Every locked door has a key. But maybe that’s not true at all. What key is there now? I no longer know which way to turn. I don’t know which way is right, or even which way is out.

The image of Tremaine on a gurney is abruptly replaced by old memories of hospital corridors, that familiar, awful smell of disinfectant seared permanently into my memories. For a moment, I’m eleven years old again, walking through the door of my father’s hospital room with an armful of peonies and a dinner tray. I’d put the flowers in a vase and sat cross-legged on the end of his bed as we ate our hospital food together. Dad’s once-thick, bright-blue hair was patchy and gray, falling out daily in chunks. His hospital gown crinkled against his gaunt shoulders in a weird way. He would spear each piece of soggy broccoli individually and pop it into his mouth, cut each piece of meatloaf carefully with his fork. But he avoided the little square of chocolate cake.

Sugar might as well be poison, he’d told me when I asked him why he left it on his plate.

And all I could think about at the time was the space shuttle Challenger, which I’d just learned about in school that morning. The government likes the official story to be that the shuttle’s explosion killed the entire crew instantly—but the truth is that the cabin was intact after the Challenger’s rocket blew. They went sailing three more miles into the sky and then plummeted for two and a half minutes until they hit the Atlantic Ocean at full speed, fully conscious and aware the whole time. And in spite of staring directly into the face of death, they’d still pulled on their oxygen masks, had their seat belts clipped in.

We fight for survival with everything we’ve got, as if the oxygen mask and the seat belt and avoidance of a square of chocolate cake might be the thing that saves us. That’s the difference between the real and the virtual. Reality is where you can lose the ones you love. Reality is the place where you can feel the cracks in your heart.

When the world is murky, guide yourself with your own steady light.

My father’s old words are a low, steady undercurrent in my mind. I can see him smile wearily at me over our dinner trays, his fingers first tapping his temple, then his chest over his heart.

Hold steady, Emi. Keep going.

I sit in the darkness until my tears have dried and my breathing has turned even again. It’s two o’clock in the morning now. The parade outside has finally quieted, and people start heading home. I sit until I can think straight again. Tremaine had chosen this path. If I back out now, his sacrifices would have been for nothing.

I sit until a new message blinks in my view. It’s from an anonymous account, asking me to Link with this person in the Dark World. It’s Jax. Jax, who’s right in the middle of this murky nightmare, with nothing for me to trust about her except the fact that I should be dead by her hand right now.

Are you ready? she asks.

I look up at the hovering invitation through my blur of tears. Why are you doing this?

Who do you think gave Jesse info in the first place?

The anonymous contact who’d shown Jesse the institute badge. That had been Jax.

She’s been watching me after all, has known I was working with Tremaine, had noticed Jesse asking around in the Dark World about Sasuke’s symbol.

We don’t have all night, Emika.

I stare at the prompt, steadying myself. Then I reach up and accept it.

18

Two Days until the Warcross Closing Ceremony

The room around me vanishes into darkness. A moment later, I find myself standing in the middle of a nondescript, black street illuminated by highlights of blue and red neon; a small but steady trickle of encrypted passersby bustle back and forth behind me.

Next to me stands an anonymous girl with a face I don’t recognize. I don’t need to, though. When she rests her hand unconsciously on her belt and drums rhythmically against it, itching for a gun handle, I know right away that it’s Jax.

She doesn’t introduce herself. She just turns her face toward the closest corner and nods for me to follow her. I do without saying a word. As we walk, a giant STOP sign—painted yellow instead of red—appears at the intersection of two streets, and when Jax leads us to the other side of the road, another STOP sign appears. They keep popping up until the signs line both sides of the street, and the closer we walk, the more appear. The optical illusion is an eerie one, and the way it shifts makes me dizzy.

“Close your eyes,” Jax says when she sees my expression. “After Hideo’s algorithm triggered, the keepers of this place put this in as a deterrent to any past visitors who might now be compelled to rat it out. If you keep looking at it, it’ll make you violently ill—unless you know the new password. So close your eyes, then follow my instructions.”

Again, I do as she says. In the darkness, Jax calls out the number of steps for me to take and when to turn. I fight the constant sensation that I might trip over something and force myself to keep moving.

