Alesa's POV
It was late at night. Probably too late to be awake and trying to solve a nearly impossible problem but that was what we were doing. Ian and Quentin, Mitch and Jerome, Ross and Barney, Jin and Jason, and Ty and I were lounging in the break room of the Glitch base, tired after a long day of fighting. The night shift team had already gotten work, which was usually our cue to go home, but there was no other time during the day that we could sit down and wrack our brains over the problem of how to get Adam back to normal.

Unfortunately, late at night is not the best of time to try and solve a problem. Jerome was close to falling asleep on a beanbag, Ross was already asleep on the couch, Ian, Mitch, Ty and Jason were flicking through their phones with half-closed eyes, Jin was trying to solve a rubix cube (I think he kept undoing every move he made), Quentin was staring at a page of the book he was reading while Barney was staring blankly at the roof, and I was thinking of that leftover lasagna in the fridge that I really wanted to eat.

"So remind me again," Ian said, locking his phone and slipping it into his coat pocket. "We can't separate Adam's coded half from the human half, and we can't uncorrupt the code."

"Uh huh," Jin said, not looking up from the rubix.

"And there's no way we can get around those two problems?"

"Nope."

"And you've been doing that wrong, you're supposed to turn the left face, not the right."

Jin froze, then quickly spun a few faces of the cube and came up with the white side completed. "Oh my goodness, you're kidding me! I've been doing this wrong my entire life," he half-shouted.

Ross jerked awake and upright. "Huh? What? What's happening?"

"Jin's life is a lie," Jerome sighed.

Most of us were too tired to chuckle. Ty and Mitch put their phones away, nearly simultaneously sighing as they leaned back in their chairs.

"Okay, so what about this," Ty said. "If Adam going into cyberspace somehow rebooted him as a virus, then why don't we just reboot him again?"

"Great, how?" Quentin asked, lowering his book a little (I think he had been on the same page for the last several minutes, but I couldn't really remember).

Ty shrugged. "Put him in the system? Then restart the system?"

"Nuh uh, too dangerous," Jason said, not looking up from his phone. "First off, when the system is restarted, everything gets dumped into cyberspace so that would include Adam. Secondly, assuming that the first one wasn't a problem, you guys would need to get out of the system before we restart it and in that time, Adam could destroy some important files or possibly hijack the system altogether, and that's not something we can afford."

"Besides, the guys are using the system now," Jin added, nodding his head to the door of the break room. "We shut it down, even just to restart it, and we could have a huge city-wide virus problem in seconds."

"But it could work, right?" I asked. "Rebooting him?"

Jin shrugged. "It could. Maybe."

We sank into silence again. At first, I was trying to think of a way to reboot Adam without putting the Glitch mainframe in danger, but soon my mind wandered back to my dinner. Maybe I should just leave and go home to eat and sleep.

"What if we just hit him really hard on the head?" Mitch asked suddenly, throwing his hands in the air.

He stared at us as we stared blankly back at him. He gave a shrug that also somehow incorporated a mexican wave of his arms. "I mean, it can't hurt, can it? Not like he could get any worse."

We stared at him for a little longer, then Jason clicked his phone off. "I can't believe I'm saying this, and it's probably just because I'm really tired, but that might actually work."

"Yeah, let's try it," Ian said with a nod.

"Now? Might as well," Barney shrugged.

We looked around at each other. Shrugged. Then stood up and headed to the locked vault room.

The door was still locked and the room beyond was silent, as usual. I peeked through the glass as I passed it but due to the split second I got to look, I couldn't see Adam. Mitch was rubbing his knuckles, no doubt ready to once again hit Adam, and Ty was giving him a highly concerned look. "Don't hit him too hard, cause the last thing we need is for him to get brain damage," he said warily.

Mitch puts his hands in the air. "I'll be careful, promise. Just tackle him and I'll sort it out."

Jerome turned the handle of the door, Barney helped pull it open-

Something burst out of the room, springing off the door and barging through us like a human cannon ball, missing me only because I was standing to the side and I spun around in time to see Adam disappearing down the hallway, sprinting for his freedom.

