Michael felt sick. Uploading the programming of Tangents into humans? His pulse stumbled.

“You’re a bigger part of this than you could have thought possible,” Kaine said. He smiled, revealing crooked, ancient teeth.

And at that moment, pain erupted in Michael’s skull.

He cried out as he collapsed. The world was agony.

Somewhere on the edge of his consciousness, he heard the icy voice of Kaine rise up like a cracking glacier.

“Bring him to me.”

2

Michael refused to open his eyes until it was over, refused to witness the terrifying visions that accompanied the attacks.

He heard footsteps, boots on stone. Shouts. Echoes. The ring of metal.

Still, the agony raged in his head. Hands gripped his arms, pulled him to his feet. A new wave of pain washed through his head, down his neck, through his body. He couldn’t support himself with his own legs, felt himself being dragged across the floor.

But he kept his eyes squeezed shut, and the aching continued.

Down the long hallway, the glow of torches flickering over his eyelids, Michael knew he was whimpering, felt tears on his cheeks, but he didn’t care. He didn’t even care that he’d been discovered, was being taken away. There wasn’t enough room to feel anything but the pain.

And then it stopped—as instantly as before—and a sudden awareness of his current danger erupted inside him.

His eyes snapped open.

Two men—all chain mail and stringy hair—were the ones dragging Michael, and two more look-alikes marched in front of them. They approached a huge wooden door with iron bindings, torches on each side, licking the air with their flames.

One of the men stepped up and pulled on a handle, and the door swung open. The squeal of hinges pierced the air. Michael knew he couldn’t let them take him through to whatever waited on the other side. He had to act, somehow save himself. He didn’t have time to wait for the VNS.

He counted to three in his head, then used all his strength and twisted his body, spinning out of the men’s grip. He dropped to the ground and was scrambling away before they could react. Slipping past them, he jumped to his feet and ran. There had to be a door or a turnoff he hadn’t noticed before. The shouts and sounds of pursuit from the soldiers—creaking leather and clanging metal and pounding footsteps—rose up behind him.

Michael ran hard, searching in the distance for any way out. If nothing else, he decided, he’d go back to the balcony and jump down into the gallery—it wasn’t a long drop, and maybe he could break his fall by landing on Kaine’s audience.

He turned a corner, and a sudden explosion rocked the building—sent him sprawling across the cobbled ground, skidding on his chin and elbows. Sections of the stone walls and ceiling crashed down around him, dust filling the air. Michael coughed, tried to get up. Something caught his eye a few feet away, where a huge gap in the wall had appeared.

A woman stepped through, dressed in a navy-blue uniform—face covered with a dark, reflective helmet. In her arms she held a weapon that looked straight out of a sci-fi game—sleek and shiny with a trigger and a short barrel. She looked at Michael—at least he thought she did—then stepped over a piece of the wall and aimed at something behind him.

Michael turned to look just in time to see a brilliant blue flash, and an arc of light hit the soldiers who’d been chasing him. Their bodies erupted in a burst of flames and disintegrated.

Then the woman was kneeling next to him, speaking.

“Thanks for leading us in, kid. We’ll take it from here. Now go.”

3

Michael didn’t waste any time arguing. The woman was clearly from the VNS.

He climbed to his feet and ran for the hole in the wall. Explosions sounded in the distance, intermixed with low rumbles and screams and the charged electric hum of laser weapons firing. Dust choked the air.

Michael jumped over a pile of broken stone and through a cloud of debris, then landed in another hallway. On a whim he went left. The entire castle trembled and shook, tossing him against the wall, throwing him to the ground.

He got up and kept going. A corridor broke off to the right and he followed it down a long slope that wound in a circle. A group of soldiers came charging toward him from the opposite direction and he dove toward the ground, scrambling to hide behind a pile of debris. But the men charged right past, followed by a group of VNS agents with weapons raised. They fired, laser beams incinerating several soldiers. No one seemed to notice Michael.

Up again, coughing from the dust, running.

The hall opened into a large chamber, where a bonfire roared in the center; armor and swords and battle-axes lined the walls. Michael saw an exit on the far side of the room and went for it. Halfway across, the ground abruptly lurched beneath him, throwing him forward. The whole building seemed to blow apart at once as he slid onto his stomach, huge pieces of rock crashing to the ground all around—one burst into stony splinters right by his head. He rolled onto his back and saw another coming right at his face, spun out of the way just in time. And then the whole world was falling.

Michael scrambled forward on his hands and knees, trying to avoid the raining stones as he did. They exploded as they hit the ground, cutting his face, filling his lungs with dust, but he kept going. He reached the exit and he was back to his feet, sprinting down another long hallway. This structure was more stable, but dust fell from above as the explosions continued. Rumbles of thunder in the distance. He met up with another group of fleeing soldiers and pressed his back against the wall, watched them pass. They eyed him but didn’t stop.

Another fifty feet farther down he passed three VNS agents. One of them nodded as they ran by. Michael didn’t understand why no one was stopping him. It seemed like Kaine’s people would want him dead and the VNS would want to protect the kid who’d found a way in for them. But they were all ignoring him.

He kept going, following the descending pathway. Left, right, hallway after hallway, running. Explosions and shouts. Soldiers and agents. Dust and crumbling rocks. Shots of blinding lasers and screams. The smells of ozone and burning flesh. Somehow Michael slipped past all of it, no one stopping or attacking him. One more corridor, then a grand staircase leading down toward another cavernous hall. Taking three steps at a time, he leaped toward the bottom floor, reached it, and ran for a huge arch with two great wooden doors pulled open, revealing darkness beyond.

All around the huge chamber, soldiers fought with agents—Kaine seemed to have conjured up weapons for his minions to match those of the intruders. Wide beams and thin arrows of light shot through the air, blasting into walls and disintegrating bodies. Shrieks of pain and roars of battle. Michael ran through it all, picking his way along, ducking, rolling, jumping back to his feet, dodging.