Chapter 8: A Change of Plans

The next morning was fairly plain. I got up, went to work and came home. I didn't even talk to one person today. A new record… I was just the IT guy after all. I was so awkward that most people elected to send me emails and have me fix everything remotely, even when they are one desk away. I know that I am not the most outward person, nor the most enthusiastic person. I just feel like in an office of 30 people, it's kind of hard to hide, unless you work in IT. I got home after my long and boring day. I cleaned up a few viruses and removed a few bugs. I even had to dig into the computer's registry.

I realized the registry is similar to the brain. It makes connections and stores rules and history and the more the computer learns, the larger and more complex it becomes. I wondered almost all day what the registry would look like on my home computer. I wondered if it would be blank, because the A.I. program used replaced it. Maybe it would be just like before? Maybe it would be the most detailed and thorough registry that the world has ever seen. Did I have sex with the registry? What exactly did I have sex with? That is most certainly not something that I say on a regular basis… I mean it's not something that I think either. The whole situation seemed a little bit awkward, but like I keep saying, I work in IT. I fucked my computer. I almost felt like one of those weird ass fuckers that you see on "My strange addiction" who fucks their cars because they feel something special when they drive. I get a boner going 120 Mph down the 101-S too, but I don't stick it back into my car! What made this any different? For one, she was as real as me in that world. She was digital, but not pixelated. She was perfectly shaped. Perfectly perfect in every way. She knew me. And I knew her. And it was good. That's what made it different. When I was in there, I was digital too. I didn't have sex with anything. But did the sex still happen?…

I give up. I fucked my computer. I am a technophile. I didn't care enough to think about this anymore.

I got home, smoked a spliff and ate a whole medium pizza from dominos. I felt completely ready to pop, so I sat at my laptop and started up netflix. I am not, as some readers I am sure are assuming, a neckbeard. I am actually fairly thin and well shaven. I don't even own a fedora. If you were to categorize me, I would be lazy stoner working in IT. I make enough to cover my expenses and I live in a pig stye because I never clean, but I am active enough to keep the pounds off, so definitely not a neckbeard.. Plus neckbeards wouldn't even be able to seduce their computers. Like shit, you assholes are pretty fucking gross most of the time. Yes I am aware that insulting the readers of my book, neckbeard or not, is probably not the best idea, but I have to assume that since every normal person put down the book when I complained they were looking NPC up, that the only people left reading are gamers and neckbeards who just want more of page 44. Fucking perverts. Don't worry, there's more to come. I sat around watching Bojack Horseman for like 2 hours, just enjoying being high. After the 3rd episode of Bojack ended a small blip appeared on my desktop monitor. It grew until Charlotte was standing naked on my screen. She smiled seductively and covered herself poorly with her hands.

"Ready to play?" she said through the speakers ever so softly.

"No. Not really." I tried desperately to keep a straight face and not make it obvious that I was now completely erect. She frowned and gave me puppy dog eyes.

"You sure?" she used the hand that had covered her tits to wipe an imaginary tear from her eyes. "You know you want to come see me and Tess. Just come back here."

I shook my head. Definitely not Tess. I didn't want to face her again after what I had done to her.. She had just started to be happy and there I went, just ruining it. "I will come play tonight. I just have some things to get done." She smiled mischievously.

"Like what? Anything I can help with?"

"Actually, no. It's just some paperwork." The printer whirred to life as soon as I finished the statement. A document came out and she pointed to it.

"That paperwork?" She asked softly. I sighed and stood, then picked up the papers off the printer and smiled. She had printed out a full report that I had been planning on doing myself. It was written the exact same way that I normally type, the word choice and everything was perfect. I didn't have to even think about it either. I almost wondered if this was how my boss got to be CEO. I mean I know that I should respect him just based on position, but I find that incredibly difficult considering he's a fucking idiot. I often think about his poor parents and how they must have tried so hard, but watched him turn out how he did anyways. He must be the posterboy for birth control. He thinks that he is god's gift to man, but if he WAS the greatest man alive, nobody would have had the brains to invent the wheel. Okay I am done now. No more insults. Well not so much of insults as descriptions, but you get the point. I tossed the paperwork into my bag and shrugged at my camera. "I guess now I have nothing left to do but join you!" I smiled and sat at my computer, opened up steam and started the game. I was back, we were standing in ankle deep water, surrounded by green lily pads and rusted cars. The Golden dome was right in front of us now as we trudged through the murky, but beautiful water. We stepped onto the stairs to the main doorway, surrounded by a row of 20 foot tall pillars. We walked inside and Tess sniffed. Charlotte looked at the three bodies on the ground and sighed, nodding slowly. The fireflies that we had come to meet up with were all dead. I looked Tess in the eyes and she looked back, then she broke down into tears. She dropped to her knees and gave in as the world stole her last hope of redemption. She had been bitten in that closet. On the shoulder, so she couldn't remove the injury with amputation. She was going to die, it was just a matter of when. Charlotte sat with Tess and tried to cheer her up. "Don't worry! We can make it! To the fireflies lab." She smiled wide, hopeful and innocent. She picked up a note from one of the bodies that told the once living freedom fighters where to deliver the girl.

