James Dashner: The Eye of Minds

But things didn’t quite go as planned when Michael hooked into the Coffin later that afternoon. Instead of Sinking into the VirtNet, all he saw were big block letters:

ACCESS DENIED BY VNS

They’d cut him off.

Michael got out of his Coffin and ran to the Chair, tried his EarCuff. It didn’t work. He ran to the couch in front of the WallScreen and clicked the TV controls. Nothing. He could hear Helga walking around the apartment, huffing and puffing, trying to make calls. But cell service had been disconnected, too. Michael went back to his Chair and attempted to hack his way into the NetScreen for an hour, to no avail.

Cut off. Completely.

All he could do was go to his bed, lie there, and stare at the ceiling, feeling sicker by the minute. How in the world had he gotten into such a mess? In a matter of a day or two, his life had been hijacked by the VNS and threatened by a madman. He missed the days when school and an occasional stomachache were the only things he had to complain about.

But anyone who’d known him for more than five minutes could have guessed where his thoughts headed next. Yes, he’d been shown a vision worse than anything he’d ever laid real or virtual eyes upon, and he’d been promised it would be his future if he did what the VNS wanted. He had no doubt that the VirtNet could be programmed that way for him. Kaine was exactly right: when you had the power to make someone see and experience anything , there were definitely things worse than death. And that bottomless trench had been dug in front of Michael.

Then someone has taken his access away, and there was no chance he could live with that .

More important, Agent Weber’s words now haunted him more vividly. She’d threatened him and his family, and cutting off his access was definitely only the beginning of worse to come. Michael had to get things square. Maybe he’d been too quick to give up.

He got out of bed and decided to stop feeling sorry for himself. He knew the VNS would give him another chance—he’d seen firsthand what they were dealing with. And if they’d come to him for help, they needed it desperately. The horrors of the Kaine vision had faded a bit; Michael’s calmer, more rational side had begun to think that this was no different from any other VirtNet experience. None of it was real, and as long as he was careful, he could do this. In all his years of dinking around in the VirtNet, he’d never met anyone better than he was at coding or hacking, or who’d gotten closer to Lifeblood Deep so quickly. Kaine was good, but he was just another gamer after all.

Michael was ready for the challenge, and kind of ashamed that he’d cowered in the first place. How could he ignore threats against his family?

Mrs. Perkins next door just about had a heart attack when Michael pounded on her door. She opened it up with wide eyes and half of her face covered in some kind of greasy cream, her hand on her chest.

“Why, Michael,” she said, her eyes rolling in relief. “Goodness gracious heaven and earth. What’s wrong? You almost—”

“Gave you a heart attack, I know. Listen, I need you to do me a favor.”

She put her hands on her hips. “Well, I’d expect a little more politeness if that’s the case.”

Michael loved Mrs. Perkins. Really, he did. She smelled like baby powder and mentholated gel, and she was the nicest lady on the planet. But right then it was all he could do not to push the woman out of the way to get to her phone.

Forcing himself to be calm, he said, “I’m really sorry. It’s urgent.”

“Apology accepted, dear. What can I do for you?”

For some reason, a smile broke out on his face. “Will you call the local VNS office? Tell them that your neighbor Michael says he’s back in. Tell them I’ll find what they’re looking for.”

His access was reinstated immediately. He knew from his message board that Bryson and Sarah had gone through the same thing and that they’d taken it just as seriously as he had. School on Monday was the most agonizing thing Michael had ever sat through, but by that evening he’d reconnected with his friends and they decided to begin their investigation the next afternoon.

They were determined to be more careful and less open this time. They’d use their coding and hacking skills like never before. There was a reason the VNS had chosen him and his friends, Michael thought, and he was glad for the reminder of the lengths they’d need to go.

We can do this , he told himself. Over and over.

“While you guys were wigging out,” Bryson said, “I was putting a Tracer on Kaine’s Aura. We’ll know next time he gets close.”

Michael was sitting with him and Sarah in a tree house on the outskirts of the outskirts of Lifeblood , a place they’d coded—or built —in secret. It was in a small forest that Michael was pretty sure even the programmers of the game didn’t know about.

“Did you upload the Tracer to us yet?” Sarah asked him. She was so good at keeping them focused.

“Yeah.”

“Good. And I think if we use my Hide-and-Seek program and Michael’s Cloak-and-Dagger, we should be able to avoid that snake for a while.”

“Or at least stay two steps ahead of him,” Michael added. He and Sarah had worked together to create the two masking programs, which had come in handy more than once.

They went silent for a moment, closing their eyes and concentrating to access the raw data of the world around them. Michael pulled up screens and connected with his friends; then they shared codes and installed programs and made sure everything was linked and good to go. No one needed to say that they should’ve been smarter the first time around, but at the time it had almost seemed like a harmless game. Which, Michael told himself, had been really stupid.

When finished coding, he opened his eyes and rubbed them—they were always a little bleary after linking to the code. He got onto his knees and looked out the window that faced the side of the forest leading back into the main sections of Lifeblood . It was foggy this far out, since the programming was weaker, but Michael liked it. The tree house they’d constructed through their own programming tricks was warm and well hidden, so it felt cozy and safe. Just add some knitted socks and a stocking cap and he’d be an official grandma, he thought with an embarrassed grin. But there was still a part of him that feared the things they were about to get into. A huge part.

“So?” Bryson began. His question was obvious.

“The old-timers,” Sarah answered. “That’s where we start.”

Michael snapped out of his funk and let his adventurous side take over again. “Definitely,” he said as he turned and sat back down. “Those geezers outside the Old Towne shopping district will know something, if anybody does. Throw ’em a few credits to Casino and we won’t be able to shut them up.”

Sarah was nodding, but her eyes were focused on the same window Michael had been gazing through. She never looked at you when she was deep in thought. “I’m trying to remember the barber’s name. He must be a thousand years old.”

“I know that dinosaur,” Bryson said. “We used him when we needed to get the passwords for the Pluto mission. You’d think the guy would buy a breath-mint program. I had to keep sucking air through my mouth, he smelled so bad.”

Michael laughed. “If you had every gamer in town knocking on your door for advice, you wouldn’t do anything to make it easier on them, either. His name’s Cutter, by the way.”

“That’s where we go,” Sarah said. “We’ll just plug our noses.”