Somewhere on the edge of his consciousness, he heard the icy voice of Kaine rise up like a cracking glacier.
“Bring him to me.”
2
Michael refused to open his eyes until it was over, refused to witness the terrifying visions that accompanied the attacks.
He heard footsteps, boots on stone. Shouts. Echoes. The ring of metal.
Still, the agony raged in his head. Hands gripped his arms, pulled him to his feet. A new wave of pain washed through his head, down his neck, through his body. He couldn’t support himself with his own legs, felt himself being dragged across the floor.
But he kept his eyes squeezed shut, and the aching continued.
Down the long hallway, the glow of torches flickering over his eyelids, Michael knew he was whimpering, felt tears on his cheeks, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even care that he’d been discovered, was being taken away. There wasn’t enough room to feel anything but the pain.
And then it stopped—as instantly as before—and a sudden awareness of his current danger erupted inside him.
His eyes snapped open.
Two men—all chain mail and stringy hair—were the ones dragging Michael, and two more look-alikes marched in front of them. They approached a huge wooden door with iron bindings, torches on each side, licking the air with their flames.
One of the men stepped up and pulled on a handle, and the door swung open. The squeal of hinges pierced the air. Michael knew he couldn’t let them take him through to whatever waited on the other side. He had to act, somehow save himself. He didn’t have time to wait for the VNS.
He counted to three in his head, then used all his strength and twisted his body, spinning out of the men’s grip. He dropped to the ground and was scrambling away before they could react. Slipping past them, he jumped to his feet and ran. There had to be a door or a turnoff he hadn’t noticed before. The shouts and sounds of pursuit from the soldiers—creaking leather and clanging metal and pounding footsteps—rose up behind him.
Michael ran hard, searching in the distance for any way out. If nothing else, he decided, he’d go back to the balcony and jump down into the gallery—it wasn’t a long drop, and maybe he could break his fall by landing on Kaine’s audience.
He turned a corner, and a sudden explosion rocked the building—sent him sprawling across the cobbled ground, skidding on his chin and elbows. Sections of the stone walls and ceiling crashed down around him, dust filling the air. Michael coughed, tried to get up. Something caught his eye a few feet away, where a huge gap in the wall had appeared.
A woman stepped through, dressed in a navy-blue uniform—face covered with a dark, reflective helmet. In her arms she held a weapon that looked straight out of a sci-fi game—sleek and shiny with a trigger and a short barrel. She looked at Michael—at least he thought she did—then stepped over a piece of the wall and aimed at something behind him.
Michael turned to look just in time to see a brilliant blue flash, and an arc of light hit the soldiers who’d been chasing him. Their bodies erupted in a burst of flames and disintegrated.
Then the woman was kneeling next to him, speaking.
“Thanks for leading us in, kid. We’ll take it from here. Now go.”
3
Michael didn’t waste any time arguing. The woman was clearly from the VNS.
He climbed to his feet and ran for the hole in the wall. Explosions sounded in the distance, intermixed with low rumbles and screams and the charged electric hum of laser weapons firing. Dust choked the air.
Michael jumped over a pile of broken stone and through a cloud of debris, then landed in another hallway. On a whim he went left. The entire castle trembled and shook, tossing him against the wall, throwing him to the ground.
He got up and kept going. A corridor broke off to the right and he followed it down a long slope that wound in a circle. A group of soldiers came charging toward him from the opposite direction and he dove toward the ground, scrambling to hide behind a pile of debris. But the men charged right past, followed by a group of VNS agents with weapons raised. They fired, laser beams incinerating several soldiers. No one seemed to notice Michael.
Up again, coughing from the dust, running.
The hall opened into a large chamber, where a bonfire roared in the center; armor and swords and battle-axes lined the walls. Michael saw an exit on the far side of the room and went for it. Halfway across, the ground abruptly lurched beneath him, throwing him forward. The whole building seemed to blow apart at once as he slid onto his stomach, huge pieces of rock crashing to the ground all around—one burst into stony splinters right by his head. He rolled onto his back and saw another coming right at his face, spun out of the way just in time. And then the whole world was falling.
Michael scrambled forward on his hands and knees, trying to avoid the raining stones as he did. They exploded as they hit the ground, cutting his face, filling his lungs with dust, but he kept going. He reached the exit and he was back to his feet, sprinting down another long hallway. This structure was more stable, but dust fell from above as the explosions continued. Rumbles of thunder in the distance. He met up with another group of fleeing soldiers and pressed his back against the wall, watched them pass. They eyed him but didn’t stop.
Another fifty feet farther down he passed three VNS agents. One of them nodded as they ran by. Michael didn’t understand why no one was stopping him. It seemed like Kaine’s people would want him dead and the VNS would want to protect the kid who’d found a way in for them. But they were all ignoring him.
