When Hazel woke for the second time, she immediately felt under her pillow and sighed with relief when she found the handheld undisturbed. She couldn’t tell the hour, but figured it must be about time to wake up, because she could hear Peter in the hallway outside the door. He was talking somewhat loudly as he came toward the room, and Hazel sat up quickly so she could see if he entered.

After a few minutes in the hallway, she heard the rattle at the door, and she decided she would rather let him in than have him bypass the lock – it gave her comfort to believe that he couldn’t have entered in the night, even if she knew the truth in the back of her mind. Grabbing the blanket from the foot of the bed, she wrapped it around her shoulders and rushed to the door, pulling it open into Peter’s face.

Hazel tried not to stare at the shirtless Pete in his pajama pants, and he seemed amused when he read her face.

“I’ll get back to you this afternoon,” he spoke to the air before stepping into the bedroom, apparently disconnecting from his conversation in the hall. “You sleep pretty,” he asserted to Hazel, and she laughed awkwardly.

“Did you need something?” she wondered.

For a minute, Peter just smiled, but then he crossed the room and grabbed a T-shirt from his drawer. He didn’t put it on right away, instead throwing it over his shoulder and easing his way into the space behind the door, effectively pinning Hazel behind it.

“You aren’t willing to give what I need…” he teased, his skin heating the narrow space between them. “Not yet.” It was as if he just wanted to see her react to him, even if she argued with him a minute later.

“And yet you keep pushing,” Hazel complained, just as Peter gripped her shoulders, twisted himself to lean against the wall, and pulled her against him in a kiss. “Peter, you –” Whatever she had intended to say got lost as her hands landed on his chest. “Peter…” she complained weakly, and after indulging himself for a minute, he let her go.

“I don’t know why you torture yourself by fighting me,” he smirked. “Every time you say yes, you say stop, you say just this once. It’s like you have no idea what you want.”

“It’s like my hormones are trying to take over my brain, Peter. My brain knows better.”

“But my brain is even better than yours, and it says you just need to stop resisting me.” He punctuated his words by kissing her neck, and when he let her go, she needed a few seconds to fully right herself.

Her handheld released a gentle vibration, but she did not look at it. She would not read a message from Rel while she stood in the bedroom of the shirtless Peter, and at the moment, she rarely got messages from anyone else.

“I’m starving,” she redirected. “Do you have anything I could cook?”

As Peter pulled his shirt over his head, Hazel took the opportunity to step through the doorway into the hall, stopping to stare at the view so she didn’t seem like she was leaving him.

“I took care of that. It’s why I was coming to get you.”

“You made breakfast?” Hazel wondered, shocked.

The look Peter threw her quickly disabused her of the idea.

“It was delivered. It was served up about six minutes ago, so let’s go eat while it’s warm.”

He grabbed her by the waist and swung her toward the living room, switching to tugging her by the hand once they were going the right direction. She felt like a child being dragged around by a big sibling. Are we back to that? she sighed.

Once they reached the table, he grabbed the metal cover off of her meal and set it aside, doing the same for himself.

“Damn it,” he complained suddenly, standing and replacing the lid before crossing to his kitchen. “They forgot the coffee.” As he began the process of brewing the beverage, he apparently contacted the restaurant and began berating whatever poor employee linked in.

Hazel rolled her eyes, too familiar with Pete’s impatience with “incompetence.”

When her handheld buzzed, she remembered that she had received a notification from Rel – one she hadn’t wanted to answer. Well, while Pete chided the poor food services employee, Hazel could be excused for paying attention to something else.

Of course, all it said was, We need to meet ASAP. Contact me this morning. Sent at four in the morning? What was he doing up that early? What was I doing up that early? she shrugged.

In an hour at the coffee shop? she typed, glancing at Peter to make sure he hadn’t noticed.

She kept her eyes on Pete as she waited for the buzzing of the notification. Make it an hour and a half. Excited, Hazel bit her lip.

See you there.

Just as Pete turned back to salvage his breakfast, Hazel’s handheld buzzed again. She ignored it, and Peter moved back to his chair.

“Now I get to eat a cold breakfast because they couldn’t get my order right. I could Jolt them,” he raged.

“At least you didn’t take your cover off. Maybe it will still be warm.”

Peter leveled her an irritated look, and Hazel glanced over to the wall of windows. If he wanted to be a baby, she didn’t have to engage him.

“You have a notification,” he interrupted her thoughts as he chewed on a bite of pancake.

Yanked back to reality, Hazel gulped down the egg she had just placed in her mouth. She pulled up the handheld, trying to figure out the story she would create to deal with a message from Rel. Fortunately, the message saved her from her concerns.

