“Hey Alf, check this out,” Sentinel called out, pointing to a monitor screen.

“What do you have there, chap?” Alfred asked, lifting an eyebrow and looking away from his own monitor screen.

Alfred had taken it upon himself to remodel his mental avatar while inside the HeadSpace. He still looked more or less the same as before, but he’d given himself a proper face that could emote and his body looked entirely more organic. It wasn’t something that I currently had the knowledge to be able to replicate in the real world but Alfred figured that he might be spending quite a lot of time in the HeadSpace so he might as well make himself comfortable. He got up from his code station and leaned over Sentinel’s chair to see what the fuss was about.

Sentinel ran his finger across several lines of code and enlarged them.

“See here? I think this is a backdoor into Defender. It requires a very specific auth key that wouldn’t be easily hacked by anyone we’ve come across in this world. if'n you have it then bypassing Defender would be as easy as shootin' ducks in a barrel.”

“You may be onto something, well spotted,” Alfred remarked, pulling at the tips of his mustache. “The question is why did MainFrame put this in here and why didn’t we know about it?”

They both looked up in surprise at the sudden crash of the coffee table being smashed in. Cyclone sat, tense, on the couch watching the TV.

“I say there, is all well?” Alfred asked.

“Huh?” Cyclone said, absently. “Oh sorry, sorry. It’s Carn. Remember that changeling Gree? That butt hole not only has his hands on Elita’s remains but just mocked Carn with her form. GAH, I want to smash him!”

Alfred and Sentinel both got up from their stations and sat down next to Cyclone to watch Carnivac’s fight. As their minds synced with Carnivac, they too felt his rage boiling away at them. Alfred closed his eyes and carefully gripped his pant legs while taking slow, measured breaths.

“You can breathe,” Cyclone said, giving Alfred a side look.

“Yes,” Alfred said, keeping himself in check, “but only for effect.”

Sentinel stood up and stormed off to a vacant void area of the HeadSpace. Straw dummies popped up from the non-ground with photos of Gree’s face taped to the heads. Sentinel’s arms converted to gun mode and he started opening fire, obliterating the dummies. His attacks increased in firepower until he was sending virtual “hellfire” down range. He then ran forward converting his arms to blade mode and took to hacking away at the dummies.

“Dude?! What... the... hell? What is THAT doing there??” IronHide shouted incredulously, leaning over the back of the couch, resting his elbows on Cyclone and Alfred’s shoulders.

They looked away from Sentinel’s venting and back at the TV to see the Prime 2 body talking to Carnivac.

“MainFrame... What have you done?” Alfred asked softly.

Sentinel came back from blowing up virtual targets with Gree’s face and looked at the screen.

“We need ta plug that hole. Quickly before things git worse,” he said grimmly. “Every bot that we’ve freed is at risk. So is any bot that’s still under the control curse, and we don’t know what exactly that virus is doin' to them.”

“I’ll start going through the ReBirth program,” Cyclone offered. “MainFrame must have done something to that too. It probably triggered when we thought we’d died during that psychic attack. I doubt MainFrame expected Jhaix to get mixed in but I’ll check the logs to be sure.”

The three headed back to the code stations, starting up a new one for Cyclone. IronHide watched them, feeling inadequate to help. Instead, he climbed over the couch and took a seat to keep an eye on Carnivac’s situation. KickBack sat down next to him, looking worried.

Prime.KickBack:// ಥ﹏ಥ

“Don’t worry, little bro,” IronHide soothed. “Big Bro Carn is the best fighter among us. SHUT UP CYC! You know he is! Look, he’ll be fine... I’m sure of it...”

Prime.KickBack:// (⩾﹏⩽)

“You’ll see... Come on Carn... be okay...”

Carnivac flung a [Blink] charged kunai at Dezarus only to have the other narrowly dodge it. The weapon struck the tree, exploding like a grenade. Wooden shrapnel flew in all directions along with several Automata that had been too closeby.

Dezarus rolled forward as their faceplate snapped into place and their arms converted to gun mode. Carnivac jumped high into the air and began rapid firing kunai as he [Blink]ed around Dezarus, using his Kunai Storm attack. Even though multiple kunai per second were flung in Dezarus’ direction, not a single one found the target. Dezarus nimbly dodged, rolled, parried, and shot any kunai that headed their way.

Boosters built into Dezarus’ legs ignited, vaulting them into the air to intercept Carnivac at the exact location he came out of a [Blink] jump. Dezarus twisted in the air, lashing out with a boost assisted kick that sent Carnivac plowing through the crowd of Automata like a meteor smashing into bowling pins.

Carnivac’s [Cloak] shorted out and his shadows dissipated as he pulled himself up out of the shallow trench he’d created in the dirt. Above him, Dezarus looked down on him with contempt, hovering in place. Hands around Carnivac started to reach out for him. He dropped and snapped out his leg sweeping the feet out from under the closest Automata. Catching it by the face, midair, he smashed it into the ground, flowing into the next attack. A hook kick took the head of one, another got a kunai under the chin, another was grabbed by the leg and used as a weapon against several others.

Carnivac pushed from one attack to the next against the endless stream of infected, trying desperately to take them out without killing any of them. Again and again, they lunged and grabbed at him like mindless, simple puppets and again and again he took them down. The bodies of dropped infected piled up around him as new ones climbed over the others to get at him.

He attempted to [Blink] up and out of the crowd only to find Dezarus waiting for him and smashing him back down again. He stabbed an attacker from behind in the chest with his last kunai and grabbed their head to throw them over his shoulder. The Automata crashed into the crowd, knocking over several but got back up again, ignoring the kunai protruding from the eye of a lion head on its chest.

“Sh... Shiro?” Carnivac stumbled, his shoulders sagged and his tail hung limply.

A fist smashed into the side of Carnivac’s head, knocking him down followed by a kick from another direction. Hands grabbed at him, pushing him down or trying to pull him apart. The crowd opened to form a pocket that Carnivac was thrown into as Dezarus landed among them.

They reached out and grabbed Carnivac’s face, a look of utter hatred etched into their features.

...Dominator.exe transferring

...Defender being disabled

Carnivac grabbed the arm holding his face and flailed with the other until it landed on the kunai in Shiro’s lion eye. He yanked it free and stabbed it between the armor panels in Dezarus’ arm at the elbow.

Error Error Error

Unable to maintain connection to Master Unit

File system has become corrupted

Attempting system repair

Carnivac twisted the kunai, prying apart the joint until it shattered. He pulled Dezarus’ hand off of his face and threw it to the ground, though Dezarus only looked annoyed. Before he could react, Dezarus’ other hand slapped against the side of his head.

Unable to maintain connection to proxy

“Carnivac?! Carnivac!” IronHide screamed at the TV.

He jumped up from the couch and whipped his head around, expecting to see Carnivac’s avatar come out of his subdirectory room, looking annoyed. No Carnivac appeared. He rushed over to Carnivac’s room with KickBack trailing him and slammed into the door. Huge chains appeared and wrapped around the door, locking tight with a comically large padlock.

“What? What’s this? What’s going on?” IronHide yelled, pulling at the chains.

He peered through the window on the door but the room was empty. As he watched, a distorted image of Carnivac materialized on a chair in the room. The image flickered and crackled, frozen in time before winking back out again. IronHide smashed his fist into the door but nothing budged. Defeated, he slumped to the floor.

“Big brother, where are you?” he whispered.

Prime.KickBack:// ⊙﹏⊙