back home safe and sound.”
That didn’t make Michael feel much better. “And fail our … mission, or whatever this is called. Tick off the VNS. Have our lives taken away from us, get thrown in jail, have families killed, who knows? I’d rather be dead.”
“We just can’t die,” Sarah said softly. “It’s not a game anymore. We can’t die and we can’t let each other die. Deal?”
“Of course,” Michael said.
Bryson gave a thumbs-up. “Let’s especially not let me die. If you guys are cool with that.”
The lingering pain in Michael’s back had drained away, and he finally focused on their surroundings a little more. The hallway in which they sat was stretched out into a gloomy darkness, as if it went on forever both ways.
“Where’d they send us now?” Bryson asked. “And how do we know it’s still on the Path?”
Sarah had closed her eyes for a moment to scan the code. “It seems to have the same structure and feel in programming as the stone disk. Complex and almost impossible to read. Fun stuff.”
Michael got to his feet and leaned back against one of the walls. He waited for a few moments to see if anything would change. “It feels like we’re in an old-timey mansion or something.”
Bryson and Sarah had also stood, and Bryson pointed in both directions at once.
“Which way do we go first?” he asked. “We might as well start exploring.”
There was a noise.
It was a low, pain-filled sound that came from down the hallway to Michael’s right. A chill shot through his body and he pushed off from the wall, standing straight and listening intently. It sounded like a man moaning, and the noise didn’t stop. It just continued on. Michael was about to whisper to his friends when a piercing scream erupted from the same direction, a long wail of agony. Then the hallway went silent. Bryson and Sarah both stared at Michael, eyes wide.
“I think we should go that way,” he said, motioning to his left.
2
They walked away from the awful sounds, though Michael looked over his shoulder every few seconds, sure he would see some horrific specter waiting at their backs, but so far there’d been nothing, not even a repeat of that moan.
The passage stretched on. They walked for what seemed an impossibly long time, passing under several dim lightbulbs like the first one they’d seen. And gradually Michael noticed a pattern—just as the gloom almost became complete darkness, they’d reach the outskirts of a lighted area and come across a new bulb. Michael could almost swear they were going in circles, even though the hallway was obviously straight as an arrow.
And they walked for a good twenty minutes without change.
“This is one doozy of a house,” Michael finally said. The place reminded him of a game he’d played once—a tower full of stairwells that made up a complex maze. At least then he’d felt like he was getting somewhere as they explored. “I can’t wait to see what the master bedroom’s like,” he added weakly.
Every now and then Sarah stopped to examine the wallpaper. “If it even is a house. I’ve been trying to figure out if we’re in some kind of loop, but so far I haven’t seen any exact repeating patterns—none of the same stains or rips. It’s just one big honking hallway.”
“It’s even weirder that there aren’t any doors,” Bryson added.
“Maybe this is some kind of tunnel. It could connect two buildings,” Sarah said. “It’d make sense—there aren’t any windows, either.”
Suddenly a harsh whisper cut through the air, like a quick breath of wind.
Michael stopped and held up a hand. “What was that?” That chill crept up his back again.
Bryson and Sarah looked at him, but he could barely see their faces in the gloom.
“Michael,” breathed a disembodied voice.
Michael spun and pressed his back against the wall. He looked left and right, but the voice had seemed to come from everywhere at once, as if there were speakers in the walls, ceiling, and floor.
“Michael, you’re doing well.”
A breeze blew through the hallway—it stirred Michael’s hair and rippled his friends’ clothing. It was as if some large beast had exhaled its last breath.
“Okay,” Bryson said. “Consider me freaked. I want out of this place, and I want it now. Why is someone talking to you?”
“Don’t be so spooked,” Michael muttered, trying to look unaffected. “How many times have we been in a haunted house? Even the racing games have haunted houses. It’s nothing.” He hoped. “It’s not that weird that they know my name.”
“Oh, you’re not scared at all, huh?” Bryson shot back.
Michael gave him a smart-aleck grin and resumed walking, but as soon as he turned away from his friend his smile vanished. Acting brave wasn’t going to make it the truth. Yes, they’d been in plenty of places like this. But not a house where you had one life and one life only. There was a queasy rumble in Michael’s belly and it had nothing to do with hunger.
He jumped when Sarah grabbed his shoulder.
“Look, Bryson,” she said with a laugh. “He’s not scared one bit.”
Bryson was snickering, too. “Yeah, let’s just hope he doesn’t see himself in a mirror. He might pee his pants.”
“All right, you win,” Michael growled. “I want my mommy. Now help me find a door.”
3
Two hours later, they still hadn’t seen a single door.