Finally, we stop.

“You’re good now,” Jax says. I open my eyes.

“Ever heard of this place?” she asks, nodding at the block before us.

All I can do is shake my head and stare. Towering in front of us is an enormous, impossible building that looks like a giant glass dome reaching higher than the Empire State Building, taking up the entire block. Thin black bridges extend from the dome like toothpicks in a bubble, connecting it with giant, floating glass circles suspended in the air. The entire structure looks like a grand model of the sun and planets. Black metal lattices crisscross the glass, as if needed to hold it all up, and around its base are a series of spotlights shining against it, casting beams of crimson color into the air and onto the ground. Fountains as tall as waterfalls line the perimeter of the dome in a lavish display, a dozen times grander than any physical fountain could possibly be.

“It’s the Dark World’s Fair,” Jax continues, motioning me forward with her toward the huge, arched entrance, where a stream of people are entering and leaving the place. “It’s like the World’s Fairs in real life—except here, the exhibitions for sale are a bit more illegal.”

I crane my neck in awe as we walk underneath the towering dome. The first time I’d ever heard of World’s Fairs was in school, and I can still remember staring down at my laptop at an article about them. The Eiffel Tower was originally built for the Paris World’s Fair in 1889. So was the original Ferris wheel, invented for the Chicago World’s Fair back in 1893. Dad was a fan of researching these grand exhibitions because he found them incredibly romantic, each one a creator’s dreamscape. I remember sitting up at night, listening to him describe one famous World’s Fair after another.

I wonder what he’d say if he could’ve seen this place.

Now we step through the entrance with other avatars and emerge inside a space that takes my breath away. Underneath the soaring glass ceiling is a vast area full of displays, each one roped off and surrounded by clusters of admirers and potential buyers. Strings of lights hang in elegant arcs from the glass ceiling, adding to how surreal the place looks. Tiny mechanical birds flit by, as if in an aviary. When I look closely, I notice them carrying blank notes strapped to their wiry legs.

“Those birds are encrypted packets. For secure messaging between the visitors here.” Jax nods at a couple of the exhibitions we pass. “These are funded by secret patrons, developed illegally at the Innovation Institute,” she says in a quiet voice. “By Taylor.”

One of these exhibits is a cloud of data, a million tiny specks that swarm and separate from each other, then swarm close again. Another is a display of weapons with glowing blue ovals running along their edges, sensors for your specific fingerprints. A third is a demonstration of invisibility done through the NeuroLink; instead of downloading a randomly generated face over your own as a disguise, it maps your surroundings and combines them into a lattice that covers your body, making you vanish from view.

I look at her. “And Taylor . . . is selling these technologies?”

She nods. “Quite a few of them. For the right price.”

I shake my head and stop right underneath a grand, rotating display of armored suits. “How is Taylor developing all these illegal devices from a proper science institute? And how are the Blackcoats connected?”

“What do you know about Taylor?”

“Not much. Just what she’s told me. She said her father was killed because of his illicit activities.”

Jax’s lips tighten. “Dana Taylor grew up during a rough time, around when the Soviet Union collapsed. Her father laundered money for a living. As a child, Taylor saw more than her share of death. She ended up studying neuroscience because she was always interested in how the mind works—the way it manufactures every aspect of our world. The mind can make you believe whatever it wants you to believe. It can bring dictators to power. It can crumble nations. You can do anything, if you put your mind to it. You know the saying. Well, she truly takes that to heart. If the mind weren’t dependent upon the rest of the body, it could operate forever.”

I nod absently at Jax’s words. They echo what Taylor had said to me.

“When she got a job at the Innovation Institute as a junior researcher and moved to Japan, that became her obsession—learning how to disconnect the mind from the body. Separating its strength from its ultimate weakness.”

Her obsession. I think of what Taylor had told me. “Is it because of her father’s murder?”

Jax pauses for a moment. “Everyone’s afraid of death, but Taylor is absolutely terrified of it. The finality. Of seeing your father dead, gone forever without an explanation. The idea of her mind just . . . shutting off one day, without warning.”

An uneasy feeling lurches in my stomach. In spite of myself, I can understand that fear. I can taste it in my mouth.