The NextWorld 02: Spawn Point (17 page)

“You can't just survive,” Raev says calmly, twisting her ribbon hair around one finger. “You need to live.
Truly
live.”

“When we first became partners, I thought that I had achieved everything I needed in life,” Xen says, smiling at Raev. “I stopped frequenting DOTsoc. I stopped going to clubs and concerts. I wanted to spend all my time meditating in DOTgod with Raev. I thought that was all I needed.” He touches her face. “She was the one that showed me the error in my ways. She was the one that showed me the wastefulness in a life lived solitary, denying myself all the pleasures that NextWorld has to offer.”

He runs his fingers across his mouth and I see a red pill disappear between his lips.

“It's about balance,” Raev says, looking deep into Xen's eyes, yet talking to me. “Moderation in either direction can bring you a lot of pleasure, just like falling to either side can cause a lot of pain.”

“Are you preaching to me right now?”

Xen chuckles to himself, “Don't bother, Raev. I gave up trying to convert Kade when he was ten.”

I think again about what Raev said about moderation, and when Xen pops yet another red pill, I wonder if maybe she was preaching to him. The thought fades away as I'm consumed again by my own issues.

“I don't think I've really accepted what's happened. I don't think I've had time to stop and consider everything. Cyren chose her death so that I could live. And now, even if I save her, she won't remember me.”

“What she did wasn't a choice. Not to her,” Raev says. “She would have done anything to save you.”

“She loved you, Kade. You'd have done the same thing for her.”

“Of course I would have!” I blurt out, hearing my own argument. I'm trying to argue with two people that I agree with for no other reason than my own frustration with having nothing else to lash out at.

They're doing nothing but sacrificing for me. They're putting themselves at risk to help me save the woman I love. Because
they
love me.

“I'm sorry,” I mumble.

“Kade, it's okay. We just-”

“No. Listen to me.” I rub my face, collecting my emotions and setting them in the appropriate containers in my mind. “Thank you. Both of you. I still need to remind myself now and then that sometimes I need help. Sometimes I need a group.”

“I'm your best friend, Kade. I'm never leaving your group.”

“And I'm his partner,” Raev says with a smile. “So I guess you're stuck with me, too.”

I shake my head, a smile breaking across my face. “Someday, I hope I can repay you.”

I start by asking them questions about Metaversalism. And I listen. I
really
listen. I don't give them any snide replies to the lessons they adhere to. I don't fade out when Xen's slurred speech trails off on tangents that aren't connected to the point he was trying to make. I don't point out the contradictions in their translations of the seven hundred and seventy-seven lessons. I listen to them and do my very best to understand them. Because they are my friends.

“We got it, yo,” Fantom says, standing up triumphantly from the cubicle next to us and swiping her screen shut. She turns to Grael and says, “Share the location code with my account and I'll encrypt it with-”

“On one condition,” he says, afraid to make eye contact with her.

“Condition?” I ask defensively, standing up and approaching him with my hands balled into fists.

He holds up a hand to stop me and says, “You're here to save Cyren. That's good. I get it. But there's a whole game world of NPCs in there. You need to save all of them.”

I look at Fantom and she nods. “The program can cut them all out. It shouldn't be a problem, yo.”

“Fine,” I say. “They all deserve to live. We'll cut them from the game and paste them into NextWorld so they can-”

“It's not that simple,” he barks at me before calming himself down. “DOTgov wants to destroy them, because they don't know how to control them. Their processing power could multiply with every second we allow them to exist in NextWorld. They could consume every bit of data, increasing their intelligence exponentially. They could become... I don't know. I have no idea what they might be capable of if they work together in the vastness of the network. But if we let them loose in NextWorld, the DgS could track them down and delete them again.”

“So... what? What do you want me to do with them?”

Grael looks up at me and says, “I need to look at their code. I think I have a way to stop DOTgov from being able to delete them, but I need more time.”

I look to Fantom, hoping for her opinion, but she shrugs her shoulders and says, “Your call, Cowboy.”

I don't want to decide. I want to save Cyren.

