Ryan’s memories after the explosion had occurred was blurry, but he still could remember the pieces before that as clear as day. His thought on the explosion that happened in Roizen University, and the thing that had placed him in this situation in the first place, was not based off his intuition alone, nor did it branch from his hatred on whoever did this. Indeed, the exact source of it all was already tucked deep in his head, within his memories.

On the day of the incident, as in yesterday, when Ryan was already inside the Compressor’s cyberspace, things seemed normal at first. In fact, the cyberspace itself didn’t seem like there was any visible problems to him. As a cyberspace belonging to a machine, the Compressor didn’t have an OS of its own, but it still had a will to maintain the cyberspace, and also an array of green diamonds inside that stored information of how the Compressor was supposed to operate. In fact, contained in one of these green diamonds should had been a script that allowed self-restoration in the event the Compressor broke down, but it didn’t seem to function that day.

Ryan, unsuspecting anything, proceeded to check the green diamonds individually after being granted admin control by the cyberspace’s Will. In total within that cyberspace were two dozens of green diamonds, each with different data inside them. In order to find out the source of the Compressor’s malfunctioning, Ryan needed to check on every single of them, every single line of scripts, and every bits of data there were. Usually, such meticulous thing would require more than hours, but to Ryan, it was merely seconds.

Such was because, Ryan’s CCL was different from others. His mother, Alicia, was one of the scientists that spearheaded the development of CCL. She wasn’t the one that created the original CCL, however, the fact still stands that she contributed considerably towards its development. The original operation time for the CCL had previously been only several hours, with other scientists hitting dead end when it came to increasing its number. But, with Alicia’s assistant and brilliant ideas, the threshold was soon to be a history, with two days being the current limit as of today.

She was also the one who had introduced the convenient ‘Conscious Access’ function and its other counterpart, ‘Conscious Recall’, in which, users had to previously physically connect themselves to a port using some specific cable to access a cyberspace. It wasn’t an overstatement to mention that Alicia herself made the era of CCL a lot more convenient than it had first started as.

Today, however, Alicia was no longer a scientist. For some mysterious reason known not to even Ryan, she had quitted being one. Alicia never bothered to explain the reason why, and Ryan knew that there was times when he shouldn’t butt into the matters of an adult, henceforth the reason itself was always shrouded in mystery. Still, money was not an issue to both of them, as Alicia’s previous works netted them a sum of money that was considerably large, and could support both of them even years after Ryan get into working himself.

Back to the topic at hand, Ryan’s CCL was designed differently from others, in which was implanted in his body during infancy stage. To be exact, the normal versions of CCL that the public use was 2.5.19, whilst Ryan’s was 3.5.19. Ryan’s CCL was one version ahead from the public’s. How did it happen? The CCL that Ryan was currently using, had been personally designed by his mother, Alicia, to be superior in various ways. One could say, that her mother was actually sort of using his own son to perform experiments on newly developed CCLs, but to Alicia herself, she was giving privileges to Ryan that others would never have, or a simpler word to say, she was doting on him.

One of the specialties of Ryan’s CCL was the ability to multitask much more efficiently than a normal CCL. He could access and read several diamond of data at the same time, a feat normally would crack a normal user’s head apart, mentally that is.

The job assigned to him that day was supposed to be an easy one. Hunt for the source, kill the source, and then revert the damages done. Yes, it was supposed to be easy.

Whilst Ryan was working on the data, a sudden chill slithered up his body. The cyberspace vibrated ever so slightly, its pulse disrupted by a foreign interference. Ryan could feel it, that there was another presence that just broke into the cyberspace of the Compressor. It couldn’t be Professor Edward, as he was watching over Ryan’s body. So, what was it? Only one way to know. Ryan turned his head around the cyberspace, but there was nothing. Nothing in sight at all. The chill was still there, so the source had to be around here.

He kept looking around, but still nothing, but as he made the last turn, he noticed bits of darkness skittering from above.

Ryan looked upward, and there it was.

Hovering in the air of the cyberspace was something… unknown. Literally. The spaces around the source was in disarray, like it was covered in black mosaics that kept twisting the light around it. Ryan couldn’t perceive its shape, nor identify the true identity of the source or even its colour. The darkness that encased it pulsed constantly, sending away black-coloured waves that perished as they reached a certain distance. It only stood there, mid-air, staring at Ryan as if it was assessing the current situation.

