001 00110 Leisure

'Tell me again, why are you dragging me along for your date?' Kanda asked irritated as they were making their way through the grounds of Batcave Industries and towards the mediatheque, a small building furthest from the street.

'I told you already it's not a date,' Lavi said with his trademark, easy going smile, while inside he was a nervous wreck. He did agree to the meeting because he basically had no choice: either he'd do it voluntarily or they'd drag him by force, even if no words like that were said. But he knew it. And he wanted someone to keep an eye on him. Someone to pull him out if things went wrong. Just in case.

'Yeah right,' the grumpy words snapped him out of his grim thoughts and he grinned at his friend. He ignored the biting "date in your work place, brilliant" comment with a snicker as he unlocked the doors with a code and a fingerprint. He chose the place for a few reasons. First of all, they would be there completely alone and hell knows what the girl would try doing! Not that he planned to let her anyway. He also wanted to meet in the mediatheque because, even when closed, it was emitting the constant buzz of information flowing in and out, jamming and mixing all particular connections. It was just easier to stay unnoticed in the crowd.

They entered and went up to the office on the top floor. With a heavy sigh Lavi fell down onto the huge chair behind the desk. He switched the floor to ceiling windows into a one way view mode and watched the scenery outside. One of the glazing was overlooking the calm lake and a forest around it. He knew that beyond the trees there was a half-abandoned housing area, in ruin after most of the people moved within the walls of the City years before. It was now being swallowed by nature, despite the hopeless struggle of the poor who lived there, and eventually would turn into relic of past high speed development. And he thought the end fit it perfectly.

On the other side of the mediatheque building, there was the Batcave Industries main building with the club and offices and apartments. It was vibrating with life and lights as people started flooding in for the evening of great fun. It sure would be fun for him as well-

He frowned when he noticed Kanda look around cautiously. Only then he heard a slightly louder buzz of devices downstairs. He got up to check what was happening, but then, without his initiative, the lightscreen over the desk appeared and from it Alice was grinning at him. He stared back at her stunned.

'It's so hard to get to you when you're all aware!' she chirped away. 'Well, I admit, you are just proficient in blocking the connection but that only proves your worth-'

'How did you do that?' Lavi interrupted her, uncertain if he should be amazed or worried. The giggle did nothing to solve his distress.

'You know, a building that is basically drowning in Connex is no problem for me,' she explained. 'Reaching it is way too simple and then I just had to read the cameras to find you and pop up in the right place-'

'I said I wanted to talk to you in person,' Lavi reminded her, now getting annoyed with her cockiness.

'I'm on my way, silly, I just wanted a nice introduction to the party!'

'Log off from here,' he ordered and she giggled at that.

'Make me,' she teased and he glared at her as he only could. He wasted no time and went to the control panel by the doors. He ignored her complaints at moving out of her current vision range and tapped in the long code into the keyboard. With a whine-like sound, all the equipment in mediatheque died down and a ringing silence surrounded them.

Maintenance system reacted in precisely ten seconds and started reviving everything into a stand by mode one by one. The electric buzz resumed, although quieter, when the backup was running a check for the cause of the breakdown before resuming full operative power of computers.

'Not that I know much about the Connex shit,' Kanda started quietly and suspiciously. 'But that was not a usual thing to do.' Lavi winced at the words as he got more of the meaning that was said. He would have to explain everything to him if he wanted his help.

'No, she's hacking through the whole Connex wide and far,' he admitted waving away the piercing glare.

'What does she want from you?' Lavi sighted at the question and looked up straight at Yuu.

'I don't know. Yet,' he replied. 'That's why I invited her here to get to know that.'

'Then what do you need me here for? I have no idea about the stuff.'

'I need Yuu to keep guard,' Lavi replied with a playful smile, covering up for his worries. Kanda was about to say something biting at that, judging by the glare, but then a small screen lit up by the doors, revealing a figure at the entrance to the mediatheque. Alice was standing there, smiling brightly at the camera, her black shorts and a white shirt with a big bow by the collar making her look like an innocent schoolgirl. The electric blue sparkle in her eyes said otherwise.

