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.
They never seem to get any closer, though, no matter how fast I go. I break into a run, but my limbs feel like they’re dragging through molasses. The little warning in my mind continues relentlessly. This happened a long time ago, I gradually realize—the walk through the park, the sound of Dad’s laugh, the smell of roasted peanuts.
This isn’t now.
Too late, I start to remember what had happened to the others, the memories that had surrounded them the instant they were touched by Zero’s security bots and had their minds infiltrated. This isn’t real, and I’d fallen for the same trap. My breaths come in panicked gasps. Already, I can feel myself stalling, my thoughts having trouble grasping on to something. Somewhere in the distance is Hideo’s voice, calling for me.
To have come all this way and done all this—just to fail here at the end, when we were so close. To leave this puzzle unfinished, the door locked. My mind churns through other options, but a fog is starting to fill my head, and I can see myself slowing down. Along with it comes a strange sensation of . . . unfeeling.
Was this what Sasuke felt on the final day of his experiment? When he gave up his last breath and his mind, and felt what was human of him scatter to become nothing more than data?
Somewhere before me, a figure approaches. It’s Zero, hidden behind his armor, and he stops a foot away from me. He studies me for a moment.
You made it so much harder for yourself, he says.
So. Much. Harder. My mind struggles to process each word. Now I’ve become part of the algorithm, become one with Zero’s mind and the NeuroLink.
Become one with Zero’s mind.
Wait. A spark lights the fog creeping into me. I think of what he’s been doing to everyone in the world, and what he’d done to Asher, Hammie, and Roshan—he’d merged with the algorithm, with the NeuroLink, and that means that his mind has become one with all of that data. When he shuts down someone else’s mind, it’s because his mind has seeped in and taken control.
But information in the NeuroLink, Hideo had once told me, can go both ways.
During our fight, Zero purposely avoided touching Hideo. Almost as if he were afraid to. Maybe he doesn’t want to see what’s there—echoes of himself as a child, of their relationship and their happy memories, or of their parents and what has happened to them since his disappearance. He’s afraid of absorbing that, just as much as someone might be afraid to click on an attachment for fear of downloading a virus.
The puzzle clicks into place. Zero doesn’t know that I have the older iterations of Sasuke in my account. If his mind invades mine, then he’s also going to absorb those files into his data.
I don’t have much time—I’m fading quickly, as if I were slowly falling asleep. I have the faint sensation that, in real life, I’ve slumped to the ground of the panic room, the same thing I’m now doing before Zero in the virtual world. The floor feels cold and metallic beneath me. With the last bit of strength that I can muster, I bring up the files I’d stored away of Sasuke.
The files appear before me, this time not as a cube of data, but as a blue scarf.
Zero stiffens. He can now see everything and anything running through my mind—which means he can see the scarf, too. I manage a small smile. Too late, he’s realized what I’ve downloaded into him.
I take the scarf in my hands. My arms lift slowly before me, like I’m dancing through deep water, and as if in a dream, I reach out toward Zero. I drape the scarf around his neck. And as the last of me wanes, I can feel Sasuke’s data merging with Zero’s mind, becoming a part of it.
His shielded face is the last thing I see. Even though he has no expression, I can feel his anger through the NeuroLink.
Thief.
No, I reply as my final thought. I’m a bounty hunter.
32
Zero freezes, as if he were nothing more than a metallic shell. A strange gasp comes from him, and I realize for the first time that I’ve never heard him utter a breath before. In that gasp, I don’t hear the deep, amused, soulless voice I’m used to hearing from Zero.
I hear a child.
“Ni-chan?”
Brother? The translation appears in my view. Then Hideo’s beside me, kneeling down, and I struggle to turn my head so that I can look up at him. Hideo has his eyes locked on Zero.
He heard the gasp, too. A hint of recognition flickers in his eyes.
“Sasuke?” he says.
“You don’t look like Hideo.”
