High above the Academy Sector of the Supercomputer, there was a series of pops, then a bang and a puff of smoke. When the smoke cleared, Wayne MacHewlett stood on empty air, hanging onto Enzo Matrix, whose feet dangled loosely.
"What did you just do?" Matrix yelled, his voice cracking as he glanced down.
"I got us into the Supercomputer," Wayne answered. "November double-Charlie 1701. Turbo must be slipping. That's Old Gertie's call sign." He gave Matrix a glance. "Activate your zipboard before your shoulder dislocates." He continued to support Matrix as though the big sprite weighed no more than an infant, but his green eyes focused on the Principle Office, and he started drifting slowly that direction.
Matrix twisted and squirmed, finally managing to pry his zipboard off his belt and activate it one-handed. He pulled his feet up and set them on the pads, finding his balance.
Wayne let go of Matrix's arm. "Good. Come on. I need your eyes."
Matrix kicked the zipboard around, and glided up beside Wayne, his expression guarded. "Who are you?" he asked finally. "What are you?"
"I'm not a virus, if that's what you're asking," Wayne said mildly.
"Uh-huh." Matrix's fingers drifted toward his holstered gun. "Your eyes are green, you know."
"I'm not surprised," Wayne answered. "That particular meme is all over Hexadecimal's code." He changed the subject. "Keep scanning for Megabyte. He knows the system is unstable, so he'll be looking for a way out."
"How do I know this 'upgrade' you gave me isn't another infection? For all I know, you're Megabyte, and you've just—"
Wayne snorted. "Think, cadet. Do you honestly believe Megabyte would let you live long enough to even ask that question?"
Matrix opened his mouth, then halted abruptly. "There," he growled. "I've got him." His eyes were focused on a patch of pavement running through the wide green lawns around the Principle Office. Matrix let his zipboard drift lower. "He's in the sewer where he belongs."
"No," Wayne said. "Not the sewer. The maintenance tunnels." His green eyes shifted as he thought. "User beyond the Web—that's what he's doing. He's using the infection." He dropped to the ground. "We need a hole, Matrix. A nice, big hole. Don't blow up Megabyte just yet."
Matrix, still on his zipboard, focused back on the pavement. "What is it you want from Megabyte, anyway?" He fired almost casually, and a hole opened up with a shower of gravel and a deafening boom.
Wayne smiled tightly. "Don't worry, there'll be plenty of him left for you."

Turbo reached up to shove his safety mask back, and banged his elbow against the thin metal of the cooling duct. He swore, though without much feeling or so much as a rub of his newest bruise. He ground his teeth and mopped the sweat off his face before he resumed cutting. Someone had carefully removed all the nuts anchoring the cooling fans in place, then splatter-painted the moving fans as they worked loose from their hubs before falling into the ductwork. The nuts had been discovered decorating a candy-striped wedding cake in the staff lounge.
Copland beeped, and Bob's voice bounced around in the duct. "Turbo? How does it look up there?"
"Like your first flying lesson," Turbo grunted. The cutting torch wavered, and Turbo locked his elbows and ground his teeth as green light lit up the duct. A soft sound escaped Turbo before the paroxysm passed. Copland crooned its distress as the green light faded and Turbo doggedly went on with his work.
"Any progress on the secondaries?" the Prime Guardian asked.
"The keytools got one of them cleared before we had to lock up the staff," Bob said. "The core temperature has dropped to 123% of normal." Bob was quiet for a moment. "It's not enough, is it?"
"Probably not." Turbo paused to let a piece of metal fall. It rattled down into the mess below, where it lodged against another embedded chunk. "How are you?"
"I've been worse," Bob said. The flat, washed-out monotone of his voice gave the lie to the statement. "How about you?"
"Headache," Turbo grunted. "Overheating, I think. I'm almost finished."
"I think we all are," Bob murmured.
Turbo didn't answer that. "Are the keytools gone?"
"Most of them." There was a short, choking sound, then Bob went on breathlessly. "Glitch refused, and Caen started swearing as soon as Glitch contacted it. They're not going, Turbo."
"That's what I was afraid of." Turbo addressed his keytool while he scooted, flat on his back, into a crevice, the cutting torch angled ahead of him. "Copland, you can't—"
Copland's answer was a short, rude clack, followed by a string of beeps.
"That's pretty much what Glitch said," Bob commented.
"Ah!" Turbo curled nearly double as the infection sought another route into his source code. "Get out of here, Copland. You, too, Glitch. Get Caen and get out of here. You can't help us now," he ground between clenched teeth. "Go. 'T's an order. Find someone to…defend the Net."
Copland howled, and Glitch joined it through the still-open com channel.
"For the good of the Net," Turbo whispered.
Copland's shriek was almost lost in the echoes of its departure.

Matrix dropped through the hole he'd made in the pavement, and landed with a solid thump inside the maintenance tunnel. He glanced behind him, but then focused all of his attention forward. "You coming?" he called up to Wayne.
Wayne slid down the edge of the concrete, letting his feet brush the floor before letting go of the pavement above. "My knees aren't as young as yours, kid. Lead on."
"Uh-uh. You may not be Megabyte, but I want you where I can see you." Matrix gestured with his gun.
