"Caen! Scan for the Doc." Davic stopped pacing long enough to glance at the tiny screen the keytool provided.
Caen clicked.
"Well, check again. He has to be somewhere."
"Davic, please calm down," Dot said in a tone of strained patience. "We've got every CPU in the city out looking."
"The why haven't we found them yet?" Davic scowled. "It's been microseconds. Can't your teams work any faster?"
"This is not the Supercomputer, young Guardian," Phong commented. "We process more slowly here in Mainframe."
"How hard can it be to find someone who's out cold on the pavement?" Davic demanded.
"He's probably not unconscious anymore," Dot said evenly. "I'm doing everything I can."
"Easy, you two," Bob soothed.
Davic slammed Caen's butt end into the floor. "If that virus has him, I won't stop at containment, Bob. We're talking about the Head of the Ward here."
"We're also talking about my brother," Dot snapped.
A vidwindow snapped into existence. Megabyte looked from one belligerent face to another. "Am I interrupting something?" he asked silkily. He negligently examined the tips of his claws. "I can always call again later."
"What do you want, Megabyte?" Bob demanded.
"Why, only to reassure you that your friends are safe. I thought that you might be rather concerned about them by now."
"Get to the point, virus," Davic growled.
"I don't believe we've been introduced," Megabyte said coolly. "You are…?"
"I'm a Guardian who isn't as softhearted as Bob," Davic hissed.
"I see," Megabyte said approvingly. "Perhaps you can understand that I have the upper hand in this situation, then?"
"If you hurt either one of them—" Davic threatened.
"You'll do nothing," Megabyte finished. "That is, unless you have some grudge against the good doctor. Now that the niceties are complete, let me present my demands. You will do as I say, or your friends will suffer the consequences." Megabyte extended a claw. "One, you will surrender your PIDs to me."
"Dream on," Davic spat.
Megabyte continued as though he hadn't heard. "Two, you will give me the location of the Supercomputer. Three, you will delete your keytools."
Glitch chittered and exploded into sparks. Caen screeched and projected an image of a hand performing a series of very rude gestures.
"Charming," Megabyte commented. "I see that keytools learn their manners from their Guardians. You have one microsecond to conclude the usual pointless arguments." He ended the transmission.
Davic growled in his throat. "I hate hostage situations."
"I'm not too fond of them myself," Bob murmured. He hit a few keys on the central console. A screen lit up. A thin blue line extended itself across the screen, then began to zigzag crazily from point to point. Bob sighed. "Typical Megabyte. He relayed the signal all over the city."
"Gone to ground like a Null in a hole," Davic agreed. "The question is: How do we track him down in less than a microsecond?"
"What I don't understand is why we can't find Wayne or Matrix," Bob mused. "Their PIDs should show up on our system scans."
"Not if they're not in the system, Bob," Dot put in. She tapped keys on the central console.
"What?" Bob asked.
"Since we can't find them in the system, they must not be in the system," Dot said matter-of-factly.
"What do you mean? Of course they're here. Where else could they be?"
"In the Net, maybe. Maybe even in the Web."
Davic whirled and glared up at Dot. "Bob, what color are her eyes?"
Dot's deep purple eyes narrowed. "I'm not crazy, Davic. There's just no other explanation."
"Once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth," Phong quoted.
"Right," Dot said, tapping keys. "My guess is that Megabyte's new lair is just outside Mainframe. That's why we haven't been able to track him."
"But why bother hanging around, if he can get out of the system on his own?" Davic demanded.
"He wants revenge," Bob said grimly. "He wants us to admit he's won."
"So what do we do?" Davic asked.
"I'm working on that," Dot answered.
"What's your plan, Dot?" Bob asked.
Dot's mouth tightened to a mere line. "We start calling in favors," she replied. "Then we stop Megabyte, once and for all."
Several well-armed binomes escorted Wayne to his cell. The sprite's jaw was set, and his purple eyes were distant. He tolerated a search of his person without protest before the virals prodded him through a door. There were several clicks as the door locked behind him, then silence.
Wayne took a deep breath, and blinked. He glanced around the room. There wasn't much to see. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all the same dull gray color. There was a single round window above a shelf that had been pressed into service as a bed. The only thing that broke the monotone monotony of the room was the form of a sprite sitting on the shelf-bed.
"So they caught you, after all," Matrix greeted.
"What?" Wayne rubbed the back of his head. "What happened?"
"You put up a pretty good fight," Matrix commented. "Kicked the wind right out of me, then laid out a lot of virals before one of them got you." He shifted carefully on the shelf. "Between you and the crocodiles, I'm gonna be sore for decacycles."
"What crocodiles?"
Matrix lifted an eyebrow. "The ones you nearly fed Bob to." His eyes narrowed. "Are you telling me you don't remember that?"
