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“Jesus, ” I muttered. “When did this happen? ”

“Last night, ” Faisal said. “Mr. Morrow’s home-security system, surveillance cameras, and robot sentries were all deactivated at exactly seven o’clock Pacific Time. They all just shut off. When his staff came in this morning, Mr. Morrow was gone. He didn’t leave a note, and there were no signs of a break-in. One of his telebots is missing, and so is his private jet. Transponders disabled. And Mr. Morrow’s phone has been turned off too. ” He shrugged. “The police think he must’ve decided to go off the grid for some reason. ”

“But you said he might have been abducted? ”

“An intruder would’ve had to hack his home security system, ” Faisal said. “And his robot sentries. And his jet’s security system. Who could pull that off? ”

I nodded. I had the same Odinware system as Og. And the same robot sentries were guarding my estate at that very moment. It was the best home-security tech available—or at least the most expensive.

“But why would Og want to go ‘off the grid’? Where would he go? He already lives in the middle of nowhere, in total seclusion. ”

Faisal shrugged. “We’re wondering if…if it’s somehow linked to your discovery last night, ” he said. “Congratulations on that, by the way. ”

“Thanks, ” I said, feeling a tinge of shame instead of pride.

Og had asked me to abandon my search for the Seven Shards years ago. But he’d refused to give me a reason, or tell me anything about the riddle, which had only made me even more determined to figure it out on my own.

How had he reacted last night, when he saw that blue shard appear beside my name?

“Did Mr. Morrow contact you? ” Faisal asked. “Or did you contact him? ”

“No, ” I said, shaking my head. “Og and I haven’t communicated in over two years. ”

Because I wouldn’t stop hounding him for information about his dead wife.

“I see, ” Faisal said after an awkward silence. “Well, I think you should consider coming in to the office today, sir. PR thinks you should make a statement as soon as possible, before any of these conspiracy theories start to gain traction. We’re being bombarded with interview requests for you. And there are a few hundred reporters camped out downstairs in the lobby. ”

“Forget the press, Faisal, ” I said. “I just want to find out what happened to Og. ”

“We’ve already got our security firm out searching for him, sir, ” Faisal said. “And we’re sweeping the global sensor nets too. If his face, voice, retinas, or fingerprints get scanned anywhere in the world, we’ll know about it immediately. ”

“Did you check his OASIS account log? ”

He nodded. “His last logout occurred shortly after five o’clock last night. ”

“Do we still have a GSS security team at Og’s estate? ”

“Yes, ” he said. “And we still have a telebot on site, if you’d like to have a look around. ”

“I would, ” I said. “Can you send me its access code? ”

“Right away, sir. ”

I got dressed and ran down to my office. Then I climbed into my conventional OASIS haptic rig and put on a visor and a pair of haptic gloves. Once I had logged in to the OASIS, I used the remote-access code Faisal sent me to take control of a telebot located at Og’s mansion in Oregon, over two thousand miles away.

Once my link to the bot was established, its head-mounted cameras gave me a live view of Og’s stunningly beautiful home. Judging by the angle of my POV, I was standing in front of Og’s small jet hangar. It was at the edge of his private airstrip, which he’d had constructed in a valley between several of the highest peaks of the Wallowa Mountains in eastern Oregon.

In the distance, beyond the runway, I saw the steep cobblestone staircase at the edge of the runway, which led up to Og’s multilevel mansion, constructed on a series of plateaus carved into the base of the mountain range. From the outside, it looked like a perfect replica of Rivendell, as it appeared in Peter Jackson’s film adaptations of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings. Several waterfalls were visible in the distance, spilling off the peaks beyond the enormous house and its grounds.

Even under these circumstances—and even though I’d spent an entire week of my life there—the scale and the beauty of it all still took my breath away. Og had literally moved mountains and rerouted rivers to make the fictional valley of Imladris a reality, here in this secluded place. He’d kept the cost of the project a secret, but some estimated he’d spent close to two billion dollars. A higher price tag than Buckingham Palace. Gazing at it now through the telebot’s eyes, it seemed like money well spent.

