CHAPTER 11

Taffyta spared fifteen minutes to rig up a countdown synced to the one on the Wi-Fi port, only because she knew she wouldn't be able to stop herself from going over to it to check it. In the end, it would save her time.

She wished she could really do that. Save herself time. Why couldn't she take some of the time that she'd laid in bed doing absolutely nothing and use it now? That totally should have been a thing; sometimes you didn't need all that time, like had she really needed to spend two weeks thinking King Candy was dead, only to find him and have just thirty-six hours to save him? Time was stupid.

And it was passing way too fast. By the time she started working on his code again, it was almost 9:00, giving her only six hours. Six hours to do almost as much work as it had taken her the past day and a half to accomplish. She was never going to make it.

"Can't I just put the bypass node on right now and finish reprogramming everything after the update?" she asked.

King Candy sighed. "No. My code has to be hooked up to the rest of the game for the node to work, and it can't—I can't?—get hooked up until everything's fixed."

"Of course," Taffyta muttered.

"I mean, why make things easy, Taff?"

"Ha, ha," she said sarcastically. Geez, what a total coping mechanism. The fact was that her hands were shaking and it was a real struggle to keep them steady while she worked. Her chest felt tight, too, and it was hard to get a decent breath through the band of anxiety squeezing her lungs.

Thirty minutes passed, then forty-five, but it felt like a fraction of that. She made a mistake and spent ten minutes redoing everything, then made another because she was rushing to try to make up time. Then it was 11:30 and there was still so much to do and she was never going to finish and this time he was going to die for real and that wouldn't be anyone's fault except hers—well, it would still be Litwak's, Litwak's and all the gamers who abandoned them for their phones and the internet; they were all just like Vanellope, bored with Sugar Rush—

Tears blurred her vision and she tried to blink them away, knowing she couldn't take the time to stop and cry. Then she sniffled and drew in a shuddering breath, and a huge teardrop rolled down her cheek and landed on the connector she was holding. It sparked and jumped in her hand and she shrieked, dropping it.

"Are you okay?"

A dam burst inside her. Okay? She hadn't been okay since the last night she'd seen him alive, since they'd sat in the living room coding soda cannon mounts and sharpened lollipop hubcap spikes for their karts, and laughed as they'd tried to decide which racer would cause the most carnage with them if any of their practice coding was actually real. "No! I'm going to fail," she blubbered like a stupid baby.

"Hey. Taffyta. Stop."

She cried harder.

"Listen to me. Taff? Listen. Focus."

Wiping her nose across the back of her hand, she tried to get her juddering breaths under control and to stop her tears.

"Just—just breathe, okay?"

She tried, and then she said, "I'm so sorry."

"Why in coder's name are you sorry?"

"Because I'm not going to be able to do this. I should have made Surge come with me, I should have—I don't know, but I wasn't the right person—I'm not smart enough, it was stupid to think I could pull this off—I'm a failure—" Her throat closed up again with a sob and she covered her face with her hands.

King Candy made an inarticulate noise, and then he said, "Taffyta, seriously. You know I don't say this lightly but you're being ridiculous."

That, finally, made her stop. "W-what?" she asked.

"You're not smart? Please. Compared to who? Of course you're smart—who else would've done what you have in the past thirty-six hours? And here's the thing, Taff, there's no one, no one, that I would've trusted to do this except you."

"Yeah right, you would've taken help from anyone," she sniffled.

"Well, I mean—okay, yes, I suppose, but they wouldn't have been as meticulous as you've been, and as thorough, and as—well, if I'm going to be honest, as much of a perfectionist, because that's what you are, and it's what makes you so good at everything you try."

For a minute, she stayed silent. Then, she said, "I'm really not a very good painter."

He laughed. "Okay, well, you got me. It's just the racing and the coding, I suppose. Oh, and your aim when you go shooting with Calhoun. And your cooking, when you actually bother. Let's not forget you're a killer mechanic, too, there's never been a problem with Pink Lightning you couldn't fix. What am I forgetting?" With each thing that he named, she could feel herself turning redder. "And I don't want to be embarrassing here, but you're the best friend a game-jumping, Cy-bug chow, universally reviled 80s racer could ask for. You're definitely more than I deserve." He hesitated."I'm, well, I'm lucky to have you. Anyone would be. You're the furthest thing from a failure there is."

