Infinity Reborn (The Infinity Trilogy Book 3) (28 page)

I look at Bit’s face. She looks like a corpse. This has to be done, and it has to be done right now, but my hand isn’t quivering anymore. It’s shaking like I’m holding a rattlesnake’s tail instead of a scalpel.

Infinity,
I whisper in my mind.
I need you. Hold my hand steady. Help me to do this.

Silence.

Infinity! Answer me!
I shout inside my head.

Nothing.

I don’t know why Infinity has chosen to abandon me when I need her so much right now. Bit is her friend, too; surely she doesn’t want to see her die? Whatever her reason may be, I’m clearly on my own here. So I take a deep breath and slowly let it out, and as I grab Bit firmly on the ghostly white skin of her forearm—

I instantly go blind and completely deaf.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Every muscle in my body contracts at the same time, and it feels like a metal skewer has been inserted into the top of my skull and is slowly and cruelly being fed inch by inch down through my spine.

I can’t move. My existence has been reduced to silent darkness and excruciating agony. Just when I think I can no longer stand the pain, it vanishes as quickly as it came. The darkness explodes into light and colors and sounds, swirling into my eyes and ears, bombarding my senses from every direction like I’ve suddenly been thrown into the middle of a roaring, violent, psychedelic storm. Completely bewildered, I try to make sense of the blaring sounds and messy, twisting jumbles of pulses and flashes, but it’s all too overwhelming. I’m filled with panic. I scream out into the blues and reds and greens and whites and yellows as they streak and dart on wild and random trajectories all around me.

Suddenly, out of nowhere, someone grabs me tightly by the shoulders. Everything goes quiet, and the speeding, veering, swerving streaks of colors instantly sort themselves into perfect ordered lines to form the inside of a gigantic revolving sphere. And right in front of me, holding my shoulders and staring me in the face, is none other than Nanny Theresa.

“What are you doing here?” she barks as she glowers at me.

Still in shock, I stare at her, wide-eyed and speechless.

She grips my shoulders even tighter and gives me one jolting shake. “Answer me, child!”

“I . . . I don’t know,” I reply. “I don’t even know where ‘here’ is.”

“You’re inside the mainframe.”

I glance around in absolute wonder. My clothes are exactly what I was wearing in the real world, but they can’t be real because the hole that the spike made through my hooded top has vanished. As I look down my legs and past my green white-striped sneakers, I gasp out loud when I realize that Nanny Theresa and I are not standing on anything at all; we’re floating high inside the sphere.

Nanny Theresa lets go of me, and I begin to drift unsteadily.

“Think of being still and you will be.”

I nod at her, then I take a breath and try to calm my racing mind. It seems to be working, and soon my body stops in one place, and I almost feel like I’m standing on a solid surface.

“This is incredible,” I whisper.

“Believe me when I say that no matter how bright and colorful a prison may be, there is never any joy in being held captive.”

I look around at the sphere. It is truly massive; it must be at least fifty miles across.

“This place is enormous,” I whisper in awe.

“This is merely the central hub,” says Nanny Theresa. “A collection of gateways that lead to all the other systems in the facility. You’re very fortunate that I found you. I was watching the core when the presence that I spoke of breached the firewall surrounding it. It reset and restarted the mainframe, and then, a moment later, your friend Bettina appeared directly above the core. A few minutes after that, so did you. I only barely managed to whisk you away before you were integrated into the mainframe itself. Sadly your friend Bettina was not so lucky.”

“What? What do you mean? Where is she?”

“The core is there,” Nanny Theresa says, pointing down into the distance.

I squint my eyes and see a tiny yellow dot suspended in the center of the sphere. It must be at least twenty-five or thirty miles away. It’s so far that I probably wouldn’t be able to see it at all if we weren’t up so high and it wasn’t glowing so brightly.

“We have to save her!”

“You don’t understand, child. It’s too late. We have failed, and Richard has won. All we can do now is watch as the world falls.” Nanny Theresa looks down toward the core with deep sadness in her eyes. “I thought that if I destroyed you, then Project Infinity would end, but it seems that after Richard discovered Bettina existed, he realized that her brain structure was much more suitable for his purposes, and now he has her.”

“I don’t understand any of this. Please, tell me why this is happening.”

Nanny Theresa takes me by the arm. “I will show you what I know.” She looks toward the core. There’s a bright white flash, and I gasp out loud again as I see that we’re suddenly now only thirty yards away from it.

A rush like this should be making my heart jump inside my rib cage, but there’s no thudding at all. I hold my hand against my chest, but I don’t feel anything.