Wayne looked at Matrix, then lifted his eyebrows and sighed. He stepped in front of Matrix, and the two of them slipped down the tunnel, headed for the Principle Office and Megabyte.
"He's moving," Matrix said tightly.
"Toward us or away?"
"Toward."
"Good. I don't feel like chasing him."
"Greetings, fools!" Megabyte's deep voice boomed in the tunnel. "I assume you are here hoping to pull off some miraculous rescue of this magnificent, doomed system. This time, however, your luck has run out. The core will soon fail, and the power surge will wipe out even the memory of the Supercomputer and its infernal Guardians."
"Why, Megabyte?" Wayne bellowed back. "Why destroy what you spent so long trying to conquer?"
Megabyte chuckled, a cold, horrible sound in the depths of the tunnels. "My dear doctor, do you really wish to go through that hackneyed rigmarole? Very well, since there is nothing you can do to stop me now, I will indulge your sense of melodrama."
"Ruling the Supercomputer was only the first step," Megabyte said, as Wayne and Matrix crept closer to his voice. "My true aims have always been higher. The core power of Mainframe would give me the strength to conquer the Supercomputer, and the power in the core of the Supercomputer would have been enough to upgrade me all the way to a Web virus."
"So that's how the infection mutated," Wayne said.
"Yes, yes," Megabyte said patronizingly. "It's all finally coming together for you now, isn't it? After my station failed to delete you and your annoying friends, I concealed myself among the Web Riders, and opened that stray packet. Attempting to save that helpless little Game sprite distracted you long enough for me to make my way here."
"You mutated the infection," Wayne said.
Matrix's hand dropped onto Wayne's shoulder. The doctor turned, and exchanged a look with the younger sprite. Matrix put his back to the right wall, then glanced meaningfully at the tangle of pipes running just above their heads. Wayne nodded.
Megabyte laughed. "And you were the genius who was to stop me. I perfected the infection, doctor. Hexadecimal was never more than fragments of code that should rightfully have been mine. I rebuilt the power of the infection, but only so that I could reclaim the power of Gigabyte!"
Matrix's right eye buzzed, and a targeting icon formed on what appeared to be a nondescript pipe connecting two larger ones. "Come on out, Megabyte. You're not fooling anyone."
"Nor are you, boy," Megabyte's voice purred. The pipe abruptly shifted, and Megabyte's arms and legs folded out from impossible angles. The virus loomed in the tunnel, nearly filling it. Parts of him appeared partially-upgraded. Wires and gears stuck out from unarmored joints and unfinished sensors. "A garrulous doctor and an apprentice Guardian. How pathetic."
"Almost as pathetic as half-upgraded virus," Wayne answered.
Megabyte smiled, a horrible sight, since his face consisted of only glittering eyeballs, the broken frame of a nose, and a predatory snout stretched over row upon row of teeth. "Then let us dispense with the talking, my dear doctor." He opened his right hand, and infection lines shot toward Wayne.
"No!" Matrix jumped forward, firing once. The shot screamed right into Megabyte's torso, where it exploded. Megabyte gasped, but grabbed Matrix around the waist with his left arm, which was now a serrated claw from the elbow down.
Wayne's head snapped up, and he let the infection lines dig into his palm. Then he closed his fist around them and pulled them close. "Wrong move, virus," he hissed, his green eyes hard. "You just gave me exactly what I need." His hand began to glow with white-hot light.
"What? You can't—Stop! Or the boy dies." Megabyte's pincers closed around Matrix, and the cadet gasped.
"Do you think I care?" Wayne wrapped the lines tighter, pulling himself into Megabyte's chest. "We Guardians have a saying, you know, "Sometimes the good of the many must take precedence over the good of the one." He reached into Megabyte's open torso, and his skin flushed, then fluoresced, throwing the shadows of Megabyte's innards across the wall and the pipes behind him.
"What…are you doing?" Megabyte panted as the light brightened.
"You're not the only one who borrowed a few algorithms from Hexadecimal," Wayne answered. His bright green eyes were almost sad. "Your sister carried a useful bag of tricks. But I need a few of yours to set the system right."
"No," Megabyte spat. But he slowly fell to his knees, letting Matrix slide out of his pincers. "You'll only delete yourself."
"Maybe," Wayne shrugged. "See you on the other side, virus." He stepped over Megabyte's huddled body. "You can finish him off now, if you like, Matrix. I'm done with him."
"What did you do to him?" Matrix asked, panting. His eyes were a little wild.
"I cut and pasted his infection and power-modulation codes into my operating code," Wayne answered. "He won't last long without them. Shooting him might be a mercy." His tone was clinically matter-of-fact.
Megabyte lunged from the floor, and Matrix put him back down with a kick. "Let him suffer the way he's made me and Mainframe suffer."
"I thought you might see it that way," Wayne said. "I'd suggest you get back to the surface. This tunnel is going to get pretty hot soon."
"What about you?" Matrix asked.
"I know what I'm doing. Go."
Matrix gave Megabyte another kick before turning back up the tunnel.
"You're…a doctor. You cannot destroy life," Megabyte hissed at Wayne's back.
Wayne's voice echoed back, "I was a Guardian long before I was a doctor. To mend and defend, virus." His footsteps faded into the depths.