"Ah. A fate worse than deletion. And they call me a monster."


Matrix hit the wall hard enough to dent it. "This is the third dead end, Bob! How is he doing this?" he asked, his voice strained.

Bob kept himself from rolling his eyes. Bob had always thought he was bad, but the renegade took impatience to another level. "He has control over the system defenses. Closing off pathways is pretty normal," said Bob, putting a hand on the renegade's arm. Trying to keep himself determined and focused on the task at hand was a lot more difficult with Matrix trying to brute force them to a solution. Letting this anger out physically wasn't going to help the system. "You need to calm down, Matrix."

"Calm down?" He shook Bob's hand off and punch the wall again. "AndrAIa could be in that room with him. Dot could be in that room with him. Can't you emulate some concern about that?"

"What is that supposed to mean?" Matrix looked away and shook his head. "Say what you mean, Matrix."

"You and Dot were always a constant in my childhood." Bob twitched. "And maybe it's because I was a kid. Maybe I didn't see things the way they really were, but I always thought... You two stopped talking during the war, and you didn't start again. And then she rejected you. Look. I don't blame you, Bob, but you're a Guardian. Even if you're not in love, you don't get to stop caring."

"Stop caring?" Bob shook his head at the larger sprite, in disbelief that quickly turned to anger. "Of course I care about Dot! I love her!" Bob's hand hit the wall beside him and he pulled it back immediately, rubbing it awkwardly as he took a few steadying breaths. They were both upset, the people up in the command room were important to both of them, but this aimless running around wasn't getting them anywhere. "I am in love with her, but hitting walls isn't going to get us any closer to her or AndrAIa," he said, biting the words out. He took another deep breath. "Dot and Phong might be the only sprites that can get us through this... maze. We need to figure out another way."

"Another way..." Matrix shook his head and his shoulders fell. "You'd think we'd be able to get through a basic maze on our own. Games use mazes all the time." He looked at Bob out of the corner of his eye, then smashed the wall again.

"The maze paths change too often," muttered Bob, shaking his head at the pointless damage. "Glitch, try another scan." The keytool was quiet for a nano, then beeped. Matrix leaned over to look at the readouts along with Bob.

It was a strange reading, not exactly something either the Guardian or the Renegade had seen before. It was similar to a sprite, but different enough that neither would have been entirely confident about the claim. Power levels were all over the place, spiking and subsiding without any obvious pattern. "What's that mean? I don't understand," said Matrix.

"Neither do I," said Bob, "but this is the first reading Glitch has managed since Megabyte took over. We need to follow it. Keep Gun ready: I can't tell what's ahead of us. These aren't normal readings." He began following Glitch's direction as Matrix took out his weapon, his mechanical eye rolling around in his head for a better targeting lock in case it was needed. "It might even be a tear with strong cohesion," the blue sprite said doubtfully.

"Do you really think so?" Bob's face looked skeptical and he shrugged in response. Matrix continued to scan the corridor. "Do you think maybe it's him? Glitch detected that he wasn't you..."

"I don't think so," said Bob. "We haven't had a chance to talk properly, but I didn't get the impression it recognized Megabyte so much as the code he'd stolen." He held up a hand, stopping the pair in their tracks. There was a noise up ahead. "Do you hear that?"

Matrix closed his eyes. "Sounds like... crying?"

"Sounds like..." Bob's listened carefully, his eyebrows knitting together for a moment before he recognized the voice. "Dot!" Bob ran forward, a burst of speed carrying him away from Matrix before the larger sprite could try to recommend caution. He ran around two corners, finding her sitting on the floor, huddled into as small a position as she could. She looked up as he came around the final corner, her eyes wide and terrified, her cheeks streaked with tears. She pressed herself further into the wall, and Bob paused long enough that Matrix caught up behind him. "It's me, Dot."

Matrix put a hand on Bob's arm. "She's alone. We don't know it's her," he said.

"It's her," said Bob, pushing the renegade's hand off of his arm and kneeling in front of the traumatized sprite. He put a hand on her shoulder and she flinched away. There was real fear in her eyes, and it could only come from one source. "You think I'm him? It's okay, Dot. I'll prove it," he said, then brought his keytool up between them. "Glitch, daisywheel."

