CHAPTER 11

"If you leave your game, stay safe, stay alert. And whatever you do, don't die. Because if you die outside your own game, you don't regenerate. Ever. Game over."

Was this what being dead was? Taffyta's whole head felt stuffed with cotton candy, and when she opened her eyes, there was nothing but blackness. But the smell of burning sugar crept into her nose and that was a little too familiar to believe that she was in arcade heaven. Huh, maybe that was a little ambitious—how did she know she wasn't going to arcade hell?

"If you leave your game, stay safe, stay alert. And whatever you do, don't die. Because if you die outside your own game, you don't regenerate. Ever. Game over."

Two sounds penetrated her fog. One was a wailing siren. Funny, she'd never heard a siren in Game Central Station. There was the plug-in alarm, but that didn't sound anything like this, that was more like a short, sharp, blat. Then she realized her hand was still in her pocket—and her thumb was depressing the button on the remote that she'd been clutching in her palm before she crashed. She didn't even remember pressing it.

The other sound was, well— "If you leave your game, stay safe, stay alert. And whatever you do—"

"Don't die, yeah, I got it," she muttered, realizing that the kart must have come to a stop against the video monitors playing Sonic's PSA. She lifted her arms to her head and discovered the reason she couldn't see anything was because Turbo's helmet had rotated over her eyes in the crash. It had kept her safe, though. Her head felt fine, and as she flexed and moved all her body parts, from her toes to her fingers, she found that she was still in one piece.

She'd think about how lucky she'd been later. Right now, she had to get out of this jumpsuit and out of here before anyone spotted her. She heard shouts and figured it was only a matter of seconds before Surge showed up. Luckily, the kart's engine was on fire and smoke was obscuring her. Not for long, though.

She ripped the helmet off, unzipped the jumpsuit, and unbuckled the seatbelt. Without it holding her in place, she fell to the floor, landing hard on her shoulder. Wincing, she pushed herself up to her knees, wriggled the rest of the way out of the jumpsuit, and then grabbed her bag and stuffed everything in before slipping away from the kart and around the other side of the kiosk. Had anyone seen her?

There was a crackling zip sound and Taffyta froze. "He's not here," Surge's voice said, sounding closer to panic than Taffyta had ever heard him.

"I saw the whole thing and I swear he didn't make it into the game," another voice said. One of the football players?

"Then why is the alarm going off? It only goes off if Turbo enters an outlet." There were footsteps, and then Taffyta heard Surge mutter, "One too many hits to the head. That must be why you're inactive today, Collins."

The sound of a whole group of people running through the station caught her attention, and somebody yelled, "What's going on? Did Turbo game-jump?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out," Surge shot back in a testy tone.

What was the best way to play this? Did she run and hope no one would spot her, or did she pretend like she'd just been hanging around? Nobody was on this side of the kiosk, so she hadn't been spotted yet. She licked her lips. It wasn't that far to the opposite wall. If she could be unobtrusive about getting over there, then maybe no one would pay attention to her.

Well, she had to do something, so, sucking in a deep breath, she kept her head down and walked as briskly as she could to the outlet opposite Virtua Cop. Her whole body was one tightly coiled ache as she kept expecting someone to yell for her to stop, what was she doing here, and what did she have to do with this? How could she possibly look anything other than guilty right now? Was she slouching? She was slouching. Shoulders back, Taffyta. Come on, stop looking so much like you just stole the president's kart and crashed it so the guy everyone hates can mess with your game's code. Yeah right. Easier said than done.

But no one stopped her. She reached the wall and put a hand to it, shifting her bag to her other shoulder so that her body was blocking it mostly from view. Her lungs ached and she realized she'd barely taken a breath in the past minute. There was a group of at least twenty people gathered around Vanellope's wrecked kart. Taffyta felt a kick of nausea when she saw it. The front was entirely crumpled, the rear spoiler was cracked in half, and the back axel was bent. She was lucky that she'd been able to walk away unscathed.

