Zero seconds.
An electric current rushes through my head. Nearby, Hammie and Roshan also flinch. The beta lenses start to patch, steadily downloading the algorithm onto them.
I pull out the cube that Zero had given me. The hack. And in the space of that moment, I hesitate.
I don’t know what gives me away to Taylor. Something about the light in my eyes, the shift in my stance, the slight hesitation in my actions.
Does she know I have other plans?
She suddenly raises a gun and aims it directly at my head. She keeps her eyes on Hideo as her finger hovers over the trigger. “Open the algorithm, Hideo,” she says calmly.
Hideo’s lips curl into a snarl at her threat to me. His hatred pours over like oil across the ocean.
At the same time, Jax—who had been so still—suddenly draws her own gun and points it directly at Taylor. “Shoot her, and I shoot you.” Her hand is clenched tightly enough around her gun’s handle to wash her skin white.
Taylor looks sharply at her. This time, the woman is surprised. “What’s this?” she murmurs. “You’re in on this, too, Jackson?”
Jax winces at the use of her full name.
Taylor tightens her lips. Deep anger flashes across her face. I remember what Jax had said to me about Taylor’s greatest fear.Death.Now her daughter is threatening her with it.
Panic floods Jax’s eyes, that terror she’d had as a small girl cowering under the influence of someone supposed to be her mother. Her hand trembles. But this time, she doesn’t back down. Everything building up inside her since the death of Sasuke has erupted to the surface, and its strength keeps her arm lifted.
She tears her eyes away from Taylor long enough to glance at me. “Now,” she hisses.
Hideo,I gasp through our Link.
Taylor looks back at him and tightens her finger on her gun’s trigger.
Hideo moves.
He snaps his fingers once, pulling up his own small, rotating box to hover between us. Before I even have time to register that this is the key to opening his algorithm, he flicks his wrist and unlocks it.
A maze of colors bursts from the box, a million bright nodes connected to each other with lines of light, the way a brain’s circuits link to one another. It’s massive and intricate, extending far beyond our space on the floor to fill the entire arena. For one brief instant, I am looking into a web of commands that can control the minds of every single person in the world hooked up to the NeuroLink. If time could have stopped right now, I would stop to marvel at this frightening masterpiece.
Hideo homes in on Taylor’s account, seizes it, and links it tothe algorithm. Her mind’s palette suddenly appears as a new node in the matrix, connected to Zero by a glowing thread.
Hideo flicks his wrist again. The thread snaps.
Taylor shudders violently as he rips away her control of Zero.
Now, Hideo,I cry out silently. The cube in my hand flickers in and out as I tremble.Destroy the algorithm.
But Hideo’s eyes are still black with hate. And I realize, abruptly, that he isn’t done yet—he’s not satisfied with this part of our plan, to merely hook Taylor into the algorithm and force her to free Zero from her control. He’s snapped loose from his measured self and allowed his rage to run free. He’s going to unleash the full, unthinking force of his power on her.
“No—” I start to say. But it’s too late.
In that same instant, Taylor’s lips part in terror as she realizes what he’s about to do. She holds out a hand instinctively in front of her.
Hideo narrows his eyes. Through our Link, I hear him send a quiet, unspoken command to Taylor.
Die.
26
I see ithappen in slow motion.
Taylor doesn’t even have time to utter a sound. She only gets a fraction of a second—and all she can do is turn her disbelieving expression to Hideo, her eyes dilated like a deer’s at the end of the hunt, right after the predator’s teeth sink in. Her lips part, but she never gets a chance to say a final word. Maybe she’d wanted to scream.
