Seek

by Spooks21

Makubex centric. An anomaly is erasing data and killing residents of Mugenjou, and it has to be dealt with.

Seek

By: Spooks

~ ~ ~ ~

Beep!

One erased.

"It's the anomaly again."

"Can you pinpoint it this time, Makubex?" Sakura shifted a little to look at the active monitor.

Makubex shook his head minutely, frowning. "I don't understand, I can't trace it, and it's not picking up on any of my sensors. They can't even register what it is," he leaned back on his hands, bouncing his crossed legs a few time in pent up frustration. Lack of knowledge, especially in something like this . . .

"Maybe it's in the system itself?" Her voice was barely a whisper amongst the hum of the surrounding computers.

"Maybe," Makubex leaned forward again and hovered over the keyboard perched in his lap. Click, click, click. Sharp little stabs at the keys. He didn't believe that it was in the system. Neither did Sakura. But it was easier than admitting that they didn't know what was going on.

The violence had been extreme, fast, and silent. Shadowy, elusive someones had been bringing down the pocket groups and gangs opposing the new movement for peace. Makubex theorized that since the liberation from Babylon City's system, certain pre-programmed virtuals were acting completely independently for the first time, ever.

It had seemed that while some people had been made (the terminology bothered him, but he couldn't think of a better way to put it other than "coded," which bothered him even more) as "free" people to move on their own and be used as experimental subjects, others had been integrated spies with sleeper programming ingrained into their very creation, with connections left open to trigger the desired actions and behavioral patterns.

Now that those connections were severed, there had been unexpected results. Some people had fallen asleep and never woken up again. Others had turned violent, intensely so, and tore themselves to pieces. But the majority of the people, none of which knew they weren't "real" (they were real, dammit), had an overwhelming urge to distrust any and all authority or hierarchy not determined by force.

Makubex realized there was probably some profound psychological (or was that sociological?) statement that could be made about this. Formerly programmed people rebelling against the entire concept of authority and bringers of order. But he had decided not to focus on the philosophical aspects of this sort of thing while people were getting killed.

Getting killed or disappearing, that is. On the database, their files, when he looked, just weren't there anymore. They'd been erased, not the completed data set that showed up when a virtual-born "died," but just . . . gone. Their data, their bodies, their clothing, their bloodstains . . . Just gone.

All data regarding them was wiped.

Even from Makubex's regular backups.

Which was an entire separate level of sinister he just couldn't deal with until he figured out the rest of what was going on.

Memories seemed to stay though, ghosts in the system in other people's data and obviously in non-system based people's as well. But the erased, they themselves were gone, leaving no other trace. Well, except in the instances when the missing people were accompanied by human-born. Then there were usually signs that the erased had been there, if only from the way a pool of blood (from one of the human-born bodies) had been shaped, as though something had once lain in the way and blocked the blood's flow long enough for it to get sticky and stain the concrete.

An anomaly had been accompanying each of these recent attacks, and there had so far been no way for Makubex to even observe the attacks. Surveillance had completely blacked out in the areas where and when the violence was occurring. It was as though the system itself refused to let him see it. And so far there had been no witnesses.

This was the fourth time the anomaly had appeared in just under 72 hours.

If something wasn't done quickly, rumors were going to go from whispers to screams.

Makubex typed, trying to wrest from the system some way to see what was going on where the anomaly was currently existing. Beside him, Sakura had her own keyboard and was working in from a different path. While they were working, people were probably dying. Or being---

Beepbeepbeep. Quick succession, like an electronic pulse gone wrong. The watchdog program he'd coded just for this purpose informed him that three people had been erased.

Something had to be done, and fast. But who would want to ask a friend to go into a life threatening, unknown situation just to gather information?

It would have to be done anyway. Unless he went himself . . . but then again, Sakura had been almost constantly with him lately. She probably realized what he was thinking about doing.

Suddenly the screens fuzzed and the anomaly was gone. Surveillance came back with an electronic crackle and enough quiet devastation to make both of them gasp. Sakura immediately covered her mouth and turned her eyes away, but Makubex just stared, swallowing any sort of other reaction in favor of studying the scene for any traces of . . . whatever it was that was doing this.

The Anomaly.

But it wasn't there.

Three broken bodies were, though. Broken was definitely the right word. He could see pink-stained bone poking out in random places before the camera even had a chance to focus properly. There were places . . .

It was a lot of blood.

Frozen blood. Maybe congealed . . . ? No . . . frozen.

The bodies seemed to be frozen to the pavement with their own blood. Wide-open eyes bulged slightly. They were frosted over, glazed with ice as well as death. A small splattering of vomit had been forced out of one body's (not a person anymore, an object, stay detached) mouth and nose. It was crusted to the face. The stomach had been stomped on.

Frozen.

That was new. Of course, the Anomaly hadn't stayed so long before. Three bodies and four erased. Makubex changed camera angles and panned in. He could see shapes in the iced blood where four bodies, twisted and broken, had fallen. Or been thrown. Whatever, semantics. Just as before, the bodies of the four virtual-born were just . . . gone.

Sakura stood up and left the room. Her footsteps were uneven and rushed.

Makubex kept focusing. Details. Logic. Don't think about seven people dead. Never mind that they were troublemakers. They were still dead.

Possible explanations:

Babylon City. If this was their way of calling for war against the people they'd formerly been using, then they were sure as hell going to get what they were asking for. But this didn't seem like it was their style. There were easier ways. Unless they wanted to undermine the illusion of safety . . . No. The odds weren't good enough. Next possibility.

Serial killer. Someone with the unique ability to not only nullify and scramble the virtual Mugenjou around him (or her, or it), but also to somehow erase--No. Ridiculous. That sort of ability didn't exist, not in one person. There would have to be a concerted effort--Next possibility.

A bug in the system itself. A virus, one that could manifest into reality, thereby working from the inside out? This was the possibility that fit best with the given scenario. Certainly not something he preferred to consider, but one he couldn't ignore.

It would mean his control had been stolen from him without him realizing. It was also worrying on a very personal level. It would mean the Anomaly could come for him, even here in his safest place, and no one would even be able to tell until he just . . . disappeared.

Poof. Gone.

He'd faced that before, but that had been different. And it definitely wasn't something he wanted to repeat. Ever.

But nevertheless, this was a possibility that could not be ignored just because he didn't want to think about it. Makubex started running his most powerful diagnostic programs. It wasn't the first time he'd done this in an attempt to figure out what was going on. It probably wouldn't be the last.

Meanwhile, he also constructed new walls around the kill area. They didn't need any little kids stumbling across that.

Next possibility? He was out of possibilities.

Another pan-review of the bodies. There had to be something he was missing.

Wait.

Corner of the screen, tucked in the darkness created by one of the new walls. Something foggy?

Makubex leaned forward, squinting at the sudden mist. He keyed the camera to focus, changing contrasts and sharpening the image. The fog stilled, and for a second, Makubex thought the surveillance feed had jammed.

A low hiss, and the fog punched forward, heading straight for the camera in hard rush.

Makubex reeled back, barely biting down on a yelp as he knocked his keyboard off his lap and protected his face with his arms. Instinctual movement.

He could have sworn! Did it see him?!

The screen had gone black.

So had every monitor that had been viewing the kill area.

The room was now almost completely dark, only the diagnostic programs' monitors giving off any sort of light. Deep shadows.

Makubex swallowed, took what he tried to make a steady breath and forced his weirdly numb fingers to type. The Anomaly (when had it reached capital letter status in his mind?) was at the scene again. He'd just witnessed it. Right? Right. Take action.

He tried to bring up another view. Blocked.

Tried to access the walls he'd just put into existence. Unreadable.

The data he'd been recording of the scene? Wiped.

It knew.

It knew.

Stop it!

Makubex forced his eyes shut. He hadn't been blinking much, he realized, and they hurt. That happened when he concentrated too hard or gotten . . . unnerved (not scared, of course not).

He counted to ten. Slowly.

He was safe. He would figure this out. He would. Protect his home. Protect the people. So what if the Ano--anomaly (lower case, dammit) was attacking people who wanted to bring him and his friends down, and hurt innocents? That didn't mean they deserved death . . . although it was tempting, he had to admit (if he didn't, he wouldn't be looking at all angles) . . . that was just horribly wrong. No one deserved to be dismembered.

The situation had to be dealt with.

It would be.

Very simple really.

Now, he just had to expand upon that basic idea. Steps. One at a time.

Upon reaching ten, Makubex opened his eyes. He gasped. If he'd been exhaling, it would have been a scream.

The blanked monitors weren't simply dark anymore. They were broken. Puzzles of crazed glass or LCD oozing liquid from the corners, depending on the type. What the hell?

Stay rational.

Makubex pressed his lips together and squinted in the very dim light of the diagnostics' monitors. He tried very hard to keep in mind that the shadows he was making with his movement were just shadows and not some bizarre nightmare creature ready to claw his back open.

