Adam's POV
The pounding in my head was bad, but it wasn't as bad as looking around and knowing that I should recognise where I was and who was around me but just... not. It was like a huge blackhole in the back of my head that was continuously sucking my information and memories away and occasionally, I'd get a fragment of memory, barely managing to hold onto it before it vanished again.

For the first few hours, there was just the low, constant terror of something being horribly, horribly wrong. The terror of being in a place that I knew but didn't remember, with people I recognised but didn't recall, with names that were so familiar yet completely alien. I felt like I was bordering on out-right panic, but I knew I was home at the same time. Alesa stayed beside me the whole time; her mere presence was enough to calm me down. I didn't remember everything or even a lot about her, or about... anything else really, but just seeing her made me feel better, and just holding her hand made me feel safer.

It took a while for me to calm down enough to be able to function properly, and by then I was starving. Ty had dropped in in the morning and although he had to go out for work, he came back for lunch and he and Alesa took me out to the hot dog place. It was the smell that reminded me of it because wow, that place smelled really good. And the food was even better.

"Slow down Adam, you're gonna choke at this rate," Ty chuckled after we had gotten our orders.

I swallowed the half of the hotdog I had taken a bite out of. "Sorry," I muttered, keeping my eyes down on my food. I felt like I hadn't eaten for months, which I guess was true. I hadn't needed to eat as a virus.

Ty and Alesa were quiet for a moment, then the former slid over his plate to me with his spare chips. I glanced up at him, a sideways smile on my face that he returned, and I knew that I had my best friend back.

But even that was blurry at the edges, like a smudged photograph. The one thing that was clear in my head - maybe the only thing - was that I was a virus. Sure, I knew somewhere that I had been a Glitch beforehand, but the fact that I was a virus somehow seemed more real. More important.

And that made my skin crawl as I sat in the break room with the rest of the Glitches, all seated in a rough semi-circle. Because although I had fleeting memories of sitting here as a Glitch and being one of them, I felt like I was in enemy territory, that the best thing to do was to get the hell out of here and get back into the mainframes, and maybe take out a few of them on the way. And it was worse when everyone's faces were vaguely familiar, but I couldn't put memories to the names.

Jason leaned forward a little. I looked down to avoid his eyes. "I know your memories probably aren't the greatest, but what do you remember?"

I frowned a little as I thought, but my mind just stayed blank and I huffed. "I don't know," I muttered, more annoyed with myself than anything. "When I try to think about my memories, I come up empty. There's just nothing there. But random things just keep popping up as I go along. Like... like that sandwich store on the corner of the block has half price sandwiches on the first Monday of every month."

"Actually it's Fridays now, they changed it," Jerome informed me.

I felt horribly offended by the news and I guess it showed on my face because a few of them chuckled. It made me relax a little. I glanced back at Jason. "If you ask me specific questions, that might help. With my memories."

Jason nodded a little, glancing around at the others as if sharing some sort of knowing look that didn't include me. "We know that the viruses are planning something, probably some sort of attack," he said. "Do you know anything about it?"

I did. As soon as he mentioned it, information leapt into my mind with much greater ease than my other memories. I instantly knew that I wasn't supposed to tell them... But they were my friends, and I had trusted them in the past, so I nodded.

"What are they planning Adam?" Mitch asked.

I took a breath before replying. "They're going to take down all of the servers in every city on the whole planet, once and for all. One huge coordinated attack. Designed so that the Glitches won't be able to fight them all off at once."

The room was dead silent, which didn't exactly make me feel any better. I stared at the floor next to my feet and realised that my dark grey shoes had white highlights on them, which were cool but I kinda wished I had my old red sneakers back.

"How is it going to work?" Ian asked. "How are they going to coordinate it?"

"Some viruses have been brought into the real world and placed in cities all across the globe," I said, swallowing down the urge to stop talking. "At the signal in two days, they will put in the right barriers, links and bugs to allow the viruses to access any server, anywhere. No matter what kind of security it has."

"Who are the viruses in the real world?"

"I don't know who they are specifically, but they're viruses that were Glitches, but have been rebooted. Proper viruses can't come into the real world, they're pure code. But Glitches rebooted as viruses are already part human. They're everywhere. More than you know."

"How do we stop it Adam," Ty asked after a moment.

I shook my head. "You can't. It's designed so that it's unable to be stopped."

"There's got to be a way-"

"You can't stop it," I repeated, struggling to keep myself from yelling. "How are you going to protect every single mainframe at once? Every time you try to repair a firewall, there will be viruses tearing it down. We- They will be destroying every file faster than you can destroy u- them. Every virus ever created will attack in a single coordinated mass. You won't be able to stop us- it- whatever!"

They were silent again, which gave me the chance to unclench my fists and take a few breaths to try to calm myself down. Everything I knew was telling me to not trust these Glitches and especially not to tell them about this plan. My heart was telling me that if I couldn't trust them, then there was no one I could trust. I could feel Alesa watching me but I didn't raise my eyes up from the floor.

"How do you know the virus' plan?" I heard Ty ask. I felt guilty knowing that the wary understone in his voice was aimed at me.

"We all heard it," I muttered. "The orders came from Herobrine himself."

I glanced up enough to see Jin frown. "Herobrine? Who's he?"

"We don't know," I muttered. "He's not a virus but he's... not human either. He's the one who creates us, who gives us our orders, who sends us to attack the mainframes. He- He showed us-" I cut myself off quickly. That I couldn't say. "He tells us what to do; he reboots the Glitches."

"Was he the one who brought these Glitches into the real world?" Ian asked.

I shrugged. "Probably."

They started trading ideas off each other, wondering if they could find out where Herobrine was and who he was, the possibility of finding him before he could give the signal for the attack, ways to contact other cities to try and prevent the attack. I zoned out. I knew that they couldn't find Herobrine. Not even the viruses knew where he was, or who he was, or what he looked like. And if we didn't know anything about him when we all knew about him, then there was no way that they could.

"Hey, are you okay?"

Alesa's quiet voice jerked me out of my own head and I glanced around, seeing the empty room. "Where'd the others go?"

"They left to go home. You looked like you were thinking pretty hard, they didn't want to disturb you. Or make things harder for you." She tilted her head a little. "What were you thinking about?"

I shook my head a little and sighed. "Honestly... I don't know what's going through my head right now."

She gave me a small, slightly sad smile and gently squeezed my arm, as if she knew what this felt like. Which I guess she did, really. I mean, she was a virus too. She held out her hand, offering me a simple metallic bracelet that had a nametag-esque plate on it.

"Just a temporary," she explained. "To help you get in and out of the mainframes."

I slowly took it and clasped it on my wrist. I noticed that she still wore my amulet around her neck; I had slipped it secretly over when the mainframe was collapsing around us, because she meant more to me than anything else.

She squeezed my hand. "Let's go."

"Where?" I asked as we stood up.

She gave me another smile. "Home."