Tron 2.32 - Drivers.

Mercury and Alchemist tensioned themselves to Strike as the Kernel’s hand closed around Jet’s throad and lifted him, hauling him into the air until his feet kicked in-effectively below. Despite the Kernel’s choking, Jet was surprised he was able to see the irony of the Kernel’s question when he was also stopping Jet from answering.

“Kernel, release that user now,” came a guttural growl from Ma3a that surprised even Jet.

Jet struggled in the huge program’s grip, but his efforts had little result.

As Mercury and Ma3a shifted for the attack, a tank program pulled in behind the Kernel and the rear hatch lowered, before a familiar green figure emerged from the tank just behind the Kernel.

“Kernel, he is my user, and by the laws of this system, you are bound to respect that bond. Just as you are bound to respect my decision to change runlevel.”

Jade’s voice cut cleanly across the platform as her heels made their clicking sound at a louder volume, which even through the haze induced by the choking was something Jet was starting to notice changed with her level of anger or emotion.

The Kernel didn’t take his eyes of Jet however and neither Alchemist nor Mercury moved from preparation to strike.

“And even you may not survive if those three programs attack you simultaneously,” said Jade as she approached, and Jet, through the fog of pain and discomfort, realized Ma3a had moved to the Kernel’s rear.

The Kernel looked over his shoulder at Mercury, seemed to weigh up his options and placed Jet back to the ground, allowing him a moment to breath and speak as Jet put his hands on his thighs to recover.

None of Jet’s defenders moved from an attack position as the Kernel released Jet and Jade walked over.

“Explain yourself program,” The Kernel commanded. “Why have you synchronized code with Jade?”

Jet got a surprised look on his face as the Kernel demanded an answer, and Jet couldn’t help but look confused as he glanced over at Mercury, who was the only one that glanced away from the Kernel to give Jet a brief questioning look.

Jade, as if adding fuel to the fire, her snakelike hair extension almost writhing around her shoulders like a sentient weapon, stepped between the Kernel and Jet, making clear she was the fourth supporter of Jet and that they all now surrounded the Kernel.

At that, in the area around Jet’s supporters, the ICPs rezzed in weapons and removed discs, wondering what was now about to happen.

“General Syslog, you will stand down now, and submit to my authority,” demanded the Kernel, using Jade’s more formal title.

Jade set her feet apart in a combat stance, as did the others, indicating her defiance of the instruction.

“You can remove my permissions, but I will not execute your command,” said Jade.

Jet realizing things were about to go from bad to worse, stepped up behind Jade to find out what the Kernel was angry about, but moved to the side, adjacent to the Kernel as he realized that standing behind the person at the centre of this issue wasn’t a good idea if he didn’t want to enrage the Kernel.

“Kernel, you’re going to have to explain your request if you expect and answer,” said Jet.

The Kernel turned to face Jet now, leaving Jet’s defenders facing him diagonally but leaving Jet speaking to his face.

“You think you can demand this because you are a user?” The Kernel snapped at him.

“I think I can point out that your request was malformed and I don’t have sufficient information to evaluate it,” said Jet, trying to work out how to put it in a way the Kernel would understand, even through his rage.

The Kernel was stopped by Jet’s words. He stood still for a moment then spoke clearly and evenly.

“I would like an explanation why you have synchronized Jade’s codebase with your own without system permission,” said the Kernel.

At the mention of what was going on, the ICPs which had previously stood around paying intent interest to what was going on began to move back to what they were doing. The danger to the Kernel from Jet’s associates only appeared as likely as the Kernel’s threats to Jet, which had ceased.

The discussion itself was something they weren’t sure they wanted the Kernel to know they were listening in to, although it would make excellent gossip later when this sector was recovered.

Jet looked to Jade, who was still facing the Kernel, then to Mercury, to Jade again and then back to the Kernel as he began to understand.

“Ah, Kernel, you think that Jade and I have been up to something - Is that why you came in here then? Not to evacuate, but to see what I’ve been up to?” Jet asked.

“I came here to recover Sector one from the interlopers, and the UPS backup situation rectified itself, although Jade seems to feel there is still some cause for concern.

“Still, program, or user as you may call yourself, I would appreciate an explanation as to your actions.” Demanded the Kernel once more.

Jet looked the Kernel directly in the eye as he responded. He knew the Kernel and Jade were close, possibly even lovers, so if the Kernel felt he had done something, he could understand the large programs anger.

At any other time, Jet might have been more diplomatic about the situation, but presently, he had just experienced his mother’s death for the second time and was desperately struggling to get to the out of band connection to escape the system before the generator went down.

He wasn’t in a mood to be diplomatic with an over-permissioned program – even if it was the Kernel.

“Kernel, I haven’t touched her system routines, with the exception of establishing the flag changes to allow transit through common memory,” Jet said.

The Kernel looked at Jade, then back to Jet.

“There’s more to it than that,” said the Kernel, the accusation clear.

“If there is, Kernel, then I don’t know about it.” Jet said.

The Kernel flashed red, setting causing Jet and the others to flinch, then suddenly flashed a yellowish tinge before stabilizing.

The Kernel seemed to relax a little, then took on a confused look and rubbed his chin.

“You’re expression evaluates true, but it still seems wrong. Be warned program, I won’t hesitate even a cycle to terminate you if you interfere with Jade again or if you interfere with this sector recovery operation.

“Your contribution to this campaign is duly noted and logged and while I’m not convinced you had anything to do with restoring the power, that was an objective which is complete.

“Keep out of my way and you may survive the next archival routine to process another cycle.”

Then as abruptly as he had attacked, the Kernel turned on his heel and left to return to the work going on around them.

Jade watched him go then turned to Jet, waited a moment, then threw herself onto his chest, hugging him tightly and burying her head in the space between his head and chest.

“My user, I’m so glad you’re allright. I’ve been concerned the Datawraiths may have damaged you while I was attending to your instructions.”

“What was that all about?” Jet asked to no-one in particular, then realized Jade was attached to him in an embrace.

Jet gave a worried glance in the Kernel’s direction, then to Mercury whose frown indicated what she thought of the situation, although she didn’t move against Jade and otherwise even adopted a more casual stance, now that the Kernel had left.

“Jade,” said Jet, pulling her back of him, then facing her. “I needed the Kernel to understand that this system is going to crash. He needs to evacuate the programs.”

Jade nodded, then shook her head. “And I’ve brought you evacuees, my user, but I can’t convince the Kernel that you’re right about this system. He’s not going to believe you, no matter what proof you offer. So I convinced him that you would open a header into the lost sectors through the Terminus, allowing him to recover them.”

Jet was surprised and impressed at the same time. “That’s how you convinced him to come here?”

“And he had brought many programs with him. More so, now that the header has been established in this sector, so he will now bring in more transports to facilitate the programs to rebuild this system. For that reason, he will derezz all the transports in the hub while maintaining asymmetric bandwidth to this sector to keep resources coming in.”

Jet through about it for a moment.

“Smart Girl, Jade, Smart Girl,” he said, then for a moment, saw the girl in the woman before him – the program still eager for encouragement and praise locked within an older program’s structure.

“Yes, Jade, I would agree with Jet on this matter. Your tactics in persuading the Kernel are always impressive.” Mercury suddenly added, bringing Jet to realize Jade’s work was impressive even to her rivals.

If Mercury was bothered by either Jade or her proximity to Jet, she was no longer showing it. Jet stepped back, rubbing the memory of the pain in his throat and looked at Jade as she continued speaking.

“But unless the system goes back to UPS, we’re not going to see any evacuation. The most we can do is to take and hold the out of band default route out of this system until the other programs are evacuated.” She said.

Jet smiled, then remembered he still needed to understand what was going on with the Kernel’s sudden outburst.

“Jade, I’m really happy with how you achieved your goals, but I think I need you to explain to me your relationship to the Kernel.” Jet said.

It was obvious now to Jet that there was more going on between Jade and the Kernel than was immediately apparent. Jet needed to understand that relationship, for his own safety.

If Jade was the Kernel’s girlfriend or if the Kernel liked her, then he was on dangerous ground being with her, even if she did support him. Jet needed the Kernel on side more than ever, so that he could protect the escape route.

Jade looked to the ground, then back up at Jet. At first Jet thought she was embarrassed, but then realized she was simply confused that he didn’t already understand without being told.

“My user, I am System,” she said.

Jet nodded. “Kind of like royalty, yeah, I get it, but what’s your relationship with the Kernel?”

Jade’s expression became even more confused.

Ma3a stepped forward then to Jet and spoke quietly in his ear.

“She’s part of the system rebuilt, Jet. After the MCP was replaced, the Kernel was coded by the team led by the superusers Alan1 and Flynn. When the system was restarted, the Kernel originally respawned all of the System Routines.” Ma3a explained.

Jet clicked.

“You’re a daughter process,” he said, not expecting it to come out the way it did.

Jade’s expression remained puzzled, but changed slightly.

“Of course, my user. I’m tied directly to the Kernel. I belong to this system.”

The stupidity of Jet’s assumptions that Jade might be romantically linked to Jade hit home. She was as old as the Kernel – but became System when the new Kernel replaced the MCP. The Kernel viewed her not just as code or even as a System routine, but as his daughter.

She was one of the few routines he would have originally respawned, and giving the pre-eminence of Syslog in the boot process, she was his first-born. The older daughter of the Kernel – A muse to the system.

Jet felt embarrassed and shamed by his lack of user-knowledge of this system. Even the programs could clearly see what he could not, and he had expert knowledge.

It explained the Kernel’s gratitude when Jet had saved her and especially, the program’s response to his actions, given she was such a low-level program that even the Kernel could not have resurrected her without consequences.

