The four thousand and ninth time you entered HIVE, everything was on fire.

Well, not literally. Probably nothing in the Honeycomb was flammable—was programmed to be flammable, I corrected myself. The Honeycomb isn’t real.

But the fear and frustration of the people inside the Honeycomb was very, very real—and things were getting very, very heated.

Before this moment, I’d never imagined how many people it might take to fill up a space the size of a moon, or what it would look like when it happened. Now, standing on my trusty floating platform, surrounded by a sea of others just like it, I knew: It took millions, and it looked like a mess. Each catwalk and walkway along the edge of the Honeycomb was packed with people, just as Jason had described. Here were the Moddies with their insanely tricked-out avatars, sticking out from the default sleek uniform of the Honeycomb in more ways than one—as I watched, a player with a pair of flaring leathery wings turned at the edge of a parapet and accidentally gave a face full of wing to a cyborg with a mullet. There were the Anons, hooded brown cloaks and painted masks hiding their faces as they hurried up stairways and striations, desperate not to be noticed. And everywhere, squeezed onto every surface, were the—the Normals? The Casuals? The players, I decided. Regular, run-of-the-mill gamers, turned desperate by a situation with no clear cause and no hope of a solution. Everyone was arguing, yelling, or pushing past one another in an effort to get … somewhere. Anywhere.

But somehow, in the biggest room coders could ever invent, there was nowhere left to go. The only escape was ducking into one of the games, which I saw more than a few gamers doing—not even checking which world they were entering, just hopping through the first hexagon that would get them away from the crowd.

Well, I say crowd, but as it turned out, the line between a crowd and a mob was frighteningly thin. As I craned my neck up and around, taking it all in, a flash of silver caught my eye. Two players stood nose to nose on a skinny walkway, each unable to move past the other, each refusing to back down. The flash of silver had been caused by one of the players pulling a sword from its sheath.

I gasped. Drawing a weapon was a huge no-no in the Honeycomb. It didn’t matter how big your in-game grudge was, or how many cool pieces of gear you’d gathered during your years in HIVE—the Honeycomb was neutral territory. But now I watched as, unnoticed in all the bedlam, Sword Guy’s opponent quickly produced her own plasma blaster. The sword swung up; the blaster hummed to life.

“Harassment is a violation of HIVE policies.”

It seemed they weren’t unnoticed by everyone. That was the unmistakable voice of a worker Drone, the faceless gray droids that patrolled HIVE looking for gamers who were either in trouble or causing it. These two hotheads were both, and within moments a hovering droid had cut through the chaos of the Honeycomb to reach them.

Glimpsed from afar, Drones mostly looked like sleek cylinders whose corners had been rounded off. Up close, they were … well, they were bigger than you’d have thought they’d be, for one thing. But although they were the height of a tall human being, Drones had no legs or limbs to speak of. Instead, they had screens, gleaming at roughly face level, that rotated toward you to indicate you were under their watchful eye (they also did not have eyes). So all things considered, the Drone bearing down upon the two players now was a sight to behold.

Then it was a sight very much not to behold, as the pair turned to face the Drone just in time for its signature security measure: the blinding flash of light that temporarily stunned any player it was directed at, freezing the rule breakers long enough for a stern talking-to or a swift removal from HIVE.

“Harassment is a violation of HIVE policies. Your weapons will be confiscated and your avatars—”

Since a swift removal was no longer an option, I assumed that the stern talking-to was imminent.

I was terribly wrong, but I wouldn’t find that out until much later, when it was already too late.

In the meantime, though, I’d seen enough. Law and order was hanging on in HIVE, but just by a thread, and I wanted to be out of here before that thread snapped. And while I couldn’t know where all the people I cared about were, I could make a pretty safe guess for at least one.

“All right,” I said, looking down at my platform. “Take me to the offices of Takumi & Wright, LLP.”

Obligingly, the platform began to lower me toward my destination. Most virtual offices in HIVE were tucked away near the bottom of the Honeycomb, below the really popular midlevel games, but above the really easy games for babies (and stressed-out non-babies who wanted to be a little less stressed. I happened to know Sammi liked to play Manny the Manatee’s Mix-n-Match the closer we got to finals every year). Whereas game hexagons advertised themselves in yellow and gold, workplaces—like restaurants or any other HIVE business—were marked by powder blue, and if I leaned out and squinted, I could see the trademark ozone-colored halo far below me.

Too far. My father and I were currently separated by a sea of platforms, people, and Sidekicks, and my platform juddered as it slowly weaved its way around and down through the first-ever HIVE equivalent of a traffic jam.

Speaking of Sidekicks—and sidekicks—now was as good a time as any to check in with:

“Jason? Are you there?” I spoke the words out loud, not sure how messaging worked in a post-Update HIVE. A woman floating by had just enough time to look at me funny before I was at eye level with her feet.