The ghost wind had flown by three more times, that disturbing whispered phrase following from everywhere at once. It sent chills across Michael’s skin on each pass, but he tried his best not to show it. Why was someone complimenting him? Whatever it was, though, it did nothing to harm them. And as they walked down the never-ending hallway, Michael’s concern shifted from the haunting visitor to a creeping panic that they might never find their way out.
It was possibly the most brilliant type of firewall. Not something to kill or maim, but a place to trap you, make you think you were getting somewhere when really you weren’t. Then throw in a creepy ghost that said your name to slowly drive you nuts.
“What are we doing?” Bryson asked. Michael almost jumped again—no one had spoken in a while and he was on edge.
Sarah stopped and sank to the floor. “He’s right. This is so pointless. We must look like idiot mice to whoever’s watching.” She waved at both directions of the hallway, then heaved a sigh. “Let’s take a break and probe the code. Maybe we’re missing something.”
She closed her eyes and leaned her head against the wall, and Michael and Bryson joined her. Following her lead, they shut their eyes and focused on the code surrounding them.
Michael pulled in a few deep breaths as he searched for anything that stood out. Real hunger was taking over now, making it hard to concentrate, and he knew they’d all need food soon or their strength would plummet. Their real bodies back in their Coffins might be fine physically, but not here. To match the simulation, the VirtNet would sap the strength out of their Auras until they only had enough energy to crawl.
He couldn’t believe what he was seeing in the programming around him. If the code back in Devils of Destruction had been a storm of letters and numbers, now it was a tornado, spinning and swirling so quickly that he could hardly make anything out. It hurt his brain to even try.
“Michael.”
Michael cut his connection and looked up, expecting the ghost to finally reveal itself. This whisper had seemed closer somehow, more solid. But nothing was there, and the now-familiar breeze blew by, though slower than it had before. Their invisible friend repeated his favorite word a few more times before disappearing again.
Michael glanced over at Bryson to gauge his reaction, and the expression on his friend’s face gave him pause. He was leaning forward, squinting at a spot on the wall across from him. Michael tried to find what he was studying so intently, but the wallpaper didn’t seem any different from what they’d been walking past for hours and hours.
“Hey,” Michael said to him. “What are you doing? Did you find a weak spot?”
Bryson’s face relaxed, and he met Michael’s gaze. “Yeah, I think so. Well, not really a weak spot, just maybe a clue in the code on what we’re supposed to do. But I’m telling you—I’ve never seen anything like this before. The programming in this place is nuts.”
“No doubt,” Sarah agreed, just as Michael was nodding. “Whoever built this place is about a thousand times more advanced than I could ever dream of becoming. Makes me wonder more and more about this Kaine guy. He must be some kind of prodigy genius.”
Bryson shrugged. “Like I said, it’s nuts. None of us could do this. That’s for sure.”
“But I thought you found something,” Michael said, his hopes falling.
“I did. It might be some crazy-advanced coding, but we’re not so stupid ourselves. Check this out.”
He stood up and walked to the facing wall. He leaned his head up against it as if he was listening for something and glided his hands up and down the surface.
“Hear that?” he asked, looking back at Michael.
Michael’s only thought was that maybe Bryson had won—he’d been the first of them to crack from walking down an endless hall.
“Sounds like a guy rubbing his hands against a wall.”
Bryson grinned. “No, my friend. That’s a magic sound. It’s hollow.”
“Magic?” Sarah asked.
Bryson stood straight again. “Have some faith, my bestest of friends.” Then he reared back with his right foot and kicked the wall hard. A pop was followed by a splintering crack as the toe of his shoe disappeared through the wallpaper. He yanked it back out, along with a section of dry-wall, and there was a shower of white dust.
He glanced at Michael over his shoulder. “No door? No problem. We’re supposed to make our own.”
4
Bryson guided them to see what he’d spotted in the complicated cyclone of code, and sure enough, there was a clue there. It was just clear enough that they agreed the only way to slip into the next portion of the Path was to go through the wall.
Michael and Sarah joined Bryson, and they all went at it. Starting where Bryson had so graciously begun, they tore at the wall, pulling out chunks of chalky material and ripping off the loose bits of decorative paper. The skin on Michael’s fingers started to rub raw, but an excitement built inside him, and they worked faster and faster as the hole got bigger.
A breeze blew past Michael’s back, along with the same dreadful whisper, but he paid it no mind. He was getting out of that place.
Soon they had an opening large enough to go through if they crouched down.
“Who’s first?” Michael asked. The other side was so dark it looked as if a black drape had been hung there.
Sarah nudged Bryson. “It was your discovery, Bigfoot.”
“Fine by me,” he muttered. He bent over, gripped the torn sides of the makeshift entry with both hands, then stepped into the darkness. On the other side he stood up and Michael could just make out his pants as he turned in a circle.
“See anything?” Michael called out.
