“Hey, Jeremie?” A box popped up on one of the bioscreens. The box displayed a head and shoulders shot of Kari. Jeremie glanced over from one of the other screens. Immediately his eyes locked onto the celestial blue orbs of Kari’s eyes. Slowly he refocused on the her entire face, the swooping curves of her eye brows, the dark yet fragile red hair, and the complexion that would melt even the most callus of hearts. “Yes, Kari?”

“Do you know where the good dishes are?” The question seemed so random, yet the way the voice filtered through the speakers, it was clear that she asked in all seriousness. Blinking Jeremie asked, “Why?”

“Well I’ve got some company today.” The response jarred Jeremie, after the last incident he had set up security measures that would alert him is anything happened, how did another one get in? Sliding his hand across the nano-board he saved what he was doing. Flicking around little stars of light on the board Jeremie brought up a scan of Terra Machina. The camera of the scan zoomed into the Alpine Zone. The silhouettes of three gangly figures were scaling a mountain. The view was not detailed, and vague, but it was obvious that these figures did not come from the super computer.

Jeremie sighed, even though his first reason for starting his little class was to study the children in hopes of something, he loathed having to put more people into his nightmare. And because he had put up every measure of safety and secrecy that he could, he felt worse. He had consciously thrust them in to his story, a story that he felt would have even more twists, shadows, and pain that it told now. But they were in it already, get them in further could not make the future for them any worse than it would be otherwise.

“I think tonight we shall give our guest a fitting welcome.” Walking over Jeremie guess how the outsiders had gotten in. How, who, why?

***

With a blip Mayhem popped up on the VXC computer. The computer’s owner walked over to the small computer alcove. Delicately she slid herself into the chair in front of screen displaying the old ragged man that was named Mayhem. “Yes, My Mayhem?”

The voice was filled with hints of many intentions, some evil, others might have been more desirable. But none of them fazed Mayhem, little in fact fazed him anymore, so when he delivered the report, he did it without any hint of emotion.

“We have a small problem; they decided not to stick around for the performance, any of them; however they did take the time to make a big exit. Half the city, no one was harmed, but half a city. Half a city exposed to Epsilon radiation, a quarter of the city burned, an eighth of the city tuned to ruble, exactly one Lance, one Crime lord, and four lifeless bodes whisked away.”

Her expression tuned cold, the tilt of her lips turned arctic, and the glare in her imperial eyes turned positively sub zero.  The whole climate of the room dropped. The icy flames that licked her pupils must have been at least somewhat accurately displayed on Mayhems screen as he flinched. Mayhem’s continuation seemed dulled by the radiating cold, “However, I do have good news, first I can guess where our quarries snuck off to. A massive data burst occurred in an obscure Network Cloud, at the estimated time of departure. And second…”

The cold alleviated, and the room cleared. A message halted any other conversation; with a flick of her wrist she dismissed the connection with Mayhem. Pulling her cloak off the table it rested on, she fastened it around her, pulled up the hood and walked out of the room. The sound of her shoes echoed in the empty hall. Even though an unstated requirement for getting hired by VXC was not having a life, many attempted to have one within the confines of the sprawling facility. So their feeble attempts at anything were recently restricted to a small wing. So for the most part late in the night the halls were empty. All the peons of VXC were trying to simulate life in that wing. And any one that was going anywhere here was in their rooms or labs or in other people’s labs trying to squeeze out more secrets of the universe.

The mere fact that she was alone both seemed satisfying and depriving to her. She enjoyed seclusion, she lavished time alone, but now she was heading toward another secretive meeting of the VXC board and she had no entertainment. She enjoyed watching her victims squirm, she never harmed them, but the thoughts that see could see passing through their minds were delicious. Fear, confusion, and the natural, idea that walked through their minds, mingled with their common sense and caused sheer terror, that little demon Lust.

But it was all in good fun. In the empty halls her mind wandered. Incomplete thoughts rippled through her mind, frayed strands that melded together to form a jumbled mosaic. The thoughts soon fell into a rhythm mirroring the click of her walk. The slithering of the shimmering black cloak folded into the painting. Then they all stopped as she reached a small door. A hiss and it slid open reveling a dim room. A long glossy black table forebodingly dominated the room. The dusky lights that were placed around the room allowed for three dark cloaked figures’ outlines to be discernable. On the far side of the room several computer alcoves were set into the wall, separated from the room by sound-proof glass doors.

Slowly, almost invisibly she slipped into the room; she slid into one of the empty chairs. A muted blip came from the long table; small lights flickered beneath its service. The lights resolved into a small read out of the reason for the meeting. A grin flicked across her face, though none of the others saw if because of the cloaks hood. The room lay in a quiet slumber for a few minutes, in this time she realized that this was Mayhems little present for Jeremie. None of the others knew who was running the super computer, that scared them, but if they only knew even a sliver of all the things going on underneath their noses, they would be scared out of their minds.

Her peers on the VXC board were bureaucrats, removed and uninterested in the nuances and interworking of all the projects and experiments that took place in VXC. They only cared to look over the summaries of the large and conspicuous projects, or the ones they themselves ordered. They didn’t take the time to get the whole scope of the facility, or the things that were unauthorized, the dabblings of the special ones that managed to do the most progressive work under the radar. She had a better idea than any of these fools of what VXC really was.

Two figures whisked into the room, faces obscured, cloaked, and powerful. One of them spoke in a tell tale voice, its voice dipped and swooped in hypnotic waves, “I apologize for this inconvenience, and while a few others might not be able to make it, I think we can get started.”