When his face got closer to the nearest destroyed LCD, he shivered. The air was colder here, and it felt as though a draft were stealing down the back of his shirt.

Stay calm.

He reached out and touched the screen. The surface was cold and brittle, maybe flash frozen? The liquid obviously hadn't been. What could do something like this?

It had happened while he was sitting there with his eyes closed.

And now . . . he could see his breath.

With widening eyes, he watched the dripping LCD liquid freeze.

Reeling back for the second time in two minutes, Makubex bit his tongue. Coppery blood and sharp pain. He had to get out. Now. Go!

Snatching up his laptop, Makubex hugged it to his chest and backed out of the room. He was quietly shocked that he made it. He kept backing up, moving to press his back against the wall before plan--

He backed into something warm.

Makubex tried to turn around, but his feet tangled together and he fell on his ass.

The laptop in his arms was just fine, though.

"Makubex! I'm sorry, are you okay?" Sakura had started to kneel beside him, her paler-than-normal face coloring slightly as though she were embarrassed. It was hard to see in the dim light, but he could still tell.

"I'm fine, I should have been looking where I was going, it's my fault," he replied in a rush, getting to his feet and tugging her arm a little to urge her to stand back up. Makubex felt like an idiot, but that didn't mean something just hadn't frozen that LCD liquid. He kept glancing back in the direction of the room, as though he expected the floor or the walls to freeze around the doorway.

Sakura frowned and she looked that way as well. "All right," she nodded slightly and shook his hand off her arm, instead putting her hand on the middle his back and starting to walk, kind of sideways so her own back wasn't to the door. She didn't drop her hand until they turned at the end of the hallway. "Let's run."

It seemed like a good idea, and so they did. Makubex made sure his laptop was all right, and Sakura watched their backs. It was a short jog to the outside, a few turns, and some stairs, to come out into the street. The moon was full above them. Fresh (as fresh as it could be here, at any rate) air.

"What was it?" Sakura asked, barely out of breath. She absently wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

She'd probably gone to throw up when she'd left the control room, Makubex realized. The sight of those bodies--If he hadn't had the duty of analyzing, he couldn't say he wouldn't have done the same.

"The anomaly came back. I think," he, however, was definitely just a little (ha ha) out of breath. His irrational and idiotic fear, he told himself, probably had as much to do with it as the running.

He went on. "I walled off the area . . . the bodies and blood were frozen. When I was trying to look more closely at the scene, a fog seemed to come from nowhere. It attacked the observation device I was using, or at least it seemed to. All the surveillance monitors went out," he paused, leaning back against the wall they'd stopped by. His laptop was a solid, comfortable weight in his arms. "All the data I'd gathered had been wiped, and I couldn't trace what had done it or access the walled off area."

Sakura's eyes had grown considerably wider.

Makubex continued, trying to sound logical and emotionless. This was just data. No reason to become distracted in relating it. He was fine. Nothing had happened to him, just around him. Fine.

"I closed my eyes to let them adjust to the darkness more efficiently," he lied, "And when I opened them, all the monitors that had blanked out earlier were broken. The LCD monitors were oozing liquid. When I leaned over to look and see what had happened, I found the immediate area around the monitors to be cold. As I watched, the liquid itself froze.

"Then I panicked and ran out of the room," he finished flatly. He could still taste the blood and the pain from when he'd bitten his tongue.

Sakura's lips had thinned. Before Makubex could blink or really anticipate the action, she'd wrapped her arms around him and was squeezing him pretty tightly, while he still held onto the laptop. Oof.

"You need to panic more quickly than that. As soon as those monitors went out, you should have left the room. Makubex, you're the only one who can even come close to possibly restoring some of the erased people's data, or find what's going on. We have to keep you safe!"

'Well,' Makubex thought, 'That was a bit unexpected. Public hug, and no, stop thinking stupidly, although--just enjoy it, right? Right. It doesn't mean you're scared or that you needed it, it means Sakura was worried.'

All at once she pulled back and held him at arm's length. "Now we're going to go find Emishi, then if my brother's inside, we'll get him too and go look at the scene. Is that a good plan?"

"Yes," he'd let it slide that she seemed to think he needed someone else to plan. No one was around to see it but Sakura anyway.

~ ~ ~ ~

Juubei wasn't in Mugenjou, according to Makubex's locating software, but Emishi was. And so, in the unnaturally quiet early morning, the three of them made their way to the walled off massacre.

Crime scene.

Not a massacre, a crime scene. Objectify it. Analyze it. Solve it.

"Maa, so it was this weird whatchikathing again?" Emishi was scratching his head and making a comically confused face that just wasn't quite convincing at the moment. The dark circles under his eyes probably had something to do with it.

In the (almost) three days since this started, they'd been so busy trying to figure out what was going on that sleep had almost been forgotten. It was probably a safe bet that Juubei had only been out of Mugenjou for a few hours, at the very most. They could probably expect him back again just after sunrise, which would be coming within the hour. They sky had already taken on that deep predawn quality that would soon give rise to lightened sky.

So by now, Kazuki must have found out what had been going on. Otherwise Juubei would still be inside Mugenjou. And when he came back, Kazuki would be with him. The odds were quite probable, enough that Makubex didn't doubt it would happen that way.

Makubex hadn't wanted to bring people back in, or ask for help. They should be able to deal with this on their own, and now that Kazuki knew, Shido would know before long, and then it was only a matter of time before Ginji knew.

They really needed to get this dealt with already. It wasn't fair to bring people back because of violence and death.

Absently, Makubex picked up, through the static of his own thoughts, that Sakura was informing Emishi of what had happened to him in the control room. All of it. How embarrassing. And how ridiculous to be embarrassed in the first place. People were dead.

Makubex stopped thinking about things he couldn't control, and concentrated on what was around him.

" . . . So anyway, Kazuki randomly showed up and dragged your little brother off, and I figure they'll be back in a liiiiiiittle while," Emishi was talking now. "Neither of them are going to be happy when they realized they missed some action, ne? Ooo," Emishi suddenly went fake-wobbly, and Makubex predicted a bad joke. "Well, action here at any rate."

Yep. Bad joke. He decided not to think too hard about it, and Sakura laughed politely. He did have to hand it to Emishi, thinking about the mechanics of pun-powered humor and getting that dose of normalcy really did help.

Meanwhile, Emishi had gone on, grinning. "Ne, Makubex, did you have a run-in with some of that ra-men earlier, or did you fooooorget again?"

Oops.

"I ate some of it," he replied calmly, as though he hadn't forgotten all about eating the little cup of ramen Emishi had plunked down and punned at him to eat before traipsing off to catch a nap. Well, traipsing off at Sakura's request, since she was up and refreshed from her own nap. They'd been around Makubex in shifts, really, since that was the only way to be absolutely positive he wouldn't get lost in the data.

"Some of it!" Emishi sighed dramatically and fake-swooned. "The poor leftover ramen! Rejected from the only job it's fit to do! It'll go bad and rebel if you don't try and eat it soon, you know," by this point Emishi was wagging his finger at Makubex.

Which made Makubex roll his eyes in that way only teenagers can do properly, even if he didn't realize that. "I'm pretty sure I can defeat the ramen when we go back," provided it hadn't somehow gotten frozen solid or something, "Thank you for it, by the way."

"You're welcome!" Emishi chimed back.

They were only a turn of a narrow alley away from the walled off area. Then the turn was there, and before them, blocking off the rest of the way was a tall wall, making the alley into a dead end. Who was punning now?

"Hold on, let me take care of the wall," Makubex muttered, sitting down on a bit of random rubble that happened to be nearby. Sakura sat down beside him, on a lower bit of rubble, and Emishi wandered over to poke the wall. Makubex noticed that Emishi was standing right where he'd be blocking his and Sakura's line of sight when the wall went away.

Opening his laptop, Makubex worked quickly. First, though, he tried to access the area behind the wall to make sure the anomaly wasn't waiting to tear them to pieces. What he saw made his fingers just . . . stop.

The blood was gone, and the bodies were lined up, still frozen from the looks of it. What. The. Hell. With a fast clatter of keys, the wall came down. Yes, what the cameras had shown was what was really there.

"Heeeeey," Emishi said. "Thought this was supposed to be a lot messier? Ew, though, these bodies are pretty messed up . . . "

"They were a lot worse before," Makubex interrupted, not meaning to be rude as much as he was just, just, well, something. "Blood . . . and . . . " He carefully toed the leg of the nearest body. He'd seen a lot of bodies growing up in Mugenjou, but rarely some that had been so messed up. "Well, they're still frozen."

Sakura had stood and was brushing her clothes off a little. She wasn't looking in the direction of the bodies. He couldn't blame her.

Above them, the sky was lightening. Dawn wasn't far away. Where had the night gone?

"Maybe the thing started to clean up for itself?"

It took Makubex a second to realize Emishi wasn't joking about that. "I'm not sure I want to assign that sort of intelligence to what's doing this," he paused. "But maybe it did."