11:43. Taffyta took several deep breaths, sniffled one more time, and wiped the last of her tears away. "I can do this," she said, more to herself than King Candy. He didn't answer, so he must have known that. She reached for his code, knowing what to do without having to think about it. It was true, what he'd told her, she suddenly realized. You really could hear code if you listened hard enough.

She didn't look up again until she put the final icons into place and connected the last filaments where they belonged. King Candy had talked her through the last few complicated steps and when it was done, she exhaled and looked around. Every icon, every piece of his code, was lit up now. She'd done it. She'd actually done it.

It was 1:45 and the timer read less than nine minutes. "How do I hook up the bypass node?" she asked, pulling it out of her pocket.

"You see those latches on the side? Open it up with those." She peered at it, holding it at eye level and rotating it till she spotted the latches, and then popped them. The box sprang open. Inside was a stacked series of boards with holes cut through them in different places. "You have to configure it. Top one goes at seventy-five degrees, next one at a hundred and thirty, the one below that at two hundred, and the bottom one at ten."

Methodically, she spun each board to the correct setting. His memory amazed her. "What's this doing?"

"Allowing two way communication but locking off any changes to my code except manual ones."

Alarms went off in her head and she looked up. Which was stupid, because it wasn't like he was there to look at. "Doesn't that make you a vulnerability in the game? Like…a virus could get to you."

For a moment, he was silent. Then, he said, "That's true."

With one swift nod, she said, "Well, then I guess I have to make sure that doesn't happen."

There was an inarticulate noise. Then King Candy said, "You're…something, Taffyta Muttonfudge."

"I hope that's good."

"Oh, yes. Remember that day up in the Frosty Mountains? That had to've been—oy, I don't know, twenty years ago? You'd just had a particularly amazing day of racing, you'd beat me more times than I usually cared to admit at the time, and I mean, more times than I usually care to admit now, but—anyway, you were in that spot up in the Frosty Mountains."

Taffyta nodded, though he obviously couldn't see her. "Our spot."

"Is it?"

"Of course it is."

"Well. That was—listen, you know what an antisocial streak I have? But that was the day I actually started…well, caring about someone besides myself." There was a pause. "Let me know if I'm getting too mushy, would you? I really feel like I am."

1:50. Taffyta smiled and shook her head. "You're my best friend and I love you too, okay?" When he just made another noise, she said, "So what do I do with this bypass node now?"

His tone got more businesslike. "The rest is pretty simple. You need to thread the dorsal connector on my code box through there. Close it back up and that's it. It draws power from my code so it'll turn on as soon as I'm plugged in again."

Maybe it was the stress, but she giggled at the term. "Sorry, 'dorsal' reminds me of a gummi shark or something." 1:51. Yeah, definitely the stress. She exited his code and kicked up to grab the filament coming out of the top of his box.

But then he cleared his throat. "Er, Taffyta, there's just one thing. You're going to have to disconnect first."

She froze. "What?"

"You need to connect my code back up to the rest of the game, and once you do that, you can put the node on. Our code can't be connected when that happens, though. It could have…unpleasant effects. Feedback loops, overloading the code cluster, a whole number of messy issues that are just better avoided."

"But—" The panic was back. "But how am I supposed to know I did it right?"

"Well, of course you'll do it right."

How could he be so confident in her? He was the coder. Not her. Wavering, she said, "But I need your help."

"Kind of a moot point, I'm afraid. It either happens this way or that update wipes me out."

And that was unthinkable. Taffyta kicked out towards her own code and grabbed the filament connecting her box to King Candy's. It seemed to pulse like a heartbeat. "See you on the other side of this. For real." She wrapped her fingers tightly around the filament and took several deep breaths, trying to calm her hammering heart. "It's going to be really good to see your face."

"Likewise, my dear. Believe me. Likewise."

1:52. She scrunched her eyes shut and pulled the connectors loose. It was as though every light in her brain went dark and she'd just been hit with a combination Sweet Seeker and A La Mode. Whoa. She put a hand to her head, aching like someone had just clubbed it, and tried not to throw up. It was like being hungover, really hungover, and that was weird too because she'd never had a drop of alcohol in her entire life but she knew exactly what it would feel like.