And perhaps the Kernel was worried that Jet - a possibly heretical program with strange abilities claiming to be a user – might become his, well, his son-program-in-law?

“Anway, I am needed my user. If you will permit, I will return to preparing for the final drive into the Datawraith controlled area of this Sector.” Jade said.

Jet smiled, feeling something almost like a chuckle build up in response to his own realization.

“Sure, Jade, go on. I really do appreciate what you did, before and just now as well,” he said.

Jade smiled at the praise again, then with the grace of an aristocrat, strode from the meeting back into the preparations as Jet noted many of the ICPs sneaking glances at her as she walked off.

Jet took a moment to watch her leave, feeling suddenly uneasy at the implications the Kernel had mentioned. He though he understood synchronization, especially since the time with Mercury on the shuttle, but if he was synchronized with Jade, there had to be a reason for it.

For the moment, That left Jet wondering if the cause was from Jade herself. Although he felt he could trust her, he felt nonetheless wary around her now. She could pose a serious problem if the Kernel felt it necessary to take action again.

Bringing his mind back to the present, he turned to his closest companions.

“Ma3a, can you help Alchemist to retrieve the shells? We need to be ready to move out directly behind the main force when the Kernel moves in.” Jet asked.

Ma3a looked to Alchemist. “Can I assist?” she asked.

“I could use the help removing the rubble code sections we used to camouflage it,” said Alchemist, then moved off, already knowing what she needed to do next.

Jet was alone with Mercury once more.

As soon as the others were out of earshot, and ignoring any ICPs that might be around, Mercury game Jet a questioning look.

“Synchronised?”

“Hey, Merc, I have no idea what he meant by that – I mean, you and I, well, you’re the only program I’ve ever synchronized with,” Jet tried to explain.

“So you and Alchemist never?” Mercury asked.

“Cross my heart,” said Jet, making the sign.

Mercury cocked her head to one side.

“That’s a user’s way of saying no, I didn’t do anything with her.” Jet said.

Mercury got a puzzled look on her face.

“Did you write her?” she asked.

“Me? Hell no,” said Jet. “If I did, she would react violently, or at least I think she would,” Jet said, wondering what would have happened if she had contained his code when they first encountered each other.

“As did my user with me, when I lost the ability to process or function.” Mercury said.

Something about’s Mercury lapse of consciousness pricked Jet’s mind, then he was overcome with the hurt and confusion he felt at hearing of another Synchronizing with his beloved.

“I’m not the only one here synchronized with another.” Jet let out, then immediately regretted it.

Mercury lowered her head, Jet thought initially in shame, and immediately regretted what he had just said, then she snapped her head around to look at him and Jet realized it was anger in her eyes.

“Who told you that?” Mercury demanded.

Jet held his palms up defensively.

“Hey,” he said, realized this wasn’t a simple mistake he had just made. “Someone thought I needed to know, but really, Merc, it doesn’t matter to me. All that matters is the here and now.”

“Programs consider synchronization a private matter,” said Mercury, looking off in the direction Ma3a had walked away.

Jet tried to change the subject, but more of it came out of his mouth as if the conversation had a will of its own.

“So, who are you synchronized with?” Jet asked.

Mercury looked away again, and Jet realized the anger was replaced with hurt.

Dammit, he thought. Why can’t I just keep my mouth closed at times.

“My user,”  came Mercury’s almost whispered response.

“Melanie?” asked Jet, now genuinely surprised at who she had just said.

“When my user came into contact with me, we immediately synchronized. Some of her base came into me. Because it’s low-level base, I can’t change it out.”

Jet looked on in surprised.

“Jet,” said Mercury quietly, “I’m not the same program you remember from before. Something changed in me when my user synchronized with me, and I don’t understand it.”

Jet seemed stunned by what seemed to him to be an almost trivial matter, then realized that again he had underestimated the social norms in this world.

“Mercury,” said Jet, quietly, then walked in front of her, gently lifted her face by her chin, then kissed her softly and quickly on the mouth, with she didn’t return.

“You’re still exactly the same Mercury that I remember. Perhaps the other programs see it differently, but to a user, you’re still the same.”

Mercury returned her gaze to the downward and started walking slowly.

“We’ve synchronized many times in the time that you’ve been away. I realized this and felt ashamed, for I know you are my chosen user and I would not willingly synchronize with another.”

Jet remembered something someone had said to him earlier.

“You’re version upgrades?” he asked.

“Yes,” Mercury finally said quietly as she walked, Jet beside her still.

Jet got in front of her.

“Mercury, aren’t user upgrades normal?” Jet asked.

“Other than during the time without users, Yes, but now you are my chosen user,” Mercury explained.

“And It’s just an upgrade right?” Jet said.

“No,” said Mercury, her voice still firm, but so quiet at the moment. “It changes who we are – changes what we are.”

Jet’s mind thought of the real world parallel and began to understand. “Your quantum nature then?” he said.

Mercury looked up at Jet, confused by a concept she realized only users understood.

“When we synchronized, you didn’t upgrade did you?” Jet asked.

“No, we only synchronized,” Mercury said.

“And when my father, Alan1 – or rather, you knew him as Guest, upgraded and recompiled you last time I was here, did you Synchronise?”

Mercury looked puzzled, but answered the question.

“There were times I received an upgrade, such as when you were last here, that I did not synchronise further,” Mercury said.

Jet smiled, realized exactly now what Synchronisation was to a program. It was the sharing of quantum states – of entangling components of themselves with another – commonly a user and sometimes a program of their choosing.

It was, as Mercury had said, what made them who they were.

It was why Mercury recognized Melanie - Why Alchemist resembled Alison and why Jet resembled himself.

It was the quantum meta-data that accompanied the photons that comprised their code.

For once, the world Jet was in started to make sense. Everything he experienced in side this world was a result of the interference of other quantum data with his own, interpreted through his own mind, allowing him to experience this world as if it existed on a level that could not exist given the symbols possible with the code alone.

And because this world had been created by people, it resembled the human world of its creators.

Jet closed his eyes for a moment at the realization and smiled, then caught up the extra step backwards before Mercury bumped into him.

“Mercury, there is something you must understand. It is normal and important that you and your user Synchronised, and I realize why now. Please understand that I don’t consider it a bad thing at all.”

Mercury looked up and smiled, a mixture of relief and still maintained dount and disbelief, but it was a happier look. Jet fell in beside her again.

“Thankyou Jet,” she said. “Or should I call you my user too?”

“Just Jet,” said Jet, still smiling. “Just Jet.”

Mercury, needing some time to herself, stepped aside to walk away then.

“I’ll check that Ma3a and Alchemist don’t need any help,” she said. “And then I’ll check in with the Kernel to let him know we need to access some transport routines.”

Jet thought about telling her not to worry, that they didn’t, then realized that right now, as she considered his words, she wanted some time to herself.

“Let me know how they are going,” said Jet, then stopped to watch her walk away, hoping this was the start of a more intimate relationship and not the beginning of the end of it.

The sound of the rotor blades cut through the cold air and hit Flynn like a pressure wave rather than a sound but the cold wind it caused within the open cabin cut through his clothes and chilled his skin, leaving him alert as the Helicopter sped through the night.

“Tell me about the quantum work,” Flynn asked the darkness.

There was a pause where Flynn heard only the beating of the blades.

“Take the hood off,” came Dillinger’s voice.

“Sir?” came a surprised response.

“They can’t do much or see much out here,” Dillinger said.

“Standard procedure says that, Sir, Sir!,” came a reply, then Jet felt the fabric over his face being tugged off.

The first thing he noticed was a P90 being pointed at his face by a soldier wearing a full face helmet.

The second thing was a well dressed old man holding a bag. Although the face had changed, he was still recognizable.

Flynn blinked once or twice, then looked at Alison, a few scratches on her arm in the dim cockpit light, but otherwise the only other one in this helicopter.

Shaking his head to once side, Flynn nodded to Alison while looking at Dillinger, then the bag. Dillinger held the bag up for a moment, realizing what he meant, then looked back to Flynn, shaking his head slightly, before sitting down.

“How much do you know about the quantum work?” Dillinger asked.

“I think we should leave interrogation to the specialists, Sir,” said the soldier to Dillinger, but Flynn noticed that the P-90 muzzle never left him and was never outside of the gaze of the soldier.

Dillinger ignored him.

“It’s a short flight, but it’s long enough,” Dillinger said.

He shuffled the bag in his hands from one hand to another, leading Flynn to realize the bag was only off while they spoke. That was like Dillinger. He liked to look his foes in the eyes and assert his superiority.

Flynn didn’t want the bag back on, so he chose talking.

“That’s what this is all about isn’t it?” Flynn said. “We just want to use the digitization technology to save someone’s life, but for you, it’s all about quantum technology.”

Dillinger sat back.

“Even back when I was CEO, I realized where Wally’s work was going. He wanted to develop new storage technologies, but he had fantasies he was creating new worlds, just like ours.

“But even then, I saw the real potential. Encom had a thirty year headstart over the rest of the world in quantum technologies. Damn stupid bastard only saw the laser. I saw the value the laser represented.

“That’s something even you didn’t recognize during your time as CEO, Flynn.”

Flynn absorbed it.

“I knew about the quantum technology Dillinger, I just didn’t concentrate on it like you did. There weren’t any civilian applications that could use it at the time,” Flynn argued, the two old CEOs of Encom sitting face to face now, just a little space separating them in the back of the small cockpit.

“Civilian uses were useless, you fool. It was the Military that really needed the technology, or at least would in a few more years. They never saw where it was going either, so we created F-Con industries as a high-level corporation developing control technologies over existing technologies.” Dillinger said.

“And so you spent what, twenty years of your life devoted to trying to take over Encom?” Flynn said.