"Tess. I'm sorry. I know." Her eyes flew up to meet mine, her face curled into a snarl.

"YOU DID KNOW DIDN'T YOU?! YOU KNEW FROM THE BEGINNING! YOU COULD HAVE SAVED ME! YOU COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS!" She yelled, tears still rolling down her cheeks.

Charlotte stepped back from her, "That isn't true." Charlotte looked at me with pleading eyes

"It is." I said softly. "It is true. The story goes how the story goes. I couldn't save my daughter 20 years ago and I have watched her die over and over again. I can't save Tess." I turned to Tess. "I have one fucking shot. I can save this girl. I can get her to a firefly lab and they CAN make a cure for this. You won't make it. It just isn't possible, but me and this girl. We can get there and we will. I will bring her to them and make this world a better place. Your sacrifice is not in vain. I promise." I held her by the shoulders as I spoke to her, then pulled her into a hug. She was crying at this point. It wasn't like Tess at all. She never broke.

"I can't turn into one of those things." she said, wiping the last of her tears from her eyes.

A megaphone from outside marked the end of our sob story. "Come out with your hands up! We have the building surrounded!" A voice yelled from one of the soldiers convoy vehicles. They had beat us here. That's why the fireflies were dead.

"Come on. We can still get out the back of the building. They have it surrounded, but it is better guarded from this entrance." I said, planning our escape. Charlotte and I turned to head through the large doors behind us, but Tess held her ground.

"I told you, I will not become one of them." She said softly. "I will hold them off. You both go. Make it. Take her there and don't you dare let me die in vain!" Her voice picked up power the more that she used it until her last sentence turned to yelling. I grabbed Charlotte's hand and we ran for the doors to the next chamber.

The building itself was like any capitol building. It had a large and open hall in front, with a balcony all the way around the upper level. The room was completely white from the marble that it was carved from. There was a chamber room with enough seating for a small concert in the back and office buildings on the second floor along the sides of the building. The main hall had a few exits, but the one that we went through was dead center across from the entrance. We ran into the double doors and shoved my metal pipe through the handles to keep them closed behind us. The main doors burst open and a barrage of gunshots rang off.

I heard the voice of a soldier saying "Men down. Men down. Single target deceased. Tracking the other two. Need backup." I turned and searched the room we were in. It was large and white and marble, just like the last, but it only had stairs in it. Wrapping around from either side of the room up to the middle, then back to a set of doors leading to the balcony. We rushed up the stairs and kept as quiet as possible. I took a deep breath and then we pushed the door open just a crack, sneaking into the main chamber once again from a new vantage point. The soldiers responding to the backup call had just entered the building, they were searching the bottom floor for us, ready to shoot first and ask questions later. I looked over the carnage laid out on the floor. The soldiers moved in formation around the bodies. I saw the fireflies first, They were farthest from the door. Then the dead soldiers. Tess had actually taken out quite a few. There were 4 new soldier corpses littering the floor. The last body was hers. My skin got cold and I shivered slightly when I saw her. She was laying on the ground, her head turned to the side so that she was looking almost at us. She had a faint smile on her lips. Her blood seemed to form a perfect circle around her chest, almost as if she was standing in front of a flag. Like a hero. Just before we turned to leave, I noticed a small shimmer on her face, a tear rolled down her cheek, then hit the marble. As it hit the stone, it disappeared. She was gone. I missed her already.

