“Dr. Rojandi,” the nurse queried, and Pawar Rojandi glanced up from the chart in front of him.

“What is it, Lurie?”

“I have another one.”

Concerned, Dr. Rojandi rose to his feet and moved to the other side of the desk. “Show me,” he commanded.

Lurie glided down the hall with the practiced silence of an experienced nurse.

“She came in already under, but you asked if we had noticed anything strange about the last patient. By himself, the last one didn’t tell us much, but this one shares some unusual issues with your previous patient. I thought you would want to know.”

“Thank you.”

Once in the room, Dr. Rojandi dismissed the nurse and pulled out his handheld. He accessed the contacts and the private connection, then sent an alert to Haywire.

Target acquired. Subject name, Hinsen. Awaiting directions.

Dr. Rojandi absolutely agreed with the idea of shutting down the Bridge, but his highest priority lay in protecting the physical health of the kids under his care during their forced convalescence. Certainly, the whole process bothered his conscience, but he subjected his personal considerations to the long-term greater good. Working without the Aggey system had made his fellow doctors work harder, but Pawar knew better than anyone that working without the Wire was possible, so all would be fine.

He would not have caused the kids serious harm, but a temporary inconvenience to the few young adults did not supersede the higher objectives that could save countless lives. The kids would recover, unlike the people who had died in the Crash.

++++++++++++++

Hazel had dreaded returning to see Peter. Once she left the coffee shop, she made up a pointless excuse and then proceeded to avoid him for several hours. She ignored his messages, ran unnecessary errands, and just generally figured out how to stay away from him.

Eventually, though, she could come up with no other excuse, and she lifted her handheld and shot Peter a message.

I’m sorry I ended up with so much to do today. If you are available now, I don’t have anything to do until tomorrow, so I can work on your Trip problem until bedtime.

She knew he would be angry. His hurt feelings always morphed instantly into anger, though he wasn’t the type to rage. Usually, his real anger grew quiet. When he was just trying to push her toward something, he would let anger leak into his tone or expression, but it wasn’t real anger. It was a tool he used to maneuver. If he had passed beyond that, Hazel would not enjoy the next few hours.

Maybe – just maybe – she could figure out how to deflect or appease him. She had avoided him, and he would not like that, but if she paid him proper attention once they were together, his pent-up anger at her “lack of respect” for him would likely dissipate.

When Hazel pushed open Peter’s door, the light glowed strangely as through a mist. Not a mist, she realized, but thick with red and gold from flame. Candles glimmered from several sources in the room, and a fire burned in the rarely used fireplace.

Apparently, Peter had something unusual in mind. Had adding a physical aspect to their relationship somehow suppressed his temper? Hazel quickly realized that she felt like she was entering purgatory, and though the effect spoke romance, her knowledge of Peter painted her in a fiery realm that promised payback.

Hazel reined in her dramatic imaginings. More likely, now that Peter had stepped over the threshold between platonic and romantic, he had just gone overboard. So much of Peter seemed almost like a caricature, an overdone rendition built for effect. She did not doubt his sincerity, just his instinct. In fact, he had only one instinct – control. Whatever he needed to do to gain that, he would do, whether charm his way into a desirable group or pressure someone into a decision they didn’t really want. It was almost impossible to explain to people just how she could understand and care about Peter but still not trust him.

As if to prove her thoughts, when the arms gripped her out of nowhere, Hazel screamed.

“What the hell, Peter?” she complained, but Peter just squeezed her to him, her back nestled against his chest.

When he lowered his mouth to her ear, Hazel closed her eyes.

“Just the drumroll for the surprise,” he offered, kissing the skin just beneath her ear.

“Rexist…” she complained weakly. Without loosening his grip, he spun her to face him, lowering his mouth to hers. Whatever protests she had been about to make submerged under the waves of heat that poured over her with the feel of his arms around her. Even so, her mind battered at its cage to slow her down.

