The Hollow Sprite
by Joshua Falken

Based on Paul Verhoeven and Douglas Wick's "Hollow Man" and H.G.Wells's "The Invisible Man"

Thanks to Sydney for the beta-reading and to Julia_Cat and BenRG for the revision. Thank you! :-)

Chapter 4 - A Young Woman's Night Out

The hollow sprite faced the corridor, uncertain for a moment. She could turn back yet. She shook her head. No. She would take this path until the end.

She walked in direction of the elevators and pressed the call button. While she waited, she saw that the door of the stairways was open.

"What am I thinking? I can't go down stairs while invisible." Dot thought, after she went to the stairs area. "I can't see my feet." Looking at the descending way, she saw the steps perfectly, even in the darkness. She considered that. "But... if I'm careful and walk slowly..."

She breathed deeply and she gave the first step. She didn't fall downstairs like an analog. Taking the second step, she felt as if she was learning how to walk again. Slowly, she descended to the floor below.

"Alphanumeric!" She exclaimed, a little louder, for that small victory. She looked at for the sides, to certify that no one had heard her. As nobody appeared, she began to go down the second flight of stairways. Ten more to go.

======

The guard in the reception area of the building where Dot lived arched his eyebrows, when the stairs door opened up, as if by itself. When he approached to examine it, the door of the main hall, which was locked, suddenly opened up and later it closed also by itself, as if a ghost was haunting the building. A bit of fear filled the guard's confused eyes.

======

Dot walked in direction of the Principal Office, when a truck passed close of her, splashing through a puddle. The water reached her legs, turning them visible. The shines of the water drops delineated her legs as small blinking lamps.

"What?" A groggily voice was heard.

Dot turned and saw a homeless binome, that had been sleeping hidden in an alley, look at her. Or better, at her legs, since it was the only visible part.

The binome saw a pair of brilliant legs to run off and disappear, as the shining droplets ran away to the ground. Finally, the shining vision disappeared completely. He looked confused for a moment, before saying: "Never am I drinking ROM and High Energy Shake together again." With that, he went back to sleep.

======

Mouse and Ray had just left the Principal Office, after finished a complete checking in the defense shields. They were close of an automatic machine, when she decided take a cup of java.

The hacker stopped suddenly, looking to either side. "What is wrong, love?" Ray asked.

She frowned, her hands touching the pockets of her coat. "Did you already have the feeling of being watched? As ridiculous as it could be?"

"No."

They looked around in turn. The few people that were in the street didn't pay attention to them. Distracted, Mouse switched the java machine on. None of the two noticed that the thermostat moved, and that the thermometer had gone up a little.

She let out a scream, when she had the first sip.

"What did happen?!"

"This java is too hot!"

"Did you burn yourself?"

"No. It wasn't so hot, but..."

Ray looked at for the thermometer: normal temperature. For a test, he also poured some java. It was normal. They looked at each other, confused.

======

Dot laughed a little, in disbelief. She had moved away from Mouse and Ray and she was at some blocks away from them.

They didn't notice that she was beside them! Neither when she messed with the thermostat. Not very hot, just enough to catch them of surprise. Sure, it was very childish, but she couldn't resist! But it was good to see Mouse confused, for a change... The hacker had looked directly at Dot, but she hadn't seen her!

The sprite walked on the main street of Baudway sector. It took her a while to get used to the fact that no one could see her, so she always had to be the one to step to the side when someone was walking towards her.

All of sudden, she feel dizzy. She leant against a light pole. When that feeling passed, she noticed that she was in front of the Algorithm Theatre, the few sprites and binomes standing in line to buy entrance. She was not surprised: since the Users began to upload the movies of their world to the Net, some of them made an incredible success, as the one that was now showing: "The Sixth Sense". She remembered the very favourable comments that her friends made about the movie, especially the ending. Matrix and AndrAIa got to see the movie twice just to certify that they had really understood the story. Mouse and Ray had seen the movie too, although Mouse claimed that she hadn't liked it, much to the others' disbelief.

