CHAPTER NINE
MAD SEASON, PART 2
For the first time in microseconds, Dot went to speak with the three members of The Net's Own. The mercenaries sat in one of the P.O.'s offices; though they had all acquired various injuries, none were life threatening. Axis' bright blue skin was black and purple from countless bruises, and his nose had been broken at an odd angle. Eide's arm hung in a sling, and she had acquired cuts and bruises over her exposed arms and legs. Dram didn't have many injuries; he just looked dirtied up from the fighting.
When Dot entered the office, Eide Cobra immediately looked up. The grim look in the eyes of the group's temporary leader told Dot that they had already heard most of the news.
Dot still recapped the events of the last second. "Bob was shot, AndrAIa has amnesia, Enzo has sneaked here, and Matrix is in a jail cell."
Axis blinked furiously and jumped up. "A jail cell?" he repeated incredulously. "Why ever in the Net would he be there?"
Eide tugged him down by his sleeve. "Let the woman talk, Lurker."
Dot swallowed thickly. She was afraid she would burst into tears if she allowed herself to be swallowed up by the emotion of this second. She was unable to accept that her brother — still her younger brother, even though he had aged so much — had committed such a crime. "We just found out," she added, her voice dropping, "that Bob was actually shot by . . . Matrix. Matrix is in the jail, and once all this mayhem gets sorted out, he'll get a proper sentence."
"Is this some kind of joke?" Eide exploded. Her hands twisted, as if to choke the incriminated sprite. "Matrix would never do that!" But there was doubt even in the voice of one who had known the adolescent Enzo Matrix.
"I know," Dot snapped, then recovered. "I know. But Dr. Qwerty showed me the bullet they took out of Bob, and it matches Matrix's Gun perfectly."
Dram straightened from his slouch. "Then it must have been him," the mercenary said, ignoring Eide's deathly glare. "Why did he do it?"
Dot rubbed her face with her hand. "I have no idea, but I wish to the User above that I did."
"Miss Matrix?" The four sprites turned to see Dr. Qwerty in the doorway.
He coughed. "I'm sorry, did I —"
"It's all right," Dot said, crossing the room. "Do you have news about Bob?"
"Yes, somewhat."
"Well, what is it?" Eide snapped.
Dr. Qwerty licked his lips as Dot and the mercenaries watched him, anxiously waiting for an answer. "It's not very good news. You see, it's been several micros since the surgery, and Bob hasn't given any sign of awakening. We're starting to get worried."
Dot's face contorted in fright. "Is he going to be all right?" she asked, her voice quivering.
"We don't know," Dr. Qwerty answered grimly. He took Dot's hands. "Miss Matrix, I think you should go visit him." He said nothing more, and Dot nodded, feeling completely helpless and hating every nano of it.
"User help him," Axis murmured as Dot left with Dr. Qwerty.
Dram tossed his head, brushing a bang out of his face. "I knew it was Matrix," he said. "He was infected from the start."
"Dammit, Dram, just shut up," Eide growled.
Dram narrowed his eye and turned away. After a nano, Eide turned back to look at him, a suspicious feeling growing in her stomach. She locked eyes with Axis and saw that she wasn't alone in her thoughts.
Dot felt Bob's forehead. She had been with him for a micro, with no results. He had not yet awakened, and now she could feel a fever mounting.
Dot blinked back tears. She had already cried long and loudly, but to look at Bob and realize the despair of his situation made the tears come again. A few droplets flowed down her face, and she lay her head on Bob's chest.
Two figures shimmered into view.
"How's the patient?" the female asked quietly.
"Not good," replied her companion.
As Rasta Mon and Stripe passed by the two sprites, the latter stroked Dot's hair gently. Dot didn't feel it, though, and the Protectors went on.
"How's the other patient?" Rasta Mon asked. He and Stripe faced a dark corner of the room; in a few milliseconds, a tall, willowy form appeared.
"How are you feeling?" Rasta Mon asked again, touching the fellow Protector's forehead.
She didn't open her eyes to look at them. Her normally curly hair hung limp, and her beautiful rosy face was beaded with sweat.
"It hurts," she whispered. She held a long-fingered hand to her stomach, the exact spot where Bob had been hit.
"You'll be all right, Romy," Rasta Mon soothed, brushing a strand of hair from her face. "You'll live through this."
Bob's Protector jerked away angrily. "No one said anything about dying," she growled.
A moment later, a tear slipped down her cheek. "I don't want to die," she whispered hoarsely.
