About five minutes had passed. It felt more like five hours.
Sam lay in the back of the broadcasting van. Jonah was sprawled beside her, still in his meta-trance. Axel and Bradbury, too, had flattened themselves to the floor. They had expected the Chang Corp gunmen to open fire. Axel was the first to raise his head when they didn’t. He peered through the shattered back window, saw something he didn’t like and dropped again.
‘They’re still out there,’ he hissed. ‘They’ve got us outnumbered, outgunned and cornered. I don’t know why the hell they don’t just—’
He was interrupted by a voice, mechanically augmented. ‘You in the van,’ said the voice. ‘Come out now with your hands in the air and you will not be harmed.’
‘They are lying,’ said Dimitry, his head down in the passenger seat. ‘They will shoot us as soon as we step outside.’
‘We don’t know that,’ said Sam.
‘If they wanted to kill us,’ said Bradbury, ‘they’d have done it by now. I would’ve.’
‘Then it is only because they do not realise who I am,’ said Dimitry. He was stiff with fright. ‘Once they see me, they will surely—’
‘What choice do we have?’ said Sam, exasperated. ‘They’re offering us a chance, and I...I’m going to take it. I’ll go out there first. I’ll talk to them.’
As she picked herself up, she realised she was trembling inside. She half expected her father to stop her from putting herself at risk.
Instead, it was Bradbury who barred her way. ‘No,’ he said gruffly. ‘I should be the one to go. It is my responsibility to protect—’
Dimitry had wound down his window. He leaned out of it and shouted: ‘You will not take us alive. We have explosives, many quantities of explosives. They are powerful enough to destroy this van and you also. So, it is you who who will lay down your guns an’ back away, please.’
Sam stared at him in horror. She didn’t know if Dimitry was bluffing or not. Either way, this wasn’t good.
Everyone waited with breath held, until the augmented voice came again: ‘I repeat, you will not be harmed. We have orders to that effect from Mr Chang himself. ’
A pause, and then the voice continued: ‘It appears you have a mutual friend – a Mr Jonah Delacroix. Where is he?’
*
Jonah had hoped the cat figurine would teleport him back to his school, back to his exit halo.
‘This device only works one way,’ Mr Chang explained. ‘But you can find your own way back to your halo through here.’ He guided Jonah to a wall- hanging tapestry. It depicted a dragon not unlike Mr Chang’s own avatar, surrounded by heaps of gold and jewels.
Behind the tapestry, there was a secret door.
‘Thank you,’ Jonah said, before stepping through the door.
Jonah emerged into a deserted alleyway, and turned to find a brick wall behind him. It was solid to his touch; there was no way back to the mountain temple through there. Rather than walk the streets, Jonah took to the sky to survey his surroundings.
He was in a Chinese-themed zone. He soared between skyscrapers and through archways decorated with singing paper lanterns. He was greeted joyously by many other dragons of varied shapes and colours.
Desperate to get back to Sam in the real world, he climbed higher and flew faster than ever before. He whipped through the digital clouds until he spotted the Chang Academy island in the distance.
He hardly noticed that an exit halo had opened in front of him.
He swerved around it, kept flying. A moment later, though, another halo opened to Jonah’s right. He could see two, three more halos, suspended in the air around him.
In the mouth of the nearest halo, an avatar was forming: an enormous, black spider. It had elongated fangs and eight round, glistening black eyes: four in the sides of its head and four more in a square pattern glaring directly at Jonah.
Jonah’s heart leapt into his mouth. He recognised the spider. It was probably the most recognisable avatar in the virtual world.
Matthew Granger had found him, and had come for him personally.
Jonah flew around the halo. He had to get away from here before the spider avatar became fully formed, before Granger’s senses transferred fully from the real world to this one. He pulled up short as he saw another black spider, climbing out of one of the other exit halos – and another and another.
There were spiders below Jonah, too. The land below was crawling with them.
There was no escape. Matthew Granger was everywhere.
The sensation was overwhelming.
Granger could see the whole of the Metasphere from
hundreds of thousands of points of view at once. He could hear it too: billions of voices raised in surprise and adulation – and, yes, some in anger towards him, but there were always those who resisted progress.
He closed his eyes, focused his mind. He could control the images, control them like a slide show. He could choose which of his many avatars’ eyes to look through.
Granger went on a tour of his virtual world. He satisfied himself that, from the call centres to the game zones, he had everyone’s attention. Concerts had been suspended; all trading on the stock markets had ceased. Everyone was waiting to hear what he had to say.
