CHAPTER 7
BLACK AND BLUE
1
They all looked at the woman, waiting for her explanation. Michael wanted to get up and run, but he knew they might never get another chance to learn anything if he did.
“He’s been here before,” she said. “I assure you my firewalls are solid. That man wouldn’t dare cross me, considering I saved … one of his most cherished … Tangents from Decay.”
Her odd pauses almost made Michael forget they were in danger. He knew that all Tangents eventually went through Decay—an artificial-intelligence program that complex and that lifelike, with such realistic intelligence, couldn’t last forever before its very existence began to contradict its instincts. The research showed that it always started with essential elements in the Tangent’s life disappearing for no reason—its artificial memory lost its ability to “fill in the blanks.” Then weird things started happening to its “physical” body. The manifestations supposedly varied from Tangent to Tangent. But once the signs got too bad, became obvious to players, the programmers would shut them down. Kill them.
Ronika’s voice pulled him back to the present.
“… wouldn’t be around this long if I hadn’t cleaned out its coding and basically rebirthed Kaine’s prized Tangent. That’s not easy to do without erasing its memory, not to mention that the whole thing is illegal. Kaine owes me. He supposedly spent years developing that specific program. I didn’t know then what I do now about him, but I will say, I probably still would have done it. It’s always good to have friends—and enemies—in your debt.”
“He doesn’t seem the type to care if he betrays an old friend,” Michael pointed out. “Also, he’s been trapping people inside the Sleep. He’s ruthless, and I don’t think we should stick around to see what he does.”
Ronika eyed Michael carefully. “Then you are most welcome to leave.”
“She won’t help us anyway if they’re friends,” Bryson said.
“Friends?” Ronika repeated, saying the word as if the concept was foreign. “He paid me a ridiculous amount of money. I’m no friend of any gamer. Only an associate. All I’m saying is that what I did for him involved a rare talent of mine, and he wouldn’t dare risk jeopardizing its availability in case he needs it in the future.”
Michael didn’t feel much safer, but they had to start prying. Sarah seemed to have the same idea.
“Look,” she said. “We don’t have that kind of money. Is there a way we can earn information from you?”
A small wry grin appeared on Ronika’s face. “There are a lot of things more valuable than money. The fact that you’re sitting here tells me a lot about you. All I want in return for the answers to your questions is one simple favor.”
That seemed way too good to be true. Michael had been gaming for long enough to know there were a million terrible things she could ask them to do.
“What favor?” he asked hesitantly.
The smile hadn’t left her face. “Oh, I couldn’t say now. I will tell you when I need it.”
Michael had no clue how the woman could say such innocent things and make them sound so menacing. And yet at the same time he found himself liking her.
“Deal,” Bryson said, not bothering to consult with his friends first. But Michael had no heart to complain; they didn’t really have much choice but to accept.
“And you two?” Ronika said, looking at Sarah, then Michael.
They both nodded.
“But we have to hurry,” Bryson said. “My Tracer is thumping and I wanna get out of here.”
Michael didn’t need to weigh the options.
“Fine,” Ronika said, seemingly satisfied with their arrangement. “Ask your questions.”
2
Michael had gotten his friends into this mess, so he conducted the interview, despite his instinct to run. They couldn’t come this far and get nothing. He decided to just be quick and to the point. And even though they’d come specifically to ask about the Path, he was going to find out as much as he could.
“Kaine,” he began. “Have you heard of something linked to him—something secret, hidden deep inside the VirtNet?”
“Yes.”
Michael held back his excitement. “Any details?”
Ronika remained straight-faced. “Almost nothing. But I think there’s definitely something major happening.” Her calm was maddening to Michael—he couldn’t tell if she knew more than she was letting on.
“Cutter said something about a path.”
She nodded. “Yes. The Path. With a capital P. How that man finds out about these things, I have no idea.”
“What is the Path?” Sarah asked.