Stripe put a hand on her shoulder comfortingly. She glanced at Rasta Mon. "Ras, you'd better leave."
"What?" he cried. "I should stay —"
Stripe gently cut him off. "Both Romy's and my Protected are here," she said, with a glance at Bob and Dot. "You need to go to Enzo and Matrix."
Rasta Mon started to protest again; then he understood that Stripe wanted to stay to comfort Romy, and he nodded and disappeared.
Romy clutched Stripe's hand tightly. "I'm scared," she whispered, her eyes wide like a frightened child.
Stripe gripped her back. "Now look it," she said in a serious tone, though a smile tugged at her lips, "you're going to be fine. Bob's your Protected; and if there's any sprite who isn't going to delete easily, it's him." She stroked Romy's back. "Get some rest. This hurts as much for you as it does for Bob."
Romy nodded and closed her eyes. She leaned back against the wall, she and Stripe invisible to the world but still able to see one another.
Back in Mainframe, most of the citizens had a case of the jaggies, to say the least. Phong had taken up the temporary position of Command.com while Dot was in Azrael. As commander of the system, he had to make sure that Mainframe was still processing smoothly while checked up on the war plans and continuous surveillance of the lower levels.
Covin and Blair had still not been found, and the spot where Frisket had spotted something suspicious was under a constant guard. The CPUs whose format was to enforce the law took shifts while the pilots still practiced the aerial attacks Bob and Matrix had instructed them in minutes ago.
At Mr. Pearson's Data Dump, a group of six CPUs stood around the old shed that the grouchy binome normally lived in. They too were a little nervous, not knowing what exactly it was they were guarding.
There had been a few searches since the second Frisket had found something wrong, but each time turned up with no evidence except for the knowledge that something unknown was there.
As the seconds increased with no answers, the bomb that Covin and Blair had planted grew larger, still contained inside one of the dumpsters. It was a pearly white color, shaped like a very large egg. Each time the CPUs changed shifts, the bomb glowed dark silver, absorbing the energy from the spot and bringing it all into itself. Each time, it gained more power.
It was the middle of the second, and the latest shift of binomes sat eating a small lunch, their eyes always on the inconspicuous shed.
A rookie binome sat watching his superiors as he munched on a chip. Unexpectedly, he felt a prick between his shoulder blades. He shrugged to make the feeling go away, but it remained, and the pricking seemed to travel along his spine.
He dropped his chip and raised a hand to rub the back of his neck when the feeling intensified to a sharp sensation, and the next nano he dropped unconscious.
The binome next to him jumped back. "What happened?" he demanded.
The others swiveled their heads around to look, but they could see nothing to suggest what had happened to their comrade. Then, slowly, they each fell to the ground.
When the next shift of CPUs came to replace their comrades, they found the previous shift of binomes unconscious, some shimmering from energy loss. The binomes turned to zip back toward the Principle Office; but before they had taken three steps, they all crumpled.
Once both squads didn't return, the chief and other binomes cautiously approached the Data Dump. Twenty flickering binomes lay on the ground, but the new CPUs found nothing to suggest an attack of any kind.
The chief looked around the Dump and reported grimly, "These are our CPUs. What's going on down here?" he asked, stepping forward as he did so. He halted as something tugged roughly at his core, and he stumbled. He jerked back to the perimeter, and the feeling diminished.
"There's some sort of energy-drainer," he explained to the others. "Quick," he said to one, "get a message to the Principle Office and have them make a shield to fight off this before it gets to the rest of the level."
The CPU hurried off on his zipboard.
Once the message was sent, the mechanical whizzes in the Principle Office developed a shield that was designed to ward off the energy-drainer. A group of tech-boys accompanied by the chief CPU set up the shield in the Data Dump at the end of the second in place of another squad of guards.
Phong sat in Dot's office. Codec, Tab, and Balu stood against the wall or sat in nearby chairs, each with the same tense expression. Hexadecimal held Tessa against her protectively, stroking her long hair. The child listened with a calm that made her look older than her hours.
The old sprite steepled his fingers in contemplation. "It seems Daemon's Guardians left something behind," he said. "We do not know much about this organism, other than that it can drain energy at a steady rate." He sighed. "We have never dealt with something like this before. We need to get a message to Dot in Azrael. She must know of what is happening."
Codec nodded. "Agreed."
Phong opened up a VidWindow to dial in an outer-system call. When he pressed the correct digits, though, the large screen displayed black, with a single line cutting horizontally across it.
