Deadman's Switch & Sunder the Hollow Ones by Saul Tanpepper

system.”
    â€œI’m not understanding.”
    Reggie holds up Micah’s Link. “We can still see him on the app on his Link, so we know his implant is functional. It looks like he never got the new implant.”
    â€œMaybe because he was so badly hurt?” I suggest.
    â€œMaybe.”
    â€œSo, you’re telling me the failsafe shouldn’t affect him then, either?”
    They both nod. “You just didn’t know because he was passed out on the tram from all the drugs you gave him.”
    I wince. Definitely my fault.
    â€œBut the big, big news is this,” Ash goes on. She swipes the screen again and points. “See this bit of code here? And this one here? There are several hundred of these separate streams in here. They’re quite distinct from either the tracking app code or The Game ’s codex. They’re nearly identical: each made up of a sequence of roughly four million bits.”
    â€œFour million. Is that all?”
    Ash nods, not realizing I’m being sarcastic. Or ignoring it. “They all repeat every two and half milliseconds, like a beacon—well, several hundred nearly identical beacons.”
    â€œA virus?”
    â€œWe think they’re the tracking programs for all the Players inside The Game . All of them carry a unique identifier code.” She looks up. “And the strange thing is, a handful of them are streaming outside of the main game stream. They’re not embedded. Guess which ones.”
    â€œOurs.”
    She nods. “We think the program they’re embedded in is the failsafe.”
    â€œClever. So the program doesn’t reside inside our implants, but in here. They must communicate to our L.I.N.C.s through Arc’s towers.”
    But as soon as I say this, I realize the deeper implications. We now have a way of defeating Arc’s failsafe. Crack the program and we’ll be free to leave. But then I have another thought. “What if we just shut the servers down? No beacon, no failsafe.”
    â€œYou read our minds.”
    â€œThere’s a problem with doing that, though,” Reggie cautions. “Arc will know almost immediately what we’re doing. They’re probably not monitoring each individual sub-stream—I mean, how could they, right?—but they’d sure as hell know if all of them suddenly stopped transmitting. I don’t think it’ll make them very happy.”
    â€œ And don’t forget,” Ashley adds, “this is their connection to The Game . Without it, they can’t stream Survivalist on Media. No Survivalist, no advertising. That’s a lot of money they’ll lose.”
    Reggie nods. “That’ll really piss them off.”
    â€œAfter what we’ve done to their people—to their experiment—I doubt they’re very happy as it is. So why haven’t they come?”
    It’s been bugging me that no one has tried. We know of at least one person who was planning on coming through the tunnel and he never showed up. When the tram didn’t arrive back on the Foxhurst side, they had to have figured something went wrong. But they never sent anyone to investigate. Why not?
    As if reading my thoughts, Reggie says, “They’re in no hurry. Remember, they can easily track us. They know we’re here. As long as we don’t try to leave, they’re not going to panic. My bet is they’re working on a plan right now to fix what we broke. But if we shut down the servers, that’ll just force them to come get us that much sooner.”
    â€œSooner than what?”
    He doesn’t answer.
    â€œOkay, so we just have to make sure we take them by surprise. As soon as we’re ready, we slam all the servers down and go. That means Micah needs to be as strong as possible. Think Arc will wait one more day?”
    They shrug.
    â€œKeep working on that program. See what else you can find out about these servers. See if