“Did take over Encom, Flynn, although I failed to complete the corporate takeover, but we did salvage enough technology to make an impressive demonstrator and get some bigger backers for the next takeover attempt.” Dillinger said, almost matter-of-factly.

Dillinger looked out to the side. A light flashed in the distance and a thin green beam seemed to leap from the ground to the helicopter for a moment, although it was a long way away and the flash only briefly lit up the cockpit.

“So then why tear it down?” Flynn asked. “You could have left us in there long enough to help the girl and had your victory to yourself after that – even blackmailed us to silence.”

“Oh Flynn, there really is so much that you don’t know or understand. I see not much has changed in the last thirty years.” Dillinger gloated.

“In which case, you’re going to lose this one too,” Flynn goaded.

Dillinger gave an annoyed smile and then in a single fluid move, flipped the bag and placed it over Flynn’s head once more.

Behind the material, Flynn was smiling at his small victory.

Jet walked silently amongst the ICPs who were getting ready to invade the Datawraith’s territory.

All around, red-suited individuals prepared weapons, checked status on tank routines and went through endless reporting procedures, each report of which Jet assumed the Kernel would eventually see.

In the distance, the constant thump-thump sound of the recognizer deleting space to prepare the assault path could be hears.

Six recognizers had been sent out so far, each destroyed by the Datawraiths, although the Kernel’s troops seemed to be adapting.

Mercury came up behind Jet as he stood momentarily at the edge of the Terminus, watching the preparation for war. Her footfalls were silent and until she clicked a step upon stopping, Jet didn’t hear her.

“Mercury,” Jet said as he twisted his neck to see who it was.

“ The ICPs are almost ready to download to tank routines for the final insertion into Datawraith territory,” she said.

Jet looked around past her.

“How’s Alchemist doing?” he asked. Jet wanted to asked how Mercury was going after their talk earlier.

Mercury looked in a slightly different direction, bringing Jet’s head around to it as she did.

“I believe preparations are complete. The Kernel would like to speak with you before he engages the interlopers.” She said.

“I’m sure he would, but I need you right now,” said Jet.

Mercury tilted her head to the side to indicate she needed more information.

“We still don’t know what’s going on in the Datawraith base,” said Jet. “Attacking could be a bad idea.”

“The Kernel doesn’t seem to think so,” said Mercury.

“The Kernel’s still not familiar with dealing with people. I think he’d be just as happy if the Datawraiths left and cut off their out of band connection,” Jet said.

“He still doesn’t believe that this system is going down.” she said, although Jet couldn’t determine if it was a question or a comment.

“No, he doesn’t, but I need it and we need it. I know this system is going down even if the Kernel doesn’t believe me.” Jet said.

Jet looked at Mercury and locked eyes with her as she responded.

“The Kernel doesn’t need to believe you, Jet, because I believe you. Ma3a believes you and Alchemist believes you. Jade, Section and Crypto believe you. Do you need more than that from us programs?” she asked.

The resolve in her answer let Jet know she was still with him, after their previous discussion, which he found left him with a good feeling. He avoided going back to that discussion this time. He had said everything he needed to and heard far more than he expected.

“I just want to save as many as I can when this all comes to an end, and I still want to help Melanie – she deserves to get out of here. I don’t even know if she understands what’s going on in this place.” Jet said.

For a moment then he thought of Mercury and worried that she too would survive this with him.

“Then you need to tell her if it’s important. Just like programs, I’m sure users want to know and understand what’s going on.” Mercury said.

Jet felt something deep within him shift as she said it, realizing he still wasn’t over the pain of his mother’s final message and still hadn’t established his own goals with Mercury, but for a moment, he had to fight down the fear of losing Mercury to the system.

He looked away at a recognizer deleting the rubble to make an assault path in the distance.

“You’re right, Merc. I do need to speak to her. Then I think we need to do a little scouting ourselves.

“Otherwise, there’s too much danger that the Datawraiths might shut down the out of band connection before we take the buffers.

“If that happens, we’re all going to perish here.”

Mercury looked back to the Terminus.

“I’ll see if I can find something usable as a light scout vehicle,” Mercury said.

“Thanks Merc,” said Jet, then walked off to find Alchemist.

Manny sat in the chair while his new friend talked to a stewardess, who didn’t seem to happy, while another lady who was a security specialist looked on.

“Bluetail flight 713 to Canada, final call for passengers, gate 10” came an announcement over the Intercom.

The ladies looked over to Manny, then one made a look that suggested resignation and walked over.

“Hi, you must be Manny,” she said, although her tone indicated nothing of the displeasure she had earlier shown when she was talking to Peter.

The other lady took out her Walkie Talkie and shook the antenna at Peter as if it was a finger. Peter put his hands together as if praying and thanked her. She simply continued walking.

“My name’s Carol,” she said, without waiting for a response. “Do you have someone waiting for you in Toronto?”

Manny nodded, then noticed that Carol turned to give a final unhappy look at Peter, who simply smiled back with a cheesy grin.

“Thank’s Carol, I really owe you for this,” Peter said.

“You’d better,” she growled, then

“I promise I won’t fall asleep next time,” Peter said.

The comment elicited a bright blush from Carol, who turned around to face Manny and didn’t quite get her customer face up in time – She was clearly embarrassed by her comment.

Carol held out her hand.

“Come on, Manny, Let’s hurry. The flight’s boarding now.” She said.

Manny took her hand and she led him to the airbridge.

For the first time, Manny started to be truly terrified by his lack of understanding of what was going on around him.

So far, he had been able to trust Flynn and Alan, but things hadn’t quite been normal since they had come to America to save his sister.

Right at the moment, he did his best not to let his fear get the best of him as he walked onto the aircraft that would take him still to another country.

Alchemist had removed the shells from the rubble beyond the Terminus and prepared them for transport once more and was leaning quietly against the shell when Jet found her.

“Alchemist, is it possible to get a message to the user inside the shell?” Jet asked.

“You can enter the paged memory yourself if you choose and access User::Melanie yourself,” said Alchemist.

“Without paging Mercury out?” Jet asked.

“You will page only locally to the memory and processor area,” said Alchemist. “The paged operates out of sync with the main processor memory, so can be accessed independently, however you can’t interact with programs of this page while you are there.”

Jet thought about it for a moment.

“Then how would I ask you to bring me back?” Jet asked.

“You cannot,” said Alchemist, “Although you can activate the controls yourself from the other side.”

“Thankyou Alchemist,” said Jet, then stepped towards the shell where Mercury had entered.

“That won’t take you to your requested destination,” Alchemist added almost quietly, her word stopping Jet as he moved towards the interface surface.

Jet looked down to Alchemist.

“The other side,” Alchemist said, pointing to the second shell surface.

Jet smiled and stepped into the surface of the shell.

A blue light seemed to pass by him at high speed and he was in darkness.

Jet looked around in the blackness. At first, nothing appeared to his sight, but then a single point of line burst into his vision.

It remained still for a moment, then expanded to the shape of a small turtle. It rotated then moved along, leaving a line behind it.

“Don’t tell me – Turtle graphics right?” Jet said. “I haven’t seen those since primary school.”

The turtle ignored him and began to speed up, the number and complexity of lines it drew slowly increasing until solidness seemed to manifest itself between some lines, giving the illusion of a physical world.

As the brightness of the solidness increased, the world slowly came to life, breathing in its own existence and slowly becoming like the world Jet had already left.

On a whim, Jet called to Alchemist, thinking she might be in this world.

“Alchemist? You there?” Jet asked the sterile world before him.

There was no response.

“Jet?” came another voice as he waited for Alchemist.

Jet turned around. A figure rezzed in before him, the resolution mask appearing and moving down rapidly, rendering in a white figure that appeared almost the same as Mercury.

“Melanie,” said Jet, remembering quickly who he had come to see.

“Is it time to return to the real world yet?” she asked.

Jet shook his head.

“I’m really sorry, Melanie, but we’re not there yet. We’re about to try and make a way to the exit, but I thought I should tell you what’s going on since we’re still finding a way to get there.” Jet said quickly.

Melanie seemed disappointed, but smiled a little.

“I guess you were hoping to be out of here already?” Jet said.

Melanie smiled warmly at no one, then looked up at Jet.

“I shouldn’t be so ungrateful I guess. Even this dream seems far nicer than the world I lived in before I came here,” she said.

Jet felt the burden of guilt feeding the guild that slowly rose in his stomach.

Melanie walked to something like a bench and ran her hand along it.

“I like this world. There’s no pain here,” she said.

“There is pain in this world,” Jet warned her, “In many ways, it’s just like the real world.”

Melanie turned to him and smiled.

“Maybe, but here, right now, the pain doesn’t stay with you. This is the first peace I’ve had in a long time,” she said.

“I’m sorry that you’ve had to stay in here for so long,” Jet said. “We’ve only a short time before we have to find a way out of here.”

“As I said, it’s been a nice break. Time doesn’t seem to have any passage here – so I haven’t really noticed. How long before I have to go back?”

Jet again felt his stomach move. He should tell her the truth.

“I don’t know. Right now, I don’t even know if we can go back. I should have spoken to you earlier, but it’s been a little difficult out in the other world.

“I’m sorry we brought you here, gave you hope then,” Jet paused, and held up his hands as if helpless. “And then got you stuck in this mess.”

“In this mess?” said Melanie, almost surprised. Then she looked closely at Jet’s face as if scrutinizing him.

“You’re Jet aren’t you,” she said, letting Jet know she was a little disoriented. “What exactly is this mess?”

“You mean you don’t remember waking up?” Jet asked.

“I thought it was a dream, I thought it still is,” she said.

Jet waved his hand in a broad motion.

“This is what it looks like inside the computer,” he said.

Melanie looked around.

