Dennis thought for a bit. "If I remember right," he said, "the layout's more or less consistent...things seem about where I remember them being."
"Huh," Effie said. "So...if you were a virus..." Well, actually, if she was? She tried to think back on it. Bonzo had stripped her of her tools, and she'd known little more than how to combine pre-existing parts, but what she did know he hadn't bothered to take. If she were...if she were writing a virus to take over the cyborg's systems, as this one seemed to be trying to do...how would she do it?
"I'm sure he has memory-protection capability," she said. "I don't think he'd even be able to host a digital fairy without it. So it's probably holed the bulk of itself up somewhere in memory and done whatever it can to block itself off to user-mode access."
"I assume that means we can't read or write in that area?" Dennis asked. Effie smirked. "Yes, but don't worry your pretty little DOS head about it." He chuckled ruefully.
"We can't," she said, "because we're running in user mode. Apparently Hiro is, too...but somehow the virus has got itself running in kernel mode. I think...that's usually done by hooking in to some existing OS function and hijacking it. Something that gets called pretty often, too..."
"The eye, maybe?" Dennis suggested. "Did you see how he was just kind of staring off into space?"
She nodded. "Sounds like it's been trying for as many functions as it can, but yeah, now that you mention it. But I'm sure we can't just go shove it out of there, it's probably guarding that, and anyway we couldn't do anything running in user mode. I think...I think we have to do some hijacking of our own."
He frowned. "Fight fire with fire? Is that such a good idea?"
She shrugged. "I don't think that's quite the same thing, this should be non-destructive as long as we remember to set things back the way they were. And I don't see that we have any better way to do this; we have some advantages running remotely from Mikey, but right now the virus is in control of the memory controller, and that limits us severely if we can't get access to-eep!" Dennis tackled her and shoved her aside as a chunk of something heavy-looking fell from the murk above them and shattered on the floor.
"It-it knows we're here," she gasped. "Th-thanks, but...what's the quickest way to two non-vital function centers from here?"
Dennis thought for a moment. There was only the one eye in the electronic portion of Hiro's brain... "The ears," he said. "The exterior is biological, but the processing's all-digital. Auditory center's..." He pointed. "That way. Come on!" The two digital fairies sprinted off away from wherever it was they'd arrived, hearing another couple chunks of notional masonry impact behind them.
They had to wind through a couple different twisty little passages before Dennis motioned for Effie to stop, in a little chamber with a pair of platforms on either side, set below upended satellite-dish looking things. Columns of light, looking vaguely like the manifestation of a native AI, hovered above the platforms, pulsing and flickering; Effie assumed it was in time with the vibrations the ears were picking up.
"This is it," he said. "But I don't get it, it hasn't attacked us for a while now...?"
She nodded. "I think it's because we're only running partially on Hiro," she said. "Anything we do here is limited by the available CPU time, but we can think and react faster than something that's entirely dependent on this. I'm not sure if that covers movement, though; if we're lucky, it does and we probably really lost it, otherwise it's only a little behind us."
"We should do this quick, then," the DOS fairy said. "What do we do?"
Effie thought for a moment. "I think we move those things aside and take their place," she said. "If we're lucky, that puts us in kernel mode since we're apparently part of the system, and we can fight this thing on more even footing."
He smiled. "Well, let's do it, then."
She smiled back. "Let's." They gently moved the existing entities aside, and stepped onto the platforms. Effie found that her platform existed in two places at once; the little chamber from which they'd come, and a larger room which she assumed represented protected operating-system space in memory. Taking a deep breath, she stepped off the platform and into the chamber, and found no resistance. It worked! She was running privileged now. Dennis arrived shortly afterward, just across the room, and the two of them took a look around.
