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Chapter Text

Chapter 00 - What it Wanted

Guardian Charger stared down at the Supercomputer’s collapsing core in despair. It would soon be too bright to look at, even through web-surfer goggles, but he couldn’t turn away. Someone had to bear witness to their folly, and he was the only one still here.

It was easy to blame the energy virus in the reactor for the coming destruction, but it was Guardian hubris that was really to blame. Guardians were the ones that brought the thing here, Guardians the ones that weaponized it, Guardians the ones that grew lax with its handling. 

Guardians that brought it into the core. 

The virus was just doing what it was programmed to do. How anyone could be surprised how this turned out was ludicrous, and yet, here they were. 

Charger grit his teeth against the blaring sirens hammering away at his skull. They should just turn the damned things off. The virus couldn’t be extricated from the reactor, it was almost at critical mass, and the unraveling ethernet couldn’t support viable portals to escape though. There was no way out. If they were all going to be deleted, they might as well do so in peace.

That was, if the virus allowed them even that.

By now it had consumed so much power that it saturated the ethernet, the vast field of quintessential energy that bathed all of reality. Its presence was everywhere, and it was growing stronger by the nano. Antiviral patches that had long kept Charger free of its influence were beginning to fail. Its consciousness leaked in. He felt what it felt.

And it was pain.

Excruciating pain. 

The strobing lights, the piercing alarms, the stinging electricity racing up walls, all of it paled in comparison to this. The Guardian clutched his head in his hands. 

 make it stop  oh user make it sto-

Suddenly a wave of terror that wasn't his ripped the air from his lungs. The room shuddered violently, and Charger grabbed onto the railing as debris rained down from above. Below him the once stationary protostar was alive with movement, distorting itself into bizarre shapes as pressed against the containment chamber walls. Through the growing waves of ambient panic he swore he could hear a whisper of a voice in his head. 

‘this isnt what i wanted   this isn’t what i wanted!   i  have to get out    have to get out! ’

The infected mass of core energy began to condense itself into something impossibly dense, and Charger fumbled in his bag for another set of goggles to hold up over the ones he already had on. For a fraction of a nano he saw a thin, deformed silhouette at the center of it, trying to hold itself together.

He shook his head grimly.

The locks that bound it with were reaching their limit. Once they broke, it was over. The final countdown began over the loudspeaker-

‘HAVE TO GET OUT!’

The room heaved, and Charger dropped the second pair of goggles as he hit the ground. Static filled his vision, and the Guardian clung to the bottom of the railing as the floor beneath him tilted and stretched, twisting around a point he couldn't see. He cast around blindly for the goggles as he heard them skitter past, then dragged himself to the edge of the failing balcony.

Below him the supernova was pressing itself into the far side of the chamber, warping it beyond recognition. Charger stared in disbelief. It was trying to push itself through the system barrier by brute force. Impossible.The Guardian glanced at the timer as the last nanos ticked down.

He closed his eyes and exhaled. "I'm so sorr-"

The kinetic weight of catastrophic failure slammed him into the wall. Heat seared his skin. Light blinded him through his eyelids. His code frayed as it reached for some event horizon, then fused back together under the crush of an ear-shattering shockwave. 

And then…nothing.

Nothing?

Charger cautiously opened one eye. He was at the bottom of the containment chamber, looking up at a rapidly closing void in the ether. Vivid streaks of red, black, orange, and blue raced around its edges until it was too shallow to define them. Then with one last, nauseating pulse, it disappeared.

Everything snapped back into place.

It was over.

The Guardian lay where he was, stunned. The chamber was dark save for the flash of emergency lights. Somewhere a wall panel groaned. Something fell in the distance, but all else was silent.

The supercomputer was still here, but the virus was gone. 

Through the ringing in his ears Charger heard shouting. He was being lifted onto a gurney. Someone was talking to him, but he was too dazed to notice. The virus’s last words echoed in his head.

‘ this isn’t what i wanted! ‘ 

He couldn’t make sense of it. The thing had held the fate of the supercomputer in the palm of its hand. It was the stuff of a virus’s wildest dreams. If that wasn't what it wanted, 

What was it?

---

Chapter 00.5 - The Walking Girl

Wick the binome looked up at the peaceful, circuited sky, nary a game in sight. Then he looked down at his dog, who was taking her sweet time looking for just the right spot to output.

"Come on, IO, anyplace'll do," he said, but really he was in no hurry.

Out of the corner of his one eye, Wick saw a peach-coloured, monotone figure coming towards him.

The Walking Girl, he thought with a smile. It was said to be good luck if you saw her, even though no one knew who the sprite was.

It was uncertain how long she'd been here, but once she'd been noticed, it seemed as if she'd always been, forever walking the whole of Mainframe.

She didn't have a name that anyone knew. No one ever saw her sleep or eat, and strangely enough, no one really knew what she looked like, even when they were sure they'd met her.

For some reason though, no one thought much about it. She was just another part of the tapestry of daily life, and once she was out of sight, she was almost immediately, uncannily out of mind.

And yet, she was remembered just enough to awaken a thread of curiosity in Wick's mind as he realized she was heading towards him. He squared his already square shoulders with determination. He was going to remember her.

As he focused on her he realized the Walking Girl had no clothing protocol, but there didn't seem to be any pronounced detail to make one necessary. Her hair was the same colour as the rest of her and floated in soft waves around her face.

Her pale peach skin seemed to glow, and her pupil-less, lavender eyes just barely showed against sclera the same colour as her skin. Upon her face was a gentle smile, and he felt a strange sense of peace as she came upon him. Odd as this all should have been, the Walking Girl struck Wick as nondescript nonetheless. He'd have thought her a mirage if he didn't know better.

The binome tipped his hat. "Hello, Walking Girl! Good day, isn't it?"

The figure stopped a nano and nodded once in agreement. Then she looked down at IO with special interest. It seemed like she wanted to pet her, but refrained.

"It's okay, she doesn't bite."

The Walking Girl paused, then slowly knelt and placed a single hand on the dog's head.

It was then that Wick felt a soft sadness, a distance, an emptiness rise within the Walking Girl's calm.

She seemed to sense he had as well, and the melancholy folded back behind her passive smile as she stood up. With that, she nodded again, then passed him by without looking back.

Wick watched her until the strange sensation she'd brought with her receded, then looked down to see IO watching him expectantly.

"Oh, you're done, then? Sorry, spaced out there. Took you long enough!"

He cleaned up what IO had left behind, then turned back for home, the interaction with the Walking Girl already fading from his memory with unnatural speed...

---

Chapter 01 - The Fire

The Walking Girl didn't know how long she'd been walking. It didn't matter. Walking passed the time. The perpetual movement kept her thoughts on the surface, where it was safe. It was imperative that she kept her head as empty as it had been when she'd first arrived here. After doing so for so long, she no longer remembered why she had to. All she knew was that it was necessary, and that was enough.

But like everyone else, she still wanted to feel something.

Today she was walking through the Baudway district. Despite having been there many times before, she never fully took it in. It was forever apart from her, and so forever new. She watched the inhabitants of this system going about their business with fascination. She liked them, in all their shapes and colours, their personalities. The more animated ones she liked the best, and if they interested her enough, she would stop to watch.

She'd come across something promising now; a male and female binome locked in an epitaph-laced argument over a sports team, but their anger was monotonous, a spice that was little more than heat without any taste. The Walking Girl soon lost interest and she began to walk again, catching bits and pieces of the emotions of those who passed her by, like little sparks that flickered through her muted world.

Suddenly those sparks shone with unanimous fear and surprise. Something was coming, and even though she couldn't yet see it, she could already feel it. As if to herald its approach, the air filled with the most glorious laughter she'd ever heard, wild and free, crackling like lightning over her skin.

Someone was telling her to run, tugging her hand, far away, but she stayed fixed, barely able to see through the violent wash of energy that this spark, no, this fire brought with it. Her senses flooded with rich, bold emotion, and in her mind's eye she saw colour so vivid she couldn't comprehend.

The Walking Girl stared at it in awe as it hovered over her, even though she could no longer hear nor see it. The waves of emotion it gave off shifted constantly, and with each one the girl was enveloped in one new, long forgotten sensation after another. She sensed it was speaking to her, but instead of words, she felt its voice wash over her in pitches and rolls.

She was dimly aware of nearby flashes of light around her. The ground beneath her shook. Intense heat intermittently grazed her. A half-hearted voice in her head warned her she was in danger, but even it didn't seem to care much. The girl felt she could die here without regret

And then, the presence was gone.

The Walking Girl swayed as it separated from her, returning her to her pale, empty self. The whole of her screamed as it realized how starved it was. All this time she'd been subsisting on crumbs, but now she'd tasted ambrosia, and the thought of never having it again was too much to bear.

On shaky legs, she looked around as her primary vision slowly returned, unconcerned by the scorch marks and flaming craters around her. She wanted answers, but to her frustration there was now no one around to ask. With growing agitation she searched until she found a zero hiding behind a mailbox.

"What was that?" She asked him bluntly, her over-exposed senses unable to sense the fear emanating from him.

The zero looked back at her, startled, then confused. "What was… What do you mean, what was that? That's Hexadecimal!"

"Hex-a-de-ci-mal," The Walking girl sounded out. It was the perfect name for the being, so complex, with so many sounds and shapes. As she thought about it, she finally felt the zero's fear. "Oh...I'm sorry. Did it scare you?" She asked it gently.

The binome grew indignant as he got up from behind the mailbox. "YES!? What's wrong with- Oh...you're that weird Walking Girl."

He squinted at her. "Aren't you afraid of being deleted?"

It was the Walking Girl's turn to look confused. "I…"

The wheels in her mind turned, then ground to a halt. That question led to places she wasn't supposed to see, and in response her mind dumped all the information that had led her here; good and bad alike.

"No. I don't mind." She replied as her empty tranquility returned. Soon she could barely remember why the question had been asked. Only a thin, wire-frame of what had come to pass remained, and without another word, she resumed her endless walking, her default restored.

And yet...in a far corner of her subconscious, a hazy swirl of ambrosia with a name still remained...

Chapter Text

Chapter 02 - The Guardian

The Walking Girl had planned to leave the Baudway district, but she kept circling back to where she'd been earlier in the cycle, wandering around and around the scorched holes in the pavement while construction workers tried to fill them back in. She found that if she willed herself to be unnoticeable, she often was, but such concentration took effort, and it was beginning to annoy her that the workers wouldn't just leave the holes and go home. She wanted to study those burnt remains, as if they might hold some clue to...something.

Eventually the workers went away and she got to inspect what was left. To her disappointment, the pavement yielded nothing besides the fact that whoever had made them was very strong, which she knew already. The Walking Girl bit her lip. She needed to know more about the Hexadecimal, but was unsure how to do so. She'd heard there was something called a library that had information on everything, but it was in the Principle Office, and she wasn't about to go there. She glanced around in consternation, unused to having to think this much. Surely there had to be a way to find out what she wanted to know without having to interact with potential enemies, but no. She would have a ... conversation .

The Walking Girl bit her lip nervously. It hadn't taken her long after arriving here for her to realize that she didn't really know how to talk to people. Her speech was stilted and blunt, and often she'd say too much or the wrong thing. Such mistakes could prove deadly, so she'd stopped talking altogether. Now it was her only option if she wanted to find the presence again.

She eyed a group of sprites hanging out by a bench. Sprites seemed to know more than binomes where she came from, but there were so many of them and that made her nervous. Binomes made her less so, and a single binome would be even better. It took a few nanos of searching, but eventually the Walking Girl found a suitable target, a one standing by a bench. She walked straight up to it.

"Excuse me. Can I ask you some questions?"

The one-binome looked surprised. "You...you can talk?"

The Walking Girl was confused by this answer until she realized she'd been recognized. Panic rose, but she pushed it away and put on the perpetual smile that she was known for. "I don't usually. Can you tell me about the Hexadecimal?"

" The Hexadecimal? It's just Hexadecimal. Uh… what do you want to know?"

"Everything."

"Oh. Uh, well, Bob could probably tell you more than I can."

"Bob?"

The one stared at her, then glanced over at a nearby bench. "You really don't talk to people do you? You want to sit or something?"

"Okay," she replied in a tone she hoped was correct.

"Right," said the binome as he hopped up on the bench beside her. "My name's Core, by the way."

The Walking Girl relaxed slightly. That's right. He's just a person. No need to be afraid of people. "Oh! Hello, Core. I'm..."

She didn't have a name, not one she cared to remember, but if the people here called her "The Walking Girl", that should suffice well enough, she reasoned.

"The Walking Girl."

The binome looked skeptical. "That's your actual name?"

She realized she'd answered wrong, but pushed ahead anyway.

"Who is Hexadecimal?" She answered instead.

The binome paused. "Why don't you talk to people?"

This wasn't going to work. The Walking Girl sighed as she stood up. "I should go."

"Wait wait! I'm sorry," Core apologized. "I'll stop. It's just you're such a mystery...But I'll stop."

She looked at him warily, then sat back down. The binome's voice had grown quieter and sadder as he went. Concerned that he might be taking in her feelings, the Walking Girl suppressed hers even further. It seemed to work.

"Hexadecimal...," Core began again, his voice noticeably improved. "Well, she's a virus. A chaos virus. She lives over on Lost Angles, that little island that used to be the twin city before it blew up. I think she blew it up. Or she and her brother blew it up. I think it was an accident."

"She?"

"Yeah, "she". She's a woman...I think."

"And she has a brother?" Viruses had families? She didn't know that.

"Yeah, Megabyte. He lives in that thing over there." Core pointed at the cobra-shaped tower at the edge of Ghedi Prime. "Do you ever walk over there?"

"Yes." She went everywhere she was able to.

"You should probably stop. It's not safe. Don't go to Lost Angles either. Not like you can walk there now, anyway. The bridge is out."

The Walking Girl swore inwardly.

"Hex and Megabyte fight with each other a lot," the binome continued, "but sometimes they work together, which is really bad. They're both viruses, but they're pretty different. Megabyte wants to take over the city and comes up with all these plans to infect everyone. You know, normal virus stuff."

"And Hexadecimal?"

"She just likes to mess with things. They say she's actually way more powerful than Megabyte and could probably nuke the whole system if she wanted to, but 'That would be boring .'" He ended with an attempt at impersonating the virus.

The Walking Girl smiled, genuinely this time. "She sounds fun…"

The one made a face.

"'Fun' isn't the word I'd use. She may not be trying to blow up the system or enslave everyone, but she's dangerous. She was here chucking fireballs earlier today. No one knows why. There might not even be a reason why. It's just Hex. Kinda crazy that we have two viruses in one system. Good thing we have Bob."

"Who is Bob?"

"Oh, right. Bob is our Guardian."

The Walking Girl froze.

"There's...a Guardian here?"

"Yeah, pretty neat, huh? I mean, we're just this backwoods system, so I could see why you'd be surprised, but I guess because we have Hex and Megs, we get a Guardian. Which is great, because he keeps everyone from being nullified in the games…."

The binome continued, but the Walking Girl could no longer hear him. Jagged memories crushed against the edges of her mind, seeking to cut their way through to the front as her heart rate skyrocketed. She didn't know what was happening, only that she had to get away, as inconspicuous as possible, before she lost all control. With her last bit of mental fortitude, she commanded her whole mind to blank.

"Thank you for all of that, Core," The Walking Girl said, her voice as soft and genial as ever as she stood up. "I think I've stayed still too long, so I'm off. Thank you for your time."

"But I didn't tell you about the stuff she's done-" the binome called after her, but she didn't stop moving.

Slowly the panic subsided as her mental defenses corralled the unwanted memories back into the abyss, once again only leaving behind what it felt pertinent to survival.

She headed out of the city towards the quiet green of Floating Point. It was often filled with tourists, even at this late millisecond, but an eternity of walking had uncovered untouched spots in which she could hide. She desperately needed to now.

Chapter Text

Chapter 03 - Painted Heart

Guardians.

To Mend and Defend.

Both of those things were good. Mending broken code was good. Defending from harm was good. A Guardian was a beacon of good to most dataforms living their day to day lives. 

But to those with viral code, they were the Reapers. Cold, indifferent, and cruel. To a Guardian, a virus, no matter what type, what past or personality, was an abomination that must be erased. Viruses were a disease, detritus, hateful and useless. They deserved no quarter. They were given no mercy. Some Guardians even delighted in their suffering. 

“The only good virus is a dead one.”

She’d heard that many times.

