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  “Delete. Where are we?”

  “Okay. This node is an information hotline to Generex. It’s run by a small phone service company,” Dee explained.

  “The weak link.”

  “The weak link,” Dee agreed and placed a small box on the wall. “Dial it up.”

  Flexing his fingers and taking a deep breath, Alex did just that. The red dot on the box turned green. Dee held up her right arm, which rezzed into a kinetic energy sword which she stabbed through the box. At the phone service company, back in the real world, this brought all the surge protectors online, and momentarily locked up their system. The box exploded inward leaving a large hole in the wall. In the split second of confusion, Dee jumped inside the system, past the body of a stunned WatchDAWG.

  The wall began self-repairing automatically behind her.

  Using the kinetic sword, Dee slashed again through the next wall. Peering through, she searched the glowing green cavernous space below for a place to reenter among the access points and skyways. Data packets flashed from one side to the other like a giant synapse.

  “That complex convergence?” Dee asked, indicating an information hub.

  “I see it. Go!” Alex answered.

  Dee crawled through the hole and leapt down to a small landing space below. Core jumping was not without its risks. In fact, the guy Alex had replaced at Olley eight years ago had missed a jump, couldn’t bail out of the program protocol in time, passed through an electric synapse bed and completely scrambled the left side of his brain.

  Dee landed hard, fought for her balance and quickly found her footing. Alex watched behind her as she unleashed the sword again, punched through the outer wall with explosive force and entered this new network.

  Go time.

  With the press of a shortcode into his left glove, Alex released ghost-signals in every direction. That would throw off the DAWGs. He watched Dee summon a carrier disk. The light-blue, luminous oval appeared before her and she stepped onto it and instantly surfed down the corridor as a flood of information strobed by. Alex had preprogrammed exactly what they were after and the disc navigated them through the extraneous file grids until Dee was suddenly on the one she’d come for: Dr. Harris P. Wenstead. With no time to copy the file, she extended an electron trap and tore the whole cubicle file from its slot and began processing it.

  “Look out!” Alex yelled into comms.

  A flash of green light struck Dee with a force that slammed her against the back wall. She was a little dazed but her armor loop seemed to take it in stride. Alex’s own VR booth flickered with the hit. He wasn’t sure how many more shots they could sustain, but they weren’t sticking around for beta testing.

  “Get outta there, DeeGØ!”

  She turned around and they were both looking directly into the lifeless eyes of a WatchDAWG leveling its weapon for another shot. Dee full-reversed the electron beam with the Wenstead file and the sparking missile sped toward the DAWG shocking it back through a wall of nano-circuits.

  “How do we feel about pithy action comments, like ‘I am shocked that worked so well’?”

  “Hate it! Get out now!”

  Dee smiled until they saw several more DAWGs appear in the gaping hole the first had opened.

  Employing the sword again, Dee punched through the floor this time, fell down to another platform and entered it. As she steered through the maze of circuitry and information cells, Alex’s heads-up-display alerted him to the presence of more WatchDAWGs on their tail and gaining. They sort of reminded him of the zombie horde from Time-9 but instead of those slow moving dumb beasts, these were frenzied freaks they couldn’t shake.

  “On your six!” Alex warned.

  The maneuvering space was so tight, Dee couldn’t afford to look back or she’d smash right into the Generex core walls and Olley could kiss its butt goodbye. Her system was bogging down on the huge information file and it reduced her speed dangerously low. They didn’t have to wonder for long about how close the DAWGs were as Dee was struck by another pulse that bit into the loop.

  This time the loop couldn’t compensate and the makeshift shield dissolved before their eyes. Alex frantically keyed to counter, but they took another magnetic pulse hit. Alex scanned the data pad on his wrist. It had struck a games file. No big loss. As if the DAWG could read his thoughts, it recalculated and fired again.

  “Damage report,” Dee said.

  “Speelksta! It’s eating through payroll! That’s it I’m pulling you out!”

  “No! You will never get another chance at this, Alex,” Dee warned.

