I accept it.
The darkness around us ripples. It blurs silver and gray before a virtual world finally materializes, a twisted place formed from Zero’s mind corrupting the NeuroLink’s Warcross databases of worlds.
Hideo and I find ourselves standing on a stone bridge, staring out at a crumbling city that continues upward and downward forever, surrounding us. Everything is constantly moving—new stairs rise, old stairs break into falling stone, bridges connecting buildings form and shatter, towers morph into shape before collapsing. Dark, glittering marbles hover in the air. I feel an instinctive urge to reach for them, like they’re power-ups, while simultaneously knowing they are land mines that need to be avoided.
My armor shifts too, and the equipment I usually have in a Warcross game appears, the familiar pouches and straps hanging from my belt.
Shadowy figures move between the shifting buildings.
Hideo looks at me. “We can’t get through this with just the two of us,” he says. “We need a team.”
A grim smile hovers on the edges of my lips. “We have a team.”
29
It’s possible that I can’t reach Hammie, Asher, and Roshan at all anymore. They’ve each been Linked with me before—but when I bring up my directory, it looks like a blank slate, and my stomach sinks. Maybe they hadn’t come out of the arena without being tethered to Zero’s mind.
Then, gradually, it fills in. Lists of names. My connection from inside this panic room is slightly slower from the thick layers of metal surrounding us, but it holds.
I find my teammates, each one glowing a faint green, indicating that they’re all online.
Asher is the first to answer. “Ems,” he says, his voice sounding like a whisper. An instant later, he accepts my invite and appears on the bridge beside us, his avatar also clad in the same black armor.
Relief floods through me at the sight of him. Even though I know neither of us can feel it, I rush forward and throw my arms around him. He startles at my rapid movement, then laughs once and holds me at arm’s length.
“Hey, Captain,” I greet him.
He shakes his head at me. “Always my wild card,” he replies with a grin.
Soon, Hammie connects, too, followed by Roshan. In spite of everything, they’re all here. I greet each of them in turn, while they exchange tense nods with Hideo.
Asher glances down in unease at his armor and takes in the moving, shifting city all around us. “What the hell is this place?” he whispers.
“The inside of Zero’s mind,” I reply. “We have to find Sasuke, so I can give him this.” I bring up the files that Jax had given me, the memories and iterations of him from the library.
Hammie’s eyes meet Hideo’s for a moment, warily, before settling on me. “The arena,” she says urgently. “Everything just stopped—and when we came to, you guys were gone. Everyone in there looks like they’ve been possessed by a spirit. I guess that’s technically true, isn’t it?”
Hideo exchanges a look with me. I hadn’t even had time to spare a thought for how people outside of the institute might be reacting to Zero’s control.
“The entire Tokyo Dome is just a sea of silent people,” Roshan adds. His lips are tight with fear, and I wonder if he’s thinking of Tremaine, trapped under Zero’s control as he idles in his hospital bed. No nurses will be taking care of him if they’re just frozen in place. “We fled the arena and made it back to Asher’s place, but as we went, we saw subways full of people with blank stares. Roads filled with people standing outside their cars, moving like machines.” He shudders at the memory. “We saw an old man in the street who looked like he wasn’t affected by the lenses. Maybe someone whose beta lenses didn’t get patched, or the odd person who didn’t use the NeuroLink. Zero must have ordered the others around him to get him. I saw him mobbed by a swarm of people.”
A chill rushes through me at the image. “Then we don’t have much time,” I answer. “This hack is the only thing protecting us from Zero’s mind, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have other ways to get past it to us. There aren’t going to be any rules to this, and no one’s going to call a foul. We only get one shot to play the game of our lives.”
If Zero manages to catch us, he could seize control of our minds and walk inside them, as surely as we’re in his. And with his current power, he could do whatever he wished. Erase parts of it. He could immobilize us, leaving us sitting quietly and staring off into space in the same way he’d done to everyone else. He could keep us like that forever, until we died in the real world. He could swallow us whole, if we’re not careful.
I’m ashamed that, even after all this time, I still half expect the Riders to step away and opt out of this. After all, this isn’t just some normal Warcross game. Why would anyone want to take that chance with me? Who would put themselves in danger alongside me?
But Asher just whistles at the shifting city. A glint appears in his eyes, the irresistible draw of a challenge pulling at the competitive part of him. He had stared down at me with that look during the Wardraft, when he’d chosen me despite the fact that I was completely untested and unranked.
“Good,” he answers. “I wouldn’t dream of sitting this one out.”
Hammie doesn’t even hesitate before she taps her chest twice in the signature Warcross salute. “In,” she says.
“In,” Roshan echoes, his eyes steady on mine.
Hideo touches my shoulder, then nods at the landscape around us. “He knows we’re in here,” he says, studying the changing structures. He gestures at the shifting architecture. “See how he’s already trying to block obvious paths with obstacles? He must be shielding himself.”
Hideo points out a door embedded against one tower’s wall, with no stairs leading up to it at all. There are other doors in strange places—underneath stairs, on ceilings, open doors displaying nothing but cement. Doors everywhere. It’s dizzying, which is exactly what Zero wants.
But Hideo’s hand stops in the direction of one last tower. I can just barely make out a door standing alone on its flat rooftop, the entrance hidden almost entirely by pillars. Dark marbles hover along the edges of the tower, spiraling around it in a silent pattern. A stone staircase runs along the side of the tower, from the very top all the way down to the end of the bridge where we stand.
“There,” Hideo says to us. “There is a pathway up to that door, even though he’s trying to hide it. It might be our way forward.”
“How do you know?” Roshan asks. “Why would Zero even give us a path to anything in the first place?”
Hideo turns to him. “Because,” he replies, “that’s not Zero. That’s Sasuke, calling for us. I can recognize his way of thinking here, designing a way through all of this.”
I look back up toward the door. Now I see it. This is a landscape of two minds fighting each other.
“So we go up there?” Asher says. Already, he’s trying to break down how we’d do it.
“So we go up there,” Hideo confirms.
A clicking sound behind us makes me turn. In the darkness materializes a shape that reminds me of Zero—nothing but black armor from head to toe. A second emerges beside him, followed by a third. There must be a dozen of these security bots coming out of the shadows toward us.
They don’t seem to know exactly where we are, but they’re facing our general direction. As more gather and they start to move faster, I break into a run toward the tower with the stairs.
“Go!” I yell.