Hazel stared at the pixelated mouth of the cave, unsure exactly what she should do. Peter had finally ceased kissing her neck, though his hands nestled firmly against her waistline.

“Why am I here?” she prompted. “What exactly do you want me to do that you couldn’t do?”

“I mean, now that you’re here, I could do it. But I think if I tried to maneuver your avatar, you would cut my hand off.”

Even in her heightened state of agitation, the comment lifted the corner of her mouth. “Has anyone ever told you that you’re smart?” she deadpanned.

“I haven’t needed anyone to tell me that for a long time. Which is why you should recognize the honor of my asking you to help. I wanted you to see if you could get a read on the code of this…”

Staring at the shimmer on the cave entrance, she pulled in a deep breath. The vision of Piroulette’s avatar as is it was sucked out of existence wouldn’t leave Hazel’s mind, but she pulled up a prompt.

“What am I looking for here?”

“Just code you recognize. Different materials, weapons, avatars, whatever. How does this glitch read? If I can tell what it was supposed to be, maybe I can fix it – or you can.”

“I mean, you don’t need me to tell you.”

“But you won’t let me touch the keyboard…” He wiggled his fingers, and his thumbs hitched themselves in the sides of her jeans, slipping below the waistline. As long as you stay there, I won’t hit you, she threatened silently.

How long did he plan on pushing her? “I see the usual,” she mumbled. “Stone, scenery. This code says there is a door, but it looks like random pixels – like you said, a glitch.”

“A door?”

“The glitch code says it’s a door. If you’re not in Trip…” She squirmed against his grip so she could look in his face, but he just leaned in to run his lips along her jawline as she spoke. “…how did you find this? Did someone show you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Pete murmured, rising to his feet and pulling her up by his grip on her waist. His lips never lost contact with her skin. “You got it. It’s a door. That’s good to know. Come on.”

“Wait.” Hazel dug her heels into the rug. “Aren’t I going inside the cave? Where are we going?”

Peter gripped the controller and wrested it from her hands – he didn’t even know what would happen if she tried to enter, though it probably wouldn’t have harmed her. Restraining himself was growing more difficult. If she had actually stolen his Tryptech access, she was surprisingly adept at veiling the truth. He could hear apprehension in her voice, though, so if she was deceiving him, she held no confidence in her ability. Still, he was impressed, and he found her curiously more attractive for the fact that she was a little less pure than she seemed. “You have had a hard day,” he insisted as he tugged her off of her stubborn stance. “I’m taking you to my bed.”

As he had known she would, Hazel almost choked a protest, obviously terrified at the words. He held in a laugh since she might not appreciate his levity at her expense.

“I can’t, Pete,” she gasped, beginning to struggle against his arms in earnest. “Let me go. Please. I wouldn’t be able to sleep in there. I want to go…”

“Where else can you go, Hazel? Besides, who needs sleep?” he murmured, though he didn’t actually intend to fight her. He slid one hand from her waist and raised it to vice her face to his gaze. “Calm down, Hazel,” he commanded. “What do you think I’m going to do to you?” He paused for a moment to read what her eyes feared, and when he found her thoroughly subdued, he spoke the words to soothe her. “I’ll sleep on the couch. I’m not going to sneak in there while you’re passed out and try to seduce you.” Not yet. “I just want you to be comfortable.”

When he stopped in the hallway, he released her face, and Hazel finally stopped resisting. She lowered her eyes to his chest, though, and pressed her hands between them. Had he really been teasing her? From what she knew of his self-control, the chances were good that he had, that he had never intended to pressure his way into bed with her. He wouldn’t do that, she assured herself.

Still, she couldn’t let his completely inappropriate behavior stand. She punched him in the chest, making sure to avoid the injured rib. “Don’t ever do that again!” she commanded, though she couldn’t get a good punch in. She didn’t really want to hurt him – just make sure he understood that he could not play with her that way. She met his eyes with as much determination as she could muster. “If you do anything like that again, I will walk out that door and never come back.”

“Okay, Hazel.” He gripped her wrists. “But you know me. I would never mean anything bad.”

Maybe she believed him, but he wouldn’t have qualms about giving her the impression that he would do all sorts of things he never intended to do. Her fear had not quite subsided, and she just stared at where he restrained her hands. “Whether that’s true or not, if I catch a hint – “

“You won’t; I promise. You took me way more seriously than I intended. Just rest. I’ll stay out here and be a good boy.” He released one of her hands and slid his arm behind her waist, letting go of the other hand once he held her firmly behind the back.

