Previously on AU Oneshots: Lloyd X Nya
Request: a futuristic world where everyone has computer chips in their wrists that act like credit cards and phones at the same time. Lloyds chip gets hacked and makes him say pop up ads all the time. like when Morro possessed Lloyd. And one of the ninjas helped him get it out.
Requested by: Elbert The Cookie
Warnings: N/A
Pairings: N/A
AU: Futuristic AU
A/N: Cole isn't in this. If I write a sequel, I'll add him- as a separate plot. Also, this became delightfully Other Side reminiscent, and I love it.
NOTE: THIS STORY CONTAINS ASPECTS OF CUTTING IF YOU ARE SQUEAMISH ABOUT SCRAPING OFF SKIN CELLS, CUTTING YOURSELF, OR OTHER SIMILAR THINGS, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED
Hacked
"Have your chips ever glitched out?" Lloyd asked his friends one chilly morning in Ninjago city.
All five of them, Nya, Kai, Zane, Jay, and… Lloyd himself, obviously, were sitting in their seats, waiting for class to begin. Ninjago City was one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world. Outside, air trains and self-driving cars swarmed past. In front of each student sat a tablet computer with a stylus, connecting them to the vast internet ahead of them.
In the year 2088, a law was passed that encouraged online school, and with the influx of androids and robots, digital teachers mainly controlled each class. Students did meet once a week for a physical lesson, mostly in psychology, as studies had proved this helpful.
"No, why?" Nya asked, kicking her feet against the white tile floor of the classroom, leaving a grey scuff mark. "Is yours glitching?"
"Mine did once," Zane answered. "It was terrifying, but my father took me to the hospital, and they fixed it."
"What was that like?" Kai asked, instantly interested by the prospect of something 'cool' happening. "Did it hurt? Did it feel weird?"
"It didn't hurt," Zane shrugged, "But it put me into a MIC for a few days until the doctors and surgeons could fix it."
"Why'd it happen?" Jay asked, sitting on his knees and leaning forward to chat with his friends. "And what's a MIC?"
"Medically induced coma," Nya answered Jay.
"There was a glitch a couple of years ago that only affected 1/10000 citizen chips. I just… happened to be unlucky, I suppose."
The group fell silent, pondering what Zane had said. Lloyd secretly rubbed the tiny steel chip under the skin of his wrist, wondering if that was happening to him too. Lately, he'd begun to get weird messages and thoughts in his head that didn't belong to him.
"Why'd you-" Nya started, but she was cut off as their teacher walked into the room.
"Welcome, students," Mr. Wu smiled at the children in his classroom. "I apologize for being so late today, there was an incident with the air trains, which I'm sure you've already known about."
The class mumbled in agreement. Chips transmitted the latest news and stories, so everyone was always up-to-date with information. The latest information about the wars in the southeast to the newest funny texts and cat videos was always at citizen's fingertips- or rather, in them.
Wu straightened his shirt and looked over the class. "As you all know, the curriculum required that we have at least five student-led discussion days a semester. How do all of you feel about completing our first one today?"
Kai shrugged "Sounds good to me."
"I'm fine with it," Jay added.
Nya shrugged, and Zane nodded.
Lloyd bit his lip. "Sure, I guess. What are we going to talk about?"
"That's up to you all to decide," Wu smiled. "Does anyone have any ideas?" While talking, he hit a button on the teacher's desk, then entered a keycode and scanned his chip, allowing all of the desks in the room to neatly slide into a circle so the class could see each other's faces.
"We could talk about Starf-" Jay started, but he was cut off by Kai.
"Oh for the love of the First Spinjitzu Master, NO!" Kai snapped. "This isn't Comic-Con!"
"You don't need to be at Comic-Con to talk about Starfarerer, farthead," Jay folded his arms, looking way too uppity to have just called his classmate 'farthead'. "You can talk about it whenever you want."
Kai looked like he was about to call Jay something worse than 'farthead', but fortunately, Nya switched the subject before he could try anything. "Is it possible to get a virus in your chip?" She asked.
Wu brightened. "It is actually possible. I'm glad you brought that up, Nya." He sat down at the teacher's chair and turned on the hologram projector in the center of the room, displaying a couple of bright lines of code. "This is a strand of coding from one of those such 'viruses'. The M.O.R.R.O program."
