Chapter V:
Avalon

Four minutes later…

Compaq was in chaos. As soon as the attack had begun, Command.com Maxell has begun shipping off citizens to neighboring systems through the emergency portal rooms. None one knew who had led the assault, only that because of it, Compaq had plunged into the utmost turmoil. Whole sectors were going off-line, and debris and the bodies of the fallen littered the streets.

The portal rooms had been destroyed in the last air attack, fortunately after the majority of civilians had been evacuated. Only the Guardian, military personnel, and Maxell had remained behind, in a last hope to repel the invaders, whoever they might be.

Now, the Guardian found, according to the scans of her keytool Presario, she and one other were the only living beings left besides the attackers.

Zara despairingly sought out the other. He or she was located on the roof of an office building, unconscious, but alive. As she neared on her zipboard, she recognized the silvery skin and dark hair: Michael.

She stepped down and knelt next to him shaking him awake.

Green eyes slowly opened and peered at her. "Zara?"

She looked at him for a moment, then sent a hand flying against his face, slapping him.

"Ow! What'cha do that for?!?"

Zara stood, pulling him to his feet. "Michael, you idiot! What are you still doing here?!? You were supposed to leave with the rest of the non-military citizens!"

He glared at her. "Look, Zara, I don't know what you're thinking, but I wanted to help. I didn't stay around just to see buildings blow…" His voice lost him as his vision cleared and he took in the devastation around them.

The sky had darkened to a sickly gray color. Several sectors had already sunk into the sea, and another one collapsed as they watched. Nearly every building was pitted with the craters of bombs and antiaircraft fire. The smell of deletion and anguish hung in the air.

"Oh, User…" Michael visibly paled. "This is worse than I ever imagined." He looked at her. "Are we…"

"The last ones."

"And the portal rooms?"

"Totally destroyed."

"Is there anyway we can leave?"

"I don't know. The only place to go now is the Principal Office."