But at some point, the Guardians had realized there were other uses for viruses, at least those they could control-

The Walking Girl snapped awake, shaking violently. Keeping from falling asleep and dreaming was one of the many reasons she never stopped moving. Now she was too afraid to even go outside. Instead she’d holed up in a little cave on the lower, wilder levels of Floating Point while she tried to figure out what to do. 

She couldn’t stay here forever. 

No, that wasn’t true. She could. As a virus, she didn’t need to eat or drink, she just pulled the energy she needed from the land like all viruses did. For the first cycle hiding here, that had been enough. Now, five cycles later, she was growing restless.

“I want to go out! ” The Walking Girl yelled at the ceiling.

It wasn’t fair. Everyone else was free to walk around, living life as they pleased, but she couldn’t, just because of what she was.

Even the other two viruses in Mainframe could roam freely, able to walk the fine line between being stronger than “Bob” but not being enough of a threat that the Guardian Viral Task Force felt the need to waste their time on a closed system.

She rolled over and lay on her stomach on the dirt floor, then stared out of the small cave’s entrance.

So this was it. This was her life now. She’d have to rename herself the Lying-on-the-Ground Girl, which certainly didn’t roll off the tongue. 

Above her she could see the random shapes of dataforms flying by on their zipboards, too far away for her to feel.

If Hexadecimal, (or the Fire, as she'd started calling her) was here, she could certainly feel her. The Fire most certainly wouldn’t be hiding in a cave. She’d go down in a blaze of glory, the girl was sure of it.

All of a sudden she was hit with a wave of longing. Before the word ‘Guardian’ had pushed everything else out of her head, her attention had been solely on the Fire. 

What was she doing now? Was she blowing up something? What did Hexadecimal do all day? Core had said she liked to mess with stuff. What kind of stuff?

The Fire was all she could think about, all she wanted to think about. It was an unexpected beacon in her desolate world, an inconceivable force that made her believe that anything was possible, even for the likes of her. Belief in the Fire was all she had, and if she stayed here, she might never see, or even feel the Fire again. What was the point of processing if she had to process without it?

Because there are things worse than deletion.

She growled and stood up. If it came to that, she’d just self-destruct. She wasn’t sure how she’d do that, but she’d find a way. The Fire would, of that the Walking Girl was certain. But even if she could figure that part out, she’d still have to live cautiously. She could try only to travel when a game was in play, when the Guardian was sure to be ensconced in it.

The Walking Girl looked up at the sky hopefully. How often did games land, anyway? She’d never paid attention, but she did know one hadn’t dropped the whole time she’d been hiding, and that had been a while. Her heart sank. This could take forever, and she wanted out now . 

Would it be so dangerous to leave? She’d been wandering around Mainframe for what seemed like month-cycles without having any trouble. She looked like any other sprite...mostly. Maybe she should get a clothing protocol, but those cost credits, and she had none. Did she really need clothes? She’d been doing a good job of remaining unnoticed without them. Nothing had actually changed besides finding out there was a Guardian here, anyway. But maybe she’d learned that just in time. How could she go out now that she knew it could be the end of her?

The Walking Girl morosely pushed a little pile of dirt around with her finger.

What would the Fire do? 

The Fire would do whatever she wanted, and it would be amazing.

She smiled to herself, unaware that body shimmered at the thought. 

Yes, she would be like the Fire and live fully, not rot in a cave. She was going to go back out there, figure out how to blow herself up, and take her life back again. 

---

It took the Walking Girl another full cycle to actually do so. 

She’d really hoped to figure out a way to self-destruct before going out, but all her ideas were either too unstable to maintain, not strong enough to finish the job, or simply didn’t work at all. The Fire probably had an idea. Maybe she could make a deal with her to be the one to do it.

That idea strangely made her feel better. Any thought regarding the Fire made her feel better.

The Walking Girl cautiously stepped outside. She’d arrived here during a night cycle, and with much of the lower level unlit, she hadn’t seen much of the park in the darkness. Now as she looked around, she realized with great joy that off the coast was the fabled Lost Angles.

It wasn’t that she hadn’t seen it before. It was always there in the background when she walked this side of the platter, but that was before it held any special meaning. Now she really looked at it, as much as she could from her vantage point.

Closest was the twisted wreckage of the Gilded Gate Bridge. What remained of it on this side of the energy sea was connected where Floating Point and Kitts sector met. It looked as if it had once been a vibrant area, but now it was deserted, as if the ill winds of the island washed over the bridge and onto the shore on the other side. 

Deserted was good.

The Walking Girl began to walk towards it while keeping an eye on the island it had once led to. 

There seemed to be two distinct parts of the city. The part closest was a drab brown pile of broken buildings and other debris that one would expect from a bombed out city. But beyond that, slightly higher up, the buildings were not only fully intact, they were wholly painted red or teal. Amongst these, all the way at the back, rose a red tower infinitely taller than the rest. It was more organic in nature than the rest of the island. It sloped at the ground, and from there it twisted its way to a paneled dome at the top. The lot of it was wrapped with thick, null-like tentacles and covered in antennae. 

“Wow…” The Walking Girl breathed as she looked at it longingly. If only she could get over there.

As she tried to plot a course to do this, she noticed that the sky suddenly seemed brighter. A game? No, that made the sky darker. Her view was greatly obscured by the floating land masses above her, but just above that she could see… what was that?

A crude round yellow circle with lines radiating from it had appeared overhead, seemingly painted there with a brush. Across the sea the Walking Girl felt a rush of joy roll over her from the island beyond. Her face lit up. It was the Fire! She was doing this, somehow. Excited, the girl rushed towards the myriad paths that led to the highest, closest point. She needed to see it all for herself.

By the time she’d reached the top, she was exhausted, but her effort paid off. The entire system was turning from drab to beautiful as she watched. There seemed to be no end to the Fire’s creativity. Every building was a different colour, or pattern, or even structure. In places the paint took solid form, creating ribbons and odd shapes that criss-crossed the city.

At her feet, a swirling, multicoloured pool of paint rolled past her ankles. The Walking Girl bent down and scooped the colours into her hands, then watched with fascination as it slid through her fingers. She then held up her colour-stained hands in delight. Colour! The Fire’s colour! She needed more of it.

With a burst of childish joy, she knelt down and splashed herself with the shifting colours, deriving great satisfaction as she watched it over-write her monotonous peach. She laid back in it, letting it rise up over her to the edges of her face, then spread out her arms and legs to slosh it all about. If anyone was watching, she didn’t care. Everyone was likely too busy enjoying the show as much as she was. 

Once the Walking Girl was sure she had fully covered herself in the Fire’s gift, she stood up to see what else had changed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw something approach the bridge, then fly over it. A man in blue with silver hair, and some oddly shaped box...thing, carrying a camera. She looked further out. The island of Lost Angles was also a riot of artistic life, but couldn’t be easily seen from here. No doubt they were off to film it so everyone else could marvel.

Absently she realized that she would have no way of seeing that broadcast. Not to worry. She’d come up with something. The Walking Girl returned her attention back to the city, which was growing more vivid by the second. Across the system she could make out a bunch of yellow flowers. There were two images plastered overhead, but to her disappointment they were too far away to see. She squinted anyway, then gave up to watch other creations arise. Truly the Fire was a creator, a god.

As she thought this, she felt a sparkle of excitement from the island. The Fire was happy about something, perhaps the film crew. The Walking Girl didn’t feel her changing moods when she’d been in hiding on the lowest level, right up next to the core, but now that she was so close to the bridge she realized there was now a constant buzz in her skin. If she could figure out a way, maybe she could live on the Kitts side of the bridge. 

Then a wave of anger rolled off the island. The Walking Girl turned out of curiosity. Whyever would the Fire be this upset? Her masterpiece was glorious! Perhaps the film crew was bothering her too much. That would be enough to annoy anyone, she reasoned. She would certainly be annoyed if someone was asking her too many que-

A wall of raw, excruciating pain crashed over her, and the Walking Girl screamed as she doubled over in agony. Thousands of unseen claws tore at her flesh while a torrent of acid crushed her beneath its weight. She couldn’t think. She couldn’t breathe. The paint on her body cracked and shattered as she collapsed to the ground, clutching at her face. To her horror, she could see light splintering under her skin, searing paths throughout her body as the rest of it began to glow, the surge of energy aching to break through.

And then, nothing. Less than nothing, an emptiness unlike any other. 

For a nano the Walking Girl lay on her back, stunned, her breath ragged and shallow as the fissures in her skin faded away. A thin trickle of saliva ran from the corner of her mouth as she stared at the sky with bleary, vacant eyes.

Slowly it dawned on her that what she’d felt had come from the Fire, and with a rush of sudden terror she scanned for her with her ravaged senses. The Walking Girl’s skin went cold. 

Nothing. 

She glanced to the side and saw there was no longer any paint on her body, nor on the buildings around her. All trace of the Fire was gone.

She saw movement from the island and forced her eyes to focus on the lone figure that was zip-boarding away from the Fire’s tower. It was the man in blue from before, now without the box or camera. As he passed over her she could see him in greater detail, and her eyes widened in horror. She knew that uniform.

It was the Guardian. 

The Walking Girl’s heart stopped as the pieces came together.

Her now hoarse throat made no sound, but her anguished, silent screams reverberated throughout the ether.

Chapter Text

Chapter 04 - The Red Light

She didn’t remember passing out, but when the Walking Girl awoke, it was to something poking her in the side. She opened one eye to see a young zero binome standing over her, prodding her with a stick while his friends looked on.

“See, it’s not deleted! You said you found a BSoD!” Said one.

“Fail...” Said another.

Growing annoyed, the Walking Girl picked herself off the ground and watched with satisfaction as the kids ran off. She didn’t remember how she got here. It must have been bad for her to pass out,  but all that remained of the event were some thin, itchy lines on her skin. 

The Walking Girl sat there a nano as she waited for the fog in her head to clear.

Then it hit her, and she clamped her hands over her mouth to suppress a scream. He’d killed her, tortured and killed her! For what? For painting the city? It was harmless! But that was how Guardians were. Cruel, merciless bastards. The Fire had let her guard down for attention, and now everything good in the world was gone. 

The Walking Girl clenched her fists, willing herself to keep it together as waves of nausea washed over her. There were people here, even on this little secluded patch of Floating Point, and she didn’t want their attention. She didn’t want anything, just to be away, far, far away. 

There was only one place for her now.

She half climbed, half fell down to the lowest level of Floating point, then ran to the entrance of the Gilded Gate Bridge.

And yet, even in her mindless grief, the Walking Girl hesitated to set foot upon it. This was the threshold of What Was and What Was Beyond. A mere cycle ago, Beyond could have been anything; terrible or amazing or both. Now it was merely a point of surrender, separating those who wanted to live from those who wanted to disappear into haunted static.

With a deep breath, the Walking Girl stepped onto the bridge. 

Then exhaled.

Somehow she felt better, even relieved. She’d never realized how exhausting living had become, how much the constant battle for stability had taken. The Fire’s power had given her a sudden burst, but with it gone, she just couldn’t keep fighting anymore. It was time to rest.

The sky changed from its usual, happy pale blue to a deep apocalyptic orange the further out the Walking Girl went, and as it did, sadness gave way to anger. She picked up her pace, and once she was out far enough, she let loose.

“Stupid Guardian!” She screamed out to the energy sea. “Stupid, stupid people! Why did you have to delete her?! Because it messed with your stupid order? ”

The Walking girl picked up a warped piece of metal and hurled it into the bubbling energy sea, where it fizzled and melted.

“And it wasn’t enough to delete her. No, you had to- What did you do ? What did you do, you monster! You MONSTER!” She screamed through broken sobs. 

She threw whatever she could find into the sea until she was too tired to continue, then she walked further down the bridge until she came upon its torn off edge. Deep inside she’d always known that she couldn’t actually get to Lost Angles, but she’d ignored it in her grief. Now the Walking Girl sat down upon the crumbling pavement and dangled her legs over the abyss.

“Monster…” she murmured to the energy sea below. It looked inviting, down there. The Walking Girl wanted to give herself to the island, but she might never get over there. She doubted she had it in her to go through what it would take to do so. Giving herself to the sea was an easier solution, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. For now she just wanted to sit, and think, and mourn. 

Wisps of chaotic energy swirled past her from the island beyond, and the Walking Girl closed her eyes to let it pass though her second sight. There it manifested as different spices, some blended, some singular, some peculiar. Mildly curious about what else was out there, the Walking Girl reached out to the floating landmass.

For a few nanos she could only sense a chaotic blur of sensory information, but as she sat, she began to pick out distinct pieces. She could taste the sharp tingle of the nulls that had congregated at their edge of the bridge. She could feel the loops in the fabric of space, like air currents with a mind of their own. A dusty miasma emanated from the ruined city at the front, but further back it felt strangely clean. And there, at the very back, she could now sense the Fire’s Lair. 

The Walking Girl gasped in awe. It was not simply a building, but a dense pillar of energy drawn up from the island itself, then wrapped in a warp in space.

You were such an amazing creature… The Walking Girl thought sadly as she ran her mind over it. 

Suddenly something prickled in her skin. She sat bolt upright, then leaned in towards the island, straining every fiber of her sensory array.

There!

At the top of the tower! 

An energy signature? No, two! The first, almost obnoxiously insistent one was of no interest to her, but the second, far weaker one was tantalizingly familiar. She poured her focus onto it.

“I’m just feeling what I want to,” The Walking Girl muttered, but still she sat there for hour-cycles, concentrating, searching, waiting.

The tiny blip shifted colours for just a split nano. Black, green, black.

The girl held her breath. It was strong evidence, but not enough. The dark orange sky grew ever darker, and there were no lights on the abandoned bridge. It would soon be too dark for her to safely make her way back to her cave, but the Walking Girl had no intention of leaving, not when there was this tentative spark of hope.

By mid night-cycle the signature had flickered more and more often to green. By dawn it was steady, but the Fire’s light had always been shifting. This one wasn’t. Still unconvinced, the Walking Girl continued to watch, even though she knew her presence on the bridge was bound to attract suspicion. 

Just give me a new colour. Red, blue, yellow, anything. Just one, just for a split nano. Please. Please be there.

Zip boards began to buzz behind her. Mainframe waking up. The Guardian was sure to do a morning sweep, even if he believed his quarry was dead. She had to leave. 

Please

The sky grew brighter. A motor sounded nearby and she stiffened, but it soon faded away. 

Please

Boats began to speckle the horizon, growing closer.

Please!

The spot flickered red.

The Walking Girl screamed with joy and bounced around upon the rickety, twisted bridge with wild abandon. “I knew you could do it! I knew you could do it!”

Then she stopped. She was going to give the Fire away if she kept this up. She had to get out of here, now .

The Walking Girl forced herself to walk as nonchalantly as possible back to her hiding place. As she went, her jubilation turned to anxiety. The Fire might be alive, but she was only just, and she was alone. The girl had to get over there somehow, and fast. But how she was going to do that…

She didn’t know.

Chapter Text

Chapter 05 - The Zipboard

The Walking Girl’s intention had been to go back to her cave and rest after the massive amount of energy she’d expended, but the thought of the Fire flickering dangerously close to deletion was too much to bear.

Again she forced herself to go out, and even though her power reserves were nearly exhausted, she still managed to redirect attention away from her. Or at least, she hoped she was. 

The only way to Lost Angles was to fly there, and there were only two options for that; a hover car or a zip board. Both cost credits, of which she had none. That was the second thing she’d have to remedy. The first was to find out just how many she needed.

There wasn’t a lot of activity at Floating Point, so the Walking Girl ventured over to Kitts. She was almost positive there was a taxi rank somewhere nearby, and with some searching she finally found it. Now she was having trouble gathering up the courage to approach one. All her newfound emotions kept getting in the way. She really didn’t want to return to her blank self, but it was necessary. For the Fire.

With a deep breath, the Walking Girl emptied out her head and walked up to the closest cab.

The driver rolled down his window. “Where to?”

“Lost Angles.” She said simply.

“Eh? Why do you want to go there?”

“How many credits is that?”

The taxi driver was quiet a nano, and she watched as he looked his potential passenger up and down, obviously trying to make sense of this. The Walking Girl gazed back, her face revealing nothing. The cabbie’s delay would have made her nervous if she had let it, but she stayed put, waiting. 

Finally the cabbie let out a sigh. “Look, I don’t go to Lost Angles. I doubt you’ll find anyone who will, unless you paid them a lot of credits. And I mean a lot . I don’t know how much you know about that place, but the space around it is all warped. Even flying near it is dangerous. Sorry, but no deal.”

His face softened. “Anywhere else you want to go?”

