Wayne glanced at the clock. "Crashes. Where are they?"
"Time passes slowly for the one who waits, but cycles are nanos to one who works," Phong said sagely. He stretched his neck to peer over the readouts of the compiler. "Ah—yes. I believe we are ready."
"Good. Transferring data." Wayne hit a few keys on the sequencer.
The compiler thrummed, then began a steady clanking under Phong's watchful eye.
"What's the estimate?" Wayne asked.
"If Turbo and Davic do not bring us a more advanced compile command, it will be…" Phong set his fingertips together and lowered his head for a moment. "Forty-eight microseconds."
Wayne paled. "Two cycles?" He closed his eyes and shook his head. "Two cycles." He sat up straight and opened a vidwindow. "Dot? How's the perimeter effort going?"
"Better than we expected," the Command.com answered. "Bob's locked down nearly every system with ports to the Supercomputer. Mouse and Ray are moving our medical teams into position in the Net."
"Good." Wayne sighed. "Any word from Turbo?"
"Not yet," Dot answered.
The infectees had not spared the lab. Broken bits of glass, plastic, and metal lay scattered among puddles of what were possibly hazardous substances. Turbo and Davic moved carefully in the mess.
"This is weird," Davic muttered as he opened drawers and cabinets.
"It took you this long to notice?" Turbo asked, without a glance at Davic. He watched the door as Davic worked.
"No, I mean this," Davic pulled a carryall out of a cabinet. "It's sort of a robbery, because we don't want to get caught, but we're not really stealing, because we're not going to fence it, and it's Collective property anyway."
"You got a problem with that?"
Davic made a face. "No good honest criminal would touch this job."
"If it'll make you feel better, I'll arrest you myself later," Turbo said dryly.
Davic grinned and opened another cabinet. "You'll have to catch me first, boss."
"Anybody hungry?" Bob entered Mainframe's infirmary with a tray balanced on one hand and a napkin over the other arm. "It's the nightly special from Dot's."
Wayne was slow to take his eyes off the slowly ticking numbers on the compiler. His stomach, however, gurgled noisily enough to be heard above the machine's thrum. "I guess I could take a break," he said ruefully.
"The wisdom of the body feeds the wisdom of the mind," Phong said. He picked up a plate. "Perhaps our other guests would care to join us?"
"I'll ask," Bob said. He hummed, then burbled a quick phrase.
The Web Riders beside the bed of the dying sprite turned, then one of them came across the room to claim two plates. The Rider bowed, a movement curiously graceful for such a misshapen creature, then returned to the bedside. They talked in soft, low counterpoint while they ate.
"What are they saying?" Phong asked, his eyes bright with curiosity.
"They're enjoying the food," Bob answered.
Glitch, muffled under the napkin, clicked.
"Didn't you already—?"
Glitch rattled.
Bob's brows knitted. "If you think it'll help. But—"
Glitch beeped, then rose off of Bob's gauntlet, taking the napkin with it. It zipped out from under the napkin and across the room, then settled with deliberate care onto the Web victim.
"What the—" Wayne half-rose from his chair, gripping his fork.
"It's all right, Doctor," Bob said hastily.
Glitch thrummed, and sent a cable snaking into a power socket. The dying sprite beneath it whimpered.
One of the Web Riders turned, and purred something at Bob.
Bob replied in what could only be called a reassuring tone.
"What's it doing?" Wayne asked, still half-crouched.
"Call it supportive care," Bob answered. "Glitch is going to try to maintain her until we have enough keytools in the system to run the recompiling program."
"Enough keytools?" Phong asked. "In my experience, one keytool is quite enough."
"You mean one Guardian is enough," Wayne commented. "We have a saying at the Academy: 'One Guardian can cause more trouble in a microsecond than the User does in a second.'"
"Very funny," Bob said. He gestured at the compiler. "So, how's it going?"
"Too slow," Wayne answered. He glanced at the compiler again. "It's all too slow." He stabbed his fork into the daily special with unnecessary force. "Even if the patch file were ready now, we couldn't spread it fast enough to save everyone."
