CHAPTER 6
THROUGH THE FLOOR
1
Michael had heard of the club. Everybody inside the VirtNet had heard of the Black and Blue. But he’d never met anyone who’d actually been there, because it was impossible to get into—unless you were extremely rich, famous, or high up on the criminal chain. Or, of course, a politician, which would make you all of the above.
Michael and his friends were none of those, and to make matters worse, they were teenagers. Their coding skills were advanced enough that they could make themselves look older, and they could conjure up fake ID docs quicker than Helga could make waffles. But everyone tried to fool the Black and Blue, and the club was far too good at seeing through the trickery.
Michael, Bryson, and Sarah stood across the street from the entrance, gawking at the people waiting in line. Michael figured more money had been spent on their jewelry and designer clothing than most people made in a year. Lifeblood was the one place in the VirtNet where not just anyone could look however they wanted. To have fancy things, you had to be rich enough to afford fancy things in the real world or know how to schmooze, flirt, or con your way into getting what you desired. Or be really good at coding and hacking.
“What’s the plan?” Bryson asked. “I can barely sneak my way into Jackie Suede’s Shake-Your-Booty Bar, much less the Black and Blue.”
Michael was racking his brain. “This Ronika person can’t live in there twenty-four hours a day. What if we just wait for her to come out and then follow her home?”
Sarah responded with something like a groan. “Sounds slightly creepy—not to mention we don’t know what she looks like. Plus, you’re forgetting this isn’t the real world. That could very well be the only place she ever goes in the Sleep—she may Sink and Lift directly to a Portal in the back room for all we know. Especially if she’s as famous as Cutter made her out to be. And I doubt she’s a Tangent, being in that kind of position. Managerial types are always human.”
Bryson let out an exaggerated sigh. “If only I could have five minutes with her. She’d be so bamboozled by the charm, we’d have our info before she knew what hit her.”
“Um, no comment on that one,” Michael said.
Sarah really groaned this time. “How did I become friends with you two, again?”
Michael quickly moved on. “Listen, I hate to say it, but we’ve only got one choice.”
Bryson and Sarah gave him a puzzled look, but he knew very well that they were thinking the same thing. Doing something blatantly illegal is always the last resort.
With a mischievous smile, he said, “We have to cut our way in.”
2
Michael had always thought of hacking into a simulated location within the VirtNet as much like breaking into a building in the Wake. It took planning and smarts. And like in the real world, if you made one wrong move, your butt could end up in jail if the VNS caught you.
“Everyone put on your I’m-not-suspicious face,” he said. “And follow me.”
“Dude, why’d you say that?” Bryson complained. “Now I’m gonna look guiltier than ever.”
They took an indirect route to get to the back side of the club. They went several blocks out of their way, hoping that anyone watching wouldn’t guess what they were up to. As they walked, they grew quiet, and Michael tried to start a new conversation; the goal was to look like a normal group of friends out for a stroll.
“No offense, but I’m kinda sick of talking about your nanny’s cooking,” Bryson finally said as they turned the last corner, the club just a hundred feet ahead. “Especially since I’ve never met her and probably never will.”
Sarah had taken the lead as they moved along, and Michael hoped that meant she was feeling confident about the job they were about to do. “Maybe we should meet up on the outside, at Michael’s place,” Sarah said. “Then Helga can whip up one of these things you keep bragging about.”
“Is Helga hot?” Bryson asked.
Michael shivered at the thought. “She’s at least sixty, man. Maybe seventy.”
“So? You didn’t answer my question.”
Sarah stopped and Michael almost ran into her. It was just a couple of buildings away now. A small black door was the only thing marking the back of the club. Even without a sign, there was a reason Michael had no doubt it was the Black and Blue: two enormous men, heads as big as their chests—and no necks in between—stood outside of it, eyeing every passerby as if they hadn’t eaten in days and loved the smell of raw human meat. Every club had bouncers, but these guys looked monstrous.
“This should be easy,” Bryson murmured.
Sarah spun around and whispered that they should stop looking in the direction of the club.
Something on her face told Michael to listen. “What are you scheming?”
“I can’t imagine what kind of firewalls this place has built around it. Could we hack them? Sure. But something hit me when we turned onto this street.” She risked a quick glance at the guards. “I think we can get inside without cutting our way in.”
Bryson’s expression showed exactly what Michael felt: total bewilderment. “Really?” he asked. “And how do you plan on walking past those nice serial killers down there?”
Sarah just rolled her eyes. “I’m serious about this. We don’t have to hack into the club, we just need to hack into the bouncers. Into their personal files. And then we waltz right through those doors.”
She went on to explain the specifics, and Michael remembered why he liked her so much. She had to be the smartest girl ever born.
3
It took forty-three minutes.