Tab's fists clenched in her skirt. "What's going on?" she demanded.
"Someone's cut us off," Balu answered in his deep, quiet voice.
"This is illegal, to disconnect communications unauthorized," Phong said. "And the main access to those calls is here, in the Principle Office. Whoever did this is here right now."
A knock sounded on the door, and Welman Matrix walked in. They all jumped at the interruption, and as he entered the room, six pairs of eyes followed him.
Welman glanced at the disconnected window with a look of absolute calm — a look that said he already knew what happened. "I'm sorry about the disconnection, old sprite."
Phong's eyes narrowed, and he pushed his glasses further up on his nose. "Do you have something to do with this, my son?" he asked.
Welman leaned against the chair where Tab sat, and she glanced up warily at him. He spread his hands in a helpless gesture. "It was needed."
"What do you mean, it was needed?" Hexadecimal asked, her eyes darkening from their usual green to an angry red.
Welman eyed her. Without answering her question, he turned and left the Principle Office.
Phong didn't waste a nanosecond. "Spare five CPUs to follow him," he ordered to a binome.
Tab stood. "With your permission, Phong, I'd like to go check the communications," she said. He nodded.
Balu stood as well. "Then I will come with you." Together they left for the lower levels.
Phong, Codec, Hex, and Tessa were left in the office. The registered virus spoke first. "I will take Tessa home with me now," she said. "We'll be safe." They disappeared in a flash.
Codec looked at the spot where they had just stood. With a grin, he commented, "I bet she'll ward off anyone who would want to hurt them."
"Of that I have no doubt," Phong answered. "But I am afraid that soon there will be need for fear in all of us."
Codec nodded somberly. "Mainframe's in trouble, for sure."
It wasn't much longer that Tab and Balu contacted them on a VidWindow to report.
"We've still got the inter-system VidWindows," the young mechanical whiz said, gesturing at the window. "But I checked the outer-system, and we've been cleanly disconnected. The lines are dead."
Ship easily passed through the bubble that separated the Supercomputer from the rest of the Net. Leaning back comfortably in the pilot's chair, Mouse chanced a look over her shoulder at the station Daemon had recently erected to ensure that each and every sprite and binome entering the Supercomputer was checked and given permission to continue on. Needless to say, Daemon had also recently put out some warnings on sprites from Mainframe, and Mouse had been recognized. All it had taken to solve that problem, however, was the containment field that she shot from her golden ring. Now, a chrome-skinned woman who had pleasantly introduced herself as Maxine was writhing and fighting a stasis field. The Guardians would find her sooner rather than later, but Mouse would deal with them only when the time came. She shoved her worries about them to the back of her mind; at the moment, she really didn't want to think about infected Guardians.
Mouse landed Ship in a little-used docking bay. She made sure her katana was in easy reach and that her backup knife was safely hidden in her boot before she left Ship. She had landed in a run-down sector unnoticed by the Guardians, as far as she could tell from the lack of transports in the air.
Mouse kept to the alleys as she made her way toward the Guardian Academy. The Supercomputer had changed since she had last been there, but she was still able to determine how far she was from the Academy.
It had been hours since she had set foot in the Supercomputer. As she sneaked around the streets of the huge system — larger than any on the Net — Mouse frowned and thought at first that she must have the wrong address. Although Mainframe had been devastated by Megabyte's forces four minutes ago, it would have been considered pristine compared to the ravaged city that stretched out before her. Countless battles had taken their toll on the buildings: fire had burned the insides of houses, leaving them blackened shells; whole apartment buildings had been torn down; gigantic blocks of rubble scattered the cracked and twisted sidewalk. Green veins, pulsing like living organisms, twined and curled and crawled over the wreckage, staining the metal and cement a sickly neon green color.
One visit was enough to seal a memory of the Supercomputer's shining majesty into the mind of even the youngest sprite. The Supercomputer's tall, sleek buildings seemed to absorb the very sunlight that glittered on their walls and throw it into the streets, so that even the most ragged shack shone with its own proud light. Now everything was the same dull, broken trash everywhere one looked. The Supercomputer's spirit had been obliterated. It was enough to make a sprite crumple to the ground and empty their stomachs. Mouse had witnessed too many other systems with similar — though not as graphic — destruction, so she stubbornly held back her bile and continued on in her search for the Academy.