"I've put out a 10-34 call through Guardian channels," Bob said. "We'll have more Guardians here soon."
"Adding sticks to our bundle increases our strength," Phong said.
"A few more lives," Wayne murmured. "Not enough, not enough. Not even the entire Collective could move fast enough."
"What if we loaded the patch file onto the Mainframe medics?" Bob suggested. "That would expand the vector pool."
Wayne shot the Guardian a look, then sighed and shoved his forkful into his mouth without answering.
"When it is finished, the patch file will be very large and complex," Phong explained apologetically. "To download it to an ordinary binome PID, we would have to erase the entire file already contained on it."
Bob's face fell. "Oh."
"Not to mention the file-integrity overrides," Wayne added. "Pop quiz, Guardian: Name the three formats that can alter a PID against the wearer's wishes."
"Command, Guardian, and virus," Bob answered promptly. "But what if we attached the overrides to the sprite patch? Then we'd have civilian vectors—"
"Leading to a geometric-progression routine," Wayne finished. "That's what's compiling now." He kicked his chair toward a console and tapped in some commands one-handed. "I've been working the numbers for microseconds, Bob. Assuming that Turbo and Davic Portaled in within the next five nanos with the compiler from my lab intact, every Guardian in the Net showed up to help carry the patch file, that every victim has eaten something in the last two cycles, and the upgraded version of the infection has no re-infection capabilities" keys clicked and displays flashed as Wayne's fingers flew, "—this is the most optimistic estimate of the deletion loss."
Bob read the numbers on the screen. "seventy-two percent," he murmured in a tone of soft horror. "We'd lose seventy-two percent. Every sector in the Supercomputer will crash."
"We've got to find a way to move it faster," Wayne growled. "There has to be a way." Desperation cracked into a grin on his face. "You don't happen to have another tame virus in this crazy little system of yours, do you?"
"Hex was never exactly 'tame'," Bob said. "She played with innocent lives the way Frisket plays with Nulls."
"Hexadecimal's insanity was preferable to her brother's lust for power," Phong stated.
Wayne's eyebrows shot up. "Her brother?"
"Hexadecimal and Megabyte were of the same viral strain," Phong explained.
With a forgotten mouthful of food bulging in one cheek, Wayne looked first at the aged Command.com, then at the system's Guardian.
Bob lifted an eyebrow. "Doctor? Are you all right?" he asked warily.
Wayne blinked, then swallowed what was in his mouth. "Why wasn't I told this?"
"Told what? That Megabyte and Hex were brother and sister?" Bob's eyebrows furrowed, and he exchanged a worried glance with Phong.
"Yes." Wayne threw down his fork and turned to the console, his eyes darting swiftly back and forth. He ran his hand over his head, then started tapping keys.
"It—didn't seem important," Bob said slowly, watching the doctor clear the glum prediction from the screen.
"It's more than important," Wayne told him without looking away from the screen. "You've just given us a chance to save the Supercomputer. A slim chance, but a chance." His fingers were dancing across the keypad, apparently completely independent of the bright eyes watching algorithms leap into life on the screen. "Get that cadet of yours down here, Bob. We're going to need him."
"He wants what?!" Dot demanded, the outrage clear in her tone.
"He wants Matrix to find Megabyte," Bob answered wearily. "He says it's the only chance we have to save the Supercomputer." He sank into a chair. "Matrix won't let me get near him, but he might listen to you."
"He's not listening to anyone," Specky said. "He blew up Dr. Matrix's exosuit and turned the entire port into a no-fly zone."
"Tell the doctor to find another way," Dot ordered. She turned back to the command room's central console.
"We tried, my child," Phong said unhappily. "But Doctor MacHewlett said—"
"He's my brother!" Dot snapped. She glared at the retired Command.com and the Guardian. "He almost lost his life a few cycles ago, and he may have lost his mind." Her voice rose, and tears filled her snapping purple eyes. "I won't let anyone ask any more of him."
"What's he want Megabyte for?" Mouse asked.
"Because we need something that can spread the patch file to an entire system in less than a cycle," Wayne answered, coming through the door with a handful of data pads.
