"Isla?"

I don't know how I hear my name, maybe it's from outside of me, but I focus my attention to the presence, invisible but palpable.

"Who's there?" I can't be sure if I said that or just thought it. I'm communicating in a way I've never been able to. It's not talking, it's not thinking, it's just... I don't know.

"It's Joe. Are we going to be saved?"

"No," I respond. "It's just us." No response. "I did my best, but you gave me the implant."

"I apologize. I have no idea what's happened since before my surgery. It's like being trapped in a pitch black room. You can't see anything, but you know things must still exist, even if you can't see them. So, what happened to our plan?"

"Jane and the Caregivers got everyone out, thanks to you. Putting the mutated DNA in the pills. Very smart, Joe." Pause. "So this is it?"

"Move through the system until you get to Mitchell's program. Meet you there."

I think about the program, about the woods around the virtual bunker where we would wait. Pixels appear before me, like when I was immersed in Nate's files, so it seems like I'm somehow in the computer. Am I hooked up to the system already? Whatever is happening, I find myself just outside the yard of the bunker, around the same area of the forest that Gabriela and Mitchell used to detonate during the immersions.

I am suddenly aware of my hands, my feet. I touch my face and it feels like my own. In the immersion program, our consciousnesses have forms to fill. In the program, we're not stuck. Thank God I didn't destroy this.

I spin around. Where is everyone?

Phoebe appears from the woods behind me, and says, "Great. Now you're in here, too?"

"She tried," Joe says, who appears, not as himself, but as a random Deathless soldier. The only way I recognize him is by his voice, the same as earlier.

"I did," I say, putting my hands on my hips. At least I have hips. "You try freeing a bunch of people from a government estate. It's not easy. Especially when Gunther loses his mind."

"What happened?" Phoebe asks, her tone softening.

"You all really have no idea what's been going on?"

She raises her eyebrows. "Do you right now?"

"No...."

"Yeah, exactly. Who knows what you're body might be doing right now."

"If only you could see some of the things your body is doing."

"Like what?" she asks.

Joe laughs.

"Oh God, what?" Phoebe asks again, dropping her arms at her sides.

"You're out there examining sparkles and laughing at painted butterflies and staring at walls."

Joe laughs again.

"Alright, alright, enough. I get it, Gunther has a cruel sense of humor. Where is Winston?"

"I think he got out."

"You think?"

"Yeah, Phoebe, I'm sorry I was too busy trying to make up an escape plan and distract Gunther to keep tabs on Winston. I did the best I could, and, as you can see, I was never the mole, nor have I ever done anything to go against the Deathless, so really I deserve an apology, not any more attitude."

She opens her mouth like she's going to protest, but instead says, "You're right. I'm sorry. I should have trusted you from the start."

"Thank you," I say. "So what do we do now? Is there any way we can get back into our minds?"

"I've been trying," Phoebe says, "but without being out there, in front of the program or a computer, I can't make the necessary changes to get our implants offline. If we had certain tools in here, like some sort of virtual disruptor, we could get the implants offline, possibly long enough to get our bodies to safety, but we don't have anything like that, and it's all hypothetical anyway."

"So this is where we live now?" I ask, peering around the empty virtual forest.

"Unless your friends come back. Wait, how are you not with them?" Phoebe asks.

"I was able to stay conscious after Gunther knocked everyone out, so I created a diversion so the other people who were able to stay conscious could get everyone else out."

"Why weren't you affected?" Phoebe asks.

"I'm immune to the gas. Nate made a serum to change my DNA so I wouldn't be affected by it."

"Wow," she says insincerely, "he must have really loved you, huh? Well, love, I guess."

"What do you mean love? He died in the bunker."

"Yeah, but his saved avatar is still here. That's what we're all inhabiting now: Our saved profiles."

"So my mom's still here, too?" I ask.

"Yeah."

"Where?"

"In the bunker—" Phoebe can't even finishing speaking before I'm racing to the bunker, toward the entrance where we arrived in the Prowler and where I led out a herd of survivors.

I'm not even halfway down the entrance tunnel, where Alexander and I were crushed by explosions a few times, when I see long brown hair ahead of me, draping down her back like willow branches.

Even without my true body, I begin to cry and my legs give out. "Mom," I yell, strangled by my own tears.

