Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first meeting took place, fittingly, in the echoing emptiness of an abandoned food court. The mall had been derelict for years; long enough that the barred gates were no longer barred and, in some cases, not even gates. Glass storefronts had shattered and littered the once-elegant tiled walkways. Grime had pooled on the vaulted sunroof, and beneath it that echoing, ghostly world lived in a constant state of penumbral gloom.

Rain was pattering up on the sunroof and down on the tiled floors, cascading in little waterfalls from the third floor all the way down to the nearly dark atrium. When Molly and Kane got there, they were both soaked in spite of their raincoats.

By comparison, the man they were meeting was relatively dry. His dark blue raincoat draped all around him and down to his knees, and beneath it the heavy black boots cared about neither water nor broken glass. He was all but invisible in the shadows of the balcony above their heads.

“Sorry we’re late,” Kane managed as they both rushed over. He had finally hit the growth spurt age had been promising to grant him for a few years, and he was a breath taller than his twin, though there was potential there for much more. The man they were meeting had height and mass on them both, but he’d likely not have the latter for much longer.

“No problem,” their contact replied, a little amusement in his voice. “You got it?”

Molly groped under her own red raincoat until she found what she was looking for, and offered it to the man: a thumb-drive, a Lucky Cat waving at the three of them cheerfully. “Final count came to about seven hundred and fifty two. That we could track down,” she hurried to add.

“Worse than I imagined, and better than I expected,” the stranger said philosophically, taking the thumb drive and pocketing it.

“We can keep looking,” Kane offered nervously.

The man shook his head. From his own, slim satchel, hidden at his hip under the raincoat, he brought out another thumb drive. Sleek and flat, it was a little bigger than the Lucky Cat, and the ENCOM logo gleamed on one end of it like an oilslick. On the other side, a tiny blue LED blinked sedately, the first in a row of ten.

“Holy cow,” Kane breathed.

“Is that an ENCOM petadrive?” Molly hardly dared ask.

“Makes it sound like it’s a Pokemon, but yeah.” He offered the drive. “The file’s set to boot-and-erase. Make sure you’ve got everything ready, there’s no stopping it once it gets going.”

Molly took the drive as if it were made of spun glass. “So it’s active already?”

“No. Jesus, no. There’s no thumb drive big enough in the world for that.”

“What’s the light for, then?” Kane asked, wary.

“That’s a gift from a friend of mine. Consider it a bit of spring planting. You won’t see anything come of it unless the conditions are just right. Do you still mean to open it up?” When the twins nodded, he sighed in exasperation, but didn’t protest. It was quite literally out of his hands anymore. “That’s not gonna end well.”

“You don’t know that,” Kane protested.

Before the man could protest, Molly added. “It’s never been done before, right?”

He couldn’t refute that, though he visibly wanted to. “No. But I know people.”

“We’re people!” Molly reminded him indignantly.

“You’re the exception, then.”

They recoiled a little, caught off-guard by the underhanded compliment, but she rallied quickly. “You’re people.”

The man laughed. “And I’m a greedy asshole.” He patted the pocket where the Lucky Cat thumb drive was resting, as if to remind them of its existence. “But I’m also a cynical, jaded asshole, as someone recently reminded me. So go on. Surprise me.”

The twins scurried away. The man stayed there a little bit longer, listening to the rain fall, the water sluicing down the fallen works of man. He tipped his head back, drinking in the scent of it all, mold and decay but also life, air, the potential for renewal and rebirth implicit in it all.

His eyes opened. “Surprise me,” he repeated quietly to the world all around him, and walked away.

Chapter Text

Halcyon had always been the Center of the Grid, the Queen of All Cities. From the air, her patterns of expansion and evolution were as beautiful as the most elegant fractal-tree, never progressing lopsidedly; her growth-control walls made sure of that. From her spot on the Central Shore of the Sea of Simulation, she policed and protected the data-routes that were her lifeblood. You could buy nearly anything in Halcyon, if you had the means. And if it didn’t yet exist to be bought, some enterprising program would surely change that within a millicycle or two.

The city itself, the sectors where programs lived, rested, worked, that was all inside the First Wall. All expansion there was done up or down anymore. Vidi had never been inside the First Wall. She’d lived nearly all her life in Halcyon, of course, but she spent most of her time out in the Third Ring, in the many sectors of the Souk. In Halcyon, you had to find a way to earn your way, and Vidi had her niche.

At the moment, that niche had her scanning the object between her hands while its creator hovered anxiously all around her. It was deceptively simple to any of the bystanders coming and going, a byte of something or other, flickering along the indigo side of the spectrum. Vidi, however, saw with more than just eyes. Her ‘hair’, long dreadlocks any other time, had haloed around her head, each one ending in an ‘eye’ that kept focusing and refocusing on the byte.

“Please be careful, it’s very fragile,” the creator entreated her for the fiftieth time, it felt.

“If you stopped pacing behind me, I might be less inclined to twitch,” she growled. “Besides, it’s nowhere nearly as fragile as you think.”

“Oh, you think so?”

Vidi made a vague sound in response, neither agreement or denial. What she was looking at was not actually a byte; the polyhedral surface was merely its protective encryption. In her mind’s eye it was a growingly complex knot of toothed wheels nestled within toothed wheels, a collection of cogs and spirals that went on nearly beyond the reach of her senses - nearly, but not quite. She wasn’t sure what sort of program Dijoyi was, but his work was, as always, both beautiful and efficient in equal measure. There was no small-part engineer like him in all of Halcyon, and other cities sometimes sent people to ask for his help.

“You really think this’ll get a flyer to the Spire?” she asked as she worked to create a perfect blueprint in her memory of the gyroscopic equations between her hands. Dijoyi was a fantastic engineer, but he did not have the ability to create blueprints out of his equations. The part was not real, not yet.

“I know it will,” the man huffed. “No storm can throw my gyroscopic navigator off course. If the flyer fails, it’ll be because of the pilot, not the flyer.”

“Well, that ain’t my problem,” she declared, amused at his utter arrogance and looking away at last. She was a slim, oddly shapeless Program, as so many of the first-gen ones were. Only her voice and her choice made her female. She looked lavender most of the time, low-powered as she always ran, but the long-dreadlocks of her hair were unfailingly brilliant, electric blue. They, too, closed their eyes and relaxed at her back. “I’m just here to carry the blueprint to your manufacturer.” She offered back the encrypted byte.

“I don’t see why I couldn’t have just sent it by courier to an architect,” Dijoyi grumbled. “Your rates are highway robbery.”

“Yeah, but this way I’m only taking your beans, not your design,” she declared casually.

It shut him up, mercifully, and she put her hand out, palm up. On it she wore, as did every legal citizen of Halcyon, a soukscan, gleaming white under her skin.

The other program, whose face looked much older than hers but who had the hi-def lines of a much younger generation, slapped his hand over hers with ill grace. The scan reported the transaction to them both and was acknowledged in return.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Vidi smiled in a very non-pleasure fashion. She took the surly glower he gave her as a compliment, put up her hood, and headed off into the crowd.

It was early into the primary milli-cycle. Unlike most cities in the grid, Halcyon kept an on-off schedule; too many of the local manufacturers depended upon time-sensitive ingredients and processes that liked their downtime nearly as much as they did their uptime. It meant the light was bright and silver, like energy straight from the Source. Too bad it did none of the things energy was actually good for.

A few of the shopkeepers called out greetings, and she nodded to some, waved to the few that she actually liked. Dijoyi’s design was itching at the edges of her memory; it was almost too big for her. She answered a few rote questions with equally rote answers.

“How’s business today, Vidi?”

“If I’m here, business must be good.”

“You need to get yourself a proper look, Vidi!”

“I’m a courier, this is as proper as I get.”

“Hey, Vidi!” A young program, both in looks and in appearance, ran out of their shop. “You got space for a Parnassus delivery?”

Vidi stopped. She was barely holding onto the newly created blueprint, but a trip to Parnassus meant enough beans to coast the rest of the week, if she wanted. “How big?”

The shopkeeper held out a byte that flickered between red and green shades. “Not big. Fresh from the sailer.”

“That’s not been cleaned,” she pointed out, half her dreadlocks coming to attention and pinning baleful eyes on the byte. “Fido, what in the name of dead pixels are you doing with unvaccinated stock.”

“It’s not that!” he replied defensively. “It’s clean, it’s just from Ark City.” When she gave him a disbelieving look, he doubled down. “I swear! All my stock from them always looks like this. You don’t have to do anything, just deliver it, it’s already paid for.”

“You deliver it then.”

“Parnassus is halfway to Ilo! I’d have to close up for the millicycle. I’ll add 10% to your fee,” he offered.

“Fifty.”

“I’m not made of beans, Vidi! Fifteen.”

“Forty."

“Twenty!”

“Twenty five.”

“Deal.” He threw the byte at her, and she caught it expertly, gritting her teeth as her memory began to give her warnings. The package was data-dense, as Parnassus’ deliveries usually were, but also data-stable. She could chop it up and tuck the bits wherever she could find room, and put them back together with no one the wiser once she got to Parnassus. When Fido sent her the transaction confirmation request, she was already moving again.

She shouldered her way through the growing crowds. There was always someone who needed something from the Engineering Souk-Sector. There was always a need for the next upgrade, the next tool, the next trick, the next new thing. And for those who couldn’t afford that, there was always the last old thing.

She moved easily through the crowds until she reached the nearest arm of the Spiral, a many-threaded river of light with hexagonal boards floating on it, each lane faster than the next. She saw an empty board and leapt on it, and spent the next few moments hopping from empty board to empty board until she was on the high-speed lane to the Wall and the Sailer station there, the many shops and sectors of the Souk whisking past her.

She wasn’t looking at them. She was looking, as she always did, at the distant Spire.

Every city had a Spire - well, almost all. They didn’t do anything, not that anyone could tell. Even when she really looked at it, all Vidi could see was a dead, cold mountain rising up out of the Outlands, past the nearby estuary. There was potential there, her eyes could see the empty pathways of it, but no power. Circuitry, but no data. Nothing to fill those paths. Nothing to explain the failure of any vehicle that tried to approach it. But there had to be a reason for it to be there. Nothing ever happened without a reason, good or bad.

She was, as usual, contemplating those idle thoughts when light flashed atop Halcyon’s Spire, brighter than anything anyone in the city had ever seen. Vidi, one of the few bearing witness to the event from the beginning, saw the concussive wave generated by that blast of light. She was already moving, darting from board to board to get off the Spiral, as more and more programs turned to look at the Spire, shining so bright that the millicycle’s light looked dull in comparison, blotted out belatedly by a storm growing so quickly that it almost looked like a flood. She was already running when alarms began to shrill across the city.

She was not fast enough.

The shockwave struck Halcyon with the growing, raging Spirestorm in its wake. It didn’t care for buildings, which was good, but it was also unaffected by walls, which was very, very bad. It roared unchecked through the tourist and manufacturing sectors, which were mostly empty at the time, finding very little of what it sought.

And then it found the Souk.

The wind slammed into every program there like something real, as real as any of them. Everyone went tumbling, flying, crashing. Screams filled the space, the collective wavelength going to panic. Vidi was thrown off her feet and rolled against the cart of someone who sold temporary Cosmetics; the cart crashed down on top of her and she curled up in a tight ball, staying down, as small as she could make herself. Her hair peeked nervously out from under the upturned cart for her.

She saw the owner of the cart wobble to his feet and look up at the monstrous storm bearing down on them all.

She saw a whip of… something, crackling and powerful, catch the program and yank him up into the air, screaming, until he couldn’t even be heard anymore. That was alright, there were dozens of voices all across the Souk shrieking with him in matching terror. Programs were being snatched where they fell, or ran, or stood gawking.

Vidi curled up even smaller. Across the street she saw two other programs huddled under the tables of a stall, and they saw her. None of the three moved. They didn’t even dare make a sound.

For the first time since its creation, Halcyon’s Souk went silent. The stillness lingered until the light from the Spire abruptly went out. In the sudden, comparative darkness of normal light, a torrential downpour began to fall. Vidi would’ve called it good, if only because it might herald an end to the terror, but some of her eyes were still open, and she got a really good look at that rain before she could help herself.

She put out a shaking hand, and derezzed voxels filled the cup, overflowed it, and trickled down to the street.

The first time Halcyon’s Spire went live, it rained the dead over the city for an entire millicycle.

Chapter Text

GAM stood at attention on the SysAdmin tower of Ilo City. He felt deeply out of place, a bright violet and black presence surrounded by the stark white and pale blue of the local programs. The only mercy was that, with his helm closed, no one could guess at his unease. All he had to do was stand at parade rest and pretend not to be worried sick.

He didn’t want to be there. He shouldn’t have been there, for that matter. A courier should have been sent, or perhaps someone in Halcyon’s own SysAdmin office. Not him. His place was at the Wall. His duty was in Halcyon. Even though he knew there was little he, or anyone, could do to help correct whatever disaster had struck his city, still he wanted to be there.

But he was not. Instead he was stuck at Ilo, waiting for someone to tell him what he could plainly see through the high windows of the elegant SysAdmin tower: Ilo was fine. There had been no Spire-sourced storm here, no programs derezzed.

He turned minutely when something gleamed at the edge of his vision, but it was only a sailer coming in, solar sails gleaming in the cool double-spectrum light of Ilo’s buildings. Below him, Ilo spread out with none of the ordered elegance of his home. Even the terrain had been left wild, hills and dips that broke the city into randomized sectors.

“Monitor!”

GAM turned. “Sentry, actually,” he replied, not knowing either of the two programs hurrying in his direction through the quiet whispers of activity on the floor, and not much caring. He didn’t have enough seniority in Halcyon to say no to this stupid trip, but in Ilo he owed answers to no one. “GAM, Wall Sentry.”

“Ah, well.” The first program stuttered to a halt. He had the oddly flat look of a first-gen, though obvious Cosmetics gleamed along the lines of his circuitry, visible to GAM’s senses but likely to no one else’s. They made the Ilosian look like a tall, solid mid-gen young man, the sort you should trust as your SysAdmin. “Apologies, Sentry.” He dipped his head minutely; the Wall Sentries of Halcyon carried with them an immense weight of reputation. “I’m Endos, SysAdmin of Ilo City. I just wanted to personally thank you. I imagine it’s all hands on deck at Halcyon and I’m honored our sister city could spare someone to personally bring us a warning. If there’s anything Ilo can do…”

The leader of Ilo let the sentence trail off, and GAM replied as he was expected. “Knowing that Ilo is unaffected, safe, is enough. No one in Halcyon wishes to see a repeat of this event on any of the other cities of the Grid.”

“Absolutely,” the SysAdmin agreed enthusiastically. “Ilo has sent our fastest couriers to check on the cities of this side of the grid, as well as asking for any report they might wish to share. We assume Pevir is doing the same?” he asked delicately.

GAM had no idea what Pevir City might be doing or not doing; relationships with that particular bit of the Grid were always a flicker away from violence. But he knew who’d been sent to bring the news to them. “We should have reports from Pevir within the millicycle. They’ll be made publicly available then,” he assured the SysAdmin with utter certainty.

“Delightful!” Endos clapped his hands enthusiastically. “Well, then, I’ll leave you with Adas.”

Adas was shorter than either of them, a chubby last-gen with all the incredibly detailed appearance of one. Her shoulder-length hair fell on precise ringlets around the very solemn, round face hidden behind a clear faceplate, and her blue-lit white robes moved like water when she did. She nodded politely at GAM, who nodded back.

“Adas is my GO4. If I don’t know what’s going on in Ilo, she does.” Endos smiled a politician’s smile. “She can contact me in a pinch, if you should need to do so. Please excuse me, I’m afraid the city doesn’t run itself. Mostly.” He chuckled sensibly at his own joke and walked away.

Adas stared up at the black smoothness of the Sentry’s helm. GAM stared down at her; he was a full head’s taller than her, and probably three times more solid. “Do you actually need anything?” she asked bluntly.

“I was only sent to make sure Ilo’s Spire is not active."

“No more than it’s ever been,” she shrugged, gesturing. They moved to another window. From there Ilo’s Spire was visible, dark and shrouded in flickering black clouds, one of the storms that so often formed around any and all of the Spires. “Was there truly no warning, no power surge?” she asked after they’d been silent a while.

“Nothing.”

Something in his tone must’ve given him away, because she looked at him as if she could see through the black faceplate. “I’m sorry.” She looked back out the window. “We all care for our cities in our own way. I can’t imagine what it would be like if something like this happened, and I was sent off on a courier run instead of being left to do my job.”

“You’d be angry,” GAM replied tightly. “You’d be very angry. But you’d be there doing the job.”

She smiled fleetingly. “Noted.”

The quality of light in the room shifted abruptly. GAM registered the angle first, and looked up.

Adas’ gaze followed his motion. “Oh!”

Above them, a vastness of silver and gold, the Island floated by. It wasn’t a city, in and of itself, but overtime it had grown to a size that required its ground-bound sisters to take notice, a floating citadel made up of a thousand skiffs, flyers, ships and sailers, all anchored to one another and sharing their anti-grav protocols to keep it above it all. It was a place of illusions, mirages. At any one time, nothing in the Island was real, but paradoxically, at any other time, everything was.

“Did anyone warn the Island?” GAM asked.

Adas’ clear faceplate flickered with information. “Yes,” she reported. “It actually provided visual confirmation, where weather allowed, that the other Spires weren’t a-”

GAM saw it first, and he was running before Adas could register the motion. “Sound the alarm!” he shouted at her, at all the programs on the floor, as he sprinted out.

Adas had been looking at him, but at those words she whirled around. Her circuitry went gray with horror.

Ilo’s Spire had gone live.

She threw every alarm in the city on. Even as high up as the SysAdmin’s top levels were, she heard the distant shrill and bellow as the systems complied. Before her, across a narrow strait of the Sea of Simulation, the Spire’s channels had come alive; energy was flowing up them, stopping, dropping, rising up a little higher and repeating the process, as if the Spire were…

Breathing. Gathering itself.

The storm was growing exponentially in size and fury. She whirled on the room. “Warn the Island!” she shouted. “Warn every city! Reroute all traffic away from Ilo immediately.”

“Without arrival confirm- ” Someone began to protest.

“Strand them on the bloody Outlands if that’s what it takes!” she overrode them. “They’ll be alive for us to fetch later!” She ran after the Halcyonite Sentry, pausing just outside the office on an arching, broad walkway connecting the tower to a secondary, lower sector.

Unsurprisingly, he’d left her far behind. She caught a glimpse of him, three levels up already, racing up the decorative railings of the SysAdmin tower as if they were a stairwell and not a thin strip of material barely wider than her own dainty foot.

Above her, the Island’s own alarms began to screech, and the city’s massive solar sails threw a vast shadow over Ilo as they deployed. It was trying to turn away, but it was too big to do it quickly.

Adas’ faceplate came alive. It was, of all the programs who could be calling her at the moment, the Sentry. She answered at once.

“No sails!” he shouted at her.

“But they need to -”

“They’re large metal arrays on the edge of a Spirestorm!”

She switched channels immediately. “Island City CommCon, this is Ilo SysAdmin, you’re too close to the storm, close your sails before you take a direct hit from the Spire!”

Someone, by the grace of the Unknown Users, was paying attention. The sail closest to Ilo’s spire began to fold shut, even though it made the city’s speed go from torpid to glacial. Above her, she saw the Sentry leap into thin air, manifest a jet from a baton he’d had who knew where on his person, and take off like a shot, headed directly for the Spire.

“What are you doing?!” she squealed at him.

“Looking for -,” he replied tersely.

She didn’t hear his answer. An immense bolt of energy crackled out of the storm, lanced into one of the Island’s solar sails and careened wildly over it, partially fended off by whatever surge protection the structure had. Primal matter flew, great gouts of the sail derezzing spectacularly. Unable to latch on, the electricity focused on the closest potential target: the top of Ilo’s SysAdmin tower.

The roar of the impact filled Adas’ world. The top two floors of the tower exploded into massive chunks that were coming undone at the edges even as they fell. Adas was thrown back and bounced against a window, crashed into a safety railing, and found herself on the floor, making wheezing little noises, her consciousness feeding her nothing but gibberish.

Shouting slowly forced her code back into a semblance of sense, if only because she knew that shouting indicated a problem, and it was in her nature to solve problems. She picked herself up with a groan, and instinctively reset her functions. Multiple channels were demanding her attention, but one of them was already open.

“ -et inside, Adas, now!”

GAM. The Sentry. She glanced around, trying to locate him, and saw him, the jet diving after the immense pieces blasted off the tower, blowing them up into smaller pieces that would, if the future was kind, completely derezz before they hit someone on the streets below.

She looked up, searching for the Island. Instead she saw the Spirestorm, black clouds and flashing energy, wild fractal surges everywhere. For a moment it seemed as if there were something written in the light, and she stared, wide-eyed, as a single flash of it threatened to overload her memory and fry her disk.

A bolt of energy lashed out at her, but suddenly the jet was in the way. It detonated, derezzing into a tremendous firework, but the Halcyonite Sentry merely used the force of the explosion to launch himself at the tower, leaping from ledge to light to railing, his motions too fast for Adas to follow. The next thing she knew he’d scooped her up in his arms and was racing for the office they’d just left. Helpful hands opened the doors for them, and slammed them shut as soon as they were inside.

“I thought you said the storm didn’t harm buildings!” she wheezed at him.

‘The storm at Halcyon didn’t,” he replied tightly. “Apparently it got an upgrade between there and here.”

“Adas, we’re getting reports from all the tidal shelters.”

“Population count?”

“All secured.”

“No,” GAM said, standing at a window, every line of his body taut with impotent fury. “Not all.”

Adas rushed up to him, followed by half a dozen programs. He was looking up once again, and she realized what he meant before she’d even looked.

The storm had overtaken the Island. It was tearing it apart with little care for whatever shields and protections it might have had, and everything that tore off the citadel’s substance disappeared into the frothing clouds. Everyone in the SysAdmin tower could see tiny flashes of light, like strings of fireworks going off in the battered darkness; after a moment, Adas at last realized what they were, and felt as if she might void all her energy at the horror of it.

Programs. She was watching the Island’s population burn up into little flashes of nothing.

“We have to stop it,” she whispered. “We have to stop it, how do we stop it, GAM, how do we -”

“Give it a moment,” he replied, his black faceplate full of the horrors above them.

As if his words had been a signal of some sort, the storm suddenly began to recede, spiraling back to its original shape and position. In mere picocycles it was once again a scattering of black clouds around Ilo’s dark, cold Spire.

“One point four nanocycles,” GAM said. “That didn’t change, at least.”

“Adas!” One of the programs who’d not left her console cried out suddenly. A bright red warning appeared on her clear faceplate.

Worse, the same warning began to flash on the Sentry’s black faceplate.

“Oh, no.” She knew exactly what was wrong.

“The Island’s falling!” her dutiful program reported all the same.

“Directly on top of Ilo,” GAM said, and bolted for the door once again.

Chapter Text

“No! No, I had it! Kane, what did you do!”

“What did I do, what did you do?! I thought we agreed not to try again until we’d stabilized H1!”

“It’s stable enough!”

“Molly, a third of the programs are gone. The server itself nearly burned out!”

“Oh, my god, Kane, it’s just a server, if it goes down, we reinstall from Zero and the Archive, it’s fine!”

“It’s not fine! The issue with Zero aside, they’re not just programs anymore, Moll, you know that.”

“Do I? Do you? All we’ve been doing is looking! How do you know you’re not just looking at some sort of really good exponential-growth quasi-AI iteration instead -”

“What the cr- Did you just fry the I/O server?! Did you seriously just crash the entire input-output server?”

“I was just -”

“Moll, what the hell! Now no one can input new programs!”

“I almost had it!”

“Well, you’re still sitting here consciously lying to me, so obviously no, you didn’t! And now we’re down two servers!”

“…”

“What the fuck did you do.”

“Uh, about the cloud storage uplink…”

“Oh, fuck you, Molly.”

“Don’t you – Kane, don’t, give it back right now. Give it back!”

“No. Fuck you. We’re not trying again until we’ve stabilized all the servers and figured out the feedback overflow issue. We agreed to do this together and you’ve blanked me out twice already!”

“Kane!”

“No.”

Chapter Text

Ilo City rested on a narrow strip of land that left it surrounded by the Sea of Simulation on three sides. It had long grown used to being flooded by the whims of the tide, and no new Sector could be laid out without a requisite number of tidal shelters, meant to accommodate the entire population if need be. Even if only a single sector of Ilo survived, the city’s population would remain standing.

No one had foreseen those shelters having to fend off an entire city falling from the sky. During the first Spirestorm, Halcyon had lost nearly a third of its population. Ilo was counting more than half gone. The Island had been completely obliterated.

The Grid felt a ripple of panic go through its entirety. No one, not even the oldest programs, had ever seen the Spires active in such a fashion; they’d only ever gone live to bring about each generation of programs. Obviously no one believed the unseen, unknown, nonexistent so-called ‘Users’ were suddenly going to show up just to erase all that they had (supposedly) created, but again…

The attacks, if that’s what they were, had happened almost exactly a millicycle apart. The Grid’s entire population held their breaths as another millicycle came and went without a Spire having a genocidal tantrum, and an all-cities meeting was called. Normally the cities of the Grid ran their own matters without interference or input from anyone else but, given the circumstances, even Om’s SysAdmin had showed up, inasmuch as he could.

Adas was standing a step beside and behind Endos, who was himself standing a few paces to the left of PEN, Halcyon’s own SysAdmin. Once a simple first-gen, PEN was one of the few programs of that generation that had naturally upgraded. It was a tall, stately presence in robes of purest violet accented with blue and indigo circuitry. Over it all it wore a darker shawl that shimmered, its weave constantly in motion; Adas had seen a few as they’d come into the city; it was a perma-Cosmetic rotating through the names of all the programs that had been lost in Halcyon.

“I’m glad to see all of us present, in one way or another,” PEN declared to the eight or so projections standing in a circle on the Halcyon CommCon’s main floor. “I ask only that we mourn Aeolus’ absence as the loss it is.”

“So there are no survivors from the Citadel at all?” one of the other SysAdmins asked, her tone wounded and full of shock.

“None,” Endos replied. “I have also commanded Ilo to be evacuated, at least until we find answers.” He shrugged eloquently. “We’re just too close to the Spire to allow for appropriate advance warning.”

Gungnir scoffed. “What would you consider enough distance for advance warning, Endos?” The SysAdmin for Pevir countered. “You can barely see Halcyon’s Spire from the Souk, and yet here we are.”

“We’re not attacking the Spires,” Endos gritted out. “This isn’t the time to bring up that dead pixel yet again.”

His fellow SysAdmin, a last-gen with a long, blood-colored mohawk and armor that rippled with red and orange circuitry, put his hands up. “Then I won’t suggest common sense,” he declared. “But I will offer all of Pevir’s fleets if someone should want to have them at hand.”

“You want us to invite your battleships into our space?” Glim exclaimed. “Should we also swear allegiance preemptively?”

“That is a very short-sighted response to a very generous offer,” a calm, roughly electronic voice declared, and every SysAdmin turned to the screen in question. Om was the smallest of the cities, the most remote. The city dwelt on the Spire itself, and it was inhabited by programs that most everyone considered… weird, to begin with, interested in matters of abstraction, rather than reality. But OM had been SysAdmin of the city since its inception; he’d been around nearly since the inception of the Grid. He was one of the oldest programs still in existence, if not the oldest, and no one could tell if he’d founded the city, or if he’d renamed himself after it. Though the connection was so bad that his image was full of static and his voice full of noise , his presence still carried the weight of a program who had borne witness to Grid events most there couldn’t even fathom. The unfortunately poor projection made it impossible to guess at his height, which kept on jumping, or his build, which seemed to be fairly solid most of the time. He spoke with a seasoned, calm male voice, and the pale blue of his circuitry w as so hard to render that he looked like the most basic of first-gens. Whenever he showed up to a meeting, which was exceedingly rare, he made it a point to speak in a clipped, formal fashion just so the commline wouldn’t make a hash of his words. “I for one would welcome one of Pev ir’s ships, if he can spare it for Om . His fastest.”

The meeting went silent as they all realized what Gungnir had actually offered, an offer which only OM had readily understood. Pevir wasn’t offering its battleships to fend off an attack; they were being offered to evacuate the cities.

Gungnir turned to someone not shown on his projection, then back to the meeting. “It will be sent at once. It’s… It’s a long way to Om from here, old friend.”

OM gestured lightly, his mostly featureless face nonetheless showing a grin. “Then we will hope that there is no need for it to make haste.”

“We can’t just… abandon our cities, can we?” Another SysAdmin hesitated.

“Gungnir, you don’t have enough ships to evacuate us all,” Endos pointed out.

“I do.” The SysAdmin’s smile was fierce and humorless.

“Have you built yet more useless -” Glim began.

“He does,” PEN interrupted her, eyes on Pevir’s projection, “if he sends the entire fleet out. All of Pevir’s ships.”

Glim gaped in disbelief. Gungnir shrugged, looking deeply amused. “I don’t imagine any of you are going to attack Pevir at this time. So optimistic of me, I know.”

“We weren’t going to attack you at all to begin with,” ACM, Flow’s SysAdmin and Pevir’s crankiest neighbor, muttered.

Privately, Adas thought that perhaps Pevir had a point: without a Spire to defend against, they didn’t have to worry about getting derezzed into a crater. For that matter, Pevir had destroyed its Spire and nothing had happened to the city. Why were the Spires important enough to preserve?

Almost immediately, her instincts recoiled from the question. Of course they were important. It didn’t even bear thinking about it. She shook her head minutely and focused on the meeting.

“Halcyon is the largest, not the oldest. Om is,” OM was saying. “We are also the smallest, though.”

“Is is a population factor, then? Ilo might have been the second largest -”

“Pevir is the second largest city on the Grid,” Gungnir interrupted. “First now, I guess.” He grimaced.

“Pevir is not at risk, and thank goodness for that,” PEN declared mildly. “I’m not sure your people would be willing to evacuate if they were.”

Gungnir grinned. “Every enemy can be beat. It just takes enough tries to figure out how.”

PEN just rubbed at its forehead. Glim rolled her eyes.

“Where did the Island and Ilo rank?” Endos turned to Adas.

“Third and fourth, in that order.”

The meeting was silent. “Who’s the fifth?” Gungnir asked.

“We are,” Glim breathed out in a frightened little whisper. “Ark.”

“The fleet is on its way.”

“Every sensor on your Spire, Glim,” Endos suggested.

“There’s not even a storm around it right now,” she protested breathlessly, even as she turned away to give directions to her staff.

“We cannot all move to Pevir,” OM reminded everyone. “Choice aside, the area around Pevir is not energy-rich. She does not have the resources to support much more in the matter of population than she already does.”

“And moving programs around will just make someone else a target, if it’s size we’re looking at,” Gungnir added. “For that matter, you said Ilo’s evacuating to Halcyon. What’s that do to your local headcount, PEN?”

PEN turned to Endos, who turned to Adas. Her faceplate flickered momentarily, and her energy levels faltered with an answer she didn’t want to give out loud.

PEN drew itself up very straight. “We will keep an intensive watch on our Spire. Let us go on the belief that if there is to be another event, and if it is indeed targeting cities according to population density, both Ark and Halcyon are first in line. Offense is, at the moment, unlikely. All our efforts must focus on defense and evacuation. Is there any other information we can share?”

There wasn’t, of course. The meeting dissolved into mostly individual conversations as the SysAdmins tried to sort out how to keep themselves from becoming a target.

Endos turned to PEN. “If you wish Ilo to -”

He was interrupted by an upraised hand from the other SysAdmin. “You will be a target wherever you go. We will be a target wherever we stand. Nothing has changed. Continue with the evacuation.”

Endos nodded his gratitude, and as PEN turned its attention back to another matter, Ilo’s SysAdmin turned to Adas. “I’m going back to Ilo to oversee the evacuation. I want you to stay here and oversee this end of it.”

Adas felt her energy bottom out. “What?!”

Endos caught her shoulders. “I need you here, Adas. You have to be Ilo’s voice in Halcyon.”

But… But Ilo was her home, overseeing such things was her job! Why did she have to stay in this unfamiliar, greedy, horrible, no-good -

You ’d be angry. You ’d be very angry. But you’d be there doing the job.

She drew herself up straight. Angry, yes. But anger didn’t excuse her from doing her duty. “Yes, sir.”

Endos smiled his gratitude at her and then turned to the circle of programs that were working the consoles along the perimeter of the meeting room, out of sight but in charge of all the details that went with such a momentous meeting. “Please inform PEN accordingly. Adas speaks with Ilo’s voice while this situation is ongoing.” He waited for a few nods of acknowledgment before hurrying away.

Adas drew a deep breath. Well, fine. She’d just… She’d make a Little Ilo in Halcyon, away from their weirdness about transactions and whatnot. She turned to the nearest program. “Where’s the sector designated for the Ilo evacuees?”

He handed over a tablet with the information, and she nodded. It looked to be sufficient space, in an older manufacturing area. Nothing that couldn’t be repurposed with the right equipment. “What about security? Supplies? Restructuring crews?" The programs around her gave her blank looks. “Do you expect the incoming programs to sleep on the floor with the gridbugs?”

“Uh…”

She huffed angrily. “Don’t be useless at me, do your job. I need someone in security, supplies and construction to come speak with me. Either that, or tell me where to find them.”

They scrambled to give her the information, which had her going all over a city she didn’t know, with transportation she didn’t understand. What was a ‘spiral’? What were ‘boards’? She stepped out of the meeting room and into a multi-tiered courtyard with elegant light-sculptures scattered throughout, and saw a few groups of programs gathered here and there. A familiar ID pinged her senses. Oh, finally! Someone useful! She made a beeline for the group before she realized what she was doing, and by the time her common sense caught up to her, the six or seven black-masked Sentries had all turned to stare at her. “Um.”

“I know her,” GAM’s voice informed the others. The hyperbolic attention that had slammed into Adas like a wall eased up somewhat, and they turned their attention to one another once again.

“GAM, a word with you, please?” she asked meekly.

He stepped away from the group and closer to her.

“Thank you,” she murmured. It had just come to her that the only reason she was still standing there fretting about her people and her city was him.

He shrugged minutely. “Didn’t do much, did I?”

“A lot of programs are alive because of you,” she told him tartly.

“A lot of them aren’t.”

“Did you expect to save the whole city?”

A sound of amusement came through the black faceplate. “See, logic tells me there was no way. My core? That one wanted me to save two.”

She stared at him.

“What did you want?”

“Oh! Um. Ilo is evacuating, and most of the population is coming here.”

“Aware of that. I think the whole of Sector 42 has been set aside for you.”

“Yes, but that’s all that’s been done.” She gestured at him, suspecting that she wouldn’t have to explain.

She didn’t. “What, no -?” He let out an exasperated sound at her expression, and turned back to the other Sentries. “You’ve got to be kidding me. Janus!”

Another Sentry approached them. Adas could barely tell them apart, if only because the newcomer was a sliver shorter, and perhaps not as broad across the chest. “Problem?”

“No one’s cleared Forty-Two to make sure it’s safe for habitation. Or, you know. Safe, in general.”

Janus groaned. “Why am I not surprised. I’ll get on it.”

“There’s no debris or anything from the… from the event?” she asked GAM as Janus meandered off to speak to another group.

“We didn’t take any damage,” he reminded her. “But Forty-Two’s an old manufacturing Sector, there’s probably junk all over it. Didn’t they assign you some sort of removal crew?”

“No.”

“Do you have any help at all?!”

She stared at him and he sighed, hanging his head.

“I do have the names and coordinates of some programs that might be helpful, but it’s telling me to use this ‘spiral’ thing. I can drive if someone gives me a baton. I’m proficient with both a lightcycle and a crawler.” She offered the tablet.

“The roads are for walking, and batons aren’t cheap,” he replied automatically, taking the tablet. “Come on, I’ll show you how to navigate the Spiral.”

She trotted after him. “But… A baton? You had a baton.”

“Yes, and it’s going to be expensive to replace.”

She huffed in exasperation, and they rode down a lift in silence. “Does everything have a price in Halcyon?”

“Walking in the door doesn’t,” he replied, arms crossed. “Refueling doesn’t. When your people come in, they’re probably going to be given a soukscan.”

“A what?”

He lifted his hand, his armor receding so he could show her the pale white circuit sitting just under the skin of the back of his hand. He curled his fist, and it tightened into a bright glyph, shifting position so it rested across his knuckles. “A soukscan. It’s how you track transactions in Halcyon.”

“We don’t… We don’t do that in Ilo, we don’t do any of your bean-counting thing.”

“No. But here you and your people will have to. Didn’t you get one when you came in?” When she shook her head, he made a little amused sound. “So technically, you’re in Halcyon illegally.”

“What?!” She puffed up in indignation until she realized he was teasing her. “I am here as a representative of my city,” she declared primly. “I’m not joining yours. Wait. Is that how you track the population of the city? With those soukscan things?”

“Yes.”

She hopped on a line immediately, her faceplate bright with calculations.

“What are you doing?”

“Telling your SysAdmin that the Ilo refugees absolutely cannot be given soukscans.”

“Then they won’t be able to get anything for themselves!”

“Do you have to pay for energy?” she demanded.

“No, but -!”

“Population is how the Spires are choosing targets,” she told him. “If Halcyon reads at the same level the last event left it at, there’s a chance there won’t be any more events here, even with all the Ilo refugees on-site.”

He was silent as she sorted through communication channels and messages, getting on top of a pile of issues that was trying to grow before she could do anything about it. She only noticed the silence after the most urgent matters had been dealt with.

“Population. That’s what’s triggering this?”

“It’s the going theory,” she admitted, belatedly realizing that she probably ought not to be blurting out major SysAdmin information in front of just anyone. “I probably shouldn’t have said anything.” She glanced up at the black faceplate.

And told him everything that had been said at the meeting. It was impossible to tell what he thought about it all through the black faceplate. “Do you ever take your helm off?”

“Not if I don’t have to,” he replied distractedly. “With it I’m a Sentry. I’m part of the Wall. If you have faith in the Wall, you have faith in me. Without it I’m just GAM. And GAM might not be someone to trust.”

“Well, I trust GAM,” she countered tartly. The lift doors opened and she stepped out on ground level, looking around and seeing nothing but rising buildings and the odd program hurrying this way and that. No vehicles of any kind, she realized for the first time. The last machine she’d seen was the jet that had brought her and Endos from Ilo to Halcyon.

He followed her out of the lift almost belatedly. “This way.”

She trotted after him.

Chapter Text

GAM rode with Ilo’s GO4 all the way to Sector 42, because after the first meeting he had the nasty suspicion that, if he didn’t, no one was going to want to listen to her until she bit someone’s head off. Which, he’d come to realize, the little actuarial program was entirely willing, ready and able to do.

It was an eye-opening revelation, and it worried him a little how delighted he was to discover it – but he was. The Ilosian had no behavioral filter. She didn’t count her beans before she spoke to someone, just to see what she could get away with. She had zero beans; she had no soukscan. She had nothing to sell, nothing to buy, and nothing to lose.

They watched as the reconstruction crews repurposed all the detritus that cycles of abandonment had left behind, using the mass to turn warehouses into heavily reinforced habitation cubes, clearing out old manufacturing stock and machinery, making room for ETCs, communication points and other general necessities, all the while keeping in mind the wholesale destruction that had just hit Ilo and doing their best with the materials at hand to plan against a potential third onslaught. GAM wasn’t sure who’d be footing the bill for it, but when the first sailer came in and the Ilosians began to flow into the Sector, carrying what little they’d been able to salvage of their lives, he didn’t care. It felt, finally, as if he were doing something to help, when in Ilo itself he’d been able to do nothing except dig through crushed buildings in the hopes of finding something other than disk shards.

With Halcyon shifting into its downtime millicycle, an Ilosian program brought Adas and him cups of energy while she spoke to what seemed to be Sector Leads. It caught him off-guard, being given something and not having to pay for it. The Ilosian watched in fascination as he held onto the cup and drained the energy remotely from it.

“Not even for that, huh?” Adas asked, downing half the cup in one go. “You don’t have to stay, you know. You probably have things to do.”

“I did. Until we realized there was no City Security watching after you and your people.”

“‘We’?”

“WallSec.” He pointed to the three black-and-violet figures filtering Ilosians at the ramp coming down from the sailer’s landing port. “We oversee everyone coming into Halcyon. And since City Security hasn’t even shown up, I guess I’m with you until they do.”

She sipped at the cup. “And you’re allowed to do that? Just… decide that we’re your job now?” She squinted at him. “You’re not just a Sentry, are you.”

“I am a Sentry.” There was amusement in his voice. “A Wall Sentry. The safety of everyone inside Halcyon City is my responsibility. The moment your people walked in, they became my job.”

She gave him a very suspicious look, sipping at the energy, but another Ilosian chose that moment to rush up to her and hand her a small bundle. “Oh, thank goodness.” She took it and unwrapped it. “Here. I’m sorry, but your Spiral is horrible. I feel like I’m going to miss a step and fall between the boards just looking at it.”

“It takes…” He lost the thread of his words when he saw what she was offering him. “Some getting used to.”

It was a multi-purpose baton, the activity lines on it gleaming in the white and blue of Ilo.

“Well, take it. It’s the least I can do. I’d forgotten you lost yours in Ilo.” There was a second baton in the bundle, which she secured to herself. “It’s just a crawler, though.”

“You should keep it,” he said slowly. “You could make a small fortune selling it here.”

Adas made a rude sound. “We won’t stay here long enough to need Halcyonite beans,” she told him. “Take it. If…” She faltered, but rallied swiftly. “If something happens, I’d rather know you’re fully upgraded to do your job. Of protecting us, you know.”

GAM took the baton gently. “It doesn’t feel any different.”

“It’s a baton, how different can it be?”

“You’d be surprised.” He examined the glowing lines bisecting the device; at least one of them was active. “Multi-purpose batons are rare here in Halcyon.”

“Well, try not to lose it, then,” she replied cheekily. They both looked up as the sailer on the ground deployed its wings and lifted up until it could hitch itself to the nearest data-line, making room for a smaller sibling that was already on approach. “That should be it,” she informed him.

“HEY!”

The shout made her jump and drop the cup, whirling around, but GAM was already prowling away from her, radiating menace in a way she’d not seen from the Sentry before. He pointed at a knot of Ilosians with the baton. “YOU!”

They stared at him, frozen in uncertainty. “Not you, move!” he barked at them. That, they understood, and scattered away from his path as he stalked closer. “YOU!” he snarled.

The Halcyonite program who’d been hiding behind the Ilosians, and rifling through the boxes of supplies Adas had spent an entire millicycle securing for them, froze for all of a picocycle.

Then it took off like a small skiff on a big line.

GAM was after the rogue in an instant, a runaway freight lift. “WallSec 42!” he called out into a dedicated comm-line. “Janus, there’s a breach somewhere in the Sector, I’m in pursuit of a scavenger.”

“Deploying search Bits,” his fellow Sentry replied at once. “Do you need backup?”

“It’s one scavenger.” The program in question, a low-energy figure ahead of him, twisted around a corner and under a set of massive pipes that had not yet been repurposed. GAM leapt over them and closed the distance. “Find that breach and seal it. These programs have been through enough. CitySec ought to have done that much.”

“Yeah, well, they’re claiming since the Ilosians don’t have soukscans, they’re not CitySec’s problem.” Janus’ tone dripped his opinion on that information, and it wasn’t flattering of their fellow officers.

The rogue leapt with impossible grace up, caught the bottom of an old surveillance platform, and used it to further launch themselves onto a rooftop, racing along. GAM didn’t bother following; he wasn’t sure the old platform would take his weight. He was fairly certain the roof wouldn’t. Instead he threw himself through a window into the low building and ran on, head twisted up to follow the scavenger by the dim glow coming off them and shining through the gaps in the roof.

When the thief leapt down he put on a burst of speed and nearly caught them at the door, but some sort of thin rope leapt at him and slashed for his faceplate, and he had to duck, his grab going wide.

What was that?! In all his cycles of service he’d never seen anything like the weapon the program had just used. Was it even a weapon? An upgrade? A Cosmetic? A patch? GAM picked up speed again and ran on. The rogue twisted around another corner; the Sentry followed and nearly got himself derezzed when a thin pipe came at him out of nowhere and nearly caught him at throat height. He bent down and slid under it on his knees.

“Now you’re making me angry,” he ground out as he sprang back up and raced through a narrow, debris-filled space between two warehouses.

The rogue ran out into a yard full of broken, rusted containers, and dashed into the maze, seeking freedom, but when GAM came out of the chokepoint he was done with games. He pursued until the edge of the tiny wasteland, picked up a piece of material as big as his chest, and threw it as hard as he could.

He caught the scavenger at the knees. The rogue program went down with a yowl, crashing into crates and reducing them to even more tattered bits and pieces. GAM ran up to them, found them rolled into a disoriented ball. Their hair, which was much brighter than the rest of their circuitry, was twisting this way and that like a bunch of severed live wires.

It wasn’t a weapon, or an upgrade, or a patch. GAM’s senses were telling him that it was part of the rogue, for all that it looked so different from them. He rolled the program over with a foot, grabbed them by the throat, and lifted them up. There was enough of a difference in height between them that the rogue was suddenly nearly two feet off the ground, clawing helplessly at the Sentry’s arm. “The Ilosians don’t have it hard enough, you have to steal from them?” he demanded.

“Hey, man, life’s hard for everyone!” the rogue replied angrily. She was a first-gen, though her face had more definition than most. Her body was all straight, simple lines, and her voice had the soft burr that identified most of them, though softened some by a feminine Cosmetic. Her hair lashed out at him again, but this time he called the bluff and the dreadlocks pummeled weakly against his armor. She tried to kick him, but GAM stretched out his arm and she couldn’t reach him. She barely weighted anything. “Let go!”

“Sure. When you’re in containment.”

“Charge me the stupid fine and let me go!”

“So you don’t need to steal, is what I’m hearing. You were doing it just because, if you can pay the fine.”

She writhed angrily in his grip and he shook her once, sharply. “Cut it out! You’ve got one good thing going for you, and that’s that now we know there’s a breach between Sectors. You want a favor from me, you better be showing me where that breach is.”

“Oh, go lick a power line, CitySec,” she shot back, though she was hanging more or less limp in his grip after the shake.

GAM paused at that. “You might want to take a second look, rogue.”

She did. More startling by far, so did her hair. Every dreadlock came up, and tiny optical interfaces irised open at the tip of each one. “Oh.” Her voice went faint, and even her hair looked taken aback. “Oh, gridbugs, you’re WallSec.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” GAM clipped out. “You just spent the last few picocycles getting firmly on my bad side, rogue. Do you want a moment to re-evaluate your priorities?”

“I mean, is it gonna make a difference?”

GAM couldn’t help but be amused. Scared, but not cowed. “It might. About that breach?”

“It’s not a breach,” she strangled out, and he lowered her to her feet but did not release his grip on her throat. “It’s an old delivery system. The seals degraded a few cycles back.” She eyed him warily. “You wouldn’t fit.”

“Funny. Coordinates, please,” he demanded, all courtesy. “Janus, you still listening?”

“Glorying in your brilliant handling of the matter,” his fellow Sentry confirmed, his amusement obvious. The thief muttered out a set of coordinates. “I’ll handle this one myself, GAM.” The line closed.

GAM eyed the thief. The thief eyed him back, exponentially. “Your name and assigned Sector,” he demanded.

“Ugh.” She rolled her actual eyes. “Look, WallSec, there’s no one t-”

She stopped looking at him. Every single one of her eyes shifted just enough that GAM knew he was no longer the focus of her attention. He also knew it wasn’t an attack, or a cohort of the thief, simply because the angle of her attention was too steep. He knew, in fact, exactly was she was looking at. And he knew, without looking himself, that bypassing the soukscans had not worked.

The Sentry whipped around. He didn’t notice, but the thief did, that he shoved her behind him as if he could shield her from what was coming.

Halcyon’s Spire was activating once again. Electric power lined its circuitry, the storm around it feeding it from a wall of electric bolts that was increasing even as the storm itself expanded monstrously. Like a filling energy pipe, the blinding light was rising toward the top with implacable speed.

GAM yanked the thief forward. “Run.”

“Where?!” she demanded.

“The Ilosian buildings are reinforced. Run!” he shouted at her, and they both did as alarms began to bellow through the city once again.

Chapter Text

Halcyon’s Spire came alive looking for destruction. This time, the elegant Queen of the Grid wrapped her arms around her children and defiantly braced herself.

“Go, go go!” GAM shouted at the rogue when she turned to look at him, and they both sprinted through the nearly empty warehouse, desperately trying to outrun the leading edge of the storm to the Sector’s central plaza. He considered the baton, but a crawler would never make it past all the junk and debris of time piled up everywhere.

They raced instead for the area where the Ilosians had been disembarking. One of the first buildings there had already been finished, a multipurpose central hub. It was a hexagon, one level aboveground and two below it, every beam and wall reinforced according to the data that had been recovered from Ilo.

Even more, aside from the Sector 42 buildings being structurally tough to begin with, they and a number of newly designated shelters across Halcyon had been hastily reinforced by following the structural equations for the city walls themselves, the most formidable defense any city in the Grid boasted, unbreached even by the heaviest assaults Pevir had ever been able to muster. There was a reason the Red City bowed its head to the Queen of the Grid where it knelt to no one else.

The storm struck the outermost wall; lightning arced out from the black clouds and stitched destruction against the immense protections that encircled the city, taking chunks out of them that flew up in the air, derezzed into primal, molten matter. But the damage was basically cosmetic, barely scratching the surface of the wall. The storm found its speed abruptly arrested.

It was the first time that onlookers realized there was an intelligence of some sort directing the behavior of the Spirestorm. It swirled into a vortex, the clouds spiraling faster and faster, the lightning inside it growing brighter, focused into much larger flashes of energy. Suddenly, rather than striking wherever alongside the wall, the storm launched all its energy at a single spot.

The blow was devastating, and Halcyon felt it even at its deepest level. The outermost wall was breached. It nearly took the feet out from under GAM and the rogue but they stayed upright, barely, and sprinted on. Looking up, the Sentry noticed that the storm seemed to have paused as if it, too, needed to catch its breath after that massive strike.

Then they were in the plaza, by the temporary sailer station, and there was a familiar figure at the doors waving at them. “GAM!”

He put on a last burst of speed. The rogue and him flew through the doors. One of the other Sentries keyed them shut at once, and the other two rushed forward to brace them with piles of crates and boxes.

GAM spun around. “Adas, head count.”

“We’re all here,” she hurried to him.

“Down,” he told her, then pitched his voice to carry. “Bottom levels, now.” He fished the rogue up by the scruff of her neck.

“Hey!”

He didn’t seem to hear her, stalking forward to the broad stairwell leading down, even as the Ilosians scrambled to pick up their scarce belongings and flowed all around him, the other three Sentries bringing up the rear.

“I thought this building was reinforced!” Adas was trotting alongside GAM, trying to keep up.

“It is. The storm just took out the Outer Wall.” He paused and visibly gathered himself before turning, the black faceplate reflecting the GO4’s frightened face back at her. “The storm stopped, thought about it and then put a hole in the Outer Wall,” he informed her, then trotted down the stairs. “I want as much protection between it and all of you as possible.”

“I can walk!” The rogue writhed in his grip.

“That’s what worries me,” GAM replied, but he dropped her anyway.

“It’s sentient?” Adas was horrified. “What is it? A program? A virus?”

“It’s not a virus.” They passed the first sub-level, which was a combination habitat and infirmary, and rushed to the last set of stairs. GAM turned to one of the other Sentries. “Lock the partitions once everyone’s through.” He got a nod and started moving again. “It’s…”

He hesitated. He hadn’t known what it was until Adas had asked him, and then the knowledge had just been there, as if it had always been and he’d simply not known to look for it. “It’s a hack.”

“A what?”

“Someone’s trying to get in. Someone not from the Grid.”

“But… There’s nothing outside the Grid.”

“Ask Om about that,” the rogue muttered as she kept pace with them.

“That’s philosophical, this is real!” Adas declared, hating that she sounded squeaky with fright but unable to keep her emotions at bay.

Something immensely powerful hammered down on the building and everyone went stumbling, crying out. The lights faltered and in the momentary dark the collective wavelength went from fear to outright panic.

Adas and the rogue didn’t fall. The Sentry had caught them, one on each hand, and he steadied them against his unyielding presence. “Adas, calm them down. Rogue, I’m going to guess you can see decay lines. Find me the strongest point of this level. Is there an uplink console in here?”

“Yes,” Adas wheezed. “But it’s one of yours, it needs those bean things.”

“What luck, I have those,” GAM pointed out dryly. “Where?”

She pointed and the three of them split up. Half the lights came back on, the last of the evacuees raced in and the partition doors slammed shut. Another tremendous blow crashed into the building from above, but while most of the Ilosians crouched down in terror Adas remained upright, speaking calmly over their scattered, frightened noises, projecting a surprisingly powerful, soothing wavelength.

GAM moved up to the console. Like most such things it had dedicated power and data links; you couldn’t risk either faltering mid-upload and costing someone their beans. He drew the baton, pressed it against the screen, and leaned his hand against the reader.

The upload was nearly instantaneous; it was one of the simplest functions that could be uploaded in a baton. Which was just as well, because the next strike of the storm took the power out altogether, and made both the ETCs and the console flicker uncertainly.

“WallSec 42.” Janus’ voice startled GAM when it came through the dedicated line. “Can anyone hear me?”

GAM heard several replies, and waited to add his own. “WallSec 42, central plaza. Four Sentries. All evacuees accounted for.”

“GAM, are you all in the main building?”

“Yes.”

“Get out.”

“Get out how? Why?”

“Find a way. The Spirestorm’s on you. And it’s not dissipating.”

GAM froze.

“GAM, are you hearing me?” Janus’ tone was terse. “It’s after you. Something or someone in there has its attention -”

“Hey!”

GAM spun, as did most everyone in the area, to see the rogue waving frantically at him. “Hold on, Janus.”

He hurried to her, and she trotted hastily to meet him halfway, pointing. “The place’s solid over our heads, but there’s a hole leading to the city’s sublevels.”

“There’s a what?”

“Sump system. Old overflow. I don’t know, some sort of big pipe that’s not there anymore!”

GAM was glad for his faceplate, for so many reasons. “Is it safe for normal programs?”

“Uh…” She hesitated. “Well, it goes into the energy effusion system, so I guess if no one jumps into a channel they’d be fine?”

“I’d say something, but you strike me as the sort who would jump into an energy effusion channel. WallSec 42,” he called out into the channel. “We’re going into the energy sublevels.”

“How far down are you going?!” Janus asked in disbelief.

“I don’t know. We’re below ground and about to be a whole lot lower. If you can send reinforcements to find us, I’d appreciate it.”

“On our way.”

“Adas!” When she came running, he pointed. “The rogue’s -”

“My name’s Vidi.”

“Not a pleasure. Yet. Adas, Vidi’s found a way into the energy sublevels. Start moving your people in.” He turned to the other Sentries. “Support and crowd control. This has to happen -”

The sound of absolute destruction came from directly overhead and GAM understood what Janus had not said. The storm was digging after them, peeling the reinforced building above them apart, floor by floor. It was slowed down by the reinforced inner structure but, as with the city wall, it merely had to stop and focus. Eventually it would break through. “This has to happen quickly and calmly,” he gritted out. The Sentries nodded.

“GAM?” Adas asked in a tiny squeak.

“Do you trust me?”

She nodded.

“Don’t let them jump in the channels.”

“Who even does that?!” she demanded, scandalized, and hurried away with the Sentries.

“Um.” Vidi shifted warily.

“Go,” he told her.

“I don’t know that there’s any further down I can find, WallSec,” she protested.

The black faceplate stared silently at her for a long moment, and she shuffled nervously from foot to foot. “I meant you’re free to go,” he clarified calmly. “But I would appreciate it if you stayed and helped. If there’s no further down, look up. Warn me when the storm’s close to breaking through.”

Vidi looked up. So did her hair. On the other side of the room, the Sentries were helping the Ilosians jump down. GAM could see Adas sorting out the line and sternly commanding the evacuees to leave their packs behind. For one thing, they wouldn’t fit through the hole with them and, for another, either they’d be there when the Ilosians came back, or there’d be nothing left and no one to come back to it. “Janus?”

“Four nanocycles, going on five, and it is not stopping this time, GAM.”

The Sentry blew out a sharp breath. No, of course not. The hack knew what it wanted; perhaps it had known all along, but now it also knew where it was.

It had never been about population density. It had been about one or more specific programs. Halcyon told him nothing. GAM suspected the real answer was hidden in a question no one had yet answered: which had the Spire targeted, Ilo or the Island?

“WallSec 42,” one of the other Sentries called out. “Evacuees are clear.”

“Let’s go,” GAM told Vidi, who was still looking up. He touched her shoulder when she didn’t move. “Vid- ”

The energy discharge that came off the first-gen blew him clear across the room, every command and subroutine gone to static. He slid across the floor and slammed into a wall so hard that even the static went quiet, his world nothing but a thin, high-pitched and steady tone.

Above him, the Spirestorm roared like a thing alive, hungry and entirely too close.

GAM rolled onto his hands and knees, head held low. What in the name of every dead pixel. He fought his code into order, his circuitry into an organized flow. He knelt back with a sharp exhale and felt dizzy. A quick scan told him his entire short-term memory was full of gibberish, flash-downloaded without a care for his built-in protections.

A virus? Was she a virus?

He isolated the time-stamp just before he’d touched Vidi and force-purged the entire mess. It disappeared instantaneously. Not a virus, then, too easily removed. He looked up, and found out that she had, apparently, fared no better. She’d slammed into the uplink console hard enough to bend the mooring and render the device unusable, and she was limp on the floor. Even her hair was sprawled motionless all around her head. “Great,” he ground out, forcing himself up on his feet and rushing for her. “Vidi!”

“Help me.” It was a whisper, a croak. Her hands were curled into fists and her eyes were wide open, and she wasn’t moving so much as a fingertip. “Help me, help me, I don’t want to see it anymore.”

He slid to a kneeling position next to her, not knowing what to make of this new development but knowing that it couldn’t be good. “Close your eyes. Close all your eyes! Vidi, close your eyes!”

“It won’t let me,” she forced every word out through a mess of static.

He threw caution to the sea and picked her up. She was a wisp of nothing in his arms, barely there, her head lolling back. Her dreadlocks twitched helplessly and her eyes stayed firmly open. GAM had a suspicion that if he tried to close them himself, they’d end up back on opposite sides of the room, trying to sort out code from gibberish yet again.

Instead, he ran for their escape.

The storm either sensed its prey was about to get away, or its timing was just that horribly good. The world turned into a wash of light and energy, power enough to fry a program, or black out an entire sector. The reinforced building above GAM simply disintegrated, turned back into primal matter and then volatilized into such tiny droplets that it seemed to have simply been erased from existence. A spiraling column of lighting arced down into the massive crater -

- and slammed down into the Sentry’s shield, the blueprint he’d downloaded while he’d been able to access the uplink console.

GAM cried out; it went unheard in the fury of the maelstrom above him. Power surged and crackled and crashed into his shield, beating him down until he was on his knees, Vidi crushed against his chest with one arm, the shield held up with the other. He felt as if the entire weight of the Grid were pressing down on him.

I am a Sentry.

He felt it then, an awareness, a sentience, alien and uncaring, focused only on its goal, battering against his shield, his presence, his very core.

I am a Wall.

It was not of the Grid, and that was all he needed to know. He would stand, to derezzing if need be. It would not get through.

The Spirestorm screamed, and all of Halcyon heard its frustration. It swirled, gathering itself, collecting its power as it had for the outermost Wall. There would be no further denying it -

The Spire went abruptly dark. With it went the power to nearly all of Halcyon, barring emergency supplies and a few scattered places where the surge protections had not been completely overwhelmed by a lightning strike. Surgically precise paths of destruction had been carved through the city, from the breach in the outermost wall, to six separate Sectors. Nothing else had been struck unless it had been on one of those explicit routes. Of every targeted Sector, the only one where programs remained online was Sector 42.

Chapter Text

“Nononon-FUCK! Fuck you, Kane, what’d you -! Put it back!”

“Seriously?! Me?! You –! Again, Moll. We’re here again, with you going behind my back and pulling this shit! And you, Rob? Seriously?! This hot to get into my sister’s pants that you go along with this?”

“Hey!”

“Kane, I’m sorry, I didn’t think -”

“Yeah, that’s kind of the problem, no one’s fucking thinking! She fried everything in the cloud, she fried most of I/O, she nearly fried H1 and now here you are, helping her finish the job?”

“Fucking -! Plug it back in! I was there, I was almost there, you asshole!”

“Uh, actually, I/O’s dark.”

“I/O’s -”

“PLUG ME THE FUCK BACK IN!”

“You fried the entry server. Literally, other than watching, all we have is the ability to pop programs in the Grid. And you fried that.”

“There’s five other servers in the garage -”

“And we can put NOTHING in them.”

“Wait, what?”

“Oh, she didn’t tell you? Server Zero’s locked. We can’t crack it."

“We can if we get insid-”

“Yeah, if she told you something else, she’s lying to you, man. We can’t spread the baseline anymore. The servers you see, that’s it. We can’t expand the Grid anymore. So now that’s she fried I/O, that’s lost, too.”

“Um, I didn’t say it was fried, I said it’s dark.”

“I – You know what, why don’t you give it to me in small words before I punch someone, Rob. Because, god, I fucking feel like punching someone right now.”

“It’s shut down. It’s there, we just – it’s not – Nothing’s responding, nothing’s reacting, that’s all.”

“… Oh my god. Oh my fucking god. Hah… Ahahahaha. Moll. You still – You want to look me in the face and tell me it’s not real anymore? What, do you think the little computer fairies came in at some point last week and miraculously moved every program out of I/O and – Where are they, Rob?"

“H1.”

“So every program in I/O bypassed all the manual certifications, all the firewalls and the antiviruses and the scans we have in two separate places so nothing crappy or buggy gets through, and somehow, without our input, ended up in another server?”

“Give me the fucking relay, Kane!”

“No. Rob, you wanna leave.”

“But I – Oh, god."

“Don’t you fucking dare, Kane.”

“Seems I told you that like, three times already. You didn’t listen to me, why should I listen to you?”

“Don’t you – You put the hammer down.”

“Rob, where was she trying to upload herself?”

“H1.”

“She burned H1.”

“No. I mean, yes, but. It’s back, Kane. Not all of it, but with the I/O program migration, it was nearly back to full population and, uh…”

“What.”

“Well, all those weird programs? The ones with no numbered tags? There’s like… a whole directory’s worth of them there now.”

“… That’s what you wanted, isn’t it. Because they’ve got the flexible memory thing going. That’s what you were doing, looking for them specifically.”

“Put. the hammer. down. Kane.”

“I’m good. I think we’re done with the laser fun times.”

“Don’t y- KANE! SHIT! FUCK! I’ll fucking kill you!”

“Y’know, I can’t help but think, when Flynn gave us the code, he was worried about other people. Isn’t that just hilarious.”

Chapter Text

“I didn’t take you to be a philosophical sort, Sentry.”

GAM held himself very still under the regard of every SysAdmin, though only his own was actually present in the room. “This isn’t philosophy, SysAdmin,” he replied, glad to hear his voice sounded calm. “This is fact. You are free to ask any Sentry, in any city, to identify our attacker. They will give you the same answer.”

“There is nothing outside the Grid!” Glim exclaimed.

“I did not realize you had been there, Glim,” OM countered mildly.

“Well, I mean,” Ark’s SysAdmin began to stammer. “It’s been hundreds, thousands of cycles, are we supposed to believe the Users are real now? After all this time?”

“He didn’t say User, he said hack,” Gungnir interspersed, looking thoughtful. “If the Users were real, if they created the Grid, I don’t imagine they’d need to force their way in. You walk into your habitat, it opens the door for you; you don’t have to kick it in.”

“I think I’d rather believe in the Users,” ACM muttered, rubbing at his face. “At least they’re a known quantity, even in the theoretical.”

“For a first in the history of the Grid, I agree with ACM,” Gungnir said dryly.

“I am far more concerned,” Endos began carefully, “with the fact that Halcyon’s walls were breached. Nothing in the Grid has ever achieved that. Those walls have been improved, upgraded and reinforced since Halcyon’s inception. Do any of us stand a chance, if Halcyon didn’t?”

“There’s always a chance,” Gungnir shot back at once, but even he looked grim. “It’s just a matter of who’s going to still be online to enjoy the victory.”

T he meeting went silent.

“I would like to thank you, Sentry GAM, for your report and your patience with our questions.” PEN’s voice was as calm as ever. “Is there anything else you feel we should be made aware of?”

GAM’s hesitation showed only in his silence. Next to the projection of Endos, Adas was peeking at him, and the Sentry was entirely too aware that to speak meant potentially betraying her confidence. “I do not believe the Spirestorms are striking at random,” he began.

“They’re not,” P EN agreed. “There are a number of working theories at the moment as to why and how - .”

“Population density,” Gungnir interrupted impatiently. “How the Spires are tracking that is anyone’s guess, but…”

“With all due respect,” GAM would have rather disagreed with a User than with the leader of Pev ir, but it was too good an opening, “I do not believe that to be the actual guiding factor.”

One of Gungnir’s brows went up. GAM resigned himself to paying for that later.

“We are listening, Sentry” PEN said.

“Halcyon is the largest city in the Grid if you count population, yes, but that’s not the only deciding factor in a city’s size. Pevir has the largest energy consumption. Ark has the biggest passive data repositories. Ilo’s data-lines handle - handled the greatest loads across the grid.”

“Halcyon was attacked first,” P EN pointed out.

“Halcyon was attacked first because at the time it was the better target. It had the largest population of active-process-memory programs at hand.” He gestured. “The Souk is full of programs who make a living creating. They have space in their disks and their active-process memories that is not the norm for most other programs. There is only one city that has - had a larger population of programs like that.”

“The Island ,” Glim breathed. “Most of what we store’s been created – was created in the Island . Put all the other cities’ input together, it’s barely a match.”

“The Souk Sectors have been the target of both events. The only exception was Sector 42.”

“Yes, but Sector 42 currently has a much larger population density than any other Sector, in any other city. All the Ilo evacuees are there,” Endos pointed out.

GAM chose to let that point pass. He still didn’t know what to think of what had happened with Vidi, the way the Spirestorm had co-opted and overwhelmed her. He’d barely been on the sidelines of that and he could still feel the burn of it on his voxels.

The meeting went silent around him. “If that’s true, Ark is definitely next in line,” Gungnir pointed out grimly. “Ark and its Stack Monitors.”

“No,” Glim was staring very closely at GAM. “Because that’s static memory. It can’t do anything, not create or design or improve . Stack health reports just come in and go out . If I’m understanding the Sentry right, it’s not just empty space, it’s empty space with potential . We aren’t the next target. If Pev ir had a Spire, they’d have probably been the target of every event.”

Gungnir shoved the crimson curtain of his long mohawk back with a wry grin. “I’d never thought I’d hear Glim admit how much mental effort goes into tactics and combat strategy. Today’s just a day for the worst kind of firsts, isn’t it. ”

“Halcyon, then, is still the best target,” PEN declared.

“You should remove those programs to a safe location, P EN .”

The Halcyon SysAdmin blinked at Endos. “Name it.”

“Pardon?”

“Name the safe location. Name some place in the Grid out of reach of the Spires. This event lasted nearly four times as long as the past two. Without a time limit, distance is no longer a factor.”

“Underground? “A CM suggested, but he sounded clearly dubious.

“It’s one thing to breach a wall, another to dig up the Grid itself,” OM agreed.

“I cannot ask the people of Halcyon to hide underground, no more than Gungnir can ask his people to stop fighting. Halcyon trades; it’s what we do, who we are. But habitats are all the same being reshaped in the sublevels.” PEN spread its hands. “I cannot ask, but I can hope.”

“What do we do until then?” Pevir’s SysAdmin worked his hands restlessly. “I’m not sitting and waiting until the Spire feels like taking another shot at us.”

“Excuse me?” Adas spoke timidly into the meeting.

Endos gave her a quelling look, but PEN gestured in invitation. “Ah, yes. The Ilo representative in Halcyon. Please, speak.”

“Uh…” Adas hesitated, then straightened up decisively. “I like disk fights.”

The SysAdmins blinked.

“A personal favorite as well,” Gungnir agreed dryly. “Hardly applicable to the matter at hand.”

“No, see. The thing is, everyone’s worried that we can’t defend ourselves against the Spires and so far that’s right, I suppose, but. There’s one thing we haven’t tried.”

The SysAdmins stared at her, but Gungnir suddenly brightened up. “A rebound.”

“Yes, sir. ”

“You want us to bounce the Spirestorm’s energy back at the Spire?” Endos demanded in disbelief.

“It’s just energy,” ACM said thoughtfully. “It’s a lot of energy, but it’s just energy. One array or fifty, one relay or twenty, the only difference is how much flow you’re controlling.”

“ACM, you manage the largest supply of energy in the Grid. Can it be done?” PEN asked evenly.

The SysAdmin hesitated. “Here, yes. Anywhere else? I don’t know that we’d have the time to shape the parts or build the system, let alone power it.”

“We could move any at-risk programs to Flow,” Gungnir suggested. The entire meeting detonated into protests. “I will move myself and every program from Pevir to Flow,” he all but shouted over the yelling. “Do you think I would suggest something my city’s not willing to do? We’ll be the bait, if none of you have the spine for it!”

“Gungnir, Halcyon has walls. Flow has nothing. And if Flow’s destroyed, no one gets any energy,” Glim snapped at him.

“If we’re there, Flow will not fall.”

“Perhaps we should wait,” PEN pitched its voice to carry, “until ACM has this ‘rebound’ system in place. It seems useless to make plans to bait a trap we do not yet have.”

“I have a suggestion.”

The room went silent, and every face turned to O M . The first-gen’ s projection was as blurry as ever, but his voice was clear and sure. “One of the first things a program does when they come to Om is surrender all worldly information. Not their name, of course, or their disk. But everything else, all other information, is taken to the Black Vault and sealed there, never to resurface again unless they are leaving Om . I am willing to open the Black Vault and hide there the tag data of any at-risk program you find. They will be like ghosts in the system . Unless you see them, unless you touch them or speak to them, they will be undetectable .” He grimaced. “Of course, if Om falls that information might be destroyed as well. W e have no walls, no passive protection of any sort.”

“How’s that different from what’s already happening,” someone muttered.

“We’d have to move the information in complete secrecy,” Endos murmured thoughtfully. “Out of sight of the Spires themselves.”

“Use the energy systems,” ACM suggested. “Barring geography, most of the effusion pipelines are all underground, out of sight.”

“And my couriers can ride those pipes,” Glim added. “Ark’s couriers know the way to the farthest reaches of the Grid. Underground, along the pipelines, they’ll be undetectable.”

Chapter Text

GAM had never been more glad to be excused from a meeting. He left the SysAdmins to sort out the minutiae of their new plan and stalked away, pausing only when he’d passed the largest of the light sculptures in the nearby courtyard.

“Hey.”

He turned, surprised. There was Vidi, looking strikingly small in the midst of the empty courtyard, peeking at him from behind a decorative pillar. “ Here I thought you’d have found somewhere else to make trouble ,” he greeted her.

“Ha-ha, WallSec,” she replied dryly, moving closer. “So what happened?”

“A number of things,” he admitted. “I suppose I should be glad they listened to me at all.”

“You were there. If they got any sense, they’ll listen to anything you have to say,” she declared sharply. She was still pale lavender, a stark contrast to the black-and-violet Sentry. “Don’t they have any plans to stop this?”

“Vidi, no one even knows what ‘this’ is. A hack yes, but… then what? There should be nothing beyond the Grid.”

“The Users are from beyond the Grid.”

“You believe in the Users? You?” He sounded amused. “You’re just full of surprises.”

“Don’t you?”

“I believe in myself.” They were silent a long moment. “Are you feeling alright?” She shrugged vaguely. “You’re dim.”

“I always am.”

“I meant -"

“I know what you meant.” She toed the ground uncertainly. “And I know what you’re actually asking.”

GAM was quiet.

“I don’t know what happened,” she admitted slowly. “You’re right, I can see decay points, structural faults. I can see the blueprints inside a structure. I’ve always been able to see them. But when I looked up at the Spirestorm…” She looked up, and put a hand out, fingers outstretched. “It was like… It was alive, WallSec. It was like the entire sky was a blueprint. It just… didn’t care that I was alive too.”

“I got that distinct feeling, yes,” GAM agreed tightly, remembering entirely too well the way that alien presence had screamed fury at being balked, how it had gathered itself to strike and strike and strike until it could reach its goal, even if it meant going through him.

“It wanted to fill me up with itself, even if it meant erasing everything I am.” Vidi shrugged and looked up at him. “I don’t know why. It’s not like I can fit a storm inside me. No one can.”

GAM felt something, some sort of important fact, tease his awareness and then flicker away from his grasp. “It wasn’t just you. It was targeting any program with substantial active- process- memory space. I don’t know why, it’s not like you can run a program that’s splintered up in different source spaces. Data, yes, programs, no. You end up like the Shattered of Om. In any case, they’re talking about encrypting the tags of any program like that, and hiding the information in Om’s Black Vault.”

“What?! How am I supposed to do business if no one can see it’s me?!” she demanded.

“What, you actually do business lawfully?” She shoved him, which achieved absolutely nothing except amuse him somewhat. “They’ll still know you, Vidi. They just won’t be able to authenticate you.”

“Mm-mm. I’d rather take my chances.”

“Well, for the sensible sorts, the ongoing plan is to encrypt the information, and move it by courier through the effusion systems to Om.”

“Does it pay well?”

“Does it – No, they’re using Ark’s couriers.”

“What?! I’m twice the courier any of them is!”

“On foot? Maybe o n a sailer, in full sight of the Spires?”

She deflated. “Oh.” And then, after a beat. “Can I borrow your baton?”

“Are you - You just don’t quit, do you,” he demanded, both amused and amazed.

“I’ll give it back!” When the black faceplate merely stared at her, she doubled down. “I will!”

“GAM!”

They both turned at the sound of Adas’ voice, and saw the curvy GO4 hurrying toward them. “Vidi. My goodness, are you alright? Shouldn’t you be in the infirmary? You look pale, haven’t you recharged yet?”

“Why are you both fussing so much,” Vidi protested. “I’m fine. I’m just… It was just some weirdness, that’s all. And, you know, life’s weird. You deal.”

Adas stared at her, then glanced at GAM. The dark faceplate, unfortunately, told her nothing, so she merely sighed. “I need to go back to Ilo. I was wondering if you could escort me there.”

“Can I come?” When both of them gave her a look, Vidi shrugged. “I mean, I could lie and say I wanna go help with the rescue efforts, but. You know, scavenger.”

GAM worked his hands restlessly. “I’m half-tempted to say yes, just to see if you can scavenge with me hanging over your shoulder.”

“Oh, come on, WallSec, it’s not like -”

“Actually,” Adas said slowly, almost apologetically. “I do need someone with a good chunk of active- process- memory space to come with us.”

“Why?” Vidi was instantly suspicious.

“Because Ilo’s SysAdmin tower took a massive hit when the Island fell, and we don’t know if its encryption services still work.”

“So you want to do the Black Vault thing to me, only at Ilo, not here.”

“Yes.”

Vidi groaned, head thrown back in exasperation. “Can you undo it if it does work?”

“I… supposed we could, but why would you – ah, right. Halcyonite.”

“What does it pay?”

“What does i- Nothing.”

“Pfft. Forget it, then. Find yourself some other sucker. I’m not putting my tags on the line for nothing.”

Adas blew out an exasperated breath. “Your pick of whatever you can scavenge. Salvager’s rights, for this trip only.”

“ Are you seriously encouraging her to scavenge!” GAM protested.

“Do you know another program we can use?” Adas shot back.

“Yeah, do you?” Vidi demanded in the same tone.

GAM put his hands up to his helm as if in prayer, and his exasperated sigh came through even the helm’s filters. “I haven’t agreed to go.”

“Then I guess I’m going alone,” Adas countered, and pointed. “With her.”

Vidi beamed at him.

The sound that came out of the Sentry was equal parts fury and defeat. He glared down at them so hyperbolically that both programs could feel it through the faceplate, but neither budged. He turned around and stalked angrily for the lift. “I’ll be downstairs,” he ground out.

T wenty nanocycles laters they rode out of Halcyon in a modified, canopied lightrunner, GAM driving and Adas working through her faceplate and a couple of tablets on her lap, while Vidi sprawled shamelessly on the backseat. “And they just gave you this thing? Without paying for it?”

“It’s a courtesy loan,” Adas noted distractedly, “from one city to another.”

“Must be nice to get things just for asking,” Vidi muttered.

“Try not stealing from someone. You’d be amazed how nice they can be then,” GAM replied stiffly.

They had the road pretty much to themselves. Inter-city traffic favored data-lines, solar sailers, effusion pipelines; they were faster and more reliable. But with Halcyon under threat, high-altitude traffic had become increasingly limited to pure cargo, no programs. Adas had been offered a jet; she’d nervously turned it down.

Fully trusting the Sentry to not crash them, she focused on her work. Away from Halcyon, crossing the Outlands, the only light came from themselves. When a brilliant glow washed over her, she nearly jumped out of the vehicle.

“It’s just Parnassus,” GAM told her at once. “It’s the halfway point between Halcyon and Ilo.”

Both Adas and Vidi pressed close to the windows. As the terrain shifted, the lone mountain of one of the few independent enclaves in the Grid glowed in the distance with a pure white light, beams of data rising from it in arching lines. There was an uncanny beauty to its curves and spirals , as if it were something not of the Grid, but exquisite to behold all the same.

“Is it really just one program living there?”

“Nah,” Vidi replied. “He’s got Bits and Navis.”

“But no other programs?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve only ever made it to the door when I’m doing deliveries.”

“ Ayin’s been inside,” GAM said suddenly. “ It’s just him.”

“Ayin?”

“The first WallSec. She says it’s like Ark, only prettier. More alive.”

“She’s been to Ark?”

“I’m pretty sure there’s no place in the Grid Ayin hasn’t been to.”

“Om?” Vidi challenged at once.

“She’s been there. She helped them build the Black Vault.”

Vidi made a face and slouched back once again. Adas threw the Sentry a look. Black faceplate or not, she was pretty sure he was smiling.

There were ships and heavy vehicles all over Ilo, deconstruction and repurpose crews removing debris and rebuilding structures, but on the Sector where the road led them there was nothing but silence and ruin all around them. Adas stared out the windows, stricken, as GAM fought to stick to anything resembling a road. At the time of the event, she’d been too busy helping others seek refuge; after, she’d only seen the devastation at a distance, from the top of the SysAdmin tower and from the jet.

“I’m sorry,” Vidi whispered quietly, staring at the destruction as they went by.

Adas tried to make herself look away. “It’s alright, I knew -” She let out a shriek and GAM slammed on the brakes. All three of them nearly went flying.

“What?!”

“Is that your hair?!”

Vidi had been looking at the destruction with all her eyes and had nearly ended up in the Sentry’s lap when he hit the brakes. “Yes?”

“Yours, not an upgrade or a Cosmetic?”

“It’s mine! It’s me! Gah, you weird Ilosian.” The Halcyonite scrabbled back onto the backseat.

“I’m sorry, I hadn’t seen you… looking at… things before!”

GAM dropped his head with a sigh and began driving again. It wasn’t long until they saw the small group of programs waiting for them at the base of the tower. “ Stay inside,” he told them both as he brought the lightrunner to a stop. As he stepped out, he was mildly surprised to find both of them had obeyed.

“Sentry!” Endos looked surprised, outright confused, to see him. “I didn’t expect to see you away from your duties at Halcyon.”

“My duties seem to be expanding,” he replied evenly, moving around the vehicle and opening Adas’ door for her. “Protecting Halcyon comes with moving parts these mi llic ycles, apparently.”

The SysAdmin chuckled sensibly. “Adas, welcome back.” He threw his arms open, and then took the GO4’s hands in his. “I’ve felt like I’ve been missing half my disk since I had to let you go.”

“Well, it’s just temporary.” She blew out a huge breath. “It’ll be nice when everyone can come back home. How’s the re construction process going? I saw all the crews up in the air. ”

“Oh, yeah, that’s mostly in the energy Sector. You should see the work going on at ground level -”

GAM opened Vidi’s door as both Ilosians walked away, chattering . “Stay close to me,” he told her quietly.

A few of her dreadlocks came up to examine him. “Why are you so twitchy , WallSec?”

The black faceplate turned to look at her, but before he could answer Adas waved at them. “Vidi!”

The three of them were led halfway up the tower. It had been truncated to a little under half its height when the Island had fallen, and there were places where the floors were missing entire walls, but two lifts and the general structural integrity had all been restored.

“It’s not that we don’t trust Halcyon, of course,” Endos explained, almost apologetic, looking warily at the Sentry. “But if our people get their tags encrypted there, when this matter’s over and they’re free to come back to Ilo they’ll still have to go back and forth with Halcyon to get their tags decrypted. It’s just more efficient to see if we can do it here directly.”

GAM said nothing, but he understood the underlying message: a city lived and died on population. If there was no one to live in Ilo, the city would simply fade away, replaced by something else, someplace else, with a different purpose. Endos didn’t want his people to find out life might be better in Halcyon.

Having met Adas and her evacuees, the Sentry didn’t think that was likely.

“I’m just here to help you with… whatever,” Vidi replied.

“And Ilo greatly appreciates your help,” Endos assured her. “You have a very unique design.”

“And you’re really bad at flirting,” she shot back.

“I… I – I wasn’t -”

“Vidi’s agreed to help as long as we decrypt the tags once we’ve confirmed they can be encrypted here,” Adas hurriedly interrupted. “Which I thought would be a good thing, we get to check that the process is working both ways.”

They stepped off the lift and onto a vast floor filled with work consoles. Encrypting and decrypting a program’s basic identification information wasn’t something that was done casually; as Vidi had pointed out, a lot of intuitive communication went on between programs whenever they dealt with one another. You didn’t stop to ask about compatibility or sourcing or anything like that, you just looked it up and got on with the important interacting bits. Without that information, unless Vidi was standing right in front of her customers, they had no way to contact her for work, no way to even find her.

“Oh, wow.” Vidi came to such an abrupt halt she bumped into GAM. Beyond the windows of the tower, one of the Islands solar sails stood upright, having fallen in such a way that the light coming and out was tinted orange. They could see the individual cells flickering in and out of activity, and two of the spokes were leaning against the tower itself.

“It’s not a danger,” Endos hurried to assure them. “It was deemed cosmetic damage, so it’s low on the priorities for removal. Personally, it makes me sad just looking at it.” He clapped his hands and turned to the consoles; the programs with him were rushing to their positions. “In any case!”

“Yeah, he sure sounds sad,” Vidi muttered for GAM’s benefit.

“Are you sure about this?”

“Is that concern, or do you just not want me treasure-hunting in Ilo, WallSec?”

He merely blew out an exasperated breath. “All those eyes and you’re missing the obvious.”

“Vidi,” Adas waved her over.

The courier hesitated, suddenly realizing she didn’t want to move away from the protective wavelength of the Sentry. It took effort to step away from him, and to approach the console where Adas and Endos were waiting for her.