“Yeah, I’m here.” I nearly jumped off the platform—I was used to having my messages announced by a pleasant Drone voice, but whatever hack Jason had figured out made it sound like he was just chilling in my head, waiting for the right time to pipe up.

“And I’m seeing all of this,” he continued. “It’s—”

“Scary, yeah,” I said, right as Jason said, “Totally cringe.”

What a fun voice to have in my head.

“Like, I’ll admit that I panicked when I was in there,” Jason said, “but I’m real. I have a home to get back to. The rest of these people, they were always stuck in the simulation anyway, so all this panicking is pointless. Like, did you see that guy with the big leathery wings? How does he not know that he’s fake?”

That last part almost wiggled its way past my rational brain and into my doubts, but I shut that down fast. Now that Jason wasn’t sitting in front of me with those pleading, wounded-animal eyes, I felt more emboldened to establish some boundaries.

“Look, if we’re going to work together, I need you to not be a jerk,” I said. “I’d like you to not be crazy, but I’ll settle for you not being a jerk.”

“Calling me crazy doesn’t make you a jerk?” Jason shot back.

“Sorry. You’re right. I can tell you’ve been through some hard stuff. And I’ve also had problems with my parent … s,” I conceded carefully. “But I didn’t decide everyone I know is a hologram because of it!”

I expected this to get a big reaction from Jason, but I could hear the shrug as he said, “Agree to disagree.”

“You can’t agree to disagree on reality!”

“Agree to—”

“Oh, come on.”

“And anyway,” Jason pivoted, “if we’re going to work together, I need you to be going up to the top of the Honeycomb rather than in the exact opposite direction.”

“I told you,” I said. “I’m finding my people first. Starting with my dad. And if you want that to go quickly, tell me a faster way to get down there.” I pointed down and then, after an awkward moment, moved my hand out in front of my eyeline so Jason could see.

There was a pause in which Jason appeared to actually consider the question. Then:

“You could jump,” he said.

I looked down and gulped. Unlike drawing a weapon, there was technically no rule against leaving your platform in the Honeycomb. But unless you had (say, just for example) big leathery wings, it wasn’t the smartest thing to do. I’d become a bit numb to it over the years, but it was a dizzying fall from here to the bottom of—well, I wasn’t even sure the Honeycomb had a bottom. It was just you, a vast abyss, and maybe a scattering of platforms to break your fall. And normally, the platforms were so far apart that it just didn’t seem worth it—like how you might imagine jumping from one rooftop to the next but never actually do it.

Now, though …

“Here goes nothing,” I said, and leaped.

“Whoa!” said Jason, who clearly hadn’t expected me to do that.

“Whoa!” said the girl whose platform I’d fallen onto, who really hadn’t expected me to do that. But before she could react, I’d already jumped off again. The place was so thick with players that it was like hopping from one moving lily pad to another—like a three-dimensional version of a certain highly beloved early-generation HIVE game. Except the lily pads weren’t extraordinarily big, and they were extraordinarily occupied, meaning I left a column of disgruntled gamers in my wake.

“Knock it off!” yelled a player as I thudded onto the lip of his platform, and “Rrrrr” growled someone’s miniature wolf-shaped Sidekick as I fell just past their snout, and “Ouch!” roared someone who—okay, this was my bad—got their toes squashed by my thick black boots. But no one was fast enough to stop me, and pretty soon the blue lights of the business district were rising up to meet me. And as Jason whooped and clapped with excitement, I couldn’t help but smile. Because, okay, giant world-shaking catastrophes aside, this was fun. And now here, coming into view, was a curved wrought-iron catwalk I knew well—ever since my first visit to Takumi & Wright, LLP. That ornate metalwork marked the entrance to my father’s office, and it meant I was almost there.

“Not gonna lie,” I said to Jason, “this is almost as good as Mind Your Manors, which is—”

And then someone was fast enough to stop me.

“Ow!” I hissed as a hand shot out from behind me and wrapped around my wrist. A big hand. Whoever’d grabbed me wasn’t just fast—they were huge, and they were strong.

And their hand was covered in red, curly hair.

“Hey, nerd.”

Oh no.

“Oh no,” said Jason.

Maneuvering around my captured wrist, I turned to see Markus Fawkes sneering down at me.

“I told you you wouldn’t want to meet me in HIVE.”

“Markus,” I said, trying to keep calm. “What are the odds?”

“Of you finding me?” He smirked. “Real low. But of me noticing you? When someone was causing all that commotion on the way down here? I’d say one to”—he squinted into space as if even a brief attempt at doing math had overheated his CPU, and then shrugged—“not as much. All I had to do was look up, and then get myself into position. And now here we are.”