Finally, she managed to turn her face to the side, but rather than stop, Peter just laughed as he began to nip along the line of her chin. “I think not,” he growled as he urged her toward the couch and spun to pull her down with him.

“Peter,” she mumbled breathlessly, “this is not what I had in mind.” Despite herself, she gasped as he bit lightly at her ear.

“I just need a few minutes,” he grinned. Of course, he should have been furious that she had blown him off – she would expect him to be furious. Peter, though, had fully expected her to panic – she was Hazel. The fact that she had come back spoke volumes about her attachment to him, and the realization superseded his usual impatient tendencies.

“No, Peter.” Hazel forced strength into her tone. “Stop.”

Snickering, Peter threw his arms out and leaned against the back of the couch, effectively releasing Hazel. “You’ll have to Jolt me.”

“Seriously? I’m getting so tired of that joke, mostly because I half think you mean it. You need to give me some space!” she insisted, panting as she cooled off from the exchange.

“Just indulge me a little.” Peter smiled the predatory version of his perfected smile. “It’s been a long time since I let myself feel anything.”

The words echoed Hazel’s own thoughts enough that she regretted her coldness. To make up for her rejection, she scooted over and curled against him. “It’s been a long time for me, too, Peter, but I’m not quite ready for this level of intensity. You know I like to ease into things.”

Peter stroked her hair, turning to her with a gentler smile. “I know you, Hazel. I understand. I just…” He leaned his head back and closed his eyes against the view of the ceiling. “I just don’t feel like I have to have the same caution with you. We’re already so close that it seems unnecessary.”

Nuzzling her head against his chest, Hazel relaxed as much as she could. It was as if he had thrown her from what she would have called cold friendship into heated connection overnight. She wouldn’t blatantly reject him, but she needed to watch out for herself.

Though she often forgot that Peter was anyone “important,” Peter was beyond important in the world. Hazel had watched him play at relationships, never actually investing himself in a woman. In fact, if she were honest with herself, his treatment of her mirrored what he had done with every woman he dated. She wasn’t a person who could recover if he screwed with her, and she also couldn’t do casual the way he wanted – his casual was far too intense to make sense, heating up fast and burning out quickly.

The thought sent her leaning away from him, sitting up and resting her elbows on her knees.

“What is it?” he wondered.

She couldn’t make herself speak, and Peter scooted forward so he could look her in the eye.

“Hazel,” he pressed, “you can’t pull away from me and then not give me any explanation.”

“Fine…since you have to hear it – I’m not your other women. I’m not going to sit here and let you drag me into this.” Hazel couldn’t believe she had the guts to talk to anyone that way, much less Peter.

Though he didn’t contradict her, he reached for her hand and began stroking it with his thumb. “You’re not my other women, Hazel.” He leaned forward so he could stare at the side of her face. “Austen,” he soothed. “Remember that I know you better than anyone else alive.”

Unimpressed, Hazel turned to meet his gaze. “You know everyone better than anyone. You’re the Architect.”

“That’s a bitchy thing to say,” he retorted, throwing her hand down and leaning back again.

“Bitchy? Like it was an asshole move for you to play at this sudden emotional connection? This compassion play isn’t you, Peter,” she countered, unimpressed by the name-calling.

Peter stood to his feet. He wasn’t prepared for the whole scheme to backfire, or even to meet with any resistance. He huffed a breath to rein in his irritation and turned back to her.

“Okay, then. No emotion. You don’t want to kiss me. Let’s try something we know we like then.” He forced a smile, crossing to turn on the lights. “Spar with me. Let me blow off steam a different way.”

I didn’t say I didn’t want to kiss you, she corrected silently. I just think it’s a bad idea.

Without explanation, every candle in the room extinguished as the lights came on. The effect was chilling.