She sighed. She and Bob had thought of seeing that movie, but they had to postpone it due to an AVERT emergency... Later, he and Enzo had watched the movie, and they loved it. But as well as Matrix and AndrAIa, they refused to tell her the end!

She was in front of the entrance door, when she saw a couple pass through the turnstile. Her invisible eyes narrowed. "Why not?" She thought.

Dot jumped over the turnstile. The ticket collector didn't notice.

She went until the auditorium, being careful to not bump into anyone, what was easy, since there were few people for the last showing. During the trailers that preceded the feature, she stretched out her hand to try to do a shadow in the screen. Obviously, she didn't have a shadow. She should already have foreseen that, but even so... she could not wrap her mind around the fact that no one could see her.

She shrugged, when the intro music of "The Sixth Sense" began, and she leaned on the chair, crossing her legs, to watch it.

======

The spectators began to leave, after the end of the movie. Without their knowledge, they had someone accompanying them, with a smile. Partly, because Dot had liked the film too. But also, because she felt... well... a different sensation... that she couldn't exactly explain yet.

She was going to the terminal station of one of the four train lines that tied the five hard drives, that now composed System Mainframe. When Mainframe had been restored, the User, besides restoring Mainframe B and everybody that lived there (including her parents), had also installed more three hard drives, enlarging the system capacity a lot.

She was to cross the street, when a truck came in high-speed. Dot jumped back to the sidewalk moments before the near-impact. While the truck left, Dot slapped her forehead. She was invisible! The driver cannot see her! If she had not seen that truck, she would now be... Dot shuddered, trying not to think in the possibility.

Crossing the street with much more attention (with the help of her enhanced vision), she entered in the station. She looked at the clock, still lacked some nanos for the arrival of the train of Verhoeven-Wick Route, that tied Mainframe A and C. While she waited, she noticed two sprites, standing, awaiting the train too. Both they seemed known to her. One of them was a young man, with grey skin and blue hair, with a somewhat cynical expression in his face. The other one was a young woman, of silver skin and red long hair, who reminded Dot of Mouse, with an bored expression that said that she would like to be in anywhere else. Curious, Dot approached of them.

======

Lynn Cog's patience had reached its' limit. She had missed three printing deadlines and she had to reformat the Mainframe Data-Times' edition that was being printed now... and now she had to deal with Roger Pagemaker, one of the most cynical and sensationalist reporters she knew. "Roger," she complained, "I don't have the patience to stand your cheap moves, ok?"

With a malicious smile, Roger shut his mouth and turned for the other side. Lynn's back was turned when she felt someone very close to her. Suddenly, Lynn felt a hand touch her Ascii. Blushing in shame, she closed her fists, looking daggers at the responsible for that.

As soon as the train stopped in the station, Lynn Cog narrowed her eyes and punched Roger Pagemaker in the right eye, a punch so strong that he fell to the ground. Indignant, he asked why she did that.

"As if you didn't know why!" was her answer, before she boarded in the train.

======

An old binome was seated in one of the train cars, knitting, when suddenly she heard a woman's voice burst into laughter. It seemed that the woman had heard a really funny joke. Annoyed by the laughter, the old lady lifted her eyes.

She almost had a core.sys attack. The laughter continued, but there was no one there! Shaking, the old lady disembarked soon that she could when the train stopped in the next station. The voice silenced for one moment, then she laughed again.

======

Dot was seated, close to the door. She dried her eyes, has just laughed a lot. First, the punch that Lynn Cog had given in that idiotic reporter, that importuned Dot since from the accident. Dot knows that she shouldn't have provoked the woman, but he deserved that.

Then the reaction of that old binome lady, scared with Dot's laughter. Sure, she should not laugh of the fright that she gave to that poor old lady. But she couldn't avoid the fact that it was funny.

Dot was to disembark in the last station before the train to cross the bridge that tied the two hard drives, when AndrAIa entered in the train. Surprised, due to the lateness time, and curious, Dot changed her plans. She wanted to know where the game sprite was going.

======

Later, AndrAIa was in front of the Susan Calvin Sporting Center. Before entering, she looked at the sides. She didn't get to shrug off that sensation of being observed. "Delete that!", she thought. She asked the security guard if Matrix was still in the Center.

