MHG-V3-4 (Initial Draft)

Chapter 15 - war

**** (The attack begins)

Ken sat up on his matress, sleepless. Activating his holopane he looked at the time: 3am.

He was still sleeping her at Teruko's compound, not because it was no longer safe to return home, but because he was worried about Teuko, who had locked herself into a virtual room and refused to communicate with anyone. Ayaka had tried all she could to break in, but to no avail. Worried sick, Ken had been unable to sleep all night, and this for the second night in a row.

Suddenly the holopad in the room turned on and Ayaka stood there before him.

"Ah, you're awake?"

"Yes. Lights." At Ken's command the lighta in the room turned on. "What's up?"

"Teruko woke up." Ayaka said, although her face looked worried.

"Really? Can we talk to her now?"

Ayaka shook her head. "She's still ignoring all external input. But she's started doing things."

"Doing things?" Ken asked. "What things?"

"I don't know, its all encrypted, but there's a lot of network traffic at the moment."

Ken breathed out roughly. What was going on? Why was she behaving like this? Ken couldn't understand what could have pushed her over the edge like this and what she was planning to.

And then suddenly..

"Wait, I've got a message from.."

Ayaka's eyes went blank for a moment. When she came back, her eyes widened suddenly.

"Ken! We have to do something, quick. The compound is under attack?"

"Attack?" Ken said incrediously. "What do you mean?"

"Quick, come to the simulator room. You'll be of more use to me there than here."

"But.."

"There's no time." Ayaka warned. "We have to act quickly.

"Okay." Ken nodded and then jumped out of bed and ran out of the room and down the hall.

**** (teruko realises whats going on)

Teruko scanned the ten or so panels open in front of her. Streams of text scrolled rapidly across each one. To a normal human it would be an unfocusable mess of numbers and letters, but Teruko easily kept an eye each one, ensuring that her program was working as expected. She was in the middle of backing up her entire datacenter. Just in case.

Suddenly a dozen more panels appeared, overlapping the existing ones and flashing brightly. Teruko's eyes grew wide. Surely they weren't...

No, there was no mistake. Mark was worse than she had thought. Had sent a small army and had the entire compound surrounded. Ayaka's army was trying to hold them off but the attacking force was overwhelming. Teruko watched in horror as mortars shots were fired and the walls to the compound crumbled into a mess of broken concrete. This.. wasn't the way it was supposed to happen...

**** (the war)

Ken sat in the full body simulation chair and immediately he felt something like sleep overcome him. A second later, as if he had reached some kind of dream state, he was awake again, but this time in a virtual environment. Panels spread out in front of him and next to him sat Ayaka. This simulation room was similar to the one he had met Teruko in before. Everything in the background was an indiscriminate white colour. It was as of the two of them sat in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by computers.