What. What? Our shock was matched only by our fear of getting caught. My hand was still over Sammi’s mouth. Sammi’s hand was over Laddu’s beak. We stayed frozen like that until the deep voice of one of those giant guards—a Secret Service member, I now realized—said, “All I hear is the Drones, sir.”

“Hmm.” This answer seemed less than satisfying to the president (what?) of the United States (what?). “Why are they doing that, anyway? Buzzing? They don’t normally do that, do they?”

“No, sir. It seems to be one more glitch resulting from—”

“Phase One, right,” the president sighed. “I hope it’s not like this going forward.”

“It shouldn’t be like this now,” snapped a woman’s voice, clipped thin with irritation and an austere English accent. “We were told we’d be granted immunity before Phase Two began. I’m supposed to be on my way to a bunker under Buckingham right now. Why have we been blocked in here with the rest of the … commoners?”

The disdain dripped from her voice, but I was too shocked to be offended on behalf of us commoners. Phase One? Phase Two? Buckingham?

At that point I remembered what Jason had said: Half the government is in HIVE at any given time. I didn’t know if I was more annoyed or terrified to realize that Jason had been right. We’d stumbled onto one of those top-secret international meetings I’d dismissed out of hand. And it sounded like they were discussing some truly top top secrets.

Because apparently, Jason had been right about something else: The Update hadn’t been an accident at all.

“Someone get Alanick on ze telephone,” another voice snapped, in another thick accent. “Vhat good is having him at our beck and call if ve cannot actually call him?”

“Yeah,” said an American. “Or … or beck him.”

“With all due respect, all messaging systems are down,” said a deeper voice, another guard. “And I think we’re all aware that Alanick is a little … tied up right now.”

“Yes! I called it!” Jason cried, and I flinched before remembering only I could hear him. Then he added, much less excitedly: “Oh no. I called it.”

And he had. Eric Alanick was being held hostage somewhere by people who had managed to crash all of HIVE—people who controlled the highest levels of real-world government. And while I couldn’t begin to imagine why they’d done it, it was clear they didn’t care how many innocent players got trapped, or Droned, or worse—just so long as they got what they wanted.

But whoever had made the plan hadn’t known everything. Clearly they had never anticipated this wall of malfunctioning Drones between them and their way out. And they definitely hadn’t anticipated us.

Which also meant we were the only ones who could do something about it.

I straightened my spine, getting ready to move, and instantly, Sammi’s eyes bulged. No, she mouthed. No, no, no. She pointed her thumb over her shoulder, back toward the way we’d come: We have to go. I didn’t budge, but now Jason had seen how Sammi was responding to me, and guessed what was going on.

“Kara, now’s not the time to make a stand,” he said. “I know you want to help, but that’s not the smart way to play the game.”

“Why does everyone keep telling me this is a game?!” I snapped.

Sammi gasped.

Jason groaned.

The president of the United States said, “Okay, we all heard that, right?”

And no amount of breath or beak holding could prevent our good friend in the Secret Service from lumbering over to the aisle, regarding us coolly from behind his sunglasses, and calling out, “Over here, sir.”

“What’s over there?” the British woman snapped.

“Couple of teenage girls and a … bird,” he said. “Not a problem, we’ll just— Aah!”

In the moments he took to reach for his sidearm, I used the first line of defense I could think of: an entire shelf full of exploding scrolls. I ran my hands over every one I could touch, and whoosh! They all erupted at once as the guard cried out and vanished in a blizzard of fine print. Sammi, seeing what I was doing, quickly deployed the opposite shelf, providing double the cover and double the fun.

“Go!” I yelled as the aisle began to fill up. “Go, go, go!”

Sammi bolted and I followed her, running my hand along more scrolls as we went. Confetti cannons of rules and regulations shot off behind me, making sure no one could chase us up the aisle.

“I’ve got ’em!” yelled a voice to our left.

Oh, right. Libraries had multiple aisles.

“Take a right!” I cried as we neared an opening in the shelves.

“But we came from the left!” Sammi said.