Two Oreo guards rushed to the scene and Taffyta quickly looked at the ground. One of them would probably be the one she'd talked to—all the castle guards had volunteered to be part of the special force tasked with keeping Turbo from game-jumping. With her heart pounding, she made her way back to the Sugar Rush outlet. The walk hadn't taken so long in her whole, entire life. It felt like an hour from one end of the station to the other, and all the while she couldn't help thinking that everyone was staring at her, wondering why she wasn't more interested in the fact that an alarm was still blaring and that her president's go-kart was laying in a smoking heap next to Virtua Cop.

But then she was there, and she'd never been so happy to board the slow, dumpy, neon train that would take her back to her game. She had it to herself, and once it slid away from Game Central Station, she slumped and let out a huge breath. She'd done what she'd needed to do. Had King Candy?

The trip took longer by train than it did by kart—well, duh—and when it arrived in the station, she jumped out and bounded outside. There were a few NPCs hovering at the top of the Rainbow Bridge. When one of them tried to stop her to ask what was going on, Taffyta plastered her best clueless look on her face. "What do you mean?" she asked in a befuddled tone.

The peanut butter cup look scared. "The alarm's going off in Game Central Station."

"Oh." Taffyta glanced over her shoulder towards the train. "I don't know, I didn't hear anything. I guess I must have already been on my way back." Inspiration struck. "Did you ask Vanellope?"

"Not yet…"

Giving the NPC a reassuring smile, Taffyta said, "Well, how about I find her? I'm sure it's nothing, but I'll let her know people are worried, okay?"

"Oh, thank you, Taffyta!" the peanut butter cup squeaked.

Taffyta flashed her a victory sign with the hand that she didn't have clenched around the strap of her bag, and then she took off again. At least the NPC would think she was running down the bridge to be helpful, instead of the real reason, which was that she needed to know right now if King Candy had pulled off his part in this.

When she finally arrived at the bottom of the sparkling sugar road that led up to the castle, panting and out of breath, she found King Candy standing there, tossing a cinnamon imperial up and down. Oh, thank gamers, he hadn't been caught, he was okay, and that meant everything must have gone according to plan. She doubled over, and with her hands on her knees, gasped, "Did it work?"

There was silence for a moment while the cinnamon imperial arced across the sun and landed neatly in his hand. He hesitated before tossing it again. Then, he said, "Not exactly."

Not exactly?! She straightened up, her body wanting to gasp in shock, but she didn't have the lung capacity for it and broke out in a fit of coughing. Her brain couldn't process this. What was he talking about? He thumped her on the back and she finally asked in a strangled voice, "What? After all that, it didn't even go right?"

He threw the cinnamon imperial over his shoulder and gave her a serious look. "Oh no, it went perfectly. The guard in the throne room went running out right on cue, and it was a piecthe of cake getting into the code vault. But…"

Taffyta was staring at him, her eyes wide. "But what?"

"Well, I was standing there, looking inside—you know how beautiful it is, right, all those strands of code—I mean, it's, I don't know, sort of perfect, don't you think? No? Maybe it's a coder thing… Well, anyway, I was standing there and then—" He stopped and fiddled with the button on his waistcoat. Taffyta waited. Then, with a sigh, he said, "I couldn't do it."

"You couldn't…do it?" For a second, she thought she'd heard wrong.

But he was nodding and making a face. "I mustht be going soft. Only took practically sixteen years of living here but I guess it was bound to happen at some point, all the smiley faces and candy…" When Taffyta just kept staring at him, he asked, "What, do you want the blow-by-blow of my thought process?"

"No," she said, finding her voice. "Just like…maybe the short version."

King Candy shrugged. "Short version: there's a few people in this arcade who seem strangely dedicated to giving me a second chance." He shrugged. "Look, you're the one who told me Felix doesn't have an angle. You don't think any of them have an angle. Ralph, Candlehead, the other racers. You think they're just being…decent to me because…well, because they're decent."