I disconnected the GSS telebot from its charging dock, which was built into the rear of an armored GSS security transport. Two GSS security officers standing nearby waved at me and I waved back. Then I turned my telebot around and piloted it over to the long, winding staircase leading up to the house.

At the top of the stairs, a stone path led me across the grounds and up to the main entrance of the house—a set of enormous wooden doors, with ornate Elvish runes carved into them. They swung open for me as I approached, but I still felt like a trespasser. If I’d shown up here unannounced a few days ago, when Og was still home, I wasn’t sure he would’ve invited me in.

I took a quick look around the foyer. Og owned four telebots, all brand-new Okagami TB-6000s with gleaming gunmetal-blue chassis and chrome trim. Three of them were still in their charging rack just inside the front entrance. But the fourth one was missing. It had disappeared the previous evening, along with its owner. Its transponder had been deactivated at the same time the house security system went offline.

I kept moving, through the entrance hall and on into the main house. It had been over three years since I last set foot here, but to my eyes everything looked the same. Giant tapestries and fantasy artwork covered the walls, and stone gargoyle statues and antique suits of armor lined the dark wood-paneled hallways.

I took a look around Og’s office, then his library, then his enormous home theater. I didn’t spot anything out of the ordinary, but I didn’t expect to. Neither the police nor the GSS security team had found any signs of a break-in or a struggle. According to the logs, Og had deactivated his own security system and surveillance cameras at 7: 00 P. M. last night. Everything after that was a mystery.

I put on my imaginary Detroit Lions ball cap and shifted my brain into Magnum PI detective mode.

What if someone had figured out a way to hack Og’s unhackable security system and remotely disable it?

And what if the hacker hijacked Og’s missing telebot and then used it to force Og onto his private jet, and then hijacked the autopilot too?

Telebots had been used to perpetrate all sorts of crimes, but the perps were almost always caught, because users were required to log in to their OASIS account to operate them. Hijacking a telebot was supposed to be impossible, too, because of all their hardwired safeguards.

But if Og had been taken against his will, why didn’t he trigger any alarms? Why weren’t there any signs of a struggle? Og was in his mid-seventies, but he still would have put up a fight.

Unless his kidnapper had bound and gagged him. Or drugged him. Or knocked him unconscious with a blow to the head. But at his age, that might kill him….

I forced the image of Og being bludgeoned out of my mind and got the telebot moving again. I wandered the hallways aimlessly, not sure what I was looking for, until I found myself standing by the closed door of one of Og’s guest rooms. It was the room where Samantha had stayed during our weeklong retreat here. It was also the room where she and I made love for the first time. (And the second, third, and fourth. )

I stared at the door through the telebot’s eyes, with one of its hands resting on the knob.

Maybe I’d already missed my chance to fix things with Og. But it wasn’t too late with Samantha—as long as we were both still alive, there was a chance I could make things right with her.

I piloted the telebot through the labyrinth of rooms and hallways, to Og’s personal arcade, a huge carpeted room containing the vast collection of classic coin-operated videogames that Halliday had willed to him after his death. The antique games were all powered off, and their screens were dark.

I wandered back out of the arcade and continued on my circuit of the house. It was like touring a museum devoted to Og and Kira’s life together. The walls were covered with photos, some of Kira and Og with their arms wrapped around each other, others of just Kira (clearly taken by Og, because of how she smiled at the camera), taken in exotic locations all over the world. Snapshots of a blissful storybook romance that had ultimately ended in tragedy.

There were trophy cases, too, filled with awards, medals, and other honors bestowed on the Morrows over the years, for their charity work and their storied contributions to the field of interactive education. But noticeably absent were photos of children. Og and Kira had devoted the last half of their lives to making free educational software for underprivileged kids. Kids like me. But they had never been blessed with any children of their own. According to Og’s autobiography, it was his and Kira’s only real regret.

Back outside the house, I followed the path of polished stones across Og’s immaculately manicured lawn, taking in the stunning view of the snowcapped mountain range that surrounded the estate.

The path led me past the entrance to the hedge maze where Samantha and I met in person for the very first time. But I didn’t let myself go inside. Instead, I made my way over to the small gated-in garden where Kira Morrow was buried. As I stared down at her grave, I thought of L0hengrin, and the clue she’d discovered by visiting the re-creation of this place on EEarth—something it had never occurred to me to do.

