Warcross (Warcross #1)(27)
The wall opens, obeying his touch.
Behind the wall is a world of dark lines and streaks of light, sequenced into detailed patterns. The code that runs this world. This is a glimpse of the API at work in the game. Hideo steps inside the wall, then gestures for me to join him. I hesitate only for a second before leaving the paint-smeared world of white walls and entering the dark mess of lines.
In here, the lines of light cast a faint blue hue against our skin. A jolt of excitement runs through me at the sight, and I scan the columns, analyzing and absorbing as much as I can. Hideo walks a little, then pauses before a segment of code.
My instincts kick in, and my eyes relax, taking in the whole display of code before me. Immediately, I see what the problem is. It’s subtle—easily overlooked by someone not experienced with analyzing the NeuroLink’s framework—but there it is, a section that looks mangled, the lines tangled in a way that doesn’t match the pattern around it, a section out of place with the rest of the organized chaos around us.
Hideo nods approvingly when he realizes that I’ve noticed it. He steps closer to the tangled part. “Do you see what he did?”
He’s not just showing me what had happened. He’s testing my skills. “It was rewired,” I answer automatically, my eyes darting across the code. “To report data.”
Hideo nods, then reaches out to the mangled portion and taps it once. It flickers before snapping back into place, clean and orderly, the way it’s supposed to be. “We patched it up. I’m just showing you a memory of how it looked when we first found it. But the person left behind no trace of himself, and he’s gotten better at hiding his tracks since then. We’ve taken to calling him Zero, as that is the default in the access record. It’s the only marker he leaves behind.” He looks at me. “I’m impressed you caught it.”
Does he think I’m Zero? I look sharply at him. Has he brought me all the way here, asked me his questions—Is this your first time in Japan? Do you have any idea what you did?—just to see if I’m the suspect he’s looking for?
I scowl at him. “If you want to know whether or not I’m Zero, you could just ask me.”
Hideo gives me a skeptical look. “And would you admit it?”
“I would’ve appreciated your directness, instead of this roundabout game you’re playing with me.”
Hideo’s stare seems capable of piercing straight through my soul. “You hacked into the opening ceremony game. Should I apologize for suspecting you?”
I open my mouth, then close it. “Fair enough,” I admit. “But I didn’t do this.”
He looks coolly away. “I know. I didn’t bring you here to force a confession.”
I fume in silence.
The world around us suddenly shifts. We’ve zoomed out of both the code and the Paintbrush Level. Now we’re standing on a hovering isle, surrounded by a hundred other floating isles, overlooking a beautiful lagoon. This was the world used in the opening ceremony that I’d hacked into.
Hideo pulls the world as if he were spinning it under his fingers, and it rushes by beneath our feet. I swallow hard. The version that his account is hooked up to is obviously different from mine, giving him in-game abilities that I don’t have. It’s strange to be inside this game with its own creator and see him play with it as its god. Hideo finally stops us at one portion of the cliffs. He reaches out and pushes. Again, we enter a space of lines and light.
This time, the tangled section is much harder to find. I let my focus turn fuzzy and my subconscious emerge, searching for the break in the pattern. It takes me a few minutes to get my head around it all, but finally, I catch the portion of the code that’s off. “Here,” I say, pointing. “Same story. Whoever this Zero person is, he set up this level to report stats to him about every single audience member watching the game.” The realization sends an ominous shiver through me. I look closer. “Wait—there’s more here. He almost disabled the level, didn’t he? This spot—he realized that the code was weak here.”
When Hideo doesn’t reply immediately, I glance away from the code to see him studying me. “What?” I say.
“How did you find that?” he asks.
“Find what? The mangled code?” I shrug. “I just . . . noticed it.”
“I don’t think you understand.” He puts his hands in his pockets. “It took my best engineers a week to do what you just did.”
“Then maybe you need better engineers.”
I can’t seem to control my retorts around Hideo. His chilly demeanor must be rubbing off on me. But he just faces me with a thoughtful look. “And how would you fix this?”
My attention goes to the compromised code. “My father taught me how to take in everything at once,” I murmur as I sweep a hand across the text. “You don’t have to break down every detail. You just need to see the overall pattern to catch the weakness in it.” I reach out to grab the code, pull forward an enormous block of it, and swipe it away. Then I replace it with a single, efficient line. The rest clicks into place around it.
“There,” I say, resting my hands on my hips. “That’s better.”
When I look back at him, he’s analyzing my change without saying a word. Maybe I’ve passed his test.