Ronika didn’t hesitate, which gave Michael confidence she was telling the truth. “It’s the only way to get to the Hallowed Ravine, a place hidden deep within the Sleep—just like Kaine and the Path itself. Again, that’s a capital H and a capital R. The word is, that’s where Kaine’s doing his business. It’s nearly impossible to get to—and they say it has several layers of infallible security measures surrounding it. As you seem to know, however, there’s always a way through. Always.”
“The Path,” Michael repeated.
Ronika nodded. “The Path.”
Michael noticed that Bryson’s knee was bouncing up and down.
“Closer?” Michael asked him.
“He’s practically right outside this room, man.” Bryson looked at the ceiling, his eyes lit with worry. “We need to go.”
“You’ll be fine,” Ronika said. But for the first time since they’d arrived, Michael sensed the slightest doubt in her voice. “I can only tell you where to start. I’ve never been on the Path, and I have no interest in doing so.”
Michael leaned forward, so excited to finally have some hard information. “Okay, where do we go?”
“Have you ever played Devils of Destruction?”
Michael shook his head. Devils of Destruction was a lame war game that only old people played. “Never wanted to.”
“Because that game sucks,” Bryson threw in. “No wonder it starts there—no one would ever notice it. You’d have to be desperate and bored to play that game.”
Ronika’s expression seemed to have become a little more tense. She was nervous, and they could hear it in her voice. “There’s a trench somewhere in the hot zone of the battlefield that has a weak spot in the code. If you can hack your way through that weak spot, there’s a Portal to the Path. That’s all I know.” She stood up. “Now our business is done, and please don’t forget your debt. I will collect at some point.”
“What’s wrong?” Michael asked her, standing up himself.
The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe I was a little overconfident about our safety.”
Even as she said it, Michael heard one of the worst sounds he’d heard in his life.
3
It was unearthly, something between a high-pitched screech and a howl. A scream that was impossibly grating, discordant and harsh. He clamped his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut. All he wanted was for it to stop.
For what had to be a full minute, the sound tore through his body. Then it ended.
Michael opened his eyes and tentatively lowered his hands. Sarah and Bryson were both pale, as if they might throw up. Even Ronika was no longer the picture of calmness she’d been earlier.
“What was that?” Bryson breathed.
“It’s not Kaine your Tracer picked up,” Ronika answered. “He sent … something else.”
A low rumbling noise started, which somehow seemed to come from everywhere at once, shaking the room around them, then passing into a long moment of silence. All four of them were frozen in place. Michael was embarrassed to admit it, but he was waiting for Ronika to tell them what to do.
The screech exploded through the air again, piercing and raw. Michael fell back on the couch, clamping his hands back over his ears. The noise cut off sooner than before, and he scrambled to his feet, no longer willing to rely on their host.
“Come on,” he said, pointing at the door Ronika had come through earlier. “Let’s get out of—”
Another eruption of the awful scream sliced off his words, but Bryson and Sarah got the point. They started moving toward the exit, but a sound like a breaking tree branch sent Michael stumbling. He turned to look just as a shadowy hand twice the size of a human’s crashed through the wall, sending huge pieces of wood flying through the air. Michael ducked to avoid the debris before he got a good look. The huge fingers lit up with a flash of yellowish light from within.
Michael hit the rug on his knees, arms curled over his head to protect himself. He heard the click-click-click of what had to be nails or claws scratching the wood on the other side of the wall, a few huffs of monstrous breath.
Ronika jumped into action. “Quick, follow me!”
Michael didn’t waste a second. Ronika started running toward the door, but something thumped against it from the other side, then thumped again. The door trembled in its frame. Ronika changed direction and suddenly fell to the floor in the corner of the room. Michael reached down to help her before he realized she was swinging a hidden panel away from the wall. She crawled into a long compartment, and he got down on his hands and knees and followed her into the darkness. Bryson and Sarah squeezed through the small opening behind him, pushing him against Ronika.
