Author's Note: This story has finally been rewritten in a new style! In case you're in the middle of the story when you catch eyes with this note, I've done the same for all of the previous chapters as well. I apologize if it's a bit sudden, haha.
"She said stay put.. She didn't say not to keep fixing it.." Markowski said to himself. She's actually putting trust in me. He felt so happy that he had tears welling in his eyes. He long blinked before wiping them away. "Alright.. So that fixes me, but what about the others? Wait, maybe the one responsible is in this game.. I didn't think about that before." One more reason to stick around.. It will take too long to look through every single character though..
Markowski began looking around for anything looking out of place. There was something resembling an ammo crate, distinctly different from everything else he's seen in the code so far. He tapped it, to no effect. Huh.. I wonder what this is? "There must be some kind of way to open this.." he said. I don't want to risk breaking anything by shooting at it.. It'll have to wait. "Anything different.. different.. Agh, why couldn't I have been made smarter?!" There has to be something else, some detail I'm missing. He randomly opened and closed a few files, including the one for Cy-bugs, but didn't find anything especially interesting as far as he could tell, missing its changelog in his perceived race against the clock.
"Sorry guys, I'm gonna have to invade your privacy after all," Markowski said, opening Kohut's profile first. As expected, his ratings are all top notch. No 'chan gelog' there. "Guess I'll look for these 'chan gelog' things.. Sarge, negatory. Marco, negatory."
He let out a sigh of relief with each file without any changes. At last he came to Loya's file, it was of a slightly different color, but otherwise exactly the same as the others he saw at first glance. However there was a changelog in this one, as well as a bunch of random things that shouldn't have been there, from what he's seen so far. There were things like trophies from games that don't even exist in the arcade anymore. Food Fight, Agent X, Star Wars, Battlezone.. Turbo Time..
He recognized the name Turbo. It couldn't possibly be him. It wouldn't make sense. He died taking a diet cola shower months ago. Months ago.. No, the times still don't match up. Our code was changed before he died. Before he died..
As Markowski looked at the changelog, he noticed there was a change made merging Loya's file with another, named Jet. This goes beyond changing a few numbers.. And what does Jet mean anyway? How the heck do you unmerge files once they're merged? He clenched his teeth and reluctantly closed the file without changing anything. I might break something.. I might break him..
"Agh.. I'll just wait until Sarge gets here," Markowski said, punching the file with the side of his right fist. An options menu popped up. "I am awesome.." He chuckled in disbelief. There was an option 'Unmerge Files', among others. This is exactly what I'm looking for.
"I win," Markowski said with a big grin on his face, tapping 'Unmerge Files'. Loya's file hissed as it suddenly changed to the same color as the rest of the soldiers' files he had seen so far, but he didn't see this Jet file anywhere. Where is that other one? Unknown to him, it was at the opposite end of the codes, separate from almost everything else, having a mere two connections to the game.
At that time, Felix and William were in the shooting range with the other soldiers. It was a room off to the side connecting to the armory. They were being shown how to use the Multi-Mode Rifles developed by the deceased Dr. Brad Scott.
Suddenly Loya began glitching into red code and a slender character in a blue jumpsuit and grey skin split off from him. The grey-skinned man quickly ran off before anyone else had a chance to react. What happened didn't quite register with them at first, but it's not every day you see someone split off from your buddy.
"I'll grab him!" Spears yelled to the others, chasing after the guy, to the exit of Hero's Duty.