Morro? Lloyd spelled out in his head. Have I heard that before?
"Why would someone write a program to intentionally harm others?" Zane asked, his eyebrows knitting together nervously. "And… what did it do?"
Wu smiled. "Good question, Zane. This particular program wasn't made to hurt people. Many years ago, probably before you all were born, I helped develop M.O.R.R.O for Kryptarium prison. When the program detects violence, it creates an electrical shock that can eventually immobilize a prisoner. When two prisoners would fight, the virus would jump to the other fighter's chip, eventually stopping riots."
"Why was it a virus?" Nya tapped her stylus against her desk. "It sounds like it could work pretty well."
Wu sighed deeply. "Nowadays, we have measures in place to defend against coded strands becoming sentient, and when we do, they are particularly programmed in that way. M.O.R.R.O existed before those safeguards. Even though the guards had a blocking program running on their chips, the police did not, and when a police officer tried to help with an escapee, M.O.R.R.O was transmitted to him and it spread from there. The virus was smart, it could replicate advertisements and news, urging those it affected to be even more violent, as that would cause it to spread. It worked similarly to an actual virus."
"How'd they stop it?" Jay asked, sitting on his knees to see the coded strands better. "Is it gone forever?"
Wu nodded slightly, opening a search engine page. "The virus has a manual deactivation Killcode, that's also a part of the central programming. This was put in place so if M.O.R.R.O became sentient, it couldn't reverse or change the code. A genius work of coding if I do say so myself."
The class shuffled around, looking at one another. Finally, Kai opened his mouth. "Does M.O.R.R.O still exist anywhere, or did they eradicate it?"
Wu shut down the projector. "The Ninjago City museum currently holds the last strain of the M.O.R.R.O Program in their Online Relics area.-"
"The Online Relics Area?" Lloyd interrupted panic beginning to build in his chest. "Is that the rooms with the statues and armor?"
"Oh, why yes," Wu nodded. "You've been there with your mother, haven't you?"
But Lloyd wasn't listening. Panic was throbbing in his body as he gripped the edges of his desk nervously, his knuckles turning white. He remembered that morning in the museum. He remembered knocking over a display case. He remembered a dragon-shaped glass bottle with a USB port shattering on the floor. But after that… nothing.
"What would happen, if, uh, hypothetically, someone, um, got the M.O.R.R.O program in their chip?" Lloyd asked, barely able to choke out the question through his hyperventilating.
"Well, it wouldn't activate very quickly," Wu answered. "The M.O.R.R.O program only activates after the holder gets into a fight or commits an act of violence, even in self-defense."
Lloyd nodded, sighing in relief. He hadn't fought anyone since that day at the museum, so all he had to do was head to the hospital to have them enter the killcode to his chip. Easy.
If only he could've known how dangerous M.O.R.R.O could be.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Lloyd was so stupid. He was an idiot. He was so dumb to think he could just get home without incident. But no. Playing around with Kai and Jay on the way to the air trains, he had shoved Kai a little too hard and felt it for the first time. A shock. A tiny jolt of electricity in his wrist. Panic began to spike through him as he ran home from the air train stop.
Running inside, he threw his backpack on the floor of his room and ran to his parent's room. Digging under their bed, he found his mom's antique apple laptop and pulled it out. Opening it up, he typed in the password (which was just the date they'd gotten it) and opened Chrome. Trembling, he tried to calm himself. He was allowed on this laptop, as long as he didn't break it. Was he worried about the virus? All he had to do was look up the killcode, and then everything would be fine.
He took a breath, then began typing 'M.O.R.R.O Virus Killcode' into the search engine. Before he could hit enter, however, his arm froze, chip buzzing.
Nervously, Lloyd opened the hologram on his wrist and selected 'messages'.
"INTERNAL ERROR MESSAGE: PLEASE CONTACT YOUR MANUFACTURER IF MISREAD AS SPAM" Was scrolling across the screen. Lloyd bit his lip, then selected 'open anyway' and braced himself for the message.
The only thing written there were the words "I wouldn't do that if I were you."
Lloyd stared at it for a few seconds, before closing the message and looking back at the laptop screen. It was probably just a joke message to scare him. Maybe it was a prank. Maybe Jay did it. Yeah. That made sense. Jay was good with electronics. It was probably just a prank.