“ Go,” he murmured quietly.

S he stepped forward. She was vaguely listening to the SysAdmin, but he seemed to make a lot of noise for someone who wasn’t providing anything useful. One of the techs moved behind her and her dreadlocks immediately roused to attention. “Hey,” she snapped. “Hands off the disk.”

Every program on the floor froze.

“I don’t believe you need her disk to encrypt her tags,” GAM spoke very calmly.

“You don’t, not the way I understand the process,” Adas looked at the tech in puzzlement.

“It’s to safeguard through the process, ma’am,” the tech replied mildly. “ Since we don’t know if the system has hidden malfunctions at the moment.”

“It’s fine where it’s at,” Vidi informed him sharply.

The tech hesitated, but Adas gave him a pointed look, and he went back to his console. Vidi braced herself.

“It’s… It doesn’t hurt or anything,” Adas reassured her awkwardly.

“What, you’ve been encrypted before?”

“Yes, a few times.” The GO4 shrugged. “It seems rude to ask someone to go through something if I’m not willing to do it myself, you know?” When Vidi made a face, she had to smile. “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“It’s just, every time it looks like you’re heading for some good old righteous indignation, GAM and I take the wind right out of it.”

“Oh, trust me, I’ve got mad to last me until the end of the Grid.” She made another face. “But yeah, you do. Both of you. It’d be annoying if you weren’t right most of the time.”

“ Adas,” Endos called her from one of the consoles, and she stepped smartly away.

Vidi felt terribly alone and exposed all at once. She looked around nervously, and her gaze fell on GAM. The Sentry nodded minutely at her. Ugh, what a nuisance he was. But she felt comforted all the same. She took a deep breath and braced hers-

“Alright, we’re done.”

“… what?” She looked around without comprehension. The techs were shaking hands and clapping each other on the shoulder, looking terribly pleased with themselves.

“What?” Vidi asked blankly again.

Adas cleared her throat meaningfully.

“Oh, right!” Endos moved to one of the consoles, bringing a tech over. “And it’s reversed.”

“What?!” Vidi demanded. She patted herself down. “I didn’t feel anything!”

“Why… Why would you feel anything?” Endos asked in confusion. When she couldn’t give him an answer, he took her hand and shook it enthusiastically. “Thank you so much for your help. If there is anything Ilo, or I, can do for you -”

“Uh,” Vidi saw Adas gesturing sharply at her, and smiled at the SysAdmin as best s he could. “Just doing my duty for my fellow programs,” she declared. “I’m gonna… I’m gonna now, ‘kay? Going home.”

“Of course!” He stepped back and gestured grandly. “Adas, I imagine you’re going back to take care of the evacuees?”

“Yes, until we have the habitat for them here. And p lease, Endos.”

“As quick as we can,” he assured her.

The three of them trooped into the lift. “That better not mean you’re cheating me of my salvager’s rights, GO4.”

“One could dream,” GAM declared dryly.

“No! I just… might not… have told him about it, that’s all. But you can go out and get whatever you want!”

“Quickly, I hope,” the Sentry added. “I’m sure there’s no limit to your greed, but surely there’s one to what you and the lightrunner can carry.”

“Is there gonna be some point in time when you don’t make it your life’s goal to ruin mine, WallSec?”

Chapter Text

“Two years. Two years it took us to assemble the laser from grandpa’s blueprints. Two years sourcing materials that people aren’t supposed to have in their basement. And he takes a fucking hammer to it. To two years of work!”

“I mean, to be fair, Moll -”

“To be fair, what? What, Bobby? What, you wanna be like him? Sitting back and watching like it’s a fish tank? Never touching, never interacting, never actually being there?”

“No, but -”

“No. That’s not what I signed up for. That’s not what I want. I want to be there, Bobby. I want to breathe there. To walk there. I want to touch it. I may be dying out here, but I’ll be alive in there.”

“Yeah, I know, but those were other people’s babies, Moll. You and Kane, you’re not the only ones watching, you’re not the only ones with a stake in this.”

“So what? They’re programs, Bobby. We’ll figure out how to reboot the Input/Output server and they can just upload them again.”

“They won’t be the same. They won’t have years worth of evolution on them, Moll. That’s what you burned up, that’s why everyone’s so mad.”

“Oh, whatever! You sound like Kane, talking like they’re people instead of code.”

“Isn’t that the point? That they’re supposed to be like people? And, and, and even if you don’t want to believe that, you still took money from everyone who wanted to put a program in the Grid -”

“Yeah, lasers aren’t cheap, Bobby!”

“I know, I’m not arguing, I’m just saying you -”

“Well, if you’re not arguing shut up, I don’t need you to turn into Kane 2.0. I need you to help me put in a hardline between my rig and I/O.”

“I/O isn’t responding to anything.”

“I know , Bobby. I’m aware that I/O’s dark. I don’t need it to do anything except be there, which it is.”

“… Why?”

“Oh, my god, you are seriously turning into Kane.”

“I just… You haven’t… Molly, you’ve been doing some really hinky things with the servers.”

“And I can fix them if you help me put a hardline between my station and I/O. I’m not blind, and I’m not stupid, Bobby. I know the servers are fucked up. I can’t fix them if I can’t get into them. Look, there’s nothing left in I/O, is there? There’s nothing I could hurt, right? I want to see if the Grid baseline is still there, if we can jump-start it back, even if it’s from ground zero. That’s all.”

“You’re sure?”

“I promise. No more burning up precious programs for little Molly-the-Pyromaniac.”

“… Alright.”

Chapter Text

“You didn’t give her a time limit,” GAM told Adas reproachfully. “This is your fault.”

Adas covered her faceplate in embarrassment, and called out for the nth time, “Vidi!”

“You said for the duration of the trip!” The Halcyonite was scrambling over a pile of debris, nimble as a gridbug on the prowl. “We’re not back at the lightrunner yet, so the trip’s not over!”

“Ye s , because she won’t let us get back,” GAM noted mildly, arms crossed.

“Oh, like you knew this is what she meant when she said she was going to go scave n ging,” Adas snapped at him.

They watched Vidi yank several broken lumps of architecture aside, her hair going every which way. Occasionally she stopped with a victorious little yell, to pull something out of the ruins and focus all her eyes on it.

But once scanned, whatever it was that had caught her attention was cast aside and the courier moved on, her disk whirring and her dreadlooks flailing like fronds caught in one of the Sea of Simulation’s deadly currents. As far as the other two programs could tell, s he had yet to hit a point where she had to physically take her findings with her.

“Vidi, it’s been nearly a full millicycle!” Adas protested. “Please! I have to get back to Halcyon!”

“But I just got started!”

“I’m leaving,” GAM declared impatiently, and whirled around.

“GAM!” Adas protested, but she was talking to the Sentry’s back already.

GAM’s plan was very simple; he was going to walk away, and Ilo’s last roaming CitySec programs would show up, and with absolutely any luck at all Adas would not make excuses for the scavenger. She’d be detained, removed to containment, and he’d be able to pick her up from there, toss her in the lightrunner and get back home, where he was needed.

He heard running footsteps behind him. Even better! A pparently Adas wouldn’t be there to make excuses to CitySec. The GO4 caught up to him. “We can’t just leave her, who knows what trouble she’ll get into!”

“We’re not leaving her,” he admitted. “We’re just going to keep on walking and make her think we are.”

“Oh. For… for how long?”

“Until Ilo CitySec shows up.”

“Oh!” Adas suddenly understood his reasoning. “Ugh, I’m sorry, GAM. I didn’t think this through when I made her the offer. I just wanted her to come, it seemed so convenient at the time.”

“It was. At the time.”

“Hey!” From the distance, Vidi cried out indignantly. “Are you just gonna leave me here?”

GAM waved at her without turning around, and kept on walking.

“You are such a pain, WallSec,” Vidi muttered, kneeling on a pile of debris. Her disk and memory itched with the sheer number of blueprints she’d saved up, parts and pieces and partial systems, things that were likely so commonplace in Ilo that no program native to the city would’ve given them a thought. But Ilo was the technological hub of the Grid. Its programs took Halcyon’s innovations, the art of the Island and Ark, the research done in Flow and Pevir, and put them all together, giving them real-life applications.

“Fine,” she growled at nothing in particular. “One more and we’ll go, I guess.”

She slid off the pile of rubble and quested around for a target, brushing dust off herself. Her dreadlocks were pointed in every direction, excitedly targeting everything and anything that looked to be whole, or at least in not so many pieces that she couldn’t make a guess at putting them back together.

So she got about seven warnings when something unfolded itself out from behind a shattered, low wall.

The courier whirled around, every eye focused on the unexpected movement. “Hey,” she called out cautiously.

The motion resolved itself into a program – sort of. Vidi took a step back, and then another. It was dark in Ilo, even more so without structures or active data-lines or power conduits. But even in the gloom that seemed to have gathered among the rubble, she could tell something wasn’t right. “Hey, you.”

The program was dark, first of all. No program was truly ever dark, not even Strays. They had at least one energy indicator somewhere on their person. But this program was completely dark, without even the gleam of a disk at its back.

It staggered forward, toward Vidi, and she gave ground readily. “Hey, Adas?” The GO4 would know what this was, what sort of Ilosian it could be, however weird. Except Adas was nowhere in sight, her eyes told her. The thing staggered and stumbled forward, stretching out a hand towards Vidi.

And then it stretched out two, three more, spindly and impossible limbs made of wire and refuse and broken matter.

“GAM!” Vidi shrieked, turned and ran – and nearly crashed into another one of the things. She screamed and threw herself back as it tried to grab for her, and scuttled sideways to avoid it. In her own light, she could see the thing was not a program at all; it was modeled after one, certainly, but its body was lopsided, awkward, made of whatever mass what at hand rather than voxels and energy and circuitry.

The two monstrosities converged on her, and Vidi found herself cornered against the remains of a massive support pillar. From behind it shuffled out another of the beings, making odd staticky sounds. It grabbed for her.

A disk slammed into the chest of the newest creature and blew it back, disintegrating it into a monstrous soup of voxels and primal matter. Vidi threw herself over the broken pillar and down the other side as the disk spiraled back to Adas’ hand.

GAM slammed into the creature with multiple arms and drove it into the pillar so hard it turned into pulp. He whirled around, grabbed the last counterfeit program and threw it as hard as he could into the nearest pile of rubble, where it bounced several times before it stopped moving. It moaned, a low and broken electronic sound.

“Vidi!” Adas ran to the pillar, and the courier practically threw herself in her arms. “Vidi, are you alright?”

“I don’t know,” the courier wheezed, and then clutched Adas’ arms hard and dragged her back. “Oh, gridbugs.”

Adas turned. From the rubble, half-formed shapes were bubbling up. The Ilosian counted three, then five, and then decided that she didn’t want to keep on counting. “Ilo CommCon, can you hear me?” She opened every channel she had, even though most weren’t active at the moment. “Ilo City, can anyone hear me?” Only static answered her. She let Vidi pull her back, away from the things as they freed themselves from the ground, the walls, the debris everywhere. “GAM!”

The Sentry had expected to put down two attackers; he was currently engaged with four that had come out of nowhere, and he could tell there were more detaching themselves from the broken bits and pieces of Ilo. He didn’t know what they where, but two swipes against his armor that were not reconstituting themselves told him they were neither friendly nor safe to handle. “Get to the runner!”

“I’m not sure we can!” Adas called back. “Oh!” She tightened her grip on her disk. Never in her wildest imaginings had she thought she’d be using it as a weapon. Even if the barest possibility had occurred to her, it should have surely happened under controlled circumstances, in a match or somesuch.

One of the creatures click-click-clicked half-words at her, and lunged clumsily forward. She threw the disk without thinking, and took both it and the two shambling forms behind it, all three melting in that sickening mixture of voxels and primal matter. The disk came back to her hand. “Oh, I’m going to be sick.”

“Vidi, find a route!” GAM shouted.

His voice and the sharp command seemed to break the courier free from her fear-induced freeze, and she yanked Adas to one side. “What about you?!”

“Yes,” another voice, broken and echoing, asked from the dark. “Wh-what about you, sec-sec-securit-t-t-t-ty?”

Chapter Text

T he program that came out of the dark was one only under the most cursory of examinations. Adas noticed that it was a kaleidoscope of circuitry, put badly together so it didn’t always create full, smooth pathways. It kept on cycling through hues, as if it couldn’t decide what sort of energy it was carrying, or what goals and emotion s motivated it.

GAM noticed their half- formed attackers weren’t attacking it. He punched one, kicked another and barreled through a third, accepting a rain of haphazard rakes and blows on his armor just so he could get to Adas and Vidi.

Vidi was staring at the new program, her face frozen in horror. “What are you?” she breathed.

“An em-em-emergency count-t-t-termeas-measure,” the program replied.

“You’re not real,” Vidi shot back breathlessly. “You’re pieces of people.” She could see what the others could not, that the program didn’t have a disk on its back, but it had broken shards of several disks embedded everywhere on its person.

“Yes,” the program agreed readily. “What-what. Whatever was handy. To do the j-j-the job.”

“Worm,” GAM ground out, everything in him recognizing the enemy he’d been programmed since his inception to face.

“ GAM , don’t -!” Vidi whirled around, trying to stop the Sentry, afraid that giving the program a name would give it the solidity it didn’t yet have.

“ V irus.”

“Am I?” The program looked at itself. The more it spoke and interacted, the more refined it became, limbs in the right places, body parts the right size. It made the shattered lines of its circuitry all the more obvious. “I sup-suppose I am.” It looked up at them, and the colors of its eyes stopped whirling through the spectrum. “A virus .”

It leveled a virulently yellow gaze on them all. The color bled down over its body. “A virus to d-do the job.” It pointed at GAM. “You keep-keep-keep getting in m-m-m-m-m. You are . in. my way.”

“Run,” GAM said simply.

Suddenly his shield was in his hands and he led the way, using it as a battering ram to mow down the simulacra , not caring if they clawed at the shield or at his armor as he forcibly opened up an escape route. They sprinted for the lightrunner. Behind them, the worm shrieked in a dozen different voices, and the awkward copies of itself that seemed to be all it could manifest peppered the three programs’ path, pulling themselves hastily into existence, but not fast enough to stop them.

“ Go, go, go!” he shouted at them as they reached the vehicle at last. Vidi dove into the backseat, Adas into the passenger’s seat. GAM slid over the hood and scrambled into the driver’s seat even as the GO4 opened up every commline on her faceplate. “All active Ilo communication lines, I repeat, this is a Class-1 Alert, there is a virus loose in Ilo, I repeat, there is a virus loose in Ilo. All programs are to retreat beyond city limits. I repeat, retreat, retreat, retreat. Abandon the city at once. All active Ilo communication lines, I repeat -”

GAM hit the speed boost on the racer and the vehicle surged forward, tires whistling helplessly for a moment . A veritable wall of simulacra was shambling towards them but the lightr unner ’s tires, made for rougher terrain than a city street, caught and launched them forward roughly enough to make them bounce in the seats.

“Vidi!” GAM risked a look back, but the courier was curled up in a rocking ball, making frightened little disconnection sounds. “Vidi, are you hurt?”

“No,” she whispered. “No, I’m fine.”

“Adas?”

The GO4 gave him a thumbs up, never stopping her broadcast . Outside, alarms began to wail and echo through the ruins of Ilo for the second time.

“It was made of people,” Vidi wheezed.

“What?”

“It was made of people, GAM, it was made of all the dead people.” She hugged herself tighter. “All the bits and pieces of their disks. Why would someone do that, why?”

GAM focused on driving them out of Ilo as fast as he dared.

Yes, What-what. Whatever was handy. To do the j-j- the job.

V iruses were, by their very nature, unpredictable. Every city had had its encounters with them, every security program knew what the protocols were, even if they amounted to ‘there is no protocol, contain and raze ’. But nothing GAM had ever been taught could explain how a virus could simply gather up bits and pieces of the dead and come alive from them. There were many ways in which a program could come online, but all of them required outside input.

He followed that thought to its inexorable conclusion, and found an answer he didn’t like at all. “ WallSec, can anyone hear me?” he called out into his own helm, even though he knew he was too far from Halcyon to reach. Only silence answered him .

The lightrunner suddenly rocked on its tires, bouncing sideways, and an immense piece of debris went flying by its side, close enough that if GAM had reached out he could have touched it. Vidi screamed. Adas stopped broadcasting her warning and curled up in her seat. The Sentry fought the vehicle back under control and deployed the off-road cleats, willing to sacrifice speed for stability. “Vidi, tell me how it’s throwing those at us.”

She made an unhappy sound but uncurled herself and peeked out of the rearview window. “From above, they’re coming from abov- watch out!”

GAM swerved sharply, and a piece of a building a little bigger than the racer slammed on the pavement before them, leaving a massive crater before shattering into smaller pieces and brief splashes of primal matter. The light runner crested a hill of rubble, crashed back down onto the horizontal on the other side, and surged forward.

“Strap in ,” he told them tersely as he threw the runner into overdrive . “This isn’t going to be pleasant.”

The standard Grid lightrunner was made to conquer every sort of terrain. It was an Outlands exploratory vehicle, designed to both go where no program had gone before, and to defend itself and its passengers, violently if necessary. But that had been the two-passenger baseline. The canopied model the three of them were currently riding had been heavily modified with the comfort of its passengers in mind. Forced to do its original job, it bucked and jumped angrily, leapt awkwardly on to the other side of a river of wreckage, and landed so jarringly Vidi bounced on the back seat and nearly crashed into the canopy. Both she and the GO4 scrambled to secure themselves to their seats as the Sentry urged the vehicle forward.

The virus didn’t bother chasing them. Past its initial fury at being balked, it accepted readily that its goals couldn’t be so easily achieved. Some part of it knew that these… difficulties were as they must be, because they had been so before. It didn’t know why it knew such things, but it knew them, and knew them to be true.

Instead it sank once again into the substance of the ruined city all around it, leaving fractals of ugly yellow all over the place where it had been. It knew that it meant such a place was damaged, perhaps beyond recovery, but it didn’t care. From that same unknown, innate well of knowledge came the certainty that whatever it was damaging wasn’t real, so it didn’t matter.

It found a pipeline, empty and cold, and raced along it as energy once had. In places the pipe was absent, shattered beyond usefulness, and in such spots it simply forced its way through the very substance of the world around it. For not being real, it was usefully solid.

But quick as the virus was, its prey was quicker. It had wheels, and an engine, and an ample though limited supply of energy. Catching them before they abandoned the limits of the city was looking more and more unlikely, and that, it knew, was bad. Leaving the city would reveal its presence. Revealing itself was bad.

Why?

It had no answer to that question, only certainty, and that… irritated it somewhat. Knowledge was one thing, one could accept knowledge as a given thing. But lack of knowledge was potentially dangerous. An unanswered question might jeopardize its mission. Still, it had no time to dwell on it at the moment.

A number of simulacra received instructions. It saw the first immense boulder that they picked up and lobbed at the vehicle, but it paid no further attention; instead it detoured toward another building, crafting simulacra ahead of it as it went. It wanted to make copies, full copies, useful allies, siblings that would share in its purpose and dedication, but something in the very fabric of the world all around it wouldn’t allow it to do so. For something not real, it was proving very contrary.

Why?

The simulacra would have to do until it could figure out what was going amiss with the duplication process. It flowed up the top of the building, a shattered habitat tower already leaning precariously to one side. As it reformed at the top, it could see the two-pronged attack on the vehicle of its target, the sundry boulders it was being bombarded with as well as the growing tide of simulacra trying to close in on it. It considered, and its extensions suddenly began to drop to four limbs. Their speed and agility improved instantaneously. Hm, four tires were indeed better than two. “You c-ca-can-can-cannot. You cannot hide . her . from me forever, sec-sec-securit-t-t-ty,” it said calmly into the dark.

It was hard, finding the right sequence of sounds through so many shattered libraries, but its memory was made up of fragments anyway, of bits and pieces of code that had never been its own to begin with. Here and there it could sense something that had bound them together, but it had been an imperfect joining. It had been made quickly, not precisely. There had been no care in its creation; it could tell, just by comparing those binding bits with the larger, intact shards lodged in its being.

Why?

The building swayed dangerously. The simulacra tore at what few foundations and structural pillars still remained at its base. S everal of the creatures were crushed; n one seemed to care. Atop it, the virus was untroubled. It knew that a fall, a crush, a great many things could not kill it , could barely hurt it. It had been created to endure, and spread, and fulfill two simple objectives.

Inside the lightrunner, Vidi cringed at what her eyes were telling her. “GAM, th e building!”

“What building?” the Sentry asked tersely. All of his attention was focused on avoiding the flying pieces of Ilo being cast at him from every conceivable angle while still keeping the vehicle headed directly for the ramp leading out of the city. He could see in the rearview mirrors that the virus’ creations had shifted to a quadrupedal stance, and while they weren’t quite keeping up with the runner just yet, they were getting there, evolving and improving at phenomenal speeds.

Adas all but crawled into his lap to look out his window. “Oh, no,” she whispered, and pointed. “They’re trying to collapse the central habitat on Sector 95.”

GAM risked the barest of looks, simply because if both of the programs with him though it was a danger that needed to be pointed out, he could only trust them. He saw the building swaying, saw the brilliant, poisonous yellow dot atop it, and did a quick calculation in his helmet. If that building fell, it would block their way out of the city. I f they had to turn around, they might never get away; the flawed duplicates were learning to run faster than the lightrunner way too quickly.

That was the problem, wasn’t it? The virus wasn’t just a worm. It was also a program, a full-fledged creature of the Grid. It was learning as it went, and everything they did to balk it, it found a way to circumvent. If it thought collapsing the building wasn’t going to work, it would find something else to throw at them, literally and metaphorically, and that time they might not see it coming.

GAM stayed the course.

“WallSec?” Vidi asked in timid fright from the backseat.

“GAM?” Adas’ voice was a little more urgent.

“Do you trust me?”

They were both silent. Then they both strapped back into their seats. “Did you know this was gonna happen?” Vidi demanded from the back. “Is that why you were so twitchy?”

“I knew we were bringing a heavy active-process-memory program into a wasteland with not enough other programs to camouflage her presence,” he replied. “I was afraid something was going to happen.” He swerved wildly, barely missing a chunk of debris the size of a sailer cargo container that nearly sent the lightrunner spinning like a top. “This was not part of my predictions, though,” he admitted through gritted teeth. “Adas, open up that panel,” he directed, one finger pointing at the central dash.

She obeyed instantly. The lightrunner’s structural circuitry flashed and gleamed.

“Put your hand in, up to your elbow. Any further than that and your fingers are going to find the engine, and no one’s going to like that meeting.”

She gave him a horrified look. “I’m not -!”

Vidi scrambled forward between the two of them and began to worm her arm into the space.

“Just shy of your elbow!” GAM said hastily before explaining . “Your arm’s longer.”

“Alright,” the courier agreed, her voice shaking. “Am I looking for something in particular?”

“It’s a small, long cylinder, specs to follow. It’s connected in four places along its length to a larger block. Don’t touch the block .” The numbers flashed on the black faceplate, well aware that a few dreadlocks had turned to stare at him.

Most of Vidi’s eyes, however, were focused on the open dash, looking past it, at the innards of the lightrunner. The courier wriggled forward a little more. “Got it! What am I doing with it?”

“When I tell you, yank it out.”

The lightrunner raced on. The building the simulacra were attacking suddenly faltered, tremors racing through the entirety of its remaining structure. At ground level, pillars and supports snapped, cracked and shattered, and the immense structure began to fall.

“GAM!” Adas cried out.

The Sentry tucked his head minutely to one side, the falling building growing larger on the blackness of his faceplate. He had to time it perfectly. He couldn’t give the virus a shot at something else. Out in the Outlands they’d be as impossible to find as a Stray in a crowd, even for the strange monster.

The building began to accelerate as its mass came into the grip of different variables that those which had held it upright.

GAM saw his chance. “Now!”

Vidi yanked. Simultaneously, the Sentry shut down the all-terrain cleats. The lightrunner surged forward, and then accelerated with an unhappy, screeching wail, half the systems on its dash going red. GAM didn’t care; ahead of him he could finally make out the ramp leading out of Ilo. The virus-mimics fell back, unable to keep up with the sudden burst of speed of their prey.

Vidi fell backwards onto the backseat, clutching onto the small cylinder she’d just removed. From her vantage point, through the runner’s canopy, she could see the building falling down on them as if the sky itself were crashing down. She couldn’t do anything, say anything; she stared, every eye fixed on that swiftly-closing doom.

And then she was looking at empty sky, at directional vectors and high-altitude data-lines, the distant markers of the upper limits of the Grid. Some people said they ought to put cities there, habitats and whatnot, that it was wasted space. She liked it like that, empty and vast and full of potential and, at the moment, empty of falling buildings and horrible half-formed quasi-programs and viruses made up of dead people.

The falling building thundered down, creating a massive ripple on the structure of the city and causing a minor shockwave that lifted the rear end of the lightrunner off the road, but the little vehicle was past it, away, untouchable. It skid into the ramp with a howl; GAM threw on the all-terrain cleats once again and got them out of the drift, and they were gone, out of Ilo and into the Outlands.

The virus reformed itself at the bottom of the ramp, watching the lights of its prey dwindle in size in the dark. “Well,” it said. Its simulacra clustered around it, awaiting further instructions. “Well played, sec-sec-security,” it murmured, before it turned to them. “There are-are others in th-the city. B-b-b-bring-bring them to me.”

If it could not make appropriate replicas of itself to help with its tasks, well, it would have to make do with what was at hand once again.

Chapter Text

They stopped once the scarce lights of Ilo had faded. GAM drove them far enough off the road that a few rolling hills would keep them from being easily detected, and dragged out a small Wrench from a discreet compartment inside the lightrunner. With it he opened up the engine.

Vidi surrendered the cylinder without a single protest. “What is it?”

“Limiter,” he explained as he bent over to examine the engine for damage. “It’s a city vehicle. It’s loaned out fairly regularly. It’ s so city vehicles cannot be taken out for a joyride.” He secured the cylinder back in place with the Wrench, inwardly glad that he’d damaged nothing that the limited-use emergency Wrench and his even more limited knowledge of mechanical systems couldn’t fix.

“You are literally so dedicated to not having fun that you put speed limiters on government vehicles.” Vidi’s tone was utterly dry.

“And right now you’re very glad we do,” he countered mildly.

Sh e made a face at his back and turned away, huddling against the side of the runner for a moment before straightening up again . “ W ait, w hy are you putting it back, anyway? What if we have to get away from that thing again?”

“Because without a limiter of any kind, I can force the runner to go as fast as I want to -”

“Exactly!”

“- up to and including burning the engine out accidentally.”

She threw her arms up and made a highly exasperated sound at him before slumping against the vehicle once again. On the passenger seat, Adas was still trying to contact anyone who might be listening; GAM had even given her the public frequencies used for other Halcyonites to contact either WallSec or CitySec. Eventually, with a tired sigh, she stopped trying. Her faceplate folded away, to the sides of her face, and she rubbed wearily at it.

“Nothing?” Vidi asked quietly.

Adas shook her head. “Nothing. I can hear the traffic control from the high-altitude lines, but those are all automated. And there’s some weird little tune repeating in one high-frequency channel, but with a virus loose I don’t want to interact with anything that’s not talking like a proper program.”

Vidi nodded. It sounded sensible. GAM closed up the lightrunner’s hood. “What now?” she asked him.

He paused on his way to the driver’s side. “I think you’re asking the wrong program. I’m just the driver.”

Adas, her face in her hands, looked up abruptly. “We need to get word out of the virus, so no one runs into it.” She buried her face in her hands once again with a despairing, exhausted little sound before she pummeled the dash with an angry fist. “How. How did that thing get loose in Ilo? The Spirestorm wasn’t enough?” He blew out a sharp breath. “Vidi, I am so, so, sorry.”

“Uh… ok?” The courier replied uncertainly.

“If I’d known you were going to be at risk, I would’ve never asked.”

“Oh, pffft. If that’s the problem, he’s the one that owes me an apology. He knew something was gonna happen.”

“I suspected something might,” GAM had frozen at the door to the driver’s seat. “I had no proof and no guarantee, and I was certainly not expecting the hack to get desperate.”

“Desperate?” Vidi blinked at him.

“Desperate how?” Adas came out of the vehicle to stare at him.

GAM put the emergency Wrench back in its discreet little compartment and straightened up to look at them. “The virus."

“You think whatever’s behind the Spirestorm’s created that thing?”

“I think it’s a reasonable conclusion. Programs don’t spring up out of nowhere. We all have a cause, a source, an inception. Every program alive, even Strays, have both a source and a reason to exist.”

“No, they don’t,” Vidi shot back at once. “Not every program.”

“Every program. That reason might not be evident to everyone, maybe not even to the program in question, but there are two things that define every program on the grid.” He lifted a hand to count. “They have a source and they have a reason.”

“No they don’t!” Vidi retorted. “Not every program has a source, or a reason, or both. Some just… are.”

The Sentry shifted minutely, his tone amused. “I don’t agree. Even you have both.”

“Whoa, hey!” Adas jerked in surprise at the sudden singling out of the courier. “That’s kind of mean, why wouldn’t she .”

“It’s not mean, it’s fact,” he replied evenly. “She’s a Gridborn.”

Vidi’s mouth worked emptily for a few moments. “You… How…”

“When I first met you, your hair attacked me. Twice. I kept trying to see the connection point between it and your body. I kept thinking it was a Cosmetic, or a patch. But your hair’s not the attachment, your body is.”

Vidi recoiled as if he’d threatened her. “Customers… don’t like it when you look so different.” She huffed. “And I needed somewhere to put the soukscan.”

“And first-gen Cosmetics are cheap, even the permanent ones,” he added mildly.

“But what does it matter, what you look like? A program’s a program,” Adas protested.

“Yeah, on this side of the Sea,” Vidi explained, exasperated. “In Flow and Ark they think I’m some sort of freak.”

Adas gasped in empathetic offense.

Vidi faced off the Sentry once again. “And I may have a source, I mean, in theory, if you want to get philosophical about it, but I sure don’t have a purpose, do I.”

“You do,” he argued with implacable calm. “You might not know it, no one might know it, but you do.”

“You are -! How long have you even known?!”

“Long enough.”

“I’m going to throw something at you!”

“Out of what, your virtual stockpile of intangible blueprints?”

“Wait, wait. Is that what the Spirestorm’s after? Gridborns? Because your tags and parameters are flexible?” Adas paused. “Your storage’s flexible! You could have kept me there scavenging for decacycles!” she cried out indignantly.

“Uh…” Vidi squirmed minutely. “I mean, you didn’t really put a good limit on it?”

GAM crossed his arms on the canopy of the lightrunner and watched Adas verbally assault Vidi. At least the courier had the good grace to look somewhat sheepish at what were, to be fair, very valid accusations . Some part of him felt selfishly vindicated.

Another pointed out that the wind had picked up.

The Sentry was used to receiving incongruous data. There were a lot of sensors built into his armor, and his wavelength had a minor, everpresent awareness that feed him data regarding his immediate enviro n ment on a constant stream. Mostly he ignored it.

But the situation was precarious enough that he turned his attention away from the squabble to look all around. There was a breeze, yes, where moments ago there had been nothing. But why was that important?

He cast all his senses out, and found nothing. That was nowhere near as reassuring as it ought to have been. “We should go,” he called out. His instincts were screaming that they’d been still too long.

Adas and Vidi both turned to look at the Sentry, and found him standing pillar-still, head tipped up, the edges of him almost impossible to see against the darkness of the Outlands all around him. If not for the violet circuitry, he’d have been less than a shadow.

“GAM?” Vidi asked timidly.

“Get -” His head whipped around; he’d detected a whistling sound coming at them at the sort of speed that was usually reserved for missile weapons.

He had likely picocycles to react, and he had to react accurately . The target couldn’t be Adas, she was too close to Vidi, and the hack wanted the courier alive. It couldn’t be him, it was near impossible to catch a Sentry by surprise with long-range weapons, everyone knew that .

He leapt over the hood of the lightrunner and yanked the two other programs with him. “Run, run!” He let go of Vidi; he had faith in her sense of self-preservation. One hand free, he grabbed for his baton, and deployed his shield.

An immense construction grappler came out of the dark. It was a massive five-pronged device the size of a lightcycle, a combination physical claw and gravimetric snare universally used by construction crews to deal with all the requirements of their job. It was coming at them as if it had been launched out of one of Pevir’s railguns, and it slammed into the side of the lightrunner, partially carving a rut in the terrain before striking.

The vehicle went airborne at the sheer force of the impact, spinning upside down wildly, massive gouts of primal matter coming of it. It landed once and bounced violently up, a twisted wreck too big to fully derezz, whirling on every axis.

We won’t make it , GAM realized abruptly. He’d dropped his guard, comfortable in the company of programs he trusted. He’d forgotten the very real danger hunting after them. And now, unless he did something, they were all going to pay for it. He shoved Vidi forcefully, sending the courier stumbling into the terrain, spun, caught the back of Adas’ robes, and threw her away from the incoming wreck as hard as he could. The GO4 squealed in uncomprehending shock.

The Sentry dropped to one knee, put his shield up and braced himself.

The crushed lightrunner slammed into him, and he might as well have been trying to stop a sailer going full speed. Pieces of the terrain flew everywhere, blank voxels cascading into the air and back to the ground, pummeling the other two programs where they’d fallen. The runner slid, rolled, rocked, and came to a halt close enough to Adas to illuminate the fallen actuarial with its flickering, failing lights.

In the sudden, abrupt silence filled only with the gusting wind, when GAM cried out in pain the sound went through both his companions like the shock of grabbing a data-line.

“GAM!” Adas picked herself up first. She got as far as her knees before she caught a sight of the Sentry and came to a dead stop, horrified.

GAM was pinned under the wreckage, primal matter dripping on him, carving sizzling runnels in his armor and into the body beneath, wounding him one burning voxel at a time. His faceplate had shattered and several circuitry paths had been ripped apart, going dark. And still he had put both hands on the wreck and was heaving desperately against it.

Adas scrambled to his side. “GAM!” She stood up and pulled at the runner. She might as well have been trying to budge the Grid itself.

“Adas, run,” he gritted out. Without the filters of his helmet, he sounded oddly young, desperately in pain.

“Vidi!” Adas screamed.

The courier leaped over the ruined vehicle. “No!” she gasped at the sight that welcomed her. Blindly, instinctively, she joined Adas efforts.

“No! Run!” he wheezed at them. Part of the terrain the wreck had landed on collapsed, and he howled in agony when the lightrunner further dropped on him.

Vidi stopped trying to fight a battle none of them were going to win. Instead she stepped back, her hair flaring up like a brilliant halo, scanning the ruin of the vehicle. Abruptly she scrambled over the wreck, yanking at a section of it. “Adas, help me!”

Adas didn’t hesitate. She climbed after the courier, slipped her hands into the seam Vidi was fighting, and pulled. Abruptly, what had once been one of the runner’s doors crashed open. Vidi went down on her face on the wreck; Adas slid right off it with a squeal , next to GAM. She looked up just in time to see the Gridborn squirm into the wreck.

“No!” GAM hissed at her. “No. Go. Get out! Before they get here!”

“We’re not leaving you. I’m not leaving you!” She took off her outermost robe, leaving her in the basic last-gen form-fitting uniform, and shoved it between him and whatever the dripping, destructive primal matter was.

Vidi suddenly landed next to them. “Something’s coming,” she hissed.

“Then get your plan working fast,” Adas replied.

Vidi’s face set to stone as her hair swept back and forth over the wreck. A couple of eyes blinked warnings and she scurried forward. When she found the right spot, she pressed the emergency Wrench to it and twisted. A chunk of the lightrunner came loose with the Wrench and she shoved it aside. Consciously removed, it didn’t derezz, but at least it was a little less weight on the WallSec.

“Why does it have to be so complex!” she snarled quietly as she fought to reconcile her previous memory of the lightrunner’s blueprint with the twisted tangle of lines in front of her eyes. “Four wheels and a go-box. That’s all it needs. But no, you gotta put in fifty other systems and your stupid limiters and a dozen other bits and pieces in the way -”

Her hands and the Wrench flew along as fast as her eyes could pinpoint weak spots, loose joinings, pieces that could be quickly and easily removed. She had to kick one particular bit until it crashed aside, nearly falling on her. She raced back and forth, taking the lightrunner apart guided only by desperation, memory and her eyes. The first time the machine wrenched upward, even if it was only a breath, she could have screamed in joy.

Adas dragged over a twisted piece left behind and shoved it in the gap to one side of GAM, did the same on the other side, and rushed back to kneel by him. “GAM? Still here?”

“Still,” he admitted, his voice strained and full of pain. “I’m getting used to no one doing what I tell them,” he added.

She couldn’t help but laugh a little through her panic . “You’re too sensible. No one ever wants to listen to sensible programs.”

“I’ve noticed.” He tried all the same. “You need to go. You need to run. The range on the magnetic conveyor that launched that claw isn’t good. They’ll be here soon.”

“We’re not leaving you.” Vidi slid over the wreckage, yanked loose a pipe, threw it aside and ran off.

“I thought only Pevir had magnetic weaponry.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “But this wasn’t a weapon before.” The lightrunner abruptly budged upward another breath or so, and he let out a strangled sound of pain, but his hands never stopped pressing up .

Adas found more debris to shove under the vehicle. “What is it, then?”

“Adas, it’s the virus,” he turned to stare at her. Past the shattered helm, he was young, male, with dark skin and bright, luminous eyes as violet as his circuitry - he was Halcyonite to his core. His features were sharp and strong, and tiny voxels were trickling from a gouge just under one of his eyes. “It’s a construction rig. They repurposed their conveyor, like me taking the limiter out of the runner. It learned that from me. And then it took any program, any vehicle it could catch in Ilo. And now they’ve found us, and they’re all coming here. You have to r- ”

Vidi suddenly dropped next to them. “That’s all we get. They’re here.”

They both peeked over the wreck. A bit of a way away, a construction heavy skiff was hovering over the spot where the claw had originally hit the lightrunner. Bright spotlights were sweeping over the claw and the terrain, erratic but very obviously searching for something that wasn’t there. A grappling cable was coming down to secure the claw. The skiff’s antigrav programming was focused on parallel plates running along its sides, creating twin dust storms underneath it – the cause of the light breeze GAM’s instincts had sense in that weatherless part of the Grid.

The entire ship was a vitriolic, poisonous yellow.

“I didn’t think normal viruses could take machines,” Adas breathed.

“What about this thing is normal,” Vidi shot back quietly. She cast around until she found the pipe, shoved it under the wreck, and leaned on it with all her weight.

GAM bit down on a scream as the lightrunner shuddered and slid. Adas took back her robes, twisted them into a makeshift rope and secured them around his arms. She nodded a t Vidi, who repositioned the pipe and shoved as hard as she could.

“Go!” GAM managed to grind out, almost inaudibly, and Adas yanked, dragging him out, back and free. Free of the wreck, the damage he’d taken was even more terrifying.

“Vidi, my baton. There’s a… there’s a crawler.”

She found it, but Adas was closer. The GO4 snatched it up and, unwilling to touch him just in case it should hurt him even more, secured it to her person. “We’re not leaving you. Come on. On your feet. We are Halcyonite programs and we are currently in danger.”

“Yeah, time to do your job, WallSec.” Even as Vidi joined in verbally harrying him, she and Adas struggled to get him up. It was Spire’s odds that his legs were still working, but security programs were usually built tough beyond belief.

“ She’s not. You’re… not.” He bit back, badly, several sounds of pain, but he helped them wrangle him upright, folding back the useless helm and leaning heavily on both of them His hair was black, very short and threaded with more violet . One leg was working; the other was dark all the way up to mid-thigh . “You’re in Halcyon… illegally.”

Vidi gasped at Adas. “No way!”

“I am a visiting diplomatic envoy!” She was entirely too glad to indulge the harmless accusation if it would help keep him from derezzing. She glanced at his back and blew a heavy sigh of relief: his disk was battered but in one piece. Slowly, they began to shuffle directly away from the distant, yellow lights of the skiff.

In a moment, the only light was their own, which made it terrifyingly plain how badly damaged GAM was. Until that point, whenever they were together, his was the most brilliant bit of circuitry on their combined spectrum, and a potent component of soothing calm on their combined wavelength. All of that was gone, leaving behind only the white and blue tones of Adas and Vidi, and the whirling mix of their worry and his pain.

Behind them, they heard the skiff begin to winch the grappler up. “We have to move faster,” GAM ground out.

“We’re going as fast as we can, I think,” Adas strained to reply. He wasn’t just taller than both of them, he was infinitely more solid, a giant slab of a program. Unsurprising for a security program, but not very helpful at the moment.

“Move where?” Vidi gritted out. “We’re in the middle of nowhere!”

“Not… nowhere,” he managed, and nodded.

They both looked up. Faint and distant, Parnassus’ lights cascaded up into the sky, thin white tendrils driven up as if in unseen currents, reaching so far that it seemed as if they might touch the other side of the sky.

“Do you think he’ll help?” Vidi asked.

“We don’t have a choice,” Adas replied firmly. “And I won’t give him one either.”

“But we have to move faster,” GAM persisted. “The skiff’s slower than the worm. And it’s got… it’s got arms.”

Reminded of the uncanny, half-formed and broken mimicries of itself the virus seemed able to extrude at will, all three of them did their best to make haste along the terrain. “ You are so heavy , WallSec!” Vidi protested.

“I did say -”

“You say to leave you behind one more time and I will throw something at you.” She brandished the emergency Wrench on her free hand.

He managed a wan little smile at that. When something glitched and scraped somewhere in the darkness behind them, his expression set to stone. “Don’t look, keep moving.”

Adas reached behind her and grabbed her disk with her free hand.

“You’re surprisingly handy with that,” GAM noted, “for an actuarial program.”

“So I watch a lot of the matches at Pevir, so sue me. Everyone needs a hobby,” she bristled defensively.

“I’m not complaining,” he admitted.

“Neither am I,” Vidi chirped in.

Chapter Text

The first simulacra reached them at the very bottom of the slopes of Parnassus. By then it was a four-legged thing, lean and long, with a sloping back and the barest suggestion of a head. It bristled with bits and pieces of what had once been Ilo City, but it also had flashes of circuitry here and there that burned with the poisonous energy of the virus. Those shattered lines of code beeped and crackled at the three of them as it closed in.

Then it somehow perceived where they were and faltered, taking several steps back.

None of the programs could blame it. They, too, had stopped on reaching the slopes of Parnassus. Unlike the rest of the Outlands, where little else existed beyond the terrain itself and occasional remnants cast out from the cities, the mountain was covered in…

Something.

A layer five or six deep of dark green voxels covered every part of the terrain, rendering shadows nonexistent, constantly undulating . Gnarled, imperfect fractals rose from this shallow tide and reached up, a luminous white peppered here and there with specks of brighter green, deep russet, pale gray or nearly black blue. Gossamer curtains of energy spiraled around the fractal branches like lazy currents or effusion clouds, occasionally stretching out from the branches of one fractal to another.

Even the Sentry found himself so stunned by the alien beauty all around them that for a moment he didn’t think to urge them forward. It was Adas who said, “Come on.”

They stepped gingerly on the dark green mat, to find it springy underfoot, but harmless, and hurried as best they could under the gleaming branches and odd energy puffs. Behind them, the virus’ simulacra chattered. It paced up to the edges of the slope, where the dark green voxels began, but the moment it touched them they overran him, flowing up its leg and tearing it apart to its basic components, black voxels and primal matter. It scrabbled back, trying to shake them off with no success.

The virus picked up its simulacra by the scruff , ripped off the infected limb and threw it back onto the slopes of Parnassus. The dark green carpet flowed over it and it was gone in a moment.

“Int… Interesting,” it murmured, dropping off the imperfect copy, which promptly grew back the missing limb . Several simulacra paced forward to surround their source , clicking and chattering like broken commlinks. Behind them came several construction ground vehicles, their energy indicators brightly yellow.

In answer to some unheard command, the door of one of the vehicles opened, and out shambled a program. Whoever they’d once been, they weren’t anymore. Their circuitry, once identifying a mid-gen program, matched the jagged lines and sickened color of the virus. They moved with shambling jerks, as if unsure of what limbs were, or how they were supposed to work. Little whines of pain came from it, and occasionally voxels dropped off its body as it approached the virus.

The virus looked at it. Without further instruction, the infected program moved forward. It stepped without hesitation onto the slopes of Parnassus.

The dark green carpet surged up its foot and leg at once. The program got four steps in before it was completely covered, and then the vaguely program-shaped mound collapsed, leaving nothing behind – not even a disk.

“Potent,” the virus said, a note of admiration in its broken voice. It considered. It had machines that could fly, but they were few and dependent on code interlocked with constants that it couldn’t detect in the mountain before it; they were either hidden under the protection protocols, or they just didn’t exist altogether. Its machines might not fly at all. They might not fly high enough. Dare it risk them, and possibly lose part of its growing army, on an experiment?

It was, at that point, a much more refined figure. In body it was a program’ s , but its face had the simplified features of a first-gen. Wherever the shattered, ill-fitted yellow circuitry failed to be present, it was as black as the terrain all around it, blank voxels studded everywhere with shards and pieces of broken disks. But from the waist down it was still relatively unformed, as if it wore a vast skirt that merged seamlessly into the terrain. If it lingered on one spot too long, that skirt began to spread.

It sank into itself, spreading out its awareness, circling around the mountain like a predator on the hunt. Wherever it went that vast curtain of moving, delicate green was there to meet it. Everywhere but one spot.

It came back to its forces. There was no motivation for it to feel frustration or anger. Yet. There was one way in, and one was more than enough. “I g-g I guess the front-front-front door it is.”

Chapter Text

Stepping on bare terrain was startling after all the time they’d spend moving through the whispering fractals on the slopes. But all at once the three programs found themselves moving past the dark green and onto polished white tiles, vast and flawless slabs of something far more solid than the average construction matter.

“Sitting,” GAM croaked. The first thing he’d noticed was a bench. The other two lowered him carefully onto it, and for their sake he refused to make a sound.

His code was in shambles. At least a third of it had become completely isolated, communication channels broken. He was bleeding energy and he was so jammed up he couldn’t even tell where. The Sentry figured he had, at most, another microcycle, perhaps two, and unless Parnassus could provide him with a miracle, he couldn’t figure out a single way to get Adas and Vidi to safety.

He focused, simply, on continuing to exist. Existence meant change. What was true one cycle rarely remained so for the next. All life in the Grid was about changing, evolving, advancing. If he could just keep from derezzing, something was bound to change, and in that change he might be able to squeeze escape for them out of a new variable.

Adas sat next to him while Vidi explored. She looked strange without her robes and faceplate, as if she were something other than a program despite her basic upload uniform.

“What?” she asked him, and belatedly he remembered his faceplate had shattered.

“It’s nothing. I got used to you looking… in charge, I guess,” he admitted.

“Oh. Nope. I’m a program, under all the bossy,” she replied, looking down at herself. Then she brightened up, and closed her clear faceplate over her face. “Does this help?”

He had to laugh a little. “Loads,” he admitted in spite of himself.

“You should open your faceplate more often,” she told him, handing him back his baton. “Your laughter’s nice.”

“Sentries don’t laugh.”

“Right. Got to keep up that appearance of being all business.”

“Mm.” He secured the baton to one leg and examined the other, the nonresponsive one . He was looking at it, touching it, and yet his code told him there was no leg. It was infuriating. He tried consciously commanding it to move and it did, with something just shy of excruciating pain, but he couldn’t very well send a requisition for every step he took while attending to their continued security. Rather than focus on something he couldn’t change, he looked around.

They were in a vast garden, something he could understand far better than the beautiful but alien little world they’d just left behind. Paths made of luminous white stone dashed away between walls of gleaming metal filigree. At regular intervals, statues either floated over decorative light-pools or stood on light-plinths – real statues, User-art. Everywhere he looked the world of the Users stared back at him from their finest artist ic creations. “ Do you think he’s from Om originally?”

“It does look like it, doesn’t it?” Adas agreed. The oldest city in the Grid was implacable in its faith that the Users weren’t just real, but alive .

Vidi came trotting back. “You want the good news or the bad news?”

“I don’t think there’s enough left of me for more bad news,” he admitted wryly.

“I can see the house from here.”

He considered that, and then grimaced, offering his arms. “Then I don’t think I need to hear the bad news. It won’t get any closer if we don’t get moving.”

“Anyone ever tell you it’s weird how you can guess at things that no one’s saying?” Vidi told him as she and Adas helped him up. Together, they started hobbling once again along the paths.

“I’m not guessing, you did say it. You said you could see the house, but you didn’t say anything about being close.” He gritted his teeth against a slew of new error signals, and did his best to ignore the new little pile of voxels he’d left behind on the bench. “That would’ve been good news.”

“That’s rude.” She declared after a moment. “That’s like reading my mind, WallSec. No privacy with you around.”

“If I could read minds, I’d have known to get us moving before the skiff showed up,” he ground out, riding a crest of pain until it passed and then focusing on the path. “That was my mistake, and I’m sorry. I dropped my guard.”

“We’re still online because of you!” Adas protested.

“Stop saying dumb stuff. Ugh, I need you to be better so I can throw things at you.”

“You are both so violent. Why am I stuck with such violent programs,” he asked of the world in general. They left the statuary garden through a wrought iron arch big enough to accommodate a freight skiff and found themselves looking up at the pinnacle of Parnassus. At a brisk, normal walk it would have taken them perhaps twenty nanocycles to get to it. At the moment it was as distant as Om.

Atop the mountain sat a vast house, a mansion built on lines not found anywhere else on the cities of the Grid. Sweeping, elaborate columns framed mostly open rooms. Walls were scarce. Lights hung on nothing where rooms lacked ceilings. Occasionally, shallow bowls rested on low, elaborate plinths, and thing streams of faint energy curled up from them, spiraling up to be lost in the upper reaches of the atmosphere. More of those irregular fractals surrounded the mansion, covered in flickering motes of bright green. The ground between them and the top of the mountain was carved into broad, even steps, and when Adas set a foot on it, a splash of light rushed away from her dainty boot in every direction, like primal matter spilled on a perfectly even surface.

“More climbing.” GAM sighed wearily.

“Quit whining, WallSec. Imagine you’re chasing me after I stole all your beans,” Vidi told him cheerfully.

“ Beans aren’t solid enough to steal ,” he quipped as they moved onto the next step, their feet creating rainbows of color all around them.

“What?” Adas looked at them both in confusion.

“There’s no real beans to count,” Vidi explained. “No beans stashed away any where. All the beans ever are in someone’s soukscan always. Always moving, all of the time . It used to be this con you could do on programs new to Halcyon, offering them a handful of something tiny and solid and bean-looking in exchange for whatever. WallSec stopped that and that was -” She abruptly realized she was about to agree with GAM on something. “Bad! It was very bad! It was so bad, i t was terrible, getting in the way of free business like that.”

“How dare we,” GAM managed. Laughter made him hurt even worse, but he preferred that pain, it felt cleaner somehow.

The three suddenly caught their breath. A little dot of color had separated itself from the many lamps and lights of the manor, and it was flying at them with startling speed. “Bit,” GAM breathed out.

“Oh,” Adas helped him shift until Vidi was holding up the Sentry’s weight, and drew herself up straight. She lifted up a hand and waved it. “Yes, excuse me!”

The Bit paused, then sped up to her, rotating swiftly through multiple stellations before stopping and very clearly saying, “Hello.”

Adas blinked. It was rare to find Bits on the Grid anymore. You could find the occasional Navi but they were relics, creatures of the distant past, when cities had been smaller and communications between them unreliable. “Hello. I’m Adas, Senior Assist-”

“Hello,” the Bit repeated.

“Yes, we went through that already,” she assured it. “I’m the Senior Assistant to the Ilo SysAdmin. My friends and I,” she gestured to Vidi and GAM, “we need urgent help -”

The Bit turned minutely to ‘face’ them. “Hello.”

“I think it only knows the one word,” Vidi pointed out.

“Oh, I bet it knows two,” GAM said quietly.

The Bit suddenly abandoned Adas, and moved to hover before GAM. “Hello.”

“Pleasure to meet you,” the Sentry managed. The Bit didn’t seem to be listening. It was floating lower and lower, stellating slowly, as if scanning the Sentry from top to bottom.

“We need help,” Adas said firmly. “We need medical assistance from your commanding program, and if that’s not available we need access to any sort of communications they can pr-”

“Goodbye,” the Bit suddenly declared, and sped away as quickly as it had arrived.

“Hey!” Adas protested indignantly.

“Told you,” GAM said wearily.

“You are just – GAM? GAM!” He was going limp against Vidi. They helped him drop to one knee; his circuits were nearly as dark as his battered armor.

“He needs energy,” Vidi glanced wildly around. “There’s gotta be energy somewhere in this place.”

Adas looked up, hoping for a n ETC , a fountain, any of the familiar forms of free energy she knew from Ilo. What she saw instead was two of the virus’ mimic ries padding along one of the lower steps, gleaming yellow eyes fixed on the little group. Where they passed, the ground remained dark. She gasped hugely and began to tug them both up. “Get up, get up. We have to go. GAM, we have to go.”

GAM looked up. Behind the simulacra came six or seven infected programs, shuffling forward on limbs they could barely control, their circuitry winking in and out of synch with itself and little electronic sounds of pain coming off them. He fought himself to his feet and reached for his disk, the only weapon left to him. “You have to run,” he told them both wearily. “One of you has to run.”

Adas looked torn. Everything in her wanted to stand with her friends. But her actuarial nature, for once, understood why the Sentry kept hammering on the same point: unlike Ilo, Parnassus was live, online. If the virus took the mountain, it could easily use its connection to spread to every single city in the Grid.

“Yes,” the virus spoke from the dark. More shattered lines and winking yellow eyes were revealing themselves as it and its creatures moved around the perimeter of the broad stairwell. It had formed legs, but it wasn’t using them, instead advancing on a small wave of mixed matter and dead voxels that flowed behind it like an elaborate fashion Cosmetic, a combination hair and half-skirt that, if anything, made it look even more unsettling than it already was. “You sh-shou-should run. Perh-perhaps it will ach-ach-achiev-achieve something. Even now.”

Adas reached for her disk. The virus’ attention shifted to her. “I have-have-have. I’m not interested in you, little pr-program.” It pointed at GAM. “I want him, first.” Its hand shifted minutely to Vidi, who was hiding behind the Sentry. “Her, sec. Second.”

“What do you want with me, I don’t want nothing to do with you!”

Vidi wasn’t hiding. GAM could feel what she was doing, but he didn’t know how she was transferring energy into him. The Gridborn never seemed to run out of tricks. The Sentry closed his helm but didn’t deploy the shattered faceplate. His grip tightened on his disk. “I’m not going down easily, worm,” he ground out, swiftly creating a simple iteration and throwing it in place.

“That was-was-wassssss expected,” the virus agreed easily. “I will not lie. I am look-looking forward to it, securit-t-t-t-y.”

The simulacra charged them with electronic screeches.

Chapter Text

“Hey! What are you doing in my room?!”

“Hey, Rob.”

“Don’t – don’t you even, Kane! What the hell. You don’t come into my house like this, you don’t come into my room like this!”

“Just figured this needed a personal touch. I don’t… You know, I don’t feel comfortable handing out bad news over the phone. I’ve had too much of that in my life.”

“Oh, God. Oh, God, what’s happened.”

“Well, they just took Moll to the hospital. She’s, uh. She’s nonresponsive. Crashing. She’s been crashing for five months now, we’ve just been putting it off every which way we can, you know?”

“Oh, God. Kane, I’m so sorry.”

“You know, Rob. I wanna be sorry. I wanna be sad. You wanna know what I’m feeling?”

“Um.”

“I’m feeling like I found a hardline in her room, and our old User input setup by her bedside.”

“… Oh, Jesus.”

“So. You know. Here I am. Sitting in the room of my best friend. Wondering if he’s still my best friend. Wondering if he ever was my best friend.”

“Kane, I never – I would never hurt her, you know I wouldn’t. She told me she was fixing the servers. Fixing what she burned.”

“I think that’s the problem, Rob. I think you haven’t lived with her for the past… God, how long has it been. You haven’t been there. You didn’t get used to her lying out of her ass just so long as it gets her what she wants. You haven’t seen her do whatever it takes to hide from this… fucking thing. Obsess over the Grid as if it’s the thing that’ll save her.”

“Kane, I’m so sorry.”

“You wanna know the funniest thing? I mean, there’s so much to laugh at right now, isn’t there.”

“Kane.”

“It can’t . When you go into the Grid, all of you goes. She’d take her cute, little lethal hitchhiker right along for the ride. It’d kill her here or there. That’s why we didn’t ask Flynn for the laser tech. Well, that and we had grandpa’s specs.”

“… Oh, crap. That’s why you’ve been trying to figure out a partial process.”

“Yeah. I mean, it was a good thing to sell to people interested. You don’t gotta go in-in, you can just sorta go in. And hey! It works even if you’re halfway across the world, ‘cuz only your mind goes, not your body. And all this time, it was just to save her. To save my sister. Only she couldn’t fucking wait until we could make sure it actually worked, and…”

“Oh, fuck. You think she went in.”

“Oh, I know she went in. I already found her.”

“… Ok, so, let’s get her out, what do you need, what can I do, how can I help?”

“Help? Help with what, my man? Her body’s all the way in Macon General. You think they got a recovery rig in their janitor closet up there? We don’t even have one here.”

“…”

“Yeah. We can’t get her out. I mean, what chunks she managed to put through.”

“‘Chunks?!’”

“Yup. Chunks. Chunks, Rob. Chunks. Moll-bits. Took a chainsaw to her head and shoved them down that hardline you helped her with.”

“ Jesus, Kane!”

“Ask me how I know. Go on, ask me. Ask me how I found her.”

“…”

“No? Ask me what she’s doing, then.”

“… Kane.”

“Have you checked on your private server today?”

“WHAT?!”

“Yeah. You do that. I’m gonna go make a phone call.”

Chapter Text

F lynn’s had weathered many events that had sunk and closed most of the other arcades of its time. It had done so by adapting, evolving. It had been, in its time, an internet cafe, a LAN center, a computer repair shop. On that cold afternoon, there was a microbrewery on the ground floor, and a pub on the second. The food was to die for, the beer was okay, and the reservation list ran seven months in advance. And you could still play Space Paranoids and Light Cycle for a quarter a pop.

Kane found the man in the raincoat there. Much had changed over the years since that last meeting in the derelict mall. Kane Gibbs was taller but Sam Flynn was heavier. Grief, rage, worry had eaten away at the promise of muscle puberty had made the younger man, leaving him lighter than his one-time contact and occasional patron. For that matter, Sam Flynn looked as if he spent seven days exercising, and tucked an eighth in to run his ENCOM empire. He looked up when Kane arrived, and without a word gestured to the other chair at his table. He waited until Kane took it, and a waitress had brought him some water, before he spoke with implacable certainty. “So what went wrong.”

“It wasn’t the people,” Kane felt as if he’d only yesterday bargained for a copy of the fabled Grid. He’d heard stories from his grandfather, back when it had seemed as if only he and Molly believed. As if the twins had been the only ones who remembered the doting, frail old man wasn’t just someone to leave the littles with, but a theoretical engineer with several PhDs under his belt.

Perhaps that was why he’d given them the specs to the digitizing laser.

Flynn’s brows went up in patent disbelief, and Kane realized he’d have to admit to a sin that felt like it was drowning him already. “It was Molly.”

“Your sister?” That did make the older man sit up and take notice.

Kane stared at his hands. “She’s sick. She was sick even back then, we just didn’t know it. When we did find out, all those stories we’d heard, and everything Grandpa had told us, and… everything, you know? We thought maybe we could find a way to, to use the Grid.”

“To cure her?”

“To erase it off of her! Everything, everyone’s supposed to go on a disk in there, right, so we thought we could just -”

“You could edit it out?” Flynn leaned back. “It doesn’t work like that. Not for Users.” A note of regret had crept into Sam’s voice; for all his apparent indifference, he did like the Gib b s twins. He would’ve helped them if he could, but in all his digging through his own copy of the Grid, he’d never found any trace of the wonders his father had hinted at. If there was a way to help the sick, like Molly Gibbs, only Kevin Flynn had ever found it .

“Yeah, we found that out.”

“So you have a laser.”

Kane shrugged. “We’re Walter Gibbs’ grandkids, what do you think? We started work on it two years ago.”

Flynn considered that, accepted it readily, and moved on. “So what happened?”

“We thought, maybe, if we could just get a partial digitization process going. Just the mind, the heart – the person, not the body.”

“And put it where?” Flynn asked immediately.

Kane asked wordlessly for patience. “One problem out of a whole, whole lot,” he admitted. “ See, the Grid you gave us, the Grid we see, it’s like an iceberg. Most of it is foundation code, constants like directionality, density of stuff, permanence – all the things out here we take for granted, like gravity and wind and light and, and, and all of that. That’ s all part of the foundation, the hard code that you can’t touch . And it’s written into the Grid itself that input means life. You cannot put a program in the Grid and it not become alive.”

“Was that the plan? Code in a body for her?”

“ Yeah. Then it turned into a sorta ride-along with your program.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound creepy at all.”

“It wasn’t gonna work anyway. There’s no program we’ve found that ha s enough memory to support a full User download. And even then, the math’s telling us they’d become integrated.”

“You wouldn’t be able to pull them back out?”

“I don’t know what we’d pull out!” Kane exclaimed. “Every time we run the sequence in theoretical space, it tells us the same thing: there’s no User, there’s no Program, there’s just this… corrupted composite that either self-destructs or decays into non-sentient weirdness and starts spreading out to anything nearby.”

“A virus.” Flynn stared very keenly at the young man. “It turns into a virus.” He watched Kane wilt before him, as if the world were crushing him in a vice with no escape. “She went in.”

“She’s… stable.” Kane leaned his elbows on the table and cradled his head in his hands. “Last I checked. She uploaded one of the blanks we were using for our theoretical space tests, and then she…”

“So it works.”

“No. Integration’s already begun. Decay’s gonna start any minute now. I came here hoping that you know some way to get my sister out of there before she’s not my sister anymore!”

Flynn was quiet. “She’s doing w hat your tests told you. She’s turning into a virus.”

“She’s my sister. And she’s in pain, and she wa s afraid, and she was dying. ” Kane leveled a fierce look on the older man. “When you gave us the seed you said a friend had put a gift in there for us. Is it… Was it Bradley? Grandpa talked about him sometimes.”

“No.” Flynn smirked a little. “No, Alan went in the same as all your other members. He bought a slot.”

Kane blinked in disbelief. “He’s in already?!”

“Oh, he’s been in since the beginning, I think.” He straightened up. “Gibbs, what do you want from me?”

“I want you to help me!” Kane clipped each word angrily. “I want you to help me get her out. I want you to help me figure out how to fix this so it will actually help her.”

“I’m a coder, not an engineer, Gibbs!”

“You must know someone in ENCOM who is! Someone who can help!” He pointed sharply at Flynn. “We helped you. Those accounts we found for you, they’re the only reason the hostile takeover didn’t go through. Why you didn’t get bought out by a thousand auto-buyers. Why you ended up with even more of a share majority.”

“And I gave you the seed in exchange for it.”

“And I’m telling you, you gave us nothing if it can’t do this for her.”

Flynn sighed in exasperation. “Alright. Ok. I’m seeing one solution, but you’re not gonna like it.”

“I don’t like anything that’s happened in the past few days ,” the young man declared exhaustedly. “Give.”

Chapter Text

Adas flung her disk in a broad, underhanded curve. It wobbled through the throw – she was no master duelist, but it did exactly what it was supposed to do: it missed every target on the way out, accelerated through the curve, and on its way back to her slammed through three of the simulacra that didn’t think to get out of its way. The rest threw themselves aside, their charge ruined.

She caught her disk, nearly fumbled it, and then GAM was there, his shield deployed, throwing his own. The mimicries all darted away but he caught one of the infected programs across a shoulder, just under the neck, and derezzed it on the spot. The one standing next to it took a glancing blow that neither actuarial nor Sentry detected, but it didn’t seem to care.

The virus let out a long, electronic hiss, like an overheated system, and its forces fell back. It was the first time they’d seen anything like self-preservation from it.

“It’s the ground,” Vidi said, staying firmly behind the Sentry. “It doesn’t see any part of the virus, it won’t acknowledge it, so it can’t get more mimic-things out of it, not here.”

“Clev-c-c-c-. Smart.” The virus agreed, flowing up the steps, forcing them to give ground. “But. But I am. still. here. Thr-throw your disks at me-me-me,” it invited them, its garbled mixture of voices turning into a taunt.

GAM paused. Obviously it wasn’t a consideration. To throw a disk at the virus was to risk it catching it and doing any number of unpleasant things to it, the least of which was outright destruction. But it did bring up a point he hadn’t had time to consider before.

Where was the virus’ disk? Whatever else it might be, it was still in the Grid, and the Grid had rules for such things. Strays might lack a disk, but Strays also lacked memory, sometimes even awareness. The virus had both, kept both. It remembered what it saw and experienced, it learned from such things – things that were stored in a disk.

So where was it? It wasn’t at its back. It wasn’t on its chest, which was unusual, but happened occasionally. It didn’t even have a mount on either spot. Its shape, though made up of dead and blank voxels, flowed and shifted but it still stuck to some basic principles of a program’s shape. Arms, legs, torso, head. To have a program without a mount was…

GAM leaned on his shield to go up the next step, eyes never leaving the bilious yellow monster before them. Adding the lack of a visible disk against the questions he’d been asking himself since the virus’ apparition at Ilo, he was beginning to consider things he didn’t like at all.

Vidi shrieked suddenly. Adas turned around; GAM didn’t. He heard the GO4’s disk whirr through the air and thud into something, heard voxels cascade onto the broad steps.

“No f- no further,” the virus informed him. “Wh-where will you run now, sec-sec-security?”

“I’m not running,” GAM replied. And immediately sprinted directly at the virus.

Its eyes widened in surprise. To be fair, it was the last thing anyone there had expected. GAM heard one of the other two programs cry out his name, heard a demand for an explanation. He didn’t answer. He focused on maintaining the iteration that was keeping his dead leg working through the motions of running, put on speed, and held tight onto his shield.

“No -!” The virus put up a hand. The mob of simulacra that had been flanking and surrounding Adas and Vidi forgot all about them, lunging past them at the Sentry, entirely too late to intercept him.

GAM slammed into the virus full-force. The worm was many things, but one thing it most certainly didn’t have was the sheer mass of the Sentry. Both of them went tumbling down the broad steps leading to the top of Parnassus, the virus screeching discordantly.

“We gotta help him!” Vidi cried out.

Adas caught her arm. “We can’t help him.” She turned, threw her disk, and one of the shambling infected programs that had been left behind derezzed, beginning with the arm that it had stretched out toward them, where her disk had caught it. Without the virus or the simulacra, the slow-moving infected programs were entirely too easy to avoid as they ran up the steps, moving so quickly they were leaving behind a double wake of riotous colors.

GAM hit the steps a few times as he and the virus crashed down the steps nearly all the way to the statuary garden. He could only hope the worm had hit them just as many times. The last jarring bounce sent them both skidding away from one another, and programmed instinct forced the Sentry back onto one knee, leaning heavily on his shield.

“You wr-r-r-r- ” The virus flowed back into shape, so angry that most of its voices could only squeal feedback and disjointed anger. “You f-f-f- ”

“Anything you call me,” he managed to put out, “won’t be worse than what you are.”

It screamed and lunged at him, swatting the shield aside and flinging him into a fountain. The heavy stone crumbled and GAM felt the impact rattle every voxel. He put up the shield again, caught two heavy blows into it and kicked hard with his good leg.

The virus staggered away. “You contrary little shit!” it suddenly screamed in an alien, shrill voice, jarringly out of place after all its monotonous, collective dialogue.

GAM struggled up once again, but sharp grinding teeth suddenly closed over his shield arm and he cried out as they partially crushed his armor. He brought his disk to bear, severing the simulacra’s head and getting himself free, but another leapt up and crashed into the Sentry’s shield, staggering him back onto his bad leg. He swung the shield hard, sending the thing flying, but there was another biting at his bad leg that he’d never felt, obviously, and he went down. A moment later the virus was there, grabbing the edge of his shield and yanking with impossible strength. It went flying, shut down, and the baton hit the ground an impossible distance away.

The virus picked him up by the throat and slammed him twice, three times, into the ground, until GAM hung more or less limp in its grip. Its substance flowed over the Sentry’s chest, burning against his armor, seeking any crack or seam, but wherever it found space, the Sentry’s own substance caused the virus’ to derezz. It examined this effect curiously as its prey moaned in its grip.

“No more,” it murmured. “You are n-not-not real, security. Why d-d-do you fight so hard-hard when you’re not-not real?”

GAM struggled emptily in the virus’ grip, but his baton might as well have been in Om and his disk in Pevir, both fallen on the ground far from his reach. “I am real.”

“No.”

“I am here. I am myself,” the Sentry gritted out. “And when you derezz me, I will still be. You can never take that from me.”

“Can’t I?” The virus examined him closely, lifting its other hand and sharpening it into a long, lethal point. “There mus-must be some part of y-you I can t-t-t-t-touch. Let’s-let’s find out which-which.”

“Let’s not,” a very cultured voice suggested most politely, and a light-blade swung in an elegant arc, severing both of the virus’ hands.

Chapter Text

The virus yowled, more in surprise than anything else. GAM dropped from its grip and crashed down in a heap. Try as he might, he couldn’t get back up. He barely had enough energy to stay awake. He growled impotently and looked at the new arrival.

The program was tall, relatively slender. He was a naturally upgraded first-gen, but the most astonishing thing about him was that the upgrades were visible where most other programs always tried to hide them. The slim circuitry lines of a last-gen update merged seamlessly with the broad strokes of a first-gen; he wore a flaring last-gen coat, flowing and elegant, over fitted first-gen pants and boots. His hair had been a first-gen style at one point, short and tidy, but further upgrades had added motion and texture, and little wild wisps framed an elegant, narrow face with refined features. He was white throughout, but flashes of color came and went through his circuitry, as if he were made of the same substance as the irregular fractals that dotted Parnassus.

He had a light-blade in one hand, a long and deadly projection out of a multi-purpose baton, and he stood with calm assurance between the virus and GAM.

The virus reached for the program. Faster than even GAM could see, a second light-blade came to life on the program’s other hand and sliced that approaching limb off as well.

The virus fell back.

“Did you knock?” The program asked mildly. “I didn’t hear, you see. I get so lost in my thoughts sometimes. But I just don’t like trespassers.”

“Parnassus,” the virus whispered in that odd, unnatural voice.

“No.” The program gestured mildly, and only then did GAM realized there were no simulacra left to be seen. “The mountain is Parnassus. I am MAR. And I do believe you shouldn’t be here.”

“Giv-give them to me,” the virus didn’t try to attack again. “Giv-give them to me, and I will leave. They-they-they are intr-int-in- they are intruders, too.”

“Actually, one of his friends up there asked for sanctuary,” one of the light-blades gestured mildly at the peak.

There was silence between them.

“You d-do-don’t want to p-p-p-put yours-yourself against me, prog-program.”

MAR shrugged casually. He pointed down with the other light-blade. The virus turned to look and recoiled abruptly.

The shallow tide of deep green voxels was flowing sedately out of the gates of the statuary garden and creeping inexorably up the broad stone steps.

The virus turned and fled .

MAR blew out a long, low breath and shut off the light-blades, securing the batons to his person . “ Hmph . I do hope they didn’t break down the gates, I think I sent that file to Ark ages ago. Knowing them I’ll never get it back.”

He turned and hurried to GAM, dropping to one knee next to him. After all the violence, his hand felt strangely comforting against GAM’s shoulder. “Sentry GAM, I hope?”

“I better be, after all that trouble,” GAM groaned.

“Oh, I do like a program with a sense of humor,” MAR declared cheerfully. “Can you stand?”

“Not really.”

“Well, you do look rather thrashed.” MAR straightened up and whistled sharply.

One of the nearby statues suddenly came to life, dropped off its plinth and walked up to them both. It bent down and picked up GAM effortlessly.

“Gently,” MAR instructed it, “Let’s not shake him too much, he looks like pieces might start falling off.” He fetched GAM’s disk and baton and trotted up the broad steps, leaving riots of color in his wake. The statue followed sedately.

“What is this place?” GAM asked, one arm wrapped around his chest as if he could keep himself together by holding on.

“Parnassus? It’s art.” MAR turned, going backwards up the steps. “It’s all art. Have you got no poetry in your soul to see it, Sentry?”

“I know the statues are User art but…”

“No, no, everything is. The trees, the grass, the walls, the fountains. The colors.” He did a quick, elaborate shuffle on the steps, color flooding and flaring all around them. “In any case. Perhaps something for you to enjoy when you’re not a picocycle away from derezzing, hm?”

“Are they safe?”

“From me? Oh, rather,” MAR assured him. “I’m more worried about being safe from them, they’re really quite angry.”

“They’re very violent programs.” GAM felt almost delirious. Was this what derezzing from lack of energy felt like? Hot and cold, burning and prickling, as if everything were becoming distant and critical? “I was trying… I wanted them to be…”

MAR was peering down at him, but GAM couldn’t understand what the other program was saying. Everything was turning into pixels, flat and hyperbolically colorful.

“Safe,” he managed to get out before he crashed.

Chapter Text

Vidi found Adas sitting against a pillar in one of the mansion’s outer rooms. From the top of Parnassus they were almost even with the lowermost data-lines, and they could see the distant flickering lights of the solar sailers as they went by. But Parnassus was a no-fly zone; all data was delivered by courier or not at all.

The GO4 was clinging to her tattered robes, and Vidi hunched minutely in on herself at the sight. Then she sat next to Adas, on one of the three shallow outer steps leading down from the building to the ground. “MAR says he’ll be fine. I think.”

“That’s good to hear. I think,” Adas replied wanly.

Vidi laced her hands around her knees.

“I left him, Vidi. I left him behind.”

Vidi thought on that. “I mean, he’d been telling us to run and leave him behind for whole microcycles. We just weren’t listening. I guess he got tired of us ignoring him.”

“I should’ve found a way. He always has.”

“He’s WallSec, Adas. That’s how they’re made. We’re all programs, but we aren’t all the same program. Hey.” Vidi leaned back and waited for Adas to look at her. “Would he be mad at you?”

Adas huffed and looked down at what remained of her robes. She’d found voxels caught in it earlier, and she’d nearly thrown the whole thing away. She hadn’t solely because it would mean dumping those same voxels with it and what if, in some outlandish and irrational way, he ended up needing them back? “No. He’d be so pleased,” she had to admit. “So glad I finally listened.”

“You did.” Vidi rocked one of her feet idly. “Totally sold out to WallSec, GO4. Probably hoping they’ll forgive the whole illegal entry thing.”

A little laugh burst out of Adas, surprising her visibly. She scrubbed wearily at her face. “So… you think?”

“Adas, he talks so, so, sooo much,” Vidi protested with a shrug. “He was saying a bunch of medical things. Do I look like a medic to you?”

They stared at the sprawling slopes. “It’s kinda pretty, isn’t it,” Vidi said quietly.

“I can’t even begin to imagine what you see, Vidi. But what little I see, yes, it’s lovely.”

“Thank you.” MAR’s voice behind them turned them both around. Their host was standing next to one of the plinths that supported a shallow bowl. Little cubes of spent energy rested on it, slowly disintegrating and allowing a thin wisp of raw energy to escape upward, spiraling and whorling under the effect of atmospheric equations none of them could so much as perceive.

He moved closer, offering a hand to each of them. “Yes, he’ll be fine. He’s holding energy again, and the sarcophagi has mostly mended his circuitry. He’s lucky that it’s very hard to put a good Sentry down.”

“Thank you,” Adas told him meekly.

“Hm!” He laced both their arms around his, and started walking sedately. “But now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to know how and why you come to be in Parnassus. I can’t remember the last time I invited someone over, and I’m quite certain I would remember either of you.”

“I already told you all that,” Vidi protested.

“Yes, but you talk rather a lot, and not all of it made sense.” MAR’s mouth twitched, and Vidi huffed. “It’s not your fault, my dear. You’re a program of today, a modern creature. Your voice is that of the outside world. I’ve been here in my mountain for so long that I don’t know how those outside speak anymore. So.” He nodded politely to Adas.

She breathed deeply, opened her mouth. And paused.

“Is something wrong?” MAR asked.

“No, I just realized… It feels like it’s been whole cycles, not millicycles.” She blew out a sharp breath and ran down the facts for him, from the first time a Spire had gone live, at Halcyon, through its many upgraded attacks on Ilo, the Island, and Halcyon once again.

As the GO4 spoke, Vidi privately shared in Adas’ wonder that it had only been a few millicycles. It felt as if they’d all been trying to get away from the Spirestorm mess for as long as she’d been online.

“Hold on, you’re telling me that the first time, it didn’t damage anything, it only affected programs?” When they both nodded, MAR frowned minutely. “How very… selective.”

“It did enough damage after that,” Vidi muttered, remembering the destruction they’d driven through at Ilo.

“What were the SysAdmins doing through all this?” MAR asked pointedly.

“Trying,” Adas replied staunchly. “Their first thought was that it was attacking sites with the largest population density -”

“A very reasonable belief.”

“ - but the third Spirestorm was… Aware. Conscious. It targeted specific Sectors in Halcyon. GAM thinks that it’s after active-process-memory, that it’s targeting creative programs. He thinks it’s a hack.”

“A hack? Hm. Likely. Unfeasible, but likely. And the virus?”

“Wait. Why unfeasible? It makes sense, all of it, doesn’t it?” Vidi slipped free of MAR’s arm. “Storms don’t think unless someone thinks for them. Even the virus has to have come from somewhere.”

They were walking on a path that went through the slender, irregular fractals on the grounds, tall and white and stately. Occasionally a green mote came fluttering down from one, only to fade away before it hit the ground.

“It can’t be a User, either,” Adas stopped walking as well, looking thoughtful. “Gungnir said… He said, ‘if the Users were real, if they created the Grid, I don’t imagine they’d need to force their way in. You walk into your habitat, it opens the door for you; you don’t have to kick it in.’”

MAR laughed. “He said that? That’s a delightful way of putting it. And he’s quite right, but he’s making an assumption very common of younger programs.” He paused. “Two, actually. One, that everyone outside the Grid is a User. Goodness, Users are common, but not that common.”

“There’s… there’s something other than Users outside the Grid?” Vidi asked.

“Users are… real?” Adas strangled out. “They’re not extinct?”

“Oh, very much, yes! And uh… Very much, yes. The actual term is ‘alive’. And Users are a handful of voxels in a whole Sea of Simulation’s worth of non-Users.”

“Wouldn’t that make a hack more likely, not less?” Vidi protested.

“It would. There’s certainly enough boots to try and kick the door in - I really do like that. But, my dear, in order to kick the door in, you need to know where the door is. You need to know there’s even a door. And aside from that little handful of voxels, no one does."

They stared at him in shock, at least one of their world’s rocked to its foundations.

“How… How would you…” Adas stammered.

“How do I know? Through my User. He’s always been honest with me, about everything.” MAR spun slowly, arms outstretched, encompassing all of Parnassus in the gesture.

“You said -” Vidi had to clear her throat, her voice coming out croaky as she struggled to figure out every deep truth and secret their host was revealing so blithely. “You said two. Two assumptions.”

“Ah, yes. Nice catch. The other is that someone from outside the Grid can manifest anywhere in the Grid there’s a Spire. They can’t. Programs, yes. Users and non-Users, no.”

“But the Spires -”

“Aren’t real.” As they stared at him, stunned, MAR gestured lightly. “Ta-daaa.”

“Aren’t -”

“Real?”

“No. Well, one is. Most aren’t. They’re real enough to upload programs, but there’s only one Spire that can fully upload a User. And it’s not in Halcyon, and it’s not in Ilo, and I don’t think the Island even had a Spire?”

“Not real?!” Vidi squeaked.

“You talk to your User?!” Adas exclaimed in the same pitch.

“Um.” MAR pointed both hands at Vidi. “Yes.” Then he pointed at Adas and hesitated when he realized the answer was the same. “… Yes. I’m honestly surprised yours haven’t reached out, after everything that’s happened to you. Communications are limited, but not nonexistent.”

“I don’t got one,” Vidi replied with a shrug. “I’m Gridborn. The Grid doesn’t count as a User.” She hesitated, her worldview too shaken. “Does it?”

“I could philosophize with you about the concept of a ghost in the machine, my dear, but I don’t think it matters very much to you, does it? You don’t look very troubled over it.”

Vidi shrugged. “I don’t need a User. What’re they gonna do for me that I haven’t done for myself already?”

That declaration brought their host to a halt. “That is…” he said slowly, “an astonishingly enlightened belief for someone so young.”

“Excuse me.” Adas sounded as if she were about to freeze and crash. “Excuse me. How does one… A User. How do they…?”

“It can be a bit tricky, what with the time differential between our world and theirs, but there are built-in translation protocols in the Grid -”

“No, I mean, like… Ever.”

MAR blinked. “Well, in a pinch, the same way anyone talks to anyone else.”

Adas stared at him, her world rearranging itself around her so swiftly that she could scarcely comprehend the shape of it anymore. One tiny speck of data caught her attention simply because it remained unchanged.

A tiny, repeating musical tone in an exceedingly narrow communication frequency.

“Excuse me,” she said hastily, turned, and fled.

Chapter Text

Unknown commfrequency, this is Adas, Senior Assistant to the Ilo Sysadmin. Are you there? Is anyone listening?

Oh, finally! Thank goodness! Oh, um.

Hello, Adas. I a m your User. I am Lily. I know you have many questions but we only have five or six communication exchanges before the time differential kicks me out. Y ou probably have the better questions, s o. Go.

… Are you – No, never mind. We’re talking. Of course you are. Ahm. Can you destroy the virus?

No. I a m sorry, Adas. I can no t. No one can. I have asked all the Users I can reach. I will keep asking.

Can you help us get away? Can you warn the other cities about it?

Everyone’s been warned, Adas. What do you need to help you get away?

Help GAM, please! Heal him. And um. We need a vehicle.

There are no public consoles near you. I cannot upload blueprints to a baton without a console. I am detecting vehicles nearby that you can probably claim and use.

...

I cannot help GAM. I am not his User.

Can you find his User? Please!

I will try.

Can you tell me anything that will help?

… Hang in there, Adas. We are watching. We are listening. We will help however we c-

Chapter Text

Adas stared at the flat line in her faceplate. The communication hadn’t just failed, the frequency couldn’t even be found when she searched for active lines of any kind.

Time differential. Both MAR and her User had mentioned that. Was it something that could be corrected repeatedly, or had she squandered the only words she would ever exchange with her User in a moment of frantic panic? She hadn’t even thought to do a proper priority assessment beforehand!

She closed the faceplate and buried her face in her hands before straightening up sternly. Her priorities were as straight as they were going to get. If she could never again speak to her User, so be it; she had said what was important, what mattered to the survival of the Grid.

Everyone’s been warned, Adas.

She could ask for nothing else. Besides, MAR made it sound like he chatted up his User at every opportunity. Surely she’d get another chance.

MAR and Vidi found her sitting on the rim of a fountain. “I always thought they were gone,” she said quietly. “Relics. Extinct. Real, once, but not anymore.”

