Someone in Trouble

Chapter 19: Saving the Day

As soon as Sportacus set foot in Pixel's house he was confronted by the clamoring alarms, flashing red lights, and the stifling smoke. He vaulted over the couch and dove under the desk where the air was a bit clearer. Down here he groped around until he found a thick coil of wire. Seizing onto the lifeline he gave a decisive yank, ripping the cord out of its socket. But it wasn't the right one.

The alarms droned louder and all the more shrilly as the hero felt around to find the next suspect plug. He grabbed it and jerked it loose, then the next one— Until at last, grabbing a fistful of cords and giving one final wrench, he pulled out every last wire that could possibly power the chaos raging around him. All at once the wall of monitors sputtered out and went dark, leaving the room pale and silent.

Almost silent, at least. Sportacus thought his ears were ringing at first before he realized something was still running. It clicked and whined like a squeaky wheel— or a rusty fan. He crawled farther under the desk, curious to find the source.

"Sportacus, are you okay?" Pixel called from the door. The boy waved his hands around to disperse the smoke as he stepped gingerly back inside.

"Everything's fine," Sportacus called. What was this thing? Smoke was still creeping out of it but at a much reduced rate. It didn't look like any of Pixel's other computers or machines. The contraption seemed to be cobbled together if anything. It gave one final chug and wheeze before finally going quiet, all power run out.

Once they got all the windows open it was a matter of time for the smoke to clear. Miraculously the computers all looked to be just fine, not a toasted tower or melted motherboard to be found. Once Sportacus plugged all of the wires back in he and Pixel just had to wait with fingers crossed to see if the computer would turn back on.

The primary monitor remained black for a moment... then a blinking green cursor appeared on the screen. Pixel tried his hand at his keyboard again and this time the computer responded perfectly.

"All right!" Pixel quickly went to work. "If we're lucky I can just reset the system back to a restore point from before Robbie's virus and we'll be back in business."

"Robbie?" Sportacus repeated. "He did this? What's going on?"

"I don't know!" Pixel said. "Robbie was getting along with all of us just fine, then all of a sudden he completely shut down, like all his shareware turned into malware. And man, is he mean about it!" Pixel's eyes widened as he looked at Sportacus. "He's got Ziggy and Trixie trapped in the park! The last I saw him, Stingy and Stephanie were running away too. We have to check the videos and see what happened to them!"

"This sounds serious..." Sportacus could barely stand still long enough for Pixel to pull up the video feeds on his computer. Time-stamped images blinked on across the wall of monitors and Sportacus frowned up at them.

There were several different angles of Lazy Park, a handful having perfect shots of the large tree where Ziggy and Trixie were strung up in a net. The bundled up kids swung gently on the branch as they wriggled around helplessly. It was enough to make Sportacus take a step towards the door but Pixel cried out and pointed at more of the monitors as the data kept coming in.

"Oh, look! Is that Stingy?!"

Pixel and Sportacus tried to make sense of the footage showing the street— or what was left of it. There were so many holes it looked more like Swiss cheese. Poking out of one of the pits were some desperately wiggling fingers. They scratched at the ground and slowly a swath of brown hair rose up over the edge of the hole. Stingy's eyes appeared next, staring wildly around until he couldn't hold on any longer and he slid back down out of sight.