We ran for a bit, and then Warren stopped by a wall. He took out a doorknob from his pocket and started screwing it into a hole in the wall I had not seen before. Looking closer, I realized what they had done.
They had taken out a doorknob and camouflaged a door. The door was nearly indistinguishable and all they had to do was take the doorknob, screw it in, open the door, and take the doorknob out.
Inside, what used to be a tiny storage room had shelves of books, a few laptops, some chargers, and a ton of chairs and beanbags.
"Welcome to our hideout!" Seth spread his arms out. Cindy entered behind me.
"Wow. That is some serious engineering." I said, astonished.
"Yeah. We did it late at night a year ago, and we keep all our stuff here." Warren grabbed his laptop and sat down. Cindy went over to a shelf and Seth sat down next to Warren.
I watched as Warren typed some code and some stuff, and then he hit a key labeled ctrl+alt and jabbed at D. An app opened up and a logo of a pile of coins with a dark figure looming behind it blinked onto the screen. I frowned. The logo was familiar. He brought up a few pie charts and started typing.
"What's that?" I asked. He looked up from his work.
"It's an app I designed. It was a game, but then a lot of people played and it's pretty cool. It's called-"
"-Zombies, Strongholds, and Loot!" I exclaimed. It was the game I had played earlier.
"Yeah. I'm sure you noticed Alina, the other sane zombie, and she took on my challenge that she could beat it. And only she could beat it. So I reconfigured the app from a platformer game into a Phantom Virus tracker." He showed me a map with dots all around, similar to the other one I had seen. "Here." He typed in a few things, then showed me a code. RenJNPR.
"That's the password for the website. Just type in Phantom Virus Tracker ZSL on the web and it should show up."
"Okay."
I took a spare laptop and followed his instructions. The map displayed on the screen, and I zoomed in to take a look at my Stronghold. Once again, there was my dot, with another that was around the same color. On the side, there was a menu. I clicked on an icon of a pie chart and some demographics showed. Now there were no dots, but countries were shaded depending on how many Phantoms were in each.
"How much time did you spend on this?" I asked.
"Half a week. I pulled two all-nighters and only went out for coffee and bathroom breaks." Warren said.
"It was quite the feat. We put it up on the Wall of Accomplishments." Cindy pointed at a wall with several certificates all over. As I looked closer, I saw the one Cindy had been pointing at.
They all looked official, but I saw some informal writing in there.
Congrats to Warren Humfrey for developing an app tracking Phantoms in three days, thirteen hours, and twenty-eight minutes.
There were a few others, but I didn't look at them and instead turned to the others.
"That is an awesome app."
After an hour or two, we stopped the laptops and started sneaking out. They invited me over for a slumber party, and I agreed. We spent all night discussing science and books, and also had a pillow fight with blankets and serious tactical strategizers. I was told to be handicapped so it was fair, so I only fought with one hand.
It was a fun night.
Author's note:
Yeah, I'm back from my trip. I know this chapter is short, but be patient.
YOU ARE READING
The Virus Within- Changing
Science FictionI will probably delete this story sometime soon. Maybe I won't. This was when I was young. It was a bad fanfic, at least by my standards. I do not want my legacy on the internet to be this. I might remake it, probably not. For new readers, this is a...