Mouse relied on her memories to guide her through the sectors. She started in the fringes of the system and slowly made her way to the opposite edge, where the Guardian Academy resided. If there were anywhere in the Supercomputer to take control, Daemon would have overthrown the Academy minutes ago. As Mouse reached Sector 8, she would find that she regretted being right about the Academy.
Out of the frying pan and into the fire, Ray thought with grim humor. He and Mouse had been skipping around the Net, from system to system for two minutes. They had escaped two Guardian attacks.
Scratch that. Mouse had escaped two attacks. Ray had been recaptured that second time and had spent hellish seconds in the same compound he, Mouse, and her friend Ethan — some friend he was — had run from. In the middle of the previous night, he had been deposited in a transport and flown to none other than the Supercomputer. There he had been dumped in a cell no less clean than the first and had watched as a burly, silent Guardian patrol the halls. No one spoke to him unless it concerned his fate as another of Daemon's nameless slaves. Now that he was in the Supercomputer, the end of his life was looming up ahead; he was smack dab in the middle of Daemon's most powerful point of Infection on the Net.
For some reason, his processor brought up a memory of when he had been a prisoner in the nameless system where he had met Matrix and AndrAIa. It was the same routine in any prison. (And believe it or not, Ray had spent time in quite a few jail cells — for minor offenses and misunderstandings only, of course.) The prisoner was brought before the worst officer and given his punishment; then he waited out his fate in his charming accommodations.
Except for two things. One, the "charming accommodations" — which were usually anything but — was a pitch black jail cell illuminated only by the neon-green vines that had latched onto the damp walls. The vines had spooked Ray the moment he first stepped into his cell, and even now the sight of them made him shudder. They pulsed with an eerie, inhuman light, and small fronds waved occasionally in his direction; Ray had no doubt that the vines could see him, though he was lost on how. He had been shoved to and fro, through five different rooms during his imprisonment. Though every room differed — from dank, empty cells to battered communications equipment — the vines twisted themselves around every piece of furniture, every doorframe, and every door handle.
There was a second problem. The worst officer Ray had ever faced — and that sprite had been a nasty, hard-bitten man more machine than sprite and with glowing orange eyes — was a cute, fluffy kitten compared to Daemon's least-important officer. One could only imagine the kind of fear the worst Guardian struck into sprite's core-coms.
What Ray hated the most was the fact that Daemon's Guardians were supposed to be deleted. It seemed so wrong and positively evil to control empty bodies. Their skin sagged on their bones, and bloody gashes and scrapes — gained in fighting as infected sprites, never healed — stood out starkly on the iron-gray flesh. Their voices — when they spoke — were little more than rough, barely intelligible rumblings. Forget glowing eyes; the lifeless holes in each Guardian's face chilled Ray far more.
The Guardians who shoved sloppy, foul-smelling food under his door and who mercilessly dragged him to Daemon had all been deleted and were now nothing more than husks. Ray hadn't encountered any half-infected Guardians — those who were still processing — since he had been recaptured. Daemon had probably learned from her mistake with Ethan, when he had gone against her Infection.
Or had he? Ray had a feeling he could understand the young Guardian's processor better than most. Ethan had rebelled against Daemon's control by freeing Mouse and Ray, and the Surfr had to applaud him for not crumbling under the super-virus' power. But when the three sprites had raced out of the compound, Ethan had betrayed Ray; he had slowed him down with some sort of toxin that allowed the Guardians to recapture the Surfr. Ethan had escaped with Mouse, but that didn't mean that she was safe. For all they knew, it could be some elaborate plan by Daemon to gain Mouse's trust. Why, Ethan could be toting her back to Daemon to be infected. In that case, they would have gotten nowhere and would have only delayed the inevitable.
That thought hurt the most.
Booted feet stomped through the halls, growing increasingly louder. The steady rhythm of footsteps continued until it stopped at the cell where Ray was being held. He didn't spare them a second glance. The previous afternoon, for the third time in eight excruciatingly slow-moving seconds, Ray had been hauled roughly out of his cell to see Daemon. He didn't doubt that the Guardians had come to bring him to "Her Lady" again, though he did wonder what Daemon had to gain from him by now. She had sucked his processor dry — a very painful experience, Ray could say with absolute certainty — for every piece of information he had about Mainframe. Fortunately for him, it wasn't very much.