He kept going, following the descending pathway. Left, right, hallway after hallway, running. Explosions and shouts. Soldiers and agents. Dust and crumbling rocks. Shots of blinding lasers and screams. The smells of ozone and burning flesh. Somehow Michael slipped past all of it, no one stopping or attacking him. One more corridor, then a grand staircase leading down toward another cavernous hall. Taking three steps at a time, he leaped toward the bottom floor, reached it, and ran for a huge arch with two great wooden doors pulled open, revealing darkness beyond.
All around the huge chamber, soldiers fought with agents—Kaine seemed to have conjured up weapons for his minions to match those of the intruders. Wide beams and thin arrows of light shot through the air, blasting into walls and disintegrating bodies. Shrieks of pain and roars of battle. Michael ran through it all, picking his way along, ducking, rolling, jumping back to his feet, dodging.
He reached the massive arch of the exit and sprinted into the night.
4
The moon shone down and reflected off the helmets of countless VNS agents. They were lined up like chess pieces, ready to join the attack on the castle walls that loomed up behind Michael. The agents parted as he neared and formed a path to let him pass. There was something strange about the whole situation, something off. All these agents on the outside while battles raged inside. Kaine and his fellow AIs, powerful entities of the Sleep—completely surprised by their arrival.
It wasn’t right. Kaine seemed too advanced to let this happen. But Michael didn’t know what to do about it.
He kept running, leaving them all behind, across a clearing toward a forest with tall trees that rose up to the stars. He just wanted to find a place to hide. He’d collapse at the foot of a massive oak, gather his thoughts. Rest and think, sort it all out.
He stopped at the forest line, turned around to take a long look at the attack on the castle. Streaks of lasers pummeled the walls of the huge stone structure. Fires raged and bodies fell. Agents continued to storm inside, but there was still something wrong about it all.
Catching his breath, Michael turned away from the mayhem and crept into the forest until he found the big tree he’d been hoping for—a thick trunk that was five or six times wider than his body. He put it between himself and the castle, sinking to the ground. He closed his eyes.
Pure exhaustion took him, and he fell asleep.
5
There was no telling how much time passed. Twenty minutes, an hour, maybe two. He dreamed of things so bizarre his mind couldn’t wrap itself around them. He was in a haze of delirium from the madness he’d seen over the past few days.
He was awakened from sleep in an instant.
Someone grabbed him by the collar, yanked him up so powerfully that Michael’s body flew into the air. Then he was being dragged through the pine straw that lined the forest floor. Michael kicked out, trying to get his feet under him, twisting to free himself. But it was no good.
Past countless trees they went, his captor showing no intention of slowing. Michael went limp; it was no use struggling—he simply waited for it to end.
6
It felt as if he’d been dragged for a mile, at least. His body ached, but he closed his eyes and hoped it would be over soon.
Finally the person dropped him to the ground without warning. Michael curled into a ball, sucking in deep breaths and coughing them back out. There was the sound of a door creaking open, footsteps on a wooden floor, murmurs of conversation that Michael couldn’t make out. He twisted to look for the source of the voices and saw a small cottage of stone with a massively huge man standing on the porch, his back to him.
The man turned toward Michael, his face in shadow, and stomped over to where he lay. Before he could say a word, the man yanked him to his feet and pulled him to the cottage. They reached the door, and he pushed Michael through it so that he tripped and crashed to the floor. He’d barely landed before the man grabbed him by the back of his shirt and lifted him up again, then slammed him into a chair that faced a roaring fire in a redbrick hearth.
Michael was in a panic, unable to form any sort of rational thought. But his eyes immediately found another chair by the fire. An old man was sitting there, his legs crossed and his arms folded. A smile on his wrinkled face, a glare that didn’t match it.
It was Kaine.
“You made it, Michael,” the Tangent said. “I can’t believe you actually made it.”
CHAPTER 24
WORTHY
1
Michael didn’t respond. Couldn’t. His mind tried to spin all the threads of what he’d experienced along the Path into something that made sense, but it wasn’t coming together. His body hurt from being dragged through the forest, and the short nap had done nothing to relieve his exhaustion. All he could do was stare at the withered form of Kaine, wonder what he was talking about, and wait for him to explain it.
It took every ounce of his will, but Michael’s eyes stayed glued to the Tangent.
“You have no idea of the magnitude of what you’ve been involved in,” Kaine said. “Everything has been designed to lead those like you here. You were one of many chosen, but the first to make it. Every step of the way, you’ve been studied. Your intelligence, your cleverness, your bravery. Tested.”
Michael finally found his voice. “For what? So you can use me to break into more programs?”
“No.” Kaine laughed, a low chortle that seemed to loosen Michael’s spine. “I’ve tested far, far more than just your hacking skills. That will only take you so far in life. You won’t understand the magnitude of what I’ve set in motion until you experience it for yourself. It can’t possibly be explained with words alone.”