The keytool clicked and beeped for a moment, then, rather more slowly than usual, created a three dimensional printed flower. Bob smiled and offered it to Dot. She looked at it for a moment, then took a few deep, gasping breaths. Her eyes relaxed slightly, the terror disappearing from them only to be replaced with a sort of exhaustion and pain that concerned the Guardian. "Bob? Matrix? It's really you?"

"Yes," said Bob. "Are you all right?" She shook her head and uncurled herself a little. Her right wrist was cradled in her left hand, and Bob hissed as he saw the state of it. Her fingers were all at awkward angles, one of Dot's nails had been pushed back to make a boxy angle with the rest of her finger. "Maybe we can get to the infirmary," he said quietly.

Matrix leaned over Bob, looking at his sister's hand. "I can set that," he said. Bob looked up at him with a question in his eyes. Matrix shrugged. "Turns out, games really are dangerous for little sprites." Dot's face paled. "So, sis. How'd you get out?" he asked, almost casually as he pushed Bob aside to examine Dot's hand more thoroughly.

"Hack and Slash," she said. "He was hiding as Frisket, and when he transformed, the two of them just grabbed me and pulled me out of the room. Probably some of the programming Phong did when he put them back together..."

Bob nodded. "Did anyone else make it out, Dot?"

"I don't know, Bob. Mouse stopped Megabyte from grabbing me. AndrAIa was near one of the upper doors... Dad and Enzo were on the lower concourse with Megabyte. Phong was..." She shook her head. "I don't remember where everyone was. I'm not sure... I barely had time to think before we were out of the room." She looked over at Matrix. "I'm sorry. I don't know if AndrAIa made it out," she said to the renegade, who simply nodded.

"This is going to hurt," he warned. She swallowed and nodded. He tugged a few times, and she whimpered in the back of her throat. Matrix gave her a half-grin. "Not so bad, right?" Dot huffed a bit of a surprised laugh at that, her eyes meeting her brother's for a moment. He undid one of the leather cords from his wrists and pulled something straight and sturdy out of his boot. "If you got out with Hack and Slash, where'd they get to?"

Dot took a deep breath. "They— he—" She shook her head. "It seemed like almost no time at all. Maybe a few nanos after that ridiculous announcement he made. It was like Megabyte knew exactly where we were, but maybe it was all just coincidence. I was trying to come up with some sort of plan, a way to get back in the control room, and suddenly I was being dragged down more hallways between them." She paused, her gaze turning inwards for a moment. "They never were good at taking directions. I told them— but they ended up taking us down a dead end." She went quiet while Matrix bound her wrist.

Bob nodded. "So they held him off while you got away."

Dot shook her head slowly. She was looking Bob's direction, but her eyes seemed to be looking very far away. "It was a dead end, Bob. There was no way out. He took them apart. Piece by piece, tossing them around. They were terrified. And he just... he enjoyed it. The look in his eyes..." She shivered. "And he looked at me the same way, and I thought... this is it. This is where he deletes me." She shook her head and looked at her hand, bound as well as it could be by Matrix's impromptu medical skills.

"But he didn't," said Bob.

"No." She swallowed. "He grabbed my hand, did that. He told me he wanted me to surrender."

"Surrender?" Bob looked up sharply at her, concern in his eyes. "That's not what he said to the system."

"He said he wanted revenge," reminded Dot. "I don't think any of us really know what that means. He's the one who hurt us, after all; what's there to get revenge for? Not inviting him to Enzo's birthday party?"

"I suppose," said Bob uncertainly. "None of it really makes sense. It sounds like he's focused on you, Dot. Did you do something he might particularly remember?" Dot looked down, touched her patched hand with a frown, and shrugged. Bob sighed. "Matrix, with all that system hopping you did, you've probably seen more viruses than me. Have you seen anything like that?"

"No," said Matrix with a shake of his head. "They'd focus on me, occasionally, if they identified my code as Guardian. And they'd sometimes mono-focus on other viruses." He cocked his head and Dot shivered.

