Chapter 3 – Patrick's Story

As the three children and two digimon walked through the lit corridors, Yolei got a good look at him.

He was about 6 foot tall with dark brown hair and matching eyes, eyes that seemed to be bloodshot with tiredness. He was wearing a flak jacket that had the name 'Kevin 'Sparky' Clarke' written on the front. The jacket seemed to be covering a ripped and tattered uniform. He looked so…tough. Yolei stared daydreaming again, but came to her senses when Patrick reached his destination.

Patrick knocked on a door. It was the same room that Yolei had noticed was blacked out.

"Password" A voice came from behind the door

" 'I need a weapon' " He replied.

The door slowly opened and Patrick pushed the children and digimon through before closing the door and locking it quietly behind him. The computer room was dimly lit, only slightly illuminated by the number of computers that were on around the place.

TK looked behind him to see who had opened the door. All he could see were two amber eyes staring at him.

"Who…" TK started but was interrupted when the small person revealed himself.

"I'm BlackAgumon" He looked at Patrick, "Paddy's partner"

Yolei stared at Patrick, "You're a…digidestined?"

Patrick produced a steel-coloured D3 and waved it infront of him.

"I think you got some explaining to do" TK asked firmly.

"Names first please"

"Oh, sorry, my name's Takeru Takishi, but you can just call me TK. This is my partner, Patamon"

"I'm Yolei Inoue, and this is Hawkmon"

Patrick switched on a small lamp in the middle of the room, revealing what could only be described as an armoury. All the small tables in the room that didn't have consoles on them were put together to make one giant surface. There were handguns, machine guns, magazines, an assortment of grenades, as well as grenade launchers. At the end there was a massive heavy machine gun andmany other flak jackets of varying sizes.

"Ok TK and Yolei, here goes." Patrick started, "It all began three days ago, on Monday…."

Patrick walked down the massive glazed corridor, and then turned left into the library corridor, towards Maths. He sighed. Today was the final day for his coursework. He'd have to ask his teacher to let him out to get it printed in the computer room. When he arrived at the classroom, his teacher, Mr. McNeill stared at him through his thick glasses and held up his hand.

"Coursework" he demanded.

"Oh yeah, I'll go get it" he dropped his bag and turned around

"Patrick O'Reilly! How are you ever going to succeed in life if you never have anything in on time? You're brother is much more punctual with his work" Mr. Mc Neill started one of his famous lectures but was cut short by Patrick.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, but I actually have it done this time. I just need to go print it sir"

The old teacher growled, "Very well. But if I find you mucking about I'll personally take you to the principal's office."

Patrick turned to leave but was stopped again. "And don't even think about hacking into the exam board and stealing coursework examples again!"

Patrick ignored this last order and set out for the computer room. When he got there, he looked through them window in the door to see that the room was empty, again. He walked in and closed the door behind him, then discovered that there was someone here. Rory MacNamara, the IT Technician, and an archenemy of Patrick. He was the administrator of the school's network, and the one that had severely downgraded his account after a few…incidents. All he could do now was create and print documents. No E-Mail, no chat-rooms, nothing. Of course, when had a few measly password encryptions stopped him?

"Hey Rory! What's up?" Patrick walked over to him when he got no reply, "Rory?" The technician was sitting at a desk with a large cardboard box sitting on it, obviosly some new hardware. He stopped when he reached the back of his chair and noticed a horrifying detail. There was a large hole in the back of the plastic chair, like someone had stabbed a knife straight through into his body. Patrick spun the chair around. Rory's limp body fell to the floor. Patrick panicked. "Oh shit!".

He immediately charged out of the room and up to his Maths room. He stopped outside the door when he heard screaming from inside. He peered through the glass and was paralysed. Inside, two black figures were walking through the class, slashing away at the pupils some tried to run, but were immediately caught and stabbed.

Patrick just stared. His friends, classmates, they were all dead. As much as he hated Mr. McNeill, he had never wished him dead. He ran back to the computer room, where he slammed the door shut, took Rory's keys and locked it. He sat down at a console and logged on. While it was logging on, he took of his blazer, and removed the USB memory stick from its pocket. The first worry he had was his brother. Was he Ok? Where was he? Patrick thought for a moment. "Errrrr…Biology!" He thought aloud.

He booted up a chat session with Declan. Of course, this was blocked, but Patrick easily bypassed it and logged on. Usually, Rory would be immediately notified of this, but he didn't seem in much of a position to do anything about it.

Meanwhile, Declan was hiding in the storeroom of a science classroom. What the hell had just happened? He had just gone into the storeroom for 5 minutes to use the computer and in that time these things had came in and slaughtered the entire class! They were gone now but who wasn't to say they wouldn't come back? Suddenly, the console beside him beeped softly, signalling that a chat session had been requested. Declan sat down and accepted the request. Its was Patrick!