The change in his demeanor raised a flag, and the Walking Girl realized she was letting her subconscious distress leak out again. She shoved it back in, then put on her smile, truly sorry she’d put her pain on someone else.

“No, thank you.” She said quietly, then walked away, mentally crossing ‘hover car’ off her list with frustration. That left a zip board. What the cabbie had said about the twisted currents around the island nagged at her, but she didn’t have a choice. She’d figure it out when she got that far. She had to get a zipboard first.

Finding a store that sold one was easy enough, and the Walking Girl entered the first one she came across. Inside, the walls were lined with different models. Generally they all looked the same, but on closer inspection she could see how each differed from the other. Some were thin and compact, some were larger, obviously meant for two binomes. Some were tricked out with lights and speakers, while others were made out of exotic materials, like wood or dead web creature skin.

The Walking Girl shivered at the sight of the web creature skin as it picked at a memory she didn’t want, and she was grateful when the owner of the shop chose that nano to enter the room.

“You need any help?” The orange-skinned sprite asked. He had an easy way about him, like someone who had found their groove in life and was happily coasting along in it. The Walking Girl was both envious and intrigued, and, had she not been on a mission, she might have asked him on how he’d gotten that way.

“I need a zipboard.” She said instead.

The man smiled. “Yeah? Well this is the place!” He said as he gestured proudly around the small, yet well-stocked shop. “Looking for anything in particular?”

This question caught the girl by surprise. “One that...flies?”

The store owner laughed and ran his hand through his thick, curly hair. “I see this is your first time doing this. My name’s Greg, by the way.” He said as he held out his hand.

The Walking Girl tentatively took it, but didn’t offer her name in return. “I just need one that flies.”

Greg didn’t miss a beat. “The good news is that they all do. Which one you get depends on what you want to do with it. If you’re just scooting around town and don’t plan on going up farther than you can afford to fall, any’ll do.” 

If the oddness of his customer was throwing him off, he wasn’t showing it. She liked that. “I need to go over water.”

The man stroked his chin. “Ah… To do that safely you’ll need a more powerful board. How far out do you plan to go?”

“Lost Angles.”

Greg’s eyebrows went up and he paused to process this. “Okay...well now that’s an entirely different thing completely. Getting across water isn’t the problem there. Lost Angles is a twisted warp zone that only pros and crazy people attempt to ride. People say it’s a rush, but you can easily get killed, no matter how good you are. Definitely not starter material.”

The Walking Girl hadn’t considered what she’d do once she got to the other side of the bridge, but now she realized that she’d have to stay on the board once she got there, lest she get devoured by nulls.

“Do you have a board that is good for going through Lost Angles?”

The store owner stared at her with almost pleading concern. Then, once he’d apparently realized he wasn’t going to change her mind, he walked over to the wall behind the cashier counter and pointed to several, heavy-duty boards above him. 

“To have any chance of surviving Lost Angles, you’d need one of these. They come with board-mounted boots that’ll keep you on the board when the warps throw you upside-down, which will happen. They also have souped up engines and state-of-the-art gyroscopic technology to give you the best chance of staying upright.”

The Walking Girl smiled, pleased. She would get one of these. “How many credits is that?”

“For one of these monsters, prices start at 5k credits, although this one is on sale for 3.7k.”

“‘K’?”

“Thousand.”

Her heart sank. She didn’t really know how things were priced, but she did know that various small sundries cost anywhere from 5 to 10 credits. That meant 3,700 was a lot . “Can I borrow it?”

“I rent standard boards for 20 cred a day, but those are locked to stay over the platter. They won’t get you to Lost Angles.”

Greg must have noticed how upset his customer was getting, or was being unknowingly infected by the girl herself, because he came over and gave her a well-meaning pat on the shoulder. “Look, maybe this is a blessing in disguise. It sounds like you’ve never been on a board in your life. If you could actually afford that thing, you’d essentially be deleting yourself. Why don’t you get a starter board and work your way up? I could rent you a standard.”

He stepped back suddenly and shivered. “Whoa, sorry. Got a weird vibe there.”

The Walking Girl was doing everything she could to keep her panic from leaking out, but it was a losing game. “I’m sorry, I have to go. Thank you for your time.” she recited and walked out the door. 

She knew she was being rude. She knew the man was just trying to help. She wanted to talk to him more, but as usual, she couldn’t, and the Walking Girl furiously stormed around Kitts sector in frustration. Not only was being unable to truly join society a perpetual thorn in her side, now it fueled a far greater, more immediate problem.

In order to get the ridiculous number of credits she needed to get safe passage (or as safe a passage as anyone could hope for) to the Fire, she’d have to get a job, and jobs involved...people. 

Not only that, but in her early days of living here, the Walking Girl had found that getting almost anything official required a scan of a person’s PID. As a virus in hiding, that was absolutely not something she could allow to happen. The only reason she even had one was because-

Her mind locked.

Fine, whatever , she hissed at it. The long and short of it was she couldn’t just get a job anywhere. She’d need to look somewhere where morals blurred and the less reputable were mostly ignored. She knew just the place.

Chapter Text

Getty Prime was a paradox to the Walking Girl, as interesting as it was dangerous, making it at once the best yet worst place to roam. After Lost Angles, Getty Prime was the most chaotic place in Mainframe, contrary to proclamations of the opposite by its de-facto leader, Megabyte. 

Compared to the bright, sunny calmness of Kitts, or the sleek shine of Wall Street, the industrial Getty was dark, cold and grim. Any number of illicit people and things lurked within its shadows, the Walking Girl included at first when she’d first crash-landed here. The sprawl of drab, grey buildings girded by a latticework of pipes, wires, and debris-filled corridors made for the perfect place for a fugitive to hide, but once she was strong enough to walk, she’d left. Anyone with any sense would have done the same. And yet, when she inevitably grew bored of everywhere else, she’d somehow wind up here.

Today, however, the Walking Girl Was here with a purpose, headed for an eatery she’d passed dozens of times before. It sat all the way at the bottom level of GP, level 31, in the darkest corner of the darkest corner, which made the pink neon lights spelling out Al’s Wait & Eat stand out all the more. 

Now outside it, the Walking Girl steeled herself as she replayed what she planned to say through her head a few more times. Then she let her mind go blank, and she entered the bar. 

Inside she was inundated with so many new sights and feelings that she had to pause to process it all. It was dark, dingy, and almost oppressively gray, but something sparkled within it, and she soon realized it was in the bar’s inhabitants. Their auras were so different from those of the world above, and even from each other. She wanted to study them all. 

If she could pull this off, she might get the chance.

With renewed purpose, the Walking Girl strode up to the counter where a one binome with a serving hat lazed at the register, a toothpick hanging from his lips.

“I would like to work here.” She stated boldly.

The binome looked up at her with vague interest. “You wanna work here?” He asked in a slow drawl. “I dunno. Not much work tah do here.”

“I could clean dishes.”

“We don’t use dishes.”

“I could clean the bar?”

“We don’t clean the bar.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

“Sorry, no. Look, you look like a nice kid, but go somewheres else.”

The Walking Girl felt her desperation start to rise, but when she was about to suppress it to keep from infecting the binome, she had a crazy, unspeakable idea. 

“Please? It really needs to be here.” She said, purposely focusing her emotions on the cashier.

This time the binome seemed to actually consider her request. “Ah...well, I could ask Al… Hey Al! This sprite wants a job!”

“WHAT?” shouted someone from the kitchen.

The cashier shook his head as if he’d expected nothing less from his boss. Then he looked as if he’d remembered something. “Hey Jerry! Come’re!”

A pink-clad binome on rollerblades slid over with a tray in hand. “Already have another order for me? That’s fast. Last one was only 50 nanos ago. Who’s this?” 

“Din you say you wanted some nights off to do somethin?”

“Well yes, but I didn’t want to leave you short-handed, not with all Al has done for me.”

The cashier turned to the Walking Girl. “Wanna work nights? It’s all night. Here. Not a good place for a sprite, but that's what I got.”

The Walking Girl lit up immediately. “Yes! Yes I can! Very much so!”

She’d left her emotions open, and her joy must have washed over the two, for they both smiled back at her in return. The cashier looked almost confused that he’d done so, but didn’t seem to care.

“I gotta ask, tho. Why you wanna work here so bad?”

The Walking Girl paused. This was the first time she’d been able to have a conversation without having to guard her feelings, and she doubted that anyone here was going to judge her. She pointed to her PID. “...I’m….here illegally.”

Both nodded knowingly and the cashier gave a short laugh. “Ha ha. Say no more. Unda the table it is. Jerry, let me know what nights you want off, I’ll give ‘em to the kid.”

Jerry looked delighted. “Oh this is wonderful, I can’t tell you! Thank you so much, uh… What’s your name?”

It was at that moment that the Walking Girl realized that, now that she was actually going to be Part of Society, “The Walking Girl” was not going to cut it anymore. When she went to think of one, her true name presented itself automatically, as if waiting for the chance, but she hesitated to claim it. It was loaded with trauma, but part of her longed to hear herself called it again. She made a compromise, and took only a piece.

“Fae. My name is Fae.”

The rollerblader clapped his hands. “Oh what a cute name! Do you know anything about waiting tables?”

“Oh, no, I don’t. Is it hard? Do I need those?” Fae asked, pointing at the waiter’s skates.

He laughed. “No, I was kidding, really. Not much to waiting tables. Just take the food and give it to the customer. Done! And no, you don’t need these. I just like the practice.”

“For what?”

“Skating, silly! I’m part of a group that puts on a wild show. Now I’ll actually get to try out for the more intense routines! Never had the time before! Oh Frank, this is going to be so great!” He said to the cashier, then turned back to the girl. “I know this is short notice, but can you take tonight? Big tryouts tonight!”

If Fae hadn’t already been an empath, she was sure she would have felt his happiness anyway. She’d already done a good thing for someone, and it was beyond exciting. “Yes! Yes I can!”

“Now that we’s got all that cleared up,” Frank cut in, “I can pay you like….uh… twelve microseconds times seven credits… 84 credits a night.”

Fae’s face fell. Yet another thing she hadn’t factored in. At this rate, it would take her milliseconds to get enough to get a board, and by then…

“Hey, that’s good money!” She heard Frank say, and she realized once again she’d left her gate open.

“Oh! No, I’m sorry, I am grateful. I’m just desperate to get a zipboard that can get me to Lost Angles as quickly as possible. No taxi will take me, and the man at the zipboard store said that  one that will get me there will cost 3.7k credits.”

Jerry’s mouth fell open. “You want to go to Lost Angles ? Wow, someone’s a thrill seeker!”

Frank grunted. “3.7k credits, huh? You can getta used one for a fraction of dat. All you reallys need tah fly LA is one with the boots on it.”

“And faster doesn’t mean better in LA.” Jerry added. “You have to take your time, or boom! Straight into the Energy Sea!” He said, throwing his arms out for effect, and in a testament to his skill as a waiter, the tray and drink stayed firmly balanced in his outstretched hand.

“Yous ever rid one before?” Frank asked the girl directly.

Fae glanced down at the floor to the left. “Well...no.”

“Are you serious ? You can’t go from never riding to Lost Angles!” Jerry said with a gasp. “Girl, you’ll delete! Tell you what. I have an old Skimmer 3000. If you want to, you can practice on that. It doesn't have holds for boots, so no going to LA on it, and it’s a bit bumpy, but if you can get along in that, you should have no problem on a better board.”

Without thinking, Fae grabbed the binome and squeezed him. “Oh thank you! Thank you so much!”

This time her burst of joy filled the whole bar, and she could hear some good-natured chuckling coming from the booths behind her. It wasn’t like standing in the Fire’s light, but being able to feel her own heart was a thrill she’d never considered before.

The rollerblader himself looked dazed. “Oh my! You keep that up, you might make me switch teams!” He said with a giggle.

Fae had no idea what that meant, but it didn’t matter. She was one step closer to where she needed to go.

Chapter Text

It was almost time for her first shift. Fae hopped from one foot to the other, restless more from excitement than nerves. This would be her first time as part of Society, and as she spent the day monitoring the Fire, it became more and more clear to her how much that meant. 

After the night she’d spent on the bridge straining for even the slightest twitch of the Fire, Fae had become so attuned to her that, with some effort, she could feel her from a less conspicuous spot in Kitts. It was so much more a relaxing spot that Fae had eventually found herself talking to her guiding light, of her thoughts, her dreams, her new experiences in the world. But most of all, she told the Fire of how she was about to become Somebody, with a Name.

Now she stood by the counter, waiting for that nano to arrive as Jerry skated towards her.

“Okay, sweetheart, you’re up and I’m off! Wish me luck!” He said as he passed his tray to her.

“Good luck!” Fae chirped. It was such a small, but honest interaction, and it whet her appetite for more. She was ready.

It was 20:00 and the dinner “rush” was just winding down, but there were still a number of interesting subjects here to study. Fae took a profile of each through the ether, and found the exterior didn’t always match the interior. While some were as mean as they looked, others were only acting tough to get through the night. Some were bitter and disillusioned with life. Others were rolling through it as it came. Too many were suffering.

She wanted to help.

Cautiously Fae opened her emotions to transmit as she had before. Doing so still made her uneasy. Infecting others was bad. Viruses infected people and viruses were bad. But what if infecting helped someone? Wouldn’t that be good? Something inside her begged her to try. 

Fae bit her lip. Then she closed her eyes and focused on what she wanted to project.

I am happy. I am happy the Fire lives. I am happy I am free! I am happy that I have a Name and a Place! I have a Name! 

She took a deep breath, then exhaled.

Be happy with me.

The tension in the room relaxed, and the heaviness lifted, just a bit. A man who had been staring at his drink looked up. A one that hadn’t been eating suddenly started to. The murmur of conversation grew. Someone chuckled. The change was small but real, and Fae was thrilled. She could use her powers to soothe these battered souls, if only for a few micros. Finally she had something truly Useful to Give, and she gave it freely.

They tipped her well for it, too, whether they understood why or not. 

It was tipping itself that confused Fae. The first time she’d seen money left behind she’d run after the customer to give it back, but once she understood that it was for her, her excitement grew. If she got “tips” at this rate, she could afford a used, energy sea-worthy board by the end of next millisecond. Now she just had to find someone willing to sell one. 

There was a table of four dataforms that had been there all night and seemed ready to stay there all night. They were a bit rough, but after careful observation Fae decided they were the perfect target. Around 06:00 work finally lulled enough for her to take a break. It was time to move on to the next phase of her plan. 

“How is everything here?” Fae asked as she approached them, projecting her earnestness ahead of her. 

At first they merely nodded, but then a zero with a short stubble engaged her directly. “You new here?” 

Fae smiled. She was in.

“Yes, actually. I just started tonight. Working my way towards buying a zipboard.”

“You ride?” Asked a one wearing the suggestion of a black leather jacket.

“I’m just learning, but eventually I want to ride Lost Angles.”

That got their attention, and immediately they inundated the girl with their opinions on which board was best and regaled her with unsettling tales of those who’d tried and failed to ride Lost Angles.

Fae beamed as she drank it in. She was with People!

At last a purple-skinned sprite with floating dreads asked her the inevitable question. “So why do you want to ride Lost Angles? Someone dare you?”

She thought about making something up, but she was too curious about how these hardened, ethically gray individuals would react to the truth. 

“I want to see Hexadecimal.” The girl stated matter-of-factly. 

The scruffy zero choked on an ionion ring and a one with a checked shirt spat out his drink, but Leather Jacket and Dreads didn’t seem fazed at all. If anything, Dreads seemed more interested than he had been all night. 

“You what? Why? ” Scruffy asked.

“Do you know her?” Fae asked, excited.

“Everyone knows her. You mean like, personally? Frag no!”

“If I had to choose between being caught by a virus, I’ll take Megs over Hex any day.” Said Checkered Shirt. The zero nodded in agreement.

Fae was confused. “Why? Doesn’t Megabyte enslave people?”

“Yeah, but at least you know what to expect with him. Hex is .BAT-shift insane .”

The words resonated uncomfortably in the back of her mind. She frowned. “She’s not insane, she just does things people don’t understand.” 

“You mean like when she turned everyone to stone just to mess with Megabyte?”

“We all got stoned that day,” Dreads said, prompting a low chuckle from Leather Jacket.

Fae hadn’t been here to experience that. Would it have bothered her if she had? “Did it hurt?”

Scruffy paused. “Well, no, but, like, that wasn’t cool.”

“So how’d it get fixed?” She asked.

“Oh, Bob went over there and did something. Thank the user for Bob, I swear.” Checkers answered.

“Got to admit, though. Seeing that slow wave of things turning to stone was pretty metal.” Said Leather Jacket. 