"When Megabyte and Hex fought," she said quietly, "all of Mainframe was in danger. Not that it was in any less when they worked together."

"Yeah, in other systems, too. It always seemed to end with system damage. Sometimes irreparable. I can't see any reason he'd focus his attention on Dot. But Bob..." Matrix shook his head and turned his focus toward the other Guardian. "I can see a reason he'd pretend to be her. He knows we both love her." Bob watched carefully as she flinched and turned away from him. "If he's focused on one of us, or both of us, Dot would be a good choice. There's no one in a better position to hurt you, and only AndrAIa's in a better position to hurt me."

Bob frowned and shook his head. His gut was telling him that this woman was Dot, but he didn't have any way to prove it. Even if Glitch's scans weren't wildly unhelpful right now, he didn't think the keytool would be sufficient proof when his combined form hadn't been able to figure out what his doppelg?nger had been up to. But there had to be something. His eyes fell on the daisywheel he'd offered Dot as proof that he was who he said. Maybe that was the solution. "Tell me something only the two of us know," he said.

Dot frowned. "People were always watching us, Bob."

"I know, but... well, there's got to be something that Megabyte doesn't know."

"Maybe... that game, when we met AndrAIa. Enzo was off somewhere playing the game. And we rebooted and you..." She glanced at Matrix and turned a very dark green.

Bob blushed as well, but smiled triumphantly. "You see? She's—"

"That's in the archives," said Matrix.

"It is?" The pair spoke simultaneously and looked at Matrix.

"All the games are in the archives," he said. "After you made me a Guardian back then, I... I felt a little lost, I guess, so AndrAIa and I watched the archives over and over. I was trying to be the best Guardian I could be. And that's in the archives."

Dot shook her head. "Well, if that's in there, I can't think of anything." She looked at Bob for a moment, then shook her head. "No wonder he was able to fool me. There's nothing between us, is there, Bob."

This was the second time a Matrix sibling had said they weren't in love, and this was a bit worse. The Guardian pulled back, hurt. How could she say that? He'd done everything for her, he'd risked his very existence for her, separated from Glitch for her! "Who's fault is that? You've barely even talked to me since the restart."

Dot's lips pursed. "Well, maybe I would have if you trusted me to know what was going on with you." Bob turned his head, confused for a moment. "Oh, did you think Phong could really keep the whole Glitch-Bob might fragment himself into a googol of tiny pieces from me forever?"

"Glitch-Bob, huh?" Bob's eyes narrowed as Dot looked down a little guiltily for barely a femtosecond. "I guess that meant it was okay that you didn't tell me we were fighting Guardians?"

The guilt didn't last long. She looked up with a challenge. "And what would you have done if I had?" she asked with a laugh. "Gone off to save them on your own?"

"Maybe I would have!"

"You know, Bob, you have a martyr complex—"

"Enough!" Matrix pushed himself between them. "You must be Dot, I can't imagine Megabyte acting like either of you. Which means we have bigger problems."

Dot and Bob stared angrily around Matrix for a nano more, then Dot dropped her eyes. "You're right, Matrix. I'm sorry. I'm angry at myself, Bob, not you."

A flash of triumph lit Bob's eyes for a moment before the weight of guilt came down on him. He hadn't stopped Megabyte from almost marrying her, Glitch had. And then, he'd convinced her to be in the command room where Megabyte had terrorized her again, and he hadn't been there for her when the virus had broken her hand. And now, he was letting what Megabyte had done get between them, when he knew that Dot was second guessing herself.

So much for having learned a lot out in the web.

"I'm sorry, too." He stood, then reached out a hand, pulling her to her feet. "Dot, we're going to be okay. We'll get him for real. You know the maze layout, right?"

She shook her head. "It's adaptive. There's no real layout. I know some ways around it, though. Cheats..." She frowned skeptically and looked between Bob and Matrix. "You two aren't thinking about storming the war room, are you?" The two Guardians looked at each other and shrugged. "That's not going to work," she said with a shake of her head. "It's the most protected place in the system, other than the core... ironically, we could access the core more easily." Dot frowned. "Actually, that's not a bad idea. There's an admin console there. Bob, can Glitch get a lock on Mouse?"