"I'm going, I'm going," Ray muttered resentfully as the Guardians opened the door to the cell and yanked him to his feet by the cord attached to his wrists. His hands had been bound tightly and carefully with a restraining command. If he so much as twitched, they sucked a bit of his energy away. It kept him imprisoned and too weary to fight. When in the cell, his feet were bound too, but when for "visits" with Daemon, the Guardians released his feet.
Ray was herded down the dark hallways, one Guardian in front and one behind. He firmly kept his face pointing forward, his eyes focused on the greenish light that slipped out from under the crack in a door up ahead. Those ghoulish vines were wrapped around the damp walls, and as Ray passed, they set off a rustling that sounded suspiciously like laughter.
Ray gritted his teeth and kept walking, not slowing for an instant. He felt like a lowly slave being mocked, but he wouldn't give Daemon the satisfaction of seeing him surrender.
Your first mistake, Daemon hissed. Ray's head snapped up, and he swallowed thickly as a feeling of unease made itself known in the pit of his stomach. Though he had survived standing before Daemon's image three times before, it was not something he looked forward to repeating. And the three times he had seen Daemon, she was communicating from the Web via VidWindow — imagine how much more terrifying she must be in person.
Nevertheless, Ray held his head proudly high as he was pushed into the communications chamber. He stopped dead upon the sight he witnessed in that dark room, and his knees buckled threateningly.
Daemon, lavender-skinned and clad in a formfitting navy blue jumpsuit, took agonizingly slow steps toward him and reached out a gloved hand to brush against his cheek. Her hand was as hot as fire, and Ray flinched away.
Daemon blinked, feigning hurt. "Not happy to finally see me in the flesh?"
"Over a VidWindow was enough for me," he barely worked up enough nerve to snarl. His voice failed him, then, and he drew in a deep breath to still the hammering of his core-com.
"That's too bad," Daemon answered, "because I am very glad to see my Web Surfr."
I'm not yours, Ray thought, his eyes narrowed. Daemon read his thought and grinned. Completely ignoring his fury, she continued: "I've been waiting for an entire cycle to infect you, Ray Tracer. You don't know how hard it is to find a sprite who can navigate the Web and bring me information on systems I have yet to infect."
I'm still free, Ray shot back and was again disregarded by the super-virus.
Daemon took the rope bound to Ray's wrists from one Guardian and dismissed him with a wave of her hand. She tugged Ray toward her, and he fell to his knees. He scrambled back to his feet, determined not to submit.
Daemon looped the coarse rope around her hands as she smirked thoughtfully. "Infection can be very painful, you know. As you slowly delete — and I make sure it's very slow — I rip apart your skin and burn all your spirit out with a single touch." She flicked one delicate, gloved finger for emphasis. "Then again, you could go more peacefully . . . a bit of code-swapping, then I can just plunge my hand into your back when you're exhausted from the pleasure. You'll only feel a small tingling. Believe me, you may want to merge with a woman once more before you delete. And I'm more than willing; it's not as if I can find much satisfaction with a platoon of corpses."
Ray did the most ungentlemanly thing by spitting into her face — desperate times called for desperate measures — appalled by the mere notion. Daemon just turned her head to the side and sighed. Yanking Ray's bonds again, she drew him a hair's breadth from her face. "You may want to rethink your decision, Surfr Boy," she hissed. She flung him twenty feet away from her, releasing the rope in the same motion. A Guardian standing by calmly retrieved the rope and yanked Ray back to his feet.
"You've got some time," Daemon told him sweetly. "I have important business to attend to. I was in the Web for so long because I had to stay updated on the progress in Azrael." She grinned at Ray's blank look. "You wouldn't know it, but all of your friends are there," Daemon told him simply, yet it sent shuddering chills down his spine.
"My Lady Daemon," a Guardian called from the doorway. He looked hurried, meaning he had probably rushed from another chamber with important news.
Daemon narrowed her eyes, annoyed at being interrupted in her glee. Pursing her lips, she turned to the Guardian and asked, "What is it?"
"We've just received a progress report from our fighters in Azrael," the Guardian said. If he had been a real sprite, he would have quavered under Daemon's impatient glare. As it was, this deleted Guardian continued on with the dire news. "They've been driven out of Azrael by the system's CPUs and the sprites from Mainframe."
"Yes!" Ray whispered, pumping one fist in the air. He had no idea what was going on, but it sounded as if the situation had tilted in the favor of the good guys.
"Quiet," Daemon ordered without looking at him. The restraining command tightened around his wrists, and Ray was silent.
"Tell me how, when, and why," Daemon ordered.