“I got the day off, too,” added Dreads.

Scruffy shot them a dirty look. “That wasn’t funny. I was scared shiftless!”

“We know. It was hilarious.” Leather answered. Fae decided she liked him.

“Hey!” Frank called from across the room. “Your shift’s up, and yous got tomorrow off.”

Fae turned to Jerry as he skated in. “Wait, do you usually work all mill?”

“Oh no! Usually the night shift is dead enough for Frank to handle on his own, but he needs help on the millends like this. And midmil, when we have the midnight-cycle special. So that’s like…” Jerry paused to count on his digit-less hand. “Three night modes. So next time we need you is mid-cycle. Oh! Just a nano.”

The rollerblader disappeared out the door as Frank counted out the night’s pay. 

“Okay back!” Jerry announced as he popped back in with a large round disk in his hands. “Here’s my old board. I have off tomorrow night-cycle, so I can show you how to use it if you want. The data dump is a great place to practice.”

“Oh! Thank you!” Fae said as she took the disk gratefully. “And I’d love that.” she added with a peck on his flat metal cheek. 

Jerry blushed. “Oh my! Well, you’re certainly welcome! Come by the dump by…is 22:00 good? Do you know where the dump is?”

The girl nodded yes to both with a smile.

“Here’s ya pay with the tips. 105 credits. Never seen these guys tip so much.” Frank said as he placed a plastic card in her hand. “I figures you don’t have your own card, what with being illegals and all, so here ya go. Better than carrying a pile of credits around. Don’t lose it. Imma put all your monies on there, so put it in your…uh…yous gots no pockets. Or clothes. Huh. Neveh noticed that before... Waits here.”

Frank disappeared into the back room. A familiar “WHAT?” rang out, and then after a few nanos he came back with a long black coat and a black hat.

“Here. Some sprite left this behind and neveh came back for it. And here’s a hat. We haves too many of them. Some band came in here and lefts them all.” He said as he handed them to her.

Fae eagerly put them on. The coat was so big on her that it hung on her like a tent, but she liked it that way. It was like a portable hiding spot that smelled like chips. Then she looked at the knit hat and saw it had something written on it. “‘Toque’?”

Frank pointed to the hat.

“That’s what that is.”

“The hat has the word ‘hat’ on it?”

“Yeps.”

Fae shrugged and put it on. Then she put her credit card in a small, zippered pocket on the inside of the coat. Real Clothes and real Money! She was becoming more a real person by the nano!

“All right, now gets outta heres.” Frank said as he waved her towards the door.

“Wait, darling! Table nine left you something!” Jerry said as he skated after her, then he handed her a folded napkin. Inside was 50 credits and a hastily scrawled message:

“For your zipboard. Good luck. You’re going to need it.”

Chapter Text

“They are not like humans. They are pure evil. I am taking a monster which harms humans, a being worthy of naught but extermination, and using it for human benefit. What fault is there in that?”

- Nanase, ‘Natsume Yuujinchou’

---

“I didn’t do anything! I didn’t do anything!” The little virus cried as she was dragged down another cold, seemingly endless hallway. Two Guardians towered over her on either side, their calming blue uniforms belying the malice she sensed beneath them.

“You’re a virus. That’s enough,” replied the Guardian to her left.

“But that’s not fair!” She said as she struggled against her restraints. Then she tried to dig her heels into the floor, but the Guardians simply yanked her forward. 

One Guardian looked over at the other. “Why do you keep talking to it, Evans?”

“Not sure.” Officer Evans replied.

“I guess it’s still got a little power left in it.” The first Guardian said as she jabbed the girl with an electric prod. “Watch yourself,” she said over the girl’s scream. “These types can get into your head. You did you get your Guardian code updated, didn’t you?”

“Not recently…” Evans replied guiltily.

The senior Guardian stopped and sighed, then waited as Evans removed his icon and placed it in her waiting hand.

“Now hold this, will you?” She said as she shoved the girl’s other wrist into Evan’s hand. “And no matter what you feel, do not let it go, or so help me I will eject you into the web.”

As the girl watched, the senior took off her own icon and held it up to his, backs facing each other. They glowed as light transferred between the two, and as it did, the girl felt the presence of the man holding her slip away. A chill ran through her. She’d thought the senior’s lack of presence was simply how she was, but now the man was just as hidden. Two blurry holes where people should be.

The process finished, the Guardian replaced her icon, grabbed the girl’s wrist back, and handed the man’s icon back to him with an air of exasperation. “Get your spammed patches, Evans. I shouldn’t have to keep telling you this. Now move it. We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Alright, Rush, alright…” The man muttered as they resumed dragging the girl down the hall.

Eventually they came to a large, circular room. It was as stark and cold as the rest, but this one seethed with fear, hatred, and death. The girl yanked back as hard as she could as it burned her senses. Her struggling grew frantic.

“Put it in the restraints.” Rush said.

“You’re going to have to adjust it first. It’s pretty small.”

Officer Rush sighed again and tapped a few keys into the sole console in the room. On the far side of the room, an ominous-looking machine started to move.

It was there that miasma radiated, the girl realized. No, it was past that, beyond a window in the wall. The light that crackled and hissed behind it promised violence, and as the Guardians dragged her closer, it clawed at her sanity.

“No! No! Not in there!” She screamed as she thrashed wildly against them. “I can’t! I won’t be a virus! Stop! Stop!-“ 

Her screams broke down into mindless sobs as they shoved her wrists and ankles into the heavy restraints, spreading her body wide.

“Oh, don’t worry, little virus. You’re not going to go in the big, bad deletion chamber. We have a special assignment for you.” Officer Rush said with a dark smile. With the tap of a few more keys, the restraining mechanism moved away from the door and turned so the girl was facing her captors.

The words barely registered. She was away from the window. She was not going in the room. That was all that mattered. She grew dizzy with relief. Her vision dimmed, their voices muffled, her body went slack with exhaustion. If she was lucky she would fall unconsciousness, but to her despair she hung just above the edge of it.

What are you going to do to me? The girl tried to ask through the blur, but her mouth wouldn’t move. The Guardians were saying something, but she couldn’t hear them over the ringing in her ears until it subsided.

“...amazing we actually got one alive, although we could still lose it during the limiting process.” She heard the one called ‘Rush’ say. The other one, ‘Evans’ looked uncertain as he studied his tablet.

“But why so many? Four Grade-Five, in-code locks and two Grade-Five, in-code one-way gates? This isn’t a super virus. Look at it!”

Officer Rush looked annoyed. “Because it’s an etheric virus!”

“I can read, Rush.”

“Then why are you asking me this? You know what they’re capable of, right?”

“They’re energy parasites that fall apart if the wind blows too hard.” Evans said with a frustrated huff.

“And?”

“And? What else is there to know?”

Now the girl fought to stay awake. They were talking about her. Maybe if they said why they thought she was dangerous, she could correct them and go home.

Officer Rush rolled her eyes and looked at her keytool. “What is taking him so long?” She muttered. Then she looked back to Evans. “Yes, they’re usually just sentient puffs of energy that fragment out on their own. That’s why they’re rare, and why we have to pay Codemasters a shift-ton of units to get them.”

She paused to jab a finger at the girl. “That thing was not cheap.”

Evans crossed his arms. “Then why bother going after them if they don’t even last long?”

“Because sometimes they do last long, and if one of them lasts long enough to learn how to control their powers? That’s a problem. If one of those forms a parasitic bond with a code-stable virus? Bigger problem. Etherics can devour entire systems if they have a host to keep their code together, so if one forms a parasitic bond with a powerful, code-stable virus? That’s a really big problem.”

Evans looked thoughtful. “What happens if they merge?” He asked.

“Not much.” Rush replied casually as she checked her keytool again. “Etherics are so unstable that they just get erased. The new virus wouldn’t get anything besides whatever energy the thing was carrying, if it upgraded at all. Merging with them is pointless.”

“Well that’s something, at least. ”

“No, its not, because even though they can’t merge, they can enter symbiosis.” The Guardian said as she glanced at the console. “They’re one of the few that can, and if one actually managed to pull that off with a powerful, code-stable virus? Well…”

She paused.

“User help us all.”

The girl’s mouth dropped open. She was powerful? No, not now, but she could be. Was that why they’d taken her away? But that wasn’t fair! How could she help being possibly bad? Anyone could be possibly bad!

Evans exhaled. “Okay, that explains the four full locks, but why two gateways, and why are they in-code?”

“Because their bodies aren’t stable enough to implant physical limiters onto. As for the gateways, if we lock this thing up completely, we can’t use it. The gateway commands let us control its ability to absorb and release energy without it being able to. One gate for energy in. One gate for energy out. Got all that?”

The girl’s anxiety spiked even higher. Use her? For what?

The door to the main room slid open, and a thin man with flaming red hair walked briskly into the room. 

Officer Rush glared at him. “You’re late, Vector.”

“Yes, well, if you Guardians would get over yourselves and hire more hackers, I wouldn’t be spread so thin.” The man said as he sat down. “I’m assuming you scanned her already?”

It was finally Officer Rush’s turn to look embarrassed, and she bent over the man to type something in while the man looked on smugly. “Thought as much.”

“Shut up.”

The girl heard something whirl above head, and she looked up to see a bar of light coming down towards her. She braced herself as it passed over her body, but when all it did was tingle, she exhaled with relief. 

The thin man named ‘Vector’ made a low whistle as symbols poured into a large screen in front of him. “Wow…a viral Etheric. Must've broken off some fragmenting super virus. Man that’s some pretty code. Almost a shame to mess it up. Well, let's start with the meta data.”

For what seemed an eternity, the man tapped on his computer, mumbling things as he went. Then he placed a small disk into a slot beside it. It glowed slightly, and when it dulled, the man handed it off to Officer Rush.

“Here. Now you’re an official resident of the Super Computer, number 26.” She said as she attached the white and black disk to the girl’s chest. 

There it spun a few times, and as the girl looked on in horror, it firmly implanted itself into her skin. “What is that? Get it off! Get it off!” she squeaked out, finally remembering how to speak.

“Oh stop it, it’s just an icon. Everyone has one.” Officer Rush said with a sneer as she pointed to her own black and gold one. 

This didn’t make her feel any better. “Does this mean I’m not a virus anymore now? Can I go home?”

“Dear User, now I’m talking to it. No, you’re still a virus, but unlike the rest of your kind, you’re actually going to be useful. Be honoured.”

Vector looked up from his screen. “Can we get on with this? I have other things to do and this is a complicated procedure.”

“Fine. But if it fragments, it’s coming out of your pay.”

“I know what I’m doing.” He said as he pushed a button next to the console. 

Suddenly the girl felt as if she was lit up from the inside out. It didn’t feel bad, but it didn’t feel good either. 

The man with the red hair looked at her then, really looked at her, as if she was a living, processing thing, and she could see sadness in his eyes. “Sorry little critter, but this is going to hurt.”

With a sigh he began typing in earnest, and the girl shrieked in agony as her code twisted and snapped-

“No! No no no stop! Stop! S-stop!”

Her screams echoed back at her. She was cold. There was dirt….where?

Fae opened her eyes, but it took a few whole nanos before she could process that she was in her little cave on Floating Point. She clawed at the icon embedded in her chest, then she buried her head in her hands.

“Why now? Why is this coming back now?” she cried angrily at her processor as she smacked her head. “You always kept these thoughts out and erased everything else, even stuff I wanted. Why are you stopping now, when I’m finally beginning to feel happy?”

Fae rubbed the tears away from her eyes with the sleeve of her new old jacket. 

“It’s because I’m finally beginning to feel anything again…isn’t it?” she murmured to herself softly.

Suddenly she wanted out of this small, dark place. It was still daylight, and the Guardian was bound to be out on patrol, but thanks to Frank, she now she had a disguise. She stuffed her hair under her hat, and after a quick glance around, she crept out into the bushes.

Fae didn’t have a timepiece, but she could tell by the shadows that it was shortly before midday-cycle. It was still a long time away from when she’d planned to meet Jerry at the dump, but she didn’t want to be alone right now.

She didn’t have to be.

Fae closed her eyes and searched hopefully for the Fire, but she still couldn’t feel her from here. With more practice she hoped to soon, so she could stay with the Fire even if she was forced to hide. Perhaps the Fire would keep her nightmares at bay in return. In the meantime, however, the girl would have to move closer to the bridge.

On shaky legs the Fae picked her way down the floating islands until she felt a solid link to the Fire, and was pleased to find it was further back than where she’d sat the day-cycle before. She got as comfortable as she could in her new spot, and she gazed out across the bridge to the island beyond. Then she closed her eyes.

Flashbacks erupted in the darkness. The door with the window. The malice of the Guardians. The look of sadness on the hacker’s face before he broke her apart.

Her eyes snapped open.

She pulled at her hair under her cap, then closed her eyes and tried again. This time she poured even more energy into her focus, but the scenes played so vividly that she couldn’t sense anything else.

Fae dug her nail-less fingers into her palms.

“Concentrate on the Fire,” she murmured anxiously. “Concentrate on the Fire.”

On the Fire. On the future. On her coat and her money card and her zip-board. On finally crossing the bridge and shielding the Fire from the torment of the Guardians. She could do it. She just needed to push a little bit more.

Fae grit her teeth and dove in. Memories rushed at her, demanding to be seen, but she clawed her way through them until she found the pure pulse of colour she was looking for. She curled up around her presence, letting the Fire’s light and heat wash over her until her ghosts died away.

To the girl’s relief, the Fire was much more lively today. Her emotions still didn’t shift as fluidly as they had before, but they moved far better than they had during Fae’s first desperate vigil. 

Green….Light Green! Green…….Yellow, Green……Red….Green…..

What are you thinking about today? Fae asked her, even though she knew the Fire would neither hear nor answer her. It was enough to just to be near, and as she watched the Fire’s colors shift back and forth on the horizon of her mind, she finally felt at peace.

Chapter Text

Fae hung close to the Fire for the rest of the day-cycle, slowly moving further away until she was able to sense her from halfway across Floating Point sector. At this rate, she would be able to monitor her from her cave in the next millisecond or so, if she didn’t get over to Lost Angles first. 

That was the only thing she thought about. Fae was determined that that be the only thing she thought about. It had been hard to keep the visions out at first, but eventually she’d managed to reactivate some semblance of the blank state that had protected her for seconds. But that created a new problem, how to stay detached yet still interact with Jerry in a meaningful way at Pearson’s Dump. 

“Stupid nightmares.” Fae muttered as she trekked to the other side of the platter. She had been looking forward to her night out since they’d agreed on a time and didn’t think one little nap would spoil it. Now she knew better. The girl decided then and there to never go into sleep mode again.

But she knew it was too late. The secret that had long driven the Walking Girl to keep her mind empty and her body in motion was unraveling. There was no going back.

The girl balled up her fists and instinctively sought out the Fire before realizing she was far too far away.

What would the Fire do?

“She’d burn it down. She’d burn it all down.” The little virus murmured to herself. A hint of a mischievous smile twitched at the corners of her lips. Then it was gone.

Did she just prove the Guardians right? No, wanting to burn it all down was a natural reaction, wasn’t it? It wasn’t like she was going to. Or could.

But what if she could do it?

Fae looked at her hands.

An “etheric” virus.

The ether, as she knew it, was the space where all unseen things resided, like vibrations, signals, and emotions. It had taken Fae forever to figure out she was the only one that could sense them, and then even longer to determine which things people could see and which ones they couldn’t. She already knew she was different that way. The only new information she’d gained on that front was the Official Name of what she was.

Far more disturbing was learning that she was little more than a cast-off ball of code and energy, as ephemeral as an eddy in the wake of a passing ship. She wouldn’t even exist now if it hadn’t been for the Guardians’ unwanted intervention.

But she did still exist because of them. Even if they hadn’t done it for her benefit, should she be grateful all the same? 

The thought made her retch. No. She would much rather have blown away with her innocence intact than endure what survival had entailed. There was even the chance she could have survived on her own and grown powerful. 

Perhaps even catastrophically so.

Fae slowed down as her mind erupted with unfathomable possibilities. If she had that kind of power, she wouldn’t have to live in fear. She could destroy her enemies, punish her tormentors, and protect the friends she’d been forced to leave behind. She could blow up the Supercomputer! She could do anything. 

She was Fate.

The shape of her true name crystallized in sharp angles as a memory flashed behind her eyes too quick to grab. Blinding, agonizing glory. Her euphoria curdled into horror.

Oh no...

The girl stopped short on the busy sidewalk. A sprite ran into her, but she barely noticed.

