“Some of this stuff might be copycat work,” Sarah said. “But a lot of it has to be Kaine. I’m guessing he had a test batch—Michael and a few other Tangents—made some tweaks after he saw what happened, then a week or two later sent a whole bunch out at once. I just don’t get what he’s trying to accomplish.”
Michael didn’t, either. “Yeah, some of it seems so random. Nothing’s consistent. I can kind of understand the government stuff, the corporation stuff—he might be planning to have others to come in and take over. But why all the violence, too?” He shrugged, as if it didn’t really matter, when it potentially mattered more than anything in history.
“Chaos,” Bryson said in a spooky whisper.
Michael just looked at him, waiting for him to expound on his dramatic pronouncement.
“Chaos,” he repeated. “Maybe Kaine wants nothing more right now except good old-fashioned chaos.”
“Why?” Sarah asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe he wants all the humans to start a big war and kill themselves.”
“That doesn’t make an ounce of sense,” Michael countered. “What’s the point of the Mortality Doctrine if he wants to wipe out humans? Doesn’t he want to be a human?” It was Bryson’s turn to shrug. “I guess that’s the question of the year. He said all that stuff about immortality—did he mean as a human or as a Tangent? Which is why we need to figure out this dude’s ultimate plan.”
Sarah stood up and stretched, pressing her hands into her back as she leaned away from the table. Michael heard something crack.
“We all need to chill and rest today,” she said. “Get some sleep tonight. Because tomorrow we have a very big day.”
“Oh yeah?” Bryson asked. “What exactly are we doing?”
Sarah stood up and turned to go, casually answering over her shoulder as she walked away.
“We’re going to see the VNS.”
Every major city—and most smaller ones—had a branch of the VNS located within its limits, though often it was unmarked. But by midafternoon the next day, Michael and his friends had located the local VNS office and were standing in front of it. It was a nondescript, run-down building in the seedier part of town, where it wasn’t unusual to see drug dealers and bandits roaming the streets. Which was why Michael asked the cabbie to wait for them while they went in.
“Are we sure this is it?” Bryson asked.
“Positive,” Sarah replied. “Anyway, what can it hurt to knock on the door?”
Bryson tapped his chin with a finger. “It could hurt if some hopped-up drug monkey was in the middle of a deal and decided to shoot whoever knocked on his door. That would hurt.”
“Yeah, that would definitely hurt,” Michael agreed. The argument was pointless, though. They all knew very well that they were going inside that building, no matter what.
Sarah headed for a grimy glass door under the awning that ran along the front wall. The metal handle hung askew from only one attached bolt. “Then I’ll do the knocking, you wimps.”
Michael and Bryson raced to be by her side when she did so.
There was an old doormat—not something you usually saw at an office building—lying crookedly in front of the entrance, one corner chewed off by a dog or rat, the frayed edge matching the exterior of the building perfectly. The mat itself said WIPE YOUR FEET, which Michael thought was perfect for an entity like the VNS, getting straight to business.
Sarah reached out and rapped her knuckles on the door. It rattled, and the loose handle knocked against the glass, but it didn’t open. Michael studied the doorframe, all dusty metal surrounded by warped wood with chipped brown paint. He started to wonder about the place—it seemed a little over-the-top for a front. He remembered visiting—and by “visiting” he meant “being kidnapped and forcefully taken to”—Agent Weber’s office, and how it had been underneath the football stadium. The VNS liked lurking in the shadows, it seemed.
Sarah finally knocked again when no one answered, this time harder, making everything shake just a little more vigorously.
“Come on, come on,” Bryson whispered.
Something clicked on the other side of the door and it swung open, one of those old-school bells attached to the top ringing with the movement. Somehow, to Michael that seemed even more out of place than the building itself, for an establishment that supposedly protected the world’s most important source of commerce and entertainment. The man who’d answered the door was even more absurd.
Short, chubby, with gray-flecked scruff on his face and wispy hair combed over his flaky scalp, the man wore a stained tank top—yellowed, with even yellower spots—revealing hairy arms that looked as if they hadn’t seen the sun in twenty years. Brown suspenders kept his brown pants from falling down, and a stubby cigar—not even lit—hung from his mouth like he’d forgotten about it hours ago.
“Who are ya, what do ya want?” he asked in a surprisingly high-pitched voice.
Sarah had taken charge and she kept it. “We’re here to speak with an agent about something important—something very important. And it’s related to the VirtNet.”