Chapter 1

A rat scurried across the metal flor, its naked tail trailing behind it as it ran to the wires coming out of the floor. It stopped and turned its head, its large teeth working away at the wire it found. A shock from the wire knocked the rat away. The rodent pushed its head from the cold floor to eye the wires before scampering to its paws and running away.

A visible spark of electricity popped from the exposed wire as the screens connected to it came to life. The screen that had been carefully positioned above the main screen now hung upside down, the bolts barely holding it up. The wing screen on the right hung by only the bottom bolt as its wires were tugged tight, its partner broken and shattered on the floor. The main screen showed lines of corrupt pixels over a dematerialization program. The ID card of a man with glasses and just graying hair changing to a darker color as the program went to work.

The program finished and in time the computer screens blinked off. A brave rat scurried its way up the wires and onto the keyboard, the return key interesting to it as it worked to pull it off. A few missing keys created divots in the board that the rat balanced around as it manage to tug the return key out. It put the key in its mouth and ran off the keyboard, taking the same path down it had used to climb up. The rat found its home in a crack of the metal floor and placed the return key in a pile of the missing keys before turning around. Back on the keyboard, the rat worked at the rest of the keys, their strange shape just want it wanted in its nest.

A sound of metal scraping metal scared the rat of getting its seventh key of the day, sending it running to its home.

The hatch blocking the ladder from the room below screeched as it was forced open. A man looking no older than his late thirties struggled to push his way into the lab, his grunts scaring away the last of the rats lingering in the room. The man pulled his legs onto the floor and stopped on his hands and knees, his muscles not feeling right after all these years of being a digital entity.

Swallowing down his resolve, he forced himself up to his feet and took in the damage that had happened to his lab. He took a few steps to the screen as he struggled to recall what had happened. He remembered helping Jérémie, the only image he knew of the boy by was his ID card of him holding up the victory sign, try to defeat Xana. The man's legs felt weak, getting him to throw a look at the chair in the room as he rested his hands on the keyboard. The chair now sat broken next to the device that had held it to the track in the floor. Letting out a sigh, he turned back to the keyboard and the screens to take in the years of damage. He slapped a hand against the left side of the screen, causing it to swing dangerously before the screens came back to life. He shook his left hand, the pain a surprise, but it gave him results. His hands fell into their familiar position over the keyboard, struggling to use the little nubs left under the missing keys. He called up his virus' program and took a deep breath at what the computer fed him. He had started to wonder why the computer seemed to have turned itself on after all these years, now he could see how.

He typed away at the keyboard, it asking for his password and ID. Franz Hopper filled the top as dots of illegible code took the bottom line. Hitting the nub that had been the return key, he brought up a T-pose of a pink haired woman, her program still working to fix herself.

Letting the program run in the background, he opened a new window, connecting to the internet. Surprised to see Google, a baby program back in his days, pop up, Franz was about to type in his daughter's name only to freeze with his fingers resting in the keys. He glanced down at the bottom corner of the screen to see the date reading 2016. He had tried to kill Xana ten years ago. It had taken him ten years to dematerialize. He stared blankly at the date as his mind processed the information. It had been twenty-two years since he had seen the outside world. Twenty-two years since he had held his family. Twenty-Two years away from this body. He looked down at his hands, gripping his right hand into a fist before slowly unclenching it.

Not sure what his daughter might be going by now, Franz looked back at the colorful Google logo and typed in Jérémie Belpois. His eyes were assaulted with a list of responses for the name as he started scrolling through the data. He found the name attached to some government papers, those catching his attention, before he found a site advertising they knew where he lived. Not thinking too much of it, Franz pulled up the source code for the website and quickly found an address he was very familiar with.

Franz closed out of the window and took a last look at the woman he was trying to repair. His heart broke seeing her still damaged, but that heart had already been shattered more than twenty years ago when he had been led to believe he had killed her. There was still hope for his wife.

AN: I know, it's still short. It's a whole lot longer than it had originally been! The original chapter 1 was only a few paragraphs!

ODD: So are we in the future or the past?

AN: Well, I wrote the original version of this back in 2010 and 2011, so Future, but now it's been a few years since 2016 so Past? I had to change a few bits of technology here and there because I had added future ideas but they aren't here yet. My holographic CelPod will eventually become a thing!

ODD: CelPod? Really?

AN: What? It was a cellphone that looked like a blood cell and used holographic icons and voice recognition. I created that thing years ago.

Oh, for those of you who are probably think, hey, didn't this have another name? Yeah, originally it was called The End Battle. It's not that no more.