It would have been nice to have the option of just plugging in the Rebel Drive, as I had started calling the USB, into my own computer and seeing if it could magically hack into Coach's PC. There were just a few issues with that.

I didn't know if it would even work. Even if it could work, I knew next to nothing about hacking. Oh and the biggest issue was that I didn't even own my own PC. I wasn't about to use my Uncle's computer for something like this. I already had enough troubles, thank you very much.

So here I was, standing outside the school fence with some rope.

"Oh I really hope this works," I said as I looked at the pretty big rock that I had tied at the end of the rope. I held it out and started twirling it around before throwing it over the side of the fence. I pulled the rock back until it caught onto the bars.

I gave it a few careful tugs to make sure that it was secure before gripping it tightly with both hands. I put one careful foot onto the bar, then the other.

I waited for a little while to see if the rope would hold my weight. Guess my scrawniness came in handy, cause the rope stayed tight and stable. Carefully, I started walking up the bars until making it to the top. Once I was there, I grabbed onto the stone keeping the rope in place and jumped off onto the grass below.

I landed with a roll, and for a second I wished that someone could have seen it. Not that anyone would recognize me with this ski mask I was wearing. I wasn't about to take down Coach K and then get in trouble for trespassing.

Finding Coach K's office was the easy part, now I just had to figure out how to get in. My first and worst idea was to just break in through the window. Just go through and unlock it from the other side.

Yeah there was no way that wasn't ending either hilariously or horribly. I had shoved that idea to the side before I even got to the school. No, I was either going to have to go in through the window or unlock the door.

Unless…

A sudden idea struck me as I looked at the door knob. I mean… I'd feel pretty stupid if it turned out to be unlocked after wasting my time trying to get in. Coach K was an arrogant man, but he wasn't stupid enough…

The door clicked open without any difficulty as I walked into his office.

The audacity of this man! Was he stupid enough to leave it unlocked, did he just forget today, or was he just that convinced that he was untouchable?

Either way it was about to backfire on him so I was okay with any of those possibilities. I was really hoping that it was the last one though.

I ignored the rest of the room and locked onto the single computer on the desk at the far end. I rushed up to it and tried to ignore that its position would leave me with my back to the door.

I booted up the computer and cringed as I saw his desktop. It was a mess of folders scattered all over the place. Maybe it was because I was just used to the way we kept the PC at home, but something about it made me hate this guy even more.

I shrugged it off and took out the rebel drive. With a single push, I put it into the USB slot and waited for it to load up. Once it opened, I was planning on keeping it there so that I could transfer the footage I needed as quickly as possible.

That was the plan… And then the computer started to glow. I took a step back as a harsh blue light erupted from the screen. It almost looked like something was coming out of it.

It was a rectangular screen of blue light. The closer I looked at it, the more I could see lines of text running down it. I spotted English, something that looked like maybe Japanese and some other weird symbols that I'd never seen before.

"What the heck is this?" I lightly tapped the screen and felt a sudden sucking sensation. My eyes widened as I felt myself get pulled in. Everything went bright, and the next thing I knew I was on my back.

"Where the heck am I?" My eyes came into focus as I saw a never ending expanse of blue in front of me. Was that the sky? Was it already daytime? Had I been caught? If that was the case then…

Since when does the sky have lines of code running through it?

I sat up and got my bearings. I was sitting on what looked like a glass road bordered by thick plastic. The glass itself was covered in what looked like circuit board patterns. The road itself was on… nothing.

Instead of laying on the ground like a normal road, it was floating in a blue void with nothing below. I took another glance above and saw that there were some other roads that looked just like this one. The only other thing I could spot besides the roads were the occasional screens next to them.

"Where the heck am I?" I asked as I took off my mask. As I did, I felt a weird weight on my arm.

I looked down and saw a weird machine around my wrist. It had a gray metal ring which wrapped around my arm like a watch strap, but the rest of it was no watch. It was a large machine made from blue plastic with a screen right in the center. To the right of the screen were three black buttons and right above it was the top of what looked like a mouse's scroll wheel, but horizontal. To the left of the screen was a tiny thing that might have been some sort of camera. Right below the screen were familiar black letters printed boldly on the machine.

"Digital rebel?" I read the black text off the blue machine as a spark or recognition went off in my head. "Is this the rebel drive?"

