I keep my hand running along the wall, feeling for doors. Hideo, I whisper, sending it through our Link. He doesn’t answer. Had everything connecting us shut down when we stepped into this zone?
A presence near me makes me reach a hand out. “Hideo?” I murmur.
It isn’t him. Instead, a steel silhouette emerges from the fog. Zero.
Jax. Had he gotten past her? He must have. Had he—the thought jolts through me, too terrible to linger on.
He seizes my arm and hurls me. I go flying across the hall and slam hard into the floor on my back. The impact knocks all the wind out of me. My eyes go wide. I gasp like a fish on land. Above me, Zero comes striding out of the mist, his masked face turned down in my direction.
I scramble backward on my hands and feet, my teeth clenched, edging next to the wall again and hunting desperately for the doors at the end of the corridor.
We’re not going to make it.
Zero raises an arm and aims down toward me. I try in vain to roll away.
As I move, another figure materializes beside me. Hideo. He’s in a crouch against the floor, and his green-gridded eyes are turned up to Zero, narrowed in rage. His bruised hands are clenched into tight fists. His voice emerges in a growl. “Don’t. Touch. Her.”
He throws himself at Zero with all his strength. It’s enough of a surprise attack to knock Zero backward, and the two of them hurtle to the floor in a crash. “Hurry, Emika!” Hideo shouts.
I hop to my feet and run my hand along the wall. Come on, come on.
And then I find it. The shape of the first door. Then, the second. My fingers halt on the groove of a third sliding door. The panic room.
I whirl to look back down the hall. Through the patches of fog emerge Hideo and Zero. Zero has the advantage of brute strength in his metal suit—but Hideo is fast on his feet, nimble where Zero has been slowed down by the injuries Jax has inflicted. Hideo kicks out at Zero’s metal chest, sending him back a step. Zero recovers too quickly. He whips a hand out and grabs Hideo’s neck, shoving him back against a wall. Then he raises a fist and hurls it into Hideo’s stomach.
Hideo lets out a choked cry.
I fumble for the panic room’s door handle until my fingers finally close around it. “Hideo!” I scream out as I yank the door open with all my strength. Farther down the hall, more guards are arriving on the scene.
Hideo glances in my direction. He clenches his teeth, pulls his legs up to his chest, and kicks at Zero as hard as he can. Once, twice. The third time, Zero’s fingers loosen slightly from around Hideo’s neck. It’s enough for him to slip free. Hideo hits the ground and runs toward me.
I reach out, seizing his arm as he approaches me, and pull us inside the panic room. I slide the door shut right as Zero gets to the entrance. The last thing I see before I snap the physical hinge across the door, locking us in, is the sight of Zero’s shielded face.
Then we’re in, the door sealing us behind a thick barrier of steel.
I fall backward onto the floor and scramble away from the door. On the other side comes the sound of pounding—Zero, or his guards, trying to break it down—but we must be behind so many layers that it’s hard to hear anything. Inside the room, panels line one wall, showing a series of views of the lab. My breaths come out in wheezing gasps.
Hideo utters a soft groan behind me. I turn to see him slumped against the wall, one hand clutching his side. Only now do I notice the dark red staining his shirt.
I drop to my knees beside him. “Shit,” I whisper, touching his arm. He winces as he gingerly moves his hand enough for me to see the wound. Between his trembling, bloodstained fingers is a deep gash, likely made by a blade.
Zero hadn’t just hit him in the side with his fist. There must have been a sharp weapon embedded on him, too, and it had ripped open Hideo’s flesh.
“Here,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice from shaking as I shrug off my jacket and loop it around his waist. Through the wound seeps a frightening pool of blood.
Hideo lets out another clenched moan as I pull the jacket tight against the gash. His breaths are coming in short gasps, and his face is shock white, beaded with sweat. I crouch with him and clutch his bloody hand, overwhelmed by how helpless I feel. Everything is falling apart.
It takes me a second to register what Hideo’s whispering. “I’m sorry,” he says over and over again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
My dream. His quiet voice, his hands pulling me close. I squeeze his hand tighter and rest my head against his, cringing at his cold, clammy skin, before looking at him again.
His eyes meet mine. They are so overwhelmingly dark. “I just wanted . . .”
“I know,” I choke out, forcing back the tears in my eyes that threaten to spill over. “Concentrate on breathing. Give me time to get into Zero’s mind.”
Hideo closes his eyes, his lashes resting against his cheeks. I fumble in my pocket for the lenses that Jax had tossed at me. Finally, I pull one of the boxes out and twist off the caps to stare down at the new lenses that will connect me with Zero.
“Link with me once you’re in,” Hideo whispers as my gaze goes up to him again. He gives me a weak but resolute nod. I nod back. One of the lenses trembles against the tip of my finger.
If this goes wrong, it’s all over.
I bring up my hack to hover over my palm again, making sure it’s still here and intact in my account. I hesitate a final time. Outside, a clang against the door makes the entire room shudder.
Hideo and I exchange a silent stare.
Then I remove my old lenses, and put in the new ones.
A tingle rushes through me. Quickly now, I tell myself as I instantly bring up the cube. Before the system can wholly connect me with Zero’s mind, I open the cube and let it run.
It bursts into a sphere around me. The panic room vanishes.
I find my virtual self standing in the middle of a black field. It stretches in every direction, a tangible darkness that pushes against the boundaries of my mind, threatening to close in like the deep ocean against a diver. I brace myself against it. Maybe Jax and I had been wrong all along. I’m never going to be able to keep Zero from seizing control.
But the sphere around me holds, pushes back.
At the same time, a single door materializes before me. I know immediately that it is a door leading into Zero’s mind.
Zero’s mind. It’s here. I can step in. A flood of hope rushes through me. I reach out and send a Link to Hideo.
He doesn’t respond right away, and for a moment, I fear the worst. He’s already gone.
Then he accepts it. A familiar wave of his emotions reaches me, and then he’s here, standing beside me in this virtual hellscape. In virtual reality, he doesn’t look injured, but his movements are slightly jerky, as if he were cutting in and out in the blink of an eye, his real-life pain affecting his connection to the NeuroLink.
“I know this glitch,” Hideo says as he steps closer to the door. “One of our engineers had pointed it out, early on, and I’d tasked Kenn with making sure it was patched properly.” He narrows his eyes at the mention of his former friend’s name.
“Then he lied to you,” I finish, and Hideo nods grimly.
For the sake of money, or promises of freedom, Kenn had sold the glitch instead to Taylor.
“Maybe it will all come back to haunt him,” Hideo adds. “And this will turn out to be the glitch that saves all of us.”
I put a hand against the door’s handle. “Let’s hope so,” I reply.
I push it open. We both step back as the door itself disintegrates into nothing, revealing behind it the first glimpse into the world of Zero’s mind—pitch-black, like staring into deep space.
I step forward first. My feet float over an expanse of nothingness beyond the door. Hideo follows me through a second later.
The first change I notice on me in here is that I’m clad from neck to toe in black armor. Hideo is dressed the same. He looks so much like Zero from the neck down, in fact, that I’m unnerved by the sight of him in my peripheral vision.
An invite from Hideo appears in my view. Play Warcross? it asks.