Ryan had never seen this form of… thing in his times within the cyberspace. Every users and programs had their shapes, even OS of a cyberspace, the core of everything. But… this thing had no shape, no colour, not a single thing to identify it. Ryan didn’t know what to do, but he was confident that this thing was a threat to the cyberspace he was currently in, and perhaps even the source of its breakdown. For sure, he couldn’t leave it behind freely.

“Security Control!” said Ryan, preparing himself for combat.

Purple spheres manifested around Ryan, the securities of the Cyberspace. Even the Will itself appeared.

“Threat. Unknown. Engage?” asked the Will.

“Affirmative,” answered Ryan.

As soon as Ryan said that, the Will floated mid-air, preparing to engage the unknown threat. Meanwhile, Ryan who was in control of the purple spheres, commanded them to surround the green diamonds, and encased them all within a force field of protection. He didn’t want to risk having the data of the Compressor being damaged from the threat, as they were now considerably valuable. Everything that came into this cyberspace would always be recorded by these green diamonds, including the threat itself. That piece of data would be vital for Ryan to give to Professor in order to analyse this menace, which may be a new one that had presented itself within the cyberspace.

After finishing that, Ryan gripped his hand into a fist. The spheres understood that gesture, and immediately surrounded Ryan. Each of them submerged into Ryan’s body, shifting into pieces of dark purple coloured suit that laid over Ryan’s original body. It was a protective combat form, designed specifically to reduce the amount of damage that an User would receive in the eventual cases that they were to personally combat a virus within a cyberspace. And now, Ryan was using the form, to fight against the… thing before him.

Ryan, using the technique his mother taught him, floated into the air of the cyberspace. Beside him was the Will, ready to engage as much as Ryan was. Currently, Ryan had two options to engage against the enemy. One, was to destroy it completely, and analyse the data diamonds later on to clarify its identity, and the second one, to capture it to perform the analysing even much faster. Naturally, the risk was higher on the second as Ryan would need to attempt to overload the threat with his own control to capture it.

Still, such thoughts will have to be saved for later, until Ryan actually won the battle.

With that, Ryan initiated the battle. He rose his left hand, and summoned five purple spheres. Ryan twiddled his fingers a little, and the spheres spun and shattered, and then reformed themselves into long spears. It was primitive to use such shapes inside this space, but Ryan had no time to think. The absolute form of offensive he could manifest best were those that he had seen in the real world. Regardless, he imagined that bubbles of compressed air gathered itself behind these spears, and then exploded them to eject the spears out of his hand into the enemy at considerable speed. However, before even reaching the target, a dark-coloured barrier suddenly flashed in the way of these shape-shifted anti-viruses whenever each of them touched it. It reflected all of them hitting the barrier, the spears losing their momentum, falling down to the ground and soon enough disintegrating afterward.

“…It didn’t work,” said Ryan.

Ryan had at least expected that one of the spears to actually hit the target, but he didn’t account in the possibility of it possessing a barrier of its own. It seemed to surface only when something came close to hitting, and then vanishing once more after the job was done. Still, it didn’t mean that the threat was invulnerable. Ryan only needed to produce something with more piercing power than those small spears, or perhaps blunt force to crack the entire thing.

As Ryan was thinking, he noticed that there appeared to be movement within the clouds of darkness and mosaic encasing the threat. Ryan braced himself for an attack, but before the threat could do anything, it was pushed to the ground when a block of the ceiling’s cyberspace fell on its head, plummeting it to the ground. The Will made its move. The attack was followed with a transparent cube materializing around the enemy, and then quickly getting smaller, putting pressure on its barrier which was withstanding the attack.

Ryan took the chance and called forth several more purple spheres. This time, however, Ryan merged them all together into one gigantic version of them all. It floated above him, Ryan with both of his hands up in the air. Unlike the small ones, it took time for Ryan to control the gigantic sphere to change to the shape that he wanted, so he needed to focus. It shifted shape slowly, from its original form, into a… massive cannon.

“If basic weapons are useless, then how about this?” said Ryan.

A white orb manifested inside the cannon, its muzzle flashing bright. The orb was written into existence with scripts of restriction, and continued to load until its size was considerable, and its power immeasurable. The orb spun in place with intense force, causing the barrel of the cannon itself to shake. It was ready. With Ryan’s control, the cannon pointed itself toward the threat—still being held in position by the will. He lurched his left arm forward, and then gripped it. From that signal, the cannon fired its shot.

