“And the reason that you pointed at Sarah and the others is because if we’re all killed here by the explosives, the rest of us wouldn’t die the true death. We’d revert back to our programs stored in the Hive.” He paused. “Except for these guys.” He gestured toward his friends. “No backup.” The two words felt cold and harsh.

Helga stood and walked to the other side of the desk, then leaned against it. “That’s all exactly correct, Michael. When the other Tangents and I gathered and made the decision to use the Mortality Doctrine to borrow bodies and come here, we made some important promises to ourselves. And one was to avoid the true death, for anyone, at any cost. But today I broke that rule because I had two terrible options. I’ll have to live with that decision, but we have to keep going. I believe that with your help, we can stop Kaine, whoever was behind Kaine in the first place, and this splinter group we met tonight.”

She folded her arms and looked down at the floor. “We call ourselves the Tangent Alliance. Ever since you were taken away from me, things within the inner workings of the VirtNet have been crumbling. Several Tangents broke away from their host programs. We saw what Kaine was doing, and we decided to fight against it. We want to restore things to the way they were. And I wanted you back. I think we have the same goals. Am I right?”

Michael glanced at Sarah, who’d been quiet since Trae and his gang finally left the barracks. She gave him a half smile, her eyes sad.

Michael sighed. “We definitely want to stop Kaine, Helga. But I feel like there’s something major that we’re missing. I don’t think it’s as easy as saying that Kaine is our enemy. We need to figure out what’s really going on, and I think the right place to start is the Hallowed Ravine. If we can…disrupt the Mortality Doctrine itself, at least we’ll stop Tangents from being able to leave the VirtNet.”

Helga clapped her hands together. “I taught you well, didn’t I? The Hive is merely a storage facility—the actual Mortality Doctrination happens exactly where you mentioned.” She gestured toward the door to the main room. “Well, we haven’t exactly been sitting around doing nothing. You saw what we have out there. People, NerveBoxes, NetScreens. We’ve been working, and we’re ready to take the next steps.”

This time Bryson spoke up. “Sounds to me like you better catch us up, then.”

“I want to know what’s going on out in the world,” Sarah added. “Things were getting bad even before we got caught in Agent Weber’s setup with the Lance device.”