The next few days were pretty mundane. There weren't any more accidents in the Simulation anymore, although I started staying away from Xavier most of the time. Why would he be there in the Simulation room? You couldn't enter the Simulation room anyway unless you were at least fifteen.

I guess he just got special permission to see if I was okay, but it still makes me suspicious because none of the instructors I asked said they let him in. Either or, the instructors are trying to see what went wrong in the Simulation that day and couldn't pick up any traces of getting hacked. So far, I've just concluded that Xavier was trying to see if I was okay. What other reason would there be? He doesn't have anything against me.

And so day went after day, and those days turned into weeks, and I practically forgot about that incident, but I knew that somewhere, stored in my brain, that memory would still haunt my dreams.

Little did I know that things would only get worse slowly from there.

*     *     *

I knew something was amiss on September 12th in the cafeteria when I found a slip of paper in my (I don't really know what's in it) soup.

Once again, I made sure that Xavier wasn't watching when I wadded my fingers through the peas, (at least I think it was peas), and mush, (at least I'm sure about that), trying to fish out the other half of the note that was sunken into the soup.  I was just about to dry and unfold it when I caught Xavier glancing over at me.

"What?"

"What's that?" Xavier asks, his eyes still trained on the note I have in my fingers.

I almost say 'none of your business', but at the last moment, switch my answer to: "I'm not sure myself."

"Mm-hm," Xavier says, clearly unconvinced. Well, there goes trying to keep him out of suspicion. Time for plan B.

"It looks like a note," Xavier goes on, looking me in the eye for once. "Making any new friends, lately?"

"I've got you and Jinks. That's plenty already." 

Okay, that was a pretty sucky attempt at buttering this guy up.

"You and Jinks have been passing notes to each other?" Xavier presses on. "Funny - he's right next to you, you know. But I get it. Passing notes is cool. No problem."

I try and fail, to keep the nervousness out of my voice. Jinks is next to me and next to Jinks is one of his friends and finally Xavier. I'm sitting on the edge and trying to keep my investigation on how the Simulation went crazy that day a secret is also on the edge along with me.

At last, I mutter: "Yeah, sure."

"You haven't been talking to me much lately either."

I curse under my breath. "It's schoolwork. I've been pretty busy."

"Yes, but now? We're in a cafeteria, Tom. This is break time."

"Well, I need some time alone."

Xavier nods as if he understands, but his eyes give it away. He doesn't believe me one bit. 

"So... when school's over, maybe we can go into the Simulation together? You know, plug ourselves into a shooting game and blast some aliens?"

"I don't play Simulation games."

"You should some time. By the way, when does school end for you guys?"

Finally, something that Xavier doesn't know. I answer matter-of-factly: "The school year ends in December but there isn't a break in between. You just switch from the first year to the second year to the third year, although sometime's you have a week to apply for your courses for year two."

"You think you could come to see me sometime during that week?"

What am I doing trying to tell the truth? Let's throw in some lies.

"Sure. Every day."

Xavier smiles. "I appreciate your enthusiasm."

I smile back and then wait for Xavier's attention to go somewhere else. I threw him off and switched the subject, ha! Maybe I should be a Head instead of a scientist...

I finish unfolding the note and read whatever mysterious secret it contains.

I really want a better grade. If you want me to tell you what I mean, meet me at the Simulation room while everybody flees outside.

Chet

What was that supposed to mean?

As if on cue, the Walking Corpse alarm shrieked its shriek of death. Remember what I told you about bodies clogging the sewers and sometimes appearing out of the toilet? Yup, it's called the Walking Corpse phenomena. It wasn't a big deal at first - just a nuisance, but ever since the Green Plague broke out and people's insides slowly locked together because of it, everybody's been told to evacuate the building if there's a Walking Corpse because that corpse might have the Plague.

My first instinct was to run along with the others, who were dashing towards the exit of the cafeteria, but then it occurred to me that Chet, in all his braininess and geekiness, was probably behind all this madness.

So instead, I ran the other way, trying my best to ignore all the looks the people around me were giving me. I could just hear what they were thinking in their heads - Is he crazy? He's going to kill himself! What is he doing?

By the time I dashed down the stairs and weaved my way into the Simulation room, the instructors were finished escorting all the panicked people out of the Refuge. I wondered if there was actually a Walking Corpse going on right now, and Chet had just signed both of our death contracts.

Now I had this itching, conflicting feeling to go to the bathroom and see if there really was an eyeball floating in the sink or a leg sticking out of the shower sewer grate. Part of me says: YES! DO THAT SO IF THERE REALLY IS A WALKING CORPSE, YOU CAN RUN FOR YOUR LIFE! Another part speaks common sense - IF THERE REALLY IS A WALKING CORPSE, YOU'RE ALREADY GOING TO GET THE GREEN PLAGUE!

The latter won, and I rushed into the Simulation room to find an overly eager Chet grinning at me.

"What are you-" I started, but he stopped me in midsentence to show me a piece of paper that he snatched from the staff room.

