By Wriness Chikaya
Chapter 8 - Catharsis
"Let me say things about you make you think you're losing your mind, but try to turn you up, don't you think twice about it, stay strong, you must fight it; you've got to carry on.. and life goes on and on and on.."
Dot sped away from Baudway on her zipboard, noting that Matrix and AndrAIa were following after her. She needed everyone she could get at the Principal Office, and she needed them NOW.
The doors blew open with her entrance, the lights inside still left on. Everything had the order of chaos; seemingly lacking an order entirely, but to ask Dot to find something, any one thing in that immense place, she knew exactly which line, which section, of which file in which folder in which cabinet to find it.
Mouse was waiting for them by the door, and followed everyone in. Dot had warned her of their needs for her aid on the way back to the Principal Office; the risk of being detected was negligible at this point.
Mouse didn't skip a beat. She jumped into the desk chair, which slid sideways to a panel with a large keypad on it. Her hands moved furiously across the glass panel, code and binary, various languages and algorithms floating past the windows which popped up at breakneck speed. This was how Mouse worked, always. Never a user-interface, what did you need a user-interface for? A user interface neglected to show you the things behind the surface; the tiny little carfully hidden exploit was all that Mouse needed..
"Dot, dearie?" Mouse called sweetly from her post.
"Yes, Mouse?" Dot sidled up.
"What exactly are we lookin' for, sugah? ..."
Dot chuckled. She had to. If she didn't relieve stress, she was going to scream her way into the egg-shaped room and never come out. "Bob, Mouse.."
"Well Ah know that, Dot, what Ah'm talkin' about is where we're gonna be lookin'." Mouse spun around in the chair.
"Try the Tor. Last time he contacted me, it was from the Tor.. or .. I hope it was.."
"Ya mean ya don't know, Dot."
"... Yeah. I don't, really."
"Well then just say so! It's so much more fun that way!" Mouse grinned, a twinge of glee audible in her voice as she happily spun around and hacked around Mainframe, milking the sensors for the last bit of information they could offer. "Ah-HA!" she yelped, and piped the information to a high-resolution vid-window in front of Dot. A detailed schematical map of the Tor, showing binome, sprite, and viral presences.
"Mouse, I think I love you," Dot said as she downloaded the map to her organizer.
"Hun, you can reserve that for later. Right now we've got to worry about Bob."
Dot nodded her agreement, and proceeded to study the map. It appeared that Bob was in a holding cell of some sort, in the lower levels of the Tor. The problem? There were viral binomes guarding all the entrances. Lots of binomes. Dot hung her head, wondering how in the Net they were going to get inside, and get Bob out, preferably without alerting the binomes. Then, she thought, perhaps if she got the viral PIDs...
Her thoughts were interrupted by a sudden cackle from Mouse. Its abrupt stop made Dot wonder even further.
"Oh, blessed User, Dot.. Ah almost can't believe this.."
Dot rumpled her eyebrows and stepped up behind Mouse for a closer look at the screen Mouse must have been referring to. On it was the html code from the Twin City files, decomposed into its base code.
"How didja find out that you were a User, Dot?" Mouse turned slightly so she could see Dot's answer.
"Phong managed to recover some citizen profiles from the Twin City. Mine listed my mother as a User." Dot raised an eyebrow and took off her glasses, leaning in closer to see what Mouse meant.
"Well, sugah, you're gonna find this either really funny, or you're gonna wanna lay down and have a good cry," Mouse said as she pointed out a few binary lines that made up the decomposed meta tags. It was official; the files were faked. Megabyte's encrypted signature was evident on the entire archive.
Dot sat there speechless for a moment. Motionless, as if in suspension between a critical breaking point. The calm before the storm, so to speak.
Mouse knew the storm was thundering when Dot's hand tightened frighteningly on the back of the desk chair and a muscle jumped in her jaw.
So much pain... so much anger...
She had known that Megabyte had caused the 'accidents'. What so infuriated her was that, when it came to the thought that perhaps the files from the Twin City were fakes, she hadn't even considered it. She wanted, no, needed to believe her history was still out there.
Mouse saw Dot chiding herself for being so naive. She reached over and gently touched Dot's hand. "Dot, darlin' ... don't blame yourself.."
Dot's hand relaxed, and she went into business-mode. "The way I figure it, we could get Bob out of the Tor without hurting anybody. I want all those binomes returned to their uninfected states. There is to be no more carnage while I'm heading this operation." Dot's lips were set in a firm, cold line. Mouse raised an orange eyebrow. "What?" Dot asked.
"You sure you don't want us to go get Bob for ya?" Mouse cringed.
"I'm going with you."
Mouse nodded in acceptance. Dot brought up an image of the map on her organizer.
"Let's get goin' then! Ain't no viral scum gonna be messin' up my cycle."
-
Matrix clutched AndrAIa in the back of Mouse's Ship. Dot felt her hands grow colder and colder; a secret fear telling her perhaps her hands would never warm...
It was relatively easy to get inside. The problem was getting inside without being seen. The four tiptoed down a curiously insectlike looking hallway, when a viral guard spotted them. AndrAIa managed to knock him out before he could cry out.
"Mighty fine fingernails ya got there, hun, gonna have ta' see if Ah can get mah hands on somethin' like them later..." Mouse mused.
It was the EMP rifle Dot spotted in the hands of the guard that had Dot on edge. Matrix handled that conveniently; Dot hid in an alcove in the hallway while the three of them distracted the binome and managed to lure him out of the room, and far away from an area where Dot would be spotted, or heard trying to get out.
Dot snuck her way into the tiny concrete room to find herself face-to-face with Bob. He smiled warmly at her, as if he had been expecting her arrival. She managed eye contact before diving at the panel which was keeping him locked away.
