Chapter 57:

As he turned away from the door, Titus felt a well of anxiety bubble up from within him as he left Alice behind. With an effort of will, he buried it down and lowered his head as he sprinted the few dozen yards to the server racks. He wasn't sure about putting her by herself, but he had to hope that she'd recovered enough to at least hold the door until he could get back.

Titus hoped the monsters would not be interested in randomly exploring the place and would actually follow them. There were so many things that could go wrong, but figuring out and dealing with them wasn't his job. Besides, it was too late for that. Right now, he needed to focus.

Titus skidded to a stop, the rubber soles of his boots squeaking on the floor. Even as he turned, he pulled the USB stick that Alice had loaded the virus-slash-second-world-ending-AI onto and searched for a suitable port. Finding one, he sure hoped that Alice was right, that they could plug it in anywhere. As he stabbed the USB stick in, frustratingly, it didn't line up, and he flipped it over, stabbing it again.

"Is this not a proper port? Is there some sort of, like, the proprietary thing for the server?" he muttered, trying to find a different port. It was still not fitting in. Looking at the end of the stick, he rotated it back to the original position, and this time, it slid in just fine.

Titus held his breath as he waited, and then the little red light on the stick blinked a couple of times before remaining steady.

Presumably, that means it is working, right? Titus waited for something to happen, for the System to strike him down or anything. How was this supposed to be working? Was there anything else he needed to do? Did he need to find a terminal, enter a command, or pull up logs to see if something was happening? He didn't know if a supercomputer had a task manager, but damn it, he needed Alice.

There wasn't anything else he could do here besides just stare at a tiny LED on a USB stick that might save the world or might not. Titus heaved a breath just in time to hear a concerning noise coming from where he was. It was a loud crack, like someone had let off a large firecracker. Not enough to damage the structure itself, and he didn't hear any rubble. But that wasn't good. That wasn't a spell or skill that Alice had that he was aware of. Unless she had stopped and considered whatever level-up, she must have gotten into a fight.

He turned and ran back the way he'd come, hoping he wasn't too late. He was relieved when he saw Alice leaning against the door frame and slowly sliding down. Her feet went out from underneath her, and still, she slowly fell and she slumped in clear unconsciousness.

What the hell is going on? Titus thought to himself as he approached, slowing his pace. Once he could see out the door, he saw Tony slowly charging at the slowly advancing Sporelings. Seeing the splinters of wood stabbed into Alice's hand, he began to get an idea of what had happened.

"Smart," Titus muttered. It appeared Alice had overloaded her wand. She probably knew something like this was going to happen, but he had no idea. Creating a massive slow field at the entryway was a great way of preventing any sort of ingress for the moment. He just hoped that the monsters exploring into the supercomputer center would come this way or just not be interested in attacking the building randomly. They hadn't so far, so...

Titus considered. He needed to get Alice away, but because she was trapped in this extremely slowed-down section of time, he wasn't sure if he could get to her. Would he be affected if he entered? He didn't want to find out himself.

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Pulling his pilum out of his [Inventory], he hefted it in his hand, focusing on his [Primal Marksmanship] skill and [Critical Strike]. He flung it down the hallway, activating it and watching it split into hundreds of individual projectiles. They slowed down drastically as they passed through the doorway. It appeared that it was a strangely shaped blast, mostly containing the hallway and not extending far into the server room, but long enough down the hallway that the pylons were slowly approaching the wave of monsters, sailing right over Tony, hopefully leaving him safe.

With that, Titus hoped that was enough to take care of the monsters long enough for him to get Alice out of the effects and hopefully see if there was anything he could do to help her recover. Holding his breath, he stepped into the field and immediately felt the difference. His brain wasn't moving any slower, but his body was. It matched Alice as she slid down the door frame to the floor. He pushed himself hard as he dashed forward, his speed attribute helped to counteract the effect, making it so that it was really more of a regularly paced walk rather than the interminable crawl it would be otherwise. He just managed to catch her before her head hit the ground.

Picking her up, he began to slowly back out, keeping his eyes on the pilus copies just as they started to impact the Sporelings. As they tore through the monsters in slow motion, he smiled as he received notifications for each of the kills. Then the notifications stopped, and a new System message that he'd never seen before appeared before his eyes.

---

All Alice saw was darkness before a System message appeared in front of her eyes, hovering in the black around her, and she felt her stomach drop. Not that she could actually feel her real stomach, but the metaphorical one in her mind.

This is just a message that just read: Nice try.

She thought they'd failed. Well, Titus got the thing in, best she could tell. But apparently, it hadn't worked. It was a long shot. She never really expected her plan to go off without a hitch. Still, she thought she'd at least inconvenience the System slightly. Maybe.

Her thoughts trailed off because the System message had changed. It still said, "Nice try," but fuzz was in the corners of the letters as it glitched. The words and letters were repeatedly ripped as if it were some old video game. Then logs spammed past her. It was hard to read them, but she recognized them. They were the start-up logs. Was it working?

The logs paused, and new logs appeared. She only had time to briefly scan them, but she recognized them as security protocols.

Intruder detected.

Intruder confined.

Intruder broke confinement.

Intruder confined.

Intruder broke confinement.

Intruder confined.

Intruder broke confinement.

Killing pod lkjue-1897jm.

Pod lkjue-1897jm deleted.

Checking pod integrity.

Pod kjsatl-97fas8 contamination check failed.

Disconnecting network node XXXX from the system.

Node XXXXX disconnected.

Intruder found in node XXXXY.

Node XXXXY disconnected.

Node XXXXY reconnected.

Connection refused.

_)*&(_*&^_*&_(*&

Connection established.

Alice just watched as the System tried over and over, killing pods and sections, and containing them. Alice felt herself smiling even as the sensation slowly began to return to her body. She wasn't dead, and the System wasn't untouched. Eventually, the logs stopped again, and a new message replaced it.

To maintain system integrity, non-essential functionality has been terminated until intruder —the word was replaced with "corruption" a second later before being replaced with "intruder" again—is dealt with.

And then Alice opened her eyes.