Wildcard Quotes
"Technically, the world should now be the safest it's ever been."
"You're on a crowded street, I tell myself. No one's following you."
"But even as I think this, I slow down to stare at the long line wrapping around a local police station."
"Another criminal must have jumped to their death."
"There’s a subtle but significant blankness in everyone’s eyes."
"I open my eyes again and continue on, trying to contain the anger beating in my chest."
"Every day over the next week or so, the top ten players of this year’s championships will be announced worldwide."
"People on the streets are proudly dressed up as their top-ten vote this year."
"I adjust my face mask, letting my rainbow hair tumble out from underneath my red raincoat’s hood."
"I’m not an official Rider anymore. People would ask questions if they saw us heading out as a group tonight."
"I pass through the mall and out the other side."
"My attention shifts to a police barricade at the end of the street."
"The eerie feeling of being watched subsides as I take in their faces."
"The whole city’s celebrating, I mutter. People have no idea what Hideo’s done."
"He’s more than a fling or a bounty or a mark. He’s forever bound to my history."
"I’m tired of the horror in the world, he’d said to me. So I will force it to end."
"I pull up my directory and start to place a call to Asher."
"A car? Maybe I wasn’t just being paranoid, after all."
"The Pirate’s Den vanishes as quickly as it appeared."
"Is the fate of the world not enough of a reason?"
"Nothing I’ve ever seen has frightened me quite as much as what Hideo Tanaka is doing with the NeuroLink’s algorithm."
"We’re going to stop him from abusing his NeuroLink, and we can do it faster with your help."
"Even the biggest companies in the world aren’t that secure."
"A one-on-one game of Warcross is called a Duel."
"I’ve watched Duels in the Dark World before, but I’ve never played in one."
"Our Duel’s virtual world is a night setting."
"In the history of the Warcross championships, there has never been a rematch of any kind."
"You’re not a lone wolf, Em. If they’re going to come for you, they’d better save themselves some time and come for us, too."
"I’m here to warn you. You don’t want to get in over your head."
"How old were you when you first started bounty hunting?"
"You don’t want digital messages lying around on phones to incriminate you."
"Lies are told more easily when you don’t see them as lies."
"Reality is where you can lose the ones you love."
"We fight for survival with everything we’ve got."
"Everything about you has been unpredictable since the moment you hacked into his game."
"This might be your only chance to save your son."
"You aren’t the only patient we have in our ranks."
"No one tied you down, did they? Now, come on."
"You don’t really question things when you’re that small. You believe everything is normal."
"I find myself wishing silently for Sasuke to turn and run away, to leave it all behind."
"Let her go now," he says to Taylor about Jax.
"He’s an illusion. Sasuke Tanaka’s real body died years ago on a lab gurney."
"What about his memory? His recognition of his family?"
"In a way, Taylor did keep her promise to Mina Tanaka."
"Nothing commands authority like a professional killer, and no killer surprises someone more than a young girl."
"You need to get access to Hideo’s algorithm."
"If the end results are this remarkable, would you throw away the research just because the process was unethical?"
"He can sync with that machine, as surely as if that were his own body."
"He’s gone this far, he’s being experimented on in this artificial intelligence program—but what’s the end result?"
"He’s an illusion. He’s an artificial intelligence program."
"Of course I know," Zero replies, in that eerily calm way of his.
"You always said that the algorithm is meant to be unbiased."
"You’re asking me to give you access to my algorithm."
"I’m never going to agree with what you’re doing."
"I’ll be ready for Taylor. I want to see her face."
"You could have returned to New York and left all of this behind. But you’re still here, Emika."
"Your lenses—and your connection to me—are just not as stable as I’d expect."
"It’s my turn now," she replies. "And one way or another, this time we’re going to leave this place together."
"Once technology has been made, it cannot be unmade."
"You keep solving one problem after another until you change the world."
"It's always easier to destroy than to create."
"You accomplish something, and then you shift, ready to accomplish the next."
"To sticking together, no matter the apocalypse."