“But Tremaine’s joining you, I hear,” Hammie adds, nudging him hard enough to throw him off balance.

A small smile grows at the edges of Roshan’s lips. He tries to hide it by looking out at the pond. “Nothing’s final yet,” he says, but all Hammie does is grin harder and poke him in the ribs. He grunts once. We laugh.

Hammie leans over to study the koi swimming by beneath us. “Houston for me,” she says. “And back to life before Warcross.”

Asher nudges her once. “And?” he adds.

She shoots him a bashful wink. “And frequent visits to LA. No reason.”

He smiles at that.

Life before Warcross. I picture the little apartment I’d lived in with Kiera in New York, the daily struggle. Most bounty hunters will be out of a job now, too—no need to hunt down people gambling illegally on Warcross or entering the Dark World. There will always be criminals, but they’ll return to operating in the regular Internet. And in real life.

What am I going to do now? Go back to New York? How will I settle back into a normal life? I picture myself applying to college now, filling out an application for a job, working in an office. It’s a strange, surreal thing to imagine.

“Warcross wasn’t who any of us are,” I say, mostly to myself.

“No,” Roshan agrees. There’s a long pause. “It’s just something we made.”

And he’s right, of course. It would’ve been nothing without them—us—making it matter. Without us, it really was just a game.

“It won’t change this,” Roshan replies, gesturing at the three of us. “You all know that, right? We’re linked forever now.”

He lifts up his glass bottle in a toast. Hammie joins him, and then Asher. I lift mine, too.

“To good friends.”

“To pulling each other up.”

“To sticking together, no matter the apocalypse.”

“To our team.”

We clink. The sound rings out across the garden, then fades into the sky.

* * *

* * *

WHEN I GET back to my hotel at night, there’s a written message waiting for me on my nightstand. I stare at it for a second before picking it up and holding it up to the light. It’s a phone number left by the hotel concierge, plus a message asking me to call.

I check my phone again. In the quiet of the garden and the company of my teammates, I hadn’t been looking at it at all. Now I realize that I’ve missed a few calls from the same number. I dial it, then walk over to my window and hold it up to my ear.

A woman’s voice comes on the other end. “Miss Chen?” she says.

“Who’s asking?” I reply.

“I’m Divya Kapoor, the new CEO of Henka Games.”

I stand up a little straighter. It’s the woman I’d seen at the Supreme Court. “Yes?”

There’s a brief, embarrassed pause on the other end. “Miss Chen, on behalf of Henka Games, I would like to apologize to you for everything that has happened. As you know, Hideo’s actions were not revealed to everyone in the studio, and I am as shocked as the rest of the world over the allegations. It is because of your help that we have avoided sheer catastrophe. We owe you a great deal.”

I listen to her quietly. It wasn’t so long ago that I’d walked into Henka Games feeling like a complete outcast. “You called me just to say that Henka Games is sorry?” I say, then immediately wince. I hadn’t meant my words to come out so accusatory. Some things never change, I guess.

“There is something else,” Divya adds. She hesitates again before going on. “We are in the process of dismantling all that’s wrong with the NeuroLink. But we also want to find a way to rebuild it.”

To rebuild it.

“There are too many things that rely on the NeuroLink,” she continues. “Taking it down entirely is not only an option that the global economy cannot bear—it is also impossible. This is not a technology that is just going to disappear, not even after what had happened. Someone else will make it.”

I swallow as I listen to her describe the various things attached to the system. In Tokyo alone, thousands of businesses revolving around the NeuroLink have shuttered. Companies that create and sell virtual goods. Educational services. Universities. That’s not even including all the businesses that relied on the Warcross games themselves, which are completely gone without the NeuroLink. But that’s not even the heart of what Divya is saying.

Once technology has been made, it cannot be unmade. What Hideo had built is going to keep existing. Someone else will invent new virtual and augmented reality that can do the same things as the original NeuroLink. Maybe even go beyond it. Someone else will fill the hole that the NeuroLink left.

The question is who. And what they will do with it.