She turns, tilts her head, and smiles at me. "Isla?... Honey, what's wrong?" She hurries toward me, and wraps me in her arms.

I squeeze her as tightly as I can, until I'm sure any tighter would force her image to burst into hundreds of voxels.

"I tried to save you, but I couldn't," I say into her shoulder.

"It's okay, Isla. I'm here. Nothing is wrong. Besides," she continues, "you and I are connected. No matter what happens, we'll always be together." She said the same thing when we spoke after the immersion trainings. After I watched her die multiple times. But I watched the camp get destroyed. I watched her die in real life. And even though this is just an avatar of her, she speaks and thinks exactly like my real mom would. Maybe being stuck here isn't so bad. Maybe this is the place Walt Whitman wrote about, where those we've lost are stopped, waiting for us.

But then I hear a familiar voice, and I'm certain this isn't that serene place: Nate. "What's up, Isla? Woah, why are you crying?" he asks.

I turn and see him again, somewhat alive and standing before me, for the first time since the bunker. "It's nothing, Nate," I say, wiping the tears from my virtual face.

He puts up his hands. "Just trying to be a good friend." He smiles and takes a step away, before turning back and whispering, "Try not to watch me walk out of here."

Of course I don't watch him, I don't even have to try to keep my eyes from him. Checking him out right now might actually cause me to have a fatal system error. Instead, I just hold on to my mom, until her unknowing avatar says, "Okay, Isla, this is getting weird. Are you sure everything is all right?"

"Sure, Mom," I say. If she is stuck in this time before explosions and deaths and capture, then I will be too. "I missed you."

"We just saw each other. Are you getting sick? Is that it?"

I laugh and roll my eyes, "No, I'm fine. Can't I just miss my mom?"

"Sure you can. I have to stand guard here though, in case something happens. Why don't you go back out into the yard with Nate? Oh, and you'll never believe who else is here."

"Who?"

"Ian Becker, your old friend. Did you already see him?"

My heart sinks. Ian Becker, who had to watch as his girlfriend was killed. "No, I haven't yet," I mumble.

"Get out there. Go hang out with your friends. I'll come out when my shift is over."

"But," I start. I don't know if I can move my legs from her side or if I can emotionally handle Ian right now. "I want to stay here."

She tilts her head and smiles again in concern. "Okay, stand guard with me."

I stand beside my mom, speechless, just feeling her presence, real or not, until the pretend sun goes down and we all camp out in the yard.

The fake night is clear, and my mom decides to go to sleep. But I'm not tired. Unlike the avatars, who function on algorithms and code, I don't need sleep. My consciousness is always on.

We lie beneath a canopy of green, on a bed of leaves. In real life, we'd be sleeping around the area I flew into after the bunker exploded; but in the program, it's still vibrant and unbroken, and the ground feels more like a rug than earth. I guess Mitchell didn't program little pebbles and uneven dirt for camping realism.

The last time my mom and I slept beneath the stars, we were stuck outside after dark during a run. The Prowlers almost caught us that night. That's when we knew we would need to be more careful. Now look at us. Both of us dead in our own way.

I roll over and watch the yard, where avatars and bodiless souls roam, either to stand guard or to pass the sleepless time. Joe is off talking to Dr. Patel's avatar, and Phoebe is with Winston's. We're all with those we've lost. Except Ian. Just ahead of the forested area, I spy him lying in the grass, staring up at the starless night, a detail Mitchell must have forgotten to program. Idiot. Nate is sleeping meters away from me without any chance of waking up to intercept my path, so I take the opportunity to pass the time with Ian.

"Mind if I join you?" I ask.

"Can't sleep either?"

"Nope." I sit beside him, and fall back onto the artificially soft grass. "I miss being real."

"At least we're not just a blob of consciousness here," he says, shoveling pixels of dirt with a virtual stick.

"Mitchell could shut down his program, though. I almost destroyed it. It would have been easy."

"He probably will turn it off, yeah. He'll do whatever Gunther says." Ian drops the stick and stares up at the blackness. "Maybe we deserve it. Did you hear about Ava?"

If my stomach were real, I'd feel it turn in agony. "I am so sorry, Ian."

