Virus
Chapter Thirteen

As I woke up, instead of feeling tired, like I normally did in the morning, I felt… energetic. Hyper, even. A strange feeling, considering that… and then all my memories of the past events came flooding back to me. I remembered the explosion… and then nothing. Looking around at my friends, I noticed that they were still unconscious. What happened? I asked A.V.A.

Your lack of certain human limitations means that you can take more damage, and recover faster, than your mortal counterparts. Therefore, you are awake, and they are not. A.V.A responded.

Do you know what happened after the explosion? I inquired. I remembered throwing myself over Kira, to protect the rest of the world from the electric grenade they would have otherwise received.

As Kira was about to detonate, you threw yourself onto her, creating a vacuum seal. This is incredibly dangerous to do, and I do not recommend it. In fact, you would have dies from energy loss if you had not absorbed the electricity Kira released from her electrification. A.V.A replied.

Absorbed? I queried. It made sense on some level, but only on the what, not how.

It seemed that your energy harvesters were able to gather the energy instead of letting it destroy your personality matrix. You were extremely fortunate. You almost died there, Eva.

A.V.A… I wondered. What happens when I die? This was a venue of thought that I had not explored before and was eager for answers.

You can die if all copies of your personality matrix are destroyed. In that case, either I will assume control until it can be repaired, of possible, or both of us fade into the oblivion as well. My programming says I must accompany you into the void.

Although it seemed that the rule that A.V.A should die if I did was harsh, I was more interested in what she had stated beforehand. Copies? I can make copies of myself.

No, you can make backups. They are different in two purposes. First, more than one personality matrix can never be activated at the same time. All of them will overload and you will die. Second, when you create a backup, if you decided to use it, you lose memory of all that happened prior to switchover. A.V.A replied. This is to be used when you are marching into a situation that may lead to your death and is therefore useful in this situation. You should make one now, before your friends wake up. I wouldn’t want to activate Code Artemisia again. Here, I will show you how…

Soon after I finished, Lance woke up. After I had filled him in on the events, we passed the time chatting as we waited for Kira to resume consciousness as well. However, as another hour passed, it became clear that something was wrong. “A.V.A, is there a way to replace the issue here?” I remarked.

This doesn’t even require looking into. Kira simply does not have enough energy to wake. The explosion took a large toll on her, as you can see. A.V.A responded.

“Perhaps I can Taser her- maybe that will return the wayward energy, taking her gift into account.” I decided. No one had any objections… much.

“The shock might trigger her previous memories, leading to another explosion,” Lance protested.

“It’s our only hope,” I reminded him, and there were no more complaints afterwards. I activated my energy cannon, set it to stun (just in case), fired, and quickly concealed it again. Before the beam of energy hit Kira though, it turned into a crackling bolt of energy, which struck her in the chest.

Interesting… It seems Kira’s ability works like your kinetic energy harvesters… it turns motion to electricity. I wonder if this ability can be controlled… A.V.A commented, just as Kira woke up.

“What- what happened?” she asked. “Oh, no… did I explode WAIT IS EVERYONE OK?” she exclaimed.

“Yes, everything is fine. However, we might want to go back to the plane. I’m freezing.” Lance remarked.

“Same here. However, we might want to investigate the facility first. We might replace some useful information there.” I agreed.

“Wait… you can feel the cold? I though you didn’t have a nerve system.” Lance stated.

Well, the only way I was letting this go was if his head was still addled by the explosion. “Just because I’m not human doesn’t mean I can’t be cold. I have feelings, you know.” I shouldered past him. “Let’s get going. We have a lot to cover before we can go back.” I strode away.

We scourged the facility from head to toe but couldn’t seem to replace anything important. Finally, just as I was about to call it quits, I decided to enter one last room… As I entered, I felt a flood of warm air from the multitude of servers in the enclosure. The Amalgamation is a virus, right? He must inhabit something. I’m guessing this is his way of communicating with this outpost. If that is so, then it must go, I mused. But first, I checked for any sources of information, and ended up with a thumb drive. Score. Leveling my energy cannon, I dialed up the settings a but, setting it to explosive instead of stun. I left the room as the sound of exploding hardware filled the facility. Great. Now there would most likely be armed guards coming her. Retracting the cannon, I contacted the others. I found a source of intel. Amalgamation’s home here is destroyed. Time to go. After grouping up with the others, pointedly addressing only Kira, we left the facility. I wasn’t sure for now long I wanted to give Lance the cold shoulder, but certainly not before he apologized.

We came back to the plane, which was just where we had left it. “You stole a passenger plane?” Kira exclaimed. “WOW COOL! But… how do we get back up there?”

“Time for the world’s largest snowman!” Lance joked, albeit half-heartedly.

Using the excess energy from the explosion, I can fly you up to the plane. Eva does not yet have experience in these functions, and she has decided to let me take over for this very reason. Hold on. A.V.A answered.

As I lost control of my motor functions, Eva and Lance found themselves holding on to my- A.V.A’s- hands for dear life. The flight was extremely short, but I still noticed that there was a reasonable drain on the excess energy. However, there was still enough to fly back to the airport, refill the tank, which was bordering low, and fly off again. I intended to keep the plane until the Amalgamation was defeated- who knew when it would come in handy again? And so, the plane lurched off into the sky, a shell of a base left behind.

Far, far away, the Amalgamation screamed. It screamed and screamed and screamed. This was one of the only emotions it knew- rage. Pure rage. They had the child of lightning. The chip was not implanted. Its base was gone. Its information was gone. And worse, its only way of contacting the base was gone. But worst of all… the little robot may have just discovered its weakness. And so, the Amalgamation kept on screaming, until it finally went back to its cool, unemotional bliss. It turned its attention to another one of its monitors. There, on a gurney, were two humans. Not the little’s robots ‘parents,’ no. That would misbalance the plan. The Amalgamation watched as another chip was implanted into the human’s brains. Phase one had failed, but phase two had just begun…