“We need to rebuild the system, but as you know, we cannot rebuild it to be the same as it always was. It will be done under the supervision of governments and the people, out in the open. It will be done honestly.”

“And what does this have to do with me?” I ask.

Divya takes a deep breath. “I’m calling to see if you might be interested in helping us put together a team. We want to target its flaws, cut out the bad, and make something better from it. And you . . . well, you’re the reason we found those flaws in the first place.”

Rebuild the NeuroLink. Rebuild Warcross.

My entire goal had been to stop Hideo, and that meant stopping the NeuroLink. I’d had my life transformed and turned upside down because of Warcross, and I’d just said my good-byes to my teammates, had braced myself to head back to America without any idea of what I would do next.

But my second thought . . .

Just because the system was flawed doesn’t mean it isn’t worth existing. Like anything else, it’s a tool that depends on those who use it. It has changed millions of lives for the better. And maybe now, with the right minds behind it and the awareness that comes with experience, we can make the NeuroLink into a better version of itself.

Every problem has a solution. But after every solution, there’s a new problem to tackle, some new challenge to take on. You don’t stop after you solve one thing. You keep going, you find a new way and a new path, try to do better and create better. Tearing something down isn’t the end; doing something great, or better, something right, is. Or maybe there isn’t such a thing as an end goal at all. You accomplish something, and then you shift, ready to accomplish the next. You keep solving one problem after another until you change the world.

Up until now, my life’s goals have been limited to stopping what’s wrong. Now I’m being handed the chance to participate in another side of fixing things: the chance to create something.

At my long pause, Divya clears her throat. “Well,” she says, her voice still reverent and apologetic, “I’ll give you some time to think it over. Should you be interested, don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly. We’re ready to hit the ground running with you. And if you’re not, we understand, too. You’ve done more than anyone ever should.”

We exchange a brief farewell. Then she hangs up, and I’m left standing in my room, my phone clutched at my side as I stare out at the nightscape beyond my window.

My phone buzzes again. I look down at the incoming call.

Then I put it on speaker, and a familiar voice fills the air. Once, it was a voice that filled me with terror. Now . . .

“Well,” Zero says. “What are you going to say?”

I smile a little. “You were listening in on all of that?”

“I am everywhere online at the same time,” he replies. “It’s not hard for me to hear a phone conversation.”

“I know. You’re just going to have to learn some boundaries.”

“You’re still glad I heard it,” he says. “I can tell in your voice.”

He sounds almost like he used to—but there is something human in his words now. The part of him made intact by Sasuke’s mind.

After the institute was raided by police, and Hideo and I were taken from the panic room, after Zero’s suit went missing and all the news broke, rumors began to circulate online that an armored figure occasionally appeared in people’s accounts. That someone was leaving cryptic markers wherever he went, signatures with a zero in them. That Jax, when given access to a phone or computer, chats with someone who doesn’t exist.

There’s nothing to substantiate any of it, of course. Most think it could just be the work of online pranksters and fledgling hackers.

But I know. As data, as information breathing between wires and electricity, Zero—Sasuke—lives on.

“Stop analyzing me,” I reply.

“I’m not.” He pauses. “You know you have my support, if you choose to join her.”

“I may need it.”

“Well?” This is the Sasuke part of his mind, bright and curious and kind. “What are you going to tell her, then?”

I start to smile. It widens until it turns into a grin. When I open my mouth to respond, my answer is unwavering.

“I’m in.”

35

The front entrance of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Headquarters is crowded with people this morning, just as it has been for weeks. As my car pulls up, people turn and start to gather around, their cameras and attention now pointed at me. I look out at the sea of faces. They’re all still here because today is the day that Hideo will be moved from this place to start serving out his time.

Everyone is gathered here, hoping to hear some news. There’s been no official announcement yet about his sentence.

Microphones are thrust in my direction as the car door opens, and shouts fill the air. I keep my head down as bodyguards push back the throngs to let me pass. I don’t look up again until we’ve reached the inside of the building. There, I bow my head briefly to an officer and follow him up the elevators.