“If I don’t find somewhere to stay, I might be here for a while. You’re not going to sleep on the couch every night.”

“You won’t be this tired every night. Just do it.”

When she managed to raise her eyes to his, he seemed as determine in his insistence as he was in everything else he did – she would not be able to say no to him without initiating a huge argument. Her pulse still raged in her chest, but her mind stilled as she realized he was not going to push her anymore. After so much turmoil, Peter was right – Hazel was tired. He raised one hand to brush a stray hair off her cheek, and his arm loosened enough that she no longer felt trapped.

“Hazel?” he prompted, and she peered into eyes that held a petition. “Can I kiss you again?”

When she pressed her hands against his chest, he released the arm that restrained her, and she took a step back. Could she risk it? Maybe as a test of his veracity? “Just a kiss. Then you turn around and walk away.” She wanted to make sure there was no claiming later that he hadn’t understood.

“Just a kiss,” he promised.

Leaning her back against the wall behind her, she gave a sharp nod. “When you give me a choice?” Hazel insisted, wondering why he bothered to ask now after the past half-hour of his non-stop physical encroachments. “I’m much more cooperative.”

“Doesn’t leave much room for spontaneity…Is that a yes?” he murmured as he stepped toward her and slid his hand to caress the back of her neck.

Hazel closed her eyes and licked her lips. “Yes,” she whispered.

With one hand behind her neck, Peter reached for her face, brushing a feather-touch on her cheek as his mouth glided lightly over the tender skin on her bottom lip. Despite her internal ambivalence, her body responded, arching toward him, seeking his mouth with her own. When she found him, he leaned away so that their lips barely touched, and Peter laughed when Hazel groaned a complaint.

He raised his hands so that both of his thumbs stroked gently down her jawline, and she lifted her face so that his hands slid onto her neck.

“Pete,” she started to protest, but it came out more as a plea, and his mouth followed his thumbs onto the sensitive flesh of her collarbone. The wall behind her held her up, Pete pinning her body against the painted wood panels before raising his mouth back to hers.

Velvet heat enveloped her mouth, and every brush of his hand across her skin trailed fire – down the side of her neck, her shoulders, her waist. After several seconds of mindlessness, she felt the disappointment of cool air as he leaned away, releasing her and whispering, “Good night,” a heated breath away from her neck.

Everything in Hazel screamed at the loss, but when she took the time to listen, she heard two voices in the cacophony. One predictable voice commanded her to grab Peter’s hand, pull him into the bedroom with her, tell him she had changed her mind. Of course, Hazel knew that voice. It was the voice of hormones, and it rarely led her into right thinking.

Fortunately, the other voice seemed much more reasonable. It was the voice that had been battering her for about a week, telling her that the path Peter had started down was not the path that Hazel wanted. Her past investment in his emotional well-being seemed to have drawn her into a position with him that she had no desire to continue, but she didn’t know how to get out. And the hormones did not help at all, probably because Peter had significantly more experience than Hazel and knew just how best to reel her in.

The down side of sleeping in Peter’s bed was that she couldn’t sneak out in the night, get away while he couldn’t persuade her to stay. On the up side, though, Hazel was very curious what Peter had in his room, and after what he had done to her, she could not muster any guilt about digging into his carefully guarded secrets. What would she find in his room that he intended to keep private? If he wanted her to trust him, she needed to know.

She didn’t know if locking the door would make much difference, since Pete probably had some kind of digital override, but she did it nonetheless, hopping into Pete’s oversized shower and then into her warm pajamas before sliding under the covers. Even though she couldn’t relax completely in Pete’s bed, he had been right – Hazel was tired, and Pete had the best bed money could buy. Curious or not, Hazel fell asleep within about five minutes of climbing into the modal sheets, her exhaustion overriding her brain. Curiosity would have to wait.

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

Hazel lay in his bed.

Everything in Peter revolted against feeling forced to restrain himself because of her prudishness and insecurity. Of course, restrain himself he would. Rarely – and not since unveiling the Bridge – had Peter given into his impulses when it would cost him his ambition. If the impulses would not affect his ultimate goals, Peter never saw the need to restrain them, but in this case, they would cost him. He could almost certainly persuade his way into bed with her, overcome her protests and make her a willing participant. If he did, though, she would likely run away, and that was the opposite of his long-term strategy. He could deprive himself until the Deconstruction when she would have nowhere else to go.

