Chapter 15: Override

It was approximately 12:56 in the afternoon when two large, burley men came barging into the District Attorney's office. Cindy Neutron, DA, glanced up from her computer. "Derek. Jack. What can I help you with?"

"We need you down at NeuCo right away." Their lack of emotion but sense of urgency, caused alarms to go off in her head. She quickly grabbed her coat and hurried out to the waiting car.

The lack of people standing around the building was alarming. Normally, when NeuCo suffered some sort of mishap, everyone was simply waiting around the building to go back inside. When she saw no one, and when the car turned to go around to the parking space out back, she started to panic even more. "Where is everyone?"

"Evacuated." Derek said flatly, as he pulled into a parking space. "Along with everyone in the radius." Before she could question any further, they hustled out of the car and brought her down several sets of stairs into the basement of NeuCo Tower. Against the blaring light of the giant monitors that lined the walls, she saw a familiar figure standing up on a platform directly underneath what she could only guess was the NeuCo mainframe.

"Jimmy?"

"Up here Cindy." His body language and tone of voice told her something was horribly wrong and she quickly moved to stand by him. "Follow my lead to a T, okay?'

"Okay."

Jimmy to turned to face the giant computer screen which asked, "Name?"

"James Issacc Neutron."

"Date of birth?"

"March 14th."

"First gift you ever gave Cindy?"

"A pearl from our island."

"Thank you. Profile accepted. Second profile required. Name?"

"Um, Cynthia Aurora Neutron."

"Date of birth?"

"June 5th?" She glanced over at her husband, but his gaze was solely on the screen, the slightly panicked look still on his face.

"What were you and Jimmy doing when he proposed?"

"Ahhh… A Snowball fight?"

She must have done well because it responded back with, "Thank you. Second profile accepted. Override request approved."

"Thank god," Jimmy grumbled as the machine shut itself down. He turned to her, "Cin, I-"An explosion rocked the room and Jimmy threw himself on top of Cindy, covering her with his body and shielding her from the blast. Two more explosions burst and Cindy clutched her husband and buried her face into his arm, something she hadn't done since the last time the faced the Yokians. When it was finally silent, both of them were pale and covered in dust.

Jimmy slowly got to his feet and reached his hand out for his wife. She stood there, shaking, and quite unnerved and he wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her close to his side. "What was that?" She asked quietly.

Jimmy sighed. "The part of the mainframe that connects to the reactor was hacked. The only way to stabilize it was to shut the whole thing down but the only two people who have the authority to do that are you and me. The explosions were part of the security device."

"Everything's good boss." Jack said as he burst into the room. "Gonna need to be cleaned up for sure, but it was contained."

"Well, I'm glad that part of the system worked correctly." Jimmy grumbled. "Tell everyone to take a paid week of vacation off until we get this cleaned up."

"Already on it."

Jimmy turned back to Cindy. "Shall I walk you back to work?"

She looked down at her ripped skirt and filth covered clothes. "No, I think I'm just gonna go home."

"I'll join you."

The rode in silence for a few blocks until curiosity got the best of Cindy. "Why did you need me to override the system?"

Her husband was silent for a long time before he responded. "It's a new feature I added after we had all those attempted hacks last spring. In talking with my IT guys, they said that I should have somebody that I trust completely with that kind of power. I debated over it for days until I realized that the only person I trust completely is, well, you."

"Oh." She flushed and glanced out the window. "Well… thanks I suppose."

"Yeah." There was a stretch of uncomfortable silence. "I never thought that I would need it."

She sat on their bed, wearing one of her husband's old Retroville High Science Club shirts and sweatpants, feeling much better after her shower. Jimmy appeared in the doorway in his sleep pants, tossed his towel in the hamper and after a deep sigh, collapsed on the bed next to her. He shifted until his head was in her lap and she slowly started scratching his scalp lightly with her fingernails. He sighed again, but this time, it didn't sound like it had the weight of the world behind it.

He was falling asleep, she could tell that by the way his breathing slowed. "Jimmy?" But there was no response. He had been exhausted. She was to. Slowly, carefully, she moved so both of them were curled up on the bed and curled around each other. Soon her own breathing slowed, and she joined her husband in slumber.