He ducked as a huge wave slammed him against the stone. When it receded, he quickly climbed even higher, finding plenty of places in the rocks for hand-and footholds. About halfway up, he found a flat outcropping and stopped. He got onto his stomach so he could lean out and look down at the water, madly curious about what lurked in this bizarre ocean.
Another cold wave crashed below, its crest splashing over him as he ducked his head. When it receded, he wiped his face and spit, slicked his hair back. And then he stared.
It wasn’t eels or fish slithering around in the water. They were spliced lines of code—actual, literal lines of numbers and letters—squirming and bouncing around like electrocuted worms.
He called out to his friends, the words ripping through his throat. “Get down here!”
By the time Bryson and Sarah clambered down to him, Michael had gotten to his feet. He crouched over, hands on knees, studying the water below. There was just enough room for the other two to squeeze in beside him, both of them taking a seat on the ground, legs dangling over the edge of the rock. A wave crashed, spraying them all. Sarah shrieked and then laughed.
“Whoa!” Bryson shouted, pointing at several different spots. “What was that? What are those …” Michael knew Bryson had seen the same thing he had. And Sarah, too, because her face had grown as immobile as the wet stone on which they sat.
“It’s code,” Michael said, even though he knew they’d figured it out. There was no denying what they saw. It was just too familiar, far too familiar—something they’d seen thousands of times, those combinations of letters and numbers. This purple ocean was full of swimming, wiggling, slithering lines of code. And they behaved as though they were all desperate to create a program. “Infected or destroyed somehow, which is probably why we can see it. But it’s code.”
“Okay,” Sarah said, holding her hands out as if steadying herself. “Let’s put our heads together. What exactly are we looking at here?”
“And how did we get here?” Bryson added. “What happened to that town we were in? Where are we? And while we’re at it, where can I get a burger?”
Michael felt like he was in a trance—he barely heard his friends. He stared at the frothy purple water below them, waves crashing into each other, spray filling the air. Everywhere he looked, those lines of code bounced off each other. There were so many of them, he thought the water itself might be made out of the things.
Bryson gently shoved him with an elbow. “Hey, wake up, maestro.”
Michael shook his head a bit—he had to recalibrate his vision after concentrating to focus on such small things for so long. “Sorry. It’s just so weird.”
“Yeah” was all Bryson said. But then a few seconds later he added, “Guess I’m not getting that burger any time soon.”
“Guess not.”
“The water’s just an illusion,” Sarah said, seemingly out of nowhere. Michael knew she’d been thinking fiercely since they’d arrived in the strange world, and she had a theory already. He wanted to hug her, wet clothes and all, because his mind was worthless mush at the moment.
“Care to expound on that?” Bryson asked.
Sarah looked over at them just as another wave crashed below, buckets of purple water splashing over them. Michael quickly wiped it out of his eyes, eager to hear what she had to say.
She rubbed her face with both hands, then squeezed as much wetness as she could from her hair. “Well,” she said, “I think Kaine is destroying parts of the Sleep. I think he’s marching in and just wiping out the code, ripping it to shreds. And I think it’s all draining into this place.” She waved her arms at the vast ocean around them. “All of this … it’s literally a dumping ground of code and that purple building-block stuff that holds it all together. If we hadn’t been protected by Agent Weber’s programs, I think we could’ve been in serious trouble.”
“Wait, what do you mean?” Bryson asked. “You think we would’ve been pulled apart and dumped in here as nothing but a bunch of code splices?”
Sarah nodded. “Something like that. I don’t know if Kaine … what’s the word … manifested this ocean like this on purpose, or if it’s just some kind of natural result of what he’s doing. But because of the way we were protected, I think we somehow formed—without meaning to—these islands of rock. Otherwise we might be swimming with the fishes, too. And brain-dead, for all we know, back in our Coffins. Or something else just as bad.”
“That lady we saw,” Michael said. “Back in the town. Dissolving into those blue spark thingies, just like what happened to Ronika. Maybe that would’ve been us, too.” He shivered at the thought.
“How in the name of Gunner Skale did you come up with all this?” Bryson asked Sarah. He seemed genuine, like he believed her. It made Michael realize that he did, too. And he wondered if on some subconscious level he’d created this escape—it made him think back to how he’d instinctively manipulated the code right before Kaine triggered the Mortality Doctrine and sent him into the mind of Jackson Porter.