Wayne shook his head, then grimaced and sank down to the floor, rubbing his eyes. "Maybe you can fill me in. I don't remember a Game, or a fight, or even how I ended up in a Game in the first place."
"I'm not telling you anything, Megabyte," Matrix growled.
Wayne sighed. "Turbo was right about you."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"The Prime told me you were suspicious and impulsive." Wayne watched Matrix's face with a calculating eye. "He said the first time he met you he had to put a restraint field on you to keep you from blowing his head off."
Matrix blinked, then relaxed. "All right, maybe you are the real one."
"I'm pretty sure I am," Wayne said dryly. "Where are we, anyway?"
Matrix jerked his thumb toward the window. "Take a look."
Wayne rose, and went to the tiny window. He looked, and his eyes widened. "What in the Net...?"
"It's not the Net. Welcome the Web, Doc."
"The Web?" Wayne repeated, staring out the window.
"Yeah." Matrix shifted again, scowling. "That's why we haven't been able to find Megabyte's lair."
Wayne sank down onto the shelf beside Matrix, and put his head in his hands. "This is completely random."
"You're one to talk."
Wayne lifted his head and met Matrix's eyes with a puzzled expression. Then his eyes went wide again, and he dropped his gaze to the floor.
"Bob said it was some kind of new infection," Matrix ventured at last.
"It is," Wayne answered wearily. "But it doesn't act like other infections. It manifests at random, then it just disappears into the code."
"Bob said you think it's got something to do with the cure for Daemon's infection."
"The timing is right. And I still don't know how the cure you created works."
"Nor do I," Matrix shrugged.
Wayne sighed. "Well, as long as we're stuck here, we may as well work on that."
The vidwindow opened, showing a pulsating background of purples and blues. The scene tilted wildly, then a gloved appendage wrapped around the screen and straightened it. A masked Web Rider chittered.
Bob trilled an answer.
Several more Web Riders crowded into view. Their high-pitched chatter overlapped into bursts of feedback.
"What are they saying?" Dot asked, wincing.
"They're very happy to see me, and they want to know how I reversed my degradation."
Davic, leaning against the wall, grinned. "That's not all they're saying."
"You speak Websong?" Dot asked.
"A little. Enough to keep Bob honest, anyway."
"Really," Dot murmured.
"Not now, Dot," Bob said quickly, blushing. He turned back to the screen and trilled a note well outside his usual speaking range.
"Hey, wait a nano," Davic interrupted. He clattered out a phrase.
The answer was short and swift.
Bob laughed.
Davic's blue skin turned pink. "So I haven't had much practice lately. They get the point, don't they?"
"They're pretty sure you don't want them to take some pixels to your grandmother," Bob chuckled. He purred something to the Web Riders.
There was considerable discussion before the answer came back.
"Good," Bob said. He thrummed deep in his throat.
The Web Riders sang back, then closed the vidwindow.
"They'll take care of it," Bob said.
"Bob, have you gone random?" Davic demanded. "Glitch can't possibly reconstruct that much degradation."
Glitch whistled indignantly. Caen joined in, and gave its Guardian a solid rap across the fingers for good measure.
"Ow! Cut that out," Davic told his keytool. He shook his banged fingers and grabbed Caen firmly in the middle with his other hand. "I'm not saying you couldn't handle the job, I'm just saying that there's not enough normal code left for you to work with."
Caen's buzz was unmistakably derisive. Then it launched into a series of clicks and whistles.
Glitch hummed back.
"Would one of you mind telling me what's going on?" Dot asked.
"Oh, sorry Dot," Bob apologized. "Davic thinks I've gone random because in exchange for their help, I promised the Web Riders the program that Glitch used to reconstruct me." He paused, listening to the chattering keytools, then added, "Glitch and Caen are discussing ways they could make it work on more extreme cases."
"Sir!" Specky yelled from his workstation. "We're open to the Web!"
"What!?" Dot switched on the central screens.
"I'm out of here," Bob cried. Glitch beeped, then exploded into a Portal. Bob stepped through.
Davic crossed the room in two long leaps, and dove through the Portal an instant before it closed.
A vidwindow sprang into existence above the central console. "Ah, my dear Dot. Are you ready to concede to my demands?"
"Not a chance, Megabyte," Dot replied.
"Hm. I expected as much," Megabyte steepled his clawed fingers. "Would you like to say a tearful goodbye to your brother before I delete him? Or would you rather let Bob fill his head with notions of noble deletion for the good of the system and such nonsense?"
"I've already said everything I need to say to Matrix, Megabyte," Dot answered coolly. "He'll understand."
"Oh, that's too bad. I was so looking forward to watching that oaf realize you were sacrificing him to save your own pitiful existence."
"I've got work to do, Megabyte." Dot closed the vidwindow. She immediately opened another one. "Bob?"
"Yes Dot?"
"Now."