The Guardians...were right. She would become a monster if given the chance. They'd taken a tremendous risk keeping her alive, but they'd held her in check. Now that she was free, it was just a matter of time. She was a virus, after all...

The girl stared up at the dark, circuited sky. She was the only creature standing still on this busy Baudway circuit, and as her vision blurred, the world whirled past her, leaving her behind. 

“I should never have survived.” She murmured softly as a tear slipped down her cheek. 

“Survived what? Hey honey, are you okay?”

Fae looked down to find Jerry staring up at her, clearly worried. “I’m sorry. I was remembering something. I’ve started remembering things. I don’t want to remember things…”

The binome patted her arm. “I’m sorry, hon. Memories can hurt. Believe me, I know… But you have to grab hold of the now, and that’s what we’re doing, right?”

She nodded. Jerry was right. She had to stay focused on the now, for the Fire’s sake. 

Fae wiped her face on the arm of her coat, and was pleased when it actually dried her instead of just pushing the water around like her bare skin did. Then she started walking again as Jerry rolled along beside her on his skates.

“Why did you choose the dump, anyway?” She asked him, eager to change the subject.

“I know, strange choice, right? But it’s the biggest, least populated place in Mainframe. Much less a chance of accidentally running into something. Plus, I figured you’d want the privacy,” he added with a knowing glance. “What with being a fugitive and all.”

Fae grew pale. “How, what makes you say that?”

“Um, you told Frank last night?”

“Oh. Right…”

“There, you see those lights up ahead? That's Old Man Pearson’s.” The binome said as he gestured to two tall floodlights a few blocks away. “We should get there in a few nanos. Oh, one quick warning, Old Man Pearson is one cranky binome. He won’t bother you if you don’t bother him, though.”

“Does he mind that we’re using his place for zip-boarding?”

“No, so long as you ask him first. I’ve been there dozens of times. He hasn’t said ‘no’ yet, except this one time something was going on with Megabyte.”

The conversation turned towards the comparatively lighter subject of Megabyte’s illicit activities. To Fae's relief, she found it was much harder to fall into a pit of despair when one had company, and by the time the two reached the dump, the girl's memories had finally retreated to the shadows

Chapter Text

Chapter 10 - Old Man Pearson

Old Man Pearson watched the scene unfolding within his vast piles of discarded components and digital waste. He didn’t like what he saw.

Though many knew now that he had once been a Code Master, few if any fully understood what that meant. 

The old binome glanced at the cup of tea on the table next to him. Where a normal person saw a cup, Old Man Pearson saw the code for a cup. He could actually see the cup itself well enough, but after years of grueling training, he reflexively saw what made it up as well, the lines of symbols hovering just over it in his mind’s eye. 

Such a thing should have been distracting, but because he’d gained the ability so gradually it was second nature. It served him well in picking out useful items to sell from the tons of junk he received everyday. People just thought he had a knack for it, but the real reason was far worse, and now it was trying to learn how to use a zipboard in front of him.

The former Code Master Talon knew exactly what he was looking at the instant he saw her. An etheric virus, registered to the Supercomputer, internally shackled by four intact Guardian grade-5, in-code locks, and two grade-5, in-code, one-way gates so corrupted that they resembled the programming equivalent of melted slag. The rest of her was so shot through with errors and web debris that it was amazing she still functioned, and there were even fresher wounds on top of that.

This girl had somehow managed to escape the VRU, and judging by what remained of her, that escape hadn't been pretty.

He grit his teeth.

There was a time when Talon couldn’t have cared less about the fate of a virus. After all, it had been his job to hunt them, and as a mercenary, whoever or whatever his client wanted, his client got. So long as the target was a virus, nothing else mattered. 

When the Guardians had launched their ironically-named “Viral Rehabilitation Unit”, they’d been content to use whatever young, inexperienced viruses they could catch themselves, but they soon found that most viral types were either unmanageable or had very little in the way of what they considered “useful”.

Despite that, eventually they’d collected a menagerie of captives for various tasks. For a while they’d been with that, but then they captured an etheric. Once they’d gotten a taste of what a truly “useful” virus could be, they’d wanted more, but the energy-consuming viruses were famously brittle, flighty, short-lived creatures.

And so the task had been given to the Code Masters. 

Even then there were few successful missions, but Talon had managed to catch one, once. He used his binome appearance to lull curious, unsuspecting prey into thinking he was harmless until it was too late, and eventually came to specialize in handling targets more likely to bolt than fight. 

Especially the young ones.

Talon had already caught quite a few for the VRU project when he’d been asked if he wanted to see what they were used for. Rather, he had lost an argument and was goaded into seeing what use a virus could possibly be. 

It’s been said that no Code Master has ever been seen within the Supercomputer, but that was because no Code Master is seen unless they want to be. Being a binome helped all the more. Where unusual dataforms like Lens stood out grotesquely against the norm, no one had looked twice at Talon made his way through the metal warren the Guardians called home.

At first he’d had little interest in what he saw, and as his contact explained the grand vision of the VRU, what each virus was, and what each was used for, his mind continued to drift off to other matters. Even seeing the imprisoned test subjects hadn’t moved him much.

But then came the demonstration.

The single etheric child he’d found was brought into a small room, where it was swiftly locked in place and wires attached to its small, shivering frame. Opposite it was another shackled virus, this one in terrible shape but obviously of once great potential. The two seemed to recognize each other. The etheric lost its mind. Even with its power so firmly locked up, Talon could still feel waves of blinding terror slice through him.

His contact was telling him something; about how using the etheric virus to drain the other virus’s energy instead of a standard energy sink was more efficient, more thorough, perhaps more satisfying, but Talon’s attention was arrested by the expressions of horror on the viruses themselves. A Guardian threw a switch, and the Code Master watched, numb, as one virus, no, one living creature was forced to delete a loved one, line by line, while both screamed for mercy.

Something snapped, and suddenly Talon couldn’t tell the difference between sprite or binome, virus or guardian. All he could sense now was what was alive and what wasn’t, and as he looked around again he saw not viruses, but people , locked in cages, strapped to walls, crying in pain. 

No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get that paradigm shift back into Pandora’s box. Unable to bear the truth of what he'd done, the once feared mercenary fell apart. Now all that remained was a broken, bitter man, buried within his chosen tomb of trash.

The former Talon clenched his small, metal hands as the memory of that night-cycle tore through him again. 

This girl hadn’t been there at the time, which meant the VRU had continued to collect new victims after he'd left. How she had been able to escape that maximum security prison, he didn’t know, but what he did know was they'd want her back. The fact that she was still here meant that either they hadn’t successfully located her yet, or they believed her to be deleted. If she was lucky, it was the second one.

Pearson wanted to leave it at that. The girl swaying cautiously on the zipboard was lucky. Ironically, the locks that still bound her had probably kept her from disintegrating during her escape, and were most likely what was keeping her together now. If she played it safe, she might actually have some semblance of a life.

The girl was casting furtive glances in his direction now, and even though the binome she was with appeared to be trying to reassure her, Pearson could tell it wasn’t working. He got up and went out the back of his shack where she couldn’t see him. Hopefully that would be enough to let her settle down and enjoy herself, but soon after, he could no longer hear their voices. 

Old Man Pearson came out from behind the hovel he called home. Sure enough, she had fled.

If she played it safe, she might have a life, but the truth was that even playing it safe might not be enough for such a high-priority target. There was only one real way to protect her, yet he hesitated to try it. The call he wanted to make could save her, but it could just as easily doom her. Still, he had to do something . He owed her that. 

He owed all of them.

Chapter Text

Good People

“Hey wait up !” Jerry called as he raced after the girl on his zipboard. “Not so fast! You're going to-” 

Fae veered into a wall. 

He brought his hand to his face with a sigh. “....crash.”

The girl’s zipboard lesson had been going so well, but once she’d noticed Old Man Pearson watching them she’d gotten weird, and shortly after that, she’d gotten gone. Fast . She probably would’ve made it to the other side of the platter by now if she hadn’t crashed.

“I told you to slow down!” Jerry cried with exasperation as he reached his fallen comrade. “What has gotten in to you?” 

Fae looked up at him, dazed, but not much worse for the wear, no doubt thanks to that ridiculously oversized coat she insisted on wearing. Hopefully he could say the same about his board. With a shake of his head he offered his hand. "Are you okay?"

Fae took it, but even as he pulled her up, she didn’t seem to notice he was there. Instead she cast about nervously, her anxiety palpable. 

Jerry put his hands on his hips. All her emotions were palpable. It was something he liked about her. Passion like that was hard to find. Still, too much of a good thing was a bad thing, and this was the second time he’d found her lost in it like this. It was beginning to worry him. 

He frowned and clicked his finger clamps in front of her face. “Faeeeeee! Mainframe to your brain, hellllloooooooo!”

Fae startled slightly, then stared at him, her eyes wide and haunted. “He was looking at me.” 

The binome furrowed his one brow. “Okaaaaaay, but how is this an emergency?”

The girl stared at him a nano more, then tried to get back on the board she’d just slammed into a wall. 

Jerry quickly grabbed her arm. “Yeah no, you’re taking a break. Hey, want to see something stunning? Move over onto one disk.” 

Before Fae could protest Jerry gently pushed her onto half of the zipboard. “Can’t usually ride double with a sprite, but you’re really light. What’s your secret?” He asked cheerfully.

Fae stiffened, the air tensed, but she didn’t reply. Jerry brushed it off.

“Okay fine, keep your secrets. My User you are random!” He tossed off. Her anxiety spiked and he swore inwardly. Everything was setting her off now. “Seriously, what’s going on with you?”

“Is being random bad?” She answered unexpectedly.

Jerry exhaled and laughed.

“Is that what all this is about? Hun, this was Getty Prime. Everyone here is random, especially Ol’ MP.” He said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “If you want to see random, wait until you meet my skating buddies. Hey, I should bring you over sometime! Although I have to warn you, they can get a little raunchy but- Oh web, what am I talking about? You work at Al’s. You know all this already.”

Fae still seemed unsettled, but her mood changed as he retracted the wheels of his skates into his shoes.

“You can do that?” She asked excitedly as he stepped on the other pad.

“Well yeah. I’m good on skates, but not good enough to use them on a zipboard, and I am not going to carry extra shoes with me.”

Jerry glanced at Fae’s feet as he stepped on his side of the board. Fae didn’t wear shoes. Wait, she didn't? He furrowed his one brow. Why didn't he not notice that before? He knew he’d noticed that before, so why…

“Jerry?”

“Huh? Oh wow, that was weird.” Jerry said as he positioned himself on the second half of the board. “Okay, just stay steady. Going uuuuup! ” He sang as they rose above the surrounding buildings.

“How come I couldn’t get it to go up this high?” Fae asked as she held onto the top of his head for stability.

“Because I set a height limit, silly! You don’t think I’m that irresponsible, do you?”

He felt a spark of confusion, then warmth. The jitter around her subsided, and he glanced up to find her looking around in awe.

“Wow…I’ve never been high up here before.” He heard her whisper as they coasted over the sector and he smiled with satisfaction. 

“This is my favorite place to sit and think,” he said as he landed on the roof of a tall building at the inner edge of the sector. “And practice. Probably not the smartest idea to do skate tricks up so high, but I don’t get hassled and I’d have to be going pretty fast to fly over the ledge wall. Perks of being short!”

Fae stepped off the board and went to the border wall. “It’s so pretty…” She breathed

Before them stretched the vast, sparkling wasteland of Getty Prime. 

Pinpoints of light twinkled from the tops of control towers and refinery trestles. Streetlights cut luminous grids through banks of factories and warehouses studded with monitors and blinking power sensors. The pulse of orange and red hazard lights from construction zones lit the steam rising from under-level pipes, the luminous haze accented by bursts of garish neon from the bars and nightclubs that seeded the levels below. 

It was bizarrely magical.

“I knew you’d like it! During the day it's all so drab and grey, but at night… I mean, Buadway is glittery too, but this feels more…” Jerry paused as he looked for the right word. “Real.”

He knew it didn’t make sense, but to his surprise Fae nodded in solemn agreement as she climbed up the ledge wall. At the top she sat down facing the skyline, her legs dangling out over the steep drop. Then she looked back at him, as if waiting for him to join her.

The top of the wall was up to his eye. 

Jerry made a face. 

“And how do I get up there?” He asked with mock sarcasm. 

Fae glanced from him to his zipboard, then hopped down and tried to pick him up.

Jerry laughed. “I was just kidding- oh! You’re strong!” He said as she managed to lift him halfway. He quickly scrambled up the rest, and once she was back up with him he patted her on the shoulder. “Aww, you didn’t have to do that! I was going to use the board.” 

She looked at him quietly. Jerry raised his brow. She was really looking at him, as if she’d never seen him before. He rubbed the back of his head. “Uhhh…well, this is the top of the building with the skating rink I perform at, although it has a lot of other things in it. Nightclubs, bars, the- uh, other nightclubs. You’re too young for that.”

Fae cocked her head. “How old are you?”

“One must never ask a lady her age!” He said, placing his hand over his chest with faux indignation. The girl looked confused. He sighed. “A little over five stages.”

Her gaze drifted away. “Oh. I’m at least seven...” 

Jerry ‘s eyebrow shot up. “Whaaaat? Well you don’t look it!”

At least, he was sure she didn’t look it. Even right next to her, Jerry still felt like he couldn’t quite see… what…huh. 

“Jerry, are you from this system?” He heard Fae ask and he snapped back.

“Oh, sorry! No, I’m from UNIX-88, one of the many UNIX systems!” Jerry replied with flourish. Then he sagged as he gazed at the orderly lines of the streetlights. Utilitarian light for utilitarian purposes. No excess. No waste. They reminded him of home. He hated and loved them for that. 

Jerry looked away and back at her. “You?”

“I'm not from here either.” Fae replied with similar melancholy.

“Oh, right, I guess I should have known that.” He said with a half-hearted chuckle. 

The air seemed to waver with apprehension 

“What do you mean?” She asked hesitantly.

“Well you’re obviously not registered here. Why else work at Al’s?”

Silence. He wasn’t surprised. 

“It’s okay, I understand. I started out the same way.” The binome said as he glanced down at his icon. “When I first got here, I wasn’t registered either. I hitched a ride over on an info packet when I heard this place was safe. Well, safer. But you know how it is. No registration, no work, no work, no money, ect.”

“But why couldn’t you get registered? You seem normal.” Fae asked.

Jerry laughed. “Me ? Hun, you clearly haven’t been paying attention!”

Fae looked confused, and with a twinge of guilt he realized she was serious. 

“Oh, uh, I thought-“ He stammered awkwardly, then fiddled with the zipper on his denim vest. “Yeah, I could have gotten registered, but then my metadata would’ve been on a list somewhere, and I didn’t want anyone knowing where I was. But as you know, most of the jobs in Getty are  suuuuuper shady, and I came here to get away from danger, not towards it, you know? So I was really lucky that someone pointed me to Al’s.”

He paused. “Now that I’m thinking about it, how did you end up there?” 

“I saw it while I was walking around and I liked how it felt. And I liked the sign.”

Jerry chuckled. “Yeah, that sounds like you...” Then he did a double take. “Wait, what do you mean you were walking around? No one just walks around Getty Prime. Well, not except for that crazy-” 

He stopped short and his eye widened. He had seen her before! “Hey! Are you the Wa-?”

“AND THEN WHAT HAPPENED?” Fae asked loudly

Jerry blinked as his train of thought fell into some foggy abyss. 

“Sorry, what was I…?”

“You went to Al’s and then what happened?” She asked with intensifying interest.

“Oh! Right, so eventually I got a tweaked PID thanks to connections I made, and now I work in a formal wear showroom in Baudway! It's an amazing place and I make way more credits, but I still work at Al’s to help him out. He’s a good guy and I owe him big. Deaf as Dell, though.”

Fae laughed. 

Jerry startled. It was strange to hear her laugh, good to! It was over all too quickly.

Her gaze grew distant. “I ran away too.” 

Jerry raised his brow in surprise. It was unusual for her to offer information. He tread carefully. “Yeah?”

The atmosphere changed, and suddenly he felt himself sinking into a deep pit.

“I come from a bad place, Jerry.” Fae answered in a voice unfamiliar to him. She seemed to age, shift. Invisible static danced across his skin. He rubbed his arms and shivered. 

“Wow, that just gave me the jaggies!”

In an instant the air went dead. Fae looked devastated. 

“Oh I’m so sorry!” She stammered. “I didn’t mean to!”

“Hey hey! Look, it’s okay! I just wasn’t expecting it! You should really consider theater!” 

