He immediately lost all sense of direction or time or matter. There was nothing. He couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, couldn’t feel. A pressure began to push on him from all sides, and suddenly up was down and down was up and the universe had turned inside out.

“We’re in,” Helga said. He couldn’t see her, but he understood the message loud and clear.

“Where are we?” he heard Bryson ask.

“We’re on the quantum path to the Hive,” Helga explained. “Actually, we are the quantum path. But we can’t access it this way. This is where we pull it all apart. We have to destroy it and us. Completely. And when it puts itself back together, we’ll be truly inside. It’ll take us along.”

Michael tried to speak but realized he didn’t know how to do it in this strange place. He was utterly lost. Yet his friends seemed to have no problem.

“How do we destroy it?” Sarah asked. “What do we do?”

“Just pull,” Helga instructed. “Like this.”

A sudden wind hit Michael with a fierce bite, and a horrendous roar ripped into his unstable mind. The odd world in which he floated shook violently. Space seemed to both shudder and expand, then contract, then expand again. Everything erupted around him.

And then there was pain. Pain so terrible that he would’ve thought it impossible if it weren’t tearing him apart.

2

Michael didn’t understand what was happening to him. He couldn’t see shapes, but the pain that tore through him appeared as color—the deep ache of blue mixed with a sheer orange that was complete agony, then escalated to a bloody red that was almost unbearable. He screamed without screaming, spun within this world of madness, and reached out with arms he didn’t have, utterly lost and confused.

“Michael!” someone yelled. The voice was unidentifiable, but it manifested as another stab of pain. He could barely form coherent thoughts, much less call out to someone. How were Sarah and Bryson faring well enough to form a word?

He focused on Helga. On what she’d said. Reach out and destroy. He would do anything to make this stop, but how? He tried. He focused on imagining his body again and pictured himself as a giant. He motioned with arms he couldn’t feel, kicked with legs miles away.

Nothing.

Only pain.

He’d thought he was one of the best coders ever. But this made no sense to him.

He was lost.

Instead of fighting, he embraced the pain and tried to sweep himself away into the black oblivion. But he was still there, the agony stretching out before him, forever.

3

Suddenly Michael noticed that something felt different. There was still pain, but could it be…receding?

Then, in a flash, it ended. The agony stopped abruptly, like an anesthetic hitting his bloodstream. He was instantly pain-free, the bliss of it euphoric.