  And she was right. But Alex couldn’t risk Dee and the entire company. He began keying in the sequence to abort all together when Dee got a confirmation beep from her data extraction.

  “Got it,” she said.

  She sent Alex the address. Another split second and it had locked on. Dee released Wenstead’s file behind her which absorbed three of the WatchDAWGs’ futile shots before exploding on impact with the lead freak.

  She turned the next corner as the fireball shot past behind her, tore through the wall and out into the CyberScape beyond.

  “Okay, Alex, I have to go dark here,” Dee said.

  Having made the uplink with Wenstead’s computer, she took off her ear comm and thus her tracking line from Olley. She jammed it onto the wall in passing.

  “No!” Alex yelled but it was too late.

  She was right though, Alex knew. The WatchDAWGs, without the signal, would have a much harder time tracing her. But, it was like doing a space walk without a tether. Leaving and re-establishing the uplink home would be another trick all together.

  With the added power from the computer’s freed up system, Dee jumped way ahead of the remaining WatchDAWGs and in the next instant stood inside the docking bay of Dr. Wenstead.

  Back in the VR room, slightly out of breath, Alex frantically keyed in the address she’d given him. He could still get there on his own, if there was enough time.

  Inside the Generex core, at the Comm device Dee had abandoned, black ridges sprang up around its circumference forming a tread. The tiny wheel spun awkwardly until it righted itself and then zoomed down the wall and off in the direction Dee had gone.

  CHAPTER 4

  Dee stepped through the shimmering portal into the Wenstead foyer, with a ceiling so high you couldn’t even see it. Or perhaps it was a wall and this was the ceiling. It was hard to tell in here. Each step left a gold footprint residue. When she stopped, the bottom of her feet tingled through her boots. She knew she was being probed. Boy, were they in for a surprise.

  She watched as a small glowing orb slowly made its way down the massive wall of circuitry before her. Once it was waist-level, the ball enlarged to about a seven-foot diameter and a large, portly man stepped out onto the terrace. He was clearly a head taller than Dee and sported a loose-fitting, lime-green jumper; the rage of all the school kids in the New Domain. Harris broke the uneasy silence.

  “I was expecting someone else,” he said eyeing her up and down, curiously.

  “That’s fine,” Dee smiled pleasantly.

  Harris circled around her slowly. He left no footprints, Dee noted.

  “What are you?” He asked finally.

  “Hm. How existentially droll,” she said cocking her head sidewise. “Quite simply, I am a hunter. Like you.”

  She was suddenly lifted into the air and suspended there by an unseen force.

  “No, no,” Harris smiled. “Not like me at all.”

  An energy beam shot down from on high, passed through her chest and into the floor leaving her skewered there, writhing in agony.

  She screamed.

  “Should have warned you, this data probe may pinch just a smidge.”

  Harris flicked a finger and Dee’s screams were silenced. She was still screaming, just not audibly. The actual words “MUTE” appeared beside her and Harris continued.

  “It was all very clever, clever indeed, how you made your
way into our system, the way you found me,” Harris opened a data window to see the results of the data probe. “The way you ripped my file and then wasted precious information destroying your WatchDAWG pursuers!”

  Along the far wall, a slight ripple skimmed the circuits with Harris’ outburst.

  “You’re not human, but you’re not an avatar. I can’t imagine what Alex has done here.”

  Just then a tiny wheel rolled into the room which Harris regarded curiously. Suddenly, it opened at the top and a full-sized holo-projection of Alex stepped forward. “Let her go, Harris,” he said, his avatar struggling with some sort of interference in the room causing the image to glitch from time to time.

  “Quosheth, Alex-kyr,” Harris bowed formally, his deep resonant voice echoing in the large receiving area.

  “I’m warning you, Harris,” Alex said, the silver ball followed his every move beneath him.

  “But I haven’t cracked the code, so to speak.”

  “You’re hurting her! Can’t you see? She can’t even breathe, she…”

  What was he talking about? There was no actual air in here which meant Dee’s gasps for breath were purely, what, theatrical?

