But then his back hit the Portal and the sky turned black.
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.