“Sophie!” Hazel gushed, the closest thing to happiness she had felt in weeks filling her chest.

“Sophie?”

“She’s awake!”

Peter’s nostrils flared, and Hazel figured he wouldn’t appreciate the interruption if she wanted to leave. His irritation wouldn’t stop her from going, but she would give him a few minutes in appreciation for the breakfast.

“I’ve got to go see her,” Hazel insisted. “Is it okay if I finish my breakfast, though?”

“I had expected you would finish your breakfast.” Staring at Hazel, he reined in the stinging response he wanted to unleash. It would not particularly help him win his cause with attaching her to him. Still, how long would an excursion to see Sophie take, especially once Hazel realized what had happened to Mr. DeSoto? “And of course you have to go see Sophie. But I had kind of expected you would want to play Trip for a few hours today so that you could gain some of the Trifecta weapons before the Partie. Two days don’t give you much time.”

Unfortunately, he was right, and Hazel had neglected her game significantly. Fortunately, she had entered Trifecta a full week before Peter knew, so she had gained quite the stash of equipment from the well-stocked area. She would come play, though, and she would spend as much time as possible if he behaved himself. If he kept pushing her physically, though? She would just deal with her disadvantages and step away for a while.

As if in answer to her thoughts, Peter stood to his feet and pulled her to hers, just as she finished her last sip of water. He wrapped his arm around her waist and peered into her eyes.

“I know Sophie is important, but she’s okay now. Don’t cost yourself all the hard work you’ve done being sentimental.” This once, he couldn’t afford to have her gone too long.

In other words, feelings be damned, Hazel glared at him, though she did not pull away.

When he lowered his mouth to hers, a thought suddenly hit her, and it erased her irritation. What if her suspicions proved true? If Peter had really caused the problems with the glitch, how long could Hazel let herself keep pretending that he was her Peter? She had been so angry with him last night – her suspicions had seemed just and right. If they proved true, though, would she really say goodbye to Peter forever? How many more times would she let herself be with him? What if she went to meet Rel and found out that everything she feared about Peter was true?

She did not protest when Peter’s lips met hers, instead kissing the man she wished Peter were, the man she had let herself believe in for so many years. It was painful and beautiful and intense, and when Peter let her go, he seemed thoroughly shocked. What had she communicated with her kiss?

“You’re coming back?” he inspired, his voice more insecure than Hazel had ever heard it.

“I’m coming back,” she insisted, praying the words were true. She followed their moment of indulgence with a tender kiss to the cheek. Even though she held no certainty of Peter’s guilt, her suspicions had begun to chip away at her faith.

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

As soon as Hazel left, Peter pulled up the Rendering, initiating the command that shut off all irrelevant data and only showed him his strategic points. For the first couple of minutes, the lights blurred together, clouded by his concerns. What had Hazel meant by that kiss? There was something off. Had she felt bad for leaving him after accepting the comfort of his bed, his generosity? That was one option. The other option bothered him immensely. Had Hazel kissed him like that because she was leaving him? Why would she leave him? What could possibly pull her away from him, apparently against her will?

He didn’t have time for it. Before he could dedicate any more energy to Hazel, he had to set up the last pieces of the Blueprint for the Deconstruction. If he got everything in place, he could leave the plan to run its course until the last couple of hours. If he managed it, then he could focus on Hazel for a few days and leave the details of the Blueprint to his friends.

Whatever Hazel imagined about her future, when the Bridge came down, she would need him. He would just have to go forward with that knowledge. As long as he had her back by the end of the day – as long as he could entice her to stay for the next couple of days after that – she would have nowhere else to go. Linking to Chad, he instructed him how to create a couple of new overpowered weapons for Hazel. If Peter planned it right, he could keep her battling to gain equipment until the system came down.

With that settled in his mind, Peter’s eyes finally focused on what hovered before them. The ground servers all hummed steadily, churning through their voluminous energy as a bright blue glow. The satellite receivers, though managing all the Stream signals on the planet, actually barely simmered their light, vague nebulas spaced strategically around the globe.

Most of Peter’s targets had played the role he had assigned them with little difficulty, a bait and switch distraction so Peter could bring the servers on line or so he could install the mechanisms onto the satellite receivers before the day he unleashed the Deconstruction.

The mindless SOA had proven highly invaluable, and Peter’s propaganda machine had them thoroughly convinced that if they didn’t install the proper software on the servers or the proper sabotage on the satellites, that the ostensible world government would use the Wire to establish a totalitarian order. The story had hardly change for a thousand years, yet new people could always be convinced of a conspiracy. Chatrooms and forums, a theory or rumor unleashed and repeated, run on private ground servers and isolated from the Bridge.

