If you’ve ever played a particular kind of video game—the kind where you crawl around dungeons, say, or sneak onto pirate ships to steal back your treasure, or live on a pirate ship as a pirate who is going to steal someone else’s treasure—if you have played any of those, then you know exactly how great it feels to open up a chest and find that secret thing you were looking for. Sometimes it’s gems. Sometimes it’s a map. Sometimes it comes with a cute little trumpet fanfare as you raise your prize to the sky, pumping your cute little digital fist.

And sometimes, instead of trumpets, all you hear is bees, fighting against the special bee drugs you have coated them in so that they might not wake up and sting you, as you stare at a secret message either for or from the man who created the giant inescapable video game reality from which you are determined, somehow, to escape.

Truly, it felt great. Just a new joy every minute over here.

“He must have suspected ahead of time that he would need to be rescued,” Sammi said. “Or did he find a way to send this message from wherever he’s being held? Or did another architect do all that for him? And is it the same person who got all those Drones to block the exits in Terms and Conditions? Maybe they knew they’d be under siege. Maybe someone’s fighting back.”

I hadn’t even considered that, and beneath the beekeeping suit, my heart began to race. What was it Dad had said?

There’s a giant problem and you’ve decided it’s your job to fix it. It’s just what your mother would have done.

“Kara,” Jason said, “maybe this is—”

“I think I saw something on the back,” I said abruptly, and flipped the frame over to reveal more words, in coder jargon:

EMERGENCY PROTOCOLS

If(HIVEAttacked=true)

Run(“SaveMe”)

“There must be more on each of these things,” I said. “Come on, Sammi, help me out.”

With each of us wiggling a different side of the second frame, it came out in no time. But when we held it up to the light, I could only frown at the mysterious message.

THERE ARE NO CHEAT CODES IN HIVE.

“Well, I could have told you that,” Jason huffed.

“Look at the back,” Sammi said, and I turned it around.

BUT THIS HIVE HAS BUGS.

“I’ll say it does,” I grumbled as a half-dozen bees ambled irritably over my boots.

“Bees aren’t bugs,” Sammi said.

“I think,” Jason said, “they mean bugs like—”

“Computer bugs.” I slapped my forehead, accidentally squashing two bees. “Of course. Like the kind that cause the Updates—or that this Update caused.”

“This is incredible,” Sammi said. “Somehow, it’s all connected.”

“Sure,” I grunted as we worked a third frame loose. “But why do all these messages have to be so cryptic? It’s not the most helpful form of communication.”

The front of the next frame just said:

36 CHARACTER LIMIT.

“Oh,” I said, feeling sheepish. Then we turned it over:

ALSO, TALKING 2 U = SUPER DANGEROUS.

“Oh,” I repeated. Not for the first time that day, I felt a crawling sensation up my neck.

Then I felt the crawling sensation several other places, and realized we were in another kind of danger.

“Uh, Sammi? The bees are getting, uh, antsy.”

“Oh, shoot.” Sammi dropped her end of the frame and grabbed the smoker again, giving a rapid one-two squeeze to first my suit and then the hive. But the first puff of smoke came out weak and wispy, and the second puff was smaller still. A few bees fell to the floor, but not that many.

“We’re running out of smoke,” she said as a bee threw itself at my foot stinger-first. As we watched, the bee lodged its stinger into the suit before tumbling to the ground to die. I hadn’t felt the sting through the thick fabric, but I didn’t want to find out if that would hold for the third or fourth time I got stung—or the thirtieth or four hundredth.

“Let’s hurry,” I said, moving quickly to the next frame. In my haste, I yanked the frame right out of the hive, which was good, but woke up many more bees in the process, which was bad.

“What does it say?” Sammi asked as she squirted the smoker furiously, and I read aloud:

BUGS ARE SCATTERED ACROSS THE HIVE.

Sammi looked around the greenhouse, but I shook my head.

“I think they mean HIVE HIVE,” I said, and as three bees stung at my wrist, I turned to the back of the frame.

YOU MUST RACE TO FIND THEM.

“Well, obviously we’re going to hurry,” Jason said. “Why would he waste frames like this?”

“Talk about a slow frame rate,” Sammi said.

I stared at her. I had to believe Jason did, too.

“Sorry,” Sammi said. “Pull the next one.”

But I was still looking at RACE TO FIND THEM, even as the buzzing grew harsher around me.

“I don’t think he—I don’t think they did waste a frame,” I said. “I think it’s a clue. For where to find the next one. Race.”

“That could be any number of— Aah!” A bee had gone to sting Sammi right in the mesh of her mask, and instinctively she had tried to swat it away. This only served to anger it, and now she was just as much of a target for the bees as I was—and there were enough bees awake now to easily attack both of us. Laddu now looked very glad to still be in his netting as he waddled nervously away from where we stood.

There was just one frame left in the hive, and it was honeystuck but good. As I pulled and pried at it, I was swallowed up in a cloud of furious yellow and black, making me wince as the bees moved to defend the last of their home. I couldn’t blame them—we were stealing their life’s work, after all—but the collective effect of all of them throwing themselves against my suit was like being buffeted by a very small hailstorm with a grudge. The fear that one of them would break through my suit was growing stronger by the second—and, somehow, I suspected their stings would have a worse effect than some light swelling.

“Why would Eric do this?” Jason asked. “If he wanted anyone to find the messages, why would he guard it like this?”

“Because he didn’t want just anyone to find the messages,” I said. I spoke through gritted teeth, both because I was pulling as hard as I could and because I already regretted what I was about to say. “He only wanted it found by a true Hivehead—by someone—like—you!”

