“Guys, look!” Bryson shouted, pointing down the street in the direction they’d been heading.
Michael had to take a step to his right to see around Bryson, and the movement almost made him fall down again. But he caught his balance and surveyed the scene, not sure what his friend had meant to point out. There was a lot to see.
The woman who’d been digitally attacked was now nothing more than a roughly human-sized form of flashing blue planes of light, and some of them had started to drift away, caught in a wind that Michael didn’t feel. He had no clue what had happened to her—there was still no sign of KillSims.
Beyond the woman, farther down the street, weird streaks of odd colors were falling from the sky like lightning. It looked as if the skyline were made of paper and claws were tearing it apart. Green and blue and yellow light flashed so brightly that spots danced in Michael’s eyes even when he turned his head. He timidly glanced back and saw that the tears in the skyline were growing, lengthening to touch the ground, spreading toward where he stood.
He understood what was going on. At least on some level. Someone, somewhere, was literally erasing the place from existence, and Michael wasn’t so sure what would happen to them if they waited around to witness its destruction.
“Get back to the Portal!” he yelled. “Now!” Visions of the three of them back in the VNS Coffins, brain-dead, haunted his mind. “Go!”
He didn’t need to tell them. They were already running, stumbling back down the street in the direction they’d come. A distinct sound filled the air, overtaking everything else—a high-pitched, grating squeal. Michael looked over his shoulder and saw a huge gap in the road arrowing toward them, the pavement faded into a jagged line of fuzzy digital static. The world itself was coming apart, and his ears felt like they might start bleeding from the horrible noise of it all.
The land jostled beneath their feet, gashes in the programming fell like lightning all around them, and the noise got impossibly louder. Michael saw the silver column of the Portal up ahead, and even it seemed less substantial than normal.
Something warm and wet landed on his arm. He looked down to see one of those blue fragments of light fluttering across his skin. He swatted it away, watched it tumble to the ground and disappear into an abyss of crumbling code.
“Faster!” he yelled, barely hearing himself over the din of wrenching squeals.
Sarah was right next to him, sprinting hard, fists clenched and arms pumping. Bryson ran a few steps ahead, pounding the loose pavement. The expanding chaos was about to overtake them.
Michael focused on the Portal. Only forty or fifty feet away. It was fading, a ghostly pillar from a dream. And then a chasm opened under it, a massive hole in the ground that faded into a crumble of pixels and a swirl of gibberish code. He watched in shock as the Portal fell into the abyss. Just like that. Gone.
Michael stopped. He sucked in huge, gulping breaths as he turned in a circle, watched the world disintegrate around him. Sarah was there, and he pulled her into his arms. Bryson joined them, and they clasped each other in a group hug. Noise and destruction everywhere.
Sarah had leaned close to Michael’s ear, and he was sure she said something, though he didn’t hear it. Just as he felt her warm breath against his skin, the ground below them collapsed and they fell into the chasm of infected code.
Light.
Sound.
Wind.
Falling.
Michael lost hold of his friends and was swept away.
Michael didn’t know how or when it ended.
There was no crash landing. His Aura didn’t find itself broken from falling onto some hard-packed land miles below the old dusty town. The noise was gone. There was no sound at all. Only a numb silence. A silence so complete it hurt his ears. Yet he lay on his back in a dark, still space.
He gently rolled over onto his side, then sat up and assessed how he felt. He expected pain, or at least a few aches, but he was fine, if a little dizzy. The darkness around him was so heavy it almost felt like it was pressing down on him. Reaching his arms out, he got to his feet and shuffled around, hoping to find a wall, a chair, something. But there was nothing except the solid ground under his feet and that blaring silence.
“Sarah?” he called. His voice sounded strange to his own ears, as if he had a cold and his head was stuffed up. “Bryson? You guys out there?”
“Michael.”
He jumped back a few steps, swung around in a circle, desperate to see. That voice. It was unsettling … mechanical and haunting, like something you’d imagine hearing from another dimension.
“Michael.”
He sucked in a quick breath, turned in a circle again. “Sarah? Bryson?” he whispered. Then he yelled. “Guys! Is that you?”
“Michael.” The voice was so odd and otherworldly he couldn’t tell if it was male or female.
“Sarah!” he shouted. “Bryson!”