"She was always so beautiful," he says. "Do you know how we met?" I shake my head. "I caught her stealing the chemical case, so I asked her what she needed it for, and she told me. Straight up, it's for the ladies so they can study. She was so determined, so fearless, I had to get to know her. So I helped her and Nina bring it to the drain, and she gave me a kiss to thank me. I was hooked. I had no idea I was capable of falling in love so quickly. It wasn't love at first sight, like all the books say. It was love at first conversation. Everything about her was beautiful, but her tenacity... That was what I loved most." He rips some artificial grass from its roots. "But that's what got her killed. When we found her, I was speechless, so Collins asked her what she was doing. She told us, straight up, I stole the pod and I killed Eleanor, even though you could tell she was lying. She had to have known she was condemning herself. He asked where the equipment was—not Eleanor, the equipment—and she pointed to the lake. So he shot her. Just like that. I didn't... I didn't even get to look at her for the last time. We didn't make eye contact or say goodbye or anything. She just died and that was it."

I have no words. Nothing I could ever say would make this better, especially not now. I just stare up at the empty black with him.

"And when Daniel comes back and gets us out, I'll have to live in a reality without her," he says.

"What if Daniel doesn't come back?"

"You didn't see him when you weren't here. He wasn't himself. When you're around, he's alive. He'll come back. He'll get us out of here. And I'll have to go on living."

I take his hand. "Hold on," I say, repeating the words he gave me in the cell. He smiles weakly.

Someone whispers, "...Isla...."

"Did you hear that?" I ask, my spine tingling.

"What?"

I sit up and look for a source, when I see that Nate is rising from his bed of leaves. It was too loud a whisper to have come from all the way over there. Or maybe sound travels differently when it's not real.

"It might have just been Nate," I say, but I'm not even convincing myself.

"I didn't hear anything. It might have been something from outside. Maybe you're hearing someone in the real world calling you."

"Yeah," I sigh, watching Nate's shadowy figure emerge from the woods. He'll want to come over and talk to me, but I can't handle that right now. I turn back to Ian and focus my full attention on him. "Speaking of the real world, when you are back in your body, if that's possible, you will probably have a broken nose and fat lip. Sorry for that."

"It's okay. It'll be a distraction from the other pain."

"Isla," Nate calls from the edge of the forest.

"No, it was him." I look back at Ian. "I can't talk to him right now," I whisper. "Eleanor was pregnant with his and my genetically modified baby."

"Wait... what about about a baby?" Ian asks.

"Never mind," I whisper, as Nate nears.

"I want to talk, Isla," he says, standing over us now.

"Well, I'm kind of busy here with Ian, so... maybe later, okay?" I say.

"No. Now. I have to get this off my chest."

I look at Ian, who is clearly waiting for my reply just as intently as Nate. He's waiting to see if he needs to step in or not. But maybe this is my chance to actually have closure with Nate. Maybe we can finally have a real goodbye.

"Fine. I'll be back in a little while," I say to Ian as I stand up and brush the grass from my Deathless uniform.

Nate takes my hand, and leads me into a part of the woods where no one is sleeping. Probably so we won't disturb anyone. I step over a fallen branch, but my foot catches and I trip. Just before I regain my balance, the dark ground morphs into the estate's staircase. But when I stand again, the dark virtual earth returns. I'm still in the program, still standing in front of Nate.

Did I just see what my body is seeing right now?Or is that just my memory sending me to a place where I used to be alive? It's probably just my implanted mind playing tricks on me.

"So, what did you want to get off your chest?" I ask.

"What did you say to him?" Nate asks, but there's a tone in his voice, familiar yet foreign coming from him.

"To who?" Who knows what or who Nate's avatar is programmed to know.

"To Hugh."

My thoughts glitch and my mouth goes dry. There's no way Nate would have been programmed to know about Hugh. "What did you just say?" I ask.

"You heard me, Ms. Blume."

Gunther. Gunther's inhabited Nate's avatar, and now he's found me.

Before I can say a word, the program changes. Gunther must be there, in Mitchell's room, using the program and forcing Mitchell to rewrite the codes. The once black sky bursts into crimson flames, and sizzles in deresolution until the world is just a white and black grid.

