I screamed, as did the gears of the Rolls-Royce and every vehicle around us, completely unprepared for Aaron’s sudden death wish. But as I closed my eyes and braced for impact, I felt no pain—just the soft unsensation of my feet pulling up from the ground.

It’s happening, I thought. I’m becoming a Drone.

Then I felt something odd. It was a lurching sensation, as if the ground had vanished from under my feet … again.

Which was impossible.

Unless someone was using some sort of—

“Double jumps, baby!”

I opened my eyes. Aaron was grinning wickedly as he pulled us through the air in a physics-defying leap, holding Sammi in one hand, me in the other, and wedging a bewildered if amused Gus under his left armpit. Laddu fluttered up beside us, looking just as nonplussed as anyone else.

“All right, everyone,” Aaron said. “Prepare to grab on in three … two …”

And then he let go of my hand. If I’d had more time, I might have panicked—or, I suppose, panicked more—but there was only enough time for the great iron curve of the bridge’s arch to rush up at me, at which point instinct took over. I threw my arms out and wrapped them around a conveniently placed railing, the frame slipping out of my grasp and clattering onto the iron below. Sammi, daringly but deftly, snatched the far railing just in time to avoid a plunge into the murky depths; and Gus tumbled onto the thin walkway sandwiched between the railings, much the same way he’d tumbled from the wings of a dragon not so much as twenty-four hours ago. Aaron, showboat that he was, landed next to Gus, beaming and on his feet.

Don’t look down, I thought, clambering over the railing and trying not to register the drop from here to the bridge below—or from the bridge to the water. Don’t look down, don’t look—

“Oof!” I fell onto the walkway, or more accurately, onto Gus.

“Are you okay?” I asked, hopping off him and helping to pull him up. “I—”

Instead of answering, Gus pulled me into a kiss as soon as we were both on our feet. Actually, a little sooner; I staggered back toward the railing, but Gus just wrapped his arms around my waist and held me steady. Now that I saw his smiling face up close, I realized it matched his suit: a little rumpled, a little beaten up by the bridge, but roguishly, undeniably charming.

“Don’t worry,” Gus said. “You know me. I like playing at the tough level.”

I smiled, but somewhere inside me, a rebellious voice whispered, Really?

“Really?”

Oh my God.

“Jason,” I hissed. “Shut up.”

Gus’s roguish smile turned down two watts.

“ ‘Jason’?” he asked, uncircling his arms from my waist.

Blessedly, Sammi chose that moment to yank off an armored glove and smack Aaron over and over with it. Laddu, ever the loyal ally, hovered nearby and got in a few pecks in solidarity.

“How—in—the—world—could—you—know—that—would—work?” Sammi exhorted between slaps. “I didn’t think you even could do double jumps in AATG!”

“You normally can’t,” Aaron said, all smiles despite the verbal and physical onslaught. “Unless you save up a bunch of points. Which you could only do if you’d, say, been driving for almost an entire day executing a seemingly endless and certainly flawless series of trick driving stunts. I bought the power-up just before you guys entered the game, but I didn’t know when the right time to use it would be.”

“I’m still not sure it was the right time,” I said, finally summoning the courage to look down as I bent to pick up the frame. Far below us, the Rolls-Royce and the roadster sat crumpled up and smoking in a ten-car pileup, all twisted metal and broken glass. The motorists who had managed to escape the wrecks of their cars were standing around shaking their fists ineffectually at one another—or, in the case of the few who’d seen the cause of the crash, looking up and shaking their fists ineffectually at us.

And then there were the ones who hadn’t escaped their cars in time. And I didn’t think they were all NPCs. Because now, out of driver’s seats and debris heaps, a couple of players had begun to rise …

“Oh, come on,” Aaron said, oblivious to the scene below. “You have to admit that was amazing.”

“He does have a point,” Jason said.

I pointed down at what were now, undoubtedly, a pair of Drones.

“Do they have to admit that was amazing?” I asked, unable to keep the frustration out of my voice. “We’re not the only people stuck in this game, guys. I know you said you could do this forever, Aaron, but thanks to you, some of those players down there don’t have a choice. We’re trying to save everyone, not sacrifice them!”

“Oh.” Aaron’s whole body deflated, and I wondered if maybe I had gone too far. “I didn’t mean to—it wasn’t—I was trying to help! Like you guys said! I just wanted to try a crazy idea, so we could save our skin and maybe find this so-called bug. That is, if it even exists—”

“I think it does,” Sammi interrupted. “And I think … maybe … your idea worked.”

We all turned to her, but she wasn’t looking at any of us.

“Look,” she said, pointing up.

As far up as we were on the bridge’s arch, there was farther still to go. The bridge peaked about fifty yards beyond and above us, at which point it began, finally, to descend back down to the distant shore. But up there at the peak, unfathomably high above a fathoms-deep river, sunlight danced and sparkled off the top of the arch, and also off—

“What is that?” Gus asked, shielding his eyes and squinting. The sun wasn’t just bouncing into our eyes; it appeared, somehow, to be bouncing twice. Like there was something hovering in midair, catching the light and refracting it in a way that our brains registered as wrong.