"The sprites from Mainframe teamed up with the sprites from Azrael to fight off our forces. They were somehow able to beat them down, and once the numbers of our fighters were next to nothing, they retreated to their ships and left the system."
Daemon let loose a string of rough, furious curses, looking almost comical as the words flowed from the lips of her young host. She closed her eyes and sighed in a long-suffering way, then placed one slender hand on her forehead. "And did we gain anything from our surprise attack?" she asked without opening her eyes.
"Yes, My Lady. Our forces burned down half of Azrael's Principle Office, and it says in this report that the number of deleted sprites was plentiful — including some from Mainframe."
Ray gasped in protest. Through Mouse he had learned that Dot had mentioned a plan of protecting some young ruler in a rich system, but it seemed Daemon somehow knew of this plan as well. Ray wondered if any of the sprites he had grown to like — Guardian Bob, AndrAIa, even the less-than-pleasant Matrix — had been among those injured or deleted. He had just begun to become better acquainted with all of them, and the thought that any of them could be gone sent a stab of pain into his core-com.
Daemon shrugged and opened her eyes. "Well, that's better than nothing. Go, now." Her slave bowed and obediently rushed out of the room.
Daemon returned her burning gaze to Ray, and her lips curled into a smirk as he narrowed his eyes behind his goggles and continued to struggle at his bonds. "In about a second I'll know which Mainframers I succeeded in deleting," Daemon told him. "And those I didn't get will eventually tear themselves apart, what with all the chaos from the attack. They can't trust each other, you know; not anymore." She looked a lot more pleasant than she had been two milliseconds earlier.
"It's just like I told Turbo . . ." Daemon paused, but not for drama. "I did like Turbo," she murmured, almost to herself. "If only he hadn't rebelled, like they all eventually do. It's not my fault they have to be deleted the painful way." She sighed heavily and looked back at Ray; she was smiling again. "Like I told Turbo, my plan of divide, render, conquer' is working perfectly." She counted off on her gloved fingers. "The attack divided them. It's really a wonderful story, you should hear it sometime. Lots of confusion, and lots of bloody deletions. Now, the stage in which I render them is just beginning. The poor sprites will be so vulnerable, it will take only a few sharp blows to make them fall. Then" — Daemon's small smile turned fiercely predatory — "I can conquer.
"But enough about my devious plans of destruction; you probably don't care what happens to those Mainframers. None of them are friends or family. There's only one sprite from Mainframe that you care about, and she's nowhere near Azrael." Daemon paused, and Ray's core-com thudded painfully in his chest. She casually glanced out the window at the bleak, twisted streets of the Supercomputer, and Ray was forced to follow her gaze. There was nothing outside.
"If everything is according to schedule — and no one has informed me otherwise — Mouse should be arriving here very soon. Ethan — you remember him, don't you? — will be escorting her to her doom." Daemon paused and let out a girlish giggle. "I love the sound of that, don't you?"
Ray clenched his teeth to keep from crying out Mouse's name. Daemon could delete him or infect him — though he'd much prefer the former — but there was no way she could touch Mouse.
"Oh, but I can." Ray cursed Daemon silently; the super-virus had read his processor yet again.
"Don't worry, Surfr," Daemon told him, her tone almost gentle again. "Mouse will be happy to see her beloved Ray Tracer again. But the sprite who will meet her when she arrives in the Supercomputer won't be a living sprite any more."
Ray's core-com quickened in panic, and as Daemon approached him he bolted for the door with an extra burst of speed in his legs. He had forgotten about the rope that bound his hands and the Guardian that held it, however, and he went toppling to the ground. Daemon slowly walked to the spot where he had fallen and began to peel off one leather glove.
Ray looked up weakly and realized that Daemon's eyes had become icy black holes. He shivered like a sprite befallen with a fever virus and tried to look past her, for any means of escape.
"My Lady!" the same pestering Guardian called from the hallway. "There appears to be activity in one of the empty classrooms. We think it may be the rebels again."
Daemon growled under her breath and stopped. Ray allowed himself a sigh of relief but didn't dare turn his head. "Take care of it," she snapped. "Can't you see I'm busy with my Surfr?" Ray tried not to let her see him shudder.
Something glittered over Daemon's shoulder, and Ray struggled to focus on it as Daemon's hand passed before his face. She grabbed his shoulder with her bare hand, and Ray let out a scream. Where her uncovered, lavender-colored skin touched him acid ate through the material of his clothing format and burned his skin. Daemon hauled him roughly to his feet, and Ray could see what he had detected in the darkest corner of the room: his Baud, its shifting light-energy gleaming through the darkness!