There wasn't time feel better, though. Quickly and carefully, she threaded the filament through the bypass node, checking the boards again to make sure they were in the right positions. Then, even though her head was pounding and pinpricks of light were stabbing at the edges of her vision, she triple-checked it. Everything had to be right. There wasn't going to be a do-over. She ran her eyes over each board one more time, then she snapped the bypass node shut and latched it.

She glanced down at the timer. Thirty seconds left. Huh, plenty of time, it wasn't like she was cutting this close or anything. Taking the end of the filament again, she swam upwards to the code box above King Candy's. All the other racers were connected to this box, each separate filament combining into a bundle on the ventral side of it. Taffyta positioned herself at this spot, lined the filament in her hand up with the port on the code box, and pushed it into place.

There was an explosion of sparks, but she'd already shielded her face, expecting it this time. Then she looked down, her heart swelling with a painful surge of fear and hope as light traveled from the code box above her down through the connector. It hit his box and there was a long, horribly infinite moment where nothing happened.

Then, a pink glow spread through it. Taffyta clapped her hands over her mouth to contain either a laugh or a sob, or maybe both. She was still nauseated but now it was because her body had no idea how to deal with the emotions coursing through her. The glow was steady and strong, lighting the stylized picture of him and his name.

Before she got carried away by her surge of happiness, she snapped the bypass node into place on the connector. Would she be able to tell if it was working? What if it was broken? Maybe Malcolm had deliberately given her something defective to get her hopes up, just to make the crash when none of this worked hurt even more? But then, it lit up with a soft pink glow. There was nothing she could do but trust that it was working.

Suddenly, there was a deep humming noise and every code box in the vault flickered. Taffyta looked at the timer. Five seconds to the update.

Four.

Three.

Two.

One.

The hum reached an abrupt crescendo, whining at a higher, almost painful pitch, before it yanked itself to nothingness, an electronic glissando fade-to-black. The light went out on every code box and Taffyta found herself in pitch darkness. Wait, no. Her eyes adjusted a little and found a source of light—the bypass node. And then, beyond that, the timer, now counting up from zero. Was something happening? Was the game updating? Would she be able to feel it this time?

There was a weird tingling in her extremities, but she didn't know if that was the power of suggestion or something actually happening to her code. It didn't look like anything was happening to her code, or anyone's code. The black went on and on, the silence pressing in on her eardrums, and her discomfort grew, looming larger and larger inside her.

And then, just when she thought everything would overwhelm her, there was a stuttering sound. One by one, each code box in the vault clicked back on, like city lights coming on at dusk. Once again, she was surrounded by a glittering array of luminescence, like gemstones with their own internal fire. She looked down. King Candy's had come back too.

Slowly, she floated down to it. For a long moment, all she could do was stare, mesmerized by the steady, healthy glow emanating from the code box. Reaching out, she laid her palm on it. It was warm to the touch. It felt alive. "Are you in there?" she asked softly, knowing there was no way for him to answer. Anyway, maybe the right question was, are you out there.

She withdrew her hand. There was only one way to answer her question, and suddenly, she was terrified to find out what it was. What if she hadn't been in time? What if she'd done something wrong? She watched his code, but it just floated there, looking the same as everyone else's. Maybe that was the best she was going to get. His code box looked the same as every other code box in the vault now—except for the dark blotch of the bypass node affixed to the connector filament like a carbuncle.

Taffyta drew in a breath. There was no point in staying here. If she'd succeeded, then everything she was looking for was out there.

Slowly, she swam back to the entrance to the code vault, stepping out and sealing the door behind her when she'd pulled herself into the hallway. She kicked the licorice rope off and for several moments, just stared at the door. For decades, all she'd been was a racer. And being a racer had always been enough. Being a racer still was enough. But without looking for it, she'd discovered she could be something else, too.

Whatever she found at home, she was a coder now. She held her hands out in front of her, turning them over to look at her palms. What a weird thought. Her, Taffyta Muttonfudge. Coding. Oh well. She'd always been King Candy's protégé, hadn't she? Or, if not always, then long enough to call it always. He'd been just a racer too, until circumstance had forced him to be something else. Maybe it was only fitting that she'd arrived at the same place.

The Oreo guard nodded to her as she left. As Taffyta walked down the center of the throne room to the stained glass hard candy doors, the emptiness of the place struck her hard. King Candy had livedhere. It had been his home. That thought seemed obvious, but the profundity of it made something twist emptily in her stomach at that moment. Vanellope—well, it maybe hadn't ever been as much of a home to her as Diet Cola Mountain, but at least she'd lived there. Now it was vacant, a symbol of everything Sugar Rush had lost—its false king, its real president. Was there something worse coming?

