System Reboot (Sequel to System Failure)

Chapter 3

Alesa's POV
It was late at night when we finally finished our rounds and returned to the Glitch base set inconspicuously along one of the many constantly-busy streets of the city. It didn't look like much from the outside; just your regular, tall, clean office building. Nearly everyone glanced right over it. The foyer wasn't much either, just a couple of chairs and a desk with a receptionist whose name I could never remember, but once we took the elevator up several floors, it was a very different story.

The Glitch base was a hub of technology, ranging from computers and tablets to ancient CD stacks and harddrives and even a few VCR tapes squirreled away in the corners. TV screens were everywhere, showing live feed of the streets or information from the dozens of mainframes around the city. There were several coffee machines in the shared kitchen (we've recently got two new ones), an assortment of computer parts were left on the shelves in a semi-organised fashion and several rooms that functioned as an armoury, a break room, a medical ward and so on.

The main room of the base was large with huge tinted windows that usually allowed in sunlight, a long desk full of computers and screens and keyboards, and a few mugs of coffee distributed here and there among the several people who worked at the desk, each wearing a set of headphones with a mic attached. These guys were the Glitches' eyes in the mainframe, helping to keep us alive and repair the firewalls while we fought the viruses.

Jason and Jin were sitting in their usual spots near the end of the desks, typing away furiously at their keyboards. Ever since the huge attack on the city server, they and their team had been working overtime to repair the firewalls of the city server and of the Glitch base, which had also been badly damaged in the attack. We used to have two AIs, Seto and Brice, who defended the server but they were both lost to cyberspace in the attack, and although we had backups of all our files (turns out that those CDs were useful for something), our defences were severely weakened.

"Hey Ty, Alesa," Jason said, glancing up from his screen for a split second before focusing back on it.

"Hey Jason," we both said, not wanting to break his concentration any more than necessary. We moved through the room to the break room and ran into Ian and Quentin, another Glitch pair. Like us, they both wore trench coats, the former's being primary black and a deep blue while the latter's was light blue and orange, and had swords at their sides. Clearly, they were ready to get to work.

"You two on the night shift?" Ty asked as we stepped out of their way.

"Guard duty actually," Ian said, jerking a thumb to the main control room. "We're swapping with Mitch and Jerome."

That was the other problem. With our server weak and no AIs, we had to have a few Glitches constantly guarding the mainframe from attacks. That meant that there were less of us out dealing with the increasing number of virus attacks.

"Good luck you two," I told them.

They both brushed off the comment, saying that it'd be easy and that luck had nothing to do with, which is basically the staple response of Glitches when it comes to fighting viruses. Ty and I quickly visited the armoury to repair our weapons a little (Ty's sword had gotten a nasty dent when we were fighting a worm) and got back to the main room just in time to see two coded lines drift out of the computer USB ports and solidify into Mitch and Jerome. They both looked exhausted from guard duty but unhurt as they mustered up the energy to slouch their way out of the room.

"They look how I feel," Ty muttered to me.

"Yeah, I agree, I'm exhausted. Let's go."

We said our goodbyes and went back down the elevator before walking through the darkened and quiet city. Well, moderately darkened. The street lights were still blazing and cars were still driving and the signs of shops were still lit and giant billboards still shone down but the sky was a deep, matt black.

A thin crowd moved around us and Ty and I stepped out of the way as a pair in trench coats darted past us, their hands holding their sheathed weapons. On the back of their trench coats was a curved symbol that marked them as Glitches from a neighbouring city. We had called in a few of them to help us since our team had always been small for a city of our size, whereas they seemed to have a fair number of Glitches spare even with the many virus attacks.

We didn't talk much as we walked and after a few minutes, we reached the park that marked where Ty and I had to split up to go our separate ways home. An old and mossy fountain stood in the middle of the park, the faint trickling and splashing of water filling the still air.

"See you tomorrow Alesa," Ty said with a wave as he made to leave.

"Bright and early!" I said with a grin as I waved back and walked down one of the paths in the park.

It was the same park where Adam had taken me on my first day in the real world - well, first day that I remembered at the time. My memories had been removed when I had become a virus but most of them had returned over the past few months, giving me some handy memories of how to fight viruses. I smiled fondly and a little sadly at the memories with Adam as I left the park and reached my apartment only a little away.

I flicked on the light of the one bedroom space and hung up my trench coat as I closed the door behind me. This used to be Adam's apartment but after his death and with the confusion after the virus attack, it ended up becoming mine. There wasn't much to it; just a bedroom, a kitchen, a study with a computer, and a lounge room with a couch, a TV set and a table.

I quickly made myself some dinner before diving into bed, burrowing down into the sheets and falling asleep in minutes.

The traditional prologue + three introduction chapters are all done, now to get onto some serious plot stuff >:3