The mere force from the shot alone caused the entire cyberspace to tremble, and the script shell that came out of it teared the air apart from its intense velocity. There was merely seconds after the shot was fired by the cannon, and the time it took for the shell of scripts to reach its target. And when it did, it exploded on impact. The scripts contained inside the said shell was immediately released, the lines inside expanding outward from it and then confining the one inside. Line of commands written in white sentences were spread out in spherical form around the target, disabling away some of its abilities, including the barrier.

The threat realized its true function of the shell shot by the cannon, but then chains of light manifested and attached to its body, and made it stuck to the ground. The Will was restricting its movement.

From that, Ryan changed the form of the cannon into a gigantic sphere. He willed it to spin in place, and so it did. It kept spinning so fast, until Ryan could feel the air that it was producing from the force alone.

With all his power, Ryan shot the spear away, and it came at the threat at full speed. The air reverberated, slashed into two as the gigantic spear dived to its target. It seemed like this was the end, as Ryan estimated that the barrier couldn’t possibly be up again while in that disabled area, and even if it did, it would become pierced from the size of the spear. It flew to the target, straight and true, to aim for the centre of its existence. It appeared as if the battle was already won, and that Ryan would successfully delete the threat.

Or so he had thought.

Before the spear could reach the centre of the darkness, it suddenly turned black, and then evaporated into mist. Ryan was utterly shocked. The threat was supposed to have no control over this space, so how was it able to erase the bulk of anti-viruses just like that? Still, Ryan couldn’t possibly give up, not just yet. He immediately summoned several more spheres to form additional spheres. This wasn’t the end. Ryan still had more on where that came from, and several tricks up to his sleeve.

“Not yet. Not yet,” said Ryan.

But then, the enemy had decided to make its move. First, it disintegrated the chains that was tugging away at it. The Will tried to keep it down by recreating the very same transparent cube it had used to trap it before, but as soon as it came close to the enemy, it shattered into million pieces merely from touch alone. At the same time, Ryan was sending away a barrage of spears into the target, but it was all deflected away and couldn’t even touch it.

As if the enemy had enough, it touched the floor of the cyberspace, and immediately, darkness began spreading outward from its touch. It corrupted the entire space, and made the Will lose control on the parts that had turned black. Noticeably as well, the Will itself was turning black, but it wasn’t giving up at all. Its job was to protect this cyberspace, as the space itself was the Will. The Will shone bright, attempting to resist the corruption. Thanks to that, the encroachment of darkness on the cyberspace was slowed down, but still steadily progressing on. Ryan tried to help the Will by personally accessing the console on the Will’s back, but the speed of him fixing its source code was being overwritten faster by the corruption taking control of it.

The threat itself, on the other hand, had suddenly teared through the force field that was placed atop the diamond data. Perhaps it was trying to delete all the information about it within, but Ryan couldn’t leave the Will’s side, or else the cyberspace itself would collapse from corruption.

“…User. Escape,” instructed the Will.

Ryan was still typing on its console, trying to take control of the cyberspace again. “What are you talking about? If I left you here, this cyberspace will fall, and the threat will spread outward to other cyberspaces!”

The Will pointed to the array of diamonds on the floor, each of them turning red from being overwritten by the threat. “…Data. Reconstructed. Explode. 20 seconds.”

“Wait, explode?” Ryan thought of how his physical body was still dangerously in close range with the compressor, and even Professor Edward who was beside him.

The Will touched Ryan’s hands, and a sudden notification filled his head.

CCL WARNING!

EMERGENCY CONSCIOUS RECALL ACTIVATED.

CODE 559, EMERGENCY PROCEDURE OF USER’S EVACUATION…

PERMISSION GRANTED!

“Thanks,” said the Will. Over half of its body was already dyed in black.

“What are you doing?!”

Ryan’s cyber body started shining, and was disappearing starting from his legs. He could feel his senses reconnecting to that of his physical body, although not fully yet. From the partial connection, he saw how the Compressor was in a critical condition in the real world, so he knew that it was already too late. Ryan could try all he wanted, but the effects were already in place. He had failed.

Ryan could only grit his teeth, as he watched the entire cyberspace turning black, and before him, the Will which was waving away at him whilst he disappeared away slowly. The recalling action took 10 seconds, so it was obvious how much time had been left.

“10 seconds. I… I have to be quick,” said Ryan.

And such was the beginning of it all.