Unfortunately, Ray thought as Daemon traced her acid-covered fingertips over his cheek, raising huge red welts, there's no way I'm gonna get to it now.
"Delete Daemon!"
The cry came from seemingly nowhere, until Ray noticed the amount of activity at the doorway. It was dark and hard to see, but he thought he detected the large, burly forms of Guardians grappling with smaller, slimmer forms. A lamp flashed through the group, momentarily illuminating the teenagers — they didn't look much older than he — fighting hand-to-hand with the infected Guardians.
Are they random? Ray thought incredulously. He continued to watch the fight, fascinated at how the teenage rebels didn't back down. They were actually holding their own, and Ray's next thought was slightly more positive: Random enough to succeed.
The ragtag band of sprites had made it into the room, and they wasted no time in destroying equipment with weapons and good, old-fashioned fire.
Daemon shrieked in outrage and released Ray. He dropped, too relieved to sit up anymore, and pressed his cheek to the achingly cold floor. User, he had never felt so good in his life.
A foot dug sharply into his ribs, and Ray turned over on his side, irritated at whomever had decided to trample him as he was enjoying just a little bit of relief. Sprites jumped and ran above and around him, and Ray felt dizzy just watching them. He laboriously pushed himself to his feet again and surveyed the room.
A huge Guardian slammed into him, and again Ray became up close and personal with the ground. That was it, he decided. If he were going to have a chance of surviving, he would have to be above the action.
He whistled for his Baud, wincing as his burned cheek stung. Immediately, the sleek gray-blue Baud whizzed through the air. Ray jumped a few feet off the ground, and his Baud slid under him perfectly. His feet touched down on the smooth, steady surface he had known for all of his life, and he was off. He flew around the room, watching the battle. As much as he would have liked to assist the rebels, his hands were still tied and they were steadily gaining the upper hand.
Just then Ray noticed someone he could help: a tall kid was locked in combat with a Guardian, and another was sneaking up on him. Ray slammed straight into the Guardian as another had done to him, and the sprite went down, hard. Ray then swerved sharply and yanked the astonished boy onto his Baud — no easy feat with his hands bound, but he managed to grab the kid's arm — before the first Guardian could slash at him with a curved knife.
"Thanks," the teenager gasped. His face — Ray couldn't tell what color in the darkness — was flushed, and his eyes sparkled. Staring at the kid, Ray's stomach did a flip-flop. The boy looked unnervingly like Mouse with the taste of bloodlust on her tongue, a sight that was slightly unpleasant for Ray. The kid even had her bright hair.
"Drop me off here," the teenager instructed Ray. "I can help my friends." Glad to understand something, Ray nodded mutely and deposited the boy on the ground.
"Now get out of here," the boy called after him, waving an arm for emphasis. "We've got it covered!"
They did. Daemon had disappeared — Ray had no idea where or how, but there was no trace of her anywhere in the room — and the Guardians' numbers were growing less and less. Eventually, the unequally matched rebels would have to high-tail it out of the ruined building, but they would have lost less fighters than they had in other surprise attacks.
"Thanks mate!" Ray called after the teenager. He flew at top speed through the winding corridors of the dank building, ignoring his pain and focusing on his goal of reaching the outside.
He made that goal with the last of his strength. Ray burst out of the huge, silvery building and onto the Supercomputer's streets. The cement was torn up and blackened from repeated battles, and the buildings surrounding it weren't in much better shape. What struck him most was the hazy, green-clouded sky; no sunlight shone anywhere, and Ray shivered although there was no cold wind.
There were no citizens on the streets; if any were left from Daemon's Infection, they had all safely hid in their houses and hadn't dared to venture out. No Guardians rushed after him, and neither did any rebel sprites. He was alone; there was no one who could help him or hurt him. That was all right, though. Ray had survived on his own long enough, and he knew how to manage by himself.
As Mouse was just entering Sector 8 on her zip-board, her katana held out in front of her, she became aware of a pair of eyes — it felt like one pair, but where there was one dirty sprite there were bound to be more — on her back. Mouse remained very still and tightened her grip on her katana.
Ray paused in the alleyway, allowing the darkness to cloak him. His Baud was propped against the wall, out of sight of whoever had also halted next to his hiding spot. He couldn't see who loomed just out of sight, hovering a few feet above the ground on a zip-board, but it couldn't be anyone pleasant.
