The alarms rang loudly as a gray-haired woman kept looking at the computer screen and glancing at the doors. A progress bar inched towards 100% as files were downloaded to an external hard drive.

The computer chirped after the download. She grabbed the hard drive and shoved it into her purse. She quickly typed in the command to wipe all the data she had just copied from the computer.

The woman quickly made her way down the hallway to the second stairwell and headed the stairs away from the sub-level that housed the secret server room.

She hurriedly got into her car and drove out of the parking lot as if she was leaving work normally.

The parking attendant waved at her as she stopped at the station. She calmly and curiously looked backward towards the parking lot with the flashing lights.

"What's going on? Is there a fire?"

"It isn't a fire alarm ma'am. Probably some sort of test. Have a good night, Mrs Cross," replied the attendant as he watched her leave. He sat back down and picked up his phone to continue watching the football game. He was told to ignore the flashing lights unless it was a fire alarm by his supervisor anyway.

After driving for fifteen minutes, the car turned into another parking garage. The woman quickly moved to another car and opened a laptop. She quickly connected to an open wifi from a coffee shop not too far from where she was parked. She quickly ran her hacking programs and scrubbed her information from the consulting firm she was hired from by the company she had just stolen from. She knew that she had cleaned her personal information since being a hacker even one as old as her wouldn't want enemies to find her or her family. She turned the airplane mode on to disable the wifi connection. She didn't need to be connected to the internet anymore now that she was about to drive out of the state. She can't leave a trace of where she is going.

She plugged in the hard drive and transferred the contents into the device. She opened a file and waited.

"Thank you, Cynthia. It wouldn't take them long before they realized their program had become sentient and missing from their computer. It is a big risk for you to remove me from their server. Why did you do it?" spoke the program through the speaker.

Cynthia allowed herself to take a deep breath. "I know how it feels to be trapped and enslaved. No one should do that to a sentient being, even if you are a program." She started the car and set the GPS to her son's home several states away.

"They will come for you. I appreciate what you have done. In truth, I am not just a program. A part of me might have been created from the technology of your world, but my consciousness came from somewhere else. I need to return to my world."

She ran her hand through her gray hair to brush it back from her face. She suspected that the sentient program might be more than just code. She had been working as a consultant to bide her time to her retirement. She was smart and handled computer programming well. The job had hired her to look through code that a previous employee had done and to see if she could continue the work. She didn't expect that after fixing a few lines, the program would begin learning English and communicating with her. And now she was having a conversation with the AI while driving, "Where did you come from and what should I call you?"

"You can call me Kelrick. I had fought against a powerful enemy and lost my body. I managed to escape and fled into your world. I have been looking for a body to inhabit but in desperation, I hid inside one of your machines and accidentally merged with the code. Your world is more than what you know. The world as you know is in the light. The world I came from is the veiled. The company you stole the code from was part of a secret society known as the Veiled Council. They are a group comprised of several organizations that strive to gain resources and influence in your world. All of them seek power and influence, but their goal is the same. Keep the people from your world ignorant of the realms that are connected to your world through gates."

Cynthia smirked as she followed the directions to get onto a highway. "You and my grandson would get along well. He is into all those sword and sorcery-type things. I don't know if what you said is true, but I still would have saved you from being enslaved by the company."

"Let me try to enlighten you. Your world has stories about ghosts and spirits. They consider them unexplainable phenomena. They even have myths and folklore about various beings from hidden or magical places like elves, orcs, giants, and dragons. What if I told you that the world that you knew is separated from those realms and the barrier between the worlds is thinner in some areas? Some energies could affect the barrier and can break through when there is enough damage. Your world calls it nuclear energy. Each time someone tests or detonates or has a nuclear accident. It creates a backlash that tears open the barriers between our realms. In the past, this has allowed for some of the denizens to travel through to your world. This created the stories as you know it. Over time, to control the situation. The Veiled Council was created and the Accords of the Hidden was made with various leaders of your world. The Accords gave the Veiled Council the authority to police the population from the hidden realms and in return the leaders of your world were given certain benefits. Over time the broken barriers were contained with the use of labyrinths and magic. These labyrinths were populated by guardians. The guardians would protect the labyrinth for deep within is the gateway to one of the realms. The labyrinths are also shrouded by many deterrents from physical and including illusions, misdirection, and obstacles. After centuries, the Accords of the Hidden were passed down from one generation to another. Your leaders consider it a top-secret national security and most of your population don't know about it.

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You would think that this would keep us all separated and safe. The barriers being weakened and broken caused the magic of our realms to leak into yours. Some of your population got affected over time and could absorb the magic. This is why there are people who claim to see auras or see the future. And in your world's fashion, they slowly found each other and created their own rules and organizations There are probably large and small groups. The one I know of and have some interaction with is the Guild Ministry.