The voice is coming from a small boy, his dark eyes fixed on Hideo’s form crouched over the now lifeless robot. When had he appeared? Zero is nowhere to be seen now. A bright blue scarf is wrapped tightly around the boy’s neck, and as he takes a few steps forward, I see a colorful plastic egg clutched in his little hand.
It’s young Sasuke, the first iteration of him, the real him.
A shudder runs through Hideo at the sight. He doesn’t take his eyes off Sasuke as his brother moves hesitantly forward, his expression suspicious of this young man bent before him.
“Sasuke,” Hideo says. A tremor has entered his voice. “Hey. It’s me.”
Still, Sasuke tilts his head at him, doubtful. He doesn’t seem to realize he’s a figment of data, a ghost of a memory, and neither does Hideo. In this moment, he is here.
“You don’t look like him,” Sasuke says again, although he keeps moving closer. “My brother is only a little taller than me, and he was wearing a white jacket.”
I remember what Hideo had been wearing that day of the disappearance, and it was indeed a white jacket. Now Hideo wipes a hand across his eyes, a hollow laugh escaping from him. His cheeks are wet.
“You remember what I was wearing?”
“Of course. I remember everything.”
“Yes.” Another shaking laugh from Hideo, full of heartbreak. “Of course you do.”
“If you’re my brother, why are you so tall?”
Hideo smiles as the boy finally stops right in front of him. “Because I’ve been searching for you for a long time, and somewhere in that time, I grew up.”
Sasuke blinks at that, as if it triggered some sort of memory in him. Then he’s shifting again, and all of a sudden, he’s no longer the small boy who had disappeared in the park, but a lankier adolescent, maybe eleven or twelve, the way I’d seen him in some of the recordings. He’s still wearing the scarf, but the baby fat in his cheeks has disappeared. He searches Hideo’s gaze as he stands there, trying to figure it all out.
“I thought you’d forgotten about me,” he says. His voice is at the in-between stage, high and low and cracking, trembling. “I waited for you, but you didn’t come get me.”
“I’m so sorry, Sasuke-kun,” Hideo whispers, as if the words themselves were stabbing him.
“I tried going to you, but they locked me away. And now I don’t know where I am.” His young brow furrows. “I don’t remember anymore, Hideo. It’s too hard.”
My own heart feels like it’s crumbling as I watch him. He is a functioning mind, forever frozen in data, but he cannot remember things like a real person can, nor can he think exactly like one. He is a ghost, forever trapped in loops, doomed to exist in a permanent half state.
“We looked everywhere for you,” Hideo says. He’s crying in earnest now and doesn’t bother to wipe his tears away. “I wish . . . I wish you could have known.”
Sasuke tilts his head at Hideo in that way I’ve come to know so well. It’s a gesture that had carried over, even with the rest of his humanity stripped away. He reaches out to brush his fingers against his brother’s brow. “You have the same eyes,” he says. “You’re still worried.”
Hideo bows his head, a laugh emerging between his tears. Then he’s reaching out, too, gathering his little brother in his arms and pulling him into a fierce embrace.
“I’m so sorry I lost you,” he whispers. “I’m so sorry for what they did to you.” His words break again and again as he weeps. “I’m so sorry I couldn’t save you.”
Sasuke hugs his brother’s neck tight. He doesn’t say a word. Maybe he can’t, as data. He has reached the limits of what he can do.
Time seems to stand still. Finally, when Sasuke pulls back, he transforms again, this time into his teenage iteration. Even taller, lankier. Dark circles under his eyes. He’s no longer wearing the scarf.
But he does recognize his brother. “Ni-san,” he says as he stands up, looking on at the bowed figure before him. Hideo rises to meet his gaze. “You created the NeuroLink because of me.”
“Everything I’ve ever done was for you,” Hideo replies.
If it wasn’t for Sasuke’s disappearance, the NeuroLink might never have existed. And if it wasn’t for the NeuroLink, Sasuke wouldn’t be standing here like a ghost from the machine. It is a strange circle.