"I think you've forgotten one little detail, sugar," Mouse drawled. "Megabyte hates us. He's been trying to destroy the entire Net for minutes. No way he's gonna help us disinfect the Supercomputer."
"Megabyte isn't the one whose cooperation we need. He's just the source code." Wayne said. "It's Matrix I've got to convince."
Several of Dot's staff gasped.
"Is that what you want Matrix for? To turn him into a virus?" Dot demanded. She grabbed Wayne with one hand and the pistol on her hip with the other. "Because if it is, you'd better change your mind, right now."
"Don't be ridiculous," Wayne told her in an icy tone. "That would go against every byte of my ethical code."
"Primum non nocere," Phong murmured. At Bob's puzzled look, the old sprite translated. "'First, do no harm'. It is the first tenet of a physician's format."
"The first and the strongest," Wayne confirmed. "Let go of me, Dot Matrix." He abruptly sounded tired, as though he had simply run out of emotion.
Dot, wide-eyed, released her hold, and Wayne put one hand to the console to steady himself.
"I'm not trying to torture you or your family, Dot," Wayne said, dropping all formality as he sagged. "I'm just out of other ideas."
"What is your idea, exactly?" Dot asked warily.
"I need a virus," Wayne said flatly. "The only one I'm aware of who may still be processing is Megabyte."
"But Megabyte was deleted in the Web," Bob pointed out.
"We're not certain of that," Wayne countered. "For all of our sakes, let's hope Matrix was right, that Megabyte is out there somewhere."
"That's the first time I've ever heard anyone wish a virus good health," Bob observed.
"There is a first time for everything, my son," Phong said with a trace of humor.
"So you're looking for Megabyte," Mouse said to Wayne. "Why does Matrix have to do the huntin'?" Mouse asked, sidling gently around the console toward Dot. "There's a long list of sprites who'd like to get their hands on that virus."
"Because no one can get their hands on Megabyte if we can't spot him," Wayne answered.
"Wayne thinks he can use the fragments of Hexadecimal's code to find Megabyte," Bob said.
"Actually, I'm using the fragments to make some educated guesses," Wayne temporized. "I should be able to construct a signature filter within the next few microseconds."
"Signature filter?" Dot asked. "Glitch can track a programming signature."
"Yeah," Mouse joined in. "That's how keytools identify you."
"Exactly," Wayne said. He sat down on the console. "Keytools don't process sensory data the way sprites do, but the way a Trojan Horse virus works fools both. When Megabyte steals a form, he copies the victim's metatags, then rearranges his internal codes to fit. Sprites see the new skin created by the metatags. Keytools scan for a match between the metatags and the internal structure. Neither recognizes the virus."
"And you think Enzo can get around that," Dot said.
Wayne nodded. "Matrix has multiphasic recognition algorithms." He glanced at the blank expressions around the room, and clarified. "He can process multiple layers of visual input at once. Once Matrix downloads my cross-referencing and reconstruction routines, he can scan a sprite's internal structure for fragments of metatags hidden in the code. The filter will use Hexadecimal's programming logic as a template to test for similar tag structures, and fill in gaps. Matrix's ordinary sprite code will arrange those tags into a logical structure, then turn it over to his facial-recognition algorithms. To put it simply—he'll be able to see the virus no matter whose face Megabyte's wearing."
Dot shook her head. "But to face Megabyte again…"
"It might be good for him," Wayne said. "To know that Megabyte can't hide from him might alleviate his paranoia." His face softened. "Ms. Matrix, please. I know what I'm asking. I also know the cost of not asking it. If we had the entire Guardian Collective in the Supercomputer with a compiled patch file right now, we'd still lose over half the population of the system." His eyes were bleak. "I'm trying to hedge our bets. We'll compile that patch, and send every sprite who can carry it into the Net and the Supercomputer. If we can catch Megabyte in time, we may be able to keep the Supercomputer online. If not," he sighed. "If not, we'll have to evacuate everyone who's sane, before…"
"Before the whole system crashes," Bob finished in a sickened tone.