"Gunther, I didn't say anything to Hugh that he wasn't already going to learn," I plead over a wailing alarm, echoing from some unseen place.

Nate derezzes in front of me, and where his avatar stood, a giant Prowler flickers into place. It stomps both its feet to anchor itself, and I fall to the ground, as it opens its center hatch to roar at me. It sounds its mechanical scream, and erupts with Gunther's deepened voice.

"He wasn't," the Prowler Gunther stomps toward me, and I scurry to my feet, "supposed to die," he takes another step, "he wouldn't have ever thought to kill himself, without being provoked." I run backward. "You killed him. You killed the last person who mattered," the machine screams.

"Mom!" I shriek, and start sprinting through the woods. "Mom! Ian, Phoebe, Joe!"

Gunther's mechanical avatar chases me over the grid squares, and I find my mom. She jumps up from her bed of leaves. Her face is open in shock and confusion, but as she breathes to scream my name, she is gone. She derezzes, evaporates, sinks into the grid as if it were quicksand. As do all the avatars. Gunther stole her from me again. He's punishing me for Hugh's choice.

Phoebe screams, "Get to a different program!" Ian and Joe must have already gone, because I am suddenly the only one left, followed swiftly by Gunther.

My legs, my arms, my hands. They are flickering in and out of resolution as I sprint, but each time my unstable feet hit the grid, I see the estate. Just for a second. This has to be what my body is seeing. Maybe the program is overloading with Gunther's presence, and I can somehow get back into my body. So I keep running, pounding my feet against the grid to see where my body is: I'm walking down the hallway of laboratories. My hand moves to open the Physics Laboratory.

In the program, I know I'm running, but I'm disconnected from my avatar, no longer able to feel the burn in my legs or the pounding of my feet.

Gunther roars again, and screams, "I will kill you and everything you love."

My consciousness collapses against the grid. My body opens the Physics lab, and... Daniel. I roll onto my avatar's back to see Gunther's Prowler form roaring over me. But now his roar sounds more like laughter, a deep, syncopated bellow.

"I have a better idea," Prowler Gunther laughs, "I will just make you kill yourself and everything you love."

Then Gunther's Prowler form derezzes from existence, and I'm left alone in the emptiness. My body saw Daniel. Oh God...

I choke on the thought, but I know this is what Gunther meant: He controls the cyborgs, and mine is with Daniel. He is going to force mine to kill him, and then, kill itself. But what about me? I'm not part of my body right now, I'm part of the computer. Will I be stuck here, remembering that I killed Daniel for all eternity, and never being able to be with him again?

I get up and start running again, slamming my feet against the grid to catch glimpses of myself. To try to stop this.

I see him: His hand is on our amplifier. My hand, stretched in front of myself, holds a gun. Gunther won't be merciful. He won't stop to hear Daniel out, so neither will my controlled body.

Then, the program returns. Somehow. Only this time, I am in a brain, which I can only assume is mine.

"No!" I scream. I don't know how to find Daniel from here. "What the hell am I supposed to do?" I ask myself.

That's when, just before me, I see the slingshot my mom and Declan created specially for me appear at my feet. I turn my head upward, like my mom had in the first immersion, and start, "Thank—"

If Daniel's here, at the estate, that means they came back, and maybe... The only other people beside Mitchell who would have known about this slingshot are Declan and my mom. Could they still be alive? Could they have sent this to me?

"Shoot," a whisper echoes through me, and I can't tell if this is the command from Gunther to my body or if this is a directive from whoever sent me the slingshot, but I do. I start shooting the magnetic ammunition everywhere I can, and with each hit, I am allowed a second back in my body, back behind my eyes. With each hit, I am able to lower the gun a little.

I keep hearing the word "Shoot" over and over, and I know it must be Gunther, but I am doing what he says and it's ruining his plan. I run through my mind, shooting at whatever I can with my magnetic pulses, until I actually find the implant.

"Pull the trigger!" I hear, so I release my magnet against the implant, and I am shocked fully back into my body, just long enough to feel my finger tighten on the trigger, and just long enough to shift the aim away from Daniel.

As the bullet pierces a window behind him, I see Daniel push down on our amplifier, and just before my consciousness slips back into my virtual brain, I feel the implant disable with the electromagnetic pulse, and I am back in control.