“S he can’t lock me out,” Craig raved. “The Ignis is mine! Frederick, have Laura get the fixer there now, and make sure Mission doesn’t go anywhere before we can get her on an infuser. I’m going to my terminal downstairs. I’ll shut the damn core down if I have to!”
He went to walk by me toward the skywalks. A drop of blood reminded me of the shard in my hand. If he could shut down the core, then that meant scripting the Great Blackout was also possible—anything. This was my chance to stop him and his show, to avenge all those people whose deaths I took the blame for.
I charged at him. Craig must have seen my reflection in his visor before I got there, and stumbled to the floor. I stood over him. The robot men might not malfunction forever. I wouldn’t be able to escape them when they came back online. This was my only chance. My blade would fall and sink into the monster who tortured my world.
“Don’t!” Vivienne jumped in front of me. “Don’t be the killer they made you. Open your eyes, Mission. This is your chance to run. There’s a place where you can hide.”
“Now isn’t the time for this!” Craig hollered as he clambered away along the floor. “Subdue her immediately,” he ordered the bots.
This time, their eyes slowly flickered back to a cool, steady red. Their heads snapped upright and their weaponized arms rose toward me. I was about to rush Craig again to try to beat them, until Vivienne took my hand and placed the blade at her own throat.
“They are programmed not to allow residents to be harmed,” she said. “Hold it and me close, and they won’t risk touching you.”
Craig’s jaw dropped. “Vivienne, what the hell are you doing?”
“Sir, I… I only volunteered here because I had to. I felt a void growing inside me that no VR could fill. I thought being a part of something real would help me—a part of the vision of the great Craig Helix. I’d thought what you did to Asher was the right thing, but nothing seems right anymore. All of Ignis seems false.”
“Asher Reinhart wanted nothing to do with you! You were worthless to him. A talentless, thoughtless consumer just like all the others.”
She didn’t react to his insults. She turned to face me, no longer afraid of the sharp edge shaving her neck. “He gave up everything to save you,” she said. “All of this. That has to mean something, doesn’t it?”
I glanced between her and Craig, and then the Unplugged man was back, filling every screen and device in High Earth, once again stealing everyone’s attention. He and Asher were entering the very inner sanctum of the Ignis’ core, where the brilliant fusion reactor churned beyond a tinted veil.
[Ignis Feed Location]
Core Reactor
<Camera 1>
A member of the Collective turned just in time to be punched across the face by the Unplugged. He then led Asher to the reactor’s control console positioned below a thick conduit.
“What’s going on?” Asher asked nervously.
“The ship we’re on was always intended to remedy the mistake I created. No more cheating through life. Fors Tech’s last project—one final hope for a new world.”
“What mistake? I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I don’t know you!”
“You did.” The Unplugged ran his artificial fingers over the controls. The interface should’ve been locked to anybody who wasn’t a member of the Collective, but he somehow entered with ease. “Two centuries ago the High Earth Network took the Ignis project from me, only for it to be transformed into a glorified stage. I thought trying to construct a replica would be enough, but thanks to you, I have hope again that at least a shred of humanity in High Earth remains unplugged.”
“What are you talking about?” Asher asked, unable to tear his petrified gaze away from the smoldering fusion reactor. It swirled within blades of revolving metal, like a miniature star, yearning to scorch everything around it.
“I’m going to finish what I started a long time ago.”
An earsplitting bang rang out. A bullet shredded the Unplugged’s shoulder and knocked him back. He whipped around while falling, and a weapon extended from one of his artificial wrists to fire. A stream of electricity lashed across the corridor and struck a stranger standing in the entrance with a pulse-pistol drawn. His face flickered as he convulsed; then a band around his neck burst. The face he wore vanished and a new one was revealed, eyes frozen open.
“A new fixer,” the Unplugged groaned. “Someone will have heard that. Asher, help me.” Asher was busy staring at the smoking corpse. “Asher!”
Asher snapped out of it and wrapped his arm around the Unplugged’s back. Blood oozed from the gaping wound in his shoulder, from which his cybernetic arm now hung slack.
“You need help,” Asher said.
“I’ll be fine.” The Unplugged propped himself back up in front of the console and went back to work with one hand.
“Who was that?”
“Nobody anymore.”
“Step away from there!” Cassiopeia commanded, bursting into the room with a cohort of enforcers and other members of the Collective, armed with guns. Unlike the attacker before them, they didn’t risk shooting and puncturing the core’s enclosure.
“I told you he was trouble,” Alora said. She leaned on the wall behind them, rubbing her aching head.
“It’s too late.” The Unplugged entered one last command and stepped back. “The coordinates for your new world are set. They’ve always been set.”
“Step back or we will fire!”
Asher looked back and forth frantically. The Unplugged took his hand. His thin lips curled into an almost robotic smile, the rest of his facial muscles barely flinching. “Remember the stars, Asher Reinhart,” he whispered. “They call to us.” Then he struck an execute key with both of their fingers.