"Yeah. They are," she said, wondering what this had to do with anything.

With another shrug, this one accompanied by his form going glitchy, he looked away and said, "Yeah, well. Like I said, going soft." He glanced back at her and added, "Anyway, there might even be one person around here who makes me stop and think if what I'm doing is the right thing to be doing. She told me recently that you can't plan for everything. She was right, as usual."

"Oh," she said. Warmth ballooned somewhere behind her sternum.

There was the sound of an approaching siren and the roar of a kart. King Candy rolled his eyes. "Here comes the cavalry. I'm going to have to deal with the fallout from stealing the glitch's kart and going out into Game Central Station, even though I didn't even really do it." He met her eyes. "Do me a favor, Taff, will you? Just stay out of what's going to be—hoo-hoo—an undoubtedly ugly confrontation."

"But—" she began.

He held up a hand. "Let me handle it, okay?"

Taffyta made a frustrated noise, but then she nodded. As the sirens got louder, she moved closer to him and lowered the bag to the ground. Within a minute, Wynchel and Duncan came into view on their motorcycles, followed by the C.L.A.W. van. Vanellope was leading all three on a kart that Taffyta recognized from the kart garage. They all came screeching to a stop and Vanellope glitched from the seat of the kart to the ground, looking murderous.

"Give me one good reason I shouldn't lock you in the fungeon again!" Vanellope yelled. Her face was red-bordering-on-purple and twisted in rage and—was it fear?

Wynchel and Duncan advanced, but King Candy held his hands up. "Look, I wasn't trying to game-jump, all right? I'm just bored. You try sitting around here all day doing nothing."

"I did," Vanellope snarled. "For fifteen years!"

He studied his fingernails, as if he didn't have a care in the world. "Well then, you know exactly how boring it is." Raising an eyebrow, he asked, "Is it because I stole your kart? It is, isn't it. That's why you're really mad."

Vanellope glitched violently, her form lost in waves of binary for a moment. When she was able to get it under control, she said, "Can you guys just handcuff him or something?!"

With a scoff, he said, "What, don't tell me you're arresting me."

"Yes!" she shouted. "That's exactly what I'm doing, you creep!"

Taffyta gasped, and even though King Candy had told her to stay out of it, she shouted, "No!"

Vanellope rounded on her, like she'd forgotten Taffyta was there and was only realizing now what an oversight that was. "And where were you?! You're supposed to be babysitting him!"

Her heart seized into a fist and she dug her fingers into her palms. "I…" she began. Then she looked at King Candy. His eyes narrowed imperceptibly and she realized what she was going to do. Furthermore, she realized that he had realized what she was going to do just a fraction of a second before she herself had. Stay out of what's going to be an undoubtedly ugly confrontation. Ha. Fat chance. When had she ever stayed out of anything in her entire life?

Taffyta took a deep breath. "I was out in Game Central Station, pretending to be Turbo."

Wynchel paused in the act of raising his nightstick, Duncan ran into him, and Vanellope glitched again. The lights on the C.L.A.W. van were still flashing, making this feel like the scene of a grisly accident. Maybe that wasn't too far from reality. "You wanna run that by me again one more time?" Vanellope said, her tone suddenly scarily calm.

There was a torturous silence, which eventually Wynchel filled by asking, "Um, Your Presidency? Do you still want us to arrest him?"

"No," King Candy said.

"Shut up," Vanellope snapped. "And hold onto that thought for a second. I wanna hear what Taffyta's talking about."

Taffyta had never, not once in her life, seen Vanellope this angry. The other girl's face was flushed and her eyes were glinting with furious brightness, and her teeth were practically bared. Then again, maybe she had seen Vanellope this angry. Maybe it was just that every other time, Vanellope had been helpless, and Taffyta had been the top dog. Now their positions were reversed, and Taffyta didn't like it one bit. She felt small, scared, and very, very vulnerable.