The three of them sat with their backs against the wall and linked up to examine the programming. Michael loved the process: closing his eyes and focusing his consciousness back to the Coffin and accessing the crude elements of the VirtNet itself, the core code of what he’d been seeing all around him. It took instinct and a lot of experience to work on it with others, but he and his friends were really good at it. It was another reason they got along so well.
Once they’d isolated the coding for the two bouncers, they broke in and downloaded a few of the men’s personal files into their own systems, then Sank back fully into their own VirtNet Auras. What they had planned was a huge bluff—but bluffing seemed a quicker option than trying to break through all the club’s firewalls, of which there had to be many. When Michael opened his eyes again, he could feel the sweat trickling down his simulated face. They had stepped well past the legal limits of manipulating code, and they were about to get in deeper. With such little planning, he knew the risk of getting caught was way too high for comfort.
Sarah jumped to her feet. “Let’s hurry before they notice we did anything.”
Michael and Bryson scrambled to follow her, and as they approached the behemoths guarding the back door of the Black and Blue Club, Michael had a small but comforting thought: The VNS had asked them to do this. Maybe they’d be given some leeway on things that were “technically” against the law.
The bouncer on the left noticed them first, and he looked at the three approaching teenagers with pure amusement. He could tell they had their sights on him, and he probably relished the prospect of denying another lame attempt at getting inside. He cracked his knuckles and let out a low rumble of boorish laughter, nudging his partner.
“You do it,” Michael whispered to Sarah, suddenly losing his nerve. “It was your idea.”
“Amen,” Bryson added.
They stopped just a few feet in front of the bouncers. The one on the right had joined his companion in staring them down.
“Let me guess,” the one on the left said. Michael realized that the two men were practically twins. “You wanna offer us a lollipop so we’ll let you in to play? Maybe some sugar bunnies?”
His partner chuckled, the sound like cracks of thunder. “Don’t waste our time, kids. Go to the arcade and kill some aliens. Or go to that teenybopper club up the street. Just get out of our faces.”
Michael couldn’t believe how nervous he was. They’d done millions of crazy stunts, but now that so much was on the line, his knees were a little weak. Sarah, however, seemed in her element.
“We stole your code,” she said, her voice so calm it scared Michael a little. “I’m sending over proof now.” She closed her eyes for the briefest of moments as she sent the few files they’d stolen, then gave the bouncers a nasty glare. The bluff was on.
The man on the left froze and his eyes shot wide; his partner reeled back, as if he’d been punched in the stomach. “They’ll throw your butts in jail for this,” he growled. “I bet someone’s breaking down your door as we speak.”
“I guess that’s our problem to worry about,” Sarah said. “Now, I’m going to start counting. When I get to five, I’m sending out some little … tidbits we dug up in the filth that’s your memory bank to all the people on your contact list. If I reach ten, we start … erasing things you wouldn’t want erased.”
“You’re lying,” the man on the right countered. “And I think I just might start counting myself. When I reach two, I start pounding you senseless. Or maybe do some of my own hacking.”
“One,” Sarah said softly. “Two.”
The bouncer on the left was getting more and more agitated. “You wouldn’t dare. You can’t mess with our personal information!”
“Three. Four.” She turned to Michael—he was quiet, actually enjoying the show. “Get the distribution list ready.”
“Got it,” he said, trying hard not to smile.
Sarah faced the giants again. “Fi—”
“Wait!” the man on the right yelled. “Just stop!”
“We’ll let you in,” his partner said. “Who gives a crap? Just make yourselves look a little older so we don’t get in trouble.”
“Fair enough,” Sarah replied. “Come on, guys.”
“Dude,” Bryson said to one of the men as they passed him. “After what I just saw in your files, I hope you never have kids.”
4
The Black and Blue Club was mostly how Michael imagined it would be, just a little louder, a little more sweaty, and filled with so much human beauty he knew he’d never see it replicated back in the real world. Skull-pounding music thumped and bellowed from the massive speakers hung on the ceiling, and strobe lights flashed and dazzled. A red glow permeated everything else, cast over the people dancing and gyrating and jumping out on the floor. Body heat filled the space, warm and sultry. Everywhere Michael looked, he saw perfection. Perfect hair, perfect clothes, perfect muscles, perfect legs.
Not my cup of tea, he thought with a smile. He preferred dorky girls with messy hair and potato chip crumbs on their shirts.
“Let’s walk around, find that woman!” he yelled at the other two. He wondered if lipreading was a popular download of those who frequented the place—he couldn’t even hear himself speak.
Bryson and Sarah just nodded. They started winding their way through the herds of beautiful patrons.
The pounding beat of the bass felt like a blacksmith’s anvil in Michael’s head, hammer blow after hammer blow. He couldn’t remember if he’d had a headache before they weaseled their way past the bouncers, but he sure had one now. It was impossible to move without bumping into people, sweaty arms slicking against his. He found himself involuntarily dancing as he walked, and Sarah looked mortified at his lack of talent.
