Chapter 06
When they returned to headquarters, they were immediately directed to a special quarantined room where the virus wouldn't be able to hop from the laptop they confiscated from that overweight teacher and infect their private computer system. They couldn't afford to let a dangerous virus loose in the NetZone. Thankfully, they managed to track down its location to the teacher's laptop and collect it before teacher and student could do anything stupid. His fist clenched at his side as he recalled meeting eyes with the young man seated before the laptop, wondering what silliness the boy was getting into now.
"Problem, Agent J?" asked his fair skinned partner as he placed the laptop on the table in the center of the room, none too gently as it banged upon the metal surface. It was clear that he didn't care about returning the confiscated property to its owner in one piece. There was a good chance that they would have to take the laptop apart in the end as they uncovered the virus, but Agent J couldn't see it as necessary to damage the laptop in the process.
"Nothing, Agent E," he answered with a shake of his head. "Let's see what mess those civilians left for us." He really hoped they didn't do something stupid like try to eliminate the virus by themselves. Viruses had evolved into highly dangerous threats since the early days of the NetZone. Agent J recalled having to review the history and development of viruses when he first began working for the Guys in White. It was a long, dull report that took him many sleepless nights reading over, despite his already extensive knowledge on the topic. Everyone that was recruited to join the Guys in White had to know at least something about viruses and how to combat them.
"Civilians," Agent E said with a sneer on his face as he dragged over a cart with a tray of tools to use in dismantling the laptop, and a few weapons in case the virus decided to make the hop from the laptop into the real world. Not all viruses were capable of that new tactic of causing chaos and destruction to the real world, but if this viruses was strong enough, they could have a serious fight on their hands. That was the whole reason for the quarantined room. There was no access point to the NetZone here for the virus enter, no means of corrupting their own computers. The room was sealed, cut off from the NetZone. Should the virus appear in the real world, its only means of escape would be reentering the laptop, but it would not be able to flee beyond this room.
"I think we can put that off until later." Agent J took a seat at the table, the only chair provided in the room, as he lifted the top of the laptop. The screen remained a mess of scrambled data that made him frown as he looked over what the two men were working on before he and his partner burst into the room. "It looks like they were trying to discover the origin of the virus," he murmured as he reviewed the data, typing in a few commands to better examine their work.
Agent E snorted as he lifted one of their latest inventions from the lower tray on the cart. "Discover the origin?" he repeated in question as he held up the weapon, a long, single barrel rifle looking thing, taking aim at the wall across from him. "It originated from the high school."
Agent J took his gaze away from the laptop screen to stare blandly at his partner. Those thick, bushy black eyebrows over the dark shades he wore were a maddening sight to see day in and day out. The eyebrows crept to the center of his brow, almost connecting the two separate parts in a single unibrow. Sometimes when they were on watch and Agent E fell asleep on the job, Agent J had the overwhelming urge to take a pair of tweezers to those brows and, at the very least, pluck them to the point of being able to identify them as two distinct eyebrows. But he preferred not having a gun jammed between his own eyes when his partner jerked out of his sleep upon the first hair plucked.
"Not according to the information they managed to pull up on the virus." Agent J turned back to the laptop, sifting through what he could on it. A lot of the data saved on the laptop was corrupted beyond hope. He was rather impressed that teacher and student were able to track the virus to the point of realizing that it actually came from outside the high school, despite what its developer wanted people to think. His head shook as he wondered how the pair of men could even manage to figure that out.
"We can work on figuring out the origin later." Agent E pushed his partner out of the chair as he took over the job of scanning through the laptop. The weapon landed on the table with a loud clang of metal on metal. His fingers moved over the keyboard of the laptop in a clumsy manner that made Agent J cringe. Even his brother was better at the computer stuff than his partner. "Oh, ugh!" Agent E complained, shoving the laptop so hard away from him that it nearly skidded right off the table.
Agent J quickly acted to catch it, snapping his eyes toward his partner and glaring behind his shades.
"Guess those old football reflexes still come in handy," Agent E said as he smirked, leaning on the table.
"You should be more careful," Agent J grumbled and placed the laptop nicely back on the table. When he glanced over the screen, he frowned at what he found. "You're not going to find the virus scanning through private photos."
"No reaction at all?" Agent E questioned as he lifted his bushy brows in surprise. "I wouldn't have imagined you to be in to that kind of thing." Despite the shades hiding his eyes, his disgust was clear on the rest of his face.
"I did have a girlfriend, you know." Agent J glared briefly at his partner before turning his gaze back to the laptop. He closed out of the folder of photographs of the, normally bald, teacher in a dress and a frizzy, curly wig and makeup painted upon his face. "I've seen it before anyway. It's a thing he does to inspire his students to work harder in class."
"I'm pretty sure I don't want to know anything more about that." Agent E pulled a face as a shudder ran through him, and Agent J knew the feeling after he first realize the teacher dressed in drag and claimed it to be his sister to his students. Strangely, he doubted many, if any other, students actually realized the truth behind the photos. Agent E folded his arms on the table as he leaned forward. "I almost forgot about her. What was her name? Meredith? Harriet? Crystal?"
"It was Bianca," Agent J answered stiffly as he focused his attention onto the laptop, seeking out the virus lurking within it.
"Right." Agent E nodded with a grin. "Bianca. She was hot. How come you don't talk about her anymore? As I recall, you two were quite the hot item last month."