“Fine. As long as I can free Cyren, you can have the others.”

“Thank you. I-” Grael stops and steps backward to swipe a pop-up screen away from his view.

When Fantom does the same thing, she yells, “We have to go. Now!”

“What is it?” I ask.

Before they can explain, a pop-up screen appears in front of me, alerting me that our guest pass is about to expire.

Fantom runs for the door, yelling over her shoulder, “The trespass will alert the DgS.”

I look back at Grael.

He swipes his hand, sharing the location code of the game and pointing toward the exit. “Just go! Save them, Arkade. Save them
all
.”

I jog after Fantom, still not sure of what is happening. “I thought you were hiding our accounts?”

She turns around, screaming at me. “I am! Nothin' would have flagged our accounts as long as we didn't do anythin' abnormal inside the domain.”

“How about we stop arguing and get out of the domain?” Xen says, his pills keeping him more calm than any of us.

We burst through the exit of the office, out on to the street, but we're stopped in our tracks when ten DgS officers teleport on to the pavement. They're furiously swiping their hands through the air, checking scanners and readouts on our accounts, trying to break through Fantom's blocks.

“They're going to be able to read Raev's account. I couldn't put the same ghosting patterns on her as us because she's still connected to her mother's account. As soon as they see that connection...”

“I'm sticking with my original plan,” Xen says, backing away from them. “The one where we get out of this domain.”

“They locked down the domain,” Fantom says in a hushed tone. “I'm going need time to break us out.”

“What do we do in the mean time?” Raev asks, looking excited by the danger.

Fantom grinds her teeth together, looking up and down the street before she answers, “We run.”

The DgS officers step forward as Fantom opens up her inventory and unfurls her carpet in front of us so that it hovers a foot off the ground.

“Get on!” she screams as the DgS officers run toward us.

We all step on to the material as it lifts from the ground, leaving the officers staring at us from the street below. I'm about to take in a breath of relief when Xen says with a passing interest, “I think they're chasing us.”

I look behind us and see the DgS officers lift off the ground, rocketing into the sky without any vehicle.

“They're tracin' our signal,” Fantom says before banking to the left as two more officers teleport into the sky in front of us. “And they're doin' a good job, yo.”

Raev leans down next to her and says with an odd calm, “Then you have to do a better job.”

“I'm tryin',” Fantom says, diving between two monotone buildings before turning right and sliding down an alleyway. “But I told you, DOTbiz has the most elaborate security in NextWorld, because they can afford to have the most elaborate security in NextWorld. This ain't gonna be easy, yo.”

“Did you need me to do anything?” Xen says, dropping a handful of pills as we bank around five more officers appearing in front of us, trying to block the alleyway.

“Stop talkin'!” Fantom screams, yanking the rug upward, climbing toward the sky above DOTbiz.

I watch her control the rug with one hand while trying to maneuver through her secret menu screens with the other. I crouch down next to her and grab on to the rug. She glares at me for a second before I say very simply, “I'll drive. You hack.”

She hesitates, not wanting to give up control of the rug. Three more officers teleport in front of us. They reach out to grab us as we pass, missing us by a few inches.

“I don't care who does what,” Raev yells, “Just get us out of here!”

Fantom turns away from the front of the rug and swipes through her screens with both hands. “We won't be able to leave the domain until I can hide Raev's account, bypass the lock down security, and activate a bug-out algorithm.” She ducks as another officer appears and swipes his hand at her. “They have to touch us in order to do anythin' to our accounts, so just stay away from them and give me time!”

Officers appear all around us, teleporting in with flashes of light, like tiny explosions across the sky. Changing the direction of our bandwidth to dodge around them isn't unlike playing a game. I watch the arrangement of the appearances and try to guess where they'll appear next, then I aim us somewhere else. It takes constant calculating, but when my gamer brain clicks into the pattern, I don't see anything else. Like tunnel vision, the rest of the domain disappears and all I see is our trajectory.

I'm so lost in operating the flying carpet, soaring back and forth, doubling back through alleyways and skimming across rooftops, that I'm not sure how much time passes before Fantom yells, “Got it!”

