Then we’re in, the door sealing us behind a thick barrier of steel.

I fall backward onto the floor and scramble away from the door. On the other side comes the sound of pounding—Zero, or his guards, trying to break it down—but we must be behind so many layers that it’s hard to hear anything. Inside the room, panels line one wall, showing a series of views of the lab. My breaths come out in wheezing gasps.

Hideo utters a soft groan behind me. I turn to see him slumped against the wall, one hand clutching his side. Only now do I notice the dark red staining his shirt.

I drop to my knees beside him. “Shit,” I whisper, touching his arm. He winces as he gingerly moves his hand enough for me to see the wound. Between his trembling, bloodstained fingers is a deep gash, likely made by a blade.

Zero hadn’t just hit him in the side with his fist. There must have been a sharp weapon embedded on him, too, and it had ripped open Hideo’s flesh.

“Here,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice from shaking as I shrug off my jacket and loop it around his waist. Through the wound seeps a frightening pool of blood.

Hideo lets out another clenched moan as I pull the jacket tight against the gash. His breaths are coming in short gasps, and his face is shock white, beaded with sweat. I crouch with him and clutch his bloody hand, overwhelmed by how helpless I feel. Everything is falling apart.

It takes me a second to register what Hideo’s whispering. “I’m sorry,” he says over and over again. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

My dream. His quiet voice, his hands pulling me close. I squeeze his hand tighter and rest my head against his, cringing at his cold, clammy skin, before looking at him again.

His eyes meet mine. They are so overwhelmingly dark. “I just wanted . . .”

“I know,” I choke out, forcing back the tears in my eyes that threaten to spill over. “Concentrate on breathing. Give me time to get into Zero’s mind.”

Hideo closes his eyes, his lashes resting against his cheeks. I fumble in my pocket for the lenses that Jax had tossed at me. Finally, I pull one of the boxes out and twist off the caps to stare down at the new lenses that will connect me with Zero.

“Link with me once you’re in,” Hideo whispers as my gaze goes up to him again. He gives me a weak but resolute nod. I nod back. One of the lenses trembles against the tip of my finger.

If this goes wrong, it’s all over.

I bring up my hack to hover over my palm again, making sure it’s still here and intact in my account. I hesitate a final time. Outside, a clang against the door makes the entire room shudder.

Hideo and I exchange a silent stare.

Then I remove my old lenses, and put in the new ones.

A tingle rushes through me. Quickly now, I tell myself as I instantly bring up the cube. Before the system can wholly connect me with Zero’s mind, I open the cube and let it run.

It bursts into a sphere around me. The panic room vanishes.

I find my virtual self standing in the middle of a black field. It stretches in every direction, a tangible darkness that pushes against the boundaries of my mind, threatening to close in like the deep ocean against a diver. I brace myself against it. Maybe Jax and I had been wrong all along. I’m never going to be able to keep Zero from seizing control.

But the sphere around me holds, pushes back.

At the same time, a single door materializes before me. I know immediately that it is a door leading into Zero’s mind.

Zero’s mind. It’s here. I can step in. A flood of hope rushes through me. I reach out and send a Link to Hideo.

He doesn’t respond right away, and for a moment, I fear the worst. He’s already gone.

Then he accepts it. A familiar wave of his emotions reaches me, and then he’s here, standing beside me in this virtual hellscape. In virtual reality, he doesn’t look injured, but his movements are slightly jerky, as if he were cutting in and out in the blink of an eye, his real-life pain affecting his connection to the NeuroLink.

“I know this glitch,” Hideo says as he steps closer to the door. “One of our engineers had pointed it out, early on, and I’d tasked Kenn with making sure it was patched properly.” He narrows his eyes at the mention of his former friend’s name.

“Then he lied to you,” I finish, and Hideo nods grimly.

For the sake of money, or promises of freedom, Kenn had sold the glitch instead to Taylor.

“Maybe it will all come back to haunt him,” Hideo adds. “And this will turn out to be the glitch that saves all of us.”

I put a hand against the door’s handle. “Let’s hope so,” I reply.