"Glitch is having some trouble with scans," Matrix said.

"What?" Dot frowned, then winced. "Oh. That'll be Mouse's keytool containment protocol. I guess it worked."

"Her what now?"

"We were fighting Guardians," explained Dot. "An army of Guardians with functional keytools would have been disastrous. Mouse had a method she thought would jam them. We weren't sure it would work, and we didn't know what it would do to Bob, so it was always intended as a last resort. And then we found out from Turbo that they didn't actually have keytools anymore, so it didn't matter, but we never uninstalled the software..." She looked down. "Actually, we weren't sure what it would do to keytools generally. You probably shouldn't use Glitch until we disable it."

Bob looked at Glitch and let out a breath. It was probably better to know, but it was frustrating to think he'd been kept in the dark about this system modification throughout the entire war effort. But he was a professional, he was going to deal with the problem head on instead of wishing things were different. "Okay. How do we disable it?"

"Without access to the war room? Or Mouse? I'm not sure."

"Well, that's just great," said Matrix.

"Look," said Dot. "You can't expect an ideal plan with Megabyte in the war room. We'll get to a command line, and we'll figure it out. Bob's not half bad at a terminal, right, Bob?" The Guardian gave her a strained smile and Dot sighed. "A command line... What we need to do now is get outside, and to do that, all we have to do is let the maze win."

Bob looked at her in surprise for a moment, then laughed. Matrix wasn't as amused. "I don't get it. If we're outside," said the renegade, "how are we going to get to a command line?"

"The pinnacle," replied Bob and Dot in unison. He grinned confidently at her, and she returned it with her own shy smile. "You remember the system upgrade, when Megabyte tried to delete everyone?" said Bob. "We were inside, having descended with the pinnacle into the main core control room. Come to think of it, he was playing the trojan horse then, too..."

"Well, what are we waiting for? Let's get this over with."

Dot nodded, and Bob took her uninjured hand in his own while Matrix led the three past doorways and various offices, read only rooms, and evacuation spaces. He kept Gun at the ready, seeing as it was the only ranged weapon that they had while Glitch was out of commission. The trio turned down different hallways, often seeing strange white binomes at the far ends, though it seemed none of them were yet interested in following the sprites.

A few did end up in their way as they arrived at the doors; Bob dropped Dot's hand while he and Matrix dispatched them easily enough, throwing two CPU officers against the wall. Matrix grabbed a third, ready to throw him aside, but Bob stopped him. "Hold him steady," Bob instructed. "I'm going to have Glitch try to scan him. It didn't seem to be doing damage before, and... Maybe that keytool dampening field of Mouse's will let me get some information."

The binome struggled a bit in the big green arms, but a small one binome versus a sprite like Matrix was always going to be an unfair fight. Glitch beeped and spun, working diligently to get answers for Bob. Turning, spinning, it's power was depleting more quickly than a scan, but Glitch came through and displayed after a moment. "Some sort of... drone," Bob said. "This is not good. I think Megabyte's connected directly to them. He might even be able to hear us through them."

Dot walked closer, a frown on her face, and she leaned in to look at the binome. "This is Mister Appleby," she said, confusion and surprise vying for dominance in her voice. "He shouldn't have been in the Principle Office when Megabyte took control." She looked into the eyes under the greying head of hair, then put a hand on the binome's forehead, as though she could detect a temperature change in the creature to determine an illness. "He's really cold," she said, then shook her head. "Mister Appleby? Can you... oh..." She swayed, and Bob grabbed her, pulling her away even as Matrix pulled the infected binome away from her in the opposite direction.

"You okay, Dot?" asked her brother. The woman in question nodded slowly and the renegade scowled, hit the zero binome's head precisely to knock it out, then tossed it to the side. Bob took her hand and looked at it, shaking his head at Matrix so that the other sprite headed back over. For a nano, her fingers looked very white, but she slowly regained color as the pair of guardians watched. "If this is infectious without him here, we are in for a lot of trouble," Matrix said.