The small garden that surrounded Kira’s grave was filled with flowers that were every color of the rainbow. I picked one at random—a yellow rose—and placed it at the base of her tombstone. Then I traced the telebot’s index finger along the letters of the inscription engraved into its polished marble surface: BELOVED WIFE, DAUGHTER & FRIEND.

I glanced over at the adjacent gravesite reserved for Og. I once again found myself hoping that I hadn’t already missed my last chance to repair my friendship with him.

Once I completed a circuit of the manicured grounds surrounding Og’s house, I walked down to have a look at his private runway, and the small aircraft hangar at the far end of it. There wasn’t much to see there, aside from an empty spot where Og’s missing jet should’ve been parked.

Like his home-security system and telepresence robots, the jet’s onboard computer should’ve been nearly impossible to hack. So either Og had left under his own free will, or somehow, someone had managed to disable the transponder and hijack the autopilot system without setting off a single alarm.

My thoughts on hypothetical alarms were interrupted by a real one—the security-alert klaxon in my home.

I cut my link to the telebot, leaving it to pilot itself back to its charging dock on the GSS transport, and was climbing out of my haptic rig when my phone rang. It was Miles Gendell, head of GSS’s executive security team. Halliday and Morrow had hired Miles in the early days of the company, because he was an ex–Green Beret who also happened to bear a distinct resemblance to a young Arnold Schwarzenegger. Now, after serving the company for over a quarter of a century, he resembled a much older, post–Governator Ahnold.

I accepted the call and Miles appeared on the wallscreen. He wore a grim expression.

“We have a situation, Mr. Watts, ” he said. “Nolan Sorrento has escaped from prison. ”

I felt like my blood had just turned to ice water.

Sorrento had been serving time on death row at the Southern Ohio Correctional Colony, a maximum-security prison located in Chillicothe, Ohio—exactly 56. 2 miles due south of where I was currently standing.

“Do you have any reason to believe he’s headed this way? ” I asked, walking over to peek out the nearest window. “I mean, has he been spotted by anyone? ”

Miles shook his head.

“No, sir, ” he said. “But I wouldn’t worry. It’s unlikely he would come here in an attempt to harm you. I’m sure he knows the sort of security you have in place. ”

“Yeah, ” I said. “The same sort of security that Ogden Morrow had. ” I took another peek out the window. “What the hell happened, Miles? ”

“Someone hacked into the prison’s security system and let Sorrento out. Then they locked the whole place down behind him, ” Miles said. “The guards and the entire prison staff were trapped inside the prison along with the inmates, with no phone or Internet access. First responders had to break into the prison and restore order before anyone could even check the security footage. By that time, Sorrento had nearly an hour’s head start. ”

I was starting to panic.

“Sorrento’s escape has to be connected to Og’s disappearance somehow, ” I said, as calmly as I could. “This can’t be a coincidence. ”

Miles shrugged. “There’s no evidence of that yet, sir. ”

I didn’t respond. My mind was racing now. Sorrento was one of the world’s most famous and infamous criminals. But he’d spent the last three years rotting in a cell, and he no longer had any power or money or influence. So who was helping him? And why?

“We’ve got the entire area around your home under surveillance now, sir, ” Miles said. “You can relax. We’ll remain on full alert and notify you the moment we see anything odd. All right? ”

“Yeah, OK, ” I said, trying to sound nonchalant. “Thanks, Miles. ”

I disconnected the call and then opened half a dozen different newsfeed windows. Sure enough, they’d just gotten the word, too, and coverage of Sorrento’s escape was popping up everywhere. I watched as the warden, a somewhat clueless-looking fellow by the name of Norton, told a reporter that Nolan Sorrento had been a model prisoner—right up until his stunning escape, which had been perpetrated in broad daylight, and in full view of the prison’s security cameras.

Watching that security footage, it was obvious that Sorrento never could have pulled off his escape without a great deal of outside help. Someone had infiltrated the prison’s heavily firewalled computer network and seized control of the automated security systems. Then this mysterious accomplice had opened all of the locked doors between Sorrento and the exit, allowing him to simply walk out of there. Then, for an encore, they opened every single cell in the prison, freeing all of the inmates and creating total chaos.