She mouthed the words You’re cute, but she rolled her eyes as she said it.
A sea of people. Pure, unbreakable noise. Disorienting lights. And that unending beat. Michael was already sick of it. But they needed to find a person named Ronika, who supposedly knew everything about everything. How were you supposed to find anyone in a place like this?
Michael looked around and realized Bryson and Sarah were no longer beside him. With a jolt of panic, he spun in a circle searching for them, pointlessly calling out their names. He was on edge—they’d gotten in illegally, and it made him nervous—but his friends’ disappearing so fast felt wrong. Michael stopped, and someone pushed him from behind; an elbow struck him in the side of the neck. Over the deafeningly loud music, he heard a woman’s laugh.
Then he fell through the floor.
5
It wasn’t like a trapdoor. And the floor didn’t collapse. Instead, as everything around him continued on, his body became immaterial and transparent, and he sank as the dancing people around him seemed to rise toward the sky. Michael quickly looked down and saw his legs and torso slip through the shiny black tile like a ghost.
He instinctively closed his eyes when his head went through, and when he opened them again he’d emerged in a dimly lit room filled with formal furniture. Tufted couches, mahogany paneling, and ornately carved lamps surrounded him, and his feet landed softly on a lush Oriental rug. Bryson and Sarah were standing nearby, looking at Michael as if he was late for a party. But no one else was in the room.
“Um, what just happened?” Michael asked. Seeing his friends made him feel better, despite the fact that he’d sunk through the floor.
“Something pulled us in here is what happened,” Bryson answered. “Which means we probably didn’t get into the club quite as stealthily as we thought.”
“Hello?” Sarah called out. “Who brought us here?”
A door in the back swung open, spilling a fan of light across the floor. A woman walked in, and the only word Michael could think of to describe her was whoa. Not beautiful, not sexy, not old or young or anything else. He found it impossible to guess her age or even say if she was ugly or pretty. But her elegant black dress, her gray hair, her wise face, everything about her screamed authority.
Michael prayed that Bryson wouldn’t say something stupid.
“Have a seat,” the woman said as she walked toward them. “I have to say I’m impressed with your little trick outside, though the two idiots who fell for it have already been fired.” She sat down in a plush leather chair and crossed her legs. “I told you to take a seat.”
Michael realized that all three of them had been staring at her with their mouths slightly open. Embarrassed, he quickly made his way to the couch on her right and sat down just as Bryson and Sarah took the one on the left.
“I assume you know who I am,” she said. Michael couldn’t tell if the lady was angry or upset. He’d never heard such indifference in a voice before.
“Ronika,” Sarah replied in a reverent whisper.
“Yes, my name is Ronika.” She turned her cold gaze on each of them in turn, and Michael was mesmerized. “You’re sitting in this room for only one reason: I’m curious. Your age and background give me no clue as to why you might be here. Judging by the time you spent stumbling around upstairs, it wasn’t to dance.”
“How did you …” Michael stopped himself before asking the dumbest question of his life. Of course this lady knew how to find their information. Her hacking skills were probably ten times his own. You didn’t become a club owner—much less the owner of the Black and Blue—without talent and loads of money.
She merely raised her eyebrows at him, which was answer enough. She continued.
“I want to make this clear: the Black and Blue didn’t get its reputation in the VirtNet by chance. People who’ve tried what you did today have ended up in places ranging from hospitals to mental wards. Answer my questions. Be up-front and you’ll be fine. But be warned—I despise sarcasm.”
Michael exchanged a look with Sarah. She’d been the one to get them inside; he knew that now it was his turn. It seemed like Bryson always got off easy.
“Why are you here?” Ronika asked.
Michael cleared his throat and swore to himself that he wouldn’t let the lady see how badly she intimidated him. “We were told to come here because we’re looking for information.”
“Who sent you?”
“An old barber over in Shady Towne.”
“Cutter.”
“Yeah, he’s the one.” Michael almost made a joke about his bad breath but stopped himself.
Ronika paused for a second. “I think I already know the answer to this question, but what are you looking for?”
“We’re looking for Kaine. The gamer.” He assumed that would be enough, but he continued. “Cutter said something about ‘the Path.’ ”
Bryson suddenly stood up, his hands flying to his temples, his eyes squeezed tight. “Oh, crap. Oh, crap.”
Michael’s heart sank. This couldn’t be good.
“What?” Sarah asked.
Bryson dropped his arms and opened his eyes. He looked over at Ronika. “My Tracer just lit up. Kaine knows we’re here. He’s close.”
Ronika seemed completely unfazed.
“Well, of course he is,” she said.