“Virtual reality?” she asked.

“Reality, just not ours,” Jet said.

“So it’s real in here?” Melanie asked.

“It’s real enough that we can die in here,” Jet said.

Melanie smiled at the comment as if it meant nothing to her.

“I’m not afraid of death after what I went through, and this mess looks like heaven to me,” Melanie said.

“You’re taking to this reality pretty well,” Jet noticed.

Melanie took a deep breath through her nose, even though she didn’t really breath in this reality.

“I kind of like it here,” she said. “It feels like programming, only I’m in it” she said.

“It is programming,” Jet noted.

“Thankyou for coming here to explain what’s going on.” Melanie said, then remembering her earlier awakening, asked “Who were the others? The one like my sister?”

“Alchemist?” said Jet.

“My sister’s program? It’s really here? ” asked Melanie. She obviously knew it well from the outside.

“Can I speak to her?”

“She is here, but you can’t speak to her at the moment,” Jet said.

“Oh,” said Melanie, somewhat disappointed. “Why is that?”

“Quantum interference. Do you remember what happened when you first arrived here?” Jet said.

“Before I woke up to you?” Melanie asked.

“Yes,” said Jet.

Melanie looked around and seemed to focus on a spot beyond Jet.

“I remember lots of people, only they looked like, well, what we look like now.” Said Melanie. “Is that the computer too?”

“Yes,” said Jet. Melanie continued.

“And I remember bright light, then pain, lots of pain. I thought it was heaven and it hurt, then I remember finding myself in here.”

“That’s why you can’t go into the other part of this world,” Jet explained, as best as he could. “Your quantum state conflicts with your program – you’re too close to her. Maybe if she wasn’t all yours or if she was desynchronized, it would be fine, but at the moment, you both conflict. It’s like a doppelganger situation. You can’t both exist in the same world in the same place.” Jet said, wondering how much of what he said was true. He was only just coming to terms with it all now.

“I don’t fully understand,” said Melanie, then realizing Jet would go again, asked “How much time do you think we have left in here?”

“I don’t know,” said Jet. “How long do you think you’ve been here for so far?”

“Maybe a few hours,” said Melanie. “Why?”

Jet suddenly realized that time might move differently inside this place.

“Then you might be here that much longer if everything goes well,” said Jet, then immediately felt bad that he couldn’t put a better spin on it. “Anyway, I have to leave now.”

“If something goes wrong, please come back and tell me,” said Melanie. “If you can.”

Jet looked at the girl who resembled Mercury so much. “I will, but once we’re out, we can speak on the outside of this.”

“Jet,” said Melanie, obviously wanting to put in one more word. “Thankyou for what you and your father are doing. I know it must be risky for you, breaking into your old workplace, but I really do appreciate it.”

Jet smiled, then looked around for the exit, worried it wasn’t immediately apparent. The turtle had stopped on a wall now and sat there immobile. Moving over, Jet touched it and felt immediately the code that would activate his page out through neutral memory.

“I’ll come back to speak later,” Jet said, then seeing Melanie smile, he activated the flag in the turtle and felt himself shift back to the outside.

Once outside, Jet found Mercury waiting for him, but the rest of this place he did not recognize.

Recognizers surrounded the Terminus now, each moving through clear area where rubble had once been and several at the edge with their landing code brought together were deleting the old rubble as they moved aware in an arc from the Terminus.

Glancing around, Jet saw that the Terminus itself had extended and several other ships sat around docked, some in the process of deresolution.

“What happened while I was in there?” Jet asked.

“The Kernel has brought in additional programs to take back Sector one,” Mercury said.

“How long was I gone for?” Mercury asked.

“Nearly three hundred cycles,” responded his partner program.

Jet rubbed his head. “In there, it only felt like a cycle or two”

Mercury nodded.

“A different time cycle to the interrupts,” she said, providing enough of an explanation for Jet to understand it. Time wasn’t consistent in this world but changed as resources came and went. Both ways, the interrupts seemed the only consistent way to measure cycles and even then, Jet was wondering how consistent they were to his understanding of time in the real world.

“Did you find us any transport?” Jet asked.

Mercury smile widened suggesting something remained hidden behind it, and she lifted two rod primitives.

“Datawraith Lightcycles,” she said.

Jet found himself smiling. It had been a long time since he had last ridden a lightcycle and all of the walking they had done so far made him long for the faster track.

“Where did you?” Jet started to ask as she handed one to him, then remembered the Datawraiths he had stopped.

“Only two were still functional though,” Mercury said.

Jet found himself still smiling.

“We need to find a back way in,” he said. “Any ideas?”

“I’d guess that the Datawraiths had a fairly clear path from the intrasector terminal back to their base,” Mercury suggested.

“Is there a lot of debris between here and there?” Jet asked.

“We’ll need to walk some of it,” Mercury said, then walked a few steps over, spread her legs a little and pushed out her backside in a way that made Jet think about synchronization once more, then activated the bar and rezzed in the cycle around her, immediately taking off between startled programs.

Jet immediately pulled the bar out in front of him, then grasped both ends, feeling the code activate as it detected it was being held in both hands. Lightcycles were like that – you didn’t let go until you wanted it to derez.

Jet moved out across the top of the Terminus without leaving a trail. This wasn’t a game anymore and trails only occurred on the game grid, as far as he knew. He weaved past a tank that was moving, then between two programs that had turned to watch Mercury’s lightcycle as it sped past.

Trying to get her back in sight, Jet heard her voice clearly across the space between them, carried no doubt by some protocol written into the routine that allowed the lightcycles to communicate data to the same team.

“Let me know if you want me to slow down, Jet,” it echoed in his ears, then she cut sharply to avoid some datacube archives scattered near a tank.

It was as Jet came down the far side of the Terminus ramp that he realized how much had happened. A huge area, the size of several football fields, had been cleared out by recognizers and was now lined by tank programs which sat nearly by the row. Mercury moved into the clear space between tank programs and sped up, moving with almost analogue grace as she angled to miss the programs sharing the nearby space.

Jet likewise sped up, attempting to keep her in sight as she sped towards the edge of the field where the debris still lay.

At the periphery, the recognizers were still clearly space and Mercury picked a trail leading out from where one was flattening the rubble like a digital jackhammer.

Jet caught the change in tone as she opened up her throttle and sped beneath the recognizer as it’s legs came up, launching onto a broken primitive as the impact with the edge left the lightcycle following a shallow ballistic trajectory.

Jet followed and adjusted his last-minute speed-up to leave himself as much space as possible, but was surprised when the recognizer nearly cut him off.

“Careful Jet, you don’t want to get caught in something like that,” Mercury said.

Jet noticed they were on a roof of a structure that sat higher than most and seemed to snake through the rubble like a maze. Although it wasn’t contiguous, some levels were higher than others and this allowed Mercury to jump from one rooftop to another.

He found he had to concentrate to both keep up with Mercury and avoid dropping down off the sides into the rubble, or missing a ramp or jump location that took them from one site to another.

He was impressed that Mercury was able to make such good speed through here.

“Is this something else you remember from your other times here?” Jet asked.

“Parts, but I also kept my eyes open on the way to the Terminus,” said Mercury.

For a moment, Jet felt a flash of memory of Melanie as Mercury spoke. He wondered how she would handle herself in this world – if she could keep up with her own program.

“You’ll need some speed for the next leap, Jet. Don’t let your speed get under four thousand,” Mercury said.

Jet watched as she sped up then launched up a ramp to glide through her own extended ballistic arc, then disappeared from view.

Trusting blindly, Jet accelerated, activating his turbo function and watching as the speed come up.

For a moment he felt panic that he wouldn’t make it, but noticed the indicator reaching close as he hit the ramp.

At first, the impact drove him down into his seat, temporarily removing his view of the world around him, then he came free just as the speed hit four thousand and eight, and the world disappeared beneath him.

Still rising on the arc, he saw Mercury still dropping below and ahead of him, moving towards a huge dish well beneath the general height of the landscape of Sector 1, and possibly below the landscape around the sector.

Jet was only just reaching the top of his own arc as Mercury touched the side of the dish, spinning around it’s perimeter as she landed.

For Jet though, still unable to do anything about his trajectory at this point in time, he started to stare at the landscape around him, the deep canyon leading down to a large dish shaped flat area and the trails leading up the side of the canyon itself.

“This is the only clear way I saw when we were walking through the damaged area,” said Mercury.

“I think it’s going to be a little quicker to ride all the way if we can than walking part of the way when the lightcycles can’t make it anymore.” She added.

The he felt himself accelerating towards the ground and watched as the canyon walls slid by faster and faster.

Finally, the dish came up and Jet dropped onto the curved surface, where it was almost vertical, then felt himself crushed into the seat as it slowly leveled out, taking off around the edge of the dish as he had seen Mercury do, then coming to a sudden halt as he noticed she had partially derezzed her lightcycle to wait for him.

“You were a little slow there, Jet,” she admonished. “Tell me if you can’t handle this and we can slow down.”

Jet thought about it. He had been terrified, but was also exhilarated by the run so far, and he still had no idea how long he had left in here.

“If you can lead, I can follow,” he said.

Mercury smiled in a sly way that penetrated to Jet’s very core and left him feeling approved of.

“Then follow me further. We still need to climb the canyon wall to a location just past the intrasector communications line.” She said.

“Lead on, Merc,” said Jet, then watched as she rezzed back in the canopy and took off once more.

“I don’t mind chasing you at all,” he said to himself, then continued after her, the canyon path blurring as his light cycle moved out in the same direction as Mercury.

Mercury might have felt she had changed since she was last here, but she still felt the same to Jet.

Mercury’s path took them to the far side of the sector before it brought them back in towards the area Jet felt that the Datawraith base was located.