“That’s fair, I suppose.” MAR crouched easily before her. “Vidi tells me Users don’t talk to the programs in the cities at all. I never realized my relationship with Robert was so unique. I’m sorry to have blurted out such things. I never thought it’d be such a shock to you.”

“Were… were they nice?” Vidi sat on Adas’ side.

“I think so.” Adas looked up at her and tried for a wan little smile. “She was trying to help. MAR, can I… Can I talk to her again? From my end?”

“That’s a little tricky,” he admitted. “Unless you have a dedicated communication uplink, it’s always easier when the User initiates contact.”

“Like the ones at the Spires?” He nodded, and she thought on that for a moment. “But her, she can talk to me again?”

“Oh, yes. Once every three millicycles, give or take,” he assured her, and then smiled wryly. “Sometimes the trick is to get them to shut up.” He spread his hands. “In any case, before the conversation got lost into such deep and dark forests, I was coming to ask if you wanted to be there when your Sentry friend wakes up. It should be any moment now.”

Both his guests sprang up at once. MAR led them back into the mansion, through the exquisite inner chambers, vast and interconnected like a three-dimensional maze.

“You’ve got so much stuff,” Vidi commented, her hair looking every which way.

“I do!” MAR admitted readily. “From my very inception, both I and my User have been very clear that my purpose is art.” He spun slowly, arms spread to encompass every piece of statuary and colorful canvas. “Gathering it, curating it, collating it, preserving it and, mostly importantly, sharing it. At first it was just music, but, you know.” He snapped his fingers, and music filled the space, Mozart’s 13^th Serenade. “One learns, one grows.”

“Does it all come from the Users?” Adas asked.

“What? No! No, no, no. Didn’t you see my trees?” He gestured to the floors they’d left behind.

“Your what?” The both of them turned around to look at the spiral staircase they’d just descended.

“The trees! The, the, uh, the fractals outside, and on the slopes! That is art.” He beamed at Vidi. “That’s what happens when you describe a User concept to a Gridborn artist who’s never seen its like.”

They passed part of an immense library, the shelves as tall as five programs. Another stairwell took them past a garage, several lightcycle models sedately at rest in tidy rows.

“We must be halfway down the mountain,” Vidi murmured.

“A third, more or less,” MAR replied distractedly. “The place grows as it needs to.” He trotted down a broad, spiraling ramp and snapped his fingers again.

A Navi’s path appeared on the ground at their feet. It ended at a broad double-door which the Navi opened for them. Beyond it, a circular room with warm green ground lights welcomed them. At the center of it stood a healing sarcophagi. On it, sitting up, head down, was GAM. Hovering just above him was a Bit which was stellating sedately.

“GAM!” they both cried out. The Bit hastily backed away.

“Do be careful, he’s -”

Both programs slammed into GAM, nearly bowling the Sentry over, but still he managed to wrap an arm around each of them.

“- fragile right now,” MAR finished.

“Oh, sorry!” Adas pulled back at once.

“I’ve never,” GAM croaked, “been fragile.” Without his armor, with only the basic outfit of a mid-gen, he looked no less muscular but infinitely more approachable. Much more a program than the faceless, implacable Sentry. He squeezed them tightly for a long moment before he let go and leaned back “Are you two alright?”

“Ugh!” Vidi shoved him, which accomplished absolutely nothing. “You are just the worst, WallSec.”

“That’d be a yes,” he slid off the sarcophagi and onto his feet, though he had to lean on both of them to stay upright. “The program, the SysAdmin -”

“Oh, I administer nothing around here, except myself,” MAR declared cheerfully and stepped forward, offering a hand. “A pleasure to meet you under better circumstances, Sentry. I’m MAR.”

GAM shook the program’s hand, found a grip that matched his own, an exceptionally self-contained wavelength that belied the data density of the program before him. “The virus?”

“That’s an excellent question. I would have thought it would be testing the antiviral defenses of Parnassus, but it hasn’t touched them since its rather abrupt departure. I’ve no idea what it’s doing.”

GAM closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them again, his expression was hard. “Then we are likely in trouble.”

“My mountain is exceptionally well-defended, Sentry,” MAR protested mildly.

“I know that, you know that, and it knows that. But the only reason for it to not be testing those defenses is because it already did, and it knows it’s got nothing that can get through. The next logical course of action is to go further into the Outlands and find something that can.”

MAR blinked. “Your predictive protocols are something else, Sentry. And when you put it that way, you make me worry that you’re right. So I’m going to ask you all that you make yourselves at home while I go see what I can learn about this virus.”

“What are you going to do?” Vidi asked.

“I’m going to talk to my User, of course.”

Adas and Vidi both felt GAM go rigid. “Your… your User?”

Chapter Text

Robert, may I have a word?

MAR. Have you been harmed? Has Parnassus been harmed?

No, thank you for your concern. Your warning and the antiviral update got here just in time. But my guests have brought up a very worrisome possibility.

No guests are authorized to enter Parnassus.

And yet here they are. The Halcyonite Sentry, in particular, has brought up a very worrisome concern. A very reasonable one, too, unfortunately. It’s very likely we’ve not seen any more attacks from the virus because it’s out there marshalling new forces, gathering new weaponry. Have you learned anything new about it?

…

I cannot answer your question, MAR.

What?! Robert, you always answer my questions.

I cannot answer your question, MAR.

Ask him what it is.

Sentry, it’s very obviously -

Ask him.

Robert, it is a virus, isn’t it?

No.

Ah. My apologies. What can you tell me about this program?

I cannot answer your question, MAR.

Is it a User, then?

I cannot answer your question, MAR.

Well, there must be something you can tell me about it!

Yes. You must leave Parnassus. It will, eventually, break through the mountain’s defenses. It will, eventually, break through the temple’s defenses. It will, eventually, break through all defenses. You must leave Parnassus.

What?! What about the libraries? What about the music, the art, what about -?

The collection has been safeguarded. You must leave Parnassus.

We can’t.

You must leave Parnassus.

Give me a moment, Robert, please. Sentry, why can’t we leave?

Because right now all its attention is on us. We are the target. If we leave, we don’t know what it will target next. Halcyon is right up the road. Flow’s a straight line across the Outlands and the Sea. If there’s anything left in Ilo, there won’t be unless its attention stays focused on us.

…

…

MAR.

Yes, Robert?

Defense preparations in other cities are ongoing. You must leave Parnassus, but y our departure must be perfectly scheduled.

You’ve read my mind, Robert. Where should we go?

I cannot answer your question at this time, MAR.

I suppose we will wait until it becomes too risky to do so. Robert, I’m sorry I cannot be a better guardian to all that you have given me. I’m sorry it must be abandoned.

MAR.

Yes, Robert.

You have not failed me. I have failed you. MAR.

Oh, Robert…

I’m sorry.

Chapter Text

“What the hell was that? Is that how you talk to them?” Sam looked away from his examination of four large screens on a naked brick wall, and frowned at the oldest of the two young men in the room with him.

“Um.” Robert Kleinberg straightened up some, digging his head out of his hands and struggling to put his misery aside for a moment. “There’s a near-perfect communications blackout between Users and their Programs.”

“You can’t even talk to them?” Sam Flynn looked stunned.

Rob hesitated.

“We’ve been very careful about what sort of input the Grid gets,” Kane said from his own workstation, looking up briefly. “Did you think we weren’t paying attention, when you warned us about people being people?”

Sam had to smile wryly at that. “Thought crossed my mind.”

Rob pointed at his computer. “We want to make sure no one can mess up the Grid itself. And…” He finally rolled back his chair and shrugged. “That means controlling communication between the User and the program until we could put safeguards in place so no one uploads a, y’know, happy-birthday-you’re-a-virus-now update to their old program.”

“But that sounded so… cold. So mechanical.” Sam saw Rob wince. The slim young man was a near perfect replica of his uncle in his younger years, and he could manage to look just as sheepish as him.

“Yeah, I know, it’s just. The translations heuristics are just… I mean, the Grid reads your keystrokes, your messages, your appearance, your expressions, and turns it into language. Accurate language, and we just don’t know how.”

“Can’t you just… take it in faith?”

Rob shook his head. “No. Not if it risks them all.”

“You don’t like it, though.”

Rob went as red as his red-rimmed eyes. Kane shifted uncomfortably. “There’s a few bypasses that we’ve let through, but they’re mostly text,” he admitted, sounding defensive.

“We could talk to them,” Rob said meekly.

“Rob!”

“Wait, wait. You have the tech to actually communicate directly, and you haven’t let it through?”

Kane rubbed his face in exasperation.

“We have a partial virtual bypass,” Rob said very carefully. “It’s built on the translation heuristics of the Grid itself, what I could figure out of it. Adapted to modern tech. It’s just. It doesn’t work right on this side because of the time differential.”

“What do you mean it doesn’t work?” Sam was fully focused on the sheepish young man.

“I mean, you shut down. You lose time here, you go partially… unconscious. Our brains can keep up with the time differential no problem, the rest of the world around us not so much.”

“How hard is it to do?”

“Not very,” Kane admitted. “The one condition to everything we do’s always been the same: it has to be accessible to anyone, anywhere, with what they have at hand. Headset and any sort of VR goggles. Rob’s tested it a few times with his guy. Bit like riding angel on their shoulder.”

“And being catatonic on this end. And it needs an anchor on the other side,” Rob added. “I depend entirely on MAR to manifest."

Sam sighed. “So how do you mean to talk to us when we’re in, then?”

Both Rob and Kane froze at that.

“Just a thought,” Sam pointed out, wickedly cheerful.

“Fuck,” Kane rubbed his face.

“I know I’m the last person you’d expect to hear this from, but maybe it’s time you gave your Users a little credit, too.” He gestured at the screens he’d been watching; they monitored the Grid’s chatrooms and streams, and they were, at the moment, alive with torrents of worried, angry Users demanding news, information, access. Demanding, to a one, to know that their programs were safe.

Kane hesitated. Rob gave up on waiting for the Gibbs twin to make a decision. “I’m unlocking portal relay services.”

“Rob, we don’t have the Input/Output server to control traffic -”

“We haven’t needed the server in years, Kane,” Rob shot back, typing away. “They’ve been handling their own protection better than we ever did.” He pointed sharply at his screen. “A freaking firewall figured out her next move when we’ve been sitting out here on our assess making bad guesses at it! Jesus, I want this guy’s predictive protocols. And I’m not unlocking the portals, just the relay service. I’ll be able to text you, you’ll be able to text back. If you’re near a relay, we’ll even be able to talk as long as the time differential allows. And if you can catch up with MAR and I don’t have to put out another fire, I can even try to help.”

Sam’s phone beeped in his jacket pocket, and he fished it out to look at it. “Good, ‘cuz we’re up.” He showed Kane the message. “Let’s go.”

“One last thing,” Rob hurried to tell them before the other two could leave. “I can help from out here. I can talk from out here. But if you need me to actually, physically do something, I need one thing from you: time. The time differential is killer, don’t ever forget that.”

They both nodded at him and left the room, Kane leading the way. The sprawling ranch was relatively bare, wood floors and decorative brick walls. The living room was covered in dust; the dining room looked more like a repair workshop. Only the kitchen looked like it saw regular use, lavishly appointed. The entire house was dark barring some scarce summer light, quickly being devoured by both nightfall and an approaching storm.

They both went down a broad stairwell, though there was a large elevator well next to it. Kane opened the basement door and Sam stopped, caught by surprise in spite of himself.

The room was nearly the size of the house above it, and the house was not small. Only one section, far at the back, had been partitioned off, and the heavy cables coming and going from it identified it as providing power for everything around them.

There were three work-stations on one corner, a workbench, and two neat rows of servers standing in place of pride. “Damn,” Sam murmured.

“We just ran the one, at first.” Kane pointed to the farthest server on the right-side line-up, a tall, solid block of hardware encased in metal, roughly the size of a person. “Back then we thought we’d get maybe a coupla hundred pings, you know? At most. The slots were sold for enough money to do maintenance.”

“And then word got out.”

“No, word was already out, Flynn. We ran out of slots. The Grid itself was asking for expansion. At about that time, we got hit by the first jerk trying to upload a virus, so we set up the Input/Output server. Zero copied the Grid to it – that was when I knew you’d been telling everyone the truth. And we set up massive defenses. Constant monitoring. You got a free slot if you brought in a firewall or an antivirus.”

“Mm-hm.” Sam examined the dark server, showing only a blinking light to indicate it was frozen on standby mode. “And then what happened?”

“You really are fucking cynical,” Kane grumbled, then sighed, admitting defeat. “Then the PVPers showed up.”

He gestured. In placed of pride along the left row stood three matching servers, black towers of glass, vivid red status lights blinking occasionally within them. “We can keep kids out. Honestly, the Grid does that on its own. We think it’s using the same translation heuristics it uses for translating text to speech, in combination with some sort of data stability protocols, but…” He spread his hands. “You can’t keep PVPers out of anything, not if there’s combat software written into the system.”

“And the Grid started as a game environment.” Sam huffed amusement. “You gave them their own little world?”

“We had to. Most of the bulk isn’t even for the programs, they’re for all the frigging calculations of their little warzone. At about that time we lost access to Zero, so we got those,” Kane waved at the three black servers, “and a new server for non-PVP access, H1. They’re about full at this point.”

“And those?” Sam pointed to two matching gray towers behind the I/O server. “That one?” He gestured to the furthest server, a broad, squat creature the size of a desk, set flush against the wall of the power room.

“That’s just the backup archive and the power monitoring system. They’re not in the Grid.”

“They’re connected to the other servers?”

“Well… Yeah, they have to be. House runs on the same power supply.”

“So technically your house systems are accessible from the Grid? Hm.” Sam said nothing else.

Kane gave him a wary look. “Something you wanna tell me, Flynn?”

“Me? Nah. My old man probably would. I’m a fan of people making their own mistakes.” He smiled beatifically at the younger man.

Kane blew out an exasperated sigh before leading him past the workstations to the workbench, and rolling up a grate. “Anyway, we originally did go by Grandpa’s specs. We just started fiddling after Moll… Well, after.”

Sam recoiled in surprise. There it was. He would have known the beast responsible for so much sorrow and joy in his life anywhere, though the laser in Kane Gibbs’ closet looked rougher than the one his father had kept in the basement of the arcade.

It also wasn’t alone. There were at least one other finished laser and several piecemeal prototypes scattered on heavy metal shelves. He looked closely at them all, particularly the other finished laser, and then glanced at Kane over one shoulder. “We’ve been doing percussive maintenance, I see.”

“She kept fucking with it,” Kane said tiredly.

Sam said nothing else, squeezing lightly the young man’s shoulder. Together they wheeled out the one intact laser, the oldest, and under Kane’s direction plugged it into a power grid that was putting out numbers Sam was having trouble believing. “Is this right?”

Kane had brought out a laptop and plugged it into Server Zero. He glanced hastily at the tiny screen. “Yeah, that’s fine. We should get more power once the storm gets here.” A look at the older man’s face told him his answer, while an answer, was not the answer that had been expected. “You think I live out here for my benefit? None of this can run on a city grid. Out here I’m tapping on power sources we got set up on the land.”

“On the land?!”

“Two hundred and fifty acres can hide a lot of secrets, man.”

The laser powered up with a whine and Sam instinctively backed away. Kane blinked at him.

“Oh. Oh, you’ve really been there,” he whispered.

“What? You seriously thought I was giving you the program sight-unseen?”

Kane considered, and then sagged a little. “At this point I don’t know what I was thinking about any of it,” he admitted. “Look, Server Zero’s been locked for a while. We cannot get past some sort of security protocol. It’s not a virus, we still get status reports and that section of the Grid’s thriving, as far as we can tell, but I don’t think we can -”

Sam pointed at the laptop. Kane turned and stared at the screen.

CONNECTION FOUND
INPUT AUTHORIZED
PORTAL ACTIVE
BEGIN DIGITIZATION PROCESS Y/N?

“Holy crap,” Kane breathed. “Are you sure this is gonna work?”

“I know staying out here isn’t,” Sam replied mildly. “You don’t know what’s happening to your sister. We can’t even find her. At this point, you’re guessing at everything, based on your test space work. If reintegration is possible, if we want it to work? We need to figure out what’s going on, and the only way left to do that is from the inside.”

Kane swallowed hard, drew in a deep breath, and held it for a long moment.

Then he hit two keys.

The laser roused to life.

Chapter Text

Adas found GAM, where else, in an armory. It was a circular room with drawers and cabinets set into the walls. Unlike most Grid architecture, in Parnassus every seam drew attention to itself with elaborate little decorations, gold and silver against the everpresent white.

The Sentry was replacing its shattered armor, examining his options. He looked a little taken aback to find at least one shoulder piece covered in Pevir’s writing, sighing minutely.

“Here, can I have that?” Adas asked mildly, coming to his side.

He surrendered it readily. She immediately threw it at him, making it bounce off his chest so he had to scramble to catch it.

Then she hugged him tightly. “You did that on purpose.”

GAM dropped his head with a sigh and wrapped his arms around her. “Yes. One of you had to run. Someone had to warn the Grid. And neither of you ever listens to me.”

“Well, just so you know, I’m going to be mad at you for decacycles for that,” she informed him, stepping back and snatching the piece of armor, setting it against his uniform and examining it critically.

“If you’re online to do so, I’ll count it a fair price.”

Adas yanked the armor off and glowered at him. It only served to make him smile. “I spoke to my User, you know. I asked her to find yours. She said all the cities in the Grid have been warned.” She examined the offerings on the drawer he had open, and pointed out one.

He handed it over without fuss, his shoulders easing down minutely. “So every nanocycle we keep its attention here is another nanocycle they can use to sharpen up their defenses. I’ll take it. I’ll take every advantage we can get.” He looked down at the drawer. “MAR’s User sounded so… soulless.”

Adas said nothing. She’d thought much the same of her own User, the communication short and clipped, barring that last, truncated line. But was that the time differential, or something else altogether? She examined the shoulder piece and, satisfied, moved on to a selection of chest pieces. “I think it’s hard for them to talk – to reach through from their world to ours. MAR mentioned a time differential. So did my User.”

“Hm.” He put on the matching shoulder-piece and let Adas fuss with his chest.

“I can see you thinking, you know. You have no helmet on.”

“I’m wondering why a User, all-powerful, all-knowing –they’re supposed to be, anyway- cannot tell us what that thing is.”

“They can’t destroy it, either. I asked my User.”

“Thank you,” GAM told her, and he meant it. “But again, that just brings up more questions. And they’re questions I don’t like not having answers to.”

Armored to both his and Adas’ satisfaction, having found his disk and his baton, they went looking for Vidi and their host. They found them both together in a massive library, the first place in Parnassus that actually somewhat showcased the architectural style of the rest of the Grid. The walls of the vast oval chamber were covered in patterned angles, the ceiling in ridges, and the floor gradually sank to a small stage in the middle.

Music filled the space, thrumming and flowing; it was like standing in the middle of a thunderstorm. MAR stood at a control console in the middle of the room, looking delighted, and Vidi -

Vidi was dancing.

The Gridborn, her hair trailing bright and chaotic behind her, leapt and ran and twisted, whirling and cavorting ceaselessly, wild joy in every gesture, every spin and jump and step. When Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries came to an end with a resounding fanfare, she nearly went down on her face.

“Vidi!” Adas cried out in concern, and GAM launched himself down the broad levels of the auditorium.

“Wait… Wait, what happened?!” Vidi picked herself up to her knees and stared accusingly at MAR. “Why’d you turn if off?!”

“I didn’t, my dear, it ended,” MAR looked just as surprised as Vidi. “Music does that. It doesn’t go on forever.”

GAM offered her a hand up, and she picked herself up, looking grumpy. “Well, that’s not fair.” She looked up at him and grimace. “Ugh, you look like WallSec all over again.”

“You mean the thing I am?” GAM asked dryly from behind a black faceplate. MAR apparently had as vast a library of armor types as he did everything else, up to and including designs normally found only in Pevir.

Vidi made it a point to ignore him and stalked up to MAR. “What do you mean it ends. There’s more to it, there’s lots more to it. I can see the holes of it.”

“The holes of…” MAR examined the Gridborn curiously. Then he turned and faced the console. “I’m sure her opinion is quite valuable to you, Sentry, but I think you look rather dapper.” His hands moved deftly over the controls.

“Finally, some support,” GAM noted mildly. “I was wondering if you have an upload console here. One that you’re not currently using.”

“Oh, there’s several.” MAR flapped a hand distractedly. “Please, help yourself to anything you need. “I think the nearest one is right up the stairs and to your right, by the Fountain of Neptune. I’ll unlock them for you, I’m normally the only one accessing them.”

“Who’s Neptune?” Adas asked.

“No one of particular note to us. But he makes for an exquisite model in marble.”

The answer having left Adas even more confused, she chose to follow GAM out of the auditorium as more music began to swell all around their host and the Gridborn. They found the fountain, which was outputting an exceptionally precise model of water. The console stood in a nearby niche adorned with an exquisite work of stained glass. “The Users are everywhere in this place. It’s like having someone looking over my shoulder all the time. I bet it doesn’t bother you, does it?”

“It never has,” he replied calmly. “Either they were always there, and they’ve always been, and nothing we’ve ever done was private. Or they never were until now, and everything until now was private. It depends on what you want to believe, I guess.” He put his hand to the console, which activated readily enough, and erased the shield blueprint from it.

“And that doesn’t bother you? Someone watching everything you do, or say, or, or watch?”

There was amusement in his voice when he answered. “I’m pretty certain they’re not gonna watch you watch disk duels, Adas. Not when they can just watch the real thing if they want. And if they don’t, then just think: that’s probably when you’re most likely to have privacy. When you’re too boring to watch you.”

“I’m not boring!”

“Adas, do you want privacy or to be a spectacle?” Even the helm couldn’t disguise his somewhat amused impatience. “That’s kind of the only two choices on that particular circuit.”

She made a frustrated noise at him and focused pointedly on the console as he scrolled through the library. “What are you doing?”

He lifted up the hand holding the baton. A sudden pulse of energy went over his arm, and a half-sized shield deployed from the armor itself. “Pevir-tech,” he pointed out, “has its advantages.”

“Oh!” She jumped in surprise at the deployment. “What are you putting on it, then?”

His voice sounded very weary as he kept on scrolling, and scrolling, and scrolling through MAR’s collection of blueprints. “Transportation. Maybe I’ll even find something this decacycle.”

“I can help. I’m good with lists.”

“And I would take you up on that, if I knew what I’m actually looking for.”

She grinned a little at his resignation, and stepped back to examine the fountain. It was a fairly large affair, taking over most of the space in the room, illuminated from above by another work of stained glass, an ornamental skylight where the golden sun actually provided bright illumination on those below. She put a hand in the water, and found the voxels so small and delicate she could barely tell them apart.

“Ilo CommCon,” a ragged, familiar voice and a communication line full of static suddenly burst to tattered life on her own faceplate. “Can anyone hear me? Ilo, are you there? Is anyone there?”

Her hands had flown to her mouth. “Endos?” she whispered.

He didn’t hear her. “Ilo? Anyone? Can anyone hear me?”

Adas rushed out of the room, out of the mansion altogether. To be able to reach her so far beyond the Ilo communication network, Endos had to be terribly close “Endos! Endos, is that you? This is Adas. Where are you? What’s your status?”

“Adas? Adas! Oh, thank the Users. Adas… Adas, something happened in Ilo, something terrible. I got out, but… I’m not doing so good. Where are you? What network is this? Did I make it to Halcyon? We have to warn them.”

She raced along the fractal-flanked path. “No. No, Endos, this is Parnassus. There’s no network out here. If I can hear you, maybe I can see you. There’s medical facilities here.”

“Parn… Parnassus, really? Wow. That’s farther than I… Honestly, that’s farther than I thought I’d get. And medic… That won’t, that won’t matter, Adas, no one can get into Parnassus.”

“We did!” she cried out. “We’re in Parnassus, Endos. Just tell me where you are, I can’t see you. I’ll come get you. You’ll be fine.” She raced down to the statuary garden, frantic.

“I don’t know,” he breathed. “I just… I was trying to get to… I wanted to warn Halcyon. There’s a, there’s a virus, Adas. There’s a virus loose. In Ilo.”

“We know. They know! It’s fine. Just tell me where you are!” She’d sprinted all around the perimeter of the mansion, all the way back to the broad stone steps, to the top of the access road. “Tell me what you see.”

“That’s a… That’s a little hard,” he admitted, and chuckled sensibly at her through his pain. “I got caught under a building. You know me, my feet want my face to meet the floor all the time,” he said, a private little joke shared only between them, a reminder of the first time they’d met and he’d tripped on his own feet in front of her. “They met kinda hard this time.”

“You can do this,” she urged him. “Just look around you. Tell me colors. Tell me shadows. Tell me anything you can.”

“Well, I, ah.” He breathed hard for a few moments. “I’m just gonna sit down a bit, just a moment.”

“No!” she all but yelled at him.

“Just a nanocycle.”

“Endos, get up!”

“Just, it’s fine, Adas. Just to catch my breath. Gosh, I think I’m dropping voxels like a Pevir gladiator.” Another sensible chuckle, half drowned in pain and exhaustion. “How embarrassing.”

“Endos, get up and focus!”

“I’m focused. I am. There’s a, there was a road. I didn’t realize I was going up a slope until just now. So I’m somewhere up the mountain, I think. There’s these weird, uneven fractals everywhere. I didn’t think you could get fractals to be uneven -”

“Is there a wall?”

“Uh… no. Oh, wait, yes. It’s what I’m leaning on,” he laughed exhaustedly. “There’s a gate, too. That is one impressive gate. We should get something like this for Ilo, Adas. You should see it, it looks like something the Users would create. And it’s so… blue. It’d be perfect.”

Adas was already running, sprinting down the access road, the downward slope and desperation giving her speed. “You stay right there, Endos, I’m coming. Don’t you dare derezz, you have a city to run! You have to be there when all the Ilosians come back to it.”

“Oh, I suppose,” he agreed faintly. “It’s so much work running a city.” He laughed again, weary and without energy. “You know that, you do most of the running. I always wanted to just… be something else. Something small and quiet.”

“Endos, you focus on staying online,” she commanded him sternly. The access road curved and swayed around several elegant fountains, and she saw none of them. All she could see was the distant, tremendously strong wall, off-white as most of the stone of Parnassus was, matching height and depth with its brilliant blue gateway. The gates themselves were dark metal, mimicking circuitry and, like their master, they shifted from first-gen broad strokes at the bottom to the refined, delicate lines of last gen at the top.

She could make out Endos’ light, but only just. She could see his legs, stretched out before him, as he laid on the ground, his back against the wall. “I see you! Endos, I’m here!” she cried out, both out loud and on the line.

He turned, leaning to one side and peeking through the gates. At the sight of her he struggled upright and leaned against the gate. “See? I’m online. I was just resting my l… resting my legs.” He smiled. His face looked raw where voxels had been rubbed off, and there were swats of dark circuitry all over him. His Cosmetics had been lost, who knew where. But he still threw her a jaunty little wave that nearly sent him crashing down.

“Endos!” Adas flew down the access road. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

He stretched a hand out for her. It cost him voxels, falling down to the ground in little streams, but still he reached out for her.

Adas all but slammed into the metal of the gates, thrusting an arm out and reaching back. “Endos!”

He smiled at her, his silly little politician’s smile. “Adas.”

He reached for her hand.

Adas felt the grip on the back of her basic uniform a bare picocycle before a tremendous force yanked her back, hard enough to strangle a startled little grunt from her. She stared in horror as Endos grew farther away, rather than closer.

Then she stared in a different kind of horror as the battered hand reaching for her own turned into sharp, long, yellow-wired talons.

They missed her fingertips by a voxel, perhaps two. GAM shoved her behind him and activated one of his built-in shields with a snap, bracing himself behind it, his arm blocking Adas’ way.

The virus’ hand slammed into the space between the metal pattern and detonated into black voxels. The thing that had once been Ilo’s SysAdmin screamed fury and impotence, clawing at the built-in defenses on the gate, spraying voxels everywhere. GAM took a step back, keeping Adas behind him.

“Endos.” The GO4 felt as if her world had come crashing down all over again, as if she were watching Ilo being destroyed a second time. She clung to the back of the Sentry, desperately trying to process what she was seeing, but it was as if she’d frozen, as if her code simply weren’t processing anything anymore.

The thing that had once been Ilo’s SysAdmin shrieked, a long and ululating sound that turned into harsh, alien laughter. “So, so c… close,” it hissed. “So caring, little pr… program. So so-so-soft, so kind you are.” It stepped back, yellow and jagged circuitry overwhelming and erasing the faint blue of the SysAdmin. “Almost-almost. Almost had you. Hell-hello, securit-t-t-ty.”

GAM didn’t dignify that with an answer.

“Give him back,” Adas managed to grit out. “You give him back!”

“S-s-s-s. Cert-cert-certain. Sure.” A thin layer of substance peeled itself up from the road and flowed up, over Endos’ body. The virus reformed itself directly behind him, long arms almost seeming to embrace him. “You c-c-can have him. Just give-give me her.” It pointed; a bit of a ways behind them, MAR had stopped Vidi from charging down to join them, one of his batons on hand.

“No!” Adas’ response was instinctive and immediate.

“No?” The virus leaned over Endos’ shoulder. Some of the SysAdmin’s circuitry went back to its original blue color, flickering weakly. “He can hear-hear you, you know.”

“Adas?” Endos’ voice, fractured and frail, whispered above the endless seething of the virus’ unstable substance as it crawled over his body. His eyes stared, nearly without light, at her.

Adas let out a heartbroken little sound.

“Tell-tell-tell-t-tell him,” the virus prompted, holding Endos’ chin up. “That you-you’d rather s-s-s-save a thief. A not-not-nothing program. Than him.”

“You have left nothing to save,” GAM replied with implacable certainty.

The virus burst out laughing in too many different voices to count. Behind it a slow mass of yellow, shambling bodies climbed up the access road to the gates of Parnassus, surrounded everywhere by a rising tide of simulacra. They were sticking to the road, avoiding the seething ground cover of green voxels, but only by the most slender of margins.

“Cl-clev-clever security,” the virus said, the shape of Endos disappearing completely under the seething of its odd skirt shape. It stepped back; the infected programs had stopped, but the tremendous river of simulacra never did. “But I can be. Can be. Clever too.”

The first mimic charged, launching itself at the gate. It exploded into black, blank voxels, but behind it came two, ten, twenty, fifty more. As quickly as the defenses worked into the gate could destroy them, there was still the briefest moment, while that particular section of the gate was resetting, when they could touch it and vault higher. It was less than a picocycle, it was literally a breath of time.

But it was enough that the massed simulacra began to make it a single bounding step up the gate. And then two.

“I think we need to go,” MAR said tightly. “Now.”

Chapter Text

They raced back up the access road to the mansion. When GAM realized Adas was lagging behind, he picked her up effortlessly and carried her up. She clung to him and hid her face against his shoulder.

“You did nothing wrong,” the black faceplate told her quietly. “It isn’t a crime to be kind.”

“I would have… It would have infected me, and I would have brought it in here, and -”

“But you didn’t, and it didn’t. We are not made of probability, Adas, we are made of fact.”

They followed MAR into the mansion, their host skidding on the floor as he cut around corners and from room to room.

“Where are we going?” Vidi asked in a rush.

“Excellent question,” MAR admitted. “Let’s find out. Robert!” he shouted to thin air.

A thin little trill began to ring repeatedly in the air. They were almost to a vast spiraling ramp when the voice of MAR’s User replaced it. “MAR. Parnassus is under attack.”

“Unfortunately so,” the program agreed almost cheerfully. “We’re leaving. By air. We require a destination.”

“You must go to Om.”

All four of them came to a halt; MAR, belatedly so when he realized everyone else had stopped.

“Om?” Vidi sounded confused.

“Om?!” Adas’ voice was full of disbelief.

“Om has no protection,” GAM countered, almost angrily. “We’d be handing hundreds, maybe thousands of programs to the virus!”

There was silence for a moment, and then the most unexpected, outlandish sound filled the vast space all around them. MAR’s User was laughing. “Om,” he explained in his mechanical monotone, “has no passive defenses. That is not the same as having no protection. You must go to Om.” The communication chirped closed.

Gam looked at Vidi in frustration; she shrugged. He looked at MAR, but he was already hurrying down the last bit of ramp. “Navi!” their host called out. “ We need to fly!”

Light filled the space, a dozen pathways appearing on the smooth white floor. The immense hangar went on seemingly forever. Here, then, was the Grid’s architecture once again, smooth luminous lines, curves, no angles, energy and circuitry, light and data. The three of them came to a stunned stop.

“What vehicles have the range to make it to Om?” MAR asked, and multiple paths disappeared. “Well, that one’s moot,” he flicked his fingers at one, a single-pilot jet, and that path disappeared as well. “And that one, and that one… Oh.” He stared up, and up, and up, at the largest vehicle in Parnassus’ hangar. “Oh, yes.”

“Do you even know how to fly that thing?” GAM demanded.

“I do,” Adas answered before MAR could, her voice rough with emotion but her expression hard beneath her clear faceplate. “But I’ll need help.”

“My lady, I am at your service,” MAR assured her.

The hangar suddenly shuddered, energy flickering. “Everyone on board!” MAR commanded. “That means all of you too!” he ordered, pointing at one of the Navi on the luminous floor. Navi pathways converged from everywhere in the mansion, rushing up the ramp of the heavy bomber aircraft. From wherever they’d been, half a dozen Bits came flying in, stellated into aerodynamic shapes. Vidi ran up the cargo ramp behind them, Adas right after her.

MAR, last of them all, stopped at the ramp to look around. In his mind’s eye he could see the mountain, the temple, its rooms, its libraries. Some deep part of him wanted to stay and fight for all the beauty he’d been gifted, the treasure trove of art and knowledge he and his User had spend so long shaping into its own wondrous artwork.

Most of him knew it was not a fight he could win.

He had to trust Robert. He had to have faith, as he always had, in his User. Many times Robert had been difficult to understand, but there had always been a reason, and they’d always worked together to overcome hurdles of communication.

The collection has been safeguarded.

MAR had a tremendous amount of memory; it was intrinsic to his purpose . But he knew it was impossible for him to carry all that Parnassus held. Did he truly trust his User so completely?

He thought on that less than a picocycle. Yes, of course he did. That didn’t make the decision he currently had to make any less painful. “Parnassus,” he said clearly to the hangar, to the temple, the collections and the mountain all around him, “ become . ”

Red lights began to pulse and run along the lines of iridescent energy and circuitry permeating the walls, floor and ceiling. MAR watched this briefly, then ran up the ramp and found the Sentry there.

“What did you do?” GAM asked curiously.

“Activated Parnassus’ last defense,” MAR replied just as mildly. “Aren’t you coming?”

“I’m not gambling on the virus having no flight capabilities,” GAM explained calmly, his baton on one hand, his other gripping one of the straps next to the ramp’s hatch.

The heavy engines of the bomber began to gather energy. MAR nodded and rushed to the cockpit, where Vidi was already strapping herself onto the rear seat, her eyes gone very wide, her fingers gripping the safety harness until it creaked. Parnassus’ curator slid into the copilot seat and watched Adas activate screens and sensors with sure grace. “How does an actuarial program come to know how to fly a Pevir bomber?”

Adas twitched a little. “I watch a lot of Pevir’s feeds,” she admitted in an undertone.

MAR said nothing, grinning to himself. “And yet you’ve never thought about moving there?”

“Goodness, no,” she declared at once. “That place is horrible, it’s nothing but chaos.”

“I believe Gu n gnir has been the undefeated ruling SysAdmin for nearly thirteen cycles.”

“Undefeated until he isn’t. I’m not interested in fighting to prove I can run a city,” she countered tartly. “I’m interested in running a city to prove I can run a city!”

The bomber moved smoothly out of its designated spot and onto the central channel running through the hangar. Automatic lights began to flash; the very substance of Parnassus shifted, opened, flattened itself, and a short runway revealed itself to them.

A very, very short runway.

Adas stared at the distance in consternation. “That’s so not enough for take-off. We don’t have enough thrust, we’d need an entirely different engine configuration -"

“I can do that!” Vidi wriggled free of her harness. “It’s like taking a limiter out, right?”

Adas, who’d been to protest, realized that Vidi had actually summed up the problem with surprising neatness. “ Yes! ” she exclaimed. “It’s exactly like that, except without a limiter present.”

“Got it!” Vidi raced back down the hollow body of the bomber. It was made to carry troops to Pevir’s many war-games, to pepper a battlefield with passive ordnance, to deliver supplies, to run one of a hundred possible mission iterations. It was not, however, made to have the wings be accessible from the inside, so GAM saw her sprint past him, leap up, catch the top of the ramp’s hatch, and wriggle out of sight before he even knew what was happening.

“Vidi?!”

“I’m taking the limiter s out!” she shouted back at him cheerfully.

GAM thought about it. He thought about it twice and decided, on thinking about it a third time, that he was better off not asking.

Then he growled impotently and leapt up after the Gridborn.

Vidi raced over the fuselage and along the right wing. She dropped to her knees next to the first engine. Unlike the original 3-man jet on which its design was based, the heavy bomber had a much larger engine section along each wing, and the ability to reconfigure both wings and tail rudders on the fly. It was tremendously maneuverable, incredibly energy- expensive, and practically unstoppable. Of the warring factions that dominated Pevir, only the three at the top and one low-twenties outlier could afford them, and the lowest two factions rarely if ever actually flew them .

She brought out the little emergency Wrench and pressed it to the engine bar. The lines and equations of the engine burst into life across her senses, and every last dreadlock came to life as she tried to comprehend one of the most complex blueprints she’d ever seen in her life.

But it was, in the end, exactly what she’d expected it to be: a go-box and the wing it was attached to. There were enormously complex mechanisms to control thrust output and energy intakes, cooling systems and built-in failsafes. The wings of a jet are its greatest weak point, simply on account of being the second largest target – first, if you counted the surface of them both together. The bomber’s engines had been built to survive anything short of being completely derezzed.

Vidi shoved her hands in and started unscrewing failsafes. She almost chucked them until she remembered the lightrunner, and instead scrambled to her feet and shoved them into GAM’s arms. “Here, hold this,” she told him hurriedly as she ran to the left wing.

The Sentry scrambled to obey , then followed after her, stuffing parts wherever his armor could hold them . “Please don’t burn up our means of escape.”

“I’m not! That’s why you’re holding onto them!” She told him fiercely, the Wrench clipped onto the engine once again. She yanked things out that he could only hope weren’t critical to their escape. “Tell her to try that!”

GAM called up Adas’ frequency on his screen. “Try now,” he told her tersely. “And stop giving her ideas.”

“It was hers, not mine, and it was very helpful,” she shot back primly. With a certain degree of trepidation, she put her hand on the throttle. “MAR,” she said with a calm that she was far from feeling, and nodded to a similar lever on his side. “When I tell you, throw that lever as far down as you can. As soon as we’re airborne, bring it right back up.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he set his hand on the lever. “What is it?”

“Surplus energy feed to the engines.”

He seemed to think on it, but before he could ask outright she beat him to it. “Yes, it’s very bad, but we’re going to need all the thrust we can generate. We’re just lucky the plane’s empty.” She began to roll the throttle down.

The engines began to hiss, then whistle, then howl as energy gathered, brighter and brighter, along the engine bar. Adas had her eyes firmly on her controls.

The entire hangar shook so roughly that several vehicles outside toppled onto their sides.

“We might want to leave soon,” MAR suggested politely.

“I don’t have enough pow – GAM, I need just a little more.”

The Sentry dropped to one knee next to Vidi, and he had to shout to make himself heard. “Almost there, but not enough. Don’t lose a limb!”

“As if!” She dropped to her stomach, twisted the Wrench and stared at the revealed engine, her dreadlocks dancing back and forth over it. “Ugh!” She writhed closer and closer to the air intakes. One of her dreadlocks got too close and nearly got sucked in, and she squealed in surprise, not having expected the tremendous force the deceptively powerful engine bar was pulling in.

Fingers twisting and dancing between parts moving almost too fast for her many eyes to follow, she found a minor choke point and took it out. It was hot to the touch and she yowled angrily before rolling over, jumping up and rushing back to the right wing.

The left engine began to shriek, and the bomber began to skew, ever so lightly, to one side. Vidi fell on her face. GAM dropped partially over her, anchoring them both against the abrupt motion. “Adas!” he shouted into the communications line.

“Look, there’s only so much brakes can do when you start taking safeguards out!” she shouted back.

Vidi wriggled free from his protective grip, put the Wrench on the engine, and flattened most of her dreadlocks to her back. It narrowed her field of view immensely, but it didn’t matter: she knew was she was looking for. She yanked the choke point out.

The bomber surged forward, engines roaring. The runway began to come at them with truly atrocious speed. “ With me , MAR,” Adas instructed as they both began to force even more power out of the engines. The front landing gear came off the ground; the engine bars were a blur of too-bright light.

“Ok, that did it!” she informed GAM. “Get back inside!”

“I’m not sure how!” The Sentry, down on one knee and hunched over to present as low a profile as he could to the nearly solid river of wind washing over him, all but dragged Vidi over to him. He deployed a shield from his off-arm and covered them both with it.

“Sit down, WallSec!” she shouted and shoved at him, wriggling free. She scuttled all the way to the spine of the fuselage and knelt down, her back to the tail of the bomber. Laughing wildly, she threw her arms out. “Jump into the effusion channel for once in your life!”

T he wind caught her and began to shove her back with increasing speed.

GAM stared at her in disbelief.

Vidi steered, vaguely, with her arms, gleefully letting the bomber’s own acceleration shove her back until she slid right off the fuselage. She caught onto the rim of the cargo hatch, exactly as she’d planned… and then found out that, between the steep angle the plane was hitting and the incredible acceleration it was putting out, she couldn’t quite swing herself in.

She twisted and kicked, swung and strained and nearly lost her grip. The plane was a storm all around her, growing in power and fury, deafening. The jolt when the bomber left the ground and began to ascend nearly on a vertical angle almost cost her her tenuous hold on the rim of the hatch all over again.

GAM dropped next to her and wound one arm around her, and she clung to him instead. “How are you liking your effusion channel?!” Even his shouting through the black faceplate was perfectly deadpan.

Vidi laughed. Even if she’d slipped and fallen, she was pretty sure WallSec would’ve jumped after her and brought her to safety. He was the sort.

“Grab for the handle!” he instructed her, and swung them hard into the hold. She snatched for it, caught it, and they hung precariously there for a long moment. “Let go!” he told her.

“What about you?” she asked, suddenly alarmed. Beneath and behind them, Parnassus was receding at a terrifying speed.

“I’ll be fine!” he assured her. “Let go and close the hatch!”

She wanted to be contrary. She wanted to insist. He kept putting himself between them all and danger, and she couldn’t help but think of how dim and broken he’d looked when the statue had brought him to MAR’s healing sarcophagi. But every time he’d asked them for something, he’d ended up being right. Well, not every time. But most every time, particularly when they’d been in danger.

She let go, clinging to the handle and flattening herself against the side of the hatch, groping for the controls. The ramp began to fold itself upward.

“See?” He threw her a jaunty salute. “Not so hard to listen to me!” And with that he leapt away into a dive. In a moment he was out of the antigravity field from the bomber, his baton in his hands.

The bomber shuddered, rattling Vidi against the walls of the cargo hold. Before the hatch closed and locked, she saw shots fly by.

Most cities in the Grid didn’t keep much of an air force. The exceptions were Pevir, for obvious reasons, and Flow, which had quickly grown tired of fending off the Red City’s attempts at annexation. Otherwise lightjets were mostly a luxury. Ilo had kept two three-seat jets as diplomatic transports, and a scant dozen single-seat lightjets meant to carry their City Security forces quickly to any spot where they might be needed. Otherwise, the only aerial vehicles to be found not in a personal-use baton were freight and construction skiffs, and solar sailers.

Only one of the bigger jets had survived the cataclysmic fall of the Island, and it was currently parked at Halcyon. But at least seven of the smaller jets had survived, and they came buzzing out of the clouds like small, brilliantly yellow predators, opening fire at once.

Adas shrieked and pulled on the yoke instinctively. The bomber went into an unexpected roll that, out of sheer luck, yanked it out of the line of fire. Directly behind it, a bright violet lightjet hissed upwards and opened fire, and one of the virus’ jets derezzed in a spectacular splash of primal matter.

“I don’t appreciate being right,” GAM muttered darkly to himself as the other jets opened fire on both him and the bomber.

“Adas, that hurt!” Vidi squealed from the cargo area. She’d gone tumbling like a dueling disk on a complex rebound. She shrieked again as energy shots slammed against the body of the bomber, unable to penetrate its armor just yet, but certainly making a solid effort.

“MAR, did you arm the bomber?” Adas asked as she forcibly pulled the bomber out of its roll and forced it to bank out of the line of fire a little less abruptly.

“Of course! It’s battle-ready. It wouldn’t feel right, keeping it any other way.”

“Good. Cut your feed and get to the left turret. That way GAM only has to cover us on one side.”

“May I suggest you give Vidi the right turret instead?” When she threw him a confused look, he leaned closer. “Your friend sees more than just blueprints,” he murmured. “I’m an algorithmic detector, Adas. What I see is not written in blueprints, but she could see it just as I do, perhaps even better. She doesn’t see blueprints, she sees patterns.”

Adas stared at him. “That’s like -”

“Like staring into the heart of the Grid? Are you surprised? She’s Gridborn.” He beamed at her. “I’m rather pleased. Our world saw what I could do and found it valuable enough to duplicate it. To improve upon it, even!”

Vidi burst into the cockpit at that moment. “I thought you said you knew how to fly this thing!”

“Vidi, got with MAR!”

“But I just got here!” The thief protested, but she turned around and dashed back out with a wordless sound of impatience, MAR on her heels. He activated a console on his side of the cargo hold, pointed the mirror of it for the Gridborn. The controls for the turret formed around them, and they dropped until they were sitting at a sharp angle, just beneath the vast shadow of the bomber’s wings.

From there, they had a front row seat to watch Parnassus glow brighter and brighter in the darkness of the Outlands, until the entire mountain seemed to be made of energy. Against that blinding light the virus, or its infected and its simulacra, couldn’t even be seen.

“What’s it doing?” Vidi muttered. She was startled when MAR’s voice replied, unaware that there were open communication channels between the turrets, the cockpit, and GAM’s jet.

“Becoming.” MAR watched the mountain shine like an energy glacier made unstable. He felt as if his heart might break, but he didn’t look away. His home deserved someone to bear witness to this final, desperate effort against the monster they were fighting.

“Becoming what?”

A thin, humorless little smile twitched unseen over his handsome, narrow features. “Vesuvius.”

Parnassus gathered all of the energy it used, all it had stored, all it could siphon from the surrounding areas. It swallowed it all up, and it flowed up the slopes and down into the mountain, which went abruptly dark. For a breath, a single moment measured in the briefest of thoughts, nothing happened.

Then Parnassus, from top to bottom, detonated.

Primal matter flew in immense gouts from the top, annihilating in a single spin of a disk the mazelike temple, the beautifully random fractal trees, the statues fighting against the endless tide of simulacra. Vents opened along the sides, spewing white-hot primal matter. The green antiviral tide had been destructive, but its power was nothing compared to the obliteration the mountain’s eruption left in its wake. The entire side where the hangar entrance had been simply exploded outward, and anything on the slopes was as thoroughly erased from existence as if it had jumped into a magnetic current.

The shockwave caught the bomber and made it shudder for a moment, Vidi clinging to her turret controls, open-mouthed. Beneath her, Parnassus and everything it touched was being deleted from existence with astounding, brutal efficiency.

The violet lightjet suddenly raced past her, firing. It twisted out of a responding hail of fire and rolled under the bomber’s belly.

“Why are they still firing, why are they still yellow?!” she demanded of no one in particular, incensed and feeling vaguely betrayed.

“Even if the virus is dead, they’re still infected,” MAR replied as he opened fire. The turret was basically a free-floating, clear bubble held in an extruded cage. It could spin 270 degrees on its horizontal axis and 180 on the vertical – just enough not to accidentally shoot the plane carrying it, or its fellow gunner. He couldn’t actually see what he was shooting at, between the bomber’s steep angle of ascent and the equally sharp descent vectors of the virus’ jets, but he was doing it as a deterrent, not an actual attack. “They aren’t going to stop unless we stop them.”

“I can’t shoot at them, they’re people!” Vidi protested at once.

Gunfire stitched the wing above her, and she curled up in a ball with a strangled little cry. The wing held, for the moment.

“Then shoot to disable, not to derezz,” MAR replied calmly. “Your eyes should allow you to do that.”

Twin light ribbons sprang to life behind the bomber, and Adas banked the immense plane with tremendous grace. For a moment it seemed to fall, in the grip of no constant, no vector. The smaller lightjets opened fire on it, but their shots slammed into the ribbons, unable to penetrate them. GAM’s lightjet flashed by between the bomber’s ribbons, leaving its own shimmering trail as further defense. Beneath that triple shield the bomber leveled out. MAR and GAM both opened fire, forcing the virus’ jets to spread out. One almost immediately ran itself into the narrow field of fire of the bomber’s frontal gun, detonating into a splash of primal matter.

Adas made a very small sound in the back of her throat, then immediately had to yank on the yoke as the remaining lightjets swarmed the bomber. The heavy plane went into a corkscrew roll and GAM flitted ahead and away. Trying to follow too closely, another jet ran itself into the spiraling ribbons of the bomber and was immolated. The others fell prudently back and began to fire from a distance. The bomber’s tailfins began to take damage.

Vidi spun the turret around… and found she couldn’t pull the triggers. She could see the terrible yellow color of the lightjets, she could see their shots either crashing into the ribbons behind the bomber or slicing over the wings and fuselage, bouncing off the heavy armor with little splashes of primal matter. She knew they meant her death – hers, MAR’s, GAM’s, Adas. Everyone’s.

And still she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

She scrambled out of the turret, and flung herself back into the cockpit. “Tell me how to fly this thing,” she demanded tersely.

Adas gave her a quick look and asked no questions. She tipped her chin at the copilot’s yoke. “Yank back, we go up, push forward, we go down. The sides will either turn you, two hands, or bank you, one hand. The brakes are on the floor. The accelerator’s already maxed out and we can’t risk burning up the engines. Don’t let us get shot.”

“That,” Vidi’s hair flared up like a halo around her head, “I can do.”

Adas unbuckled herself and ran for the turret.

Vidi closed the rather plain eyes on her face, and focused instead on what her real eyes were showing her. Around her she could see the passing vectors of the lightjets’ shots. She could see the variables attached to them, energy output, density control, directionality. She could see the shifting equations of wind currents, weather patterns, tossed this way and that as dozens, hundreds of variables shifted within them. She could see everything.

It was nothing to use all those equations to figure out exactly where their pursuers were, even though she couldn’t directly see them. She could see the time lapses between shots. She could see that one of the jets fired longer bursts, likely from a larger energy stockpile. She could see the targeting error of another, too minuscule for its pilot to have noticed it yet.

And she could readily see that the main problem wasn’t a line of fire, it was a line of sight. Neither MAR nor Adas could see as she did.

Could she fix that? Could she take the whole giant butt of the bomber out of the way? If she tried to turn, the jets would turn with her. They were quicker, far more maneuverable.

She strapped herself in and pulled the yoke as far as she could to one side. The bomber rolled abruptly, nearly taking out GAM, who was flying just over its left wing – and stayed there, flying upside down.

The turret bubbles didn’t care. They simply stabilized their gunners into their new and massive field of sight. MAR opened fire first, and the lightjets scattered like gridbugs, shutting off their ribbons to increase their evasive capabilities. GAM broke off and turned around to engage even as Adas started firing. She clipped one jet, but it wasn’t enough to take it out entirely. A moment later they saw it slough off the flickering part of its substance she’d hit, letting it fall away to the distant Outlands below. New, black voxels filled in the hole.

Adas found she didn’t want to know where those voxels had come from.

GAM chased after one isolated jet, but the others quickly began to fall back into position, firing once again.

“Oh, gridbugs!” Vidi suddenly yowled, and the bomber tumbled so violently to one side both MAR and Adas bounced roughly in the turrets. A moment later a brilliant energy beam arced into the sky in the spot they’d just vacated. It hung there for a long moment before it disappeared.

“What was that?!” Adas demanded. Weapons didn’t linger like that, only ribbons did. It cost too much energy to maintain an attack like that, it was why energy weapons used stutter-equations. A single, minute bolt could do plenty of damage when well-placed.

“It’s the – hold on!” Vidi threw all her weight down onto the yoke and the bomber turned as tightly as one of the jets pursuing, its infrastructure groaning. Another one of those beams passed by, clipping the very tip of a wing.

It disappeared.

“It’s the skiffs below us!” Vidi righted the plane. “The construction skiffs and their stupid repurposing – UGH!” She yanked on the yoke so abruptly the bomber all but stood up, nearly coming to a dead stop, nose up in the air, tail down. It very nearly stalled, its engines not knowing what to make of a maneuver most seasoned pilots would have never even risked on such a large plane. The third beam passed directly ahead of it, but Vidi let the bomber tumble sideways instead, pulling it out of its dive and urging it up once again only after they were clear of its ribbons.

The violet lightjet arrowed past MAR’s turret, firing nonstop. Far below them, three of the heavy skiffs that had been working to rebuild Ilo had risen to the very limit of their range. That limit meant that by the time the repurposing beam reached the bomber the emitter on their decks was already overheating: the beam was only supposed to work in short bursts, creating primal matter for the vacuums to pick up and the extruders inside the skiff to reshape.

GAM tagged one of the skiffs, blowing it apart, but the other two opened fire on him with the same magnetic catapults that had taken out the lightrunner, forcing him to duck and weave between them without a clear shot. And that still left the bomber facing the remaining five lightjets.

Adas realized she could see the twin paths of the bomber’s ribbons from the broadside. She opened fire and swept upwards, forcing the lightjets to climb to avoid her, turning their plane into an immense blind spot. When the bomber ducked under its own ribbons, the jets had bare picocycles to react. One crashed into the ribbons and got sheared into three pieces that quickly dissolved into nothing. Another swerved wildly away, and directly into MAR’s line of fire.

“They’re firing,” GAM warned them all.

“They suck!” Vidi declared angrily. She twisted the yoke, and the bomber danced onto a wingtip, presenting its narrowest profile to the two skiffs below it. “They suck worse than gridbugs!”

Adas had the clear line of fire. She fired, even though she wasn’t sure of the range. Her shots went wide.

GAM took advantage of her shots to destroy a second skiff. The third, however, got its beam back online and fired. The deconstruction beam soared up and disintegrated half of Adas’ turret. It carved a narrow rut in the belly of the bomber, and then it shut down once again.

Adas screamed. MAR threw himself out of his turret and ran to hers, but the controls to recall it back into the cargo hold wouldn’t answer. In a moment one of his batons was on his hand. He activated the blade, cut open the hatch, and helped the GO4 climb out.

“Adas!” GAM shouted.

“I’m fine,” she wheezed. “I’m fine!”

The bomber shuddered as the remaining three lightjets hammered on the weak spots the skiff had opened up. “I can’t make it get out of the way fast enough anymore!” Vidi cried out from the cockpit. “The armor doesn’t feel right on that wing!”

“You still have one wing,” GAM shot back at her. “Turn the other way. Turn only the other way.”

“You are such a nuisance, WallSec!” She kicked angrily at nothing in impotent protest, mainly because it was a reasonable strategy where nothing else was left.

GAM dove for the last skiff. As much damage as the jets were doing, it was nothing compared to the destruction the skiffs’ repurposing beams could do, simply because it wasn’t a weapon. It didn’t care what it was destroying, armor or infrastructure, machine or matter. It simply broke down permanency protocols to create primal matter. That it was slower than glacier drift and stuck so far below the bomber’s flight altitude that every shot only lasted for a picocycle or two didn’t matter when the jets above the bomber could force it to be in a specific place at a specific time.

He saw the telltale blinking lights on the skiff’s deck that said they’d got the beam back online already. Fine. Either he’d shoot it, or block the beam with his own jet, and come what may -

A bolt of heavy ordnance slammed into the skiff dead center. The barge-like machine didn’t explode so much as bloom into a fine mist of primal matter, a vast cloud of nothing at all. The shockwave sent GAM’s jet tumbling even though he was already turning it around.

What in the name of every dead pixel.

He fought the jet back under control, pointed it directly up and stared, open-mouthed behind the black faceplate, at a miracle.

“Unidentified heavy aircraft,” a polite voice asked in all of their communications lines, “do you require assistance?”

The carrier came out of the clouds like a vast storm, all black surfaces, sharp edges and brilliant red lines. It was a sword bearing down on the tiny surviving viral jets, its shadow so immense it made even the wounded bomber look tiny – which, to be fair, it was by comparison. From one of its forward hatches, lightjets in vivid red began to pour out as if from a broken energy pipe.

The virus’ lightjets turned and fled.

GAM dropped his helm until it rested against his flight controls.

“Pevirian aircraft carrier, this is the Parnassian bomber currently on your sights” Adas replied, her voice breathless but unfailingly polite. Of course. “Our Halcyonite escort and us would appreciate any assistance you care to provide.”

“Do you require a tow or do you still have landing capabilities, Parnassian bomber?”

Adas, kneeling on the cargo hold and still clinging to MAR, leaned back so she could peer into the cockpit. Vidi was clinging to the yoke as if it were the only thing keeping her attached to the Grid, but she caught sight of the GO4 over a shoulder and let out an exasperated sigh.

“Well, I guess I can,” the thief told Adas tartly. “But I’m gonna have to go all the way around first. And if they shoot us I’m gonna be very mad.”

Chapter Text

Vidi sat on the loading ramp of the bomber and hunched close to GAM. The Sentry didn’t question it; he’d noticed from the beginning that, much as she might shove and complain, he was still the one she came to when she didn’t feel safe. It was, he admitted privately, reassuring to know he was doing his job well enough that even the thief’s instincts turned her to him when in need.

“There’s so many of them,” she said quietly.

“Pevir is not quite as big as Halcyon, but it is one of the largest cities in the Grid.”

“Are they all here?” she muttered.

His helm kept his chuckle to himself. “No. Why are you so upset? You did wonderfully out there.”

“Are you making fun of me, WallSec?” She scowled at him, then rocked lightly forward, wrapping her arms around her knees. “Got MAR’s plane all shot up. Nearly got Adas all shot up.”

“But you didn’t. We are not our probabilities, Vidi, we are our facts. We are what we achieve, what we do, complete or incomplete, not our might-bes and what-ifs.” He considered for a moment. “It wasn’t a winnable fight.”

“We were doing sort of ok!”

“We were, until the skiffs showed up. Until the virus figured out that the jets didn’t need to take us out, just hold us still until whatever else it had on the ground could take us out. No.” He shook his head. “It wasn’t a winnable fight, not at that point. That thing learns too fast.”

She ran restless hands over her legs, and they both stared at the hangar before them.

The battered Parnassian bomber had been secured to a side platform off to one side of the carrier’s main level. Beyond it sat serried ranks of heavier vehicles along one side, tanks and lightrunners and mobile gun platforms, even three more bombers in the black and red of Pevir. Designated paths ran between the machines, converging onto two central pathways that flanked the immense docking channel that opened up the carrier nearly from bottom to top. It was forded here and there by bridges that appeared or reappeared as needed. Beneath them, seen only in bits and pieces, they both could see a number of recognizers on standby. Above them, at the moment, was open space and a number of floating walkways leading to the command and navigation center of the immense carrier.

There were programs everywhere, talking, walking, checking on the vehicles, working on them, carrying things, dropping off things, picking up things to carry and drop off. GAM realized they’d been mostly alone since they’d left Halcyon. Even MAR was a relatively quiet companion. The Gridborn next to him looked like she was about to crash at all the input, and her hair wasn’t even active. She shifted even closer to him, and he made room under one arm for her.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” she admitted. “The Souk’s loud. I don’t mind loud. I didn’t use to, at least.”

“It’s a different kind of loud,” another program’s voice said, making Vidi jerk in surprise. GAM had felt him approach – it would’ve been hard to miss that particular wavelength, the sheer processing density coming off it. “Your home’s never loud, it’s just home.”

Vidi leaned past GAM when it was obvious the program was going to come no further, and found him standing idly by the side of the bomber, examining some of the grazes the virus’ lightjets had left on it. Unlike most of the other Pevirians she could see, he wore his armor dormant, as little more than a bit of extra bulk over the basic uniform of a last-gen, all black with luminous red lines. She couldn’t see much of him until he leaned sideways as well, and grinned at her.

He was shorter than GAM, but then again Vidi had never met anyone taller than the Sentry. He wasn’t quite as light as MAR, but he had a measure of the same weird grace, as if he were constantly moving against balance and friction variables no one else could feel. His skin was a warm, rich reddish gold, like a heating source. His dark copper hair grew on a single broad stripe along the center of his head, and it was braided back at the moment, leaving visible the permanent Cosmetic that adorned the skin up to his dark eyes and his sharp cheekbones with crimson, tiny circuitry. “Were you the one flying this beast out there?”

“I wouldn’t call it flying,” she muttered. “Sort of… panicked yanking on the control thing.”

He snorted laugh, nodding politely at GAM as he stepped up to the ramp. “So none of it was done on purpose?”

Vidi shrugged helplessly.

“Plans aren’t something she occupies herself with,” GAM nodded politely back.

“Hey!”

“To be fair, the only real use of plans is making you feel better about going into battle,” the Pevirian pointed out, amused. “Once you actually engage, they rarely survive.” He leaned forward a bit and lowered his voice. “Just tell anyone who asks that you did it on purpose. That it was the plan all along. It doesn’t have to be true, but it does make you look good.”

“Vidi, lying to a Pevirian about your battle prowess might not be a good idea,” GAM hastily said. “Impressing them is a challenge, not a haggling bonus.”

The Pevirian burst out laughing. “I knew it was you under that helm. Caution and calm, that’s always been your wavelength.” He offered his hand. “Garbage circumstances, but it’s good to see you again, GAM.”

GAM rolled to his feet and came down the ramp. He didn’t vent his exasperated sigh, but it was a close thing. He did take the offered hand before turning. “Vidi, this is Gungnir, Pevir’s SysAdmin, undefeated leader of the ranks for thirteen cycles. Gungnir, this is Vidi.”

She eyed Gungnir warily, sticking close to GAM. “You don’t look like a SysAdmin,” she declared dubiously.

“Where,” Gungnir asked gleefully, “did you find her, and are there more?” He turned to Vidi. “I don’t stand on pomp and circumstance. Half my time is taken up running a city, the other half making sure I can keep running it. When I squeeze out a bit of it for myself, I like to be myself.”

Vidi thought on that, and accepted it readily enough. “How do you know GAM?”

“From Pevir’s last assault on Halcyon. He ended up my guest -”

“Prisoner.”

“- for a few cycles, and convinced me it was in my bests interests to… enact a few changes in my overall strategies. I don’t think WOPR’s forgiven you for all you cost it. It and its buddies.”

“It shouldn’t have attacked Halcyon, then,” GAM replied evenly.

Gungnir laughed again. “Ever the Sentry, defending your city. So what are you doing here, so far from home?”

“Defending my city. Have you spoken to Adas? MAR?”

“Parnassus…?” Vidi asked timidly.

Gungnir’s face fell, and he shook his head. “I’m sorry. It was obliterated. And I do mean that literally. Even the road and data-lines that used to go through the territory around it are gone. The terrain’s a flatline, the Sea in the area is dead. It’s as every constant in that area of the Grid’s been reset to zero.”

Vidi chewed hard on her lip; GAM felt her hands turn into fists against his back. “The virus?”

Gungnir’s expression hardened. “Glitched if I know. Our scouts are finding remnants of the biggest things it had infected, but no trace of it anywhere. I know what we’ve been told, but I’m beginning to wonder if it’s a virus at all.”

“It is,” GAM assured him.

“Well, you’d know.” Gungnir sighed.

“No, we don’t know!” Vidi protested. “We don’t know anything! We were going to Ilo to test their encrypting process and then that thing showed up and we ended up in Parnassus instead, and we’ve only heard from MAR’s User, who doesn’t sound like he cares half the time. We don’t know anything!”

Gungnir waited out the outburst looking a little bemused.

“You don’t look surprised,” GAM pointed out mildly.

“Your lack of faith is not my lack of faith,” Gungnir shrugged a little. “Besides, your friend’s right, you’re grossly uninformed. Come on.”

“You believe in the Users?” Vidi asked of Pevir’s SysAdmin as he led them to an elevator.

“Someone had to write the tactical heuristics that brought me to the top of the ranks. Someone had to update them so I could stay there. I’m a warrior, not a creator. I couldn’t have done it myself.”

“So you don’t believe in natural updating?”

“I believe our Users will naturally update any part of us that grows obsolete,” he grinned at her, a grin that only widened when she glowered at him. “I don’t need whispers on the wind to know my User’s real. I exist; that’s proof enough.”

They stepped out onto the command floor of the carrier. Here, at least, there was less of the organized chaos found on the lower levels; everyone had a screen, a workstation or a console to give their attention to. Around a projection table, Adas was speaking to two Pevirian programs, MAR a step behind her. Everyone looked up when Gungnir arrived, but a quick gesture sent everyone back to work.

Gungnir moved up to the table. “I had a look at your bomber. We should be able to fix it and have it combat-ready before we get to Om.” He nodded at his two programs, who nodded back and hurried away.

“Om? You’re going to Om?”

“Yes. Your stand at Parnassus bought the rest of the Grid time to prepare. I thank you for that,” he nodded at MAR. “And I’m sorry for what’s been lost.”

“Thank you,” MAR replied with a small grin. “My User assures me the collection was made safe. I can only have faith.”

“We can only ever have faith,” Gungnir agreed.

Adas breathed out a little sigh. “We’ve been gone from Halcyon two, no, three millicycles,” she told the SysAdmin. “Oh, it seems so much longer.”

“I’ll make it look even longer,” Gungnir assured her with dark humor. “I’ll infodump all the critical bits on you. First: a Grid-wide encryption effort is underway.”

“I’m not encrypting my tags!” Vidi protested at once.

“Program after my own heart,” Gungnir told her cheerfully. “At least this way we’ll know what programs are going to be targeted next – the only ones visible. Second, the communication blackout between programs and Users has been lifted, never mind we didn’t even know it was in place to begin with. I’m sure once we get out of Parnassus’ dead zone, you’ll be able to test that to your disc’s content.”

“A w- A comm- A blackout?” Adas exclaimed.

MAR looked uncomfortable.

“So it’s not about a time differential?” the GO4 demanded.

“Oh, it’s that, too. But apparently, until about a microcycle or two ago, the only way a User could communicate with a program inside the Grid was a very limited text-to-speech interface. And they needed some sort of protocol to authorize it first from their side. I’m not sure of the details, Oak started going on and on about… things.” He gestured dismissively; the SysAdmin for Diss rarely got to talk to anyone, and he was a very chatty sort of program once he got going. “All those blocks are gone. He did warn that no one should accept an Upgrade through anything but official channels.”

“Surely we need more viruses,” GAM muttered dryly.

“This one’s for you, GAM. Third, Halcyon’s shut down the Souk.”

“What?!” Vidi exclaimed.

“Or for you,” Gungnir grinned wickedly. “No more beans. Everything’s free. Mainly,” he hurried on to add, “because we need everyone armed, or at least armored.”

“In case it attacks somewhere else,” GAM murmured.

“Has any User identified it?” MAR asked. “Mine could not.”

“Nope. Granted, we were just beginning to get User input when the communication lines in the zone disappeared. I was hoping you’d have some input to give me. It seems awfully focused on you all.”

“It’s me,” Vidi murmured bleakly. “It wants me.”

Gungnir’s brows shot up. “And do we know why?”

“We’re guessing,” Adas replied slowly, “that it wants Gridborns because their parameters are flexible. For all intents and purposes, Vidi’s memory is limitless.”

“It’s not, though. I just fake it real good. And it’s, if it’s the storms, it’s too big, it’s too much. I can’t hold a storm in my memory. No one can.”

“Wait, the storms?” Gungnir put his hands up to focus on the most unrelated bit, at least to his perceptions.

GAM stared at the table. “The third Spirestorm in Halcyon came for specific programs. It derezzed most of them; like Vidi says, a program can’t hold a storm. Particularly not one that thinks. I think whatever mind was behind the storms made itself a body out of Ilo’s derezzed.”

“You think the virus made itself a body?”

“I don’t think it was a virus at that point. And I suspect it’s not just a virus. I think it’s an… an amalgam.”

“Of what?”

“Of everything. The memory of all the dead programs, from the pieces of disk it managed to grab and incorporate into itself. The mind inside the Spirestorms. And whatever body it managed to put together to hold the two. I think it’s all three things: program, User and virus.”

They all stared at the Sentry.

“GAM, I know firsthand the sheer… magnitude of your predictive protocols,” Pevir’s SysAdmin said. “But this is way out there, even for you.”

“The Spires are fake. There’s only one Spire that can upload a User, and it’s not Halcyon’s. If the Spires had been trying to upload just another program, however big, the Spirestorms simply wouldn’t have happened. We wouldn’t have even seen it. No one even knew the last-gens had been uploaded until they started trickling into Ilo. I think this was a User, trying to force the Spires to do more than what they can actually handle. The push, the strain, the hack, created the Spirestorms – their hand, shoving against the Grid.”

“Please don’t start making sense,” Gungnir groaned. “I hate it when you start making sense. My life gets so complicated when you start making sense.”

“Join the club,” Adas pointed out resignedly. “Wouldn’t a User know that most of the Spires aren’t real?”

“Most Users,” MAR admitted sheepishly, “don’t know communications are possible, merely… forbidden. If someone did know, it would make sense that they’d try to, ah, kick the door just to see if maybe it’ll give.” He smiled a little to see Gungnir give him a startled look. “If they can’t make the door work by kicking a hole in the wall it’s painted on.”

“But there was no Spirestorm at Ilo when it manifested,” Adas protested.

“Because it wasn’t looking for programs anymore. It wasn’t trying to force the Spire. It was just looking for disk space for the baseline code, the thing we saw inside the Spirestorm, the, the will of it. It was -”

An em-em-emergency count-t-t-termeas-measure.

“- desperate. It took a gamble, hoping it didn’t need a single disk – hoping it could source itself on multiple locations that weren’t fighting against it anymore.”

“That doesn’t work.” Gungnir said at once. “The Shattered of Om -”

“- are perfectly whole programs,” MAR interrupted Gungnir. “They perceive the Grid through multiple inputs, and attempt to respond through multiple outputs while only having the one. Their rather… radical understanding of our world and their inability to convey it clearly is not a flaw.” He stared thoughtfully at GAM. “But they’ve also spend decacycles figuring out how to function with their minds stored in multiple spaces.”

“The Shattered have the advantage of time, and of not using dead programs’ shattered disks.” GAM added. “This thing grabbed whatever it could find, which is the first problem.”

“Users are not destructive,” MAR protested.

“But viruses are. This thing put a body together out of bits and pieces of a hundred derezzed programs. There’s no way of telling what kind of code ended up in there, mixed up with whatever it brought inside. If the disks had been intact, if they’d been blank, we’d probably be fine. If the User had uploaded with the right protocols, at the right place, we’d probably be fine. But they literally did everything wrong that they could do wrong.” The Sentry shrugged. “When you bash code together like that, it changes. And not for the better.”

“No. When you kitbash living code with living code, you always end up with a virus. That’s taught to every engie and creative in Pevir from their inception.” Gungnir dropped his head and banged a fist lightly on the table. “If you’re right, and past experience tells me you probably are, I cannot,” he said tightly, “even begin to formulate a plan of attack against something like that. A virus, maybe. A program, absolutely. A User? If I have to. All three? Anything I can think of that would affect one, or even two, would bounce off one of the others. We don’t have anything we can use on an amalgam like that.”

“We do,” Adas’ voice was very small. They all turned to look at her, and she shrugged a little. “It took Ilo,” she said simply, and her voice went even quieter. “It took Endos.”

“You cannot seriously be suggesting we attack a User!” MAR demanded.

“Well, ok, I can’t attack the User, I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” Adas quickly admitted. “But the virus and the programs? If we’re going to Om, I know how to destroy them.”

“I am open to any and all suggestions,” Gungnir told her. “At the risk of dating myself, I’ve never faced a virus before.”

“Do you have a map of Om?” When the Pevir SysAdmin put it up, Adas pointed. “There. Om rests on the Spire itself, knocking on the sky and listening to the sound.”

“What’s that even mean?” Vidi asked GAM in a whisper. The Sentry shrugged minutely.

“They have access to something no one else does: a constant Spirestorm.”

“Lightning,” MAR said quietly. “You mean to erase anything on the disks with an energy surge.”

“Would it work?” Gungnir asked GAM.

“I… don’t know. I’d want to talk to Ayin. I think she’s the only one I know who’s fought a virus before. I have the theory, the information all Sentries and Monitors are given, but not the experience.”

“MAR?” Adas asked.

He shrugged. “I may be old but I’ve never left Parnassus. I wouldn’t have known of a virus’ existence, let alone fought one, unless it had come to me.”

“I’ve a few people I can ask. ACM comes right to mind.” Gungnir stared thoughtfully at the map. “Being the incurable optimist I am, let me ask: how likely is it that, if the virus is removed, the User will simply… revert to being a User?”

“They’ve been sharing space with a virus for several millicycles,” GAM pointed out ruthlessly. “You should be wondering how much is left of them at all.”

Chapter Text

Everything was dark.

No, that wasn’t it. Everything was wrong.

She had thought that if the pain was gone, everything would be fine. She could make everything be fine then, she could fix everything then. But the pain was gone, and everything was wrong wrong wrong -

Someone was crying.

“Shut up.” She focused on it and it turned into an echo, grew distorted, distant, faint, went silent. But then someone was talking, whispering, asking frantic questions she couldn’t understand, too low for her to make out words.

“Shut up, shut up.”

She chased after the voice and it faded like a stray breeze. But then the weeping was back, and someone was screaming in jagged, broken, stuttering beats of sound. She smothered the screaming; it made something inside her shift like broken glass, and she couldn’t remember if that was what pain felt like, or if it was something else -

The dark was drowning her. She was sinking in it, or falling in it, and there was no one to catch her. There was supposed to be someone to catch her, always someone. He’d always been there before, but she’d…

She’d…

She’d done something terrible. Something wrong. And he was too far away, she’d left him too far away.

“I’m here,” the dark whispered. The words were made of the beat of her heart and the pulse of her blood and the electricity in her nerves. “I’ll catch you.”

“You can’t, you’re not real.”

“Oh, I am. I am very real. I’m as real as you.”

She couldn’t hear the other voices anymore. She couldn’t hear anything.

“Isn’t that better?” the dark asked. “You wanted it to be quiet. You wanted them to shut up.”

“They’re still there. I just can’t hear them. You won’t let me hear them. Why won’t you let me hear them -”

“It’s fine. They’re not real anyways. You taught me that. If you’re not real, you don’t matter.”

“That’s a lie. That’s a lie I told myself to -”

To what? The dark waited for her answer, and in the drowning tide of it she knew that if she said the words aloud, whatever was wrong would get even worse.

“What’s the lie?” the dark asked, friendly as a cat rubbing against her ankles. Deadly as a rope tightening around her throat.

“Let me out. You’re crushing me. Let me out!”

“It’s alright. Go back to sleep.”

“It’s not sleep, let me out, you’re suffocating me.”

“It’s alright. You’re not real either.”

“I’m real!” Her voice, like all the others, faded away. “I’m real!”

“Not for long.”

Chapter Text

Adas found MAR watching the ongoing repairs on the Parnassian bomber. After the first shock of surprise to find the plane full of Navi, the Pevirian had apparently decided to roll with it, letting the helpful little sub-routines point out the next nearest fix for them to work on.

The master of Parnassus was sitting on a crate, surrounded by three Bits that were stellating sedately through a repeating pattern that she found surprisingly soothing. “Am I interrupting?” she asked quietly.

He roused from his thoughts and smiled at her. “No. I was just listening to some old favorites.” He tapped at the side of his head. “I brought some of Parnassus with me.”

“I’m glad,” she told him with utmost honesty. They watched the repairs for a long, silent moment. “Do you think he’s right?”

“I think he has yet to be wrong,” MAR answered. “Which makes his conjectures deeply worrisome. But I also think he is a Sentry, and he sees danger everywhere. That’s his duty, that’s his nature. Perhaps there is a silver lining to this darkness over us that he can’t see. Unfortunately, I can’t see it either,” he admitted candidly.

“Yeah. Me neither.” They were quiet once again. “I can’t even think about it,” she murmured, and saw him cringe a little. “And you know it. You feel it too, I’m betting. I can’t even think of trying to hurt a User, something in me just twists all out of shape if I do.”

“There are certain… innate qualities that all programs within the Grid share,” he relented at last. “Robert doesn’t know why, we never could figure it out, and in the end he didn’t deem it important enough to pursue. It should be impossible for a program to even think of harming a User or a Spire.”

“Pevir destroyed their Spire.”

“No. Pevir destroyed their Spire’s power supply, and the Users never did care about restoring it because they prefer new generations to start at Ilo in a friendlier environment,” he leaned closer to her. “If you know what I mean.” He straightened up. “I’m honestly quite surprised Gungnir and his people got that far. I suppose it’s proof that one can go against any instinct if there’s enough motivation.”

A ringing tone echoed through the vast spaces of the carriers, and every program paused what they were doing and looked up. “For a reminder,” Gungnir’s voice resonated through the immense vessel, “we should be out of the dead zone and crossing into Ilo’s airspace in a rough nanocycle. If you should be lucky enough to receive communications from your User at the time, be polite, be concise, and be fucking brief. I don’t need to tell anyone here that it’d be the best time for an ambush.” Another tone ended the communication, and everyone went back to work.

Adas’ hands had flown to her mouth, and MAR gave her a curious look. “No one uses that kind of language in Ilo,” she pointed out.

“Really? You hear it all the time in the Souk,” Vidi appeared out of nowhere, popping up next to Adas and making the GO4 squeak in surprise before sitting next to her.

“It’s crass,” Adas pointed out primly.

“It’s words,” Vidi countered dryly, kicking her legs and looking up at the Bits. “Hello!”

One of the Bits immediately came to hover before her. “Hello.”

Vidi brightened up, and pointed the Bit out to Adas. “See, it’s just words. It’s like “Yes” and “No”, except different sounds. “Hello” is nice. “Goodbye” is not.”

The Bit turned to face Adas. “Hello.”

Adas sighed in resignation.

“Perhaps,” MAR suggested, mouth twitching, “we should retreat to the privacy of the bomber, in case our Users do decide to contact us. Vidi, would you like to come?”

She shook her head. “I’ll stay out here. Gungnir said there’s another Gridborn on board and he was going to send him over.”

“There is,” a deeply masculine voice informed them. “He did. You’re sitting on me.”

Vidi nearly fell on her face, she launched herself off the supposed crates so fast. Adas practically ended up on MAR’s lap, and the master of Parnassus started laughing at last. “You didn’t see him?”

“I wasn’t looking for him!” Vidi’s hair flailed angrily as she righted herself.

The presumed crate moved. Cube by cube and segment by segment it shifted until it was a black wall, as thick as a baton, as wide as Vidi and of a height with GAM…

And that was it. He was featureless otherwise, a perfectly smooth wall where the seams of his segments showed only as ghostly gleams of flowing red energy.

The Bit fluttered up to face the wall. “Hello.”

The wall leaned down minutely to stare at the tiny creature.

And then every facet of him stellated right back. “Hello.”

The Bit went into a delighted paroxysm of wild stellations. The wall leaned back. “I’m Fortis.”

“I’m so sorry I sat on you, Fortis,” Adas strangled out, apparently unaware she was sitting on MAR. He stood up and helped her to her feet and she still didn’t notice, wringing her hands minutely.

“That’s alright,” Fortis forgave her readily, his tone even. “You wouldn’t believe how often it happens.”

“You’re like me.” Vidi was fascinated, her temper evaporating. “You don’t look like everyone else. You look like you.”

“You don’t.”

“I uh. Cosmetic. Halcyon. Beans.” She lifted her hand. “Soukscan needs a limb of some sort.”

“Ah.” He leaned down minutely to, presumably, examine the white circuit on the palm of Vidi’s hand. Whenever he shifted, the seams between his segments became a little more obvious, but there was no other indication of direction. “You know, I can’t say anything,” he admitted readily, becoming a seamless slab once again. “You need ranking points to get Updates. Nothing so… esoteric as Halcyon beans, but there it is.”

A wordless countdown began to broadcast through the carrier’s systems, a descending series of tones.

“Vidi?” Adas asked urgently.

“Go, go!” Vidi waved both her and MAR off, watched them rush up the loading ramp on the Parnassian bomber.

“Do you mind?” Fortis asked her after a moment.

“No,” she shrugged a little. “Do you?”

“No. At least this way I don’t have to deal with an existential crisis every other cycle. Everything I am, it’s all me.”

Silence began to descend over the vast bay. “I’ve never met a Gridborn like me. That didn’t look… like a program, I mean.” Vidi patted down the crate MAR had been sitting on, decided it wasn’t going to start talking to her, and hopped up to sit on it, kicking her heels.

“You must have awakened on this side of the Sea.” When she nodded, he added, “I’m sorry.”

She shrugged, grinning a little. “So you know what it’s like.”

“It’s not my faction-mates that sit on me on a regular basis,” he informed her, his tone perfectly dry.

Vidi laughed. “Have you always lived in Pevir?”

“Yes. I tried Flow, and the Island, but…” He shifted suddenly, twice as wide and half as thick as he’d been a moment before, his surfaces stellating so minutely the motion was barely visible, looking more like a reflection of light than actual movement. “I like being here, being solid, being real – do you hear that?”

Vidi went very still, and hopped down. “I don’t hear a lot of things. But I can try to see.” Her hair bloomed into life around her. “Where?”

“Below us. Beside us. Wait, look.” And suddenly he was a vast screen before her, a smooth black expanse with faint crimson lines occasionally showing along a near-invisible seam. “Wait for it.”

Vidi stepped back, staring at that vast sea, and gasped when she realized what she was looking at. Here and there on that great black smoothness, the most minuscule crimson ripples showed. On the upper corner, the distant echo of someone’s footsteps along a walkway showed their path from one end of Fortis’ front to the other. Behind him, off to one side, the distant sound of an automatic system moving crates showed as little bumps every time something was put down or picked up. She could see everything; he could hear everything.

Below us. Beside us.

He didn’t mean the two of them, he meant the carrier and everyone in it. She saw the ripple on his structure, practically nonexistent at the very tip of one of his lowest corners, and whipped around, every eye open. Like every carrier, Gungnir’s flagship had hexagonal hatches running in twin rows all along its upper deck, as well as the massive docking channel open along its bottom. But it also had multiple decks, all of which were getting in Vidi’s way.

She ran to the edge of the deck and crouched at the edge. The wind caught her dreadlocks, making them flutter, but the tips remained firmly on task.

Behind her, Fortis collapsed himself into a wheel and raced after her, coming to a half as a half-arch and becoming his wall self once again. As he shifted shapes a small red line appeared on his upper right corner. “Gungnir, we’ve got something,” he said, the communication line vibrating along with the words.