He nodded.

~~~~~~~~~~

The Guardian's heart ached in despair as they flew over her ravaged system. Who would do such a thing? Can even a virus desire absolute genocide? She sighed and flew onwards as the Principal Office came into view. It had taken on a vast amount of damage. Its once mighty spire was now just a jagged turret, and large sections crumbled into piles of rubble.

Abruptly, their zipboards jerked and began to float downwards. "The system is losing power," Zara said to Michael as they discarded their useless transportation. The two ran up the steps, watchful of every shadow. Michael picked up a cast off pistol for protection, since he carried no weapon of his own.

"What are we going to do?" he asked as her followed her down a corridor.

"I don't know yet," she replied quietly.

They arrive at a sub-control room, near the front of the Principal Office. Each ran to a console, checking the system's status.

Michael let out an agonized groan, and Zara joined him at his console. "What is it?"

He spoke with a frigid certainty. "The core has reached an highly unstable level. We have little time remaining before we have a total meltdown and system crash."

Zara reached over him, calling up reports and vidwindows. She inhaled sharply as she found what she was looking for. "There's only fifteen nanoseconds left."

"What can we do?" Michael asked, his sturdy shoulders sagging. "We can't use the portal rooms."

Zara's ethereal blue eyes filled with the despair that he had only seen in the game, when they had thought all was lost. "I…I…" She suddenly snapped her fingers. "Wait! There's an old Net transfer command around here, somewhere…" She rapidly began opening folders, searching.

"Aha!" she said triumphantly, fishing the command out of a folder that looked like it hadn't seen the light of megacycle in hours. "But we need to get to the Principal Command console to use it." She grabbed Michael's hand and pulled him along as she ran down the hall. He would have been delighted to be so close to her, but that wasn't on his processor at the moment.

He stumbled as his foot caught on something. A boot. "Wait!" he called to Zara. He turned back and found Maxell lying half out of a doorway. There was a deep gash in his side, and his body was surrounded by a puddle of his own blood. A look of permanent pain, or perhaps horror, was etched in his face.

Zara's breath caught in her throat as she saw who it was. "Maxell…" She sighed and pulled Michael away from the corpse.

"Eight nanoseconds until core meltdown," droned the pre-recorded voice of the System Administrator.

They continued down the hall until she stopped at a large door and kicked it in. She rushed to the console that dominated one whole wall of the room, plugged the transfer command in, and furiously began typing.

"Where are we going to go?" Michael asked quietly.

"I'm going to try my own system." She stopped and pressed the Send button, but it only resulted in an error window, reading 'Error: System does not exist.'

"Error my ASCII! This thing must be out of date." She began typing again, her fingers flying.

"Seven nanoseconds until core meltdown."

"Where else can we go?"

"Before Matrix left, he gave me the Net address for Mainframe; he said to only use it in an emergency." She pressed the Send button again. A stable portal appeared in the center of the room. The system of Mainframe awaited just beyond the sphere's polished surface. They had only begun to move toward it when a voice called out at them from the shadows.

"Don't go any further, Guardian!"

Zara and Michael both spun around to see a figure in the doorway, swathed in darkness. "I thought I might find you here." The stranger's voice was most definitely female, smooth and melodious, with an almost hypnotic undertone. "Where is Guardian 452?"

Zara stretched up to her full height, "I don't know what you're talking about," she said coldly. She began to edge toward the portal. Is it Bob, or Matrix, that this woman is searching for?

A pair of red eyes glowed angrily in the dark. "Where is Guardian 452?" she repeated.

"Six nanoseconds until core meltdown."

"I don't know who you are, or why you're searching for this Guardian, but won't bet getting anything from us." Zara stepped back so that she was within arm's reach of the portal.

The woman stepped forward and they gasped. The woman was fiercely beautiful: her skin was a pale, icy blue; her long, straight hair was violet; and the large, red eyes glowed with an fanatic light. She was dressed in a sapphire form-fitting body suit, revealing only the white skin of her face. Yet there was something harsh in her startling beauty, something corrupt.

Realization dawned on Michael. "Viral scum!" he shouted. "You're the one who attacked our system! Why?"

Fangs glinted in the dim light as she spoke. "That is none of your concern."

"Five nanoseconds until core meltdown."

She stepped closer. "Where is the Guardian I seek?!"

Zara pulled out Presario and pointed it at the woman. "Presario: energy shield!" A wall of golden light stretched across the room, coming in between the two sprites and the female virus.

The woman let out a demonic screech as Zara and Michael dove through the portal and it snapped shut.

~~~~~~~~~~

In the early light of a new megacycle, a shrill alarm shattered the serenity that had pervaded the Mainframe Principal Office during the night cycles. All personnel looked up from their work, wondering what it could mean. Dot Matrix ran to her workstation.

"What is it, my child?" Phong rolled up beside her as she ran a system check.

"I don't know…"

The others joined the Command.com as the alarm continued to sound. "Honey, this better be important," said Mouse, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. "I don't like for my beauty sleep to be interrupted."

"There's a huge amount of energy building up…" Dot's forehead creased in worry. "Right here in the Principle Office!"

A bright light filled the room, and they held up their hands to shield their eyes from the harsh glare.

~~~~~~~~~~

Zara yelped in pain as she landed on her tailbone. She pushed herself up, groaning as she felt bruises forming. The Guardian turned to Michael, who had landed in a heap beside her. "You okay?"

"Yeah…" He looked about him in slight confusion. "Uh, Zara?"

She heard the shrill whir of guns powering up, and the distinct metallic hiss of a sword being unsheathed. Zara finally brought her gaze upwards to see a circle of sprites surrounding the two of them, all bearing weapons.

~~~~~~~~~~

"State your names and formats," Bob commanded, gathering energy at his hands. The female, several hours his junior, got shakily to her feet and pulled her companion up beside her. The light momentarily glinted off her black and gold icon. A Guardian? But he kept his guard up; she might be infected.

