Surprising both Crasher and Xyber. Crasher thought Xyber had stopped on purpose, and Xyber thought she had missed something...something important...
So she double checked the system at lightning speed, carefull this time to not trip any surprise traps or undetected back up systems...but she found neither...except...
What was that? A microscopic chip that seemed to be glowing with a pale blue light...she looked closer and found four cooling systems within and a very small glowing crystal...it pulsed like a heart beat...
Could that be the sentient part of the computer? She just had to take a closer look by trying to interface with it... And the crystal increased it´s glow and let her in.... ****************************************
In a huge room full of wallscreens and computer terminals, a flashing light was blinking.
A wrinkled pale hand switched it off with a deep sigh.
"Marc, could you come to the monitor room please?" A tired and angry voice said to a close microphone.
"Coming, Sir."
The one called Marc ran out of his private quarters into a long corridor with ancient paintings on the walls. His now long gray hair was still wet after a long well deserved shower. Damn it was hot in here.
He arrived only a minute after he had been summoned, and walked to the ancient pale man in front of him.
"What´s the problem , Sir?"
"My little girls are in trouble...could you help them...please?"
"Uh...sure.What´s the story?"
"They are located at the Tower Of Cuccubao. You know the one I warned you about?
"Yes..."
"It seems incredible but someone has managed to compromise the Ameristar suit...and her life signs are flat..."
"Okay, Sir. Don´t panic. I know how much you love them both. I will do my best to retreive them, Sir."
"Thank you, Marc. You have proven to be an enormous asset to this team. I will be in you debt." The old man patted Marc on the shoulder. Then sat down in a chair and continued his monitoring duties.
"I must not let this distract me from my task...the project is at a critical stage, and nothing, not even the ones I love most must distract me from suceeding. Please be swift Marc...come home in one peice."
"No problem, Sir. With this equipment, and my abilities, theu won´t even know I was there."
And with that he ran to the storage to get his field uniform and equipment. *******************************************
Xyber fell..... A seemingly bottomless well opened beneath her...and deep down, something stirred... Something that was angry... And it rose from the deep towards her... She could feel it´s raw power, and knew at that instant what it was...the one thing that she had feared most in this battle...
The living prescense within the armor.
Once again she found herself thrown out of the armor...and worse she had been transferred to....somwhere else... She snooped around...this wasn´t the armor...it was...
A public school computer...and someone was running a program... Visual Basic. Oh no...she was inside a kid´s school computer...angrily she swore that she would take revenge on that entity someday...what ever it was... Then she realised the impossible in what had happened...the armor had a communications device...but not for sending raw data. How on Earth could she have sent her here? The two systems weren´t even connected?
It must have been that mysterious force within the armor...what was it that lived inside that crystal? She would know...and soon...as fast as she could find a way out of here.......