Any more questions were put off as I heard a sound from behind me. I turned around and spotted a strange tear appearing next to the glass road. I stuffed my mask into my back pocket and kept a careful distance. I watched as the tear widened and something started coming out.

It looked kind of like a big lizard or dinosaur, with a gray body and black carapace on its back. Most concerning to me however, was the giant horn sticking out of its face.

Of course, that may have been matched by the fact that only a second later, our eyes meet. I swore I saw my own face reflected in the big green eye, but the creature blinked a second later before roaring at me.

"And now we run!"

I turned and started running, doing everything I could to not think about the thundering behind me. I kept running, going past a bunch of the screens as I looked for anything that could help me… now what do we have here?

My brain went back to the creature and its stumpy legs in particular. I slid to a stop in front of another road that split off from the one I was on. Well, split off might not have been the right words.

It was a few feet higher than the road I was on for one. I slapped my hands down on the edge and scrambled up, ignoring the dangling sensation that my legs felt at a few points.

I cleared the ledge and kept running for a bit before turning back.

The lizard had come to a stop in front of the ledge as well. It was growling at me as it scratched the edge of the road with its horn.

I watched it for a bit before it finally growled at me one last time before walking off.

"What even was that thing?" I collapsed onto the ground, trying to get my bearings for a moment. Once I was sure that I wouldn't drop like a sack of rocks, I got to my feet again. "Man this is crazy, what even is…"

I trailed off as I looked down at the rebel drive on my arm. I hadn't had much of a chance to play with it before the giant lizard showed up, so might as well check it out now. Who knew, maybe it had some useful information on it. I pressed the buttons only for none of them to do anything. I scowled as I tried to move the scroll wheel, but that didn't do anything either.

The logical thing to guess was that the machine was turned off, so was there some sort of on switch? I looked it over again and sure enough, there was a tiny button in a depression under the machine. I'd never have found it if I wasn't looking for it, and I would never have pressed it by accident either.

"Smart placement," I complimented the rebel drive as I pressed the button and turned it back over to the screen.

It flashed as a simple black and white display appeared. I got my hopes up that I was making progress, only for that hope to die a second later.

"Not enough processing available," I read off the screen as the text slowly crawled across it. "Please find another processing unit in order to unlock functions."

I tried all the buttons, but all those did was reset the message. Another processing unit? Did I need to find a matching machine for my other arm or something?

Well if the rebel drive wasn't going to help, then I was going to have to find another way to figure out where I was. Let's see here, the only things in here were the roads, the screens, and the big dinosaur. By process of elimination, I should probably check out the screens next.

And lucky for me, there was a screen right next to me. I walked up to it and looked it over. It was a plain rectangle with nothing on it, but what if I…?

The screen came to life as I gently tapped it. After a second the screen became solid white and a couple of icons appeared on it. Most of them were labeled as 'line up' followed by a date. And right at the top was the words 'team line up' followed by the current school year.

"Is this…?" I questioned as I pressed the most current document and a spreadsheet appeared in front of me. I recognized several of the names of the American football players as well as some positions that I was pretty sure had to do with the sport.

I looked it over again and noticed a small menu right at the top right. One button in particular caught my eye. A downwards arrow that I clicked without a thought.

A small progress bar appeared at the bottom and filled up in about two seconds. As soon as it finished, a small orb of light came out of the screen and flew into the rebel drive.

I brought the drive up to me and pressed one of the buttons as the tiny camera-looking thing came to life. Floating above the rebel drive was a hologram version of the document I'd just seen.

"Huh, this is Coach K's computer," I mumbled to myself before glancing back at the path I'd been walking on earlier. "Why does Coach K's computer have dinosaurs in it? The man's old, but he's not that old."

Which also meant that somewhere in this void was a screen that had the storage room security footage on it. If I could get to it, I could download it and walk away from here with all the proof I needed.

Well I would need to find a way to walk out of here before that but one problem at a time. First, I needed to figure out where to go next. This was a pretty big palace, with many, many screens randomly scattered everywhere.

"This is his mess of a desktop, isn't it?" I asked the empty air. The lack of response didn't matter, I knew the truth.

I sighed as I looked around again, trying to find any notable differences between the screens. And of course I found nothing. Looked like my only options were to either find whatever folder he saved the footage to, or to get to… what's the term for it? The folder that would have all the desktop folders on it.

