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Megabyte must have thought he had a wicked sense of humor. He'd unleashed 'Game Mode' on the upper halls of the Principle Office.

I read game-puck signals and belligerent mops racing up and down the hallways as we stepped off the elevator. It seemed like Megabyte's forces were moving faster up here too. I highly doubt the evil janitorial equipment was playing favorites. Random disk explosions reverberated about the floor.

"We'll have to move fast." Bob reported. "We need to find Dot, Mouse and AndrAIa. They should be ahead of us along this corridor."

Matrix looked up and down the hall on either side. Another 'boom' shook the walls. "What was that?"

"The floor has been flooded with those pucks from Phong's game." Bob said. "Dot and I faced this before when Megabyte was in the core control chamber. The pucks are packed with high explosives. Plus they're heat sensing, we'll have to try hard to avoid them."

Matrix rolled his eye and shook his head. "Perfect."

Bob looked to his wrist. "Glitch, I'm counting on you."

I live to serve. There were pucks puttering all over, but they seemed to move in packs accompanied by cleaners. There were two such groups chasing binome squads, but the ones scouting had split wide to cover many halls at once. If we ran like mad straight ahead for fifty feet it would be perfect. We'll see where they all are and plot our next move when we get there. Bob felt the same and signaled for Matrix to take off. We sprinted down the hall and stopped in the intersection at fifty feet. We'd picked up some pucks on the way. They bounced up the hall behind us.

Bob squinted down at me. "Mouse and AndrAIa should be down one of these halls."

Matrix fired Gun and blew one of the disks behind us to smithereens. The explosion triggered the others to go off as well and sent shockwaves echoing down the halls all around us. Bob whirled on him. "Matrix!"

You dipswitch!

"What?"

Bob shook his head at him. "They had to have heard that."

"What do we care?" Matrix asked. "Would you rather have exploded instead?"

A voice came down the hall. "Matrix?"

We all turned. AndrAIa appeared around the corner, breaking into a wide smile when she spotted us. The renegade dropped all negativity and dashed forward to meet her. She clung fast to his chest.

"I'd recognize that blast anywhere!"

"AndrAIa," Matrix looked down at her as they came apart. "Are you okay?"

She put a hand on her hip. "Aren't I always?" She looked quickly down the halls. "We can't stay here. The floor is in Game Mode."

"We know." Bob replied.

She gestured for us to follow her. "Come on." When we turned the corner we saw a firewall blocking off a hallway. The plink of game pucks coasted in from the hallways on our left and right. AndrAIa called into the fire. "Mouse! Open up!"

A sprite-sized opening dropped and we ducked inside. It resealed in time to have the tracking pucks impact on the surface. The girls, Matrix and Bob covered their ears as the sound's intensity jumped off the scale. The hacker was standing at a console by the door to the War Room. "Bob! Matrix! Boy are we glad to see you!"

"What happened?" Bob asked.

"Megabyte's reset the entry codes." Mouse replied. "Nothing I've tried has helped."

"And we don't know where Dot and the Robots are." AndrAIa added. "We're lucky Mouse was able to protect us with this firewall."

"She's the best." Matrix shrugged.

"It doesn't seem so." Mouse said grouchily, turning back to the panel. "Or else I might be able to open this spammed door."

Oooh! Ooh! Ooh! Pick me! Pick me!

I whirred to get Bob's attention.

'I can do it! Let me try!'

He nodded. "Let's see if Glitch can help." He aimed his wrist at Mouse's console. "Glitch! Decryption Command!"

I flew off and locked onto the panel, spreading my data down into its wiring. My screen extended out to form a touch pad with streaming code. Wow… that code was flying by. It must have had a random number generator built into it. I couldn't sort out any specific passcode, but Mouse seemed to find my display helpful. Her face lit up when she saw it, anyway. "Ah, I see… it's got a scrambling program attached. Well, I can break that easy enough." She looked back to Bob and gestured to me. "Mind if I use him?"

I bleeped.

He shrugged.

Mouse commenced work. I brought up whatever her fingers asked for, taking paths through the circuitry of the PO I would have never thought to take without her guidance. She thought of code patterns and access names that were remarkably out of the ordinary and led us on detours through strange places I'd never expected to be seeing on such a mission.

I mean, who knew you could access the security system through the chess table in Phong's office?

I sensed more explosions behind us and Bob's voice pattern cut in over my computing. "Before we charge in on Megabyte, we need to make sure Dot's okay."

"I'd love to, Sugar, but I don't know where Dot is."

Matrix answered. "Glitch can find her. Glitch! Pull up a scan for Dot!"

Okay, but this one's for old times sake. I popped open a scanning window beside Mouse's touchpad. Dot was on the move, it looked like some of those game pieces were following her. AndrAIa pressed in tight. "Oh no!"

"Don't worry honey, I'm on it." Mouse opened a separate input window and began typing. A firewall appeared behind Dot and her pursuers vanished from my scan.

Bob was pleased. "Great Mouse! Can you get her to us?"

"Easy said, easy done." She replied. Firewalls popped up in front of all the hallway openings along Dot's path, leaving one route that led to our location. It was a genius little trick and she followed the maze easily. Before we knew it she, Hack, and Slash were knocking at our door. Mouse opened it up and shut down the rest of the firewalls, returning to my console to try and cancel the scrambler.

"We're glad to find all of you, I had no idea what was going on with those firewalls. Figures it was you, Mouse."

"Naturally, Sugar."