Jax fires again, but Zero lunges for her at the same time. Her second shot strikes his leg, sending up another shower of sparks. His leg twists oddly, throwing off the grace of his movements.
I reach Hideo. He’s struggling to his feet, but his motions are slower as he fights against whatever drug is coursing through his system. I pull his arm over my shoulders and force him upright. We make a run for the door.
Zero turns to stop us, but Jax’s hits have broken parts of the suit, making him limp. Still, he’s terrifyingly fast. As we reach the door, Zero’s metal fingers close around a fistful of my shirt.
Jax is on him in an instant. Under the red lights, her eyes have the savage glint of a killer. She strikes his wrist as hard as she can.
She can’t break the metal, but it is enough to loosen his grip and for me to slide through. “This way,” she gasps out over the alarm as she shoves the door open and darts out into the hall.
Hideo and I rush after her. Behind us, Zero’s suit twists in our direction.
The halls are washed in bloody light. Around the bend comes the pounding of footsteps growing louder and louder.
Jax glances at me. “Everyone in this building is under his control,” she whispers. “Get out of the institute. Don’t go through the front—there are guards swarming around there. Do you remember the way to the side entrance?”
I retrace the path I’d taken through the building on my first night here, then nod. Beside me, Hideo is regaining some of his strength, but he still leans heavily against me. We’re not going to be able to move very quickly.
“Good,” she continues. “Get out, then find a way into Zero’s mind. When—”
She cuts off. Her stare darts over my shoulder, and I turn to see Zero’s dark silhouette behind us.
He flattens one metal hand against the wall. Overhead, all the speakers installed in the ceilings buzz with static, followed by his deep voice.
“You’re wasting your time.”
Every scarlet light in the building goes out, plunging us into total darkness.
I can’t see anything, not even my hands in front of me or Hideo at my side. It’s as if we’d been swallowed by a void. At the same time, a round of clicks come from the building’s doors, the unmistakable sound of locks being activated.
I can be everywhere, Zero had said. And now, his mind is operating the institute’s security system, trapping us in.
From the speakers, Zero’s voice envelops us in this impenetrable darkness. “Why are you doing this?” he asks. His question is for Jax.
Jax doesn’t answer, but I feel her fingers close around my arm and pull me forward. “The panic room,” she tells me. “It’s the only place in this building not hooked up to the digital system. Get to the end of this hall and take the first set of stairs. Keep going up until you can’t anymore. When you reach the last floor, you’ll see two doors at the end of that hall. To their left is a third, embedded flat against the wall. You’ll have to open it manually. Lock yourselves in.”
The panic room. Tremaine had tried in vain to reach that room before he’d been caught.
I can hear in her voice that Jax isn’t coming with us. “But you—”
“Just do it. I’m going to hold him off.” There’s no sound of worry in her words, no sense of fear. She sounds exactly as she did the very first day I met her—cold and confident.
I want to scream at her to come with us, but instead, I feel Hideo’s weight leaning heavier against me as she steps away from us. Over her shoulder, she calls at us, “Why are you still here?”
I utter a curse under my breath and do as she says, turning on my grid system.
Instantly, the halls around me glow with a system of lines, showing me a layout of the hall, as if a dim light were still shining in here—
But it’s not quite right. Usually, when I use a virtual grid, it can overlay anything, guiding a user through fog or rain or snow. But in here, Zero must have tampered with what the NeuroLink is able to read about the institute, because my grid vanishes into misty patches, its data incomplete. The building probably has all sorts of virtual barriers in place, transforming the halls into illusions.
At least I can also see an outline of Hideo beside me. Jax has her back turned to us, her figure blanketed in green lines, and she’s facing Zero, a completely dark silhouette looming in the middle of the hall behind us.
Move. Hideo and I start staggering away. Somewhere in the halls around us pound the footsteps of approaching guards, caught under Zero’s spell. If they reach us, we’re not going to have Jax’s help fending them off.
Behind us comes Jax’s voice as she confronts Zero. “Remember when you couldn’t leave me behind?” she calls out.
“Get out of my way, Jax.” I hear the metallic thud of his suit’s footsteps and dare to glance backward.
Jax hoists both her guns, spins them in unison, and crouches down against one side of the hall, ready for Zero to attack. Her pose reminds me of when she had appeared beside me on feet so light she seemed ready to fly.
“It’s my turn now,” she replies. “And one way or another, this time we’re going to leave this place together.”
Hideo’s weight lifts from my shoulders as he summons the strength to move on his own. His hand finds mine, and in the dark, I take it, squeezing it as tightly as I can. We force ourselves to keep going.
Ahead, the hall is starting to shroud with virtual mist, making it difficult for me to see the grids of the hallway. I slow, sliding my hand against the wall. Through the fog dart glimpses of shadows, figures shuffling left and right, others looking like they’re running toward us. Sweat beads on my forehead.
“They’re not real,” Hideo whispers, his eyes fixed on them in the dark. “The grid’s not outlining over them in green.”
Sure enough, one of the shadows dissipates into smoke the instant it reaches us. Not real. I shut my eyes and keep creeping forward. The steps we’ve taken scroll through my mind in a list of numbers. Are we ever going to reach the stairwell? Maybe we’re not even going in the right direction—
Then my hand hits the groove of a door. I freeze, running my fingers along the metal bar spanning the door’s width.
I shove myself against it. We burst into the stairwell, where the grid in my view abruptly reappears in crystal clear lines, highlighting the steps that wind up. In the hall we’d just left behind come the pops of gunshots.
Jax.
I force myself to move as Hideo seizes the banister and leaps up the stairs. His movements still seem exhausted, but at least he’s able to keep pace with me. We go up, up, up until we’ve sprinted three flights and the stairs end. I throw open the stairwell door and stumble into a new hall.
The first thing I see is a pair of figures hurtling toward us. My eyes go straight to the green grids overlaid on their figures. They’re real.
Guards.
The thought hits me just in time. I drop to a crouch and roll to the other side of the hall, swinging my leg out and catching one of them right at the ankles. He loses his balance and falls forward with a grunt.
The second guard twists around and points a weapon in my direction. I duck, bracing myself—but an instant later he goes flying as Hideo tackles him, ramming him against the wall. The guard throws a fist at Hideo’s face, but Hideo is too quick—he dodges, twists the man’s arm around his back, and shoves hard.
A sickening crunch, followed by a shriek of pain. The guard drops his weapon with a clatter. Hideo swipes it up, tucking it at his belt, and rushes to me as I scramble to my feet. Already, the sound of more guards behind us is approaching fast.
The panic room should be at the end of this hall.
We sprint down the gridded corridor. Ahead, it fades again into thick virtual mist, but there’s no time to stop and think about it now. We hurtle into the blind spot.
“Almost there,” I gasp out. But when I look to my side, Hideo’s green figure has also vanished from sight, swallowed in the fog.