XI.
Inez held the scissors up to the mass of wires over Digit's head. She exhaled a deep breath trying to relax herself before she started on the most stressful task she'd ever been given in her life. And worse still, the person she was relying on to guide her through was none other than Hacker! It was the worse possible situation they could have been stuck in, and worse, she couldn't think of any way it could have been adverted.
"Okay. What first?" she said, tentatively.
"You're cutting five of the wires that link the the CPU and personality chip," the cyborg lectured, quite smug about being the one in charge. "If you so much as SNAG any of the wires around it, they'll snap and your bird brain will be bird food. If that happens, I claim no culpability," he added, sounding a bit too pleased by the scenario. "You have to replace the wires as you're cutting. Never have more than one wire disconnected at a ti-"
Inez leapt out of her seat as Hacker collapsed like dead weight beside her. "Guys, I think he ran out of power."
"I'm FINE!" Hacker wheezed dragging himself back onto the table, his voice a venomous whisper. He grabbed a pen and drew a map of the wiring, marking out the ones that needed to be cut in order. "There. I spelled it out for you. Now get to work," he groaned, collapsing again.
"GUYS!?" Inez cried, shooting panicked glance at her friends.
"We can do it together," Jackie reassured her, placing a supportive hand over her shoulder. "I'll help you find the wires."
"I'll start looking for screws," Matt said, getting up to look around the room. "I'll need them when you're replacing the wires."
"Just take your time," Jackie said. "If you need me to switch with you, I will." Inez nodded. It was always a relief to have her friends with her. They had done big things together. Incredible things. Winning a skating contest by the narrowest possible margin, taking out a giant frog, escaping a gang of Hackerized gorillas. Their adventures together would take all day to list. With their support, there wasn't anything she was afraid of. Even performing causal neurosurgery on one of her best friends.
"Okay. I got this."
She pried the mass of wires open with the prongs and Jackie helped her search and marked out the ones she needed. She slowly brought the scissors up to the first one, trying not to touch any of the cords around it which all looked thin enough that they might rip with a only a slight provocation. The tangle made it difficult to identify the two ends of the wire and which ones actually matched up. She was just thankful a few of them were different colors.
"They kind of look like neurons in a brain," she murmured, hesitating as her blades hovered over the one she was meant to cut. "At least what neurons look like in drawings." She tilter the scissor's curved blade down at an angle and aimed it with a level of precision that could only have been possessed by an Operation master. "I got the first one." Matt was right by her with the replacement wire and screw.
"Let me do this part," he offered. "My dad taught me a little when he was fixing the lights in the barn." Inez handed the tools to Matt, relieved to have someone else with more expertise help out.
With Inez cutting, Matt rewiring and Jackie keeping the whole team organized, they made incredibly efficient progress. In a little over an hour and a half they had gotten through all five wires. The old CPU was still in Digit's head though. They would need to remove it and replace it with the new one. She was just about to examine the chip closer when a hand pushed her out of the way. Hacker had dragged himself up again, but didn't look like he'd last more than a couple of minutes.
"What are you doing?" he snapped, seemingly having forgetting the instructions he'd given them before.
"We're done replacing the wires," she announced.
"You what!?" He looked over their work and let out a series of unintelligible grumbles. He seemed to be trying to find something to complain about, but was coming up empty. Using a pair of foreceps, he lifted the CPU off its knobs, fitting the new one over and gently pushing it into place. "Now close him up and GET ME OUTTA HERE!"
"Not so fast." Jackie held her hand in front of his face, then seemed to realize how close she was to touching him and drew it away. "We're going to make sure you didn't try and pull anything first. Boot him back up."
Hacker growled and started jamming his thumb on Digit's power button. "Wake up you bothersome bird."
Jackie quickly rescued her friend from the bad guy's clutches. She placed Digit's box on her lap and slid a finger gently over his power button. After a few seconds there was a soft chime and what sounded like a pre-recorded message. "The Digi will be right with cha!"
"It worked!" she cried, eye glowing with excitement at hearing the boid's voice.
"Of course it worked, you infantile ingrate," Hacker sneered before being elbowed in the face by Matt. The villain faceplanted on the ground with a loud thonk and laid still.
"Matt!"
"What?" the boy shrugged. "Admit it, you wanted to do it too."
"Yeah, I did," Jackie muttered reluctantly.
Inez reached over at patted Digit on the back. There was a soft humming coming from his operating system, but still no movement from the boid. "Are you alright, Digi?
At her touch, Digit's head and limbs popped out of his body like a jack in the box. He looked around wildly, his eyes big and panicked. "Where am I? What happened?"
"Do you remember us, Digit?" Jackie asked.
"Course I do, Jackster, but what is the Hacker doing here?"
"It's a long story," Inez giggled. "But we better get a portal from him back to the Wrecker before he wakes up again."
"We missed ya, Digit," Matt said, giving the cyboid a playful punch on the shoulder.
"Don't worry," the boid cried, hopping over to the desk to flash superhero poses. "The Digi is back! He's better! And he's here to stay!"
XII.
"Boss! Rise and shine. I've got your breakfast right here. Eggs with You-shaped pancakes," Buzz said, waiting outside Hacker's room for permission to enter. "I think Delete might have gotten a bit of shell in by mistake. Boss?" He waited another minute before pushing aside the trolley and knocking on the door.
"Something wrong Buzzy?" Delete said, coming by with a warm towel laid smartly over one arm. It was part of the Hacker's daily routine to have a towel over his face every morning to warm up the circuits and aid in general wellness, at least according to the cyber-health magazines he was always reading.
"The boss isn't waking up. Wicked's gonna be here any minute."
"Maybe something terrible happened to him! We should check," the lanky bot cried, pushing open the door.
"Deedee, wait!" Buzz moved over the stop him, knowing the Hacker hated being barged in on while he was enjoying beauty sleep. The two tumbled through the door, knocking over a drawer of photos and sending shards of glass scattering across the spotless floor. "The Hacker isn't going to like this."
"Boss!" Delete pulled himself off his colleague, seeming not to notice the mess they'd made, and ran over to Hacker's bedside where the villain lay, face flat on the floor. "Boss?" He gave the cyborg's head a little poke, but got no response.
"I think the boss needs a recharge," Buzz suggested, shoving the glass shards under the carpet. "That's funny, I don't think he's ever run out of juice in the middle of the night."
"Maybe someone came in, in the middle of the night and took him somewhere," Delete said, letting out a little frightened gasp. "What if they're still HERE?!"
"That's ridiculous. Who'd come all the way out here? And how would they have gotten past the security?"
"We have security?"
"Of- er... now that you mention it," the round bot gave his chin a scratch. "Check the room, and then we've got to get the boss to his recharging chair." Delete nodded, opening the closet and yanking out Hacker's capes in order to make sure no one was hiding inside or behind any of them. Meanwhile Buzz was pulled off the sheets of the bed to make sure no one was hiding inside of it.
"I can't believe we have to drag him half way across the Wrecker," he muttered.
A spark of electricity buzzed between Delete's antennae. "We could bring the chair here," he suggested. "That'll be easier. We could take it apart and put it back together right next to the bed."
"Good thinking, Deedee! How hard could it be to put together a chair?" The two duncebuckets gave each other the high five before walking out, leaving their boss lying on the floor beside his disheveled bed.
THE END.