“Nothing.” As if in an act of defiance, he took another bite of his now-cold hot dog. If his stomach could talk, he would’ve gotten an earful of complaints.
The room went silent again as they all allowed themselves to be lost in their thoughts. Michael jumped when someone rapped loudly on the door. It swung open immediately—of course—and Agent Weber walked into the room.
“Are we finished?” she asked a little too cheerfully to sound genuine.
Michael exaggerated a groan while he doubled over, holding his stomach. He was getting too comfortable around this woman. Sarah snickered.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Weber pronounced. She moved closer to the table, looming over Bryson’s shoulder. He didn’t look up, though he obviously wanted to.
“I’m glad you’ve had a chance to eat and rest,” their host continued. “Because we need to get going.”
That perked Michael up. “What? Go where?”
“I need to get the three of you back into the NerveBoxes.”
Michael didn’t know if he’d heard that right. He exchanged confused looks with his friends. Sarah finally voiced what they were all thinking.
“What do you mean? I thought you and the agents were going to run through the data before doing anything.”
“Why do you want us in the Coffins, anyway?” Bryson added. “I thought our job was done. Isn’t that why we just spilled everything to your agents?”
Michael stared at Agent Weber, waiting for answers. Once again they were on the edge of a huge cliff, about to be tossed over.
“There are plenty of things my agents will be doing,” Weber said. “Trailing you, supporting you, providing backup the second you need help. Most importantly, trying to locate Sarah’s parents. I’ll stay here and work with them—for one thing, we need to hunt down any person who’s been transformed by this Mortality Doctrine. Start figuring things out. In the meantime, I’m sending you three back into the VirtNet to get the job done. You’ve proven yourselves over and over—I wouldn’t dare trust the lead on this to anyone else. You know Kaine like no others, and it needs to be a quiet operation.”
Michael looked at his friends, who appeared as stunned as he was.
“And I’ll take that as a yes on the mission, then,” Weber said, folding her hands together in victory. “Now come. I have something to show you.”
The thing she wanted to show them didn’t even exist.
Not in the real world, anyway.
They were in Weber’s office, huddled around a large projection. It was a collection of images and words that were slowly swirling in a circle. Michael saw a picture of a dog—a golden retriever—with a little boy kneeling next to it, the biggest smile you ever saw splitting his face. So many thoughts went through Michael’s head seeing that picture, but mostly it made him feel like Agent Weber was a real person after all.
Without any kind of introduction, she tapped and swiped at the projected sphere and moved things around until it all suddenly flew away and was replaced by one lone image: a long, rectangular metallic box, wires and anodes lining its surface. As Michael and the others stared, it revolved in place.
“What’s that?” Bryson asked.
Weber reached forward into the projection, and it looked as if her fingers touched the two ends of the box. She grabbed them and stretched the whole thing out so that it was much bigger. Michael had no idea how large or small the device would be if it weren’t just an image.
“This is what you’re going to use to bring Kaine down,” Weber said, her voice filled with satisfaction. A little too much, Michael thought, even though it didn’t bother him. She obviously disliked the Tangent as much as he did. “This is a project I’ve been working on for a long time. A very long time. And it’s a grand achievement, if I do say so myself.” The woman stared at the box, pride on her face. Then she blinked hard and cleared her throat, as if she’d just realized there were other people in the room.
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just that … I’ve put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into developing this. You’ll have to forgive me if I’m a little excited that it’ll finally be put to use.”
Sarah asked the obvious question this time. “What is it?”
The agent sat back in her chair, leaving the image to continue rotating. “I call it the Lance. It seems to fit.”
Bryson and Sarah didn’t say anything, just stared. Michael knew it was his turn to ask, but it seemed stupid. So he stubbornly waited for the agent to tell them what the thing did. She took a few moments to admire her creation before speaking again.
“It’s a program, of course, the most complex collection of code I’ve ever been able to put together. I gave it this visual manifestation to make it as easy as possible to place and trigger.”