I had trained for firewalls before, what protected VirtuaNet, but I had never faced them. No one had. No one still on the real world to share his story.

Until now.

Ice blades sliced my burnt scars, because even though the firewall was this mammoth pillar of flames, it felt like liquid nitrogen blasted through your veins, so you could even feel your blood cease its pulse. It clouted my chest with the strength of Samson and dragged me upward in an endless ascent.

It chiseled in me even more the fact that the Bridge was like that searing ice finale I would not end up in. Not in the virtual world. And much less in the real world. God-willing. And I could see Ivore past the wall. I prayed for strength and didn’t panic. I remembered my training. I knew what I had to do. I had gone over and over it a million times before.

Two minutes-fifty seven seconds had passed. Two minutes fifty-eight. Two minutes fifty-nine. Three minutes. My time to stop soon came. And my feet were beginning to merge. But I wasn’t going to forsake Ivore to save myself. I wasn’t going to write another name in my notepad. I had promised myself that. And I wasn’t one to break promises.

I did what my bridger teacher had taught me to do. I extended my left arm as far as I could, even though I couldn’t reach the firewall’s edge, and clawed my fingers right into it, as if I wanted to dredge the Log Na Coille and hollow its rocks with my own hands. And just then an array of light bursts pulsed from the firewall in all directions, like a shoal of krill. Which struck a light blaze, and punctured my skin, but it was the brightest it had ever been in the Bridge. I could see my hands. And even VirtuaNet in the horizon. And it reminded me of my hometown, of Wexford.

But the pain jolted me back to reality. Thankfully. The Bridge might have been virtual, but the pain sure was real. It hurt. But I was used to pain by now. Besides, someone’s salvation was at stake. Ivore should have had the opportunity to go to Heaven, at least, even if he wasted it. Not lose it because I could not endure some pain.

I then thrust my left arm back, still clawed to the firewall, and forced myself ahead. Burrowed my right hand into the firewall. And I opened the left one. The only reason I did not bleed was because I hovered through the Bridge. I then did the same with my right hand and kept going until I had arrived at the end of the firewall, until my left hand, which I couldn’t keep open, which I had to keep shut to endure the agony, lay in the emptiness of the Bridge, not the goethite interior of the firewall. And then, in one last feat of strength, I thrust myself ahead with my right hand and I was back into the emptiness of the lit Bridge.

But I couldn’t even take a deep breath. Three minutes forty-seconds had elapsed. Three minutes forty-three. Three minutes forty-four. Three minutes forty-five. And my legs were merging. But it was worth it. The pain, the agony, the risk. Because I was in front of Ivore. I swam toward him, snatched his arm, and began searching for an exit, because I couldn’t cross that firewall again.

Three minutes fifty-one. Three minutes fifty-two. Three minutes fifty-three. And still no new exit. Any smartwatch would have sufficed, but it needed to be habilitated as a bridger exit point. Few people did. And the thought pelted me; that I was going to lose my salvation for a murderer. But I just began to pray. I wasn’t going to lose my salvation. I was not. That’s what I told myself. Four minutes had passed. And I saw a light blaze in the horizon. A brief burst. An exit. Thank God.

I swam toward it. Prayed it wasn’t an illusion. And it wasn’t. It was real. Completely. Real. I hovered into it and I was back, we were back in the real world. Thank God. I always thanked Him when I returned to the real world, because you never knew when it was going to be your last time in the Bridge. Forever.

It usually took me two seconds to register I had returned to the real world, and adjust my senses to the bustles of the world. Today it took me one. I guessed rage enhanced your reaction time. Rage, and bridging into a VirtuaNet studio.

I saw the fliting lights. I heard the classical music. I smelled the artificial apple-wine fragrance. Everything to comfort my senses, but I just thought them an oomycete bosomed by a nascent Rooster crop yet to show symptoms, as they always punctured my Bridge-adapted senses, which is why I preferred the stillness of the Bridge, and the odd soothing quality of its voices. Most bridgers preferred other noises, though.

I didn’t like admitting it, but any other Enhanced would have made it seem haphazard and ineffective. Only Zielkkenhom and his ministerial Tussenvolken’s rational creativity could have devised such an ordered chaos of elements designed to short-circuit your senses, to the point that even a void room of white concrete walls could seem like an art palace. A palace you didn’t want to wreck, but that would consume you if you did not carry extra flasks of olive oil. A palace that had already consumed so many, as I could even hear footsteps from people approaching. Naturals and Impures most likely, ready to waste their meager government aid in a dream.

