When was I going to see the proverbial tunnel of white light I’d heard about? With people waiting for me at the other end, smiling and holding out their hands? Don’t kids with wings go to heaven?
Then an angry voice filtered through the pain: “Who’s screwing with my Mac?”
85
Just as before, the pain slowly ebbed, and I almost cried with frustration: If it was ending, I wasn’t dead. If I wasn’t dead, I could go through this again.
Images flashed across the backs of my eyes, but they were unfocused and undecipherable. If I had been alone, I would have started bawling. Instead I had to desperately try to keep it together, try not to wake the younger ones (if I hadn’t already), try not to give our position away.
“Who are you?” The angry voice came again. “What are you doing? You’ve crashed my whole system, worthless dipstick!”
Ordinarily, I would have been on my feet by now, pushing Angel and the others in back of me, an angry snarl on my face.
However, tonight I was crumpled in a humiliated, whimpering ball, holding my head, eyes squeezed shut, trying not to sob like a complete weenie.
“What are you talking about?” Fang asked, an edge of steel in his voice.
“My system crashed. I’ve tracked the interference, and it’s comin’ from you. So I’m tellin’ you to knock it off—or else!”
I drew in a deep, shuddering breath, totally mortified that a stranger was seeing me like this.
“And what’s wrong with her? She trippin’?”
“She’s fine,” Fang snapped. “We don’t know anything about your computer. If you’re not brain-dead, you’ll get out of here.” No one sounds colder or meaner than Fang when he wants to.
The other guy said flatly, “I’m not going nowhere till you quit messing with my Mac. Why don’t you get your girlfriend to a hospital?”
Girlfriend? Oh, God, was I going to catch it later about that. It was enough to make me lever up on one arm, then pull myself to a sitting position.
“Who the hell are you?” I snarled, the effect totally ruined by the weak, weepy sound of my voice. Blinking rapidly, finding even the dim tunnel light painful, I struggled to focus on the intruder.
I got a hazy impression of someone about my age; a ragged-looking kid wearing old army fatigues. He had a dingy PowerBook attached to straps around his shoulders like a xylophone or something.
“None of your beeswax!” he shot back. “Just quit screwing up my motherboard.”
I was still clammy and nauseated, still had a shocking headache and felt trembly, but I thought I could string a complete sentence together. “What are you talking about?”
“This!” The kid turned his Mac toward us, and when I saw the screen I actually gasped.
It was a mishmash of flashing images, drawings, maps, streams of code, silent film clips of people talking. It was exactly the stuff that had flooded my brain during my attack.
PART 5
THE VOICE—MAKE THAT MY VOICE
86
My eyes flicked to the kid’s grimy face. “Who are you?” I demanded again, still sounding shaky.
“I’m the guy who’s gonna kick your butt if you don’t quit messing with my system,” the kid said angrily.
In the next moment, his computer screen cleared totally, turning the same dull green as his fatigues. Then large red words scrolled down: Hello, Max.
Fang’s head whipped around to stare at me, and I focused helplessly on his wide, dark eyes. Then, as if connected, our heads turned to stare again at the computer. Onscreen, it said, Welcome to New York.
Inside my head, a voice said, I knew you’d come. I’ve got big plans for you.
“Can you hear that?” I whispered. “Did you hear it?”