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Burning. He was on fire, every sense filled with the roar and hiss of the fever that was rapidly consuming him. At the same time a tremendous lassitude filled every line of his code; he felt like he could sleep for a hundred hours, Game or no Game. Although his vision was blurring more he could hear Hack and Slash babbling at each other, a facile flow of agitated nonsense:
"We're gonna be eradi-erodi-" "Rodified?" "Radicated!" "Radicated?" "Offlined! Erased!" rising to a terrified stereo wail: "NULLIFIED!"
But the robots seemed to speaking at a tremendous distance, and therefore were unimportant. Megabyte sounded a lot closer, and thus captured more of Bob's fuzzy attention. The metal hand that had locked around his throat to lift him from the ground also helped: "Guardian! Get up! The User has entered the final level!"
Bob opened his mouth with no plan. What came out was: "Uh… huh?" Every part of him was burning: lips, tongue, lungs, belly, and especially his heart. He was dimly aware that the Game serpent which had scored a hit on his left foot, penetrating his sandal with dripping fangs, was lying dead beside his hand, but he was numb from the hips down and the static was claiming more of his format with every passing nano.
So tired. He started to close his eyes. Just a little nap, and then he'd —
Megabyte shook him so hard that his processor rattled in his head. "GUARDIAN!"
"Wha'?" He managed to focus his vision enough to glare blearily into the red-in-green eyes blazing into his face at close range.
"Pull yourself together!" A low animal growl with the rough edge of furious desperation infused his usually silken voice. "I can't do this myself — the portal includes an anti-viral protocol."
"Ha'… Sla'…"
"Oh, please." He leaned closer and pulled Bob forward several pixels, near enough now that Bob could almost taste the gleam of his silver teeth. "Now get up and get moving — or I'LL be nullified along with the rest of you!"
Bob nearly laughed aloud. What emerged with a breathless cough. He tried to retort: In case you haven't noticed, I've been poisoned, but this time he could produce no syllables at all.
Another set of cries from Hack and Slash: "Boss —" "The guy —" "He's at the —" and a mutual scream: "BOSS!"
"Yes, I can see that," Megabyte snarled, and turned his attention back to Bob again, the weight of his angry gaze palpable on Bob's face. For the first time it occurred to Bob that this might be The End: if the poison didn't crash him and the User didn't nullify them all, Megabyte might well decide to simply break his neck… and when those steel fingers tightened around his throat he felt a flare of white panic even hotter than the venom's kiss. He tried to fight back as Megabyte pinned him to the stone floor, to raise his hands and pry the virus's grip free, but he couldn't even manage that as Megabyte's other hand closed over the top of his head.
He's going to rip my — That was as far as Bob got before something even worse than the snake's poison rushed into him and hit his nervous system like a truck: green code, piercingly cold and raveningly incandescent at the same time, searing through his whole body — and far worse, into his mind.
He screamed then, arching up off the ground and kicking out with both feet, but he might as well have tried to get out from under an ABC using only his own mortal strength. Megabyte's energy was filling him to overflowing, engulfing him, conquering his senses, tearing at his —
No. Not tearing. Not destroying… or at least, not destroying him. Instead it attacked the venom's code and consumed it in virulent emerald flame, sweeping Bob's format clean of every trace of the lethal subroutine. He spasmed again from pure shock, his eyes wide open and staring up into the virus's face, which was suddenly crystal clear: every line, every contour, every detail of embossing on his indigo armour and every nuance of his arrogant expression flash-imprinted itself onto Bob's brain. Megabyte's code within him reached out to its source and opened a circuit, a circle, a —
//Guardian…//
In his mind, a voice that was dark and singing and savage and beautiful all at once, like a symphonic score in an alien musical language. His whole being moved toward it, blinded by amazement; only his Guardian protocols saved him from a headlong fall.
Stunned, he reeled back. [[That's impossible… you can't infect me…]]
//How true!// His mental laughter was even more compelling than the audible reality. Another wave of code washed through Bob's format and left him physically shaking, as that telepathic touch modulated itself to a virulent caress: //I can, however, establish a network link — and if we only had a little more time…//
The empathic undertone, a blade of white-hot lust that pierced to the heart, made Bob shudder with an entirely different quality of resistance — but then Megabyte was gone, leaving him empty and sweat-drenched and trembling in every dimension. He closed his eyes and tried to get his wildly spinning inner compass back under control, without much success.
"… and a modicum of privacy…" He released Bob's head and throat to take hold of his shoulders instead, rising from his kneeling position and pulling Bob to his feet at the same time. Still mentally reeling, Bob barely managed not to land on the ground again face-first when the virus let go of him and stepped back, planting his fists on his hips and fixing Bob with an imperious glare. "But right now, you have a User to defeat!"
"Y—" He gave his head a shake and ran an auto-scan: his body was as fit as it had ever been, strong and sure and ready for anything, and time was running out. "Right! Stay here, and keep those hoplites off my tail!"
"Why certainly," Megabyte purred in a way that made Bob's skin flush all over again. He turned and sprinted for the portal, aware of Hack and Slash's wondering gazes following him — and that although he'd been spared to fight another second something treacherous still lingered inside him, asleep for now, but awaiting only the right set of circumstances to awaken to new and terrible life.
THE END