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balls on each side.
    When the scales tilted to the left, she pulled off those eight balls and then split them into the three piles of three, three and two. After placing the threes on the scale and finding the heavier side, she did the same but with twos.
    She only had a few seconds left as she put the last ball on the scale. The scales did not tip, meaning the ball left on the table was the heaviest.
    Gabby grabbed the shadow boy's hand and together they hit the red button. The countdown ended at two seconds and the entrance room disappeared.
    When their projections appeared inside the dimly lit bar, their hands were still grasped together. Their hands weren't really together, as they were in two totally separate places, but the sense-webs in their skin made it feel like they were holding hands.
    Gabby immediately pulled away and as the boy mumbled thanks, she realized she was staring into a pair of eyes the color of ice-chips.
    When the boy realized who she was, he glanced around the room once, and then grabbed her hand, pulling her toward a dark corner.
    Gabby would have yanked her hand away from him had it not been for the frenzied glance he'd given the rest of the bar, as if he expected a horde of zombies to come crashing down on them.
    When they reached a darkened hollow in the strange confines of the Black Gate, the boy, the one she hadn't been sure she'd seen in her school hallway, gave one long look at the other patrons of the bar.
    "Did he see you?" he said.
    Gabby scrunched up her face. "Who?"
    The boy put his face up close to hers. A certain maddening sheen had glazed across his eyes. "Did he see you? You have to be sure. Did the Coder see you?"
    "What? I don't--"
    Gabby tried to complete her sentence, but the boy, seeing something over her shoulder grabbed her by the back of the head and jammed his lips against hers.

Chapter Six
    Gabby had only gotten in the Black Gate once before. It'd taken her four hours to solve the problem and once she had, it had been time to leave. Her aunt Beatrice had been getting remarried that day.
    She'd only had enough time to circle through the rooms, trying not to be so obvious that she had no idea where she was going.
    The curved windows on the walls had revealed hazy blue water a few dozen feet below the surface of some ocean. The bar had been a tall spiral, like a conch shell set on end, and she had gone levels up until an invisible wall stopped her from going further.
    The people in the bar had been difficult to see as if a shadow lay permanently across their faces. So Gabby had eventually wandered back to the entrance and exited the bar. She hadn't needed to use the physical door, she could have dropped connection from anywhere in the bar, but hadn't wanted to violate some unknown rule and not be allowed back.
    This time, the experience was radically different. Instead of leisurely strolling through the atmospheric space, she'd been dragged off to a corner and set upon by a boy she'd only seen once, as a fleeting projection in her school hallway.
    While he did have mind-numbingly blue eyes, flecked through with a white so piercing bright it made her head swim, she hardly wanted him to make such a bold advance. She wasn't a stranger to kissing, but she wanted to give him permission first.
    Gabby struggled against his hand, which was stranger still, since it was only their projections smashing lips together, and they experienced it remotely through their sense-webs. The nano-sized sensors in her lips transferred a surprising amount of feeling.
    She should have been able to slip her head free, but his projection had a tight grip on hers. She was beginning to wonder if this was a come-on when he let her head loose.
    Gabby hit him in the chest with both fists. "What gave you the right to do that?"
    The boy ignored her and continued to check over her shoulder. Gabby started to spin around when he grabbed her shoulder.
    "Don't draw attention," he said.
    "Look, err...you," she forced