Fortunately, the night hadn’t proven a total loss. A rising sense of concern had grown in him for the past few days, from the rebellion of Tomás DeSoto to the fire at Hazel’s apartment to someone stealing his Trifecta tag, Peter had begun to worry that someone was unraveling his schemes. If Hazel had really stolen his Trifecta key, though, he could relax about that, at least. Just to be sure, he would have Chad keep the trace up, but Hazel definitely seemed the most likely suspect there.

Of course, DeSoto had managed the reset of his daughter, but how? Did he have an accomplice at the NCB? Rel Martins had been there that day, but besides the fact that Peter had Martins neatly handled, the guy was a low-level hack. He could never have gotten clearance to access the Wire of someone as important as Tomás DeSoto’s daughter, even with DeSoto’s permission. So there was rebellion somewhere in the NCB, and Peter needed to find out where. He might have to visit some misfortune on one of his other contacts there.

He could find no evidence on the Bridge to explain the fire at Hazel’s, so he wondered if there were yet another factor coming against him – a non-Wired infiltration, perhaps one of the SOA members he had recruited. They might be the only people who knew Hazel, and if her connection with Peter had leaked somehow, she might become a target. Maybe it had nothing to do with Peter’s Deconstruction agenda.

Confirming that Hazel could not access the glitch calmed Peter’s nerves the most. In truth, all the other concerns were just distractions. Everything hinged on the glitch, and if anyone could make something of the glitch, surely Hazel could. She had recognized the code for the door – which was perhaps problematic – but she did not seem to note anything significant about the location. If she didn’t, most likely no one else would.

Despite his resolution to let Hazel have her night, he turned from the view outside and glided down the hall to his room, disengaging the lock and stepping inside to where he could make out Hazel’s sleeping form on the bed. If any other woman had lain there, Peter would have found a way to entice his way into bed with her. Hazel, though, would not forgive the imposition, and Peter had not undertaken the effort for the mere challenge. He needed to secure Hazel’s loyalty, not cement her resentment. Stepping back through the door and relocking it, he made his way back to his living room where he stared at the rendering far into the night.

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

When Hazel awoke and realized where she lay, her first thoughts shot to Peter. Had he come in to waken her? Her eyes popped open, and nothing seemed to have disturbed her. Still, sleep had done with her, and she felt herself sitting up and stretching her tired limbs. She had fallen asleep so early, exhausted by the loss of her home and of Sophie’s near death. Honestly, her gratitude at having a place to stay warmed her despite all the chaos Pete had pressed on her.

The windows to her left still lay open to the world, but Hazel knew they had one-way glass. Also, Peter had the transparency on a timer, and during summer months when the sun rose early, the windows grew dark with the sunrise. For now, though, Hazel could walk up to the windows and lean her head against them, taking in the amazing sense of her own insignificance in the predawn night.

Pete’s place stood alone on a hill, one he had made by hauling in ridiculous tons of dirt into the most scenic spot in the city after buying an entire city block and demolishing the high-end apartments there. The hill placed him on the level of about a fifth story, and Hazel complained to him every time she took the stairs from the front door. Unfortunately, the elevator only ran through the garage, and Peter hadn’t given her access. The park that faced the home meant that Peter had an unimpeded view across the bay. In the middle of the night, the view took Hazel’s breath away.

Of course, at her pleasure, thoughts of Peter and his offer to move in rose to her mind, so she turned from the window and crossed back to the bed. It was as if he were weaving a spell, and she sensed that it had begun to work. When she sat back on the bed, she recognized the massive monitor that stood on a streamlined desk directly in front of her. It amused her that, despite the fact that he had basically engineered the Wire in his and everyone else’s heads, he kept the old hardware around. Or, not old in this case. Some new creation probably directly from Peter’s mind, but basically just a big, fancy, physical computer.

She crossed to the desk and sat in the perfectly ergonomic chair. Most likely, Pete just magically wished the screen to wake when he wanted it to, and it did, but Hazel brushed her hand across the little green beam to activate the keyboard on the desktop. It seemed to use typical Bridge software, a biometric sensor no doubt would read and allow Pete to access the machine. Not available to Hazel, of course, but she noticed a little shield on one corner, similar to but more generic than the SOA shield. Just a blue shield with a checkmark, and she tabbed to it and hit enter.