  “Very well, young PyntaTuuk,” Harris now stood menacingly close, “I’ll give you one minute. It’s the least I can do for an old friend.”

  The beam through Dee vanished but she continued to hang there in mid-air, seemingly unconscious. But Alex knew better. He turned back to Harris and closed the distance between them. “Harris, you’ve been bullying Journeymen since we met in Time-5. I thought we were finally rid of you after Time-10. But, here you are! Now why haven’t I been briefed on the next scuttle?”

  With the dismissive wave of his hand, Harris was all smiles again, like a rattlesnake before it strikes. “First things first,” he said. “My, but does Sindy have a big mouth or what?”

  “Sindy had nothing to do with this,” Alex answered with a smile. “There’s been reports all over the Scape about a fat, angry booger.”

  Harris buried his gaze into Alex, “Sindy’s so fragile. I’m surprised she’s held up through so many time-folds.”

  “What are you talking about?” Alex was genuinely confused.

  “Come now, Alex, you know as well as I do that she barely made it through the last shift. She was unconscious for a week.”

  “You lie,” Alex snarled.

  “Do I?” Harris got deadly serious. “I think not, and the next time-fold is sure to kill her, so you’d better make sure you’ve figured that in to your grand rescue plan.”

  Alex hesitated. The Journeymen always had a high casualty rate who didn’t survive the shock wave during the time-fold. He knew Sindy had had a little trouble with the last shift but it couldn’t have been as bad as Harris alleged. Still, if it was true, it certainly complicated things. He didn’t think he’d have to choose between Valerie or Sindy’s life; the two most important people to him.

  Back in the VR booth, Alex watched on-screen as Harris snorted contemptuously, turned and began to walk away. A persistent warning light on Alex’s wrist monitor finally got his attention. Pulling his arm up to see the readout, he was shocked to see WatchDAWGs amassing just outside Harris’ address. How had they found them?

  He remembered the horrifying WatchDAWG faces during their Generex breach. Eyes devoid of life, the stiff robotic actions of one who was… controlled by someone else. A chill ran up Alex’s spine. He had seen those eyes before, he had looked into that same face, the face of the Perfect Artificial Race back in Time-3.

  But this was Time-11. How in the hell…?

  He wanted to be away from this place. To clear his head. Things had gotten so confused all of a sudden. Harris’ large frame was almost to the wall when a fantastic premonition struck Alex.

  “Harris, where were you during the Cyborg Wars of Time-3?”

  Harris stopped abruptly. On the wall, another ripple.

  “I’m not completely sure, so long ago, but I believe ours was the Ninth Quadrant we were trying to hold. Sindy and Trent were in my squad. They’d remember better than I.”

  “You didn’t meet Sindy until Time-5,” Alex said evenly. “And Trent was in the Sixth Quadrant with me. Where were you, Harris? Or should I ask, which side were you on?”

  Harris turned around slowly, his eyes blazing. “Are you insinuating that I was fighting for the Automatons, Alex?”

  “No, I think you were leading them.”

  An evil grin spread across Harris’ face. Something inside Alex shriveled up.

  “Ne plyshev, Harris, yn flynckshen speelksta,” Alex spat. “And once wasn’t enough, huh? Now you’ve created a new army to replace the one you lost, yn blythen. That’s why you don’t want me to fold time, you’ve got this world on the verge of a huge CyberWar.”

  Harris cocked an eyebrow, “My but hasn’t this little visit been enlightening?”

  “Yes, it has. DeeGØ? Are you finished?”

  The real Dee suddenly rezzed up by the wall where she was jacked into a data panel, entirely cloaked until now. “Could have used a few more cycles but thanks for spoiling the surprise, Master.” Gold footprints materialized leading over to where she’d been accessing information the whole time.

  Harris looked over at her and then up at the other Dee still hanging in mid-air. “What’s going on?”

  The unconscious decoy above them glitched a few times and then disappeared. The real Dee walked back over to Alex as Harris backed slowly away from them both.

  “You’ve stumbled onto something so big you don’t even realize it,” Harris growled at them.