She carefully scanned the small crowd of sprites around her, as if looking for someone she knew. He male companion looked around, apparently still stunned. Her luminous blue eyes stopped on Bob's face. Why does she look so familiar?

"Bob?" she asked tentatively, scrutinizing his face. So many scars… What in the Net happened to him? And that armor…where did he pick that up?

Suddenly, Bob's processor was flooded with the jumbled memories of his long ago time at the Academy; of a lost and friendless cadet… "Zara? Zara Mavis??"

"It is you!" She ran over to him and practically jumped in his arms, wrapping her own arms around his neck. Startled, the glow of the energy buildup disappeared from his hands. He squeezed her back, then gently set her back down, as the others put away their weapons.

"Where's Matrix?" she asked.

"What? How do you-"

Zara heard someone else call her name. "Zara?"

She spun around and came face to chest with the renegade Matrix. He was even taller, if possible, than before, and he had developed a beard and mustache.

His face lit up, and to everyone's surprise, including Zara's, he virtually picked the smaller Guardian up off her feet as he wrapped her in a bear hug. "Never thought I'd see you again," he said as he set Zara back on her feet.

"Same here."

AndrAIa stepped around Matrix and embraced Zara in a gleeful hug. "What are you doing here?"

Zara's eyes fell to the floor, the color draining from her face. "Compaq was attacked by an unknown viral force. The majority of the citizens had been evacuated to neighboring systems through the emergency portal rooms. The core was on the verge of a meltdown when Michael and I escaped using an ancient Net transfer command.

"But right as we were about to leave, the viral revealed herself. She claimed to be looking for Guardian 452." She looked at back at Bob, then at Matrix. "I'm guessing you all have some idea of what's going on here."

She watched as Bob and an attractive green-skinned female that looked remarkably like Matrix exchanged looks. Bob turned back to Zara with a heavy sigh. "A supervirus has managed to infect the whole Guardian Collective except for you, Matrix, and me. She was searching for us because have the only clean Guardian protocols left. Prime Guardian Turbo is the only one resisting the infection, and is our contact in the Super Computer. This virus, Daemon, has gone through systems, gathering her armies, taking control of everyone and everything."

The young Guardian's eyes widened as she stumbled backwards, nearly collapsing into Michael's arms as they both stared at Bob in horror.

"How…how did this happen?" Zara whispered weakly.

Bob simply shook his head.

AndrAIa stepped forward and placed a hand on Zara's shoulder. "Come on, you need to rest. You and Michael have had a big shock." She gently but firmly guided her away, Michael at their heels.

Dot looked from her brother to her Guardian, utterly confused. "You two have some explaining to do…"

~~~~~~~~~~

Michael awoke to the sound of weeping. He sat up and listened intently. The sound paused for a moment, then began again. He opened the door to his room and peered out. The disquiet was drifting from a room down the hall.

He crept down the corridor in bare feet, following the sobbing, and found himself at Zara's room. Michael eased the door open. "Zara? Are you all right?"

She sat on her bed with her back to him, her knees folded up against her chest. She hadn't even changed her clothes. "Go away," she mumbled.

Michael sat down next to her. "What happened?"

Zara lifted up her face, wet with tears. "I asked AndrAIa to…to help me contact my home system, Arun." She drew in a ragged sigh, biting back a sob. "She told me…it was gone. There's nothing left." She could hold back the floodgates no longer, and collapsed as the tears spilled forth.

Michael let her rest upon his chest, grief running down her pale face in rivers. He gently wrapped his arms about her shoulders, comforting warmth. He casually stroked her bronzed curls, as Zara moved her head to his shoulder, her tresses flowing about her in a bright waterfall.

Soon, Michael felt her body relax as the tears ebbed and exhaustion took its toll on her small frame. He eased her down onto the bed and silently pulled the sheets over her. At the door, he paused and turned back to gaze at her once more, as she shifted in her sleep. Then he carefully, closed the door and headed back to his own room.