"Our grades," Chet began, gesturing to the paper, "Have just gone down the toilet."

"Along with the corpses and dead bodies?" I joked, but Chet's expression stays exactly the same.

"Those two mean the same thing, just for the record. And... like I said, if we don't do something fast, our grades are going to get us Outcasted from the refuge."

"Wait, what?" I blurted out, walking closer to Chet and looking at the paper. "Hey, that's from the staff room. How did you-"

"I have my ways," Chet answered mysteriously. "The staff have to go to the cafeteria to get their food. Between going in and out, there's about a five-to-ten minute break. Enough to let me peek at our grades."

I nod, trying not to think about what else Chet knew, and then looked at the paper.

"Skip the first two people," Chet suggested, his mood suddenly lightened. "Our grades are the only ones that are important at the moment."

Sheesh, Chet was sort of selfish, I guess.

YEAR ONE GRADE - THOMAS DALE, 15, MALE, NO SPECIAL REQUIREMENTS, PERFECT HEALTH

Well, I wouldn't say perfect health, but as long as I'm not sick or dying, I suppose that I'm fine.

SCIENTIST COURSE (YEAR ONE) - 97%

SCOUT COURSE (YEAR ONE) - 54%

I blinked. 54 percent... I wasn't failing, but I was definitely one of the people at the bottom of the courses. 

"See what I mean?" Chet says, taking back the piece of paper. "Even if we score perfects on the other courses, this course is going to drag us down a lot, and from what I can tell, both of us have horrible grades in some areas. See, come and look for yourself."

Chet handed the piece of paper back to me. I read what was on my grades first, partially because I cared more about them than Chet's, (we're all selfish, aren't we?), and partially because I was above him on the list.

INVESTIGATOR COURSE (YEAR ONE) - 100%

PLANKWALKER COURSE (YEAR ONE) - 76%

VETERANS

VETERAN JOBS (YEAR ONE) - 84%

VETERAN SAFETY (YEAR ONE) - 89%

VETERAN CHARACTER (YEAR ONE) - 83%

HEADS

MAKING DECISIONS (YEAR ONE) - 93%

NEGOTIATING (YEAR ONE) - 87%

INFORMATION AND KNOWLEDGE (YEAR ONE) - 96%

GEOGRAPHY, DISASTERS, OTHER (YEAR ONE) - 82%

OTHER NOTES:

SCOUTING SIMULATION 04 (ACID RAIN SAMPLE) BELIEVED TO BE TAMPERED WITH - FOUND NO TRACES, STUDENT THUS FAILED TASK

Chet's scores were pretty much the same, although his physical task scores were slightly lower and his knowledge task scores slightly higher. When I was done and gave the paper back to him, he was clearly upset at seeing his grades again.

"I don't even want to have a chance of being an Outcast," Chet said as he refolded his find and put it into his pocket. "That's why I need your help to hack into the Simulation."

Of all the things I was expecting Chet to say, this was definitely not one of them.

"Why do you need me?" I asked, shuddering at the thought of going back into that virtual hell again.

"I don't know really," Chet replied, fiddling with his fingers. "I guess I was kind of nervous about doing this myself. And besides, two heads are better than one. And if somebody needs to go into the Simulation, another has to watch."

"You're going into the Simulation," I instantly said.

Chet nodded. "Got it. Plus, who knows, maybe I need another person for this job. You're a bright guy, Tom. I was thinking that if I was to hack into the Simulation, maybe I would need two computers to test it. I'm actually not sure now... I didn't think a lot about it before."

Great. Chet is definitely going to get us all killed.

"I'm in," I suddenly said, not even knowing why I agreed. Why did I agree? The thrill of doing something crazy like this? The ambition to get my grades back? "Just one condition."

"Shoot."

"Don't call me Tom anymore." And Chet grins.

"Got it, Thomas."

"Let's get going already, shall we? I can't wait to hack into the Simulation code. Maybe I should make a hobby out of it."

"I love your sarcasm," Chet says, walking over to the nearest computer. I follow him.

"You really do get fussy over schoolwork, don't you?"

Chet shrugs and boots up the laptop. "I guess. Usually, I'm not in that serious mood."

"Would you kill for a perfect grade?" I ask, trying to keep a straight face.

Chet looks at me like I'm crazy.

"Kidding. Come on, this computer is slooooow."

"That's because I haven't pressed anything yet," Chet says with an impressive eye roll. "So far, it's just a screen displaying all the options of the things we can plug ourselves into. Arcade games, educational activities, other..."

"Click on educational games," I suggest. "Not like getting virtual-killed was any fun, though."

Chet snorts. "Virtual-killed. I like that word."

"Just click on it for goodness sake."

Chet complies, and we're almost instantly brought onto another screen featuring row after row of file names. 

"Click on 'scouts'," I suggest again.

"How about this?" Chet offers. "You tell me what to do, and I do it."

"So in other words, you don't do any work."