“Close it up,” she whispered. “Hurry.”
Bryson did as she said, pulling the hidden door back into position.
There was just enough room inside for them to shift until they sat, backs against the wall, four in a line. Michael’s head brushed the ceiling. Before any of them had a chance to speak, Ronika closed her eyes tightly and a screen appeared in the air, hovering above her lap before floating over to the wall in front of them. The screen showed the room from which they’d just escaped.
As Michael watched, something exploded out of the hole the strange hand had torn through the wall. A dark, wolfish shape with blurred features leaped past splintered wood and landed on the tile floor, yellow eyes gleaming in its gray head. Three more shadowy creatures jumped through the wall after it, and they each ran to a different corner of the room. The edges of the room were dim, and Michael watched with growing horror as the creatures seemed to vanish into the shadows, melding with the darkness until there was nothing but those two pinpoints of bright yellow light in each corner.
Since they didn’t have a Portal to Lift themselves back to the Wake, Michael had no idea what to do. What were those things out there? He’d never seen anything like them in the Sleep before. And why were they just waiting?
Ronika turned to face Michael and his friends, and they waited for her to speak. She’d said that Kaine had sent “something else” to the Black and Blue, so Michael hoped she knew what it was.
“Well?” Bryson finally said in a low whisper.
Ronika gave him a sharp look; then she answered the obvious but unspoken question.
“Those are KillSims. And we’re in some serious trouble.”
4
Michael had never heard of a KillSim before Tanya had used the term what now seemed like eons ago—but he knew enough that those two words together sent goose bumps across his arms. “What are they?”
“Kaine’s creation—stories have been surfacing recently.” Ronika looked at the screen. There was still no movement in the room, only dark shadows and yellow eyes. “They’re a version of antimatter for the VirtNet. Antiprogramming would be a more apt description. If they can bite you and latch on, they’ll literally suck the virtual life into some digital abyss that’s God knows where. You’d Lift back into your Coffin in the Wake and be ruined, have to start all over. It could even damage your brain in the real world, which might be what happened to some of those people you mentioned earlier.”
More chills for Michael. He flinched when a low growl came from the other side of the secret door, but there was no movement on the screen. The noise wasn’t like that of any kind of animal in the natural world. There was something staticky and digital about it. Michael braced himself, wondering if that awful screech would come next, but it didn’t happen.
“Why aren’t they attacking us?” Sarah whispered. “They have to know we came in here.”
“I’m not complaining,” Bryson murmured.
Ronika spoke so quietly that Michael had to lean in to hear her. “My guess is Kaine wanted to trap us. And now we’re cornered better than he even imagined. Maybe he’s coming himself, trying to break through my firewalls.”
“How do we fight those things off?” Bryson asked. “Do you know anything about them?”
The last word had barely come out of his mouth when the ear-piercing howl tore through the air again.
As soon as it stopped, Ronika answered. “I have no idea,” she said, her voice empty of any sense of hope.
The only thing left was for Michael to take charge. “Listen, Ronika, they’re obviously here for us. But we can’t sit here all day—we’re just waiting for Kaine to stroll right in, and he’ll find us eventually. You stay while we make a break for the door.”
“No,” she said. “I’m not leaving you until we’re all safe.”
Her protectiveness surprised him. “All right, but you know as well as we do, it can only get worse. Especially if Kaine shows up.”
“And how do you expect to fight those things off when they pounce on us?” Bryson asked.
“Don’t let them bite you,” Sarah answered.
Ronika pointed to the screen. “We just have to make it up those stairs outside the door. Somehow Kaine’s blocked me from contacting my security detail. But once we’re to the top and into the main section of the club, my bouncers will swarm and be too much even for the KillSims.”
“Okay. To the door, then,” Michael said. “And up the stairs. No problem.” But the truth was, terror raced through his body, making it hard for him to breathe.
“We need to stick together,” Sarah added. “Stay in a pack.”
