Wildcard (Warcross #2)(86)

I lunge at the closest power-up I can find. It’s a neon-yellow sphere. “Hideo!” I shout. He glances over to me for a brief moment. Then I unleash it.

A blinding light swallows the entire space. Even through my closed lids and my outstretched hands, I want to squint against the brightness of it. It washes out everything around us into white.

Zero pauses for a moment. He can’t be blinded by something like this, I don’t think, but he must be reacting to the overwhelming data wipe—as if everything in his view went temporarily blank.

Then the light vanishes as quickly as it’d appeared. Hideo doesn’t waste the chance. He’s already dashing at Zero. Zero whips out an arm, seizing his brother, but Hideo takes advantage of the move and instead uses Zero’s weight against him—he kneels down and flips Zero over.

Zero’s on his feet again in a split second, rolling off his back and leaping up in one fluid motion. He rushes toward Hideo, grabs him by the neck, and pins him against the wall.

“You’re a fool for trying,” Zero says to him, his deep voice echoing around us and in my mind. He sounds amused, but beneath it all, there’s a churning rage—no, something else, something that sounds desperate. “Why don’t you go back home? You have all the money in the world now, don’t you? Leave this alone and take care of your parents.”

Hideo grapples at the metallic hand locked around his neck and says nothing. He just stares hard into the opaque black helmet.

I point one of my knives at him and throw as hard as I can.

The knife slams into his helmet, shattering it.

But Zero just vanishes, reappearing a few feet away from us. He looks completely undisturbed.

“It’ll be easier for you this way, you know,” he says. “You don’t want to hurt your parents, do you? Your poor mother, slow and forgetful? Your father, sickly and frail? You don’t want any harm to come to them, do you?”

And I realize that these aren’t Zero’s words at all. They’re Taylor’s—I can recognize them solely by the taunting questions. These are things she must have once said to Sasuke, threatening his family to keep him from running away.

Hideo stares back at Zero with a clenched jaw. “You’re not going to hurt anyone,” he snarls. “Because you’re not real.”

Somehow, Hideo’s not going blank like everyone else had—he’s still here, alert and conscious. He slams Zero down against the floor, striking him in the face.

Zero vanishes, reappears again. I sprint for him, only to realize that he can just disappear again and again. How can I reach him and break through his armor to install Sasuke’s data into him? It’s impossible. I glance desperately over at Hideo as several of Zero’s bots reach him. A scream bubbles in my throat.

To my surprise, though, they go around him. They don’t touch him at all. It’s as if they’re leaving Hideo for Zero to deal with himself.

But in my confusion I let one bot get too close to me. I don’t react fast enough. His hand shoots out and seizes my wrist.

I gasp. His grip feels so cold, like he’s made out of ice. Behind me comes Hideo’s shout. “Emika!”

I twist around, my teeth clenched, and kick out at his black helmet. My boot smashes straight through the glass. He immediately vaporizes.

I hold my wrist tightly. The ice of his touch lingers, burning straight through me and into my mind, and the edges of my vision blur a bit. I shake my head. The world around me shifts again as I run.

I blink. Where am I? The city had looked like emptied Tokyo, but suddenly I see a layout of intersecting streets that I recognize as New York. I’m passing through Times Square now, except it’s not Times Square at all—none of its lights are lit, and no pedestrians crowd its streets. Right beside it is a glimpse of Central Park.

That doesn’t make sense at all, I think to myself, as I race toward Zero. Sasuke has probably never been to New York before. The layout of it makes no sense either, as Central Park isn’t anywhere near Times Square.

This is my home—my memories.

I realize with a sickening lurch that Zero’s security bots have infiltrated my mind, as surely as he’d done with each of my teammates—that ice-cold grip on my wrist had been him seeping into my mind.

I look wildly around for Hideo, ready to call out for him, but the entire world around me has now transformed into New York City. In Central Park, I see a figure walking. Hideo. Zero. I start running toward it.

When I get closer, I stumble to a halt. The figure walking through the park isn’t Hideo or Zero at all. It’s my father.

“Dad,” I whisper. He’s here, and I’m home.

I start running toward his figure. It’s him, everything about him screams it—his suit perfectly tailored and his hair sleek and elegant from an afternoon concert at Carnegie Hall. He’s walking with a young girl in a tulle dress, singing her a concert piece. Even from here, I can hear notes of his humming, off-key and full of life, followed by the accompanying singing of the girl. I can almost smell the bag of sweet roasted peanuts he hands to her, feel the breeze swirling the leaves around them.

Where had I been earlier? Some unfinished illusion of a city. But this? This is obviously real, and here.

There’s a warning going off somewhere in me, trying to tell me that this isn’t quite right. But I shrug it off as I make my way closer to my dad and myself. It’s fall, so of course the leaves are drifting down, and my dad is still alive, so of course he’s walking hand in hand with me through the park. The sound of his bright laughter is so familiar that I feel an intense burst of joy. My steps quicken.