In less than a week, the satellite receivers would go offline, and the Bridge would cease to exist. All Wires would lose their significance. It wouldn’t take long for individual companies to recreate small, ground-based Wire services, and the Wires would return to their functionality on a small scale. There would be no Bridge as it now stood, though. No interconnected virtual structure that could develop and enact whatever the powers-that-be determined.

Only a couple of his targets had resisted, and Peter had treated them much the same way as Tomás DeSoto. In their cases, though, they had held lower-level jobs with little accountability, and no one would have a reason to expect an unusual cause for their incapacity. For Tomás though? Peter would need to move quickly, or one of his security geniuses would trace the coma to Peter’s signal from the Bridge.

Peter linked to Ziyad. “She didn’t suspect anything,” Peter explained. “I took her right to the glitch, and she just shrugged it off.”

“Are you sure she wasn’t hiding something?”

Whatever Peter thought, he wasn’t ready to share it with anyone else until he knew for sure. “I really don’t think so. I’ve pretty much got her reeling from all of the relationship pressure.”

“We’ve all seen how that works out for you,” Ziyad chuckled.

“Pretty much exactly how I want it,” Peter replied. “Besides, she’s a decently intelligent person, but she’s not smart enough to figure all this out in the time that’s left. I know the extent of her understanding, and her reaction at the glitch was confused enough to show that she didn’t get it.”

“I’m not smart enough to figure it all out, either, but you know I could throw a wrench in it if I wanted to.”

“We aren’t here to figure out if Hazel is involved in sabotaging my plans. I just used her as a guinea pig to see if anyone else could. I have her managed, and she’s too much of a coward to want to change anything. The only thing I needed her to care about was her game, and if she didn’t show interest, it is unlikely anyone else would consider the glitch of interest.”

Peter heard Ziyad’s sigh through the Wire. “Well, assuming you’re right – and you know Hazel a lot better than I do – then I would say you have little to worry about that could happen in four days.”

“My only concern is after. It will take me months to wake up all the incidental players who happened onto the glitch. It’s about a hundred incidentals for every one primary.”

“Or just don’t wake them up,” Ziyad laughed.

“Don’t think I haven’t considered it. Tobie’s?”

“Dinner then Tobie’s. Half an hour. Jeddie is coming to dinner.”

“That’s good. She’s nice to look at.” Peter relished the idea of the distraction.

“My girlfriend,” Ziyad warned.

“What does that have to do with anything? You get to take her home at night.”

With a laugh, Ziyad dropped the link.

Four days…Peter sighed. By the end of the evening, there would not be much left to do but wait. The servers had been resurrected, the players had been recruited and restrained, the satellites managed, and DeSoto was out of the loop and could not rescind his earlier orders to suppress important intel. Once Chad and Leo had done their jobs, and Pete had checked it, most of the subjects would have their kids back little worse for the wear.

Maybe there would be a few with long-term effects, and there would be the potential casualties from the high-complexity job situations – there had already been a few. But Peter was not going to hesitate. Too many forces had gotten their claws into sections of the Bridge, taken to serve their own purposes without any respect to Peter and his original design.

As far as Peter was concerned, his controlled halt would save the general public from the idiocy and incompetence of bureaucrats and marginal talent. Certainly, any serious consequences would be limited, and after the fact, there would be no overarching system to track the cause of the system failure – or the cause of the resulting casualties. He wouldn’t consider economic or social consequences as significant, as long as he reclaimed management of the Bridge. The world had recovered quickly enough the last time; it would recover again.

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

“I’m on my way to Sophie’s,” Hazel told Rel as she sped away from Pete’s on her bike. The weather had turned almost cold enough that she would have to leave her bike at home and take a Queue car, but she still held significant misgivings about the technology. Of course, now I hold misgivings about Rel, too. “I would move our meeting up, but I haven’t seen Sophie since she came out of her coma. I’m not sure how to process that she’s okay after all this.”

“I’ve been looking at your screenshot. How did you get that?”

“It’s a long story I’d rather save for coffee. Did you say you have something to show me, too?” She certainly didn’t want to explain to Rel that she had slept in Peter’s bed – though she didn’t let herself ask why.

“I mean, yeah,” Rel admitted. “Or more accurately, something to ask you. I have this data that I can’t turn into information because I don’t know the language. I’m hoping you do.”

“I’ll do my best,” Hazel agreed.

“Would you do something else for me?” Rel queried.

“Probably.”

“I noticed a weird reading on Mr. DeSoto after you and I left yesterday. It seems really significant. Would you mind letting me know if anything is strange about Mr. DeSoto when you get there?”