She pounded out code after code.. nothing worked. Prodding Bob for hints, he could tell her very little. She tried random sequences of letters, words, names of everyone she could remember. Dot was about ready to give up, when in a flash, her dream came back to her.
She was running again. Her breathing was ragged, and dry again, as dry as her forehead was wet with sweat. She looked back behind her, and watched as a contorted and twisted version of Megabyte leaned towards her, stretching its arm. "Your fears, Dot..." the vision rasped, like a demon come to take her very soul. She ran on.
Somehow he kept following, though she never really saw him move. He was consuming all, enormous, yet seeming like he should be small. All was the same though; he didn't look exactly as he looked in real life. She looked back again as he stretched the other arm towards her.. "Your fears, Dot..." he rasped again, and Dot closed her eyes with a sob as she pleaded for this wretched hallucination to end.
She stopped, seemingly rooted to her spot, and felt him curl around her like a mist. She could feel his cold tendrils wrap themselves around her arms and hold her down, feel them strangle her of breath. A hot, sour breath was pressed in her face. "You think you run your life?" it screamed. "You don't run your life. I run your life!" Dot sobbed and turned her face away. The face breathed again, this time venomously, and Dot choked on the poisonous words. "Your work breathes with you. I breathe with you. Your hatred for me is what has kept you going! It is what keeps me going!"
Dot writhed in agony at the way the words made her feel, the fact that this breaking point was shoving her off a ledge she knew she wouldn't be able to scramble back up on to again, and that, in turn was destroying the feelings that an hour of peace had left her with. She squirmed at the movements of the misty tendrils, suddenly like ice, cold and restricting...
"Your fears control you, Dot. That control is what leaves you so dead, so empty after a day. Bob is your solace! But I stole him from you!" an echoing chorus of maniacal laughter ensued, the voice not wholly Megabyte's, but scarily, intertwined with the tones of her own as well. She shuddered deeply, opening her eyes with a cringe, the cold tendrils of mist slipping away, the burn of the red pupils into her retinas beginning to fade. One phrase echoed in her mind. "I control you..."
"Control," she spoke aloud, punching that into the keypad next to the force field keeping her from Bob. She nearly collapsed against the wall when the force field shimmered and melted away. She fairly leapt into the cell, hugging Bob and kissing him frantically on his neck. She sobbed hard.
"Bob.. I.. oh.. User.." she gasped, clinging to him. Tears fell shortly from her face. She cried even harder as he wrapped his arms around her as best he could and whispered warm words into her hair. "I-- Bob.. I .."
He stroked her hair gently, then grasped her chin and moved her face to look into her eyes. "Dot, you're going to have to get me out of these shackles. The key .. it's in the top drawer on the desk over there.. can you get it for me?"
Dot nodded quickly, wiping tears from her face and sniffling loudly. She stood up shakily and opened and shut drawers in a frantic until she found a small metallic object, adorned with a simple blue button.
She sprinted back to the cell and knelt on the floor, her hands shaking. She pressed the pointed end of the metallic piece into a hole in the neck collar of the elaborate restraint device, and pressed the button. With a loud click, the chest restraint opened up, allowing Bob to take it off. Dot collapsed in his arms again, sobbing hard.
"I- I- I can't .. Bob.. I love you.."
"I love you too, Dot.. it'll be okay," he whispered as he stroked her hair.
She held up the metallic piece again, pressing it into the wrist shackles, hands shaking, feeling the relief the click of the release brought him.
While she undid the shackle on his right arm, she muttered something.
"Bob, will.." it was so quiet it was nearly incomprehensible.
Bob leaned in gently and caressed her face in his hand. She stared into his golden eyes, feeling him wipe away a tear with a gritty hand. "Bob, I .. don't want to sound sappy.. or .. over-eager... I want this to sound right.."
She unlocked the other shackel and he lifted his other hand to hold her nose to his, and in kissing her, he felt her mumble something. Pulling back, he held her in his hands again. She blinked softly in his grasp, and to Bob, she had never been more beautiful.
Hair disheveled, face dirty from his grasp, tearstains streaking her smooth skin. He saw her blink and stare at the floor, as if she didn't know what to say. "I'm not going to draw this out into a long monologue. The times.. without you there.. " she sniffled a little bit. "Well, they've seemed to me like the longest times I've had to live through in my entire life. Even the times after my parent's death didn't seem so long. I'm rarely truly happy. But, I know one thing.. and that's that.. I'm happy when I'm with you."
Bob clutched her close and whispered into her shoulder. "Dot, you don't have to say it.."
"No," she said, pushing him away, "I do. This is my opportunity at happiness and I don't want to blow it. Bob, I think I'd like to grow old with you." She looked up at him, gazing him straight in the eyes. A fresh tear trickled down her cheek. "Will you marry me? Please? ..."
Bob grabbed her tightly, hugging her closer than he ever had. Gripping her through her uniform, he prayed she didn't notice the tear that trickled down his cheek. "Of course I will, Dot. Of course..."
Mouse was the one who looked in first, seeing the couple clutching each other, kneeling on the holding chamber floor. "Ah don't know what you're up to you two, but Ah've got about six virals on mah tail and if ya don't feel like bein' deleted, Ah humbly suggest that yah move yah bitmaps!"
The couple scrambled to their feet, Dot wiping the tears from her face.
Dot could feel something though. The sense of falling off her ledge of comfort was distubing, but she felt something better, something she hadn't felt for a long time. Leaning against Bob's chest, in the belly of Ship, Dot knew a feeling she hadn't felt for a long time.
She felt whole.
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