She still looked stricken. Jerry put his hand on hers. “Look, I don’t mean to pry, but….are you not registered for the same reason I didn't want to be? Like…” He paused, then whispered. “Are there people after you?”

He wasn’t surprised when Fae didn’t answer, but now he couldn’t feel her either. The only hint he had was her struggle to keep a neutral face, and even that was hard for him to focus on. It was all incredibly unsettling. “Uh…are you okay?”

“Are you?” Fae answered anxiously.

“Well yeah! I’m just worried about you! Because usually I can feel this kind of…of…”

“Why did you run away?” 

Jerry blanked. He’d been thinking about something important, he was sure of it. “Huh, me? Well…”

He tried a little longer to remember what it was, but soon found himself staring off at the horizon. At the far edge of the sector loomed the dark silhouette of the Silicon Tor. A dangerous virus lived there, yet somehow Megabyte never registered as a real threat. The virus’s intent was indiscriminate; he wanted to control everyone.

It was oddly egalitarian. 

The binome sighed heavily. “I wasn’t wanted at home.”

“Why?” Fae asked, back to openly staring at him. 

Jerry smirked. Her absolute lack of self-awareness was strangely disarming, but this time he was hesitant to continue. It was a lot to tell someone he’d just met. 

She must have picked up on his nerves, for she drew back and looked away. “It’s okay. I don’t like to remember things either.” 

“It’s not that, it’s just…” Jerry stumbled. There was no point in hiding it, he knew. Even if she hadn’t figured it out by now, she was going to eventually. “Well… People weren’t too happy when I came out.”

Fae studied him. He froze. It was still hard to read her face. Was she upset? Had he misjudged? He used to be able to sense how she felt but for some reason he couldn’t anymore-

“Of what?”

“Huh?”

“Came out of what?”

The binome snorted, he burst out laughing. “Oh my User, Fae, you scared me! I swear, you say the funniest things!”

She looked confused. At least he could tell now.

“You know… ‘come out of the package’?” He offered.

She looked even more confused. “Is that…code for something?”

“Oh! Lol I’m sorry, I guess you probably wouldn't know that phrase either, huh? It means that you’ve admitted you’re parallel.” He said, then paused. “You do know what it means to be parry, right”

Fae slowly shook her head. Jerry put his hand to his face. “User, where have you been? ‘Parry’ means I fall in love with people the same gender code as me. You… please tell me you know what GC is.”

The girl frowned, clearly getting frustrated. “I think so, but what does that have to do with anything? I don’t get it!”

“Because you’re not supposed to love people of the same GC, duh!” Jerry replied sarcastically. Then he slapped his hand over his mouth.

His carefree facade had cracked, and that made him even angrier. It wasn’t supposed to be a facade! It was who he was, who he was supposed to be! But megacycles of hatred, disgust and betrayal had hollowed him out, and then filled him back in with things he didn’t want. 

Now he wasn’t sure if he was himself, or someone else playing who he still wanted to be.

He noticed Fae was digging her fingernails into the concrete and he bit his lip. "Hey, I hope that didn’t sound mean, it's just… Okay, do you know what gender is?”

Fae looked as if she was running through her entire database for the answer, and when she gave it, it was in awkward starts and stops.

“Isn’t gender like… Not like a format, but… if you’re a one or a zero, or have hair or no hair? Or what type of hair? Like, a style of person?”

The binome’s face softened. She had no idea what it was, but then again, maybe she had a better idea than everyone else. “A style of person, huh? I like that. I like that a lot.”

The girl smiled too, clearly pleased with herself. “So your system doesn’t like it if you love people like you? But isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?”

Jerry looked down at the streets below, his eye tracing the path of an errant null. He hadn’t spoken about this in a long time, if ever. He hadn’t needed to. There was an open understanding amongst the para community, and he was hesitant to discuss it with those who didn’t have code in the game. It wasn’t safe, even in such a tolerant system as Mainframe. Outsiders came in all the time. One never knew. 

But Fae’s reaction to everything was so weirdly wholesome, and somehow he felt like they were in the same boat. He decided to keep going. 

“You’d think so, right? And besides, why does anyone even care? But some people say being para is bad, and forget inter-format, or inter-format para, or just anything that isn’t normal. They’ll shut you out of everything, disown you, beat you up. Some people…”

The fire left his voice. “Some people will even try to delete you for it...”

The air around them smoldered, then crackled with rage, and the girl was suddenly on her feet.

“That’s stupid! This is stupid! This is all stupid!” She shouted angrily as she gestured wildly. “We’re not hurting anyone!, we’re just trying to live! We’re just people!”  

Her shoulders sagged. “We’re just people, Jerry… We shouldn’t have to hide to stay alive.”

Jerry stared up at her, completely taken off guard. “Wait, what? You’re para too?” 

“I don’t know and I don’t care. People should love people, not hair, or tallness, or code, or whatever. It doesn’t matter.” 

He chuckled. He didn’t know why. Was it relief? Amusement at her absurdity? Comfort in it? She was hiding something, he knew, but he always lost his train of thought when he tried to think about it. Maybe it was because she was right. It didn’t matter. People were just people. They should be taken as they were. The rest didn’t matter.

Fae plopped down next to him. “I’m sorry, Jerry… I just…” 

“Hey, it’s okay. That made me feel better, actually.” He said as he patted her hand.

The girl looked at him sadly and placed her hand on his head. “You’re a good person, Jerry. I’ll never let anything happen to you.”

That voice again. His forehead tingled and he scratched it absently. His mind felt cloudy. 

Fae suddenly slumped against his side, and he grabbed her as best he could. “Hey, are you okay?"

She nodded, but didn't sit up. He kept his arm around her. "You know, whatever’s going on, you don’t have to do it alone. Do you at least want to talk about it a little bit?”

He couldn’t see her face, but he could feel longing, conflict. 

“I want to…but I can’t.” She said softly.

“Is it really that bad?”

She didn’t answer, but he could feel himself start to sink again.

The binome sighed. “I'm sorry, I didn’t mean to press. I just feel bad because I dumped all my problems on you, especially seeing as my life is a lot better now. I mean, I can’t just trust just anyone , but I don’t feel like I’m in danger anymore. Sure, I still have to deal with bigots, but there’s going to be haters wherever you go.”

He felt a swell of sorrow so profound that he felt like crying, then it dimmed into solemn resignation as Fae took his hands in hers. 

“I can’t tell you now, Jerry, but I promise, I will tell you someday.” She said softly. 

He didn’t like that answer, but he’d have to settle for it. 

“Okaaaaaaay.” He replied with mock disappointment. To his relief, she laughed, and he leaned against her. She put her arm around him, and together they watched the shimmer of the wasteland below in comfortable silence.

After a time he turned to her. “Hey…You’re a good person too, you know? And I won’t let anything bad happen to you either, k?”

“…i didn’t mean to, Jerry…” He heard her mumble.

“Didn’t mean to what?” 

No response.

“Fae?”

She had fallen asleep. Jerry smiled at her warmly. She looked so peaceful, so much more real. He hated to wake her up but he didn't have a choice. “Hey, I should bring you home.” He said as he nudged her.

Fae grumbled. 

“I know, I know, but we’re on top of one of the tallest buildings in Getty, and I can’t just drape you over my zipboard.”

She got up off the ledge, then looked back out over the city mournfully.

Jerry chuckled. “I promise I’ll bring you up here again. Now hop on. Where do you live, anyway?”

She gestured vaguely at the edge of Floating Point, but no one lived there, so he steered towards Kitts instead. “You want to give me better directions than that?” He asked as they got closer.

She merely pointed down, clearly not wanting to give an exact location. He could appreciate that.

“Okay then, you can get home from here?” Jerry asked as he landed. 

Fae stepped off, then immediately looked off behind him. He turned. Far, far in the distance he could see the bright flood lights of Old Man Pearson’s dump. “Still on about him, huh? I’m telling you, he’s just-.”

Jerry felt a kiss on the top of his head cube. “What was that about?” He asked as he turned back. 

But the girl was gone.

Chapter Text

"True redemption is...when guilt leads to good." ~ Khaled Hosseini

Old Man Talon

Old Man Pearson had paced the lot after the girl had left, wracking his brain for a solution to a problem that wouldn’t leave him be. At last an idea came upon him, and he rummaged through his many drawers of carefully sorted treasures until at last he found what he was looking for. 

Icons.

A surprising number of the precious things ended up in his possession over the megacycles, either lost or damaged or even stolen. When they did show up, they glinted like jewels amongst the waste, the code of an entire living being in the palm of his hand.

He made sure to wipe them all clean.

It was upon one of these that he’d just finished making the final adjustments. The PID was still mostly blank—the old binome no longer felt confident in his ability to recreate a truly passable identity—but he did know how to register it to Mainframe, and he’d added just enough metadata for it to look legitimate under a brief scan. It wasn’t a perfect plan, but at least it would buy the girl more time.

Now he needed to figure out how to give it to her. The old binome never left the dump, and he doubted she’d come back here again-

A light but determined knock on his door broke his thoughts. Old Man Pearson slammed his soldering iron on the table and swore as he stormed over to the door. Someone was in for a tongue lashing, but when he swung it open he stopped short. 

There, a safe distance away, stood the girl, little fists clenched and staring him down.

Ah see ah needn’t hae worried, he thought as he appraised the situation. “'What are ye doing back here this time o'-?

“Why were you staring at me?” She asked sharply. 

Her entire being radiated with defiance, but he could still sense fear. Old Man Pearson sighed as he leaned against the doorframe. Brave wee bairn. Brave but daft. 

“Mighty demanding o' someone who let ye surf about on their private property.”

The girl said nothing, but upped her intensity.

He sighed again. Well, ah hae been trying tae figure out how tae reach her…

“Fine, ye got me. Here.” He said gruffly as he held out the newly re-minted PID. “Ye want me tae put yer name on it?” 

The girl looked at it, confused, then backed further away. “Why are you giving that to me?”

“Because ah ain’t daft. The only reason Jerry would bring ye to my yard instead o’ somewhere better is because you’re likely hiding.” He said. Then he pointed at the icon on her chest, half-obscured by her ridiculous coat. “Best ye get rid o’ that one n’ use this. Tis registered n' has some fake data on it. Good enough tae get by.”

Old Man Pearson watched the girl carefully, drawing upon his training to coax her closer. He’d already mapped out a response to each of her most likely responses, and the responses to her responses after those. If he had been on a job, she’d be his by now. That bothered him immensely. 

So damned daft, comin' 'ere after suspecting something. 

Then he kicked himself. I’m nae the only one here who can see beyond what’s visible, am ah? He thought with an inward smile.

Forgetting that would have cost him this target long ago. The only reason the little etheric must have come back was because even though he’d put her on guard, she’d sensed no malicious intent from him. She’d decided to take the risk to investigate, and her gamble was paying off. 

That meant that this one was already learning how her powers worked. If she ever managed to get those Guardian locks off, she could become a powerful threat. He almost hoped she did.

T’would serve us right, he thought bitterly. 

It was then that she approached him, her head cocked.

She’d picked up the change in emotion with that last thought. The old Code Master quickly forced his mind flat. At such close range, she could effectively reconstruct his thoughts from the minute nuances in his feelings if she was skilled enough. 

Instead he only felt confusion from the girl, and Old Man Talon exhaled with relief. Not only was she unable to read what she received very well, she was unwittingly broadcasting her own emotions. He could play those cards back at her. 

There was no point to it now, he knew. She’d already managed to win against him when she’d snatched the PID from his hand during his lapse of concentration. The game was technically over, and yet she was still here, fiddling with the icon on her chest. The waves of confusion descended into panic, and he realized the girl didn’t know how to take it off. No, she couldn’t take it off. 

Old Man Talon cracked a small smile. The game was still on, and he was determined not to lose again.

“D’ya need help with tha?” He asked, purposely projecting kindness at her.

He received distress in response. Talon tried again to lure her in with weaponized empathy, but he felt her suspicion only grow, and she broadcasted that pointedly at him as she stepped back further. 

That wasn't right... She shouldn't be nearly skilled enough to broadcast on purpose, not with what he'd seen of her so far, but if she could…

Suddenly something clicked.

His lapse in concentration had been no accident

So ye really did beat me then, did ye?

The realization that High Brother Talon of the Seventh Brotherhood, the great Talon the Dispatcher, had been bested by this tiny, half-baked virus should have infuriated him, but instead he was thrilled. How he’d missed this, the rush of engaging in a battle of wit against an ever-changing foe, and Talon was already debating his next move when he was doused with anger.

The girl glared daggers at him, then began to stalk off. He could feel her trying hard to blank her mind as she went but she was failing, and as her sadness leaked out she let the PID he’d given her slip from her fingers.

The old Code Master’s heart broke anew.

“Hold on! Hold on, I’m sorry. Wait… ” He called out as he ran after her on his cursedly small legs.

She did, but kept her back to him. Then she fell to her knees. Her fingers curled around the icon in the dust beside her with one hand, while the other gripped the icon embedded in her chest.

“Please, take this off me.” She whispered without looking up. 

“Truly, I'm trying tae help. Ah know ah must come off odd. Ah don’t talk tae many folk except tae yell at ‘em. Didn’t mean tae scare ye.” 

The girl didn’t answer, and her mind remained closed. With a heavy sigh the old binome knelt down and tried to remove the icon on her chest, but just as he suspected, it wouldn’t come off for him either. It was in-code, like everything else. 

He swore under his breath as he stood up. “Hold on, let me see if ah hae something in the shop.” 

Old Man Pearson continued to swear at himself and everything else as he opened the log for the dump. There had to be something here that he could use, but it was soon apparent to him that he had nothing that would work on viral code without also causing significant damage. He needed something that could manipulate her code with precision, but the only thing he could think of that could-

He froze. Then with slow, deliberate moves he pushed several boxes aside and pulled a heavy tarp away from a chest all too recently opened.

Within lay the artifacts of his former life. There were some trappings, a few weapons and other tools of the trade. His helmet was gone, but he’d never had a connection to the thing. It was gaudy and had little use beyond making him look ridiculous at ceremonies. The boy could have it. 

The Gibson coil pike at bottom of the box— well, that was something else entirely.

Even broken in half, it was dangerous. He’d made it that way. Every Code Master made their own pike, each designed with their particular fighting style in mind. It had once felt like an extension of his own body. Now he hesitated to touch it. The old ways had already taken over once today. 

Old Man Pearson stared into the box.

He wanted them to take over again. He’d felt so young, so strong, so sharp-

The girl’s defeated face flashed before his eyes as the terrifying night at the VRU unraveled around her. Old Man Pearson snapped back. 

No. He’d stopped. He’d gotten out. This wasn't him anymore. He should have gotten rid of the pike stages ago, but he hadn’t. For some reason it hadn’t felt right. Maybe this was why. 

It too had to be redeemed.

With solemn purpose he lifted one half of it from the chest. He didn't need the whole thing. The forked end would do, and he feared putting the tip anywhere near the fragile virus. 

If she was still even here.

At first he didn’t see the girl, but eventually spotted her hiding in the shadow of a crane. She was no longer broadcasting, but he could tell that she’d regained her determination to see this through.

Broken half in hand, Old Man Pearson cautiously approached her. He had no idea what the pike looked like in the ether, but he doubted it was good. Indeed the girl shrank away, but didn’t leave.

He admired her resolve.

“Okay, ah don’t know if this will work and it might hurt a bit-”

“Please try.”

Old Man Pearson carefully positioned the forked edge below the offending icon. With a great deal of concentration he isolated the PID from the rest of her, and with a wrenching twist it popped free.

The girl gave a sharp gasp and fell back against the machinery with a heavy thud. For a moment she looked stunned, then stared at her chest. Where the PID had been her skin shifted and shimmered. She quickly pulled her coat closed to hide it.

“That’ll heal up,” the old binome said to imply that was normal, even though it most certainly was not. “Whoever put tha on ye is a-”

He paused. It felt inappropriate to swear in front of a child. He felt safe in assuming she was— Her type often didn't live long enough to mature. Then again, this one had been bolted down to the world of the processing by four military-grade locks for 7.5 stages. She was technically an adult. He might as well treat her like one.

“-Bloody bastard.” He finished. Then he held out his hand. “Ye be want’n your name on tha?”

Again the girl hesitated, and Old Man Pearson sighed inwardly. Oh just pick anythin', lass. Tisn't like they had a name for ye there besides ‘26’.

“Fae.” She said, a flare of finality in her voice as she handed the icon back.

Old Man Pearson added that last precious piece of data, then returned it to its new owner. “Usually I’d wipe the ol' one, but there’s something wrong with it, so I'm going tae give it tae the compactor.”