Though the idea that Peter needed to “blow off steam” after their exchange bothered her, she was certainly more comfortable with the familiar exercise than the heated physicality of their kiss. A moment later, they both wore hand wraps, and he had begun a gentle boxing against her outstretched hands. She kicked at him a few times, tentative lest their tension spill over into aggression. Not unexpectedly, he seemed to be struggling with the same problem.

Once they finally began a true sparring match, she found herself quick to laugh at every failure or lapse, her stress tumbling into her default of humor.

“I think you’re better than normal right now,” Peter grinned. “Need to release some tension?”

“Maybe,” she acknowledged, raising her leg for a kick against his left side. Unfortunately, he chose that moment to lunge with a punch, and her leg hit his chest.

“Shit!” he screeched.

“Oh, Peter

Peter dropped to the floor with his arms stretched to the side, and Hazel knelt over him, anxious.

“You hit the rib,” he groaned, his hands clasping his side as he breathed deeply. “I know; you told me to get it treated.”

“The fact that it’s been six years since the competition and you are still having issues means it wasn’t just hairline.”

“Thank you, Dr. Hazel,” he murmured, and before she could react, he had grabbed her arms and spun her to the floor, pinning her shoulders to the ground with his hands and sitting astride her. “This didn’t help me release tension,” Peter smirked, dodging her weak attempts to punch him from her prone position and leaning down to minimize the range of the blows. His weight pressing her to the ground restrained her, and she stopped fighting, her heart thudding inside her chest. “Yeah, definitely didn’t work.”

They stared at each other, panting from the fight, and Hazel had to agree. “Just promise you won’t be offended when I have to run out of here,” she breathed.

“As long as you’re not offended when I chase you,” Peter leveled, no hint of teasing in his tone. He crushed his mouth onto hers, and she lost herself for more time than she wanted to think about. Only when his hand slipped under the hem of her shirt did she remember that she wasn’t ready for this. She had warned him. Twisting from under him, she scrambled toward the door, and though Pete followed her, he didn’t stop her.

“Just promise me you’ll come back, Hazel.” His hand pressed against the door lightly, so that she knew she could pull it open if she tried. With his other hand, he gently reached for hers. “I know that your experience with men is limited so I don’t want to scare you off. But this is normal.”

“You know I’ll come back, Peter. I always do,” she agreed, confused and self-conscious at the accusation of innocence. She had dated, but certainly not like Peter had. “I just don’t think I’m ready for this…”

“One more,” he growled as he reached for her waist and tugged her into another kiss. He released her and pulled the door open for her, letting the cold air wash over both of them. Fortunately, Peter was well on the way to securing her attachment to him. As the door shut her out, he indulged his smug enjoyment of the moment.

No, he didn’t have time to play the relationship game, but he should have known that if anyone could secure his interest, it would be Hazel. She acted conciliatory and nonconfrontational, but he easily saw inside her. He might apply the pressure, but she would resist in her quiet way, and if he pushed her, she would fight. It didn’t really bother him that the prospect excited him.

What would she do in a few days when she had nowhere to run? Peter looked forward to that day, because at the moment, she could still run to the DeSotos’ house. Why had the one other person in Hazel’s life proven so belligerent toward Peter? Fortunately, that negative influence currently lay immobile in a bed and unable to influence anyone. If Peter could have afforded to eradicate the out for Hazel, he would have, but until the Deconstruction, he would have to hang the carrot of Sophie’s recovery before Tomás DeSoto to keep him in line.

The thought reminded him that, for the past few days, he had neglected his years-long plan for the sake of petty personal considerations. The sooner he could unhitch the Blueprint from unwilling participants, the sooner he could act unilaterally. Until then, he needed to make sure he held an iron grip.

To ensure his hold, Peter opened a link. It was time to make a strategic revelation so he could rein in an impending obstacle to his plan.

+++++++++++++++

Hazel quickly made her way down the stairs and to the street. Not that the cold ever bothered her much, but at the moment, it felt like a baptism into life, a cold release from some heated borderland of hell, where the flames licked up and singed her skin as she milled around within the blaze.