Michael got onto his hands and knees, ready to crawl through the secret door. “Bryson, you’re closest, so you’ll have to go first.”
“Figures,” he replied.
Michael knew Bryson was kidding, but he was right. It shouldn’t be him at the front. Michael pushed his way past Sarah and then Bryson to get to the exit. “No—I got us into this mess,” he said. “I’ll go first.”
“But now if you die I’ll feel bad,” Bryson whined.
Michael liked that his friend was at least trying to keep his sense of humor. “You’ll just have to live with it.”
5
As soon as everyone was lined up behind Michael, he slowly pushed the small wood panel open. Something like candle glow filled the dimly lit room, making everything ethereal and warm. It felt peaceful, but Michael knew the truth: violence hid in every shadow.
He studied the wall directly ahead of them. He couldn’t make out any distinct shapes; aside from those yellow eyes, it was just shadow on top of shadow. Michael tried to focus to get a count of how many creatures there were, but an odd thing happened—the yellow eyes vanished when Michael looked directly at them. He turned his head and they came back into view in his peripheral vision. So far nothing had moved. Maybe they were waiting for Kaine to give further orders.
Michael kept his gaze averted and carefully inched forward, moving out of the hidden compartment, then edging along the wall, heading for the door. The rug under the furniture gave way to tile, which hurt Michael’s knees as he crawled. The digital growl started up again, and he saw a flash of yellow in the gaping hole the creatures had torn in the wall—only about twenty feet away. Michael stopped.
Bryson bumped into him. “Keep going!” he whispered, so loudly he might as well have said it in a normal voice.
Michael stole a glance at his friend. “They might attack if we move too fast.”
“They might kill us if we don’t!”
Silence settled on the room for a few seconds; then the growling began again. The rumbling static rolled through Michael’s body. It was impossible to tell where it was coming from. He sucked in a huge breath and started forward.
When the door was only ten feet away, Michael pulled himself up into a crouch, ready to make a run for it. Movement caught his eye to the right. He turned to look, and it was as if the darkness had melted and splashed onto the floor. Then it coalesced into the same wolf shape he’d seen earlier, yellow eyes blazing like pinpricks of fire. Michael looked directly into the glowing gaze and the eyes seemed to disappear; then a shattering scream erupted from the creature. Michael’s hands had barely flown up to cover his ears when the sound stopped, replaced by the strange growling, like an old-school computer buzzing its last moments of life.
He now had no doubt that what they’d guessed was correct. These things just wanted to guard them, make sure they didn’t leave. Kaine was coming.
And Michael didn’t plan on being there when he showed up.
6
Michael averted his gaze, and the creature’s eyes came back into focus; then he slowly stood from his crouch, sliding up against the wall behind him. On instinct, he put his hands out as if to pacify the beast, but he knew it meant nothing to the antiprogram.
“I’ll open the door,” he whispered to the others. “You guys run for it.” The words came out before he realized that the plan meant he’d be the last one to leave the room. And most likely the first to get attacked.
“Let’s do it,” Bryson replied.
Michael nodded. “Now.”
He ran to the door, reaching for the knob just as he noticed the KillSim’s head jerk back. Something told him Kaine was watching through those yellow eyes and was shocked to see that Michael and his friends weren’t waiting around, cowering in fear. Michael’s fingers curled around the cool metal of the handle and he twisted it, swung the door open just in time for Bryson to flash through the opening. Terrible piercing screams tore through the air, and a blur of movement caught the corner of Michael’s vision as Sarah ran through, then Ronika.
He was right on her heels. He reached back and grabbed the handle, started to pull the door closed behind him. It was five or six inches from slamming shut when something ripped the whole thing from his grasp, tearing the door from its hinges.
He bolted forward just as Bryson got halfway up the stairs.
“Go! Go! Go!” Michael yelled.