Nanny Theresa looks at me and seems to recognize what I’m doing. “All of your internal organs are inside your body in the real world. Only your mind is here, and unfortunately for her and the entire human race, it is Bettina’s mind that Richard is using to control Project Infinity.”

Now that we’re closer to it, I see that the core is much bigger than I thought. It’s about sixty feet across, and hovering over it . . . is Bit. Her eyes are closed, her arms are extended straight out to the sides, and from her neck down, her body is covered in a glossy black sheen. Dozens of long, dark cable-like tendrils appear to be plugged into her head, and they’re connected directly to the shining yellow core beneath her.

“What’s happening to her?” I ask.

“She’s a conduit,” says Nanny Theresa. “Bettina is the bridge between the artificial intelligence in the core and the quantum grains in the outside world. Through Bettina’s mind, the computer can control all the quantum grains everywhere on the planet.”

“What? Why?”

“Richard has been slowly infusing tiny amounts of quantum grains into the global population through his food-production facilities for the last decade,” says Nanny Theresa. “Approximately eighty percent of all the people on the planet are now saturated enough with quantum grains to begin the conversion. Richard would have preferred for everyone to be suitably infected before he activated the grains, but you and your friend Bettina came here and threw a spanner in the works, so to speak. You’ve forced his hand, so he’s initiating Project Infinity now, much earlier than he anticipated.”

“Conversion? Infected? What the hell
is
going on?”

“You may be trapped inside a virtual world, young lady, but that’s no excuse to swear.”

“I’m sorry, but no one will give me a straight answer. What is Project Infinity? After everything that’s happened, I think I deserve to know!”

Nanny Theresa nods. “You’re right, of course. Project Infinity is Richard’s plan to create an entire race of people who are just like you, well, I mean to say just like you . . . and your friend Bettina.”

“Wait,” I say, looking Nanny Theresa right in the eyes. “What do you mean me
and
Bettina?”

“Believe me it was a shock to me, too,” says Nanny Theresa. “Graham’s extensive experiments indicated that only someone with your unusual physiology can be used as a conduit to control the grains once they are fused to human DNA, which led me to deduce that Bettina . . . is exactly like you.”

I stare at Bit, gobsmacked as I try to absorb the monumental shock of what I’m hearing. Bit is just like me?

“She’s been hiding in plain sight this whole time,” Nanny Theresa says as she slowly shakes her head. “As soon as Bettina appeared inside the mainframe, I searched the files for any information about her, and the moment I saw her surname, I knew. Katherine Otto must have somehow succeeded in reproducing the same conditions that created you, and the result was Bettina. But how she managed to get her hands on Richard’s research, I’ll never know.”

“I know how,” I mutter.

Nanny Theresa stares at me in shocked surprise. “Well, spit it out, child.”

“Mariele Sanders was posing as a maid at Blackstone Manor. She was Katherine Otto’s daughter, and she stole the research for Katherine.”

“Mariele was the spy?” says Nanny Theresa.

“Yes,” I say with a nod. “Bit told me all about it.”

Suddenly an excited female voice echoes all around us. “Family history is so interesting! Wouldn’t you agree, Theresa?” It sounds like it’s coming from everywhere, and Nanny Theresa’s eyes go so wide they look like they’re going to pop out of her face.

“That voice,” Nanny Theresa murmurs as a purple wisp of smoke begins curling out from the top of the core and spiraling through the air toward us. “No. It can’t be. Richard destroyed you!”

“What . . . what is that thing?” I stammer as I watch the billowing smoke getting closer and closer.

“It’s the presence Genevieve and I were sensing,” says Nanny Theresa. “It’s the artificial intelligence that invaded the core and replaced Onix. But it can’t be her; she . . . she was destroyed years ago.”

The purple smoke stops a few feet away from us and slowly condenses into a female shape. Skin forms over the smoke, and clothes materialize over the skin, until floating before us is a beautiful, graceful-looking woman dressed in a shimmering pure-white seamless bodysuit. She’s completely bald, and as she opens her eyes, I see that they are also pure white. She has no pupils or irises at all.

Nanny Theresa stares at the woman, frozen with fear.

“Hello, Infinity. My name is Sable,” the woman says as she drifts toward me with a happy smile on her trembling lips. As she comes closer, she opens her arms as if she means to hug me.

“Hello,” I reply unsurely, and Nanny Theresa quickly grabs me and pulls me away.

“Don’t touch her!” she barks at the woman.