The guard told her that he was in the firing range.

With a sigh, AndrAIa went in that direction. She didn't notice that the guard had a problem closing the door, as if something invisible had been caught in it.

AndrAIa opened the door of the firing and heard the shots that her boyfriend was aiming perfectly at the targets.

"Isn't it past your bedtime?" She asked as soon as he removed his hearing protectors.

"Huh? Hi, Andi."

The door opened up slowly again. Shaking her head, AndrAIa approached him.

"I don't understand why you practice shooting until the early seconds of the downtime. You have the best aim in System Mainframe." He frowned a little. Besides his mother and his sister, only AndrAIa could call him by his real name without getting him angry.

The renegade shrugged. "If Daemon attacks Mainframe, I want to be ready and able to blow off her head."

The game sprite looked at him a little apprehensively. He noticed and understood the reason. "I'm not looking for it. But I guess that if the situation arrives to that point, it's better to be prepared to stop her," he said, in practical and calm tone.

AndrAIa relaxed. For a moment, she was afraid that that violent rage that he had suffered during the game-hopping was returning. That rage came from many things: his rage at Megabyte, the frustration for having lost that mis-compiled game, the fear of having failed his friends, the frustration of not being able to go back to Mainframe... All this combined inside of him, turning him a bitter and extremely temperamental sprite. Even cruel, sometimes. AndrAIa could not avoid thinking that, during that time, it was as if he was becoming a virus, the thing that he most hated. And she thought Matrix had also noticed that, unconsciously.

The tables were turned during the end of the War against Megabyte, when they faced each other. Matrix was about to delete the virus, but he didn't. Matrix never said the why, but she thought that he had done that to prove to himself that he was not the same Megabyte, to exorcise that demon of his soul... and he achieved that goal.

Not that his personality has changed all of sudden. Everything that he had gone through had left scars on him. He continued a sprite with a very short temper, someone easy to irritate. But not in the way that scared her. Annoy her, yes, sometimes.

Matrix noticed the way how AndrAIa looked at him. "What?"

"I was only thinking in how much you changed. Just that."

He gave an ironic laugh. "And what did you want? After telling me that you could imagine me as that guy with the axe in "The Shining"?"

She smiled, embarrassed. That was another factor that allowed Matrix to control his temper. He could accept that AndrAIa could be angry with him. After all sometimes she had the right to be angry, but he refused to accept that she could be afraid of him. When she said after that movie, that she could easily imagine him in that way, going random and trying hurt her... Well, you can imagine the shock that he had.

The two young lovers were silent for a while before AndrAIa spoke. "Shall we go?"

"Go ahead, I have to put a few things in order before I leave."

AndrAIa left the room. Matrix looked at the open door for a moment, before taking a small box from his pocket. He opened it.

He became alert in an instant. He thought that he heard someone gasping. Blaming his imagination, he murmured somewhat annoyed with himself: "You didn't have courage, did you? Again." He closed the box with the engagement ring, and left the room.

======

Dot shook her head and wearing an incredulous smile as she walked through the Sporting Center. Matrix thinking of proposing marriage to AndrAIa?! She knew how much they had been through together, so was to be expected that they are thinking about something like that, but she was surprised that was him who was thinking seriously in that subject...

When Dot stopped to think about that, she saw that she was in front of the Olympic pool. The water was completely calm and clear. She placed her left hand into the water, forming a kind of hollow bubble. The shape of her hand was perfectly visible. She chuckled.

She withdrew her hand and she looked thoughtfully at the pool.

There was the sound of a double click followed by a light splash. A bubble in the form of a sprite was visible in the middle of the pool.

She swam the whole length of the pool twice, her arms visible due the sheet of water and the body visible because of the void that it formed in the water. When she left the pool, the water covered her completely, creating a transparent bubble of her. Ghostly, in a certain way. She smiled.

Dot picked up a towel and she began to dry herself, while wet footprints marked the route that she took.

======

Later, the hollow sprite went back to her apartment, going by the way of Kits Sector of Mainframe A. She noticed that she was just a block away from the building where Bob lived. She stopped, an idea forming in her head, remembering the talk that she had in her apartment earlier.