A shudder knocked everyone in the walkway sideways. The floor and data-server-covered walls began to rattle, and the glow of the core’s reactor augmented until all that was visible were their silhouettes cast against orange light as brilliant as fire.
* * *
“What is he doing!” Craig screamed as High Earth was flooded with orange light. He darted past me as if he’d forgotten I was there. He shoved cowering Frederick out of the way and then looked straight up.
The light didn’t wane. It bounced off every shimmering tower outside, above and below the skywalks, as if a new sun were rising. All the screens in the city, which had once depicted me or views of the Ignis , were still set to the same feed depicting the blinding interior of the core.
Vivienne approached the edge of the platform window slowly, and I had no choice but to follow, keep the blade at her throat, and rotate away from the robot men.
“This is impossible!” Craig shouted. “Frederick, do something!”
The director remained on the floor, whimpering and totally stunned.
“Laura, somebody, do something!”
“Ignis ,” Vivienne whispered. She pointed toward a bright spot streaking across the blue canvas of Earth’s sky.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
The images of the core on everyone’s feed started to flicker so rapidly it was like we were caught in the heart of a violent, rainless electrical storm. Then, suddenly, the feed cut out, and every viewing device in High Earth went dark.
“No!” Craig and I shrieked at the same time.
“It’s okay! Look, it’s still there.” Vivienne ran her finger along the glass where the white mark she claimed to be the Ignis jetted across the horizon. And she wasn’t alone. All of the crowd did the same. And up the towers surrounding us, residents here and there who hadn’t come down to see me stepped out onto their balconies to look up.
“This is impossible!” Craig cried. The band on his wrist flashed so fast it might as well have been solid red. He pulled out a device like Vivienne’s, and his quaking fingers darted across the keys. “She can’t take Ignis from me. Nobody can!” He slammed the screen on the floor and ran to one of the bots. He grabbed it by the shoulders and shook it, earning their attention. “Fix this!”
“They’re actually sending it,” Vivienne said.
“Where?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off the tiny white blemish in the sky. Ignis had been so close to Earth that the people there could see my world if only they’d removed their visors and looked up.
“Where you always thought you were going.”
Another piece of my memories after Asher had saved me jumped into my head. I recalled seeing Earth while running from him. It was blue and brilliant, and while I wasn’t an expert on astrology like a member of the Collective might be, I knew the Ignis shouldn’t have been close enough to see it at all.
It really was all a lie…
“You did this,” Craig turned and said to me, his face flushed. “You planned it with Asher, didn’t you? He wanted to get back at me, so he helped Gloria take my show from me.”
I didn’t answer. Instead, I stared at him. His entire body was trembling. Tears stained his cheeks as he sat amongst the wreckage of the console. He looked like a child in one of the Ignis’ nurseries, throwing a tantrum.
“You took my show from me!” He sprang at me, but I stepped back with Vivienne. He tripped again and cut his hands on the countless shards of the screen. He gaped down at them as blood started to bubble out of him.
“Why would you do this?” he whimpered. “I made you a star. All of you ungrateful… Kill her!” he yelled at the robot men, but with Vivienne there, they couldn’t. Craig lunged again and grabbed my calf. He was so physically weak that I was able to shake free with ease, but as I went to retaliate with a kick, my foot stopped just in front of his face.
Vivienne was right. If I killed him now, I’d become the very thing he’d allowed his show to make me. I’d learned back home that there was a fate worse than death. Our criminals, people like me, were cast into space so that their energy would be lost forever. I never imagined I could pity the man who had caused my world so much pain and suffering, but I’d never seen someone look so pathetic. Asher and the Unplugged had taken from him the one thing in the world he valued, just as he had taken my Jacen from me.
“You said there was a place the bots can’t reach?” I asked Vivienne.
She nodded.
“Show me.”
I turned without even bothering to say the innumerable insults to our monstrous benefactor that I wanted to. Craig Helix didn’t deserve my attention.
“You can’t run from this!” Craig bellowed. “The Network sees everything!”
With the makeshift blade at her throat, Vivienne led me toward the skywalks. The bots parted to allow us to pass, reiterating how I was a threat to society and requesting that I release my weapon. I wondered if maybe they too had no idea how to handle a situation like this. Real violence in their perfect little world.
“She’s an inhabitant, for Earth’s sake!” Helix yelled to the crowd who’d come to meet with me. “Someone grab them and I’ll make you director!”
None of the residents did anything to block us. They were completely confused, some terrified and fleeing me like I was a monster. Others were too busy staring at Craig while he unraveled. More watched the bright mark in the sky that was apparently Ignis setting off on the long-awaited journey across the stars I always thought I was on.
“You’re all useless!” Craig screamed. “After all I’ve given you people. You don’t deserve it. You’ll be delisted for this, Vivienne! You’ll never see High Earth again, you hear me! Neither of you!” His maddened howls now filled the studio.
Vivienne glanced back as we entered the lift. For a second, I noticed hints of regret affect her features; then the doors closed behind us.