I push it open. We both step back as the door itself disintegrates into nothing, revealing behind it the first glimpse into the world of Zero’s mind—pitch-black, like staring into deep space.

I step forward first. My feet float over an expanse of nothingness beyond the door. Hideo follows me through a second later.

The first change I notice on me in here is that I’m clad from neck to toe in black armor. Hideo is dressed the same. He looks so much like Zero from the neck down, in fact, that I’m unnerved by the sight of him in my peripheral vision.

An invite from Hideo appears in my view. Play Warcross? it asks.

I accept it.

The darkness around us ripples. It blurs silver and gray before a virtual world finally materializes, a twisted place formed from Zero’s mind corrupting the NeuroLink’s Warcross databases of worlds.

Hideo and I find ourselves standing on a stone bridge, staring out at a crumbling city that continues upward and downward forever, surrounding us. Everything is constantly moving—new stairs rise, old stairs break into falling stone, bridges connecting buildings form and shatter, towers morph into shape before collapsing. Dark, glittering marbles hover in the air. I feel an instinctive urge to reach for them, like they’re power-ups, while simultaneously knowing they are land mines that need to be avoided.

My armor shifts too, and the equipment I usually have in a Warcross game appears, the familiar pouches and straps hanging from my belt.

Shadowy figures move between the shifting buildings.

Hideo looks at me. “We can’t get through this with just the two of us,” he says. “We need a team.”

A grim smile hovers on the edges of my lips. “We have a team.”

29

It’s possible that I can’t reach Hammie, Asher, and Roshan at all anymore. They’ve each been Linked with me before—but when I bring up my directory, it looks like a blank slate, and my stomach sinks. Maybe they hadn’t come out of the arena without being tethered to Zero’s mind.

Then, gradually, it fills in. Lists of names. My connection from inside this panic room is slightly slower from the thick layers of metal surrounding us, but it holds.

I find my teammates, each one glowing a faint green, indicating that they’re all online.

Asher is the first to answer. “Ems,” he says, his voice sounding like a whisper. An instant later, he accepts my invite and appears on the bridge beside us, his avatar also clad in the same black armor.

Relief floods through me at the sight of him. Even though I know neither of us can feel it, I rush forward and throw my arms around him. He startles at my rapid movement, then laughs once and holds me at arm’s length.

“Hey, Captain,” I greet him.

He shakes his head at me. “Always my wild card,” he replies with a grin.

Soon, Hammie connects, too, followed by Roshan. In spite of everything, they’re all here. I greet each of them in turn, while they exchange tense nods with Hideo.

Asher glances down in unease at his armor and takes in the moving, shifting city all around us. “What the hell is this place?” he whispers.

“The inside of Zero’s mind,” I reply. “We have to find Sasuke, so I can give him this.” I bring up the files that Jax had given me, the memories and iterations of him from the library.

Hammie’s eyes meet Hideo’s for a moment, warily, before settling on me. “The arena,” she says urgently. “Everything just stopped—and when we came to, you guys were gone. Everyone in there looks like they’ve been possessed by a spirit. I guess that’s technically true, isn’t it?”

Hideo exchanges a look with me. I hadn’t even had time to spare a thought for how people outside of the institute might be reacting to Zero’s control.

“The entire Tokyo Dome is just a sea of silent people,” Roshan adds. His lips are tight with fear, and I wonder if he’s thinking of Tremaine, trapped under Zero’s control as he idles in his hospital bed. No nurses will be taking care of him if they’re just frozen in place. “We fled the arena and made it back to Asher’s place, but as we went, we saw subways full of people with blank stares. Roads filled with people standing outside their cars, moving like machines.” He shudders at the memory. “We saw an old man in the street who looked like he wasn’t affected by the lenses. Maybe someone whose beta lenses didn’t get patched, or the odd person who didn’t use the NeuroLink. Zero must have ordered the others around him to get him. I saw him mobbed by a swarm of people.”

A chill rushes through me at the image. “Then we don’t have much time,” I answer. “This hack is the only thing protecting us from Zero’s mind, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have other ways to get past it to us. There aren’t going to be any rules to this, and no one’s going to call a foul. We only get one shot to play the game of our lives.”