Lifting his gaze, Agent J gave his partner a sour look. "We broke up, and she kicked me out of the apartment." He frowned bitterly at the memory of their fight. A month ago, everything was perfect between them. They were happy together. They got along together when they moved into the same apartment. Until last night when he came home early from work and discovered her making out on the couch with their neighbor, and she somehow tried to spin the fight so that he ended up looking like the bag guy in that scenario.
"Sorry," Agent E said, though he didn't sound all that sorry about it. "I could have told you she was way out of your league though. Need a place to stay until you find another apartment?"
Agent J shook his head. "I'll be moving my stuff back into my parents' house." Living with Agent E, even for a short time, didn't sound very appealing to him, even if they were all expected to be immaculate in their living conditions, part of their training to avoid any contamination. "I've already got my stuff packed up. I'll be bringing it all over tonight."
"Living with your parents, sounds kind of lame." Agent E got to his feet, pressing his hands to the tabletop as he leaned forward to get a look at the computer screen. "Found our virus yet?"
Agent J glared over the top of his shades, brown eyes narrowing at the fair skinned man. "Nothing yet," he answered as he dropped his gaze again. Wrinkles appeared over his brow as the corners of his mouth tugged downward.
"Uh oh. I know that look." Standing up straight, Agent E folded his arms, creasing his nicely pressed white suit with the action. "Something's wrong, isn't it?"
His fingers flew quickly over the keyboard, running through everything he could think of as he examined the laptop. After several moments, Agent J lifted his head with a disturbed expression. "It's not there."
"This isn't the time to be joking, Agent J," Agent E said firmly as he snatched the laptop, twisting it around to face him. "What do you mean it's not there?"
"I mean," Agent J tried to keep the growl out of his voice, but watching his partner check over his work like he was incapable of doing anything correctly was a little more than beyond irritating to him, "that the virus is not in this laptop."
"But we tracked it to this laptop!" Agent E complained, jamming his fingers down hard on the buttons as he typed. "This computer was infected with the virus. It's the only piece of tech that showed up on our scanners as having the virus. How can it not be here? We had the laptop locked up tight, cut off from the NetZone, the whole way here until we arrived in this room. There's no way that it could have jumped from the laptop at any point after we confiscated it."
Agent J watched with distaste as his partner's anger seemed to increase with each word he spoke, with each pounding keystroke. A thought worked its way through his head, trying to puzzle out what happened, how they could have failed to contain the virus, how the virus managed to deceive and elude them. From what he saw on the computer, from the work shown of the teacher and student's attempts to uncover the truth of the virus' origins, they were looking for a rather sophisticated piece of vile coding.
"Perhaps it was never in the laptop," Agent J offered tentatively. He held his ground when his partner snapped his head upward, green eyes narrowing without a doubt at him. "It might have made it look like it was attacking the laptop, or maybe it was there up until our arrival," he continued before Agent E could demand an explanation from him. "If it can hide its true origin and make people believe that it came from the high school until someone dives deeper into its coding, then it's not illogical to believe that it could leave some sort of false imagery behind and leave us thinking that we've caught it while it scurried away to hide somewhere else in the high school. By now, we've wasted a lot of time returning here and examining the laptop. Chances are, the virus is long gone now."
Agent J flinched when his partner suddenly threw the laptop against the wall, which then fell to the ground in a shattered, sparking mess. It looked like Mr. Lancer wouldn't be getting his laptop back in one piece after all.
DB-KT: I miss being in the chat! D: Haha, yes~ Vlad! 8D *pats Danny* He had to learn to abuse his powers somehow! orz Sketchbook? O: Are you going to draw that? 8D
jeanette9a: Popups! DX Those are so irritating!
Guest: Maybe~ =) Yeah, friends are his power! *shot* XD;; But yeah, he's lacking everything here that he had in canon that helped him be the Phantom that he is. XD;; Why do you do that, FFn!? orz Let us have our text emoticons!
Sammi: Kwan needs a hugs~ D:
midnight: *pets Kwan* Well, there might be some roughing up.
XD: Oh oh! And what if Walker was the GiW's antivirus program, and he's the one that shut down Vortex? Nocturne doesn't care about Phantom since Phantom's never done anything to him. But if a virus comes in with proof of taking down Walker? Nocturne would probably just be like "Okay, everyone, give that virus all your data." Haha, like Vortex and Nocturne are the original virus x program pairing in the network. XD;; And being a program, Nocturne doesn't have the fight capability as a virus, so he can't really do anything to get his revenge on Walker/the GiW. Oh! And their accidental jump to the real world could have been what inspired the Fentons/the GiW to take a closer look at the viruses and programs within the NetZone, but it took YEARS for viruses to actually manage to jump to the real world on purpose. I've been using access points, but outlets could work too. XD His armor protects him? XD;; Either that, or like, Fright Knight is immune to the powers of his own sword? I haven't thought of who Kwan'll be paired up with. *taps chin* Vlad and Danny are taken... *stares at who's left* Who would be best to pair Kwan with? The show never showed a whole lot with Kwan. =( It's sort of my head canon that Kwan has these super strict parents, they want everything perfect and have super high standards for what they expect from Kwan, but he doesn't always live up to it. orz Probably because that's how I played him when I role played him. XD;;; Well, something is starting. 8) Dash being an artist sort of came out of nowhere. XD But I thought it would be cool having him do this whole comic series about his favorite hero. XD;;;