7
Nothing changed for two hours. Nothing except the sand that had fallen with them, which finally vanished from the steps the farther they pushed on. The endlessness continued. Steps and more steps. Down, down, down they walked in cool darkness, the glow of NetScreens lighting the way. Any attempt to find a shortcut or a way out in the programming just led them in circles—nothing made sense.
Finally, they made the decision that they needed to sleep.
“We’re each roughly about the same size as the steps,” Bryson pointed out when they stopped.
No one said anything as they lay down. Michael had never before felt so tired. Both his mind and body needed rest.
Yet, strangely, sleep didn’t come for Michael. Maybe it was the bruises, or maybe he was just on edge—too consumed with waiting for whatever was going to come next—but he couldn’t fall asleep. Instead, his mind wandered, and for some reason he thought of one thing and one thing only.
His parents.
He didn’t know where it had come from. He missed them, sure. And he was worried about them finding out about the whole Kaine affair.
But then something occurred to him. It was so jarring, so hard to believe, so disconcerting, that he sat up straight and had to struggle for air. Luckily, Bryson and Sarah were asleep. He couldn’t have handled questions from them—he wasn’t sure he had the answers.
Michael closed his eyes and concentrated, rubbing his temples. He had to just be shaken up, not thinking right. He took a deep breath and calmed himself, went through a very methodical line of thinking. He thought about each and every day of his recent life in reverse order, running through a mental list of what had happened.
One week. Two weeks. Three weeks. A month. Two months. Day by day, going back in time, trying to go through the checklist of his everyday existence. His memory was stronger than he would’ve guessed—there were lots of things, lots of events, that he could bring back. But there was one glaring, monumental detail that seemed impossible to recall. How could he have gotten so wrapped up in his life that it had gone unnoticed until now? So wrapped up in school and the VirtNet?
There was no mistaking the thing that bothered him so much.
Michael literally couldn’t remember the last time he had seen his parents.
CHAPTER 15
A DOOR IN THE DISTANCE
1
And Helga had never come back, either.
Michael didn’t know which bothered him more—that something terrible was going on with his parents and nanny or that he was so wrapped up in his entertainment that it had taken him this long to notice. He was equally horrified and ashamed.
He tried to think of what possibly could’ve happened. Maybe the VNS was involved somehow. Or Kaine and this Mortality Doctrine program. All the things that had so drastically changed his life over the past couple of weeks were, after all, related—though he didn’t know how to connect the dots.
But Michael couldn’t remember. As hard as he pressed his mind, he couldn’t recall the exact last time he’d been together with his parents. Everything he thought of—parties, meals, riding in the car—it always seemed overwhelmingly true that surely he had seen them since then. But there was nothing.
It was weird, and it terrified him. And haunting it all, Michael had to wonder if it had something to do with the KillSim. There was no doubt in his mind that the creature had done something to his brain.
He didn’t know what to do, what to think, but eventually he allowed himself to lie back on his designated stair and stretch out. The sheer exhaustion finally became too much and he fell asleep.
2
Bryson woke him with a gentle shake of his shoulders. Michael looked at his friend through bleary eyes.
“Sheesh, man,” Bryson said. “We’ve been awake for an hour. And you snore like a fat bear.”
Michael swung his legs around and sat up, yawned, rubbed his eyes. The black world of the staircase tilted for a second, then righted itself. Nothing had changed while they’d slept.
“Anybody else have weird dreams last night?” Sarah asked. “There was a guy in a bunny suit in mine. Don’t ask for more details.”
Michael hadn’t dreamed at all, but his upsetting discovery came back to him like a whammy. Why couldn’t he remember when he’d last seen his parents? Where were they? Why hadn’t Helga come home? How could he not have thought about his mom and dad being gone so long? He never talked to his parents much while they were away, but it was still weird. And he had no doubt that something was not right, in one form or another.
“Michael?” Sarah asked. “You okay?”
He looked at her and decided there was no way he’d tell anybody about this oddity. “Yeah, I’m okay. Just excited to walk down some more stairs. And starving so bad I’m thinking about eating one of Bryson’s legs.”
“Better shave them first,” Bryson responded, lifting a leg straight out in front of him as if to offer it. He put it back down, then said, “I had a weird dream. I’d never met Michael in it and was living a wonderfully happy life, with no one trying to kill me or damage my brain forever. It was sweet.”
“That does sound nice,” Sarah said.
Michael stood up and stretched. “Hardy har har. Let’s get down these stupid stairs.”
No one argued, and step by step they resumed their descent.
3
It was impossible to tell just how long it took before something changed. Michael tried counting the steps for a while, then seconds and minutes, just to keep his mind occupied with something other than his parents. His watch had stopped working at some point, and the clocks on their NetScreens kept doing weird things. The longer they descended, the crazier Michael felt. The monotony of it began building an anxiety that he had to work hard to push down. Occasional—and failed—attempts to hack into the seemingly impossible code only made things worse.