Unless that was what I was already walking around in. That was going to take a while to wrap my head around it.

I took a single step forward to begin my search when I heard a heavy stomp off in the distance. I glanced back and saw the big dinosaur monster from earlier watching me again. The same one that'd just come out of a tear which had appeared in thin air. Thin air like the kind I was surrounded by.

"Huh… better find that thing before more of you guys show up," I told it before turning around and going at a brisk pace.

I quickly fell into a pattern that I was okay with. Reach a screen, open it, check it for proof, close it, and then move on. I wasn't sure how long I was taking, but I felt like I was making good progress. I was also pretty sure I was slowly making my way up the void, taking every chance to climb up to the next rung of the road.

Good thing too since the dinosaur was still wandering the bottom. I would have been worried that the folder I needed was down there, but I was noticing a trend.

The larger the folder was, the higher up it was on the path. The bottom ones were full of folders with text files or simple documents. Now that I was almost halfway through, I was starting to find files with photos in them.

Nothing incriminating, just Coach K posing with the teams of years prior in front of the field and stuff like that. Aside from noticing that his mustache grew bushier over the years, there wasn't much there.

Funny, but not about to send Coach to jail like I wanted. I kept moving, hoping that Coach K had bigger files then the videos cause I wasn't about to walk all the way to the top of this place.

I climbed up another rung when I heard a familiar sound coming from below.

I glanced down and spotted several new tears all forming at once. On the bright side, they were all below me and those big lizard things had no way of climbing up to where I was. All I had to do was ignore them and keep moving.

Why did I hear buzzing?

I took another quick glance down and did a double take as I watched something new emerge from the tears.

Some of the new arrivals were the gray lizards, but among them were a handful of large green insect-like monsters. They had four legs, large wings that buzzed through the air, red stripes on their face in place of eyes right below two red antennae. From how far away I was, I could tell they had a big mouth but I couldn't make out any teeth. Knowing my luck they were probably razor sharp.

Weird, it felt like I was forgetting an important detail here…

Oh right.

"Why do they have scythes for hands?" I whispered to myself as I tried to make myself look as small as possible. Normally that would have meant laying down flat on the ground, but these roads were see through so crouching down into a ball it was.

I watched them carefully as they finished emerging from the tears. With any luck, they'd just fly around and leave me alone.

At first, I thought that that was what they were going to do. They finished coming out of the tears and started buzzing around down there, mostly ignoring each other.

And then one of the gray lizards roared up at them.

Each one faced downwards at the same time. Their heads locked onto the lizards below and in a disturbing bit of synchronization, they raised their scythes up and dove down.

I tore myself away from the inevitable bloodbath below and started running up. I stopped kidding myself, there was no way that Coach K had anything on his computer bigger than video files from a camera that was either recording all day or just when it sensed movement.

I scrambled up the road, my feet pounding on the glass with a volume that felt so much louder. Maybe I was lucky and the giant green blade monsters hunted via vibrations instead of sound? The glass road didn't move that much when I stepped on it, so they wouldn't even know I was here.

I kept running, trying really hard to ignore the sounds of combat coming from below. After a while, I noticed that I never ran out of breath, no matter how hard I ran. Weird thing to notice at a time like this but it was useful so I didn't question it.

It took me a little while, but I finally pulled myself up to the last glass road, the top of the void. It was a single straight line going across the void which looked a lot darker all the way up here. To the side were a small handful of screens.

Without wasting a second, I ran up to the last one and opened it. Right in front of me were the video files I needed. I punched the download button in a rush as I watched the orb of data enter the Digital Rebel.

"Looks like I did it," I smirked to myself as I noticed a slight buzzing in the air.

"Wait buzzing?" I asked myself as I looked down and saw one of the mantis monsters flying right up at me.

I watched it wide eyed as it rushed right past me, the wind knocking me back towards the edge. I felt my feet lose their grip as I started to fall.

As the world started rising around me, I looked back up to the mantis to see what it was doing. I would have thought that it would have chased after me, but no. It was instead slashing at the air above the last road.

I wondered why it was doing that, but I had bigger things to worry about right now. Like the fact that I was pretty sure that I was falling to my doom.

"Grab on."

My eyes flew open as I heard a voice from nearby. In a flash I saw something come right at me. I grabbed it without a second thought.