I’m sitting at the edge of a canal. The water is brown and topped with a frothy layer of foam. It looks like a cappuccino and it smells like crap. Still, I feel the urge to jump in. What a relief it would be to end it all. To spend eternity at the cold, calm bottom of the Gowanus Canal.
“I’ve been waiting for you to show up.” My grandfather is sitting next to me, our legs dangling over the side. “How long’s it been since you slept?”
“You’re dead and I’m not in the mood,” I say. “Go away.”
“Dead, sure. But hardly gone. See that?” He reaches over and flicks my nose with his middle finger. “That right there means I’m immortal. I am inside every cell of you. You want reality, it’s right smack-dab in the middle of your face.”
Not long ago that would have made me feel better, but tonight it’s hardly a comforting thought. Carole died because she thought I was the One. I’ve read a million graphic novels and seen hundreds of sci-fi films. In none of them was the One the delinquent grandson of a big-nosed gangster.
“So whatcha gonna do?”
“Can’t you leave me the hell alone?” I ask. “Don’t I deserve a minute of peace?”
“No,” he says. “That lady died to help you. You owe her. I want to know what you’re going to do.”
“I don’t know!” I shout.
“Hey! What are you shouting for?” someone whispers.
I look around. My grandfather’s gone. I’m inside the fort that Kat and I built in the forest between our houses. I reach out and run my fingertips across the wood.
“Are you okay?” Kat asks. She’s sitting cross-legged in front of me, the Yoda sleeping bag wrapped around her shoulders. I try to take in every part of her. The copper-colored hair, the hazel eyes. What if this is the last time I see her?
“No,” I tell Kat. “I’m not okay. I need you right now.” What else is there to say?
“I’m here,” she says. “I’m always here.”
I would give anything for that to be true. “You’re a dream inside a virtual world.”
“I’m the girl you met in the woods when we were eight years old. Even when you don’t see me, I’m here. I helped make you you.”
And I know it’s true. “What am I supposed to do?”
“You’re supposed to keep going,” she says.
“I just came here for you,” I confess. “I’m not who they think I am.”
“Maybe you weren’t,” Kat says. “Maybe you are now.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” I tell her.
“It doesn’t?” Kat asks. “You think you can come somewhere like Otherworld and leave the same person? It’s not just the disk that’s dangerous. It’s Otherworld, too. It changes you.”
I think of the avatars hunting each other in the jungles of Nastrond. “I’m pretty sure most of the people who come here are pretty screwed up to begin with,” I say.
Kat shrugs. “Sure. A lot of them. Otherworld was built so you can indulge your every desire. You can go around eating, killing, hoarding, screwing—and there’s no one here judging you or telling you to stop. No doubt a bunch of people here were psychos from the start. What do you think happens to everyone else?”
“I don’t understand. It’s just virtual reality,” I say.
Kat leans forward. “No, see, that’s the big secret,” she whispers. “It’s not virtual if it changes who you are. All of this is real, Simon. It’s real.”
I wake to find the Clay Man standing with his back to me, staring down at Carole’s final resting place. After I found Gorog, he and I did our best to bury her, but the grave isn’t much to look at. The land around us is red rock with a silky coating of scarlet dirt. The wind spins the loose soil into dust devils that aimlessly wander the wasteland. The ogre and I spent hours searching for enough stones to cover Carole’s avatar. I wonder if it’s still there beneath the pile.
The Clay Man’s head is bowed in grief. When I started my journey, he wanted me to leave Carole and Gorog behind. He said they would distract me from my mission. The truth is, the mission would have ended days ago without them.
“It’s about time you showed up to pay your respects,” I say.
“How did she die?” he asks.
I sit up and look around. Gorog is awake too. He’s got his arms wrapped around his knees and his forehead resting against them. “I almost attacked the Elemental of Mammon and was sent to Nastrond as punishment. Carole followed me there and sacrificed herself to spare my life,” I tell him. “She had this insane idea that I’m the guy who’s going to free everyone the disks have imprisoned.”
“You are the One,” the ogre mutters to himself. I can tell he desperately needs it to be true.
“I’m not,” I insist. “You’ve watched too many movies.”