The sound of a baby crying broke through the morning air. Had someone with a small child been in the area when this had happened? That wasn't a good thought. Then Makubex realized his laptop had beeped quietly. Something had been modified in the system? Another erasure?

Trusting Sakura or Emishi to deal with "crowd control" (or whatever dealing with the baby should be called), Makubex reopened his laptop screen and pulled up . . . That was impossible. Wasn't it?

The first attack had happened 72 hours ago. It had been two people, just two, and they'd been erased. They'd left behind the signs of a fantastically violent struggle, but like the other virtual-born who'd been killed, their bodies and blood had vanished along with their lives.

Their data had just been restored.

Makubex typed faster than he realized he was thinking, tracing and examining and. And. The two people's data was just as it had been, but it was formatted as though it had been freshly added to the system. Duplicated precisely, thousands of lines of coding but . . . wait.

The sleeper tags--the connections that had been rendered empty by the server's disconnection with Babylon City's influence--those were gone. The code was complete. Makubex's fingers blurred and he traced the two people while analyzing the data for a closer look.

"Makubex, we might have a problem," Sakura's voice was quiet.

He looked up, only half paying attention. Sakura had a sleeping baby enfolded in part of her cloth. Bald baby, sucking his (her?) thumb. Behind Sakura, Makubex could see Emishi holding another baby, who'd been wrapped up in Emishi's green coat. Emishi was making faces at the baby, and the infant's crying was turning into confused giggles.

That one must be at least six weeks old, his (her?) actions were too coordinated for a newborn. What an odd thought. How had he known something like that? Never mind.

"What's the problem?" He finally asked.

"There are no parents, and no sign of any adults at all," she replied.

Makubex frowned. "According to the information I gathered about the ones attacked, none of them had any children. Do you think they were abandoned?"

Good, that had come out without any sort of hitches or odd bitterness. He might have been born as a program, but he hadn't known that for most of his life. The damn "Makube" bag.

"I don't know," Sakura shook her head, obviously being careful not to jostle the baby. "We just need to find someone to take care of them."

"Yeah," Makubex nodded. The baby Emishi had was gurgling and giggling.

His laptop beeped. His trace must be complete. The data analysis program was most likely still running.

"Hold on a second, please," he looked at the computer's screen.

Location: alley. This alley. Right here.

The babies.

Makubex swallowed and brought up the running analysis program. It filled certain fields first, such as apparent age, gender, and physical statistics. Other fields, more complicated data on fears and programmed traits and the like would be filled in next. At least, it would fill in if the subject being analyzed had those written in.

As he watched, the analysis program ended. Soft beep.

The basics. No sleeper programs. No predetermined character traits or phobias.

Just two little babies, approximately nine weeks old.

Where had his voice gone?

"Makubex, what is it?" Sakura asked. She looked concerned.

He cleared his throat. "Nothing."

This was his responsibility.

~ ~ ~ ~

Three hours later, the sun was up, the two babies had been pseudo-adopted, or at least in custody of people who would be able to and willing to care for them for a while.

He hadn't told anyone about who they were yet. He wasn't sure if he even should. If they were thought of as who their data had been, would that be fair? Technically they were new little people with a fresh start, right? Even though they'd had to die first . . .

This was complicated.

Right now, he'd asked his friends (Juubei had come back, sure enough, right after dawn, and yes, Kazuki had been with him) to please go and visit some of the most visible (still living) people who were resisting the new movement for order.

He anticipated that the warnings could be taken as threats, but it would be worse to just ignore the pattern the attacks had been taking. In the shaky politics of this new Lowertown, he was in a very bad position.

But it wasn't as though he could just ignore what he knew! He had to warn people if he could. Even if it roused suspicion against him, he couldn't just keep quiet about that, it was wrong. He could only hope, though, that the very visible efforts he was taking would help him gain some trust back. He doubted it would, though.

He now had a timer running. The second attack had happened 75 hours ago. In 7 more hours, it would have been an even 72 since the second attack.

Maybe this had been another, unrelated anomaly. Maybe there were parts in the overall system he didn't understand. Maybe he had missed something he should have caught. Maybe--

Stop it.

Makubex focused his efforts. He was trying to force some sort of surveillance from the area where the two babies had been found that morning.

But just like with the attacks, there was none. Just a fast fuzz of static, and suddenly there they were, as though they always had been. He'd been lucky that his watchdog program had even caught the data being re-added.

His program, the one he used to detect system and observational blackouts, hadn't even noticed.

What if the anomaly had learned a way around it?

"Fuck off!"

Makubex muted the surveillance for a moment, waiting until the yeller's mouth stopped moving. Then he turned the sound back on.

Warning people wasn't going well, sure enough. Juubei looked as though he were about to throw a handful of needles at the guy who'd just screamed in Kazuki's face.

No need, Kazuki was smiling tightly and the yeller was pulled back by a few strings. "I would appreciate it if you didn't do that again."

It was his "I was one of the four kings not so long ago, don't fuck with me! I can kick your ass! smile, polite!" voice.

And the yeller looked suitably intimidated.

Evidently one of his friends wasn't though. A woman in a tight black shirt just laughed and stuck her nose in the air. "Look, you think we're fucking stupid? Huh? Some big shakedown a while ago and now you guys keep showing up again? People mysteriously getting killed? What, you think you can take all of us on? We band together, all your pretty little strings and needles and shit aren't going to do you a bit of good!"

Kazuki frowned and released the man from the strings, letting him land with a thud. "Why would we warn you about this, obviously coming into a hostile area, if we were the ones attacking? And why would we go about it in such a bizarre, underhanded manner? Your logic is circular."

The woman's laugh was high pitched and obviously forced. "Yeah, right, if you weren't the ones doing it, then wouldn't Makubex, who, oh yes, we remember being a tyrant not too long ago, don't think we haven't forgotten that! Wouldn't he be able to know what was going on? He's supposed to see everything that goes on in here, that's what the rumors say."

"You're an idiot," Kazuki said simply. He turned his back and walked away. Juubei kept guard, and then they were gone.

The little gang of people they left behind laughed and patted the woman on the back.

He was glad he was alone in the room.

Makubex switched from the surveillance of that to the diagnostics he'd run that morning. No viruses. No anomalies that he could find. Everything looked normal. Obviously it wasn't.

All the broken monitors were pushed into a corner, and a few replacements had already been brought in. The room smelled a bit odd. Like plastic and ice, although logically he knew ice didn't have a scent.

Shaking his head, he began to analyze the data of the still-erased people. He decided to lay alarms all around any access points where people's data had been erased. If the next three virtual people who'd been killed were "re-written" as babies, he was going to catch where that signal was coming from. He knew this system, he could do it, and he would.

That was all there was to it.

Hours passed, and people came in and out of the control room. He was dimly aware of Sakura putting a drink where he could reach it, and then the drink was empty before he realized he'd been sipping on it.

With a sigh, Makubex closed his burning eyes. Had been forgetting to blink again. He'd made it just in time, the tracer programs would let him know if/when/how the data would be restored.

He opened his eyes and gave a tired, but satisfied little smile to Sakura, who had just knelt down to connect a newly brought replacement monitor for one of the broken ones. She smiled back.

"You made it."

Makubex nodded minutely. Oh, stiff neck.

This had to help. At the very least, it should give him more information.

The timer he'd set to countdown to the second attack's 72 hours-ago-mark beeped. Immediately he turned his attention to the data of those erased during that attack, ready to watch, to see if his program could catch anything.

The data was already back.

Just like the two people from this morning, fresh data, no implanted traits or sleeper coding. Just three brand new babies. Automatically, almost, he typed in the locate command.

His program, the one he'd just spent so much time and energy on--his program hadn't responded to the appearance of the new data. It hadn't responded at all. How come his other watchdog program had before (it hadn't this time either) and his new one, designed specifically for this purpose, didn't do anything?

It showed nothing wrong in the system. As though nothing unusual had happened at all.

It had failed. Hours of time he could have used to re-analyze the data he'd already had. His burning eyes, his stiff neck, his tired, tired, tired head.

Failure.

Never mind.

He'd fix it.

The three new babies' locations popped up in a separate dialog box. A few clicks later and he had a view of the area. Oh. The three had appeared (that was the only word that seemed to fit, might as well use it) just around the corner from where Emishi and (when had) Shido (entered Mugenjou?) were, three small infants blinking at the world. Then one started to cry.

As Makubex watched, his friends heard it and for the second time that day, he saw Emishi shedding his jacket and trying to cheer up a baby. He kind of wanted to watch that for a bit longer. It was good.

No time, though.

Someone was probably going to figure this out before too much longer. It was so obvious, the timers and the babies, the same number showing up who'd been erased . . . But maybe it just seemed obvious because he knew all the information. Not all the information, that was wrong. He knew the most. It wasn't much, and it certainly wasn't all--

Stop that.