Maybe she was exaggerating, but Peter had never seemed more comfortable and easy than since the moment he pressed her to kiss him. Now, his energy pulsed with the force of power that a man in his position should hold. He wasn’t the young, injured man who had garnered Hazel’s pity. He was a man used to having his way. Hazel did not know if she liked it very much, though she couldn’t deny the excitement. Fortunately for her, real-life excitement was never really her thing. I’ll stick with virtual excitement, she insisted to herself.

She had about two hours before she needed to return to her apartment for the night. Since she did not wish to fight through laggy Trip and she refused to wander the streets around Peter’s place, she headed to Sophie’s. If Mr. DeSoto wasn’t there, she might even unload the weight of her evening with Peter, unburden herself onto the deaf ears of her best friend.

By the time she managed the ten-minute bike to the DeSoto’s brownstone, Hazel had cooled off just enough to feel the chill. Hilda let her into the cozy foyer, and then fussed over her for a couple of minutes, taking her jacket and asking her if she needed anything. Hazel just needed to get to Sophie. Still, as she glanced into the downstairs office of Mr. DeSoto, she couldn’t help but notice how flustered he seemed. The intensity of his tone of voice had drawn Hazel’s attention, and she paused behind Hilda for a moment, bending to tie her shoes so she could figure out what had so affected Mr. DeSoto.

“There are other ways to manage this,” he insisted, brimming with a mix of anger and pleading. “What you are doing is wrong, no matter how justified your reasons.”

From above, an alarm suddenly rang out, and all of Mr. DeSoto’s mystery became irrelevant. Hazel rushed up the stairs to the bedside of her best friend and hovered a few feet away as a hired nurse accessed monitors and checked connections. The screens held a series of straight lines, and when the nurse pressed a button, Sophie’s body arched before lying back limply onto the table. A moment later, Tomás DeSoto leapt up the top few steps just as the monitors beeped back to life and Sophie’s skin turned back to its normal bronze hue.

Hazel found her breath hitching, and a sob rose in her throat. Mirroring her distress, Mr. DeSoto grabbed a vase off the nightstand and hurled it to smash against the opposite wall. A yelp escaped Hazel’s lips, and Mr. DeSoto spun to see her, obviously surprised at her presence.

“Oh, god, Hazel!” he entreated. “I am so sorry, child. Forgive me.” He crossed to her, and she managed not to shy away from him. Certainly, she understood his desperation, but she would never have expected such a display of rage. “I am…there are a lot of things involved in my life right now, but I would never have done that in front of someone. It was private. I shouldn’t have done it in front of Sophie, though, since no one knows how much she hears. I feel very foolish-”

“I imagine you have some really relevant reasons to be so upset,” Hazel interrupted, her sympathy moving her to end his misery. “Sometimes I want to throw things because of Sophie.”

“You are a good friend to her.”

Unused to being noticed, Hazel did not reply.

“Play,” Mr. DeSoto prompted. “Sophie wants you to.”

I don’t think we have a clue what Sophie wants, Hazel shrugged silently, but she took her seat at the desk nonetheless. Once she was seated, Mr. DeSoto returned to his study, and Hazel reopened her game. She hadn’t ever played Trip one-handed, but what almost happened to Sophie terrified Hazel, so she clasped her hand to her friend’s, opening the game application and trying to gain her bearings. She skimmed through a few Pros as she approached the Trifecta, and she found the familiar environment steadying her, like some anti-anxiety drug that settled the tightness in her chest.

Until that moment, her promise to Rel had slipped her mind, but now that she began to seek out a lane, she remembered what he had asked. As she navigated the path between the Gestapo headquarters and row if shops, she pummeled the little Proletariat, carefully assessing the tags of the avatars she passed.

Finally, she recognized a tag she had teamed with in the past, an elite, and she ran to join the battle that had opened against her friend, releasing Sophie’s hand as the battle grew intense.

