Chapter 17

They flattened themselves against the wall. At that moment, the hornets met the centipedes with a thunderous crash. She watched in awe as the hornets sailed down, seized up centipedes, and carried them away—at least those hornets that weren’t dragged down and pulled into the greedy mouths of the centipedes. The air crackled in blue and yellow, sizzling with electricity. Solvr inched along the wall while the battle raged on, with Fites following. Once they were clear of the chaos, they ran to the far side of the corridor.

Within seconds the two armies had destroyed each other. A few straggling hornets hovered in the corner and a couple of lucky centipedes still scurried along the floor, but both enemies were mostly wiped out.

“How did you know that would happen?” Fites asked.

“I didn’t,” she admitted. “But binary really means a thing with two sides. So I thought ‘binary debugging’ might mean letting the two bugs take care of each other.”

“So if I hadn’t accidentally released the hornets we’d both be drowning in centipedes right now.”

“Yeah. Dumb luck.”

“That’s one kind of luck I’m a natural at,” he said.

“Come on. You’re not dumb.”

They stood there for a moment, watching the damaged bugs scattered across the floor faded away.

“What do we do now?” Fites asked eventually.

“I don’t know.” She glanced at the timer on her wristband. “But we better do it in the next twenty minutes.”

“Is this the boss room?” he asked, tapping the wall behind them.

“I think so,” she said. “The walls have been getting darker as we get to the middle, and,” she gestured to the wall, “they can’t get any blacker than that.”

“If we get in there, we have a shot at finishing this game in time.”

“But how do we get in there?” she wondered aloud. The walls were blank and featureless. There were no gates to open and no levers to pull. They followed the corridor all the way around to be sure.

“Maybe we have to kill the last of those bugs and a door opens?” Fites suggested.

“My weapon is drained.”

“Mine too,” he said. “But I still have feet.” He took a couple of quick paces toward a straggling centipede and tried to stomp on it. The bug scurried away and disappeared under the wall.

“There’s not even a crack there,” Fites said, toeing the spot where it had disappeared.

“Yeah, but I’ve seen plenty of bugs crawl through the walls,” Solvr said. “Video game animators don’t have to follow the laws of physics.” She had another thought. “Before the monitor exploded, it said something about tracking the remaining bugs. Maybe that wasn’t a command—it was a hint!”

“Might as well try it,” Fites said. He chased after another fleeing bug and dove at the wall just as the centipede hit the corner. Solvr winced, worried that he would crack his head on the wall, but he disappeared into a seam exactly when the bug did.

Solvr walked over and tapped on the wall. It was solid. She slid her hand down and across, along the floor. Whatever secret door he’d slipped through was now sealed. She stood up and scanned the floor for more bugs. There were no centipedes, but a single hornet flew by her head and cruised toward the inside wall. She leaped as high she could and hurled her body at the wall, hitting it precisely when the wasp did. She passed through and landed hard on her feet inside the closed room.

It was dark inside.

“Fites?” she called softly.

“I’m here,” he said.

“That was weird.”

“Yeah,” Fites agreed, and then a chime sounded. “Checkpoint over here.” She followed his voice to the opposite corner, then saw the shape of a pyramid as her eyes got used to the darkness. She scanned her wristband to level up. She couldn’t see her wristband in the darkness, but she heard the chime.