Chasing her had been challenging and had kept Jet’s adrenaline, or at least it’s digital equivalent, pumping through his digitized veins, but what Jet had seen on the way, section of the natural landscape of the digital world, had left an indelible impression on him.

Mercury had slowed a little as the number of trails increased and the level of damage to the sector increased. Approaching the top of one hill, she slowed, stopped just before the crest, then slowly backed back down to be parallel with Jet where he had stopped near the base.

The cover of the Datawraith lightcycle derezzed and Mercury sat vertically on it.

“We’re too close to approach any further by Lightcycle. We’ll need to move in on foot now to avoid alerting them to our presence,” Mercury told Jet, then started the deresolution process of the rest of the cycle, until she was left only holding a short bar.

Jet did the same and also derezzed his Lightcycle. Jet assumed that the Datawraiths would expect a linear assault from the Kernel, which is something he would have also expected, so they may not have noticed if they came over the hill in a tank, but then Mercury’s caution at this time still seemed the correct approach.

Jet climbed to the top of the hill, using the natural damage of the buildings that were once there to cover his approach. They were high here and Jet could see most of the Datawraith base from here, including the section they were fortifying against the obvious approach.

Following that direction out into another part of the sector, Jet used the modified LOL zoom and was surprised to find that he could make out three recognizers in the far distance now clearing a path from the Kernel's beachhead, or header as Jade had put it, back at the Terminus through to the compound where Jet hoped to find the out of band connection that the Datawraiths were using to enter the system.

Crawling slowly atop of the hill, Jet slowly inched forward on his stomach, more and more detail of the Dataraith base becoming available as he got above the rubble level.

Mercury, taking her queue from Jet, slid forward slowly beside him, coming up silently. If Jet hadn't known she would be there, he wouldn't have realized she had followed him. That in itself was a nice feeling. She was there whenever he needed her and the more time he spent with her, the closer he came to developing some additional sense that told him where she was.

As the base area of the Datawraith encampment came into view, Jet looked down through the LOL and dialed in the maximum zoom to see what he was looking at.

The base itself was somewhat unusual in this evenly spaced world. Small buildings were scattered and unevenly placed, sitting almost like rubble but clearly buildings to Jet. The lack of symmetry and the prevalence of non primitive shapes nonetheless was something Jet would have expected in his world, but not in this one.

To one end of the base, which seemed to protrude in places beyond what was once the natural sector, there was a large rectangular building with several other buildings clustered around it. This had a fairly natural shape compared to other parts of the compound.

From this extended a huge beam, at least as large as the one at the Terminus, but heading vertically upwards, unlike the transport systems.

To Jet’s thoughts, it was most likely where the Datawraiths had established the out of band access to this sector.

Further over were a series of large buildings that Jet couldn't quite make out. There was very little activity in this area – which was closest to them where they were standing. Through gaps like windows in the face building, Jet could make out that there appeared to be something stored in there.

Finally, towards the direction that Jet could see faced the recognizers, there was some activity as the Datawraiths assembled what appeared to be some kind of tower at the edge of the base, as if preparing to head off the siege they knew was coming, and doubtless could now see the Recognizers themselves.

Despite the size and scope of the base below Jet, one thing was readily apparent. It looked like it held a lot more datawraiths than were present at the moment, and given the attack coming in, it appeared that a lot more activity should be obvious as they prepared to repel it.

The meaning of that was clear – That the Datawraiths were preparing to leave and many had already done so – their own evacuation completed well ahead of the final failure of this system which might be as fatal to them as it would be to Jet.

That would also be a threat to the stability of the out of band connection. Once it was disconnected, Jet would be trapped he as the system went down, taking Mercury, Melanie and the rest of the programs that remained here.

Jet continued to scan the compound. Occasionally, he made out some small movement in the distance which he then tracked back to a Datawraith, but something kept drawing Jet's attention back to the storage buildings that were at the nearest point of the compound. He couldn’t put his finger on what it was, but something told him they were important.

“Mercury, I think we need to move down there and examine those buildings at the edge of the compound,” Jet said.

The voice came back from exactly where Jet expected Mercury would be.

“We should return to the path then and locate a more covered approach to that location,” she said.

Jet nodded, although at no one in particular. He looked over to the path Mercury was referring to and followed it by eye, seeing that it led closer to the compound and directly into rubble nearer the location where the buildings were. It might make a good path to gain access to the nearby buildings.

They shimmied backwards the way they had come and once out of view, made their way back to the path.

Keeping his LOL handy, Jet and Mercury kept to the natural cover that now presented itself along the path. Once, this place would have looked much like the rest of the digitial world.

Now it more resembled a warzone from his own world.

Not even when Master User Thorne had taken a sector had it looked this badly damaged, and most of that sector had been corrupted.

It continued like that for most of the way along the path as they approached the compound, however there were places where Jet felt the need to crouch down and walk slowly to cover himself from possible view.

After what felt like a couple of cycles of careful approach, they reached the bottom of the trail where it became blocked by the rubble of damaged sector structures.

Jet walked up to the blockage and put his hand against it.

“They destroy everything,” Jet said, feeling the rough edge of a damaged primitive. “Why do they do that, I wonder.”

“They are users, are they not?” asked Mercury.

“You don't seem to revere them even though they are,” said Jet, wondering at the context of the term users that Mercury meant.

“They are from the user world, but these are users that we do not serve,” Mercury said.

“Yeah, I guess so, and I keep looking for military reasons that they would do this, but even those reasons don't make sense.” Jet said, pushing his hand clear through the damaged section of wall.

“Then there would be a non-military reason for this,” Mercury reasoned.

Jet nodded. They moved from path to path, quickly finding a way through the lower rubble to find an opening to the compound. Jet crouched low in the cover that the rubble provided. The ground ahead was completely clear of all rubble, but the structures within seemed more human than program.

Mercury reached out and touched the ground where it became smooth and clean, without rubble.

“They have reformatted this section of the sector” she said.

Jet looked down at the smooth black surface she touched.

“What makes you say that?” he asked.

“Because, the data that was here was deleted completely. This entire compound is a single directory structure. It looks like it was located here deliberately.” Mercury said.

“You can tell that just by looking at it?” Jet asked.

Mercury turned to him.

“It's different from the other sectors. Programs only use disk space as required – we don't delete anything we don't need to. This part of the sector was deleted without respect to what was here – even the damage the Datawraiths caused isn't as extreme as this. This is the work of users, without a doubt.” she said.

“The kind you do serve?” Jet asked.

“The kind we fear to serve,” Mercury said.

Jet didn't fully understand Mercury's statement, especially the part about users that they feared to serve, but didn't think that he had a lot of time. The base would be preoccupied with either evacuation or preparation for the Kernel's counterattack.

“Come on, Merc, we need to find a way in,” Jet said, then keeping low and taking his bearings once, moved out to a thin forcewall that surrounded the compound.

Mercury looked up and realised Jet was heading to where a toppled primitive looked like it had fallen onto the freshly reformatted area.

There were no guards in the base, ICPs or Datawraiths, Although Jet was maintaining a lookout for anything nearby and purple.

Approaching the fallen primitive, which up close appeared to be some kind of small tower that showed extensive signs of conflict, Jet could see that it was almost two separate pieces that together blocked the forcewall and held it open with a small enough gap between them at the base to crawl through.

Although the forcewall continued at the top where the tower had fallen beneath it's upper level it also looked like it might be jumpable, although the top of the fallen beam seemed a little difficult to get to.

This was seeming easy so far. That alone slowed Jet every so often as he wondered if it was a little too easy, but so far, there had been no traps and they had covered a lot of space.

Mercury and Jet moved through the gap and into the compound where they quickly ran across the open distance from the forcewall to the buildings they had seen earlier.

“There don't seem to be any Datawraiths around,” said Mercury as they took shelter from sight in a small area

“They expect the Kernel to attack from the front and at most, they only have to fight a rearguard battle as they withdraw.” said Jet.

“Even so, they have programs that serve them don’t they?” Mercury questioned.

Jet considered the question. There had been quite a few programs that clearly weren’t Datawraiths on the mobile server he had crashed.

“Now that you mentioned it, yeah, you could be right. We better keep a look out for them also.” Jet said, then his mind went briefly to the user they had caught. It was easy to forget about him while he was wrapped in the compression ball of his own weapon.

Mercury looked both ways then moved out alongside the side of the building they were next to and followed it until they came to a clear forcewall. Inside, they were able to see what was in the shed, even if it wasn’t clear.

The inside were quite a few archive cubes but there were also shelves.

“What are those structures?” Mercury asked.

“What structures?” Jet questioned.

“Those strange structures with compressed data on them,” Mercury asked.

“The Shelves?” Jet said, wondering what she was referring to.

“Flat square primitives connected by cube primitives at the edges.” Mercury clarified. “There are many of them and I do not understand their function.”

Jet looked back through the forcewall covered gap.

“Shelves are a real-world method of storage,” said Jet. “I guess the Datawraiths like this to feel a little more like home, or perhaps it’s the user influence in architecture in this area.”

“And the spheres?” Mercury asked.

“They,” Jet said, realizing what she was referring to, then suddenly realizing where he had seen them before. “Look just like the one our friend was collecting.”

Jet looked back at Mercury as a thought filled his head, then moved along the building further without waiting for her.

“I need to find a way in,” said Jet.

Moving around the side, Jet found an opening that was covered with a forcewall that had a lock-bit attached to control access.

From the outside, the lockbit looked like a small poly-cosi-dodecahedron that gave off no light, encased in a communications interface – a little like a control panel for the forcewall that restricted access to the door.

The datawraiths possibly had their own way of activating it, but Jet had learned a trick to bypass it during his time in this world.

