System Failure (An Adesa Fanfic) [Originally by Littlewolf65]

Chapter 7

Sorry 'bout the break, I had to study for exams.

Quick recap of the last few chapters: Ty and Adam are just casually killing viruses in various computer systems when multiple viruses attack the city hall. Ty and Adam go in to help, Adam finding Alesa again. He hides her in the system to finish the fight and then offers for her to see the real world. She accepts.

Adam's POV
Most of the glitches had left when I opened my eyes, now back in the real world. Ty was leaning against the worn wooden doorframe, his foot tapping on the floor and his eyes watching me amusedly.

"Are we going?" he asked.

"One sec," I said, taking my phone out of my coat pocket.

Ty rolled his eyes and turned his head to watch the outside while I plugged my phone into one of the reception computers via a small cable that was in my pocket. The computers all looked no worse for wear, although the end one was smoking a little. Around the city hall, people were moving back to their computers to resume their work. With only a small portion of files destroyed, things should be running smoothly in an hour or so. My phone buzzed in my hand and I glanced down at it.

Download complete.

I quickly unplugged it and put it back in my coat pocket before joining Ty at the door. We both left the building, heading down the street at a leisurely walk.

"Back to Sparklez Tech then?" I asked.

Ty nodded and looked at his phone. "We've got time to do a few more jobs before our shift's done. That fight took a few hours."

"Time flies when you're fighting for your life."

Ty laughed and we both jogged back to Sparklez Tech. Many of viruses seemed to have participated in the attack on city hall, leaving less to cause chaos in the rest of the city and giving Ty and I fewer jobs for that day. At the end of our shift, Ty and I parted ways at the old fountain where we always met up.

"See you sometime this week?" Ty said, waving goodbye.

"Yeah. If not, see you at work next week." Glitches always spent two weeks saving our technological world from viruses and one week being a normal human being. There were three groups that rotated so that two groups were always on, ready for anything.

My apartment was two blocks away from the fountain in a small and not overly clean but neat complex. I took the stairs up to the third floor as it often took longer to wait for the lift and opened the door to home.

I hung my trench coat behind my door and went straight to my study, plugging my phone into my computer. I sat in my chair and rummaged through the drawers of my desk.

"I know it was here somewhere..." I muttered to myself.

My hand then closed around a semi-circular shape. It was a light pink gem on one side but the other held a partly-finished microchip. Every glitch was supposed to have a backup way to get into the mainframe if their primary way broke, but I had just never gotten around to finishing this backup amulet.

It took me longer than I would have liked to finish the gem and put it in the gold amulet case. I had to solder the remaining wires to the microchip and then I had to program it using a default system that all Jason had set up for all of us glitches. Finally, it was almost done. I glanced at my clock.

"Midnight already?" I muttered. "I really should get some sleep."

I opened up the text notes app on my computer and wrote a quick message that Alesa should be able to read, saying that I was going to sleep and I'd show her the real world tomorrow. She didn't write anything back, but the app did close for no apparent reason, so I assumed she saw it.

I was awake and dressed before my alarm went off the next morning. I always kept my amulet around my neck so that I didn't lose or forget it. I went to my study and grabbed the pink amulet off my desk, holding it tightly before pressing down on my purple gem, entering my computer's hard drive. The green coded world inside had several bright orbs which I knew to be the files on my computer and none of them seemed to be broken, which was a relief.

"Alesa!" I called.

"Hey."

I jumped and spun around, my hand automatically going to my sword but dropping from it just as quickly as I realised that it was the unique worm. She was grinning at me like she was inwardly laughing but tried to make a straight face as she apologised.

"I'm really bad at jumpscares, please don't do that again," I said.

She tilted her head. "You're scared of jumpscares and yet you willingly go into a mainframe where viruses can literally jump out from anywhere and kill you?"

"Yeah."

Alesa grinned again. I held out the pink amulet for her to take and she slowly did so, noting that it was the same as mine.

"It will help you get into the real world," I explained as she put it around her neck. "Don't ask me how it exactly works, I have no idea." I held out my hand to her. "You ready?"

She put her hand in mine and nodded. We both pressed down the gem in our amulet and left the hard drive. I felt her hand tighten on mine as the real world formed around us. Her eyes were wide as she looked around, her left eye a soft brown colour but the right a dark green full of coding. She let go of my hand as she turned around, getting a better look around my study.

"This is what the real world is like?" she asked quietly.

"This is nothing," I told her. "Outside is much better."

"Can you take me there?" Alesa asked instantly.

"Of course!" I said. "But you'll have to hide your right eye, it gives you away as a virus."

She quickly shifted her hair slightly so that it was mostly covering that eye. "Better?"

I grinned. "You look human. Come on, I'll show you the park."

Well, that was a bad chapter.

In my defence, this book has tantrums every time I try to write it.

Bai!