The spiders all spoke at once, in one voice. Granger’s voice.
‘For those of you who don’t know me,’ they said, ‘or have forgotten me after all this time, let me introduce myself. I am Matthew Granger.’
Jonah, like everyone else, was just floating, listening. He didn’t have much choice.
‘Twenty years ago, I created Web 4.0, the beta version of what we now call the Metasphere. My intent was to create a better life for all, a better world than the one we had. It was to have been an ordered world, an efficient world, a world in which – to put it bluntly – things worked.’
At first, Jonah had just been relieved that the spiders hadn’t come for him. Now, however, he felt queasy with anticipation. For Granger to be doing this, showing himself like this, there had to be a good reason. Something big.
‘Three years ago,’ said the spiders, ‘that world was taken from me. Our governments – the very bodies that had ruined their world – believed they could do a better job than I of managing this one. We have seen how wrong they were.’
Many avatars cheered at this – and the thing was, as hard as he tried, Jonah couldn’t think of a reason to disagree with them.
‘Well, those dark times are over. You have no doubt heard that, three days ago, in the wake of the collapse of the United States government, I escaped from the prison to which I had been unjustly confined. I have been busy since then.
‘We have traversed the real world, my followers and I. We have returned to the sites of the four server farms that I built to run the Metasphere two decades ago. We have retaken those sites from the governments who—’
The rest of Granger’s words were drowned out by a tremendous roar.
Jonah had never heard so many voices raised at once. It sounded as if the whole world was screaming, some in celebration, some in fury, each faction determined to outdo the other.
‘My friends,’ Matthew Granger boomed over the hubbub, through the mouths of his many spider avatars, ‘the Four Corners are mine again. I am back in control. Today is the beginning of a bright new era.’
Jonah had to get back to the others.
He continued to the Chang Academy. His route was lined by more spider avatars. They floated in the air, bobbed on the water. Jonah couldn’t escape their combined voice.
Bradbury was the first out of the broadcasting van, his hands in the air. When the Chang Corp men didn’t gun him down at once, Axel followed his example.
Two Chang Corp men came forward and frisked them. They took Bradbury’s shotgun and Axel’s pistol, then motioned them towards the waiting limousines.
The other six gunmen hadn’t moved. They were crouched behind their vehicles, their weapons trained on the prisoners.
Sam emerged next. The first two men searched her and finding no weapons, holstered their own.
‘He’s inside,’ she said. ‘Inside the van, and inside the Metasphere. And we’re not going anywhere until he comes out of his meta-trance.’
Dimitry and Andrey climbed out of the passenger and driver doors. Dimitry held his head low, avoiding eye contact with the gunmen. None of the Chang Corp men reacted to his appearance, so either they didn’t recognise him or – more likely – they knew who he was and just didn’t care.
Sam heard a groan from inside the van. Before anyone could stop her, she had run back to it, pulled the van doors open.
Jonah was coming round, and had evidently discovered the fresh bruises on his body. Sam picked him up, unplugged his Ethernet cord and helped him outside. ‘What happened?’ asked Jonah, a little groggily. ‘No, actually, never mind that. There’s something I have to tell you. Granger...Matthew Granger has taken back the Metasphere.’
Jonah walked between the van and the limousines and told his story. Dimitry and Andrey listened too, as did the Chang Corp men, who came out from behind their cars and lowered their guns. Axel and Bradbury came with them; no one tried to stop them.
They started asking Jonah questions. One thin-faced man, wearing an earpiece, came forward to say that he had checked and it was true.
They stood together in silence for a time, these former enemies.
‘So, what now?’ asked Sam.
‘Our instructions,’ said the thin-faced Chang Corp man, ‘are to escort you to the Myachkovo Airport.’
‘Why?’ asked Jonah. ‘What’s the point now? It’s too late!’
Dimitry glared at him. Sam knew what the Russian pirate was thinking. Those ‘instructions’ were all that was keeping him alive. The rest of them too, most likely.
‘No,’ said Axel. ‘It’s not too late, it’s just a different mission. So Granger has the first mover advantage. He’s got the Four Corners now. And, before him, the governments had them. We always knew this fight was coming. If we had got there first, we’d be defending. But now...’
‘Now,’ said Sam quietly, finishing her father’s thoughts, ‘we’ll be attacking. We’ll have to fight the Millennials head-on.’