Taffyta shook herself. Maybe Ralph had been right about the code vault doing something to her brain.

As she stepped outside, she squinted into the dawn, the sun a huge red orb rising over the Frosty Mountains. Everything was sparkling under a fresh layer of snow. She breathed in, her lungs stinging as they filled with cold air, and shivered. Maybe winter wasn't so bad after all. It was pretty, you had to give it that.

Then, she sat down in Pink Lightning and wrapped her hands around the cold steering wheel. The seat felt stiff and creaked as she leaned back. She was shaking, just a little, but cradled in her kart, she felt better. No matter what, she had this. She had racing.

With another deep breath, Taffyta started her kart and headed towards home. Driving through the wintry landscape was like a dream. She felt like she hadn't noticed anything in the past two weeks, the way ice rimmed the tree branches and made them glint like hard candy, the delicate layer of frost on leaves that made them glitter in the light, the way the snow made everything hushed and secret feeling, and how quiet and still the winter air was. Her kart shattered that silence like a brick through a window, but as soon as she'd passed she somehow knew that the frigid air swallowed the sound right back up.

As the sun rose, it illuminated Gumball Gorge, the light glinting off the metal hatches of the gumball machines and dazzling her vision for a second. Before the upgrade, nothing like that had ever happened. The sun had only ever shined down on everything from directly above. But everything was different now, through every hour of the day, and every day of the year. Everything had changed. She had changed.

In that moment, behind the wheel of her kart, doing what she'd always done, she felt that one fact, deep inside her code. She had changed, and nothing was ever going to be the same.

Strawberry Fields came into view and soon she could see her house, tucked in its little hollow. Her heart pounded with mingled happiness at seeing it and fear at what she'd find—or not find—when she got there.

The garage door opened and she pulled in, parking Pink Lightning next to the Royal Racer. It hadn't moved. Duh. Of course it hadn't moved. She ran a hand over the curve of the hood, feeling her stomach clench into a tighter and tighter ball, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, the sun was starting to angle through the windows, slanting just right so that it illuminated the Royal Racer. She swallowed hard at the way it glittered in the light. If she never saw King Candy drive this kart again…

A door slammed.

Taffyta stood straight up, her heart hammering. That had been her door. She recognized the clatter from the one broken spring that she'd been meaning to fix but never seemed to find the time for. She dodged around the Royal Racer, opened the door to the garage, and stepped outside.

King Candy was standing outside her front door, facing her. He was taller. The same height as her, she noted distantly. She'd guessed right when he'd asked her to make sure he wasn't the shortest character in the game.

For a long, long moment, stretching to eternity in the cold morning light, she just stood there, frozen, and stared at him. Then, everything in her cracked open, and she couldn't really remember moving, just screaming and throwing her arms around him.

As he hugged her back hard, she buried her face in his shoulder and held onto him, unable to get any words out past the lump of knotted, messy emotions choking her throat. He didn't say anything either, and the two of them stood there like that for what could have been forever, as far as Taffyta cared. She'd never been so happy in her life, and she just wanted to hang onto him and convince herself of his realness and his thereness and the fact that she hadn't lost him.

Eventually, reluctantly, she let go of him. He put his hands on her shoulders, holding her at arm's length and looking at her. "So," he said, "you weren't kidding about being twenty-five."

Taffyta laughed. "Yeah, that was just something I came up with to mess with you in there. Of course I wasn't kidding." She tucked her hair behind her ears and put a hand on her hip, grinning crookedly at him. "Hey, didn't you say you were like, programmed at thirty-five? I used to think that was ancient."

With a chuckle, he said, "And what, now it'sth just sort of old?"

Pursing her lips, unable to keep an irrepressible smile off her face, she said, "I wouldn't go that far. Maybe somewhere in between sort-of-old and ancient." Impulsively, she hugged him again. "I can't believe you're here," she said quietly. Her joy suddenly teetered on the edge of all the grief of the last few weeks. God, she was a mess. An emotional wreck. He was probably going to wish he was back in the code vault. Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry.

It was no good. She started to cry.