Lloyd hit enter-
PAIN.
PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN PAIN.
Lloyd trids to scream but his convulsing, electrified body didn't let him. He could barely breathe. He could barely move. Everything hurt… so, so, bad…
Finally, the pain receded, and Lloyd was left sobbing on the carpet, staring at his arm, lying in an odd position, his neck crooked weird.
The messages lit up again, and from the same number: "I told you. I'm a virus. I can possess anything."
Lloyd rubbed his aching head, and in a blind panic, he opened the settings function of the chip, swiping through until he found 'shut down options'. Selecting that, he scrolled quickly down until he found 'routine maintenance manual shutdown'. He pressed the button and felt the chip slowly power down.
Sighing, Lloyd blinked, the whirring sounds that normally filled his ears gone. He stared at his wrist, horrified. He couldn't enter the code without turning on the chip, but when he turned on the chip, M.O.R.R.O could gain control of his body.
Panicking, Lloyd observed his arm. Chips were embedded into the epidermis, the top layer of the skin, meaning Lloyd could probably get it out if he tried.
Shutting the laptop, he ran towards his room, laptop in tow, and grabbed some supplies from the bathroom, a pin, a pair of tweezers, and a nail clipper.
Sitting on the floor of his room, he grabbed the nail clippers in his hand, his hand shaking. He willed it to stop, then nervously nipped his own skin.
Nothing happened.
Lloyd tried a couple more times, before grabbing the pin and gingerly stabbing himself until he felt the chip. It was tiny, only 5 mm wide and 2 long. It was thin, too, very thin. Fortunately, he didn't bleed, as the chip was so lightly in that it didn't touch any blood vessels.
Grabbing the tweezers, he dug around for a second but began to panic when he just pushed it in further.
Panicking, he tried to grab it and cut himself. Glaring, he slammed down the tweezers and sat back on his ankles, about to cry.
Just then, the doorbell rang.
Lloyd panicked, shoving the tweezers and pin under his bed and leapt up, running through the apartment. "ALEXA, UNLOCK THE FRONT DOOR!"
He arrived, gasping, and opened the door to see Kai and Jay standing at the door.
"You wanna hang?" Kai asked, looking over Jay's head. "Sorry Nya's not here, she had Tiquando lessons."
"Uh…" Lloyd though for a few seconds. If he let them in, they could help, but he didn't want to get them infected. "Um…"
"We could play smash at your house?" Jay suggested. "Y'know, because you have that cool Nintendo Switch One!"
"Uh, yeah!" Lloyd jumped at the idea. If his friends were here, that made him feel a lot safer, and a lot less likely to have to deal with M.O.R.R.O. "C'mon in."
Jay looked around curiously, constantly freaking out over old electronic relics in the house. Quote: "Woah, is that a second-gen smart fridge?" "Awesome, a flip phone!" "YOU GUYS HAVE AN ALEXA!?"
This led to a disgruntled Kai punching him to get him to shut up. "Hey, I texted you. Why didn't you answer?"
Lloyd pinked. "Um, no reason." He bit his lip. "Oh, look, we're in the living room. You guys wanna get set up, I need to grab something from my room."
Jogging away from his friends, Lloyd grabbed the computer, and the tweezers, before stabbing at the chip once again.
It buzzed in his arm, and a strangely artificial voice spoke through his earpieces. "Did you really think that shutting down your chip could stop me? Do you know how many prisoners tried that?"
Finally giving into his overwhelming panic, Lloyd screamed as the M.O.R.R.O voice in his head began to laugh, shocking the air out of his lungs. He tried to scream again but choked on his own saliva.
Morro laughed, taunting him. "You're so sweet. So innocent. I don't think I'll kill you quite yet." He purred, his angry artificial voice bleeding into Lloyd's brain.
Lloyd tried to cry, but only tears spilled from his eyes. He vaguely spotted Kai and Jay running into his room, panicking and grabbing at him, and then, nothing.
"WHAT'S WRONG WITH HIM!?" Kai panicked, grabbing his convulsing friend as Jay snatched up the laptop, flinging it open after checking the bottom, then entering the password.