The ogre looks up at me. “Yeah? Well, so have the geeks who designed this place,” he argues. “Maybe they designed it so there would be a One.”
“I don’t think there’s a One,” says the Clay Man.
“See?” I tell Gorog.
“But there might be Two,” the Clay Man says. “If so, Simon is one of them.”
“Who’s the other?” I can tell from Gorog’s voice that he’s really hoping he gets to be number two. But he won’t. I know exactly who the Clay Man has in mind.
I’m too exhausted and broken to keep playing games. “I need to know who you are in real life,” I say. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me.”
“I understand,” the Clay Man says. “And it’s time I showed you. Let me take you out of Otherworld, and I’ll explain everything.”
“No.” I’m not having it. “I’m not leaving Gorog in Otherworld on his own. We’ve got to talk here.”
“Gorog is safe for now,” says the Clay Man. “There are no Beasts or Children in this wasteland. He’ll watch over your avatar while you return to New Jersey.”
I’m about to refuse again, but Gorog claps a giant hand on my back. “It’s okay,” he says. “I don’t need a babysitter. I’ll be right here when you get back.”
“Are you sure?” I ask.
He rolls his eyes. “Yes, Dad,” he says. “And I promise not to use the stove while you’re gone.”
Gorog’s sad smirk is the last thing I see before I’m blinded by a powerful light. I’m back at Elmer’s, and the sun is streaming in through the glassless windows. There’s someone bending over me, but all I can see is the blurry outline of a head. Still, it’s not the head I was expecting.
“Oh, man, you really need a bath,” a girl’s voice says. “Why didn’t you use the Depends I left for you?” I recognize the voice just as the face begins to come into focus.
“Busara?” I sputter. “You’re the Clay Man?”
“Yes,” she confirms as I struggle to sit up. “I sent you the disk. I got you into this mess. I’m really sorry. Here.” She pulls a bottle of water and an energy bar out of her backpack. Then she sits down beside me on the floor. “You definitely need this.”
I chug down the water and chew the energy bar as my brain slowly recalibrates. I should have known that Busara might be the Clay Man, but I was convinced it was Martin. “How did you get your hands on a disk?” I ask, realizing as I speak that she must have one too.
“My father was a man named James Ogubu. He invented the technology, and he liked to bring his work home,” she says. “I have the master disk—the one he used to wear. No one else even knows it exists. It lets me enter and leave whenever I like. The disk I gave you is the one my dad made for me. The two devices are connected—that’s how I’m able to find you in Otherworld.”
The news takes me by surprise, and I stop chewing. “Your dad works for the Company?” I ask with my mouth full.
“Not anymore,” Busara tells me. “I’m pretty sure Milo Yolkin had him killed.”
“Milo Yolkin had…What?” Bits of energy bar spray everywhere. I’m not sure why I find this news shocking, after everything I’ve seen in Otherworld and at the facility. It’s still hard to believe that the Company’s sneaker-wearing boy genius could be personally responsible for so many deaths. It’s like finding out that the devil takes the form of a cocker spaniel.
“Sorry,” Busara says. “That slipped out. I should have worked up to it. I didn’t mean to blow your mind right away.” She pauses as if she’s collecting her thoughts and trying to put them into an order that will make sense to me. “When I was first diagnosed with my heart condition, the doctors told my parents I was never going to lead a normal life. My mom cried for weeks, but my dad refused to accept it. He started looking for solutions—and he was the kind of guy who could find them. He ran the Company’s West Coast innovations lab, so he had access to money and resources and the world’s best engineers.”
“You’re saying the disk was made for you?”
“That’s how it started, but then my dad got obsessed with the project. Even after I had heart surgery and started getting better, his team kept working on it. After a while they ended up inventing the disk and the visor—and creating the software for the White City. The technology was designed to help people with broken bodies lead better lives. In the real world a kid with a serious heart condition might be stuck in a bed. But in the White City she could run and dance and play.”
I remember the fields that surround the White City and imagine a younger Busara prancing among the flowers and butterflies. “It sounds really great. I can’t understand how it could have gone so wrong.”