“Not a thing,” he responded, his voice slightly muffled. “Not a single thing. But it’s open and airy. Come on in—we’ll hold hands and sing songs while we explore.”
Sarah hunched down and exited the hallway, and then Michael followed. Bryson was right. The air was cool, and there wasn’t anything there.
“It’s creepy in here,” Michael said. “Anybody have a flashlight?”
Bryson clicked his EarCuff and his NetScreen appeared in front of him. He adjusted the settings, and soon they had a nice bright square to light their way.
“Brilliant,” Michael said. He and Sarah did the same.
“I know,” Bryson responded.
The only problem was that even though they now had a pool of light around them, it didn’t reveal anything. Michael could only see darkness—nothing else.
“It’s like we’re on the moon,” Sarah whispered.
Michael squeezed her elbow. “Except that we can breathe, there are no stars, and there’s still gravity.”
“Yeah, other than that, it’s like we’re on the moon.” She stepped farther into the darkness and looked in both directions. “Which way?”
“Forward,” Bryson answered, pointing straight ahead. “The code sure seemed to suggest it.”
“Plus,” Michael said, “I don’t want anything more to do with that stupid hallway.” For a moment, he wondered whether it was the right decision and why nothing was trying to stop them. But it seemed to be their only choice.
“Let’s do it, then,” Sarah said.
So they walked into the darkness.
5
It was weird and quiet and spooky. They moved across the black floor, their footsteps, their breath, and the rustling of their clothes the only sounds. Michael looked back, and the hole into the hallway was now just a tiny spot of light in the distance. The programming for this place was so incredibly solid, he thought, because the perspective felt real and stayed consistent. In lesser locations you could feel the weaknesses in the coding—the surroundings might subtly shift, the colors change, or you might get skipping in the light source.
“What’s the purpose of all this?” Bryson whispered. They were all whispering now, as if something in the darkness might hear them.
“It’s the Path,” Michael answered. It was starting to make more sense to him. “Kaine knows he can’t keep everyone out of his secret place. And he knows the good ones will have hacking skills. So he has us playing into his hands. It’s a lot easier to funnel people into a series of firewall programs that’ll scare them, make them wanna go back. Or kill them and accomplish the same thing. Man, I hate this dude.”
“He’s not a dude,” Sarah said. “He’s a madman gamer.”
Michael changed his line. “Man, I hate this madman gamer.”
They continued on, but nothing changed and nothing new appeared.
Then Michael heard the ghost again and his heart sank. The group stopped.
“Michael.” That whimpering whisper. “Michael.”
A breeze picked up, but this time it wasn’t something that passed by. This breeze didn’t stop. It came in bursts and changed directions, pulling on their clothes and hair. The sound of moaning filled the air, even louder than what they’d heard back in the hallway. Michael imagined a man curled up in a ball on a sweat-soaked bed as he groaned in agony.
“Michael Michael Michael,” came the words again, and then again, from everywhere at once as the moaning continued. Michael didn’t know what to think. The voice was definitely louder.
“Remind me to avoid haunted houses from now on,” Bryson said. “And why are they only picking on you?”
A new sound pierced the air—a woman’s scream, unnaturally long and shrill.
“I can’t take this anymore!” Sarah yelled, her hands over her ears. “Let’s get out of here!”
Michael thought that sounded like a very good idea. He grabbed her by the hand and started running in the direction they’d been going. Bryson was right beside him—their NetScreens bounced, and the light bobbed ahead of them. The awful noise only grew, and the breeze stiffened into a strong wind.
“Michael Michael Michael …”
Michael picked up the pace, dragging Sarah along with him. And as they ran, the ground below them suddenly turned soft—with every step Michael’s feet sank several inches until he stumbled and fell onto the shifting surface.
It was black sand. The wind picked up, whipping the grit against his skin. The moans had turned into howls now, and the words blended together to sound like some indecipherable language.
“None of this makes any sense!” Bryson yelled. Michael could barely hear him over the noise. He was on his knees, looking around in disbelief.
Sarah was just getting to her feet. “We need to keep—”
Her voice was cut off when the ground below them collapsed completely and they plummeted in a cloud of sand.
6
For a long moment, Michael’s heart seemed to float in his chest and he prepared himself for death. He was back at the Golden Gate Bridge with Tanya, falling to the sea. But relief came when he not so much landed but felt a hard, cool surface against his back. And he wasn’t falling anymore; he was sliding. His descent began to slow as the surface beneath him turned into stairs, and he tumbled, struggling to stop himself.
Grunting with each jarring impact, he braced his hands and feet and finally came to a halt, his chin resting against the hard edge of a step. He closed his eyes and took a breath. And then someone landed on top of him.
