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Michael could barely look at it. It spun like a celestial body, pulsing with brilliance.
    Michael and his friends—floating, frozen, silent—waited. Michael tried to speak but couldn’t. Tried to move but was paralyzed. Fear surged through every last inch of him. And then a voice spoke from the blinding ball of light, throbbing with each word. And it was terrifying.
    “My name is Kaine,” it said. “And I see all.”
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    Whatever had paralyzed Michael didn’t release its hold on him.
    The chilling voice continued, “Do you really think I’m not aware of VNS and their efforts to stop me? Can you imagine that I’d let anything happen within the VirtNet that doesn’t serve
my
interests? This is
my
domain now, and only the boldest, the strongest, and the smartest will be allowed to serve me in the end. VNS and players like you will be rendered utterly insignificant.”
    Michael strained to break free from the force that held him.
    “You have no idea the power I have,” Kaine’s voice said. “I’m warning all who try to stop me. You will not be warned twice.” The voice paused. “See what awaits if you don’t heed my words.”
    The ball of spinning light vanished, replaced by a huge rectangle that looked like one of the screens on which they used to watch movies decades ago. Images flashed across the screen as it grew wider and taller, until it almost filled Michael’s entire vision.
    It was as if he’d been inserted into the mind of a lunatic: A city of rubble, devoid of color, people huddling in the gutters.
    Several slack-jawed men in a smoky room, seemingly waiting to be burned alive as flames licked at the edges of a door.
    An old woman in a rocking chair, slowly raising a gun.
    Two teenagers, laughing, pushing little kids off a high cliff and watching them fall.
    A hospital full of frail, sickly patients, its door chained and locked from the outside. Several haggard-looking people splashing gasoline on its walls, one of them pulling out a lighter.
    The horrifying scenes continued, flashing one after another, growing more unspeakable. Michael’s body trembled with the effort to break free. It was worse than any nightmare from which he’d ever struggled to wake.
    Kaine’s voice spoke again, coming from everywhere at once.
    “You know so little about what’s
really
going on. You are children in every sense of the word. All this and more awaits your mind if you continue.”
    And then it ended. Everything vanished, and Michael found himself back inside his Coffin. But his throat hurt, and he realized he must’ve been screaming for quite some time.

CHAPTER 4
NO CHOICE IN THE MATTER
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    Michael thought Tanya’s suicide had been bad, but this time he was barely able to pull himself out of the Coffin. He didn’t even bother putting on shorts. Trembling, sweating, he stumbled to his bed. A part of him still floated in Kaine’s version of a deep-space theater, surrounded by the horrors he’d predicted for Michael’s future. For his
mind
, whatever that meant.
    It made his skin crawl. After a lifetime of seeking out wilder and wilder experiences, he’d had two run-ins inside the VirtNet that made him long for the days when everything had been fun—and not quite so wild. He didn’t care what the VNS was offering, what they’d threatened if he didn’t try to help. Seeing someone rip their Core out before his eyes, and Kaine’s vision of punishment should Michael seek him out, had made up Michael’s mind. What if the man could somehow reach him even in the Wake? Michael had never had that paralyzed, helpless feeling before, inside the VirtNet or out.
    He didn’t know how he could possibly fulfill the challenge the VNS had given him. Shooting aliens, rescuing princesses from goblins, dealing with
Lifeblood
’s day-to-day drama, then Lifting out of it all to do homework seemed just fine—and Bryson and Sarah would always be there in the Sleep to do it with him. He’d just go back to his normal,