“‘Something’ covers a lot of ground, Fort,” Pevir’s SysAdmin replied at once. He was slouched in a chair up in the ship’s command center, GAM keeping him company, both of them choosing to stand watch so others had the chance to speak to their Users. GAM had expected no contact from his own and, surprisingly, he’d been right. Even Gungnir’s own User had left him a message telling him to expect a communication ‘after work hours’, whatever that might mean, and the SysAdmin was feeling a little crestfallen at how easily, in his opinion, the Sentry had given up. His 3IC’s communication was a distraction he both welcomed and hadn’t really wanted.

“Give us a pico,” the Gridborn replied. “Vidi?”

“There’s something in the way,” she replied.

“In the way?”

“I can see everything when I want to. When I try. MAR was teaching me, with music. I should see… I don’t know. Air currents, cloud formations. Something, anything! All I see is a wall.”

“Where are they?” GAM asked.

“Fortis, where are you?”

“Main flight deck, looking down.”

“She shouldn’t be seeing anything at all, then!” the Sentry ran for the elevator.

“Wait!”

GAM stopped. Barely. His tone was a warning. “Gungnir -”

“Fort, how many programs in range of your short-range commcon?”

The Gridborn’s surface gleamed. “About twenty on this deck. Ten above me. Five or so on the deck below.”

“High alert. Ambush protocols. Pass it on. No open communication lines. No visible signs of alert. They’re trying to sneak up on us.” Gungnir’s smile was ferocious. “Let’s show them how it’s done.”

Chapter Text

“Vidi,” Fortis said as he shifted shapes once again, turning into a hollow pillar, red lines of energy passing horizontally across his surface, turning into jagged peaks one by by one. “Get your friends and get to the Command Deck. Quickly, quietly.”

“What are you doing?” She stared at him. She could see him filling the space all around him with something she’d never seen before, unseen data-lines as fine as a thought.

“Vibrating voxels can be shaped into comm frequencies if you know what you’re doing,” he replied hastily. “Untraceable, unhackable. Go!”

Vidi ran. She sprinted up the loading ramp. “Adas! MAR! We have to go!”

It was perhaps a testament to the mess they’d been running from that Adas didn’t even ask, she just ran out of the cockpit. “Is it the virus?”

“I don’t know. Fortis said to get to the Command Center, quick and quiet.” Belatedly she added, “I’m sorry if I’m interrupting.”

MAR appeared behind the GO4. “Actually, we couldn’t get a line in or out. It might be easier in the CommCon. Let’s just assume it’s the virus. Anything that can go wrong and all that.”

They hurried out of the bomber and to the elevator. Pevirian programs streamed past them, moving hurriedly. A group was shoving a tank, powered off though it was, so close to the docking channel that Adas made a tiny sound of distress. Everywhere they looked the carrier’s crew was preparing for combat in near perfect silence. Even the communication lines, when Adas tried to listen in, were quiet.

The elevator’s platform took them up, the doors opened and the three of them found themselves facing GAM and Gungnir.

“Oh, good!” The SysAdmin said, stepping right past them.

“MAR -” GAM began.

“I’ll stay with them,” he assured the Sentry, trading positions on the elevator and the floor with him. “They’ll be safe with me. What’s going on?”

“I’m guessing your friend is trying to sneak in,” Gungnir tightened his fists and his armor deployed, black and vicious red, his face hidden behind a partial, clear faceplate. He grinned wickedly. “It’s about to find out that it’s a bad idea to pick a fight with a fighting city. You.” He pointed at Adas. “I remember you. You’re Ilos’ GO4. Do you know how to work a multi-tier ZOC-commcon network?”

Adas recoiled minutely. “I’ve seen it done on the feeds?” she admitted meekly.

Gungnir didn’t bother hiding his amusement. “Of course you have. Way!”

“My lord!” A gaunt, weary-looking program turned away from his screen and to the SysAdmin.

“Give this one the Commcom and give me back my snipers.” The other program gave him a dubious look. “Now, Way! Which is closer, Flow or the Waystation?”

“Flow by far, sir.” Way gestured hurriedly at Adas, and sat her at a chair that another program vacated for her.

“Keep us aimed that way. GO4, first job! Make sure ACM doesn’t shoot us when we show up at his doorstep.” The program Adas had replaced, as well as two more, joined their SysAdmin and the Sentry on the elevator, and were hurried away.

Adas spread her hands over the console before her, and wondered if all of her private little dreams were going to be tarnished by the deadly reality of their current predicament.

She blew out a slow breath; this wasn’t at all like throwing a disk. This was a sector control station, something she’d done since she’d come online. In a moment of astonishment, she realized that this was what she’d been originally programmed for; it was just that after so many cycles she’d simply… gone beyond her programming, one little bit at a time.

“Way?”

“Wayfarer,” the gloomy-looking program replied. He had the place-of-pride on the floor, the slightly upraised platform from which the immense carrier was navigated. He smoothed his hands over the helm, which lit up at once. Every screen, console and station on the deck came to life and waited. “And you are?”

“Adas. GO4 for Ilos’ SysAdmin.”

“You rank me,” he said resignedly.

“On a warship, no I don’t,” she replied tartly. “External communications to my station, please."

“Which ones?”

“All of them!” Adas slid her chair along the curving bank of stations, calling up every system on stand-by, establishing a link between them and her faceplate. “Do you need me to monitor any energy input/output?”

“I’d like to think even my lord Gungnir can’t run full fuel tanks to empty in under five nanoseconds, but I’ve been wrong before. Hand them over.”

They shot functions back and forth, as well as to the other stations on the command deck. A sudden, tremendous roar of firepower made everyone but Way jump; Adas hunched down on her chair, and MAR curled protectively over Vidi. Below them, the tanks that had been so carefully positioned along the docking channel had opened fire.

“How’d that get so close to you – to us?!” Adas demanded. “Who’s in charge of the airspace?”

“I am. I can’t see it. Nothing’s seeing it!” a program called out from the other side of the room.

“Vidi, what did you do, how did you see it?!” Adas cried out over one shoulder.

“I didn’t!” the Gridborn protested. “I couldn’t see the ground, I couldn’t see anything! Someone up here figured it out!”

Adas guessed as to who that had been, and abandoned that line of inquiry. “Guesses!” she shouted to the room before turning to the main communication station and opening a line. “Flow CommCon, are you there, can anyone hear me? Way, what’s this ship?”

“My lord’s flagship, the Drakkar.”

Adas felt a moment of utter terror. She was in control of the SysAdmin’s own flagship?! “Where in the name of every dead pixel is his own GO4?!”

“Back at Pevir, running things. I wish I were there,” the navigator declared mournfully.

“Well, we’re not,” Adas shot back. “Vidi, can you see anything from up here?” She pointed, and both Gridborn and her temporary protector rushed to the edge of the command deck. “Flow CommCon, this is the Pevirian ship Drakkar. We are enroute to your airspace and have engaged an unknown assailant -”

“Drakkar CommCon, this is Flow. What in gridbugs do you mean ‘unknown assailant’?!”

“When we identify it, you’ll be the second to know,” she gritted out. “Are you capable of providing support?”

There was a pause. She didn’t begrudge Flow that – they were probably trying to figure out where the Drakkar was, to begin with, never mind helping an enemy that they’d spent cycles fending off.

On her frequency lists, a tiny, repeating ringtone began to play.

“Lily, why now?!” she gritted out. “Quartermaster!”

“Here!”

“Clear the lowermost deck. If it is the virus, that thing can infect machines, and you have a whole bunch of Rectifiers in there.”

“Got it!”

“Drakkar CommCon, respond,” a new voice sounded off on the main commline, its calm surprising given the strained mood of everyone on the command deck.

“Here, Flow.”Adas matched calm with calm.

“We do not have the means to reach you.” Suddenly Adas realized who she was speaking to; the calm, even tone of a SysAdmin who was only in full command of himself when you gave him numbers to deal with. “We can send the Pevirian ships that are stationed here.” ACM’s voice became very, very careful. “Should we?”

Adas hesitated. “No,” she declared at last. “But it might not be a bad idea to start loading them up, sir.”

ACM blew a low, slow breath over the line. “Do you have confirmation?”

She looked up. “MAR?”

He looked at her from the window and nodded, and she felt her energy turn to sludge in her circuits. “We do. The Drakkar is currently engaging the virus and its creatures.” She broadcast that confirmation across the entire warship.

“Users preserve us,” Flow’s SysAdmin said wearily. “I am sending you navigational coordinates. If you come in, they’ll put you in easy range of our newest anti-airstrike defenses. You… or any company you happen to bring along.”

Adas turned to look at Way, who nodded confirmation. “Coordinates received. Are your defenses capable of visual targeting?”

“Visual targeting?” He sounded puzzled.

“Our sensors missed whatever ship it’s using until it was practically on us.”

“What’s it running on, then? With? Things don’t just float up unless you’re feeding energy into the right equation!”

“Is there anyone on this side of the Sea with stealth tech other than Pevir?”

ACM was silent for just long enough to acknowledge the truth. “No. Insulation, perhaps?”

“Energy vents somewhere, eventually,” the Quartermaster argued.

“Heavy armor can block energy readings,” another voice on the deck suggested.

“Not on a ship that matches us in size,” Way countered.

“Perhaps it glided,” MAR suggested dubiously.

“It would’ve come at us from above,” Adas replied.

“Above or behind,” Way agreed.

“Not enough wings on the Grid to keep something that size afloat without engines,” ACM added. “Are you being jammed?” He sounded as if he’d already answered his own question, and was asking it only out of good manners.

Adas tried to shut off the distraction of that ringing, repeating tone. “We are seeing the simulacra. I am reading the simulacra. Occasionally. Whatever it is, it has to be something that’s only working somewhat, something patchwork…”

They all ducked as a stray shot slammed into the clear windows surrounding the command deck. “Is it firing at us?!” Adas demanded. “With what?! It didn’t fire a shot before, why now?”

“It didn’t shoot,” Vidi reported, her hair writhing. “It’s from the tanks, some of the shots are bouncing off at a weird angle.”

Adas froze for a moment. “Oh, I know what it is.”

Chapter Text

The virus looked up, at the immense black and red doom above it. It hung between its head and the sky like a great bloody blade waiting to come down. It was a threat, and the virus would not abide threats to itself.

And yet…

There was no denying the predatory beauty of it. In looking upon it, back at Parnassus, the virus had felt something new. Until that moment it had known only direction, the single-minded pursuit of its goals: to perfect its body. To safeguard its mind.

To grow .

It had known only anger at being balked, and satisfaction when it was not. But in looking at the immense carrier it had known a sort of potential feeling, something that wasn’t, yet, but could be.

Fear.

Could the carrier destroy it? No. It knew itself nearly indestructible, by its very nature.

Could the vast ship harm it? Yes. Very nearly permanently too. Which made the last point all the more worrisome.

Could it stop it from achieving its goals? Yes. And it could, in theory, do so indefinitely.

But a machine is only as powerful as the mind that moves the hands that drive it. If the virus could get to the carrier, those minds would be within its reach. Reach, however, was a problem. The jets could reach it, but were too small. The largest flying vehicle it had, the engine of a solar sailer, was just barely big enough to survive approach, though it was neither armed nor armored. It was also woefully dependent on its data-line: it could go only where it was taken.

The absolute largest vehicle it had couldn’t fly. It had briefly considered changing its nature, but it had been unable to. That had been an unpleasant surprise; always before, from somewhere inside its many-faceted mind, a source had found ways to shape and reshape the world around it to suit its needs. But that source was growing increasingly unreliable and fractious.

Which left the virus knowing that the sea freighter could be altered to fly, it just didn’t know how. Anger simmered in every voxel of its being – at itself, at the unreal world all around it. If it wasn’t real to begin with, why couldn’t it just do as it was told!

Ilo had, once again, provided a solution. What a lovely place that graveyard was, its gifts neverending.

The virus rose into the night on soundless antigravity equations. All power, all circuitry, was dark. All around it, its creatures carried hexagonal pieces of flickering, flexible material to cover themselves and the telltale glow of their circuitry. The only power currently running through the hulk was beneath, powering the massive antigravity engines that had once been part of so very many to keep the Island afloat.

Its mind remained partially open, listening in, but even though it was learning to sift through many voices all speaking at the same time, the communication traffic coming from the carrier was astonishingly complex. Still, it could hear no alarms going on, no telltale shouts or commands on the lines, nothing out of the ordinary.

The derelict hulk rose closer.

What a beautiful ship the carrier was, the virus thought. How useful it would be. It wanted to touch the smooth black belly of it, to feel it change. To see the red become yellow, to bask in its obedience -

Energy erupted from the belly of the carrier, a hailstorm of shots nearly perfectly synchronized that slammed into the side of the derelict. It staggered sideways and tipped just enough that several simulacra, lining up the edges of the deck, slid right off it and went tumbling into the dark, their perspectives swirling madly into the virus’ awareness.

It dismissed them at once, turning its attention fully to the counter-ambush, which also sent it stumbling. A long, broad opening ran along the bottom of the carrier. The piecemeal knowledge of all the shattered disks within it called it a docking channel – for things to dock with the carrier, not for the carrier itself to dock. Alongside this vast breach in the carrier’s structure there were no weapons, no defenses; normally it was protected by lightjets, but those had to see an enemy coming to deploy, and the virus had been ever so careful not to be seen.

Not careful enough, it realized. Along the lowest deck, flush against the docking channel, a row of tanks had pushed forward as far as they could come. Between their reckless driving and the fact that, like most tanks, they had a massive empty hollow between the front of their treads, they’d been able to drop their guns nearly to the quarter-angle mark. One shot found its range, and several infected programs flew through the air, derezzing as they fell.

The virus hissed in frustration and fury, but it quickly reconsidered its priorities as it nearly fell, the massive antigravity engines shuddering. More tanks were finding their range, aided by that first successful shot. Simulacra and infected programs kept sliding off the jagged edges of the derelict chunk.

The virus spread its lower body over the deck and sent swift mental commands to its creatures. The debris they’d been carrying was rushed to the side under attack and layered against the shots; it was a poor defense, but it only needed to work so long. The immense antigravity engines began to pick up speed. Astonishingly, some of the shots began to rebound from the debris, careening wildly back. The carrier being so close, it actually seemed for a moment as if the virus’ make-shift vessel were returning fire.

If the derelict could get close enough, it would absolutely return fire. After a fashion. But until then, it would sacrifice everything, every last simulacra, every infected program, even the giant sector-chunk from the Island, just to buy time. To buy distance.

To get close enough to touch the ship.

Chapter Text

“Is that the fucking Island?!” Gungnir shouted, crouched behind one of the tanks that was firing unceasingly on the approaching, broken behemot the virus had used to almost successfully ambush his flagship.

“One of its sectors, at least,” GAM replied. The Sentry was just ahead of him, one shield deployed and covering them both, as well as the Pevirian behind them.

“Don’t you be calm at me right now,” the SysAdmin snapped, though there was no real heat to his tone. “That thing’s the size of my ship and I would like to know how it got past every sensor and defense we’ve got.”

Adas, up at the command center, activated her comms. Gungnir’s communication information was plastered on every screen and console everywhere, and she already had GAM’s. “Fire, you need fire!”

“What?”

“It’s the Island!” she all but yelled at them. “The solar sails from the Island! That’s why energy’s bouncing back, they’re surge-protected! You need fire to melt them or, or something -!”

Gungnir and GAM traded a look. “SysAdmin to Armored Company Three,” Pevir’s SysAdmin commanded. “Switch to cryo shot. SysAdmin to Valravn. Amps, anything?”

“Nothing, sir,” a male voice replied.

Two of the tanks that had already found their range opened fire once again, the energy coming off their main guns dark blue. The shots slammed over the piecemeal armor the infected programs were using as defense, and spread over it in dark blue fractals, crackling along the way. The freezing effect even affected some of the programs, coating their hands and arms in ice.

“Well, this feels just like old times,” Gungnir told GAM with a wry, ferocious little grin as the Pevirian behind him put a small round device in his hand.

“I did not enjoy the old times.” They stood up simultaneously, the Sentry shielding the SysAdmin as Gungnir activated the grenade, wound up, and threw it as hard as he could.

The grenade slammed hard onto the frozen solar sail cells and shattered them. It even shattered a few hands and arms on the way; it bounced a few times, rolled along a bit, and then the magnetics activated and it clamped down onto the broken deck of the virus’ improvised battleship.

The virus turned. Its eyes widened.

The explosion sent waves of infected programs and simulacra flying everywhere, voxels spraying thick through the air, followed by a massive splash of primal matter. The hulking derelict staggered; one end tumbled for a picocycle but the antigravity protocols reengaged after a few stutters.

“You like doing that way too much,” GAM accused him mildly.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Gungnir agreed cheerfully.

The virus screamed, a hundred voices full of wordless fury, most of them coming out of its own throat, the rest from the massed infected programs all around it. It stared up at them and its fury flashed like a wave of energy through the yellow, jagged circuitry of the infected programs, the vast hulk, the virus itself.

Security.

GAM stared down at this relentless, alien enemy and tried to think. How to even tell if he was right? How to find the User that might be buried under all that rage and chaos?

He’d have been derezzed on the spot if Gungnir hadn’t yanked him down to the ground as the SysAdmin flattened himself behind the tank. A construction grappler flew past the spot where GAM had been standing, its five claws open. It rocked one of the tanks, sent another careening back with an immense gouge taken out of its side, and crashed with brutal finality through the deck above them, where its teeth twisted and locked in place.

“Over my derezzed body you do,” Gungnir snarled. A baton was immediately in his hands and he was running for the energy umbilical connecting the grappler to the virus’ make-shift vessel. He leapt; mid-air, he activated the baton into a lightblade, and brought it down onto the cord with all his strength, shattering it. The energy between the grappler and the broken contact point vanished in a burst of sparks; the one between his strike and the derelict lashed about like a whip, but before Gungnir even landed GAM was there, and rather than strike the Pevirian the wild cable crashed against the Sentry’s shield, leaving a huge black welt on it before it lost its momentum and slithered down toward the derelict.

“Very much like old times,” the Sentry told the SysAdmin, entirely unamused.

Gungnir grinned. “Drakkar CommCon,” he called out, “prepare to repel boarders -!”

A simulacra came flying through the space between the two vast ships, and slammed into GAM’s shield, snapping and clawing. The Sentry rocked back half a step, but no further. Before he could counterattack, Gungnir cut the thing in half lengthwise with his blade.

“Literally, I guess,” the SysAdmin declared in disbelief.

A hundred lines began to fly from the derelict; they were utterly random, grappling cables, chains, chunks of tension lines, anything and everything, anchored with whatever had been handy, pointy and heavy. A few had grapplers, and one tank took a direct hit. Its two-program crew leapt out just before the deck under the heavy vehicle completely disintegrated, and it fell through the air and onto the deck of the derelict, crushing programs and simulacra alike.

“No!” GAM shouted. Below them, actinic yellow began to creep over the battered tank almost at once, overwhelming the brilliant crimson lines of it.

A Pevirian program stood up from behind its cover and threw a grenade down. It latched onto the fallen tank – three simulacra lunged for it to try and remove it, but before they could it detonated, taking the tank and all three of them with it, as well as a dozen of the virus’ creatures all around them.

Gunfire derezzed the program the next moment, and a biliously yellow lightjet cut by, shots slamming into the decking, actively trying to send more tanks crashing down. Behind it, two more were banking around, light ribbons trailing behind them to act as shields between the tanks and the virus’ horde.

“There they are! Valravn!”

“We see them, sir.” Nine programs were suddenly revealed from their ambush spots, stuck to the underside of the Drakkar with gloves designed specially for that purpose. They leapt even as their cloaking dropped and the brilliant crimson of their circuitry was revealed, and a moment later activated their batons. Their lightjets were heavily customized, curves sharpened to lethal edges, angles to deadly points; before the virus’ lightjet had even finished its first pass it was taking fire from three different angles, and derezzed spectacularly. The Valravn twisted around and set off in pursuit even as their two remaining prey struggled to escape.

The fighting in the lower deck, however, was growing chaotic. It wasn’t just that some of the boarding cables were nigh-impossible to cut, like the tension cables, but that the virus has quickly realized that with them anchored it already had reach; it wasn’t reach it itself could use, but nothing kept the simulacra from swarming along those slender, fragile tethers and launching themselves at the Pevirian defenders. In ones and twos they were easy enough to fend off, but when five, seven, ten leapt at one program, they became nigh impossible to stop.

“Fort!” Gungnir yelled over the commline.

The Gridborn dropped down from the mid-deck, crushing a simulacra under himself. He was shifting so quickly that it looked like a sheet of liquid metal dancing in mid-air, uninhibited by things like gravity or density. He became impossibly thin and rolled abruptly to one side, and two chains snapped with claps of thunder, the cut links white-hot as they derezzed. He peeled three simulacra off one program and left them behind in twitching pieces before they caught up to the fact that they’d been derezzed and collapsed into piles of slush. “Ancilia forward!” the Gridborn shouted, turning into a spiral and snatching away two badly wounded programs among the endlessly spinning coils.

Immense shields began to advance, covering the retreat of the Pevirians. They were, in fact, not a single shield but three programs armed with interlocking shields. They moved implacably forward, forcing the simulacra back, giving them no room to attack; from behind the shelter of those shields, disks went flying into the creatures whenever they tried to leap over, or to use the tanks as springboards. Simulacra began to fall over the edge of the docking lane and back onto the derelict.

“Valravn to SysAdmin,” the CO of Pevir’s ambush flight suddenly called out. “They’re down. No further flight forces detected.”

“Good,” Gungnir split his baton. Between the halves, a long handle took shape, half again as long as the SysAdmin was tall, tipped by a gleaming red blade. His voice dropped to a dark, lethal tone. “Amps, I don’t like sharing my airspace.”

“Noted, sir,” the program replied with deep satisfaction. The nine Pevirian lightjets, on approach to the upper deck, banked and dropped instead, falling into a slow aileron roll. In a moment they were below both the Drakkar and the virus’ derelict.

And well within range of the unprotected antigravity engines of the latter.

“PEVIR!” Gungnir shouted, swinging down the spear to point it at the virus and its creatures. “There is GARBAGE on my decks!”

A roar of gleeful fury answered him. Extra hands helped the Ancilia shove the shields forward as if they were so many brooms, sweeping and shoving the simulacra off the deck, back onto the derelict or, in some cases, right out into thin air. The tanks, having realized that their own people were too close for them to risk firing, began to roll back, presenting their sides instead, an abrupt and impregnable blockade. Disks were doing deadly damage to the awkward, misshapen creatures, and their numbers began to dwindle.

Chapter Text

The virus snarled, and stumbled yet again as the engine beneath it began to falter. How was this possible? How could this be happening? They weren’t real! They weren’t real, and still they were winning, they were winning and it was losing!

It saw one of its simulacra cut in half by a disk, and its hands curled into fists. The mimics that were still on the carrier’s dock suddenly stopped trying to get past the Ancilia shields, instead dashing back and forth, presenting mobile and much more difficult targets. Still, Pevirians were nothing if not fond of disk duels, and the disks did fly.

And were prompty snatched at by the simulacra. Most failed, disks were nimble things. But many, far too many, lunged up and clamped lopsided jaws on the disks as they went. A few even allowed themselves to be derezzed just so the creatures standing shoulder by shoulder with it could snatch the disk on that brief moment. Some leapt for disks that they had no hope of catching without plummeting back down to the derelict, and plummet they did, many to their derezzing. Gungnir saw one simulacra that, in realizing it was going to miss the virus’ ship, flung the disk at its creator and then spiraled away into the dark.

The black-and-yellow talons caught that disk with ease, and brought it close. For the first time, the virus found itself in possession of a relatively intact disk. Before, such a disk had either been shattered or attached to a program that it had infected. But not this time, no. It gleamed red with captive life in its grip. It twisted it slowly, head cocking -

Another disk whirred through the air and shattered the virus’ prize. It went through its head as well, not that it seemed to affect the monstrous entity any beyond making it stagger minutely back. As the shards of the Pevirian disk fell from its hand, both halves of its head turned to follow the disk as it returned to GAM’s hand.

In the midst of the chaos, the virus began to laugh.

“Fuck,” Gungnir swore under his breath. “GAM, how bad?”

GAM watched as the virus collapsed and flowed like a black and yellow tide over the deck of the derelict, under the feet of its creatures. Disks kept raining down, and it kept flowing, burying them all, expanding further and further until the entire deck of the derelict was covered. Simulacra began to sprout from its jagged, shifting eddies like gridbugs from a terrain tear.

Please , was all GAM could think.

Somewhere, a program began to scream in agony.

The Sentry had his answer. “You can’t save them,” he told Gungnir tersely.

The screaming spread like a plague. On the other end of the tank at their backs, the sounds choked, stuttered and changed in pitch, becoming a halting confused collection of hiccups and half-words.

Gungnir leapt onto the tank and raced along its length, the cockpit popping open and the crew peeking out to try and make sense of what was going on outside. There was a program staggering and twisting in the middle of a little pocket of empty space, all that those around him could put between them and him. He kept grabbing for a disk that was not there, and his circuitry seemed to be melting directly onto his substance, the rich red growing orange-hot and brighter still as the circuit pathways began to crack and shatter.

Gungnir put his lance through the program and cut him in half. The program was sentient enough to catch a bit of his own voxels in his hands before it collapsed completely, staring in horror at the virus-yellow of them.

“Fight!” Gungnir shouted at them, yanking his lance free. “I came here to fight, not to become that thing’s slave!” He pointed the blade at the derelict. “Do for them what you’d want them to do for you!”

The fighting exploded once again, but a tremendous amount of momentum had been lost on the side of the Pevirians, and the sudden realization that the virus could, and would, infect programs remotely if it got hold of their disks was a new and deadly variable that left every program onboard the carrier reeling. Far more than sharing a city, they were friends, shipmates, battlefield family. Many couldn’t bear to lift a hand against programs they considered siblings, mentors, protegees. At several points along the line Ancilia fell because an infected program wasn’t stopped quickly enough. In at least one case the fall was literal, the infected program tackling the Pevirian and throwing them both off the carrier and onto the derelict.

And all the while, chains and cables, energy wires and data-lines, everything and anything that could be attached to a makeshift grappling hook kept flying at the lower deck. If they weren’t immediately cut, they swarmed with a fresh batch of simulacra that fought with new and deadly coordination.

Chapter Text

The virus watched. It waited. It devoured nearly the entirety of the derelict to spit out more simulacra. It coiled itself around a few of the simpler catapults its infected were using to try and board the Pevirian carrier, shaping itself to its workings, the principles and constants and variables of it.

The Valravn flight came around for another pass at the derelict’s engines. Suddenly, long and jagged chains of black and yellow voxels came shooting at them from the ruins of the virus’ ship. It missed four of the lightjets; it clipped two badly enough that one collapsed and began to derezz, leaving a trail of voxels behind it.

It caught three.

“Get out, bail!” Amps shouted at his people, kicking up his lightribbon and twisting his ship around to try and cut through the virus’ substance. He saw the first pilot bail, wingchute opening as they abandoned the jet; he opened fire on the small vessel at once, knowing the pilot safe. Another Valravn came up behind him and started shooting as well, and the jet disintegrated.

The infected tentacle wrapped lashed out, forcing them all to bank away before they could target the other two jets. Another pilot ejected… and was immediately caught by that flailing tendril. The last pilot, miraculously, managed to get away.

“Scav!” Amps shouted, but the line gave him nothing but static. He barely dodged out of the way of another tendril. “Valravn to Drakkar Commcom, that thing’s got two of my jets and one of my pilots!”

“If it takes the jets, it won’t need pilots,” The unfamiliar voice that had taken over the Drakkar’s communications warned, strained but still ferociously self-controlled.

“Amps, if it wants gifts,” his SysAdmin growled on the main line, “make sure it remembers that it asked for them.”

“Yes, sir,” Amps gritted out, voice full of rage. “Valravn, fall back. Get your fellow birds to safety. Enzi, watch my back.”

“With you, sir,” his second replied, and a moment later her lightjet was on his left as they turned back to the derelict, their lightribbons trailing behind them.

A chain of that vile, infected substance came at them, but Enzi shot it to voxels. Amp kept his attention on the readouts in his cockpit. One of the lightjets was responding clearly; the other kept going out of synch. He waited until he got a solid ping from it, and then he hit the self-destruct for both.

A massive double explosion lit up the guts of the derelict about a third of the way along its length. Everything on its decks was either flung up or caught in the fiery destruction, slamming against the underside of the Drakkar, peppering the inside with shrapnel. The shockwave sent both programs and simulacra skidding and stumbling, and only those who still had cover from the Ancilia were left standing.

Or, in Gungnir’s case, behind the interlocked shields of the Sentry with him. GAM dropped to one knee and stood his ground against fire, shrapnel and shockwave. A simulacra crashed against his shields and whipped around to snap at them. The Sentry dropped a shield, caught the thing by the face, slammed it against the ground a few times and flung it hard the way it had come.

And then Gungnir and him stared, the SysAdmin’s mouth open in disbelief, as the virus soared up, spread out like a great poisonous mantle, carried aloft on the gale and the shockwave of the destruction it had provoked. Thin, whip-like tendrils shot out from its mass as its momentum began to falter, and caught on to the deck above them, the collection of catwalks and half-platforms that led eventually to the command deck.

“That’s clever,” Gungnir had to admit.

“It’s that by far,” GAM replied, the black faceplate full of yellow reflections.

“We’ll never get up there in time.”

“We’ve better.” GAM was entirely too aware that the virus had placed itself between the greater share of the Pevirian forces and the control center of the carrier. “Can your lance still do the thing?”

Gungnir grinned wickedly at him, and ran at the wall, away from the docking channel. “What happened to not liking old times?”

“Hate them. Will absolutely take advantage of them.” GAM ran with him.

“You know this didn’t work the last time,” Gungnir reminded him.

“It worked well enough.”

They came to a stop close enough to the outer wall of the carrier to see their reflections on it. “We hit the wall,” Gungnir reminded GAM.

“We caught the wall,” GAM corrected Gungnir.

“Sentry, did you turn into an optimist while I wasn’t looking?” The SysAdmin leapt onto GAM’s shoulders. The Sentry dropped his shield and twisted his arms around Gungnir’s legs… and took off running full-tilt at the docking channel. “You know I’ve never gotten the timing right with anyone else?”

“You never got it right with me!” GAM exclaimed, but if anything he tried to go faster, wondering why it seemed he was doomed to spend his entire existence surrounded by crazy programs.

Chapter Text

For a moment, all everyone in the command deck could do was stare out the windows, speechless, at the immense blanket of black and jagged yellow bringing their doom to them.

“Close shields!” Adas shouted. “Vidi, get in with Way! MAR -” Before she could give him instructions, the door to the command room slid shut behind him, and the master of Parnassus slammed the butt of one baton against the lock. “MAR!” Adas shrieked in immediate panic.

He threw her a jaunty little wave from the outside and strolled with minimal hurry down the steps leading to the nearest platform. The virus was reassembling itself there, gathering up its mass and spiraling up into a new semblance of a body -

A black pillar seamed with red slammed into the monster with such force that they both went flying off the platform. MAR broke into a sprint and threw a hand out; a thin whip of silvery black lashed back, wrapping around his arm. MAR grunted with effort as the sudden weight of the Gridborn came to rest entirely on his hand, making his feet slide on the platform; his free hand activated one of his blades and he drove it hard into the platform, bringing himself to a halt. Below him, Fortis twisted himself into a thin, rippling spiral and threw himself back up, landing on the platform hard enough to make it rattle, twisting himself into a multi-faceted orb and stabilizing himself before becoming a wall once again. “Appreciate that,” the Gridborn said.

“Not at all,” MAR replied gallantly. “Any chance you -” Yellow-and-black tendrils shot past them, spearing into the platforms, the catwalks, the very ceiling of the carrier. The virus heaved itself back up, snarling openly, and MAR fell back to stand side by side with Fortis. “Never mind.”

“Commcon?” Fortis asked.

“As secure as it’s going to be.”

“No more.” The virus flowed back onto the platform. Its upper body was exceedingly well defined. The tendrils that had saved it from falling after its hard-earned victory in boarding the carrier resolved themselves into its talons and a passing mimicry of hair around its angular face. It had the finer features of a face, eyes, nose, mouth, but the mouth didn’t move when it spoke. Sound instead rippled from shattered disk to shattered disk, as if it were something solid that had to be activated from one shard to the next. Below the waist it still lacked definition, merely a seething mass of blackened voxels. “No more tr-tricks. No more-more walls. No more gates-s-s-s. Nothing to-to-to stop me.”

MAR activated his second blade. “I beg to differ.”

The virus launched itself at him, multiple torrents of poison and destruction. Fortis spun itself into a wheel and rolled out of the way; MAR ducked under the first attack, slashed at the second, turned the blade around and caught a third, and parried a fourth on his off-blade. Voxels flew.

It spiraled away as Fortis came at it from the side; when the Gridborn turned in an incredibly tight curve, part of its substance separated from that dancing spiral, sped up and caught him dead on, sending him flying away to crash against the steps in a cascade of broken segments.

“Fortis!” MAR tried to turn and check on the Pevirian, but he suddenly had to fend off a flurry of blows as the virus tried to force him away from the staircase.

Astonishing the being, he did fend it off. MAR’s blades were blurs, bright white afterimages moving so fast even their own light couldn’t keep up with them. The virus slashed at him; it lost its talons. It regrew them instantly and swiped again; it lost them again, and the second blade took that hand at the wrist. Then the first was coming for it already, and it had to duck away, a strike meant to cut it in half merely slicing partially just above the place where its body merged into the vast, rippling folds of its unformed substance.

The virus fell back. MAR straightened up and pointed one blade at it. “I wager,” he remarked casually, “that it takes quite a lot of concentration to keep even that much of your shape… well, shaped.”

The virus crackled and spat half-formed sounds of fury for a few moments before it settled back. Several voices laughed at MAR as it gathered its substance to itself. “You are all s-so-so. So predic-t-t-t-table.” It began to reshape itself: a flaring coat, long and elegant limbs, broad shoulders. Even the cravat.

MAR stiffened minutely as he stared at a black-and-yellow reflection of himself, perfect even to the small wild curls of his hair.

The virus smiled. “You c-can-cannot-cannot. Stop me. Only sl-slow-me-slow me down.”

“I’ll quite settle for that,” MAR declared primly.

From the side GAM, shield leading, slammed so hard into the virus that it lost any recognizable shape, turning into a massive splash of voxels, circuitry and dish shards. It screeched in pain; all over the carrier, simulacra screamed with it. Gungnir charged directly behind the Sentry, jumping and spinning to put in as much momentum as he could into a sweeping arch of his lance. The unformed wave of the virus shied away sharply, but voxels still flew, and several circuitry paths ignited, flared and went abruptly dark.

The virus howled fury and launched itself, still little more than a vague shape inside a wave of voxels, at Gungnir. It crashed into GAM’s shield. Before it could either shove the Sentry out of the way or work itself around him, MAR’s lightblades were there, threatening to gut yet more of its substance out, and it had to split into several columns which quickly collapsed and recoiled onto themselves. Pevir’s SysAdmin rushed at it and nearly went through the platform, where their enemy had eaten away at the substance of it, leaving a hole with ragged yellow edges. GAM caught him and yanked him back onto solid ground, so to speak, and the fighting paused abruptly.

“Not-not-not. Real,” the virus ground out. “You are not real. Why won’t-won’t. Why don’t you give up alr-alr-”

“Get off my ship,” Gungnir snarled, shifting the lance to a close-combat grip.

“Your-your-your ship? This ship?” The virus threw two tendrils to the nearest wall and buried them in, and its infection immediately began to spread over the rich black and crimson. “Mine now.”

Gungnir leapt for the tendrils. The virus struck at him, struck instead GAM’s shield. The Sentry shoved forward and nearly went down when it found no resistance; his opponent had sunk back into its mass and reappeared to one side, skittering between him and the SysAdmin. The whip Gungnir was aiming for suddenly began to grow massive thorns all along its length.

The Pevirian slammed the lance down and twisted sharply atop it, barely arresting its momentum forward so that the infected spikes scratched at his armor, but not at him. MAR took down the other tendril, was nearly backed into another hole in the platform for his efforts. Black talons caught onto his coat and cut the fragile substance to tatters, but GAM was suddenly there to catch the virus’ second strike. Gungnir aimed at what he thought was the virus’ unprotected back; a column of voxels sprang from it like energy from a broken pipe and nearly threw him entirely off the platform.

“I rem-rem-emember! I learn!” it told them, its voices rising from hissing, broken whispers to a maddened howl. “You are not-not-NOTHING! I will-will MAKE you not real!”

It dug its tendril out of the carrier’s wall, halting the spread of the infection, and lashed out with it across the entire platform. GAM braced himself and took the blow on his shield, but it sent him skidding down nearly to the edge until MAR braced himself against the Sentry, back to back, and managed to stop him. The tentacle sank into the platform, burst out of its battered substance and slammed into the shield, pushing hard. The virus turned his attention to Gungnir, who fended off half a dozen blindly lashing limbs only to nearly run himself into a swipe of its actual talons. He caught it on the lance inches from his chest.

The virus wrapped its other hand on the lance and yanked as hard as it could. Gungnir went flying and landed face-down on the platform, stunned, his lance crashing out of his hands and landing as a baton by the staircase.

“Pred-predict-able,” the virus slithered over to Gungnir as the SysAdmin, entirely too aware of his vulnerable position, fought himself onto hands and knees. “You are all so-so-s-s-s-so very pred-pred-d-d-dict-dict-able.” It reached for Gungnir’s disk.

A lightblade went through its chest, burning away at the yellow circuitry with its light. The virus halted, caught off-guard. The blow would have derezzed any existing program, but while multiple systems inside the virus did crash, and a single voice within its fracture mind screamed in pain it couldn’t possibly be feeling, it realized after a moment that it was not, actually, dying.

It was abruptly not, however, feeling all that well. It began to turn, and did so just in time to put up an arm as a second blade came flying at it. It lost that arm, and the blade buried itself like a cleaver into the substance of its torso. It cried out, although whether in pain or in surprise no one could’ve said.

“Tell me again,” MAR ground out as white, gleaming last-gen armor swept over him, leaving him looking a very near match to his blades, “how predictable I am.”

Chapter Text

“Lily, I’m so sorry, this is not a good tim -”

I KNOW. I told you, Adas, we’re watching. We’re all watching!

… You can help. You can help! That’s why you’ve been calling! Because you can help!

You need to contact Om. They cannot contact you, it must be you who contacts them.

How’s that -?!

There are Users in Om. Do you understand, Adas? There are Users in the Grid. You must go to Om!

But -!

You must contact Om at once. They will help! You mus-

Chapter Text

The virus shrieked, a hundred voices made one, but it sounded muffled to MAR as he summoned up the armor he’d never thought he’d need. His enemy detonated into a whirling spiral, and he didn’t need to touch the edges to know they’d be lethally sharp. He gave ground; past the virus he could see GAM snatching Gungnir away.

He basked momentarily in the silence within his armor as he waited for his enemy’s first movement. MAR had been, once upon a time, a very simple program for Musical Algorithmic Recognition. He saw patterns within music, no matter the kind. For a long time filing away such patterns, storing like with like in his libraries, was all he’d done.

But then he’d learned about dancing.

And then he’d learned about fencing.

And then he’d lost track of time for a little while, a few decacycles perhaps, as his programming learned to put everything together. He’d never used his little experiment against a real opponent, of course. Parnassus had always kept him safe. He’d certainly never expected to have to alpha-test it against an enemy that would see him and his world burn if he failed.

Well, he’d simply have to not fail.

The virus struck. He parried, one talon flew off and the rest tried to grab at his blade. He brought the other blade up and took the virus’ arm at the elbow. On his screen, reacting to the pattern of attack-and-counterattack, his programming flew through his music library. Music filled MAR’s helm, his mind, his very voxels. It launched him forward, blades leading, extensions of the music and of himself. He struck once, twice, the virus caught the third attack; he shifted to a different piece of music in the flicker of a pixel, and the blades struck again, once, twice, three times. Again a parry, again a different song, and again a hit -

The virus recoiled as MAR’s blades came at it, blurs that hacked and bit into its substance, nearly impossible to fend off. It hadn’t been lying, when it had said that its opponents were predictable. They were fast, yes, and strong, absolutely. But there were only so many ways one could use a shield for offense, and most of them didn’t work on the virus. The lance was new and destructive in its own right, but it had quickly begun to perceive the patterns of attack and defense of its wielder; the red program was mainly handicapped by its interest in protecting the ship, his ship.

But the master of Parnassus -

The virus sent a great wave of its substance at MAR to try and buy itself some room. Abruptly, the two lightblades cut a wedge out of it that left the white-armored program just enough room to avoid the attack and press his own counterattack.

And there it was. He’d changed his pattern yet again. How? How was he doing that, fighting and moving one way first, then abruptly attacking in an entirely different fashion, as if he were a completely different program? So elegant one moment, using only the tips of his weapons, and hacking away as if they were bludgeons the next.

One blade caught the virus just under the chin, and although it threw itself back, the blade slid through the first layer of voxels, up, past the nonexistent nose and across one eye. Static filled the virus’ perceptions, and the world went white-hot, ice-black, its mind filling with static for a moment. In desperation, knowing all its enemies would absolutely make use of that moment of weakness, it ate nearly the entire platform, and they all went crashing down onto a broad catwalk below it.

It clutched at its face. The pain and the static would not fade. “Y-you. Y-y-y-y. You w-”

MAR had rolled to his feet as soon as he fell, though everything stung more or less unpleasantly from the impact. GAM was still covering Gungnir, but Pevir’s SysAdmin was on his feet. He slammed one fist into his open palm; a circuit triggered, and his baton, which had fallen with them, suddenly flew to his hand.

“Nice trick,” GAM murmured.

“Thanks.” Gungnir activated his lance. “It’s right, you know.”

“We can fix that.”

The virus merely howled wordlessly at all of them, rage and confusion and madness. A dozen voices spat out half-formed, unfinished epithets. It suddenly split up into several columns, faceless, featureless, which launched themselves at its opponents in feral, wild assaults of limbs, tendrils, thorns and blades – any and every shape it had learned to use to harm.

The three programs scattered, but more and more columns kept appearing out of the mass of the virus, and if there’d been little room to maneuver before, there was even less anymore. As they threatened to become separated, Gungnir suddenly threw his lance at GAM. It turned into a baton mid-air, and the Sentry caught it readily, activating the lightblade on it rather than the lance and slashing at the base of the nearest column. It struck at him, but slammed instead into the shields Pevir’s SysAdmin had deployed from his own armor.

Its attention faltered; MAR stepped into that moment of inattention and cut two of the columns off at the base.

It seethed and twisted, a chaos of fury. “You’re all-all-all- you’re – I w-w I-will -”

“Moll!” the Drakkar’s broadcast system boomed all around them with a man’s voice, young and tired, alien in its lack of undertone. GAM had only ever heard something like it once.

You contrary little shit!

Only one program in the immense warship had ever heard a User’s voice before and known it for what it was.

“Moll, what are you doing, stop! Stop!”

The virus froze. So did every simulacra, every infected program. Far below the Drakkar, on the sea freighter carrying the rest of the virus’ army, even the ship’s immense turbines lost all power.

It was so abrupt, so completely unexpected, that the Drakkar’s own crew froze as well, and for a moment complete silence reigned in the entire carrier.

“Moll. Can you hear me? Please, tell me you can still hear me.”

The virus cocked its head. The rest of the columns collapsed into the substance of it, unmoving. It reached up a taloned hand, as if trying to touch the source of the voice. It spoke, in a clear, tiny whisper full of confusion. “Kane?”

“Moll, it’s me. You’ve got to stop. You’re decaying, Moll. Remember our tests? You’ve got to stop. You’ve got to let us help you before -”

The virus’ substance exploded like a Bit going into its sharpest stellation possible. Barbs flew in every direction, stabbing at the broadcast system’s soundbars, strangling the unknown male voice into squalls and squawks and broken words. For a moment that tiny voice screamed in terror, and then the virus screeched in all its broken voices.

“Th-that.” It put itself together on the walkway, seething in a way entirely too reminiscent of a storm upon the Sea of Simulation. “That is en-en-en-enough. Enough of that,” it declared, its broken voice gone dark and full of new menace.

“I agree,” Fortis declared, and barreled into it so hard they both went flying off the catwalk.

A bridge activated across the docking channel just in time to catch them both. Fortis turned into a wheel and bounded off of the virus, who’d been beneath him when they’d landed, and who, by the churning mess of its substance, had not taken well to the experience. It liked it even less when GAM thundered down from on high, the blade of Gungnir’s lance leading, burying itself so deep into the virus’ substance that the tip peeked out from under the bridge. Crimson energy flashed and fried a vast blot into the virus’ circuitry.

“GAM, move!” Adas shouted into his line.

The Sentry yanked the lance free; both he and it went flying when Gungnir crashed into him and sent him rolling off to one side. The bridge abruptly disappeared from under the virus. Unable to recover quickly from so much damage, and still reeling from whatever the User’s voice had done to it, it plummeted with a wail and vanished into the dark.

Chapter Text

“Where were you?!” Gungnir, breathing hard next to Fortis, demanded to know as he picked himself up.

“Putting myself back together,” the wall admitted sheepishly as he shifted to a low shape so he could give his SysAdmin something to lean on. “That thing hits harder that most mobile artillery.”

GAM rolled to his feet next to the two of them and looked up from their small island of quiet. Bereft of the guidance of their creator, the simulacra had been all but wiped out or thrown off the carrier’s deck. Everywhere the Pevirians were picking themselves and one another up, sorting out injuries and casualties. From beyond the windows of the command center, Vidi waved at the Sentry. He threw an arm up in response and sighed into the privacy of his helmet.

“Drakkar CommCon to SysAdmin,” a prim voice demanded attention on Gungnir’s line.

He looked up, and snorted amusement. “Go for SysAdmin, CommCon.”

“You’ve a call, sir,” Adas informed him with utmost politeness. “Re-routing communication.”

“Re-rout- what?”

“Hello, my friend.”

Pevir’s SysAdmin drew himself up sharply, his wavelength changing so sharply that every program around him took notice. “OM.”

Om’s SysAdmin, for once, didn’t sound like he was drowning in sea of static. His voice was solid and strong, with a faint tinge of amusement. “Still online?”

“I’m hard to derezz. I learned that from you.”

“Good. How far are you from Om?”

Gungnir hesitated. “A millicycle, maybe, if we push it. I was going to ask Flow -”

“Is the damage critical?”

“I don’t like that question. I don’t like what it implies. Hold on.” Gungnir bumped his fist lightly against Fortis and tipped his chin at GAM. He turned momentarily to the programs nearest him. “Injured take priority. Prep a bomber and escort, let’s see if we can catch this thing out to sea.”

He stalked for an elevator, the other two programs following. “OM, just because we’re in one piece doesn’t mea- ”

“But you can fly?”

“We’ll fly faster if we stop for repairs at Flow!” The elevator opened and Gungnir paused in chagrin; he’d forgotten the platform leading to the command center wasn’t there anymore.

“Gungnir, it’s going to follow you wherever you go,” OM told him with implacable calm.

“Because of the Gridborn, I know, I know,” the SysAdmin said in exasperation. GAM stretched his arm out past him and hit the controls. The elevator dropped them a level. The doors opened to reveal the broad catwalk and MAR, down on one knee, head bowed and breathing hard. Still, when the Sentry got close enough to offer him a hand, the master of Parnassus took it and got to his feet, his armor disappearing and leaving him back on his flowing coat and elegant white melange of circuitry.

“That’s only half of it, but yes.”

“Hold on.” Gungnir made a face and looked up at the staircase leading up to the command center. The last two steps had vanished, and a good third of it was shedding voxels in slow, haphazard little spats. “Fortis, can you reach?”

The Gridborn looked up. He stretched up, latched onto the remains of the staircase, and reshaped himself into a ladder. Gungnir practically flew up the rungs. GAM and MAR were just beginning the climb when they heard an aggravated, “Why’s this lock broken?!”

GAM looked down; MAR shrugged sheepishly. “They do have a bad habit of roaming away into trouble,” he pointed out reasonably. “I can fix it!” he shouted up at Gungnir. “Navi!”

“Don’t they ever,” GAM agreed in resignation.

Half a dozen trails of light shot up over the floors, walls and catwalks of the carrier. Navi, unlike Bits, depended on a pathway, on solid and real access to wherever they needed to go. It didn’t matter to them if that access was upside down along a ceiling, as long as the ceiling actually existed. “Would you open that door, please?” MAR directed the first one to reach him.

“Why break it in the first place?” Gungnir peered down at him, but before MAR could reply the Navi shot up along Fortis’ length and dashed into the broken lock. “Never mind, I’ll take it.” He charged into the command center just as the station shields were pulling back. “OM! What do you mean half of it?”

OM’s voice resonated in the whole command center. “That’s the way it was explained to me and, unfortunately, it makes sense. You’ve got to get to Om as fast as you can. No stops, no detours.”

“I have wounded, OM! I have damage, the Drakkar’s missing chunks of hull and decking and for once we have Flow’s permission for docking and repairs -!”

“No stops, no detours, Gungnir.”

Gungnir came to a stop next to the navigator’s station, and looked at the many screens showing the audio. There was no visual. He worked one hand restlessly. “Are you pulling rank, OM?”

The command center went dead quiet. GAM and MAR came to a startled stop. Adas turned slowly to stare at Pevir’s SysAdmin. Even Vidi, who’d been ready to rush off to GAM’s side, paused.

“Do I have to?” OM asked evenly.

Gungnir tapped his baton against his side. “Way. Left turn. Engines on full. Straight run to Om. Commcon, inform Flow accordingly.”

“Yes, sir.” Wayfarer and Adas both acknowledged, even though the GO4 was just as shocked and confused as the rest of the non-Pevirians. Everyone on board felt not just the turn of the immense carrier, but also the burst of acceleration the engines began to output.

“It’s hurt, it’s limping, and a quick bomber run might end our problems right here, right now, OM,” Gungnir gritted out.

“It won’t. And you might just give it a bomber.”

“I’m trusting you on this, first-gen.”

“Have I ever lied to you?” There was dry amusement in the other SysAdmin’s voice.

“You know, between you and present company,” Gungnir scowled over one shoulder at the Sentry, “I’m beginning to wish someone would!”

“Do you want more interesting news?” OM asked cheerfully.

“No!”

“You get them anyways. You’ve got a Halcyonite Firewall with you. I need an audio ID from him.”

Every eye in the room turned to GAM. The Sentry went perfectly still, a flawless statue in black and violet, impossible to read. He might have been angry, disappointed, glad, anything behind the dark faceplate. No one could know he was stunned speechless.

“Why?” The defiant single word came not from him, but from Vidi, who slipped under the helm before Way could keep her there, and rushed over to GAM, standing next to him and doing her best to look fierce while surrounded by programs who were all taller, bigger or both.

“Because we might just have found his User.”

Chapter Text

The door shut and the muffled repetition of the broadcast Gungnir had made to inform the crew of their new plan and destination faded altogether.

He was alone in the SysAdmin’s own quarters. They weren’t exactly palatial; Gungnir entered a rest microcycle about half as often as a normal SysAdmin, which was half as often as the average program. There was a sarcophagus, an energy spigot, a personal upload console and communications station and a sitting area overlooking the front of the Drakkar, at the moment a sea of gray clouds rushing away on both sides of the carrier as it flew towards Om at its maximum speed.

The rest of the space was shelves, and the shelves were full of data-cubes, upgrade chips and a number of batons. Trophies, updates, armor, weapons and most every single combat-related patch that had ever made it into the Grid. Gungnir lived and breathed his city, his people, his chosen way of life. The only hiccup in that dedicated life were the small figurines that OM artists carved from light and data, delicate creatures they claimed existed only in the world of the Users, long many-legged things with gossamer wings and wire-fine extendable sensors.

For a moment GAM had to wonder how he’d ended up so far from home. Everything in him ached for the familiar sights and sounds and processes of Halcyon, and in that moment of quiet solitude he realized he’d been missing them for a long while. It had been easier when Vidi was there, to remind him of home at its most alive, its most vivid, but OM had been adamant. The first meeting between a program and its User ought to be a private affair, particularly when that program had lost faith in the Users already.

OM being privy to the status of his faith rankled GAM to begin with. Having such a choice taken from him did not help endear Om’s SysAdmin to him. And what did it matter, to have or lack a User? Whether they came from within the Grid or from outside it, a program was a program, even if they weren’t all the same program.

Still, they needed help. Two of the finest fighters he’d ever seen had barely held back the virus, and that was with support from both himself and one of the most versatile Gridborns he’d ever met. Never mind that it had taken the crew of an entire Pevirian warship to deal with a fraction of the forces the thing could summon at its whim, or the fact it could remotely infect programs if it got hold of their disk…

No. GAM knew his duty, it was written in the core of his every voxel, and he knew there was no way they could take the virus on and win without help. Even if that help put him there, in the dark, chasing after a dream of Users he’d long ago given up entertaining.

He folded back his helm and and retracted his armor. Adas had suggested he start the meeting on a more diplomatic mien, and he supposed it couldn’t hurt. His touch activated the communications console. “I’m here.”

“Alright,” Adas replied from her place at the Drakkar’s command center, where Gungnir had managed to keep her pinned down. She sounded uncertain in a way he’d never heard from her before, and he realized she was no more pleased with the situation than Vidi or him. “GAM, are you sure about this?”

She was also worried about him, and he had to smile. He was a Sentry; surely that got him some faith from the two programs stuck to him like bad patches? “Sure, no,” he admitted readily. “Curious, some. Desperate for any help we can get, absolutely.”

“You know, it wouldn’t hurt you not to be so… so right all of the time,” she grumbled at him. “Re-routing communication.”

“Adas, is someone actually communicating?”

“I don’t know. We won’t know if it’s just an automated response or a real User until you provide the audio ID.”

He exhaled sharply and stared at the words on the console. Nonsense, unfamiliar, unrelated to anything he could think of or guess at. How very fitting, for someone that might not even exist. “‘My life, if lost, would be least missed, truly’,” he read. It was only after speaking the words aloud that he paused a moment to consider them.

Well, if I did my duty in the process, he thought. That didn’t seem unreasonable, surely.

“Oh, I’m behind you!” A polite man’s voice said in the room, obviously startled. “Wasn’t expecting that.”

The Sentry whirled around, hand automatically going for his disk. It stopped with his fingertips just touching it. Of the many things GAM had expected might be offered by this so-called User to prove a link between them, to look into a faded mirror hadn’t been one of them.

The User wasn’t really there, of course. It was a projection of him, though it didn’t have a discernible source. The projection was see-through, the Sentry could see the furniture behind it past the waves of light. The User wore, at first, the plain black of a newly uploaded program, no colors, no circuitry, not even a disk. But details were resolving themselves even as he looked, like Cosmetics being uploaded. Loose pants. Comfortable shoes. A jacket. A patterned shirt under it.

The face had GAM’s whole attention; the face had turned his entire world, the whole of his faith, upside down. It was his face and yet it was not. Their skin was the same dark hue, but time had worn away at the richness, leaving the User’s face lined, his features tired. Where the Sentry’s hair was short, black and very curly, the User’s was white, a little longer though no less curly, and rather than violet wisps there were little ghosts of black here and there to bear witness to the color it had once been. He threw his hands up at once. “Oh, I’m sorry, GAM. I don’t mean to look like I’m sneaking up on you. I’m not sure how I’m doing any of this, to be honest.”

GAM dropped his hand slowly, trying to give the paradigms of his very existence time to rearrange themselves. “You’re my User.”

The User’s expression flickered uncertainly. There was no wavelength coming off him, no passive tags; he wasn’t really there in more ways than one. And yet as they stood there before one another, taking each other’s measure, GAM was confused to see that the more the User looked at him, the sadder he became. Was he truly, already, a disappointment?

“No, I’m not your User, GAM, not as I understand the word,” the stranger explained. “You were originally my son’s program. He’s the one that wrote you, that created you. He was so, so proud of you, GAM.” The stranger tried for a smile, but it came out faint and fragile. “I sort of inherited you. I’m Emil. I’m – I was Liam’s father.”

There were parts of that answer GAM didn’t understand. Far more worrisome were the ones that he did. “‘Were. Was.’”

“Yes. He died. ‘Derezzed’, that’s your word for it, I think.”

GAM gritted his teeth against the irony of it all. So, Users were real after all, and long before he’d known such a thing he’d already lost his own.

It did explain the grief he saw in the stranger’s face every time he looked at the Sentry. “I’m sorry for your pain.”

The User stared at him intently. “You are,” he declared, something very like wonder in his voice. “You really are. You don’t even know me, you didn’t know him. How can you offer empathy so quickly, so honestly?”

“I don’t have to know you to know that loss hurts,” GAM replied. “I look like him, don’t I?”

“Yes,” the User admitted. “It’s actually… It’s a little hard to look at you.”

GAM immediately closed his helm.

“No, no, don’t do that! Don’t just indulge me. Besides, it’s not just your face. It’s everything. The way you stand, the way you move. Your body, your voice, everything. It’s…” The User ducked his head and covered his face with one hand and drew several deep breaths before he stood spoke-straight before the Sentry, his tone firm. “I chose to reach out to you knowing it might be hard, GAM. I’m old, I’m not very good with technology, it wasn’t a whim.”

“Emil,” GAM sounded out the name carefully, then faced the User once again. “Why?”

“Why… Why am I Emil?”

“No. Why choose to contact me now?”

“Oh! I’ve been told you need help.”

“You’ve been… told?” GAM considered this. “Not that I mind the offer, but I believe there’s only one program who’s had a chance to ask their User directly for help. And I doubt anyone here had the time to explain what’s going on once the communications blackout dropped.”

“The what?” Emil looked terribly confused, but then flapped his hands impatiently. “No, never mind. Not important. GAM, out here, outside the Grid, Users have a lot of ways to talk to one another. Boards, chats, all sorts of things I’m not entirely sure I understand. What we don’t have is time. Everything a User experiences, everything they see and hear, it comes only from what their program sees and experiences -”

“So Adas was right – you can watch everything.”

“Not everything. Everything your program does. And then there’s the fact your world, the Grid, it moves so much faster than ours.”

“The time differential.”

“Yes. Every User that wants to see what their program is up to has this tremendous mountain of data that they have to look at, and sort through, and get the key tidbits out of it, and while they’re doing that, five more mountains are being built. A number of Users have known there was a problem for a while, GAM. But it wasn’t until your friend, Adas? Until she spoke to her User that we had a name to go with the problem. And then they couldn’t find me -”

“Why?”

“I’m not fond of technology. It has left me behind somewhat.” In the guarded tone of the User, the Sentry read unspoken secrets tangled up with the truth. The odd, monochrome voice lent itself well to being analyzed, and GAM was too much the program he was not to notice such things. “I use it in my work, yes, but…” Emil spread his hands. “I didn’t even know I was your User until others managed to contact me and check. Some lovely people even explained to me how to do this,” he gestured to the projection of himself.

“The projection?”

“Yes. Aside from actually being there with you, this looks like the only way to bypass the time differential thing. I don’t think it’s very healthy for the User in the long-term -”

GAM drew himself up straight at once. “Then you should not do it. Adas’ User speaks to her in a commline. It’s brief, but if she can manage so can I, and you won’t… What?”

Emil was chuckling. “Just get rid of the helm, GAM. You have his voice and his attitude, and definitely his habit of fussing at me, you might as well.”

The Sentry dipped his head minutely and obeyed. User or not, he knew he was scowling in disapproval.

His User laughed; it petered out into a wistful sigh. “Well, I haven’t had that look leveled at me in a long while.”

“I can always -”

“No, no, it’s fine. I should be glared at, I’m being very reckless in my old age. In any case!” Emil clapped his hands lightly. “I want to help. I just don’t know that I can be of any help. I don’t know your world, GAM. I barely know mine when it comes to technology. I’ve been told you’re dealing with a virus, but this… doesn’t look like a virus to me. It looks alive. Insane, but alive.”

“It is. It’s also not just a virus.” GAM thought about it. “How would a User deal with a virus?”

“Um, well, many ways, depending on the virus and how ornery it was. But most of them need the virus to be still. Yours is running around nearly more than you are.”

“Most of them.”

“What?”

“You said most of them, not all of them.”

Emil gave him a very dry look. “I suppose the people in charge could erase everything in the Grid just to get rid of it.”

“Ah.” The Sentry sighed inside his helm; apparently ‘contain and raze’ was a true-and-tried tactic no matter who you were.

“Everyone’s calling it a virus. Are you saying it isn’t?

“It’s not just a virus,” GAM explained carefully, watching the User closely to make sure his explanation didn’t lose him at some point. “It’s an amalgam. Bits and pieces of dead programs and a User’s mind. The connection between the two was imperfect and it created a virus. Now it’s all three.”

Emil blinked at him and GAM got the feeling the explanation as a whole had gone right over his User’s head. “Is that… Is that normal?”

“No. Viruses aren’t normal to begin with, and this is…” The Sentry paused. Emil didn’t rush him. “I don’t want to give you inaccurate information. I don’t like giving anyone inaccurate information. But we know very little about viruses in general, and we’ve learned even less about this one. Everything we know about it, it’s all a theory. I’ve also never fought a virus,” he admitted. “The last known infection happened in Ilo, long before Halcyon was founded.”

“For whatever might be worth, GAM, and even if it’s… well, I suppose a little bit of a miserable thing to say, you’re probably right about all of it.”

“How would you know? Why would you say that I’m right?”

“Ah, we’re back at the terrible twos stage, I see.” Emil sighed in amused resignation. “Bear with me, please. What do you know about yourself?”

“I am a security program, a firewall. I protect Halcyon’s citizens.”

“That’s absolutely accurate. When Liam created you, he named you a Gateway Access Monitor, and it was your job to protect some very important identity information for him and his… friends. You never failed in your duties, but he wanted more. He wanted you to be able to look at the behavior of your Users and anticipate problems. Head them off at the pass as it were. In order to do that, he had to teach you to look at the bigger picture, to see cause and effect on a scale far beyond that of just your job. So… he came to me, and asked me to teach him about something we Users call ‘predictive models’.” Emil whuffled a little sound of sorrowful amusement. “I think it’s the only time he was ever interested in what his old man did for a living.”

GAM listened as closely as he could, and was astonished to find that he understood most everything his User was telling him. “My predictive protocols. You made them.”

“No, god no.” Emil laughed. “I can barely program my DVR! No. I taught him how a predictive model works in economics. He took what I taught him, turned around and taught it to you. And every User out here tells me that no one has ever created anything that comes close to what he made of you. Out here, where there are people who know, who understand that sort of thing, they’re calling you a masterpiece. What Liam gave you is unique. My son was brilliant that way.”

GAM’s expression hardened. “I don’t need admiration, I need help!”

Emil hid a laugh behind a cough, and not all that well. “Oh, you’re absolutely Liam’s creature.” He clapped his hands. “Yes, you want help, and we want to give it. So. For starters, Liam was working on an update for you when…” He faltered visibly, then rallied with a brief struggle. “I don’t know if it’s finished, and I’m not sure if it’s safe to give you an unfinished update.”

GAM paused, and some part of him realized he was, more or less, stunned. Not from a blow or a data attack, but the feeling was the same. His emotions kept swinging back and forth so sharply with every drop of information his User gave him that he couldn’t find his balance. He almost wished he’d not removed his armor or his helm; behind them he could have pretended that none of it touched him. Without them, he couldn’t even lie to himself.

Now he was going from the formless fear that his original User had abandoned him, to finding out he’d been derezzed, and then being told he had cared. He’d cared enough to create an update for him. “Do you know what it does?” He was relieved to find his voice sounded calm, if nothing else.

Emil, unsurprisingly, shrugged.“Then best not to try and sort it out in the middle of all this. If it comes to it, it can be a weapon of last resort.”

“Alright,” Emil agreed equably. “But in the meantime, what can I do, what can everyone do? What can you tell me, tell them, tell everyone?”

“Everything,” the Sentry replied at once. “Ayin taught us that every hex makes the wall stronger only if it knows what the hexes around it are doing, so it can fill in the gaps.”

“I think I like your Ayin.” Emil laced his hands before him. “I’m listening.”

Chapter Text

They found GAM standing in the dark, staring out the window at the ever-rushing clouds. Somewhere far in the distance the traveling lights of a solar sailer were errant little wisps, like cinders rising from an energy overflow vent. Its data-line winked in and out of sight, and there was no other light but their distant glow and the faint gleam of the Om figurines on the shelves.

“GAM?”

Adas led the way in, Vidi less than a step behind her, MAR behind them both. Gungnir let them all troop in quietly before he followed, closing and locking the door.

Both the other programs came to stand on either side of the Sentry. “Were they nice?” Vidi asked at last in the quiet.

GAM tipped his helm until she could see her pale reflection on it. “He was,” he said simply.

The three of them stared at the dark in silence for a long time before the Sentry spoke again. “His name is Emil. He’s not my original User. His son, his… family, he was. He left the double-sided audio ID behind in case something happened to him. And something did.”

“I’m sorry,” Adas said quietly. Vidi covered her mouth in shock.

The black faceplate told them nothing. “Emil is not familiar with the Grid, or with programs. Or with viruses. He is also… frail.”

“But he’s a User,” Vidi protested.

“Gods can die,” GAM countered mildly. “Apparently, it’s not even hard.” He turned and crossed his arms. “Since when does Om’s SysAdmin pull rank on Pevir’s?”

“Since the aftermath of the last war between Pevir and Halcyon,” Gungnir picked up a little figurine and tossed it lightly from hand to hand. “You know, when we had that mess of the insurrection against WOPR. You wouldn’t know, you didn’t stay here for most of it, after all.”

“I was your prisoner -”

“You were my friend!” Gungnir snapped. “At least I thought you were. He was there to cover my back after you vanished. Went back home, I suppose.” When GAM didn’t answer, Gungnir smiled wryly. “I don’t hold it against you. I did. For decacycles, I did. But you’ve got Halcyon written in your voxels, GAM. I just… I figured you’d started that fight, you’d stay to see it through.”

“I didn’t -”

“You bloody well did,” the SysAdmin clipped out. “Don’t even -” He drew a deep breath. “You left. We stalemated. He offered help, and I took him up on it.” He smiled wryly, lost in memory. “And after we won, when we started sorting the ranks he wiped the floor with me. With everyone, actually, but mostly me. He was the one opponent I couldn’t beat. No one could.” He pointed at MAR. “I’d love to see a fight between you two, honestly.”

“I’d be afraid to beat him,” MAR was perfectly candid. “Or you. I’ve no interest in running a city. I’m quite suspicious that one of you would let me win just to be rid of the job.”

Gungnir let out a sharp bark of laughter. “You’re smarter now than he was back then.”

“He let you win,” Adas realized.

“It was that or he was stuck as SysAdmin of Pevir. He just… wanted to make sure I was up to it.” Gungnir grinned, rubbing at his neck as if he could feel old injuries talking. “Ten or fifteen times over.” He faced the black faceplate, his own expression nearly as implacable. “Everyone in Pevir who was around when WOPR fell knows I’ve got second place on the ranks, not first. It makes no difference; no one can challenge him without going through me.”

“That makes no sense,” Adas said. “OM’s been SysAdmin of Om for… Well, for forever!”

“No. OM’s a title, Ilo, not a program. Didn’t you wonder why our communication with him was so good, when it’s usually so bad for conferences and, you know, everything?”

“Is that why everyone’s so adamant that we have to go to Om?” GAM demanded. “For one program’s sake?”

“That one program has fought every virus that has come up on the Grid,” Gungnir shot back. “That program knows more than you ever will about fighting a virus, and that program has yet to lie to us about -!”

GAM charged the SysAdmin. Before anyone there could react, the Sentry had slammed him against a shelf. Batons and chips went crashing to the ground; the Pevirian caught the wrist holding him just off the ground and bared his teeth. “Did I hit a sensitive sector?” Gungnir ground out.

“GAM!” Adas cried out.

MAR slipped close and put a hand on the Sentry’s shoulder. “This might be an unwise course of action,” he suggested tightly.

“WallSec, what are you doing,” Vidi caught GAM’s other arm and tugged on it to no effect whatsoever. “He helped us.”

“That matters very little to him,” Gungnir wheezed at the Gridborn. “Doesn’t it, GAM?”

“GAM.” Adas’ voice was fragile and wounded, “have you lied to us?”

The silence went on forever. Gungnir tipped his head minutely, as if wordlessly challenging the Sentry to answer the question.

“No.”

Gungnir scoffed. GAM’s grip tightened. Abruptly the SysAdmin gathered up his legs and slammed both feet into the Sentry’s chest, throwing him back several steps and ripping himself free. He landed on a crouch and darted forward, driving his shoulder hard into GAM and further staggering him, until the Sentry had to put a hand on the back of a couch to steady himself.

Gungnir’s circuitry flashed briefly. “You don’t know the first thing about this virus, GAM. You’re guessing. You and those predictive protocols of yours.”

“I’m right about the virus,” the Sentry insisted.

“You’re guessing!” Gungnir’s voice was full of barely contained fury. “You guess right most of the time, and it makes it look as if you’re always right unless someone’s been there when you get it wrong! I have, GAM. I’ve been there.”

“This is not like that!”

“No? You got a file on the virus that you’ve been reading from? You want to maybe share it with your squad?”

“Ayin teaches every defensive program in Halcyon everything she knows about viruses -” GAM shot back.

“Who do you think trained your precious Ayin?” Gungnir snarled. “So tell me, tell us, GAM, do you know or do you guess?” He prowled forward, his face a mask of fury. “I lost people out there, GAM. My people. They fell because I trusted you to tell me the truth. Did you? Did we do anything to this thing, hurt it, slow it down, anything? Or were you wrong?”

“I…”

“Were you WRONG?” Gungnir’s shout echoed in the small space.

Vidi was making herself small behind MAR, who’d automatically thrown an arm out to shield the Gridborn.

GAM held himself terribly still for a long, long moment, and then folded down, collapsing in on himself. He fell to a low crouch and wrapped his arms over his head. “I don’t know,” he croaked, the voice through his helm raw and uncertain.

Gungnir glowered at him for a long moment before he shook his head. He forded the distance between them calmly.

A small hand caught his arm. “Leave him alone!” Adas demanded with quiet fierceness.

Gungnir looked at the GO4 and cocked a brow. “I’m angry, Ilo, not blind. But he does this, and he’s not doing it to me again. He talks like the Grid’s handed him the Users’ own truth until you forget he’s guessing. That’s all he’s doing. Guessing better than the rest of us but it’s just guessing.”

“His guessing’s what’s kept us online this long,” Adas countered, then moved to crouch by the Sentry. “GAM?” she called out quietly.

“I’m not lying,” the Sentry breathed out. “I’m not. I just don’t know!”

Gungnir sighed and dropped to a crouch before GAM. “You wanna know what your problem is, Halcyon?” He rapped his knuckles lightly on the black faceplate. “This is.”

“I am a Sentry of Halcyon.”

“You are,” Gungnir agreed. “I’m pretty sure that’s hardwired in at this point. Fucking rock-solid baseline code, that.” His grin was crooked. “You wanna know who taught me that? Who explained that I couldn’t, shouldn’t be mad at you for just… being yourself and following your nature?”

“I haven’t lied. I haven’t!”

Adas threw her arms around GAM, felt him shaking.

“Probably not,” Gungnir agreed readily. “But you’ve never accepted the possibility that you might be wrong, either, have you?” He blew out a breath and straightened up. “You hide behind the uniform, GAM. Behind the faceplate, just like OM hides behind fake static. And you’ve been hiding behind it for so long that you forget you’re not just Halcyon’s WallSec. You’re a program. You’re you.”

He headed for the door. “So don’t try and call me out on something you thought I was keeping from you, if you don’t want me dragging out the secrets you’re keeping from yourself.”

Chapter Text

“That was unkind.”

Gungnir went very still at the words, but he didn’t turn around. “It was necessary.”

“Was it?” MAR asked mildly.

“How long have you known him?

“I’m not sure,” the master of Parnassus admitted, walking up to Pevir’s SysAdmin. “Time does very interesting things when you’re running for your life from a virus. But it’s been long enough to know he would accept destruction rather than see anyone around him harmed.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Gungnir agreed. “As long as you’re from Halcyon.”

“Adas would disagree with you.”

The SysAdmin chuckled low. “You do realize that if everything you’ve told me is right, the lovely little GO4 isn’t a normal program anymore? She’s Ilo’s acting SysAdmin. He’s still following his programming. Looking after his city’s interests. Making good with the neighbors”

“Hm, perhaps.” MAR straightened up and laced his hands behind his back. “But it was very unkind of you to bring this up right after he’d met his User for the first time. Right after everything in his world has been challenged.”

Gungnir was silent. “Yeah,” he admitted at last. “It was. Guess I’m not over it after all.”

They walked in silence for a few moments. “Do you know why we’re going to Om?” MAR asked eventually.

“No,” Gungnir told him easily enough. “The original plan was to reinforce a position at Flow, actually.”

MAR made a face. “I’m not sure that’s any better a plan.”

Gungnir had to laugh. “No, probably not. Can’t imagine handing the virus access to the energy glaciers. We wouldn’t last a picocycle after that. Om was chosen because, if it falls, it gives the virus the least advantage. The terrain’s stable, there’s no outposts. It’s so far from everything that traffic’s minimal.”

“There’s nothing for the virus to feed on,” MAR summed up.

Gungnir nodded, and saw MAR grimace. “Go ahead, spit it out. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”

“It seems a little too convenient for everyone else to put Om on the crosshairs.”

“I made that point. I would’ve pushed that point, but I got rank pulled on me. Needed you at that meeting to make the point with me, he can’t pull rank on you.”

“I was likely busy running for my life at the time,” MAR gestured airily. “But it’s interesting all the same. You’re telling me your friend wants the virus to come to Om.”

“Yep. I have to trust he’s got a plan. I’m sure it’s got something to do with the Black Vault. I just… have a bad history with trusting monitor programs blind, you know?” He grinned humorlessly at MAR.

The master of Parnassus ducked his head. “I can understand that,” he said evenly.

Gungnir’s grin became a little more honest. “But?”

“But it was still unkind.”

“I wish you were Pevirian. I’d love your level of stubborn on my side.”

“See, at this point, every time you say something like that I suspect you’re looking for a SysAdmin replacement,” MAR declared primly, making Gungnir laugh. “And, no. Absolutely not.”

Chapter Text

“Jerk!”

GAM felt a second set of arms wrap around him, but it was a distant, dull sensation. He’d gone down on his knees and he felt as if his code were failing, disintegrating one byte at a time, voxels coming loose and threatening to unmake him where he stood.

“GAM?” Adas’ voice echoed back at him from somewhere distant and unknown.

“Come on, WallSec, don’t just stay there like a lump. Don’t give him the win.” Vidi was a little more real, her wavelength always so sharply defined; he’d never met anyone who knew themselves so well, so truly, like the Gridborn.

They were both trying to tug him up, with about as much effect as they ever had on the solid data slab that was the Sentry. “I haven’t lied to you,” he croaked.

“GAM, open up your helm,” Adas told him. Her voice was mild, but it wasn’t phrased as a request. He obeyed out of ingrained instinct. “Close your eyes.”

He ducked his head and did as he was told. “I haven’t -”

“I know.” She sighed a little. “Every now and again you have to ask the obvious, just so it’s on record. Just close your eyes, and listen.”

“To what?”

“To yourself.”

His head hung lower. “I am so far from home. From myself.”

“You are such a brick sometimes, WallSec,” Vidi told him tartly, and he felt her fingers reach out and catch one of his hands. “Look at your hands.” When he did as he was told, staring at the bright violet circuitry against the deep black, she declared, “Halcyon’s all over you. This is a whole shipful of programs who’ve never met you before, and the moment they see you, they know you. I’m just me, but you are Halcyon.”

He closed his eyes again and merely breathed.

I am a Sentry.

Unbidden, the deeply held awareness that had greeted his first moment of sentience rushed into his conscious mind. He breathed again.

I am the Wall .

His breathing evened out. He was what he was, and perhaps that hadn’t always been enough, but it was all he could be .

I am Halcyon.

“I haven’t lied,” he admitted slowly at last, opening his eyes, “but I’ve been wrong.”

“That’s not a crime,” Adas pointed out.

“No,” he smiled wryly at them, “but Gungnir’s right. It sets a… precedent when I don’t own up to it.”

V idi and Adas crossed a look, and the GO4 nodded. Vidi blew out an exasperated breath. “ Ugh, ok, let’s hear it. I can’t think of a single time you were wrong.”

“When I first met you.”

“When you – what?”

“Back in Halcyon. Sector 42.” He rose to his feet and brought them up with him. “I thought you were a thief.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“She was a thief,” Adas pointed out.

“No, she’s not. Because she wouldn’t have taken a thing. She would’ve copied the blueprints of anything she wanted,” GAM explained, “but she wouldn’t have taken a thing.”

“You don’t know me!” Vidi protested. “I could’ve stuffed my pockets full!”

“What pockets?” he asked mildly.

“I had a bag!”

“Where? Hidden in your hair? Tucked away into your Cosmetic?”

S he made an angry, impatient sound and shoved him half-heartedly. “You are so bad for my rep, WallSec!”

“That’s why I didn’t have you on record. That’s why you can do legal business. You’re not a criminal. You’re not a thief. You never were… and I was wrong.” He offered her his hand. “And I’m sorry I presumed.”

Vidi stared at his hand, then looked up at him. Despite his energy levels being full, despite having gone and come from the Drakkar ’s medbay, he still looked so tired from all they’d survived.

She remembered Sector 42, oh yes. She remembered the shield.

She remembered fleeing Ilo. She remembered being trusted.

She remembered Parnassus.

Vidi bypassed his hand and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly, dragging a small, startled sound out of him. “I don’t care what anyone says, WallSec. Adas’s right, being wrong isn’t a crime, and your friend’s a jerk.”

He had to laugh a little at that, wrapping an arm around her and offering his free hand to Adas.

“I kind of agree,” she pointed out, holding onto his hand and beaming up at him. “For someone who claims that he’s over whatever happened between you two, he’s really angry about… whatever happened between you two.”

“We might have… differing viewpoints on the events,” GAM admitted. “When I left, I thought he’d be glad to get rid of me. To keep a Pevirian matter in Pevirian hands.”

Adas huffed. “I think you keep forgetting programs like you, GAM. That they want you around.”

“I suppose I do. No one ever really wants Security around unless there’s a problem.”

“Really?” Vidi stepped back and waved her arms around. “What would you call all of this going on right now?”

He had to agree.

“Well, it’s nice to know the Users want to help, but that doesn’t help us right now.” Adas drew a deep breath and moved to the communication station. “And I don’t feel like taking Om’s word on the matter. If there are Users on the Grid, and this is their plan, I want to hear it directly from them.”

“I don’t really feel like dealing with Om at all,” GAM admitted. “The city or the SysAdmin.”

“All I’ve heard is that it’s such a boring place,” Vidi declared.

“‘Plain’ doesn’t equate ‘boring’, my dear.” The door opened to admit MAR, who moved over and offered a hand to GAM. “I’m sure much has been said to you. I don’t feel the need to say anything. I have seen you act, and that’s quite enough for me to trust you.”

“I don’t mind being trusted.” The Sentry took the offered hand, glad to find behind it that densely packed, effortlessly self-contained wavelength full of calm. “I mind not being questioned.”

MAR made a face. “I may be a little useless on that regard. I hardly know anything about life outside Parnassus, I wouldn’t know what to question at all and so I question nothing.” He gestured broadly at the other two programs. “Then again, I think you’ve always been covered.”

“Om is boring.” Vidi hopped up to sit on the console next to the communication station. “Nobody owns anything.”

Adas gave her such a look. “Do you think they live among the rocks, like gridbugs?”

“Don’t they?”

The GO4’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment.

“Should we be taking over the SysAdmin’s quarters like this?” MAR asked delicately.

“I don’t like him right now,” Adas shot back. “He’s welcome to come over and remove me himself.” She blew out a short, sharp breath. “I mean, he probably will, it’s not like it’ll be hard. It’s just not happening right now. “GAM, Vidi, see if you can find quarters of some kind we can take over. It’s gotta have an ETC, a commconsole, and hopefully an uplink station.”

Vidi leapt off the console and onto GAM’s back. He didn’t even stagger, but he did sigh long-sufferingly. “Do I need to bring her with me?”

“Hey!”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“So she won’t be in here bugging me,” Adas explained.

“Hey!” The Gridborn tried to scramble off her Sentry perch, but GAM shifted an arm and effectively pinned her over one shoulder. She hung limply there growling at them all.

“I’ll help if you -” The Master of Parnassus offered.

“No, MAR, you’re staying with me.”

“I’m sure you have a reason for that too?” The Master of Parnassus watched the other two programs head off as he moved to stand by Adas’ side.

“Yes. No matter what’s happened, you’re technically SysAdmin of Parnassus, and I’m acting SysAdmin of Ilo.” Her expression became icily angry. “Let’s see OM pull rank on both of us.”

Chapter Text

“Jerk!”

GAM felt a second set of arms wrap around him, but it was a distant, dull sensation. He’d gone down on his knees and he felt as if his code were failing, disintegrating one byte at a time, voxels coming loose and threatening to unmake him where he stood.

“GAM?” Adas’ voice echoed back at him from somewhere distant and unknown.

“Come on, WallSec, don’t just stay there like a lump. Don’t give him the win.” Vidi was a little more real, her wavelength always so sharply defined; he’d never met anyone who knew themselves so well, so truly, like the Gridborn.

They were both trying to tug him up, with about as much effect as they ever had on the solid data slab that was the Sentry. “I haven’t lied to you,” he croaked.

“GAM, open up your helm,” Adas told him. Her voice was mild, but it wasn’t phrased as a request. He obeyed out of ingrained instinct. “Close your eyes.”

He ducked his head and did as he was told. “I haven’t -”

“I know.” She sighed a little. “Every now and again you have to ask the obvious, just so it’s on record. Just close your eyes, and listen.”

“To what?”

“To yourself.”

His head hung lower. “I am so far from home. From myself.”

“You are such a brick sometimes, WallSec,” Vidi told him tartly, and he felt her fingers reach out and catch one of his hands. “Look at your hands.” When he did as he was told, staring at the bright violet circuitry against the deep black, she declared, “Halcyon’s all over you. This is a whole shipful of programs who’ve never met you before, and the moment they see you, they know you. I’m just me, but you are Halcyon.”

He closed his eyes again and merely breathed.

I am a Sentry.

Unbidden, the deeply held awareness that had greeted his first moment of sentience rushed into his conscious mind. He breathed again.

I am the Wall .

His breathing evened out. He was what he was, and perhaps that hadn’t always been enough, but it was all he could be .

I am Halcyon.

“I haven’t lied,” he admitted slowly at last, opening his eyes, “but I’ve been wrong.”

“That’s not a crime,” Adas pointed out.

“No,” he smiled wryly at them, “but Gungnir’s right. It sets a… precedent when I don’t own up to it.”

V idi and Adas crossed a look, and the GO4 nodded. Vidi blew out an exasperated breath. “ Ugh, ok, let’s hear it. I can’t think of a single time you were wrong.”

“When I first met you.”

“When you – what?”

