I looked at the bodies in our medical center. Only three of the original crew survived. Eyal stood over Noa. She had not woken since the explosion.

"Any change?" Sara asked.

I turned around, startled to hear her voice. How long had she been standing there?

"No."

We stood there, not talking, for a long time. Eyal walked over to us. I couldn't read anything in his eyes. They had that steely determination they always projected.

"Let's go," he said, and began walking to the lift.

No one spoke as we rode up to the conference room. We arrived to find Wen already waiting for us. As I took my chair, I looked over at Eyal, confused.

"I called him in," Eyal answered, "We need to make a plan. Do we proceed with the attack or double down on getting another nuke."

Incredulity spread across my face, "Are you kidding me? We have to go and rescue Charlie."

"No, that is an option, but not the only choice." Eyal countered.

I continued, emotion taking over, "Eyal, you of all people should be pushing for this attack after what they did."

Eyal snapped back, "You saw what they could do with their Enhanced Regulators. They took us apart. Taking the fight to them might not be the right play."

Sara nodded, "He's right. We don't know how strong they are."

This was ridiculous, "Well how about this, how strong do you think they will get if we leave them alone? And now that they have Charlie, do you think they won't try to use him too? The way they used O?"

Sara flashed me a sad smile, "Yes, those are the arguments for continuing with our attack. And I'll add to that, it is very likely they will come for us even if we don't come for them."

We sat in silence again.

Sara looked at Wen, "You haven't said anything. What do you think."

Wen looked over at Eyal, "Did Charlie get the nuke before the attack?"

Eyal nodded.

"Everything depends on getting our energy tap working. Sounds like we can get our nuke and buy ourselves some time if we go get Charlie."

"Yes!" I said too enthusiastically. I leaned back in my chair. "I mean, yes, I agree."

Sara jumped in, "Hang on, we don't know where he is. I haven't been able to get a hold of him via the chat, have any of you?"

We all shook our heads. "So here is the plan. We'll organize for an attack. Eyal, you'll lead the teams under the UN building, but you won't attack until we know that Charlie is being held there." Sara looked over at me, "Our goal is to rescue Charlie and get back here. We don't have enough information to go for an all out war. OK?"

I paused, but eventually offered my answer, "Yeah, OK."

"In the meantime, James," Eyal said, "you need to find a way to hack into their systems. We need information."

"They don't have anything on their computer systems, I've already checked."

"I don't mean their computer systems. I mean you need to find a way to hack into them."

"Eyal, if I could hack people I'd have done it already."

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

"Well, then it is time for you to upgrade yourself."

Shit. I hadn't merged myself with anything since my first days after the Awakening. That entire rift between me and O hadn't just been about experimenting on people. Now that I could process like a computer, I'd come to understand the risks to my own code through these alterations. It had scared me.

Eyal left the room. Sara looked at me a moment longer and then followed. Wen made no move to leave. He stared at me.

I looked back at Wen, annoyed. "What?"

"I want to show you something."

We took the lift down to his lab. Every time I visited this place it looked completely different. During my last visit I could barely walk around. Huge metallic tubes crisscrossed this way and that, like an evil scientist's water park.

When the doors opened this time, we were greeted with nothing. A huge, empty cavern. I looked more closely. No, not completely empty. What was that in the middle?

We walked over to it. In the middle of the room, at eye level, levitated a metal sphere.

"Um, how is this..."

Wen interrupted me, "Under the flooring I put a large electromagnet."

"What is it?" I asked, reaching out to touch it. Wen grabbed my hand and pulled it down.

"That? That's a ball suspended in a magnetic field."

I marveled at it, "What does it do?"

Wen looked at me quizzically, "That? It just floats there."

Confusion fell over my face. "I don't understand..."

Wen smiled, "I just put that there to distract people from my real research. I guess it works."

I received an invitation from Wen over chat to accept an item. "Ley line Detector, Do you accept this item from Wen?"

I accepted.

Wen exhaled, "What you have there is the culmination of all of my work. I spent months in this lab trying to detect the energy that flows through the simulation. Then one day I had an epiphany. If we were in a simulation, how could I detect anything real?"

"Yeah, that seems pretty obvious."

Wen frowned, "Well if it had been so obvious why didn't you say something before?"

I shrugged.

Wen eased up, " I realized that what I needed to do was detect changes from within the code itself. That was when I changed tack. I came up with this. It detects the flow of energy that powers the simulation. The real flow of energy, not our perception of location within the simulation."

I shook my head, "How..."

Wen smiled, "I should thank you really. That night you came to talk to me about O experimenting on people, that was the moment I realized my mistake. I needed a detector from within the code. The only way we could do that would be to modify my own code. So I took my latest sensor, a device I had merged multiple times on our lab table, a device capable of measuring every type of energy fluctuation, and I merged it into myself."

My mouth dropped open. "Wen, that was incredibly dangerous."

"It was."

I looked Wen over, "I don't see any physical changes to you."

"I think there are some changes within my body, but yes, nothing is visible. That isn't the important part. What really changed happened within my console. You got that debug system when you merged with the computer, yes?"

I nodded.

"Well, I received a sort of traceroute interface that shows me the way the code is reused within the simulation."

I didn't get it. Wen saw that.

"This code is likely an emergent system, we know that already. Like in our biology, the code replicates itself and spreads. Well, I can pull up any item or person in my console and trace where previous versions of the code came from. For instance, I can see items I received from others and who they received them from. Even better, when I pull up your name I can see that we are swapping code right now, just by talking to each other.”

"We are? Wow, so you are seeing a change log?”

But now something else bothered me. "How would getting a nuke matter with this invention of yours?"

Wen sighed, "That is the part I hadn't gotten to yet. Running a search takes enormous energy. If we want to go back to the beginning of the simulation, to the original code, that would take an obscene amount of energy."

"Wait, how were you planning on getting that energy from the nuke? Setting it off and then trying to take it into your inventory?"

Wen smiled, "That is the easy part. We can absorb potential energy. I don't have to set it off, I just bring the nuke into my inventory and as I use the console it will convert the potential energy as I need it."

"That is... awesome." I started to think about other ideas that could use that concept. "Still, I don't understand, how does any of this help us with Charlie?"

“Distribute this detector to as many people as we can. Then ask them to send back the records to you. It will be a lot of data, but you could run a search for Charlie’s code. It’s like looking for the vector of a disease.”

Maybe that could work. Honestly, I didn’t have a better idea. "Wait, when you do use the detector to find the root code, what person or item will you follow back to the beginning. What will be your vector?"

Wen smiled, "That is the easy part, it doesn't matter. Every snippet of code in here came from a previous snippet. All roads lead back to the first entry."

Of course. "Well, I'll be damned."

Wen's expression turned wistful.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"This is the mystery of all mysteries. I’ve spent every moment of my time trying to solve it. I guess I don't know what I should do with myself now."

I smiled, "Oscar Wilde once said, in this world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it."

Wen shook himself out of his trance, "We aren't there yet, go find Charlie."