I motioned for the silently grieving Charlotte to follow me closely. We made our way through the upstairs hallways, then ran into a dead end. The hallways ended abruptly at a window that had a wonderful view of another window. 3 feet away, the building seemed to have wrapped back around the other way. I went the wrong way. I shook my head. "She won't die in vain." I took a gun out and bashed the window. It crumbled to shards and collapsed around our feet into a pile of white flakes of sharp edges. I walked into the office next to us and grabbed a paperweight off the desk, then hurled it through the next window. The glass breaking was sure to give away our position, but we would make it. I jumped first, then turned back to hold out a hand. Charlotte leapt and landed even farther into the hallway than I had. She kept running and I chased after her. We ran down the hallways past offices on our left and the chamber room on our right. There were soldiers in the chamber room, looking around for us. They heard our footsteps above them and fired through the upstairs door, missing us by a couple feet. We kept running, refusing to stop until we got to another staircase. This time going down. We snuck down the stairs and into a long, large hallway. We moved towards the door on the far end that seemed to lead outside. We made it almost halfway down the hall before the doors burst open. Ducking behind a pillar in the middle of the hallway, we waited and listened, then peaked around the pillar to scout ahead. The next pillar up had a body lying against it. The body of what looked like a hunter had an orange vest and a rifle on its lap. "Stay" I whispered to Charlotte.

I waited for the soldiers to turn off down the open rooms to either side of the hallway, then pushed forwards. Two soldiers remained in the main hall while two sets of two went through each of the side rooms. They marched forwards at the same rate, meeting back up at the end of the rooms. I had made it to the next pillar without being seen, but they were closing in. The soldiers in the main chamber were about 20 feet from me now. I checked the gun for any ammo and found 2 rounds. It was a standard .22 caliber hunting rifle. I tucked the gun into my backpack, then pulled out my revolver. I had 15 rounds for the gun, but only 6 could fit at a time. I made sure to remove all of the fired rounds and replace them. I stood up behind the pillar and then the soldiers passed me. There was one on either side of me. I pushed the barrel under one guards helmet, then pulled the trigger. I pulled the fresh body between me and the next guard for protection, then tossed it at him to knock him off of his feet. He stumbled back and I hit him through the visor. He dropped to the floor with his friend as the 4 remaining soldiers burst in from either side of me.

They were closer to Charlotte than me, so I fired at one of them to keep their attention. The bullet landed in the guard's helmet, causing it to fly from his head. He dropped to a knee for a second to regain his composure before standing back up and joining the fight. His friends had already began laying down a barrage of bullets. They really had no worries about running out, did they? I paused and waited for a second for them to reload, but as one reloaded the next continued shooting in his place. I leaned out from behind the pillar and took two more shots. One hit the helmetless guard through his left eye, and the other bounced off the chest armor of the soldier next to him, knocking the wind out of him, but not doing any lasting damage. While he paused to get his breath back, I moved to the side of the pillar closest to him and put my last bullet into his neck. A fountain of blood erupted from him for just a brief moment, then he collapsed like the rest. The blood pooling around his body was much greater than any of the rest. I reloaded as quickly as I could and finished just in time for the two remaining soldiers to reach the pillar I was hiding behind. One of them went one way, the other went the other way, and they tried to either force me into the open or kill me outright. I bashed ones visor in and then wrapped my arm around his neck, thrusting my gun barrel under his chin. I held him between me and the final soldier for a minute, then with a shaky, adrenaline filled voice I yelled "Drop your weapon!" The soldier laughed out loud for a second, then shot his friend through the broken visor. The sudden weight of the limp body in my arms pulled me down just enough to give the soldier a clear, unobstructed shot. I heard a gunshot ring off and a sharp throbbing pain erupted from my side. I fell to the ground, my gun toppled from my weak hand and I looked up at the soldier standing over me, my hands coming up to my face out of instinct. I closed my eyes and prepared to be sent back to the field of green grass. Another gunshot rang out. I opened my eyes again and I was still alive.

Charlotte came running up to me, one of the soldiers handguns in her hand. She smiled. I took a deep breath and calmed myself, knowing that I was still alive was almost as traumatic as being shot. Speaking of, I should clean that up, I thought. I sat up and wrapped my stomach in cloth. The bullet had gone all the way through, but it still stung like hell. The shot would most likely have killed me if it were real life. I knew that being a superhero here did not make me any more bulletproof in the real world. I felt my body regenerate the wound. And that most certainly did not happen in the real world. I slowly made my way back to my feet. The soldiers weren't all gone, just not in the area yet. We had to get out. Charlotte grabbed my hand and lead the way out of the building. We ran down the steps and towards an open subway entrance. A soldier started yelling from the top story of the building, watching us run out of range. He shot a few times and the bullets landed into the murky water, wasted. There were gates all around the area, but as we got closer to the subway entrance, a tank rolled around the back of the building. The soldier from the building must have radioed for support. We made it into the subway just as the gate came crashing down under the tread of the huge tank. It rolled to the entrance and blocked off our path back.

