System Reboot (Sequel to System Failure)

Chapter 11

Let's put the real world aside for a moment and see what's happening in cyberspace, shall we?

Virus #1035's POV
I darted around the mainframe, laughing at the Glitches behind me who struggled to keep up, a team of three warding off the other viruses who had joined me in the mainframe attack. With a whoop, I dived into a computer orb, twisting and snapping the files around me, ripping them apart with programmed malice and hate and reforming in my human form, grinning.

"Stupid viruses!" I heard one of the Glitches yelling in anger.

"What, getting tired?" I yelled back, smirking smugly though I felt nothing.

"You wish!" another Glitch yelled back, cutting at the worm who passed him before glaring at me. "Why don't you come over here and I'll show you just how not tired I am?"

"Why don't you come over here and get me?" I called back with a laugh as I formed into a red orb, leaping around the riot of smashed red coding that decorated the floor and walls of the server, a result of my fervent work and the work of the viruses I had invited to come along.

We had managed to destroy a good part of the files before the Glitches had come along to screw things up but even in their team of three, they weren't enough to undo the damage we had caused, and they weren't enough to get rid of the four of us. This mainframe was done for.

I burst through another computer orb, yelling taunts at the Glitch who had barely missed me with a bullet from her laser pistol of sorts (seriously, using a bullet to hit a worm? Who does that?). I decided to return the favour, running around in a large circle towards her and slicing horizontally with my daggers as I passed by in a blur, slicing her shin and earning a hiss of pain.

I heard one of my fellow worms calling out to me as the last computer was destroyed and the mainframe started to shake and shudder as the weight of our havoc brought it down. With a cheer of triumph, the worms and trojan I had gathered leapt out of the huge gaps that were forming in the walls of the server. I followed close behind, jumping backwards out of the server to yell one final sally at the Glitches who were about to concede defeat.

"Catch you next time losers," I called, putting my fingers in an 'L' shape on my forehead and diving into the deep wells of cyberspace.

The world of cyberspace was pitch black, so dark that I couldn't see the others flying ahead of me. My body was a thin stream of red coding, held together by thin red lines that prevented me from being ripped apart as I raced faster and faster down into the digital world, feeling no sense of gravity or wind or light, nor any solid surface, but I knew that I was falling, moving faster than a single binary code of information.

Green lines of coding started spitting around me, moving by faster and faster until I was surrounded by a tunnel of flashing codes, the framework that made up the digital world. Then the codes became red and dark and I was spat out into deep cyberspace, the gathering place of the viruses. A place no Glitch or human could ever find.

The viruses I had temporarily recruited had disappeared, no doubt gone to find another city to attack and another mainframe to destroy, and I was eager to do the same, but I had to report first. My coded body flashed around the huge space, narrowly avoiding other flashes that were fellow viruses that darted around at break-neck speeds.

Fragments of green and red code, data that had been lost, floated slowly through the space, being tossed around by the scattering viruses. Occasionally, a few of these codes would come together and slowly meld into the form of a new virus, who would hover in the air for a few moments as they received the orders in their coding before darting off to follow the wake of others travelling up through hundreds of thousands of gaps in the space that lead to mainframes and the real world.

I dove into one of these spaces, one that led further down into deep cyberspace. The red code that made up the 'walls' faded away, creating a room that was darker than pitch black, so dark that even I struggled to know which way was up and which way was down until I stopped moving, simply floating in this space. Tiny fragments of code, both green and red, occasionally burst to life before being consumed by the darkness but otherwise, there was nothing here.

"A mainframe in Corodun city has been destroyed," I announced, my voice sounding thin and small in this place. "No viruses were lost, the Glitches escaped alive."

The place was silent for a moment.

Around me, the small fragments of code came together to form words that hovered in front of me as a disembodied voice spoke. It wasn't human, but it wasn't the voice of a virus either. "Good. Any incidences?"

"None," I replied, my voice flat as I spoke to the master.

The fragments broke apart, then reformed, the voice speaking the words. "Do they suspect anything?"

"No. They know nothing."

The fragments broke apart again and the voice remained silent, but I knew better than to leave. This was the voice that had called me together, as he had called all viruses together, creating us and programming orders into our code to unite us in a single purpose. So I waited for my next order in silence.

"Where is my newest Glitch-Virus?" the disembodied voice of the master asked. "The one called Adam?"

"I have not seen him."

The fragments didn't form his next words, but I heard them anyway. "No one has. If he had been killed, I would have known. I have precious few like him, and the others are already engaged in other tasks."

I didn't reply.

"Watch out for him," the voice commanded, fragments emphasising his words. "Tell the viruses you meet to do the same. I want to know where he is and what he's doing."

"Yes Herobrine."

"Go to another server in Corodun. Keep destroying the mainframes. Glitches all around the world in every city need to be weak if the plan is to work. We will act soon."

"Yes Herobrine," I replied a second time.

The voice didn't speak again and I knew that this was my cue to leave, so I raced back up into the virus hub, ready to carry out my next orders. As I flew through cyberspace, I purposely bumped against several viruses, each of whom swerved from their path to follow me. They knew what my plan was, and they were eager to follow as I led the way up through the tunnels and back to the mainframes above.