Analyze. Figure this out. So the program failed? Fix the mistake, there had to be one. He must have mistyped something (that never happened, that's not it, he just plain messed up) or put in the wrong prompt at some point. But first, he needed to check--And just like before, the surveillance in the area, what had been recorded, had blinked and then the babies had simply existed.

He was missing something. Had to be.

What was it? Makubex started typing again. He'd fix the program, then he'd go over the diagnostics again.

Approximately 30 hours before the next 72 hour mark. Only (only?!) one virtual person had been erased in that attack. Three human-born had died. There had been a gap in activity, Mugenjou had seemed to grind to a halt for a full day the first attacks. It was a testament to how unusually brutal they had been. Another attack could happen at any time.

"You're going to sleep, or we're going to knock you out."

Shido did have a way with words. When had he entered the control room? Never mind. Makubex pretended not to hear and kept working.

"Makubex?"

That was Sakura. If bluntness didn't work, then they seemed to be trying to talk him into it. Which wouldn't sway him.

"I'm working."

Couldn't they see that for themselves?

"You're not going to do anyone any good if you don't rest. You'll burn out and start making mistakes."

He wasn't sure who'd said that. Maybe he'd thought it and just imagined . . . Weak.

The voice continued. "Fine."

Whoever said it sounded annoyed.

Type, type, type. They wouldn't really knock him out.

He blinked and he wasn't in the control room anymore.

Evidently they would knock him out. And had. Probably Juubei. Some needle, a pressure point or something. Makubex rubbed his eyes and looked around the dark room. Where was he?

Ah. He was lying in a small storage room adjacent to the control room. He could see the glow of computer monitors through the open doorway and hear the quiet, sporadic clicking of keys. A little blanket had been arranged over him, and his head had been propped up on something soft so it wouldn't be on the hard floor. His laptop was beside him.

How much time had he lost? Shaking off the lethargy threatening to shut him off from the world again, Makubex sat up and slid his laptop closer.

12 hours.

12 hours!

That meant it was night again, what time? No, it was the next day. Early morning again. How long? Approximately 20 hours since the last attack. Unless there had been another one? Had there been?

He sagged a little, happily, when he saw that there hadn't been. 18 hours till the next 72 hour mark now. Simple math, slow, sleepy brain.

Stupid brain.

Makubex stood up, took a moment to bounce on his toes a little, then picked up his laptop. When he walked through the doorway to the control room, he saw Sakura monitoring the system. Off to the side, leaning against the wall, Juubei sat as though thinking deeply about something. Or, well, his head was bowed a little. Maybe he was napping?

Sakura looked over at him. She smiled, as though being careful about the expression. "Are you angry?"

"A little. I didn't have time to sleep," he shrugged one shoulder, whose arm wasn't holding the laptop.

"You would have passed out before too much longer," she replied quietly, then stood up as he sat down. "I'm going to get you some food."

Makubex imagined there wouldn't be any use trying to tell her not to worry about it. "Thank you, I really appreciate everyone's concern," even if it's not really necessary concern. It's still good to know that they care.

Sakura nodded and smiled again, then left the room.

Makubex turned to his program, took a deep breath, and started to review it command by command and line by line. The room was quiet otherwise; he could even hear Juubei's steady breathing.

After two minutes, an alert window popped up, obscuring his view of the program.

The anomaly was back.

Where?

He couldn't see it, obviously, but he could see the hole in the surveillance systems' coverage. Just as he had every time before, he tried to trace the anomaly itself, its origins, anything about it. But all he got was the empty place were surveillance should be.

There! A whole building.

That made him more than a little nervous. It wasn't a small building, oh no, it was warehouse sort of thing, and he could pull up the layout from his backups to view, so that's what he did. Any information helped, as paltry as it may seem.

Several rooms, a couple catwalks across the two largest rooms, which had high ceilings. A second story that the catwalks extended from. A lot of boxes and random junk and crumbling walls. Jutting beams.

Okay. Who stayed there normally? A bit of checking, and he found it wasn't anyone he normally kept track of.

"Something is happening?" Juubei had woken up.

Makubex was startled, but he didn't jump. "The anomaly has shown up again."

"Where?"

He didn't turn around and look, but he could hear Juubei getting to his feet.

"Why?" Please don't say you're going, please don't say you plan on telling everyone where it is and trying to confront it when I can't see you and I can't help. Even if we all know that's what's going to be done, just don't say it.

Juubei said it.

Fuck.

So Makubex told him.

Then Juubei was gone, taking headsets with him. Makubex turned cameras on and watched him gather people. Kazuki, of course, and Emishi, and Shido who had apparently been sleeping. The warehouse was only a block or so away, and they were all fast.

He wondered, while he followed their progress on one screen and tried futilely to pierce the surveillance blackout in the warehouse on another, why Ginji hadn't come yet. Maybe they hadn't told him. Makubex kind of hoped not. He deserved to be happy, not to be called back to Mugenjou every time there was a problem. He'd already done some much.

No time to think about that kind of thing. Focus. Makubex slipped on a headset and turned it on. "There's two entrances, one to the south and another to the east. The anomaly is moving around, and at the moment I can only see half the rooms inside, and those are all clear. There should be two large rooms. They have high ceilings and catwalks along them. Those two rooms are totally blind to me. So it's probably in one of those."

As he watched, Shido and Emishi went for the south entrance, while Kazuki and Juubei went for the eastern one.

Stay calm, they'll be okay.

As soon as the four entered, their signals disappeared, and the residual noise from their headsets cut off completely. Enforced radio silence. He wondered if they could hear each other, or if it was just him who had been cut off.

Makubex waited, trying for cameras in every single room.

Surveillance. Noise. Anything. Cameras to look in the windows, even. Something! He had to see, he had to help.

There! A flash of something in a dirty window, one to the big room immediately on the other side of the southern entrance.

A flurry of wings, and he heard, vaguely--

Large crashing noises, and the exterior wall shook. The camera went black.

Another one. There had to be. Another camera somewhere . . .

There! A view that would let him look through the dark southern doorway. On the audio he heard a yell, and another crash. Running feet.

Black out.

"BEHIND YOU!"

The blast came through his headset so loud it almost made his eyes cross. It took all he had not to turn around. The message obviously wasn't meant for him.

More sound, crackling static and a battle cry. The sound of fighting.

A child's laughter?

Loud static.

Makubex could swear he heard children's voices through it. That was crazy, that wasn't possible. Oh, oh, no. What if one of the gangs of younger kids had been staying in the warehouse? What if the anomaly's attack pattern had only been a coincidence?!

What if they had warned the wrong people?

The static cut off. Complete radio silence. No. No wait. There were whispers . . . ?

No time to worry about that, no time. He started trying to modify the walls, trying to get inside, anything. He had to know, he had to see--!

Abruptly, he had a visual of both big rooms. To his utter relief, all four of his friends were all right. There were things thrown around, and he could clearly see one leg sticking out from under a big box in the room Kazuki and Juubei were standing in.

It was a large leg. Not a child-sized one.

Oh, wait.

He hadn't been entirely correct.

It wasn't a leg attacked to anything under the box. It was just a leg.

Where was the body?

Never mind.

Audio came back with a piercing roar of static.

"--on't know! There was all that fog and I couldn't see what threw the box." That was Emishi's voice.

"What happened?" Makubex asked, satisfied to notice that his voice was steady and he sounded mostly calm.

"There was fog, and things were thrown around. We couldn't see what was doing it," Shido reported. "There were birds in the rafters, and they couldn't even tell, but the ones that went into the fog are dead."

Not good.

"Leave, get out, then. There's no poin--" Makubex cut himself off when he realized the headsets had just gone silent again. For a moment longer he could see the visuals in the big rooms, then there was nothing.

Beep!

Two people's data had just been erased.

Makubex felt like punching the floor, but instead he just started working on pinpointing the anomaly within the warehouse.

" . . . play nice or we'll . . . "

Whispers in the headset.

Could the others hear this?

Loud static. Silence.

" . . . bad, bad lady!..."

" . . . silly . . . "

Makubex brought up a sound recording program and activated it.

" . . . you're not helping anything!"

" . . . WE'LL STOP YOU WE'LL STOP YOU PLAY NICE PLAY NICE PLAY NI--"

He switched off his headset, then turned it back on.

Total silence.

He tried the recording he'd just made.

Only static.

He stopped it and put the playback at the beginning again.

Had he just heard the anomaly? No, surely not, it had to be interference. Why was he even bothering with this! The anomaly was attacking and killing people and his friends were right there!

Attacking the keyboard, Makubex worked as fast as he could. There! He'd gotten a view from a camera in a building close by, looking through a hole in the roof. Swirling, milky fog. Audio was picking up a roar, a loud, high-pitched screeching noise.

A bit of fog trailed out the window, then seemed to be sucked right back in.

"Stop watching, please," a quiet, echoing voice came over the headset.

Not the headset.

