through it. I wondered if my real self was shivering in the recliner?
"You have anything else for me before I go?"
She smiled. It was an innocent, warm smile. "Be careful, Conor."
The sentiment surprised me, chiseling through and creating the faintest spark of hope that I could get through this mess alive.
It was probably stupid to have hope.
Everything started shaking. The floors, the walls, even the sky above us, as though the entirety of the Machine had been picked up by a curious infant. Prithi slipped and fell over, while Sandman dropped to her knees and balanced on three points, looking first at me, and then upwards.
A dark mass was growing over us, black clouds and lightning that reached out and smashed into the emerald construction, shattering it and sending it raining down.
"Black?" I asked, all of the fear rushing back in an instant.
"No. It can't be."
The darkness fell from the sky as one massive cloud, swallowing everything within it as it did.
"Conor, let's go," Prithi said. "Just say 'exit Machine.'"
I didn't. I couldn't. I was frozen. In fear. In awe. In anger. Sandman said it wasn't Black, and I believed her. I knew what this was.
Who this was.
The laughter rippled across the universe, echoing loud enough to shatter all that remained of Sandman's green city. She cried out and put her hands to her ears, and I saw her lips move. Then she was gone.
"Conor," Prithi said again. "Exit Machine."
She vanished as well, returned to the real world.
I wasn't ready to leave. Not yet. The whole interaction with the entity in the mask had emboldened me. Too much?
"Get to the point," I shouted at the cloud. I could leave anytime, and he couldn't hurt me here. Could he?
"This is the point," Death replied. "You aren't safe, Conor. Not here. Not anywhere. Wherever you go, I can find you. In that world, and in this one."
"If you're so powerful, then why don't you just kill me yourself? Why the games? Why the threats? Why the thugs?"
"That is my prerogative. My modus operandi." He laughed at that. "I don't have to hurry you along. I don't have to make it easy. You will come to me, one way or another. The more you resist, the more pleasure I will take in welcoming you."
The words were terrifying. I didn't believe them. Not after what had happened at the Sharma house. He couldn't kill me. He couldn't get past the mask. Whoever, whatever was inside of it, it was protecting me.
Or using me.
Was I making everything worse for myself? Was every day I continued to live costing me a greater eternity of pain when I finally lost a roll of the dice?
I didn't know. All I did know was that I never wanted to find out. If I was going to die, let it be because of something that was beyond my control. Let them be responsible for my hell, so at least I would have someone to blame.
"I guess I'll see you around," I said. "Exit Machine."
THIRTY
Love connection.
"Conor," Prithi said, the moment I came back and lifted the helmet off my head. She threw herself into my lap and wrapped her arms around me.
"I'm fine," I said, appreciative of her concern.
"What was that?" Amos asked.
"You saw it?"
"The feed switched to your view just before that hot chick with the green hair kissed you. Awww, man, I'd love a girl with green hair right about now."
Prithi slid off my lap. "Whatever it was, it totally owned the Machine."
"The servers were going nuts," Myra said, approaching us. "I don't know who you are, or what you're about, but I've never seen anything like that before."
I considered whether or not to tell the truth. The whole truth. As insane as it would sound. As crazy as it was. Maybe I should have. The timing wasn't right.
"We can worry about that later," I said. "Myra, how do I get a datafile out that was passed to me?"
She knelt down in front of the monitor on my rig and started tapping it. "Do you have a password?"
"Yeah."
She reached into a pocket and pulled a datacard, and then shoved it into a small slot in the black box. "What is it?"
"I'll put it in," Prithi said. She knelt down next to Myra, who watched her type it in with a measure of curiosity and interest.
A loading bar popped up for a few seconds. Prithi pulled the card.
"We still need a computer to view it on," she said.
I looked at