Busara sighs. “Two words—Milo Yolkin. My dad’s team was testing the disk when Milo heard about the project. He was smart enough to see that my father’s technology was world-changing. It wasn’t just the disk. The graphics and the AI were eons ahead of anything else developed by the Company. So Milo took my dad’s whole team and brought them here to Brockenhurst. He wanted them to be closer to the Company headquarters in Princeton—but far enough away so they could work on the project in complete secrecy.”
“That’s when you moved to New Jersey?” I ask.
“Yeah, last year. Before they started expanding it, the building on Dandelion Drive used to be my father’s lab.”
It’s beginning to come together now. “I was wondering how you managed to get me into the facility.”
“I wasn’t sure I could,” Busara says. “But I have access to my dad’s old files, and fortunately for us, the facility is still using the same HR recruiter. They like to hire former military personnel for all the grunt work. My dad always thought it was strange. Now it makes perfect sense. They want people who follow orders and keep their mouths shut. My father never did either of those things. That’s what got him killed.”
Once again, we’re back to the subject of murder. How many people have died for this goddamn disk? “I still don’t get why Milo would want your father dead. What the hell happened?”
“During his tests, my dad started finding bugs everywhere. The White City software was full of them. He wanted the city to feel real, so he created a self-sustaining ecosystem where the plants and animals all grew and reproduced and died. But weird hybrid species started popping up. And the NPCs, which my dad had designed to possess what he called emergent AI, began acting in unpredictable ways. He felt like he was losing control of the world he’d built. But he figured that could be fixed, even if it meant starting all over from scratch. The biggest problem wasn’t with the software, though. It was with the disk.”
My laugh is bitter. “Yeah, it kills people. I’d say that’s a pretty big problem.”
“The disk sends signals to the wearer’s brain that convince it that everything the person smells or touches or tastes in the virtual world is real. Which is totally fantastic if you’re riding ponies or eating steak. But it’s impossible to create a virtual environment where only good things happen. My father realized that one day when he was in the White City testing the gear. He dropped a tablet on his foot—and it hurt. His brain was completely convinced that the injury was real. And that’s when he knew the disk was dangerous. If a person was ever seriously hurt inside the White City, his brain could react by shutting down the injured part of his body. And it might be a part of the body the person couldn’t live without.”
“What did your dad do when he discovered the problem with the disk?” I ask.
“He ended the project. There were engineers on his team who thought he’d gone totally crazy, but he knew it was too dangerous to continue. Then Milo showed up at our house.”
“Milo Yolkin was at your house? You met him?” Even now—after all I know—I still feel a stab of jealousy. The hoodie-clad girl sitting cross-legged in front of me on a gritty factory floor has been in the presence of greatness.
“Oh, sure. Milo’s a super-nice guy. Really charming and polite. You’d never guess he was evil incarnate. He flew here in a helicopter from Princeton. It landed in our backyard. He wanted to talk to my dad about Otherworld. He said he’d been working on a secret reboot—and he’d borrowed a few things from the White City.”
“Borrowed? Your dad gave him access to the White City software?”
Busara snorts angrily. “Of course not. But Milo owns the Company. The Company owned the lab. Milo took what he wanted, and there wasn’t much my dad could do about it. I’m not even sure my dad knew that his boss had access until Milo’s pet project started going south.”
“Let me guess. Otherworld was full of bugs too.”
“Yeah. Literally. Milo had borrowed the self-replicating ecosystem my dad created for the White City, and he gave some of his NPCs—mainly the Elementals—true artificial intelligence. By the time Milo came to see us, his Otherworld ecosystems were going completely insane. Beasts and Elementals were reproducing, and strange creatures were being introduced.”
“The Children,” I say.
“Yep. I guess Milo tried to get rid of them at first, but there was one little problem with that. My father had been very careful not to give his White City NPCs true artificial intelligence. But Milo had gone all the way. He’d tried to create a world so real that players would never want to leave. Now he had all these unexpected creatures to deal with—dangerous creatures that didn’t want human guests in Otherworld. And the Children weren’t robots. They were conscious. Milo couldn’t bear to exterminate them. He wanted my dad to help him find a way to fix what he’d screwed up.”
Something isn’t adding up. The man who has murdered dozens of people just to test his technology suddenly got all tenderhearted when it came time to kill off a bunch of digital freaks?