The voice had just come out of the sound recorder.

He could see the sound wave's readout on the monitor in front of him. The recording ended, then looped back again.

"Stop watching, please."

Again.

Makubex stopped the playback's loop. Maybe he was still asleep, that . . . was impossible! Unless, what if, had he been hacked? That had to be it! Maybe the anomaly wasn't an anomaly at all! It could be a Babylon City hacker working in conjunction with real people with special abilities.

Beep! Another person's data had been erased.

Makubex swallowed and forced himself not to lose his train of thought.

Trying to take over the system again. Run him into the ground, discredit the new movement for peace, and regain what they'd lost. It made sense! And with their system familiarity, it's conceivable they could be evading his programs!

A logical explanation, finally!

Makubex felt himself calm down immediately and he started trying to trace what had just been implanted into his sound recorder. Meanwhile, he kept his headset on and a constant search for some way to see or hear what was going on in the warehouse. Although now that he knew what was happening, he was a lot less worried. He was confident in his friends' abilities. He hadn't known what he'd thought before, but whatever it was, he'd been wrong.

A monitor flared to life, showing the view from a catwalk located in one of the big rooms. No sound. The view wasn't pointing down to the big room's floor, but parallel to the catwalk and inward, showing the door that opened onto the catwalk. It was pitch black.

No, wait. It wasn't. There was something there, dark as the shadows, but moving.

A head.

A head rolled onto the catwalk.

There was a head without a body. Or eyes.

Facing the camera.

No blood leaking out of the place where the neck (or the eyes the head had not eyes) should be. Frozen? Probably.

Beep! The head was gone. Virtual person. Erased data.

The monitor went blank.

His headset crackled loudly.

"--ere! In here! What the h--"

A long, loud, tortured scream. It cut off abruptly.

His headset went silent again.

Makubex bit his lip, hard, and forced himself to turn away from his attempts to trace the hacker (it was a hacker, it was, it was!) and focused on trying to find a way, anyway, to get through to the headsets. They should leave, they should get out of there. There wasn't a point to them being in a place were people were getting decapitated.

Abruptly, all the surveillance monitors came back online, and the headset crackled back to life.

"Do you have any idea what just happened here?" Kazuki was asking someone. Who was he asking?

"Not a clue," Shido replied.

Makubex found them, all four coming in the big room just inside the eastern door.

He tapped his own mic, activating it so he could talk to them. They must have turned theirs on and left them that way after he'd been cut off. Just because he'd lost their signal didn't mean they'd lost each others. "Do you know how many were hurt?" Or killed.

"Makubex! Hey! Good to hear you again!" Emishi. "Whew, did you manage to catch any of that?"

"Not much. Are you all okay?"

"Fine, fine, just confused as anything. It's a feat that we're all still on our feet!"

Kazuki gave quiet groan at the joke, then spoke. "There was an odd fog. Things kept happening where we couldn't see them, but when we found people, they were already dead."

"Did you . . . " He shouldn't ask this, it was ridiculous, "I heard a bunch of children's voices, that wasn't coming from there, was it?"

"No. All adults," Juubei answered quietly. "I didn't hear any small footsteps, either."

On one hand, that was a huge relief. On the other, it was slightly alarming. But no, no it wasn't. Someone could have hijacked the signal closer to his end and jammed in that interference. It fit. It did.

"Okay, good. Look, I'm going to wall off the entrances to the warehouse, and we can deal with clean up in the morning. Sound good?" He asked. Last night they'd gone to the site as soon as the attack was over. But he didn't think going right now would do any good. After all, they'd been there while the anomaly had been killing, and nothing had been gained from it. Without waiting for an answer, he continued. "I have a theory, and there's nothing to be gained from staying there."

Long pause. He could hear muffled voices, but not what they were saying. He could see their mouths moving on the monitors, and saw that they were covering their audio pickups.

Then Kazuki replied. "All right."

And that was that.

"Makubex?" Sakura's voice came from a few feet behind him. She was sitting on the floor, a small tray beside her.

"Oh, how long have you been back?" He asked. His head was swimming. Trying to make connections, to somehow figure out how to run a successful trace. He needed to count how many non-virtual people had died. Been killed. Three virtual.

"I just walked in and sat down while you were talking to the others over the radio," she replied. "Do you think you can eat anything after all that . . . ?"

He hadn't been hungry to begin with. "Remind me in a few minutes, please. Right now I need to see how many died."

Which meant looking at the bodies and counting them. He could have that finished by the time his friends returned. He hoped.

" . . . All right."

"Thank you."

Three virtual people. Four others.

The body count was up to 25 in four days. If this kept up, a hundred would be dead in just outside of two weeks.

That could not happen. He wouldn't let it.

~ ~ ~ ~

Late evening. Ten minutes until it would have been 72 hours since the third attack. 18 since the fifth. Under 18, but who's being exact?

The only thing wrong with his hacker/Babylon City theory, Makubex knew, was the babies. He could see no reason for reinstalling erased people's data with no inherent programming. Unless the programming was hidden from his detection, but that would be nearly impossible to do.

But then again, he supposed, if his voice recorder could be hacked without a trace, then there was the possibility of him not being able to read a certain code. Maybe it was backdoored into a hidden, newly connected server he didn't know about?

That was highly unlikely.

But it was possible.

Unlikely.

Anyway.

In the time since the latest attack, the warehouse had been cleaned up. Once again, the bodies were all frozen, but this time the bodies hadn't been tidied up or rearranged. The ones from the alley attack had probably been moved during the blackout on his screens, when the fog had attac--when the monitors had shorted out.

At any rate, he'd modified his program for detecting the rewriting of the erased's data. He hadn't found a mistake, but he'd found ways that he could have gotten around it, and now the program was quite literally at the far edge of his talent. He couldn't break this program, and he knew no way to slip past it.

If it didn't work, he just wasn't sure what else he could do in regards to that.

As for tracing back and trying to detect anything about his system being hacked, that had amounted to absolutely nothing.

The voice that had been embedded into his voice recording program was gone, replaced by nothing but static.

After he'd discovered that, he'd taken a very deliberate break to eat. He must have deleted it without realizing it, or recorded over it, and he had to have been more than a little out of it when he did.

He just couldn't stomach the idea of the hacker(s) getting at his files on an open program. That had been on his screen and visible the entire time.

So now, now he waited. Sakura was leaning against the wall off to the side, catching a bit of sleep. She'd asked him, two hours ago, to wake her up in one hour. He'd decided to let her keep sleeping instead. After all, they'd let him get a full 12 hours, and he knew fine well that she hadn't had more than a short naps, and at badly spaced intervals.

Besides, he was sure he could deal with one appearing baby.

Everyone else was outside, patrolling. There'd been a bit of discussion earlier, and if things kept going like this, Kazuki was going to go and get Ginji. No one was really sure what exactly Ginji could do, but just having him around seemed to help situations. In fact, Makubex wasn't sure if Kazuki had already contacted him. Never mind, that would readily become apparent if or when Ginji entered Mugenjou.

Makubex would really rather stop things on his own, though. It was his responsibility now, he should have had this figured out before the third attack. Before the second. The first shouldn't have happened. No way to change that now, but he could fix this, and it was a mixture of pride (he wasn't above admitting that at this point) and concern for his friends' welfare that made him wish that he was still working away without any extra help.

But he wasn't doing that, and he did appreciate the assistance, and he was wasting time even thinking like this. Even if he was just waiting for the 72 hour timer to go off. So okay, he was idle, not wasting time. But then, being idle was wasting time.

Beep!

The timer. He turned his attention the system view of where the person's erased data had been. His program was running in the background, and it would only take a key press to bring it up. He counted down with the timer, and forced himself not to blink or look away from the screen when it hit zero.

Beep!

The program reacted! Yes!

And just as the data had come up, it had worked! Makubex typed furiously. He had a trace! He'd tagged the hacker!

Letting out a quiet, but sharp little breath, he worked and traced and followed. It was running through the system, not bothering to set up walls, just going, and fast. But he was faster, he was going to get it.

Dead end. The signal had stopped.

His program beeped again. Loud in the nearly silent room.

The trail had ended at his own terminal.

No.

He brought up the program anyway.

There was text on the screen. Green glowing. Black background.

[HELLO, MAKUBEX.]

He swallowed, then before he knew it, he was typing back. Clicking keys, the only sound in the room other than breathing. "HELLO."

[WE'RE SORRY, PLEASE WAIT WITH OUR GAME. WE'LL PLAY AGAIN IN A MINUTE WHEN WE'RE DONE HERE WITH THIS ONE. :) ]

A game? What? "NO, IT'S NOT A GAME, NONE OF THIS IS A GAME. STOP HURTING PEOPLE."

[THEY'RE NOT PLAYING NICE. :( ]

"IT'S NOT A GAME."

[ . . . YES IT IS. WE'RE HAVING FUN WITH YOU TOO BUT YOU HAVE TO WAIT! PLEASE.]