Keeping close to the wall so he wouldn’t be seem, Jet held his hand over the lockbit, then once he felt he had accessed it, began feeding energy into it as he had so many times before.

“I think this is the way in,” said Jet as it reached its tripping potential.

The lock bit changes from active to inactive and the forcewall over the opening rezzed out.

Taking one more look around, Jet stalked into the building and to the nearest section of shelving. As he had suspected, there were several archive balls sitting on the surface of the shelf.

He lifted one up and had a close look, noting the circuitry in it seemed very similar to the one Mercury held for him.

“Mercury, I think I know what this place is,” Jet said.

“It is strange here, Jet, I don’t like it,” Mercury said as she gave an involuntary shiver. “It doesn’t feel right for a program to be here.”

“Yeah, you could be right. Do you still have that decompression tool from before?” Jet asked.

“This one?” Mercury said as she rezzed it in from its primitive storage.

“Yeah, that’s the one,” said Jet, then he rolled the ball away from him across the floor.

It came to stop a little way out and Jet aimed the tool directly at the ball and trigged it.

Flashes of light erupted from the ball as it spun around momentarily, it’s shape adjusting accordingly as the contents decompressed.

Perhaps only a cycle later, a strangely shaped object appeared on the floor, looking like several cylinders attached around a radial point. It was quite large in size – at least as high off the floor as Jet and several meters wide by comparison.

It took up much of the open space between the shelves.

“Not quite what I expected,” said Jet.

“What did you expect?” Mercury asked.

“Some, well, program to come out,” Jet said.

“It does appear to be some part of an application,” said Mercury, looking at it.

Jet noticed that it did appear to be something out of the ordinary. He approached it and placed his hand against the edge of it, then cleared his mind as he felt for its code.

The code itself opened up cleanly and completely, without hesitation. Jet slowly opened his eyes and withdrew his hand.

“It’s a driver circuit,” said Jet. “For accessing a fiber node termination.”

“Driver circuit?” asked Mercury.

“A component of an application as you mentioned, Merc. The question is what is it doing here?”

“They don’t exist in this world like that,” said Mercury.

“As a discrete module?” Jet questioned.

Mercury shook her head.

“Normally, it would be a part of a larger application, shielded by the structure.” Mercury said.

Jet’s mind clicked.

“Such as you might find if you destroyed a structure of this world and looked inside?” he asked.

“Yes, something like that, but connected to other modules and functional. This doesn’t appear functional by itself.” Mercury said.

Jet understood now.

“But to a user, Merc, this is just waiting to go back into an application. It’s ready to use as a component of a larger application. The real question is now why are they doing this.

“I can understand they damage now – they’re taking the applications, which we see as structures in here, apart to rip out the basic core code within them and separate the modules, but this is stuff we write from scratch if we need to.

“Or we just use the source to create a new one. We don’t need to be inside this world to do this.”

Jet looked out through one of the windows to the damaged world beyond the compound.

“Yet, for some reason, the Datawraiths went to an awful lot of trouble and risk to do this. There must be something incredibly important about this.”

Jet was re-aligning the compression tool once more with the object when Mercury grabbed his hand and dragged him back into the shelved area.

“Jet, someone’s coming,” she said, they they moved deeper into the shed.

“Unexplained bit errors and the user interface wants us to compile a report before preparation for shipping,” came a voice, slowly growing louder as Jet listened.

Then a purple program accompanied by two ICPs of similar color walked through the open door that Jet and Mercury had opened.

“Be quick about it program, we need to return our operations to the section nearest the incursion point,” said one of the ICPs standing next to him.

“You ICPs really don’t get out much, do you?” said the program. “But perhaps you need to,”

“Just mute it and get a move on,” said the other ICP, holding out a spark rod.

The program stopped when he saw the decompressed module on the floor of the digital shed.

“This shouldn’t be here.” said the program, looking a little confused. “I can confirm this is not in the checksum for this location.”

“Call a class three alert,” said one of the ICPs to the other, then began to move off towards a rez-in station near the wall.

That was when Jet put a LOL round through the head of the other.

The purple program dropped to the floor, while the other ICP picked up speed.

“Mercury, take him down, now!” yelled Jet, but as he looked, Mercury was already halfway to the ICP with two rod primitives removed.

It still wasn’t fast enough.

The ICP never managed to remove its own weapon after it activated the alarm, two of Mercury’s rods driving into its back, but the damage was already done.

“Mercury, Lightcycle now,” said Jet.

She removed the rod as Jet did and two Datawraith lightcycles rezzed in beneath them each.

“Time we made an escape,” Jet called, then both lightcycles moved out.

When Mercury got out, she turned right instead of left as Jet had expected, taking her further away from the way they had come in to this area.

Moving out into the open, Jet could see why – a tank program, purple and with two turrets, had appeared from the direction they had come in from.

Jet quickly followed Mercury.

“Where did he come from,” Jet called out.

“I imagine they picked up the bit deactivation,” said Mercury. “Weave past buildings and obstacles to stop them tracking you.”

Jet cursed himself for his own stupidity, but right now, needed to concentrate on escaping. Moving out into the base, using the shapes to cover themselves, Jet followed Mercury.

Then a shot from the tank program hit a group of archive cubes sitting in a small area, scattering them around the flat base surface like cubic balls.

“Shit, they really have some firepower in there too!,” said Jet.

Another shot hit the ground next the Jet, ripping a huge chunk of ground out.

Mercury’s lighcycle made a sudden sharp left turn, then sped towards an natural alley between two buildings.

“Keep your speed u,” said Jade, then a shot hit the back of her cycle, ripping the back wheel out and spinning it around, causing it to skitter off the open area and behind a building in a narrow corridor that formed the alley between it and another.

“Mercury,” Jet screamed and drove for where her lightcycle had landed, narrowly missing a shot from the twin-barreled tank as he did so.

Sparks shot from Mercury’s damaged lightcycle as it span along the ground and at times, pieces of the now disassembling lightcycle were flung clear. It came to a stop in the corridor, but continued to spin as Jet raced to her aid.

Mercury’s lightcycle was still spinning rapidly like a top as Jet pulled up alongside. He looked back the way he came as he derezzed his lightcycle, then pulled back around the corner as a delete shell slammed into the edge of the building, removing a large piece.

Mercury’s lightcycle derezzed as a piece of debris ricocheted off of it, leaving mercury spinning in its place. Jet bent down and grabbed her, bringing her to a stop as he cradled her head.

“Mercury!” Jet screamed, then realizing how close the tank was pulled her back to the face of the building and over to an entry point nearby that was covered by a forcewall similar to the one that had covered the entrance to the first warehouse.

The tank appeared at the corner of the build and Jet grabbed Mercury and pulled her back, away from the line of fire, screaming her name as he did so, waiting for the tank to fully come around the corner and open fire.

Looking up as he stumbled, expecting to see the delete instruction that would end it all, Jet realized that the tank was obstructed by another building and some data cubes and couldn’t bring the turret around to cover the space nearest the wall.

The advantage would only be short lived. Holding his back to the wall and pulling mercury in as far as he could go, Jet threw his arm up and around the side to hold it against the lockbit controlling access to the covered portal, feeding it energy through his hand to trip it over as he had with the other.

“Come on,” he screamed as the short time he knew it would take to fill up the energy level of the bit and trigger it seemed to drag out forever.

Archive data cubes exploded through the corridor between buildings as a tank delete smashed them around like pebbles, cubes nearly hitting both Jet and Mercury as they rebounded through the confined space.

Then the Bit switched.

“No,” came a single response and the shield covering the entrance dropped just as the tank program re-aligned to bring them into its aiming arc.

Jet threw himself back into the building as a delete instruction slammed home into the corner of the building, ripping the bit’s access point cleanly off the outside wall and pushing up the field that separated the outside of the compound from the building.

The tank appeared at the entrance and aimed down at Jet and Mercury. Jet was now laying on the floor on his back, only his head lifted up, Mercury’s unconscious figure draped over his chest and waist and pinning him down.

The twin barrels came down, then focused, then there was a blinding light as the discharge exploded against the rezzed in forcewall. For a moment, the forcewall flickered as if about to collapse, sparks flying from it in all directions, taking out small sections of the floor and wall inside the building, but then it solidified.

A moment later it fired again and the process repeated itself, with the same result. It was a stalemate.

Jet levered Mercury off his body and helped her sit up.

“Mercury!” Jet screamed.

She slowly opened her eyes.

“Jet,” she said weakly, then slowly shook her head. “I’m OK, just a little uncompiled by the hit. Just give me a moment to reset my variables.”

Jet held her to him closely, which elicited a smile from Mercury of satisfaction that he wasn’t able to see, and she held him close, pulling her arm around him.

“Dammit, Mercury, that was too close. I nearly lost you.” Jet said.

“I’m glad you were here,” said Mercury.

“And if I wasn’t,” Jet asked.

“Then I probably wouldn’t have been hit,” said Mercury, bringing Jet to realize his very presence might actually be a risk.

“You mean you were slowing down for me?” Jet said.

“I am the fastest lightcycle pilot in all systems,” said Mercury, and Jet realized she was simply telling it as it was. She had been slowing down for his benefit this whole time. He wondered just how much faster she could have gone without him.

Another shell hit the forcewall and derezzed, a spark hitting Jet in the arm as it did so. He flinched and yelled as it stung, but the force evaporated on his armor.

“We need to find a way out of here,” said Jet.

“There might be another exit, but it didn’t look like these buildings had a lot of exits,” said Mercury.

She was right. Presently they were trapped and the large tank sat at the only egress point like a huge digital guard dog.

Jet helped Mercury get up off of him and got up himself, then caught her as she suddenly dropped.

“Mercury!,” Yelled Jet, concerned, again.

