Light. Soft. Warm. Comforting.

"Gabriel?"

Familiar voice. Worried. Worried for him.

"Gabriel? Can you hear us?"

Different voice, still familiar…Still worried.

Gabriel blinked and opened his eyes. White, cracked ceiling, white bed frame, white blanket, white bandages, blue gown—

Riley sat on the other side of the white barrier around his bed. She smiled at him. He grinned as the old familiar data streams appeared in his mind's eye. A young woman came to stand next to Riley. She had short brown hair and a bandage on her face. Facial recognition gave her name as Danielle Martin and listed an address in Redding, California. Gabriel's eyes roved to the tree of IV bags next to his bed. Identification tags pegged the hospital as Intermountain Medical Center in Salt Lake City, Utah. Gabriel blinked. He looked at Riley.

"Utah?" he asked weakly.

She smiled and squeezed his hand.

"How did he know we were in Utah?" Dani whispered.

Riley smiled, "He's smarter than he looks."

Gabriel smiled and moved to reach over to the young girl whose life he saved—and who had in turn saved his life. He was gratified to feel the roughness of the hospital blanket as his hand obeyed his brain for pretty much the first time in a while. Dani placed her hand over his.

"We made it," she said.

"What happened?" asked Gabriel. "At the fourth checkpoint, I mean. Before I—popped."

"The CyberCom agents went looking into Wolfcub Graphics and found out they once had a factory in Salt Lake," Dani answered. "That's how they figured out where we were."

"Factory," Gabriel mused, as the requisite information appeared in his brain. "The bunker?"

Dani nodded. "That big crack you heard was when the CyberCom techs figured out how to disconnect all the avatars—which included you, I guess—and so all they had left were the real enemies to fight. Then Riley and a few others found an entrance from the outside and basically fought their way in to get us."

"It's a good thing you two were so close to the surface," Riley remarked. "We sent a team in there to clear it and from what I hear the whole complex is like a maze that penetrates the mountain range pretty deeply."

Gabriel glanced at Dani. "A labyrinth, right?"

The girl nodded.

Riley began chewing on her lip, a sure sign she had something to tell him.

"Dani," Gabriel said, "would you mind stepping outside for a moment? Find Lillian, I'm sure she'll let you call your parents and let them know you're safe."

Dani glanced between the two of them and nodded, understanding.

When they were alone, Gabriel asked, "What is it?"

Riley sighed heavily. "It's Wolfcub Graphics. Their game series, Upsilon Force? It's—well, see for yourself."

Gabriel stared unseeing up at the ceiling and accessed the online data about the game series. Apparently the crux of the premise centered around a top-secret government agency that recruited and artificially enhanced "gifted" and "special" assets, each of which had their own campaigns within the game, telling their story, and in the online games, players could choose from any one of the characters to role-play in various competitions like capture-the-flag, king-of-the-hill, and the one he and Dani had experienced, the free-for-all.

Most disturbing—in addition to the existence of one character by the name of "Clockwork Angel" whose story and "superpower" closely resembled his—was the fact that this agency was apparently led by a fair-haired, determined woman, the character stories invariably involved the aid of a brilliant scientist with shaggy grey hair named Doctor Shen, and they were perpetually at odds with the other United States security an defense agencies. There was also the matter of the "fictitious" agency's name: CyberCorps.

He looked at Riley with a confused frown. She sighed.

"Lillian has techs exploring the possibility of a leak or a mole within CyberCom. Meanwhile, we're fighting massively accelerated levels of encryption with anything pertaining to Wolfcub Graphics. They seem to be very selective about their publicity, and anything remotely unflattering is scrubbed."

"Sounds like a hornet's nest to me," Gabriel commented wryly.

Riley nodded, "It's been busted wide open, and there's no going back now."

"So," Gabriel murmured as he closed his eyes to rest,

"Which one of us is the nest, and who kicked first?"