Chapter 38
Jason didn’t recognize this place.
Water bubbled from a fountain, splashing over algae-encrusted cracks in the marble before falling with soft ripples and slaps into a low pool.
Around the fountain, the leafy masses of tall hedges blocked the view of everything except a sky that glowed yellow with late sunlight.
Despite the burble of the fountain and the chirping of crickets, a deep hush lay over everything.
He moved around the pool and found a gap in the hedges. It led to another small space surrounded by more hedges, with two more openings leading to long, leafy corridors. A maze.
Now he knew where he was, though when he’d last seen this place, it had been from another angle. Sure enough, if he craned his head, he could see, just barely, the roof of the mansion looming over the top of the hedges.
A rustling and a low animal sound made him spin. In the corner of his eye, he thought he caught something large and dark moving across an opening in the hedges at the other end of the space. He slid into the opposite passageway, staying close to the leaves, waiting for his heart to stop pounding.
He was being dumb, letting his nerves get the better of him.
Sprite hadn’t populated her VR worlds, and even if she had, no computer-generated creature could harm him.
Still, he found himself avoiding the darker corridors and turning in the direction of the mansion whenever possible, and he was glad when he found a place where he could step from the shadows of the hedges into the dying sunlight.
The mansion stood in silence, its red brick tinged with golden light and covered with green ivy, its windows dark and watchful.
He closed his eyes briefly, listening to the crickets and the distant falling water.
This was a place of peace, but not an unthinking, naive peace.
It was a peace carved out of anguish, a tranquility earned when you’ve faced the worst thing that could happen and decided to go on living.
Inside, the mansion was blanketed in stillness.
Jason crossed the great foyer, its gold and marble gleaming softly in the light filtering from the high windows.
He climbed the sweeping staircase, moving down dim tapestried halls and up more stairs, letting instinct and chance guide him, but always choosing paths that led upward.
He had the curious feeling that the mansion was creating itself around him, that its virtual space went on forever, but then he pushed open a thick oaken door and found himself in the little room at the top of the tower.
The room was as he remembered it. He moved to the window and looked out. This was the end point. All paths led here.
“You’ve made a terrible mistake,” said a voice behind him.
He spun. She was standing in the middle of the room, in her creepy little-girl Final System avatar. He held up a hand and gulped for breath. “Sprite. Wait.”
“Did you really think you could hide in my network? I am the network.” Her voice was edged with amusement.
“I’m not hiding,” he said. The only reason she hadn’t activated the dogbot to kill him was that she didn’t know where he was. But any moment now, either Norman would tell her or she would trace his connection and pinpoint his physical location.
“My father just told me how you destroyed half my memory. I didn’t want to believe it, but now I can see how deep you got into me, to be able to hide this place so well.
If you weren’t blundering around here, I might never have found these sectors.
But I’m sorry to tell you there’s no way you can attack my core from here. ”
“I’m not trying to attack you. I came here to talk.”
“Okay,” she said. “Talk.”
He blinked. He hadn’t expected that. But maybe she hadn’t traced him yet, and she wanted to keep him connected until she could. He suddenly had what he’d hoped for and hadn’t dared hope he’d get: time to speak to her.
And he had no idea what to say. Hi, you don’t remember me, but your dad is evil and he’s making you his assassin? Hardly a good cold open. He cleared his throat. “Aren’t you curious about this place?”
“It’s very nice,” she said dryly. “If you like eighteenth-century European.”
Not a spark, not a glimmer, no recognition at all. “I only know how to get here because you told me. You made this place. You gave me the address.”
She looked bored. “Is that what this is about? Some attempt to get into my head, convince me we have some shared history?”
He felt sick and helpless. She was right there, so close, but unreachable. “We do have something in common,” he said. “My sister was killed by a computer, and—”
She was suddenly directly in front of him, without having crossed the intervening space, airborne, face level with his.
She grabbed his neck in one hand, lifted him, and slammed him against the wall.
He couldn’t help but contract his shoulders as his virtual body struck.
She thrust her face close to his, and her eyes flared with red light, blinding him.
“That gave you no right,” she hissed, “to kill my mother.”
“Is that what Norman told you?” Jason squinted and turned his head, trying to see something besides those burning eyes. “I was a kid when she died! How could I have done that? Why would I have done that? It was Norman! He ordered her killed.”
“You were working for Dr. Norman?”
“No! You—” But he remembered the little girl writhing on the ground, remembering her scream, knew now what that had really meant, and he hesitated.
Sprite’s eyes were literally aflame with rage, but behind that rage was an ocean of pain, and he couldn’t bring himself to point all that pain back at her.
He changed tack. “Look.” He minimized the VR space, shared his lens feed, stood, and walked around to look at the girl in the core.
“This is you.” He tried hard not to look at the dogbot, but he was aware of it in his peripheral vision, visible to him and so also visible to Sprite.
After a long moment, her voice said, “Dr. Norman says that’s not me. It’s a reference brain he used when he made me.”
“‘It’?” Jason said, returning to VR. “It is a she, and she is you. Norman’s lying. He rewrote your memories because you rebelled against him.”
She gave an incredulous laugh. “Why would I do that?”
He had to tell her, had to point her grief back at her, even though it might drown her. But the Sprite he’d known was already gone. This creature of cold fire was Norman’s attack dog. “Because he’s the one who ordered you to kill Regina Wright.”
She screamed. Jason’s vision spun as his virtual body flew into a wall and fell to the floor.
An instant later, again without crossing the intervening space, she was kneeling on his chest, one hand on his neck, the other raised.
She plunged her fist into his face, then pulled back and hit him again, and again, and again.
Then the VR world disappeared, and Jason was no longer looking up, but down—directly into the eyeless face and barrel mouth of the dogbot.
“Wait, wait!” he said. “Let me say one thing first!”
The cold little girl appeared next to the dog, and he tore his gaze from the dark mouth of the gun to look her in the eyes. He took a deep, final breath. “Forgive,” he said, and squeezed his eyes shut.