She looked up into his face.

“I’m Okay, Jet, Really, I just,” she closed her eyes, pauses between her words.

“I, just, I’m not completely, recovered, yet.”

Jet helped her into the building, further away from the tank that was doing its best to blast it’s way in. This building, similar to the last, was full of stacked shelves and some empty ones too, a strange machine to one side that looked like it had been loading the compressed balls into trolleys for transport recently.

Jet picked up a small archival ball then put it back.

“They have so many of these,” Jet said. “Why so many?”

“There would have been a lot of applications that built this sector, Jet, it was one of the original sectors of the EN511.” Mercury said. “From the level of damage, they probably have every application that built a part of Sector one here in pieces.”

The sound of a shell from behind rang out, but it was muted as they got further away from the door.

“Mercury, can you retrieve the archive of the program we found in sector two?” Jet asked.

“The user?” Mercury questioned.

“Yeah, him. Can you do it?”

Mercury reached behind her and pulled out a still rezzing in sphere.

Jet took it.

“I have a few questions for our friend I need answered.” Jet said.

Mercury handed him the archival tool and Jet activated it, waiting for the contents to spring open. When the process was complete, a purple user that looked more like a program was curled on the floor crying softly.

“Get up Simon, you’re home.” Jet called out.

Simon looked around, then realized he was in a warehouse of archival material.

“But, you’re still here,” he said as he slowly came back to normality.

“And we’re in your home base it seems,” said Jet.

“You couldn’t have taken this base,” said Simon, “It’s not possible.”

“And that’s because,” Jet asked.

“It’s,” said Simon, then changed his mind about what he was going to say and asked a question. “What do you want of me?”

Jet looked around, then faced Simon again.

“What is this place?”

Simon walked over to a shelf and took a sphere off of it.

“I imagine you’ve seen one of these of course,” Simon said as he lifted the archive. “This is what I do. I make these things.”

“Why?” Jet asked.

“They’re code exerpts,” said Simon.

“I know what they are, I want to know why!,” Jet yelled, getting a reaction from Simon.

“Is she around?” he asked quietly.

Jet looked at Mercury.

“The Green one,” Simon clarified.

“Jade? No,” said Jet, curious to why Simon was concerned about Jade at all.

He seemed to gain some height at the response.

“I don’t know why,” he said, then continued.

“I could write this stuff, if they asked me, but for some reason they won’t let us. We need to build all of the new systems out of the old stuff, but we can’t even copy the source.

“So they make us come here and we disassemble it piece by piece. Tanks open the building through their debug function, then we take the contents. We archive it here and then we look back at the reference information in the real world to see what we got.” He said.

“And why do you do that?” Jet demanded, Simon shrinking back a little at his anger.

“I don’t know why. For some reason, our programs don’t work, but if we use the routines we get from here, even if we stitch them together with our own code, they work.

“I can’t explain it and I really don’t know any more than that. That’s the truth, whether you believe it or not.”

Jet wasn’t satisfied with the explanation, but didn’t press further. He had more pressing issues such as getting out of here.

“What do you know about these buildings?” Jet asked.

“They’re just warehouses – umm, you would call them archival storage.” Simon said.

“Where are the entrances and exits?” Jet asked.

Simon turned to look at the entrance then, and only then realized that a tank had been firing at it while he had been speaking. As the sparks flew from the door, he involuntarily flinched, even though he was far from where they were.

“How long has that been going on?” Simon asked.

“For a short time,” said Jet. “Since we came in here?”

“A smart program would have stayed away from here,” said Simon.

Jet cut to the specific question.

“How do I get out of here?” he asked.

Simon pointed to the door that the tank program was unsuccessfully trying to break down.

“That’s the only way. I suggest you surrender to me, and I’ll let them know you’re to be released from the compound,” Simon suggested.

Jet didn’t even respond to the clear lie. He simply took the archival unit and aimed it at Simon.

“No, Wait,” he called, ducking as if he might dodge the process it generated.

“Another exit, now,” Jet called.

“OK, Ok, there’s an exit at the roof, but there’s no access to the next level of the warehouse from here. You need to reach that walkway up there and only ICPs and Datawraiths can activate the access code to rez in the ramp to reach it.” Simon said.

Jet looked at the far wall and saw the walkway on the far wall.

“Even then,” Simon continued, “You can only get as far as the roof – there’s no way down and a fall like that will kill a program – even in here,” he said.

Jet examined the shelves under the walkway, then had an idea. The shelves didn’t reach anywhere near high enough, but they did hold significant volumes of archived compressed items.

He put his hand against the archival tool, felt for the activating criteria in its code, then modified it to accept a wildcard entry.

Then Jet pointed it at the shelves under the walkway.

“What are you doing?” Simon asked as Jet triggered the device.

There was no beam of light or other indication that the tool had done it’s job, but a moment later, light began to spring from the shelves as dozens of code segments began to erupt and decompress.

“Holy crap,” screamed Simon. “Do you have any freaking idea how much data is stored in those compressed archives?”

Then without waiting, Simon turned and bolted towards the far side of the building – which was where the tank was trying to blast it’s way in.

Mercury took Jet’s elbow and tugged it gently.

“If the Datawraith is running, perhaps we shouldn’t be this close when it dearchives?” Mercury said.

Several spheres rolled around on the shelf Jet targeted and span out onto the floor as they began erupting.

Jet turned and ran with Mercury in the direction Simon had run when the shelf started to come apart, its very primitives ripped apart and derezzed by the expansion of the unarchiving items.

Behind them, the shelf fully erupting, the expanding items smashing into other shelves and scattering compressed archival balls around the floor as they did so.

Mercury grabbed Jet forcefully as he rounded a shelf corner and pulled him back before the stacked shelves started toppling like dominoes, each falling on the first. Jet found himself pushed down, with Mercury on top of him, as balls rained down around him, accompanied by a cacophony that would have been impressive in the real world.

As the shelves stopped toppling and the only sound was that of rolling balls, Jet lifted his head and looked back. A huge pile of dearchived routines had expanded to fill the space from floor to roof, smashing through the roof in places, providing a climbable way out.

Mercury looked back as well.

“You might have just expanded a few items to reach the walkway,” she said.

“Not my style,” said Jet, feeling rather stupid for the Ill-considered action, but not wanting to admit to it at the moment.

Jet stood and turned again to see Simon staring at the damage Jet had just done.

“Do you have any idea how long it took to archive and catalog all those routines?” he asked.

Jet lifted the archival tool and pointed it in Simon’s direction.

“How about showing me how well you can climb it?” Jet asked.

Simon looked at jet, his surprise and anger turning quickly to fear.

“Ok, just don’t rearchive me OK? That seriously hurts and I’m not sure that it’s lossless compression on users.” He said.

The three of them made their way over to the now nearly destroyed corner of the warehouse and made their way directly to the next floor, which was accessible from the pile now that the roof was smashed through.

Above the storage room was something similar to an office, with display slates located around the periphery of the room and at a few human looking consoles within it also.

“What’s all this?” Jet asked Simon.

“Archive records,” said Simon. “We need to know what routines are archived so we can take the correct ones back to our own network.”

“There’s a lot of workstations here,” Jet noted.

“There were a lot of archives here,” pointed out Simon.

“They’re still here, just not as compressed,” said Jet, then added “Roof?” with a force that told Simon he didn’t want to wait for the response.

Simon pointed to a door at the far side.

“There’s a ramp to the roof there,” he said.

Jet nodded for Simon to precede him, although Mercury wisely got in front of both with enough space to make sure Simon wasn’t leading them into a trap.

He wasn’t however and in short time, they were up on the roof.

Jet walked to the edge of the roof, and looked over, then pulled his head back as Datawraith fire came up from the ground below.

“I think they know we’re here,” he said.

Mercury kept a close watch on Simon as Jet approached the edge. As he stepped forward to look, he got a little close to Jet and as Mercury abruptly closed the distance between her and the captive, Simon realized and backed away a little.

Mercury stopped also.

“Well, aside from the tank trying to smash this place down, they were all chasing us in here.” she said.

Jet walked to another edge nearer the way they had come from. Looking out, he could make out the other roofs of lower sheds and warehouses and the path out.

“Do you think we can make it on lightcycles?” Jet asked.

“I can,” said Mercury.

“Then we’re out of here,” Jet said.

Mercury rezzed in her lightcycle, but only halfway, still sitting up.

We’ll need to rearchive the captive to take him with us.

Jet lifted the archival tool readying it for use, but this time Simon only barely flinched, then faced him down. Jet guessed it must have been because he was on his own base and from here could see it.

Jet could see he was about to say something, so paused to let him speak.

“You won’t understand this, but I have a wife and kids waiting for me in my world,” Simon said.

“Out over where that beam goes straight up? That’ the way home for me. You don’t have wives or kids in this world, so you don’t understand, but they’re like daughter programs to me. And my wife’s like my operating system.

“If I don’t get home soon, they’re going to shut this world down on me and I’m going to die here. I don’t know if I have minutes or seconds left, but it doesn’t matter anymore. I’m not going to get to see them am I?”

Simon’s comments reminded Jet of his own problems. Simon was facing many of the same problems, but unlike Jet, wasn’t in a position to do anything about it. Jet tried not to let it show, but he felt the impact of Simon’s words as he said them.

“I guess this sounds like rambling to you programs huh?” Simon said.

Jet lowered the archival tool, then handed it to Mercury, still on the lightcycle, who took it.

“You’re not the only user in this world,” Jet said. “And not all of them work for F-con.”

Simon’s eyes went wide.

“You’re a user?” he asked.

“There’s two of us in here and we’re trying to get out too.” Jet said.