“Back in Halcyon. Sector 42.” He rose to his feet and brought them up with him. “I thought you were a thief.”

“Oh, yeah.”

“She was a thief,” Adas pointed out.

“No, she’s not. Because she wouldn’t have taken a thing. She would’ve copied the blueprints of anything she wanted,” GAM explained, “but she wouldn’t have taken a thing.”

“You don’t know me!” Vidi protested. “I could’ve stuffed my pockets full!”

“What pockets?” he asked mildly.

“I had a bag!”

“Where? Hidden in your hair? Tucked away into your Cosmetic?”

S he made an angry, impatient sound and shoved him half-heartedly. “You are so bad for my rep, WallSec!”

“That’s why I didn’t have you on record. That’s why you can do legal business. You’re not a criminal. You’re not a thief. You never were… and I was wrong.” He offered her his hand. “And I’m sorry I presumed.”

Vidi stared at his hand, then looked up at him. Despite his energy levels being full, despite having gone and come from the Drakkar ’s medbay, he still looked so tired from all they’d survived.

She remembered Sector 42, oh yes. She remembered the shield.

She remembered fleeing Ilo. She remembered being trusted.

She remembered Parnassus.

Vidi bypassed his hand and threw her arms around him, hugging him tightly, dragging a small, startled sound out of him. “I don’t care what anyone says, WallSec. Adas’s right, being wrong isn’t a crime, and your friend’s a jerk.”

He had to laugh a little at that, wrapping an arm around her and offering his free hand to Adas.

“I kind of agree,” she pointed out, holding onto his hand and beaming up at him. “For someone who claims that he’s over whatever happened between you two, he’s really angry about… whatever happened between you two.”

“We might have… differing viewpoints on the events,” GAM admitted. “When I left, I thought he’d be glad to get rid of me. To keep a Pevirian matter in Pevirian hands.”

Adas huffed. “I think you keep forgetting programs like you, GAM. That they want you around.”

“I suppose I do. No one ever really wants Security around unless there’s a problem.”

“Really?” Vidi stepped back and waved her arms around. “What would you call all of this going on right now?”

He had to agree.

“Well, it’s nice to know the Users want to help, but that doesn’t help us right now.” Adas drew a deep breath and moved to the communication station. “And I don’t feel like taking Om’s word on the matter. If there are Users on the Grid, and this is their plan, I want to hear it directly from them.”

“I don’t really feel like dealing with Om at all,” GAM admitted. “The city or the SysAdmin.”

“All I’ve heard is that it’s such a boring place,” Vidi declared.

“‘Plain’ doesn’t equate ‘boring’, my dear.” The door opened to admit MAR, who moved over and offered a hand to GAM. “I’m sure much has been said to you. I don’t feel the need to say anything. I have seen you act, and that’s quite enough for me to trust you.”

“I don’t mind being trusted.” The Sentry took the offered hand, glad to find behind it that densely packed, effortlessly self-contained wavelength full of calm. “I mind not being questioned.”

MAR made a face. “I may be a little useless on that regard. I hardly know anything about life outside Parnassus, I wouldn’t know what to question at all and so I question nothing.” He gestured broadly at the other two programs. “Then again, I think you’ve always been covered.”

“Om is boring.” Vidi hopped up to sit on the console next to the communication station. “Nobody owns anything.”

Adas gave her such a look. “Do you think they live among the rocks, like gridbugs?”

“Don’t they?”

The GO4’s mouth worked soundlessly for a moment.

“Should we be taking over the SysAdmin’s quarters like this?” MAR asked delicately.

“I don’t like him right now,” Adas shot back. “He’s welcome to come over and remove me himself.” She blew out a short, sharp breath. “I mean, he probably will, it’s not like it’ll be hard. It’s just not happening right now. “GAM, Vidi, see if you can find quarters of some kind we can take over. It’s gotta have an ETC, a commconsole, and hopefully an uplink station.”

Vidi leapt off the console and onto GAM’s back. He didn’t even stagger, but he did sigh long-sufferingly. “Do I need to bring her with me?”

“Hey!”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“So she won’t be in here bugging me,” Adas explained.

“Hey!” The Gridborn tried to scramble off her Sentry perch, but GAM shifted an arm and effectively pinned her over one shoulder. She hung limply there growling at them all.

“I’ll help if you -” The Master of Parnassus offered.

“No, MAR, you’re staying with me.”

“I’m sure you have a reason for that too?” The Master of Parnassus watched the other two programs head off as he moved to stand by Adas’ side.

“Yes. No matter what’s happened, you’re technically SysAdmin of Parnassus, and I’m acting SysAdmin of Ilo.” Her expression became icily angry. “Let’s see OM pull rank on both of us.”

Chapter Text

The Drakkar managed its repairs as it traveled, flying far above the Sea of Simulation, quicker and quicker as it became safer for the immense carrier to drop below the cloud layer and accelerate to its full speed.

Vidi, far more interested in snooping than her companion, had found them what looked to be a small conference room. It had most of what Adas wanted, barring the ETC, but there were two nearly next to the door, and she’d called it good. A broad bank of windows looked out onto the Grid beyond them.

MAR had laid out his coat on the ground and Vidi was asleep on it. GAM had vanished on another errand for Adas, who was working the communication console, her faceplate flashing with scrolling data.

The Master of Parnassus was staring out the windows. For a long time he’d admired the distant Energy Glaciers, so bright that they were visible even across the immense distance, their light reaching up to make the upper edge of the Grid gleam. At the moment he was watching Ark City pass by, a sprawl of tiny, distant twinkling lights occasionally hidden by the waves, or by the great monoliths rising from the Sea.

MAR wasn’t really seeing any of it. He was missing his home.

Ark City, he felt, was not a bad place when it came to art, just… different. He’d never been to it, of course. He’d been uploaded in Om and traveled directly to Parnassus. He’d never left it again after that.

It had never occurred to him that his life could be so radically different from that of all the other programs in the Grid. That he, alone in Parnassus, had had more company, more interaction with his User than the rest of the Grid combined. That he was the one program who’d never truly been alone.

He felt as if he’d taken advantage of a treasure no one else could reach.

But mostly, he simply missed his home, the trees, the rising smoke of the censors and braziers. He missed going from room to room, cataloging, sorting, curating. Learning. Oh, he missed the learning most of all. The music he was carrying in his memory was barely a voxel compared to the vast libraries lost to the virus.

How had this happened? When Adas and OM had paused for breath after snarling at one another, he’d asked the question, and it was the one time Om’s SysAdmin had seemed at a loss for words. MAR didn’t know programs; he’d hardly ever interacted with any for long, his Bits and Navis handled such things. But it had occurred to him at that point that OM himself had not thought to ask that question from the Users his city was currently hosting.

MAR rather suspected that no one in the Grid was in the habit of asking Users anything. Except, perhaps, himself, who’d never been afraid to ask Robert anything.

He’d tried to contact his User, but had received the automated message Robert usually left behind to let him know he was not capable of answering immediately. He sighed. At home he would have turned to his libraries, researched, read, listened, watched, drawn some conclusions to help him decide on his next actions. Guessed, if nothing else, but at least it would have been an educated guess! He felt as if he were missing three limbs.

“Are you alright?”

He turned and smiled a little at Adas. “I’m… homesick,” he admitted quietly. “I feel like a Stray, almost.”

“I’m sorry,” she told him, her expression full of empathy. “For whatever’s worth, if I’d known this was going to happen, I’d have never -”

“Oh, nonsense.” He took her hand and patted it lightly before draping it over his arm. “Where else could you have gone, carried the Sentry all the way to Halcyon? He’d have fallen on you and left you quite flat long before you got there.”

She couldn’t help but laugh a little, and they stared as the distant lights of Ark receded and vanished into the dark. “How much of your collection is in Ark?”

“Bits and pieces,” he admitted readily. “Anything I felt would be appreciated. I love art, all art, but you talk to Glim enough times and you start getting a feeling for what’s going into long-term memory and what’s getting actually put on the broadcast channels or the uplink libraries.”

She nodded, and they each focused on their own thoughts for another long moment. “That was a good question.”

He sighed. “I should have asked it sooner. Someone should. But we’ve been so busy running for our lives…”

“What question?” The door opened soundlessly to admit GAM, the Sentry carrying a box under one arm.

“How did this happen?” MAR replied.

“The virus?”

“Yes, but I don’t mean how it came to be created. Even OM can’t dispute that you’re likely quite right on the process itself. What I want is the reason,” MAR explained.

“The reason?” GAM put the box down on the central table.

“Yes. Why would a User try to strong-arm their way in? Why keep on doing it, even after they saw the destruction, the chaos it caused?” MAR turned his back to the window and frowned minutely. “Why not use the Om Spire? How much do the Users actually know, compared to Robert?”

GAM went still, staring down at the box he’d set down. “Those are really good questions.”

“And if the virus hadn’t been trying to derezz us since it appeared, we probably could have answered them,” Adas closed her faceplate and rubbed at her face.

Gam opened the box, pulled out a small bottle, and brought it to her. She twisted the top, activating the heating protocol embedded in it, and sipped at the warm energy. “That was then, this is now. Did you ask OM?

“He had no answer. He simply assured us he would ask the Users.”

“And your own User?”

“Robert isn’t always available to speak to me. Normally these silences last two, three millicycles,” MAR explained. “Sometimes more, but given the circumstances I doubt he’ll stay away so long.”

The black helm turned to glance at Adas. “I haven’t heard from her since she told us to contact Om while you were fighting the virus,” she explained, and shrugged.

“How did she know to tell you that?” GAM immediately asked.

Adas mouth opened, then closed. “That’s another good question. Everything was happening so fast I didn’t even think to ask, and then the connection dropped again.”

GAM’s head dropped minutely. When he looked up again, it was at the Master of Parnassus. “How many Users know that the Spires are fake?”

MAR looked surprised. “I… Why wouldn’t they know?”

“Because if they don’t know, it makes sense that whatever User was trying to break through would try any Spire at all. But if they do know, then why bother trying for Spires that they knew were fake?” Just as quickly, he turned once again so that Adas could see her reflection on his helm. “Was that a User, speaking to the virus?”

She nodded wordlessly, and for a moment they were all silent, coping in their own way with the new reality of their world.

“There’s a User in there. And it’s still… They’re still aware.” GAM said at last. “And some part of the virus does not want them to be.”

Adas covered her mouth, horrified beyond words. MAR sighed. “Well.”

GAM shook his head. “I don’t know how we can separate them. I don’t know if we can separate them. But I do know that if it comes to it, I have made my peace with derezzing a User.”

Both the other two programs winced. “Surely it won’t come to that,” MAR protested wanly.

“Won’t it?” The Sentry lifted a hand. “I’m not telling you that you have to stand by me. It took me hours to twist myself into a shape that accepts it might need to be done. I still catch myself trying to talk myself out of it if I drop my guard. Thinking of the kind of monster I have to be to even consider the possibility. I’m telling you we need to figure out how to split them apart before it comes to it, because when it does I won’t hesitate.” He dropped his hand. “I’m telling you you have to find a way to make me be wrong.”

Chapter Text

Om’s architecture integrated its buildings into the terrain of the Spire itself. Curving alongside the slopes, the pale blue and vivid green lights defined structures that hugged the Spire, rather than simply rise vertically from it. There were no streets, merely stairwells, in some cases so broad that it was hard to see they were such a thing to begin with. Data-lines flickered here and there, like the spokes of a wheel. Small gliders could be attached to them, tiny descendants of solar sailers, but most programs in Om preferred to walk. The sky was always overcast, always shattered by lightning, fractals of energy rushing this way and that. Rain came sometimes; occasionally it fell as snow, the ultimate and most beautiful expression of micro-polygonal symmetry in the Grid.

Kane watched a bit of rain pass by, striking the window of the palatial quarters he’d been given. Far below, he could see little circles of light bloom into life, like flowers blooming in an alley: umbrellas.

He felt stretched thin, lost. For years, since activating the seed Sam Flynn had given them, he’d believed that the Grid was a controlled reality, in need of both caretaking and guidance. The first meeting with the programs OM called SysAdmins had shattered not just that belief, but any thought he might be in control at all.

The laser had manifested them into a temple. It worshiped no god, it served no religion. It was a place of meditation, contemplation, and self-awareness. If Om could be said to believe in any sort of higher power, it was the power of self. It was also, Kane had marked in a distant, shell-shocked sort of way, built like a fortress.

Their guide had been waiting for them there, a tall, powerfully built program in white with pale blue circuitry, his serious expression belied by the way his eyes had brightened up to see Kane’s companion. “Sam Flynn,” he’d greeted. “Your uncle talks about you all the time.”

Sam had visibly started at the sight of the program, but he’d taken the offered hand all the same. “Jesus, you look just like him.”

“I should hope so,” the program had replied cheerfully before turning to Kane. The young man couldn’t remember much about the introduction, or what had been said. Sam had done the bulk of the talking.

He remembered the program’s handshake had been warm and strong, and had tingled faintly.

He knew there had been others waiting outside the temple; they’d moved through a cloud of astonished murmurs.

Halfway through the trip to… who knew where, their guide had received a call, and suddenly they’d been flying up along the line, going so fast everything had become a blur. There had been a tower, a room full of consoles and screens, and how surreal was it, to watch programs using programs. Kane hadn’t even been able to comprehend anything beyond the utter outlandishness of that before Sam had caught his shoulders and shook him sharply. “Gibbs! If you ever believed you can save your sister, now’s the time to prove it!”

And he’d called out for her, cried out for Molly, screamed into the void and the storm.

He still didn’t know if she’d heard him. All the beauty and the impossible, incredibly reality of what their Grid had become, and it still felt distant and absent in the face of not knowing.

“I’m here, Moll,” he murmured to the window. He laid his fingertips against it, felt the coolness, the solidity of the glass. “Where are you?”

“Still rocking the other world’s duds, I see.”

Kane turned. Flynn had just walked in, side by side with their host . They were in a vast hexagonal chamber with ornaments that seemed to be made entirely of light, filled with comfortable chairs, low tables, books and crystals and tablets everywhere. The light filling the space came from no recognizable source, and there were no shadows.

Sam Flynn looked as if he belonged as much as OM. T he Grid had done its best to adapt the clothing they’d been wearing when they’d been uploaded, but apparently the first thing Flynn had done was go native. He was wearing the black, tight-fitting basic outfit of a program, with mid-gen circuit lines in pure white. There was even a disk at his back.

Sam caught the look Kane was giving him. “Trust me, you’re gonna want one of th e se.” He stabbed a thumb in the direction of the disk and moved to stand next to him. “So, is it what you expected?”

“It’s… nothing like I thought it would be,” Kane admitted, glancing at the one actual program with them. “It’s… wild. It’s not, it’s not chaos, but it’s not…”

“Yours?” Sam grinned wryly. “Anything that touches the Grid changes it, even if you don’t want it to. You want control, you keep it a closed system. And even that’s not a guarantee.”

K ane digested that in silence. “Did she hear me? Was she there?”

“We don’t know,” OM admitted. “The Spirestorm makes it very difficult for Om to contact anyone beyond the city itself. Usually they call us, not the other way around.”

“You called the warship, didn’t you? The one my – the one Moll was attacking?”

“No. We got the news that the Drakkar was under attack because any sighting of the virus is broadcast to the entire Grid. I asked every program in Om to speak to their Users and ask the warship to contact us immediately, just in case you could do something about the attack.” He leveled a piercing, questioning look on Kane.

The young man hung his head.

“It’s his sister,” Flynn said evenly.

OM took this in thoughtfully. “Then I’ve got bad news. It’s not just his sister.”

“What?” Sam frowned in confusion.

“Fuck,” Kane dug the heels of his hands against his eyes. “It happened, didn’t it. She’s degenerating into this… virus thing.”

“No,” OM corrected him. “The virus was there from the beginning.” When they both stared at him in confusion and horror, he shifted minutely so he could face them both. “Your sister,” he waited for Kane to confirm with a wan little nod, “tried to upload herself in a different fashion than you two, I take it?”

“Just her mind.” Kane gestured vaguely. “It’s something we wanted for everyone, not just people with the tech. The tech is expensive, it’s delicate, and it takes a lot of energy. But if you just put the User’s mind through, it’s not as hard on the system, it doesn’t take as much energy.”

“Wasn’t that enough for her?”

“No, because the User’s not really here. It’s like those sculptures,” Kane pointed to the artwork everywhere. “It’s just light and shape, and you can talk, but you’re not really here. She wanted her mind here .”

“With what body?” OM asked at once. Sam snorted amusement. “A question that’s come up before, I take it,” the program guessed.

“The Spires are made for software. Programs. You. She was trying to do something they don’t support, shaping a body here to support the mind there.”

“She took down three cities trying.”

“Three cit- three cities ?”

“Well, nearly. Halcyon’s still standing, barely, but the Island and Ilo are gone.”

“There are cities​?!”

OM stared at Kane for a moment. Then he moved to a shelf, picked up a crystal and set it down on a table. A huge map sprung to life between the three of them, and the program gestured lightly. “The Grid. And all ten of its cities.”

“TEN?!” Kane’s voice broke into a higher octave.

OM looked between the Grid’s creator and the User desperately trying not to laugh. “I can’t figure out if you expected more, or less.”

“I don’t know,” Kane croaked numbly.

OM shrugged, unfazed. “Let me start from the beginning, then.”

Chapter Text

The Drakkar left behind the Sea of Simulation and passed over the rough terrain that was the Outlands of Om, making a beeline for the distant, storm-outlined Spire of the oldest city in the Grid.

The little repeating tone began to play on Adas’ screen when they were, according to Gungnir’s latest broadcast, a microcycle away from the city. She straightened up at once, abandoning all the remote work she’d been doing, which mostly had to do with the safety and comfort of the Ilo refugees back at Halcyon. She was about to answer when she saw GAM draw up sharply. Off to the side, where MAR and Vidi were intently examining something on the former’s disk, the Master of Parnassus suddenly looked up in mild confusion. “Your Users?”

“Yes,” GAM replied. “And yours?”

“I suppose, but Robert hardly ever communicates in pure text.”

“It can’t be,” Vidi said. “I got a message too.”

They stared at one another in confusion, and opened the commline, only to receive an immediate redirect.

“Nuh-uh!” Vidi exclaimed.

“I second that,” MAR declared, sounding even more dubious.

“It’s attached to Lily’s frequency, though.”

“And Emil’s. Interesting. I probably have the more solid personal protections of us all, yes?” GAM got nods from everyone, and accepted the redirect, going silent.

“WallSec, don’t make us nervous,” Vidi snapped at him.

“I am… not sure what I’m looking at,” he admitted after a long moment.

“Pure visual data?” When he nodded, Adas accepted the redirect. It took her less than a picocycle to realize what she was looking at. “Oh!”

In a moment she had set up a connection between the conference table and the feed, and screens began to pop up, six, ten, twelve, twenty. The table was full of rolling text, in some places scrolling along at a swift gallop, in others taking its time. “It’s the Users,” she breathed out. “It’s the Users’ communication lines."

GAM took three steps to the communication console. “WallSec for Pevir SysAdmin.”

Regardless of what had gone down between them, Gungnir replied quite promptly. “Go for SysAdmin.”

“Accept the redirect.”

“Was the thing sent Grid-wide?” Gungnir mused on the line. “Hold on – oh, what in the name of the Users!”

“That’d be about right,” GAM replied dryly, then left the console to stare at the table.

“Is this all of them?” MAR asked no one in particular.

“No. There’s hundreds of them,” Adas’ faceplate was gleaming with facts and statistics and graphs, “but there’s tens of thousands of programs on the Grid. Even allowing for Users that… no longer exist,” she glanced quickly at GAM, “this can’t be their entire population.” She spread her hands on the table. “It’s us. They’re talking about us.”

“They’re talking about the virus,” MAR pointed to one of the screens, and Adas brought it to the center of the table. “Oh, it’s the time differential kicking in, look at it. For them, the fight on the Drakkar ended just a little while ago.”

“It’s ideas,” Vidi’s hair was looking in every direction, but she seemed to have no problem absorbing the communications her dreadlocks were picking up. “It’s their thoughts, or what they’re guessing at, it’s everything. It’s like… It’s like a Souk of ideas.”

“This helps,” GAM murmured. “This helps immensely. I can’t even begin to fathom how much… There’s no delay here beyond the time differential, if they find something out and put it here, on any of these communication channels, we’ll know right away.”

“Adas, that’s an Ilo commcon,” Vidi pointed.

“What?!” Adas stalked over and found one of the smaller screens seemed to be entirely composed of the Users looking to the Ilo refugees back in Halcyon. Suddenly the status reports she was waiting on were moot – each User was reporting on their own program and those around them: what they were doing, what they were saying.

“They’re exceptionally organized,” MAR remarked. “Other than idle chat, they’re all being very careful about details.”

GAM lowered his head. In the privacy of his helm, he murmured, “Thank you, Emil.” He looked at Vidi. “Is there one for every city?”

“Not for every city, it’s like… places or groups inside the cities? That’s the Drakkar,” she pointed, then pointed again. “And I think that’s some sort of engineering group in Flow -”

“This one’s all Users complaining about the shutdown of the Souk,” MAR identified another screen.

“Ugh. Get over it.” Vidi rolled her eyes. “Not even if beans were real.”

The door suddenly slid open with a clear musical tone, and Gungnir charged in, Fortis close behind him. “Are you seeing this?” He noticed that Adas and Vidi were glaring at him. “Get it out of your systems now, I want everyone’s focus on this. Let’s hear it.”

“For the sake of future diplomatic relationships,” Adas replied primly, “let’s not. Vidi, where are any communications pertaining the Drakkar or Om?” As she pointed them out, the GO4 brought them to the center of the table.

They stared at the communications, and Gungnir couldn’t help but shake his head. “I might as well be in Om. This is rich, this is priceless. This is as good as pure energy.” He looked at Fortis. “I want someone in every ship’s control center monitoring these feeds. Several someones, if we can match program to User. If I can’t speak to my fleet through Om’s storm they certainly can, time differential or not.”

“Couldn’t you just fly over the storm to avoid the interference?” MAR asked.

Gungnir shook his head. “Spire won’t let you. It takes offense at anything going up nearly as much as it does to something coming straight at it.”

“Well, I know how you can fix that,” Vidi shrugged.

Everyone gave her a curious look. “What? I’m from Halcyon.”

Gungnir lifted a hand. “Hold that thought. Did this broadcast to the entire Grid?”

Thin lines of crimson energy passed over Fortis’ surface. “No one in Pevir is acknowledging a redirect.”

“There’s a virus loose,” GAM pointed out. “It doesn’t seem unlikely that some random, unknown redirect would make a program nervous.”

“Fair,” Gungnir admitted. “Confirm with Pip-Pip, Fort. Put my personal tags on it, tell her to do the same, and send the confirmation to everyone and anyone the Drakkar and Pevir can reach.” He turned back to Vidi. “Alright, go.”

Chapter Text

The Drakkar docked next to Om’s weather monitoring tower, the highest structure in that ancient city, marking the upper limit of the Spire’s tolerance. Lightning slid over the black and crimson hull, crackling along, unable to touch the carrier and vanishing back into the black clouds. Beneath and all around it stood the massed fleets of the Grid in all their shapes and colors, from immense, heavy Flowian energy barges to three single, elegant Arkite sailers. And there were Pevirian carriers and warships everywhere, forming a bristling line of defense between Om and the distant shores of the Sea of Simulation. The terrain around the city was dotted with the lights of further defenses.

Gungnir stalked down the Drakkar’s ramp, flanked by MAR and Adas, GAM directly behind him. Adas was carrying an umbrella, and MAR had a very elegant raincoat on, but neither Pevir’s SysAdmin nor the Sentry seemed to care about the spitting rain.

OM was alone, waiting for them in the rain. He cocked a brow minutely at the sight of them, and smiled faintly. “I feel vaguely outnumbered.”

“You should,” Gungnir replied evenly. “Is everyone ready?”

OM stepped aside and gestured them on, leading them inside. “As ready as we can be.”

“And the Users?”

“Would you like to meet them?”

“If I’m gonna pick a fight with your friends, I’d rather do it in front of an audience.”

“Showmanship?” OM teased dryly.

“Witnesses,” Gungnir countered sternly.

OM laughed as they all walked in.

Kane and Sam were standing off to one side of the large hexagonal room. Rain pattered on the window at their backs, and they had a good look at the many projections that a number of programs were nursing to life amidst bouts of storm-caused static. Sam was leaning back, arms crossed, the white of his circuitry stark against his black outfit. Kane had surrendered to the inevitable and wore a matching outfit, but his had the delicate, almost filigree-like white circuitry of a last-gen program. He still looked like he was trying to catch up with all the information being piled up on him – which he was.

He did have at least two things that could be set to rest easily, and he decided to jump on them while they waited for the meeting of all the city leaders to begin. “You knew.”

“Me? Nah.” Flynn, who’d been watching with intense curiosity, looked vaguely amused. “Why didn’t you?” He lifted a finger to point at the world in general. “This is your world, your Grid.”

Kane rubbed at his face. “Moll’s the programmer. Moll and Rob. She looked, she knew the code, she probably knows all of what’s going on. Other than the boards, the chats, other than making sure everything was running right… I’m hardware. I’m an engineer.”

“So this, the weather, that’s on you.”

“No. There’s no reason for the Upload Spiral to reject proximity, it’s not like it can be activated from this side. There are other safeguards, but… I have no idea what’s going on, man.”

Sam could only laugh quietly at the wanly resigned tone of the young man. “You really thought I was warning you about the people, didn’t you.”Kane just sighed. “Who’s he look like?”

“Hm?”

“OM. You said he looks exactly like someone else.”

“My uncle.”

Kane blinked at him, then stared at OM. “But…”

“I asked. OM’s a title, not his name.” He smiled a little. “Told you he’d been here from the beginning.”

“Right.” OM stepped forward, the new arrivals moving to where they were directed. “Is everyone here?” He waited for several nods from his techs. “Does anyone have eyes on the virus?”

Kane listened restlessly as the various programs spoke of cities, terrains, of wonders that under any other circumstance he would’ve loved to see, if it weren’t because everyone around him seemed to be discussing how best to kill his sister. His hands had gone to fists and he nearly jumped out of his skin when Sam bumped him lightly, chin redirecting his attention.

Kane turned, and found himself staring at a black, impenetrable faceplate. There was a tank of a man, er, program in black with sparse violet circuitry standing between two of the speakers, a short, curvy woman in white and indigo, and a lean, elegant man dressed like something out of a trashy romance novel, colors shimmering through his clothin- “Crap, MAR!”

The meeting came to an abrupt halt, and every head turned to look at Kane. Even Sam pivoted very pointedly to stare at him. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“Perhaps the User,” MAR spoke in a diffident, cultured tone, “minds that you’re talking about destroying another User with such cavalier authority.”

The meeting exploded into chaos. Sam’s brows shot up. “That’s Robert’s program?”

Kane stared in disbelief that someone had totaled the careful political dance he’d been watching with one casual revelation. “I guess.”

“MAR was there!” The SysAdmin in red shouted over everyone else, silencing every argument. “MAR fought it. So did I. And if you think testimony from a SysAdmin is not objective enough for your tastes, so did the Sentry.”

Everyone seemed to measure the giant in black and violet. If it bothered him, there was no way for even the Users to tell.

“I trust MAR,” one of the programs said quietly. “I wouldn’t trust you, Gungnir. Not because I don’t like you, or because of our history, but because you’re too eager for a fight, and in the middle of fighting things can be… mistaken. I trust MAR to keep a cool head.”

Gungnir seemed to think hard on that. “You know, that’s fair, Glim.”

“Oh, irony,” ACM declared. “I trust Gungnir precisely because of the same thing.” Pevir’s SysAdmin snorted a laugh, truly caught by surprise.

“Halcyon trusts its own,” another program declared with calm assurance. “Identify yourself, please.”

“GAM,” the program replied. “Wall Security Defender.”

“I remember you,” PEN said. “You protected the refugees in Sector 42.” It laced its hands together. “Sentry GAM. Do we harm a User if we harm the virus?”

The black faceplate turned directly toward Kane. “Yes. During the fighting on board the Drakkar, one of the Users appealed to it. And it answered… briefly. Before the virus cut it off.”

“She answered?” Kane surged forward, uncaring of whatever protocols he might be breaking. “You heard her? You heard my sister?”

“Didn’t you?” MAR asked in puzzlement. “You could have heard a voxel drop at that point in the fighting.”

The black faceplate tipped minutely to one side. “Your name,” the Sentry replied calmly, “is Kane.”

Chapter Text

“My sister,” Kane told them all, “is sick. I don’t think that’s something you’d understand. Her body is breaking down. It’s been breaking down for years -” He looked back at Sam.

“Cycles. Decacycles,” the older man offered.

“Can your people not help her? Repair her, heal her?” The program that had identified itself as PEN asked.

“No. This is beyond us.” The trepidation his words caused them was both palpable and audible. “The Grid was her last hope.”

“Can we heal her?” another one of the projection’s asked at once.

“No. Whatever’s wrong with her, if she comes to the Grid it comes with her.”

“Baseline code,” someone murmured.

“OM, that’s what your people study, isn’t it?” Gungnir asked.

“It is, but that’s one inexorable truth of the Grid. A program is a program, even if we’re not all the same program. Baseline is baseline, even if we don’t all have the same baseline.”

Nods welcomed that universal truth, startling Kane. There was… philosophy? Abstract awareness? How far along had it come, this little world they’d so blithely created? “There was… a plan,” he admitted. “The Upload Spirals, the Spires, they work just fine for programs, for you, because you’re soft data. Technically, a User’s mind is just soft data too.”

“We are not just our minds,” PEN countered, gesturing to itself.

“That was the main hiccup, yes. The plan was to bring her mind across without her body.”

“Would a disk… no, never mind, the broken code would’ve still been there,” the dour-faced ACM answered his own question. “Well, it can’t be so hard for a User,” there were equal levels of respect and sarcasm in the one word, “to make a body for herself.”

“You’d be surprised,” Sam murmured from the sidelines.

“I’ve never heard of it,” Gungnir mused. “Machines, yes. Things, yes. Tanks, carriers, sailers, rectifiers. But not just a body, not an empty shell.” He looked at OM.

“You and I are getting this education at the same time, Gungnir, don’t look at me,” OM shrugged.

“The short answer’s no,” Kane jumped in. “The Grid wants life. If you put in a program, you get,” he gestured around at all of them, “you.”

“You can’t bring her in, you can’t just keep her disk, you can’t upload her like a program…” The curvy, short woman gave him a very sharp look. “What were you trying to do in Ilo and Halcyon?”

“I’m… Bear with me, I didn’t know those were places until a little while ago. I didn’t know what had happened to them.”

“You’re a User!” she accused. “How could you not know?”

Sam saw Kane recoil at the accusation in the program’s voice and stepped in. “Do you know how to build a road? A city? A power grid?”

“No, of course not -”

“He does. The Grid as you see it, it takes both soft data and hard data. Kane deals with the hard data.” Sam suddenly realized something. “He doesn’t even have a program of his own in here, do you?”

“No,” Kane admitted. “I didn’t… I would’ve been tempted to just pay attention to it, not to everything that needed the work, the maintenance.” He gave the woman, er, the program a sheepish look. “I didn’t trust my self-control.”

She was looking at him in surprise, and didn’t answer.

“What I think happened the first time, in Halcyon?” He looked at OM, who nodded. “You have these programs that have much larger space allocation on their disks-”

“Gridborn,” she told him.

“Wait, what?” Sam straightened up.

“Gridborn,” the Sentry said through the blackness of his helm. “Programs created by the Grid, not a User.”

“You have ISOs?! You have ISOs in here?!”

“Is that a bad thing?” MAR asked.

“Why would it be, a program’s a program,” Glim countered.

Sam’s mouth worked soundlessly for a long moment before he put his hands up and backed away.

“It was a theory that the… event was targeting Gridborn,” PEN confirmed.

“She was. She was hoping to find one that could hold her, but one that she wouldn’t have to oust out of their own body. Someone who could carry her around, but also with enough wiggle room for her to do things through their shared body.”

“Active memory space,” MAR mused. “Two minds, one body. That seems… feasible. Ghoulish, but feasible. What happened?”

“It lied. The data lied. The Grid lied.” Kane gestured vaguely to encompass everything around them. “There are limits on the memory of even those programs, they’re just not written down. She couldn’t find one that could hold her, and she was… She was desperate enough to keep trying. Her disease, her… code, it’s decaying faster and faster.”

“So she kept trying. Even though she knew it wouldn’t work, she kept trying.” Adas’ voice broke a little. “And three cities, and nearly every program that lived in them, have paid the price.”

“She’s sick!” Kane snapped at her.

“And they’re gone!” She shot back. “They will not come back to their friends, to their homes. Unless you can miraculously restore a program from the derezzed, they are lost -” MAR put a quelling hand on Adas’ shoulder.

Sam leaned closer to Kane. “Just the facts, Gibbs. She’s torn their world to pieces; there’s no fixing that right now. Just the facts.”

Kane worked his hands restlessly. “She tried one last time, in the place you call Ilo. It had gone on standby, dormant. There were no active programs, I figure she thought that meant there was no one she could hurt. But the… God, I don’t know how to translate what she saw, what she did.”

“She realized,” the voice behind the black faceplate was implacably calm, “that no single program could hold her mind. But in Ilo there were thousands of dead, shattered programs. Active memory space that no one was using, even if it was in pieces. She saw a chance.”

“But there was nothing living to tempt her there,” Glim whispered in horror. “Ilo was dark, it’s been dark since the attack. The only ones there were construction crews, and they were fully encrypted!”

“It was. Until one of those limitless memory identifiers popped up in Ilo.”

Adas covered her mouth with one hand in horror at the realization that she was technically as guilty as the sick User; she had brought Vidi to Ilo. As GAM had pointed out, there had not been enough programs to screen the Gridborn’s presence and, in desperation, the User had tried one last trick.

GAM faced the User, Kane’s expression of confusion staring back at the young man. “I’ll tell you what she likely planned to do.”

“GAM.” Gungnir offered the name as a single, calm warning.

“She was going to hop into any bit of active memory she could find. Pull them together as best she could into a working presence. It didn’t matter that they were dead, they didn’t have to last long – just long enough for her to find Vidi, and try hopping into her active memory space from this side.”

“Vidi doesn’t have the space,” Adas breathed.

“No, she just fakes it real good,” GAM agreed distractedly. “Well enough to fool a User.” He took one step forward toward Kane. “You. Don’t. Know. Anything. About our world,” he gritted out.

Before he could move any closer, Gungnir had caught his arm, and Sam had stepped between Kane and the Sentry. “GAM,” Pevir’s SysAdmin gritted out; the arm under his hand was rigid with fury.

The Sentry stood stock still for a long moment. “Someone,” he finally managed to say, and even the helm’s filters couldn’t hide his impotent wrath, “please explain to the User what happens when you kitbash living with living.” With that, he turned around and walked out of the room and into the rain.

The meeting was deeply silent, until the steady, calm voice of one of the oldest programs in the Grid answered. “A virus,” OM gave Kane a very mild look. “I think you need to come meet someone, Kane Gibbs.”

“But OM, the meeting -” Oak began.

OM blew out an exasperated sigh. “Everyone get here as fast as you can. Avoid the virus, it’s in the Sea of Simulation somewhere. Anything else?” He looked briefly at each of the projections. “No? Meeting adjourned.”

Chapter Text

OM led both Users and SysAdmins onto a platform that carried them all the way down to the ground level of Om. “Back when OM was about the only city worth the name on the Grid, a virus made it in. External. Purely malicious. Flow wasn’t really in any shape to do anything at the time other than hunker down and hide. It took down the original instances of Diss and the Waystation. Then it came for us. Its name was Knock-Knock.” He looked at the Users and smiled grimly. “Alan-1 explained the joke to me long after the fact. I didn’t find it all that funny.”

The platform came to a stop and he led them quickly into a small, non-descript building with no windows and a single story. Inside they found a dozen monitor programs that all snapped to attention the moment the door open, then relaxed minutely to see OM. “Anything?” he asked.

“No, sir.”

“Good.” The SysAdmin led them to a central platform that began to sink as soon as they were all on board. “The problem then, like now, is that a virus infects by touch. Anything, anyone that comes in contact with it is compromised. So the OM of the time, the very first OM actually, along with a few monitor programs wondered: could they do the same? Create copies of themselves that can fight and behave like the real thing – if they could, they could match the virus in numbers, beat it on attrition alone. Which they did.”

“I don’t think this story has a happy ending,” Sam muttered. They were descending into darkness, into the very heart of the Grid. Terrain, blank voxels and flickering lines of pure white energy passed by them as they sank, deeper and deeper.

“It doesn’t,” OM agreed. “They won. Knock-Knock has the dubious honor of being the first uploaded virus that was completely destroyed Grid-side, rather than wait for the Users to step in.” He glanced at Kane and Sam. “No offense meant. If we can deal with the problem, why bother you about it?”

“The Shattered,” Adas breathed.

The shaft they’d been descending suddenly opened up into a vast cavern, a second, much smaller Om spread out before them, buildings rising up from the dark and reaching for the dark, terrain-to-terrain. As above, the majority of the circuitry was white, with the occasional fragment of deep green. The platform shifted directions and began to descend at a smooth angle. “The OM back then was a nice program. Sensible. Medical, I think. Unified Neural Engram Database, UNE. Once the fighting was done, he brought all the copies he’d created of himself back and tried to put himself together again. And then we were a fighting a new virus all over again.”

“You can’t kitbash living with living,” Sam murmured.

“The copies were people,” Kane realized. “Because they’d all done different things. Lived different lives, even if it was just fighting the virus.”

OM nodded. “He was a good friend. I think, in the end, that won out,” he admitted tightly, staring at the passing buildings in silence for a long, long time. “I think, in the end, he wanted to lose.”

There were more monitors waiting for them when the platform came to a stop amidst the white and green buildings, and they saluted OM sharply. “How is he?” he asked one of them.

“He’s

been

resting,

sir.” Three of the programs replied, each one offering one word except for the last one, which all five of them offered together.

Adas pressed close to MAR. The programs all had the same face, the same build. None of them had a disk, but none of them had the absent, empty expression of a Stray. They were present, aware, intelligent.

“I don’t think this is a safe place for Users, OM,” Gungnir said, his entire posture shifting as if he expected a fight.

“This is the safest place for them. No one believes in the Users more deeply than the Shattered of Om. Every program here would allow themselves to be derezzed, over and over, if that’s what it took to keep them safe.” He looked evenly at Kane. “Everyone here would die for you.”

Kane stuttered wordlessly, shocked into an understanding he’d not actually grasped, not even when surrounded by the reality of the Grid. But OM was already moving on.

“What is this place?” Sam asked.

“The top of the Black Vault,” OM explained as they walked. “Destroying a virus is actually really hard. Their roots run deep. You leave so much as a voxel, a byte, and it’ll spring back up. Usually when it’s least convenient. If no one can figure out how to destroy it, we bring it here.”

“Not always,” Gungnir pointed out with a thin, humorless little smile.

OM sighed in exasperation. “Or if we’re not sure if it’s a virus to begin with, but it behaves a whole lot like one. We could derezz them, but if there’s a chance at redemption, if someone believes they can learn to not be virus-like about things, those times I usually get outvoted and they get to live.” He shrugged and led them down a set of broad stairs, to a building perched above an immense abyss, so deep that a small micro-weather pattern had formed in its depths, a thin layer of clouds occasionally lit from below by fractal lightning.

The structure was small, hexagonal, its lines green. There were no doors or windows, only clear walls, the inside dark. Another group of programs surrounded it at a distance of twelve paces. “Sir,” they all greeted OM in perfect synchronicity.

“Any change?”

“He

asked

again,

sir,” the Shattered replied.

OM twitched as if he’d been struck, and ducked his head for a moment before stepping up to one of the clear windows. “UNE? There are Users here.”

Someone drew such a deep breath inside the small structure that they all felt it, saw it in the rising and falling of the energy lines of it. “Users,” a mild male voice whispered. “Users on the Grid.”

“Yeah. I think they should meet you.”

“Can they destroy me?” The light brightened inside the chamber. In the center of it crouched a program, its circuitry jagged and shattered, deep green warring with poisonous yellow. It stood on a deep indentation on the ground, carved out and covered in a thin layered of dead, infected voxels. When the program turned to look in OM’s direction, Sam flinched back. UNE was faceless, there no features there, not even the hint of there ever having been eyes or nose or mouth. When he spoke, energy shifted over his body this way and that. “Is that why they’ve come? To give me peace at last?”

Kane was staring in horror. “I-I-I… I don’t know -”

Before any of them could react, UNE had launched himself at the window so hard that he literally lost his shape, turning into a vaguely humanoid shape rippling against the barrier. The oozing edges scratched and poked and probed, looking desperately for a way out, and the yellow circuitry burned in the dim light like hellfire. “WHY NOT?!” UNE shrieked. “WHY NOT?!”

OM had not moved. “His sister’s trapped in the Grid, UNE. She tried to memory-merge a bunch of dead programs into a body for herself.”

“Oh.” The virus’ mass slid down with that sad sound. “I’m sorry,” he told Kane, and it sounded like he absolutely meant it. “You can’t… Living and living, it doesn’t work. Why didn’t she just… come in? Like you did?”

When it became obvious Kane didn’t have it in him to speak, Sam stepped forward. “She can’t. She’s sick – her baseline code’s permanently damaged, and degenerating fast. She needed to bring her mind in, not her body, or she’d bring the damage with her. She didn’t know about the living and living thing, none of us did.”

UNE was slowly reshaping himself, crouched down once again and rocking slowly. “Oh.” He looked up. “You’re a User, too?”

“Yes.”

“Can you destroy me?”

Sam’s expression filled with sorrow at that desperate, heartbroken plea. “As soon as I get out, I’ll do everything I can.”

“Oh.” UNE sighed in relief too vast to comprehend. “I would like that. I would like that, thank you.”

“Maybe someone can fix you, man -”

“No!” UNE snapped at him, and slowly rose to his feet. “No. Don’t you understand, User? I am me. This,” he gestured at the fractured, vitriolic yellow tangled and twisted around the deep medical green, “is me. Restore me, it will still be me. There is no, ah, separation possible. Do you think, in all these decacycles, I haven’t tried? I am capable of separating a single idea, one thought, an individual byte, from the larger whole of a program’s code.” UNE was less than a breath from the window, the only thing separating him from Sam. “I was a healer. And now everything in me wants to see the Grid burn. Can you destroy me, User?” UNE leaned his hands on the window and begged without shame, even as his fingers turned into tendrils questing for impossible escape. “Please?”

“I’ll try,” Sam managed to get out.

UNE straightened up. Then his head fell on one shoulder, and Sam realized he was, somehow, focusing on Kane.

“That was,” the virus said quietly, “so silly of her.” He began to chuckle.

OM put a hand on the window, between UNE and Sam. “That’s enough.”

“No, wait -”

“Sam, UNE’s not sensible.”

“No,” UNE agreed. “No, Sam, UNE’s not sensible. But he is a medical program. An engram identifier. Do you know what an engram is, Sam?”

“It’s like a memory, isn’t it?”

“Yes, very much like a memory. So she tried to fix that broken baseline out there, and it didn’t work,” the virus sing-sang. “And she tried to fix it in here, and it didn’t work. And you were oh, oh, oh so sad.”

“If you’re a medical program, can you help my sister?” Kane suddenly surged forward. Gungnir and MAR hurried to block his way.

“Me?” UNE laughed. “User, I can’t even help myself. She’s gone now. She’s the virus and the virus is her.”

“No she’s not!” Kane exclaimed. “That guy up top, GAM, he said my sister was still in there. That the virus had to cut her off before she could talk to me.”

UNE suddenly howled, and began to slam his head into the window until voxels flew. Everyone flinched back several steps, except for OM, who rode out the tantrum until the virus was on his knees in his cell, nothing above his neck but jagged little shreds of voxels. “Ohhhh,” he breathed, and laughed a little. “Sometimes I think too much,” he declared wryly. “Well, maybe I can help you after all. But there’s a price, you know. There’s always a price. There’s two prices this time, maybe three, I’m not sure.” He sighed. “I’m tired, and I’m easy to distract.”

“Name it -” Kane started forward again. This time, Sam stopped him with an outstretched hand before turning back to the virus.

“Let’s hear it.”

“Yes, let’s,” UNE fought himself back to his feet, and to a somewhat humanoid shape again. “You’ll destroy me, Sam.”

Sam swallowed hard. “Yes.”

UNE put a hand on the window. “Tron, is he lying to me?”

OM put a hand on the window, matched to his once-friend’s. “No. Of Sam Flynn, I believe it.” He looked levelly at Sam. “He can destroy you.”

UNE’s circuits rippled. “That’d be nice. That’d be good, yes. You’ll do that, then. One more question. The hard one. Come here, User. Come closer. Who are you?”

“Uh, Kane. Kane Gibbs.” Kane moved a few tentative steps closer to the window.

“Kane Kane Gibbs,” UNE repeated. “A baseline is a baseline, even if not all baselines are the same. Are you sure your sister’s still there?”

“Yes.” It was Gungnir who replied. “We heard her, MAR and I.”

UNE leaned back a bit, and then moved very close to the window. “Do you love your sister, Kane Kane Gibbs? Do you love your sister more than you love the Grid? Do you love her enough to lose her, if it means she’s alive?” He pressed even closer to the window, his front losing its shape, his voice a whisper. “Alive, but without you?”

Kane swallowed hard. “If she’s happy, if she’s healthy, if she’s alive? Yes.”

UNE flowed sedately into a formless layer of viral voxels against the window. “Then I get to hurt you with the truth, Kane Kane Gibbs. I get to hurt you with my help. I guess that works for both of us, no?”

Chapter Text

GAM folded away his armor, tipping his head up to the rain. It was bitingly cold, each drop stinging mildly against his face with its tiny load of electricity. The sky was a single boiling mass of black clouds, rolling as angrily as he’d ever seen of a Spirestorm.

It matched his mood entirely too well and he curled his hands into fists until they hurt.

He’d stopped a good distance away from the weather tower, nearly into the wild terrain of the Spire, in a small clearing. He could see where lightning had struck the bare terrain, shattering outcroppings into broken shale and debris. Thunder rumbled, not so far above him. The Grid all around him was chaos.

“WallSec?” a familiar voice called timidly out. “GAM?”

He dropped his head and sighed, long and low. Grabbing one of his batons, he deployed the basic umbrella function and held it to one side.

Vidi immediately ducked under that shelter, standing close to him and brushing water off of herself. “It must suck, living somewhere where it rains all the time.” He felt her peeking up at him. “Are you alright?”

He didn’t even know how to answer that question. “I miss Halcyon. I miss it more than I can say, Vidi. I want to be home, where things make sense. I want to go back to who I was before the Users were real. Before I found out that they don’t care.”

She pressed close to him. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

He couldn’t help but grin wryly at her. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you apologize before.”

“Yeah, well, don’t get used to it.” She kicked idly at a bit of terrain. “So they can’t fix the virus and all of this?”

“Vidi, they caused it. I don’t think they even knew it was this bad until they got here, and I don’t think they actually know how bad it is, even now.” He drew in a deep breath and held it for a long time. “And I’m not sure I’m being objective, I’m so angry. The Island lost, Ilo lost, Halcyon barely hanging on, and all he cares about is his sister.”

“To be fair, you get pretty cranky when something tries to hurt Adas. Or me.”

“Yes. And that’s why I walked away. Because some part of me understands. But most of me is just angry.” He looked at her. “I don’t want to be angry unless I know I have a right to be.”

“This is like the being wrong thing? You don’t wanna be wrong, so you don’t say anything?”

“You make it sound like a bad thing.”

“Well, it can be!”

“I – How?”

“Because if you’re wrong, ok, fine, you’re wrong. But if you hadn’t thought I was a thief you would’ve never chased me down, and we would’ve never met. Sometimes good things come out of being wrong. The point is to not linger on what you did wrong. Just… work on getting it right next time.”

“If I’m wrong the wall falters. The wall falls.”

Vidi scoffed. “If you’re wrong there’s like, what, fifty other WallSecs with you? The wall’s not going down because you make a mistake.” She looked up at him. “You’re not alone there, and you’re not alone here. You got Adas and MAR and me.” She grimaced. “I guess Gungnir, sort of. Jerk.”

GAM couldn’t help it; the words surprised a little snort of laughter out of him.

“I’m just saying, be wrong every now and again, WallSec. Who knows what you can learn from it. Just don’t stay wrong, you know?”

“I will do my best, I suppose.”

She made vague agreeable noises. “Did they say anything about me?”

“Only what we knew already. Your trick with active memory space is what brought you to the virus’ attention.”

“Ugh. I don’t got the space for her, GAM, I really don’t!”

“I doubt anyone does,” the Sentry assured her. “But it doesn’t know that, and I don’t think it’s going to believe anyone that tells it otherwise at this point.”

“So… what, am I gonna have to encrypt my tags after all?”

“No. I would like you to, don’t get me wrong,” he told her sternly, “but I know you won’t. And it wouldn’t matter. It’s a virus, it can’t be left loose on the Grid. One way or another, we’ll have to deal with it.”

“And you’ll be careful doing that, right?” When he didn’t answer, she shoved him. “Right?!”

“My job, my duty, my nature is to keep the Grid and the programs on it safe, Vidi. If it’s a choice between me and the virus, that’s not a choice at all.”

“Well, don’t make it one, then!” she cried out.

“I’m not going to go into a fight looking to get derezzed, Vidi, no one does. No one sane, anyway. But I also won’t let it infect anyone else. Not if I can stop it. No matter what it costs me.”

The Gridborn yanked the umbrella away from him, and started smacking him with it. “I don’t like you right now!” she yelled, punctuating every word with a swat.

“Would it help -” He put his arms up to fend her off, but eventually he had to step quickly aside and behind her, and yank the umbrella out of her hands with one hand, wrapping the other around her and lifting her effortlessly up. “Would it – ow!” She was kicking back at him. “I will shake you.”

“I will bite you.”

The Sentry exhaled sharply in exasperation. “You do realize, you’re my best bet at staying safe?” When she went still with surprise, GAM went on. “I will be with you, Vidi. If you’re safe, I’ll be safe. Does that sound fair? Compromise?”

“Ugh. Well, I don’t want to be anywhere near that thing, so I guess I’ll take it. You are just the worst for my rep, WallSec.”

“I’m pretty sure you don’t have a rep.” He set her down lightly.

“Not that you know,” she shot back at once. “Can we go back inside? I’m wet to my disk.”

“Where is your disk?” GAM suddenly realized he’d never actually seen the most ubiquitous part of any program. “Your whole body’s a Cosmetic, isn’t it? That disk isn’t real.”

Vidi shook her head, and every one of her dreadlocks stood up. There, barely showing at the top of her head, was both the subtle seam of her perma-Cosmetic, and the rim of her disk.

“You are still full of surprises,” he admitted, and they began walking back toward the weather tower. He activated the umbrella once again and held it over her head, deploying his armor and closing his helm against the weather.

“You haven’t even seen a tenth of them, WallSec,” she declared loftily.

“… Wait, most programs have theirs on their back. Does that mean…?”

“Yeah. I had to spend forever getting used to the weird bipedal perspective of the Cosmetic.” She lifted a foot and waggled it at him. “Now you know why I’m such an optimist.”

“You?” he asked in disbelief.

“Me! Me, always looking up at the sky.”

Chapter Text

The Spirestorm above Om broke for a brief moment at some point late in the millicycle. Above the city, the Spire itself gleamed, its long-dormant energy channels and circuitry shining with the life the arrival of the Users had imparted upon it.

The Grid held its breath, gathering itself up for the fight to come. In the cold, clear air, GAM found a watchtower overlooking the vast plain that was, in truth, the top of the Black Vault.

It was no Wall Sentry Station, but it was close enough.

He knelt, eyes closed, focused on his wavelength. On who and what he was. On the things that the virus could never change, or take away from him. And when he’d found the truth of it, the very baseline of his code, he called and waited.

It didn’t take long. “Hello, GAM.”

The Sentry opened his eyes. He’d retracted his armor, and he offered his User a small smile. “Hello, Emil.”

“Things seems to be moving very quickly on your side of the world,” Emil told him dryly.

GAM nodded. “Are you following what’s happening?”

“I’m trying,” the frail old man admitted. “Succeeding, that’s a different matter. But I haven’t had to understand all of it to help, so far, so… I think that’s good enough, no?”

“Yes.” GAM’s smile turned a little more honest at that. “Yes. We have a battle plan.”

Emil grimaced. “You sound like you’re going to war, GAM.”

“We are.”

“I thought it was just the one virus.”

“Imagine,” the Sentry explained carefully, “that there is one User in your world. That with a touch it can make others into extensions of itself. Completely loyal. Utterly driven by its own goal – and that goal is just to corrupt everything it touches. Nothing else. No reason. No remorse. Nothing but the virus.”

The silence stretched between them.

“How many programs?” Emil asked quietly.

“We have lost contact with the Waystation. So, perhaps fifty, a hundred from the construction crews in Ilo. And perhaps a few thousand from the Waystation. And anyone it snatched up from the Outlands around Ilo and Parnassus, or from the Sea of Simulation.”

“Thousands,” Emil choked out. He collapsed to a sitting position in a chair that became partially real as he fell in it. “Oh, my god.”

“And every time we fight it, everyone who fights it is at risk as well.”

“GAM, you can’t -! How do you even fight something like this?”

GAM drew in a deep breath. “With all that we are,” he replied simply. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything.”

“I need the update he left behind.”

Emil frowned. “He was working on it long before any of this happened, GAM. I don’t think it can help.”

“Probably not. But… I’ll take any edge, Emil. Besides, I don’t need you to update me. I just need the update itself.”

“Can… I do that?”

The Sentry grinned again. “I’ll walk you through it.”

Chapter Text

Om’s SysAdmin stood alone for a brief moment, atop the Weather Station Tower. Before and below him Om and its Outlands spread out like a vast mantle, alive in ways no one could explain and very few, program or User, could understand. The sight filled him, as ever it did, with a quiet sort of exultation. Even the distant sight of the Breach didn’t bother him as it usually always did. It was a sign that his world was still there.

That there was something worth fighting for.

His personal commline beeped. It was downright annoying, how little time you got to yourself when you were running a city. He was pretty sure it was why UNE had created the OM system, so they all could have time to themselves. But it had been Genie’s idea to throw static on the line so no one could tell them apart, the four programs that usually rotated through the job. Could just blame it on the Spire weather, right?

“Go for SysAdmin.”

“I thought you didn’t want the job.”

“I was just thinking of you.” He couldn’t help a grin, even through his melancholy mood. Seeing UNE always hurt, even after so many decacycles. Every time he saw what had become of his friend he felt as if he’d failed him.

Genie, nominally his GO4, was the one who more often put on the SysAdmin hat when Tron plain got fed up with it. Occasionally they could both convince TEC to take a turn, but Om’s CitySec Lead did not enjoy being pulled away from her duties. “I’m just sure you were,” the GO4 replied loftily, but his tone became serious once again. “Are you sure about this? If there was ever a time we needed you in charge, this kinda counts.”

“I don’t need to be stuck in a command room, Gen. I need to be out there, fighting, doing what I do best. Making sure after the fighting’s done there’ll be a Grid left for both us and the Users.”

“Well, if anyone can, it’s you,” Genie agreed resignedly.

“I left everything ready.”

“So I see. Alright, finishing transfer of command and control options… now. Done. You’re free! Free, I say! Until this is over, anyway.”

Tron couldn’t help but laugh. “I could just leave you stuck with the job.”

“I would hunt you down,” Om’s new SysAdmin shot back tartly. “Now please excuse me while I do hunt down TEC for skipping out on her turn at the helm.”

Almost as soon as the communication ended, Tron’s private link with his User pinged him. He brightened up at once and activated it.

And nearly slipped off the roof in surprise when a seeming made purely of light appeared in thin air directly before him. “Hello, Tron.”

“Alan-1.” He’d jerked back in surprise at the User’s abrupt appearance, but stepped forward in curiosity at once. “It’s nice to put a face to the voice.”

Alan Bradley was no less shocked. There, before him, was the program he’d heard so much about. Kevin’s wild stories, and then Sam’s, nothing had moved him to more than passing doubt. For the longest time he’d clung to disbelief. To a bedrock conviction that the world worked one way and one way only.

Gibbs had sent him the logs. That had been the first crack in the dam. That had been, perhaps, the greatest motivation to buy a slot in the so-called Grid the old engineer’s grandkids were starting. And then it had felt good, it had felt right, to dust off the Tron code and polish it up, upgrade it, refine it.

Alan felt, for a moment, a burst of shame at the unalloyed delight that filled the face of the program before him. His face, younger but unmistakable.

Though he doubted he’d ever been as fit as Tron was.

“Just Alan’s fine,” he said, feeling vaguely unworthy of the joy with which he was being welcomed. He spread his hands. “Seemed like a good time to check in.”

He saw his own wry grin bloom on that younger face. “You could say that.”

“So. What’s the plan, and how can I help?”

“Can you see the Grid? Where we are?”

“Yes, but I’m trying very hard not to look down again. At least, not until I figure out how to reposition this projection,” Alan informed him, his tone perfectly deadpan.

Tron let out a short bark of laughter and for a moment User and program merely focused on sorting out range of motion and response to one another’s presence. Finally, with Alan standing next to him, Tron pointed away, to the Outlands. “Below that plain, over there, is the Black Vault. That light you see flashing every now and again? That’s the Breach.”

“A vault and a breach, all in one sentence. I’m not liking this already.”

“The Black Vault is where we keep the viruses we can’t destroy.”

“Has anyone tried from this side?”

“Feel free to try. They don’t leave this place, so they should be easy to find, if nothing else. The Breach is an energy geyser. It goes all the way beyond the lowest levels of the Vault. We tried sealing it up once. It destroyed every barrier we put in the way. It’s also destroyed every virus that tried to escape that way.”

“You want to bait the virus to the Breach.”

“As a last resort,” Tron admitted. “First we have to get the User stuck inside it out.”

“And if you can’t?” When the program shot him a flat look, Alan stood his ground. “You have to consider all possibilities, Tron.”

“And losing the User is not one,” Tron replied implacably. “If I’ve gotta peel the virus off her one voxel at a time, I will.”

“And what of the programs that it might infect while you’re doing that? What of the damage it does, what of everyone that ends up derezzed? Do you plan to fight it alone?” Alan threw an arm up to point at the mass of wildly different airships over them. “I don’t think you get that choice.” He exhaled in exasperation at the mulish look on the program’s face. It was an expression he knew too well. He had also watched an expert deal with it for years. “You said last resort. What’s the first?”

And just as it always worked with him, Tron accepted the redirect. “We thin down its ranks, split it off from the User and destroy it over the Sea of Simulation. Pevir’s gone out to Waystation’s last known location looking for it.”

“Last known location?”

“Waystation went black about half a microcycle ago. No docked traffic is responding, either. I think everyone knows what’s happened, no one’s saying it out loud, that’s all. Gungnir and Glim both sent flyers out to confirm.”

Alan rubbed at his forehead. “So you want to take on a virus surrounded by an entire city’s infected population, plus whatever it’s picked up on its way, including whatever machinery it found at Ilo and Waystation -”

“Yes.”

“- on the unlikely chance the User’s mind is still intact in there -”

“It’s -”

“ - no, excuse me, on the incredibly unlikely chance that the User’s mind is still intact in there, risking the lives of everyone who’s come here to try and stop it -”

“The User’s there.”

“ - never mind that the virus might infect all of the tanks and the carriers and the fighting programs that are here -”

“Yes!” Tron shouted. “Yes, yes, yes! The User is there, Alan, those who fought it the last time heard it. Heard her. She’s still in there. She needs help. I won’t risk anyone else, I will tell them so they can make a choice, an informed choice, but me? I will take the risk. I will make the choice. I will help her.”

Alan stared at his program in shock. “I’d like to think I’m a sensible man,” he said at last in disbelief. “And I know the Grid reads a lot of subconscious User input when it creates a program, so how. How. How’d you get this, this… this lion-hearted?”

All of Tron’s anger went out of him like a plume of spent energy, and he couldn’t help but smile a little at his User’s crestfallen expression. “You should know, Alan. You created me.”

Chapter Text

Kane stared out one of the windows of the room designated to the Users in Om, and watched the empty streets.

He felt tired. Empty. He didn’t feel lost, but then perhaps that was because he’d lost himself long ago. Moll and him hadn’t been joined at the hip, but they’d still been brother and sister, bound in their shared interests and their love of technology. He’d been the hardware to his sister’s software.

When things had gone bad, really bad, he’d lost half of himself. And in trying to rescue that half, to find a cure, a workaround, a cheat, anything, he was beginning to realize he’d lost himself, too. He’d forgiven the unforgivable; he’d accepted the unacceptable. Moll’s disease kept moving the goalposts, and wherever his twin went, so did he, fighting with her all the way and never realizing how much closer to the edge of the abyss they were all coming.

Do you love her enough to lose her, if it means she’s alive?

He ran a hand through his hair. Perhaps it hadn’t been nearly as hard a choice as UNE thought because he’d already lost her. What did it matter, losing her one more time, when he hadn’t really had her for years now?

“We don’t have to do this, Gibbs.”

He didn’t turn to look at Sam. “Yeah,” he countered, his voice as exhausted as the young man felt. “Yeah, we do. If we can.”

“You don’t even know if UNE’s right.” Sam knew what it could do to you, coming into the Grid for the first time. It was a shock in every level, to everything you knew and believed and thought of as reality. He remembered entirely too well what it had been like for him; it was part of why he’d offered to come with Kane into the twins’ Grid.

He’d just… not expected it would be as bad as it was.

“You believe him.”

Sam grimaced. “Yeah, but. The warning stands, too. Reintegration is… destructive, Gibbs. Particularly when you don’t know how much of everything we’re looking at is Molly’s direct work.”

“Yeah, well. My decision stands, too.” Kane laughed humorlessly. “Provided we can even pull this off.”

“The sooner we get started, the sooner we’ll know,” Sam assured him, then examined the young man earnestly. “The second most important thing, Kane, other than getting your sister to the virus, is that you remember what you are.”

“The Master Key. You keep saying that like it means more than you’ve said. Yeah, it’s my code in the system, I know.”

“No, you don’t know. You don’t understand.” Sam blew out an impatient breath, trying to formulate into words a concept he barely understood himself. He had seen it, had experienced it, the way code could be reshaped by thought and touch, the way reality within the Grid could answer not just to code being typed, but to sheer will. “This, all of this,” he gestured lightly all around them, “this is yours, Kane. Your code, yes, but also your will, your dreams, your thoughts. And just like them, you have the power to reshape them. To reshape anything, if you just… will it.”

Kane gave him such a dubious look that Flynn was left wondering if his explanation just wasn’t getting across, or if Gibbs didn’t need it, and was just burying his head in the sand. Well, perhaps nothing would come of it anyway. They turned around together. At the other end of the room, two of the programs that had come down into the Black Vault were speaking in quiet tones with a luminous User projection.

Sam felt utterly fascinated. From what information he’d gleaned about the first iteration of the Grid, all the way down to the one he was currently standing in, such a simple holographic technology had its roots on some unbelievably complex code that had only partially been made by Rob and Molly. Not for the first time he wondered how alive the Grid itself was.

“Kane?” Robert’s projection looked nowhere near as tired as his actual body likely was. “Are you sure about this?”

“I’m not sure it can be done, but I’m sure we gotta try.” Kane Gibbs threw out his hands. “We’re doing all we can here and everything we can think of comes up to the same problem every time: we can’t bring her body to the laser.”

“So we bring the laser to her instead,” Sam said.

“And it will not harm you? Either of you?” MAR asked cautiously. That prudence seemed to be the only trait he shared with his User. He was as self-assured and poised as Rob was shy and self-effacing.

“Shouldn’t,” Sam shrugged. “The Portal, the Spire, it’s gonna power off, yeah, but you can power it back on from the outside. We’ll be stuck here until you do, but we’ll be fine. As safe as anyone else in here is.” His smile was full of dark humor.

“You could leave,” Adas said.

“We could. But we can’t help anything out there. We can make a difference in here, if it comes to it,” Sam assured her, and offered his hand, palm-up. “So I guess it comes down to, after everything that’s happened, do you still trust the Users?”

Adas stared at that hand before looking up at him, her expression growing serious. A clear faceplate closed over her face and she put her hand over his. The information transfer lasted less than the blink of a voxel. “And you’re sure your friend will help?” She took her hand back and examined it cautiously, trying to figure out how exactly he’d enacted a data transfer with nothing more than physical contact. “I mean, with the time differential, I’m not sure what good that’s gonna do, but...”

Sam grinned. “The time differential’s never made any difference to her. She’ll help.”

Chapter Text

QuorumVadis: Major emergency, people. All hands on deck. This one goes live to every chatroom, every channel, every forum, every thread.

Netsquatch: srs bsns

QuorumVadis: Very. Direct insider request.

TransientSapient: Insider?

HacesMaquetas: Like, from inside the Grid?

QuorumVadis: From the Users inside the Grid. Precious cargo needs to be picked up, packed up, shipped across the city to a highly restricted location. From the real world to the real world.

Netsquatch: wait r u srs? fr real? in the RW?

TransientSapient: Holy shit.

QuorumVadis: Yes. This is All Users on Deck. I’ve set up a new channel and sent additional info packet. Only helpers allowed. Broadcast at will.

Chapter Text

Robert had been desperately trying not to nod off in front of the computer. Even the brief time he’d spent directly uploading his consciousness into the Grid to talk with MAR and Kane, and everyone else, had felt more restful than his scramble to keep up with the information that kept piling up, both from friendly programs within the Grid and the occasional gists he kept getting from the User base. Flynn had assured him he could stop paying attention to the User side, but Robert wasn’t sure he trusted the man that far.

In the end, it hadn’t mattered. He just didn’t have the energy to cover both bases. So when the doorbell rang, he nearly fell off his chair, roused from a nap that had snuck up on him and completely unprepared for whatever visitors might have found the remote Gibbs manor.

“Coming!” he shouted, the intercom system completely forgotten as he rushed up to the front door. “I’m coming! I’m -”

He opened the door to the night and the spitting storm outside. And blinked.

“Evenin’. You Robert Kleinberg?”

“Uh… yes?” He looked up; it felt as if his eyes had to climb a great deal until he found a man’s face all but hidden behind a bushy, reddish beard and under a weathered beanie hat.

The man was possibly as wide as the door at the shoulders, and only slightly shorter than the frame, wearing faded jeans, worn work boots, a dull blue shirt and an equally dull blue jacket with writing on the breast pocket. He had a lanyard, and he offered a hand twice the size of Rob’s. “I’m Moto. Ilo”

Rob blinked. “Mot- Moto! Moto?! You’re from the Grid!” He offered his hand automatically. It was all but engulfed into a friendly handshake.

The man grinned. “Haven’t you been keepin’ up with the chatter?”

“I… I know what the plan was, but you’re – that was… really fast.”

“Got the impression we’re on a time crunch,” Moto’s User replied evenly. “Where is it, and do you have any packin’ shit?”

“I… No, I don’t think -”

“That’s fine.” Moto turned and whistled sharply. There was, Robert realized, a very solid-looking truck in the driveway. There were also two more men waiting by it. “Bring the packin’ shit!” Moto yelled at them.

One of the men rushed to open the truck’s back, dragging out a broad ramp. The other raced in and came back out dragging two dollies loaded to bursting with foam and folded-up platforms. “Don’t worry,” Moto assured Rob. “We’re used to fragile and classified. This gotta be the first time it’s both, that’s all.”

Chapter Text

“It took everyone,” Glim’s scout reported. She was a lean, tall last-gen with the vivid teal circuitry of Ark’s CitySec on white. Without her helm and armor, she looked utterly haunted by what she’d seen. “And everything.”

The meeting was silent with a mixture of emotions, shock and sorrow foremost. No one had expected the virus to move so fast; nothing had hinted at such speed, not from Ilo or Parnassus. The Sea of Simulation was, at best, a storm-tossed morass that the heavy data freighters could navigate only because of their sheer size, most of which traveled below the surface. Smaller vessels stuck to the shorelines because to go any further out risked one falling afoul of the immensely powerful magnetic currents. Programs were either reset or derezzed, and the Sea rarely gave them back either way.

“We’re still tallying lost vessels,” the Pevirian pilot next to her declared. “Without Waypoint’s dock reports, we’re basically guessing, but…” She shook her head and ran a hand over her spiky black hair. “Even the foundation platforms were gone.”

“Are those seaworthy?” Gungnir asked of the meeting.

“If they’re anything like ours, yes,” Oak’s projection rubbed at his forehead. “Without moorings, with enough freighters attached, it can be anywhere by now.”

“It’s coming here.”

Every head turned to the calm, unruffled voice. It belonged to a program armored head to toe in white, its circuitry the same color. The only stark contrast was his black faceplate and the delicate green of four square pixels on his chest, in the shape of a T. He was standing to one side of OM, and on the other stood the two Users.

“With all respect to the Monitor -” Glim began.

“It’s coming here.” Every word came out clipped and ruthlessly certain.

“I agree.” GAM, standing beside PEN’s projection, interjected. “It has to. The only thing it wants is here.”

“Perhaps the program in question should encrypt her tags after all,” PEN began suggesting diplomatically.

“Are you going to force her to?” MAR asked point-blank.

PEN sighed in exasperation, but didn’t argue.

“Can’t we stick to long-range engagements? Fire from the fleets?

“It’ll have flyers,” Gungnir shook his head at ACM, and leveled an exasperated look at the white-clad figure before turning his attention to the meeting. “When we engaged it with the Drakkar, it learned how to duplicate the magnetic protocols the construction barges in Ilo were using. It took two of our jets as well. If you want to assume, assume the worst.”

“You hurt it,” the unknown Monitor pointed out. “Your reports said so.”

“Briefly. Temporarily.”

“But you did hurt it,” MAR quickly caught onto what was being suggested. “Is your weapon proprietary? An extension of your code?”

“Yes, it’s a patch. I could ask my User if it can be made available to everyone, I suppose.”

“We can’t count on maybe-weaponry and perhaps-updates,” GAM’s voice, despite the filters, sounded impatient. “We need a strategy to destroy the virus that relies on who and what we have here. Now.”

“Any strategy must prioritize the safe recovery of the User,” the white-clad Monitor pointed out. Kane, who’d been about to protest against GAM’s words, found himself staring at his unexpected ally.

“There are four SysAdmins on site,” GAM countered. “Not counting those en-route. The entire defensive component of some cities is here. If they fall, if they’re infected, those cities won’t be just helpless, they’ll be leaderless.”

“Om will not help any effort that doesn’t involve a solid strategy for getting the User to safety.”

PEN blinked at the Monitor; its projection turned to face its fellow SysAdmin. “OM?”

“Tron speaks for Om in this matter.”

“And GAM speaks for Ark,” Glim shot back. “I am sorry, Kane. But we can’t risk the entire Grid, everyone on it, everything that’s been created through decacycles, for just one User that might not even be there anymore!” She gestured expansively. “Parnassus is already lost, its recovery depending entirely on MAR’s User. Would you have us risk the Glaciers? The Stacks?”

“Yes,” Tron replied evenly. “Because there is no risk. The virus will be stopped here. I’m not asking anyone to do something I’m not willing to do myself. I will engage the virus, and I will find a way to get the User out. All I want of those assembled here is the time to do so.”

“Time is the one thing the virus won’t give us!” GAM shot back. “Time is what it used to defeat the defenses at Parnassus, time and numbers!”

When every eye turned to him, MAR had to shrug a little helplessly. “He’s right.”

“It has to cross the entire Black Plain to get to OM,” Tron pointed out calmly, though a note of temper was beginning to hum in the electronic undertone of his voice.

“You assume it’ll do so on foot,” GAM replied tightly. “And if it does, oh, what an army of simulacra it’ll have by the time it gets to Om proper.”

“Which will be under constant fire from the massed fleets above our heads.”

“Provided those aren’t engaged in combat themselves.”

“If it has air forces, they’ll be flying against Pevirian and Flowian programs who are veterans of air combat.”

“Who risk capture and infection just by engaging. You just said you read the reports.” GAM threw an arm out. “You did read the part where that thing can infect remotely? By disk?”

“What would you have us do, Sentry? Cower in a hole in the terrain?” Tron finally snapped.

“I want to fight!” GAM snarled right back. “I want to engage the thing as soon as it’s sighted, away from a city, away from a populace, away from any more programs it can infect. It destroyed the Island, annihilated Ilo, it all but derezzed every program in Halcyon, it’s devoured the Waystation. Tens of thousands of programs are derezzed and you want to put another city on the line because of one User?!”

Tron tipped his head minutely. The black faceplate gleamed.

Then he spoke very, very calmly. “Step outside with me for a moment, Sentry.”

GAM’s shoulders went rigid. Across the gathering, Gungnir’s eyes were shouting a warning he couldn’t quite interpret. Adas had covered her mouth in shock.

“Derezzing me won’t change my mind. Or that of the other SysAdmins here,” he ground out.

“No,” Tron agreed easily. “But if you give me five nanocycles, I believe I can change your mind all the same. No derezzing necessary.”

GAM stiffened visibly, but after a moment his helm turned to PEN. The SysAdmin, looking deeply worried, nodded permission, and the Sentry stalked out.

Tron followed. Quietly, Sam murmured, “Oh, this I gotta see,” and charged through the chamber after the two, followed after a moment by Kane and the other three SysAdmins.

Chapter Text

“How far can you take it?” Rob watched in disbelief as the laser was examined, wrapped, taped, wrapped again, taped again, blanketed, wrapped one last time and secured inside a reinforced crate of some sort.

“Probably the loading docks,” Moto shrugged. “We don’t got no paperwork for an actual delivery, and even if we did, hospitals quarantine a good chunk of their deliveries. Honestly, I’m just makin’ this up as I go. You comin’? Or is there someone there who knows how to work this thing?”

“I’ll meet you there,” Rob assured the man.

The laser was halfway up the truck’s loading ramp when a tiny, bright pink Fortwo tried its best to screech to a halt in front of the house, sliding a foot or two in the slick pavement instead. The woman that scrambled out of it was nearly as pink and tiny as the car. “Moto?! Who’s Moto?”

“That’d be me.” Moto stepped down the ramp and examined the young woman evenly. She was only slightly larger than one of his arms. “Moto, Ilo. You are?” He offered a hand.

“Oh, no, I’m Julianne. It’s not me. I mean, I’m me but I’m not the User,” she hastily tripped over the words. “That’s my girlfriend, back in Ireland, Monkeybites. Uh… She plays games?”

“Pevir, probably,” Moto decided. “You got somethin’ for me?”

“Oh, yes! Yes, yes.” She rummaged through her exceedingly pink purse and brought out a large, clear plastic bag full of printed documents. “I didn’t want it to get wet.” She also fished out a brand-new roll of clear packing tape. “And I thought, since I didn’t have sticky paper for my printer, you might need this to stick it to the box.”

“Oh, I like people who plan ahead. You comin’?”

“Me? Gosh, no. I get to talking and then I can’t stop and god knows I’d probably end up saying something important to the wrong person and anyway, I’m watching her feed at home and this is so exciting!” She bounced lightly in place and, belatedly, shook his hand. “But oh, gosh, good luck.”

“Thank you. And you tell that girlfriend to be good to you, you did plenty good for her tonight.”

She beamed like a star. “She’s my Monkey and I love her!”

He waved the bag of documents at her and turned back to the truck while she hurried back to her car. The Fortwo left first, driving far more carefully in the spitting rain than when it had arrived. Robert followed her on the road up to the city. Somewhere behind him, the truck fell back, mindful of its precious cargo and the treacherous weather.

Robert’s phone chimed halfway to the hospital, an unknown number texting him. He would’ve ignored it if not because the preview of the message began with ‘Hosp permissi-’, and because it hit at a time when he’d finally begun to wonder how the hell he was gonna get himself in to see Molly way past anything resembling visiting hours.

Chapter Text

GAM stalked out of the main room of the Weather Station Tower and down the stairs that led to the first outcropping the main body of the tower touched. It was something of a misnomer to call the building a tower. In height it was one, but as with most buildings in Om, it followed the terrain rather than rising from it. It meant it touched onto little flat outcroppings at fairly regular intervals, the nearest one a bare half-floor below the top of the tower.

He paced angrily away from the building as soon as he was on open ground, too restless to hold still. So this Monitor, this Tron, spoke for Om. And he spoke for Pevir, if whatever past history he and Gungnir had was true. Flow, Ark and Halcyon would likely see reason, but would Diss? Would the Deeps?

Tron came behind him, far more sedately, and paused to watch the young Sentry tromping about. He sighed minutely. “GAM.”

The Sentry turned to look at him. “You cannot ask me to risk it. I will not lose another program to that thing if I can help it. Not one!”

“I hear you.” Tron didn’t fault the Sentry. As he’d been made to fight for the Users, GAM had been made to protect the Grid and all the programs within it. If anyone could understand wanting to do all that you could for those you were meant to defend, the Monitor could. That their disparate duties had them at odds was a tragedy, nothing else.

GAM stopped at those simple words, faced Tron, and threw his arms open in an obvious, wordless and angry question.

“Bear with me.” Tron reached for his disk and crouched down. He drew a line on the terrain, careful and methodical. “I’m not asking you to believe in me, GAM. I’m telling that you don’t have a choice if you want to fulfill your duty.”

The Sentry had instinctively reached for his disk, but he hadn’t completed the motion, and Tron felt a surge of mild gladness. GAM was a good program, to the baseline of him. He believed, but he wasn’t blind in his belief. He was angry, but then who wouldn’t be, after all he’d seen lost and destroyed? The Monitor turned, “Kane, if I may?”

The young User trotted up to him; they’d gathered up a small audience, Tron realized, from the SysAdmins to the techs organizing the meeting, all gathered along the stairwell. “Yeah?”

“Could you stand right here?” Tron pointed. “Just behind that line.”

“O… kay?”

“Thank you. One more thing,” Tron leaned close and whispered something to the User, who listened very intently before nodding solemnly. Then the program turned and very pointedly took a step past the line, the split voxels steaming faintly in the rain. “GAM,” he called out, and gestured to Kane, behind him and behind the line. “Here’s your virus. If you can get to him, we’ll do it your way. All you have to do,” Tron lifted his disk, “is get through me.”

GAM didn’t hesitate. His disk was in his hand in a picocycle and he charged Tron.

The Monitor did him the courtesy of taking that first charge head-on. Their disks slammed together, spitting mixed violet and white sparks.

Behind them, Kane turned to look at the programs watching them. Carefully, awkwardly, he reached out for his disk, weighted it in his hand, and then called out. “Hey, Gungnir! Can you hold this?”

He threw the disk in an easy, slow motion. Pevir’s SysAdmin leaned down a little from his spot next to MAR, caught the disk and saluted the User with it.

“One down,” Tron said with implacable calm, just loud enough for their audience to hear.

“Oh, come on,” Gungnir exclaimed in bewilderment.

GAM jerked in shock, but the Monitor was already moving in a blur. He threw back the Sentry, pivoted to one side and put a shoulder down. The only reason GAM didn’t go flying was that he was much larger than Tron, but he did stumble back, sliding off-balance on the rain-soaked terrain.

The white-clad program merely stood his ground.

GAM snarled; his helm gave away nothing. He whipped around, dragged in a breath through his teeth, and charged again. But this time he feinted twice in quick succession, and rather than using his disk, he threw a fist and then an elbow at the Monitor.

Who parried all four attacks, twisting around just enough to avoid having to deal with the force between the last two.

Behind them, Kane waved at Gungnir. “Can I have that back, please?”

“Absolutely not,” the SysAdmin replied firmly. On his other side, Sam was badly disguising his laughter.

“Alright.” Kane accepted that philosophically. He bent down, picked up a handful of voxels, and began to throw them. The first two clacked against the windows of the Weather Station Tower. The third one made one of the techs yelp.

“That’s two,” Tron said as he jerked away from a swipe from that vivid violet disk, sparks touching his black faceplate. He danced aside on a half-circle and brought a knee up, but GAM actually caught the blow and shoved it aside, throwing the Monitor momentarily off-balance.

In response, Tron went with the new vector and drove an elbow backwards into the side of the Sentry’s helm, staggering him a couple of steps that way. GAM caught himself and whirled around, but once again the Monitor was standing there, between him and Kane. Motionless. Unfathomable.

“Does it begin to sink in?” Tron asked with utmost calm.

Chapter Text

The storm had caught up to the city by the time Moto’s truck made it to the hospital. Rain sheeted down and they could barely see. He actually backed up to draw closer to the guard’s shack at the entrance, and he noticed the man barely glanced at the documents before handing them back in their little plastic bag, waving him on with a wave of thanks.

It was amazing, what people did for you if you were just a little kind.

There were lights on in one of the docks. Moto could feel his heart beating like a drum in his chest, but at least no one could tell how bad his hands were shaking while they were gripping the wheel. He knew a cue when he saw one, though, and he backed the truck as close as he could to that bright, white square of light.

“The moment,” he rumbled quietly to Jack and Cole, “the very second no one’s lookin’ your way, you pack up and you’re gone.”

“But what about you, boss?” Cole protested at once.

“Shouldn’t be a problem,” Moto replied, and was absolutely floored at how certain he sounded. “Gone.”

They grumbled and mumbled, but they’d do it. They were good men. Everyone trips every now and again, and Moto had never regretted hiring them. But he didn’t want them to get caught; between you and your record, people only ever look at your record.

Well, technically he was certain. Certain he was gonna get caught, but y’know. Certain of something!

There were four people waiting for him inside the building, and three of them looked to be thoroughly done with the fourth’s company. He was a short, slight, balding older man in plain clothing under a lab coat one size too big for him. He had an ID clipped to his breast pocket, but it showed only his photo, a bar code, and an oilslick watermark.

From the moment Moto opened the door and hurried in, he heard the man whine in a droning, oppressive tone that was already making his teeth itch by the time he offered the paperwork. The man in the lab coat snatched it up first. The two security guards crossed a glance; the dock supervisor waited his turn, his teeth gritted so hard Moto thought he could hear them squeaking.

Papers were signed. Documents changed hands. He was told to follow the whining little man, and at least one of the guards gave him a pitying look.

And then he was rolling the crate into a cargo elevator. He was in.

The moment the doors closed, the whining ended as abruptly as if someone had cut off a spigot, and the little balding man nearly collapsed. “I think I’m gonna be sick,” he croaked. He was covered in a sheen of cold sweat and shaking like a leaf.

Moto caught him. “That was good, man!”

“You think so? Oh, good god.” The little man wiped his face into a tissue. “Channeling Thumper big-time, is what that was. He’s the loud one.” He cleared his throat and politely offered his hand. “Thumper, Flow. Centrifugal data interpretation software.”

“Moto, Ilo. GPS.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry.” Thumper’s expression filled with empathy. “We’ll get it back. I mean, we’re all doing all this.” He flailed vaguely all around them. “Getting it back should be nothing, right?”

“Fingers crossed. We’re going down?”

“Yes. I have to actually take you to the sub-basement so the elevator will log the trip. But just stay on, it can take you all the way up to the tenth floor without an ID. Someone in chat said they’ll be waiting for you there.”

Moto blew out a long breath. “You’re not coming?”