"Never mind, then."

Chet clicks on scouts and the first file name that pops up on the third screen is - guess what? - the acid sample test.

"What now?" I ask, and in response, Chet right-clicks over the acid sample test file.

"I'm guessing we press 'edit'?"

I shrug. "Sure."

The next screen has a black background and only says two words:

ENTER PASSWORD.

And then underneath, a white box with the line-thingy where you type the password.

"Looks like we'll have to bypass this," Chet says, grinning from ear to ear now. "Hold on... lemme try this way..."

Chet right-clicks again and presses on the INSPECT option.

Two red words instantly flash on the screen.

ACCESS DENIED.

"Crap," Chet mutters and then starts clicking on another file and a search engine, typing in keywords that I don't understand. "This may take a while..."

After several minutes, we were stuck with the same two annoying red words.

ACCESS DENIED.

Chet swears under his breath. "If I can hack into the admin account and then gain control of the password..."

ACCESS DENIED.

"Maybe if I can hook a virus onto this thing..."

ACCESS DENIED.

"If this thing would just let me in!"

REQUEST TIMED OUT.

"Arghhhhhhhh!!!!!" Chet screams, kicking the computer. "Let's find another one."

"Actually, I think I know the password to the Simulation," I suddenly recalled when we shuffled to the next computer on the left.

Chet groaned. "You could've told me that earlier, you know. Would've saved us a computer-kicking."

I shrugged. "At least we can get in now."

I could tell that Chet wanted to roll his eyes around his head, but instead, he just plopped down into another chair and danced his fingers above the keys until we were finally on the screen that said ENTER PASSWORD.

"So, what is it?" Chet asked, and although it was a harmless question, I had the feeling that he was pointing a gun at my head.

It took a while, but finally, I recited: "A, L, R, V, R, C, C."

Chet typed each of the letters in after I said it. At last, there was a moment of silence as the computer scanned the password, and finally, the moment of truth.

ACCESS ALLOWED.

WELCOME, GUEST USER.

FILE: ACID_SAMPLE_SCOUTINGTEST

PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT ALL EDITS AND SEARCH HISTORY WILL BE RECORDED WHETHER OR NOT YOU ARE A GUEST USER. THIS FILE IS PROTECTED BY ANTIVIRUSES AND FIREWALLS.

"Golly, that actually worked," Chet murmured, reading what was on the screen. "How do you remember the password to this exact file? It had to be like two months ago when we did this."

I shrugged, still surprised that Chet used the word 'Golly'. Seriously, isn't that what parrots say in cartoons? 'Golly-gee willikers!'

Okay, maybe I'm just being weird here.

"I have a severe case of remember-the-dumbest-things-and-forget-the-important-ones," I finally answer, smiling. "It's a common disease."

Chet snorts. "Nice. Now, let's see what this Simulation code holds for us..."

"What exactly are you planning to do?" I said uneasily, eying the SEARCH HISTORY WILL BE RECORDED warning.

"Oh, I'll be looking at the history of the Simulation code, to see if anything's changed. I'm sure they fixed the bug by now, so there's no use looking at the actual computer programming. But if all the edits are permanently stored in here..."

I ahhhed in understanding. "How are we going to get into the code history? Oh wait, there's a button right there that says that."

Chet clicks on the button in the right corner, but instead of instantly flicking to another screen like the past ones did, the arrow on the screen turns into one of those blue loading circles, and after a while, it finally, (but still laggily), moves on to the history.

"Try August," I suggested.

"What do you-" But then I suppose Chet understood what I meant and scrolled all the way down to the August history.

"Only two edits," he muttered, clicking on the first one. "This one was edited on August 23rd, just a while before we did the scouting test. The instructors test-ran it and, from the looks of it, they decided it was too hard with the 'creatures' so they removed it from the code."

"How do you know that they thought it was too hard?" I asked, still only halfway through reading the history.

"It says right here under all the edits," Chet pointed out, moving his mouse arrow to the bottom. "'August 23rd - Removed creatures, lowered difficulty'."

I nodded. "So then the other edit..."

Chet clicked on it and then gasped. 

"It's on the day of the test, Thomas."

I read the edits, but it was actually only one edit. One major edit. One fatal edit.

AUG. 27 - PROTECTIONSUIT>ACIDRAIN=(null)

-GUEST USER-

"Well, poop," Chet muttered, rereading the edit. "We don't know who did it, but we know that we were hacked."

"But how actually did the instructors not find this?" I asked, knowing that Chet didn't know the answer, but still befuddled at the confusing contradiction that I was now facing. The instructors knew their way around the Simulation code better than us, yet they couldn't find it right in front of them. Why?

Another question dawned on me. Something that I hoped Chet did know the answer to.

"Chet?" I asked, breaking him out of his thoughts.

"Hm?"

"When you set off the Walking Corpse alarm... do you think the people are going to come back?"

Chet gulped, thought about it, and then smiled nervously. 

"Oops?"