“Don’t worry,” Kaine said. “Those are mine. The others are on their way.”

Michael searched for words. “Which is…I still don’t get it. What if they bring those KillSims with them again? They will!”

Kaine reached out and squeezed his shoulder, looking at him very seriously. “Michael, there’s a link between you and the Mortality Doctrine that I can’t afford to lose. Neither can Weber and the VNS. You need to stay off the battlefield. And you’re perfectly suited to what I need you to do.”

Michael nodded, too many questions running through his mind to give voice to any.

“Good. Now just close your eyes and let the connection flow. Once you have all the information, things will start falling into place. It’ll come fast, so be prepared.”

“Okay.” Michael wanted to say so much more. He was scared—worried he wouldn’t know what to do—but then, if anyone could figure out what Kaine was talking about, it was most likely to be Michael. He closed his eyes and opened himself to the raw world of the code. “I’m ready.”

“Here it comes,” Kaine said, and information came in a torrent, filling Michael’s virtual vision like a blizzard. “And don’t worry. You won’t be vulnerable to attack while you’re working—I’ll form a bubble around you and we’ll fight them off as best we can. Just keep working.”

“Uh…yeah.” It was all he could do to get those words out, lost in the rushing stream of code.

“Let’s just hope the bubble holds.” They were Kaine’s last, not-so-reassuring words before the onslaught of information finally overwhelmed Michael.

And he gave himself to it.

3

For a while, Michael was having fun again. Wading through code, facing down puzzles, learning at a pace faster than thought could process. He had been born for this—programmed with these abilities. And he relished the challenge.

The Code Pool was like the next step of evolution for coding, as if it had all transformed into something biological, his virtual body melding with it, becoming one. It reminded him of the human brain, which was really nothing more than a biological computer. This is what he existed within now, a living goop of code. Kaine’s instructions swirled in his mind like a whirlpool as he worked, manipulating the sea of pure information in which he swam.

Time was lost to Michael, but eventually he saw it. Lights, twisting in a pattern not unlike that of DNA, extending into the universe of code for what seemed like eternity. Individual strings shone so bright that they blended together in the distance miles away. He had to focus hard to find the specific strings provided by Kaine in his information dump.

Michael moved things with his mind. The lights twisted and spun and vaulted like comets, forward or backward, according to his will.

There.