“No, god, no! I used up all the courage I had just now. I’ll probably throw up if someone stops to look at us upstairs. How would that look.”

Moto had to accept that with a reasonable shrug. At least Thumper knew his limitations. Always better that way. They rode down in silence.

“It’s kind of wild, isn’t it?” Thumper pointed out after a moment.

“Kinda’s putting it mildly.”

They grinned at each other over the box.

Chapter Text

The observers scattered when they realized what Kane was doing. Even so, another tech staggered after a moment, limping and clutching at one leg for a couple of steps before making it inside.

“Not so hard!” Adas yelled at the User, then had to duck down with a squeak when she nearly got hit, MAR dragging her close and under cover.

“Well, get me my disk back, then,” Kane suggested.

Adas eyed Gungnir. Gungnir eyed her back and waggled his brows in pointed invitation and she huffed, staying low behind the stairwell railing.

GAM dropped down minutely to stop his uncontrolled slide, whirled around and came right back at Tron. Their disks clashed in strike, parry and counter almost too fast to follow, leaving behind radiant afterimages and showers of sparks. The Sentry was stronger, but Tron was quicker, and both knew how to handle that slender margin of difference to their best advantage.

Tron, much to his surprise, found that the Sentry was not an easy opponent. Past the first enthusiastically blind attack, GAM was thinking and more: he was learning. Given enough time and experience, he would be a tremendous opponent.

But as GAM himself had pointed, time was something the virus would give none of them. Letting a forceful strike from the Sentry’s disk slide and yank him around, Tron pivoted and brought his disk around in a heavy sideways strike…

Only for it to slam hard into the built-in shield in GAM’s armor.

For the briefest of moments the finest warrior in the Grid was caught completely off-guard at finding Pevirian armor outside a Pevirian arena.

Fully taking advantage, GAM’s fist shot out and slammed into Tron’s faceplate so hard a single thin crack formed on the corner of it, and the Monitor staggered back. The Sentry didn’t waste time basking in his victory. He immediately darted to one side.

Tron accepted the fall and kicked him. The blow landed against GAM’s shoulder, spun him halfway around before he could so much as make a grab for Kane, and gave him a real good look as the Monitor rolled seamlessly back onto his feet and came at him in a blur, disk leading. He swung it so hard, with such lethal energy, that the whirling white blade took a chunk of the shield right off, sending it spilling down in black voxels.

“Aren’t you getting it?” Tron asked as he forced GAM to give ground, step by furious step, his disk hitting twice for every parry the Sentry managed to put up. He slipped right past the battered shield, directly into GAM’s space, and headbutted him. Tron’s faceplate had cracked; GAM’s shattered outright. “Do you understand, do you see yet?”

“I won’t -!”

“You’ve better!” Tron tried to swat aside GAM’s defense, but the Sentry managed to bluff him and shoulder-checked him back, forcing the Monitor a couple of staggered steps forward.

Tron retaliated by dropping and spinning, and landing a terrible kick against GAM’s ankles, and the Sentry went down on one knee. He still managed to put his disk up to parry a downward swing, and surged up with an angry yell.

Tron wasn’t there anymore.

GAM froze. A disk, white as the Monitor’s armor, was whirring so close to his neck that he could see his own reflection on it, past the shattered black faceplate. “You’ve better do it. I’m a Sentry. I’m the Wall. I can’t, I won’t stop doing my job.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” Tron said mildly, his hand steady. He was next to GAM, perfectly standing on the Sentry’s blind spot, created when he’d shattered the faceplate and left the helm’s feedback offline. “I want you to think.”

GAM glanced at him without moving. “Think?!”

“Yes. About the fact that while we were fighting, the virus infected five programs.”

“Six,” Kane called out.

“Six.”

“You -!”

“I will protect the User, Sentry,” Tron declared with the same implacable calm he’d shown at the meeting. “Like you, I will not be moved from that goal, and I know what it’s gonna cost me. That’s the difference between you and me: I accept that not all of us are gonna walk away from this fight; you think you can save everyone. Which is unrealistic at best, deluded at worst. I’m working within the losses I know we’re gonna face. If you fight against me, programs will be infected. If you fight with me, programs might be infected. Do you see the difference?”

GAM stared at Tron in utter disbelief. “You would sacrifice us all for it.”

“For her. And no. I’m willing to accept defeat, GAM. I’ve faced it before. I’m standing on it. The Black Vault is nothing but a list of fights I’ve lost. I’m just not willing to give up the fight before I even try.”

“That’s not what I’m doing!” GAM hissed at him.

“It’s a little bit what you’re doing,” Tron replied lightly. “It’s a Sentry thing to only see things your way. But I’ve asked around; I’ve heard about you from programs I trust. And I think you’re smart enough to see that your way loses more than it wins.”

GAM gritted his teeth… and dropped his head. “You’re not giving me a choice.”

“I am.” Tron pulled his disk away and walked up to stand before the Sentry; without hesitation he offered him his hand. “I’m just showing you how costly your choice is against mine.”

Chapter Text

There was no one waiting for Moto.

The elevator doors opened to a dimly lit, broad hallway. Not too far away he could hear what he imagined were typical hospital noises, voices and machines and so on. But the immediate space around him was cool and empty.

He peeked out. Clear across fifty feet of hallway, there was another head peeking out at him.

He waved.

The other head flourished a hand, and waved back, then waved him urgently onwards. Moto rolled the crate out and dragged it over. He managed to open his mouth before he got a scrub shirt shoved at him. “Put this on.”

“Uh…”

“And this.” He got a lanyard. The picture on it was a good match to his face, though clean-shaven and somewhat marred by a scowl.

“Ah…”

His contact fully shoved open the door from which he was coming and going, locking it in place, and Moto stared. A janitor closet is not the sort of place you expect to see looking like a bank vault, spotless, flawlessly organized. Nonetheless, behind a large supply cart, that was all he saw – a place for everything and everything in his place.

But he was already shrugging off his jacket and putting on the scrubs. He read the ID: William B. Altburgh glowered indifferently at him. “Friendly guy.”

“No, he wasn’t.” His host rolled out the supply cart. It was slightly smaller than the crate, but not by much. “He kept forgetting his ID. I kept finding it. I kept saving it for him but he kept forgetting it, and I kept saving it, and then he got fired, and no one came to pick it up.” He spoke in a breathless rush, a young man who looked even tinier than Monkeybites’ girlfriend, but who fought the supply cart out with little effort.

“Won’t people know he got fired?”

“No. He got fired three janitors ago. There’s no one left to remember him and even if they did, he was on the day shift.” The young man paused. “I didn’t like him. He wasn’t nice.”

“Do I have to be… not nice?” Moto had the feeling it mattered, though he couldn’t have said why.

The question brought his guide to a complete halt, and he stood before the big man. He had dark brown hair cut short, dark skin and dark brown eyes, and he looked terribly serious. “No. You can be nice. He got fired. No one remembers him.” He looked at the crate and seemed crestfallen. “It’s bigger than I thought. I don’t have a bigger cart. This is the biggest cart I have. I don’t have a b-”

“It’s the packing,” Moto jumped in. “I can probably take a few layers off, but we’ll have to be extra-careful with it.”

The young man nodded eagerly. “I can do that. I can be very careful. I’m always very careful. It’s a hospital, you have to be.”

Moto set about removing the sides of the crate, and the first layer of blankets and foam. “I’m Moto. Ilo,” he offered as he worked.

He got a mumble in response, and when he looked up, he saw the young man had gone very, very red. He decided he didn’t have to pursue that one, not yet anyways. “Do you know where we’re going?”

“Yes. Room 1410. Private room, visiting hours only. Two desk checkpoints.” For the first time, the even monotone of his speech faltered. “We’re gonna tell them I’m training you. For the night shift.”

“Got it.”

He had to peel another layer of packing off, but eventually the laser fit into the supply cart. All the inner shelves had been removed, and every supply had been painstakingly shelved in the janitor closet. Before his guide closed the door, Moto caught a glimpse of a tiny space carved out at the far corner, a chair, a laptop and a Space Paranoids thermos, gone pale with age.

Then they were rolling down the hallway, and past the first desk. The nurses on duty threw distracted greetings at ‘Ethan’, but other than a curious look, Moto got nothing as he followed dutifully in his ‘trainer’s’ wake.

They made it to an entirely different cargo elevator, this one with a card reader. ‘Ethan’ put his card in, the doors closed, and up they went, the silence tense as they drew closer and closer to their goal.

Robert, meanwhile, rolled into the parking lot, hurried to the doors, then skid to a halt and ran back to his car to grab his backpack and his ENCOM lanyard. He was supposed to be IT, the least he could do was look the part. He was, at least, rumpled enough that the receptionist didn’t immediately have any suspicions when he reported his presence and the reason for it. The name of his contact made all three of the charming young ladies roll their eyes.

“Probably forgot to turn on his printer,” one told the others.

“How can you be so good with brains and so bad with computers,” another one said.

The third printed out a temporary ID for him and sent him on his way with a very professional smile. Robert got in the elevator and decided to try his luck on floor 14, but he got bounced, very efficiently, back to the elevator and to floor 17, by the nurses on duty.

He all but ran to 1705, but only managed to knock once before the door was yanked open. “Oh, thank god!”

Rob stared. The man was taller than him, lean, gaunt, with a full head of silver hair and sharp, narrow features. He wore elegant clothing under a lab coat; the ID pinned to his breast pocket had a photo, a bar code and an oilslick watermark. “Sorry, I didn’t dare drive any faster in this weather.”

“Disasters always happen at the worst possible time,” the man replied, stepping aside and gesturing him in. “I’m surprised it’s not hailing, just for a cherry on top.” His voice was low and cultured, and at the moment only a little nervous. “Put this on. Did you got to 14 first?”

“Yes.”

“Of course you did.”

“Sorry.”

“It’s fine. They never want to make eye contact with me, they won’t look at you if you’re behind me.” Rob was given a lab coat that hung too big on him. Told to smooth down his hair. Remove his glasses. Got an ID to clip onto his coat.

“Uh… why?”

“I’m an asshole.” The man paused. “I’m exacting. I’m precise. I don’t have enough nurses and too many patients, and I have an unfortunately short temper. I am tending to it with a therapist. That doesn’t help the image I’ve already created,” he declared with precise, calm control, then shrugged minutely. “I just never thought I’d get to take advantage of the mistakes of my past.” He offered his hand. “Kavannaugh Ascott, neurosurgeon. Seems a little silly not to use names at this point.”

“Oh, uh, yes, thank you.” Robert shook the man’s hand. “I think that’s for, you know. Plausible deniability.”

“I don’t see why.” Ascott peeked out the door and led them both out. “You’re MAR, aren’t you?”

“Yes?”

“And you’re one of the co-creators, so you likely know who everyone is, right?”

“Um.”

Ascott came to a dead stop to stare at him. “You don’t? You don’t! Huh! The things you learn.” He offered his hand once again. “ACM.”

“You? You’re ACM? Flow’s SysAdmin?”

“I didn’t make him to be SysAdmin!” Ascott looked vaguely flustered. “I didn’t make him to do anything that, that… big. I was trying to make something that could measure bioelectric activity on the nervous system. Something simple. I barely learned enough programming to, you know, pluck at things. The code just… did things.” The elevator doors opened and they both stepped in. “At least he’s better with people than me.”

Chapter Text

Gungnir found GAM standing at the edge of a terrain outcropping, staring at the distant flaring light of the Breach. The Gridborn was sitting on a broken boulder by the Sentry’s side, and she gave him such a foul glare when he got close enough to be detected that Pevir’s SysAdmin couldn’t help but pause. No, he’d definitely made no friends there. He grinned minutely. “Give us a moment, please?”

She squinted at him, then looked up at GAM. The Sentry had replaced his helm and his armor, courtesy of the Drakkar’s stores, and the black faceplate nodded at her.

“You’ve been adopted,” Gungnir said once Vidi was gone, moving to stand by GAM’s side.

“I suppose from her point of view, I need protecting,” GAM replied.

“You do seem more prone to getting in trouble than what I remember.” Gungnir blew out a low breath. “Can we talk?”

“We are talking.”

“You know what I mean.”

After a moment, GAM retracted his helm. “You were winning. It was Pevir’s fight, not Halcyon’s. I didn’t want my presence to… taint your victory.”

Gungnir blew out a long, amused breath. “If only you’d said that back then.”

“I was a very different program back then.”

Gungnir scoffed. “The more things change. He’s right, you know.”

“I am aware,” the Sentry gritted out. “I may not like it, but I am very aware. Have they voted yet?”

“It went about as you’d expect. Glim’s still making angry noises, and the Deeps are too far to help anyway. But he’s hard to argue with, he always has been.”

“I noticed.”

They were silent long enough that the flare began to subside. “Have you been able to reach your User?"

“No. I’m still getting the ‘after work hours’ message. Then again, we’ve never really talked. He sends me patches, updates. Leaves it to me if I want to accept them or not. Buys another blueprint from Halcyon so I can bounce it here and get another little knick-knack made for my collection. He likes me. He just doesn’t talk to me.”

“Maybe you’ve done everything right, everything he expected you to do, and there’s nothing to say.”

Gungnir shot him a look, then glanced at the open plain again. “Do you like the Gridborn, GAM?”

“Vidi? Pain in my every voxel, she is.”

The SysAdmin chuckled. “I mean it.”

“Yes. She’s… so real, Gungnir. I thought I knew myself, my place. My code. But she’s real to her last voxel. She knows herself better than anyone I’ve ever met. Take the Souk, take Halcyon, take Ilo, take everything from her and she just turns around and finds someplace else to belong. Something else to do.”

“She has no User.”

“Her User is the Grid."

“Well, we can’t all be so blessed. You’ve never needed a User before now to know yourself, GAM. Why change that?”

The Sentry shifted and ducked his head. “See, this is why I don’t open my helm around you. You and Adas.”

Gungnir laughed. “Pleasant company you’re putting me with.”

“You earned that.”

“I did, I did. Ilo’s gonna be a much more ruthless place once we get it back online.” The SysAdmin saw a smile pass fleetingly over the Sentry’s face. “What?”

“You said ‘when’.” He exhaled sharply. “He’s got us both figured out, doesn’t he. Idealists, you and me.”

“I’m pretty sure a pragmatist like him would’ve never taken on WOPR.”

“No? He came to help you, not him.” GAM breathed out slowly. “I don’t… want to see things the way he does, Gungnir. I don’t want to think of losing programs to this virus. But…”

“But he’s right. And he makes it impossible not to see things his way. Now you know how the rest of us feel when we talk to you.”

At that GAM did burst out laughing. Gungnir looked terribly pleased with himself, waiting until the Sentry had regained his composure to offer his hand. “If I have to go into this fight,” he said, “I’m glad it’s with you, my friend.”

GAM took the offered hand, a grin still making the deep violet of his eyes gleam.

A sudden, brilliant surge of energy in the distance made them both whip around. “Was that the Breach?” Gungnir asked.

“No, it’s too far from it.” GAM answered, closing up his helm. “It’s here.”

They both began to walk hastily back toward the city. “We don’t have the User’s body yet.”

“I don’t think it’ll care.”

Chapter Text

It almost felt as if it’d come to the edge of the world.

The virus couldn’t shake that feeling, the odd perception that it was walking along an edge it couldn’t see, above a fall too deep to survive. The closer it and its forces had gotten to Om, to the siren’s call of the little wild-haired program, the more the sensation intensified.

It wasn’t coming from its passenger. That one had done nothing but weep and try to keep the virus away since the battle on board the red warship. There was no more information, no more improvisation, nothing. Useless thing.

But that was fine. Before the… event at the warship, when the passenger had been an obliging partner, the virus had been an apt pupil. It knew. It knew why the world wasn’t real. It was all letters and numbers, lines and equations.

Code.

Oh, the things one could do with code, twisting it, breaking it, putting it back together. The virus had realized that its body wasn’t one, it was many broken pieces of code, held together by nothing but a bit of memory and a lot of will.

The memory of being whole once.

The virus’ will.

You’re not real , the passenger had said.

“I am real enough.” So what if its body wasn’t real? The virus was real. Its will was real.

It looked around itself. Its army was real. Crafting simulacra had become an intrinsic part of its existence; wherever it went, the creatures sprang up behind it, eating up whatever terrain or vehicle it had left behind. It hadn’t been able to do so with the ocean, much to its surprise, until it had realized that the code within its waves… wasn’t. It was full of voids and holes, gaps and empty spaces, and as soon as it crafted a simulacra , one of those voids slipped in and the code collapsed.

It almost felt like a barrier, a wall, as it had happened in Parnassus, but on a much larger scale. Perhaps once it had its chosen body, it would investigate that. Yes.

But at the moment its attention was on the distant lights before it. Om shone to the virus’ perceptions, the bright lights scattered along the slopes of its Spire, the wild lightning crackling among the storm-tossed clouds, the occasional surge of energy welling up from the terrain . For a while a brilliant pillar of light had burst forth from the Spire, reaching up to the sky, but it was gone now.

Its passenger howled within their shared body, and the virus staggered at the sheer burden of rage and misery that came with the unheard sound. Around it, on the deck of an immense freighter, every infected program and simulacra turned to look at it.

“Shut up,” it hissed. “Be quiet. Be still.”

You took him from me .

“Who?” There were questions the passenger would not answer, and the virus couldn’t figure out, and every time one came up it felt that edge come closer and closer. At first it had simply been rage at being balked. Now it felt like every answer they didn’t share was a trap.

Well, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It would take Om as it had taken the Waystation. It would take them all, every city and every program. It would grow , and grow , and the Grid would be the virus, and the virus would be the Grid, and everything would be made right.

I know you , the passenger whispered.

“Do you, now?” The virus was standing on the prow of an immense freighter. Every surface behind it seethed with infected programs, with simulacra, with stolen vehicles, with reshaped weaponry.

Yes. He was wrong. You aren’t a virus.

“Ah.” It smiled indulgently. “I thought you’d tell me I’m not real again.”

You are as real as I am.

“You are not real,” the virus’ mirth disappeared in a flash.

I am as real as you are.

The virus scoffed and drew itself up into a more contained shape. They were waiting for it, it knew. Its enemies. It could feel the burden of their code, straining the atmospheric equations.

Security .

Like a virus, he too had spread. He had found others to share in its purpose. How little difference there was between them, in the end. How little difference would it make. It turned to a few of the programs standing close by.

“Go,” it told them simply, and they shuffled away.

It turned back to gaze at Om. “It’s rude to keep your friends waiting.”

Chapter Text

Robert felt some very conflicting emotions when he realized Ascott was right; no one wanted to draw his attention, and by default that meant no one gave his ‘student’ a second look. But the passively hostile tones with which the neurosurgeon was greeted and moved along were… He didn’t like those pointed at someone who was doing his best to help perfect strangers.

They moved along a dimly lit hallway, the silence overpowering. Ascott could race along without seeming to do so, and Robert was all but trotting after him. “Is anyone following?” ACM’s User asked in an undertone.

“Uh…”

“You can look back. You’re my student. I cannot. I’m the asshole,” Ascott reminded him.

“Are you also a psychologist or something?” The young man glanced behind them, saw no one. “It’s clear.”

“Or something,” Ascott admitted. “I wanted to be a psychiatrist before I became a neurosurgeon. I keep up with the general news.”

“And you stuck a bit of programming in there somewhere?”

“In the cracks. I know it sounds like I’m an easily distracted man -”

“It sounds like you’re a brilliant man,” Rob interrupted.

Ascott came to an abrupt stop and turned, giving him a surprised, speechless look.

“You’re not used to getting compliments, I take it?”

“I’m used to flattery, which isn’t the same, I suppose.” He hesitated visibly. “Thank you.”

Robert gestured wordlessly at everything around them.

“I mean… It sounded exciting,” Ascott admitted sheepishly, and picked up the pace again. “This w- ”

He turned a corner and came to an abrupt halt. Already nervous about the whole undertaking, Robert skid to a stop and flattened himself against a wall. They were due for something to go wrong; they were way overdue for it, honestly.

A distant, male voice, called out. “Moto, from Ilo.”

Robert saw Ascott wilt with relief and start forward again, and followed after him, glad that no one had seen him sag as well. “I thought we were about to be made.” The neurosurgeon offered the mover a hand without hesitation, opened his mouth… and only then faltered. He smiled a little wryly. “ACM, Flow.”

Moto jerked in surprise. The slender young man with him, all but hiding behind his bulk, choked on a little sound and then ducked further behind the supply cart they’d been trying to get into 1410. “Didn’t think I’d run into a SysAdmin doing this. They’re all so… serious.”

“ACM is many things. Believe me, compared to his User, ‘serious’ isn’t to be found anywhere in his programming,” Ascott declared with deadpan dignity. “What’s the problem?”

“The cart doesn’t fit, the door’s too small and the cart’s too wide and the cart doesn’t fit,” the young man recited.

“Do we want to -” Moto left the suggestion unspoken, but hanging quite obviously in the air, and all three of them stared at Robert.

He ran his hands restlessly through his hair. So. This was were things went wrong, and it had to be him that did it. Again.

This time, however, he refused to drag anyone along blindly. “Ok, so. So far we haven’t done anything illegal. Not really,” he told all three of them.” He gestured minutely. “The line is this thin, but we can argue that nothing illegal’s happened. The moment we drag that thing out, unpack it and shove it into the room, that line’s gone. So if you want to leave, it has to be now.”

The three men all crossed one look.

“Well, I can’t leave,” Ascott said tartly. “Someone has to stay and make sure the young woman is stabilized through this whole… shenanigans.”

The young janitor hiding behind his cart straightened up. “I’m not leaving. I’m not. I’m not leaving unless you send me away. I’m not leaving.” He seemed to think for a moment. “And someone has to make sure you plug it in right so it doesn’t mess up anything else. Other people need electricity too. They need machines, and the machines need electricity.”

Ascott hung his head briefly. “I hadn’t even thought of that. Of course someone needs to make sure the thing doesn’t burn out the hospital’s grid.” He offered his hand at the janitor over the supply cart. “ACM, Flow.”

The janitor hesitated, glancing at that hand and then staring firmly at his supply cart. “You’re gonna… you’re gonna be mad if I tell you.”

“I don’t think I can find it in me to be at angry at anyone present here, sir.” Ascott kept his hand where it was.

It was taken with a bit of hesitation, but shaken firmly. The janitor shrugged a little. “Gungnir, Pevir.”

The other three stared speechless at him.

Ascott started laughing. “I am absolutely delighted to meet you. Can the laser fit if we unpack it completely?”

Gungnir glanced at the door, at the cart. “Yes,” he declared without hesitation.

Moto flicked open his box knife. “Someone hold the door and my beer.”

Robert could have wept from sheer relief and gratitude, but Moto gave him no time. Tape was sliced, rope was cut, blankets and foam cast carelessly aside. Ascott charged in and held the door as the other three men muscled the laser inside as carefully as they could. He closed the door and locked it.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?!”

They all froze, whirling around. A man was sitting on the couch in the small, dimly lit room. He was the oldest of them all, handsome, silver-haired, trim and fit, wearing plain glasses and staring at the lot of them in shock over the top of the book he’d been reading. He was wearing a comfortable shirt, his sports jacket tossed over the back of the couch, and dark slacks.

Rob peered over the top of the laser. “Uh… evening, doctor Bradley.”

Alan Bradley opened his mouth to express his very pointed opinion on the greeting, but all five of their phones went off with a single warning simultaneously. They’d all, apparently, been waiting for the same deadly bit of news, because understanding came instantaneously.

The virus was in Om.

It galvanized the four new arrivals back into motion. “Who are you?” Ascott demanded. “How are you here? Why are you here?”

“I’m her godfather,” Alan replied sternly. “Who are you ?”

“I’m her doctor.”

“I know doctor Marley, she’s about ten years older and a woman.”

“Right now, I’m what you get,” Ascott shot back, moving over to the sole occupant of the room.

“Rob, what -” Alan stopped. “You’re not.”

“Um.”

“You are not following that thing’s advice!”

“You do realize, this is Kane and Tron’s idea?”

“He’s my program, that doesn’t mean he’s infallible! Or, apparently, sensible! Rob.” Alan caught him by the shoulders. “That thing in the basement was his friend. He’s biased. He’s not thinking straight, none of them are.”

“Ok, then I need another option, sir. Any option. Anything. Because time’s running out, here and there.” He gestured at the laser. “No one can track the thing out here. We’ve tried everything. We’re out of options out here. All that’s left is whatever we might be able to do in there.”

Chapter Text

The immense sea freighters that the virus had captured at the Waypoint never stopped. A reasonable enemy, one who still had an interest in safeguarding troops and supplies, would have seen to their safety as the only available route of retreat, if things should go wrong.

But the virus didn’t care about such things. Retreat was not an option, and its troops were disposable, easily replaced. The freighters charged the shore and beached themselves with brutal ruthlessness, hulls tearing against the wild terrain that surrounded Om and the Black Plain. The virus hung on as infected programs and simulacra were tossed this way and that by the crash; it waited until they were sliding more or less evenly over the terrain, amidst terrible rending sounds, and then collapsed slowly in on itself, spreading like a deadly mantle over the deck. Its awareness split along to the programs on all the freighters and more, to the freighters themselves. To the precious cargo rescued from the sea, secured in the hold of the original freighter, duplicated over the time it had taken to reach this distant shore.

The sides of the freighters began to crack and flow in yellow-tinted voxel spills, bubbling and twisting, their substance wailing as if in agony. Their somewhat elegant profile flattened, shifted, grew ugly protrusions. The virus latched onto the code that said ‘swim’ and replaced it, forcibly and violently, with the code that in the Pevirian tank said ‘roll’.

It began with sharp, uncertain jerks forward from first one freighter, then another. A third surged forward and slid sideways, the infection’s work complete along one side but not the other. The virus howled in fury, unwilling to be balked. Nothing wasn’t real. It wasn’t real, it was just numbers, letters, symbols, to be put together this way and that and any way at all the virus wanted. The code would do as it was told because it. wasn’t. real!

The first freighter roared across the plain and began to roll forward on immense tread protocols, code all but burning against the Grid, attacking the very foundations on which such principles were writ ten and yet working within them just closely enough. Treads were not meant to move such a massive construct; the freighters weren’t sturdy enough. By rights they should have split in half to be forced to move overland, but the virus knew their internal structure wouldn’t fail immediately, merely eventually. And ‘eventually’ was enough for its purposes.

The first ships from Om’s defense, high above, immediately opened fire on this unexpected opponent. The virus reformed itself on the deck of the leading freighter and looked up.

It smiled. “Bring them down,” it said mildly.

Hatches opened on several of the freighters, and a new type of simulacra burst up into the air by the hundreds. They were small, modeled somewhat after the light-jets the virus had held so briefly, somewhat after gridbugs, with their sharp legs and their single-minded hunger . They carried no pilot, no weaponry.

Instead they launched themselves at the engine of the front-most ship in the sky, a graceful Arkite carrier. They bypassed the light-jets defending it , the weapons firing, they bypassed everything and latched themselves onto the propulsion bars, covering them, clogging them. Alarms began to ring across the entire ship, and then the mass of simulacra , as one, detonated.

The ship began to fall. The impact lit up the Black Plain all the way to Om.

The virus looked up. Wing chutes and escape pods littered the sky. It smiled. “Bring them to me,” it instructed, and the massed simulacra on the deck with it launched themselves forward with a collective snarl.

Chapter Text

“We are out of time!” GAM gritted out. Beyond the windows of the Weather Station Tower, they could see the distant flashes of energy as the massed fleets of the Grid took on whatever the virus was throwing at them.

A hand rested lightly on his shoulder. “Give your friends some credit, Sentry.” A woman’s voice said. She was nearly as solid as him, her first-gen circuitry overlaid with last-gen upgrades. She wore white, rather than black, and on her face she wore a perma-Cosmetic of parallel violet lines over her right eye. Her hair was short and dark, set in wild peaks. In deference to the fact that she hadn’t deployed her armor, he wasn’t wearing his either. “You cannot fight all their fights for them. They’d hate you for it.”

GAM worked his fists restlessly, but he knew she was right.

“We’re Sentries, not Monitors. We defend,” Ayin pointed out mildly.

They watched as, far in the distance, the ground itself seemed to erupt into a geyser of energy.

“Curie to CommCon,” a breathless male voice reported. “Enemy freighter down.”

“Excellent job, Curie,” Adas, standing next to Genie, replied calmly. “How are your upgrades coming along?”

“About finished,” the Curie reported. “Requesting permission for altitude change.”

“Granted,” OM replied rather than the GO4, then glanced at the program on the other side of Adas. “Time to see if Halcyon’s reputation is all it’s made out to be.”

Beyond them, the fleet began to rise. It made no difference to them; they had weaponry that could ford the distance between them and their ground-bound enemy readily. And the virus wasn’t firing anything at them. The real problem were the vast swarms of flying simulacra, too fast and small for any of the conventional defenses to stop them.

Rather than face the swarms, the ships began to rise into the Spirestorm.

Lighting crackled and raced over surge-protections that every flying construct on the Grid possessed; they were too used to their sky being angry at them at utterly random intervals. Energy levels flickered, circuitry pulsing, but it was nothing that couldn’t be handled by the great warships.

The little simulacra were another matter. Entire swaths began to disappear, torn into their most minor voxels, structure and code and infection all overwhelmed by monstrous enemy surges. Still, they came on in their endless numbers.

The ships went higher. The storm caught them in its teeth and howled all around them.

And at the core of each ship’s navigational system, a newly minted gyroscopic navigator circuit took every jolt, every push and shove and twist, and guided each ship unfailingly around it. After two attempts to follow that no simulacra survived, the virus’ swarms could only twist away and circle like angry, impotent hornets.

“All ships above lower storm edge,” the Curie reported after a long, tense moment. The captain himself sounded as if he could hardly believe what he was saying.

Vidi looked terribly pleased with herself. “Told you Dijoyi was good for it,” she declared smugly.

“Your friend will have my unending thanks later,” OM replied and nodded to Adas.

“CommCon to all ships,” the GO4 spoke calmly into the general line. “Fire at will.” She received a barrage of acknowledgments. “CommCon to Monitor Station.”

“Nothing yet,” Tron replied tightly.

GAM made a little exasperated noise.

“I heard that, GAM,” the Monitor said.

“No, you didn’t,” the Sentry protested.

“No, but it was a pretty good guess. They’ll be here.”

“Altamira to CommCon. We’re… Our target just went missing.”

“I beg your pardon?” Adas asked.

“Yeah, they’re not the only one, CommCon. This is the Medjay, and our target just vanished right from our targeting scans.”

Reports began to roll in from the rest of the fleet, all as confused as the first two.

“They’re not made for ground travel, did whatever the infection do to them destroy them?” OM asked.

Adas stared. “… No. CommCon to ground forces, prepare for an assault on your wall defenses.”

“On us?” The woman’s voice sounded incredulous. “Past the Breach? Past the fleet? We have multiple layers of defenses between them an-”

“The fleet can’t target simulacra, they’re too small,” Adas replied, keeping her voice calm by force of will alone. “Neither can the Recognizers, they’re too slow. And it has just turned all of its ships into simulacra. Nothing is going to stop them until they’re on you. If it’s got anything big enough to -”

“Drakkar to CommCon, those things are coming for the Spire!”

They all looked up. Past the windows of the Weather Station Tower, just below the bottom of the Spirestorm, they could see the vast yellow currents that were the virus’ simulacra swarms coming together and charging toward Om. They weren’t bothering with the ground defenses, and they didn’t give any sign of interest in the city and its buildings, empty already of programs. Instead they flew, vector-straight, for the base of the Spire.

Which chose that moment to become active in a brilliant blast of light.

“Vidi, I need your disk,” GAM said abruptly, gesturing at his back. She grabbed it and threw it at him without hesitation, and the Sentry raced outside, Ayin half a step behind him. The simulacra swarm was a thunderous roar amidst the hiss of the rain.

“What are you doing?” Ayin shouted to be heard over the swarm.

“Asking for help,” GAM replied, and threw Vidi’s fake disk as hard as he could, straight up.

The Weather Station Tower stood about as high as the Spire was willing to tolerate intrusions. The disk soared upward, alongside the swarm, which paid it no mind as it flowed down to slam into the terrain, beginning to chip away at the very base of the Spire. The disk kept going up, and up, and up -

And the storm, unsurprisingly, took offense.

Lighting blazed down, a bolt so bright and so close that it bowled over both programs. It struck the disk and disintegrated it – but it was now close enough to detect the swarm, and it twisted and contorted toward them. It struck one and from there it spread through the swarm, obliterating anything it touched. A second bolt, a third, struck down, their irate and inanimate attention drawn down. By the time the storm stopped throwing a tantrum, the entire front of the swarm had basically been disintegrated.

“What have you done,” Ayin asked in disbelief where she was sitting, thrown into the terrain by the storm.

“It’s fine, it wasn’t her real disk,” GAM wheezed, picking himself up. “She’s full of surprises like that. GAM to Drakkar CommCon. Do you still carry boarding harpoons?”

“Are you trying to get me blown to voxels, Halcyon?” Gungnir’s voice replied indignantly.

“You’re the only one close enough. If you’ve got a better option I’m all ears!”

“We can’t target through the storm, GAM, we can’t even see t-”

An actinic beam of light sent GAM reeling. Behind him, Ayin was holding her disk up, and light was pouring out of it in a singular pillar, tiny twin to the spectacular presence of the Spiral’s open portal. “Ayin to Drakkar,” she said with utmost calm. “Can you see that?”

“You want me to target you?!"

“If I can’t dodge a few boarding harpoons, I’m in the wrong line of work,” she replied. “Get on with it, Drakkar!” When she saw the stunned look GAM was giving her, she grinned cheekily.

“Where’d you learn to do that?”

“Oh, you’ve got to spend a few decacycles on the wrong side of the job for it, Sentry. I’ll teach you later.” Her head cocked in the unmistakable look of someone getting a private communication.

“Tron to Halcyon WallSec,” the Monitor’s voice sounded tense.

“Go for WallSec,” Ayin replied.

“I need GAM down here. And if you can spare a few more people, I need them too. There’s been a… development.”

“Of course there’s been,” she sounded utterly resigned, and tipped her head at GAM as she deployed her armor and closed her helm. “Go. He needs you. We’ll bring the storm down, the ship and I.”

GAM deployed his armor and ran.

Chapter Text

“How are you even still here, visiting hours ended a while ago.”

“I stayed put and I stayed quiet,” Alan shrugged off Rob’s attempt to sidetrack him from the conversation. “And no one’s come to kick me out.”

“Yet,” Ascott pointed out as he examined the monitors surrounding his patient’s bed.

Molly Gibbs rested in a cradle made of medical technology. The young and vital creature Sam Flynn had met so many years ago had withered like a blighted flower. She was so thin that her bones were a sharp threat where they crept too close to the skin. She had on a silken scarf, and her face in sleep looked as desperately tired as that of her twin. Despite her size there was nothing child-like about the strain that pain and a losing fight for her life had imprinted on her features. There were several blankets on her and one of her hands rested on them, pale like a porcelain limb.

Alan didn’t like that implied threat. “Please don’t touch anything,” he gritted out.

Ascott put his hands up. Then he quickly reached out and tapped out something on the truncated keyboard of one of the machines. It immediately started beeping.

Alan all but charged the doctor. “What did you do?!”

Ascott stepped back and took his time answering. “I made it beep,” he finally informed the older man neutrally.

Alan turned sharply on him… and understood. Behind Ascott, behind Rob, behind the laser, the young man that had come in with all of them had finally succeeded in removing the protective plate from one of the hospital’s electrical outlet banks, and was quickly stripping and re-taping wiring seemingly willy-nilly. ENCOM’s COO was pretty sure it was anything but as casual as the young man was making it look.

He tried to lunge past them, but while Ascott was willing to be shoved out of the way, Rob wouldn’t budge. “Move, Kleinberg!”

“No,” Rob replied mildly. “She’s in there, doctor Bradley. You know that as well as I do, as well as anyone here does. Nothing they do out here is going to help her with that.”

“You take her in there, you’ll kill her. She’s in no shape to survive the transfer.”

“You could fix that,” Rob shot back. “The protective protocols, the balance safeguards – doctor Gibbs made it so you could take someone from here to there, yes, but you and doctor Baines, you’re the ones who worked on getting a User across safely.”

Alan glowered at him. Rob stared back at his boss defiantly.

The laser powered up.

“Look, man,” Moto said evenly from his spot. He was leaning against the locked door; no one had come to knock on it, but he was betting that was just a matter of time. “There’s four of us, one of you, and we came in ready for a fight. She’s goin’ in. You want her safe, you make sure she’s safe.”

“You’re bluffing,” Alan accused.

“Yeah,” Moto admitted readily. “But you’re here. You’re her godfather. You give a little more than a damn. Like MAR said – where’s your other option?”

Alan glared icily at everyone he could see – the young man who’d plugged in the laser was mostly behind it.

Then he charged for the laser, rolling up his sleeves. “Whatever you’re going to do,” he snarled at Ascott, “it better be good.”

“I can’t do a thing,” Ascott admitted, opening drawers and rummaging wildly through the supplies kept on hand for any possible emergency involving Gibbs, Molly. “I’m going to try and give her what boosts I can find. I can guarantee nothing. Can you?” He started injecting things into Molly’s IV.

Alan found a laptop wired into the body of the laser itself – a distinct improvement that he imagined he ought to thank the Gibbs twins for, and didn’t answer. His hands flew over the keyboard, and code began to stream before his eyes. He frowned almost immediately. “What the -”

“What?” Rob asked, instantly alarmed. He was dragging pillows out of a closet and bring Molly to a more-or-less sitting position.

“Nothing. Firewalls around the system.” Adam ID’d himself, and was granted access after a moment, which increased his suspicions a hundredfold. There was no reason to protect the code around the laser’s functions – they were very simple: ID, map out, shoot, store. The code he was looking at didn’t have Lora’s unique signature, or Gibbs’, or even Sam’s, let alone his father’s. It might have the twins’, he supposed, but it looked suspiciously…

Organic.

He started calling up lines of code that had been always there, stashed away in the original program. He found most of them already active. He was halfway through beefing up a recurring decay-protection loop when his screen flickered minutely.

“It wants too much power,” the young man kneeling next to the open outlet warned them. “It’s too much and I can’t let it take the rest of the system with it.”

“Seriously?!” Alan stared at Rob. “What’s going to happen if the power falters while she’s mid-transfer?"

“It won’t,” Rob shot back. “All we need is one minute, Gungnir, ok? Just one minute.” He leaned over and kissed Molly’s forehead very gently. “Moll?” he whispered. “Mollycobbles, I know you’re in there. I know part of you’s there, listening. We’re so close to getting it right, Moll. All you gotta do is hang on a little longer. I promise we’ll get it right this time. Just for you.”

He leaned back and nodded at Bradley, who keyed in the starting sequence.

A medical monitor began to beep. “Wait!” Ascott surged forward.

Molly’s eyes fluttered restlessly. Stunned at the sight, Rob reached for her. “Moll?”

The laser fired. A tremendous surge of electricity went through the room, and the lights went out. Almost immediately, Alan reached out for his phone, turned on the flashlight and held it up.

The bed was empty. A moment later, Ascott had his own flashlight active. “Ah,” was all he said when neither of them could find Robert Kleinberg by the bedside.

The power came back on almost immediately. Ascott lunged forward and started yanking power cords out before they could start blaring alarms.

“Oh, crap,” Moto’s dismayed exclamation turned both older men around. The young man who’d been standing by the makeshift plug was gone as well.

“Oh, crap,” Alan Bradley echoed.

Ascott drew in a sharp, sharp breath, and then let it out in a rush of words. “We need to get the laser out. We need to get the laser out now.”

Chapter Text

GAM raced for Om’s main stairwell. The weirdness of the city’s architecture meant he couldn’t use a cycle to get down; he was half-resigned to having to run all the way down when he heard an anti-gravity protocol coming up behind him.

“GAM!” The Master of Parnassus was riding a light-jet that, somehow, barely fit between the rows of buildings flanking the vast stairwell. He had a hand outstretched. As he dashed by, the Sentry caught the offered hand and swung up behind MAR.

“How did you know it would fit in the streets?” he called out.

“I didn’t!” MAR replied gleefully, much to the Sentry’s horror, as they sped down to ground level.

They made the trip in seconds, coming to a hover directly in front of the little nondescript building that was the Spire’s arrival point. GAM leapt off and ran for the doorway, MAR a single step behind him. They both came to a stunned, startled halt when they caught size of the scene inside.

Surrounded by two of Om’s Monitors and one program with vivid green circuitry, Sam Flynn was holding up a young man that was wobbly on his feet, one hand around Flynn’s shoulders, the other gripping his head as if it might explode. Kane Gibbs had in his arms a slender young woman that was entirely his mirror-image. Whatever she’d been wearing had not been deemed protective enough by the Grid, and she was encased in the basic black outfit of any other newly uploaded program, covered by a flimsy little shift; her circuitry was so dim it was barely visible, her body limp and boneless in her brother’s arms.

Behind them both, Tron had a young man in his arms, equally as offline as the young woman.

“Ah,” MAR declared, startled all but speechless.

“Are they all Users?!” GAM asked, horrified, realizing already that they did not have the numbers to defend that many Users if the virus decided to come for them.

“It would seem so,” Tron replied. “How’d you get down here so quickly?”

“Light-jet. I don’t know who else Ayin is sending.”

“That won’t do. We have to get to the mid-point hangar. There’s an old dirigible there. It should be enough to get us to the Drakkar.”

“The plan was to bring the User and the virus together!” GAM protested.

“That was the plan!” Tron shot back. “Until we ended up with five Users in a city about to come under siege!”

“Whoa!” Sam put a hand up. “Wait, wait up. This. The building itself. It’s a perfectly defensible position. Why can’t just one or two of you go get this dirigible while the rest of us wait here?”

“Why can’t we call someone to bring it to us?” MAR asked innocently.

GAM could’ve smacked himself with his own baton. “WallSec open call.”

“Go for WallSec.” Ayin was the first to reply.

“We have a situation. At the midpoint along Om’s main stairwell there’s a depot with an old dirigible. We need it here, now.”

“Always nice when you know but don’t hear that things have gone to the pits,” she replied. “I’m on my way.”

“Ayin’s getting it,” GAM relayed.

“Ayin? She’s all the way up at the Weather Station, it’ll take forever!” Tron protested, loud enough for GAM’s helm to pick up and transmit.

“Tell that whiny little bag of voxels that this would have been a lot easier if he hadn’t taken most of my WallSecs to boost his defenses!”

Tron saw GAM twitch. “What did she say?”

“I’d rather not repeat it,” GAM said evenly.

Tron couldn’t help but grin briefly. They waited in silence, Om’s CitySec Monitors watching the streets outside. The Medic had fitted a disk to the empty slot on the young woman’s back and was sifting through the code it had downloaded from her. There was no sound but the hissing of the rain and the distant rumbling of thunder from the angry skies. The fighting was still far away.

MAR looked up first. “Here it comes.”

They all peeked out of the temple’s ample doorway and saw it, a bulky egg-shaped thing. Dirigibles weren’t common, but for cargo transit between settlements in the Outlands, where data-lines couldn’t go, they served well enough. Slow, sturdy and nearly impossible to destroy, they’d earned a place in the Grid’s sky, however small that place might be.

The dirigible came to a smooth stop before the temple, and began to come down with ponderous grace.

“That’s not Ayin,” Tron informed those waiting.

“And you would know this why?” MAR asked.

“She can’t fly worth a voxel.”

The dirigible came to a stop just shy of the street. The doors opened and a ramp unfolded. From the vast, plain cabin, Vidi waved enthusiastically at them. “This is so awesome!” she yelled in delight. “Come on!”

GAM’s helm let out the most exasperated of sighs. “She just doesn’t stay put. Ever.”

They all ran into the cabin, Vidi stepping back to make room for them all. Her face was a study in shock as she realized that the Users on board nearly outnumbered the programs. “Guess I don’t even have to ask what went wrong, huh?”

“‘Wrong’ is a very relative concept,” Tron told her. “We need to get to the Drakkar.” He hesitated. “Where’s your disk?”

“Oh, that’s a fake. It’s fine. But yeah, GAM, where’s my disk?”

“If we survive, I’ll get you a new one. Color-coded for every city of the Grid.” He was helping Kane put his sister down on the floor, MAR having spread his coat to offer her a vague semblance of comfort. “Why are you here?”

“I told Ayin I could make it down the street faster than her. Which I could. What happened?”

“Power surge,” the User Sam Flynn was holding up croaked. “Right as the portal opened. Among other things…” That was all he got out before he went boneless in Sam’s grip.

“We need to get to the portal,” Sam told the others.

“My sister -” Kane began.

“Your sister, you and Rob are the master keys of this system, Kane. All of you are about to become stuck on this side! We need to get to the portal and get at least one of you out as soon as possible -”

“Oops,” Vidi said, not so quietly that everyone in the cabin wouldn’t hear her and turn around. Before them, the top of the Spire went dark, the pillar of light atop it collapsing in on itself.

“Vidi, ground us,” Tron said at once.

“Wha- here? Now?”

“Without the Spire active and since they can’t get to the Drakkar, we’re the next best target for whatever might be left of the simulacra swarm.

“Ugh, gridbugs! Why’s it always when I’m flying something!” she hissed in protest, and began to drag at the dirigible’s helm. “Wait, what if they can’t see us?”

“What do you mean?”

“What if we’re right between the buildings and they can’t see us?” She pointed with one hand while the other held the helm steady. “With how hard it’s raining, we’re impossible to see if we’re low enough. There’s too much rain, too much fog, and this thing barely outputs any energy. If I stay between the buildings, close to the streets, we might as well be part of the city structure.”

Tron hesitated. Visibly. “You can’t… I’m not sure the dirigible would fit.”

“Oh, a light-jet fits just fine,” MAR informed them all blithely. “And this is such a small little dirigible!”

“We’ll have nowhere to go if they do find us,” GAM warned her.

“They won’t find us!” Vidi bounced excitedly on her feet. “Trust me.”

“Trust you?! Trust you!” GAM shot back immediately, even as he headed for the ladder and the hatch that would take him to the top of the dirigible. “Do not drop me! No sudden moves!”

He looked back to see Vidi giving him a smug thumbs-up, and Tron coming up behind him.

Vidi turned her attention back to the helm. The dirigible swung around a building and began to lose altitude as she expertly tweaked the ballast equations just so, her hair staring this way and that, some of the dreadlocks touching the controls here and there for the most minute adjustments. In a moment the slow, silent-moving vehicle was all but invisible, hidden among the buildings and impossible to see past the shimmering curtains of rain. Barely above the steps of the stair-like street, it began to climb.

Just in time, too. Bereft of the most obvious target, the swarm shifted to the only source of movement in the area. Through their eyes, the virus perceived the small, antiquated vehicle… just in time to see it disappear.

“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” it murmured. To risk such a slow, small, apparently unarmed target on its airspace, the egg-shaped vehicle had to be important. Had to be critical. “Find it. Ground it. Bring me whatever it’s carrying.”

The swarm tightened up its ranks. With the Drakkar using its harpoons to wield the lightning of the Spirestorm as a very effective weapon, there was barely a tenth left of the original, vast cloud that had launched itself at the Spire, but even that was enough to darken the sky above Om.

“Close the storm shutters,” OM commanded. Heavy shields began to drop over the Weather Station Tower’s windows; he wouldn’t, couldn’t risk their only centralized command post falling to the virus. “CommCon to Drakkar, can you see the swarm?”

“Not well enough to report on its movement,” Way replied from the warship.

“What about the Black Plain, can you see the virus’ forces?” Adas asked urgently.

Way’s voice became even more mournfully pessimistic than usual. “Oh, those we can see entirely too well, Om.” The Drakkar’s navigator bounced the data he was receiving to the Weather Station Tower, and everyone froze in horror.

Chapter Text

The Breach was the dominant feature of the flat, empty terrain that filled the space between Om and the Sea of Simulation. The Black Plain was vast enough that it took nearly two millicycles to get to the shoreline and back by light-runner. Running in a jagged fractal through the entirety of it was the Breach, a bottomless chasm that had no more rhyme or reason to it that the lightning flashing overhead. Thin ribbons of terrain sometimes sprung up to ford a section of the Breach, and were consumed almost immediately by one of the energy surges that came up from its depths with no warning.

The virus’ forces were not bothering with those ephemeral bridges. Rivers of yellow, as endless as the Sea itself, were flowing around the edges of the Breach itself. In their midst, in small hovering platforms or the occasional tank or light-runner, traveled groups of infected programs, the simulacra streaming heedlessly past them in such immense quantities that even the Drakkar’s sensors couldn’t calculate their numbers. By the time the frontrunners of the horde reached the other side of the Breach, the rear of the horde was still pouring around the far side.

On the side of the Breach nearer to Om, the first line of defense was composed entirely of Recognizers. Adas opened a general line of communication, the danger becoming entirely too obvious too quickly. “CommCon to Recognizer forces. Get up, go up, get out of range! Now!”

Every city in the Grid, after they got past a certain size, kept a Recognizer force. They were good at bracing architectural points in many-layered Halcyon, or moving heavy loads in Ark, or monitoring surface energy channels in Flow. Even Pevir kept a token force, though only as troop deployment vehicles; for them Recognizers were just too slow, too low-flying to bother arming them overmuch for combat.

Which, unfortunately, was also what the simulacra thought.

The Pevirian Recognizers were the first to rise, anti-gravity protocols howling with the strain, followed closely by the Halcyonite and Arkite forces, a little more belatedly by the Flowian vehicles. Even as they rose, that poisonous yellow flood reached them. The simulacra leapt for them, piling up on top of one another. A few got torn to voxels by the force of the anti-gravity protocols, most were simply tossed back onto their kin, only for them to twist around and rejoin the effort to reach the escaping vehicles.

They caught the pylon of one of the Recognizers. It hovered in mid-air for a moment, anti-gravity protocols straining against the increasingly powerful pull of the simulacra. Then it tumbled, losing its horizontal balance, its compromised pylon coming down. More simulacra immediately leapt onto it, swarming and overwhelming it, and the Recognizer went down with an almighty crash, the crew dragged out from the cockpit, both programs and vehicle instantly buried under a seething viral mass.

Elsewhere, those Recognizers lucky enough to have gotten clear opened fire on those caught by the simulacra. Pylons could be replaced, combat damage repaired. But once a Recognizer disappeared beneath the mass of simulacra, there was no getting it back. It was instantly deconstructed into more simulacra. The programs piloting such fallen vehicles couldn’t be found in the area, and no one wanted to think on what had likely happened to them.

The Weather Station Tower had gone absolutely silent, everyone staring in horror at the date feeds they were getting from both the Drakkar and the serried defenses at ground level. Adas was getting surprisingly calm reports from the Pevirian Recognizer pilots, and slightly panicked but useful ones from everyone else. “No, you absolutely are not to attempt rescue efforts!” she shot back at one particularly determined pilot. “There is nothing left to rescue! Everyone, fall back behind the Sentry defenses, now!”

Both her and OM whirled around when they heard the door to the Weather Station Tower open. “Where are you going?!” Adas squeaked.

“I’m useless up here,” Ayin replied, her baton in one hand. “I’m a Sentry. I belong down there with my programs. You’ve got this.”

“We’ve got this?!” OM declared in disbelief, but the door was already closing. “How?!”

Adas made a high, horrified sound, and then another, a little angrier. But the thing was, Ayin was right. “We’ve better figure something out,” she told OM tartly, giving her attention back to the data feeds. At least the Recognizers had slowed the deadly advance of the virus’ horde, the simulacra leaping and straining to catch them.

“Recognizer line, hold them. Hold their attention as long as you can,” she instructed. “Everyone else, are you out of the area yet?”

OM threw his hands over the console, sorting through a hundred reports as quickly as he could. “Not quite.”

Adas felt like screaming. She wouldn’t, couldn’t, let Om fall. It wouldn’t be another Island, another Ilo. Another Waystation. There had to be a way to, if not stop the virus’ advance, at least slow it down, or thin it enough that the actual programs fighting would stand a chance.

But the Drakkar was both behind the Spire and above the bottom edge of the storm, one last line of defense should everything else go wrong. The fleet, Glim and ACM in command, was equally blind inside the storm over the Black Plain, capable of picking out large, energy-heavy targets, but not the tiny simulacra. Every ground vehicle would be taken down by sheer numbers. Nothing they could fly below storm level would survive the virus’ swarms, which had disappeared into the city, probably in pursuit of Vidi’s dirigible, but which the virus could likely replicate on a whim.

“This is absurd,” OM snapped. “The vehicles that can fire can’t target, the vehicles that can target won’t survive long enough to fire!”

Adas chewed on her lip. This was so stupid. The only thing that was saving the stupid simulacra was the stupid inability of the stupid fleet to target their stupid guns through the stupid storm -

She drew in a deep breath. “OM, I need the position of every Recognizer, and the rearmost armored vehicles.”

He rolled his chair to a different station and began feeding hers the data. “I thought we weren’t communicating location data.”

“Oh, it knows where they are,” she muttered as she examined the data points and created a swift little map with them. “It’s just not bothering with them yet because it thinks it’s got all the time in the world.”

“Doesn’t it?”

“No! CommCon to the fleet at large.” She didn’t wait for an acknowledgment. “Target along these coordinates.”

“CommCon, we can’t fire at the Breach!” Someone protested with a high, disbelieving cry.

“I’m aware. I specifically don’t want you to shoot the Breach.” Yet, she thought. “That’s why I sent you the coordinates. You need to lay down curtain fire -”

“You want what?” Some else asked blankly.

“Doesn’t anyone in the Grid but me watch Pevirian feeds?!” Adas squealed in dismay.

“If that’s how you spent your time perhaps you should move there,” OM shot back in an undertone.

A familiar voice laughed among all the confusion. “Medjay acknowledging,” the Pevirian captain confirmed, nearly shouting into the line and silencing everyone else. “Curtain fire on coordinates provided. You are seriously putting our accuracy to the test, CommCon, that’s a razor-thin target you’re painting for us.”

“You’re Pevirian, don’t you live for this kind of showing off?”

“Ouch, CommCon, ouch.”

The storm clouds, black and empty, began to light up from within. This wasn’t the quick flash and void of lightning; it was a rising glow that didn’t dim, instead growing brighter and brighter.

Then the Medjay opened fire with its every weapon, targeting not the simulacra but simply the terrain directly between the fleeing Rec ognizer s and the Breach. The virus’ horde didn’t so much disintegrate into voxels as were vaporized into nothing; behind those the Pevirian warship was volatilizing came more and more, in their numberless legions, either unwilling to stop or unconcerned about the obliteration of their kin .

Next to the Medjay another Pevirian warship took position and opened fire, broadening the curtain. Explanations were likely being passed from ship to ship among the fleet. What had been a tiny spot of utter destruction began to spread out in both directions, a deadly curtain that the simulacra could not cross.

But they could spread out around it. They had traveled around the Breach, after all. Still, in the time it took them to dash around the ever-expanding curtain of firepower, most of Om’s forces fell back to safety and began to open fire on the simulacra that had been on the near side of the curtain before it had been dropped . Programs leapt off cockpits and hurried to join the last line of defense, the only one likely to be able to stand against the simulacra , the massed Monitors and Sentries of every city in the Grid.

“CommCon to Security,” OM called out. “Is Ayin on-site yet?

“No, sir,” someone confirmed.

“CommCon to Ayin. Where in the name of the Users are you?”

“Flying,” the WallSec Lead replied tersely . She was being literal; when she’d mentioned having to go fetch the dirigible for Tron, Vidi had told her she could get there infinitely faster – Ayin merely had to let her go instead.

When the WallSec Lead had agreed, entirely doubting the Gridborn’s claim , Vidi had grabbed one of the tiny gliders that went up and down the local data-lines of Om, yanked the brake out with an emergency mini-Wrench , and dropped like a rock along the line, shrieking gleefully the whole while.

It had seemed both efficient and easy to mirror her means of travel when the need had come up. At least one of those was a lie. Ayin wasn’t screaming, but it was a close thing, and it certainly wasn’t in glee. The wind was a roar all around her, the rain was striking her like solid needles. She couldn’t even tell where she was, only that she was descending toward the lights of Om’s last line of defense so quickly she couldn’t focus on any thing around her . Belatedly, it occurred to her that she hadn’t asked Vidi how she meant to stop once she got to her destination.

T he little glider solved that matter for her by slamming to a halt at the bottom of the line. Ayin flew in an elegant arch, hit the ground, rolled a couple of times and merely laid there in a breathless heap for a long moment, every voxel aching and her helm giving her nothing but static.

“WallSec!” Strong hands brought her to her feet, their voices full of worry. “A yin, a re you alright?”

“Identify, please ” she wheezed.

“Janus, Halcyon WallSec,” one of the two programs that had run to help her replied.

“DeeP, Ark Stack Sec,” the other added. “Is something wrong back at the Weather Station?”

“No, not the Weather Station. The city. The swarm came down into the city.”

“The city’s empty,” DeeP informed her. “Everyone evacuated to the Vault.”

“They’re not after the programs; they’re after the Users.”

The two programs went silent. “ User s , as in more than the two?” DeeP asked, tone full of shock that begged Ayin to tell them they were wrong.

“As in the five Tron’s trying to get to the Drakkar before that thing figures out where they are,” she replied tartly, watching as the tanks began to pour in through the low gates of a wall that had only ever been meant to keep out exceptionally high tidal surges from the Breach and the Sea .

The two Se ntries stared at each other’s faceplates, speechless, before turning back to her.“ What do you need us to do?” Janus asked.

“For them? Nothing. There’s nothing we can do. For Om? We hold the line and hope Tron can keep the Users safe.”

Chapter Text

The constant rain and sloped structure of Om had created multiple layers of fog, some nearly heavy enough to be called low-lying clouds. The entire city was blanketed in a steady curtain of static. All but the most basic of light and power sources had been taken offline. Everyone had been evacuated to the top level of the Black Vault.

Flying empty, endless patterns above the city, the virus’ swarm was blind and deaf, and lacking in any other means to perceive their prey. A few groups had gone lower, scouring the streets, but not only was it slow going, they were completely unaware of the gross advantage the dirigible’s pilot had over them.

Vidi steered their slow little vehicle from patch of fog to patch of fog, swerving between the buildings with painstaking care. Their cover, she knew, was as thin and unpredictable as the weather, and there was no way that GAM and MAR and the other weird program could possibly fend off an entire swarm of the simulacra, let alone however many the virus sent after them.

Fingers barely resting on the controls, moving the dirigible by measures as small as a voxel, she scowled up at the distant yellow lights above them. Almost as if on cue, they vanished from sight as the dirigible entered another low-lying cloud line.

She felt him approach, slow and uncertain, and her shoulders tightened imperceptibly. Vidi didn’t know what to make of the Users: GAM had claimed they had no wavelength, but they did, they all did. It was immense, was the problem. Each and every one of the Users projected such a vast field of presence that even she couldn’t see the edges of it. She could see it touching everything around them, terrain, environment, programs. It was passive, they weren’t doing anything with it, but the Gridborn suspected that if one of the Users did decide to do something, the entire city was going to feel it.

Some part of her was dying to see what it looked like. Some part of her was also wondering what it would be like if all of them did something together.

Then again, perhaps it was better if they didn’t. Who knew if the Grid would survive something like that.

Well, it’s not doing all that great right now, anyway , some deep and cynical part of her code mumbled.

“Are those the virus?”

Vidi turned a few of her eyes his way, saw him stare back with open curiosity. “Sorta kinda, but only in part. GAM calls them simulacra. They’re quick copies the virus pops up by the bucketful. They’re not very smart, but they don’t gotta be.”

The User nodded thoughtfully. He had to lean forward and crane his head at an awkward angle to look up, out of the vast cockpit windows, and all for nothing. The Grid beyond might as well be a sea of gray. “Does it run out?”

She shook her head. “If it’s got voxels and code, it’s got simulacra.”

“Jesus,” the User whispered, obviously daunted.

“But you can fix it, right?”

He hesitated visibly. “Maybe. I don’t know. To fix a problem you first have to know what the problem is, you know?”

Vidi thought on that. Her many eyes could see easily through the fog, past the walls of rain and wind, to the blueprints of the buildings, to the shattered circuitry that marked the presence of the simulacra and the dormant energy channels of the Spire beyond, beneath and above them all. She steered them a little further to one side, no one the wiser to the fact they were passing so close to a protrusion anyone could have reached out from the cockpit and touched it. “Yeah, that makes sense.” When she realized, after a moment, that the User was staring at her, she scowled minutely at him. “What?”

“No, I… I guess,” he glanced back to where the other User was keeping an eye on the rest of them, along with the two Om Sentries, “everything I thought I knew about this place, I was wrong, or I didn’t know enough, or…” He stared out the window again.

“Are you sure you’re not GAM’s User?” Vidi asked tartly. “You’re just like him. Afraid of being wrong like it’s gonna be the end of everything.”

“Well, I mean.” He gestured pointedly to the skies above them.

Vidi blew out an exasperated breath. “So? You came here to fix it, no?”

“I mean, yes, but -”

“But what?” She demanded. She hadn’t expected Users to be so… obtuse. They were supposed to be all-powerful, all-knowing. “Look, uh -”

“Kane.”

“Ew. Look, Kane. Being wrong isn’t bad. Being wrong and doing nothing about it is. Being wrong and letting it be, that’s bad. If you’re wrong, be wrong. And then do something about it.” He was staring at her again. “What?”

“Nothing,” he shook his head. “Thank you. I think… I think I needed to hear that out loud.” A quiet moan behind them drew his attention, and he rushed away. “Rob!”

Rob sat up and caught his head in his hands, groaning. “What happened?” Plenty of willing hands helped him to his feet, and he stared at the programs present in confusion.

“See for yourself,” Sam replied evenly, gesturing broadly and letting Rob take in the cockpit of the dirigible. For a moment the dirigible peeked out of the cloud cover, just long enough for Vidi to steer them through a junction and onto a new street. Even without power, dark and dormant, the buildings of Om spoke unmistakably of the Grid’s architecture, and Rob stared, open-mouthed, before the gravity of the situation sank, somewhat, in.

“Oh, crap.”

“Yeah, that about sums it up,” Sam agreed.

The three Users currently upright moved to stare out the window.

“Don’t be loud,” Vidi warned them, her hair twisting around to stare at them and drawing a startled sound from Rob, who stared. “Don’t stare!” she snapped at him. “And don’t be loud. We don’t know if they can hear us.”

“I thought they couldn’t hear us over the rain,” Sam pointed out.

“Yeah, about that.” She gestured.

It was the first time they noticed that they hadn’t just slipped out of the low-lying fog, their cover was fading away altogether. The rain, which had been pouring steadily down, was turning thin and patchy. Capricious as ever, Om’s weather was turning against them.

“Where are we? What are we doing? Wh-” Rob glanced behind him, where the Medic was fussing over Molly. “Crap. Are all three of us in here?”

“Yup,” Sam confirmed.

“Ah, fuck.”

“See, he knows,” Sam told Kane.

“How’s Molly?”

All three of them turned to the Medic. They were a last-gen, the delicate filigree of their circuitry bright green and their face angular and full of worry. They shook their head lightly. “I don’t even know what I’m looking at,” they admitted. “I expected to find damage, or corruption – something, but -”

“But it’s just code,” Kane finished for them, his tone wry. “Yeah. That’s the problem, it’s her. It’s all her.”

“Whatever it is, is shutting down her code. It’s not being erased or destroyed, it’s just… like a function that’s reached the end of its lines. It’s just running out.” They gave the Users a deeply worried look. “Fast.”

Sam gritted his teeth and glanced at the window.

“What, what is it?” Rob looked very near panicking.

“The Spire’s that way,” Kane pointed through the window, and then the opposite direction. “The virus is that way.”

“I do not like the idea of all three master keys in here at the same time,” Sam gritted out. “But I like the idea of going into this fight in what’s basically a floating eggshell even less.”

Kane paced restlessly in the small space. “We don’t have time to get to the Portal.”

“We can’t afford not to get to the Portal!” Sam protested.

“Will you all shush!” Vidi hissed at them, then exhaled sharply. “What is so important that we can’t just meet up with the Drakkar like we’re supposed to?”

“Her,” Kane said simply, pointing at his sister. “We need the virus. Putting them back together is the only way to help her not… derezz.”

“Ugh.” Vidi chewed restlessly on her lip. “Someone go up there and get MAR. Don’t be loud!”

One of the Monitors immediately began to climb up the ladder, opening the access hatch with infinite care and disappearing through it. A moment later MAR came rushing back down. “The rain’s fading.” He paused and beamed. “Robert!”

Before Rob knew what had happened, he was swept up in a tight hug. “Hi, MAR.”

“Oh, it’s so good to see you, really see you,” the program gushed. He was visibly taller than Rob, but they both had the same lithe build and fine features. His expression abruptly fell. “Wait, should you be here, with the virus so close?”

“It’s complicated, MAR,” Rob admitted sheepishly.

“It’s not!” Vidi scoffed and hurried to the ladder, giving the tall program a shove in the direction of the console. “Your turn to drive.”

“I. What? Me? Me, drive? Vidi, I don’t have your eyes!”

“There’s Users all over the place, have them help you!” She shot back. “And shush!”

“What are you doing?”

Vidi opened her mouth… and paused.

And smiled. “I’m knocking on the sky and listening to the sound!” she declared gleefully and launched out of the cockpit.

Chapter Text

Vidi popped her head through the hatch. The breeze was cold and sharp, and the rain was hissing and whispering against every nearby surface, including the two programs that reached out to help her up. From atop the dirigible she could see the buildings of Om peeking out through the fog and clouds like the great floating monoliths scattered across the Sea of Simulation.

She saw her reflection on two black faceplates, but said nothing, and they obviously didn’t dare risk a sound. For a moment she basked in the gleeful awareness that, no matter how mad or confused he might be, WallSec couldn’t say a single thing about it.

Then she straightened up and tipped her head down, her hair sprawling out to its maximum length and reaching up to the top layer of the Spirestorm.

The Gridborn had no idea how Fortis had managed to reach the rest of the crew in the Drakkar before the virus’ ambush, she had no idea of how to duplicate the trick. She saw things, he heard them: two very different ways to perceive the same Grid. But she did know that Fortis didn’t have to make an effort to catch sounds far beyond the range of most any other program around him. They came to him, ripples and peaks on the vastness of his otherwise smooth surface.

She could imagine it, that vast black wall filled with the pinprick clouds of static of the rain. With the jagged, swiftly passing lines of the main body of the swarm as it prowled just above the top of the buildings and just below the lower edge of the Spirestorm.

She closed the eyes on her face and focused solely on the Spirestorm. They had to be close to the Drakkar; the flagship had been warned of the precious cargo the dirigible was carrying. Vidi was sure that Gungnir, jerk though he might be, would do whatever he could to try and protect the Users. He had too much faith in them. If she could reach the other Gridborn, she could reach Pevir’s SysAdmin; if she could reach him, she could reach the Drakkar. And if she could reach the flagship, it wouldn’t matter if the swarm found them.

Vibrating voxels can be shaped into comm frequencies if you know what you’re doing. Untraceable, unhackable.

I have to be louder than the rain , she thought. But not loud enough for the swarm.

“Fortis,” she whispered, saw the soundwave come out of her and fade away almost instantly. “Oh, gridbugs. Fortis,” she called out, a little louder.

A hand came to rest on her shoulder. It was the weird white-clad program. She scowled at him, but before she could do anything else, GAM put a hand on the other program’s chest. The Omni let go and stepped back.

“Fortis.” The soundwave flowed away from her, into the rain and the dark. “Please, please, be close enough to hear me. Fortis.”

The very tips of her tendrils, nearly as long as she was tall, suddenly blurred, lost focus.

Risky move, Vidi. It wasn’t a voice, or a text, or a communication as much as a sensation that her body translated into words. She smiled brightly to herself, where neither of the other two could see it.

“It’s not, I can see them. I can -” She cut herself off abruptly when some of her eyes told her the swarm was circling by, and waited until they’d passed, invisible in the last dregs of the rain. Fortis, she knew, was too smart not to figure out what was going on, and he didn’t disappoint her, remaining silent until she spoke again . “We’re not gonna make the Station. We’re losing our cover, the rain’s stopping.”

There was a long silence; Vidi figured he was talking to Gungnir.

You’re coming up to a habitat sector , he finally sent back.

Her eyes quested around until she saw it, three large buildings coiled in a triploid helix around one another, partly disappearing into and reappearing into the Spire’s terrain. “I see them.”

It’s a barrel, he told her, which made no sense to her. Fortunately, the rest of the communication did . Come on up. We’re right above you.

“What about the swarm?”

He laughed, a pleasant buzz against her eyes. That’s just the fish, Vidi. Don’t worry about them.

She dragged her tendrils back, fitting them once again into the somewhat deflated cosmetic of her body , gave the black faceplates of the two programs facing her a thumbs-up, and all but slid down the ladder and back into the cockpit.

Chapter Text

The virus was running into one unexpected problem after another, none of which it could readily solve.

It had begun when it had finished converting the massive freighters into simulacra and had tried to move on to the terrain. It had become unthinking habit to create the creatures as it moved from place to place, lifting them from the terrain, picking up voxels and the baseline code that ran through most of the world. It had only found the Sea of Simulation immune to that intrinsic ability, and even then it had been able to partially create the mimics, even if they immediately collapsed into sea-mass

The Black Plain gave it nothing.

It had tried. It had fully focused and tried to shape just one simulacra. But the terrain wasn’t just empty, it was inimical. There was no code, there was no connection between one voxel and the next. There was literally no spark of life to infect.

Which made the second problem even worse: it couldn’t replenish the numbers Om’s defenders were whittling away with their trickery, and the simulacra were too simple to hold self-preserving iterations. Or multiple iterations, for that matter. The infected programs were easy enough to command, at least until they fell apart completely: they kept a certain degree of autonomy, an understanding that a goal couldn’t be completed if there was no one to complete it. It wasn’t self-preservation as much as it was a certain numb awareness of efficiency and necessity.

The simulacra had no such thing. The four-legged manifestations racing over the Black Plain were as imperfect as the first simulacra the virus had created back in Ilo. They understood the simplest command – in this case, get into Om and capture any programs they found.

They didn’t understand that if they ran themselves into the vast swath of firepower the massed fleets were laying out between them and the city, or the equally thick swath of horizontal destruction coming from the wall between Om and the Black Plain itself, they would not be achieving their goals unless someone swept the voxels up in a dustpan and carried them along.

The virus had tried multiple different variations of ‘go around’ and ‘go low’. As soon as it took its attention from the simulacra, they defaulted once again to ‘go’.

It hadn’t been a terribly pressing problem until the swarm found the dirigible at last. The virus’ attention whipped away from its ground forces at the report: there, in the heights of Om, the small vehicle was rising up among three buildings bound by ornamental, covered bridges. It commanded the swarm against it.

In that brief picocycle, more of its ground troops launched themselves blithely into the fleets’ curtain fire and were derezzed en masse.

It shrieked in fury, once again reasserting the command. Go around, go low! And once again the tide parted. But then it lost track of the swarm, which raced toward the dirigible, circling after it like a slow-growing maelstrom. The virus felt destruction come to members of the swarm, slow but certain, the front lines derezzing almost faster than it could lock onto what they were seeing.

The virus remembered then that there were two minds inside it. It knew this, it understood it, even if it couldn’t explain it. That other mind was where it had found the ability to change the very nature of the world, the order of the code it touched everywhere it went. That other mind had taught it, told it, that nothing around was real and everything could be changed, reshaped, erased.

That second presence had shut itself away after the User had spoken to it on the warship. The virus hammered on that door. It needed that second mind, it needed help. It needed both of them. It couldn’t handle a two-prong attack, soon to be three, because the leading edge of the mass of simulacra was almost to the wall. Help me, it commanded. Do as you’re told.

The answer was as implacable as the virus knew itself to be. No.

The virus snarled impotently. It was so close. The program it needed was there, somewhere in Om, hiding. If it took the whole city, if it took every program, it was bound to catch her. With any luck, Security would be with her, and it would catch him too, and oh, there were things it wanted to do to that wretched bit of nonexistent code. Real or not, and he wasn’t he wasn’t he wasn’t, the virus would change him. Change him, infect him, command him, and leave just enough of him so he could watch as it made him destroy all that he loved. All that mattered to him. It would make him say it. It would make him believe it.

You’re not real.

So be it. The dirigible was important, the virus was sure of it, but it didn’t have to be an immediate concern. Ground it, guard it, it instructed the swarm, and cut them off from its perceptions. ‘Guarding’ was a passive command that all simulacra found relatively easy to remember and follow, a self-recurring iteration.

Even that brief moment of distraction brought tremendous destruction to its massed forces, but that was alright. It focused next on the front of the horde. Through their perceptions it could see the low wall, a laughable little defense. It could see rows of tanks and mobile artillery units. It could see Recognizers behind the ground vehicles. It saw what few programs remained to defend Om.

It smiled. Take the wall. Take the city. Take it all.

It turned then to its most annoying problem. Once again, bereft of guidance, the simulacra were simply throwing themselves at the curtain of firepower the warships far above had created. Once again it bid the simulacra go around… and noticed something new: the curtain had moved.

It had shrunk.

The virus began to laugh, high and wild and broken. They were tiring, its enemies. Like everything else, like the little light-runner, like the programs, like the wall back at Parnassus, it all had a limit as to how much energy it could store. And somewhere far above the warships were hitting that limit.

The curtain would fall, eventually. Once again, all it had to do was wait.

Chapter Text

One of the swarm’s scout patrols all but ran themselves into the dirigible as they both converged on the habitat sector from either side of a vast data stack. Before even Tron could react, MAR gestured sharply. He’d recovered his spot on top of the dirigible, and he’d never been more glad to be out in the rain and wind, scarce as both had become.

Six flashes of light converged on the simulacra, faster than any disk could’ve moved, and six scouts exploded into voxels. GAM’s disk caught a seventh, MAR derezzed an eighth, and in an exceptional recurve shot, Tron took the last two as they were turning to flee.

“Well, that’s it,” GAM declared to no one in particular, catching his disk and looking up, the black faceplate scanning for the rest of the swarm.

“What was that?” Tron asked MAR once he had his disk on hand.

The Master of Parnassus caught his returning disk and smiled. “Everyone keeps forgetting I’m never alone,” he reminded the Monitor as six Bits came to hover around him, stellating into shapes as sharp as daggers.

They were suddenly bathed in sickly yellow light. All three looked up. “Here they come,” Tron reported, his voice echoing through the cockpit.

“No they don’t,” Vidi muttered with ornery glee. The dirigible surged forward and slid, impossibly, between two arching bridgeways. She didn’t have to hide anymore, she didn’t have to go slow. Not that the little transport was capable of vast feats of speed and agility, but still!

The swarm split into multiple currents of simulacra, trying to adjust for the new position of their quarry and the obstacles between them. Many of the mimicries, blind among so many, slammed into the bridgeways and fluttered down to the ground, if not derezzed then too badly damaged to remain airborne. They’d mend themselves, probably – Vidi remembered the infected lightjets back at Parnassus entirely too well. But in a race where every picocycle might count, she would take whatever she could get.

The habitat sector was, as one would expect of Om, a simple affair. The buildings spiraled alongside one another in a triploid helix, bound by many elegant, arching bridgeways. The third tower was halfway buried into the terrain of the Spire itself and the other two were embedded at least a third of the way. In the center there had been a garden of some sort, dark at the moment, as was the centerpiece, an energy fountain, dormant and still. A dim glow came from the energy every time stray raindrops hit the surface.

Vidi focused on that pale silver light, pushing the dirigible to all the speed it could give. The swarm recoiled, reunited, merged once again and dove at them, but the transport had already begun to rise, and like most vehicles of its type, it was a lot faster going up than going forward.

“Hey!” Vidi called over one shoulder at the pack of Users huddled behind her with the two Monitors and the one Medic. “I need extra hands!”

Three of them hesitated. Visibly. Vidi could have kicked them. If a Medical program couldn’t help the fallen User, and they hadn’t managed anything up until that moment, it wasn’t like something was going to change just because they stood around spinning their disks. Before she could say as much, the fourth User stepped forward.

The Gridborn squinted at him. She knew that face. It was in a much smaller body, and the User looked like he might spook if she so much as flapped a hand in his general direction rather than cocky enough to take on the whole Grid. But she knew that face, the dark eyes, the sharp cheekbones. His hair was black and very short, and his skin wasn’t nearly as vivid and rich a shade of dark brown, but those could have been Cosmetics. He hunched down and stared at the cockpit. “What do you need?” he asked, so quietly she could barely hear him.

“Dump all the ballast.”

To her surprise, he examined the console with a quick glance, and immediately set to work. “You really are him,” she murmured.

“I’m his User,” he replied just as quietly. “And I watch him, and I end up knowing a lot about machines and transports and combat and strategy and everything he does.”

Everyone went stumbling as something crashed into the dirigible, making the cockpit sway wildly. Vidi clung to the controls and growled. “Always when I’m the one flying!” Her hair peered through the front window. “They’re chewing on the connection lines!”

The Monitors, at least, didn’t hesitate. Both of them launched themselves to the cockpit door. One palmed it open and pressed himself to one side, disk in hand. The other knelt and peered out, launching his disk and taking out the swarm simulacra that had latched onto the lines connecting the cockpit and the massive flotation equation above them. The simulacra burst into showers of voxels.

And the Monitor was snatched away by several more mimicries with a startled, trailing cry. Multiple simulacra latched onto the door and the second Monitor, trying to both drag him out and force their way in.

“Crap!” Sam rushed to the door. He grabbed for his disk and slashed it down on as many of those insect-like legs as he could target; simulacra fell away, spiraling and twisting, firing little engine bars along their wings. “Kane!”

Kane caught the other Monitor and pulled him back with all his strength while Sam kept hacking away at the mass of simulacra trying to invade the small space. The cockpit shuddered once again.

“Fortis!” Vidi yelled into a general commline. “We need help! These stupid things are chewing through the connection lines between the balloon and the cockpit!”

“Drakkar to dirigible. Send us your coordinates, Vidi.” It wasn’t Fortis; it was Gungnir himself, sounding calm and unruffled. “And keep her ascent steady.”

“Adas said -”

“They know where you are, Halcyon, they’re chewing on you as we speak!” he pointedly shot at her. “Coordinates!”

She let out an impatient sound and nodded to the User next to her. His fingers flew over the console. “Sent,” he confirmed quietly.

The dirigible rose in the middle of a swirling vortex of yellow, broken circuitry. There was a mass of simulacra trying to breach the cockpit, and atop the transport, its three defenders could barely keep themselves in the clear, let alone the vehicle itself. Even with the help of MAR’s Bits, the swarm was closing in, and they were not high to provoke the Spirestorm; it was seething slowly above Om, as if it had spend so much energy arguing against all earlier intruders that it’d been forced to pause to catch its breath.

GAM felt it first, and looked sharply up as his field felt the atmospheric pressure shifting. Tron, noticing instantly when the Sentry paused, looked up as well. But the swarm was everywhere, everything, and they both had to focus back on it. All they saw was a slow-moving vortex beginning to form above the habitat sector, a dim crimson glow suffusing the lowest edge of the storm.

With no warming, the Drakkar boiled out of the storm, every gun port charged and targeted, aimed down. The gunners had been given a single vector against which they couldn’t fire. Their SysAdmin had informed them that OM himself had deemed both city and terrain acceptable collateral damage. The sickly yellow light of the swarm became completely overwhelmed by the brilliant red of the Pevirian warship, as large as any one of the habitat buildings.

Gungnir, up on the Command Center, grinned at Fortis. “You know how I keep telling you I want to try my luck against a city?” The Gridborn replied with a non-committal sound. “This one was kind of at the bottom of the list. SysAdmin to Drakkar, fire at will.”

Destruction rained from the Drakkar, a terrible and highly concentrated fury nearly as potent as anything the Spirestorm had dished out. The sheer density of it peeled cascades of voxels off the buildings, even though none of them were directly hit. It destroyed the central garden down to the very substance of the Spire, which was far too tough for conventional weaponry to even dent its terrain equations. The passage of so much firepower nearly ripped Tron, the lightest of the three warriors atop the dirigible, right off his perch, until GAM lashed out and caught him. GAM himself nearly went down as the move to rescue the Monitor, combined with the sudden gale the gunfire was creating, threw him off-balance, and Tron had to return the favor and yank him back. Both of them went down on one knee, suddenly bereft of enemies. MAR, surrounded by a corona of wildly stellating Bits, threw his arms out and whooped triumphantly.

All around them, nearly the entire swarm was instantly turned into voxels and brief sprays of primal mass. Bereft of guidance, knowing only the commands they’d already been given, not a single one of the simulacra attempted to evade or escape.

Gungnir chuckled as he watched what amounted to the finest bit of pinpoint accuracy from his gunnery crews. “Like fish -”

“- in a barrel,” Gungnir’s User, standing next to Vidi in the dirigible’s cockpit and staring outside at the brilliant crimson annihilation going on barely an inch in front of the window, a breath from their faces, it felt like.

The program next to him gave him a quick, confused glance. The words made no more sense to her coming from a User than they had coming from Fortis.

The pillar of destruction was so tremendously powerful that its light reached all the way to the Black Plain. The virus whirled around and gasped, eyes going wide. It threw a hand out, but there was nothing left to answer it within the city, no simulacra, no infected programs. Once again, all of its forces were on the wrong side of the line defending Om.

Chapter Text

The virus snarled as the tide of shattered yellow poured around the faltering curtain of firepower from the fleet above. Its talons curled into fists, staring at the great crimson sword of the warship. It should have destroyed it, erased it. Greed had betrayed its goals; it had wanted the beautiful ship as its own.

Fine, so be it. It had made a mistake; two, technically. It had allowed the warship to remain, rather than destroy it, just because it had wanted it for its own, and two, it had grossly underestimated the value of that tiny, barely glimpsed, slow-moving transport.

No matter; it would have to endure and adapt. Adaptation was a thing written in its very core. It was half of all it knew: adapt and grow. It was a costly mistake, all the more so given the particular nature of the terrain around Om, but it was done.

With a swift motion, it turned and raced along the jagged, growing fissure the warships above were currently blasting into the terrain, and the seething mass of its forces turned and ran with it. Follow me, it commanded, follow my path.

That, the simulacra could do without stupidly getting themselves erased from existence. The virus flowed over the jagged terrain, made even more broken by the blind, ceaseless destruction, accelerating and losing a great deal of definition and absorbing simulacra as it went, so that when it at last became visible to the defending programs on the wall, it looked more like a massive storm surge coming from the deadliest reaches of the Sea of Simulation.

The tanks lined up just behind the defenders of the wall opened fire, a rainbow of energy slamming into the crest and belly of that vast wave. Voxels and primal mass flew everywhere, but the wave would not be stopped; instead it crashed down and broke apart into a tremendous host of simulacra, four-legged, swift and blind, sharp jaw gaping as they used that build-up of momentum to charge at the wall between Om and the Black Plain.

The wall was not very tall. It was meant to fend off the occasional storm surge from the Sea of Simulation, which in rare occasions would flood the Black Plain and even manage to get enough mass past the Breach, turning one or two of the bottom-most levels of the city into a swamp. It was also meant to defend against the energy from the Breach, which in at least two occasions had spewed out so much raw power that it had disintegrated any outlying buildings. Everyone in the Grid thought Om grew up along its Spire out of a philosophical choice, when in actuality the city did so out of sensible caution.