Lavi pressed the right buttons and the doors opened, letting her in. She sped up the stairs and all but jumped at him and hugged him in a tight embrace. In the very moment he saw the eruption of blue glow all around them.

Furious, he pushed her away and making the Connex glow disappear.

'Don't fuck with me,' he hissed, his teeth clenched in the effort to fight down the urge to scratch his suddenly itchy right eye socket. He walked away and sat down on the chair.

Alice watched him go and then followed, taking place on the table in front of him.

'You are aware that if I won't someone else will do that soon,' she said sounding serious for once, her eyes calm but not losing the bluish spark. Lavi considered her for a moment. He leaned forward and pulled her hair back at the sides, revealing the discrete piece of headgear over her one ear and connecting with the other. He searched for the tiny switch in the back of the equipment and turned it off, noticing well how she shivered upon being logged off Connex. She said nothing, however, and he gently took off the headgear and put it away onto the table. Then, he leaned back comfortably in his chair, crossed his arms and pinned her with his one-eyed glare.

'What do you want from me?' he asked in his best business-like tone and hid well his worries when he saw her lips split in a huge grin that was not all that pleasant.

'We want you,' she said merrily. 'We want your ability to log on and off without any unnecessary equipment. We want the splendid possibilities your special gear offers.'

'But I don't want to be pulled into whatever you're doing,' he replied sternly. 'I enjoy my life as it is, as far from the damn net as I can only get.'

'You are never far from it,' she pointed out truthfully. 'Otherwise I would have never found you in Inner. They would never be able to track you down.' He frowned at her and urged her to elaborate. 'They keep an eye on you in the club to see if you're behaving well. They probably wait for the best moment to take you back with Them and use you to Their needs, to what They made you for-'

'What the hell are you talking about?' Kanda butted in suddenly and only then Alice seemed to notice his presence. She gazed at him surprised while Lavi looked away feeling highly uncomfortable.

'Well look at you, pretty,' the girl chirped under his glare. 'Your lack of digital presence made you effectively invisible to me before.' Yuu frowned at her but then ignored and turned straight to the redhead.

'What is she talking about?' he demanded and Lavi sighted resigned. He knew it'd come to this one of the days. Slowly, he took off his eyepatch and pulled back the hair falling down his face. He opened his right eye and with the left he watched Kanda's face turn from annoyance to genuine surprise tinged with a fair bit of distaste. Well, he couldn't blame the other for the reaction, knowing how he despised the whole Connex as an idea. And here he had his friend, looking at him with a shiny metal sphere instead on an eye, clearly high technology fixed into his body. And from the previous talk he could surely guess that it was an instant and constant way into the Connex that could be used freely. He hated his life at times like that.

'The hell is that, idiot rabbit?' Yuu asked incredulously, a tinge of betrayal clearly audible in his voice. It hurt, but he knew he deserved it. It was a huge secret that he kept for himself for years, never really meaning to share it. He had a few good reasons for that.

'A leash I can't get rid off if I still want to live,' he replied nervously. He was about to continue on the matter but he was distracted by the flashing, small light on Alice's headgear. He frowned at it and then at her. 'I switched it off,' he pointed out accusingly.

'You can never switch it off completely,' she said thoughtfully. 'And this spells danger. Can I use the computer here?' she asked and almost did not wait for his nod. She hopped off the table and called up the lightscreen. She worked fast on numbers and commands while the two of them watched her carefully trying to follow her actions.

'There,' she said when she finally stopped her work with a view on Batcave club on the lightscreen. She pointed at a group of four guys sitting motionlessly at a table. 'You'd call them connaddicts, we call them Fronts. My guess is that the warning meant that the system took them over and will use them now as the front of their surveillance. On you, most likely,' she added giving him a brief glance. 'We eliminate them all the time and they still keep popping up like crazy.'

'You what?' Lavi asked not liking the meaning the words could carry. However, whatever answer he'd get, none came, when they saw the guys wake up and move in one direction. Like dolls.