Then something was on his right shoulder. Heavy and sharp. It slammed him to the floor, knocked the air out of his lungs. Gasping for breath, he twisted onto his back, kicked and punched at the huge thing pinning him to the ground. Two yellow lights stared down at him, but everything else was darkness and shadow, seeming to alternate in form between solid and vapor. Michael heard footsteps on the stairs, heard Sarah call his name. Other dark shadows leaped over the one attacking Michael, barking their awful noises. Human screams followed almost immediately. It was an ambush.
The KillSim started battering Michael with four massive fists, as if it had changed its shape from canine to human. For a brief moment Michael pictured his real body back in the Coffin, thrashing as the different elements of AirPuffs and LiquiGels and NerveWire made him feel every last pounding of the creature. It was his own fault for choosing the most realistic Coffin on the market.
Adrenaline burned inside him. He gathered all of his strength and kicked out with both legs, connecting with the KillSim’s middle. It flew off him and slammed into the wall of the short hallway between the door and the stairs.
Even as the creature crouched for another attack, Michael was scrambling backward. He hit the opposite wall, then climbed to his feet. The thing jumped, its yellow eyes flashing as it flew toward him. Michael dove to his left to avoid it, leaping back to the ground toward the stairs, and heard its body crash behind him. On his feet again quickly, he turned to see that the thing seemed dazed, slowly trying to right itself on wobbly legs of shadow.
Madness surrounded Michael. The other KillSims had attacked his friends and Ronika, all of whom were fighting to get free. He watched Sarah get loose from her monster, kicking it in the face so that it tumbled down the stairs. Bryson was almost to the door at the top, punching and clawing. Ronika was in the worst shape, just a few feet away from Michael. The KillSim on top of her had pinned each of her limbs to the ground. Its mouth was yawning open above her, the jaws stretching impossibly wide as if it planned to swallow her entire head with one bite.
Michael moved forward to help, but just as he did, a creature pounced on him from behind. It threw him to the right, cutting a gash in his left shoulder. His head slammed into the wall and he collapsed, stunned. He’d barely recovered when the KillSim landed on him and knocked him onto his back, pinning his arms to the ground. Michael still couldn’t focus on its true form, but a dark wolf-shaped head leaned in closer to his face and the creature snarled its mechanical growl.
Michael couldn’t move. His muscles seemed to have turned to jelly, and his mind spun as he tried to focus on the code, wondering if he could bring in some sort of weapon or skill from another game. But it was impossible to think. The KillSim opened its jaws wider and wider, and Michael saw that it had no teeth, no tongue—nothing but pure darkness hovered above him. It was as if a black hole had winked into existence, ready to suck Michael into the cosmos. Behind him he heard Ronika screaming, heard Bryson and Sarah grunting as they fought, heard the thumps of bodies falling against the ground and walls. Michael tried to free his arms, to kick out again, but nothing did what he told it to. The mouth of the creature yawned wider, coming closer and closer, filling his entire vision.
There was a sharp crash behind them, like glass shattering. Another one followed immediately, the sound clear even over Ronika’s screams. All Michael could see now was blackness.
Then Bryson shouted in a strangled voice, “Its eyes! Squeeze its freaking eyes!”
The pain in Michael’s head turned to something else. More like an achy buzz, as if bees swarmed between his ears. He couldn’t tell anymore if his eyes were open, couldn’t feel the creature’s paws pinning his arms and legs. The hard floor seemed to no longer press against his body from below. He was floating. Floating in a dark void where the only thing that existed in the great abyss of the KillSim was that deep ache. The buzz increased in volume until he heard almost nothing else. Ronika screamed one last time, as if from a great distance. Sarah was yelling something, but it reached Michael’s ears as gibberish.
His thoughts wandered. For some reason he pictured the advertisement outside his apartment for Lifeblood Deep, pictured his parents, who’d been gone on their stupid trip for ages, it seemed. He remembered being a little kid—baseball, ice cream, playgrounds.
