Alesa's POV
Adam was quiet as we left the library and took the busy, shop-lined streets to the Sky Tower to have some late lunch. His eyes kept darting around the crowds, noticing everyone and everything, and he didn't begin to relax until we had stepped inside the elevator and the steel doors had closed behind us.

"Checking to see if we were followed?" I guessed as he let out a deep breath.

He smiled at me a little sheepishly. "Yeah. We weren't though."

Yet he still seemed to be distracted at lunch, and though I could tell that he was trying his best to keep up the conversation, his focus kept drifting away and after a few tries to refocus him, I let him think, staring out the huge glass walls at the city below. His expression, for the most part, was impassive and distant, but every now and then, I caught a flash of anger.

After the meal, we wandered around the city some more, ducking in and out of shops and art museums at random, neither of us realising how late it was getting until the stars were out in force. Actually, Adam wasn't aware enough to realise the time; he was constantly zoned out, accidentally bumping into people several times and he would have bumped into more if I hadn't started to pull him out of people's way.

I held tight onto his hand as we walked home, taking the lamp-lit streets that were still slightly crowded as the city's nightlife appeared. We followed the trail of lights across a smaller road and into the park near our apartment, the small splashes of the fountain reaching us. I walked next to Adam as we started down the simple paths, his feet dragging.

"Hey," I said quietly, coming to a stop and gently forcing him to stop as well. "What's wrong?"

He started a little as if broken out of his trail of thought yet again, but he shook his head. "It's nothing," he mumbled, looking away.

I put both my hands on his face, making him look at my one normal, one coded eyes, my voice gentle. "Adam, you can tell me. I'm a virus too, remember? We're in this together."

He stared back with his miss-matched eyes, a few spurts of red code flashing in one eye before he gave a heavy sigh, gently pushing down my hands from his face. I thought that meant that he wasn't going to tell me. But then he did.

"Just look around Alesa," he said quietly, his tone the most defeated I've ever heard it. "Really look. Look at us, look at everyone else here, look at the buildings and the signs, just look."

I looked around. There were a few people in the park with us even at this late hour, sitting on chairs or late-night walking their dogs. I glanced back at Adam and gave him the tiniest of shrugs, showing that I didn't understand.

"People, Alesa. Look at what they're doing. Everyone we've met all day, everyone who bumped into me, the people who were at lunch with us, the people at the harbour, all of them. Didn't you see?"

"What was I supposed to see?" I asked, my confusion showing.

"Technology, Alesa. Do you remember a single person who didn't look at their phone, or have headphones on? Did you see a single person who was looking at the world around them, just taking the time to enjoy it? To be part of it? To be a part of others?"

I hesitated, but I knew the answer without needing to recall the day. Everyone at the harbour either ran with headphones or were taking calls or fiddling on their phone. The people who walked down the streets with us or waiting in the shops were the same, lost in their own reality. The library, though we were there for a short time, had many people working away at laptops, and very few reading the wealth of books present. At the Sky Tower, some people were talking with each other, but all with their phones right there beside their hands, while others ignored their dining partner all together. Even looking around the park now, I could see that it was the same story. Nearly everyone here had headphones in, and everyone had a phone.

Adam's eyes had a sort of desperate plea in them when I looked back at him. "Don't you see?" he asked, taking my hands in his. "People are dependant on technology Alesa. They can't interact with others without it, even those closest to them. People can't live without technology anymore. The world's not supposed to be this way. Humans are ruled by emotion, it's how we are, how we function, how we live. Even as a virus, I was still driven by emotion, that's why I couldn't attack you. But technology removes an important part of that emotion. We've forgotten how to interact with each other face to face. People don't want to be around other people anymore, that's easy to see with the whole online shopping and tap payments."

I opened my mouth to say something, but no words came to mind, because he had a point. A very good point.

"Information and data are more secure than they've ever been," Adam continued. "People are more secure than they've ever been, but they're also more terrified than ever before. There's no peace, there's no comfort, there's only the constant pressure of worrying if what you have will be taken away, constant information being shoved in your face whether you like it or not. People are connected and secure but they're not happy. The world is slowly dying Alesa, and no one cares."

