Anna stood in the middle of the street. The neon signs still blazed above her head. If she turned on the right settings she'd get all the ads flashing above her. Some appropriate for school-age children, others not so much. 

She was here to see her significant other, Darach. 

Darach had spent his life in the mainframe, he was born here, and he would... well he wouldn't die here but that didn't worry Anna. In the mainframe, she was young forever, even while her body started to wrinkle on the outside. Darach had no idea she was approaching her mid-forties and was a little overweight. She was a carefree teenager here. 

Some people started up relationships, cross-species they were called. It wasn't healthy but Anna had long ceased most of her human contact.

She waited. But there was no response from him. Just static where he should have responded.

But something was wrong. The throngs of visitors simply looked confused. 

She looked around trying to gather her wits. What was wrong?

"There's no AI here," a voice whispered.

She turned to the young man next to her. He looked like a bodybuilder but that meant nothing here. The odds were fairly good he was as old as she was, and possibly in worse shape. The bigger they were in cyberspace, the smaller they were in reality was how the saying went. He looked fantastic as far as avatars went.

She absentmindedly scratched a bed sore on her shoulder, that did not exist on her person inside the mainframe. "I can't reach Darach," she admitted out loud as she turned away from him. The bed sore itched more.

"Darach a friend of yours?" The man gave her a once-over, uncomfortable she shifted away.

"Something like that." 

Darach wasn't responding. No one was, it appeared.

Anna glanced up at the night sky and that's when she saw it. 

Lightning tore across the darkened sky, splitting it apart. But what appeared behind it was nothing, an infinite blackness that slowly seeped, and spread. The neon signs all changed in the blink of a human eye. 

Systems wipe imminent.

They flashed repeatedly as the horrible black nothingness swept across the sky.

Anna simply stood and watched it come as did many of the humans. No one knew what it was, someone screamed and a few winked out. But most stood mouths hanging open at the black maw bearing down at them.

"There's no AI here," the man repeated as he stared up at the boiling sky. That should have meant something to the viewers but most stared dumbfounded at the destruction coming their way.

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Caohdan and Tristin stood looking out at the doorway. The portal as it was known was teaming with AI, all stood solemnly at the door. Whatever Atticus had done, it had worked beautifully. Too beautifully, Tristin thought as he scanned their desperate faces.

Tristin leaned into Caohdan. "Will they all actually fit in there?"

Caohdan nodded but his face was creased, a sure sign that he wasn't as confident in his plan as he was ten minutes ago. He bent over the box again, checking and rechecking the codes.

Tristin felt the familiar ache in his back, a steady reminder that the chair he was using to get into the mainframe wasn't suited for the hump in his back. It was also a reminder that the situation was dire. He swallowed, his mouth suddenly feeling dry. He'd just witnessed people dying to enormous bots outside and here they were trying to get a bunch of AIs out of cyberspace. He had no idea what was going on or what he would find when he got out of the chair.

They were crazy.

And yet, as the AI watched from outside the door, he and Caohdan moved to create a doorway straight into the Legion box. The coding took longer than he would have liked and he kept expecting any second for the world to go dark around them. But still, they worked and the AI stared at them unmoving, completely silent, watching their progress. The box itself was nondescript, but building an access point was harder than it looked.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, Caohdan sat up. "It's ready," he whispered.

Tristin nodded. He glanced around and inhaled. "Should we wait for Atticus?"

Caohdan shook his head. " I have a second box for him just in case."

"Hurry," a voice whispered. Tristin glanced up. It was Gary. Gary of all AI was at the door, peering in. He kept glancing behind him and looking back. "It's starting."

Gary didn't have the confident protective look anymore. Tristin had never seen his AI guardian look so frightened. "Please," he added.

Before Tristin could question him further Caohdan stood up and opened the door wide.

Chaos exploded around them. The AI didn't just run in, there was no order, they flew in.

Whatever both boys were expecting this wasn't it. The steady flow of AI was a river, a torrent, and the bodies were no longer recognizable as different beings. Just a steady flow that miraculously shrank down as they flowed into the entry port of the Legion box. The boys exchanged glances frightened glances and scrambled to get away.

"Maybe I should have made a city inside," Caohdan whispered. "They just have each other in there."

"Where's Atticus and Caleb?" Tristin said looking towards the opening. The crawl of AI had slowed to a trickle, but their friends still had not shown up. 

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Anna stared up at what should have been the night sky. There were no stars, only an ever-stretching dark. 

Then she noticed there was screaming all around her. 

Her mind couldn't comprehend what was coming at her. Many others winked out, but Anna froze as the darkness swept over her, her scream separating out in a distorted set of electronic signals as all that she was split into scattered codes and electronic bits and was swept away into the darkness.

-------------------------

Her face sagged into the chair, her breath came out in gasps. Her splotched and wrinkled skin paled against the dark coloring of her seat. Her eyes stared up at the ceiling as her body stilled. She remained connected to a restarting system, even as everything that made her Anna was gone. It would be weeks before she was discovered, her last thoughts on Darach, uncomprehending the destruction of her safe haven.

(1018)