"This is bad," agreed Bob. "This is very bad."

Dot, for her part, looked a bit confused as she pulled herself away from Bob and his steadying hold. "I'm fine, though. Just... that was really... weird."

"If Glitch's readings were right, Megabyte might have had some connection to you for a nano or two," said Bob.

Her lips pursed and she frowned contemplatively. "I thought I saw the war room for a moment. It felt... annoying." She looked at the two Guardians. "I am okay, right?"

"Don't worry about it," Bob replied with a nod. "Just don't touch any more of them." He looked over at the door. "Let's get to that command line. Matrix, you ready?"

The renegade nodded, readied his weapon, and kicked the door open. Dot gasped, and Bob's eyes widened in alarm. Outside, past the golden exterior and marble staircases, the view of the city was complete chaos. There were tears floating above buildings as far as the eye could see, slowly descending upon the city. Monotone, blank-faced binomes were walking out at the edges of the Principle Office, slowly making their way across the bridges between the circular disk of the city and the great sphere in the middle of it all.

Matrix, further in front of Dot and Bob, had noticed something more pertinent. "AndrAIa! Mouse!" He called to the other members of the command team, heading out of sight before the pair behind him could react. By the time they could see the rest of the sprites, Matrix had already reached them.

Bob and Dot, meanwhile, were both assessing the situation. Six bridges around the Principle Office: most of the binomes appeared to have arrived by one single bridge, the one that connected G-Prime, where the two, now three, sprites had set up their position. Dot could only see two others from their current position, but there were binomes slowly massing on the Mainframe sides. Mouse was fighting the binomes off with the flat of her blade, while AndrAIa used her paralyzing nails to devastating effect. Matrix was using Gun in a low-power mode, obviously trying not to hurt the binomes who had already crossed the links.

Action was called for. "We can't fight Megabyte on two fronts— take down the bridges!" Dot called out the order, her voice loud and clear even over the booming sound of Gun.

Bob had already come to the same conclusion, and surveyed what he could. Dot functioned best when she called strategy, but he was the master of tactics. The other three were too busy fighting to take action, and Dot needed to stay away from the binomes... "Dot, get the quick-release on the link from Baudway," he said. "I'll handle G-Prime."

She nodded and turned, heading toward the bridge at a jog, while Bob moved to the rest of the team. He dodged and weaved around the binomes that had already made it past the checkpoint that Mouse and AndrAIa had tried to set up; there was no point in fighting these drone-like binomes at the moment, the other three could work containment.

"Get them off the bridge!"

"Easier said than done," Matrix replied, but began focusing his fire on areas between the binomes from the middle to the leading edge of the bridge between Mainframe and its command center, large concussive blasts sending most of the desaturated ones and zeros backwards toward the city.

Bob looked to the side, noting the build-up of binomes on the edge of Beverly Hills. "Matrix and I will handle this one. AndrAIa, Mouse, I need you to get the other bridges offline, ASAP."

The two women looked at each other, and AndrAIa nodded seriously. "We're on it, Bob," she said as the pair headed off.

The only problem with this on-the-fly idea was that the binomes were coming directly at him now. They couldn't harm him with their touch, the Guardian code protected him from that, and they weren't particularly aggressive, but the numbers were enough that they could mob him without trying very hard. Bob pushed two of them aside as he struggled to reach the pillar where the bridge release was tucked away.

He had to fight the urge to ask for Glitch's help. It was strange: of course, he'd felt the keytool's loss when he'd been sent to the web, but hadn't felt as reliant as he did now. Maybe it was from their time as a merged entity... regardless, he was going to have to do this alone.

"Ow!" A binome had attached itself to his leg and was now biting him! Bob pulled open a panel, and moved his arms forcefully in a wide circle to give himself a bit more breathing room. There it was, the quick release. Shatter the glass, pull the cord, bridge tumbles down to isolate the command area... easy enough, except that one of the binomes had attached itself to the metal glass puncturing device.