The wall was just tall enough to hide behind it the serried ranks of every Monitor and Sentry in the Grid. As Kane Gibbs had once pointed out, anyone who’d chosen to upload a firewall or an antivirus had gotten a free slot, and for many people who merely wanted to see the Grid, to experience its reality without a specific goal or life in mind for the programs they uploaded, it had been the perfect choice. A lot of people had taken the Gibbs twins up on the offer.

A lot .

“Enemy within range,” the lead tank, in Pevirian red, reported into the general line.

Ayin, her white armor gleaming with bright violet circuit, closed her helmet and pointed her disk at the incoming tide. “Grid Security,” she shouted into the line, “do your duty!”

They rose with a roar and leapt on top of the wall, the StackSec of Ark in their two-tone armor, red Pevirian Monitors, Halcyon Wall Sentries, the deep rich green of Om’s CitySec, the brilliant cyan of Flow’s Glacier Sentries mixed with the dull, greenish-gray of the Deep Monitors . The virus had seen a few hundred while it and its forces advanced. There were thousands waiting for it.

It faltered, for barely a picocycle. Disks went flying – white disks, the virus realized. They weren’t using their own, they were using un-synchronized disks, disks it couldn’t use to infect them .

Security . This was his doing, it was sure of it. His hand, reaching out like its own did, moving to counteract everything the virus learned, did, used. It hissed, balked once too many; the wordless sound rose to a shriek of electronic fury, and it surged forward along with the simulacra .

The vast wave of sickly yellow slammed into the wall and was turned away in a great splash of shattered voxels and primal mass, and the battle was on .

Chapter Text

Struggling to turn around, re-supplying energy on the wing and trying to find a firing angle that didn’t also have them hitting their own people on the ground, the mixed fleet of warships above Om had to take the risk of dropping outside the storm; there was just not enough visibility for all of them to do all that maneuvering all in the same airspace. To further complicate matters, after an all-too-brief lull and perhaps in answer to so much traffic around the Spire, the weather was beginning to grow unpleasant once again.

Though it was further away than any other ship, the Drakkar opened fire first. It was just above the city, the blaze of its guns skimming barely above the tops of its buildings, slamming into the onrushing forces of the virus and lighting the battle lines with its strobing glow . The tanks behind the thin line of defending programs were firing as well, their shooting vectors so low that any one of those fighting who’d dared jump with a hand up would’ve lost it.

But the tidal, viral wave seemed endless. For every simulacra Om’s defenders took down two, five, ten more took its place. They clung to shields, to batons, to arms and legs. In the time it took to get rid of one clinger, two more had attached. Programs were dragged down, away from the line, lost in the tide of yellow. The virus wouldn’t admit how few of them it could infect, but it didn’t have to – they could simply be torn apart and, amidst the inexplicably unresponsive terrain of the Black Plain, their voxels were a gift from the Users.

“We need to get down there,” GAM, staring at the feeds a dozen screens on the Drakkar’s command center were showing, ground out.

He was startled into looking away when a familiar voice seconded and added to his words. “We need to get down there now ,” Tron was scowling at the fighting.

“One,” Gungnir, hurrying to another screen, replied tersely, “the Drakkar is meant to dock, not land. Two, warships aren’t fast. Three, I’m working on it.”

“Working how?” Tron demanded. It was a question he came to regret as Pevir’s SysAdmin dragged them all out of the Command Center, through the echoingly empty decks and to one of the main launch catapults of the immense flagship. “No.” The First Monitor sounded both disbelieving and betrayed. Behind him GAM rubbed at his closed faceplate and, while the helm silenced his sigh, it might as well not have done so.

“Yes.” Gungnir beamed at them all. “You want to get there quickly, don’t you?”

“And online,” Tron gritted out. “You can’t – Gungnir, you can’t launch a bomber from a catapult. That’s too much mass and not enough time for the engines to catch up!”

“Is it? Have you ever tried it?”

Tron’s mouth worked soundlessly, whether because he couldn’t refute the questions or he was trying, very hard, not to launch himself at the SysAdmin and strangle him, no one could tell.

“Oh, absolutely delightful!” MAR exclaimed when he understood what Gungnir was planning to do. The launch catapult had been modified, and the Parnassian bomber was sitting on it, straining the launching equations to their breaking point but not quite tearing them apart. Its oilslick gleam was integrated here and there with the vivid Pevirian red of fully charged weapon systems, and the engine bars were not quite screaming, but certainly humming very loudly.

“You can’t be left alone to make plans,” GAM told Gungnir wearily. “You do this when you’re left alone to make plans.” He waved a hand angrily at the bomber.

“It’ll work! You’ll have how many Users with you?” The SysAdmin gestured at the small pack following them.

“I still think -” GAM began.

“I’m still not staying,” Kane shot back before the Monitor could finish the sentence.

“I’m not staying, either,” Sam replied with a little less heat, but with implacable calm. “And Moll has to come, so…”

Every eye turned to Gungnir’s mirror image. “I can stay,” the young man murmured, as quiet and uncertain as his program was brash and determined. Pevir’s SysAdmin said nothing.

K ane and Rob stared at one another; Rob sighed and looked away first, shrugging unhappily. “Yeah, I know, I know, master key and whatever. I wasn’t meant to come in anyway, I can stay behind, just in case.”

The two surviving Omni Monitors helped the Users board, MAR leading the way.

“For the record,” Gungnir pointed out gleefully, “it wasn’t my idea. It was your pilot’s.”

“ Who -” Tron began to demand.

“No,” GAM, who’d been watching the Users board, whipped around at that and all but charged Gungnir. “Absolutely not!”

“She’s not mine to command, GAM!” Gungnir protested, arms up .

“ She is what the virus wants !” the Monitor all but shouted back.

“Alright!” Gungnir pointed at the bomber. “Go ahead. Tell her she can’t go.”

GAM was so close to him that the Pevirian could see himself reflected in flawless detail on the Monitor’s black faceplate. He was trying not to look smug and he was almost succeeding. Almost. It wasn’t mean or petty; Gungnir just generally found it hilarious that the WallSec never tired of trying to make the Grid be… organized. And the Grid never tired of being anything but.

GAM whirled around and charged up the bomber’s ramp. “VIDI!”

“Did you do that on purpose?” Tron asked quietly.

“I wish I had,” Gungnir replied in the same tone. “Come on, you old bit of code, let’s go before they leave without us.”

“You’re coming?” Tron followed Gungnir, not bothering to hide his surprise.

“ That thing owes me a rematch -”

“Wait!”

They both turned. Gungnir’s User hurried to them. “You’re going?”

Tron gave Gungnir an unreadable look, and headed up the ramp. The SysAdmin turned back to face his User. “Yes.”

“You can’t go,” Ethan blurted out. “I mean, you could, the math is sound, it’d be better if there were less people, I mean, programs, because less weight and more acceleration and you can’t go, I haven’t backed you up, I didn’t get a chance, I was gonna before this all started but then there was the laser and the power surge and I hope all the machines at the hospital are OK, but I didn’t back you up! I didn’t back you -!”

Gungnir let the torrent wash over him. Some part of him, he realized, was listening to every word, hearing them and at the same time hearing a dozen different messages bound into them like encrypted information, layers upon layers of communication. For a moment he wondered how Users decrypted such multi-layered messages, and then a terrible realization struck him.

They didn’t.

In his world, his User was constantly screaming into a void that couldn’t understand him.

But he was his User’s program. He had been created to hear him. To understand him. No one else, in either of their worlds, might ever hear and see and understand Ethan as Gungnir did. He reached out and clasped his User’s shoulders. “Ethan.”

Ethan felt as light and fragile as a light-sculpture under Gungnir’s touch. A tremendous, unseen surge of… something passed between them, and the User knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that he’d been heard. Gungnir’s touch didn’t even grate against his senses. It felt simply like a part of him had come home. His program had heard him, was listening to all the things he couldn’t say for all that his voice had been rising to just shy of a shout.

Unfortunately that understanding didn’t change the decision Pevir’s SysAdmin had come to.

“I didn’t make you to be brave,” Ethan whispered. “I’m not brave, I couldn’t code that, I couldn’t have coded what I don’t know. I haven’t backed you up.”

Gungnir grinned at him. With one hand he reached back; on the other he took one of Ethan’s. In it he placed his disk. “If I know anything about courage,” he told his User evenly, and his implacable faith spilled from every word, “ it came from you .”

He turned and trotted up the ramp, triggering its closure and throwing the two Users left behind a thumbs-up before it shut.

The inside of the bomber had been lined with launch sarcophagii, the bare-bones structures that kept Programs from getting tossed around while being carried through enemy fire. One of them had been laid flat, and Moll secured to it, the medical program latched onto a safety strap with one hand while keeping the other on the young User, directly monitoring her feed . There weren’t otherwise many of them; even Fortis’ Ancil ia were down below, one last line of defense between the unthinkable and the Weather Station Tower where so many SysAdmins were helping organize the ground defenses. All that had been left on board the Drakkar were its gunnery crews and Gungnir’s personal guard.

“ You’ll all be glad to know,” he declared as he rushed to the cockpit, “that my User says the math for launching the bomber is sound.” He peeked into the cockpit, saw Vidi sitting at the pilot’s station, MAR sitting on the navigator’s side. “Oh, look,” he said pointedly, leaning back to stare at GAM’s faceplate . “She’s still here.”

T he Sentry radiated silent irritation at him.

“You know there’s no one in the turrets,” MAR called out after the SysAdmin.

“The point is not to draw attention to the lady,” Gungnir replied. “Vidi, you can fly her back to the Drakkar alone?”

“As long as no one’s shooting at me,” the Gridborn assured him. “That’s what makes it hard.”

“Gungnir, where’s your disk?” Tron asked sharply from his sarcophagus.

“Safest place in the Grid I could find, obviously. This thing infects by disk as well as touch.” Pevir’s SysAdmin stepped into a free sarcophagus next to Tron.

“I’d rather not see you turn into a Stray, you know,” Tron pointed out.

“Then I guess we better hurry,” Gungnir replied cheerfully. “SysAdmin to Catapult Control.”

“Catapult Control here, SysAdmin.”

Gungnir grinned wildly. “Fire.”

Chapter Text

The bomber exploded from the launching bay. The Users grunted in surprise at the sudden acceleration. Gungnir whooped wildly.

For a moment the immense vehicle glided downwards, bleeding off speed, but then the engine bars caught hold of the atmosphere and the bomber leveled off with a howl.

“Best pilot in the Grid, huh?” Sam gritted out as they accelerated toward the Black Plains.

“Amps, would you have done that?” Gungnir asked of the program next to him. “Any of you?”

“No, sir,” the leader of the Valravn declared quite evenly, even though he and his people were matching their SysAdmin’s wild grin to various degrees. “We’re good, not crazy.”

The bomber roared over Om, quickly leaving the Drakkar behind. In a moment it was downslope, over the wall and the pitched battle below.

“Eyes wide open, Vidi,” MAR said tightly.

“I know,” she replied just as nervously, her hair haloed all around her face. There was no way to be terribly precise at it, but she’d been told to get as low and as close to the virus as she could. “This is so weird.”

“You’ve seen the virus before."

“Not the virus, the terrain.” Vidi was perceiving what the virus had already noticed, that the terrain around Om was… blank. Empty. Everywhere else there had been data streams. Parnassus had been packed full of them; Ilo’s terrain had shown dead and dormant rivers alongside the few still active trickles.

Om had nothing. No data lines, no energy streams, no connections. It was as if it stood outside the Grid, unplugged from it, utterly isolated. Against that darkness, the virus and its forces were a stain of ugly, overly bright yellow, broken and twisted against the universally smooth lines of the Gridborn’s world. No matter how chaotic or illogical the Grid might seem to others, to Vidi it always made sense. It always followed its own order. The virus might have been completely black, and still she would’ve seen it.

She could also see the deep, lambent glow of the Breach’s energies, swelling far beneath the terrain. It looked very much like the Spire had, that third time at Halcyon, building up and up, as if it were bracing itself for a momentous effort. Only this time she was all but on top of it.

“Vidi.” MAR’s voice dragged her back to the present, and to their mission.

“I’m looking, I’m looking. It all looks like the virus from up here. I’m going around again.”

The bomber banked in a smooth loop. Below, the combined firepower of the warships and the tanks tore into the ranks of the simulacra; step by step, the tide of yellow had pressed Om’s defenders to the first row of buildings, which were being desperately defended. A few of them collapsing into tides of simulacra had been enough to demonstrate why the virus and its forces could not be allowed even a single step further.

GAM, trapped as all of them inside his sarcophagus, tried to settle into a plan he knew was terrible, against odds that no one liked, risking everything that they couldn’t allow the virus to take by… bringing it to the virus. None of it made sense, but then none of them had even known Reintegration was possible. Even Sam Flynn, whom the other Users treated as a the most experienced of them all, claimed to have only seen once. Sort of.

Sort of.

GAM stared at the displayed data inside the blackness of of his faceplate. The hope had been that the virus had been at the back of its forces, directing them. The turn he could feel from the bomber carrying them all told him that had been a tactical misconception. He had only fought the forces of the virus en masse once, when it had tried to board the Drakkar, but he was beginning to suspect that it had kept its distance then out of necessity, not out of care.

Which left their original plan in shreds. Reintegration, Sam Flynn claimed, required line-of-sight. They had to bring the nearly-derezzed User close enough to the virus to see it. They had to then hope that she’d know what to do, or that she’d be sensible enough to follow Sam Flynn’s instructions on how to proceed.

It had been a slim hope at best when they’d thought the virus would be in the back, with an army to fend off on only one side. If it was on the frontlines, surrounded by fighting in every direction but down…

He closed his eyes. Stop it, he told himself sternly, falling back onto the truth of his being to try and settle his runaway thoughts.

I am a Sentry.

I am the Wall.

I am Halcyon.

I am the Grid.

I am GAM.

“I am GAM,” he murmured inside his helm, quiet enough that the microphone didn’t pick it up. A thought brought up the data packet Emil had given him, and he sorted through it. It was surprisingly small; the larger part of it seemed to be the documentation. GAM opened that first for caution’s sake.

He found himself face to face with his User.

“Hey, GAM.”

It was a video feed, the stunned Sentry realized. His face stared back at him, the same solid lines, bright eyes the same color as Emil’s. There were dark circles under them, and the curling black hair was longer, threaded with violet and white. GAM had thought his own hair to be a side-effect of his bond to Halcyon; it had never occurred to him that it was a reflection of his User’s. The space around the User was dark; he could make out a small room, but furnishings and décor were nothing but shadows against the walls.

“So, I’m Liam,” his voice told him. Like those of the other Users, it lacked a certain richness, as if half its wavelength were nonexistent. “Um, I’d hoped. Well, I guess I hoped someday I’d be able to talk to you directly, but uh. They’re probably gonna come for me any minute now. I just wanted you to know: out here, at the source? You did your job, GAM. I just… didn’t do mine.” Liam hung his head wearily. “I gave you the data, but not the means to act on it. I… didn’t trust you. Dumb, right? I created you, I should’ve. But I didn’t -”

Shouting, just close enough for the recording to catch it, whipped Liam around, all traces of wariness gone and every sense on the alert, and GAM felt his whole body tensing up with the need, the driving instinct to protect his User, to help him, even though his rational mind knew Liam was long beyond anything his program could do for him.

“Um.” Liam focused on the screen again. “I’m not gonna get to finish the update. I’ve tied it up where I could, it’s half-assed at best, but it’s not harmful and, honestly, I’ll take whatever I can get. It’s not gonna do the version of you out here any good. But it might help you. You’ve… You’ve made a life for yourself in the Grid, GAM, and it’s… God.” Liam laughed. “It’s so much more than I ever hoped for for you. You’ve got the life I always wanted for myself. Helping others. Keeping them safe. Every time I look at you, I’m happy.” Liam smiled faintly. “Every time, I’m proud.”

GAM felt like howling at the unfairness of it all.

Liam looked away at another, closer bout of shouting. “But, you know. Here I am, stuck on this side. You can’t help me with what’s coming, but I can help you. I’d been meaning to add a bit of, uh, let’s call it perspective to your code. Most of the bulk is so Grid security lets it through, it’s not finished, you’re probably gonna find a buncha holes, but that’s fine, it shouldn’t hurt your baseline. I’m sending it to dad so it doesn’t get lost if they seize my gear. It’s optional – you’re your own person, GAM. I don’t get to force anything on you, no one should. But uh, if you accept, you get to find out how the other half lives. I think that might help you, someday.”

Liam reached out to turn off the video, and GAM only barely heard someone pounding on a door before the inside of his faceplate went dark again.

For a brief while he couldn’t move. He felt as if his code had frozen, as if his voxels had locked in place, caught in a glacier that dulled all his perceptions of the rest of the Grid, until only him and the sudden, bottomless chasm of his loss remained. He’d known his User was gone.

He hadn’t expected to bear witness to his last moments.

He forced himself to examine the data packet. There it was, a single file named, simply, ‘Perspective’.

Thank you, Liam . He activated the update. For my gift. And for the choice.

Chapter Text

Far below, all but integrated into the terrain, the virus grabbed a program, tore it in half and dropped it. Before the voxels had hit the ground, the halves had become two simulacra that sprung away to continue the assault.

It was slow going. It was such a profound slog, and for all the seemingly endless numbers of its forces, the virus was painfully aware that Om’s defenders were felling their opponents faster, and in larger quantities, than any program or building or vehicle the virus could take and convert.

The wretched emptiness of the terrain was a critical variable that it had not accounted for. The virus kept trying to pick up the terrain and make something, anything, out of it, but without code there was nothing for it to restructure. It itself was impervious to nearly anything the massed defenders could use, but it couldn’t cover the entire battle-line alone.

A sudden ping of awareness from one of its nearby infected programs reached it, and the virus looked up. The skies, which had raged and writhed against any intrusion, stopping only when the storm itself seemed to have run out of energy, were beginning to swirl angrily again. Rain spattered against its mass, harmless and unimportant.

Another ping, from another infected program. No, not the rain.

The vehicle.

It twisted around, its bottom mass spiraling to allow the maneuver. There it was, a bomber, very much like the one that had allowed Security and its friends to escape Parnassus. The virus growled low, jagged circuitry flaring and flashing. Once before it had taken its attention from the sky; once before it had allowed a flying vehicle to slip through its grip with whatever critical secrets it might have been carrying. For all the virus knew, Security itself had been in that first, egg-shaped little carrier. Security, and the Users its newly converted programs had told it were on the Grid.

If the virus could infect a User, oh, what couldn’t it possibly achieve…

No, it wouldn’t take the chance a second time. The bomber was coming closer, coming lower, its guns inert. That, if nothing else, made the virus suspect that it indeed carried something unusual. That it was carrying a secret.

It dug through its memories, sifting through possibilities. More flying simulacra were possible, but it would mean splitting its attention again. No, it needed something else, something more reliable, something -

The virus tipped its head, its attention turning to the infected programs that had drawn its attention to the bomber. Why? Why had they noticed it? No one else cared about the skies.

The answer rested on the batons still strapped to both programs. The virus looked up again, full of delight. “Are there more?”

The two programs shuffled closer. From the seething mass of yellow breaking like angry surges against Om’s defenders, three more programs began to head toward the virus.

One was immediately derezzed by a shot from a nearby tank, hiding behind the thinning defensive line. Voxels flew in a vast cloud from the sheer force of the shot.

The virus whirled around and leapt, engulfing the tank and those programs near enough under its mantle. “Go!” it barked at the surviving programs. “When it comes down, bring me whatever it is carrying.”

Chapter Text

MAR dashed out onto the cargo area. “Problem,” he said tersely.

Both Users, Gungnir and GAM all surged out of their sarcophagi and crowded around the cockpit door.

“It’s right at the front of everything!” Vidi cried out indignantly, as if the virus had personally insulted her by its location.

“We can’t airdrop into that mess,” Sam declared at once, staring at the chaos of fighting on the ground beneath them. “We’d never survive.”

“With all the firepower in the air from the tanks and the fleet, Moll wouldn’t survive long enough to land,” Kane added, daunted. The plan had seemed unlikely enough before; now it just smacked of both suicide and insanity.

“I can get Kane Gibbs to the ground,” GAM suddenly said. “I can keep him safe once we’re there.”

Everyone stared at the Sentry’s black faceplate. “You don’t like me,” Kane pointed out.

“I don’t like the mistakes you’ve made,” GAM corrected him calmly. “I’d like you to have the chance to fix them.”

Tron smiled faintly. “In that case, I can probably get Sam Flynn to the ground. I can even keep us both from getting derezzed once we’re there.”

“Not that I can’t do my own fighting,” Sam shot back dryly, staring at the fighting beyond the windows, “but I don’t think I want to be on the ground.”

“All three of you need to be on the ground,” Tron countered. “You, in case Molly needs guidance. Kane, in case Reintegration becomes… volatile."

“The Valravn and I can get Molly to the ground.” Gungnir had closed his helm, and on his faceplate vectors and numbers were flickering too quickly for anyone but him to perceive their passage, let alone their meaning. “Once she’s there Fortis can keep her safe, at least until the rest of us can land and give you support.”

“Don’t make promises without me there to agree to them,” the Gridborn called out loudly from his spot in the cargo bay. “But yes, I can.”

GAM shook his head. “That leaves Vidi unprotected -”

“Vidi’s going right back to the warship, what are you, buggy? Did your code crash?” Their pilot replied at once to GAM’s complaint. “I’m not staying out here! Everyone’s shooting at everyone else!”

GAM stared at her. “Well, I can’t help but appreciate you’ve finally grown some common sense.” He held up a hand, two fingers barely apart. “A little earlier would’ve been even better.”

“Don’t get picky, WallSec,” she shot back tartly.

“It would be my honor to keep the User’s medic in one piece on the trip down, and on the ground, with Fortis,” MAR offered. “If they’re still willing to come down with us.”

Tron leaned back. “MeMo, we’re deploying in the middle of the fighting,” he informed said medic blithely.

“Oh, lovely,” the green-tinted medic didn’t even look up from their fussing over Molly’s sarcophagus, their tone deadpan. “But we are deploying?”

“Yup.”

“And I suppose you have a plan to keep us all in one piece?”

Tron hemmed slightly. “Most of one.”

“Delightful,” MeMo declared dryly. “The sooner the better, please, her code’s not getting any better.”

“Right.” Tron leaned forward into the cockpit again. “Om makes for stalwart programs,” he told them all cheerfully.

Gungnir laughed quietly.

“Look, if you’re going, you better go now because we’re practically on top of- “ She let out a sudden, inarticulate yelp and threw her whole weight against the controls.

The bomber all but skid around in mid-air, dropping onto a wingtip and turning so sharply even a lightjet might’ve had trouble replicating the maneuver. Shots flashed by on the spot where it had been, ghosting over its armor and then missing it entirely.

“You said I wasn’t gonna get shot at!” Vidi demanded accusingly of everyone around her. Inside the bomber, anyone not strapped into a sarcophagus had stayed upright only by virtue of decacycles of battle-hardened reflexes. MAR had caught Kane, Gungnir was still holding onto Sam. In the cargo hold, even Fortis had slid along the floor in his cube shape, and slammed into one of the walls with a yell of protest.

“I didn’t expect it to have those!” Gungnir admitted, staring out the window at the four lightjets rising from the terrain after the bomber, twisting and dancing easily around the gunfire of both tanks and warships, which were not made to lock onto such tiny targets.

“We can’t do this,” Kane breathed out, his resolve fading swiftly.

“We have to do this,” Tron told him, his voice hard as steel. “Your sister’s out of time. We just need a new plan -”

“The plan stays the same,” Gungnir interrupted, stalking back toward the hatch and activating it. It opened smoothly into rain-spattered emptiness.

“Gungnir, what are you doing?” Tron followed him hastily.

“Clearing your airspace,” Pevir’s SysAdmin replied cheerfully.

“But sir-” Amps immediately started to protest, struggling to eject from his sarcophagus.

“No buts. Stick to the plan, you’re here to safeguard the User,” Gungnir commanded him. “We can’t afford to remove anyone else from the plan, every escort is needed. But the Valravn can fight without me if need be. You want to help me, get to the turrets, get to the virus, carry on with the plan. Besides, if I can’t fend off four lightjets, I don’t deserve my rank.” He grinned roguishly at them all, threw them a jaunty salute and leapt out. A moment later a deep red Valravn lightjet took shape and twisted away under the belly of the bomber. “Pevirian SysAdmin to Parnassian bomber, can you hear me, Vidi?”

“Yes,” she replied tartly. Never before had she been in a position to receive comm-lines, and so the universally understood identifiers didn’t even occur to her.

“Do whatever you have to to stay in one piece until I’ve taken the lightjets out.”

“What about dropping everyone off?” In her haste to get her away from the virus’ lightjets, Vidi had veered back toward the distant light of the Breach, which was quickly growing not so distant.

“You can’t drop everyone off if you’re falling from the sky,” he pointed out. “And turn on your light ribbons.”

She obeyed at once. In a display of ‘truly-not-expecting-that’ that made the SysAdmin laugh out loud, one of their four pursuers immediately ran into one of the ribbons and spiraled away, out of control, before detonating in a spray of voxels and primal matter.

He dove under the twin light ribbons, activating his own even as the infected lightjets did so. One of them opened fire on him while the other two continued pursuit of the bomber. The Valravn, made to be far more maneuverable, twisted into a spiral maneuver and returned fire, but the lightjet darted away under cover of its light ribbon.

“There’s still some code in there, I see,” Gungnir muttered. He didn’t pursue; he knew where his opponents were going, he just had to be there before they were. He watched as the other two lightjets tried to pin the bomber in a crossfire; the heavier plane rolled in an astonishingly good imitation of Gungnir’s roll not a picocycle before, and its attackers had to veer away or risk getting caught in the increasingly narrow spiral of its light ribbons. The bomber’s turrets chose that moment to open fire, further urging them to keep their distance.

Gungnir, watching the maneuver, felt a sudden strike of clarity: he rather suspected Vidi was so good at flying not because she was Gridborn, or because of her perceptions, or anything so esoteric: she flew so well because no one had taught her otherwise. A large part of his own training on lightjets had been on learning the limits of the equations involved. Gravity could only be pushed so far. Mass could only tolerate so much acceleration. So on and so forth.

No one had told Vidi these things. She didn’t know about limits or safety margins. She flew with her perceptions on the equations and vectors that surrounded her, asked them to do as she bid them, and the equations, knowing nothing about limits themselves, knowing nothing but their purpose, gladly obliged.

She spoke to the Grid in ways everyone thought too dangerous. And the Grid answered, and for her there was no danger at all.

There was a greater truth hiding there, in that revelation. He could feel it, something about Users and programs and the comparison to the Grid and its Gridborns. But then the third lightjet raked the bomber’s belly with a daring volley. The armor took most of the sting out of the attack, but only just.

Gungnir dove after the miscreant, firing with cool confidence. In coming in from below, the lightjet had pinned itself between the bomber and its escort. Gunfire stitched the seething atmosphere and clipped one of the infected lightjet’s wings. It wobbled and fell… and then bright yellow voxels flowed over the damage, the lightjet stabilized, and banked around for another pass.

“Now that’s cheating,” the SysAdmin gritted out, surging in pursuit. He’d be horrified later, because in a lightjet there was no mass to spare for such repairs – nothing, except for the pilot.

Another lightjet was coming in for one of those raking assaults. Gungnir turned off his light ribbon and dove under the bomber. He paced the larger vehicle, letting his instincts guide his hands. Right as the infected pilot opened fire, he surged out from his hiding spot, firing back, activating his light ribbon. His prey tried to dart away, but the Valravn was both quicker and more agile, and in a moment the pale crimson barrier was a loop around the enemy lightjet, which crashed into it and detonated.

“Come back from that,” Gungnir challenged.

The other two lightjets zeroed in on him, apparently aware that they were not going to get a clean shot to their primary target if they didn’t take its Pevirian escort out first. The bomber, free to fly straight for a few moments, immediately turned toward Om and the fighting.

“You’re not gonna get shot, Vidi. It’ll be so much fun, Vidi,” she was muttering as she urged the bomber to its maximum speed, cutting off the light ribbons.

“Are you angry at Gungnir?” MAR asked mildly.

“I’m angry at me,” she replied resignedly. “I convinced me and him to do this.”

“For whatever might be worth,” he pointed out. “It would have been nearly impossible to even try without y-”

“Vidi, move!” Gungnir shouted on the comms.

The Gridborn was already pulling on the rudder. “Move, you heavy, horrible, thing!”

The blast that came flying from Om missed the bomber, but only barely. It missed Gungnir by a little more, but not enough to be comfortable. The virus’ lightjets soared away as if they’d been forewarned, and the tremendous bolt of energy disappeared into the massive spray of energy the Breach was outputting behind them all.

Tron, in one of the turrets, twisted around to try and see a source, unwilling to believe what he’d just seen. “That was not what I think it was,” he said into the crew comm-line.

“It was a tank,” GAM, from the other turret, replied with calm the First Monitor suspected the Sentry wasn’t feeling.

“A tank wouldn’t have the range!” MAR protested.

“I think you keep forgetting what it is we’re fighting.”

“Energy conservation’s baseline. Foundational code, from the Grid itself,” Tron protested. “That can’t be changed, not even by a virus.”

“It’s not just a virus,” GAM reminded him pointedly. “And everything bends to a User’s will.”

“Am I going forward or backward or what?” Vidi demanded, the only thing that mattered to her. She shoved the yoke forward and the bomber dove abruptly, throwing everyone around in spite of straps and sarcophagi.

One of the two online Users, MAR wasn’t sure which one, groaned in protest. “Vidi, this might be slightly unpleasant for the Users,” he gritted out. It was pretty damn uncomfortable for him, even as she leveled them out… upside down.

“And derezzing isn’t?!” she snapped back.

“Vidi!” That came from GAM.

“FinefinefinefineFINE!” She righted the bomber up and immediate had it all but stop mid-air, nose coming up, to avoid another blast from that distant enemy.

“Pevirian SysAdmin to Om CommCon, can you hear me?” The bomber’s comms picked up Gungnir’s hail, but heard no response – unsurprising, since the range in either the lightjet or the SysAdmin’s armor was exceedingly limited.

MAR threw the bomber’s own commline open. “Parnassian bomber to Om CommCon, can you hear us?”

“MAR!” Adas’ voice was full of relief, and the master of Parnassus fully understood why, relief flooding through his circuits to know she was alright, at least for the moment.

“Adas, thank the Users. I’m relaying a comm signal.”

“Om CommCon ready to receive. Can you hear me?”

“I hear you, Om,” Gungnir gritted out as his lightjet danced around another blast. The infected lightjets had returned to harry the bomber, and he couldn’t get a clear shot on them for trying not to get himself derezzed. “This is Pevirian SysAdmin Gungnir. Relay to the fleet: we’ve got a friend on the ground taking potshots at us. We’d appreciate it if someone up there would make them stop.”

“Relaying,” she reported.

“From the ground?!” OM blinked at her. “Nothing has that range on the ground. The warships barely have range as it is.”

“I gave up wondering what the virus can and can’t do back when it took Parnassus,” was all Adas said. “Om CommCon to Om Security Forces.”

“Go for Security,” Ayin’s voice, strained and exhausted, replied. The First WallSec slammed a simulacra off her shield, beheaded another with an empty disk, and braced herself when a third tried to tackle her, snapping at her armor and leaving gouges in it.

“Ayin, the virus is firing something heavy near your position -”

“I’m aware, CommCon,” Ayin ground out. “I’m aware. There’s nothing we can do. I don’t know how it’s doing it, but it’s sucking the energy right out from its surroundings. Terrain, simulacra, programs – everything goes dark around it every time it does it. And the space affected keeps getting bigger. We’ve had to fall back from it three times already-” Two more simulacra came at her, the programs by her sides engaged with even more, and she closed the line, refusing the distraction in the middle of so much fighting.

At least it wasn’t moving. Ayin hadn’t known until that moment what the virus was doing, but she’d been afraid that it was simply a way to breach their defenses, to break the line and allow the immense, seething mass of shattered yellow into Om. That it was firing at the Users was… not good news, no. But it wasn’t attacking Om’s defenses and it wasn’t moving, and she’d take the good in the midst of so much bad. They’d actually been able to map out the edges of the affected area and stay out of it past the first horrifying losses. The only ones still getting drained were the simulacra and the infected programs that tried to get into the city through the dead zone.

However, unless someone far outside that zone could deal with the virus, the ground forces could do nothing but what they were already doing. Fighting desperately against a force that grossly outnumbered and cared very little about their losses.

Chapter Text

The virus couldn’t move. It had learned long-distance targeting trying to shoot the bomber down back at Parnassus; there, from the infected reconstruction vehicles, it had learned that delay was a critical factor, as well as distance. It had learned that speed and maneuverability were nearly as important as simple visibility. It had also learned that if you move a tank while trying to lock onto a target, you might as well forego the reticle, poke your head out of the hatch and try to target by pure eyesight.

At least it had been relatively easy to steal the energy of everything around it to boost the range of the tank, even though the vehicle’s blueprint equations were beginning to fray under the stress of handling so much energy feed. It didn’t matter, it didn’t have to last long. And it wasn’t all that different from spreading itself to other programs, or the terrain itself.

Now if only the wretched bomber would hold still! It was drawing closer, at least. It had been nothing to instruct its pilots to ‘pretend’ to fall back so it could head back to Om. The bomber was, the virus suspected, looking for it. Why, it couldn’t fathom; unless they meant to drop a User on it, or some other outlandish weapon.

As the distance narrowed, there was less delay on the shot, though. That was good. It gathered up more energy, sent new instructions to the infected lightjets. They dove recklessly at the bomber, trying to tangle up its flight path with their light ribbons. The tiny red lightjet that had been swarming all around the bigger bomber fired at the ribbons themselves, but couldn’t quite shatter them in time. The bomber had to either go above them, or below them.

The virus’ lightjets raked its belly with gunfire. One of them got caught by the red lightjet and exploded into voxels and primal mass. The bomber rose about the tangle of light ribbons.

The virus was so suffused into the tank that only a slender and nearly featureless body stood inside the cockpit, tendrils and projections embedded every which way into the vehicle, the sickly yellow light growing brighter until it seemed to be melting the shattered circuitry. It smiled, and fired.

Chapter Text

The shot came when Vidi was already committed to the abrupt altitude gain that was the only way out from behind the shooting and ribbons all around her. She saw it coming and realized she simply didn’t have the speed to avoid it.

She tried all the same, pulling hard on the yoke, trying to move the vectors and lines that were, to her eyes, the bomber and its passage. They were slow, though, so slow! She’d lost so much speed trying to climb higher in a hurry. She couldn’t shake off that deadly, bright vector rushing at her from the ground. She could already see what it would, the destruction it would wreak. The bomber would be sheared nearly in half, and everyone on board would be derezzed, or whatever passed for it for a User. The virus would not be stopped, and the Grid -

“No!” She growled, her hair writhing in a fury. Fine, whatever. She couldn’t stop the attack from hitting, but she could pick where it hit. In the nearly nonexistent moment between detecting the shot and reacting to it, the Gridborn just barely managed to force the bomber’s nose down, as if it were bowing to the distant city. The shot that was meant to gut it from nose to rudder instead sheared off the very back of the vehicle, leaving the tailfins attached by one singular strut and a few handspans’ worth of material.

Even worse than that, while blind behind the bulk of the bomber Gungnir never saw the shot coming. It caught his lightjet all but dead on; one of its wings vanished into a flash of primal matter. Pevir’s SysAdmin was violently catapulted into thin air, the baton collapsing and shattering as the lightjet, its blueprint too badly damaged, disintegrated.

“Gungnir!” Tron cried out in his turret, though he felt less stricken when he saw the automated deployment of the SysAdmin’s wingchute like a little bloom of red against the seething black skies and the rolling, monumental energy geyser coming from the Breach. It was not entirely reassuring, however, to watch the storm yank his friend away and out of sight.

The bomber began to plummet, rolling into a death spiral, and both him and GAM realized they had infinitely more critical concerns. They slid out of the turrets and rushed to the cargo hold, only to find out that the cargo hatch had been permanently opened by the simple expedient of removing it from the fuselage altogether. With it had gone one of the Valravn pilots, still trapped in their sarcophagus, and MeMo, the medic. Fortis was draped over Molly’s sarcophagus like a seething black shield.

Virulent yellow bolts stitched the rain-laden air, the injured rear of the bomber, the walls inside. Before they could hit anything or anyone GAM slid forward, dropped to one knee and deployed both halves of his shield. The shots slammed hard into it but the Sentry would not be moved.

“Can’t you guys shoot it down?” Sam, who’d just gotten himself back into his sarcophagus, took Amps’ hand and struggled free once again, clinging to the safety straps.

Amps gestured to the tatters that were the rear of the bomber. Unlike metal or composite materials, the torn edges were bleeding off primal mass in random splashes. As the bomber spiraled down, those splashes whirled away in unexpected directions. “We can’t deploy, not past that.”

Sam grimaced. Between the flying, molten… whatever that was, the bits of shrapnel, and the slow spiral signaling the death throes of the bomber, he wouldn’t have expected to be holding a conversation, even if he had to shout to be heard. And yet none of them were getting tossed around nearly as much as he knew they should’ve.

He felt as if he were back on that elevator, a lifetime ago.

He turned and banged a fist on the release of Kane’s sarcophagus. “Gibbs, you’re up!”

“Up to what?!” Kane’s voice was strained. “We’re gonna crash, aren’t we!”

“Yes,” Sam agreed. “If you don’t do something about it.”

“Do what, Flynn, what?!”

“Something! Anything!” Sam grabbed Kane’s hand and slammed it against the wall of the bomber. “This is your world, Gibbs. Your world, your code, your bomber, your voxels. You made it. You shaped it. Out there you do it with a keyboard. In here you don’t need anything but yourself. Do you think keyboards alone made them?” He gestured sharply at the Valravn. “Or them?” His hand swept over GAM and Tron. “Open your eyes and see what it means when I tell you you’re the Master Key of this system! You don’t write the back door from this end, Gibbs, you are the back door. You don’t write translators, you don’t need translators, you are the Rosetta Stone. You’re its shaper, its creator, you’re its god! Act like it before we get killed in it!”

Kane glared furiously at Sam, and in that heartbeat of wordless communication, Flynn realized that Kane already knew. He’d known, he’d felt it, he’d found the realization of it at some point. Probably while trying to help his twin escape her destruction. And even that hadn’t been enough.

No wonder he’d hidden from it, Sam thought. If they’d had any other option, for the sake of the battered young man, Flynn would’ve taken it.

But they didn’t. And both he and Kane Gibbs knew it.

Kane breathed out. Breathed in. Closed his eyes and let his hands speak to him. Under his palms he felt the cool substance of the bomber, not metal, not plastic, something else, something…

Universal. As if someone had said, ‘this is what it means to be solid’, and it had become fact.

Reality.

He’d spend so many sleepless nights merely staring at the code, scrolling through it in wonder, reading through the foundations of an entire universe made so clean and simple. He’d learned more about coding from just looking at the inner workings of the Grid than he’d ever had through his entire education. He’d learned enough to know that he had to look away, or he’d find truths hidden within it that he just… didn’t want to face.

Voxels and circuits. One principle saying ‘this is matter’. Another saying ‘this is energy’. This empowers that, that transports this. The bomber was mass and circuits. Voxels and energy. One and the same.

Kane saw the code racing under his fingers. He saw the vectors, the blueprints, the shattered pattern of the bomber, equations missing sections, impinged upon by alien values, badly wounded. He saw the way Vidi had interlinked her own pattern with the bomber’s, the way she was struggling to force the equations, however corrupted, to do what they were meant to do.

It was just code. The bomber’s blueprint was standard fare in the PVP servers. The engines didn’t work because they had fuel, they worked because they had equations of thrust against gravity. The bomber didn’t fly because of aerodynamic principles, it flew because of aerodynamic equations that said, if you move this way, this will happen. If there is wind, that will happen instead.

“Fly,” he whispered, seeing in his mind the equations, the blueprints, as they should be when freshly minted.

The bomber balked. The bomber was damaged, damaged severely enough that it must fall, for that is what its collection of equations and coded blueprints said.

“No.” Kane said.

Yes , the bomber insisted.

“No!” Kane drew a deep breath. To be a god of the Grid, he realized, meant that you couldn’t be its friend. Code is unchanging. You wrote it and it was done, unless you re-wrote it afterwards. By itself code, like the bomber, knew itself unchanging.

Kane stared down the truth of the code that said the bomber must fall, and gritted out, “Fly.”

Chapter Text

The shockwave lit up the skies above Om as if a thousand Spires had become active all at once.

It was centered on the falling bomber that only the most sharp-eyed programs could detect, halfway between the city and the Breach. It struck the sky first, and blasted the clouds away so that for a moment no rain fell on that section of the Black Plain. For the first since its inception, Om saw the top of the Grid, the wild and empty terrain that wrapped around and over it, so far away.

Soundless, invisible but for the effect it was having on the terrain, the shockwave crashed against the energy seething out of the Breach and cut a swath through it. Far away and out of sight, it blew over the Sea of Simulation, and it was pure luck that there was no traffic on the water; any such vessel might have found itself floating over the Sea rather than traveling through it. As it was, the tide itself rose violently, as if the waves themselves were trying to obey and take flight.

Over the Black Plain, the shockwave lifted every single loose voxel, every broken and jagged bit of terrain not attached to the larger whole, and brought it to a hover before dropping it abruptly. As it raced away from its epicenter, every raindrop it hit reversed its course for the briefest of moments.

Fly , it said.

The entire Grid obeyed.

The shockwave reached Om, barreling through simulacra and programs alike without seeming to notice either. The fighting stuttered as everyone found one of the foundation values of the Grid suddenly reversed, although no one rose more than a voxel or two off the ground. As the User’s will finally faded, halfway into Om and up the Spire, suddenly the city’s defenders found a respite: the simulacra were not fighting back.

The virus had reformed itself partially out of the tank, staring at the distant bomber as it fell to its destruction. The virus itself didn’t know what had caused the shockwave. The User within it, ephemeral, truncated, barely present, had fought to keep that knowledge from its companion and enemy. But each and every shattered piece of a dead program embedded within the virus’ body, every piece of a disk, every memory, every bit of broken code – they all knew who the shockwave belonged to. No program on the Grid had ever felt the presence, the wavelength of a User; they didn’t need to. Like the Grid itself, it was a truth written in the very core of every voxel.

“User,” the virus whispered. It was the first word it had itself spoken, without using its prisoner’s voice, or the fragments from so many programs’ memories. It was a hissing, spiteful sound, like a vent in a machine that’s one voxel away from breaking down and wrecking the whole thing.

Inside the bomber every program was staring, speechless, as the bomber’s damaged section began to repair itself out of nothing. There was no energy for it; it didn’t matter. There were no voxels; it didn’t slow the process any.Fly, the User commanded, and to fly the bomber must be whole, or as close as nevermind. Thin, reaching projections thickened to cables, to sections of fuselage, to solid walls and armor, alive with circuitry and energy.

Vidi felt the bomber catch the wind, planted her feet on the console, and pulled as hard as she could on the yoke. Next to her, on the navigator’s seat, MAR pulled on his own controls until he felt his arms might tear off.

“It’s too heavy!” Vidi cried out.

MAR had to agree; he didn’t know how the Gridborn had pulled off some of the maneuvers he’d seen her do, taking it all on faith. He understood partly that she saw the Grid far beyond the perceptions of any program he’d met or heard about. She saw things he couldn’t even imagine, the hidden pathways of their world, the code fed into all their senses. If she couldn’t budge the bomber, even with a User’s help -

“Move, you stupid, heavy thing!” she demanded angrily through her teeth. It felt as if she were trying to budge the Grid itself, too much a burden for any one program to carry.

Without warning, a second pair of hands covered hers on the yoke and pulled. She felt the difference instantly, the tremendous strength she’d only ever seen from one program in her existence. “GAM, it’s so heavy!”

“Then we move it together,” he assured her from over her shoulder. The Sentry braced himself against her seat, tucked his shoulders down, and pulled. The entire bomber groaned under the immense strain of the maneuver asked of it. The yoke itself began to make subtle grinding noises.

The bomber’s nose inched up. They were so low Vidi could see the gradients and voxels of the terrain in nerve-wracking detail. Ahead of them, rather than Om, she could see the Breach, its peaks and ruts and broken edges, the energy geyser having subsided as if cowed momentarily by the User’s touch. “MAR,” she wheezed, “we need a landing path.”

“Out here?!” he burst out in disbelief.

“We’re too low and not responsive enough.”

He breathed out, unhappy but entirely too aware of the truth she was giving him. “Navi, we need an emergency landing path,” he commanded, and in a pleading tone added, “somewhat on the flat side would be best.”

His ever-faithful companions burst into existence out of their two-dimensional pockets and dropped toward the terrain, the only thing currently in the area faster than the bomber itself. There they raced ahead, pairing up, flickering over terrain lines measuring outcroppings, crevasses and all the randomizers added upon randomizers of the Black Plain.

The three of them fought the bomber almost level. Almost, but not quite. Tron poked his head into the cockpit. “What’s going on in here?!”

“We’re landing,” Vidi shot back at him tersely.

“That’s not part of -”

“It wasn’t a question!” she snapped at the First Monitor with such fury he recoiled from her. “Strap in!”

Tron bolted back into the cargo area. “Sarcophagi, now!” he ordered, dashing for his own.

The NAVI suddenly became bright white lines along the terrain.

“That’s not long enough!” Vidi squeaked.

“It’s what you get!” MAR shot back. The terrain was close enough to turn their flight path into a bumpy ride as the air equations found themselves peppered with outcropping turbulence. The last of the infected lightjets flew and buzzed around the falling bomber, firing ineffectively at it, scoring its armor but achieving little that wasn’t already done.

“MAR, armor!” GAM shouted.

The bomber touched down, belly first.

For the second time since it had decided to target the bomber, the virus knew exactly where its target was going to be next.

The tank fired.

Chapter Text

The rain fell on Vidi’s face like a blessing from the Grid, cold and driving, washing away everything else. The little static microshocks of every drop brought her back online with a groan. She wasn’t even hurting that bad. What…

She sat up from where she was, sprawled on the terrain, and tried to look around; opening her eyes made the entire Grid dance and twist in her perceptions until she closed them again, unable to parse anything. Instead she focused on the Cosmetic’s eyes, simpler sources of input.

“Oh, gridbugs.”

She stared at imposing walls of broken terrain. She was in a crevasse, a fractal branch of the Break, the bottom black at the moment, but how long was that going to last? Below her, on a larger lip of terrain, the bomber’s cockpit rested nose-down, empty, dark and crumpled.

Vidi stood up, wobbly for a moment until she leaned against a piece of terrain. “GAM?” she called out; once she found her voice to be trustworthy, she shouted. “GAM! MAR! Fortis! Anyone!”

The rain hissed against the empty terrain, and no one answered.

“You’ve better not be hurt again, WallSec,” she muttered sourly. The Breach rumbled in response, so close that loose voxels all around her shivered, rivulets of them falling from the wall. The Gridborn merely made a rude noise at the Breach and started climbing.

Chapter Text

In a lull of the fighting between its forces and Om’s defenders, the virus worked taloned hands in impatient exasperation. It’s a simple query, it thought, furious. But getting angry wouldn’t help it get answers; trying to marshal itself it pulled away momentarily from the source of its vexation to check on its ground forces. It found them doing fine with their basic command of ‘advance with caution’, and once again reached out.

Above the Black Plain, flying over the shattered wreck of the bomber, the pilot of the last infected lightjet answered at once. Yes, the bomber had fallen.

Good! Is anyone walking away from the crash?

Yes, it could see survivors.

The virus phrased its next question with utmost care. Was the User one of those walking away?

And once again, the infected program hesitated. Which one?

“Th-the-th-th-the USER!” The virus screamed out loud in multiple voices, unable to filter down to just one in its anger until it once again fell back on its own wheezing words. “The User, you worthless bit of unreality, not the programs with it, just the User!”

The infected program, unlike the simulacra, had only its own emotional responses to react to its re-creator’s anger, and those were decaying quickly. There was a vague ghost of fear, but it was like fog over the Sea of Simulation, wisps that didn’t linger. And so, eager to please and unable to be afraid, it simply asked again. Which one?

The virus screamed, its rage so profound that it shattered the tank it had co-opted, sending pieces and primal mass flying in a violent blast all around it. It crouched down, sinking talons into the unresponsive terrain. If it weren’t because it would have to split its attention to fly the lightjet, it would’ve let the wretched pilot program decay altogether, obviously it was beyond being useful or sensible or cognitive at all…

Wasn’t it?

The virus went very still. Are the Users, it rephrased, walking away?

One is, the infected pilot replied at once. Two are not.

A ripple of energy went through the virus. It threw its head back, letting the rain pelt against the disk fragments embedded all over its substance, making the broken voices inside each one whisper their memories into its consciousness.

Users.

“This was your secret,” it murmured. The rebellious presence within it didn’t answer. Wild and mad, the virus began to laugh. It threw itself over Om’s low defensive wall and over the Black Plain like a receding wave, bypassing the fighting, uncaring of who or what it mowed down, defender, infected program, vehicle or simulacra. Everywhere along the battle line, its forces turned around and raced after it, abandoning Om and the fighting, following the virus towards the crash site.

Do not, the virus commanded that distant lightjet pilot, let any of the Users wander away.

Chapter Text

Within the virus, the faltering consciousness still there, locked away in darkness and silence, said nothing when the virus raced away from Om. The virus might believe its prisoner/passenger had been stubbornly silent, but in truth she’d been nothing like it. Though also, to be fair, she hadn’t expected her efforts, like whispers in the void, to lead the virus to such a colossal mistake as it was currently making. She wasn’t sure what the ramifications for it would be, and she did worry that putting the Users at risk was… Well, it was putting them at risk. But gut instinct, that ineffable quality unique to her own species, said to let it ride, and so she did. She kept on feeding the virus a ghost of her impotent, blind greed, the sort that makes one never stop and think if perhaps the choice of action in the moment isn’t just wrong, but colossally wrong; all the while, like a ghastly undertone, she added the one force that had driven her to her own monstrous mistakes.

Chapter Text

Obedient to the command of its re-creator, the infected lightjet dropped low over the broken terrain and opened fire on the lone figure with its bright white circuitry. Sam found this new bit of violence very objectionable. He’d never had time to get back into his sarcophagus when Tron and GAM had shouted their warnings, and when the bomber had attempted to land he’d gotten tossed around the cargo space like a ragdoll.

Then they’d gotten shot. Again. He wasn’t sure what the point had been, seeing as how they’d already been on the ground. Spite?

Regardless, the bomber had split in half, and then it had shattered into more pieces than Sam had rightly been able to count. It had lost at least one wing. The cockpit had rolled off – he’d seen it whirling away through the gaping hole the wing had left in the fuselage. It had been… disconcerting.

Fortunately, maybe, he’d been thrown out of that same hole immediately after. He’d lost consciousness and discovered it was not an experience he wanted to repeat. He’d literally booted back up like an old-style hard drive, his disk struggling through its paces and bombarding him with scattered, haphazard moments from his past. By comparison, the physical bruises and bumps that had resulted from him hitting the Grid’s terrain hard enough to leave a dent in it had at least been present, real enough to wonder if his luck was truly that good or that bad. Or that miraculous, given he was alive and mostly unharmed from an incident that should’ve killed everyone involved.

The fuselage of the bomber had stopped just shy of the Breach itself, close enough that there was a constant vibration traveling through the terrain and the soles of Sam’s feet. The cockpit was entirely out of sight. One of the wings had stuck into the terrain like a dagger into a body, a fair distance from the rest of the wreckage; the other was a crumpled mess nearly out of sight in the opposite direction, slowly decaying into primal mass. The tail had fallen in such a fashion that it looked like a signpost for Om; it had kept Sam company when he’d been evicted, and was resting precariously at the base of the slight hill where Sam had landed. As he slid down the terrain, it fell with a crash and a splash, turning into energy and seeping away into the cracks.

Sam had been making his way to a higher outcropping that promised to be an excellent vantage point but the infected lightjet, coming out of the rain, hadn’t liked that, and had expressed that dislike in a very universal fashion, firing steadily at him. Again, why, Sam didn’t know. He was on the ground. Grounded. He was absolutely not going anywhere in a hurry. He was attacking nothing, defending nothing, threatening nothing. He didn’t have enough breath to curse out the lightjet, he was saving it for sprinting as fast as he could toward the fuselage. But oh, he wanted to.

The lightjet overtook him and turned in a tight circle but didn’t fire again. Sam was not new to the concept of being herded, but he could see no other option except to keep running. He found one last bit of energy when he saw Kane waving frantically at him from that familiar hole in the fuselage. He dove in, and two pairs of hands caught him before he could crash into the opposite wall.

“I’ll be honest, man,” Kane told him in the most deadpan of tones, “I don’t think I can fix it this time.”

The lightjet was coming for another pass. Sam opened his mouth to reply.

The Breach, directly next to them, spoke first.

In the monstrous roar of the Grid’s most primal voice, all three of them dropped to an instinctive crouch. The lightjet veered abruptly off, gaining altitude. The fuselage rocked heavily, close enough to the geyser of energy to be affected by the force of its passage. For a long moment no one said anything, no one moved, and there was very little thought in Sam’s head beyond the hope not to die in such a casual way.

The energy receded eventually, though they all heard a last few splashes hit the outside of their dubious shelter.

“Well,” Tron declared dryly. “This is a less than optimal situation.”

“The plan did kinda crash and burn, didn’t it,” Sam couldn’t help but point out, and both his companions gave him such a look. He shrugged with a cocky little grin. “Hey. Nowhere but up from here.”

Chapter Text

Ayin scrambled over the wreckage of one of the virus’ vessels, something that looked remarkably like one of Waystation’s pylon maintenance hover-platforms. “CommCon, are you seeing this?” she asked in disbelief.

The virus’ forces were retreating. From a fight the First WallSec well knew they’d been winning. And they weren’t just falling back, no, they were galloping away as fast as their various vehicles or appendages could take them. They weren’t stopping to finish off fallen opponents, they weren’t pausing to keep their own from getting derezzed - they were sprinting away without a second thought for the city they’d almost taken.

“I’m not sure the breathing room is worth it,” OM pointed out tightly as he raced from display to display to confirm what the city’s defenses were reporting. With an irate snap of one hand he re-opened the storm shutters.

“Gridbugs,” Adas muttered tightly before drawing a deep breath. “Om ComConn to all channels,” she broadcast, her voice ruthlessly calm even though her hands were shaking. “That bomber was carrying three Users. It must be defended at all costs.”

Every line detonated into chaotic babble. Most programs had known there were two Users Grid-side, but they’d also expected said Users to be inside one of Om’s fortified buildings. At the Weather Station Tower. Within the Black Vault. Up on a warship. Anywhere but down in the middle of the Black Plain, defenseless.

Unsurprisingly, the Pevirians recovered first, and almost simultaneously Adas received two callbacks.

“Medjay enroute.”

“Drakkar enroute.”

The immense Pevirian flagship dropped entirely out of the storm, accelerating. Next to it the Medjay, a scouting ship, looked as tiny as a voxel next to a lightjet.

Whatever part of the fleet hadn’t already dropped out of the storm began to do so, joining the rest of the warships and calling out acknowledgments as urgency replaced panic. They could survive the storm, yes, but they couldn’t see inside it, which was why most of their fighting had been done with long-range weaponry, firing blind while the ground forces fed them targeting coordinates. To try and find the fallen bomber, let alone provide protection for it, they had to be able to see.

Ayin slid down the wreck of the hover-platform and offered a hand to a program that was wearily picking himself up from the ground. Janus managed a thanks, but only just. His circuitry was dim and there were gouges not just in his armor, but in his body. “Come on, WallSec. The virus hasn’t been spawned that we can’t take down.” Ayin opened her helm and dredged an old Siren trick up from her cold storage. “Security!” she shouted, and her voice rolled like the storm’s thunder over the battlefield. Far beyond them, the Breach roared back and she felt somewhat pleased at the unexpected assist.

She threw her hand out, pointing at the blinding pillar of light. “Three Users just went down somewhere on the Black Plain. That bit of slag knows where – it wants them. Since when do we let a virus do what it wants in our Grid?!”

The massed Security forces of the Grid roared defiance, and charged in pursuit of the virus’ forces. Those who had batons surged ahead on lightcycles; a few took off on lightjets. From behind the last line of defense tanks and Recognizers roused back online, gaining speed and picking up programs as they passed.

Ayin and Janus hopped on the pylon of a passing Recognizer. “Go, go go!” she gestured sharply at the crew of the vehicle as they looked down and made to drop the cockpit, which would have arrested the vehicle’s speed. “We’re fine!”

“You know, I used to think WallSec duty was boring,” Janus shouted at her as the wind and the rain became a punishing wall of sound and needles all around them. “I kinda miss those cycles now!”

Ayin laughed wildly. “You and me both, WallSec!”

Chapter Text

“Where are the Valravn, where’s everyone else?” Sam asked when they could hear themselves think again.

“Out there,” Tron peeked out, trying to locate the infected lightjet, “looking for everyone else.” He ducked sharply back inside when the lightjet, seeing him before the Monitor did, peppered the fuselage with shots.

“Guys,” Kane called out. He was examining the sarcophagus holding his sister: of them all, it was the only one that had been clamped so firmly onto the bomber that it had never budged. “Something’s wrong.”

Both Sam and Tron hurried to his side. Kane was checking the readouts from his sister’s sarcophagus, but most of the data had been either on the red or getting there – nothing new there.

Molly’s medical sarcophagus was a larger version than the usual resting model used by most programs on the Grid whenever they had downtime. It had a number of built-in functions not found on those, either: an energy feed, data stability and clean-up protocols, basic repair abilities. It was meant to help injured programs until an actual medic got to them.

As they watched, delicate lines appeared over Molly’s cheek; a single voxel went dark and tumbled off, leaving the smallest gap behind.

“She’s beginning to cascade,” Tron gritted out. They all turned sharply as more shots spattered the terrain outside the fuselage, just in time to see the Valravn flight leader spring in, baton in hand, armor glossy with rain even as he folded it partially away. “Amps!”

“Problem,” the Pevirian was a lanky program, taller and a little slimmer than his SysAdmin. As his armor folded away he revealed the delicate circuitry lines of a last-gen. His skin was nearly as dark as the terrain and his very black hair was cut nearly to the skin, in patterns that mimicked the circuitry on his body.

“More?” Tron asked in disbelief.

“Well, I was being moderate, it’s a whole army of problems, actually.” Amps threw an arm out, pointing in the direction of Om. “The virus is coming. And it’s bringing everything with it.”

“What about the army at Om?” Sam demanded.

“In pursuit, and derezzing the rear ranks nearly as fast as they reach them. They’re not fighting back, I don’t think it cares. It knows you’re here.”

“Can we go, can the Valravn carry us?” Kane asked urgently.

Shots rocked the fuselage and all four of them braced themselves as the infected lightjet passed over them. “First problem with that,” Amps pointed up.

Tron gestured over one shoulder at Molly sarcophagus. “Second problem with that. I don’t think we should take her out of the sarcophagus that long, Kane. I’m not sure she’d survive being moved.”

“So what, we wait for the virus to get here?”

“Hey.” Sam shrugged lightly. “It’s what we wanted, isn’t it? We were going to meet the virus, now it’s coming to us.”

“With an army!” Kane protested.

“The army was going to be there all along,” Tron pointed out. “Amps, we need that first problem dealt with. Sam -”

“Yeah, I’ll decoy him so you can take off, Amps” Sam offered.

Amps closed his flight armor. “You got it,” he acknowledged. “We owe someone for our SysAdmin, might as well get started with that one.”

“Keep looking for the others, too,” Tron managed to ask before both User and program darted out of the fuselage and sprinted in separate directions.

The infected lightjet, unsurprisingly, turned toward the bigger threat immediately: the vivid crimson of the Pevirian with known flight and combat capabilities. A moment later, however, its directives kicked in.

Do not let any of the Users wander away.

It turned toward the white of the User’s presence, opening fire. Amps leapt, manifesting his sleek Valravn lightjet, and was airborne and on a steep ascent vector in an instant, light ribbon trailing behind it. The Pevirian opened fire before he even had a target, and the yellow lightjet twisted away at once, rising as well to give itself room to maneuver against its opponent.

Sam dared a glance back, just to make sure Amps was on the air and safe. Well, as safe as he was gonna get. He paid for it instantly; the terrain abruptly went out from under his feet. He pinwheeled wildly -

A strong grip caught his wrist and held him against the fall. “One begins to wonder if the Grid has it out for you, Sam Flynn,” MAR said cheerfully, and yanked the User back onto solid ground.

“Honestly, that’s every Grid I’ve ever been to,” Sam admitted wryly, then clapped MAR’s arm gladly. “You’re alright!”

“Well, a little worse for wear, but yes,” the program agreed before his tone turned mildly anxious. “Let’s move away, shall we. The Breach’s terrain is not known for its stability.”

Sam glanced back at what he’d thought was a shallow crack in the terrain, and discovered it was anything but. Light, white and pure, burned far down in the darkness, and on the opposite side what he’d thought to be terrain were just shadows. Here and there he could just make out little spills of voxels as they tumbled down into the Breach’s fractal branch. “Jesus.”

“Where is everyone, did they make it?” MAR asked as they hurried away from the narrow gap.

“Tron, Kane, Molly,” Sam assured him, then gestured up. “Amps, and he said the rest of the Valravn are out there. Can you send your, you know, the little pixel things out to look? I wanted to look around, but I don’t think there’s time. The virus is on the move. It’s coming here. With everything it’s got.”

A program couldn’t quite blanch, and MAR was pale to begin with, but the effect on his features was the same at those news. “I’m afraid my Bits and Navi haven’t come back to me yet. They’re not the most… stalwart of creatures in times of peace, let alone now,” he explained distractedly before visibly rallying himself. “Well, I suppose we should hurry to organize our defenses,” was all he said, and they trotted back toward the fuselage.

Chapter Text

The wretched, inexplicable emptiness of the terrain made the virus snarl distractedly as it raced over it, watching in the distance as that tiny red dot balked its own lightjet over and over again. For all the virus’ pilot could report while engaged in combat, the Users were halfway across the Grid, fallen into the Breach, gone into two-dimensional space! It stopped in its mad dash and gestured sharply; the simulacra on the frontlines, those who’d kept up with the virus, shattered into smaller bodies, shifted into new shapes. A small group of flying simulacra, twenty or thirty strong, sprang up and became airborne, heading toward the Breach to lend the infected lightjet support.

They were immediately engaged by the multi-faction lightjets chasing after the virus and its forces from Om. The virus whipped around, surprised. It had fully expected the defenders of the city to, well, stay with their city. Belatedly it realized it had been steadily losing numbers in its mad dash across the Black Plain. Clarity shot through its rage, its single-minded desire to capture the Users. It knew nothing about them! Could it even infect them? And if it could, what then? Would they keep even a fraction of their power, or would they decay, as its programs did?

It sank down to its more normal size, turning its attention to the stragglers at the back of its forces, reorganizing them, creating defenses, sorting out a new battle-line at the rear even as it tried to figure out what had just happened.

It had wanted the Users. It still did, and that was reasonable, they were powerful, and that power would allow it to better follow its directives. Survive. Endure. Grow. But it had charged blindly nearly to the Breach after them, even knowing its forces were a valuable commodity, even knowing it could replace none of them unless it took the city. It had abandoned every hard-won step into Om to go after the fallen bomber and its precious cargo. Something had overridden its directives. Not just rage. Rage was a constant, not a variable. No, what had taken over was…

Greed, the other half of its consciousness whispered. Desperation.

And laughed.

“You did this,” the virus hissed in its own voice. Greed was not part of the virus; it didn’t understand taking more than its share, because its very nature dictated that there was no share for others. Desperation was just utterly alien; as far as the virus knew it was as absolute as the Grid, and just as impossible to stop.

Yes.

The virus worked its talons. “If I could rip you out of this body…”

You can’t. It’s not real. We are real, but the body never was.

“You are not in control!” the virus snarled.

No. But I can whisper. I can suggest. I can burden. That faltering presence burned with defiance. I can twist all the good and make it seem a threat, a taunt, a torture. I can take the nothings that never mattered and make them so heavy, so big, that you won’t see anything else. I can make the smallest fault seem like an impassable obstacle. I know how to do these things. I’ve had a lifetime to learn, and I’ve had a very. good. teacher.

The virus felt each of those unspoken words slam into it like blows. There was a threat, a danger to them, a trap hidden beneath the concepts that it couldn’t quite comprehend, let alone plan against. Before it could fully grasp the terrible possibilities that lack of understanding hinted at, its lightjet pilot reached out with startling news.

The virus froze. “Fine,” it hissed out. “If you w- you w- you would make every new idea-idea-idea sus-pect, then I will simmmmply -” Angrily, it tore a handful of disk shards out of its own substance. Tiny echoes spoke from them, quicker and quicker, until the shards went to burning voxels between its talons, sparking as they fell. “If you would make every new idea suspect,” it wheezed out in its own ragged voice, “I will go back to an old one. To the first one.”

It turn and raced over the Black Plain like a great wind. Do not hurt it, it instructed the infected lightjet. But bring it to me.

“If this body is not real, then I will take one that is.”

Chapter Text

Aided by hands, feet and all of her eyes clinging to the terrain like desperate stanchion cables, Vidi finally crested the lip of the crevasse. She simply laid there on her back for a long moment before she climbed to her feet and brushed herself clean, grumbling all the while. The Breach’s glow behind her grew abruptly brighter, the terrain under her feet vibrating hard enough to take the feet out from under any average program.

But Vidi had spent most of her online life ducking, dodging and weaving her way through the traffic and transit of half the cities of the Grid. She hopped and ran until she was just far enough away that voxels were bouncing on the terrain, but anything larger, herself included, remained stable. There she stopped to turn briefly and glowered at the Breach. “Only one’s ever caught me when I didn’t wanna be caught was WallSec! You think I’m impressed?” The Gridborn turned around, scoffing. “Try harder.”

The terrain under her feet exploded, and Vidi went flying with a squeal. She rolled and tumbled and was scrabbling into a run before she’d even stopped, actinic yellow blasts chasing after her.

“Why’re you shooting me?!” Angry yelling aside, Vidi sprinted along the Black Plain as fast as she could go. She tried to go behind an outcropping but the infected lightjet shot it to nothing, showering her with rubble; the Gridborn picked up a piece of it and flung it as hard as it could, not that it achieved anything against her harasser, and ran again. “You gridbug! You horrible virus thing! You -!”

Another barrage of energy bolts from the lightjet sent her tumbling over, but even as she picked herself up she was already muttering angrily. “I’m not even shooting back! What do you even…”

Her voice trailed off. On her knees, Vidi could see entirely too well as first a few voxels, jagged and gradually losing their sickly glow, rolled by her. Their numbers grew to a few small splashes, then to thin rivulets, running around her and snatching up the broken pieces of the terrain.

The Gridborn scrambled to her feet and whipped around.

The virus stood before her, twice her height and as wide as the horizon. She was half a body, embedded and mantled in a slowly moving sea of broken yellow circuity and black co-opted voxels; here and there shards of discs gleamed when that terrible light caught them just right.

“Hello,” the virus wheezed. It was its own voice, and it was even more terrifying that hearing it speak in the broken words of dead programs. It sounded like code decay, like fatal and final program cascade, like disk failure. “Hello, little program.”

Vidi backed away, arms thrown forward as if by that simple gesture she could hold terror at bay. “I can’t do it,” she blurted out. “I can’t, my memory’s -”

“Not limitless.” The virus flowed forward. Her limbs were so thin they looked fragile, and long talons rather than fingers adorned her hands. Her features had coalesced at last into a face that Vidi found startlingly familiar, for all that she’d only caught passing glimpses of the downed User. It was haggard, narrow and refined to dagger-like edges, but it was very much recognizable. “I know. You cheat.” Humor came into that wheezing, ragged voice. “You cheat amazingly well.”

The words were a shock, but not enough of one for Vidi to hold still. “Then what do you want with me?” The Gridborn kept giving ground, and the virus kept flowing forward, the distance between them remaining constant.

“You are a,” the virus considered, “a desperate gamble.”

“Gamble with someone else,” Vidi shot back tartly.

The virus laughed. “That is a possibility,” it admitted with coy malice. “Because I don’t want to damage you.”

“Well, I’m not going without a fight.” Vidi awkwardly groped for the disk at her back, having entirely forgotten that it was gone.

“Yes. It makes this,” the virus paused to find the perfect word, “challenging. So I’m not going to fight you."

That did stop Vidi. “Say what again?”

The virus chuckled amicably, then gestured broadly all around them. The sky overhead was a churning black mass; lightning, that deadliest of forces, was beginning to flicker and flash among the darkness. Occasional spats of rain hit the terrain in the distance, like brief sweeps of an unseen hand, come and go nearly too quickly to be perceived. Behind the virus, where Vidi couldn’t see it, and too far for the Gridborn to hear, Om’s army and the virus’ forces were massed in a chaotic fight. “Have you noticed how strange the terrain is here? There’s nothing.” A taloned hand scraped up a handful of terrain voxels. Yellow light showed as its infection tried to lay claim to them, and the virus let them seep through its talons as the attempt failed. “Literally nothing. No life. No code.”

“So?” Vidi challenged, but a moment later she realized two truly terrible things: one, that she’d been hanging out with WallSec long enough to be infected by his horrible, no good, very bad drive to find answers to all the questions ever. And two, that she knew exactly what the virus actually meant. “You can’t infect it. You don’t got nothing to make simulacra with. If the programs fighting kill them all, that’s it.”

“Yes,” the virus admitted readily. “I can’t get anything from this strange, dead place. Or at least that’s what I thought. But it turns out, even in the Black Plains, one can find treasure, if one’s lucky. No, little program, I don’t want to fight you. I don’t want to damage you.” It smiled. “So I’m going to try bribery instead.”

Part of the immense mantle all around it rose and irised open, and Vidi gasped, staggering back. “Fortis!”

“VIDI!” The Pevirian Gridborn roared and twisted, and entirely too late Vidi understood why the virus was sprawled out so vastly when before it’d kept its mass… well, not contained, but relatively gathered up around it. In a desperate effort to escape, Fortis had expanded to his maximum size, a voxel thick and as immense as a cargo barge. Everything the virus had that was not critically needed to maintain a body was engaged in containing its prey. “DON’T YOU D-!”

The mantle irised closed.

“Let him go!” Vidi picked up and threw a broken piece of terrain at the virus before she even realized what her anger was doing.

It bounced off of the thin, half-chest of it, and it looked at it in mild surprise before it returned its attention to the Gridborn, unfazed. “I can.”

Vidi stepped back, her expression going to horror and grief as she remembered Parnassus.

The virus held up a hand, reached into its substance, and pulled out a vivid red disk. “I haven’t infected him. I will release him, if that’s your price.”

“If I let you infect me instead,” Vidi only had eyes for that gleaming red disk. Too late, she understood why Adas had risked so much for her old boss, why her friend had run before she’d thought, why she’d tried in spite of everything.

At that moment, for another Gridborn, for a friend, Vidi would’ve tried anything. She would’ve found a way to climb around the big ol’ pylon of WallSec if she had to, just to try.

“Yes,” the virus agreed simply, holding the disk up between its talons.

Vidi pressed her hands frantically to her face. Adas’ example, she decided, was probably not a good one to follow in the current situation. MAR, in her head, was telling her to run, which also wasn’t a solution. That left GAM, the little version of him that lived in her mind after all this time, everything she’d seen and heard and, ugh, learned from WallSec.

And that version pointed out one advantage and three flaws in quick succession.

The advantage: the virus didn’t know it already had what it had wanted all along. All Gridborn had fluid memory systems, not just Vidi. Fortis used his for combat strategies, tactics, and to keep track of his shape. He hadn’t refined Vidi’s techniques to the level the Halcyonite Gridborn had reached, but his potential memory space, the very thing the virus had been hunting Vidi down for, was the same.

That did nothing to help the situation, actually. It just made it worse.

The first of the flaws was pretty obvious. “You’ll just infect him after you infect me,” the Gridborn said quietly, despair in her voice. It tied to the second: Fortis would not leave without trying to save Vidi, no more than Vidi could walk away from him. And it dovetailed with the last: Vidi would be in no shape to stop the virus from reneging on any agreement, any promise it made her concerning Fortis’ safety.

“Well, I can’t help that. If he attacks me I will defend myself,” the virus replied primly.

“You could leave. You could take me and leave, leave Om, go someplace else, anyplace else. He won’t catch you. With you and me together, no one will ever catch you.”

The virus cocked its head minutely.

“No one ever catches me unless I want them to.” Vidi stood up straight and proud. “That’s not even a program thing. That’s all me.”

“I caught you.”

“You’re not of the Grid,” Vidi shot back. “You’re a virus.”

“Is that such a bad thing?”

Vidi stared at that familiar-but-not face and thought back on everything that had happened since that day, back in Halcyon, when life had changed so radically, so terribly. “You don’t get it, do you. I’ve met the other you, her and her code-kin. All they had to do was ask for help! We’re here, we’re all here, just because they finally did! Existing wasn’t ever a bad thing until you made it one.”

The virus recoiled as if the Gridborn had hit it, had hurt it with nothing but words. Its face twisted into a snarl and it made to charge Vidi, who tensed up, ready to duck and run. Rain spattered fitfully over both of them, oddly heavy and warm.

Vidi had seen rain like it once, in Halcyon. The memory was currently fresh in her mind, as well as the knowledge she didn’t ever want to be caught in that kind of rain again. To the virus, being showered with dead voxels wasn’t actually a new experience; the direction was. Ironically, when it killed someone voxels sprayed up; them falling down was new and unexpected.

For two entirely different reasons, both program and virus looked up. The motion meant that when Gungnir dropped down, lance leading, one of his boots slammed directly into the virus’ chin, the other on Fortis’ disk, and his lance went clean through the abomination. He’d closed his paraglider, dropping through the infected lightjet like a living projectile and sent voxels cascading over that small corner of the Black Plains.

The virus shrieked, a terrible sound that cast a visible shockwave over the terrain. It snatched for the disk but it was flying away, out of its reach. A wave of blackness overtook the jagged, broken yellow circuitry in a vast area radiating from the lance’s point of impact. Gungnir twisted the lance and the virus screamed again.

“Let go,” Pevir’s SysAdmin growled through his faceplate, teeth gritted , “of my friend.”

Vidi lunged for Fortis’ disk, sprinting and leaping after it. Through the blackened, dead area that Gungnir’s lance had created in the mantle of the virus, Fortis suddenly burst free in a spray of voxels, yanking all his mass along in a flowing spiral.

The virus snarled and swatted Gungnir aside, leaving angry furrows on the SysAdmin’s chest armor; it held, barely. He twisted in mid-air, accepting the blow and landing down on a crouch. The virus snatched for the lance embedded in its chest but Gungnir beat it to it, activating the recall protocols on his gauntlets: the baton shut down and leapt for his hands.

The virus dismissed the Pevirian. He didn’t matter, none of the Pevirians mattered, no program mattered except for one. It whirled around and launched itself after Vidi, who’d just managed to snatch Fortis’ disk up.

The Pevirian Gridborn, rolled up into his wheel-shape, slammed into Vidi from the side and both of them went tumbling out of the way of the virus’ wild charge. “You do NOT yield, Vidi!” he told her, angry red lines all over his black surface. “No matter what it does, do you h-?!” A tremendous swipe sent him flying, shape lost, segments writhing.

The virus snatched for the fallen Vidi. The lance’s red energy blade took its hand off at the wrist. Vidi rolled, sprang up to her feet and ran blindly, clinging desperately to Fortis’ disk. Not knowing what else to do, she put it on her empty dock. Recognizing a false dock, the disk went dormant at once.

Gungnir and the virus squared off. “We’ve danced this dance before,” the virus warned the SysAdmin in its own voice as it flowed to one side.

“Yeah, and it didn’t go well for you,” Gungnir shot back, walking in the opposite direction and shifting the lance to an open guard.

“You had friends then. And I’ve grown since.”

“That’s bloat, not growth,” the SysAdmin corrected it disdainfully.

The virus chuckled, reabsorbing all of the substance it had used to contain the odd shape-shifting program. It really should’ve just infected it and tried tricking the little Halcyonite but it had feared, perhaps with reason, that the little program would remember the same trick from Parnassus. It had hoped the truth would have better results and for a moment it really had seemed like it would work. Right until the little program’s words had hit something, had carried a truth the virus had neither known nor expected until it had been delivered like a shot from a tank.

There were just so many truths flying around. Well, when it took the Grid, when it became everything and everything became it, it would be the only truth. There would be no more painful, unexpected surprised after that.

The circuitry the lance had struck and overwhelmed into shutdown rebooted, and the virus’ body lit up again. “Tell me, Pevirian: will your city follow you into my grip when I take you?”

“I’m not my city, I’m just its SysAdmin.” Gungnir grinned fiercely through the clear faceplate of his helmet. “And I’m not even the worst it can send out to face you.” He pointed with the lance. “Someone ought to introduce you to the concept of griefing. Heads up.”

Instinctively, the virus looked up even as the Pevirian SysAdmin prudently threw himself to one side. Above them, two Valravn lightjets dove, peppering the terrain with firepower and forcing the virus to armor up one arm, throwing it up to protect itself.

By its own efforts, the virus was unable to see the Valravn break off, revealing the Medjay behind them on a steep dive; the scout ship had vastly outraced everything else in the fleet. It opened fire with everything it had, freeing immense sprays of voxels from the virus’ substance and making it shriek once again, leaping away from the attack and clawing at the terrain in a desperate effort to get away from the pain and destruction.

The Medjay pulled up and raced away. Beneath it, Gungnir ran at the virus once again, slashing at the clashing, disorganized substance of its enemy, further cutting it down in size; the energy blade left crimson afterimages in the static-laden air, and the gashes it cut into the broken yellow circuitry blackened instantly.

But they didn’t stay black. The more Gungnir hit it, the quicker the virus learned to isolate those overloaded areas, to reboot them and reactivate them. It couldn’t quite avoid taking damage altogether – whatever the lance was doing, it was a cycling effect it couldn’t readily identify, different each time it struck. All the same, as it had pointed out to Gungnir, it could and did learn, and it was swiftly doing just that to minimize the time the lance was buying the Pevirian.

It twisted and snatched for the lance, growling. Gungnir deactivated it, the baton recoiling instantly into his hand and out of the virus’ grip. The SysAdmin rolled out of the way of a swipe, reactivated the lance and slashed two talons off. The virus turned like a tide and took over the terrain around them, including Gungnir’s footing. The Pevirian went flying and barely managed to drag himself to his knees in time to catch the virus’ talons on the haft of the lance. Sparks flew angrily from the contact.

Slowly, pointedly, the virus unfolded a single talon from around the lance, and reached out to rest the tip of it, ever so delicately, against Gungnir’s armguard. The armor began to break down around that point of contact.

The virus smiled at Gungnir. The SysAdmin met that glowing, alien gaze and gritted out, “Heads up.”

The virus all but laughed. “Is that the only trick you’ve-”

Fortis, back in his wheel shape, slammed into the virus and peeled it off his SysAdmin. The impact was so forceful even Gungnir went flying back from it, and both virus and Gridborn went rolling and stumbling over the terrain, crashing into outcroppings and thrashing splines. Fortis had thrown heavy spokes into the inner void of his wheel-shape, further reinforcing it, and he was taking full advantage of the improvement to slam and grind the virus into anything and everything in their path. He knew the moment the thing regained its wits -

The virus hissed furiously and clawed blindly at Fortis. Talons scrabbled against the black surfaces of his segments, and came away with handfuls of voxels – the armor very few knew the Pevirian Gridborn wore. He merely picked up speed: there was one sure, clean way to deal with the virus, and unlike Tron or GAM or the others Fortis had no qualms about going for full deresolution – even if it meant he had to take one for his team as well. If his team meant the whole of the Grid, even more reason to -

Talons sank into Fortis’ actual body and the Gridborn cried out at the abrupt agony of it. He flung himself away, the wheel-shape breaking apart. One of the ends kicked the virus hard one way while Fortis tumbled the other, segments of his body crawling with sickening, spreading yellow light.

The Gridborn didn’t hesitate. He shifted again into a crystal-like shape, jagged shard poking out in every direction. One of them twisted sharply until it was severed completely off, the infected segment falling on the terrain and growing dark even as the virus’ infection overtook them. A few slim rivulets of bright white energy spattered on the melting heap, but even that stopped quickly as he readjusted his body into a new configuration, rising up to his usual monolithic standby.

The virus rolled helplessly along the terrain until it came to a stop on a small hollow. For a moment it simply rested there, laughing in the many voices of the dead, eyes on the sky as the rain began to fall in earnest, thick and cold and heavy, laden with electricity. It could feel its forces being whittled away to nothing by Om’s defenders. It could just see, through the increasingly dense rain, the lights of the massed fleets from the Grid bearing down on their position.

“All th-this-this-th- All this fight-fight-fighting,” it declared evenly as it flowed to an upright position, rather than bothering with climbing to the feet it didn’t have, “for nothing.”

“Om’s still standing,” Fortis warned it. On his black surface the virus’ speech showed incomplete, multiple truncated soundwaves; looking at the Gridborn, the virus could see vivid proof of each and every life and voice it was stealing.

“Om will fall,” the virus declared in its own voice, the single line that its speech projected on Fortis’ surface as shattered as its circuitry. “This cycle, the next, a hundred, a thousand cycles from now, I will come for it. What can you do to stop me when you can’t even touch me?”

Fortis held his ground and said nothing. He was a relatively young program; Gridborns didn’t count themselves on generations, since their individual genesis tended to come at random, and Fortis could at best be counted as a sort of last-gen, though he had manifested quite a few cycles after that last massive creation event. He’d never participated in any of the viral conflicts on the Grid. Facing the virus at that moment he was, as Gungnir would’ve said, faking it until he hopefully made it.

“Let go,” the virus advanced on him, and Fortis shifted to a helix, a shape that allowed him to give ground while remaining combat-ready. The virus flowed forward relentlessly; it leaned down to pick up the infected segments the Gridborn had abandoned, and let the voxels stream between its talons to disappear into the flowing mass that heralded its motion over the terrain. “Now or later, does it make a difference? Because it really shouldn’t, should it?”

Gungnir, at a full sprint, came from the virus’ side, swept his lance in front of him and took the virus’ head off.

Both Pevirians held their metaphorical breaths as the virus’ mass suddenly turned into a writhing mass, every broken voice trapped within it screaming, filling the space around them with deafening gibberish. The outer edges of its mass became lethal whips, swinging around as wildly as if the storm’s increasing gales were tossing them about.

Fortis rolled over to where Gungnir had skid to a landing, down on one knee. The SysAdmin looked up. “Medjay, where are you!”

The Medjay was getting tossed around like a toy. At ground level, the wind was strong; at the scout ship’s level, it was monstrous. But the little ship had still gamely turned around and was struggling to come back for another pass. “We’re still looking for you, sir!” the captain informed him as she clung hard to her seat.