Then, finally, they found a door.
It was at the end of the stairs, where the space around them had narrowed until it formed a tunnel that dead-ended at an ordinary wooden door. The relief of seeing it overwhelmed Michael, and an irrational surge of giddiness made him suddenly erupt in giggles.
“Something funny?” Bryson asked, on the verge of a smile himself. “Better share it with the whole class.”
“No, nothing funny.” Michael was the first to the door, and he reached out for its round brass handle. “Just happy to be home.”
Bryson snickered at that, and Michael didn’t wait for more conversation. He twisted the handle and the door swung open easily. Then he stepped through to see what awaited them.
Two long rows of people stood, backs to the walls, stretching down a hallway. And despite the fact that they all had their eyes open, every one of them looked dead.
4
Michael stopped right past the threshold of the doorway. He could sense his friends at his back, but no one made a move to urge him on. He was sure that they wanted to walk down the hallway as much as he did. Which was not at all.
Bare lightbulbs, like the ones from the haunted-house hallway, hung from the ceiling to illuminate the two lines of people, and Michael suddenly missed the darkness they’d been surrounded by for so long. The strangers stood as still as carved rock, every pair of eyes trained on Michael and his friends.
Michael focused on the ones closest to him. To his right was a woman, her skin as pale as the moon. She wore a white dress, wrinkled but clean. Her dark eyes bore into Michael’s, and it seemed that she might open her mouth to speak to him at any second.
Directly across from her, to Michael’s left, was a man in a black suit. He was just as pale as the woman and just as still, but his right arm was held out halfway from his body, the fingers spread apart.
Michael focused on the others lining the hallway. All of them ghostly white, all completely still, all staring at the new arrivals. Like the man, many of the people were frozen in odd positions. As if they’d been turned to stone in the middle of an activity.
“Hello?” Bryson called. His voice echoed down the hallway, and just before it faded, each person in front of them moved slightly. Michael’s heart skipped.
“What was that?” Sarah whispered, and a few of the bodies twitched. Then she said even softer, “All I can tell from the code is it seems the Path goes straight ahead. I can’t break through anything or see another way out.”
“What else is new?” Bryson added. “Me neither.”
Very slowly, Michael turned around to face his two friends. Then, so quiet he could barely hear himself speaking, he said, “Okay, but no talking. No sudden movements. Follow me.”
He turned back and took a careful step forward, then another. The heads of the strangers slowly pivoted to watch his movement, their eyes zeroing in on him specifically. Michael held his gaze on them, terrified of what they might do. With each person he passed, a choking fear grew in his chest that was making it harder and harder to breathe.
He pressed on, forcing himself to take each step as slowly as possible. He could sense Bryson and Sarah behind him, but he didn’t dare turn to look at them again. They passed an old man with a large nose and fire in his eyes. Another man with an enormous birthmark covering half his face, like a bruise on his pale skin. A lady with her mouth wide open, teeth white and gums purple. A toddler, a slight smile frozen on his face.
Michael felt an itch growing in his nose and was unable to hold it back. He sneezed, and the bodies around him twitched again, their arms and hands rising almost an inch. His heart skipped and he stopped, waiting to make sure nothing was going to happen. All was still. Relieved, he pushed forward again, step by agonizingly slow step.
They’d passed about ten more people when Michael tripped over an uneven break in the floor. He fell to the ground, landing on his shoulder. But before he even hit the hard floor of the hallway, he heard movement from all the people around him.
5
Michael rolled onto his back and shot his arms up protectively around his face, but then froze. The scene above was like a horror-movie poster. Several sets of hands reaching toward him, framing angry faces. But they’d frozen as soon as he had. Bone-white fingers with sharp nails hovered over him. And eyes, bright with hunger, stared down. But no one moved.
Sure that they’d soon hear his banging heart, Michael tried to calm himself down. Slowly, he took several long, deep breaths; then he readied himself and started inching backward, using his legs and arms to do it in tiny motions. Sweat broke out all over his body, soaking his clothes and dripping down the sides of his face. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from the many locked on him. One mistake and they’d attack—he knew it—and then it’d all be over. Fighting would only cause more movement.
Happy thoughts, he mused as he slowly scooted away from them.
Finally, Michael got out from under the frozen canopy of arms. The creepiest part for him was that even though their bodies—below the neck—remained still, their eyes continued to follow his movements. Chills washed through him.
Ever so slowly, he turned over, then rose to his feet. He looked back at Bryson and Sarah, who were on the far side of the pack Michael had just escaped. Luckily a space had opened up along the wall where some of the people had been standing. His two friends slipped into it to wind around the group, and once again they were all together. Bryson was unusually distraught, his face tense, his eyes wild. Michael wanted to ask him if he was okay, but knew they couldn’t afford to make any noise, so he silently pressed on.