"Don't even think on that!" She murmured to herself. She turned her eyes to her boyfriend's apartment, noticing that the lights were turned off. "But... it would not do any harm..." She said, in a whisper, giving up to the idea.

======

Bob woke up when the door bell rang. Looking at the clock, he became surprised, due to the lateness of the time. Surprise turned to anger as Bob looked through the peephole. There was nobody there.

As soon as he turned to return to his bed, the bell rung again. "What in the Web...?" He murmured surprised, when he don't saw anyone again through the peephole.

When the bell ringed by the third time, he opened the door and he walked to the corridor, looking for who was playing a joke on him. There wasn't anybody in the corridor.

Scratching his head, confused, he went back to the apartment. That strategy game he played earlier today must have got him more tired than he thought.

After fetching an energy can in the kitchen, he sat down on the sofa. Drinking the energy, he appreciated the silence of his apartment. Mike, his TV that couldn't be turned off because the remote control ran away, on that moment was in some system, playing the tour guide, for Hex. He laughed when he thought that Hex, a chaotic virus, was a spy for AVERT... after all, nobody would think that a virus, in special a chaotic one, could be helping them to defeat Echelon... But Hexadecimal was one of a kind, even for a chaotic virus...

He got startled when he heard a noise coming from the kitchen. Placing the can in the center table, he teleported himself for there. There was no one there, the noise had been a pile of glasses that had fallen in the sink.

When he returned to the living room, he was surprised when he found the energy can on top of the sofa. Shrugging it off, he finished drinking the energy, and he went to the bathroom, to have a good bath. Maybe he would relax a little. Closing the door, he frowned at the sound that the door had made, as if it had hit something. While he took a shower, the door opened up slowly. He didn't care. He closed his eyes for one moment. When he opened them, he thought that he saw a shadow in the steam.

"What the...?" The shadow had disappeared.

Leaving the shower, Bob looked around him, startled. He could swear that... He shook his head. And he laughed at the idea that he had.

"She would never do that." He murmured for himself, smiling of that ridiculous idea. The smile disappeared soon later, with an afterthought. "I mean, I don't think so..."

He looked around again, searching for anything out of the normal. He joined his hands, and made a kind of energy net, of the size of a blanket. When he heard a noise behind him, he threw the net, that dropped in the ground. The noise was from the door as it closed.

Laughing at himself, he went back to the bed. Some microseconds later, he slept.

The tuft of hair on his forehead moved, as if an invisible hand had moved it. A small depression appeared in his cheek, as if it was being touched gently by a finger. The depression went down slowly for the neck, reaching his chest.

Bob didn't stir. Marks in the form of a pair of a woman's hands appeared in the sheet that covered him. The marks moved, as if they were massaging him. After it stopped, his lips moved, as if they were being kissed. The ghost of a smile appeared in the face of the sleeping sprite, before he bolted awake, bathed in a cold sweat.

He didn't hear when the door of his apartment opened and closed by itself.

======

It was almost the beginning of the uptime when Dot arrived at her apartment. She entered, carefully so that she didn't wake up her brother.

She didn't believe in everything that had got to do due to her invisibility... in the train station, in the movie theatre, in the sporting center, in Bob's apartment (she didn't bother to hide her invisible smile)... They didn't even imagined that she was beside them! They thought that was their imagination when they noticed something! Only Bob thought that she could be there, but even so he laughed at the idea. He didn't could picture her doing that! All that did that she felt something that she didn't get to define very well.

It was something as... freedom.

She stopped, suddenly thoughtful. It was the only word to describe it... freedom.

The invisibility had its drawbacks, as in the case of the truck that almost ran her over, or when Bob (without knowing, of course) had almost slammed the door of the bathroom on her nose... but anyway...

In the bathroom, the faucet opened up and a small puddle of water floated in the air and splashed over her face, turning it visible. With an indecipherable tone of voice and a serious expression in on her face, which faded from view as the water slipped away, she announced:

"It is incredible what you can do when you don't have to look at yourself in the mirror anymore."

What do you think? Read and Review!

Chapter 5 coming soon...