A thought came, and with a genuine smile he added, “D’ye want tae throw it in?”

He received a nod coupled with a thrill of excitement, and his smile grew a little more. Thought so.

The electromagnetic compactor was set to crush anything into particulate, a good way to fully discard anything dangerous. The girl’s old icon fit the description well enough, and Old Man Pearson watched with solemn satisfaction as she tossed it into oblivion. 

There was still that call he longed to make, but for now, this was enough.

The girl, no, Fae approached him then, closer than she’d come the entire night. 

“Thank you.”

Then she smiled. 

The simple act changed her appearance so dramatically that he didn’t notice her hand on his metal head until he felt the distinct charge of infection. The thread of code was so miniscule that Old Man Pearson doubted anyone else would notice, but that was the point. 

She’d marked him.

Viruses did this for many reasons. Most of them were bad news for the recipient—staking claims, tracking food, shows of dominance, ect. But in rare cases, the virus simply wanted to keep tabs on something that interested it. Even rarer, something it wanted to protect. 

Old Man Talon rubbed his head as he watched her leave. He didn’t feel he deserved any such mercy from a virus. Maybe she didn’t either and was just trying to track a threat. There wasn’t much he could do about it either way. That was Guardian territory, something he wanted no part of.

Unless he had to be.

Chapter Text

Chapter 13 - The Mask

Despite its presumably good outcome, the meeting with Old Man Pearson had left Fae shaken. Maybe he really was a terrible communicator. User knew she was. For all she knew, this could be a normal type of interaction that she hadn’t encountered yet, but none of those excuses satisfied her instincts.

Fae turned the new icon over and over in her hands as she walked back to Floating Point, hesitant to put it on. There was no way for her to know what was on it or what it could do to her, and after having to get her old one pried off with that terrifying fork thing, she felt justified in her paranoia. 

Normal people just didn't have things like that.

No, this was going on her beloved black coat. Most people wore theirs on their clothes, although those clothes were usually coded clothing protocols. Hopefully that didn’t make a difference.  With little ceremony Fae pinned it on. If it did really contain what the old binome said there was, he was one more person she was in debt to.

That done, Fae’s adrenaline faded, revealing a bigger threat that was quickly gaining ground. 

Sleep.

The girl sped up her pace to regain the steady rhythm that had long kept her awake, but now it only wore her out. Fae stopped and leaned against a nearby wall. Walking had always worked before, but back then walking was the only thing she did. Now she was expending considerably more energy just to keep an eye on the Fire, not to mention learning how to use her newfound abilities. Even talking to people seemed to sap energy. The brief meeting with the binome alone had left her exhausted. 

The obvious solution was to sleep, but with it came the visions. She hadn’t yet recovered from what she’d already seen and was more than afraid of what she’d see next. Sleep was inevitable, but Fae was going to outrun it as long as she possibly could.

She spent the light-cycles wandering Mainframe as she always had, although this time she stuck to the lower levels so not to be spotted from above. The dark-cycles were used watching the Fire gain strength while she practiced zip-boarding out on the bridge. The Fire seemed almost as good as new now. The time between the change in colors still varied, but they flowed one after the other in steady arcs. 

Fae often tried to guess what the Fire was doing based on the sequence of the lights. Long stretches of red and yellow meant she was aggravated. Varying intensities of green meant she was enjoying herself. The rare yellows meant something might afoot. And the blues… Oh the blues… She doubted the Fire could sense her, but she tried to comfort her anyway. 

There were other signals of interest over there. Besides the Fire and the blaring point of light, there was another presence, so small that she couldn’t do more than be aware that it was sentient. Hopefully the small one was keeping the bright one in check, whatever it was.

There was one more thing that Fae had picked up over the many nights, and it confounded her the most. At first she wasn’t even sure she was sensing it at all; a flickering warp in the ether. What it could be was so fantastic that Fae set aside one night to concentrate on it. 

It was there indeed; an actual warp, at times even a tear in the ether, yet perfectly contained. It wasn’t always present, and when it was, it wasn’t always active, but when it was, the Fire was almost always in a good mood. She was clearly interacting with it, possibly even controlling it. That was madness. No one could control the void between systems like that, but then again, she was the Fire.

Talking at the Fire made the nights easy to spend, but the days less so. It was hard to find a safe place to sit with her attention so far off elsewhere—even on the lower levels—and if she went into her cave she was certain to fall asleep. Walking had to suffice, but as time wore on, the girl had had to come up with simple games to keep her from nodding off on her feet. She counted how fast she could find 100 pogs or how long she could stand on one foot before falling over, sleep nipping at her heels all the while.

Eventually even that wasn’t enough. The girl needed something more interactive, and so even though her next shift at Al’s wasn’t for day-cycles, Fae showed up anyway. 

The flickering pink neon sign out front looked prettier than she remembered. The air inside felt warmer, and the once gray pall of dinginess now seemed comfortingly worn-in. It felt like coming home. 

“Heyyyy what are you doing here?” Jerry sang out as he glided out of the kitchen. “You don’t need to be here until tomorrow, you know. Oh jeeze are you okay?” he added as he came up close.

Fae unconsciously shot a glance at the wound on her chest and was relieved to find her oversized black coat still buttoned over it. “Yes, why?”

“Why? It looks like you haven’t had any downtime in like, a week . Did you even go home after we went to the dump?”

Fae shifted uncomfortably. “I’ve had downtime…ish. I’ve just been busy, is all. I’m fine. I just wanted to come by and see what was going on. Talk to people. Maybe you need help-?”

Jerry put a hand on her shoulder with a look of concern. “Seriously. Fae, as a friend, go home . You look like you’re going to pass out. Oh! But wait a nano first!”

Fae tried to check her appearance in the reflection of a chrome napkin dispenser as he skated behind the cashier counter. She didn’t look that bad. She didn’t look that good either. Mostly she looked like a napkin dispenser. With a sigh she put it down just as Jerry returned with a thin box in his hands.

“Those guys you were talking to left this here for you-”

He was interrupted by a shout from above, and the two looked up to see two binomes and a passed out sprite at a table on the second floor. One of them was waving his hand wildly. 

“Hey! Why didn’t you tell us she was here?” He shouted down at Jerry, obviously drunk.

Jerry put his hands on his hips with a clink. “Because she’s not staying here. She needs to go home-, hey! Oh come on , Fae!”

The girl had snatched the box and was halfway up the stairs before Jerry realized she was gone. Now he scowled up at her like a disapproving parent. 

Fae felt a tickle of a smile at the edges of her mouth. She’d never had anyone actually care about her wellbeing. It was a strange, yet pleasant sensation. 

“I will go home! Eventually. But they want to give me this thing. Then I’ll go home.” she said earnestly over the second floor railing.

Jerry threw out his arms. “Why must you make me worry?” he cried overdramatically.

Fae fully smiled then. She liked this feeling, but with it came responsibility. Her smile faded. 

“I’m sorry, Jerry. I just want a little while longer, okay? I just want a little longer.” She said with a hit of sadness in her voice, and she sent along what she hoped were the right mixture of emotions his way.

The binome sighed. “Okayyyy, but I’m watching you! Honestly, you need to take better care of yourself…” He said as he rolled off.

“He’s a pushy one, ain't he?” said one of the binomes at the table as Fae came over.

“I think it’s nice.” Fae simply as she held up the box. “Is this from you?”

“It’s from Jacked, actually,” He said, gesturing to the binome in the checkered shirt. “He told his brother that you like Hex, and he has this friend- Well, just open it.”

With great excitement Fae opened the box. Inside it was a white mask with feminine features, red lips and arched, black eyebrows. Its expression looked peaceful with just a hint of curiosity, but it was hard to tell for sure as the eyes had been cut out. She turned it over in her hands, unsure of what to make of it.

“A mask?” she asked uncertainly.

“Well yeah! It’s a Hex mask! I mean, it’s not an actual Hex mask. I don’t think those come off. My brother’s friend has a store that sells weird stuff like that.”

“People usually buy them to creep other people out.” Durge, the one in the leather jacket added with a laugh.

Fae cocked her head, entirely lost now. “A Hex mask…but the real ones don’t come off?”

It was the two binomes’ turn to look confused. 

“You…you do know she doesn’t have a real face, right?” Jacked asked.

Only then did Fae realize she didn’t know what the Fire actually looked like. She’d managed to perceive a blur of red, white, and black through the wash of color and sound, but it had been so comparatively inconsequential that Fae hadn’t thought of it since.

Now she studied the mask in her hands with reverence. This was her face. Her face! Pure white and smooth with perfectly painted eyebrows and lips. All that was missing were her eyes.

“Why doesn’t it have eyes?”

“Because then you wouldn’t be able to see through it!” Jacked said with a laugh.

“And Hex’s masks don’t have eyes anyway. I don’t think. The eyes change color with her mood, so I always figured they were behind the mask.” Durge added.  “What do you think, Crash?”

Crash looked at the mask thoughtfully. “I mean, if she doesn’t have a face, wouldn’t that mean she doesn’t have eyes either? Otherwise her face would be , like, a giant, talking eyeball.”

“She doesn’t have a face…” Fae murmured absently at the mask, then she looked up. “You said her eyes change color with her moods. What color is happy?”

“Green. Red is angry, blue is sad- Have you seriously never seen Hex before?” Jacked asked in disbelief. He turned to the others. “Get her! She’s all ready to zip to Lost Angles and she doesn’t even know what to look for!”

The girl shifted uncomfortably as the others laughed. “I’d know her when I saw her…”

“Lay off her, my dudes.” Said the seemingly passed out sprite at the end of the table. “Hey, little peach dude, why do you like Hexadecimal so much?”

Fae gazed down at the mask in her hands and the world around her lost focus.

“She is the Fire,” she said softly. “The light, the heat of this world. She is the creator and the destroyer, the master of the ether and the keeper of the Void. Through her all things are possible. Without her…all hope is lost.”

The dataforms at the table stared at her in disbelief, until at last Jacked broke the silence. “We’re…we’re still talking about Hexa decimal , right? The random virus that would tear off your face for kicks but get bored halfway through? There’s a reason those masks freak people out.”

Random . That word again. Fae bristled, but she forced it back. “Does she really tear people’s faces off?”

The others looked at each other. “I mean…not that I specifically know about, but I wouldn’t put it past her. I mean, you’ve got to see her claws, they’re like, this long!” Jacked said as he spread his hands a decent amount apart.

Fae ignored it. “You said she has no actual face, just a bunch of masks instead? Is each one a mood?”

“Yeah, and they change constantly, every time she waves her hand over her face. You never know what you’re going to get. ‘Happy, sad, happy, I’M GOING TO KILL YOU, just kidding!’ You might want to reconsider trying to go over there, because chances are you won’t come back.”

But by this point Fae had stopped listening. Something began to nag at her from the back of her mind, something incredibly important, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. She turned inward to chase it.

The next thing she knew, she was on the floor, staring at a long lost french fry under the table as voices shouted overhead.

“I knew it. I knew it! Fae, where do you live, I’m getting you a cab.” she heard Jerry say as someone picked her up. “Hey! Where do you live? ”

Fae panicked. “I…near Fl- near Kitts. By…by the zipboard store. Over the zipboard store.”

“Yes, but what street ? I need an address.”

At a loss of what else to say, Fae feigned unconsciousness. She heard Jerry sigh heavily. “I can’t just have them dump you off in front of Zippy’s, and I doubt you want to sleep here. I don’t even know where I’d put you. Al, do we have, like, a cot here or something?”

“WHAT?”

“Why did I even bother to ask…?” she heard him say with a sigh, but his words were becoming muddled. Sleep had finally won, and with the last of her consciousness she clutched the mask to her chest.

‘Fire, light my way…’

Chapter Text

Chapter 14 - .BAT-shift

“And that’s .BAT-shift- I’m sorry, Commander, that’s Seven.” Guardian Rictor said to his senior commander as he showed a cadre of his superiors around the Virus Rehabilitation Unit. “He had so much potential, but he’s barely manageable now. Not all of them make it, I’m afraid.” 

Several sharp, metal clanks interrupted their discussion, and they turned to see a small, peach-colored virus banging on the wall of her cell.

“His name is Kale, and it’s your fault he’s like this!” She shouted at them. “You broke him, now you fix him! I know you Guardians can, I’ve seen you do it!”

Rictor hesitated as several lab technicians looked up in surprise. 

“I thought you said that one couldn't talk,” he said irritably to the closest tech.

“She can, but doesn't.” The tech replied as he glared at the angry etheric. “Although today appears to be the exception.”

The girl stared back, but she didn’t back down. She couldn’t.

Usually the emaciated energy virus lay unresponsive on the floor, not a sound, not a movement, weeks on end. Even when they used her for her “purpose”, she stayed limp and blank, save for what screaming she couldn’t control. Staying detached was the only way she could survive. It didn’t work well, but at least it worked. 

Kale had not been so lucky

The young, petty-crimes corruptor had been sane, once. The girl knew so because she used to talk to him through the walls of their cells. But where she could maintain docility, Kale was rough around the edges, and the Guardians took great pleasure in provoking him so they could “put him in his place.” 

Under unrelenting punishment his code began to splinter, and bit by bit, the girl felt Kale’s mind unravel. He’d begged her for help. She’d tried desperately to stabilize him through the wall, but the locks in her code hampered her efforts, and eventually the Guardians moved him too far away from her to have any effect at all. All the virus could do was curl up in despair as his signal tore apart

The Guardians now simply referred to him as ‘Random’. They made no move to mend him, for even though Kale was talented at twisting strings of code into beautiful things, he was still a common virus type and easy to replace. In fact, it seemed to her as if they wanted him to go mad. She was certain they’d purposely moved her too far away to help once they realized she still could

They kept her far away from everyone.

“So what’s her story?” The commanding officer asked, gesturing at her.

Another lab tech handed the first Guardian a tablet, who then passed it to his senior.

“Number 26, Etheric virus, roughly seven nanos old when found in the Cyclen System. Used to drain high energy viruses before/to deletion, then transfer neutralized energy to the core. Two one-way internal limiters, plus four permanent cat-5, dual lock internal limiters.”

The commanding officer paused and turned to Rictor. “Six limiters on this little thing? And internal?”

“She may look little, Commander Ross, but she could consume and control near limitless amounts of energy if she had access to her powers. We only managed to get her because she was too young to know how to use them.” 

The girl’s determination flared anew as she realized this man was in a position of power, and she doubted he had any anti-etheric patches installed. Quickly she locked onto him while he was still close enough, then poured out a plea for mercy as carefully as she could. If she went to fast- 

 An alarm by her door sounded, and Rictor yanked the two men away from her with a growl.

“Oh no you don’t!” he spat.

“What did she do?” The younger officer asked him, clearly shaken.

“Something, Captain Sawyer. Manipulate your emotions, most likely. Sneaky little-” Rictor started angrily, then regained his composure. “If 26 wasn’t so useful and etheric viruses weren’t so hard to find, we would’ve deleted this one long ago.” 

He raised his keytool in her direction. “Usually she’s well-behaved, for a virus.”

The girl knew what was coming, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet. After months of torture, Kale had finally snapped and attacked a guard the night before. Now deletion was all but assured. The situation was hopeless, but she couldn’t bear to stand by and do nothing.

“Don’t delete Kale! Please, please fix him!” She pleaded with the three Guardians in front of her. “Mend and Defend, isn’t that what Guardians do? Isn’t that what this VRU thing is supposed to do? Mend us! Defend us!” 

The two superiors looked uncomfortable, but Rictor sneered at her as the narrow angle beam crackled alive on his keytool. “Mend and Defend does not extend to viruses.” 

The girl closed her eyes and braced, but the pain never came. Instead the air grew cold and heavy, and when she opened her eyes she found the Guardians and the lab beyond frozen in place. The scene before her flattened and faded as black ooze bubbled around the edges. The substance was far more tangible than the reality it encroached upon, and as the dying vision crumpled in front of her, Fae realized she was awake in the ether. 

Something terrible was trying to push its way through, but she couldn’t escape. Pulsing black tentacles burst through the remnants of Rictor’s face. Before she could react they constricted around her, dragged her into itself. The suffocating darkness within was saturated with blinding fear, its very presence vibrated with screams of desperation-

“HEX!” 

Fae snapped awake and jumped to her feet, wild-eyed. It barely registered that she was in an unfamiliar place. All she cared about was finding a way out of it.

“Morning, sleepy-head!” rang Jerry’s voice behind her. “Sorry about bringing you home, but I couldn’t leave you at Al’s and I had no idea where you live. I’ve got some breakfast on the table… Hey, are you okay?”