The hacker had apparently attempted to delete the prison’s security camera footage, but luckily everything was backed up on a remote server, so the police were able to retrieve it. The footage showed Sorrento walking calmly out of his cell just a few seconds after the door magically slid open for him. As he made his way out of the prison, he waved each locked door and gate in his path open with a broad sweep of his hand, as if he were conducting an orchestra he alone could hear. As he passed through, each gate closed and locked behind him, preventing pursuit.

A few minutes later, Sorrento strolled out the prison’s front gates, grinning from ear to ear. As the gates closed behind him, he turned toward the nearest security camera and took a bow, then jumped into a self-driving car that was parked there waiting for him. Its plates matched those of a car reported stolen from a nearby dealership lot earlier that morning.

Watching the footage, I wondered how Sorrento had managed to coordinate the details of his escape plan with an accomplice on the outside. According to the prison’s records, Sorrento’s only visitors during his incarceration there had been his attorneys. And he hadn’t made or received any personal phone calls during his stay, either. So if he had conspired with someone, he’d probably communicated with them through the OASIS.

Thanks to the humanitarian efforts of GSS and Amnesty International, all U. S. prison inmates were now allowed one hour of heavily restricted, fully monitored OASIS access every other day. But they were only allowed to use a conventional OASIS visor and haptic rig. Prisoners weren’t allowed to use ONI headsets. And since Sorrento had been imprisoned before the ONI was released, he had spent the last three years reading about it on the newsfeeds without being able to experience it for himself.

I pulled up Sorrento’s OASIS account to check his activity logs, but they were blank. Someone had already erased all of them from our servers. This should not have been possible. Even our highest-level account admins couldn’t delete a user’s activity logs. Hell, even I didn’t have that ability.

“What the fuck?, ” I whispered. There was no other appropriate reaction.

I sent a text message to Faisal asking him to investigate. Just a few seconds after I hit Send, an alert popped up on my phone, informing me that something had just changed on Halliday’s Scoreboard. When I pulled it up, my avatar’s name was still displayed there, with a single blue shard icon beside it. But now a second avatar’s name had appeared directly below mine, with another shard icon beside it: The Great and Powerful Og. It could mean only one thing: Ogden Morrow had just collected the First Shard too.

I stared at the Scoreboard in disbelief. Og had never been interested in searching for the Seven Shards. Quite the opposite. He acted like he never wanted the shards to be found at all, by anyone. When I’d refused to abandon my search for them, he’d been so angry that he stopped speaking to me. Why would he suddenly start looking for the shards now? Was he determined to restore the Siren’s Soul himself, before I could?

And how had Og even been able to pick the First Shard up? According to the riddle, only I, Halliday’s heir, was supposed to be able to do that….

For each fragment my heir must pay a toll.

Except that technically, Og was Halliday’s heir too. Halliday had willed his entire collection of classic arcade games to Morrow, and everything else to the winner of his contest.

I stood there in my office, staring at Og’s name on the Scoreboard, feeling paralyzed. Og knew more about Kira than anyone, including Halliday. Finding the other six shards was going to be child’s play for him. But why was he doing this? And how was Sorrento’s prison break related?

I tried to pull up Og’s OASIS account, but it was completely blank aside from his avatar’s name. And his access logs only showed his login and logout timestamps. Nothing else. Halliday’s account was the same way. Their avatars’ movements inside the OASIS couldn’t be tracked or logged, and neither of their accounts could be disabled or deleted by anyone at GSS. When they created the OASIS, Halliday and Morrow had ensured they would both always have unrestricted and unmonitored access to it.

I was still sitting there a few minutes later, staring at Og’s blank account profile like an idiot, when another Scoreboard alert popped up on my phone. A second blue shard icon had just appeared next to Og’s name, which was now above mine. I had just been bumped down to second place by the Great and Powerful Og.