When the box popped up, Hazel realized that she had no idea what Pete would use as a pin. After trying a couple of options, she decided to attempt another route, opening a prompt that would give her limited access to the computer. Part of her wondered what she was doing, but another part was driven by base curiosity. Peter Donovan, the man who wanted to date her, the Architect of the Bridge, the guy who had terrified her in a claimed attempt at a game – the guy who had held her together when her father had died.

A total stranger.

After having known him for a quarter of her life, Hazel realized that, while he knew basically everything about her, he had guarded everything about himself. Now he wanted her to just jump into his arms based on what? That they had hung out for a few years and could stand each other’s presence? That five years before they had both needed support and had existed together during recovery? On occasion, Peter showed consideration and generosity. On just as many occasions, though, he showed pettiness and heartlessness, and sometimes near cruelty. Just depended on his mood and whim. If she went merely by evidence, Peter held no greater virtue than his brilliance.

His brilliance had made the Bridge.

His brilliance had solved so many of Hazel’s problems.

His brilliance had pulled Hazel to him despite her misgivings.

With a tapping of her fingers on the desk, she searched for recent events on the computer, and a directory opened. It was a simple list, computer events that seemed perfectly normal for the Architect of the Bridge: Pete’s identifying information, Bridge infrastructure, satellite monitoring, alerts and alarms. There was one entry, though, in recent files, that made no sense whatsoever – Trifecta.

She pulled up the directory, thinking that maybe he had looked at it recently to get her access. What she saw could not be explained by seeking access, though. In fact, she could figure out no logical reason he would have accessed the information on the screen, out of all the games, out of all the times, out of all the people…

Sitting in Peter’s beautiful bedroom, with the magnificent view of downtown out Peter’s breathtaking windows, Hazel’s eyes finally opened to an aspect of Peter’s brilliance that she had never considered. Unfortunately, she had ignored the possibilities of an intelligence like his, especially when married to his particular lack of conscience. She had imagined her own thoughts and intentions, had believed that he would have acted in any situation as she would.

As she stared at the list of names, though, a new possibility opened before her. Her mind reeled, and for a moment she didn’t trust herself to move because she would lose her balance. Once she sucked in a couple of breaths, she leaned back over the keyboard and forced herself to face what made no sense. What made her sick.

Trifecta, it read, followed by a long list of names. The first group, “Registered,” looked to be about four thousand names long – and next to the names, gamertags. She recognized several of them from her years of play.

The second group of gamertags, “Objectives,” stopped Hazel in her tracks. They were tags that Hazel had paid a lot of attention to over the past couple of weeks.

Manticore, StepWise, Pandem2102, Incandecks – so many of the names she already knew about. Freddy Nako was on there, “Lagonix” – she hadn’t known his tag. Even Bandwidth, whom Hazel now knew must be Grayson Lopez. What was Peter doing with this list? Monitoring it? Trying to crack it? Maybe he had just noticed the weird malady hitting gamers, and he was worried about Hazel.

Flying down the list, she looked for the most important name. As Hazel had feared, the name was there - MadLady. Sophie. Sophie was in the list. Hazel just stared at the figures, completely confused. When she checked the dates of entry on the log, Sophie’s first entry had appeared three days before her accident. And there next to her name was an ID, a virtual location on the Bridge. Or, not really on the Bridge, Hazel realized. Somewhere…foreign, as Rel had put it.

Of course, Pete had access to all of the connections – it was literally the purpose of the Bridge, to create and maintain the connections between individual entities. Peter didn’t manage all of it alone, but he could monitor it. When he looked at the Bridge, it always showed up as a vast sky of blue stars, the hubs glowing brightly, the clusters of people as cloudy galaxies of souls.

All Hazel could see from her perspective was code, and she got none of the bigger picture. Still, there were details, and they looked incredibly familiar. She pulled out her handheld again and captured the screen, shooting the info off to Rel immediately. Guilt squeezed her throat, because she was basically stealing proprietary information from her best friend and sending it to a relative stranger. She couldn’t regret it, though. Of course, she would also talk to Peter about it, but she justified the breach by deciding she needed to get more than one mind working on a solution. Her suspicions wouldn’t let her leave all her cards with Pete.

Unwilling to consider her obvious confliction, Hazel pressed down the idea that had actually motivated her to send it to Rel – the idea that Peter had created the list and caused the comas. It can’t be, she denied. This was just her fear of committing to Peter that had dreamed up horrible illusions of his capability. She couldn’t deny the possibility, though. If Peter wanted something and could justify it to himself, he would go forward in it no matter who it affected. For instance, Hazel closed her eyes, did he know what that glitch could do when he led me to it? Did he know I was in that car with Sophie? Did he send the queue car after me? Surely, he wouldn’t do that to her. He cared about her, didn’t he? After the moment in the hallway, she just wasn’t sure.