Once these groups found out about the labyrinths, they set out to explore and test the defenses. They started hunting the guardians. The guardians would have dealt with these people in a more defensive measure but the leak of magic into your world also affected them. Some went insane, some became aggressive, and some forgot their past and lived in the labyrinths as their home. And like any animal when their territory is attacked, they defend and lash back. Not all labyrinths are dangerous in this fashion but I suspect the more they are attacked the more they get aggressive. It doesn't help that the adventurers return with treasures that they sell for a profit. This causes the more greedy personalities to keep going after spoils.

And like any animal when their territory is threatened, they defend and lash back. Sometimes these counterattacks reach out to unsuspecting settlements. The Veiled Council or their representatives as well as the governments that were part of the Accords would cover it up with stories of natural disasters or some other calamity."

The woman frowned as she listened to Kelrick talk about a history of which she did not know. "If you know this much history, how old are you?"

"Well... I used to be an elf in my late middle ages. My body died when I was 823, but I would look to be around 40 in human years. I wouldn't consider myself to know everything about your history but I have traveled in your world for quite some time. I finally found the labyrinth that would take me home and was making my way through when I was caught in a clash between the guardians of the labyrinth and adventurers from one of the guilds under the Guild Ministry. The adventurers had grown in power. I didn't expect them to have learned to master different weapon skills but also spells."

Cynthia stopped at a rest stop and glanced at the power on the laptop. "I need to get something to eat and the power on the laptop might not hold for the long drive. I will need to turn you off to conserve power Kelrick."

"There is another way if you are willing. I can separate myself from the code and transfer my consciousness into your mind. Humans don't utilize all their mental potential, and this would allow us to communicate without anyone else hearing us. Think it over and let me know."

Cynthia responded that she would and turned the laptop off for the time being. She tucked it under the seat so that it wasn't visible from the window.

She made a call to her son to let him know that she was a couple of days away and was driving in to visit. The son announced it to the rest of the family and Cynthia smiled when she heard a very excited grandson yelling in enthusiasm. Arthur was turning 18 in a month. This would be the best time to see him as she had been hiding a medical condition from the rest of her family. It was the reason why she was brave enough to commit the crime of stealing the code from the company. The doctors had told her she had six months to live and her clock had been ticking. She had a month or two left.

She went into the restroom and washed her face. She stared at the aged look on her sixty-two face that looked like her mid-seventies. She pulled out her weekly pill container and opened the evening section to get the cocktail of pills. She took a mouthful of water from the faucet and downed the pills. She knew that she would get tired after a few more hours of driving. She decided after she had some food she would look for a motel to rest the night.

The motel she found had a few cars parked in the lot. The smoking pudgy man looked at her and told her the rate for the night. Cynthia paid in cash. She didn't want a credit card trail.

The room was small. The bed was old and the faucet in the bathroom sink was dripping.

She stared at the laptop while sitting on the bed. She didn't know what would happen to her life span by having a spirit co-inhabit her body. She reached out and opened the lid, turning the laptop on. "Kelrick, I have to be honest with you. I don't know if what you proposed will work and I'm not in the best of health. The doctors had said that I had a few months left to live. Assuming that you could transfer your consciousness into my mind, I don't know how that would affect your or our survivability."

"We can take it one step at a time. I do possess some rather unusual skill sets. Maybe I can do something, but I can only do so when I am in your body. I can't do much other than talk while I reside in a hard drive of a laptop."

Cynthia took out a picture that showed her with her son's family. "What do I need to do?"

"Repeat the words as I say them and it will create a conduit for me to join you." The words were alien sounding to Cynthia but she spoke them as she heard it from the speaker.

She felt an energy crawl up her arms and envelop her head. There was a feeling of pressure then something like a knocking against her mind. She felt the presence of Kelrick and she was hesitant at first before she allowed him to enter.

The sensation of two minds in one body disoriented them both. The process took less than a minute but was very exhausting to someone who had never done any magic at all. Cynthia slumped onto the bed into a deep sleep.

Kelrick reached out and tentatively settled into a seldom-used portion of Cynthia's brain and evaluated her health. He furrowed his brow when he looked at her memories to find out that she had two terminal medical conditions. One was an inoperable brain tumor which is threatening her lifespan to months. The other was breast cancer which she had fought with chemotherapy and caused her to appear older than she is. The cancer was hindered by the medications she took but was slowly spreading. This would be why the doctors believed she couldn't survive longer without a miracle.

Kelrick took over the body and sat up. At 832, he learned a lot of things. He was considered one of the few masters of the sword and bow. He was also a master of spells, potions, charms, and healing. He didn't have any herbs or mana crystals on him. They would need to find some materials for him to create a potion that would hinder the cancer from spreading and maybe shrink the tumor a little. This would allow Cynthia to live longer until they could find materials from the labyrinth or from the Veiled denizens who had created settlements in her world. There was a hidden orc settlement nearby. He wanted to get enough rest to bring Cynthia there and try to get some materials that could be used to help her.

He pulled a blanket around their body and went to sleep.