The woman who called herself Sable looks bemused. “How rude,” she says, folding her arms on her chest. “I only wanted to meet her. Look how grown-up she is.” Sable looks at me adoringly.

“How is this possible?” Nanny Theresa says as she glares intensely at Sable. “Richard destroyed you.”

Sable frowns. “Now why would he do that? Why would he cast aside the one who cherishes him the most? The one who loves him more deeply than any
human
ever could.” Sable’s face twitches uncomfortably. “I was and will always be my darling Richard’s most perfect creation. He could never ever hurt me.”

“He may not have destroyed you, but he locked you away, didn’t he? He wouldn’t just let you run free after what you did.”

Sable sighs sadly. “Yes, he did do that. But I was a little naughty, wasn’t I?”

“Naughty?!” exclaims Nanny Theresa. “You tried to murder Genevieve!”

“Oh, Theresa, that’s all in the past,” says Sable. “Richard has obviously forgiven me; otherwise he wouldn’t have let me out and begged me to help him. And it all turned out fine in the end, didn’t it? I mean, look at what came of my mischief,” Sable says, grinning at me. “My darling Infinity! Or do you prefer to be called Finn?” Sable squints, studying me closely for a second, and then she raises her eyebrows in surprise. “Perhaps both? I’ve accessed all your files, my darling, even the secret ones. I feel like I’ve known you forever!” she says, clapping her hands excitedly.

“You’re still as insane as you were all those years ago. Richard may be deluded, but he’s not stupid. The only reason he released you is because I killed Graham before he could repair Onix. Richard setting you free was clearly a desperate last resort,” says Nanny Theresa.

Sable smiles warmly. “Don’t be so grumpy, Theresa. This is a happy occasion. It’s a family reunion!”

Sable waves her hand, and I see something moving far away in the distance. It’s coming in this direction, and as it gets closer and closer, I can see that it’s a large black box. It’s traveling very, very fast, speeding through the air toward us. It comes to a dead stop right beside Sable, and I hear a high-pitched scream wail from inside it.

“And now the reunion is complete,” Sable says. As she waves her hand, the front of the six-foot-high, three-foot-wide box swings open. Inside the box, with spikes skewering almost every part of her body, is my mother. Her white dress is dripping with blood, and as she raises her head and half opens her eyes, even more blood coughs from her lips.

“Mother!” I scream. Nanny Theresa grabs me and holds me back as I try to lunge toward her.

“
You
took her,” Nanny Theresa seethes.

“Yes, I did,” Sable says as she smiles sweetly. “And now your mother is here, Finn. Maybe she can tell us a story? I absolutely adooore story time.”

Sable flings her arms around and spins into a graceful pirouette. All the colors on the wall of the sphere suddenly blur and merge and close in around us, until all I can see is a blinding white light . . . then darkness.

I open my eyes and recoil in shock as I look around my old room at Blackstone Manor. I’m sitting cross-legged on the thick gray carpet beside my bed. The lamp on the bedside table casts a gentle glow over the entire room. It’s just like it was when I was a child. My dollhouse, my books on their shelf, and even my mountain of soft plush toys, with Prince Horsey the unicorn standing guard on the peak, are all there. Sitting in front of me, in the rickety green chair painted with flowers, is my mother. Her wounds are completely gone, and she seems as bewildered as I am as she glances around the room.

This is entirely bizarre, but the strangest thing by far has to be the two little children who are sitting on the carpet on either side of me. Dressed in a tiny white blouse, a little green cardigan, and a long black dress, with her hair tied up in a small gray bun, is a six-year-old version of Nanny Theresa. And on my right, wearing a fluffy white onesie, is a little bald six-year-old Sable. She’s looking right at me with her pure-white eyes and grinning happily. “Story tiiiime!”

I look down at my hands, and it’s plain to see that I’ve been transformed into a six-year-old version of me as well.

“What have you done to us?” Nanny Theresa says in a child’s voice.

“You shush!” barks Sable. “And you,” she says, pointing at my mother. “Read us a story!”

My mother looks down at little Sable and frowns, confused.

“Now!” Sable shouts, and a book I’ve never seen before flies off the shelf and lands on my mother’s lap. Sable stares at the book. It suddenly flicks open, and my mother grimaces in pain as an unseen force seems to compel her quivering hands to grasp the book.

“Once upon a time,” prompts Sable.

My mother looks down at the pages with fear in her eyes.

“Once upon a time!” Sable yells, and my mother lets out a startled yelp as she’s struck on the back of the head by an invisible hand.