“I can’t be here,” I whisper. The sight of the foster home is making it hard for me to catch my breath. “Get me out.”
Zero shakes his head. “Not until you can do the same to me,” he replies.
I clench my fists as my fear boils over into anger. “I won’t say it again.”
“Neither will I.” He stands before me, cold and impassable. “Look in your Memory. Open the cube.”
Everything around me seems like it’s blurring, spinning in a dizzying circle. I try to concentrate—but then, the old grandfather clock at the end of the hall starts to chime, and the sound of a muffled voice in the kitchen catches my attention.
My heartbeat quickens. I’m back in that awful place again. I’m fourteen, the clock is chiming two in the morning, and I’m out in the hall, sneakers and backpack on, quivering at the sound.
I forget that I’m learning a hack. Instead, I bolt away from Zero and run as fast as I can. My shoes catch against the carpet, making me stumble in the same way I’d stumbled that night. Then I’m out of the hall and in the front room of the home, where the main entrance is staring back at me.
“Hey!”
A shout behind me makes me look over my shoulder. It’s Chloe, one of my older roommates. Her eyes are focused on my backpack and my shoes as she points a finger at me.
“Mrs. Devitt!” she yells, raising her voice so that it seems to drown the whole house. “Emika’s running away!”
I don’t know if it’s because I’m inside my own Memory, but my body does exactly the same thing I did that night. I dart past the kitchen, my eyes on the front door. My legs feel like they’re dragging through mud.
Then comes Zero’s voice again, but I don’t care what he wants from me anymore. All I need to do is get out of here. If they catch me, I’m dead. As I reach the door, I start to sprint.
A force tackles me from behind. It’s Chloe, and suddenly her hands are grabbing for my hair and my throat. We both fall to the floor. I kick blindly out at her, as violently as I can. The lights in the farthest bedroom turn on. We’ve woken up the others.
My shoe connects hard with Chloe’s face. She lets out a yelp and releases me. “Littlebitch!” she spits as she grabs for me again.
I manage to slip out of her grasp, scramble to my feet, and burst through the door out into a stormy night.
The grass is so slick that I nearly slip, but I regain my footing in time. The chain-link gate is right in front of me. I slam into it, just as I realize that it’s held shut with a heavy padlock. Panic ripples through me. My hands hook on to the wiring of the chain-link fence and I haul myself up, not caring when a sharp edge on the metal slashes a red line across one of my fingers.
I crumple in a heap on the other side of the fence, off the property of the foster home.Get up. You can’t be here—they’ll catch you.Behind me, someone emerges from inside the house. They sweep a flashlight beam across the porch. Faint shouts drift to me in the wet air.
I drag myself up to my feet again and dash down the street. I’m not sure if I’m crying in real life or if this is another figment of the memory. All I know is that eventually I huddle in a doorway, almost able to feel the texture of wet wood grain against my hands as I push against either side of the door in an attempt to steady myself. My fingers curl—my nails dig into the chipping paint on the wood.
Zero appears on the sidewalk in front of me. Before I can even start thinking about what to do next, he rushes at me with impossible speed.
Every single instinct I have as a hunter kicks into high gear. I spin out of the way, my arms up in self-defense to protect my faceas he lunges at me. He seizes me by my collar before I can run, then yanks me up onto my feet. He brings his face close to me.
“Calm down and think,” he says angrily.
The vividness of the Memory shudders, and his words cut through my panic. This isn’t real; you’re not really back here.You’re playing in the Dark World, inside a ghost from your past.
How dare you.A surge of anger hits me, forcing me to focus only on Zero. He has broken into my mind, has violated my privacy yet again.The cube. His hack.I stare up at his figure towering over me and bring up the code again. This time, I look inside my Memory.
There.I can evenseewhat he’s done—there is an extra file in my account that shouldn’t be there, an access file that the cube had somehow planted.
I open the access file he’s downloaded into me to see a hidden Link between us, the gateway he’d opened up that led me right back to him. Then I open the cube of data and run it on him.
A ring of files appears around Zero, each one a gaping, door-like void with a view of another world on the other side. Windows into Zero’s mind. I’m in.
I don’t wait for him to react. I just pick the closest door to me—and suck my breath in as his mind suddenly envelops everything around us.
The stormy night vanishes; so do the familiar midnight street and the foster home behind chain-link fencing on the other side of the road. New York disappears.
Instead, I’m now on a carpeted floor, in a strange place. When I look up, I see what appears to be a bedroom. A figure is crouched in one corner, huddled tightly against the wall.I’m in Zero’s memories.
The figure crouching in the corner of the bedroom now stirs.