"And… how'd you know that?" Kai asked, wrinkling his nose as a nervous Jay looked over the open Google Chrome page.
"He's got M.O.R.R.O," Jay squeaked. "We have to help him!"
"I don't know how?!" Kai snapped, moving Lloyd to the bed. "Can't we just remove his chip? It looks like he was trying to do that himself!"
"No, that'll make it worse," Jay opened a program and clicked through a couple of puzzles with hedges and odd-looking letters. "Okay… FSM there's a firewall!?"
"What are you doing? Lloyd is hurting and you're play-"
"I'm trying to help him!" Jay snarled, surprising Kai. "Firewall, firewall… uh… there!" He tapped in a code, breaking through into random code. "This is the code behind Lloyd's chip. All I need to do is locate M.O.R.R.O."
They spent a few tense seconds scrolling through code until Jay discovered the input and entered the code. "This should fix it!"
The code didn't do anything.
"WHat do we do!?" Kai shouted, tears streaming from his eyes as he tried to hold a convulsing Lloyd. "He could DIE!"
"I KNOW!?" Jay was practically in tears at this point. "It was supposed to work! WHY ISN'T IT WORKING!?"
Kai grabbed one of Lloyd's earpieces and paled. "You have to hear this." He handed the small, white earbud to Jay, who took a listen.
"Your friends are fools if they think that code will stop me, I am the greatest virus ever born, the can't-" Jay dropped the earbud, and grabbed the mouse, scrolling down while scanning the code.
"What is it?" Kai asked, looking over his shoulder.
"The source code!" Jay answered, searching through a few more lines of code. "The killcode doesn't need to be entered…" He selected a line of code and pressed 'delete'. "It needs to be removed."
The second the code was missing, a horrible screech issued from Lloyd's earpieces, slowly dying out as the rest of the code simultaneously self-destructed.
Lloyd slowly stopped convulsing, but as Kai held him, he sighed. "I still think we should take him to a hospital."
"Already on it, Buddy," Jay answered, nodding to Kai.
"Thanks, and hey-!" Kai exclaimed. "Don't call me Buddy!"
Jay smirked at him as the paramedics arrived.
Two days later, Lloyd and his mother were talking to Dr. Borg at Ninjago Cyborg Relations Hospital while waiting to be discharged.
"Well, Lloyd, I must say, you're lucky to be alive right now," Dr. Borg leaned back in his wheelchair, "Had it not been for your friends, you very well could've died that afternoon."
"Lloyd, I am so sorry I didn't warn you about M.O.R.R.O while we were at the museum," Misako, his mother, apologized.
Lloyd smiled slightly. "Honestly, I'm just glad to be here."
"Thanks to you, however," Dr. Borg smiled. "We will be adding virus safeguards to all chips from now on. In the form of an interactive assistant, or... friend. Now, I took the liberty of giving you and your friends the same one, just as a thank you gift and apology for what happened. I do hope that you will enjoy him."
"Thank you, Dr. Borg," Lloyd nodded, looking at his neatly stitched up armed. "Anything else I should worry about?"
Dr. Borg chuckled. "No, Lloyd, believe me, you're free to go."
And he was.
That night, Lloyd opened his chip and selected the program 'digital friend'.
It lit up quickly, displaying a hologram of a black-haired muscular boy. He smiled, spotting Lloyd. "Hi there, I'm Cole, your virus safeguard and digital friend. It's nice to meet you, Lloyd."
Lloyd grinned, excited. "It's nice to meet you too, Cole. Tell me how you block against viruses?"
"Using only the best virus blocking technology of the decade, I can defend against thousands of viruses, from spam emails to trojan viruses," Cole answered. "Anything else?"
Lloyd smiled. Tonight, for the first time in nearly a week, he was finally going to be able to relax.
A/N: Well, this took forever. I apologize for the random breaks in writing, I've been having a little bit of mental health trouble recently, and it's begun to bleed over into this.
Also, I now have a Wattpad and AO3 account, just to kinda, get my stuff out there, y'know?
*shameless self-promotion* Anyway, I also started a Skybound-Jaya AU called 'My Heart At The Top Of The Sky', so if you like Jaya, it might be worth checking out.
Next time on AU Oneshots: CaptainSteve1's request for a Llorumi!