“Foxlight?” Hazel inquired. “Remember me?”

“Wireless girl, yeah. Thanks for the assist.”

“You know how it is; I need something, so I’m offering help.”

The pair leveled blow after blow against the huge Axis tank, Hazel from skills and Foxlight from ranged attacks. Before too long, the tank evaporated.

“What did you need?” Foxlight prompted.

Hazel paused a minute, yelling at the Pros who kept jumping in front of her as if they could hear. “Trying to make a list,” she begged Foxlight. “Elites who have disappeared? I have several already: Mani, StepWise, Princely, Pandem2102, MadLady, Optigon, and Piroulette. Have you noticed any others?”

“My mage,” Foxlight complained. “TwoDollars. He bowed out about three days ago; no one knows where he is.”

“Did he actually bow out, or did he just disappear?”

“Just gone, really. No word. Unless he’s gotten sick. I know of at least a dozen elite who have caught some weird virus.”

“Wait,” Hazel sputtered. “You mean a physical virus, right? That would affect people outside of trip.”

For several seconds, Foxlight didn’t respond. “Look, I haven’t seen anything on the feed about a virus hitting humanity in general, or targeting people around our age or anything. I just know about the Trip players. So I’m just not going to guess, because the idea that a computer virus has wiped them out is just the stuff of bad vids.”

Hazel huffed out a breath. Foxlight hadn’t seen what she had seen with Piroulette – it was a lot like a computer virus infecting a human, if she were going to be honest. What if the “virus” had knocked out Sophie, and Freddy, and Mani? Though she wouldn’t let herself buy into it too intensely, she couldn’t completely erase the thought.

“I know we’re not supposed to ask this, but I actually have a friend who is investigating all the disappearances. Do you happen to know who TwoDollars is, or at least where he’s based?”

“Based in CC. Went to school with Pandem2102, then Pandem2102 went west to Belgium and TwoDollars went east to Caucasia. Princely is in Yoruba. I’ve never heard of StepWise or MadLady or that other guy. Manny is in the states.”

“Yeah, Manny is a friend of mine. That is absolutely amazing,” Hazel thanked him. “This will help for sure.”

“Comes with being Wired. We pick up on little things.”

The praise soured, but Hazel just shut down her frustration by unleashing a manic spell on a nearby fort. When the northern wall crumbled, Hazel turned away from Foxlight. “Knock yourself out,” she offered before shutting down her game.

What had she found out? Well, for one, there was a pretty large number of Trip players who had just disappeared. For another, though, the vanishing players all played Trip, their demise didn’t seem to follow any typical viral pattern. They weren’t the same type of player, so they likely hadn’t acquired the same weapons which would have carried the same code. They had different locations that they frequented, so they likely hadn’t encountered some enemy who deployed a code against them. Maybe it was a virus, but Hazel considered it as unlikely.

For the half-hour she had played, Hazel had pressed the stress of Sophie’s near incident out of her mind. Mr. DeSoto had assured Hazel that the doctors weren’t worried, and so Hazel had done what she did best – boxed up her emotions and placed them neatly into a more manageable compartment where she could ignore them. Now that she had expended some of her energy, though, the emotion seeped out and weighed her down. She placed her chin on the blanket and stared at Sophie’s angelic sleep.

“I wish you were really as peaceful as you look, Sophe. I miss you.”

She laid her cheek down on the blanket and gripped Sophie’s hand, scooting closer to the bed so she could relax onto the cushioned surface. Not that she would stay all night, but Hazel needed to connect with her best friend, so she closed her eyes and breathed deeply, meeting Sophie in sleep for a little while.

When she awoke, Hazel couldn’t determine how long she had been out. Apparently, Mr. DeSoto had happened by at some point, because Hazel’s head rested on a thin, comfortable cushion and the throw blanket from the little settee lay across her shoulders. The glow that filtered through the overhead window hovered grey with the outside light, but Hazel couldn’t tell if it brimmed with morning or settled to night.