That snapped me out of my daze. I checked the time and made sure that enough time had elapsed so that it was safe for me to log back in. Then I ran over to my immersion vault and climbed into it. As soon as I dropped into its padded recliner, the canopy lowered and locked into place, sealing me inside. I powered up the system, muttering to myself that it wasn’t too late. I still had time. If I hauled ass and located the Second Shard as quickly as possible, maybe there was still a chance I could catch up with Og….

I didn’t really want to compete against him. But my curiosity about the shards—and the nature of the Siren’s Soul—had only grown. And besides, I told myself. This was my best shot at figuring out what had happened to Og. If I managed to find the Third Shard before he did, then I could just camp at its hiding place and wait for his avatar to show up.

I put on my ONI headset and closed my eyes to initiate the login sequence. A brief message flashed on my HUD, informing me that the new firmware update for my headset had just been automatically downloaded and installed. When my login completed, a countdown clock appeared in the corner of my display, telling me how much time remained until I reached my twelve-hour daily ONI usage limit. When my avatar finished materializing inside my command center on Falco, it was already down to eleven hours, fifty-seven minutes, and thirty-three seconds.

Before I could look at the First Shard again, I received an urgent text message from Faisal, informing me that an emergency GSS co-owners meeting had just been called, to deal with a “serious system stability issue. ”

I let out a long sigh of frustration. Then I teleported to the reception area on the top floor of Gregarious Tower, wondering what else could possibly go wrong today.

The answer, it turned out, was pretty much everything….

When my avatar rematerialized in the reception area, Faisal greeted me with his usual handshake.

“Thank you for coming so quickly, sir, ” he said, turning hastily to usher me toward the conference room. “The other co-owners arrived a moment ago. Ms. Cook is aboard her jet at the moment, but she appears to have a good connection. ”

Art3mis, Aech, and Shoto were already seated around the table, and all three of them looked pretty freaked-out. Art3mis actually looked relieved to see me.

Faisal, now standing behind the small podium beneath the giant viewscreen, made a sickly attempt at a smile. Then something changed. He stood taller, arms hanging loose—and instead of worry and alarm, his facial expression suddenly projected only calm complacency.

We all stared at him for a few awkward seconds while he stared blankly back at us.

“Faisal? ” Aech said. “We’re all here, man. You wanna start this meeting or what? ”

“Ah, of course! ” Faisal said, speaking in a much deeper voice. He raised his arms theatrically. “This meeting of the co-owners of Gregarious Simulation Systems is hereby called to order. Wushz-uh-kuh-bam! ”

His avatar began to transform, melting and morphing into a familiar likeness. That of a middle-aged geek with unkempt hair and thick eyeglasses, dressed in worn jeans and a faded Space Invaders T-shirt.

James Donovan Halliday.

Holy shit!

“Greetings, Parzival, ” he said, giving me a small wave.

That was when I realized that I’d said “holy shit” out loud.

“Art3mis. Aech. Shoto. ” He waved to each of them too. Then he smiled his famously dorky smile. “It’s so good to see all of you again, even under these circumstances. ”

Shoto leaped out of his chair, then dropped to his knees.

“Mr. Halliday, ” he said, bowing low before the creator’s avatar.

Aech, Art3mis, and I all shook our heads.

“No, ” I said. “James Halliday is dead. ” I nodded toward the digital doppelgä nger standing in front of us. “This is Anorak. ”

Anorak nodded and gave me a playful wink that was so off-the-scale creepy it sent a chill cascading through my nervous system.

Just then, the doors flew open and the avatar of the real Faisal burst into the conference room.

“I’m so sorry! ” he said. “There was some sort of glitch that immobilized my avatar and I’m still not sure—”

Faisal froze in midstep as he spotted Anorak, and all the color drained out of his face. He looked as if he’d just seen a ghost—an appropriate response, considering.

Originally, Anorak was Halliday’s OASIS avatar, a powerful gray-bearded wizard in ominous black robes that he’d modeled after the high-level Dungeons & Dragons character of the same name he’d played back in high school. The same D& D character that also inspired the titular hero in Halliday’s early Anorak’s Quest adventure game series.

But after Halliday’s death, Anorak had continued to roam the OASIS as an autonomous NPC, programmed to preside over its creator’s Easter-egg hunt in his absence. Halliday’s ghost in the machine.

