Dot opened her eyes and stared at an unfamiliar ceiling for a long moment.
Something beeped.
"Ah! You are awake again. Excellent." Phong's face swung into view above her. "Just lie still, my child."
"Phong?" Dot reached up and rubbed her forehead, then dropped her hand and sat up a little too quickly. "Phong!" She blinked, and her eyes refocused. "Phong, the Supercomputer. Enzo…Bob!"
"Now, now, Dot," the old Command.com soothed. "You must eat something." He offered her a steaming bowl of thick soup. "Your power levels were nearly critical when your staff brought you here."
"Not now, Phong. I have to save—"
Phong placed the bowl on a beeping console and lowered his head. "I am afraid that is not possible, my child," he said gravely. "The infection has taken the entire Supercomputer. Our long-range scans show that the Core there will soon go offline."
"Then we'll have to be fast. Where's Mouse?" Dot swung her legs over the edge of the bed.
Phong did not get a chance to answer. As Dot's feet touched the floor, a swarm of Portals opened, each barely large enough to permit a keytool through. The small room filled with squeals and chatter as keytools of every description suddenly filled the air.
"What in the Net…Glitch!" Dot pointed, her eyes wide in shock.
Glitch zipped out of the crowd of its comrades and buzzed around Dot's head, squealing and clicking at high speed and higher volume.
"And that, if I am not mistaken, is the Prime Guardian's keytool," Phong said, nodding toward a red blur. He watched the keytools mob the almost-forgotten Web victim across the room. "There is only one explanation for their presence here, my child," he said sadly.
"No," Dot shook her head. "A keytool never leaves its Guardian. Not while there's still some hope…" She stopped. "Bob—no. Oh no no no no no…" Her grief was interrupted by sudden silence, and she raised her head.
The keytools had formed into a neat, if ungainly, knot. They dropped lightly onto the unresponsive Web victim. Bright lines shot out of the keytool mass, and secured themselves into four data ports and all the power outlets in the room.
The lights flickered and died, and the usual thrum of the system died away to barely a whisper.
Dot found Phong's thin arm in the darkness, and clutched it.
Another red light flashed to life in the now-silent Supercomputer Command Room. "W—wa—warning," the system voice stuttered. "Virus-virus detected in P-Prin-rin-rin-ssscipal Office—ss."
Bob opened his eyes and slowly lifted himself off the console he had dropped onto out of sheer exhaustion. "Impossible…" he breathed. "Nothing could survive the surges…" His eyes changed color, and a lunatic grin spread across his face. "I bet I could do that." He pushed away from the console with renewed energy. "The entire power of the Core, surging through me! I know what that would feel like!"
Hoarse, maniacal laughter boomed down the ductwork from above.
"What lovely music!" Bob danced around the Command Room, singing off-key and twirling a nonexistent partner with expert flourishes.
"Phong?" Dot's voice said into the dark. "Phong, what are they doing?"
"I do not know, my child," the whispery voice answered. "Perhaps—"
A beam of light erupted from across the room, and something writhed in the shadows, screaming. The cries were soon drowned out by a vibrato purr that shook Mainframe to its foundations. Something rattled, and a crash of broken crockery signaled the loss of Phong's bowl of soup.
The purr ended in a sudden, sharp chord. The lights came back on and the keytools fell out of their knot at the same instant. A long, ululating cry went on, though. It died away as its maker stretched.
Phong blinked rapidly and adjusted his glasses. "Ah—hello?"
The sprite perched on the bed opposite turned and smiled at him. "Hello, revered elder. What system is this?"
"Mainframe," Dot answered, smoothing her hair. "Who are you?"
A keytool zipped out of the remains of the knot and slammed itself onto the sprite's left arm with enough force to bruise. It chattered and clicked, its tiny round face spinning.
"I believe that answers part of your question," the Guardian said, her rich tones amused. "Let me answer the rest. I am Aria, and this is my keytool, Pavane. We are in your debt for my restoration," she curtseyed, "but first I must ask a question of my own. Where is my Prime?"
Dot and Phong exchanged a look, at a loss.
"W—wa--arning. C-c-core-rr fragment—t-t--ting." The system voice rang in the pulses of energy.
Wayne's green eyes and darkened icon were all that distinguished him from the mindless power swirling around him. "Access System Restore file." The words rose on a spinning vortex of tightly-controlled power.
"Ak-ak-access d-denied," the system said, while chunks of falling masonry bounced off Wayne's shoulders.
Wayne sighed, and pressed his hands to the wall behind him. His face flickered, and darkened to something closer to its normal color for a moment, as streaks of green light twisted their way around the walls.
In the Control Room, consoles sparked and displays went dark in sprays of green sparks, lighting up Bob's slow, mad dance. Turbo slid out of the ductwork in a cascade of broken and burned metal. A deep gash gaped across his forehead, but the Prime Guardian seemed oblivious to his injury. He grabbed Bob by the waist as the other Guardian twirled by, and threw him into the nearest wall. Bob raised his head with an animal growl, and unleashed a fireball from between his hands.
"Ak—akakakak—kacess…"
"Granted," Wayne finished as the system voice stuttered into silence. A vidwindow opened, its colors washed-out by the brightness around it. Wayne ran one brightly-pulsing finger across the screen, and a bright red highlight followed his touch. He reached into the text, and grabbed several lines of code, pulling them out of the screen as a thin wire of zeroes and ones. He took off his icon. "PID—executive unlock. Open for upgrade." The top half of the icon spun, and lifted off the bottom half. Wayne flickered in and out of existence, his body burning away in bright flakes of overloaded code. His eyes were intent as he coiled the wire of code neatly into the bottom half of his PID. "Close icon and reinitialize," he ordered.
