"Multiple signal shifts!" Wayne cried. "It's adapting in transit!"
Mouse let out a high-pitched squeak of desperation as she worked to counter not one but several different signal mutations.
"Twenty picoseconds to propagation," Doctor Bingen rapped out.
"I can't do it!" Mouse shrieked. "They're changing too fast!"
"Ten picoseconds!" Doctor Bingen snapped.
"Dear sweet User, we're gonna lose him," Galen said, horrified.
A squeal of mechanical alarm shrilled, making Mouse jump at her boards.
"Are you giving up? So soon? How disappointing. I guess it's my turn, then," Wayne said, his eyes gleaming bright green.
"Propagation," Doctor Bingen whispered, her eyes on Wayne.
Wayne put one hand on the edge of his boards and jumped over them without obvious effort. He looked down at Matrix, gray and flickering, then he pushed the write heads out of the way. "You're really making this much harder than it has to be," he told the doctor. He put one hand on Matrix's chest, and his hand glowed suddenly red. A burst of light shot through Matrix's body, and the unconscious sprite heaved, then fell back onto the table as Galen gasped and Doctor Bingen lunged across her patient to grab the green-eyed doctor.
The monitor was still wailing. Wayne turned and looked at it even as Doctor Bingen tugged at his shirt.
"This thing really is annoying. I wonder why I didn't take care of it before." Wayne touched the monitor with one finger. It exploded into sparks and fell silent. "Much better," Wayne said approvingly.
"Galen! Call security!" Doctor Bingen yelled. She changed her grip on Wayne, trying to shove him away from Matrix. "No, check the boards! What did he do?"
"Chaos will always triumph over order. It is the way of things," Wayne told her pleasantly as the young resident scrambled to comply. He grinned at the white-faced doctor, then disappeared with a loud bang.
"Caen! What was that?" Davic slipped into a supply room as a pair of nurses hurried past in the hall.
Caen beeped, then chattered.
"Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no…" Davic put his back against the door and leaned the back of his head against it. "Did he kill the kid?"
Caen clacked.
"Where is he now?"
Caen clicked, and its little screen lit up in the dark closet.
"One thing at a time, Caen," Davic murmured as his eyes flicked across the screen. "One thing at a time."
"He's crashing!" Galen yelled.
"Get those write heads aligned!" Doctor Bingen cried back. "No, Mouse, you do that. Galen, get over here. I need your hands."
A burly sprite burst through the door. "Someone called for security?"
"Doctor MacHewlett's infection just manifested itself," Doctor Bingen said tightly, without looking up. "He's got teleport capabilities. Get one of those Guardians in the waiting room to track him down. And send me another surgeon and two more nurses. Go!"
The sprite left at a run.
Wayne popped back into existence in midair. "Now what was I doing?" he asked himself. He glanced around himself, looking into fifteenth-floor windows with a puzzled expression. "I'm sure—" he broke off, and his brow furrowed. "Something's wrong. What is it?" His green eyes darted back and forth as he thought.
"Doc!" Davic appeared on the roof of a nearby building. "Wayne!"
"Hm?" Wayne's eyes refocused. "Hello. Don't I know you from somewhere?"
"Yes," Davic told him. "I'm the sprite trying to save your ASCII."
"Save me from what?" Wayne asked, standing on empty air.
Davic stared at him for an instant, then said in a milder tone, "Why don't you come down here, and I'll explain."
"Okay," Wayne shrugged. He drifted to the edge of the roof.
Davic grabbed the doctor with one hand, and pulled him in. "That's better," he said with a sigh of relief. "Don't scare me like that, Doc; I thought I was going to have to scrape you off the street."
Caen clicked, then burst into a stream of clicks and whistles.
"I remember you," Wayne said, watching the keytool. His brow furrowed again. "Or do I? I think so. There's something I've forgotten. It's important."
Davic carefully put his hand on Wayne's shoulder, and Caen ran up Davic's arm and created a shoulder harness around Wayne. It sent out a small grappling hook attached to a long line, anchoring Wayne to the roof.
Wayne watched the keytool with recognition flickering on his face. "I've seen one of these before. A long time ago."
"It's a keytool, Wayne. This one's named Caen, and I'm its Guardian. You used to have one like it. Remember?"
"No," Wayne's tone was troubled. "There's something I've forgotten," he said again. "Where was I?" he asked Davic.
"You were doing surgery on Bob's cadet. Remember him? A virus named Megabyte put a whole bunch of interrupts into his head and slave-disked him."
"Virus…" Wayne murmured. His eyes snapped up, and they were wide and purple. "Oh, my—the infection. What have I done?" he demanded. He grabbed Davic by the arms. "Tell me—what have I done?"
Caen whistled harshly, then chattered as it retracted.
"Caen says Copland just got a report—you went green-eyed just as a cascade was triggering. You fried the interrupts then 'ported out. Doctor Bingen's trying to recompile enough of Matrix's code to keep him processing."
Wayne let go of Davic, and sank to the roof. "I've killed him. I've killed the one sprite whose code might have saved the Net."
"He's not dead yet, Doc," Davic said gruffly. "You actually saved his life—you stopped the cascade."
"But I infected him in the process. I must have." Wayne looked at his hands. "As weak as he is, he won't be able to hold off the degradation."
Caen made a few subdued beeps.
Davic nodded, and sat down beside Wayne. "Caen just checked. There's no viral activity in Matrix's code, according to Copland."
"There's probably none in mine, either," Wayne said bitterly. "We can't track this thing, remember?"
Caen hummed something, then expanded its screen and beeped.
"Does that matter?" Davic asked it.
Caen beeped again.
"What is it?" Wayne asked without interest.
"Well, maybe this will make sense to you," Davic said. He held out Caen for Wayne to see.
"What?" Wayne glanced at the data on Caen's screen. "What is this?"
"Caen scanned you just now," Davic said. "It found something. It seems like a pretty small detail, but it thought it might be a clue."
Wayne scanned the display. "This is timing data, what—oh. Oh." He looked up at Davic. "I'm an idiot," he said in disgust. "It's been staring me right in the face—stupid!" he exploded. "If that kid deletes because of this—come on," he commanded. He grabbed Davic by the wrist. "Get me back to that hospital. Now."
"How is he?" Dot asked, her eyes wide.
"Still processing," Mouse answered, dropping to the couch beside Dot. "Just barely." She sank back into the couch cushions and rubbed her face before letting her hair down.
"The interrupts are out," Doctor Bingen replied, sinking wearily into a waiting-room chair. "He's stable."
Sighs of relief followed this statement.
"So Wayne didn't hurt him?" Turbo asked.
Doctor Bingen shot the Prime Guardian a quizzical look. "I'm not sure just what he did, Prime," she said frankly. "What I do know is that one moment, I was losing a patient to a mutating interrupt cascade, and the next, the interrupts were gone and Doctor MacHewlett was talking about chaos. I had my hands full after that."
"Copland, any report from Davic?" Turbo asked his keytool.
Copland beeped, then hummed.
"He what?"