System Reboot (Sequel to System Failure)

Chapter 7

"How many viruses are we facing?" Ty asked.

"Four," Ross told us. I sucked in a breath and Ty whistled. "Barney's hunting down the spyware, there's a worm running around somewhere and two trojans are hanging out. You'll uhh... you'll know them when you see them."

"Oh no, who are they?" I asked, dreading the answer.

Ross seemed uncomfortable to say who they were, given the fact that he glanced away and just nodded a bit. "Just stay on your toes, these guys are working like a well oiled machine."

"Good thing we can work like that too," Ty said, glancing at me. I gave a nod and flicked out my chains. "What do you say we hunt down some trojans?"

"I say that's an excellent idea, they're doing some serious damage here," Jason said through my earpiece. "Should be down the hallway to your right, second door. Ross, Barney's in the first room, might need some help."

We split off and Ty and I jogged down the hallway, ready for a surprise attack at any moment. Ahead of us, two orbs of red coding smashed out of the hallway wall and raced away from us, darting and weaving around each other. Ty and I sprinted after, and the orbs were no match for our speed as I threw both of my chains and wrapped one around each orb, yanking them back to face us.

Both orbs dropped to the ground and the coding shifted as they became humanoids and stood and in a few seconds, Ty and I were facing ourselves, staring back at us with expressions eager for a fight.

"Give up the jokes Trojans," Ty growled. "It's pretty obvious that you're faking."

The fake-Ty have a one-armed shrug. "We just thought you might like to see some familiar faces for once."

"It's not like you were ever familiar with ours," fake-Alesa agreed.

Ty and I looked on with a frown until the Trojans dropped the facade and morphed into their real selves; two viruses standing shoulder to shoulder, one with a long purple cape and a white crown, the other with a black and yellow jumper and spiky golden hair.

I recognised their appearance immediately, but Ty knew their names. "Seto? Brice?"

"Surprised?" Seto asked, his gaze similar to a glare. "You shouldn't be. Though I suppose you didn't think much about us after the Glitch base was attacked, huh?"

It seemed wrong that these two AIs of the Glitch base were here as viruses, but it's hard to deny the facts when you're staring right at them. Especially when they're staring at you with a sort of hatred. When I had first met them in the Glitch base, they were distrusting of me but there was no hate in them. Seemed that things had changed, but somehow...

"You recognise us?" I asked. If they had been rebooted as viruses, then surely they had forgotten who they were? Adam had forgotten who he was, I had forgotten, why not these guys?

Brice crossed his arms. "Yeah, we do. And we remember everything about the Glitch base. And everything about who we were."

"And yet you're still fighting for the viruses?"

Seto shrugged. "Remembering and caring are two different things."

"So you remember Adam then?" Ty asked. "You've seen him?"

A smirking grin came on Brice's face. "Who's he?" he asked innocently before diving towards me with a dagger that seemed to come out of nowhere. I jumped back, the dagger catching the edges of my cloak and I swiftly pulled my chain in and swung the heavy lead ball on the end into his face. He gave an 'oof' as it hit him but didn't seem fazed as he stepped closer again, much too close for my ranged weapons to be of much use.

I ducked and dodged his strikes, trying to get distance but he kept manoeuvring me to put the wall behind my back. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught flashes of Ty and Seto battling it out and dimly heard Jason relaying information to Ross and Barney. Brice backed me into a wall yet again but I dived past him as he thrust forward with his dagger that cut along my side but the sudden movement gave me a chance and I darted away, springing off the walls then spinning around and flicking my chains. They wrapped around Brice's torso as he was running towards me and I used his own momentum to fling him up and over, sending him rolling down to the other end of the hallway.

I whipped my chain around again, catching him in the head with one end and smashing the other into his arm. He hissed but simply switched his dagger to his other hand and came running towards me again, dodging out of the way as my chains snapped around or simply taking the hit. His eyes flicked to the two fighting behind me and they widened.

"Seto!" he called.

I didn't dare take my eyes off him but from the fact that the Trojan suddenly skid to a stop in shock, and then had a look of utter rage come over his face, Ty had just finished off Seto. Sure enough, Ty stood up next to me and Brice ran off in the opposite direction, his speed pitifully slow compared to what Ty and I could do, but just as we neared him, he sliced a hole through the wall and disappeared with a final snarl.

I put my hands on my hips, catching my breath for a moment as Ty tapped on his headset. "Jason, where are Ross and Barney?"

"Just down from you," Jason said. "They just took care of that last worm, I'm almost done with the firewall."

Ty nodded (a useless gesture since Jason couldn't see it) then caught sight of the red and green code spilling slowly out from my side. "Hey, are you hurt?"

"It's shallow," I assured him, putting a hand to it. It didn't really hurt yet. "It'll be fine."

"If you say so," he said with a shrug. Then, into his microphone; "Hey Jason, those two trojans we fought were Seto and Brice, the old AIs. They kept all of their memories somehow. We got rid of Seto but Brice escaped back into cyberspace. They might have told the other viruses how to get into the Glitch mainframe."

I heard Jason sigh heavily. "Brilliant. Well, most of the firewall data has been replaced anyway, but I'll see if we can put up some additional safeguards. Other than that, I don't think there's much we can do about it."

"I guess AIs can go rogue and become viruses," I muttered to Ty as we patrolled the mainframe to get rid of corrupted files.

"Yeah," Ty huffed. "I'm learning all these new things about viruses lately that I really didn't want to know."

I gave him an amused side-eye. "You just want to know how to kill them and leave it at that?"

"Preferably, yes. All of this technical stuff is giving me a headache."

"You don't like technical stuff and yet you decided to become a Glitch?"

"Be quiet and get rid of those corrupted files."

I couldn't help but laugh.