Her heart racing, Hazel shut down the computer and crawled back into the bed. More than anything, she wanted to get out of that apartment, but she would never make it past Peter without waking him. And at the early hour, Pete would find it very strange that she wanted to leave. It had been a long time since she had slept with her handheld under her pillow, but she fell back asleep for a few hours, the device safely stowed under her head.

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

Vee, I need you now. Rel pushed the notification to urgent, praying she would get it. After a few minutes, he sent the message again. He had no reason to think that she would wake up and notice the messages, but the urgent flag would at least sound a short alarm.

Slow down, cowboy, the message came, you know my rules.

“Thank God,” Rel breathed. Not that. I need your opinion on this. If I’m right, it’s a matter of life or death.

Okay, I’m looking.

I was going over the record of the incident with Tomás and Sophie DeSoto, and I ran a program we have on the mainframe…

Are you at the office? Vee exclaimed.

Yes.

It’s four a.m.! Hold on. I’m connecting on voice. “What is going on, Rel?”

Before she could finish her question, his words rushed past her.

“The ground networks. The code that was connecting Sophie DeSoto to the ground network is currently connected to her father. I mean, I don’t know exactly how code works, but it’s the same code. Whatever string of characters ran through Sophie’s Wire and kept her connected to the ground network is currently running through the Wire in Tomás DeSoto’s brain. Any idea the last time anyone heard from him?”

“How would I know that?”

“I figured the head of a company that manages Stream security for the government would be monitored by the government.”

Vee laughed. “Fair point, but my clearance level is way below that kind of information.”

“You rebooted his daughter’s Wire,” Rel countered.

“Yeah, his daughter’s. And I dodged a major bullet. I might have broken the law. I can’t do that if someone’s life isn’t in imminent danger.”

Rel sighed, then an idea dawned in his mind. “But if I broke into your information and found out by myself…”

“Then you’ll get fired and maybe put in jail.”

“And…?”

“And you still want me to help you, don’t you? Rel! You are crazy!”

“But you’re smart enough that you could tell me how to access the info and make sure I’m the only one who’s implicated.”

Vee shook her head. “Look, Rel. I like you. I’m not sure I’m willing to help someone I like get in that much trouble.”

“Listen to me, Vee. I don’t know what is going down, but I know that anyone who is willing to put maybe hundreds of young people into comas – that person has to be stopped.”

“And I know that someone who stands up against that kind of storm, stands on the top of a hill and lifts his fist against the hurricane – that person ends dead at the bottom of a cliff. And that’s where you’ll end if you go through with this, Rel. You are one man with a hunch and some hormonal promptings-”

“This is not about Hazel!” he interrupted. Every time she had entered his mind since their dinner together, he had pushed the thought out. He had been well on the way to caring about her from the night he had met her, but he didn’t know if he could trust himself anymore, despite Vee’s reassurances.

“And that statement,” laughed Vee, “makes me even more nervous! I meant the prompts that have been handing you leads; I hadn’t even let myself consider that you would let the Hazel issue affect your investigation.”

Huffing a breath, Rel ran his hand through his hair. Convincing Vee to do what he asked might prove difficult, but Hazel might know some solution Rel couldn’t know. But did he dare? He certainly wanted to. “No, Vee. I’m not. But if I come back to you, will you consider giving me access? If I have more compelling evidence.”

“To give you up to potential martyrdom? It will have to be really compelling.”

Rel squinted his eyes against the little flashing light that indicated he had a new notification.

“Rel, do you hear me?” Vee prompted.

“Hold on,” Rel insisted. Speak of the devil – what was Hazel doing up so early? And what had she sent him? It was a screen capture of a command window from a computer screen, with a lot of characters and words that meant nothing to him. Intermingled with the nonsense, though, were some very important pieces of information. Piroulette, Manticore, StepWise, MadLady. A list of probably a hundred names including the ones he and Hazel had talked about for the past week or so. If it meant nothing to him, he bet it meant something to Hazel. He couldn’t suppress the thrill that ran through him – apparently, he needed to see her.

“Compelling it is,” he murmured. “I’ll get back to you,” he offered more loudly, shutting down his link with Vee and shooting a message to Hazel. What had that girl managed to find?