She shook her head and sniffled. “Not anymore. Not to me. This isn’t the Terraform Zero I know or have ever played.”
“You’ll give up everything for him?”
It wasn’t even a question anymore to her. “Everything,” she whispered. Even though somewhere far off, she could hear the crowd of the stadium, it didn’t change her answer. Cypher had given up everything for her. She hadn’t realized that until now, and she would easily do the same for him.
“What a shame.” Commander Lotrin turned his back on her and threw out his hand. The very screens she’d been desperate to make appear materialized forhim.
Then the alien guards vanished, and the surroundings changed. Cypher was still out on the floor, but his body was fully intact again, and the sparks and blood had vanished. He lay there unconscious, and she wondered if he’d been thrust into another instance in the game, or held somewhere else…
Vee licked her lips.If this isn’t my virtual world, was he even there at all?
She glanced away. It was only her and Commander Lotrin now, overlooking Laprencia and its beautiful alien landscapes. Still, the Trentian commander’s presence unnerved her.
Shaking, she slowly climbed to her feet and went to his side.
“Are you really here?” she asked. “Or are you part of the simulation?”
The Commander turned to her and smiled coldly.
23
Cypher glared at the Commander Lotrin with contempt. Every code and well-crafted fiber of his being urged him to kill the alien. It didn’t matter that the war had ended nearly a half-century ago. Those parts of him hadn’t changed.
The need to thrust Vee behind him and protect her body and soul coursed through his wires like hellfire.
But time had given him reason, knowledge, and a tiny bit of wisdom. He held back. There was something else happening around him that put him on edge. He gritted his teeth, looking at the alien ship in disgust.
Something’s wrong.
He forced his instincts down and focused on the strangeness. Within seconds, the culprit was known.The game’s codes.They flickered and crashed around him.
The moment he entered Terraform Zero with Vee, nothing felt right. Even as he gazed at the alien soldiers around him while Vee talked to the commander, Cypher knew something was off.
He reached out and touched Vee’s arm, and although she glanced at him and there was warmth under his fingers, the feel of her wasn’t the same as when they played together at his ship.
Frowning, he shuttered his systems and surged his digital consciousness into the codes of the game. Immediately, he came across codes written over codes, three times over.
I’m in a different simulation than Vee.
Within seconds, he hacked and unraveled the mess before him. It was sophisticated, but nowhere near the level of Ghost City. Vee’s fake persona was tugging on his arm and asking him where he was when he had the worst of the simulation’s codes suppressed. Even though he knew she wasn’t really there, he pulled her under his arm and pressed her to his side.
“I’m finding my way back to you,” he muttered.
“But you’re right here?” Her voice was a dream.
“Cyborg scum,” the commander snarled. Cypher numbed his own codes out to not fall for the Trentian’s bait.
Fucking cheaters.
He found his and Vee’s simulation, partially overlapped but in different instances. Working fast, he untangled the rest of the web.
An array of colors saturated his vision, a feeling of vertigo.
“Cypher!” Vee screamed when his simulation finally crumbled around him. Blood-curdling, her cry thrust him back into virtual reality.
“What the hell—” Cypher gasped. He looked around, disoriented. Blood and sweat filled his nose. They’d definitely been in different simulations.
Vee, no longer under his arm, was being held back by a Trentian soldier as she fought to reach Cypher. Pain erupted through his body, his senses seized, and he temporarily blacked out. Shock and electricity suffused him.
