SPECTRE

10| GATEWAY ERROR

Oh, no, no.

Trying not to breathe hard, I kept my heartbeat in check. I knew OPTIS, and any irregularities in my physical state would cause suspicion. And suspicious happenings were always investigated, which would mean near definite doom for me.

"Subject 000256, experimentation start."

Suddenly, my consciousness was jerked into another reality. A black space, filled with endless lines upon lines upon lines of glowing symbols, too far away for me to see clearly. Completely silent, but not quite at the same time, a small, muffled humming sound beneath the surface of this black space.

Like I was swimming, I pushed towards the lines of symbols, the blackness rippling past my skin like jelly, icy and thick.

I shivered, then moved closer and could barely hold in a gasp.

Infinite lines of letters and numbers, pulsing and speeding and moving. Infinite lines of them, glowing a beautiful green, forming what I had built my life upon.

I was seeing computer code.

I slowly reached out wondrously and touched a letter, thinking there would be no harm done. I was wrong, as I saw when the letter shattered into millions of fragments and glitched into nonexistence.

Immediately, like a domino effect, the entire line of code started flashing red and the line of code started to crumble slowly from the crack onwards.

"SPECTRE," I said desperately, hoping with all my heart that I still had the virus in the tech built into my suit. "Repair this!"

SPECTRE, shining blue, spilled out of my bracelet and leapt at the slowly dying line of code, jumping into the code, filling all the gaps and finally turning it green again.

A holoscreen popped up from the code, informing me that my tech suit was at 99% battery. It would charge by itself, but I hated waiting, even if it would only take a short time. I had to wait before doing anything else reckless, because when the battery went to 0%, the tech suit would reset, and SPECTRE would be destroyed. There could be no backups, and if SPECTRE is destroyed, all the codes and videos and cams it had covered up before would be recovered, exposing myself to the world.

SPECTRE's coding was flawless, but its container — my suit — was not.

As I drifted through the coding, I made sure not to touch anything else. Assuming that all the code was connected, if I even destroyed one letter of code, I would destroy the rest, and trap myself in this — this limbo — forever.

As quickly as I had been transported into the computer code, I was jerked back into my own consciousness.

I tried to sit up, but hit my head on an invisible barrier.

Oh, this was just fantastic. I was in a pod.

I swung out my fist, trying to break it, but the nanoglass just absorbed the impact, the punch sending a strange ripple through it.

Using the limited space between me and the barrier, I drew out the code from the barrier and sent SPECTRE into it to unlock the pod. It would take much longer than usual, since I was dealing with OPTIS, but as long as nobody came to check within ten minutes, I would be fine.

Agonizingly slowly, the blue lines of the virus that was SPECTRE replaced the green lines of the original code, merging with it as it went.

One minute. Two minutes. Four minutes. Nine minutes.

I watched the seconds blink by on the digital clock in-built in the wall, heart racing as I waited for SPECTRE to take over the final twenty lines of coding that was needed.

Just as SPECTRE was delving into the last two lines of code, I heard footsteps resounding from down the hallway outside.

No, no, no, I thought frantically. Not now.

As soon as SPECTRE had finished with the final number, the nanoglass retracted, and I stepped out, just as a guard came in.

"What the heck — "

She didn't get to say anything else, because I'd hit her in the head. Quickly, I put on her uniform and helmet which completely obscured my features, and tossed her into the pod, the nanoglass covering the pod a few seconds afterwards.

Her comm buzzed. "Parkes, come in! Status report!"

"All clear. Experiment safe," I said, my voice sounding strangely robotic as it escaped the helmet filter.

"Good, return to position at gate."

"Received."

I smirked as I went. They'd just handed me the perfect opportunity to escape.