"Bob! The bridge is clear, can't say for how long!" The guardian glanced over to see the renegade awkwardly firing at the leading edge of the bridge, kicking backward every so often to keep the infected binomes from making too much of a mess around him.

"Glitch, hammer— wait, no, nevermind. I'll manage this myself." He clenched his fist and punched the glass out, wincing as a few shards embedded themselves in his knuckles, then pulled the cord. A great thumping noise occurred, but when Bob turned his head, he saw that the bridge was not down. The center had unbuckled, but had caught on something—

And the renegade was being mobbed. Bob elbowed one of the binomes in the face, heading towards the bulkier sprite. Maybe he shouldn't have told AndrAIa and Mouse to go, but then again, he could see that they'd already taken down both of the bridges. Bob grabbed some of the binomes attacking Matrix, noticing that they were biting him, too. The renegade's uniform wasn't quite as protective as Bobs, and he could see a nasty patch of white forming around the bruises.

"Matrix, shoot the center of the bridge!"

"Got it!" A one had grabbed the green sprite's bicep, and Bob punched it in the middle third of its body, taking it down even as Matrix fired. The bridge collapsed with a screeching sound that the Guardian didn't like at all. But, he supposed, a little damage was expected in a major fight against a virus. Matrix grabbed one of the binomes, intent on throwing it at the wall, but stopped himself with a worried exclamation. This one was just a little kid! "What are we supposed to do with the rest of them?"

Bob looked around, pushing another monotone viral away. "They're slow, and over the whole PO, there's not that many. As long as we're not in the middle of this knot," he said, with another shove, "we'll be fine. Split up, it might confuse them... You get Mouse and AndrAIa, I'll get Dot, we'll meet on the other side of the building."

Matrix nodded and pushed his way through the crowd of binomes, turned, and put the child down before sprinting off towards the now-downed Wall Street bridge. Bob did much the same, exiting the crowd with as little force as he could manage and heading towards the link between the Principle Office and Baudway.

The first bridge was down, and Bob quickly jogged to the next sector conserving his energy in case he needed a sudden burst of speed. The second bridge, the one that connected the central sphere with Kits' sector, was also down, but Bob noted with some alarm, Dot was holding her damaged hand while leaning against the giant pillar that housed the quick release. He ran over to her, his eyes taking in the paleness of her skin that seemed to be spreading from—

"One of the infected bit you?" he asked.

Dot was shaking slightly, but nodded. "Go protect the system," she said. "I'll be fine, I just got too close. They don't seem very interested in me, though... I keep feeling annoyed, like before. It must be Megabyte."

Bob shook his head, and took hold of her hand, looking at her palm critically. "It doesn't look too bad," he said, trying to give her a reassuring smile even as he looked at the fine white line running along her wrist. "We'll have Matrix bandage it a bit more, and you'll be fine. How did it happen?"

"Mrs Paisley was at the bridge release controls. I had to get her out of the way." Dot shrugged, then took a sudden breath in, her eyes going distant, her mouth slackening. Just as quickly, she shook her head and looked at Bob with alarm. "He's coming. We have to go."

Bob's mouth pursed, and he pulled her up and to his side to stop her from wobbling. "Come on," he said. "Look, they're taking down the last bridge." His pace was a little slowed as he dragged Dot with him to the final connection to the system, alert for any more of the binomes... or worse. He was worried. In a normal situation, he could have moved the civilians out of the danger zones— into the city if Megabyte had taken over the central office, or somewhere in the Principle Office itself if Megabyte was damaging Mainframe itself. But with this situation, he couldn't see a safe place to put Dot. He hoped that she was imagining it, but if Glitch's scan was right, she might be broadcasting to Megabyte even now.

"Bob, Dot!" Mouse gave them one of her half-smiles, until she saw Dot shiver against Bob. "You alright, Sugar?"

"One of those binomes bit her," said Bob unhappily.

AndrAIa tilted her head. "Really? One of them bit me." Matrix took a quick inhale of breath and looked at the woman he loved with worry and concern. "Relax, lover. I feel fine, it just stung a little." She pointed at her leg. "The bite mark's already closed and everything."