But she'd committed herself now. No going back. She licked her lips and glanced at King Candy, who shook his head slightly. She ignored him and looked back to Vanellope. "I stole your kart. I dressed up like Turbo so everyone would think he'd left Sugar Rush."

A single glitch rippled up Vanellope, but her anger seemed to have evaporated for the moment. It seemed to have been shocked out of her. "Why would you do that?"

She rubbed at her arm with her opposite hand. "I…"

"Taffyta," King Candy said in a low tone.

Her heart was pounding, but she couldn't see a way out of this besides telling the truth. She wasn't going to let him take the fall for something he hadn't even done. Then again, what he'd been planning to do would probably be way worse in Vanellope's mind. "It was just to keep the game safe," she said, her voice shaking. "To keep us from getting unplugged." Her throat closed up, and for a second, she stood there in silence. They all stood there in silence. Wynchel and Duncan looked flabbergasted, and King Candy had an expression on his face that Taffyta couldn't read.

"Yeah, and?" Vanellope finally asked.

Taffyta closed her eyes tightly. "I…wanted everyone to think that he was outside the game so he could get into the code vault and change a couple lines of code. Not to hurt anybody!" she added quickly, as Vanellope took three glitchy, stumbling steps back. "I just—it was my idea, okay?" Maybe this wasn't exactly true, but she'd gladly let Vanellope think this was just another impulsive, stupid, Taffyta Muttonfudge-brand decision. The alternative was her thinking King Candy had brainwashed her or something. "I wanted to do it. I just wanted the bad racers to be chosen more often by the randomizer, nothing horrible! Nothing bad."

Vanellope's glitching was out of control. She was just a Vanellope-shaped garble of blue pixels. Wynchel and Duncan shuffled closer, looking between Taffyta and King Candy. Taffyta's mouth went dry. Would…would Vanellope arrest both of them after all this? Pixie sticks, they never should have done this; why had either of them thought this was a good plan, why couldn't they just have left well enough alone—

But Vanellope got her glitching under control and she didn't tell Wynchel and Duncan to arrest them. Instead, she just stared, her face white with shock. Finally, she managed to ask, "Why?"

For a second, Taffyta couldn't seem to make any sound come out of her mouth. The fact that Vanellope wasn't yelling anymore was definitely scarier. She swallowed and opened her mouth to answer, but nothing came out at first except a hoarse, strangled sound. After a second, Wynchel went to prod her with his nightstick, but before it touched her, King Candy reached out with a snarl and hit it away, growling, "Don't touch her, you lard-filled doofus."

Vanellope didn't react to this. Instead, she crossed her arms over her chest. "Spit it out, Taffyta."

She felt like she might hyperventilate, but she took a couple shallow breaths and said, "People weren't playing the game as much. You had to've noticed, right?" When she looked at Vanellope hopefully, the other girl just stared back at her with a flat expression. Taffyta tried not to wilt. "We thought…I thought if the code was changed in the randomizer, and it started choosing the bad racers, then you'd see what a bad idea it was, and you'd go back to the Random Roster Race."

With a contemptuous scoff, Vanellope said, "You wanna talk about bad ideas—"

King Candy made a disgusted noise, and everyone turned towards him. "Oh, please. Listen, glitch, you don't give the gamersth a challenge, and they'll find one somewhere else. I'm kind of an expert on the concept, so maybe it's not the worst idea to trust me on this one."

"Uh, it's not the worst idea, but it's for sure up there," Vanellope retorted. "And I wouldn't call you an 'expert' as much as a paranoid nutcase. Offense totally intended."

He rolled his eyes and demanded, "Why are you letting awful racers who have never cared about winning onto the roster? Don't you know who your best racers are? Can you possibly be that stupid?"

"I wanna give everyone a chance to race, King Puffy-Pants!" Vanellope snarled. "Not like you, trying to keep people out who didn't meet your standards!"

Laughing derisively, he said, "Oh, please, there are nine spotsth on that roster every single day. If you want to race, you make sure you get on it. You do what you have to do to make that happen."