“Sophie is my friend,” Hazel leveled, “so if it crosses the line of friendship, I won’t. But if it’s generic information or can help her, I’ll share.”

“That’s all I could ask for or expect.”

“Okay. I’m going up now, so I’ll see you in an hour.”

Hazel stowed her handheld in her backpack and sent a notification to the DeSoto’s monitor. For some reason, Rel’s voice on the handheld seemed more reserved and professional than usual, and Hazel swallowed her disappointment. A few moments later, Hilda opened the warm yellow glow of the indoors against the grey cold of approaching winter morning.

“Miss Hazel,” Hilda worried, “you have come to see Sophie?”

“I have. Is everything okay?”

“Sophie is not happy. I think she will be glad to see you.”

When Hazel’s head popped past the highest stair, Sophie’s face lit up with relief and happiness. “Thank God,” Sophie gushed. “No one will tell me anything, and I’m stuck in this stupid bed.”

“Why are you stuck?” Hazel wondered.

“Apparently, someone coming out of a coma after three weeks can’t just jump up and run around like they did before. Lost muscle tone. I have managed to play some Trip, so my hands work, but I have placed very little weight on my legs, always with help, and for no more than a few seconds. Certainly, I don’t get to walk around.”

“That has to be frustrating.”

“Yeah, but that’s just an annoyance. What is freaking me out is that everyone is acting really weird when I ask to see my dad. I mean, my dad is always super busy, but surely he would want to know his daughter was out of a coma-”

“No, Sophie,” Hazel interrupted. “You have no idea. He was a basket case. He was here every day for hours on end. He made me come over and play Trip. If I didn’t show up on a day, he would message me and make me promise to come the next day. He obsessed over you.”

“So, where is he?” Sophie demanded, and Hazel didn’t have an answer.

“Do you know anyone at his company that you could contact? He didn’t say anything about going out of town.”

“I contacted Millard,” Sophie explained, “and he always knows everything about my dad’s schedule. He told me my dad had a really urgent situation, but that he was safe and would get back to me as soon as possible.”

“Well, look,” Hazel offered. “I have a friend who has access to all kinds of information. I can see what he can find, or if he can.”

Sophie scoffed. “He? Peter and I are your only friends. You could’ve just said you’d ask Peter.”

“It’s not Peter.”

Curious, Sophie stared at her friend. “I imagine there are a lot of things that have happened while I was out.”

“Don’t give me that look. It’s not like that.”

“How has Peter taken it?”

“Taken what? There’s nothing to take. There’s more with Peter than with my friend.”

As soon as she said it, Hazel regretted it, and Sophie immediately adopted an admonishing expression. “You and Peter? That is a bad idea on so many levels.”

“It’s not anything serious. He just-”

“You let him push you into this, didn’t you? That bastard. I swear, I was the only one who had the guts to warn you about him.”

“I know what I’m doing,” Hazel lied.

“You think you can manage him,” Sophie corrected. “You are way underestimating what he’s capable of. You can’t believe that he could be heartless because you are literally incapable of being heartless.”

“How would you know?”

“Because I am capable. It’s something I fight against all the time. But Peter doesn’t. He has no problem with his fluctuating and indefinite standard of ethics. If it works, it’s justifiable – that’s the end. If he is making a move on you, it’s to accomplish a purpose, even if it’s just to keep you around.”

“Sophie…” Hazel whined. “You haven’t been through what we’ve been through. I’ve seen him hurt. You can’t do that without a heart.”

“Of course, you can. It’s one of only two things you can manage without a heart. Hurt and rage. Every other appearance of human emotion by him is a performance.”

“Well, you don’t have to worry about that.” Hazel censured her friend, but Sophie had put into words some of the thoughts Hazel herself had recently had. Thoughts that tore her up with guilt and made her overcorrect by giving Peter more credit than he had earned. “I’m not investing too much, and I can manage him.”

“You’re going to regret that hubris,” Sophie complained. “You are a smart person, but you are not Peter Donovan. Certainly, I’m not either, but I know when I’m outclassed. You have let yourself be claimed by your past, even after the past is gone. He’s manipulating you in every way possible. Are you involved physically? You don’t have enough experience to recognize hormonal manipulation. Your last boyfriend was in college.”

Hazel had made very near that complaint to Peter earlier, but she wouldn’t admit it to Sophie. Instead, she rested her head on Sophie’s blanket. “I’m not being an idiot, Sophie. I’m not some pristine ingenue. I know how tenuous this is. I’m just trying to figure out if I have to leave him or not. I don’t want to – he’s been my comfortable place for so long, and it’s not like I’m a perfect person. I hide so much it’s almost dishonesty, and I’ve ignored the way he treated other people because he treated me mostly okay. Who am I to judge? Besides, I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to leave him. I’ve already lost my house.”