Like a bug.

“No way,” Gus breathed. “It couldn’t be that easy. Is that a loot box? Or a secret AATG thing, like Aaron’s power-up?”

“Can’t be,” Aaron said. “They don’t shine like that. Maybe it’s— Hey!”

I knew from experience that Gus and Aaron could bicker for hours. I didn’t think we had that kind of time, so I set off up the walkway, leaving the others to catch up behind me.

Down on the highway, the people who’d noticed us earlier were now pointing and gesticulating urgently, and as traffic backed up, more and more people were getting out of their cars to watch the weirdos high up on the walkway. For a moment as I looked down, it seemed like even the Drones were rising up to check us out—but I couldn’t be sure, and anyway, I had bigger things to worry about. The climb got steeper and more precarious the closer we got to the top, and the winds grew stronger, threatening to topple us off the side. Soon I was pulling myself up the handrail one step at a time, clutching the honeycomb frame to my body and digging my boots in for as much traction as I could get.

And then I reached the peak.

As I stepped forward, the light that had been so blinding a moment ago slanted and shifted, and finally I could see what we’d come for.

The Bug.

It floated impossibly, four feet above the walkway, frozen in the air despite looking as large and heavy as a gold brick. What was really odd was that it had four gossamer wings, but used none of them to keep itself in the air. In fact, it didn’t move at all: not the wings, nor the bulbous black-striped abdomen, nor the honeyrod thorax, all of which marked the object out as …

“A bee,” Jason said. “Another bee.”

“It’s an actual bug,” Gus said. “The Bug is a bug.”

“Bees aren’t bugs,” Sammi said.

“Bugs aren’t bugs,” Aaron said, and before anyone could question that, he added, “Like, computer bugs aren’t literally insects. I think some license is being taken here.”

“Actually,” I heard myself say, “one of the first recorded bugs in computer history was a moth that flew into a gigantic navy supercomputer. They had to remove it from the room before they could get things working again. It’s part of why we call glitches bugs.”

Three faces turned to stare at me, open-mouthed. I knew how they were feeling. I hadn’t thought about that fact in years.

“Whoa, book girl,” Sammi said. “Where’d you learn that?”

“My mom told me,” I said softly.

Sammi closed her mouth again as Gus’s eyes popped open.

“Wait, Kara,” he said. “Do you think your mom—”

“All right,” I said, shooting my hand out toward the Bug. “We’ve wasted enough time here. Let’s see what this thing is—”

“Freeze.”

I froze.

The two Drones flanked the walkway, hemming us in on either side.

“This anomaly is in violation of HIVE policies,” said one of the Drones. “Thank you for detecting it; it will be handled by authorities from here. Please step away from the anomaly.”

“Wait, whaaaat,” Aaron breathed.

“Please step away from the anomaly,” said the other Drone—I think. Honestly, it was hard to tell where their voices came from. “Step away or your avatars will be expelled.”

“Kara,” Gus cautioned, moving forward and placing a hand lightly on my shoulder, “maybe you should—”

“Freeze,” the first Drone repeated, whirling toward Gus. “Do not step closer to the anomaly.”

Gus obliged, his hand still on my shoulder, my hand still stretched out toward the Bug. Without moving my head, I flickered my eyes downward. By now, half of Neversleep City appeared to be clustered on the bridge, staring up at us, waiting for something to happen.

And then something happened.

Out of the very corner of my vision, I saw Sammi’s hand fly to the belt of her aviation suit. The Drones turned to face her, but she had already pulled out the smoker, clipped at her waist since we’d left Terms and Conditions. With a pair of quick puffs, she aimed at first the one Drone, then the other. Again, barely any smoke came out; and yet again, the Drones recoiled as if they’d been attacked with a flamethrower.

I shot my hand forward, seizing the moment and seizing the Bug. As soon as my fingers wrapped around it, the golden light of the Bug slid up my arm and enveloped my body. I noted dimly that the light continued to flow up Gus’s arm and around his body as well, but I didn’t really get a chance to process that because suddenly I could hear and taste and sense everything ten times more acutely than I could just a second before. It was as if touching the Bug had jacked me into the inner workings of HIVE itself. I smelled each plume of smoke that had been programmed to rise across Neversleep City. I felt the panicked whirring of every Drone in the game. I heard Gus crying, “Aaron, grab my hand! Sammi, grab on to—”

And I heard a cheery, disembodied voice say, “Bug found! Override initiated for game-winning protocol. You may now return to the Honeycomb.”

And the people on the bridge must have heard that, too, because someone yelled, “Wait, override?” prompting a similar chorus of bewildered and outraged voices.

And then I heard none of them at all.

Because we had returned to the Honeycomb.