The icon whirred as its halves closed. Wayne put it back in its place on his chest, then closed his eyes and tapped it.
After that there was only white-hot silence.
Sound. Sounds. Racket. It made his head hurt. It hurt to realize that he still had a head at all. And fingers. They hurt, every one of them. He slipped back toward the silence he had found in those last nanos, but just on the edge of the precipice, a gust of hot, loud wind pushed him up again. Racket. It was so loud.
Light—yellow, painful light dawned. He turned away from it, but his eyes burned in their sockets, making him regretfully remember that he had a head again.
"Wayne?"
No. Not Wayne. Just warm silence and—
"Wayne?"
The voice was familiar. A memory stirred.
"Crash you, T'bo," Wayne mumbled.
"Any day of the week, old friend. Two falls out of three?"
"Nah. Y'cheat." Wayne opened his eyes to slits, then shut them again with a moan. "Wha happened?"
"You just saved the Supercomputer, Wayne. Nearly sacrificed yourself doing it, too. There's a lot of sprites who want to yell at you for that."
"Wha?"
Turbo put his hand on Wayne's shoulder, then quickly removed it at Wayne's eyes flew open with an inadvertent gasp. "Sorry, old friend," he said hastily. "Let me fill in the gaps. You and Matrix busted in here, tore open a maintenance tunnel, tracked down Megabyte, and turned him into a little bit less than a Null. Then you walked right into the Core and let loose an upgrade with enough power behind it to blow half the system clear across the known Net. When the smoke cleared, the core was down to five percent of capacity and there wasn't a fragment of Hexadecimal left anywhere in the system."
"Smart meme. Not hard," Wayne murmured, his eyelids drifting shut. "Just needed a power-control bug. Not hard."
"Maybe not for you," Turbo said. "You never patched yourself, did you?"
"Wouldn've worked," Wayne answered, his eyes still closed. "Different."
"Different how?"
Wayne sighed. "Different patch. Got Doctor Bingen to leave some of the infection intact."
"In the name of the Programmer, why?"
"Thought I might need it." Wayne opened his eyes again. "And I did."
"So that's why your scans keep coming up viral," Turbo said. "You pasted together bits of Hexadecimal and Megabyte in your own code."
Wayne nodded wearily. "Fight fire with fire." He focused his eyes on Turbo. "What am I, class three?"
"Four," Turbo corrected glumly.
"So why am I still here?" Wayne asked. "Guardian policy on viruses—"
"Doesn't apply to you," Turbo snapped. "You think I'd authorize the deletion of my oldest friend? Of the hero who saved the Supercomputer?"
"If you had to," Wayne answered levelly. "What am I, Turbo?"
Turbo sank back into his chair. "You're the Head Medical Protocol at the Guardian Academy, Wayne."
Wayne nodded slowly. "And if I happen to startle some cadets or decide to teleport myself home some night--?"
"You scare 'em, you explain to 'em," Turbo answered. "They'll be expecting miracles out of you, anyway." Copland beeped, and Turbo glanced at it. "I've got to go. Lil threatened me with a full checkup and three days of quarantined observation if I 'pestered' you too long."
Copland beeped again, and produced an elongated wolf whistle.
Turbo blushed.
Wayne's eyebrows rose questioningly.
"You remember that Web victim we found?"
Wayne nodded.
"The keytools cured her. It—it was Aria, Wayne. If I hadn't ordered the keytools to leave here, she…" He stopped, and was silent for a long moment, then he shook his head, grinning. "She Portaled in here as soon as Mainframe's scans showed that there was still something here to Portal to."
"It's about time," Wayne murmured.
Turbo's goofy grin vanished. "How's that?"
"She's not going to let you post her at the other end of the Web again, you know."
Turbo winced. "So she's told me. But—"
"Just let her marry you already, Turbo. She's been more than patient with you." Wayne grinned at his old friend. "Maybe keeping her happy will keep you out of my hair."
"You don't have any hair, old friend."
"And who do you think's responsible for that?" Wayne settled back against the pillows and yawned. "Go plan your wedding, Turbo. Kiss her for me."
"I'll do that," Turbo said, his lips twitching. "Sleep well, Wayne."
"Mm-hm." Wayne closed his eyes. "Hey Turbo?"
Turbo turned back from the door. "Yeah?"
"D'you think you could pull rank and get Roscoe in to see me?"
Turbo chuckled. "I'll see what I can do."
Epilogue
The alarm went off and Wayne rolled out of bed, tangling the sheets around Roscoe, who pulled the linens off the bed and dragged them into the living room as he followed his master into the kitchen. Wayne fixed an omelette for himself, and a bowl of kibble for Roscoe. The sprite sat down by his kitchen window and took a bite of his omelette. "Not bad," he commented. "I think I like it better with green onions and shredded cheddar, though."
Roscoe whuffed into his bowl, and his tail wagged.
Wayne dawdled over breakfast, looking out the window at the cleanup and reconstruction effort under way on the streets that had been a vandalized ruin a few decacycles ago. The storefronts had been cleaned and repainted, the junked cars had been removed from the streets and most of the ruined bushes and trees had been replanted. Wayne sighed contentedly, put his plate down for Roscoe to lick, and padded into his bathroom. "Three more cycles," he told his reflection. "Just three more cycles, and then, back to work." He grinned. "Wonder if Argus is up for a round or two."
His green eyes laughed back at him.