During our fight, Zero purposely avoided touching Hideo. Almost as if he were afraid to. Maybe he doesn’t want to see what’s there—echoes of himself as a child, of their relationship and their happy memories, or of their parents and what has happened to them since his disappearance. He’s afraid of absorbing that, just as much as someone might be afraid to click on an attachment for fear of downloading a virus.
The puzzle clicks into place. Zero doesn’t know that I havethe older iterations of Sasuke in my account. If his mind invades mine, then he’s also going to absorb those files into his data.
I don’t have much time—I’m fading quickly, as if I were slowly falling asleep. I have the faint sensation that, in real life, I’ve slumped to the ground of the panic room, the same thing I’m now doing before Zero in the virtual world. The floor feels cold and metallic beneath me. With the last bit of strength that I can muster, I bring up the files I’d stored away of Sasuke.
The files appear before me, this time not as a cube of data, but as a blue scarf.
Zero stiffens. He can now see everything and anything running through my mind—which means he can see the scarf, too. I manage a small smile. Too late, he’s realized what I’ve downloaded into him.
I take the scarf in my hands. My arms lift slowly before me, like I’m dancing through deep water, and as if in a dream, I reach out toward Zero. I drape the scarf around his neck. And as the last of me wanes, I can feel Sasuke’s data merging with Zero’s mind, becoming a part of it.
His shielded face is the last thing I see. Even though he has no expression, I can feel his anger through the NeuroLink.
Thief.
No,I reply as my final thought.I’m a bounty hunter.
32
Zero freezes, asif he were nothing more than a metallic shell. A strange gasp comes from him, and I realize for the first time that I’ve never heard him utter a breath before. In that gasp, I don’t hear the deep, amused, soulless voice I’m used to hearing from Zero.
I hear a child.
“Ni-chan?”
Brother?The translation appears in my view. Then Hideo’s beside me, kneeling down, and I struggle to turn my head so that I can look up at him. Hideo has his eyes locked on Zero.
He heard the gasp, too. A hint of recognition flickers in his eyes.
“Sasuke?” he says.
“You don’t look like Hideo.”
The voice is coming from a small boy, his dark eyes fixed onHideo’s form crouched over the now lifeless robot. When had he appeared? Zero is nowhere to be seen now. A bright blue scarf is wrapped tightly around the boy’s neck, and as he takes a few steps forward, I see a colorful plastic egg clutched in his little hand.
It’s young Sasuke, the first iteration of him, therealhim.
A shudder runs through Hideo at the sight. He doesn’t take his eyes off Sasuke as his brother moves hesitantly forward, his expression suspicious of this young man bent before him.
“Sasuke,” Hideo says. A tremor has entered his voice. “Hey. It’s me.”
Still, Sasuke tilts his head at him, doubtful. He doesn’t seem to realize he’s a figment of data, a ghost of a memory, and neither does Hideo. In this moment, he is here.
“You don’t look like him,” Sasuke says again, although he keeps moving closer. “My brother is only a little taller than me, and he was wearing a white jacket.”
I remember what Hideo had been wearing that day of the disappearance, and it was indeed a white jacket. Now Hideo wipes a hand across his eyes, a hollow laugh escaping from him. His cheeks are wet.
“You remember what I was wearing?”
“Of course. I remember everything.”
“Yes.” Another shaking laugh from Hideo, full of heartbreak. “Of course you do.”
“If you’re my brother, why are you so tall?”
Hideo smiles as the boy finally stops right in front of him. “Because I’ve been searching for you for a long time, and somewhere in that time, I grew up.”
Sasuke blinks at that, as if it triggered some sort of memory in him. Then he’s shifting again, and all of a sudden, he’s no longer the small boy who had disappeared in the park, but a lankieradolescent, maybe eleven or twelve, the way I’d seen him in some of the recordings. He’s still wearing the scarf, but the baby fat in his cheeks has disappeared. He searches Hideo’s gaze as he stands there, trying to figure it all out.