A wave of exasperation washed over Ray suddenly. He was tired; he was bruised and cut, and the welts on his face didn't feel very good either; he had been beaten several times and he just wanted to get out of this hellhole. "Why don't you show yourself?" he called to the sprite crouching in the opposite alleyway. "If you're gonna delete me, mate, might as well make it quick and merciful."
Mouse's breath sharpened, and her knees wobbled with sheer relief. Without a second thought for her own safety, she ran out of the alleyway and rushed towards the voice. It could be only one sprite, the one sprite she thought she would never see again —
Ray's core-com leapt like a dolphin in the data sea at the sight of Mouse's static orange hair. He never thought he'd be this happy to see glowing hair, but his Mouse — My Mouse? some part of his processor mused. I'll have to think more on that that later — was running towards him, and things would be all right if they could only be together —
Just as Mouse reached Ray, an extremely large, extremely grungy binome blocked the Surfr and caused Mouse to skid to an abrupt stop, her katana automatically raised.
The binome leered at her around broken, grimy teeth, and his one eye narrowed menacingly. "If you want your beloved —" He stopped and looked Ray over; then, without figuring out Ray's function, he rushed on, "If you want your beloved sprite who doesn't have any ears, you'll have to get through me, sweetheart." His dirty grin widened as he got a feel for how manly he sounded.
A nano later, Mouse sliced a chunk of his greasy black hair off his head, and the binome bolted before he could encounter any more trouble. Mouse immediately forgot him and turned wide, pleading eyes on Ray, begging him to be real and not a tired illusion her weary processor was dangling before her without any hope of reaching.
For his part, Ray let out a small laugh as he watched the binome run for his life. "Those blokes get easily scared, don't they —" Mouse flung her arms around his neck and kissed him long and hard. Ray also forgot the troublesome binome as he held Mouse tightly to him, determined not to let her go for a second time.
With Mouse nestled comfortably in his arms, Ray knew that he could ask for no more. The User had granted him a rare blessing by allowing him to escape Daemon's clutches and reunite with the woman he loved. Yes, he loved Mouse. There was no doubt that his feelings were of anything else but fiery, passionate, tender love.
It was all worth it. The skipping around the Net; the stay in that frigid system; the heartbreak, the remorse and the fright. It was the price Mouse had had to pay in order to return to Ray, and she would have lived through that hellish cycle one hundred more times if it meant that she could see his strong, smiling face.
For just two milliseconds in the war against Daemon, Mouse felt at peace.
Dot retired to her office as Azrael began to go into downtime. What a second — and it hadn't even been a full one since the ambush. She was tired out of her processor with all the worries for Bob, AndrAIa, and Matrix too, plus her anger at Daemon's troops, for bringing this down on them. Right now she desperately wanted to sleep. And she would, just as soon as she contacted Mainframe to let them know she was all right — in a sense.
As Dot dropped into her chair and powered up the communications, she noted that Azrael had a far better communications system than Mainframe. They hadn't just been in an hour-long system war, she added to herself. Mainframe had gone from one war to the other. It almost made her laugh; they had had only a minute and a half to relax before the next wave came.
Dot tried to convince herself that she was tired, and these thoughts were only coming from her lack of sleep. She typed in Mainframe's address with weary fingers and waited for the connection, willing her lids to stay open for just five more milliseconds.
An urgent beeping made her sit up. Dot wondered what was going on before she realized the beeping was coming from the screen in front of her, accompanied by a bright message.
"UNABLE TO CONNECT. COMMUNICATIONS CUT OFF. UNABLE TO CONNECT. COMMUNICATIONS CUT OFF."
Dot hurriedly pulled up a map of the systems around Azrael and searched for Mainframe. On the spot where her home system was, there was a large red X.
Dot gripped the sides of the desk tightly. Not again, she thought, eerily reminded of when Megabyte had cut them off from the rest of the Net. Not again. She wasn't sure if it was weariness or fright or a mixture, but a tear trickled down her cheek.
Enzo stood in the doorway, his eyes wide. The message on the screen kept repeating itself. "UNABLE TO CONNECT. COMMUNICATIONS CUT OFF. UNABLE TO CONNECT. COMMUNICATIONS CUT OFF." His eyes grew bright with tears — not just for all of them in Azrael, but for his close friends in Mainframe: Frisket, Phong — and Tessa.