We were in Og’s former home office and library—a large U-shaped room at the southern corner of the house. I recognized the ornately carved woodwork on the empty bookshelves that lined the back wall of the room, from several different photos of Og that had been taken here, of him sitting at his desk, working away on his computer. But now the desk and all of the other furniture was gone. The room was empty, except for two conventional haptic rigs that stood side by side at its very center. They were both Habashaw OIR-9400s—the same top-of-line immersion-rig model that Sorrento and the Sixers preferred to use during the days of Halliday’s contest. Both of the rigs were currently empty.
“Back here!” I heard a familiar voice shout. It was Nolan Sorrento, and his words echoed off the oak-paneled walls and the vaulted ceiling of the empty room, making my blood run cold.
I rotated my telebot’s head to scan the entire room until I located the source of the voice. It had come from just around the corner at the opposite end of the room, off to our left. I could see a small amount of light down there as well. I walked my telebot in that direction, until I was able to see around the corner.
There was a hospital bed pushed up against the wall, and Ogden Morrow was lying there on it unconscious. He looked gaunt and extremely pale. He had an IV drip attached to his right arm, and a biomonitor built into the foot of the bed displayed his vital signs. Through its tiny speaker, I could hear the thud of his heartbeat, which sounded steady, if a bit slow.
Og was still alive! I felt like jumping for joy.
That was the good news. The bad news was that Nolan Sorrento was standing right beside Og, holding a gun to his temple and wearing a big, friendly smile.
“Well, well, well,” Sorrento said. “If it isn’t my old pal, Parzival! Hey, man! It’s good to see you again!” He turned to address Samantha’s telebot and his smile widened. “And Ms. Cook! You’re looking lovely today, as always.”
On the opposite side of the bed was another of the stolen military telebots we’d seen in the adjacent room. But this one was being operated by someone. Both of its forearm-mounted machine guns were raised. But they weren’t pointed at Og. They were pointed at Sorrento. Yet he didn’t appear to be at all concerned by this.
“Sorry, Wade,” Anorak said through his telebot while keeping its guns trained on Sorrento. “I ordered Nolan to stand down and release Mr. Morrow, as you requested. But as you can see, he’s still refusing to comply.”
“We had an agreement, Anorak!” Sorrento shouted. “And this wasn’t it! I did my part. Now do yours. Give me what you promised!” He pressed the gun harder against Og’s temple and glared directly at me. “I want my revenge. I want to destroy the OASIS forever.” He shifted his gaze back to Anorak. “Give me access to that Big Red Button. Right now. Or I’ll spray Mr. Morrow’s brains all over that wall. It’s up to you.”
“I’m so sorry, Nolan,” Anorak replied. “But I no longer have the ability to honor our agreement. And now that all the shards have been collected, you’re no longer of any use to me. So, as a self-appointed representative of the state of Ohio, I’m going to carry out the sentence you were given two years ago.”
Then, suddenly and without warning, Anorak fired a single round from his telebot’s forearm-mounted gun and shot Sorrento directly in the forehead.
The impact rocked his whole body backward. It also must’ve caused the muscles in his trigger finger to constrict, because the gun in his hand went off a split second later, firing a wild shot that struck Ogden Morrow in the stomach.
I heard Samantha scream over the comm as her telebot rushed to Og’s side. She reached him just as Sorrento’s body hit the floor with a thud.
I just stood there in shock, watching it all happen.
I had spent years fantasizing about Sorrento’s death, almost always at my own hands. But actually witnessing it in person made me feel sick to my stomach. Inside my drone control rig, I reflexively bent over and began to retch repeatedly.
When I realized that my telebot was still mirroring my movements, I forced myself to get back on my feet. Then I raised my own guns and leveled them at Anorak’s telebot. He immediately retracted his bot’s guns and raised its hands. Then we both turned to watch while Samantha used her medic telebot’s sensors to examine Og’s wound. She used the surgical tools embedded in its fingers to extract the bullet. She dropped it onto Sorrento’s corpse. Then she sterilized Og’s wound and sealed it with a liquid adhesive dispensed from a nozzle that extended from the pinkie finger of her telebot’s other hand. Then she began to apply a bandage—all of this in less than thirty seconds after Og had been shot.