Walls

16

"This is bad," Abbie said, staring at the laptop on her lap.

She had stood outside the little cabin that Elias left her off, clutching two laptops to her heart and looking pleased with the sight of his car.

Elias had picked her up and set the destination back to Acute Inc. Driving off the greens to the safety of the city was something that he was patiently waiting for.

Abbie scrunched her nose, heaving a long sigh.

"What is it now?" Elias asked, throwing her a casual glance before setting his eyes back on the road.

He was immensely proud of the woman he was supposedly engaged to. Between the crazy hacking and tracking and the adorable blinking, Elias kind of understood how his past self might have been a complete goner for Abbie.

So much to get engaged to her.

"Well, the thing is I disabled the call block and stuff, but the timer was not easy. It is programmed into another huge program that I-"

Abbie fell into deep silence, her mouth falling open and eyes going wide. Elias glanced at the timer on the phone she was holding, it read: 01:12:47

"What is it?"

"Freak!"

"What is it, Abbie?"

"This is the program for Acute Inc. I can see a signature that has to be something corporate-related. This person has the software for the brain chips!"

"I don't understand. What are you talking about? What software?"

"This person did not just only hack our phones, but also the software that controls our brain chips. According to this program or the way it is programmed, I think I see something that can establish contact with a transmitter. And by the looks of it, this program can take care of certain things like shutting down the chip or ejecting it."

Abbie ran a palm over her mouth, looking horrified. Elias found it extremely hard to concentrate on the road and also try and capture each and every one of her expressions. He decided it was better to be safe than sorry, Abbie would appreciate it - gritting his teeth he set his eyes back on the road.

"What about it?"

"There is a secondary function that loops within the first. This I can only describe as the very basic coding of the chip - It is mostly engineered stuff that I don't understand very well. But there is this one loop that is reversing a bunch of these functions."

"Reversing?"

"Yeah. More like blocking and replacing with newer functions."

Elias felt the shivers rumbling down his spine as the dots connected into place in his head.

"Do you think that is why we don't have our memories? Someone blocked it?"

"I don't know for sure. But that looks like it. I mean, I am not an engineer - I can't understand that part of the system. But it certainly looks like it."

"Can you amend it? Reverse the whole thing and make us remember the whole fucking thing?"

"I can try. But I can't be sure, because this is an offline system. This means that I can try and reverse the damage, but it does not work until we can transfer it back to the main system - which, by the way, could be anywhere in the world. My guess - Acute Inc."

Elias nodded, "Hurry up."

He was impatient for the weird memory thing to come back up so that he can go back to discussing some actual things like how well his body is responding to whatever unintelligible stuff that Abbie is talking about.

He prayed that he could cool down his poking hardness until at least they were not in the middle of a life and death situation.

The adrenaline in his body seemed to be challenging him with more fire. Just great - if only he could swish his fingers and make all this vanish like a dream. He hated the fact that so many things were out of control - including his fucking manhood.

Abbie let out a horrifying shriek, dragging him out of his head.

"This is not normal. Whew...I think I can't breathe-"

"What? No, don't freak out, what is the matter?"

Abbie was pulling in some dangerously panic-attack-like deep breaths that were freaking Elias out. But he needed to keep his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road if he needed to stay alive for the next hour or so that it would take for them to get to Angelora.

"I just- I'm not an engineer, but this thing does not look good," Abbie wheezed.

"What? What does not look good? Talk to me, Abbie!"

"Oh my gosh, oh my gosh-"

"You're freaking me out!" Elias groaned, his fingers gripping the wheel harder than he probably should.

Abbie took a deep breath, looking like she was calming herself down, "We are hacked!"

"Not news Abbie. Not freaking news!" Elias rolled his eyes, "Our phones were hacked, our chips were hacked-"

"No! I mean the company is hacked!"

Elias turned to her, "The company-"

"There are 25 Agents on a list who have chips in their brains. And all of them are the major Engineering team working on this project. Plus both of us. I mean it is already stupid that we have this thing in our brains, but the entire, whole, full, engineering team did not have to go and get themselves-"

"Abbie, calm down and get to the point-"

"Everyone who knows about this project is hacked, Elias!" Abbie said, clutching her heart, "And they probably have no idea what is happening. According to this - this window right here," Abbie poked the laptop screen forcefully, "All those chips are designed to disable in exactly one hour!"

"What?"

She looked like she was going into another panic attack, but Elias knew what this meant. He followed Abbie's line of sight, stopping at the phone in her hand. The timer - it had one hour to go.

"Oh my GOSH," Abbie squeaked.

The car came to a whooshing halt as Elias turned to her absorbing the look on her face. He did not want to think about the fact that his heart was trying to outrun a Ferrari or something, but the look of pure terror on Abbie's face said it all - they had only one hour left of their lives.