"NOT A GAME."

[YES IT IS!]

"WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO DO? WHAT'S THE POINT? PEOPLE ARE DYING, AND--"

His typing disappeared from the screen, and even though he kept pressing keys, nothing was appearing on the screen.

Slowly words began to appear again. Large. And red.

[WE'RE JUST DOING WHAT WE'RE SUPPOSED TO DO AND YOU WON'T STOP TRYING TO STOP US WE'RE GETTING TIRED DON'T YOU UNDERSTAND YOU YOU'RE NOT HELPING LET US PLAY!]

The screen fuzzed out, and flashed bright white, then went back to normal. His program was blank of code, and the system view of the newly re-entered data was up.

The room was very quiet. All Makubex could hear was his pulse roaring in his ears, drowning out his own hushed breathing. Sakura slept on.

Good.

No point in anyone else seeing that, anyway. It was just the hacker flaunting his (or her) skill.

He started typing, working on just . . . just tracing something. He was almost out of ideas, and that taunt hadn't helped.

Makubex had no idea what to---Never mind. He should find where that new baby had appeared. That was important. Take care of the new one.

At least he could find that out rather quickly.

The baby was in the next building over, up a few floors.

Makubex pulled up the tracers he had on his friends. No one was close. Sakura was asleep.

He could take his laptop. If there was another attack, the way things were going, he could do as much good with that alone as with the entire control room. Not the most cheerful thought. But it was the truth.

Quietly cracking his knuckles, he typed up a quick note and left it visible on his main working monitor. "Be right back, have laptop."

And so he went. He put his laptop in a bag, grabbed the blanket he'd been covered with, uh, how long ago was it? 18 hours ago. Right. Makubex ignored the odd echo of his steps, and adjusted the headset he'd mostly forgotten he'd been wearing until it had threatened to slip off. It wasn't activated, it was just sort of there.

Up, up, up, and outside, and the streets were deserted. Next building over. He recalled the layout he'd pulled up along with the baby's location, then entered. He passed a huddle of young teenagers (not too much younger than himself, but he felt ancient compared to them, which he knew was probably a silly thing to think) camped out with amongst strategically arranged broken wall parts.

One of them shifted and made a showing of having a large, shiny knife. Makubex really didn't care, he kept walking. Rickety stairs. Up, carefully. He saw a pair of eyes watching him through a hole in the stairwell's wall, backlit by a flashlight that had obviously been covered with a cupped palm.

Upstairs, he carefully avoided junk on the floor, hopped over a fallen part of a wall, and found the room. He walked in and looked around. There, in the corner. The baby was fussing, waving her little arms around and wiggling on the dirty floor. That just wasn't right. He hurried over and knelt down, putting his laptop bag to the side and laying out the blanket. Then the baby went on the blanket, and he wrapped her up.

What was her name?

He couldn't remember.

He'd been so busy, and he had looked before, he'd been staring right at it. The code, the little girl's data, he could see in his head as plain as he were looking at the computer screen. But the name . . . it just wasn't there. He couldn't remember at all.

For that matter . . .

He realized he couldn't remember any of the erased's names.

The little girl started to cry quietly.

Makubex slung the laptop bag over his shoulder and made sure he had a good hold of the baby, then stood up. When faced with a crying baby, he had no idea what to do. And if she got any louder and someone heard . . . well. It might not have been the best idea to come out here alone. Whatever. One thing at a time. He smiled a little desperately at the infant and bounced her some.

That didn't work.

He tried making a funny face. Never had been very good at that.

Didn't work.

He tried humming. He'd sing, but his voice wasn't very good.

Didn't work.

Maybe she was hungry?

Maybe she was tired?

Had she--no, the blanket was still clean.

Cold?

Not knowing what else to do and feeling rather frustrated and upset with his total lack of effectiveness (that had been happening a lot lately, huh?) he just held the baby to his chest, securely, and started to leave the room.

There was a wall where the door used to be.

His laptop beeped.

The baby had stopped crying, at least. She was whimpering a little now, and cuddling into his front. And had a hold of his dolphin necklace. Well, he'd let her, as long as she didn't try to eat it.

Why was there a wall there?!

He was all alone, with a baby, pretty helpless himself when it came to a fight, and only had his laptop as a pseudo-weapon. Which had beeped. Okay. First things first. Laptop. He sat down in the floor, carefully holding the (tiny little helpless, is this how he'd been when he'd been found?) baby while he did so.

Sliding the laptop out of the bag wasn't easy one-handed, but he managed to do it pretty damn quickly. Open lid.

There was a message on the screen.

[HIDE AND SEEK! STAY HIDDEN, PLEASE! :) ]

Oh no.

He tried, shifting the baby, to access--

There was loud thud against the wall to the hallway. Where the door had been. It was hard enough that flaking paint fluttered to the floor in a mad shower.

Back to the computer.

He couldn't access the hallway.

He couldn't access anything. At all.

The screen was stuck on the message.

The anomaly.

He heard a loud, unnatural scream right on the other side of the wall.

A sound like scrambling fingernails splintering on concrete.

Liquid. Liquid splattering.

The baby was crying loud enough that her little voice was cracking.

The anomaly was right there. Right outside.

Was it here for him?

Suddenly all his nice neat (messy) theories about Babylon City and hackers just didn't work.

Something was wrong with the air. It smelled.

It smelled like death. Literally. Dead bodies, not rotting yet, but on the verge of it. It was a smell he knew, not that he was glad about that.

Makubex kept trying with his laptop, but nothing worked. It was stuck, locked to that polite little message with the smiley face and the blinking cursor at the end, flickering the dim light in the room enough that the shadows were bouncing.

Giving up on the computer (which felt almost as terrifying as hearing that unnatural heaving coming from the hallway) he held onto the baby and turned her small head so it was sideways on his chest. That way he could cover her ear and hope the other one was muffled enough to block out some of those horrible sounds.

Was this his fault? Had he drawn the anomaly here because he'd been trying to track it? Was it going to kill him? Erase him? What about the little baby? Maybe the babies had been a lure! Oh, poor things . . . but no, that was circular log--

Something heavy hit the floor outside the room, and parts of the ceiling started to fall in large chunks, one landing squarely on his laptop. He barely managed to lean forward and shield the baby from getting hit, and he caught the point of a piece on the back of his neck. He felt the skin break, and a trickle of blood started to sneak down his collar, pool on the string of his necklace, and then run in a thick stream under his shirt.

The little girl had downgraded from screaming to hoarse little whimpers and big, wet tears that had soaked the front of his shirt. How long had the attack been going on? It felt like two minutes, it felt like twenty, he had no way to tell since his laptop had been frozen on that black screen (busted screen now).

There was a deep cracking noise.

It wasn't coming from the building. There were whimpers, and little yelps that accompanied it.

Makubex closed his eyes, then forced them open again. Trapped.

He hadn't told anyone where he was going, just that stupid little note. He'd been so arrogant.

His headset turned itself on.

Whispers. Echoed and indistinct. Children's voices.

"Ma--"

No.

"--Ku--"

No!

"--Be--"

He tore off the headset and flung it across the room. Which hurt his ear, but at least he couldn't hear--

The door was back. He could see something dark creeping along the floor. The baby was sobbing quietly. What was that on the floor?

Oh. Blood. A lot of blood. Not frozen.

He shivered, a violent shudder that almost made his teeth chatter.

Tearing his gaze away from the pool of blood slowly seeping into the room, he felt at the back of his neck, poking carefully at the bloody spot where he'd gotten hit with the bit of ceiling. The wound had iced over. Frozen blood, solid and cold in a trail halfway down his back.

At least the bleeding had stopped.

He almost laughed at that. It was a good thing he didn't because he might have not been able to stop.

That was not a good thought.

How the hell had his blood frozen like . . . oh. He looked down at the baby, who was wiping her nose on his shirt. She had a hold of his dolphin necklace. His necklace. Which was frozen.

The little girl had freezing capabilities.

There was something important in that, but damned if he could think clearly enough to piece it together right now.

Oh.

The pool of blood had reached him and was soaking into his pants.

He should stand up.

He stood up.

Leave?

Yes.

He left.

But not before covering the baby's head with the blanket. Her little eyes didn't need to see whatever was in the hallway.

There was blood everywhere. Flashlight, still on, smeared with blood and casting a red glow down the hallway. There was a hand holding it, but not the rest of the arm. The walls--covered--there were splatters on the ceiling---

Makubex hurried out. Puddles of blood splashed up his pants leg. He supposed he was lucky it hadn't iced, or he would have fallen, and that would have just been horrible.

Down the stairs.

Outside.

His shoes were squishing. Bloody prints where he walked.

At least the baby was okay, right?

He went into the building entrance that would eventually lead to his main system room. And nearly ran into Midou Ban. Which meant Ginji had to be around here somewhere. Another little failure.

