Doctor Hildegarde Bingen arrived in the doorway to Wayne's room carrying an outdated scanner in one hand and a data pad in the other. She had crow's-feet around her deep grey eyes, and her hair was silvery-gray. She moved with the assured speed of perfect health, however. She set the data pad on the foot of Wayne's bed and gave him a measuring look. "The Prime says you're feeling better," she began.
"Apparently I have you to thank for that," Wayne answered graciously. "It's an honor to meet you, Doctor Bingen."
"The honor is mutual, Doctor MacHewlett," the gray-haired doctor replied. "I've read your readmes on the controlled use of magnets. Your approach is unorthodox, but your results speak of talent."
"Thank you," Wayne said modestly.
"Turbo told me you're interested in the slaved cadet?"
"Yes. If you don't mind," Wayne added hastily.
Doctor Bingen raised her eyebrows. "I'll make you a deal." She picked up the data pad and tossed it into Wayne's lap. "You can look that over while I scan you."
"Deal," Wayne affirmed. He turned on the data pad and flipped through its contents, ignoring the scanner's beeps and his doctor's gently probing touch. His face clouded, then lengthened as he read. "This is bad," he said faintly.
"Very bad," Doctor Bingen confirmed. "Your energy levels are still fluctuating, and your processing code hasn't recompiled as much as it should have by now."
"That's not what I meant." Wayne's brows furrowed.
"He's my patient, Doctor," Doctor Bingen said firmly. "And so are you. You're going to have to let the system process without you for a while. Trust me, it will still be there when you're back online."
"Maybe not," Wayne grunted. "Did Turbo tell you about the infection?" Wayne asked tensely.
The gray-haired doctor set her scanner down and met his eyes. "He did. We put you through every scan we have, looking for traces. There's nothing there."
"Nothing but the viral traces left by Daemon," Wayne corrected.
"No," Doctor Bingen shook her head. "There's no evidence you were ever infected by Daemon. The traces must have fallen apart as your power levels dropped."
"That's impossible," Wayne protested. "The infection must have left some bits of itself in my uncorrupted code."
"Your code doesn't show anything except overload damage," Doctor Bingen told him flatly. "If Turbo hadn't assured me that there's an epidemic in the Web, I'd have said you overdosed on core energy and it burned your processing codes to a crisp."
"There has to be a connection," Wayne stated. He tapped the data pad. "We have to come up with a way to recover Matrix's code."
Doctor Bingen let out a short, exasperated sigh. "Those are fail-safe interrupts, Doctor," she told Wayne curtly. "We can't shut down any of the patient's processing algorithms without setting off a disintegration cascade, and we can't remove any one of them fast enough to keep it from setting off the others in real time. It's just not possible."
"'Can't' isn't one of our options, Doctor," Wayne shot back. "If we can't remove the things fast enough—" he broke off, his eyes going distant. "We'll just have to stay ahead of it."
Doctor Bingen's eyebrows shot toward the ceiling. "What? You're talking about letting the fail-safes go off!"
"Yes. I think we can get around that, but we're going to need some outside expertise." Wayne swung out of bed and limped to the door, reaching out to catch himself on the doorjamb. He looked back at the outraged doctor. "Call it another one of my unorthodox ideas, Doctor."
The hospital waiting room was roomy, well-lit, and decorated in soothing colors. Despite the best intentions of its designers, however, it had an air of desperate tension that seemed to have seeped into the very walls.
Dot Matrix, Command.com of Mainframe, had finally paced and cried herself to exhaustion, and fallen asleep in Bob's arms. Bob simply held Dot and waited, his eyes wide and sad. Turbo sprawled in an easy chair, his lean frame relaxed but alert. There were dark circles around the Prime Guardian's sharp eyes, and his face had lines that made him look far older than he was. Mouse sat beside AndrAIa on a couch by the window. The hacker's voice was a soft murmur as she talked with the Game sprite—her words reached only AndrAIa's ears. Captain Capacitor had posted a guard, then left, ostensibly to see to the repairs of the Saucy Mare II. In truth, he had made such a nuisance of himself that the hospital staff had finally suggested that he leave a contact number and go "take his mind off his worry".
Wayne strode into the waiting room, moving fast despite his sore leg. He headed straight for Mouse. "How good are you?" he demanded, his eyes intent.
"I beg your pardon?" Mouse asked, her eyebrows rising.