"Don't let him get to the elevator!" Jason yelled and we gave chase, splitting up along the hallway to catch him.

Barney, Jerome and I chased after Adam, trying to keep him in sight as he twisted around the corners, often pausing in the doorway of a room only to see that it was a deadend and running on, allowing us to slowly get closer and closer. Ty and Ian ran out of a corridor just in front of Adam but he didn't hesitate and with inhuman strength, jumped up and sprung off one of the walls, easily landing on the other side of the two and continuing to sprint.

How the heck can he do that? I asked myself as the five of us gave chase. Must be the virus code altering his body in the real world.

Oh wait.

I was a virus too.

I poured on the speed and the gap between me and Adam closed rapidly as I overtook the others and I came up beside him, sticking my leg out to trip him. His legs hit my shin and he stumbled, but unfortunately I did the same, and in the moment that I was recovering, I didn't see his foot flick out and kick me in the chest, just below the ribs. Even though the impact was reduced so that it didn't break my ribs, it was still enough to knock the wind out of me.

Wheezing, I fell behind the others, but I knew that Adam was close to the elevator and the stairs that ran beside it. I started trotting after them, a hand on my bruised chest, taking deep breaths and hoping that they-

Clang!

Something heavy hit the ground and I picked up the pace to turn the corner and reach the elevator hallway. Through the others, I could see that Adam was lying on the floor and Ross was lowering a stainless steel frypan that he had been holding up.

"Why do you have a frypan?" Ty asked, puffing. "We don't even have a stove in the kitchen!"

"I've been saving it for a moment like this!" Ross said.

Barney raised an eyebrow. "You've been savings it for when your Glitch friend turns into a virus and we captures him and he nearly escapes?"

Ross paused for a moment, then gave a resolute nod of his head. "Yes."

Mitch, Quentin, Jin and Jason turned the corner ahead of us and slowed down when they saw that Adam had been dealt with.

"You're late," Jerome called.

Jin waved a hand and bent over his knees. "Just go put him back in the room."

Ian and Ty obliged and Adam was propped up against the back corner of the empty space. While the others left to get some well-earned sleep, I stayed in the room, intending on waiting for Adam to wake up. Ty paused in the doorway after the others had gone.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" he asked, probably guessing what I was planning on doing. "It might not have worked..."

I shrugged a little. "I'll be fine," I promised.

He nodded a little, then waved his phone. "Call me if you need me. And when he wakes up."

I nodded and he left, shutting the door behind him but not locking it. So that I could get out if Adam attacked me. If this whole thing didn't work.

What if we couldn't save Adam? What if whatever rebooting did to you was irreversible. I mean, I knew that I couldn't get rid of the virus side to me, and I'm starting to suspect that I just got lucky when I was rebooted to be able to keep my emotions. But Adam didn't get lucky so if- if we couldn't reverse the virus side, if we couldn't fix him so that he could feel again... then what?

The thought that we might have to kill Adam wasn't a nice one to sleep on, but I drifted off before I had realised. Whatever sleep I did get was fitful and restless, and I woke up several times with my heart racing, only to realise that the room was dark and that Adam hadn't moved. I gave up on sleep at about four in the morning, and alternated between fiddling on my phone and pacing around the room, doing anything to keep me distracted from worrying over what would happen if we were wrong and Adam couldn't be fixed.

It was about two hours later that I was sitting beside Adam again, staring out the door in a half-asleep daze, feeling just about ready to try that whole sleep thing again when Adam stirred beside me. I was instantly alert, watching and not daring to hope as he sat up with a stifled groan, wincing and holding his head in his hand as he blinked blearily around the room.

I was frozen, I wasn't even sure if I was breathing when his head finally turned to me and he blinked, his eyes unfocused until they slowly, slowly cleared.

"Alesa?" he muttered.

I let go of a sob that I had been holding and I wrapped my arms around his shoulders, my eyes squeezed shut, feeling lighter than I had for weeks when his arm hesitantly returned the hug.

"Welcome back," I whispered in his ear.