Don’t freak out too much. I’ve been imprisoned in Val Verde. I’m in the high-security area, which is outside of the main campus. It’s a big cinder block building with no windows and an armed guard. I’ve been trapped inside of the Altus Space for, I think, weeks now? I am not going to sugarcoat it: It is very bad to be trapped inside your own mind. Making this for you has been the only thing keeping me sane. The thing that’s scaring me the most, honestly, is that I have no idea how I’m eating food or going to the bathroom. What are they doing with my body? This isn’t OK. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I think a lot of people from Val Verde have agreed to be in this prison, but that doesn’t make it less of a prison. Maybe if the rest of the world knows about this it would hurt them.

Please come as soon as you get this. I’m afraid of what they’ll do if they find out I’ve tried this. If they’ll do this … what else will they do? Just hurry, OK?

I’m sorry I’m such a mess,

Miranda

How long ago had she left that message? Every day that I’d been defending Altus, enjoying the Space, feeling powerful and loving my addiction, had been a day when Miranda had been trapped. I didn’t want to confront the real reason I was so disgusted with myself: I had started to think maybe Peter was OK. I mean, he was bad, obviously, but not evil. But this was evil. I had sent Miranda to Altus, and then I had just forgotten about her. Is that the kind of friend I was? The kind of person I was?

I exited the Space, tore off my headset, and found Jason and Bex sitting in my room. Jason was leaning on my desk; Bex was in the desk chair.

“Andy,” Jason said, standing up.

“Hey, guys?” I said, anxious.

“We need to talk about some stuff,” Bex said to me. I had thought maybe I wasn’t ever going to see her again.

“I’m really sorry, I’m sure this is important, but it has to wait.” I moved to grab my phone from my nightstand, but Jason beat me to it.

“Why don’t you tell us what’s going on?” Jason said.

“Give me. My fucking. Phone.”

He didn’t give me my phone.

“Andy, we need to talk about how you’re handling the world. You haven’t been outside in days. Ever since April came back, you’ve been unhealthy, and we’re worried about you.”

“Look, guys, your hearts are absolutely in the right place, but you don’t know what’s going on here. This is the only moment when I can’t handle this. Give me my phone and leave. Right now.”

Bex stood up from the desk chair, “You’re totally right, Andy. We don’t know what’s going on. Why don’t you help us? Why don’t you help us understand?”

“Can’t you just trust me?” I said.

Jason and Bex looked at each other. “No,” Jason said finally. “No, I think we could have a while back, but you can’t see you from our eyes. People are dying in the Space, Andy. And we’ve been tracking you—you’re in there so much more than is healthy.”

“Tell us,” Bex said. “Just tell us what’s going on.”

I thought about it and realized it would be faster, and it would all be public soon anyway, so who cared.

“April, Maya, Robin, Miranda, and I have been plotting to take down Altus. We don’t know exactly how, but we’ve been waiting for the right moment. I think the right moment is now. I just got a message from Miranda that she’s been kidnapped by Altus and we need to get her out.”

As I told them this, I could see them glancing back and forth at each other. Did they believe me?

“You’re … you’re planning on taking Altus … down? What does that mean?” Jason asked.

“Like, we want to take control of the technology, or just eliminate it altogether.”

“But,” Bex said, “you love it.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s not evil. Look, I don’t actually want to destroy it, but that would be better than leaving it in the hands of these people.”

“So,” said Bex, “how the hell are you going to do that?”

“Well,” I said … and then I realized that, of course, I had no idea. “Well, we’re going to go to Val Verde. We’re going to document what’s going on there and then show the world.”

“Do you think that’s going to stop Altus?” Bex asked.

I thought about it. I thought about how addictive, how important and powerful, the Space was. And then I thought about how no one seemed to have any control over them except people who would lose billions of dollars if Altus stopped growing.

“The Space is a superpower, and one that people worked their asses off to get to.” Even now, as I was telling myself that I wouldn’t ever use Altus again, another part of me was saying, OK, but keep your options open.

“But maybe if we hit Altus hard enough, the company will break. Maybe the value of the company will drop and the investors will get spooked or something?” I said, winging it.

Bex exhaled an annoyed laugh. “No, Altus seems to make even good people make terrible decisions.” I had to look away as she said it. “And besides, they’re too valuable. We could show the world how awful they are, but the board would just kick out the C-level management or, in the best case for us, they’d sell to someone else who would reopen a new Space in a matter of months. The investors have put in billions, we won’t be able to get them to give it up by hurting Altus.”

Jason and I looked at each other.

“Don’t look so shocked—do you guys think I’m majoring in sandwiches?”

“What are you majoring in?” Jason asked.

“Also, how have I never asked you that?” I added.

“Finance, and you’ll have to examine that question for yourself,” she said to me.

“Private equity,” I said.

“Yes, well, venture capital, more specifically,” Bex said. “Though I’m sure some private equity firms are involved.”

“No, private equity … Bex, I have an idea, I need you to tell me how idiotic it is. We call this guy—” I went to my desk and dug through a drawer until I found the card from the private equity manager I had talked to in Cannes. “We tell him we know that Altus is about to fail catastrophically and we want to buy the company when investors start feeling the pressure to abandon it. That guy figures out how exactly all that works while April and Maya send The Thread a bunch of footage of how Altus has kidnapped and imprisoned people inside the Altus Space. The Thread publishes that video and then shares the names of each one of those investors along with email addresses so that people can tell them to sell their shares of Altus stock. Then, we buy Altus.” I was pretty fucking proud of this plan, honestly.

“That … is an idiotic idea,” she said. “There’s no way you have enough money to buy Altus.”

“I have five billion dollars,” I said.

“Oh,” she replied. And then, “No, you don’t.”

Jason was just staring at me with his mouth open.

“Probably more than that now.”

“You do not have five billion dollars,” Bex said.