With another sigh, he realized just how sick of that place he was. Time to move on. He wondered about going back to the VNS building to see how Kaine’s Tangents had done cleaning the place up, but decided against it. He’d gotten the rest he needed, and he missed his friends. It was time to find them. And if they hadn’t already infiltrated the Doctrine and figured out a way to kill it, he’d help them. They’d do it together. With the VNS no longer breathing down their necks, it shouldn’t be too hard.

For the third time that day, Michael accessed his history files to search for a previously visited location. This one was a little tougher. It had more firewalls than even the Hive. But he’d gotten there once, so he knew he could do it again. Once, the Path had taken him there, the place where he’d first met Kaine, the place where he’d been born into a human body for the first time. The Hallowed Ravine.

He jumped into the code and made his way.

4

He saw Gabby first, and even though he barely knew her, her face brightened his day. Not until she stood before him, her Aura looking so much like her actual body, did he realize how lonely he’d been. For so long he’d gone at this all by himself.

“Hi,” she said, obviously startled at his sudden appearance. They stood on a rolling hill of wind-flattened grass, a thick forest at the bottom. “I…We…Where’d you come from?”

Michael shrugged. “Oh, I’ve been out and about. Saving people, killing bad guys—that sort of stuff.”

She stepped forward and threw her arms around him, hugging him as fiercely as if they’d known each other forever. He hugged back, thankful for the human touch. The light went on in his mind: no matter what happened, she saw Jackson Porter in him, and Jackson Porter was her boyfriend.

She pulled away and looked up at him. “It’s good to see you. Any word on…I don’t even know what to ask, actually. Did you do it? Whatever it was?”

He nodded, feeling more confident by the second. He’d half expected to be greeted by KillSims when he’d arrived, something that had happened in this very place not that long ago. But there were trees, and there was grass and a bright blue sky. Kaine must have really worked hard to protect the place from the ruination of the VirtNet.

“Yeah,” he said, “I think so. I think the VNS is done, and Weber’s days of making our lives miserable are over for sure. What about here? Any luck?”