Overtaken

Loops and Light Beams Won't Help Us

A/N: After a long, arduous wait, my friends, I give you...

PART 2! YEAH ❤
As always, credits to @DarkArrow7 for being amazing and coming up with most of the ideas. I am but a simple writer compared to Her Splendiferousness' magnificence. We must bow down before her. ANY WAY MERRRY CHRISTMAS OR HANNUKAH (I probably spelt it wrong oops) OR WINTER HAVE AN AMAZING TIME!!! HERE WE GOOOOOOO LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ICY ROAD (not that it ever snows here in the UK)

Woah I just realised the title of this chapter sounds like a Fall Out Boy song 😅😅

Word count: 1009

I stared into the blue holographic screen, not really taking the presentation in. Why bother? It was the same old nonsense every day anyway. Just Google trying to promote itself in a world where it's already in control. And here I sat, just like every other day, pretending to pay attention. A specialty of mine.

Google has been improving lives across the globe for over a thousand years. Together, we have produced a luxurious living space where everybody can enjoy their lives free of worries ...

Distracted, I looked around. The Hub, as usual, was full of people and harsh, bright lights. It was the second largest base of work with Google and about a quarter of the population associated with it. Its 7500 gigabyte area could hold a lot. The most used base is Google headquarters, despite the fact that only representatives can enter it. The security levels would take a genius to break through, anyway.

Nobody in the hub seemed at all distracted from their work, which I found odd. If it was me, I would have been useless. Everybody seemed so focused- I just don't understand how they do it. Oh well. Just my short attention span again.

Beside me, sat my twin brother, Toby, fiddling with something he had found. Both of us have no concentration when it comes to class and spend most of it daydreaming. Except Toby is a star- the polar opposite of me. He is communicative where I am stand-offish. He plans ahead where I am impulsive. With playful, round green eyes and a face that can mold into any expression, he is the master at deception and can explain away anything. If we weren't so invisible, he would have been taken advantage of long ago. Thank God for never being noticed. If Google had gotten their hands on him, we would never have seen him again. But (call me what you like) I have to protect him. He's too good for this world- a bright spot in a pitch black horizon. He deserves better. Typical me- I choose the hardest people to love.

Suddenly I was jarred from my thoughts by an unsettling shift. The room flickered out of focus completely and blackened, before righting itself. What was happening? Mutters filled the room as chinks of it were still missing, leaving black spaces behind. Then one person decided to scream, and the whole place exploded with panic. People running sideways and shouting. An alarm went off; a shrill sound filled my ears with a strange mixture of echos and reverberation. Then I felt myself falling and my head whirling in confusion. Everything went quiet and my mind went blank.

What felt like hours later, I felt myself regaining some sense, and realized I was standing in my own house. Immediately my brain started asking question after question; they darted around in my already full head like fish. I swiveled around, hoping for information. Toby was standing right beside me, confusion clearly hung on his face.

"Toby, what happened?" I asked him groggily. Whatever had happened had sapped all the awareness from my mind.

"I don't know, but we've got to find mum and dad. They'll know. Whatever happened was definitely unnatural." Toby replied, his voice vaguely distant. I nodded.

"They'll know..." I repeated. Feeling oddly heavy, I approached the door. Mum and Dad were experienced hackers- they would know what happened. Their company, Genzu, had been around for years and had extracted massive amounts of information, despite never being noticed by Google. I was just about to place my hand on the door when it swung open and my mother strode inside. She was wearing a strange expression- worry? Excitement? Triumph? I don't know.

"Shut the door and sit down - I have some information." she said tersely. That wasn't like her, Usually her voice could calm in an instant. I pushed the door closed and seated myself beside Toby, sensing a hint of haste in her voice

"What happened? The room just flickered and an alarm went off and-" began Toby before being cut off.

"Honey, we don't have much time- Google will be knocking on doors in a few minutes. But I can quickly explain." She took a deep breath. "We may have gotten into Google's first system."

I gasped shakily. This was massive! Genzu and hundreds of other browsers had been attempting this for years and years with no result. And it was getting harder and harder over time as Google updated their defense barriers. Stunned, I waited for more. I could feel Toby tense up next to me. Mum continued

"We managed to hack into the first layer of the system, but there was a trap. Breaking the first layer would send a visible signal in a highly used Google base. All major representatives would have been alerted and within seconds, they could have tracked down the hacking source. That's why part of the Hub flickered. They set a loop to send anybody who doesn't work for Google right home. You were both out for a while, but in the loop. They cancelled your class out and sent you all through it." She continued. Her usually bright eyes were dark with anxiety- the trusting light gone from them. "The Genzu base has a defense system that scatters anything trying to track it- like light beams on mirrors. But loops and light beams won't help us. Google thinks the base is around here somewhere and they'll be coming. Hopefully we still have a little-" She was interrupted by a hard beat on the door. "Time," she finished weakly.

I felt my throat clench up. The last time Google had been around, things hadn't turned out well. People were imprisoned and executed left and right. It was a painful time- even I could tell that at the age of 6. Now, almost 10 years later, I felt exactly the same- trapped, lost, and terrified out of my mind. My brain finally pieced everything together and fear struck me like never before.