Every program had a link to its owner, especially when it was being controlled. He’d found it. Weber was hidden somewhere, but it didn’t matter. He had the link. The pain was so great he shook, barely able to reach forward and latch onto her, throw a million strings of code to lock her to him, pull her to him.

He felt her fear. Like stepping under a waterfall, it was a burst of coldness.

Through her own program, Michael had found her, and now she was his.

With his last ounce of strength, he launched an anti-program, countering every line of code encompassing the destructive darkness Weber had unleashed. In an instant it eviscerated her program, eliminating it from existence. Light poured back in, blinding and glorious, and the pain disappeared.

Michael held Weber in his grasp, the massive world of her code enclosed in his mental might. He leaped toward the wall of the Hive and found a pod that had already been half destroyed by Weber’s program before he’d stopped it. Whoever it represented had no chance of survival. Gaping holes covered the orange oval so Michael could see inside to the dark purple world beyond.

It was enough. He hoped.

Michael launched himself at it, sank into its code, reached for the links to the Mortality Doctrine he’d discovered within Jackson Porter’s pod, threw Weber’s code into its vortex, and channeled her very being into the body connected to the pod at hand.

And Weber’s essence vanished from the Sleep.

She entered a new body in the Wake, possessed its mind, linked to the pod before him. Her own link severed, the real body of Agent Weber was brain-dead.

Using his scant knowledge of the program she had created, Michael finished off the job on the half-destroyed pod that now represented everything that was left of Weber’s essence. The pod disintegrated, vanished in a mist of darkness, killing anything linked to it back in the Wake. And then all was as silent and still as a windless day.

Michael had just killed Agent Weber.

CHAPTER 21

THE MORTALITY DOCTRINE

1

The sea of code vanished in a blink, replaced by the orderly world of the Hive. The scar of destroyed pods was a conspicuous gash of black in the orange light.

Michael pulled in a deep breath. He’d done it. He’d stopped Weber’s program from annihilating every single life he could see, both the Tangent side and the human side. The problem was far from solved, but he’d accomplished the most immediate task. And Weber was dead. The true death. Her body now lay lifeless back in the Wake, her consciousness wiped from the earth and the VirtNet.