"Maybe game sprite code's as good as Guardian code for protection," replied Bob. He was a lot more concerned about Dot, since she was the one who seemed to be having trouble. Megabyte shouldn't be able to infect a sprite, especially not via an infected binome, but he wasn't going to rule anything out. "Mouse, I need to get Glitch back online so I can scan Dot."

"No," said Dot. "You need to contain Megabyte."

"And I need Glitch for that, too," he said stubbornly. "Mouse, what do I need to do?"

"Well, now..." Mouse looked at Bob, Dot and Glitch with concern. "There is an override command set," she said. "One in each sector. But that won't amount to a hill of bytes in the Principle Office. I set the signal up so that they couldn't use 'em against us there."

"Can you turn it off via a command line?" asked AndrAIa.

"No, it's... well, it's hardware, not software. I don't know how we could disrupt it, other than..."

"Other than what?" Bob asked.

"The DMA transfer," said Mouse, looking apologetically at Dot.

The green sprite sighed. "You're sure you can't do it without Glitch?" Bob shook his head, and she shivered again. "All right. We should be able to interrupt it." She looked up at the sky. "We did it during the war, we can do it again."

"Do you know how to do it? It would take an hour to fix any kind of damage to that part of the system. And won't that take down power in the city?" asked AndrAIa.

Mouse nodded. "About 40 per cent of it," she said, tilting her head and shrugging. "That's why it'd work."

Dot closed her eyes and leaned heavily against Bob. He let out a breath and shook his head. He couldn't damage the city to get Glitch back online. "What if we... lure him out into the city?" asked Bob. "He wants a hunt, we give him one out there. We can deal with these overrides Mouse was talking about."

"We just cut the bridges, Bob. And with all those binomes swarming around... A fight out there is a fight he wins," said AndrAIa.

"We could take him," disagreed Matrix. "We just have to choose our ground carefully. There's open space around Dot's, or we could lure him over to Lost Angles—"

"No," said Dot, her eyes opening suddenly. "We need him in the Principle Office behind a firewall. That's the only way this ends."

"Dot... I..." Matrix looked at her sheepishly. "I kind of damaged the firewall in the containment room."

Dot's eyes focused on him, outraged. "You what?"

"Bob wouldn't turn it off!"

"User," she said softly, then took a deep breath. "Fine, we'll work around it. The armory still has some of the old hardware we used to make the original firewall around G-Prime. Mouse, do you think you could make the calculations to stabilize them?"

"Reckon I could," said Mouse brightly.

Dot nodded and let out a breath. "I'm glad you're here, Mouse. I don't think any of the rest of us could manage that. You and Bob go to the armory, set that up. Matrix, AndrAIa, you're going to need to do the interrupt. I'll go to the Pinnacle and get the command line set up."

"No one goes alone," protested Bob. Especially not you wasn't said, but everyone heard it regardless as Bob pressed her closer to his side and she shivered again.

Dot closed her eyes again and nodded. "We need to force him out of the war room anyways. All right, two longer missions. Bob and I will do the interrupt, then head for the Pinnacle. Mouse, AndrAIa, I'll need the two of you to blow the power to the war room—"

"What!?"

"A hardware burnout. AndrAIa knows the engineering lines well enough to target it. That will disrupt his command lines and lock him out of the systems. The best command line he can get to after that will be the one in the Core. He'll head for us, Bob. We'll distract him. Mouse will get the firewall set up in the armory and send Glitch a signal, and... you'll get him into it."

"What about me, Sis?"

"No one goes alone," Dot said, but shrugged. "I'd like to have a Guardian with each team, but maybe it's better if you come with me and Bob..."

Mouse looked at her, narrowing her eyes. "I think he should come with us. Give the pair of you some more time to work together."

"Mouse..."

"Bob don't need Matrix to keep you safe, Sugar. Do ya, Bob?"

The blue guardian smiled at the hacker. "No, I don't." He paused to look down at her. "You trust me, don't you, Dot?"

"Sure. It's me that's the zombie process," she muttered as she shivered again. "All right. Let's get this over with. Everyone ready?"