"Like you?" Vanellope said. "You sure did whatever you had to do."

He narrowed his eyes at her but ignored the jab. "Let me tell you who should be on that roster tomorrow if you want more than pre-schoolers and senior citizens looking for a place to sit down to play this game." He started ticking off on his fingers. "Taffyta, Candlehead, Rancis, Snowanna, Adorabeezle, Crumbelina, Gloyd, Jubileena, and I suppose you, glitch, since you're pretty amazing out on the track."

Vanellope looked momentarily speechless, which was a pretty impressive feat. Taffyta could only assume it was King Candy's admission that she was one of the best racers in the game. She herself couldn't help glowing a little over the fact that he'd named her first. Even if one or both of them was going to get thrown in the fungeon after this, at least he thought she was the best racer out of all of them.

Then, Vanellope's face grew hard again. "Tell me how to get rid of whatever…whatever horrible changes you made."

He waved a hand with a flick of his wrist. "No need. I didn't actually do it."

Vanellope blinked. "Huh? But Taffyta just said—"

Glitching a little, he put his hands on his hips and said, "Yes, thanks, since I'm not deaf I heard Taffyta, believe it or not. Do you need to get your hearing checked? I didn't do it. Your precious randomizer's totally intact, with the same code it had yesterday."

Glaring at him, Vanellope said, "How do I know you're telling the truth?"

"I guessth you don't. Have somebody check if you don't believe me."

Taffyta knew full well that almost nobody in the arcade would be able to tell if King Candy had altered the code or not, and Vanellope knew it too. But the other girl still said, "Yeah, I will."

King Candy shrugged. How could he possibly be so calm? Taffyta's legs were shaking so hard that she thought she was going to collapse. At any moment, Vanellope was going to…to like, come to her senses. Well, not her senses, exactly, but she was going to remember that she was furious at them and order Wynchel and Duncan to arrest them. Every single time that she'd vouched for King Candy, every time she'd insisted that he was trying to be a better person, that he wasn't a monster, and they'd thrown it all away for something that was never going to look like anything except trying to re-code the game.

No one moved for a long, long moment. Then, Vanellope looked straight at Taffyta. "Is he telling the truth?"

Without hesitation, Taffyta nodded. It had never occurred to her not to believe him.

"Ugh," Vanellope said, rolling her eyes into the back of her head. "Okay. I have to figure this out. Can you just—I don't know, put yourselves under house arrest or something? Wynchel, Duncan, you can go." The police looked disappointed. Pointing at both King Candy and Taffyta in turn, Vanellope said, "And I'm going to come by later and make sure you're there, so don't even think about trying to sneak out to Tapper's or something."

"Okay," Taffyta said in a small voice.

Glaring at them one last time, Vanellope hopped back into the kart and tore off. Wynchel and Duncan regretfully shuffled away, and Taffyta and King Candy were left alone. Taffyta sank to her knees and put her hands over her face. "Oh my god," she moaned. "We're dead. We're so, so, so dead, she's gonna change her mind and come back and she's going to throw us in the fungeon and you're never going to race again and I'm never going to race again and—"

"Taffyta, Taffyta!" he interrupted. Her rambling devolved into wordless whimpering, and he knelt next to her. "Hey. Taff. Listen. It's going to be fine. Okay?"

She shifted one finger to the side so she could see him, even with her hands still over her face. "How do you know?" she asked, her voice muffled by her palms.

He glitched, appearing as Turbo briefly, before glitching back. Then he stood up and offered her a hand. "I don't, it's just sthomething I tell myself to stay sane. Sometimes it works better than others."

She removed her hands from her face and looked up at him. Was it going to be fine? They weren't in the fungeon now. That was a plus. She swallowed, then took his hand and let him pull her up. Everything would be fine. Sure. Right. Deep breaths and delusions and probably a really long nap, and she might just get through the rest of this day.