“Freeze!” yelled a guard, barreling into view on our left.

“Never mind!” Sammi said, and as Laddu flew directly into the guard’s forehead, we went right. While the guard roared and flailed, I looked back to make sure Laddu was okay, but Sammi herself pulled me into a new row, pushing me onward.

“He’ll be fine!” Sammi said. “Does Jason know a way we can get out of here?”

“Just keep going forward!” Jason said.

But already there was another set of footsteps thudding up the aisle to our right. If we just kept going forward, they’d have us surrounded in no time.

“What’d he say?” Sammi asked as we reached a new intersection.

“He said left!” I said, and we bore left. Then a shape burst forth from a shelf in front of us, and we screamed and dodged right into a new aisle—only to have that shape fly ahead of us, shaking its tail feathers in our faces.

“Oh. Hey, Laddu,” Sammi panted. “Knew you’d be fine—oh, there he goes again.”

Again, the first guard had entered the aisle behind us, and again, Laddu circled and dove. I was too busy running forward into a new aisle to look back, but based on the shriek that resulted, this time Laddu had aimed lower than the forehead.

“I love him so much,” Sammi said.

Blinking touchscreens and mysterious aisle markings raced by: ADA–UNIX; 101010–EVERYTHING; ???–!!!!. I was running out of breath, and at this point so many people were yelling from all over the library that it was impossible to tell where any of our pursuers were—or where we were, for that matter.

Then I saw it, coming up on our right: K–S, one of the aisles we’d first seen upon entering Terms and Conditions. We’d made it back to the front.

“This way!” I hissed, not wanting to give away our location. Sammi nodded and we darted up K–S, ready to make a quiet escape.

Then we reached the end of the aisle and froze.

“Was that there when we came in?” Sammi asked.

“That was definitely not there when we came in,” I said.

Nevertheless, it was there now: another swarm of Drones, smaller than the one at the back door but still big enough to look seriously tough to pass through, thrumming and humming around the door that would lead us out to the Honeycomb.

“Do you think they’ll attack us if we try to get out?” I asked.

“Do you really want to find out?” Sammi responded, which, fair. But we had to do something quick—all those shouts and footfalls, while still scattered across the library, were definitely getting closer.

“Laddu?” Laddu asked, appearing behind Sammi and perching on her shoulder, feathers ruffled but none the worse for wear.

“You’re asking me,” Sammi sighed.

“You could let them catch you,” Jason suggested. “Maybe they’d take you to wherever they’re keeping Eric Alanick. Then you could find out what’s happening and I could—I mean, we could do something about it.”

“That’s really your best idea?”

“No,” Jason sighed. “But I didn’t want to tell you about the other one.”

I could feel my blood pressure rising, which was really impressive because, again, not my real body. “Why would you not want to tell us?!”

But I knew the answer without him even responding: He cared more about us finding Eric Alanick than he did about us actually escaping.

“Jason knows a way out?” Sammi asked, catching on.

“Sort of,” Jason said. “Do you see the touchscreen next to you?”

I did. Glowing on the edge of the shelf was one of the mini-hexagons I’d spotted upon entering the library. It was the one that read HIVE SIMULATOR—ENTER?

“I see it,” I said. “What’s a HIVE Simulator, anyway? That seems redundant. We’re already in HIVE.”

“That’s not—just touch it,” Jason said. “Both of you. Or just you, obviously. I don’t really care about Sammi.”

“You little—”

“I hear them!” yelled a voice that was much closer than any of the others had been so far.

“Touch the screen!” I hissed, and without even questioning it, Sammi joined me in slamming a hand down on the console. Over Sammi’s shoulder, I saw a goon emerge from the stacks, looking the wrong way, but the moment he turned he would see …

Nothing, apparently, because at that moment the goon vanished, along with Sammi and the rest of the library. In a sharp contrast from the library’s strip lights and steel, I suddenly found myself standing in a beam of warm sunshine.

And in another sharp contrast, I suddenly found myself inches away from a wrinkled, pale beast with no face, lumbering closer to me with every second, ready to tear me apart.