I had to yell the last word as the final frame came loose with an enormous crack and a roaring of enraged bees. They were so thick around me now that I could barely read the message, but I could still make it out:

NOW MOVE LIKE YOU STOLE IT.

And just like that, I knew where we had to go.

“Move!” I yelled. “Move, go, now!”

I tucked the frame under my arm and turned to run. Sammi brandished the smoker into the cloud of bees, but they just feinted and then re-formed, bearing down on us as we dashed back to the front of the greenhouse.

“How are we getting out of here?!” Sammi asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I just hoped we might leave the same way we—”

Flash.

“Came,” I said, and then the two of us were standing in Terms and Conditions.

Facing a bunch of guards.

“Hey!” said a guard. “Who are you?”

Which was strange because, from the claw marks on his forehead, I could definitely tell this was the same guard who’d been chasing us before. Why wouldn’t he recognize us?

Maybe because we were still wearing our beekeeping suits was why.

“What?” Sammi asked. “How did these come through with us? Things stay in the game they’re from.”

“Put the—put your things down!” said one of the guards. They were steadily advancing on us.

Which was how I found out I still had the final frame tucked under my arm, and Sammi still had her smoker.

“It’s not really a game, remember?” I asked. “Maybe anything can come in and out.”

“Which means …” Sammi began, and luckily, we both knew the end of the sentence before she said it.

Which was why we both threw ourselves to the ground as a swarm of seriously ticked-off bees came spewing out of the mini-hexagon behind us, descending upon the legion of guards in a cacophony of buzzing and screaming.

“The door!” I hissed.

“What about it?” Sammi asked.

It was now unblocked by humans, as they ran from the bees—but still blocked by Drones.

“I have an idea,” I said. “Come on!”

As I got back up off the ground, I snatched the smoker from Sammi, pointed it at the door, and squeezed as hard as I could with just the one free hand. The smoker released one last pitiful puff of smoke, but it was exactly enough for the Drones, which scuttled away from it like cockroaches from sunlight. It made no sense; it made perfect sense; and most important, it made a perfect opening for us to leap through, escaping from Terms and Conditions with a flash of light and a sudden, bee-blocking silence.

In a gut-churning moment, we lurched from jumping forward to falling straight down, as we were spat back out into the very top of the Honeycomb. But our platform was waiting for us right where we’d left it, and I twisted around just in time to slam into it on my back, holding the frame up safe in the air. Sammi landed with a grunt next to me, and then Laddu came to a hovering halt just above her.

“Ain’t Auto Theft Grand!” I yelled to the platform. “And hit it!”

Laddu squawked and wrapped his talons around the platform edge just in time to get brought along as we plummeted out of the Honeycomb heights.

“You want to go find Gus and Aaron right now?” Sammi asked, stunned.

“I want to go find the first of these bugs,” I said. “And I think we might just happen to find it in the same place that we’ll find Gus and Aaron.”

“Why in the world would you think that?”

“The clues,” I said, brandishing the frame. “Race to find them. Move like you stole it. What game famously features stealing things and then racing them?”

“Ain’t Auto Theft Grand,” Sammi gasped. “Of course. Wow, what are the odds?”

“It’s the simulation,” Jason gloated. “It’s working perfectly.”

Then he paused.

“Or it’s glitching,” he said. “I think it happens sometimes. I think that’s how we got platypuses.”

At some point, we were going to have a very serious talk about Jason’s views on reality. We were also going to have to figure out what the governments of the world wanted with HIVE, who was trying to help us stop them, and where the people I loved were now.

And if those last two questions were related.

One problem at a time, Tilden, I told myself.

“That was fast,” Sammi said, cutting off my internal dialogue as the platform slowed down. “We’re here. You ready?”

“Let’s go,” I said, getting up. “Or, wait, hold on—we should probably take these beekeeper suits off first.”

Luckily, outfits in the HIVE world worked on video game logic—even, it turned out, those found in mysterious mini-libraries. With a pinch of our noses, we were able to file our suits away to our invisible Inventories, returning us to our standard clothing. Finally, I could see Sammi’s face again—and it was troubled.

“Kara,” she said, “AATG is a huge game. It takes place across an entire sprawling old-timey megacity. How are we supposed to find Gus and Aaron in all that? Let alone a bug whose shape, identity, nature, or even existence we can’t be sure of?”

I did my best to look calm and confident.

“A wise person once told me: One problem at a time,” I said.

Sammi frowned.

“I never said that,” she said.

“I wasn’t saying—never mind,” I said, stepping to the edge of the platform. “Come on. We’ll figure out how to find our friends once we’re inside the game. If they’re even inside the game at all.”

We stepped inside the game.

We stood in the middle of a screaming highway, perched precariously on the thin strip of grass that served as a median. Roadsters raced by us at illegal speeds, scraping the paint off one another as they tried to push their opponents’ cars off the road—which unfortunately had a fifty-fifty chance of pushing that car straight toward us. Sammi cried out in horror as one bright yellow Rolls-Royce in particular flew into a hard spin, spiraling across four lanes of traffic and coming to a screeching halt straddled atop the median mere feet from where we stood. When you got right down to it, the odds of that car landing there were incredible—they really couldn’t have done better if the driver had been aiming for it.

The driver’s seat opened.

“Hey, girls—looks like you need a ride.”

Aaron grinned at us with bright eyes.

On the passenger side, someone leaned their seat back until their face could be seen over Aaron’s shoulder.

Their stupid, handsome face.

“Guess it’s a good thing we found you,” said Gus.