"Oi, Computer Boy, what happened to you?" Came the question around a dangling cigarette. Midou had side-stepped easily, which was the only reason Makubex hadn't bowled right into him. "People are looking for you . . . "

It was pretty obvious Midou had gotten a better look at him when he'd backed up a little, because that slightly arrogant voice trailed off and came back a bit more serious.

"Shit."

"That about sums it up," he heard himself replied in a vague sort of way. Next thing Makubex knew, he was putting the baby in Midou's arms. Midou didn't look quite prepared, but it worked anyway.

Makubex took the opportunity to calmly turn around, walk back around the corner, and throw up.

~ ~ ~ ~

After a lot of fussing, which he hated, and a lot of subtle nagging, which he also hated, and after changing clothes, which he had not hated, Makubex was back in his control room and working.

The little girl had been given to someone, and no amount of searching the system found her name. It was wiped from the backups, as well, of course. Not only that, but he couldn't find the names for any of the erased.

The data wasn't storied in any of their living virtual companion's memories either, which was downright alarming. Chances were, though, that those discrepancies would be rationalized away by people on an individual basis. Or not even noticed. He himself hadn't realized until it had been shoved in his face.

But that sort of thinking was what usually happened in situations like this, at least in here in Mugenjou. Part of the design.

A bit of investigation, however, had revealed that human born who had known the erased's names still had that knowledge. Which was what he'd expected, actually, but to confirm it had been a relief. It was one of the few things he'd predicted in relation to all of this that had been accurate.

That done, he'd felt a lot better about things, even if it was only a small, pointless victory. It also left him without a new lead. But investigating that much had taken him to a pausing point somewhere in the early morning hours, and had passed the time immediately after the attack well enough. It had helped him not think about things.

He stopped to stretch his arms over his head and noticed something.

Everyone. Was. In. There. With. Him.

Everyone!

Why?

He began to analyze possibilities. Did they think he was going to run off again, or that he was going to dive headfirst into some sort of bizarre hysterical fit, or did they think--

Never mind, superfluous, unimportant path of thought. It wouldn't lead anywhere, and although it might be a nice distraction to wander that way, he had things to do.

The body count from the attack had been four erasures and one human-born. 30 dead. Maybe he should subtract the number of babies from that? No.

None of the new dead had been frozen. He knew that was important, but he didn't know why. Or maybe he just hoped it was important so it would give him something to piece together?

Steadfastly ignoring everyone in the room, Makubex ran another system diagnostic and tried everything he knew about system tracking. Again. And again, he came up with absolutely nothing. Whatever, or whoever (shouldn't those terms be reversed in order?), was doing this was smarter than him.

Not the best thing to admit to himself.

It was when he was typing up a code to try and supplement his tracer programs when the idea hit him.

The anomaly, or the hacker, had contacted him. It had seemed aware of his actions.

Maybe it was watching his progress right now.

Maybe it was watching.

Maybe he could talk to it.

Bringing up a simple text program, he typed. "HELLO."

Nothing.

"HELLO, ARE YOU THERE?"

He waited, entering nonsense in his program while he tried to pretend he wasn't anxiously waiting for a reply.

Maybe . . .

When had he had contact with it? What were the circumstances? He had been tracking the anomaly. Investigating it. He was still doing that at the present, so it might be a corollary, but to what? The contact had been immediately following (if he counted the fog incident on the camera) or during an attack. He wondered if it had allowed him to trace it that last time, when it had typed at him. Probably a taunt, but maybe it wasn't that at all. Maybe it had felt like it needed to say something?

Maybe it really was a game to the anomaly.

Not the most comforting idea.

What else had those instances had in common?

He'd been either alone, or the person in the room had been asleep.

There.

That was it.

If he counted the headset whispers as part of the puzzle, then that made sense as well. No one else had heard the voices (that sounded insane, hearing voices, maybe this is all him? Maybe he's the one who had been doing it and he just didn't realize it? No, no, that's not possible, that's illogical) over the headset but him. That static tricks, the voice recorder. All just to (for?) him.

Which meant he had to find a way to clear his friends out of the control room before he even had a hope of getting the anomaly (or hacker, it could be a hacker, nothing more) to respond.

He turned around, not bothering to get up from then floor. It put the glow of the computers at his back, which gave off the only light in the room. That gave him the advantage, since no one would be able to see his face with the soft glow behind him.

He immediately picked out Ginji's bright head, slumped on Midou's shoulder as Ginji slept. For his part, Midou was toying with an unlit cigarette (good, Makubex didn't want the smoke in the room with his computers) and having a muttered argument with Shido. Surprise. Sakura was exchanging quiet words with her brother, and on the other side of Juubei sat Kazuki, who was talking with Emishi. From the looks of it, Emishi had just told one of his jokes. All the talking was a quiet hum under the electric sound of Makubex's monitors, and he realized he must have tuned it out at some point without realizing just what he was tuning out.

He looked at them all for a second and then completely lost his nerve. He had been about to throw a fit, act like the teenager he was, and toss them out. But he just couldn't. Instead he cleared his throat. "Excuse me?"

Well, that seemed to get everyone to stop what they were doing and look at him. So he continued. "I need everyone to please leave the room."

" . . . Why?" Sakura asked the obvious question.

He debated with himself a moment before answering. "Because I'm going to try and contact whoever," whatever, he really meant, but saying that probably wouldn't help his case any, "Is doing this. Any contact I've had with it before has been incoming, and I was the only one to see it or hear it. Therefore, I anticipate that it won't answer me until I'm the only one here."

"It?" That was Midou. Trust him to pick up on the thing Makubex really didn't want anyone to pick up on.

He ignored it.

Kazuki didn't. Makubex saw him frown slightly.

Scrutiny is not what Makubex needed right now. This was going to be done. It had to be.

"What do you mean, it's contacted you?" Kazuki added onto Midou's question, more or less.

He hadn't been sharing a lot of the details. It was only natural that people asked questions. Right.

"It's typed messages to me. It's talked to me by accessing a sound recording program and embedded a file to play for me," he replied calmly, as though he weren't completely fudging the details and leaving a lot out.

"And what about all those monitors breaking?" Sakura again. She had seen more of this than the others, after all, and knew the most about the system.

"What about it? I wasn't hurt, and that could have been an unrelated malfunction," he sounded as though he believed that, he really did. "I don't mean to sound ungrateful or rude, but it's really not necessary for everyone to be in here anyway."

And that sounded reasonable and not accusatory. Go him. He was doing quite well, he thought, at keeping the worst of the details to himself.

"But, Makubex, we're only here because we're all worried about you. You're our friend and this has been really tough on you," Ginji was pouting a little. Makubex sometimes had trouble meshing the fact that the man who could be the Thunder Emperor could pout, but Ginji wouldn't be Ginji if he weren't complicated.

And Ginji certainly wouldn't be Ginji without being far too bizarrely perceptive at times.

"Ooooooh," Ginji had gone right on, as though he'd just made some sort of connection. If he did, he wasn't saying what it was, because he stood (bounced, actually) up without elaborating. "Okay, Makubex! We're going to go outside the room, and be right there because we're worried, but you do what you have to do! Come on, everybody!"

Well. Maybe . . . maybe Ginji was remembering what it was like to have to do something he didn't want to do, and fight off people to get to do it? The point was, though, that people were getting up, not looking too pleased about it, but following Ginji out the room.

Such. A relief.

"Thank you! It won't be for long," he lied pleasantly as they went. He might end up erased. He wasn't thinking (yes he was) about that, but the possibility remained.

He was about to seal off the room when Ginji bounced back in, knelt down, and hugged him. Why were people randomly hugging him lately? Never mind. "Don't do anything silly, Makubex, even if this doesn't work, something eventually will. It'll be okay," and then Ginji smiled at him and went back out.

That actually did make him feel a lot better.

So this is what it had come down to. Him verses the anomaly. Or whatever it was. Whoever. Sometimes, Makubex thought it would be a lot easier to be a physical fighter than whatever it was he was probably thought as. It wasn't something he dwelt on very often, it was just the way things were.

Taking a deep breath, Makubex sealed off the room, and turned back to his text program. He was smiling a little, admitting to himself that he was just maybe a bit scared, but that it was okay to be. "HELLO? CAN I PLEASE TALK TO YOU NOW?"

[HI! WHAT DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT?]

"I WANT TO TALK ABOUT YOUR PLAYING. YOUR GAME."

[WHY?]

"BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW THE RULES."

[OH, THOSE ARE EASY. :) ]

"WILL YOU TELL ME?"

[YOU ALREADY KNOW THEM, THOUGH.]

"NO, I DON'T."

[YES YOU DO YOU JUST DON'T REALIZE YOU KNOW THEM. :) ]

This wasn't getting anywhere. But at least they were communicating. Makubex closed his eyes and typed his next question. He didn't want to make the anomaly, the hacker, whatever, mad. But he had to ask this.

"WHO ARE YOU?"