"She's the best there is," Turbo put in.
"What's going on?" Dot asked sleepily, as she stirred in Bob's arms.
Doctor Bingen, flanked by a pair of hefty orderlies, answered, "I'm afraid Doctor MacHewlett hasn't quite shaken off the effects of his recent ordeal."
"I'm fine," Wayne said evenly, without taking his eyes off Mouse. "I just need to know if you're as good as they say you are."
"That depends, honey," Mouse said, regaining her composure. "What have you heard?"
"From what I've heard, you just might be capable of keeping up with a parallel-triggered disintegration cascade in real time," Wayne said.
Mouse cocked an eyebrow. "That's a mighty tall order, sugar," she said. "You're talking about intercepting multiple encrypted signals at once."
"Actually, I'm talking about intercepting multiple encrypted signals, defusing them, then using them as bumpers to block the cascade from progressing further." Wayne matched Mouse's quizzical look with a challenging eyebrow of his own. "Of course, the sooner you outrun it, the fewer signal paths you'll have to block."
"Are you out of your mind?" Doctor Bingen exploded. "You'd be risking your patient's life on the remote chance that an untrained hacker can decode a viral interrupt signal fast enough to stop it before it can propagate. Even if you don't get a runaway cascade, the damage—"
"Will be no worse than what he'd suffer if we simply tried to pull the interrupts without triggering them," Wayne interrupted. "Face it, Doctor, there's no chance that you won't touch off the cascade. The things are designed with conventional surgery in mind. If we go in with the intention of avoiding the cascade, we're playing by the virus's rules. If we touch off the cascade on purpose, we can control when and how it happens, and where in the code. Once we know what it's going to do, we can stop it."
"Could that work?" Dot said, her voice full of desperate hope.
"It'll be touch and go," Wayne told her. He turned to the gray-haired doctor, his face carefully neutral. "You might want to get a second opinion."
Doctor Bingen looked from Dot, to Wayne, to Mouse, then back to Wayne. "I'd like to see a little more detail of what you're suggesting, Doctor," she said quietly. "What you are proposing is unheard-of, but every technique is unheard-of until someone tries it."
"Help my brother," Dot said tearfully. "Do whatever you have to, just save him."
Wayne nodded slowly, his eyes still on Doctor Bingen. "We'll need some time to plan this out."
"Perhaps we should move to a conference room," the doctor offered. "You can use the projectors to show me how you plan to control a cascade."
"It all depends on Mouse," Wayne said.
"You show me the code, I'll tie it in knots if you want," Mouse told him, rising from the couch.
"All right," Wayne said. "Let's go do the impossible."
"Ms. Matrix?" Wayne, leaning heavily on a sturdy cane, nudged Dot's arm gently.
Dot opened her eyes and took a deep breath as she woke from a sound sleep. "Yes?" She shifted carefully beneath Bob's arm. "What is it, Doctor?"
"Hm?" Bob grunted, then stretched. "What's happening?"
"Your brother will probably need a few code transfusions, Ms. Matrix," Wayne said gently. "We'd also like to have a scan of your source code, so we can compare the programming logics as we rebuild his processing code."
"All right," Dot said faintly. "Do you want to do the scan now?"
"If you don't mind," Wayne replied.
"I'll go tell Turbo what's going on," Bob said. He got up and looked at Wayne. "If you need code donors—"
"We do," Wayne said. "Guardian patch files are pretty short in the system."
Dot gave the doctor a stricken look.
"I won't lie to you, Ma'am," Wayne said frankly. "This is a long shot. Once the interrupts are out, we'll have to rebuild the damaged synapses. Now with your code as a template, we've got a better shot at getting close to the original structure."
"It would be even closer if Enzo was here," Dot put her head on Bob's shoulder.
"Enzo?" Wayne gave Dot a puzzled look.
"A backup of Matrix. He's almost 11 now," Bob explained.
"A backup would be the ideal template," Wayne confirmed. "Has the Web opened?"
Bob shook his head. "The Web Riders would have called if it was safe to open a Portal."
"Can we wait?" Dot asked. "The Web might clear any nano."
"Every nano we wait increases the risks," Wayne said soberly. "The effects of heavy sedation, on top of viral infection…" He shook his head.
Dot took a deep, sobbing breath. "All right." She looked up into Wayne's eyes. "Let's do it."