King Candy wrapped his arms around her while she bawled, patting her back now and then. Finally, when she got her tears under control—who was she kidding, sort of under control—she said, "I'm sorry. It's…I'm…I really missed you." What else was there to say? This captured almost nothing of what she'd been feeling for the past two weeks, and yet, at the same time, it captured everything.

"I know," he said. When she let go of him, he gave her a faint smile and said, "I missed you too."

Taffyta gave a watery laugh and sniffled. He handed her a handkerchief. Her mascara was running again, but honestly, she'd ruined so many of his handkerchiefs with her tears and makeup at this point that he wouldn't expect anything less.

"Hey, Taff," he said, and she looked at him, mid-nose-blow. He clasped his hands behind his back and rocked back on his heels, looking serious, and like he didn't know exactly what to say. This man wasn't often at a loss for words, though she supposed, if it was ever going to happen, if would be after the past two weeks. Finally, he said, "Thank you. For everything you did."

She shook her head. "I couldn't do anything else."

"Well." He waved a hand. "That'sth just demonstrably not true. There were lots of things you could have done, and the vast majority of them didn't include getting access to the code vault, finding me in there, and fixing me. Not to mention acquiring a black market part to do it." He fixed her with a look and raised an eyebrow. "Which, by the way, don't get me wrong, I'm obviously very appreciative of what you did for me, but don't agree to go on a date with a scummy virus for my sake ever again, all right?"

With a shrug, she said, "Well, that's kind of gonna depend on what catastrophe I have to save you from next, so no promises."

He shook his head, but he was smiling. "Listen, you know what a high opinion I have of mysthelf, but I'm really not worth it."

Taffyta crossed her arms over her chest. "You are to me. I would've thought you'd be used that that idea by now."

"Mmph. Well." He looked away. "You know."

Yeah, she did know. She knew that he'd always struggled with the idea of anyone else caring about him for him. That ego, arrogance, and loneliness had gotten in the way. She knew that she was the person he'd never expected to care about, and that the depth of her feelings for him had surprised him from the beginning. Honestly, she'd always half suspected that at first, when Sugar Rush had been plugged in, he'd thought she was annoying. Everyone else had told her the way she hero-worshipped him was obnoxious, no reason he wouldn't have thought it too. Why are you such a suck-up, Taffyta? all the other racers had asked her. Okay, so maybe she had been a suck-up—but it was only because she'd looked up to him so much, because she'd wanted him to notice her, wanted to be as good as him, wanted him to like her.

It turned out they were a lot alike—in a lot of ways that were bad but a lot of ways that were good, too. And for as much as she wanted to be like him, she'd had plenty to teach him, too—about the value of letting someone in, and of not having to stand alone for every single minute of your life.

But all of that was too much to say, and anyway, there didn't seem to be much point in saying something both of them already knew. Even if he hadn't read her mind and she hadn't read his, their code had been tied together in the code vault. Taffyta could still feel that connection, imprinted on her, and doubted it would ever go away. Maybe, in some way that she couldn't describe or explain, it had always been there.

She smiled at him and put her shoulders back, feeling tension and grief and every single worry of the past two weeks roll off her. The sun was coming up and the snow was sparkling. The bite in the air was crisp and cold, but there was something under it, a hint of green and warmth that said spring was coming. Taffyta pointed with a thumb over her shoulder towards the garage and said, "So, want to check out the new tracks? That is, if you don't mind me kicking your butt on all of them."

"Hoohoohoo! My dear, I'd be delighted." He returned her smile with a grin. "Though I hope you won't be too disappointed coming in second."

She stuck her tongue out and he laughed again. Okay, so yeah, everything was different. But maybe some things would never change.

Tune in next time! "The Rest of Forever" follows this fic. Thanks for reading everyone! :)

This fic also comes with a playlist:

1. "Here's to Never Growing Up" - Avril Lavigne

2. "Lasts, or Eschaton" - Charlotte Church

3. "The Last Dancer" - iamamiwhoami

4. "Wait It Out" - Imogen Heap

5. "How" - Katherine Mcphee

6. "Faith" - VV Brown

7. "Rescue" - Lauren Daigle

8. "Draft Moon" - Borealis

9. "Get It" - Kyla La Grange

10. "Where the Fence is Low" - LIGHTS

11. "My True Name" - Bloc Party

12. "Awake" - Tycho