Ending of The Eye of Minds

The ending was nice but what really upset me was Michael was a tangent. A tangent basically means someone who was created by a computer and lives inside the VirtNet. So all this time Michael was a computer program. It's weird, why did Michael die when he got stabbed in the Devils of Destruction? My thoughts are, he was programmed to have human emotions, can feel psychical strength and damage. I expected the ending to be maybe Michael was a spy for Kaine and he was trying to figure out if the VirtNet will try to attack him or try to find him. My question is, how did he come out of the VirtNet and come into the real world? He's a program designed by the VirtNet. It's strange because near the beginning of the story he says he spends most of his time in the VirtNet and less time in the real world. The book didn't introduce the word "tangent" yet so I just inferred that he was having fun in the VirtNet. But once I figured out what tangent meant, I knew he was some kind of robot or computer program.