"N-No," I said, finally finding my voice. "I mean, you're right, people do use technology a lot, but we're more connected than we ever were Adam! We can talk to people on the other side of the world and understand people where we couldn't before. A-And people are raising awareness for the damage done to the world, we-"

"But is anyone doing anything about it?" Adam interrupted. "Do people do anything other than send on the message and then continue to live the same way?"

I dropped my eyes from his intense gaze.

"Alesa."

His tone was gentle, so gentle that I had to look up at him again to make sure that it was him who had spoken.

"This is why the viruses exist," he said quietly, like he was worried that we would be overheard. "This is their - our - goal. Herobrine saw how technology was slowly destroying the world, and how it was damaging people in the process. He told us that it wasn't supposed to be this way. People aren't supposed to be this way. We destroy the mainframes and files and data in the hopes that people will stop relying on them. We don't do what we do to hurt humanity, but to try and save it. We want all the mainframes, every server, to be destroyed for good because of that. So that people can interact more. So that people will care. So that they can finally reach out and enjoy the world personally instead of through a screen."

I shake my head a little. I felt a sinking feeling in my chest as the foundation of everything I believed and worked and fought for was shaken. But there was the sensation that deep down, I had already known everything that Adam was saying. That even before I had fallen into cyberspace and become a virus, I had thought that something was wrong with how the world functioned. That what I was hearing was only confirming my fears.

"It might not be the way the world was meant to work, with humanity relying on technology," I said slowly, "but that's the way things are. If the files and data are destroyed, then people's whole lives, everything they've worked for... it's all going to disappear. Our world would stop functioning-"

"But if we destroy it now then at least the world gets a chance to fix itself," Adam insisted. "Look; the viruses will attack soon, maybe as soon as tomorrow. If they are the ones to destroy the mainframes, then everything will go to hell. Glitches will be hurt or die trying to fight them, and you know what a few viruses can do to a computer. Times that by a hundred or a thousand and-"

"If one virus can make a computer send sparks, then hundreds could cause fires," I muttered quietly. "But what are we supposed to do about that Adam? Alright, so you're right. The viruses are right. The world is not supposed to run on technology, but what are we supposed to do about it? We can't stop the attack."

He took a step closer to me and lowered his voice even more. "We're Glitches Alesa. It's our job to protect humanity." He gave me a crooked smile. "But we're also viruses. We can destroy mainframes. We can jump through cyberspace and set off a controlled destruction of every mainframe, the two of us. We can take down the mainframes in a way that no Glitches are hurt and no damage is done to the real world. We could do it."

I opened and closed my mouth for a moment. "T-There are thousands upon thousands of mainframes-"

"We've got time!" Adam insisted. "We can travel faster than a byte of information, nearly at the speed of light. I've spent a month in cyberspace, I know the tunnels and the shortcuts, and thanks to that and my old conversations with Jason and Jin, I know how the mainframes are connected to cyberspace. We wouldn't have to destroy every bit of data, just the ones that tie the server to cyberspace. That would destroy it just as completely as wanton destruction."

I looked at his eyes that were staring into mine with an urgency that I hadn't seen from him before. "Is this the virus speaking, or the human you?" I asked gently.

"Both. It's the information I know as a virus, but I believe it because I'm human. Alesa, I've..." he broke his gaze and looked around the now empty park. "All today I've been trying to figure out whether my belief as a Glitch or my knowledge as a virus was more important. But I can't protect the systems or even stand by and watch when I know what it's doing to humanity. The viruses can see it because they're not human. They're not driven by emotion, and they have no desire other than what is coded into them. I think that makes them able to see what we can't as humans. It helps them to see the truth."

I took in a deep breath, then let it out, then took in another one before I nodded. "Alright. A controlled destruction."

He smiled and without warning, hugged me tight. I returned it for a moment before stepping back, taking his hand. "But we gotta be quick."

