It’s a young boy, with his arms wrapped around his knees. His wrists are bony, protruding from a baggy white sweater, and when I look closer, I notice a symbol embroidered on his upper left sleeve. It’s not a mark I’ve yet seen associated with Zero or the Blackcoats, nor is it anything else I recognize. I can’t make out his face in the darkness—but my eyes hitch on a thick scarf wrapped around his neck. A blue scarf.
The same scarf Hideo had given Sasuke the day he disappeared.
The sight startles me so much that I stop short, frozen in place. I pause long enough that, when I blink again, the figure in the corner is gone, and Zero is standing before me again. He reaches out to seize my arm before I can turn away. His hand closes around my wrist, and suddenly I feel like I’m falling, paralyzed. I try to pull my virtual self back up onto my feet, but it’s like I’ve completely stopped responding. All I can see is Zero standing over my figure, dark armor reflecting the dim light in the boy’s bedroom, before it all disappears into darkness.
The Pirate’s Den comes back into view. The onlookers around us are riotous, shouting over one another as payouts fly, the transparent numbers over their heads changing wildly. I blink, confused and lost. On a hovering screen, I see a playback of the last moments of the Duel. I see the moment when Zero struck me with a Lightning power-up, causing me to collapse on top of the glass arch. Zero walks up to me. I run from him along the arch and I recognize my frantic gestures from when I was running down the hallway in the memory of my foster home. I see myself fight back against Zero—the moments when I’d actually hacked into his Memory—only to have Zero paralyze me with a grip of my wrist, another power-up.
He takes my Artifact.
No one in the audience saw my Memory or Zero’s. No one has any idea what happened, that Zero had hacked into my mind or that I had hacked into his. All they witnessed were the same actions playing out in the Duel world. They heard none of the things Zero said to me. It had only been through our Link, as were my words to him.
Some of the onlookers snicker at me, but others seem impressed with the way I played. I nod back at them as if still in a trance. Zero stands beside me. When he looks at me, the black brace around my wrist reappears.
“Well done,” Zero says.
Then the ship fades away, and abruptly I find myself back in the real world, sitting exhausted in my hotel suite before Zero. He’s back in his black outfit and his real body, his cool eyes still studying me like I’m some sort of sculpture.
Our Duel is done.
I can barely remember the dragons and our brief fight. All I can think about is that Zero had dragged one of my worst moments back up to the surface. Forced me to relive every awful second. He’d used my greatest weakness—my past—against me. Suddenly a wild anger sears me to the bone. I feel careless. All I want to do is hurt him back.
I lunge across the room at him.
Zero sidesteps me like a shadow. I stumble past him, clawing at the air, and fall to my knees. Again, I push myself up and go for him, but he dodges again, as smoothly as if he were toying with me.
“I wouldn’t,” he warns, his eyes flashing.
I lean against the room’s writing desk and meet his eyes warily. “Your Memory,” I mutter as I try to steady my breathing. “What was going on in there? Was that when you first disappeared? The symbol on your sleeve—”
“—is a Memory I didn’t intend you to access,” he answers, his voice still eerily detached. He puts his hands in his pockets. “What matters is that you were able to get in through the vulnerability exposed by our Link, in the same way I used the cube to get into your mind.” He gives me a serious look. “That’s your ticket in. But be careful in how you use it. Being inside a mind that’s not your own means the other’s defense will constantly be on the lookout for you. When I seized your wrist, that was my mind realizing you weren’t supposed to be in there and pushing you out. It means you won’t be able to get back in again.”
“But what was that room? Where were you?” I press.
“And where wereyoutrying to run away to?” he interjects, a sharpness suddenly entering his voice. He gives me a small smile. “You ran from me like you could see nothing through the terror in your Memory. Like you didn’t want to spend another second in that house.”
I close my eyes and fight the massive tide of resistance rising in my chest. “Fine, fine,” I snap, crossing my arms over my chest. “Point taken. You don’t ask me, and I won’t ask you.”
He studies me with a curious gaze but decides to let his own questions drop. He brings up the glowing cube between us, the key to this hack. “For you,” he says.
I take it and store it away in my files. My palms feel clammy.
“You’ll have every freedom you had before you met us,” Zero continues. “If you need any equipment, let me know. Jax mentioned you lost your board during your escape. I’ll have a new one sent for you. Keep me updated on how things are going between you and Hideo.”
I nod without saying a word. The thought of me invading Hideo’s memories the way Zero just did mine makes me feel sick.It’s nothing that he isn’t doing with the NeuroLink, I remind myself, and in much worse ways than that.
Zero pauses at my door for a moment. When he glances at me over his shoulder, there’s something else in his gaze—something stiff, as if I’d struck a nerve. “I didn’t know which Memory of yours would appear,” he says.
It’s almost an apology. I don’t know what to make of it. All I can do is stand here quietly, fishing for the right words, trying not to let my mind linger on the night of my escape and the terror of crouching alone in that doorway.
It’s strange, this moment. It’s almost as if he’d let down his guard to reveal a hint of his opaque interior. But it lasts only for a second. Then he steps out of my room, leaving me alone with my endless questions.
I think of Sasuke’s small figure, huddled in a corner. His blue scarf, given to him by the brother he doesn’t seem to remember loving, wrapped desperately around his neck, the way he clung to it as if it were all he had in the world. Most of all, I linger on the glimpse of the mystery symbol embroidered on his sweater. I pull the image up again now and let it hover before me.
Why did he let me see such a personal Memory? Why was it so easy for me to access? It could be that it was just a random mistake, just like I never meant for him to see mine. But Zero is one of the most powerful hackers I’ve ever met. How could he be careless enough to expose this sensitive moment from his past to me? I stand there quietly, struggling to figure him out.
Why does Hideo’s name mean nothing to you? Who took you? What does that symbol mean?
What happened to you?