Standing to her feet, she moved the little cushion off the bed to the chair she had vacated, tossed the throw on top of it, and lengthened her arms and legs into a stretch. She wandered around the room for a minute before pulling out her handheld.

Peter had sent her a message, of course. A request to play Trip, ironically, and Hazel couldn’t escape her anxiety. If he tried to play again, would his system somehow notify him of the Trifecta access? Maybe not since the invitation came to a different user name. But he does basically run the Stream, she recognized. She comforted herself with the thought that if he had cared, he already would have found out.

After glancing through the blinds to confirm that the autumn morning had just broken grey with clouds, she responded to Peter in the affirmative, unconcerned that she might wake him. Apparently, she had in fact slept all night in a chair. I’ll come over after lunch, she offered, and Peter replied with a calendar confirmation of their date.

Instead of reopening the game, Hazel just sat down next to Sophie again and began unburdening her mind. She told Sophie about the SOA and Trifecta, Peter’s new romantic interest, the runaway Queue car, Rel Martins, the missing players, Piroulette’s coma, how Hazel almost didn’t care about Partie…so much had happened in a couple of weeks.

Now Hazel had just over a week before the tournament, and with everything in chaos around her, she felt the least amount of confidence in her game that she had ever felt. “What do I do, Sophe?” Hazel wondered. “I can’t afford to crater right now, but this seems more important…What if you’re in this coma because of Trip?”

From the adjoining kitchen, Mr. DeSoto listened to Hazel with increasing concern. No one stood in a more precarious position than Hazel, and even more precarious than Mr. DeSoto would have imagined. Peter Donovan, scheming and self-aggrandizing, had pulled in Sophie’s best friend. Peter Donovan, who had just revealed himself as the instigator of Sophie’s coma, the man who had coerced Tomás into some obscure scheme, and then who had punctuated his insistence by sending Sophie into near death. A broken vase was the smallest expression of a father’s fury. Hearing that Peter Donovan might be using that fatherly connection to damage the lives of hundreds of other young people pressed Tomás even further over the edge of reason.

If Hazel ended up mingled in Peter’s maneuverings, she would become a danger to Sophie, and Mr. DeSoto would have to pull his support and his open invitation to the house. If Hazel did not fall for it, she might find herself in trouble, despite the fact that she didn’t have a Wire…In a way, though, Hazel was better protected from the Bridge than anyone Tomás knew.

That being the case, maybe Tomás had been mistaken in his initial assessment of the situation. Sure, he didn’t want Hazel spying for Peter, but Tomás considered that unlikely. Peter couldn’t access Hazel’s Wire to spy, since she didn’t have one, but Hazel’s little speech to Sophie had revealed more to Tomás than he had figured out since the accident. Maybe it would be better if Hazel were more entrenched with Peter. Maybe Tomás could mine her for information that would otherwise prove unavailable to him, offer misinformation for her to plant.

Mr. DeSoto did not like the idea of using Hazel, but to get Sophie back? Tomás DeSoto would do almost anything to save his daughter, even put Hazel in a risky situation. For weeks, he had hardly slept, and he had neglected his business to the point if irresponsibility. It seemed that Hazel had landed fortuitously in his path.

If he played his cards right, he could plant Hazel Hops directly into Peter’s plans and use her to manage some of his own. Tomás just had to figure out how to ensure that Hazel ended up deeply entrenched in Peter’s world. He didn’t like the idea he had to make that happen, but he had to consider Sophie. No one would be physically hurt, and possessions could be replaced. Sophie could not. Tomás needed Hazel in Donovan’s sphere and needed Donovan suitably jealous to distract him.

Shooting off a message to the proper people, Tomás set his plan in motion. Peter Donovan might rule the world, but he would not use Sophie to accomplish his dirty work.