“Did your dad help him?” I ask.
“There was nothing he could do. He told Milo to scrap everything, but Milo refused. My dad said it was like he couldn’t. And that’s when he figured out that Milo hadn’t just stolen the software. He was using a disk. He was addicted to Otherworld.”
“Wow.” What else is there to say? I remember what Kat told me in my dream. Otherworld changes you. Sounds like Milo Yolkin was its first victim.
“My dad told me he threatened to go public if Milo didn’t kill the entire Otherworld project. Next thing I know, my father’s disappeared and Milo’s launching Otherworld as a headset VR app. And then one day I work up the guts to try out my dad’s old gear, and I discover the Company is beta testing the disk—and they’ve connected the White City to Otherworld. I guess they had to. No one was going to get really hurt inside the White City, and the beta testers needed to be badly injured so the Company could see what the physical impact would be. I guess they decided it was worth killing a few hundred people to fix the disk’s bugs.”
We sit in silence while I let the information sink in.
“So when do I come into the story?” I ask.
“I’ve been lurking in Otherworld for a while now,” she tells me. “I don’t enter the realms. My heart is too weak—any kind of combat might kill me. But otherwise I come and go and no one seems to notice. Their focus is on optimizing the realms for launch; they don’t have time to monitor the wastelands and in-between spaces right now. Plus, I think my condition keeps me off the Company’s radar. I guess they don’t believe that a sick kid like me could pose a threat. And I didn’t think so either. I knew there wasn’t much I could do on my own. Then I saw you inside the ice cave…”
“How did you know it was me?” I butt in.
“Are you kidding? You gave your avatar the same nose. And the girl you were with called you Simon.”
“It was Kat.”
“Yeah, I figured that out. After the collapse at the factory, I saw a way for us to help each other. You wanted to save Kat. I wanted Magna dead. All you had to do was kill him and take Kat through the exit in the cave. With her disk shut off, she’d be safe until her body could be rescued.”
It takes me a moment to place the name Magna. It belongs to the big red creature inside the glacier. “I don’t get it. Why did you want me to kill Magna?”
“He’s the one they call the Creator.”
I guess that clears a few things up, but I still don’t understand why Busara would want him dead. “Isn’t the Creator part of the game?”
“No,” she says. “Magna is Milo Yolkin’s avatar.”
I suddenly feel unbelievably stupid. I should have made that connection a long time ago, but I was only thinking about saving Kat. Then something else hits me. “You lied to me,” I say to Busara. “You told me the Creator was part of the game.”
Busara swallows nervously. She must feel me seething. “At this point he is. Milo spends almost all his time in Otherworld. He hardly takes his disk off. He’s addicted to the game. He just sits in that cave trying to figure out how to fix his creation. Killing his avatar is the only way to put a stop to the project.”
“But if he’s wearing a disk, killing his avatar would…” I pause. Things are quickly adding up in my head, and the conclusion I’m coming to is batshit insane. “That’s why you sent me a disk. You want me to murder Milo Yolkin?”
“Yes,” she admits, though she doesn’t sound very proud of it.
“Because you think he killed your father.”
Busara shakes her head with frustration. I guess she doesn’t want her plan to be written off as revenge. “My father isn’t the only person Milo’s murdered. Think of all the people who’ve been forced to take part in the disk’s beta test. People like Kat and Carole and Gorog. Milo’s using them as human guinea pigs. I’m pretty sure most of the patients involved in the test don’t even have locked-in syndrome.”
“No shit. But do you have any proof?” I ask.
“According to my dad’s files, the disk puts people into a state that’s similar to sleep paralysis. Sleeping people don’t have conscious control of their bodies, but that doesn’t always keep them from moving or speaking. Remember the night you found me in Kat’s hospital room? I punctured Kat’s IV. When the fluid ran out, she started speaking, right? Well, people with real locked-in syndrome can’t speak. I think the Company is drugging them. There’s something mixed in with the patients’ IV fluids that keeps them paralyzed. I’m sure of it.”
I hold up a hand. “Stop right there for a second,” I say. We just took a detour into some very dark and disturbing territory. “You’re telling me you screwed with Kat’s IV at the hospital? On a hunch? What if you’d been wrong?”