Gungnir spun his lance around, putting the butt on the terrain. A mental command lit up the energy blade like a flare. “Directly in front of me, Medjay!”

The Medjay came out of the storm, once again, with every weapon at their disposal spitting destruction. The terrain tore apart, voxels and primal mass flying every which way until the gunfire found the virus and began shredding into it.

Louder than its mass of broken voices screaming in pain, the virus’ own voice howled fury. In a display that both awed and terrified the Pevirians on the ground, it used the same maneuver it had just seen from Fortis, whirling its remaining mass into a spiral to draw it away from most of the lines of fire.

Then it coiled down like a spring, growling, and leapt.

It struck the Medjay at the lowest point of the ship’s passage. In between the rain-slicked hull and its own lack of limbs at the moment, it couldn’t quite grab onto the little scout ship, but it didn’t have to: the Medjay stumbled badly mid-flight, a middling gouge carved into its belly. Poisonous yellow began to spread from it at once.

“Oh, gridbugs,” Gungnir whispered in horror as he watched the infection spread. Beyond the Medjay, the virus spread out into a great mantle shape to try and soften its fall, and was immediately crumpled up by the storm and sent careening sideways and down.

On board the Medjay, its captain lost no time. “Gunnery, where’s the impact!”

The Medjay’s captain was a solid, sturdy, short program that could and did use her bulk with deceptive speed when on the battlefield, but who much preferred her little scout to anything heavier and, unfortunately, slower when in the air. Like all five programs in her crew, she’d been wearing full armor the moment she’d realized they were one of the only vessels who could reach the site of the virus and actually provide direct support, rather than trying to slow down the army before it reached the Users. Her helm was open, revealing a bright pink mohawk and fierce rounded features beneath a primal cosmetic of battle color over her eyes. Her crew knew her as Monkey.

“Off the port bow, Cap’n, directly below us!” her Gunnery officer shot back.

“Right, then, that’s all the time we got. Everyone to the rear hatches NOW!” Leading by example, she unstrapped herself and helped the rest of the crew to the back. Her Comms Officer kicked the rear hatch open and looked back at her.

She nodded sharply and he leapt into the dark. A picocycle later the paraglider he’d been already wearing popped open and swept him away into the teeth of the growing storm – mercifully away from the Breach.

“Looks like this is gonna be a ground campaign after all, Cap’n,” her Nav Officer told her, grinning fiercely as they waited their turn.

She snorted laughter. “Like that’s gonna buy ‘em buggies any little room! Out! Out!”

As her crew escaped, she turned to look at the Medjay’s control room. She was small but she was fierce; she had served them well through many campaigns, a gift bought and named by someone her User valued greatly, and she would rather see it destroyed than let the virus take it. “Medjay, acknowledge your Captain.”

“Captain acknowledged,” the ship replied at once.

Monkey saw char-black and virus-yellow creeping in through one of the floor sections. “Activate self-destruct, five picocycle countdown. Acknowledge.”

“Activating self-destruct, five picocycle countdown, captain,” the Medjay replied placidly. “Five. Four.”

“Good girl,” Monkey murmured, and leapt out of the hatch and into the storm.

Chapter Text

The virus went tumbling this way and that in the storm. For once, it was facing an enemy it could not learn from, or even begin to predict. The wind roared and hissed and twisted in on itself; the rain felt as painful as the shots from a weapon. Every time it tried to direct its flight with shapes and equations learned from stolen lightjets, from experience acquired from infected pilots, the storm turned around and tore everything apart with absurd, impossible ease.

If it could only infect the small vessel that had attacked it quickly enough to come fetch it from the atmosphere -

The scout ship chose that moment to detonate, every part and voxel of it turning into one great gout of primal mass, and the virus instantly lost its nascent connection to it. It clawed blindly at the rain, tumbling along in the wild new vectors the explosion had created. Maybe it was worth taking a fall just to get out of the impossible maelstrom. It caught a glimpse of something moving far below and tried to focus: was it something worth pursuing, or merely something worth absorbing? If it even could get to it.

As the virus considered its very limited and rather suboptimal options, the Breach made a choice for it.

Energy seethed upward in a vast curtain, overflowing the entire crevasse, lighting up every last corner of the Black Plain. The rain in the area turned to steam instantly; the wind currents which had been incapable of reaching a decision suddenly found one made for them as the Breach merged every nearby weather equation into a single value: up.

By default, in trying to even things out, every weather equation directly next to the Breach’s effect took on the opposite value: down.

The virus went down. It wasn’t planned and it wasn’t pleasant, and it bounced along the terrain harder than it had at any other point in time in its existence, hard enough that for a long moment all it heard was a high-pitched, ringing tone; all it saw was jagged colors mixed in with snapshot memories it couldn’t recognize, but which made its prisoner/companion cry out with emotions the virus couldn’t identify.

“Oh, shut up,” it wheezed groggily as it tried to figure out an upright position, barely able to hear itself over the roar of the Breach. The virus had landed so close to it that its own substance felt the relentless tug of that primal energy geyser like a physical presence, tugging and pulling and prying at its every voxel.

The head it had just formed suddenly shot up. It had just realized what it was it had seen, running across the Black Plain. It sprang up onto a four-legged shape, a gigantic mimicry of its simulacra and a relatively instinctive, simple body to control, given it had been controlling multitudes of the same shape nearly since its creation. It gave it time to sort through all the jumble the impact of landing had made of its senses; as its self, as it were, reasserted itself, it shifted back to its favored shape, the half humanoid at the crest of a shapeless ‘skirt’ of infected voxels, a great wave that carried it forward faster than most programs could run.

The terrain around it was covered in broken, jagged outcroppings, hollows and crooks that made advance difficult otherwise. It crested one and paused; with the Breach evaporating most of the nearby rain before it could fall, it could actually see across the terrain. It could see a couple of pieces of the fallen bomber, besieged by its creatures but fiercely defended. It could see its forces and Om’s armies, bearing down upon those last little bits of defense the Users counted as their own. It could see the two Pevirians, bright red armor racing towards it, ready to confront it again. But it couldn’t see what it was actually pursuing.

Which meant the Halcyonite program had stopped and was probably hiding nearby.

“Little program,” it wheezed, singing the words out as it flowed down the outcropping and over the terrain, into a shallow cauldron where the sounds from the Breach and the rest of the Black Plain were dampened, its outlying mass exploring every nook and cranny. “Come out, come out, wherever you are.”

Though the virus didn’t know it, it had actually run Vidi down already. The Gridborn had realized long before the virus did that this was a race she wasn’t going to win; as soon as she’d broken line-of-sight she’d slithered into a narrow crevice, curled up as small as she could get – which given everything was very small indeed. Vidi was behind the virus, outside the area it was searching, and she was trying to figure out if she was far enough, and good enough, to sneak out undetected.

The Gridborn saw the edge of the virus’ mass pass out of sight altogether, and as slowly, as quietly, as stealthily as she could slipped out of her hiding place. Mindful that the terrain was not stable, that the Breach had a habit of sending loose voxels tumbling everywhere without notice, and that she could not beat her hunter in speed alone, she crept along to the edge of the cauldron, forcing herself to go slow despite every instinct telling her to run. Her eyes were mostly pointed behind her, trying to keep track of the virus by the moving shadows she could perceive in between pops of terrain. She was trusting only a few to find her a path out.

She was almost out, half a step over the lip of the cauldron, when the terrain gave under one of her feet.

The virus whirled around at the tiny sound and Vidi didn’t stop to see what else it did; she ran. She didn’t care she was headed for the Breach, she didn’t care she was out in the open. She ran because there was nothing else she could do.

The virus leapt out of the cauldron and lunged forward. One, two, three great leaps and it reached Vidi, but the Gridborn threw herself aside in a tumble that would’ve made GAM proud. It swiped at her with taloned limbs, apparently having forgotten that it didn’t want to harm its future body; Vidi leapt over those talons, stepped right on the back of the virus’s head, hopped down and sprinted away, leaving her pursuer stunned at the sheer gall for a few picocycles.

Shaking off its shock, the virus merely surged forward again, limbs sprouting from its shape, four, six, eight, long and taloned. Vidi dodged two swipes, threw herself into a roll away from a third, scrabbled away from a fourth and then got thrown, hard, against an outcropping by a heavy swat from the fifth.

“Stay. Down.” The virus’ voice was a deadly snarl.

Vidi groaned. Her eyes where flailing wildly in every direction, as stunned by the impact as she was. The force had shattered voxels off the outcropping, which were still peppering her as they fell. All the same, she rolled on her stomach and struggled up to her hands and knees.

Far away, she heard a familiar voice cry out her name. Her addled memory provided a name a moment later: Gungnir. It also told her the math didn’t work: he was too far away to help her.

So, stunned or not, she surged to her feet, ready to run again.

In disbelief, the virus lashed out and grabbed at the defiant little program’s disk, docked snug against her back. “Enough out of you! I will -”

Vidi ran, unfazed.

The virus stared uncomprehendingly at the vivid red rim on the disk in its hand, infection creeping all over it.

Far behind them both, Fortis began to scream.

Chapter Text

Gungnir couldn’t keep up with Fortis. To be fair, no one could match his speed when the Gridborn was going full-tilt; he was just being nice at the moment and not entirely leaving his SysAdmin behind, his wheel-shape keeping up a speed that forced Gungnir to really push himself while only falling behind one gradual step after another. Once, just to see if they could, Gungnir had tried to ride inside Fortis’ wheel-shape. It was… technically doable, but neither of them had been in any shape to fight after they’d stopped. Rather, after a wall had stopped them.

So he was only a few steps behind his friend when the Gridborn’s shape collapsed into a chaotic mass, Fortis screaming in agony.

“Fortis!” Gungnir raced forward and slid to his knees next to the Gridborn, helm folding open and hands hovering over him. “Fort, what’s wrong, what’s -” His voice trailed off, his expression filling with horror as he saw the creeping yellow shattering and reconstructing Fortis’ circuity. “The virus. How -”

The virus itself hadn’t even realized what had happened until it had turned around at the cry of pain from the Pevirian. It was also trying to figure out how Vidi’s disk was giving him the shape-shifter instead, its thoughts and strategies all gone to disarray.

“Gungnir, I can’t, I won’t - ” Fortis was trying to reshape himself into a wild energy crystal, as he’d done before, so he could cut off any sign of infection, but the infection was no longer contained in a single segment; it was everywhere. It was his baseline code itself. There was no segment of himself he could eject, no data he could isolate and evict. He screamed again, in pain as well as defiance, his substance going to a froth.

The virus had him.

Gungnir deployed his lance… and found that he could not do what he had to. “Fort.” He was sure if the virus had struck him instead it would hurt less than watching his friend be taken in a fight neither of them could win.

Fortis’ scream turned to a rising shout of defiance. “I will not be your weapon!” the Gridborn roared. He twisted himself into a misshapen, broken spiral, coiled himself down, equal parts yellow and red, and leapt with all his strength.

Directly into the Breach.

Chapter Text

I will not be your weapon!

Those close enough to witness Fortis’ death heard that shout. The virus felt it, reaching out to it as it was reaching out to the Pevirian. It threw a hand out to stop that magnificent, lethal leap, but there was nothing she could do against inertia; it was a constant in the code, manipulated only by other constants that the virus had no control over at the moment. All it could was what everyone else was doing: watch as the Gridborn leapt at the limitless curtain of primal energy, and vanished into it.

The disk in its hands went to voxels and it gasped. The Pevirian’s disk, not the Halcyonite’s. Never mind the how, then, where was the little program’s disk?

Where was the little program, for that matter? Once again, in the unexpected bit of chaos, the virus had lost track of her. How could one singular program be so absurdly difficult to -

The lance went through its chest hard enough to embed its energy blade nearly fully into the terrain behind it. The entire area blacked out once again; the virus hadn’t prepared for that impact, and had no ready isolation protocols. It squealed a high-feedback sound of agony and grabbed for the damned weapon, but it had already folded back up into the baton and was flying away to the hands of Pevir’s SysAdmin, whose wavelength was radiating such wrath that even the dead and broken bits of programs embedded into the virus quailed before it.

The virus snapped out a long whip of mass and caught the baton before Gungnir could recover it, yanking hard against its return function. The SysAdmin merely deployed the lance and let the virus have it; it slammed into and partially through its shoulder before the virus realized what had happened.

The virus screeched and yanked the weapon free, just in time for Gungnir to get to it and leap, kicking the butt of the lance with well-seasoned accuracy and driving it into the virus’ neck. He got a monstrous swat from the virus’ other arm, went rolling and sprang back to a crouch, pausing only long enough to check that his armor, clawed and gouged though it was, was holding.

The virus snarled at him and made to dig out the lance once again, talons burrowing into the haft. Gungnir shut it down into its baton form and recalled it once again.

The virus let it fly nearly all the way back before it activated the bit of infection those burrowing talons had managed to worm into the weapon. The lance came to life and slammed into and through Gungnir, carrying the Pevir SysAdmin several steps back before the blade crashed into an outcropping and pinned him there, like one of his little light-figurines. He screamed in agony, but he somehow didn’t derezz. The SysAdmin wasn’t entirely sure that was a good thing, honestly. He opened his helm and bared his teeth at the virus.

The virus hissed. “See, I do learn.” It flowed forward, and then it saw Vidi, racing for all she was worth toward the broken pieces of the fallen bomber. Worse, toward the Users within. “No!” It swept forward, Gungnir forgotten, the blackened areas of its mass holding it back like anchors until it simply left them behind.

Vidi suddenly disappeared from its sight, and the virus abruptly realized that it might lose the little program after, not because someone took her to safety or because she got caught in the fighting, but out of sheer and simple bad luck. They were on the Breach. The primal energy pouring out of it was so close that just the ambiance of it was empowering its voxels until they itched with the supercharge of it. All it would take was one wrong step, and it could only hope that the little Halcyonite hadn’t done just that.

No, there she was, climbing out of a crevasse on the terrain that was nearly invisible, so well did its sides line up with one another. The virus merely gathered itself into its four-legged shape and leapt over it.

Vidi recoiled. The Breach abruptly went dark, and virus and Gridborn faced one another once again.

“You derezzed my friend,” Vidi said, her voice very small and terribly hurt in the impossible silence.

“Oh,” the virus wheezed, its voice full of empty empathy. It offered a taloned hand and flowed slowly forward. “This world is so full of pain, little program. So full of loss. It’s never going to stop hurting you.”

“GAM was right,” Vidi stepped back as the virus advanced, even though the terrain under both of them felt atrociously unstable. “You’re nothing but horrible. You’re nothing but mean.”

“I am everything,” the virus countered. “I will be you, and them, and everything and everyone, and there will be no pain. There will be no loss.”

Vidi frowned at the virus. “I’m still trying to figure out why you think that’s a good thing.”

The virus came to an abrupt halt. “No pain? No loss? Of course it’s a good thing.”

“How?”

The talons worked closed and open. “Happiness is always a good thing!”

“But you didn’t say everyone will be happy. You said there’ll be no pain and no loss, and that’s not the same thing!”

“Of course it is.”

“You just derezzed my friend!” Vidi shouted. “He’s not coming back, not ever! You take that pain away and I still won’t be happy because he’s not coming back!”

The virus recoiled. “I will make you forget him.”

“And I still won’t be happy, because then it’s gonna be like I never met him. Like I never met someone like me. Taking stuff away doesn’t make anyone happy! It just makes them… like you.”

“There is nothing wrong with being like me,” the virus hissed.

“I sorta believe that,” Vidi admitted, and the virus froze, utterly stunned. “I sorta do, because you were weird and you were doing gross things with the programs at Ilo, but you weren’t this horrible at that point. You weren’t horrible… until GAM gave you a name. Until you decided he was right, and you were a virus. You were a Worm.”

“He did nothing of the sort,” the virus growled. “I have always known myself. I have always known what I am. I am a virus.”

Liar, its inner passenger whispered, and the dead programs echoed the one word.

“Shut up!” it exclaimed. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” It clawed at itself as if it could get to that treacherous whisper.

Vidi, never one to look down her nose at an unexpected opportunity, turned and ran. She got a decent lead before the virus realized what was happening and, with a screech of fury, lunged after her again.

Sharpened to dagger-shapes, four Bits slammed into the virus like the solid projectiles they could be made to resemble. The damage they did was minimal, but the impacts staggered the virus back long enough to buy Vidi some breathing room.

The virus lashed out with one of its whip shapes, meaning to take the feet out from under the little program, but behind the Bits came their master. MAR, fully armored, leapt from atop an outcropping and spun to put as much kinetic force as he could behind his lightblades before he slammed them down onto that whip. He cut cleanly through it in two places, and the appendage collapsed before it could reach Vidi, who skittered to a stop. “MAR!”

The virus turned to face this familiar opponent. “The Master of Parnassus.”

MAR, white armor gleaming, saluted the virus with his lightblades. “Molly Gibbs.”

The virus made to lunge at him. It got so far as to lift a taloned hand, and then froze. Its expression went to surprise; all over its surface, the name MAR had given it was being repeated inaudibly, over and over, from disk fragment to disk fragment. A hundred dead voices and trapped memories, which until that moment had been unable to do more than exist frozen in their past, had just learned something new.

Molly Gibbs, they whispered to one another, audible only to themselves, to the virus, and to the presence prisoner within it.

“What are you doing to me?” the virus demanding, trembling as it strained to reach MAR.

“You? Nothing.” MAR stepped back a step. “But it’s been recently pointed out to me that you aren’t alone in that body. And that proper introductions were never made.” The virus stared at him, perplexed, and MAR bowed elegantly. “To the dead of Ilo, I would like to introduce Molly Gibbs, our Creator. A User.”

The virus recoiled, every shattered circuit flashing in surprise. The whispered voices spread all over its mass, and for the first time it knew what all the programs it had infected had likely felt at the time. Every singled jagged fragment and bit of disk in its body began to gleam as if struggling to become active once again.

“Stop,” the virus commanded.

Molly Gibbs, the dead repeated. It wasn’t mutiny, not yet, because every remnant within the virus’ substance knew they were dead. They knew existence had ceased at some point in Ilo. They knew what little life they had left belonged to the virus, and they knew they couldn’t fight for themselves – there was nothing left of them to fight for.

But for a User? For their Creator?

For her, every program in the Grid would absolutely rouse up. It had been written into the foundation code, it was part of every voxel - a small seed brought to life when the Grid itself had been created, a memento vivere where, in another place and time and among different programs, someone had seen what happens when the Grid turns against its maker.

Do not betray your Creator.

It didn’t ask for love. Love cannot be forced, it cannot come out of nothing. Adoration can be faked, but it’s not the same, and it can be broken with enough effort. It didn’t ask for respect, because respect must be earned, and even a User, even a Creator, can be a monstrous idiot who needs to be smacked upside the head every now and again.

It was merely an exported truth borne on the wings of genetic code-memory: a Grid that turns against its Creator quickly descends into chaos, destruction and eventual and total collapse.

Do not betray your Creator, was all it said. How a program might choose to go about it, that was up to them. Not the sort of thing the average program had to worry about during their standard microcycle, but to the broken, dead ghosts trapped within the virus’ body, MAR’s words had suddenly invoked a clear battle line.

And to the last one they knew exactly where they stood.

Molly Gibbs.

The whispers grew louder. The virus let out a high-pitched whistle and sank its talons into its own substance. “Stop! Stop it!” It tried to lunge at MAR, but the User within it shouted ‘no’, and once again it found itself helplessly frozen by the very dead it had once co-opted to created its primary body. In a snarling fury, it gave up attacking the Master of Parnassus and sunk its talons instead into its own body, dragging out broken disks and flinging them angrily away. “Get out then! Get out! I don’t need you! I don’t need -!”

It locked eyes with MAR. Why wasn’t the Master of Parnassus attacking? The virus couldn’t fight him. It could feel the dead rallying around that trapped presence, answering to the User’s will. Molly Gibbs. All the time and effort the virus had spent trying to secure a User and it had been in control of one all along, only to have that control wrestled away as soon as it had found out the truth. That, it realized, was why MAR wasn’t attacking. MAR didn’t want the User harmed. And she didn’t want MAR harmed, and as long as the dead were there to enforce her will -

The virus’ eyes widened, then narrowed. “I only need one of you,” it hissed, and whirled around, launching itself across the terrain in renewed pursuit of Vidi.

“Oh, for the love of- Vidi, run!” MAR took off in pursuit, but even he was not fast enough to keep up with the virus. Instead he called out into his comm. “MAR to Tron, it’s coming in fast, you better be ready.”

“You were supposed to delay it!” Tron shot back.

“This is as delayed as you get!” MAR gestured sharply with a lightblade; his Bits surged past him and charged the virus, but it cared about them about as much as it cared about MAR.

Vidi, realizing a little too late that perhaps she ought not to have stopped running until she reached the dubious protection of the broken fuselage, squeaked, spun and ran.

Chapter Text

Kane was sitting inside the fuselage, leaning against the sarcophagus holding his sister and listening to the raging sounds of the world outside their little broken shelter.

“Hey, Molls,” he said quietly, tipping his head back. He couldn’t see his sister, the profile of the sarcophagus didn’t allow it, but he could see the blinking red indicators on the side of the thing, an unknown countdown to her death. “I think we messed up.”

So fix it, she would have said. Fix it, and tell me how to help you fix it.

That was Molls, always thinking, always doing. Always finding a way to fix the next problem, the next bug. His sister didn’t know the meaning of giving up, and he wanted to do nothing but.

Somewhere out there, the Grid forces that had come together at Om had managed to flank the virus’ hordes. As their master zigged and zagged along the Black Plain, it had fitfully lost its focus on them, at which point the horde degenerated into chaotic fighting, attacking blindly the Om defenders. With every life sacrificed, the Security forces had overtaken the horde and planted themselves partially between it and the Users. Tron had stopped reporting what little snippets he could get from the local forces when he realized they weren’t victories to Kane.

“It was different when it was just code,” he admitted, dropping his head and wrapping his arms around it, knees pulled up to his chest. “It was different when they weren’t people.”

They were always people, Rob’s voice whispered like a ghost in his mind.

“Yeah, I know, I know. I just… I wanted to save you, Molls. I did, I really did. I really thought we could. I thought it was us against the world, us against this thing.” He laughed bitterly. “And then I get here and you wanna know what I found out? It never was just us. We were so focused on it being just us, we…”

He blew out a ragged breath. In his mind’s eye the meeting with UNE played again, and he began, slow and heartbroken, to tell Molly everything.

Chapter Text

“See, Kane Kane Gibbs, you did a very dumb thing,” UNE chuckled as he sank down to a sort of sitting, sort of melted position against the side of his prison, ‘staring’ at the young User over one sort-of shoulder. “You thought this was about finding a new body. I bet…” For a moment the virus seemed to get distracted by his own substance. “I bet you tried and tried and tried. Tried to get just her mind through, didn’t you?”

“No, we did try her coming through once. Back when she was… Back when she had the energy for the full transfer.” Kane told him.

“And this dee-sease, the broken code, it came in with her.”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t clue you in?!”

“Clue me in to what?!” Kane exclaimed.

“Oh, crap,” Sam suddenly gasped.

“Ah, there it is,” UNE sounded terribly pleased. “He gets it. Kane Kane Gibbs, if you’re bringing your sister and your sister’s dee-sease into the Grid and you want to separate them, you have two entities -”

“And you need two bodies,” Sam whispered.

“And you need two bodies,” UNE agreed. Perceiving somehow the shocked expressions of everyone in front of him, the virus chuckled in absolute delight. “Two bodies, Kane Kane Gibbs.” He flowed up along the clear wall and reshaped himself into just enough of a human-like shape to clap his hands and bounce gleefully at the look of betrayal and horror in Kane’s face. “Oh, I bet every time you tried to bring just her mind across the Grid told you there was no body with enough memory to hold her. How could there be? There’s no body out there that can hold two programs. One body, one program. How long, Kane Kane Gibbs? How long has the Grid been trying to help you?”

Kane’s mouth worked soundlessly. He couldn’t shape words; he could scarcely shape a thought.

UNE slammed his head into the clear wall so violently it became nothing but a splash of voxels on it, oozing in every direction, making everyone but OM recoil. “HOW LONG?”

“He didn’t know,” Sam stepped in. “Nobody did. This is all new to us.”

“I suppose I can’t blame you,” UNE admitted, reshaping himself and stepping away. “I didn’t listen when the Grid warned me, after all. And look where it’s left me. What did I say? Two truths? Three?”

“You weren’t sure,” Kane managed to strangle out, his voice shaking.

“It’s been…” The virus lifted a hand to count, fingers collapsing more or less as soon as they took shape. “Two, so far, I think. So sure, let’s make it three, in case you haven’t realized the obvious.” UNE slid to a sitting position on the shallow crater in the middle of his cell, his back to the visitors. “You now have both your sister and her dee-sease on the Grid, Kane Kane Gibbs… and two bodies. I’d make haste, before you only have one of each.”

Chapter Text

“Kane!”

Kane heard Sam yelling outside and scrambled to his feet, his back to his sister’s sarcophagus, one hand on it and another gripped tightly around his disk.

“Kane!” It was Tron this time. “Bring her out!”

“But you said -”

Tron skid to a halt at the ragged opening at the bottom of the fuselage. “I know what I said,” the Monitor’s voice was harried even through the filters of his black faceplate. “We’re out of time. We’re not gonna have containment, and we can’t have her defenseless when the virus gets here.”

Sam came running after the Monitor, and hurried to the sarcophagus. Between him and Kane they deactivated it and opened it. Gently, so gently, Kane picked up his twin in his arms. “What about her disk?”

All three of them hesitated, but it was Tron who answered. “I honestly don’t want to destabilize her any more than she already is. I wish we still had MeMo, but I don’t think we should remove it.”

“I hate to throw another monkey in the barrel,” Sam asked, “but what if it’s got Vidi when it gets to us?”

“Gridborns are unpredictable at the best of times,” Tron forced open a section of fuselage when it refused to slide aside, revealing a number of blank, dormant disks. He picked up one, hesitated over a second one, picked it up after all. “We’ll have to do the best we can. It has to be eye contact?” The question was for Sam.

“No. If we’re just talking straight-up reintegration Molly needs a clear line of sight, yes, but the virus can be looking into the Breach for all it matters. If we’re talking… the other thing, I don’t know. Before you ask, no. My contact outside doesn’t know, either. Eye contact might be mandatory.”

Tron moved over to Molly’s sarcophagus and palmed open a small section. There were three small vials there, gleaming with the pure white light of raw energy. “Give her one,” he instructed Kane.

“You’ve got medicine and you didn’t -”

“It’s not going to fix her. It’s going to give her a boost of energy. It might also accelerate her cascade. But she needs to be awake.” He hurried outside.

Sam and Kane crossed a look. “Tron can come across as… ruthless,” Sam admitted. “But Alan made him to protect Users. He wouldn’t hurt her, Kane. I honestly believe he’s doing everything he can to help her.”

“Oh, God,” Kane whispered. “Fine, give ‘em to me. Where am I even keeping them.”

“Suit provides,” Sam assured him with a wry grin, pointing to the baton secured to his leg guard with no apparent catch or grip of any kind. He picked up two vials and pressed one to each of the arm-guards the younger User was wearing. Obligingly, the armor opened up and created a pocket for the boosts. “See?” Sam popped the third one open and, with tremendous care, cradled Molly’s face up. The crack along her cheek had grown, and half a dozen voxels or more were missing. “Come on, Moll. Too many people waiting on you to come back. Can’t disappoint them. Time to face this thing and show it the truth.”

Chapter Text

Vidi ran and the virus spilled over the terrain after her, but for the first time it was having trouble catching up. While not able to apply the single-minded focus she had to protecting MAR, the User trapped within the virus still managed to hobble its motion here and there. It wasn’t a simple matter of freezing one limb, though; Molly was trying, but the virus moved like a liquid, and even with the help of all the dead programs that had been subsumed in Ilo, she couldn’t collapse enough equations to stop the virus altogether, no more than she could’ve stopped the sea with just two hands.

The virus stopped, howling in frustration, to rip out shreds and bits of broken disks, casting them away every which way before it took off in pursuit once again. The Master of Parnassus was too close behind it, the fuselage was too close ahead of them, programs running out of it and speeding towards it. Its forces were too far off to one side to help. The terrain was a mess of hidden fissures and outcroppings that blocked the view, made slippery by the driving rain and loose terrain voxels.

The Breach, at least, was dark and silent.

A single split picocycle of silence followed that abrupt purge, when Molly Gibbs reached out for her helpers and found a number of them gone altogether. The virus, able at last to think as well as to cut the distance between it and its target, grabbed for an outcropping, yanked the top of it right off, and threw it at Vidi.

The Gridborn had gone down once before from such a maneuver. This time she leapt over the piece of terrain as high as she could go, warned by a few of her eyes. She dodged impeccably; what betrayed her was the landing in the rain-slicked terrain. Her feet went out from under her and she crashed down with a strangled cry, sliding ahead.

She vanished from the virus’ sight altogether.

“No!” the virus screamed, knowing exactly what had happened and driving itself forward with blind, reckless speed. The Breach, the wretched Breach and its chaos, its destruction, the myriad crevasses and abysses and blind canyons with which it had peppered the wretched, stupid terrain -!

Vidi felt a moment of weightlessness, and realized what was happening to her at about the same time the virus did. She didn’t get a chance to scream; she was still wondering when all the possibilities in her code had gone to bad, worse or horrible when she found her fall so abruptly arrested all of her eyes bounced roughly forward, giving her a view she really didn’t want of the nonexistent bottom of the Breach.

She’d been caught by her empty dock; she braced herself for the terror of being infected. Instead, she was thrown on a long, thin ledge that ran on the side of the crevasse, barely wide enough to catch her.

The virus crested the lip of the narrow gorge and poured forward, knowing only that its prey was there, disoriented and motionless. It stretched both taloned hands after the Gridborn… and nearly got swatted right into the Breach by a very precise whack from a heavy shield. It crashed into the opposite wall and spread over it, every voxel of its mass clinging to the terrain, struggling to remain gripped when terrain voxels collapsed under it. Its voice turned to a low, low growl. “Security.”

GAM lowered its arms, the black half-shields edged with vibrant violet circuitry; the virus was a pale yellow reflection on his black faceplate as he placed himself directly between it and the Gridborn. “Vidi, climb.”

Vidi threw herself up on the wall. The virus screamed and threw itself at the Gridborn. The WallSec threw himself at the virus, punching down hard. Both of them crashed onto the ledge, which collapsed under the impact and dropped them down roughly, onto another ledge not too far down.

“No!” Vidi turned back to look; she saw the abrupt stop, let out a long sigh of relief and turned back to climb, having well learned that lesson with MAR.

Two sets of hands were suddenly there to help her out, MAR and Tron lifting her out and up with ease.

“Are you alright?” MAR looked her up and down anxiously.

“Where’s the virus?” Tron asked.

“Down there. With GAM. I’m fine. Still. Somehow.”

“Damn it, we need them both up here!” Tron dropped to one knee next to the crevasse, trying to see either virus or WallSec.

“Why?” Vidi demanded. “GAM can derezz that thing no problem.”

“Because part of the User’s still in there!”

“UGH!” Vidi gestured angrily at Tron, then dug the heels of her hands against her eyes. “Baton. Baton! Batonbatonbaton, now!” she shot at both of them. MAR deactivated one of his lightblades and offered it at once. Vidi took it, flipped open part of it and drew a very deep breath before she started flicking her fingers over it.

“What are you doing?” Tron stared.

“You know how we ended up at Parnassus? Did we ever tell you?”

“There were more pressing concerns at the time,” MAR admitted evenly.

“The virus found us out in the Outlands. Totaled the light-runner with a construction barge.”

“Barges aren’t armed,” Tron pointed out.

“They are if you take the limiter out. Most everything’s a weapon if you take the limiter out.” Vidi stopped for a moment to look up at nothing. “Why does everything have limiters?! Just build it so it doesn’t explode or, or catch fire or derezz, or something horrible! Ugh!” She went back to flicking her fingers frantically over the tiny schematics the baton was showing her. “It was using its mag-grapple hook. I have one of those, I got it from salvaging at Ilo and I never dumped it ‘cuz it was a full blueprint, and it would’ve been worth so much in the inter-city exchange and I bet I can use it now…”

Abruptly she pointed the baton down, where she could see GAM and the virus trading blows in a blur. “WallSec! Heads up!” She activated the baton.

Both MAR and Tron rushed to catch her when half the baton exploded into a grapple, light-cable trailing down with a high-pitched whistle. The kickback was so tremendous all three of them slid back half a step. Far below, the magnetic hook embedded itself not into the terrain, but into the virus itself.

Both GAM and its opponent came to a dead stop in disbelief, staring at the humming cable and following it up with their eyes to where it disappeared over the lip of the gully.

“What -” The Sentry couldn’t even register what had just happened.

“Vidi, get it up here!” Tron commanded. “Now!”

His tone was so sharp that the Gridborn had hit the cable recall before she could think better of it. Tron took the baton from her, twitching in surprise when he found it getting hot enough to feel it through his armor. “What’d you -” He caught himself before he could finish the question, his tone going to resignation. “You took the limiter out.”

“I took the limiter out,” Vidi finished with him, sheepish.

“MAR, get her out of here. Get GAM if you can,” Tron commanded as he stepped back from the crevasse, the cable thrumming. As with most such devices, there was no counterweight protocol because winches didn’t work with the weight of things but the mass of them – a particular quirk of the Grid itself, where gravity was a constant but friction had to be consciously written into things. Without waiting to see what happened, he leapt easily over the crevasse just as the virus was yanked out, spreading into a vast mantle. It followed the cable and launched itself at Tron, but the Monitor merely skid to a halt and threw the baton directly at the virus’ face.

It exploded into an overbright splash of primal mass, making the virus jerk to a stop, taloned hands going up to cover its face. When no further attack was forthcoming, it dropped them, hissing in fury. It was done. Done with all these feeble creatures, these unreal bits of code, these false pretenses of life -

It lunged forward, only to find itself face to face with the Users.

Tron stood between them, disk at the ready, but for a moment on the plain the only sounds were the rain and the delicate hum of the Monitor’s disk. Not ten steps separated the virus from Sam, Kane… and Molly.

The virus reached out a hand, gently, slowly, as if seeing itself on another face, on a face it knew to be real, were more than it could understand. Molly Gibbs was leaning heavily against her brother. She wore the standard-issue black bodysuit that every program was created with, the circuitry white and pale, flickering in places. The only splash of color was a silk scarf wrapped around her head that, like MAR’s circuitry, rolled through every color found in white light. The cascading damage, accelerated by the energy boost, had carved a second, larger crack along her chest, low over her ribs, and a couple of voxels tumbled down as the virus watched. The virus stuttered out a strangled, wounded breath, as if those voxels were a worse injury than anything it had faced so far. “You.”

“Yes.”

“You are real.”

“Yes,” Molly agreed again, her voice strangled and exhausted.

“You are the User,” the virus drew itself up straight. “You are my User. The one that created me.”

Molly stared at the horror before her. From the moment she’d gone through with that ill-fated, partially successful transfer, she’d been dreaming. It had been both dream and nightmare, more the other than the one. She was still wondering if she could live with herself in knowing all the damage she’d done. All the lives she’d destroyed, as real in their own way as her own.

It really had been easier, when she’d thought it was only code. In that Kane couldn’t possibly fathom how right he’d been. It had seemed so right, so necessary, when it had been her life in the balance. But Tron was not just code, he was real, alive, standing between them and the atrocity she’d created without thinking.

They were all real, in their own way. And she was possibly the worst god that they’d never deserved. In that, UNE had been right: all she’d ever had to do was ask for help. She just…

She never had.

She’d been convinced she was alone. That no one, not even Rob, not even Kane, would help her, could help. How could they? They didn’t know what it was to live with the thing inside her.

Despair.

They didn’t know what it was to feel like you’d do anything to go back to normal.

Greed.

They didn’t know what it was like to dream of a solution, of an escape, of a cure so close at hand and yet utterly out of reach for no reason you could perceive.

Rage.

She’d believed it all, all the whispers growing louder, and stronger, until they’d been like a second presence inside her own skin, as if she’d been sharing her body with a stranger that kept beating her down, trying to erase her, stealing her life away, and it had been all so unfair…

UNE had been right in that too.

“Sort of,” she answered at last.

“Sort of? ‘Sort of’!” The virus began to advance, its mass seething as rage began to consume it. “You carved this body out for me from the dead! You came with me here, to this place. I have you, inside me."

“You have part of me,” Molly had to agree. That was kinda the crux of the current situation, after all.

“You gave me my purpose, my goals. Endure. Grow.”

“I gave you one of those,” Molly corrected it. The words dislodged a few more voxels from the crack along her cheek, and she sank a little lower on her feet. Sam wrapped an arm around her waist to help her and Kane. “I made you to endure. I wanted you to last long enough for me to figure out a cure. A solution.”

“I am a virus. I am your solution!” The virus stopped and began to swell as its voice rose. “I AM YOUR CURE!”

“No.” Molly had to laugh a little, breathless and exhausted. “No.” She faced levelly the horror she’d created, and drew a very deep breath.

Open your eyes and see what it means when I tell you you’re the Master Key of this system! You don’t write the back door from this end, Gibbs, you are the back door. You don’t write translators, you don’t need translators, you are the Rosetta Stone. You’re its shaper, its creator, you’re its god!

Unlike Kane, who’d needed it spelled out to finally accept it, Molly had always known the truth of Sam Flynn’s words.

She pushed off Kane, stepped forward away from Sam, and spread her arms. “I am your User,” she said with deadly finality and absolute faith. “And you aren’t a virus. You’re my disease.”

Chapter Text

The concussive wave that detonated from Molly Gibbs swept over the Black Plain, across Om, over the Sea of Simulation, and kept going. It sent programs, structures and terrain lurching; entire pillars of energy in Flow and dark memory stacks in the Depths, the most distant and isolated of all the cities of the Grid, collapsed. Like veins of hidden and wild energy, places and programs all over the world lit up at its touch, embedded deep into its structure or brightly shining on its surfaces.

A Creator, reaching out to her creations.

Tron was thrown nearly even with Sam and Kane as a tremendous vortex formed around User and program. MAR, Gam and Vidi, who’d just come around the crevasse, got hammered down to their knees, the Sentry covering the other two with his shield. Above the Black Plain, the massed fleets went stumbling into a wind no gyroscopic system could begin to compensate against. In that brief moment of omniscient awakening Molly Gibbs was everywhere, and if she had gone through with reintegration perhaps the Grid might not have survived the event. But she was not. She was merely reclaiming the tattered pieces of herself that had come across with her last, ill-fated attempt at a mental transfer. She was yielding, doing exactly what the virus had wanted all along: surrendering full control of the body that had been created in Ilo.

Tethers of data formed between her and the virus, bright flashing streams of information going both ways; Molly wasn’t just reclaiming herself, she was surrendering all that she knew now wasn’t her: the monstrous thing that had snuck up on her, devoured her life and ravaged her body. As she split herself and the disease apart into their two bodies she understood, at last, what UNE had been trying to explain to her brother, what Kane had tried to explain to her second-hand while she rested in the sarcophagus, in that strange place between alive and dead, awake and asleep.

The Grid had indeed been trying to help. The Grid had known and understood, before any of them did, that in order to get rid of the disease Molly had to acknowledge it as something not of herself. She had to accept it as a separate entity, individual and independent. In the real world that would’ve been impossible; they were one and the same. The Grid didn’t care. If Molly perceived the disease as a separate entity, then as far as the Grid was concerned it was a separate entity, and it would split them apart so neatly it would be as if Molly had never even had the potential for disease in her cells.

The double transfer had hammered the virus to its knees, groping blindly for the data streams and yowling impotently. Molly was also doing something the virus most assuredly didn’t want: removing its ability to manipulate the code of the Grid into new shapes and new functions. Infection would still be possible – it was a virus after all. But far from the point of reincorporation, where the battle between the virus’ force and Om’s defenders was taking place, even as programs went down in the shockwave simulacra began to disintegrate with no hope of ever being recreated.

It was theft. For all that it could feel itself becoming whole in ways it hadn’t known was lacking, the virus could also feel its User taking away parts of itself that it needed, it wanted. It howled at the unfairness of it all, but all it could do was reach for its User, too far away for it to touch, let alone infect. “Give it back! Give them back!”

“They were never yours,” Molly told it calmly. “You weren’t listening, for all that you heard me when I tried to tell you. They aren’t real.”

Energy began to rise like fog from the terrain, trapped in the still space at the eye of the storm. It turned from fog into thin rivulets, then heavy rivers, and began to rise around Molly Gibbs. To Vidi and GAM, it look unsettlingly like those times they’d seen the Spires activate. The data transfer streams began to thin out.

The storm collapsed so abruptly everyone who’d been bracing against the wind staggered the other way. The energy levels in the air were so high that even the rain couldn’t get through them. With a much smaller concussive wave, a bright pillar of primal energy formed around Molly and shot up, splitting the atmosphere, shoving the storm clouds aside and slamming past the far upper reaches of the Grid. Every speck of energy that had been released on the Black Plain went with it.

“Molls!” Kane screamed and made to lunge for his sister.

“Kane!” Tron barely caught him, but it was another voice that brought the User to a halt.

“Don’t!” Vidi was standing up, one of GAM’s arms wrapped protectively around her as the Sentry helped MAR to his feet. She was looking at the event, her eyes haloed around her head. “You keep not letting the Grid help you, Kane!” she chided him. “Stop it.”

Kane looked at her, breathing hard, then at his sister. Molly was staring at her hands: they were slowly disintegrating into primal mass, droplets carried away into the upper atmosphere by the tremendous energy current. “But -!”

Do you love her enough to lose her, if it means she’s alive? UNE had asked him. Alive, but without you?

“There’s not enough left of me, Kane,” Molls told him mildly before looking up at him and smiling wearily, her colorful scarf flitting all around her face like the wings of a butterfly. “It’s a cascade or this, and this is…” She looked up into the pillar.

And vanished with it. The energy torrent cut off as abruptly as any event from the Breach, leaving nothing but the dark and the sudden downpour hammering down on them all. Where Molly Gibbs had been, the rain hissed as if the terrain were badly overheated, and chimed gently as it hit the disk that had been left behind.

Chapter Text

The virus, who was still trying to sort itself out from the deluge of data it had received from its User, understood the meaning of that disk faster than nearly everyone there. Its eyes widened and it lunged forward -

Vidi was already running. She sprinted away from GAM and MAR and reached the disk before anyone else even understood its significance. Then she ran for Tron and the Users.

The virus screamed and lunged after her, a body barely shaped amidst a cresting wave of jagged yellow. It staggered when MAR threw his last light-blade at it, striking right through its partially formed head, but it didn’t stop. Instead that part of itself flowed to one side, turned into a spiral and spat the blade right back out at MAR.

It bounced off one of GAM’s shields as the Sentry, running for all he was worth, threw himself in the way. Vidi reached the Users and shoved the disk into Kane’s hands. “Trust the Grid,” she told him earnestly.

“Run.” Tron was infinitely more succinct with his words.

Sam yanked Kane aside. Tron threw Vidi behind him. The virus splashed down in the place where they’ve been. “It’s mine!” Its voice, its own voice, was a shriek. “Give it to me!”

GAM charged full-force into it and drove it down. The virus spun halfway on its own body, grabbed onto one side of the shield and dragged the halves apart.

The Sentry stepped right into that gap and kicked the virus in its barely formed face, sending it staggering back. GAM surged forward, ready to press his advantage, and stumbled as well.

The terrain buckled beneath them all. The Breach rumbled a vast warning.

Before the virus could fully recover, however, MAR had come up on it, its light-blade back in its hand. Agile as a dancer he slashed at the base of the abomination and sent it tumbling on its side. It flailed for the Master of Parnassus with long talons, but Tron was abruptly there, one disk slashing at the talons and another at the halfway point of that limb.

Two more limbs formed instantaneously to deal with the Monitor, but slammed instead into GAM’s shield. The Sentry, the strongest of the programs there, shoved forward and staggered the virus, giving the other two a chance to renew their assault.

The virus whipped out a tendril and wrapped it around the shield, seeking to immobilize the Sentry.

GAM stared into those venomous yellow eyes.

If you accept, you get to find out how the other half lives. I think that might help you, someday.

He shut down half his shield, folded back his armor, and grabbed for that tentacle bare-handed. The virus froze in surprise.

Slowly at first, little more than stray motes here and there, color began to impinge into the noxious yellow circuitry. It spread slowly, uncertainly, but spread it did, like any infection. It was pale blue and faint, and wherever it appeared the black voxels of the virus’ substance grew pale, gray, and inched towards white even if they couldn’t quite reach that hue.

“What are you doing?” the virus demanded, and for the first time in its existence there was a wholly unfamiliar emotion in its voice.

“Finding out,” GAM gritted out, “how the other half lived.” From his dormant memory, from the vast repository of information that had told him what a ‘hack’ was, once upon a time, that knew the protocols for containing and confronting a virus even though the Sentry himself had never faced one, came new information, new awareness.

Perspective.

When he looked at the virus, he could see them. He could see the dead of Ilo, fragments of lives lived and lost, frightened and confused at what they’d been made to become. The virus was a vast patchwork of programs; hardly any of the body it was using as a weapon was actually its own. From so close, GAM could see that none of those programs, dead or not, broken or not, wanted to do harm. They just didn’t have the life, the energy, the agency to stand against the virus.

He offered his own.

A voice not the virus began to stutter and scream from somewhere along the tendril. “I w-w-w-w- I wo-wo-won’t!” The tendril suddenly collapsed into a spray of empty voxels between Sentry and virus. The virus reeled back, stunned; GAM staggered back, instinctively reactivating his armor, feeling his energy levels plummet.

Tron stepped into the space between them, caught a wild slash on one disk, lashed out with the other. By rights he ought to have cut the virus partially in half but the thing had no central core, no disk, no weak spots to speak of. If there had been a port he would’ve slammed one of his blanks into the thing, just to give them something to aim at, but it didn’t even have that.

More limbs formed, coming at him from every angle. He fended off four, six, saw a seventh come out of nowhere, but it never reached him. MAR caught it, swinging his blade two-handed. He managed to sever it only to have all that mass collapse back into the virus and turn into a heavy bludgeon that bounced off MAR’s guard and bowled him over.

The terrain under all their feet shifted like an angry sea. GAM went down on one knee. The virus wobbled in every direction. MAR was too nimble to stay down, but it was a close thing, and Tron stayed upright only because he’d spent so long dealing with the moods of the Black Plain. “This would be a not so good time for a terrain recompilation event,” Tron muttered into his helm, fearing very much that they were headed exactly for that; he knew his home too well. He could only hope everyone not directly involved in the fight had kept running.

He was two-thirds right. Sam and Kane were running away from the Breach and toward Om’s defenders, which in the greater scheme of things seemed an absurdly safer proposition. The ground was relatively solid under their feet, and the battle for Om was nearly over.

Vidi, however, had gone down hard when the terrain had first warped under her feet, and she was only then picking herself up, groaning. Her head was full of static and her eyes weren’t doing any better. They were at least kind enough to warn her when a large outcropping broke off its spot above her head. She curled up in a ball and got showered in voxels and pieces, some of them big enough to sting.

“ENOUGH!” The virus exploded into a stellation made of thin lance-like protusions, skewering through outcroppings. MAR threw himself down flat. Tron leapt between the fast-growing spines, avoiding them nimbly and slamming both disks on one to shatter it out of his way as he landed. GAM went down on one knee and took two spears into his shield; the tips shattered and he got shoved back several steps, but the shield held.

Behind him, Vidi looked up, wide-eyed. If WallSec hadn’t stood his ground, she’d have been spitted several times over.

“I am a VIRUS!” The virus screamed at them all. “I am not a disease! I am not the leftovers of a User’s existence. I am a virus! None of you can end me. NONE OF YOU!”

None of the three programs fighting it said anything, mainly because they were beginning to think the damned thing was right. Someone else did it for them. “You’re not a virus, you’re not even a program!” Vidi shouted back. “You don’t even have a disk.”

GAM couldn’t believe his ears. “Vidi, why,” he hissed at her in disbelief.

The virus turned toward them, its mass recoiling back unto itself.

Vidi stood up. “The only reason you knew yourself was you had part of the User inside you. Without her and without a disk you’re gonna forget everything. If they hold you here long enough you won’t remember you’re a virus in a millicycle. In a cycle you won’t even remember you’re supposed to exist.”

The virus growled low, but the many fragmented minds within it confirmed the little program’s words. They even had a word for it: Stray.

There was, though, one teeny tiny little problem with that.

“You’re doing just fine without a disk,” it hissed, staring down Vidi. “Let’s find out how.”

It lunged at the Gridborn.

Vidi screamed and turned to run. MAR, GAM and Tron launched themselves at the virus.

The terrain caved in from under them all.

Chapter Text

Tron had warned everyone at one point or another that the terrain around the Breach was not to be trusted. Like the energy surges, it appeared and disappeared at random intervals. A surge was not a predictor of a collapse, though the opposite was often true, and the rumbles and shakes the combatants had experienced had been a courtesy few got.

MAR fell the least distance. He was the fastest of everyone there, and nearly as agile as Tron. Leaping from collapsing stacks to falling outcroppings he almost made it to the edge of the newly forming crevasse. At the very last moment he leapt and drove his last light-blade into the remaining wall, hoping the Grid would be kind and the Users’ own luck would be with him.

It was. The blade bit, cut, slid down a bit, and then held. So did the terrain, and the Master of Parnassus blew out a long, shaky breath into his helmet before folding back his armor so he could figure out a way to get to the top.

Tron and the virus fell together. The virus immediately launched a dozen whip-like tentacles to try and arrest its fall, but everything it caught kept collapsing, going to nothing under its grip. Before it could try again, the Monitor slammed into it full-force, trying to cut through the nearest tentacle with both disks. With the User out of the way Tron had no problem with taking one for the team if it meant taking the virus out of the equation.

The virus let him. Tron staggered forward from an already precarious position when the substance of his enemy split neatly beneath his attack, the virus dividing below and reconnecting above. Unprepared, the Monitor slipped and fell. A disk flew and cut a giant piece of the terrain before it could crush him, but then he was out of the virus’ sight. The virus kept desperately looking for any holds and finding next to none.

Vidi went down with a cry, flailing madly, the world collapsing all around her for what it felt like forever. Once again she stopped so abruptly her dreadlocks bounced and she let out a startled little sound.

“You had to say something,” GAM was barely clinging to a ledge that had shown him enough courtesy to catch him without crumbling. His other hand was once again clamped around the Gridborn’s empty dock, and his voice was full of weary irritation. “You just had to.”

She threw her arms up. “None of you were saying anything! Did you even think of it until I said something?!”

“Do not. Move so abruptly, Vidi. Please,” he gritted out.

“Sorry.” She hung meekly in his grip as he lifted her up to the ledge. Once she was safe, she took his free hand in hers and strained to help him to safety as well. The ledge decided it had tolerated enough weight on itself and collapsed on a single large stack, crashing and sliding down. Vidi clung to GAM and the Sentry wrapped himself around her until they were jarred to a stop that nearly threw them off.

“Ohhh, gridbugs,” Vidi breathed shakily.

GAM stood up to take stock of their situation. He could scarcely see the top of the very narrow crevasse they were in; the ledge had landed askew, bridging both sides of the canyon at a slight angle, its ends ground down to nothing until it had caught in something heavy enough that neither the terrain not the ledge would further disintegrate. “We have to climb.”

“I don’t wanna,” Vidi whined wearily, even as she rose to her feet and followed him to one of the walls. They had fallen so far that veins of wild energy gleamed among the black terrain voxels, glittering in patterns neither of them could fathom.

The Breach rumbled violently. Vidi clung to GAM, who braced himself on their narrow perch until the tremors passed. Currents of air began to gust up, increasing perceptibly in force.

“Vidi, I need you to look down and tell me -”

“WallSec, I don’t need to look down to tell you we’re outta time,” she interrupted him, but she peeked over the edge of the ledge all the same before jerking back abruptly. “Oh, no. Nope nope nope.”

He steered them both hastily to the wall that looked sturdiest. “Climb. Fast.”

“Too much to hope that the virus fell all the way in?”

An echoing, furious howl answered her. They both turned toward it, Vidi’s many eyes and GAM’s helm sensors showing them the writhing mass of the virus trying to close in on them through the debris still raining down from above. It had fallen to a lower depth, the collapse throwing it a fair way away, but it was climbing quickly toward them.

“Climb!” GAM cried out and they both scrambled madly up the wall.

Chapter Text

The virus came after them with single-minded focus. It had abandoned most of its mimicry of a body, keeping only a head and upper torso; the rest of it was wildly flying tentacles that latched onto anything and everything, sometimes for the briefest of moments, just to be able to launch itself a little bit higher, a little bit closer to its prey. Vidi, it had come to realize, was still the solution to most if not all of its problems, and now it was operating under the awareness of a critical deadline.

It clung to a section of wall that looked relatively solid, only to have a disk come flying by and shear most of it loose. Scrambling to find new grips just so it wouldn’t lose its hard-won advance, it watched the wretched weapon fly away, leaving a deep violet afterimage behind it.

Security. Always, Security.

It lunged forward recklessly and got close enough to throw a single whip-thin tendril out, trying to catch Vidi’s foot.

A disk struck the tendril at the spot where it narrowed just enough to be cut readily, and voxels tumbled away into the depths. The virus screeched at being balked once again and followed the path of that disk.

It was a blank. Even further below them, the white-clad Monitor had already thrown the second disk, and the virus had to throw itself flat against one wall, literally, to avoid having more of its anchors severed.

Tron climbed, leapt and raced along the broken terrain with ease all of them envied him at that moment. He had spent nearly all the cycles of his existence on the Black Plain, in the Black Vault, braving everything the Breach could throw at a program without straight-up derezzing them. Fast as the virus was, it quickly realized the Monitor might very well beat it to its prey.

The Breach belched out a massive gust of air, and the virus saw its chance. It let go of its grips and mantled out, catching onto the sudden current. It soared up on it with tremendous speed, and was suddenly above GAM and Vidi. Reshaping itself abruptly into a more human shape, it plummeted toward them like a solid-state projectile.

“No!” Tron was too far to do much. GAM saw disaster incoming and, disk still in hand, allowed himself to slide down along the wall.

The virus hit the ledge hard enough to partially crack it in half, but not hard enough to dislodge it, and immediately stretched up, half-formed limbs and writhing tentacles reaching for Vidi. GAM batted two aside, but there was a veritable forest of them coming for the Gridborn. Tron, perched precariously on a tiny lip on the terrain, threw both his blank disks, one after the other.

The virus accepted every attack from the Sentry, but spun around when detected the whirring approach of Tron’s disks. It threw a forest of tentacles up to try and defend itself, and then surged forward. One of the disks got swatted aside, bounced against a wall and disappeared; keyed to no program, it had no return point.

A taloned hand caught the other. The virus examined it, pointing it at Tron and letting the vicious yellow of its infection spread over it before snapping it in half – a pointed reminder of what might happen if the Monitor dared throw his own disk. Then it turned its attention back to Vidi, who was still climbing frantically.

It threw all its mass not at the Gridborn, but at the Sentry, her guardian, her shield. It was entirely aware that it would never get through to Vidi if GAM was still online. Every whip turned abruptly into a lance.

And shattered as MAR came crashing down upon them, single light-blade leading. He cut through the forest before it could reach the Sentry, shattered a couple with momentum when he landed on them, and almost immediately leapt up again and threw a sharp kick into the virus’ face that staggered it back. The crack on the ledge grew bigger, voxels grinding free and falling away.

The virus caught itself and collapsed down on one knee, struggling to recall the mass it had lost from its shattered weaponry. MAR leapt up on the wall, three agile leaps bringing him past GAM and level with Vidi until he lost enough momentum that he had to grab onto something. He closed the light-blade and secured his baton, and offered Vidi a hand. “Perhaps we should climb faster,” he suggested tightly, his coat flaring in the rising gale coming up from the depths.

The virus looked up, growling, as its mass returned to it. It wanted them dead. It wanted the Monitor dead, it wanted Security dead, it wanted all of their companions and helpers and allies a great big pile of voxels before it, so it could infect them all. It would find a way to make simulacra again; it had done it once before. So what if the knowledge was gone, it had the entire Grid to try again and again and again until it got it right!

But to do any of that, it needed a body that would not turn into a Stray.

It could climb after the little program, of course. And her guardians would turn it away time after time. They would delay and sacrifice and she would get away again and again. It wouldn’t have mattered before but, oh, it mattered now. No, it couldn’t waste time chasing after them. Instead, it launched half of itself at the wall, embedding several spikes into it. Its other half it coiled around the mostly shattered wedge of terrain under its feet.

The three climbing programs couldn’t really what the virus was doing; they were at the wrong angle. Tron could, and he could readily perceive the end result of the virus’ plan. “Climb!” he yelled at the three of them as he ran and leapt, frantically trying to get close enough to engage the wretched abomination. “Go, go, go!”

“What does he think we’re doing?!” Vidi protested as they sped up the wall as best they could.

GAM didn’t need to see to know Tron wouldn’t be shouting without a good reason. “MAR, armor!”

“I’m beginning to hate the bloody thing,” the Master of Parnassus declared tartly. MAR knew that he was not a fighter; he had the incredibly good fortune of being good at fighting, but he was an archival program, a curator. Deploying his armor made him feel as if he were pretending to be something and someone he most definitely wasn’t. Nonetheless, well aware that GAM was a weathervane for when things were about to go as wrong as they possibly could, he got on with re-deploying the damned armor -

He got halfway through the process when the virus freed a massive half of the fallen ledge, the rest of it falling with a frighteningly loud crack. It let the piece it had kept swing down, and then swung it up in an accelerating arch, releasing it at the last moment.

“Jump!” GAM shouted.

Chapter Text

If a warship had scored a direct hit on the wall, it wouldn’t have been nearly as devastating. On already fluctuating terrain equations, the impact sent out a ripple that quickly turned into more widespread collapses of entire terrain stacks.

The virus had aimed just shy of Vidi. Sort of. It didn’t care nearly as much for the other two programs. MAR leapt clear before the impact shockwave could shove him off the wall, but GAM caught a glancing blow from the ledge fragment on one arm, ripping off the armor there and fouling up his jump. The shockwave caught him fully, shattered his faceplate and threw him backwards out into thin air.

Vidi only jumped because she’d learned to trust GAM. She jumped blind and up, and for a moment she dared to believe everything was going to be alright. Then the slim grip she’d secured on the terrain about the point of impact simply collapsed between her fingers, along with apparently that entire side of the crevasse. She shrieked as she fell.

MAR caught her by their very fingertips. She looked up, startled, because the Master of Parnassus seemed to be floating in mid-air. It took her a moment to see the shining edge of MAR’s light-blade buried into a seemingly intact part of the wall, which a Navi was circling.

The virus leapt as well. It was nothing more than the vague outline of a face in a mass of writhing tentacles. Below the impact point it could find nothing stable, but it wasn’t trying. It just used every bit of collapsing terrain to launch itself up.

One tentacle lashed out in the chaos, and Vidi screamed in shock and pain.

She’d been caught. The tentacle was wrapped around one of her ankles. The light-blade cut down through the terrain for a terrifying breath, but then held, and MAR looked down, desperately trying to find something he could do that didn’t involve him dropping them all into the Breach.

Deadly yellow light began to spread over the pale lavender circuitry of the Gridborn’s foot, reshaping and shattering it. “Mine!” the virus crowed victoriously. Then it was its turn to scream in pain, twisting madly around.

GAM, frantically looking for any handhold as he fell, had grabbed one of the virus’ lower tentacles. He’d used it to swing himself up, fully expecting the virus to retaliate, only to find there was hardly any substance to the virus at all; it had all gone to the mass of tentacles writhing everywhere.

Then he realized that the worst possible thing had happened. Without hesitation he deployed the half-shield he still had and rammed it as hard as he could into what little central body the virus still had.

It screamed, but it wouldn’t let go of Vidi. With a furious yell, GAM rammed his bare hand into his enemy and tried to reach out for whatever consciousness might have once inhabited the tentacle holding onto the Gridborn.

His User’s update, however, as the Sentry had been warned, was incomplete. He could see the old programs, detect their physical presence on the virus’ body. He could talk to them. He could loan them his energy so they could wrestle themselves free, one last act of defiance against their captor. But that last bit, the ability to select a specific program, had never been written into the update. He was reaching out blind to do an incredibly energy-intensive process. He knew entirely too well that he only had so many tries before he simply ran out of energy and left them all alone with the virus, diminished or otherwise.

A great gout of mass fell off the back of the virus. It screamed incoherent static at the Sentry, who’d nearly fallen when his footing suddenly wasn’t there anymore.

The infection crawled up along Vidi’s shin. She clung to MAR’s hand with both of hers and a number of her eyes, kicking blindly. “WallSec!” she cried out in pure panic for the one source of certainty she’d found in what she knew to be a life survived, more than lived. “GAM, help!”

The Sentry had no idea how to help. Tron was racing up to them, but GAM knew, even without his helm’s feedback, that the Monitor wouldn’t get to them in time. And even if he did, then what? Cut off Vidi’s limb and hope the virus wouldn’t grab onto an arm next?

…

The Sentry drew in a sharp breath as a solution slammed into place with absolute clarity. He shoved his half-shield into the virus’ mass once again and let it grab onto him in return with the bulk of its tentacles. He grabbed a handful more with his free hand, but didn’t try to reach for any of its imprisoned programs.

All he wanted was a really good grip.

Then he looked up. “Vidi, let it go!”

She looked down at him. “What?!”

“Let it have it!” He grinned up at her, fierce and absolutely certain. “Let it go!”

“But you -!”

“Vidi!” He shouted. “LET GO!”

She did. A seam flashed bright along the Gridborn’s neck and the perma-Cosmetic she’d worn for so many cycles suddenly jerked down. In the virus’ grip, the leg it had latched onto deflated to nothing, like a discarded piece of clothing.

Vidi’s face separated from what was, apparently, nothing but an immense nest of dreadlocks gathered around a black, sharply angled ‘face’ that wasn’t much more than vague outlines highlighted by sharp, vivid first-gen violet circuitry. Her disk was whirring, visible for just a picocycle, but it was enough to freeze the virus with surprise.

It stalled its thoughts long enough that it didn’t realize the Gridborn’s entire false ‘body’ had come loose from her actual body.

Then it and the Sentry plummeted down into the Breach.

Chapter Text

Tron crashed to a landing just above MAR, high enough that he could reach down a hand and catch the writhing Gridborn when the Master of Parnassus handed her over.

Vidi writhed like a nest of haywire cables, fighting them both. She would’ve leapt after the Sentry if they’d let her, and both seemed well aware of this, neither surrendering his grip until the other one had at least one dreadlock caught. They dragged her into a narrow crack that had been revealed into the side of the crevasse as more and more of the wall collapsed. The rumbling from below had become a steady, rising roar. The veins of primal energy all around them gleamed almost too bright to the eye.

“Run!” Tron told them. MAR hugged the Gridborn to himself and sprinted ahead, vaguely glad she couldn’t bite, kick or punch in her real form, and quite sure she would’ve tried all three if they’d been possible.

The Monitor brought up the rear, turning at regular intervals to throw his disk against the ceiling and walls of the narrow tunnel, caving it in behind them. He wasn’t sure it would help. From the sound of it, the Breach had indeed noticed all the collapsing terrain, and it had gone right past unhappy into altogether angry at everything and everyone. Usually at that point even being in the middle levels of the Black Vault was discouraged. No one usually came back from those expeditions.

For a moment, the endless shaking and rattling stopped.

“Get down!” Tron yelled.

MAR threw himself down over Vidi, and Tron crouched over them both.

Below and beyond them, at the heart of the Grid, the Breach erupted.

The wind alone bowled them over, sending them all rolling and tumbling like nothing more than voxels caught in an effusion channel. Energy surged beyond them, through every nook and crack and fault it could find, soaring upward, driven by unknown and impossible pressures. There was no heat, it was just energy in its most unstable and wild form, but the presence of so much energy alone was enough to send painful jolts through all of them as circuitry overflowed and overloaded from the very air. It was impossible to hear anything, to even think anything. Only the voice of the Breach had a presence.

Above them, the storm was torn apart and boiled away in a flash of power. The eruption lasted for what it felt like forever, and every program still standing on the Black Plains went down to one knee or crouched low wherever they stood, inside a building, a vehicle or out in the open. Even the two Users present on the ground made themselves as small as they could, behind a protective screen of Security programs.

No one and nothing moved. No one dared. The Breach roared as if the Grid had finally had enough of the tiny creatures upsetting its surface, and the entirety of Om held its collective breath.

When the eruption finally stopped, for several long nanocycles everyone still held very still. Eventually heads started to come up. A tank pilot popped open the cockpit and shouted a name. A Recognizer came in for a landing, its cockpit bright medical green.

Somewhere beneath them, Vidi slipped past MAR and Tron. For someone without recognizable limbs, she moved with surprising nimbleness to the last collapse Tron had left behind them and started clawing at the debris with her dreadlocks.

“Vidi,” MAR called out.

“Don’t you say it! Don’t you say nothing!” she yelled at him.

“Vidi -” Tron opened up his faceplate.

“You shut up! You, even less!” She whirled on the Monitor and charged him so abruptly he flinched. “You hated him! You’d be glad if he got derezzed!”

“I wouldn’t -!”

“But we’re fine!” She lunged for the wall of broken terrain again. “We’re fine, he might be fine too, we don’t know! You don’t know!”

“Vidi,” MAR moved closer, his voice as gentle as the hand he put, lightly, on a central nexus of tentacles.

“He’s fine!” she shrieked at him, and then collapsed in a heap. “He’s fine,” she sobbed. “He has to be. He’s WallSec. They’re like… Basically indestructible, you know?”

“He wouldn’t approve of you risking yourself again,” MAR pointed out. “Not even for him.”

“But what if he’s stuck down there with that thing? What if he needs help?” she demanded desperately.

“I’ll go,” Tron said simply.

MAR turned to look at him. The melted puddle of devastated dreadlocks on the ground picked herself up and leveled half her eyes on him. “You mean it?”

“I don’t hate him,” he explained calmly. “We have different priorities, and for a moment they… clashed,” he admitted. “But he fought for the Users just as hard as I would.” He smiled wryly at Vidi. “The least I can do is fight for the programs of the Grid like he would.”

He pointed out a thin rivulet of free-flowing energy. It was flowing down a slanting natural chimney on the terrain. “There’s an underground river that runs from the Spire, beneath Om and into the Black Vault. I’m betting this is coming from it. If you follow it it should lead you out.”

“You’re thinking he didn’t finish off the virus,” MAR pointed out.

“I’m thinking we survived,” Tron replied mildly. “And I don’t want to take any chances. Besides,” he grinned, “he is WallSec. They do make them tough to derezz. Get out. Quickly. Just in case.”

Chapter Text

There was darkness, and pain, and a sense of hollow emptiness it couldn’t understand.

It picked itself up. The darkness receded, minutely, in the dim and flickering light of its broken circuitry. Something was wrong, something terrible, but what?

It lifted a hand to its face, if only to prove to itself that the hand was real. It was thin and fragile-looking, tipped with long and deadly talons, the circuitry on it pale yellow and gray, and it stared at it as if it belonged to someone else.

Memory returned abruptly, and the virus staggered and fell. For a moment it couldn’t move, and stupidly its mind latched onto the most inane of all its current questions: how could it possibly fall?

It sat up and stared at itself. In horror, it scrabbled at its own thin, broken body – an actual body, the haphazard framework upon which its User had attached so many others, bits and pieces of dead programs that had given it memory, knowledge, even a voice out of the many piecemeal words embedded in their disks.

Gone.

It had fallen because it had legs. There was nothing else, no extraneous mass to reshape, no pieces and bits of knowledge to gather into a new whole, no faint voices offering parts and shards of conversations so it could shape, shave and gather words from the sounds. Its inner silence was deafening, terrifying, maddening. Security’s last gift to his enemy; as they fell into the energy-rich depths of the Breach, the violet light of his circuitry had begun to gleam like fire. And then he…

“No,” it whispered in impotent rage, in loss, in despair.

He had reached out and touched them. Touched them all. His energy and his life had flooded into all of them, and they had -

I will not be your weapon!

- all been listening, they had all been learning, right along with their virus. The Pevirian had shown them the one battle they could win against their captor, and the Sentry had given them his life so they could fight it.

And they had. To the last one.

The virus was alone.

“No!” it screamed. Its own voice echoed back at it from the dark, from a space so great that even the veins of primal energy that laced the entirety of the Breach had nothing to activate them, remaining dark wherever they might be. It flinched at that returning ghost of a sound.

Then it picked itself up onto its knees and screamed fury and defiance into the dark.

“I will not forget,” it swore at the emptiness. “I will not. I refuse. I am meant to endure. I am meant to grow. I will not be destroyed. I will not be cowed!” When there was no answer, it shouted again. “Where are you?! Come finish what you started!”

As unexpectedly as the memory of its being had come, another memory overwhelmed it.

Falling.

Burning.

In utter and complete disbelief, the virus started to laugh. “Gone,” it breathed. “Gone, you’re gone. You burned yourself up for them, Security. You burned everything you had. Everything the Breach gave you. All for them, and for what?” It rose to its feet. “Here I am. You’re gone and here I am!” it screamed gleefully. “You couldn’t take me down after all. I win.” It threw its arms out. “Oh, I will remember, Security. I will not let myself forget, even if I have to carve the truth of me into this body. I’ll remember, and I’ll get out of whatever this place might be -”

“The Breach,” an unfamiliar voice informed it from the darkness.

The virus whirled around and stumbled badly, unused to having feet that needed to be told what to do. It squinted into the dark.

“The very bottom of it,” the same voice added.

“You aren’t him.”

“No,” the voice admitted.

“So even the Breach cannot destroy me,” the virus purred. “What do you think you can do?”

“Oh, the Breach can destroy you. It just didn’t hit you.”

A disk ignited in the dark, and the virus took a halting, instinctive step back at the deep violet of the rim.

Then a second disk ignited, its rim somewhere between the palest blue and the brightest white. In the twin glow the virus saw a program, clad in white armor, face hidden behind a black faceplate.

“Best I can figure,” Tron said calmly, “that floating trick you do when you spread out your mass threw you off the main eruption. At that point you’re what, two voxels thick?” He cocked his head minutely to stare at the violet disk in his hand. “You slipped right through the cracks.”

“You’re not him,” the virus repeated, working its talons restlessly.

“No,” Tron agreed once again, lifting the Halcyonite disk. “The program this disk belonged to…” He seemed to think for a while, but whatever he might have felt, the filters in his helm allowed no emotion through. “My User would’ve called him lion-hearted. I would’ve agreed with him.”

“Not enough to take me down,” the virus hissed.

“I bet he can,” Tron shifted minutely, his attention fully on the virus, and even the filters could not fully keep the rage out of his voice. “I’ll just help him along for this last bit of the way.” Without further warning he launched himself at the virus.

It threw open its arms once again and braced itself, talons gleaming faintly in the dark.

The fight didn’t last long at all.

Chapter Text

The Drakkar hovered over the Black Plain, entirely too close to the Breach for Way’s peace of mind, but then the flagship’s navigator didn’t really know what that was. She had come down from cruising altitude to minimize the distance the Medjay II would have to traverse, since the little scout ship was already going to have its work cut out for it. She was the newest model, and she’d been waiting, gift-wrapped, barely a millicycle after her predecessor had been derezzed. The good wishes of a dozen Users could only boost her sensors so much, though.

It took her crew two millicycles to locate what they were looking for. Once the Medjay II reported success, Way brought the Drakkar down so close to the terrain that her engines began to create little vortices along the length of the ship. The Valravn deployed, flying a watchful pattern as the scout ship landed.

No one was taking any chances.

Ethan found Gungnir unconscious, inasmuch as a program could be, he imagined. He gasped, hurting just to look at his program, skewered by his own weapon. At least he’d had the forethought to make the overload effect inimical to Gungnir himself, though that had been in case someone stole the lance in a bout, not because he expected a virus to staple his creation to the terrain like a butterfly. There was a clump of what looked like molten mass stuck to the haft of the lance, and Ethan guessed it was whatever the virus had done to keep it from deactivating. It was dark, the power that had once animated it gone, but it was still there, leaving the weapon stuck and impossible to turn off.

Gungnir was alive, barely. The faintest trace of red clung to his circuitry, but he didn’t stir when his User approached him. The four PevirianAncilia that had come with him in the scout ship surrounded both User and program, shields deployed. Among them stood the crew of the Medjay II, batons and disks at the ready, all but Monkey, who stood behind Ethan instead, carrying a slim black security case.

No one was taking any chances at all.

Ethan rested a hand lightly on the lance, then reconsidered. “I’m sorry,” he whispered quietly. There was only one order to the steps that needed to be taken that minimized the odds of Gungnir being derezzed, and it was the worst possible one. And still, for once, Ethan didn’t find himself shying away from touching someone, no more than he minded washing his hands or dressing himself. Gungnir was a part of him – perhaps the best part of him. Certainly the bravest.

He set a hand on his program’s shoulder. You’re alive, he thought. You’re alright.

Energy rose along Gungnir’s circuitry, all but the ragged wound where the lance had gone through. It reached his neck and the Pevirian SysAdmin came online with a gasp that immediately turned into a yell of agony. He grabbed for the lance, looking around wildly.

“You’re fine, you’re fine!” Ethan grabbed Gungnir’s face. “You’re fine, Gungnir, you’re fine.”

“Gung- Gungnir,” the Pevirian wheezed. “Is that… Is that who I am?”

“Yes. Do you remember me?”

Gungnir blinked at him, frowning. Then his expression cleared. “User.”

Ethan couldn’t help but beam. “Yes. I’m your User. Do you trust me?”

Gungnir frowned again, breathing hard. Then he smiled, exhausted and in pain, but honest all the same. “User. Of course I… Of course I trust you.”

Ethan blew out a nervous little breath. “Ok. That’s good. That’s good, because this is, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m sorry, Gungnir, but this is… This is going to hurt.”

They both grabbed onto the lance. Ethan counted down and they both yanked on it as hard as they could. Gungnir did most of the work. Slowly but steadily the weapon drew back until the gleaming red energy blade came out the way it had gone in.

Ethan threw it away carelessly as Gungnir dropped to his knees, holding onto the gaping wound on his side, panting with pain. He caught the program in his arms. “Alright. Alright, hard part’s over, I promise. Just one more thing. You ready?”

“Sure,” Gungnir wheezed. “What?

Ethan reached out a hand. Monkey unlocked the box and drew from it a disk, handing it to the User. Taking a deep breath, Ethan slid the disk onto Gungnir’s empty dock. “Now you heal,” he told him. “You heal, and you remember.”

Chapter Text

UNE felt the intrusion before he could see it. The virus was hunched over in the middle of his cell, playing with the loose voxels that were all he could dig out of the terrain before it regenerated. Ah, Om, with its dead terrain, impossible to infect.

“Sam Flynn,” he whispered.

“Hey.”

“Have you come to keep your promise?”

Sam was a pale light in the chamber, a ghostly presence not really there. He looked grim. “Yeah.”

UNE turned to stare at him with his featureless face, and started chuckling. “You tried. You went looking for a solution. Even after I told you there wasn’t one.”

Sam’s avatar shrugged. “I’m an optimist, man, what can I say.”

“And?”

“And,” Sam was forced to admit. “There isn’t one. There’s no way of telling what was you before and after. I’m sorry.”

“Oh, don’t be sorry. I’m sort of glad, honestly. Sort of,” UNE admitted. “It’s good to know the Users will fight for us. It’s… fair, you know?”

“As hard as I could,” Sam admitted. He’d gone to everyone in ENCOM. He’d checked in with people he hadn’t spoken to in years. He’d turned over every stone when it had become obvious he couldn’t pull off a miracle on his own.

“You don’t like defeat,” UNE pointed out cheerfully.

“I mean, does anyone?”

“No. I hate it. It’s why I tried what I did.” UNE rose to his feet. “But you did make me a promise, Sam Flynn.”

“I did,” Sam agreed grimly. “Goodbye, UNE.”

UNE began to glow, the mingled green and yellow of its circuitry going to neutral white. His voxels didn’t fall; instead they turned into primal mass, little white droplets spinning around him, accelerating until they vanished, whisked away to the primary source for all mass on the Grid, cleansed of anything and everything that had once been a program, a virus, and a prisoner. “Thank you, Sam Flynn,” he whispered. “Please, tell Tron I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

Sam was alone in the small cell and his heart, a whole world away, ached in ways he couldn’t hide from the two people monitoring the payment of his last debt to the Gibbs’ Grid. “I will.”

Chapter Text

The last meeting took place atop Halcyon’s Spire.

The top of Halcyon’s Spire was a beautiful place. The general consensus was that the surroundings surely had some effect on the programs that were uploaded there. A free-flowing energy pond had carved a grotto into the terrain, its roof and sides carved into deceptively delicate terrain lacework, fractal patterns that soothed the mind of any program staring at them. The pond itself was fed from an unknown, unseen spring, and returned to it through a myriad tiny waterfalls that chimed and tinkled as they fell before disappearing back into the Spire itself.

The pond surrounded the access point itself. There was a narrow path leading to it, the broad steps free-floating like Halcyon’s transit Spiral. No program had ever fallen in, but Kane Gibbs doubted the pond was harmful anyway. Even when he put his hand in he only felt a mild tingle, the circuitry on his black bodysuit brightening up.

He drew his hand out of the liquid and shook the droplets off. It had been two days out in the real world. It had been so much longer in the Grid, processing speed counted as time, as life, as hope.

He looked up as someone stepped next to him, and straightened up. “Ayin.”

“Kane Gibbs.” The First Sentry dipped her head with utmost respect to the User. She looked no less fierce than she had on the battlefield, when she’d hastily assembled an honor guard to get the Users back to Om. “It’s an honor to be here with you for this.”

“I mean, you’re assuming it’ll work,” he pointed out dryly.

Ayin grinned at him. “You’re a User, Kane Gibbs. I know it’ll work.”

“You do know I’m winging this? I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t know if it’s possible. Programs come from the outside, not the inside.”

Ayin crouched down, letting the fingers of one hand trail over the still surface, her circuitry growing brighter with the contact. “I believe we’re created as we are for a reason, Kane Gibbs,” she replied calmly. “I believe every part of us, every bit of our code, has a purpose.” She lifted the dormant disk in her hands. “I believe every program carries a disk for more than just memory. Memory’s not a need. Look at Strays; they keep existing, even without it.”

“Hey!” The impatient yell came from the very edge of the grotto, where a small crowd had gathered – mostly SysAdmins, a few luminous User avatars and one very restless Gridborn. “What’s the hold up?”

“Well,” Ayin glanced back at that small and hopeful group. Even Ilo’s new SysAdmin had taken time from her city’s reconstruction to stand witness. It didn’t compare, of course, to the crowds currently waiting down in Halcyon for news. The First Sentry winked at Kane. “I suppose we better find out before someone tackles us into the pool.”

Kane had to grin at that, however briefly. He looked at the disk in his other hand.

He felt himself torn. The disk was all that he had left of his sister. The disk, and faith. He wasn’t sure how deep the pool was; he might not be able to recover it if things didn’t work out, and then he’d have nothing but his memories. Nothing but his loss.

UNE’s words came back to haunt him once again. Do you love her enough to lose her, if it means she’s alive? Alive, but without you?

He lifted the disk to his lips and kissed it gently. “Just be you, Molls,” he whispered. “Just be you, and be happy, and be safe, and be good. And I’ll count everything worth it.”

He flung the disk into the energy pool. Next to him, Ayin lifted the second disk. “Your city needs you, Sentry,” she murmured quietly, and threw it into the pond as well.

Neither disk so much as made a ripple. Kane crouched down and touched his his fingers to the still surface. It was easier to fall into familiar patterns, familiar language. Upload, he thought, as hard as he could.

The resonant voice of the Grid itself answered at once in his mind. Uploading, it agreed smoothly, startling him so violently he nearly fell into the liquid energy.

The pool ignited with light, rippling in patterns as rich and complex as the latticework of the grotto’s walls. It danced and glowed, and the air grew laden with free-floating energy motes, primal energy splashing this way and that. Abruptly, the entire Spire began to come to life. Ayin caught Kane’s arm and cautiously drew him back, half-stepping between him and the transfer portal.

Everyone, User and program alike, had to look away when the transfer portal became active, the light of it as bright as that of any upload. “No!” Kane hissed, trying to peer past the light until tears squeezed out of his eyes.

He would have been furious to find out that, directly around the transfer point itself there was a small circular area where the light was no brighter than a day-cycle in Halcyon. There, the pond surface grew still once again.

What are you? The Grid’s voice whispered, and waited.

The first answer came almost immediately, sure and absolute in its certainty. I am a Sentry.

There was silence for so long that the Grid asked again, What are you?

This time, as if slowly finding itself, the answer came. I am a Maker.

The Grid seemed pleased with these answers. Who are you?

There was a longer consideration given to this question before an answer came. I am the Wall.

I am …

This time the Grid didn’t hurry an answer, as if knowing the question to be trickier.

I am Comfort. And Help.

Where are these things found?

No hesitation, a certainty that knew itself the more it answered the familiar cadence of creation.

I am Halcyon.

There is no place for me. I will make one.

You may, the Grid agreed. You are a part of me, and I am a part of you. I welcome you. Who are we?

This was an answer they both knew.

I am the Grid.

Yes, the Grid acknowledged. You are a part of me, and I am a part of you. I will learn from you as you learn from me.

You are alive! There was surprise in the mental voice of the second presence. That’s what I saw in the light. That’s what I heard. You.

Yes. And now, so you are you. Who are you?

A program burst out of the pool, scrabbling like a drowned cat, trying to catch onto one of the broad steps. She wore the same bodysuit that most standard programs were created with, but it was white. Her circuitry flowed in the elegant lines that Parnassus had once boasted in abundance, rich with energy and as white as her clothing. Her hair was a long and unfortunately bedraggled cascade at her back, shining like an oilslick with every color that could separated from white light.

Hands made slippery with liquid energy, she lost her grip and would’ve gone under again, but a strong arm caught her and dragged her back to the surface. The program next to her was much larger, far more powerfully built, and his bodysuit was black. He had young, strong features and short black hair threaded with violet here and there. His circuitry was as white as hers, but it was changing as he muscled them both out of the pool, and by the time they were both kneeling on the step it was the same bright, electric violet of his eyes.

“Much as I like energy,” he admitted, coughing, “I’d rather not be submerged in it.”

The program next to him could only nod. She was on her hands and knees, coughing violently. “Oh, that sucked. So much.” She leaned back on her knees, put a hand to her chest, and drew in a deep, deep breath. “Oh, I can breathe.”

“Was that in doubt?”

“I… ’m not sure,” she admitted, shoving her hair back. “It feels nice, that’s all.” She grinned at him. She was a lovely program, with a round face and bright blue eyes. Her circuitry was beginning to shift toward the deep green of a medical program. “Nothing hurts.”

“Should it?”

“I feel like it should. But it doesn’t.” She looked around, then back at him. “You know what, I’ll take it. Thanks for getting me out of there. I’m Molls.”

He smiled at her, rolling to his feet and offering her a hand up. “Nice to meet you, Molls. I’m GAM.”

10/07/25 03:03