She points at a hole in the edge of the domain, like an opening torn in the sky. I pull up on the carpet, then bank to the left, shooting directly toward the exit. We blast through the lock down that surrounds the domain and the hole seals behind us. As we zoom over the super-highway that connects the domains of NextWorld, Fantom grabs a hold of the carpet again.

I relinquish control back to her and ask, “Why aren't they following us out here?”

“They are. At least they think they are,” she says with a wink. “Once they find 'us' they'll realize they've been tracking a family of accounts from Old India.”

“Did they complete their scan?”

Fantom looks at me like what I'm asking is ludicrous. “What do you think I am? Of course they didn't scan us. We're clean, yo.”

I turn around and face Raev and Xen. “I can't thank you enough. I'm sorry it came so close, but we can bring you back to DOTgod now. The DgS will never know you helped me.”

Xen opens his mouth to accept my thanks, but Raev cuts him off.

“You've got to be joking. You're going to bring us home just when things are getting interesting?”

“You don't have to-”

“But we're going to,” she says, looking away from me to end the conversation.

Fantom glances at me and I shrug my shoulders in response, settling back into my spot next to her. She pushes down on the carpet and we dive toward the edge of the super-highway. We skim across the last lane and head straight for a large tree trunk sitting on a hill. As we get closer, the top of the tree trunk pops open. The carpet dives into the opening and we drop into a sewer-like tunnel covered in tubes, cords, and wires. The carpet comes to a stop and disappears from underneath us.

“Welcome to DOTnet, yo,” Fantom says as she falls against the brick wall, exhausted.

I check my location screen and it confirms what she's saying, but I still don't fully believe it.

“This doesn't look like DOTnet.”

I've been to the domain once before to upload my information for the student voucher program because something went wrong and DOTedu lost my files. The domain looked like a giant circuit board, with buildings like electrical components and passageways etched from copper sheets. I got lost three times even though I was using the domain's mapping program. Everyone who worked there acted like every one of my problems was my own fault. No one visits DOTnet unless it's absolutely necessary. Today definitely qualifies.

“We're under the domain,” Fantom says, pointing at the ceiling. “These tunnels are under
all
of the domains. DOTnet connects all of NextWorld. It's the infrastructure that sends the bits and pieces travelin' through
here
before they're goin' up
there
.” She grins to herself and adds, “Which is why my people like it so much.”

“Your people?” Xen asks.

“Hackers, yo. We use these tunnels to access back doors, listen in on casts, or slip our own command lines into all the noise that's runnin' through here.”

My timer clicks down, each number rolling over to signify the loss of another second, another minute, another hour. Sixteen hours left. Sixteen hours until I lose everything. Sixteen hours to save her.

“Is this how we're going to enter the Trash Bin?” I ask, trying to push everyone closer to our goal. “Do we hack into one of these tubes and-”

“Not so fast, Cowboy.” Fantom turns and heads deeper into the network of sewers. “I said I knew about the Trash Bin. I never said I knew how to get in.”

“You don't know
how
to get in?” My words shriek, my voice breaks, and I sound like a whiny kid again.

“No,” she says carelessly, “but I know someone who does.”

“Another hacker?” Raev asks, and I'm surprised by how excited she sounds by the prospect.

“You could say that. He leads one of the most elite groups down here. Sektor. They're snoopin' and sniffin' every corner of NextWorld, all in the name of information freedom. They'd prefer it if you called them hacktivists, yo.”

“So where do we find this 'hacktivist?'”

She runs her hands down her pigtails and throws them out to the sides. “We can't just
find
him.
”

“Great,” I say with an exasperated sigh, taking my cowboy hat off and running my fingers through my own hair.

“If we can't find him...?” Raev asks, unsure of how to end her question.

“He'll find us, yo. We just need to make ourselves noticeable.”

“I thought that was dangerous,” Xen says, rubbing his eyes as if he's trying to look past his own confusion. “Didn't you say we needed to stay hidden?”