Alice worked on the views and cameras and soon they saw someone rushing through the crowd, making their escape from the club-

'Sharon?' Lavi asked out loud surprised. Why would They chase her if she was working for Connex? Did she do something-

'Hey guy,' Alice's words made him look at her and he saw she had her gear back on and was talking to it. 'Your bird is being chased. Yes, I'm here.' She gazed at Lavi with a small smile. 'Yes. Ok, deal. See you.' She stared straight at him. 'I need your help to get the chic out of trouble. At least, out of the bigger trouble that are the Fronts on her tail.' The redhead frowned at her.

'What help?' Alice grinned.

'I need you to take both of us to Inner so we can hunt the hunter and push the prey into the right place.' Lavi sighted.

'I have the impression I'm being framed,' he muttered and the wide smile on the girls face was all the confirmation he needed. Fuck this life.

Alice sat on the table and held out her hands and he took them only with the smallest hesitation. He looked up at Yuu and met the confused glare that was still laced with hurt.

'Keep your eyes open,' he said with his best pleading tone and the next thing he knew they were surrounded by delicate bluish glow of Inner. Alice hopped off the table and looked around carefully while he was examining his own hands. This was so weird, he thought and then, nudged by a sudden impulse, looked up. Yuu was not there. Not even the faintest shadow where he stood. Gross, he thought and shivered.

He turned around when Alice called him and said they were going. She looked like she was holding something, an invisible thread, and she stretched a hand towards him. He took it and then everything blurred in electric blue and gray.

Images appeared and disappeared in fast sequence and it made him nauseous, figuratively speaking, as he had no stomach here to be turned upside down. Which was good. In a way.

The vision stopped and he recognized the place as the outer side of the East Gate. He gazed ahead and saw a view that made his eye widen. There was a half-formed, desaturated shadow speeding their way, chased by three damn solid riders on their bikes. What the hell?

Alice raised her hand up and aimed at the shadow up front. There was a delicate gleam passing over it and for the briefest moment he saw it take a solid form: it was Sharon. The definite shape disappeared and the shadow and its pursuit passed by them with no sound or movement of air.

'Let's get to their destination,' Alice said cheerfully.

'What did you do?' he asked before letting her pull him again. She frowned, probably at the lack of reaction to her movement command, and then looked at him with a sigh.

'I placed a suggestion to navigation app in her motorbike. It will take her where we want and are able to control the events,' she replied patiently.

'We! Who are you people anyway?' he exclaimed exasperated and her wide grin unnerved him.

'You'll see for yourself soon,' she assured him. 'And now let's get going to be there before our pray,' she added and this time he let her pull him along.

After a set of subsequent images they stopped at the entrance to the Old Square. Alice pulled him into a building and they went up to the first floor. They took their places by the knocked out window overlooking the Square and had no time to talk. Soon, the shadow slid into the very centre and stopped there. It was constantly changing between the shapeless mass and a solid outline and it was seriously making him feel sick. Not only from the visual effects but also the awareness that everybody was floating between the digital and real constantly. It had to make people go crazy. It was making him go nuts.

He shook his head and watched how the pursuers entered the Square.

'Got it,' he heard Alice say but before he asked her what it meant, he felt a deep vibration shake the digital solid landscape. He felt it resonate in every cell of his body and he heard, at the edge of his hearing range, a terrifying static of wails and cries of thousands of voices. He pressed his hands against his ears and willed the Noise to die away.

He watched numbly how Alice got up and walked to the window, he saw her aim at the pursuers with a smirk. He watched them tremble and wither away into nothingness in a matter of seconds. He blinked away his surprise and worry and then realized the static was gone.

A painful cry tore the momentary silence and, where the shadow once have been, he saw Sharon flicker into existence, screaming her lungs out. Soon enough, she fell limp in the arms of someone holding her. However, before Lavi registered anything else then a mass of white and violet he felt a tug at his arm. Immediately he realized what it was.

He grabbed Alice's hand, ignoring her questioning gaze, and used all his will to bring them back to the surface.

His awareness returned to his body with a heavy weight and he gasped surprised. He blinked his vision back and saw that pulling the girl out he actually managed to pull her onto his lap. However, before the implications of their position reached him, he felt an iron squeeze on his arm and heard the unmistakable sound of glass shattering downstairs. The doors.

He gazed up at Kanda's attentive face and when their eyes met they spelled the same thing: fucking danger.