“So you came in through Encom’s old facility,” Simon said, realizing what was going on. “We got word that the old building was compromised and they were shutting down this network because of it. I didn’t hear that anyone digitized though. Why did you come in?”

“To save someone’s life,” Jet said.

“Then just come with me,” suggested Simon, “We can all go out together. “

“I don’t think your bosses want us to get out,” Jet said. “Something bigger than we expected is happening and besides.”

Simon seemed far more human in his response.

“Yeah, they don’t treat us much better. Sometimes I think we’re all expendable. That’s what you get when the government is involved – no one tells you what you’re working on or what it’s going to be used for. Just do the work and get out.

“I used to be a Datawraith support officer until they realized I can see the code properly in here. Then they made me become a piece of code myself. Time goes by differently in here – it feels like I’ve been here a lifetime already and I was only employed for a week.

“Just do one week of programming for us in this new system was all they told me. You’ll get your instructions on the other side. Then it’s just all confidential.

“Hell, my wife thinks I’m gone for a week and I’ve been of here for years, subjective time.”

Tears, glowing with liquid energy, were slowly running down Simon’s face, but no longer from his fear.

“So if you’re a user, and if she’s one too, then you know what I’m talking about.” Simon said.

“I’m not a user,” said Mercury.

“Oh,” said Simon. “Sorry, you?”

“We’re from the same world,” said Jet, suddenly confusing Simon with the ‘We’ without more information.

“And the other user is a girl who came in here to avoid dying of cancer. We still have to bring her here. If we can make it to the real world, it’s a lot harder for them to kill us.”

“Do you really think they would kill you if they found you in here first?” Simon asked.

“They cut the power to Encom as soon as we got in here,” Jet said. “I don’t think they want us around.”

Simon nodded, then looked at Jet.

“If you’re really a user, then please,” Simon started, but Jet finished it.

“Let you go right?”

Simon swallowed.

“Yeah. I really want a chance to see my family again and I’ve completed my week’s duty. I just want to get my money and go home.”

“How much they pay you?” Jet asked.

“One Hundred and Fifty thousand.” said Simon. “And a free trip to Australia.”

“You’re Australian?” asked Jet.

“Not originally, I’m from Michigan, but I’m working in Australia.” He said.

“I didn’t know that F-Con programmers work from Australia?” Jet said, the tension between them almost evaporating as their commonalities gave them a moment to speak as equals rather than captor and captive.

“Australia, England, Washington. It’s all the same to us. Once we’re in the system they can move us around to any of their facilities.”

“So they’re using the system to transport people?” Jet asked.

Simon looked around, scared. “Hey, don’t ask more about that. If you make it out, they’re going to question you right, and I don’t want them locking me up because I’ve talked to you.”

“And I sure don’t want to run into that green bitch again,” said Simon.

“Jade,” said Jet.

“Jade bitch then,” said Simon. “If she was working with you, I can understand them betraying you, but once I’m in the real world again, she can’t do too much to me, although I don’t want to find out if I’m wrong.”

Jet was initially confused then realized Simon thought that Jade was the other user. Obviously, she resembled someone in the real world who must have been her original programmer, and who was involved with this situation.

“Who exactly is she?” Jet asked.

“Steve Gibbs? You don’t know who she is? She was CEO of Encom.” Simon said, emphasizing the “E” on the end of Steve, to pronounce it Stevie.”

“She and some guy named Edward Dillinger run the show. Nasty pair – deserve each other,” then Simon stopped talking abruptly, as if he was wondering if he had just said too much.

“That was Steve Gibbs,” Jet said, emphasis on the V.

Simon smiled. “Yeah, well she had a real set of balls on her, so maybe you’re right, but then again, maybe you’re just confused, but anyone who met Jasmine Steve Gibbs isn’t likely to forget it.”

The name hit Jet like a brick. Like a series of dots that he had never quite connected over time.

His mind reeled as he realized then that in the entire time he had been at Encom, he had never once met the boss. He cast his mind back and then recalled a woman who occasionally walked the floors and made everyone nervous.

There were always several men around her and he knew the woman was a Gibbs, but he had never known the men who comprised the senior management, and Jet had only ever briefly wondered which one was Steve Gibbs, one of the family that had dominated Encom for years.

But now he realized who Steve Gibbs had been all along. The long hair. The walk. It had been sitting there in his subconscious during his dream, as if his mind was trying to tell him something.

Jade’s original programmer had been one of the Gibbs family. Jet had met her, he now realized, but she looked so much older than Jade that he hadn’t made the connection.

Now that he thought about it, she was almost like an older version of Jade. Jet knew she was a senior manager but had never figured out just who exactly she was.

It had even been mentioned to him at one time that she was one of the original programmers of the system by one of the other programmers in the game division once.

Blinded to what was obvious to all around him by the gender ambiguity of her preferred name, the identity of his own former CEO and her connection to this suddenly became clear.

Gibbs Junior, Steve Gibbs, Jasmine Steve Gibbs, was Walter Gibbs’ Niece.

Somehow the Gibbs, some of whom Jet had known and trusted during his time with Encom, were involved in this. He knew he trusted Wally and Peter, but even Peter had suggested to Jet at times to watch out for his aunt.

Jet got a sick feeling as the proximity of those acting around him on the outside became clear.

In the silence that followed as Jet considered the revelation, it became apparent the conversation was over and they were reverting back to their roles as captor and captive.

Simon broke the silence.

“So what happens next?” Simon asked. “You going to archive me again?”

“Do you return to the real world if you die here?” Jet asked, lifting his LOL. “We are in Sector one now.”

Simon seemed to realize what he was suggesting and held up his hands defensively and stepped back.

“Woah, woah, not that OK, I mean, people like you and me do return if we get killed in here, but we’re not like the Datawraiths. We’re too entangled in this world. Returning that way is like receiving a frontal lobotomy.” He said nervously.

Jet lowered the LOL, then looked at the archival tool in Mercury’s hands, then back at Simon. He didn’t want to leave him here, but now he had said it, Jet realized Simon was as stuck in here as he and Melanie were, and if Jet didn’t make it, he wasn’t sure he wanted Simon’s death on his conscience too.

“You can go,” said Jet, lowering his weapon. He removed his primitive that formed his transport and rezzed in his lightcycle as he prepared to depart the Datawraith base before coming back with the others.

Simon’s expression changed as if he was struggling to understand what had just been said to him.

“I can go?” Simon repeated as if asking, clearly worried he had misunderstood, or that this was a trick.

“Jet, if he compromises our position to the Datawraiths, we won’t escape,” Mercury warned.

Jet looked to Simon.

“Simon, go home to your wife and kids. I can’t control your actions from here on, but remember there are two users still stuck inside the system trying to get out. If you get a chance to help us, please remember that we’re all in this together.”

Simon nodded, backed away for a moment as if getting ready to run in the direction of the exit to the lower floors, then turned and looked at Jet once more.

Jet removed the rod primitive that he used to rez-in the lightcycle and generated the Datawraith lightcycle beneath him, although instead of sealing it, he left the top open. Twisting, he placed his hand against the canopy and felt for the code, then faint lines appeared around the canopy as it derezzed.

“Hop on behind, Mercury, we need to get out of here,” Jet said.

Mercury moved in behind him and sat in the location where the canopy had been, placing her arms around Jet’s waist and her body against his back.

Simon then took two steps back towards Jet, stopped and called out to him.

“Hey, User, what’s your name?”

Jet looked across at him, not sure what to tell him, then realizing it probably didn’t matter.

“It’s Jet,” said Jet.

Simon seemed to absorb the information, then pointed across the compound to the far side.

“Jet,” called Simon. “Do you see that tower over there?”

Jet looked across to the communications tower.

“The way out?” Jet asked.

“No,” said Simon. “The other tower to the right of it.”

Jet located the tower Simon was referring to.

“That’s a weapon,” said Simon.

“What kind of weapon?” asked Jet.

“Some kind of tank smasher, that’s all I know,” said Simon.

Jet nodded. “Thanks for the warning.”

“Good luck getting back to the outside,” said Simon, then stepped backwards twice.

Jet looked at him, realized that for this moment, they were equal – two users somewhere that they shouldn’t really be.

“See you on the outside,” Jet said, then activated his lightcycle, wheeling around to get some space.

Simon turned and walked back to the path back down and stood watching as Jet and Mercury turned and drove back as far as they could for a run-up, then launched the digital vehicle across the rooftop, jumping from the top of the archive where they were temporarily trapped to the roof of a building nearer the path back to the damaged area of Sector 1 where they had come in.

Jet looked back towards Simon once more as they moved through open space, but he was already gone.

“Good luck Simon, because I’ve got the feeling all of a sudden that you’re going to need it as much as I do,” he said quietly, then they came down and Jet made his dash across the rooftops.

The surfaces were slightly lower as he approached the forcewall surrounding the base, and the tank programs had relocated his position, but he was moving fast now, both him and Mercury now on the same lightcycle, towards the top of the intrusion into the sector.

The tanks must have been able to track them because as Jet approached each edge of a building, tank programs opened fire, ripping the sharp edges into hundreds of jagged shapes, blowing small pieces of data around them, but none came close enough to slow or divert Jet from his current path.

Angling his lightcycle, Jet came off the last building at full speed, the momentum carrying him across the space to the top of the toppled tower, sparks flying as the lightcycle temporarily realigned itself with the path out.

Then tank fire converged on the space where Jet had been, ripping apart the fallen tower as Jet’s lightcycle sped over the makeshift bridge it created and moved out into the debris of Sector 1.

Behind him, the toppled tower now shattered, the forcewall rezzed back into place closing the gap that had let them into the base.

Behind that still, the tower Simon had pointed out started to light up as its function routines were engaged.

Next: Chapter 2.33 – Battlezone