Busara’s eyes go wide. I don’t think she realized how far she’d taken things. “But I wasn’t wrong,” she says.
“You could have been,” I say. “And now that I think about it, you knew from the start that the disk is able to kill its wearer. You even warned me that I might not get more than one life in Otherworld. And then you went ahead and let me use the disk anyway.”
“My father thought the disk might be dangerous,” Busara says. “But I swear, Simon. I didn’t know for sure until now.”
I’m starting to get seriously pissed. “So you let me be your guinea pig. You let me take all the risks while you never took a single one. What exactly makes you any better than Milo Yolkin?”
Her jaw drops. She clearly doesn’t have an answer ready. “I’m really sorry,” she finally says. And she looks sorry, too. But I’m sure she’d do it all over again. “I sent you the disk because I saw you in Otherworld and I was convinced you’d survive. And it was the only way to protect Kat. If I’d told you the truth, would it have stopped you from going in after her?”
“No,” I admit. And it still won’t. In fact, it just makes me more eager to get Kat the hell out of there. I pick my disk and visor up off the floor. “But you should have been honest with me. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to kill myself. I think it’s time for me to go back and finish my mission.”
“No! Don’t you see—you don’t have to,” Busara says. “That’s why I pulled you out of Otherworld. Carole died. That means we finally have proof that the disks are actually killing people. We can put the facility out of business and destroy the Company, too.”
She hands me a phone. On it is an article from the Morris NewsBee. There’s a picture of Carole. She looks a little plumper than she did in Otherworld, but otherwise she’s exactly the same. She could have been anyone back at setup, but she chose to be herself. I scan the words. It’s an obituary. Carole Elliot, forty-three. She succumbed to injuries sustained in an automobile accident. She’s survived by her four children and husband. Turns out Carole really was a soccer mom.
I hand the phone back to Busara. It takes a few seconds before I feel like I’m able to talk. “How is this proof?” I ask.
“You saw Carole die in Otherworld yesterday. The same day she died at the facility.”
“You’re not thinking straight. That doesn’t prove anything,” I say. “It would just be my word against the Company’s. Who do you think the cops are going to believe? Milo Yolkin—or some idiot kid with a criminal history?”
Busara goes quiet. “Okay, you’re right,” she says softly. “But I don’t want you to go back to Otherworld. I guess I wasn’t prepared to be right about this. But it’s gotten too real, Simon. Carole died. You could die too.”
“I don’t have a choice. I have to go back. Kat is still there. Gorog is too. I’m not leaving again until both of them are free. If that means killing Milo Yolkin, that’s okay with me.”
“What if you die fighting Magna?” Busara asks. “What’s going to happen to everyone else in the beta test?”
Honestly, it never occurred to me. There aren’t just two lives depending on me. Everyone in the facility is my responsibility. My life couldn’t possibly suck any harder than it does right now.
“Fine,” I huff. “Kat might have information that could help you stop the Company if something happens to us. She saw what happened at Elmer’s. I’ll pass the information along to you after I find her and talk to her. If we die, you’ll need to find a way to use it.”
“I don’t understand,” Busara says. “What kind of information could Kat have?”
“The night of the collapse, I was at the factory. I saw someone throw an object through a hole in the third floor. When it landed on the second floor, all the kids gathered around. That’s what made the floor collapse. Maybe the boards were rotten—or maybe they’d been sabotaged. But someone knew that the floor couldn’t handle that much weight in one spot.”
“Wait—you said someone threw an object?” Busara asks. “What kind of object?”
“It was small and round. And when it landed, it was glowing. That’s all I know, but Kat saw it. She might even have seen the person who threw it. I’d bet you anything there’s a connection to the Company.”
“What did Marlow do when he saw the object?” Busara asks.
“Marlow?” I try to think back to the night in question. “He shouted something. I think he told everyone to stay away from it.”
I’m loving the look on Busara’s face right now. It’s nice to see I’ve surprised her for once. “You never mentioned any of this,” she says.
“Yeah, well, there’s a lot you never told me, either,” I shoot back.
I bend my head forward and begin to position the disk at the base of my skull.
“Wait,” says Busara. “Give me one more hour. Please. There might be another way.”