The transition from the high-speed velocity of the Data-Pipe to the Holding Pen was not a crash; it was a deceleration into a nightmare. One moment, Kaelen and his thousand survivors were a stream of white-gold fire; the next, they were falling through a sky the color of a bruised television screen. They didn't hit the ground so much as they merged with it, the "soil" consisting of billions of lines of discarded, low-priority text that crunched like dead leaves under their feet.
Kaelen gasped, his lungs feeling as though they were filled with cold ash. He looked up, and for the first time in his life, he felt a fear that transcended the System.
[LOCATION: SECTOR 9.9.9 — THE HOLDING PEN]
[STATUS: MAXIMUM ISOLATION]
[SYSTEM NOTE: WELCOME TO THE END OF THE LINE.]