He grinned. It was a bad grin. For someone who was so big in real life, you’d think Markus would be confident in his size in the game, but no—he’d pushed his avatar’s bulk up by a few feet and a few dozen pounds, and strapped on a medieval armory’s worth of equipment to boot. Same red hair, though.

“And now,” he said, noticing me noticing his gear, “I’m fully equipped. So what do you say to a rematch?”

“We can’t,” I pointed out. “This is the Honeycomb. You pull a weapon and the Drones will be on us in seconds.”

I didn’t think it was possible, but Markus’s grip on my wrist tightened.

“You know,” he said, “right now, my strength could be all the weapon I need.”

I took a deep breath—but before I could shout for help, a flash of light swallowed us up. It seemed a Drone had already come to my rescue.

Then, as I slowly regained my vision, I realized it wasn’t just me and Markus blinking our eyes, but everyone around us as well—and above us, and below us. That light wasn’t a Drone at all.

It was HIVE transforming itself.

In the last sixty seconds, every single hexagon in the Honeycomb—blue, yellow, gold, whatever—had flashed bright white. When that light dimmed, the hexagons returned not to their original patchwork of colors but to one unified glow, becoming panels in the largest telescreen I’d ever seen. And now, stepping onto that screen, were hundreds of men in black suits.

No, wait—it was one man, repeated over and over again, up and down the walls of the Honeycomb in hundred-foot-tall units so that absolutely everyone could see him. The effect was dizzying, like watching a presidential address through the eyes of some monstrous insect.

Except it wasn’t the president of the country addressing us.

“Valued HIVE users,” said the thousand towering faces of Eric Alanick, founder and CEO of HIVE. “We here at HIVE headquarters owe you an apology.”

He paused, and I heard something for the first time: silence in the Honeycomb. Everyone’s eyes were glued to whichever Eric was in front of them, and I could just about feel us all thinking the same thing: This better be good.

“We know you are dissatisfied with the rollout of today’s Update,” Eric continued, “and we deeply regret any inconvenience it may have caused.”

Based on the groans that immediately went up around us, this did not qualify as good.

“ ‘May have’?!” yelled a girl with a pixie cut and pixie wings. “Try did !”

Whatever system Alanick was using to talk to us, he sure didn’t seem able to hear us, or I like to think he might have blushed, or raised his hands appeasingly. Then again, maybe he wouldn’t have.

“He can’t even pretend to be sincere,” I said. “He looks like he’s being forced to say all this at gunpoint.”

“Heh,” Markus chuckled, even though I hadn’t been talking to him. “Maybe he is.”

“Oh no,” Jason said, but I didn’t have time to follow up on that because Alanick was barging on.

“This is an upsetting event to all of us here at HIVE. Our team is moving with a sense of urgency to address and resolve this situation, and conduct our own detailed assessment of what occurred. We know this represents a significant breach of trust, and we’re taking steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Happen again?” someone roared. “It’s still happening now!”

“Our top priority has always been our mission of connecting people, building gaming communities, and bringing the world closer together,” Eric said, apparently oblivious to the growing unrest. “I know we will learn from this experience to secure our platform further and make our community better for everyone. As I speak, our best architects are working to expand HIVE’s features and policies so we can better address these things moving forward, and we hope to have those changes in place shortly.”

“How shortly?!”

“I thought he was going to apologize! Did anyone hear an apology?!” The Anon who shouted this had a point—Alanick had used a whole bunch of words, but it was hard to tell if he’d actually said anything.

But if I was being honest, the only thing I had heard was our best architects. That had to include Mom. I wondered if she was working frantically somewhere right now, her hair pulled up into the messy topknot that meant she was about to kick some piece of code’s butt. Was she thinking about us—me, Dad, Kyle? Was she worried? I hoped she was. No, I didn’t care if she was. No, I—

“Kara,” Jason said, cutting off my thought spiral. “What if he is? Being held at gunpoint, I mean? Maybe he’s been taken hostage. Maybe this whole disaster wasn’t some coding issue—maybe this was planned.”

“This is not the time to add an additional conspiracy theory to your conspiracy,” I hissed.

“What?” Markus frowned.

“Believe me,” Eric said, and I had to admit that if he wasn’t being held hostage, he was doing a terrible job at seeming relaxed—his strained smile barely registered as a human emotion. “We here at HIVE are just as concerned by these events as you are. We hope you will join us in taking this opportunity not to fall apart, but to pull together until a solution has been found. To all of you who are here in the game with us, we say: Game on!”

And just like that, the Eric Alanicks were gone and the hexagons were back, leaving a stunned community of gamers—and one eavesdropper.

“Wait,” Jason said. “Did he just say—”

“He did,” I confirmed.

“He did what?” Markus asked, but I barely heard him. My stomach was too busy twisting up in knots.

Nobody was coming to help.

The zookeeper was locked inside the zoo.

Hostage or not, Eric Alanick was somewhere in the game with us.