“I’d have to find them first. And that’d take too long. But don’t worry. They won’t find you in here. I’ve got a scrambler.”
“A what?” Lilli asked, scrunching up her nose.
Maddy smiled. “Let’s just say I like my privacy. I don’t need the government looking in on everything I do.”
Wow. Was Maddy a hacker or something? I had no idea.
“Look, I’m sorry,” I said. “We didn’t want to drag you into this. We just didn’t know where else to go.”
“I’m glad you came. Now, why don’t you go upstairs? You can use my office to log back into the game. I’ll keep an eye on things down here. If they do show up looking for you, I’ll try to get rid of them. And if I can’t? I’ll hit the master breaker for the building. It’ll shut down all power and Wi-Fi so you’ll be booted from the game. If you are, don’t try to find me. Just go. There’s a back door on the second floor that leads out to the fire escape.”
“But then where do we go?” Lilli asked, looking frightened. I didn’t blame her. It was one thing to be on the run in a video game. But in real life? It was ten times as terrifying. My sister turned to me. “Maybe we should go to the police,” she said.
“If we do, they’ll take our VR rigs,” I argued. “Then we’ll never get to Ikumi.”
“Yeah, well, we’re not going to get to her anyway if the Mech Ops people catch up to us.”
“Here,” Maddy interrupted, writing down an address and some instructions on a small scrap of paper. “If you need to leave, head here. Follow these directions exactly. They’ll take you to someone safe.”
I stared down at the paper. “Alpha Burn?” The name sounded so familiar. Then it hit me. “Wait, isn’t this that big-time hacker?” Wow. I’d read all about this guy online. He was totally famous. Maddy knew him personally?
“Just a friend of mine,” was all Maddy would say. “Someone you can trust.”
“Thanks, Maddy,” Lilli said. “We owe you one.”
She gave a tight smile. “You owe me at least ten. Now go!” She shooed us to the stairs.
We dashed up the stairs into the apartment. It was small, but cozy and clean, with simple furniture and all sorts of framed manga artwork on the walls. We settled down onto her couch and started reassembling our VR rigs, getting ready to log back into the game.
As we worked, I tried to keep my mind on the task at hand, but found myself glancing at the apartment front door over and over again. Despite Maddy’s assurances, I still didn’t feel safe. And I really didn’t like the idea of going into a game world and leaving our real-life selves so vulnerable.
But we had no choice. And so I forced myself to swallow my fear and place my game helmet over my head. We’d been given another chance. We couldn’t waste it.
“You ready?” I asked Lilli.
“Gearing up, Mech Head,” she replied with a rueful grin. “Let’s hope we live till tomorrow.”
We were back.
Except, annoyingly, not where we left off. Like Mom said, we had emerged back inside the warehouse at the very beginning of the game.
I groaned, lightly punching the wall with annoyance. “All that work! For nothing!”
“At least we’re out of that building,” Lilli pointed out, ever the optimist. “That’s something.”
“Except we left Starr there,” I reminded her. “What if she’s still stuck in that room?” I accessed my menu and checked our party status. Lilli and I showed up online. But Starr no longer appeared in our party. Probably because she was still off-grid.
“Maybe she logged off when we didn’t come back,” Lilli suggested.
“Maybe…” Then a disturbing thought struck me. “I hope those guys from Mech Ops didn’t come for her, too.”
“Ugh. I hope not,” Lilli scowled. “Without her we’ll never get through this thing.”
“Don’t worry, Speedy. You still got me!”
We whirled around at the sound of the voice. There was Josh, lounging against a rusted-out old robot, decked out in all his glorious purple armor. I bit back a groan, doing my best not to look as annoyed as I felt. Seriously? Starr was missing, and Josh had somehow made it back? Talk about rotten luck.
“Don’t you have soccer camp today?” Lilli asked, peering at him curiously.
“Don’t you?” he shot back, raising his eyebrows.
She grinned. “I’m… sick.”
“Funny. Me too,” Josh declared, giving her a wink. “So desperately ill. Anyway, I figured I’d log in to see what my team was up to in the Mech ’verse.”
“Uh, we’re not actually a team,” I reminded him, annoyance rising.
Josh raised an eyebrow. “We were literally just playing together hours ago.”
“Yeah. And you literally just left me to die in the vents. Nice teamwork.” I tried not to think about the rat again, crawling toward me. Its gnashing teeth, its glowing eyes. I should have been thankful at least it didn’t have Atreus’s face.
“We didn’t leave you to die, Ian,” Lilli said, sounding exasperated. “We went in, we found the grate in the next room, and we climbed down.”
“There wasn’t a grate!” I protested.
“There was!” my sister insisted. “Maybe the designer moved it by the time you got there. Like the hole in the floor. You can’t blame us for that.”
It was funny, her saying “us” when I’d been talking about Josh, not her.
“Whatever,” I muttered. Frustrated, I walked over to the big shipping container in the center of the room, punching it with my fist. To my surprise, a low groan came from inside. A groan that sounded like…
“Yano?” My heart picked up its pace. “Is that you?”
Relief rushing through me, I ran to the front of the shipping container and whipped open the door. Sure enough, there was our dragon friend, once again crammed inside.
“Finally!” he declared, shuffling out from the crate. “I was beginning to think you’d never open this thing. My wings are completely