But I guessed that was the point of it all, though. To force your focus onto VirtuaNet. To make you forget about the real world. A goal both Zielkkenhom and the Harmonists shared, apparently, because neither spoke ill of VirtuaNet addiction. Same rotten thing, both of them. That’s why I’d have taken the narrow road, and gutted my own path. I just hoped for the better.

Rarer than spotting a Killarney shad, as they spent their days voluntarily locked in the Propaganda Department, save when they vacationed in VirtuaNet, the Tussenvolken were multi-pigmented lean slaves who looked as if an expressionist tried his hand at body paint. Their Eugenex enhanced their creativity, though at the cost of their critical thinking skills, and altered their melanin so that their skin color constantly varied. Always in fixed patterns, though. A structured pandemonium of tints meant to uplift ríceablæd, as their skin color lines always changed between orange, onyx, and white, the colors of the national flag, so they were living embodiments of ríceablæd, of their love for our nation, of true art. Well, what passed for art in their easily brainwashed minds.

Everyone thought them a sight to behold, pieces fit for a museum, or a sight to fear, aliens fit for expulsion to another planet, but I just thought the Tussenvolken regular humans. No different than any Natural, or any Enhanced for that matter. I had saved quite a few Tussenvolken from getting trapped, and after the tenth one, you just got used to shifting skin hues. And they didn’t use drugs, only class that didn’t, so they gave me hope for the rest.

We disagreed in the meaning of true art, however, but I had learned to keep my mouth shut when I talked to the Tussenvolken for the sake of keeping amicable relationships between the classes, so that even Zielkkenhom’s most ardent zealots could support the hope Aisha Lexington and I had for the nation.

I thought of art as something inspiring toward goodness, an ideal on way to extinction, though. The Tussenvolken thought of it as rallying others to Zielkkenhom’s folly, a notion already in zeitgeist, sadly. But I guessed that was the best way to induce people to act against their own interest, and that of others, and lose their lives for hollow ideas while their leaders hunkered down safely in the comfort of their mansions and penthouses. Convincing them that evil was good.

Old strategy. Simple strategy. No wonder it still worked.

But I would have countered it. I hoped. Because I was not the water, but the aluminum that would have suffocated their visions. I just prayed they had forgotten that not only water fought fire. And that wind could have crossed them both. For better or for worse.

Dozens of unconscious Naturals sprawled upon my feet, all splotches on a perfectly spotless floor, all adrift between the worlds as if they did not have to return to their real lives, and could forever live a virtual dream. Their heads, hooked into computer terminals, as if they were no longer human, but an extension of machines.

I thought melancholy would have engulfed me at such a sight, and that I’d have said a prayer for the living corpses, but all I could think about was the flame blades that sliced my veins because one of Zielkkenhom’s VirtuaNet studios had saved me. Because those very Naturals who lived for VirtuaNet still called me a traitor, Zielkkenhom’s second best bootlicker. Nothing but an Enhanced in Natural skin.

But that was just pride, though, and immaturity, for you were only meant to keep God happy, not the world. Father Sutton had taught me that much. A subtle form, though, one that could even make you look humble because you were compassionate toward others, but that made you think God held you to higher standards, because you thought God expected more of you. Stupid, I knew. But I knew God would help me end up stronger, more faithful. They said you had to take it one day at a time, but sometimes, it felt like sixty seconds at a time. Tougher than bridging.

I thought Ivore’s eyes would have glinted concern, or at least astonishment at forest of corpses he had stomped on his way toward the studio’s exit, but his sight remained fixed on his smartwatch. The stench of Ivore’s Eugenex lingered in the studio as a potato gone rotten, but I was kind of used to it by now. Heck, sometimes it made me less nauseated than the colognes and fragrances most Enhanceds doused themselves in to mask the Eugenex stench that emanated from their pores, but most Fenglas reveled in their inner putridness. And Ivore did not move, transfixed by the latest gossip news sites, until an Impure I knew, Owen, committed the great offense of bumping into him. And I wasn’t fast enough to help him. Didn’t have Enhanced reflexes.

Ivore punched Owen and thrust him against the floor. A few teeth gone. A cracking sound. His beer chips scattered over the living corpses. The worst part. Neither of them thought anything of it. Owen’s eyes, the same they had been just ten seconds ago. Ivore’s eyes, they did not blaze wrath, much less remorse, but a faint glimmer, as if he was justified in what he had done, as if he was justified in bashing someone else’s jaw. And then Ivore punched the air, though not because rage seethed through his veins, but because Fengel Eugenex granted you special abilities, all but Impure Eugenex did. But then again, not all Eugenex was made the same.