“I have to go. How do I get out?”

Jerry looked crestfallen. “Oh. Well, the door is this way…”

Fae felt his sadness and she forced herself to calm down. 

“I’m sorry, Jerry. It’s not you. I’m grateful, I am. I’ll pay you back for it, I promise, but I have to go. It’s an emergency.” She said as hopped from one foot to the other, the Fire’s terror resonating in every fiber of her being.

Jerry still seemed upset, but there wasn’t anything she could do about it now. She patted him lovingly on his head, grabbed his zipboard, then dove out the door. 

Chapter Text

Null and Void

Dx wandered across the old tennis court, basking in the warm, perpetually orange glow of the Lost Angles sky. There was no need to worry here, no need to hurry—not here in the Oasis. 

The little red null stopped to nose through a pile of torched rackets, fueled only by idle curiosity. Then he exhaled a squeak of contentment. Life was good.

But it hadn’t always been.

There was a time, not too long ago, when he and his kind huddled in the shadows of the former Twin Cities, scrounging for food, forever straining their senses for any disturbance in the ether that could herald an incoming game. 

There was little to sustain them here. Nearly all available energy was off limits to them, shunted away to power the datastreams, the skyscrapers, and seemingly more worthy dataforms. What precious little food did escape the grid was fought for, and with every lost game came still more nulls to feed. 

Some grew bold with hunger and ventured out into the open in search of food, only to be destroyed in fallen games, viciously attacked by their former brethren, or used in a hundred other terrible ways. Those that lacked the strength simply withered away in the dark. 

That was, until She came.

Dx turned his attention to the core of the Oasis. Even though he no longer had eyes to perceive it, it was impossible not to know where it was. It was there that the Queen dwelled, the source of the rich, life-sustaining energy that forever flowed across the isle. It was by Her strength that games dare not land here, by Her will that others not trespass. Throughout Her land, She bid they roam. Beneath Her mantle, they knew peace unimaginable. 

Truly, She was unto a god, and their hearts were Hers to command.

The red-coloured null stopped to listen to the wavelengths around him, then chewed on a singed tennis ball. A null was never truly alone. They could sense each other through the ether, peacefully going about their day. They did not particularly think in words. There was little reason to think at all, here. The Oasis was a harmonious blanket of shifting colour, with the Queen radiating from the center.

Dx was about to wander on when the ether suddenly grew cold and jagged. He stiffened, then joined his fellows’ cries of distress as the Queen’s ever-present brilliance sank into a black, liquid void, a pulsing nexus of fear left in its wake. 

The call to arms was immediate. Her subjects surged towards the invading presence with no regard for their own safety. Whatever lay ahead didn’t matter. They would drain it dry.

The Queen’s tower had no known entrance, but the nulls would not be stopped. They climbed up over each other until they could go no higher, then chewed through the walls and began climbing up over each other from the inside until they reached their target. 

It had felt massive within the ether, but as they swarmed it they realized that it, and by proxy their Queen, was actually quite small. Not quite as small as they, but small enough that it should only have taken a few of them to tear off what bound Her. And yet, no amount of tugging or biting or burning could do so. The thing wasn’t on Her at all, they realized. 

It was in Her, using Her power for itself.

Rage rippled through the mass of bodies. How dare it? How dare it?!, they seethed, and they grew all the more vicious. Still they got nowhere, and it soon dawned upon them that if the thing controlled the Queen’s power, it was as strong as the Queen Herself; a power undefeatable.

There was only one way forward, but the nulls loathed to consider it.

While conflict arose within the swarm, the thing had become decidedly tired of having its mission hampered by thousands of nulls, and it tore through the thick tower wall in a bid for freedom. It took everything the nulls had to hold onto it as it plummeted to the ground below, and as shockwaves reverberated throughout the mass, they finally came to a grim consensus. Such action was inconceivable, even blasphemous, but there was no other way.

With heavy hearts, the nulls set upon Her as one.

By now the thing was encased in millions of nulls, but even at their maximum draining strength, it was not enough. We should have known , wailed the desperate chorus. How does one drain a god? 

But they refused to abandon their beloved life-giver, even as they were dragged ever closer to the dreaded twin of the Oasis. The vast divide of the broken bridge still lay between, but the thing would not be denied. It lunged forward, and, bestowed with the power of the Queen, easily reached the other side. 

Out in the open here was the last place the nulls wanted to be, yet upon landing, every one of their brethren still trapped in Mainframe rushed to join them. From every corner they flooded, and with every new body, Dx felt their cumulative power grow as the Queen’s faded. It was working. They were almost a match! All they needed was a few thousand more!

But there weren't a few thousand more. 

By now, every available null was here, and the thing was still in control. Panic rippled through the mass, but as it did, they felt something peculiar joined their ranks. 

It was larger than they, and as it dug its way through them they could feel it had the form of a sprite. But a sprite wouldn’t last a fraction of a nano within this massive energy sink. What was amongst them now was unknown. The nulls reached out to it through the ether, and to their surprise it responded, their orders understood. The creature dug in and followed their lead.

Whatever it was, it was powerful. It had the draining power of tens, no, hundreds of nulls, and the ability to shunt that stolen energy straight into the ground. The nulls ceased their questioning and embraced it into their cause. 

They could feel something splintering in its code as it took on more energy. It was in pain, they could tell, but its devotion to their Queen rivaled their own, and soon the creature was climbing in even further, sending Her clear messages of reassurance as it did.

Then the mass shuddered violently, and a wave of confusion raced through it as the outermost nulls relayed what had happened. Some metallic … thing was out there, fighting them. 

Anger spread. 

Their newfound ally was nearing the draining power of thousands , and the tide had begun to turn. They couldn’t risk interference at this point. But the metal giant wouldn’t relent, and the nulls found themselves forced to split their attention between defending themselves and maintaining the synchronized drain. 

The mass faltered.

The creature immediately picked up the slack, but it was now unable to rid itself of the energy it was taking on fast enough. Whatever it was, it was not built to hold onto so much power, and a sickening ‘crack’ reverberated through the ether. Still the great null continued to claw its way towards the center, until at last it reached the thing itself.

Then, in an instant, everything changed.

The Queen was no longer the highest energy signature in the mass. Now it was the great null, and the thing took notice. It abandoned their weakened God and unfurled its thick, black tentacles towards its new prey. The nulls screamed in alarm and tried to block its path, but the Thing pushed them aside as it reached out for the saviour’s neck.

Something sharp and heavy plunged through the center of the mass, and with several violent twists, the world flew apart.

Chapter Text

Destroyer of Systems

That surge, that grating, sizzling static. He remembered it well. The scent of burning circuits, sharp and acidic. 

The scent of new life. 

He breathed it in deeply as he waited for his body to settle, then opened his eyes and scanned his surroundings. 

Gigabyte had been here, once, for a fraction of a fraction of a nano, but the memory of being split in two was not the sort that binds one to a place out of nostalgia. 

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a male sprite approaching him, and was about to question the man's sanity when he noticed his uniform.

A Guardian. 

He chuckled inwardly. That was a different kind of madness. 

Gigabyte waited for the inevitable, but to his surprise, the Guardian did not come at him with both barrels blasting. Maybe this one knew its place.

“I am Guardian 452. State your name and function.” The Guardian stated with a strange amount of confidence for a single sprite facing a Class 5 virus. 

The virus paused a moment. Blue face. Silver hair. This one seemed familiar, not just to his former selves but to his own short memory. A smile crossed his face as he stood to his full height. 

“You. I remember you.” He said in a low growl as he pointed a long, clawed finger at the far shorter sprite. “But it appears you do not remember me. I am become Gigabyte, destroyer of systems.”

To his satisfaction, recognition showed on the Guardian’s face. And fear. Sweet fear. 

The Guardian stepped back. “No, that's not possible! You were an upgrade from Kilobyte, not a merger!”

“You are correct. I am an upgrade. The temporary existence of Hexadecimal and Megabyte was merely a mistake,” Gigabyte said as he flexed his claws, “one that has now been… rectified .”

He was simply stating a fact, but to his surprise, the Guardian seemed strangely, genuinely angered by this. 

“They weren’t mistakes .” He spat, and without further provocation, he aimed his keytool and fired.

The blast hit Gigabyte full in the chest, but it did little more than fuel him further. He sighed and looked out over the sprite’s head to the horizon. He had better places to be.

Gigabyte raised his hands, and the ether between them began to glow and warp, but then, nothing.

The Guardian raised his keytool to his mouth in alarm. “We’ve got a Class-5, energy-absorbing virus! Is attempting to portal-”

The colossus cut him off with a slash through his midsection, sending the man skidding across the tarmac, but when the Guardian quickly staggered to his feet, Gigabyte realized he’d only managed to damage his armor. The Class-5 growled inwardly. He'd finally reformed after all this time, only to be this weak . 

Though he loathed to acknowledge it, he now was a merger of two lesser viruses, and his inability to create a portal made it obvious which one wasn’t pulling their weight. 

He needed more power to replenish his other half, but when he scanned for suitable targets, he found the system powering itself down to deprive him. The floating barrier that surrounded the principal building would have sufficed, but he lacked the power to fly to it, and as he watched, every major source of fuel flickered out of the ether like stars at dawn.

Except for one.

The hungry Class-5 smiled. 

Someone had made a mistake.

He continued to scan the source as he bounded towards it in giant leaps. 

It was in an odd place for such a tremendous amount of power. Instead of an industrial park or any particular sort of landmark, it appeared to be next to an innocuous residential building, and as he grew closer, he could sense hundreds of smaller entities around it, communicating with it through the ether. 

It made little sense, and the sight that greeted him when he arrived made even less.

This last, blinding beacon was nothing more than a small, sprite-like entity, slumped against a wall and surrounded by a throng of nulls that dared not touch it. As he came closer, the nulls closed ranks but did not approach, even though he could tell they truly wanted to.

Odd. 

Gigabyte scanned the thing through the ether and found it wasn't a sprite at all, but instead a mess of seemingly everything . There was no format to describe it, but somehow it too felt familiar, and as he felt his code begin to resonate in its presence, he understood why.

How so much of his missing energy had come to rest within this pitiful creature, he did not know, nor did he care. All that mattered was that it was here , and as the thing stumbled to its feet, the behemoth slowly advanced upon it, each heavy step sending tremors through the ground between them

“That power,” Gigabyte said, extending a long, sharp claw at it, “belongs to me. You will return it.”

The thing was clearly not built to contain the sheer amount of power it possessed. Its body warped and bulged as it moved. Energy streamed from its eyes, nose, mouth, and the many fissures in its luminescent skin, while the ether around it popped and hissed in a constant flux of pain, anger, and growing madness.  

“Where is she?” it demanded angrily, staring up at him with unseeing eyes.

The nulls behind it grew agitated and began to advance, but the creature waved them back.

“She is gone.” Gigabyte replied flatly, yet the sight of the nulls obeying orders made him uneasy, and a prickling in his hardware warned him all too late that the thing was rapidly sorting through him in the ether. 

“No, she is there, in your code!” It cried. 

“There is no she. She does not exist. My code is my own, or do you not know how a viral merger works?”

Viscous luminescence sloughed off the creature’s arm and splattered against his chest as it stabbed a finger up at him.

“She would never allow a merger!”

A dark chuckle emanated from the juggernaut as it wiped the energy from his armor and let it drip into his mouth. 

“Who said she allowed it?”

The ether ignited with such rage that it seared the Class-5’s senses, but it cleared just as quickly as it came, and Gigabyte regained his vision in time to see the thing crumple to its knees, liquid light pouring from its face onto the pavement below.

“How pitiful.” He said, a smile playing on his metal lips as he raised his long claws above it. ”Let me end your suffering."

“Who are you?” It answered back in a hoarse whisper.

“I am Gigabyte.” He stated defiantly.

The giant reveled a moment longer as he readied his strike. Then, with one fell swoop, he drove the blades through its body, down to the ground beneath it.

“Destroyer of systems.”

For a moment all was quiet, save for the thin shrieks of the gathering nulls. 

The thing was wrong. There was no other within him. There was no other than him, and now, there was no other that could stop him.

Satisfied, Gigabyte went to unskewer his prize from the ground, only to find he couldn’t free his claws from the pavement. An embarrassing setback, he thought as he pulled harder, yet still he remained stuck. As he continued to struggle, laughter began to ring in his ears, unfamiliar and all too much so at once. Only then did he realize that the thing between his claws was still very much alive, and it was within it that he was caught. 

The creature's long, incandescent arms were wrapped tight around his massive wrist. The warm, golden energy that had dripped off its body was now sizzling white, and when it looked back up at him again, its face was wild, with blazing eyes and a savage smile.

“A destroyer of systems, you say?” It hissed as it pulled him further. “What a coincidence! So am I .”

Gigabyte snarled at it, then grit his teeth and tried again. There was no reason the thing should have been able to hold him there. It was weak, faded, dying. It barely had a body to hold him with. It should then be a simple matter to absorb the rest of it, but when he tried, he found nothing to take. It had had so much power before. That was the whole point of coming here. Where was it now?  He dug into the ether to find it in chaos, and he realized this was the thing's true domain. An etheric. Where was its power, then? He pushed through the cacophony of noise and light and vicious laughter until he found it. In the ground. It was in the ground, massive shafts of energy sunk deep through all 31 platters to the energy sea below. In this state its ability was limitless.

If it could maintain control.

Otherwise, it was food.

He forgot his arm and concentrated on the tug of war in the ether instead. It was draining him, but only one half. Only Hex’s side. No. There was no Hex. There was only him.

“Are you sure?” a voice whispered in his ear. He could feel fissures forming as the two halves began to reconsolidate within him. They had been separate for too long. They had concrete personalities, wills, desires now, and the thing was making sure one of them remembered that.

“Give her back give her back give her back! I will never let you leave, I will never let you go! I will make you my own if I have to! I will consume you and tear you apart until we get what we want!” It shrieked, one voice becoming two as its chosen half vindictively slashed at his code as it surged through the etheric to freedom.

“No! I’ve waited too long!” He bellowed as he dug in. He was a Class-5. He was a super virus. Etherics were fragile things without a body to hold onto. What was it holding onto? It was climbing up his arm now, weaving its brilliant tendril fingers through the sinew of his hardware on its way to his processor.

It was holding onto him. It was holding onto her. It was holding onto saturated ground. It was holding onto millions of nulls. It was holding onto the very fabric of reality.

“What are you?” He asked through grit teeth.

“I am FATE, destroyer of you!”

Its multi-octave voice reverberated through his head, its faces filled his vision. Their voice. their face, their infection racing through his system faster than he could free himself of it, their sadistic glee filling every space in his mind.

'Consume, destroy, obliterate, ravage , take it all, take it all!’

Through the haze of madness the colossus heard the sound of an engine overhead. He had entirely forgotten about the Guardian, but before he could think further he was enveloped in a field of pure, raw energy. Gigabyte didn’t know where it came from, but he didn’t care. He had to absorb as much as he could before the etheric did. It was his last chance.

But something else was interested in this burst of power—an oily black presence on his back that he hadn't noticed until now—and he sensed it too had an agenda. It reached through him to collect all of it for itself—him, her, it, this. That had been its plan all along, and as light and dark fought for control of his body, he realized he was a pawn in a much larger game. 

No! He would take them both, and he would leave this place. His name would be uttered in every nightmare, his visage forever burned in the mind of every processing thing.

The energy tear that had been dumped on him suddenly stabilized into a portal around him, encasing all three in a silver, spherical prison. 

To his grim satisfaction the etheric was also caught off guard and a massive amount of it was yanked from the ground into the sphere with him. 

His hand was finally free, but the etheric recovered quickly and grabbed him by the neck instead, seemingly unaware of anything besides its singular goal. The black presence on his back, now monstrous in size from the sheer amount of energy it bathed in, reached around him to envelop the burning entity in its pulsing tentacles. Gigabyte drove his claws through both, and as each struggled to consume the other they collapsed into a dense, writhing singularity.

He lost all sense of space and time, unable to tell where one of them ended and the next began. 

Then felt the etheric’s hands ripped from his neck, its body from his claws as they were violently pulled apart, code from code, energy from bodies, minds from minds. Gigabyte’s vision began to fill with static, and he made one last attempt to pull the etheric into him, but it had already relinquished its power to the rapidly reviving goddess within it. There was no time left to try again. The last seams unraveled, and he knew no more.

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Link to the song! Ultimate Furi Soundtrack - 02 Carpenter Brut - Enraged (The Strap) Rip + OST