Michael screamed, letting out all the frustration he’d felt over the past several hours, and with one huge burst of adrenaline, he threw whoever it was off of him before he could stop himself. Just as he let go he saw that it was Sarah, and he watched, horrified, as she somersaulted before coming to a stop several steps below him.
“Sorry,” he muttered, embarrassed. Nothing like a good friend to toss you down a flight of stairs. “Lost it there for a sec.”
She looked up at him, a grimace twisting her features. She opened her mouth to speak and then seemed to think better of it. Michael noticed Bryson then, lying awkwardly on his back, his NetScreen hovering a few feet above him.
Michael curled his legs up to his chest, wrapping his arms around them. He could only imagine the bruises he’d have when he Lifted. The Coffin was expert at physical punishment.
“That hurt,” Bryson said. He was staring at some far-off point.
Michael looked around and saw nothing but the same endless darkness. “Yeah, it did,” he agreed. “And I’m pretty sure it should be impossible for Kaine to create such a complex place. How can he create a program like this that all three of us can barely penetrate and read? Much less manipulate?”
“I don’t know,” Bryson responded. “Maybe he had a lot of help. Or maybe there’s something about him that we just haven’t figured out yet. But it’s pretty crazy. I think you’re right that the only weaknesses we’re seeing are the ones he wants us to—so that we’ll be funneled along the Path according to his plan. I’m jealous of the rat.”
Sarah started whimpering, and when Michael looked he could see that her shoulders were shaking, her head buried in her arms. Whoa, he thought. Things had gotten really bad—he couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Sarah cry. He moved to console her, and every inch of him complained. He gingerly made his way down each step until he was by her side, then reached out and rubbed her back.
She looked up and met his eyes. Tears streaked her face, but even in the dim light Michael could tell that she wasn’t angry. At least he was in the clear.
“You okay?” he asked, fully aware it was a stupid question but not sure what else to say.
“Hmm, let me think about it.… No, I’m not okay.” She made a poor attempt at a smile, then shifted to sit up next to him, wincing as she did. “What just happened?”
Bryson was the one with the answer. “Well, we were in a long hallway, then a black room, then walking on sand. Then we fell down a slide that turned into stairs. You’ve never done that before?”
“Can’t say that I have,” she answered weakly. “You guys are right about the code. And Kaine. It’s all really weird.”
Michael studied the staircase below them, trying to see where it ended. But just like the hallway, it disappeared into darkness.
He hated what he was about to say, but it was their only option. “We have to keep going. We gotta get out of this place.”
“Why?” Bryson asked bitterly. “The next one’s just going to be worse.”
Michael shrugged. “Right. And we’ll get through that one and then the next one. Go and go and go until we make it to the Hallowed Ravine and figure this all out.”
“Or die and go back home,” Sarah said softly.
“Or die and go back home,” Michael repeated. He was mad that all the time they’d spent in the Sleep didn’t seem nearly enough experience to get them through this massive firewall. Angry and hurting, he stood up and started walking down the stairs.
7
Nothing changed for two hours. Nothing except the sand that had fallen with them, which finally vanished from the steps the farther they pushed on. The endlessness continued. Steps and more steps. Down, down, down they walked in cool darkness, the glow of NetScreens lighting the way. Any attempt to find a shortcut or a way out in the programming just led them in circles—nothing made sense.
Finally, they made the decision that they needed to sleep.
“We’re each roughly about the same size as the steps,” Bryson pointed out when they stopped.
No one said anything as they lay down. Michael had never before felt so tired. Both his mind and body needed rest.
Yet, strangely, sleep didn’t come for Michael. Maybe it was the bruises, or maybe he was just on edge—too consumed with waiting for whatever was going to come next—but he couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, his mind wandered, and for some reason he thought of one thing and one thing only.
His parents.
He didn’t know where it had come from. He missed them, sure. And he was worried about them finding out about the whole Kaine affair.
But then something occurred to him. It was so jarring, so hard to believe, so disconcerting, that he sat up straight and had to struggle for air. Luckily, Bryson and Sarah were asleep. He couldn’t have handled questions from them—he wasn’t sure he had the answers.
Michael closed his eyes and concentrated, rubbing his temples. He had to just be shaken up, not thinking right. He took a deep breath and calmed himself, went through a very methodical line of thinking. He thought about each and every day of his recent life in reverse order, running through a mental list of what had happened.
One week. Two weeks. Three weeks. A month. Two months. Day by day, going back in time, trying to go through the checklist of his everyday existence. His memory was stronger than he would’ve guessed—there were lots of things, lots of events, that he could bring back. But there was one glaring, monumental detail that seemed impossible to recall. How could he have gotten so wrapped up in his life that it had gone unnoticed until now? So wrapped up in school and the VirtNet?
There was no mistaking the thing that bothered him so much.
Michael literally couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his parents.