[ . . . YOU . . . DON'T KNOW?] The text came slowly.

"I'M SORRY, I DON'T. I'D LIKE TO."

[OKAY!]

Every single monitor went dark, stealing every bit of light from the room and leaving it pitch black. The electric hum of the computers was gone, too. Quiet and dark. Makubex waited. He couldn't hear his friends anymore. It was just him. Alone. Waiting.

A soft breeze made his hair flutter. Whispers.

"Hi!" A child's voice piped. It came from everywhere in the room, quiet and happy. It echoed within itself.

It was the voice from the recording.

" . . . Hi," Makubex replied. His own voice was shaking.

"Hee. We," the child's tone echoed more on that word, "Have like playing with you, Makubex! You're so good at hide and seek. We're glad we let you into the game."

"Thank you. Um," he was having trouble thinking clearly. Small hands seemed to be tugging at his shirt. "Can you tell me about the other game, please? The babies and the people being killed? Is that part of the rules?"

There came a high pitched little giggle. "Silly! No! That's the whole object of the game!"

"Killing people?" He blurted out.

"They're bad people! They're causing problems in the system!"

It sounded like ten little feet were all stomped at once. The small hands that were tugging at his shirt pushed away all at once, which didn't exactly feel good. They were strong hands. He was knocked onto his side.

"Oops! So~rry!" The little voice(s) didn't sound sorry at all.

"Why are they bad? I'm sorry, I don't understand," his ribs hurt.

"Beecaaaauuuuse," Singsong voice, coming from above him and his left, his right, and little hands were yanking his shirt and pulling him to sit up again. When he tried to touch one of them, he couldn't feel anything. It was so, so, so dark in the room.

Makubex decided to wait and see if . . . It . . . They . . . said anything else.

"They're doing bad things! They're being bad to you, you knooooow that already, we're just doing what we're supposed to!" The sound of a raspberry being blown, right by his left ear, made him jump.

"You're supposed to eliminate threats to me?" He managed to ask. His mind was racing in circles, it seemed, and he just didn't know what to do, except to be so, so careful.

"Well you now," came the little giggly voice, as though this were the most obvious thing in the world and he was soooo stupid for not knowing that already.

"Who before?"

"Stuuuupid!" The little hands pushed him again, harder this time. Ouch. His keyboard had gone flying that time and he'd skidded into a nearby monitor. "Aren't you grateful?"

"I'm sorry! I am, I am grateful, but people are getting hurt! Even if they are threats to the peace we're all working for, that doesn't mean they need to be killed!" Frustrated, in pain, and losing the bit of hope he had left at finding a way out of this. He pushed himself to sit back up, even though it hurt to do so. "Sure, you seem to be bringing the virtual people back, but the human born are just plain dead! And why erase the names? What's the point?"

He waited.

The little hands had all withdrawn. When the voice came again, it was soft, but thundering with some sort of strange depth. It seemed to shake the floor, the walls, and every bone in his body.

"They're BAD people! They're BAD. We don't CARE about the outsiders who came in because that's not what we were told to worry about! The BAD people are corrupted in their data and they have to be rewritten! They're not DYING!"

Corrupted . . . the sleeper programming. Oh.

"Babylon City programmed you to take care of the sleeper programmed people, and fix them if they weren't working as anticipated," Makubex felt a bit numb. It was easier than hurting, or worrying, or being scared. "Thus protecting their interests."

"Yeah, but you beat them and are in charge of things noooow, so we protect you!" Brightly. The voice seemed to bounce from emotion to emotion like a rubber ball.

"Oh," was his utterly intelligent response. Think! He thought. "You were programmed into the system as part of it, no wonder you're so good at hide and seek."

It was like his mouth was moving ahead of his brain. But really, his brain wasn't sure what it would have changed in that.

"Yay! Thank you!" A little, happy laugh that was almost deafeningly intense.

"And you get more powers from the one's you've erased. It takes you three days to reformat and rearrange the data, that's really fast. You're really good at this," he went on after the laughter died down a bit.

It explained, if he was right, why the bodies weren't being frozen anymore. They weren't frozen until after the third attack, and weren't after the baby with the freezing talent was reborn.

"Right! See, you already knew all of this, Makubex, you just didn't know you knew, huh? Don't be so sad, you're really smart," and then the small multitude of children's hands were petting his hair and patting his shoulders.

"Thank you," he felt like he should definitely say that, so he did. "Why do you sound so young? If you've been around so long, then shouldn't you sound older?"

"Becauuuse, where do you think the people born in the system go when they die? Data gets erased, even after it's complete, but the person never really leaves. That's what we're made of, and there's waaaay more kids than adults! Seeee, otherwise we'd just be wandering around and of no use at all," there was a definite note of 'duh' in the voice's (voices') response.

Then the voice went on, bubbly and full of glee. "They tried to delete us when things didn't work out they way they'd thought things would, but deleting just set us even freer!"

It giggled.

"I see," he didn't at all. No, he did, but he didn't want to understand. The idea was both elating and monstrous.

"Of course you do," and the air around him turned into another small breeze.

He couldn't delete this program. He couldn't. Not even if he could find it, isolate it. He couldn't . . . it was just doing what it was supposed to do. And it was . . . did virtual people have an afterlife? Maybe. Maybe not. He hadn't stopped to let himself think about it.

Would he become part of this program (ghost?) when he died?

Maybe he could delete this program.

"Please, there's been an aberration in the system," he started, not sure where he was going with this. "Can you help me with it?"

"Will it be fun?"

"Yes, it will be very fun. It'll be just another game, okay? Can you localize yourselves and go to a certain folder for me?"

"Why?"

"It's a gaaaame, if I told you that then it wouldn't be fun. I'll type in the location when I can access the system again, okay?" He felt positively evil and dirty and just plain wrong. If this didn't work, he had no doubt that this little immature ghost of a program would come back and--

"Oh, okay!"

He was hugged (his ribs screamed, but he pressed his lips together and bore it) by many small disembodied arms.

A little blast of wind.

The monitors in the room came back on and the electric hum was back. He typed in the folder location and waited. Three seconds later, there was text on the screen.

[WE'RE HERE!]

There wasn't much on the folder he'd specified. Nothing of importance to the maintenance of Mugenjou, or any of the people in it.

Sometimes, in his spare time, Makubex wrote viruses.

He had one, a particularly devastating virus, that located where a target program or file was on the physical hardware of a system. Once it had done that, it corrupted the area around it, essentially frying the target area into an island, trapping it without deleting it.

"JUST STAY PUT, OKAY? ARE YOU ALL THERE? I NEED TO KNOW BEFORE I TELL YOU WHAT THE GAME WILL BE ABOUT."

[WE'RE ALL HERE! GO AHEAD, WE TRUST YOU. WE'RE FRIENDS. :) ]

He brought up the virus, targeting that location. One key stroke would set it in motion.

"KEEP IN THIS PLACE AND COUNT TO ONE HUNDRED, USING SECONDS AS THE INTERVAL. DON'T PEEK! AND THEN COME AND FIND WHERE I AM IN THE SYSTEM."

[PHYSICALLY?]

"YES. OKAY, READY?'

[YAY! YES!]

After five seconds, he entered, "WAIT, HOLD ON!"

No response. Either it was really not peeking, or it was peeking and pretending not to.

He had to bank on the former, because if it was the latter, he was as good as erased.

Not wasting anymore time, he executed the virus.

It would take sixty seconds to complete its work.

He counted heartbeats and watched a timer. Done.

Makubex spent the next twenty-five seconds making sure the room was completely physically sealed off. If he'd failed, he hoped that at least the wall could keep people out if they heard him being ripped apart. That way, maybe, the anomaly would leave them alone.

Ten.

So many people dead.

Nine.

But the babies . . .

Eight.

Splattered blood and tortured screams.

Seven.

What gave him the authority to do something like this? What was going to happen--

Six.

--To those remnants? To be trapped--

Five.

--In once place like that forever? Wasn't that horrible?

Four.

Did he have a choice? No.

Three.

He didn't want to be part of that when he died. . . . If he'd been wrong, he wouldn't have to live--

Two.

--With the failure for long. How morbid.

One.

Makubex squeezed his eyes shut and held his breath, listening to the hum of the computers and just waiting, expecting, knowing that it was about to stop and he was about to di--

Nothing happened.

Opening his eyes again, Makubex sagged and let out a relieved, exhausted laugh. He brought up a view of the section where his virus had trapped (he hoped unless it was watching and playing with him and lying and about to ki--shut up) the anomaly. The dead. Ghosts.

He couldn't just leave them there.

It had worked exactly as he'd coded it to. Quickly, he exported all the data from that physical circuit board to another location.

Taking a minute to think this decision over one more time, he manipulated the electrical flow to that area, and destroyed the entire circuit board.

~ ~ ~ ~

Ten minutes later he unsealed the room. His cheeks were dry again and his eyes weren't red at all.

~ ~ ~ ~