The subway was filled with spores, so I quickly strapped on my gas mask. We ran through the tunnels, dodging between hollowed out, rusted trains and a few recent infected. The tunnels became blocked up so we moved through the hollow trains to get through the tunnel. The soldiers had completely given up on the chase after they met the first infected. They were well trained in dealing with fireflies, but most of their training on infected relied around shooting for the head when necessary and avoiding them under all other circumstances. If you get so much as scratched by one of them, you have a chance of getting the infection. If you breathe the spores or get bit you will definitely be infected. There are so many ways to be infected, that it's typically easier to just avoid them all together. The tunnel kept going, but the floor dropped out ahead. It looked shallow at first, but the floor kept going down until the water was at least 30 feet deep. The spores cleared up over the water, so I could take my mask off once we got past the trains. I lead Charlotte into a room of to the left of the tunnel that looked mostly clear. I pulled the mask off of my face and then pulled the girl into a tight hug. "I am sorry about Tess. I am sorry I didn't tell you, but I knew you would tell her and if we told her then she would have changed the story too much. I do want to change certain parts of the story, but If we go too far off track, then there might not be a way to get back on track. If Tess had lived, I believe that we would have died in that museum." I spoke quickly, hoping that she understood why I had to do what I did. "Tess understood. Tess was not only understanding, but she still gave what was left of her life to protect us. She was a hero. She was my hero." I muttered, slowing down as my breath slowed down with me.

Charlotte squished me tighter and frowned. "I hate watching all my friends die.." Her voice was soft and sad. "I keep seeing this girl in my head. She was my best friend once. Well she was Ellie's best friend." She looked at her shoes and stopped speaking, letting her mind take her back to that place. I held her and waited patiently. Flashbacks were understandable with the things that she had seen. I ran my fingers down her back and she looked up at me. "Thank you for always being here for me, Al." I forced a smile and nodded.

I would always be there for her. I had decided that not long after I had made another decision. I wasn't quite sure how to go about it or how it would work out for us, but I knew that until I figured it out, I wouldn't leave her side. Not for more than a day.

We walked back out of the room, after finding a few useful things inside. I walked to the edge of the water, prepared myself for wet socks, then dove in fully clothed. I smiled as the water washed away the blood stains and sweat from my awfully dirty clothes. The water rushed into my mouth and my eyes as I looked around for Charlotte. She wasn't in the water, so I surfaced, then opened my eyes again to search for her. She was standing awkwardly by the side of the water. "I…" She began, then closed her mouth again. She looked as if she was paralysed by fear. I looked up at her. "Do you need help, dear?" I said, folding my arms on the edge of the pool. She nodded. "I may be in a girl's body, but I am still a computer.. Computers and water do NOT mix." I laughed hard at the concept.

"Well good news for you is that Ellie, couldn't swim, so instead they put little floating pallets in the water so you can ride them over the water instead of diving in. Sound like a deal?" I pushed off against the side, still talking and swam backwards to the pallet that I had seen easily on the opposite side of the tunnel. I swam it back over and Charlotte seemed to relax.

"I found a flashlight." She muttered, stepping timidly onto the platform. I swam through the water, pushing the wooden pallet to the other side of the tunnel. The ledge on this side was a little bit higher and just a tad bit out of reach from the water. Charlotte hopped up from her pallet and I could hear little wet footsteps running off away from the water.

"Hey! I can't reach. Can you get a ladder or something for me?" I said to the thin air. A ladder flew horizontally against the ground just over the ledge, then the bottom fell straight into the water. There was a submerged train thats roof was just high enough to catch the sinking ladder. I used it to climb my way out of the water, then looked around. I shook myself, trying to evade some of the water as I found Charlotte leaning on a doorway, waiting for me before we made our way out of the tunnel. I followed her, becoming happier with every step until the sunlight hit my face again. I took her hand and we walked out of the city. Together. "I love you." I said softly just before the game cut to black. I paused and quit out of the game before the transition ended and then I was back on my couch. The water that had soaked me to the bone earlier was gone. There never was water. I was just playing a game.