  A small door slid aside on the floor and a spinning red orb floated up to Harris. He continued, “Before I scramble your minds all over the CyberScape, let me just say that you have been a thorn in my side from Time-5 and—“

  Dee fired a bolt of energy into the red ball of light, she scooped up the Comm device and jumped back through the terrace portal, plowing into a large group of WatchDAWGs. Alex’s avatar blinked away but he was still connected to the device that Dee tucked behind her ear. There would be a microsecond delay as her energy bolt synergized the virus, but then…

  She keyed for her carrier disc as dozens of guards brought weapons up to bear. She jumped on the disc, slashing at the closest DAWGs with her kinetic blade flashing to and fro and mowed through the forward section. The explosion from the viral conductor burst through the portal walls, consuming the entire unit and continued to replicate and spread as it devoured.

  “We’ve gotta get you an exit portal outside the Generex core so you can bounce outta here, Dee,” Alex yelled into comms.

  Dee had turned several corners but they could hear the distant rumbling of the advancing bubble of destruction. The world was literally eating away at itself and collapsing inward.

  Ducking low hanging cables and lifting over jagged outcroppings, Dee raced on through the Cyber streets. Finally pinging an exit, they took the left fork of an intersection and the corridor widened out. In the distance they could see a squad of six WatchDAWGs. Dee squatted low when suddenly all six DAWGs were overtaken by the impact of an even bigger bubble of energy pressing down on them.

  The anti-virus. It also spread quickly and everything it consumed was frozen safely inside. The distance between the two walls was closing at an exponential rate. Hearing the exit uplink confirmed, a laser wire appeared from the sky and Dee had only to touch it and was instantly transported back up through the floor of the VR booth.

  Soaked with sweat Alex collapsed onto the floor beside her. “That… was a close one,” he swallowed hard.

  Dee opened a data window running some system maintenance. “Harris’ virus has been crushed,” she said. “But not before substantial damage to Generex.”

  “That will slow him down,” Alex exhaled deeply. “The blaa flynckshen blinked out of sight before impact. Too bad. Would’ve been nice to delete him once and for all.”

  Dee opened another window with a schemat
ic. “While you were distracting Harris, I was able to access his system logs. Alex, I know the location of the time raid.”

  She swiped the window and it slid across to Alex’s wrist-pad.

  “Thanks, Dee. You saved my ass back there.”

  “It’s a great ass.”

  “A flirt module? Come on, Dee.”

  Dee shrugged. They both stood to their feet, and he took hold of Dee’s shoulders. “Dee, you passed the test. The sad part is, they’re gonna shut our department down big time after they find out about all of this. So, you can’t stay here or they’ll delete you.”

  “They could try,” she smiled.

  Alex ejected a small blue carbon stick from the panel beside him and handed it to Dee.

  “This is me?” She asked.

  Alex nodded. “So be careful.”

  “Never,” she smiled, “careful is boring.”

  She triggered another portal out of the VR booth and then walked over to the edge of it.

  “Where will you go?”

  Dee shrugged, “Wherever I’m needed, I guess. Hey, you want iconic good bye speech module?”

  “No, just go already,” Alex said.

  “You’re gonna miss me,” Dee smiled and back-flipped out of the portal and into the CyberScape beyond.

  Alex sighed. There was still a lot of work to be done and not a lot of time. “Computer: Delete Project Generex, Delete Wenstead File, Delete all DeeGØ files.”

  The computer chimed in compliance and then millions of files began to erase themselves from existence and the VR world around him began to dissolve into a boring white pod.

  Alex needed to contact Sindy. He needed to warn her about Harris before it was too late.

  CHAPTER 5

  After no answer on comms, Alex decided to check on Sindy himself. He knew that she housed herself on the east side of the New Domain. As the early morning sun shone through the windshield of the Oryx, Alex’s silvery tactical lids slid into place blocking the glare. The supercar lifted off the floating garage surface as Alex pushed skyward. Air traffic was heavier than usual. The lower cloud line had cut down the dimensional commuter space and packed more vehicles into a smaller area.