“What?” Sophie exclaimed.

Shaking her head, Hazel sat back up and rubbed her face with her hands. “Yeah, I was so excited you were awake. I actually kind of forgot for a few minutes. My apartment building burned to the ground. I slept at Peter’s last night.”

“He did it!” Sophie accused. “Peter burned your place!”

“Sophie! Don’t be crazy. I know you don’t like him, but it doesn’t help your case to accuse him of things that aren’t true.”

“Do you think we would know if he did? I mean, maybe my dad would be able to look – if he ever bothers to show up. But Peter could do almost anything, and we would never know.”

“Stop, Sophie. Now you sound like me talking about people hacking my brain. It wasn’t Peter. It was an old building. It burned. If it were going to happen, it would happen there.”

“No, it’s not the same. People always overestimate the big scary forces conspiring behind closed doors. Most people should look at those sitting next to them for the greatest danger. Come on, Hazel. Your place. Coincidentally. When Pete had finally gotten free rein at you because I wasn’t around to talk sense into you.”

“But Rel was.”

“Rel?”

“My friend. I mean, he’s not as blatant as you, but I don’t think he’s impressed by Peter either.”

Sophie narrowed her eyes. “You bring him here. Now. I want to meet him, because he sounds jealous, and I like that.”

“Rel isn’t jealous! Maybe protective, which I know sounds like code language. But I promise it’s not – it’s just his job. I’m meeting him for coffee right after this.” At the moment, Hazel thought she was overstating Rel’s interest, but she had to divert Sophie. Hazel didn’t know if she could trust herself, much less Rel or Peter. At least I have Sophie.

“Ask him to meet you here!”

Though part of Hazel recoiled at what she feared would prove awkward, another part wanted Sophie to meet Rel, to form an opinion for Hazel when Hazel couldn’t form one herself.

“It’s a little early, but I’ll ask. He’s already seen you, yesterday when you were in a coma and nearly died. He helped your dad figure out how to use the Wire to fix you. Are you sure you won’t feel awkward?”

“Fix me?” Sophie laughed, then leveled a cynical expression at her friend. “I’ve been in a coma for three weeks. Have you already forgotten everything about me? Awkward means nothing to me.”

Convinced, Hazel shot off a message to Rel, smiling at Sophie. “I’ve missed you, friend,” she volunteered, grabbing Sophie’s hand.

“Don’t prove me wrong, Hazel Hops,” Sophie smirked. “This is damn near awkward.”

Hazel’s smile widened, and she glanced down at the handheld that had just buzzed. “You wanted to meet him…he was downstairs in the coffee shop across the street waiting for our meeting. He claims he had some work he could do while he waited, but I think he was just impatient. He gets really excited when he’s on the trail of something.”

“On the trail?”

“He works for NCB,” Hazel explained as they both heard Hilda open the door below. “He’s like all those old detective shows, a dog with a bone and all that.”

As she said the words, she turned toward the stairs just in time to encounter Rel’s yellow hair, followed by a shy smile. Why did she have trouble meeting his eyes, somehow ashamed of her night with Peter?

“Hazel,” Rel hummed, trying to ignore the forced influx of chemicals, both natural and synthetic, into his system. Fortunately, before he could pull Hazel to him and kiss the breath out of her, he noticed another pair of eyes staring at him from an unexpected direction. His intensity dulled behind sudden awkwardness. “Oh, uh, hi,” he stuttered. “Sophie DeSoto. Nice to meet you. I’m Rel Martins. I didn’t mean to intrude. She said to come up…”

“Hi, Rel Martins,” Sophie beamed, and Hazel felt certain there was something cat-like in Sophie’s smile. “It is very nice to meet you.”

“It’s a relief to see you awake,” Rel offered with genuine complacency. “It’s been hard on Hazel for you to be out.”

Sophie threw Hazel an approving look, and Hazel blushed. “Rel and I have a meeting, Sophie. Are you going to be okay?”

Rolling her eyes, Sophie directed her complaint to Rel. “This is going to get real old real fast. I’m not good at the helpless thing.”

Rel laughed, and Sophie returned his smile.

“Okay, Hazel. Get out of here. And see if your friend can figure out where my dad is.”

With a quick look between Sophie and Hazel, Rel followed Hazel’s lead and turned to the stairs. “It was a pleasure to meet you, Sophie,” he offered, turning for a quick genuflection before he started the descent.