Ty's POV
I wheeled my chair closer to Jason as he typed away on his laptop at the desk, researching at my request after my own browsing came up empty. If there was anything on the internet about memory loss and how that connected to code, Jason would find it.

"I'm guessing you're asking me to search this to help Adam?" Jason asked with a raised eyebrow, not taking his eyes off of his screen as he scrolled rapidly through.

"Yeah," I admitted. "I mean, he's got some of his memories but I'm wondering if there's a way to help him recall them faster, you know? And I'm thinking that if the rebooting process or whatever it was took away his memories or locked them away, then figuring out how that works is the first step to helping him get them back."

"Ah, right," Jason said with a nod, changing a few keywords in his search bar. "So your one day off was spent researching then?"

"Pretty much."

"What a boring life," he muttered.

I rolled my eyes as Jason's laptop screen suddenly went black. He frowned and tapped at a few keys, muttering to himself as he turned it off and turned it back on. The screen refused to turn back on and he hissed, fruitlessly trying to type.

"Uhhh... you okay?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"My laptop's just died," he answered. "Look, the power light is on but it's just not turning on. And it's pretty new, so I don't get why-"

A chorus of shouts and confused swearing erupted from the main control room and Jason and I glanced at each other before rushing in there. The technicians at the desks were taking off their headsets, tapping at their keyboards as their screens stayed a dark black. Ian and Quentin were in the room too, blinking as if surprised to be there.

"What happened?" Jason asked, running around to the computers.

"They just shut off!" a guy with bright red hair and a gold necklace said. "One moment fine, the next, gone!"

"Was that why we were just kicked from the mainframe?" Quentin asked, rubbing his head.

"Didn't feel like the Extractor," Ian muttered, stretching his back. "Just felt like a good kick to the arse."

Jason fished his phone out and went to call someone, only his phone was displaying the same black screen as the computers and the laptop. A quick glance told me that my phone was the same, as was everyone else's.

"Great," Jason said, throwing his hands in the air. "So the mainframe has just died, both our own and apparently the entire phone network and internet, which means that we can't contact anyone, so we're basically screwed."

I don't know why, but my mind instantly jumped to Adam and Alesa. Maybe it was just because I had met them today and Jason and I had just been researching a way to help Adam, but for some reason, something about this made me instantly suspect their involvement. "No mainframes means there's no viruses," I said slowly, glancing around the room. "No viruses means that there's not going to be that big doomsday attack."

"No mainframes mean no data," Ian pointed out. "No files, no information, nothing. Everyone's information, gone."

"Well if it's a mainframe issue, then maybe we're not the only ones," I pointed out. "Let's check around the city, check on the Sparklez Tech servers and the city mainframe. If they're down too, then we can contact other cities and see what's going on."

"How are we going to contact the cities? All the phone lines are down," the same red-headed man from earlier said.

"There's such thing as a letter," Quentin said with a raised eyebrow and a slight smirk. "We could go the old caveman route."

Jason gave a heavy sigh and ran a hand through his hair. "Alright, let's get going, we gotta figure out what's going on, and fast."

Deep in cyberspace, far away from the real world, two viruses in pure coded form darted around nearly too fast to track, swirling around each other, darting up through different tunnels and holes to break apart lines and lines of code as they carefully and deliberately destroyed the mainframes above, carefully separating the real world from cyberspace as they crossed the world in the span of minutes. No one interrupted their work, their coding allowing them to blend in as viruses.

Finally, as cyberspace filled up with confused but pleased viruses, there was only one connection left, the same one that the two had entered in. They charged through the port, appearing on the other side and reforming into their human forms.

"Would you like to do the honours?" Adam asked.

Alesa smiled at him, kissing his cheek. They both put a hand to their amulets, and when they were both sure that the other was ready, Alesa flung her chain at the connection, and the final mainframe was destroyed as the two returned to the safety of the real world.

*chants* One more chapter, one more chapter, one more chapter, one more chapter.