Michael realized he was completely disoriented. Enveloped by darkness, he squeezed his eyes shut and focused, throwing all his mental effort into pooling every bit of his consciousness into one place. Bryson had told him what to do—something about its eyes. Sarah was nearby, maybe trying to help.
They’d figured something out.
He had to fight back.
This thing was going to kill him.
Michael gathered his energy and screamed, then jerked his arms away from the shadow paws that held them down. He pulled free and groped blindly above him, finding the head of the KillSim, searching with his fingers until he found the place where those yellow lights had glowed. Michael could feel that the creature was trying to pin him again, but he rolled to evade its grip. His hands found two warm orbs, almost hot. He instantly took hold, clamping his fingers into tight fists around what had to be the KillSim’s eyes.
With every last drop of strength left in his body, Michael squeezed as hard as he could. The eyes felt hard and smooth as glass but gave way like gel. As his sight cleared, he watched the eyes begin to ooze between his fingers. The creature let out an anguished shriek and thrashed against Michael, struggling to get loose.
Then its eyes burst.
7
It was as if two eggs had imploded in Michael’s hands. The instant it happened, he felt a charge of electricity scorch his palms and run through his arms and chest. He screamed at the pain coursing through his body and pushed until the KillSim fell off him and thumped on the floor. Light swarmed back into Michael’s vision, and nausea hit him like a punch to the gut.
The room seemed a different color, duller than before, and his head ached like nothing he’d ever experienced. His thoughts were still jumbled, his mind in a haze. The KillSim lay in a heap at his feet, its outline distinguishable once again. Everything about it seemed to have shrunk; lying there on the ground, it looked like nothing more than an eyeless black dog.
“If we’d just known that from the start,” Bryson said.
Michael snapped his gaze away from the creature and toward his friend. The movement sent a spike of pain through his entire skull.
Bryson and Sarah knelt next to Ronika, another dead KillSim only inches away. Two other creatures had been killed as well—one at the bottom of the stairs and one halfway up. Both of Michael’s friends were still breathing heavily, and a quick glance showed him that their hands were burned raw. He looked down at his own and saw the same thing. Only at the sight of them did the pain hit him.
Ronika. Why wasn’t she moving?
Michael took a step forward and was just about to ask them what had happened when a blue light flashed from Ronika’s forehead and stopped him short. A crackle filled the air, and as Michael stood there frozen he watched her body completely transform.
Blue lights sparkled along her brow, increasing in brightness and frequency until he could no longer see her skin. Then the lights started to grow and spread, moving into her hair and down across her eyebrows, into her eyes and along her nose, her cheeks. Bluish-green butterflies—sparks that looked like wings—replaced her features as the twinkling lights expanded. The wings flapped and sent out sound like a zap of electrical current.
As if she’d been infected with some horrific skin disease, Ronika’s entire head submitted to the transformation, and soon there was nothing but a round ball of fluttering blue and green planes of glowing light where her skin had once been. Gradually the ball moved down her neck and spread across her shoulders, along her chest, leaving the strange butterflies in its wake. Michael stood there, helpless, no idea what to do.
Sarah finally spoke, her voice sounding odd through the crackling electricity emanating from Ronika’s disappearing body. “We must’ve been too late. The thing sucked her digital life out. Just like she warned us.”
“That would’ve been you in another minute,” Bryson added, giving Michael a look that said they’d probably never get over just how close it had been.
Michael returned his attention to Ronika without answering. Half her body had been devoured, and the butterflies that covered her head started fluttering away, floating several inches into the air before they suddenly lit up in a bright flash and then disappeared entirely, leaving nothing behind. Soon her entire face was gone forever.
As mesmerizing as the display was, and as badly as Michael’s head hurt, it finally hit him that they couldn’t waste another second. He looked to his friends, and without a word they got to their feet and ran up the stairs two at a time.
They got out of the club before anyone could ask questions, found a Portal, and Lifted themselves back to the Wake. By the time Michael stepped out of the Coffin, his head felt like a nest of scorpions had hatched inside it.