PATOREILLY> r u ok?

DECOREILLY> yeah, but what happened? My class was killed!

PATOREILLY> mine 2 + it seems we're the only ones left

DECOREILLY> where r u?

PATOREILLY> it dept

DECOREILLY> what r we going 2 do?

PATOREILLY> we need 2 regroup

DECOREILLY> ok

PATOREILLY> when I give the signal RUN

DECOREILLY> ok, here goes

Patrickunlocked the door, then walked outand stepped over to the end of the library corridor. At the other end he could see Declan. Patrick cautiously looked around. The corridor was empty. Patrick waved his hand at Declan, who wasted no time sprinting down the corridor. Within 10 seconds they were all safe in the computer room.

Declan stopped to catch his breath, while Patrick ripped upthe cardboard box andstuck it to the window in the door, for extra secrecy. He also closed all the blinds, plunging the room into darkness. Declan switched the lights on.

"OK…so what…now?" Declan was still quite breathless

"Well first, we set up camp, that's here"

"Camp? We're…staying here?"

Patrick stared down into his brother's eyes and said, "I am not leaving until every last one of those bastards are dead."

Declan nodded, "And I'm not leaving...your side"

"Well, that's sorta the end of it" Patrick shrugged his shoulder, "We stayed here for a day, as wave after wave of police units and swat teams entered the building and were promptly, killed. Me, Declan and our digimon went down on Monday night and salvaged all this weaponry from the bodies. Most of it anyway, some is from the commando team."

"That's terrible!" Yolei sounded shocked

"That's war," said Patrick who turned to sit at a console

"Hang on, what did you by 'sorta' the end of it. And where is your brother" TK asked

Patrick stopped, "I was afraid you'd ask that" He turned around, "Put simply, they got him"

"Oh…I'm sorry to here that" TK looked down at his feet. He shouldn't have asked that.

"It's ok, I've still got hope. For some reason they didn't instantly kill Declan. Instead they knocked him out and took him to the gym"

"Why the gym?"

"That's where they came from. They've got some sort of portal machinery down there. They used it to send Declan to…well…wherever it goes"

"Hold on" TK put his hands up, "Backtrack a second. Your brother is digidestined as well?"

"Aye"

"Who's his digimon?"

"Penguinmon"

"Right, okay let's review" Yolei began, "Three days ago this school was attacked by strange beings. They killed everyone except you and your brother who are both digidestined"

"Are the any other Irish digidestined?" TK asked

"Aye, but they don't go to this school"

"Then why didn't they come?"

"Same thing probably happened to their school"

"Right, anyway, there have been loads of attempts to enter and kill the beings, none have succeeded. You took all their weapons and brought them here."

"Yeah, that seems correct so far"

"Then you called for us to help…"

"Woowa, hold up. I didn't call for you two. Declan did."

"Oh yeah, didn't Izzy say that the E-Mail was sent by a Declan O'Reilly?" TK asked

"Yeah, but why did he send it?"

"I don't know. He went up to music to huntsaw someriflemen go up their alone. He took only an M9handgun, but the next time I saw him was on the library camera, sending an E-Mail. Then the ninja things got him."

"Oh…"

"Wait, who the hells Izzy?"

"Another digidestined along with us"

"You're not the only two?"

"No, in fact, there are one, two, three…" TK started counting

"Eleven" Yolei simply said

"What? There's fucking eleven of youse?"

"Yeah, what's wrong with that?"

"Well there's three of us here in Ireland and I thought that was a lot…wait, did others come with you?"

"Yeah, some- Tai, Sora and Kari"

"Where did they go" Patrick sounded urgent

"Err…. the other way down the library corridor. Why, did you see them?"

"No, that's the problem" Patrick swung round to a console and started typing furiously. He opened up what looked like a CCTV monitoring system. He started rewinding the one looking down the glazed corridor and stopped when he saw movement. They watched as Tai, Kari and Sora walked down the corridor, only to be ambushed by some of those riflemen. Their digimon digivolved, and were so caught up in the fight, that they never noticed the ninjas things come up behind their partnersand knock them cold.

Thesixjust stared at the screen.

"Well, at least they didn't kill them" TK turned around

"I'm starting to see a pattern here, they are only killing normal people and kidnapping digidestined" Patrick thought

"I see where your coming from, but why would they want us?" Yolei asked

"Don't know, but what I do know is that your friends have been captured by the enemy. In a couple of hours they'll be taken through that portal to God knows where…"

Patrick walked over to the middle, reached under the table and retrieved a large barrelled rifle with a massive scope on it. He yanked out the magazine, made sure it was full, then slammed it back in again.

"…and I'm gonna save them…" he snapped back the breach, loading a fresh bullet into the chamber, "…you coming?"