The lights dimmed even farther and on one wall a large screen lit up. It showed a frigid mountain, near vertical faces surrounded a needle point peak, wings of feathery mist wrapped around the monolith. The sky was a dim silicon gray, slight ripples shimmered across it. The sheer size of the mountain seemed to dare physics itself to prove that it could not exist. Beyond it the foggy air gave the viewers a glimpse of equally stunning monuments. Where ever this was it was an extraordinary place, truely extraordinary.

***

Jeremie slumped back into the chair that overlooked the bio-screens.  How much simpler it had been when he was first doing this. At the drop of the hat they would all come running to the old abandoned factory, but now it was just a class. The children had their own lives to attend to, and as of yet the world wasn’t in danger. But Jeremie couldn’t get it out of his mind that asking the kids to join in on his little escapades through barely understandable loopholes in the universes primal code.

“Oh, come on, your being too hard on yourself. I mean, what are you going to do? Come in here instead?” Jeremie smiled at the face of the virtual girl. Jeremie nodded, life would be so much simpler if we were all computer AI’s.

“Alright, at least we got two of them. Want to open up the Digitizer for them, Kari?” Kari bobbed her head, wisps of silky rich red hair weaved around her face. Her face disappeared from the screen, replaced with a small conformation box. Unbidden tendrils of adrenalin seeped into Jeremie’s bloodstream, memories of countless transfers flashed through his mind. Near whispering into the air, he asked Erin, “Are you ready?”

There was a moment’s delay before the conformation. After this Jeremie let all the tension in his mind and body slip away, he returned to his element. Wildly his fingers danced across the starry surface of the nano-board, ripples jumping from where his fingers pressed against the glassy top. They preformed complicated jumps and leaps, sliding short distances small shooting stars followed his fingers. Then Jeremie began to recite the voice commands that shortened the intricate and eclectic dance of his fingers, “Access file Pripe.MTD! Conversion! Digitize!”

From the steely Alpine Zone sky fell a shimmering column of electric sapphire. After it faded a child sized werepuppy thing stepped on the frigid dry snow, Erin Pripe glanced around the toothy mountains. Small flashes of data whipped across the slate gray sky. With an electric hum a flash of blue rocketed down from the sky. As it lifted the figure of Grace Sharron entered the Terra Machina.

She shivered, her long pink hair shaking in the thin icy wind. A frigid scowl came to rest upon her face. “Ga! Why does it have to be so cold?”

Erin snickered quietly, “I may be cold, but--” The res t of the sentence was lost, lost in an explosion of digital energy. A shockwave threw Erin and Grace into the alpine sky, over the edge of their small alcove they sailed. Erin, being slightly lighter than Grace, flew higher into the air, until his arch came to an abrupt halt. Pain filled his vision as his back impacted a hard black bolder. He slid down its icy surface on to a small ledge, were he sat, crumpled and dazed.  Grace came to a slightly more comfortable stop, in a snow bank, on a large out cropping several feet below where she had started.

Slowly she picked herself up, brushing the moisture-less snow from her she glanced around, looking for the cause of their sudden departure. Clinging to the face of the closet mountain a spider like creature held onto the shear face. Four fleshy, joint-less, legs attached the machinoid body to the creatures claws. A diamond shaped head rested on its angular shoulders, no neck to be seen. The creature glared at her with glassy eyes. Lifting up its head it opened a toothy insectoid mouth and released a blast of red energy. Grace was petrified as the ball of crimson raced toward her, its malevolent light reflected in her eyes. Then with a deafening explosion all she saw was black.

She didn’t feel dead, she could still feel the infernal cold.  Slowly Grace became aware of the spasms of pain that fidgeted around her back. Then suddenly she realized part of the reason all she could see was black was that her eyes had involuntarily closed. From above Erin voice rang out, “Grace is dead!”

Opening her eyes she shouted up at the werepuppy, “No, shut up, Shorty! I’m not dead yet!” The monster on the on the other mountain let out a steely screech, it echoed forebodingly around the mountains. As it died down four streaks of orange light rocketed from just above Grace. The creature twisted away from the mountain face, releasing three blast of crimson light as it flew through the air. Flipping over the monster dug its claws back into the digital earth, letting lose a few more deadly blasts. Erin’s mini-drones quickly altered coarse, arching to intercept the blasts. Two of the six red blasts went wildly aria, the other four were prematurely detonated by the orange streaks.

The creature wrenched out a foot and dug it in again; it was walking up the mountain.  Grace raised her gloved fist, three throwing stars materialized in-between her fingers. Flinging down her arm the shimmering pink stars whisked out of her hand. Two of them dug deep into the spidery monster, the third continued into the dark depths of the canyon.

The arachnid was now almost at Grace’s ledge, she could hear the crunch as its claws dug back into the rock, and rip as they were pulled out. But together these fail to compare with the buzz that now surrounded the creature. Crimson power spilled from the mouth, a sickening hum accompanied it. “Mini-drones!” 

The mini-drones had no effect, the resulting explosions didn’t even slow the creatures pace. One claw made it over the lip of the ledge. A second soon followed, and finally the narrow diamond shaped head peaked over the edge. Grace’s mind screamed at her to run away, but her body wouldn’t budge.  She could fell the spider-like thing about to fire, then it stopped. The light faded way, as did the immobilizing buzz.

From above Grace heard Erin exclaim. Almost out of instinct she threw a punch at the imposing figure. And somehow the creature, even with its rigged face and unmoving expression looked surprised as it was thrown back into the canyon. Slowly it faded way, and after a second a blue white explosion lit up the black bottoms of the valley.

***

After Erin climbed out of the Digitizer he gave Grace a strange, inquisitive look, “How did you do that?” He asked excitedly.

“Do what?”

“Turn invisible. Gezz, that hot”

Jeremie heard a very painful sounding slap from his chair in front of the screen. Erin was probably going to be feeling that for a while.