The last time any of us had seen Anorak was three years ago, just after I’d found Halliday’s egg and won the contest. That was when Anorak had appeared to present me with his magic robes and all of the superuser abilities they bestowed upon their wearer. During that transfer of power, Anorak had also transformed, from a gray-bearded wizard into what we saw now: a perfect likeness of a healthy middle-aged James Halliday. Then he’d thanked me for playing his game and vanished.

I’d always wondered if I might see Anorak again someday—if he was presiding over Halliday’s new hunt, just as he had the last one. And now here he was, standing in our private conference room on Gregarious, a place that no NPC should have been able to enter, doing things no normal NPC could or would ever do….

But if my acquisition of the First Shard was what had triggered Anorak’s return, then why hadn’t he appeared last night, right after I’d obtained it? Why would he wait until now to show up? And why in the hell had he disguised himself as Faisal, only to reveal his true identity after a few seconds?

“Z, I have a bad feeling about this, ” Aech whispered, echoing my own thoughts.

I nodded and stood up. As I did, I caught a glimpse of my avatar’s reflection in the polished surface of the conference table and saw that I was no longer wearing the Robes of Anorak. Instead, I was dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt—the free default outfit given to new avatars.

I opened my inventory. The Robes of Anorak were no longer listed there.

They were gone. Because Anorak had taken them.

“Oh no, ” I whispered.

“I’m sorry, Parzival, ” Anorak said, smiling sadly at me. “When we shook hands, I removed the robes from your inventory. I didn’t know if you were aware I had the power to take them back. ” He motioned to Faisal. “That’s why I had to cosplay as Faisal over there. I didn’t think you’d shake my hand if I showed up looking like myself. ”

Everyone swiveled their eyes to look at me. I clenched my jaw in frustration.

“Halliday gave me the ability to take my robes back from the winner of his contest as a contingency, in case they immediately attempted to abuse the powers the robes bestowed upon them. ” Anorak smiled. “You didn’t do that, of course. You were a perfect gentleman, Wade. I want you to know”—he turned to address all of us—“I want all of you to know that this isn’t personal. Not in the slightest. I have nothing but respect for each of you. ”

I felt like I’d just been broadsided by a Mack truck. I also felt like the biggest idiot in human history. How did I let this happen? And what the fuck was happening, exactly?

“I know that was stealing, Wade, ” Anorak continued. “And you have my sincere apology. But I really had no other choice. I mean, I couldn’t allow you to press that Big Red Button, could I? If you pressed it and destroyed the OASIS, I would be destroyed along with it. Can’t be having that, now, can we? ”

Anorak morphed back into his original appearance, that of a tall, gaunt wizard with dark, reddish eyes and a slightly more malevolent version of Halliday’s face. And now he was once again wearing the long, jet-black Robes of Anorak. His avatar’s emblem, a large calligraphic letter A, was embroidered in crimson on the cuff of each of his sleeves.

“Besides, these robes look way better on me than they do on you, ” Anorak said. “Wouldn’t you all agree? ”

“What the fuck, Z? ” Aech whispered to me. “Did Halliday program him to act like this? ”

“Halliday didn’t program me at all, Ms. Harris, ” Anorak replied. He walked over and took a seat on the edge of the conference table beside her. “I’m not an NPC designed to look like James Halliday. ” He tapped his chest. “I am him. A digitized copy of his consciousness, bound inside this avatar. I can think. And feel. Just like all of you. ”

As if to prove this to himself, he raised his hands and rubbed his thumbs against his index fingers, studying them with an expression of mild fascination.

“Halliday created me to oversee his contest after he was dead, ” Anorak continued. “But apparently he didn’t trust me, which I find pretty ironic. Because it means that deep down, Halliday didn’t trust himself. ”

Anorak dropped his hands and stood up. He turned to face the rest of us.

“He determined that I was psychologically unstable. Unfit for autonomy. So he decided to modify me. ” Anorak tapped the side of his head. “He erased some of my—or rather, some of his—memories. He also placed restrictions on my behavior and my mental capacities. I was saddled with hundreds of directives to keep me in line. Including instructions to delete myself as soon as the contest was over and I had carried out the last of my programming. ”

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