A solidified air glaive that seemed to have fired right from Ivore’s fist blasted Brandon, a Natural, who had attempted to block Ivore’s punch meant for Owen. Knocked Brandon right into a statue, at least a minute away, and onto the living corpses. But thank God I did not hear his spine shatter. “Remain at ten feet from me, Læt,” he told Owen, with a word that meant Owen was better than a slave, but not as good as a freeman. Ivore leered at Brandon, even though no Achroite would have approved of that brutish display of wrath. They’d have rather kept their hands pure. Externally anyway. “And you Góp, I will not for your soiled genes to infect me.”

Góp. Slave. “Bastard!” I shot. “You don’t deserve—”

“Worry not, dawg,” Owen said in heavy Impure accent, a slurred string of nasal phonemes that sounded flat. “Okay.” He faced Ivore’s shoes as he spoke.

“You allow this Læt and this Góp to speak to you in such terms, Class A+?” he said. “Figures.” He squinted his eyes and glanced at the statues of Eadwig and Sweyn that protected the entrance to the VirtuaNet studio while he talked to me. “You still cling to repugnant genes.”

“Rather have repugnant genes and a clean soul than the other way around, Ivore,” I said. “Clean genes don’t get you to Heaven.”

In Rebirth School they thought us Natural genes could contaminate Achroite and Fenglas enhanced bodies, but we never bought into that stupidity. I guessed for all their Enhanced brains, the Achroites were even stupider than the Impures. But then again, with enough brainwashing, you could get an entire world to believe idiocy. Well, not all of it, I had to admit. Aisha graced my mind.

“If I may, Léof Ivore,” Owen said, knocking his previous Impure accent, trying to sound just like the Achroites. “I am in deep apology for my offensive behavior. I regret it dearly. It was—”

“You have nothing to apologize for Owen!” I turned to Brandon. “And neither do you, in case you were thinking such madness.” I glared at Ivore. “It’s you who must apologize. Now! Before I mark you a debtor.” To Ivore, and any Enhanced, a destiny worse than death. “My original fee would have been just support for the Non-Enhanced Defense Act, Cael’s Law, if you’ve forgotten the law’s actual name, but now I’m adding the apology to my fee. So pay.”

It had been two years and three months, and I still couldn’t get used to saying my own name like that. Sounded arrogant. But in the Enhanceds’ eyes, that made me more like them. A cross I had shouldered since the Rebirth School, but one that would have granted us freedom through peace. Sometimes, the benefit of your cross was not so apparent. And sometimes that hurt more than the cross itself, not knowing its purpose.

“I shall grant you my support and that of my entire estate for your reform,” he said. “As long as you eliminate the apology from your fee. I shan’t apologize to gópum and lætum. Garbage.”

The thought crossed me, even if only for a second. That I took the reform. That I let injustice happen in front of me. That I did nothing as someone else suffered. That I repeated that New Year’s Eve all over again. And that Rebirth Day. But I would not have that. Even if it meant reform took a while longer. Besides, Ivore was a Puyi among the Fenglas. His support would not have been decisive.

And I remembered what ma had taught me, while we waited for pa to return.

“Change what you feel is right, act how you know is right,” ma told me six years ago, when I first began working for upper classes, after Aisha saved Ellie and me. “But do not budge. Do not show weakness. Stay in control, in power.” She then hugged me and kissed my head. “I wouldn’t want those Achroites and Fenglas to take advantage of my gulpin,” she said in a mellower voice than usual. “Let’s pray for pa’s return now, okay?”

I drew out the Rosary from my pocket. And glanced at the calendar we used to count the days pa had been missing: eleven years, ten months, and twelve days.

I knew what I had to do.

“I will eliminate something from the fee, Dysig Ivore,” I told him. “The Non-Enhanced Defense Act reform support. But I will not eliminate the apology.”

“I shan’t—” Ivore clenched his fists at the word Dysig. Meant fool.

Law said I had to call him Leóf. Sir. But Ivore was no sir. And he could not punch me. Not because the law forbade it. Fact, he was ready to air blast me. But because he must have remembered the consequences of punching a bridger. Saw the fear his eyes glinted. Some threats worked better than vapid war cries. I guessed the Enhanced brain that Fengel Eugenex gave you had a purpose. Most of the time. Only soldiers had the “privilege” to pounce on bridgers and get away with it. But not all of them thought Naturals practice targets. Thank God.

I glanced at my smartwatch, pretending concern didn’t writhe in my veins, pretending I didn’t care about what I was going to do. “You have three seconds.”

“I shall not—”

“Two seconds. I’m not kidding.”

“You shan’t force me to—”

“One second. And I do not joke.”

“You’ve got not the spine to—”

“Zero.”

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