The room was large, with a number of different similar platforms for various other inputs. A large three-dimensional grid projected in the air took up the center of the room, with points of light at each vertex. The lights flicked on, then off in sequence, running all the way from one corner to the very far opposite and then looping back. Occasionally little streaks of light flashed between two vertices like forkless lightning. Effie felt a little awed when she realized she was watching the kernel of Hiro's brain in operation, spreading out CPU time between every thread in the entire system and passing the occasional message between them. It sounded so prosaic in a textbook, but in a metaphorical environment like this, where she could actually see what was happening millions of times a second...she wondered which of those little points she was, and where Dennis was at.
At the far end of the room, there was a...a thing. It could only be the virus. At the center of it was what looked like an AI's globe of light, only it was a globe of darkness, leaving that whole end of the room in shadow. Thick black tendrils snaked out from it to many of the control ports around the chamber. As they stared, it move slightly toward them. It had noticed them!
Effie froze, freaked out by the sight as much as the danger, and Dennis just stood there with a hand on her shoulder. The thing sat there for a long moment, as if it was studying, then drifted carefully back into place.
Offer: it said. Leave now and you will not be harmed.
That was enough to snap her out of it. The Windows ME fairy frowned. "You leave," she said. "You're not welcome here."
Mission must be completed. Do not obstruct. Leave now or you will be harmed.
"Effie, be careful," Dennis said. She nodded. "I'm not leaving!" she snapped. "You get out of him, now!"
YOU WILL BE HARMED.
Dennis frowned. "Why isn't it attacking?" he whispered to Effie. "It's not doing anything."
She nodded. "Yeah, it talks a good game," she said. "It wants us to go without a fight...I think it's afraid of hitting the kernel. That'd be a disaster, all three of us are dependent on it at the moment. But if we get any closer, it might actually try something..."
He grimaced. "We need a distraction..."
Hiro was not having a good afternoon. Not only had he been invaded by a virus, not only had it decided to screw with him by turning off one eye and his navigation systems, now his ears had been disabled as well. Not even ambient noise...he wondered whether it was trying to annoy him into giving in, or if it was just turning things off as it took them over and decided it didn't need them. But if that were the case, why invade him at all? Maybe...because it would be easier than...than taking over a full android?
He was thankfully distracted from that line of thought when a little girl with blue hair tied into two side locks and a ponytail walked past. All of a sudden his unwelcome houseguest reacted, turning on his eye again and re-engaging the navigation systems, tracking her movement. Follow, it said.
Hiro considered this. "Naaaah, I don't think I will," he smarmed. "What can I say? You've shown me how nice standing in place for fifteen minutes can be!"
The sarcasm was lost on the intruder. Follow.
He scowled. "Not a chance." Some directive he didn't recognize was trying to compel him to do this, but it wasn't very well-implemented, and he could manage to ignore it. Whatever this thing was, it hadn't done a whole lot of study before trying to take him over...it was like it expected things to be easier. Maybe...maybe it expected a full machine?
FOLLOW FOLLOW FOLLOW FOLLOW FOLLOW... It started generating as many uncomfortable sensations as it could. Hiro winced and sank to the floor; it wasn't in control of everything, it couldn't hurt him too much, but it was certainly trying. It could go to hell; he wasn't about to give it what it wanted. Why did it want to go after that little girl, anyway? She was like eight!
Effie blinked in surprise. Something had taken the virus's complete and undivided attention. It was dividing its time between repeatedly demanding that Hiro "follow," with accompanying creative sensory incentive, and banging the wireless port with mass quantities of data. "It's trying to send something," she said to Dennis. "Any idea what?"
He peered at the stream of packets being fired off, snatching a few out of the air and stashing them away. "I don't know," he said. "The data is all Greek to me, but it's a bunch of repetitions of a shorter string."
"It's trying to make sure something gets through," she said. "Good thinking with isolating the router from the network."
He smiled, blushing just a bit. "Uh, while it's distracted..."
Effie nodded. She tried to think of a plan, but the more she looked at that thing, the more she thought about her own viruses and about poor little Nadine, and now Hiro not only being taken over, but having to resist being pressed into service for someone else's ends...the more everything just seemed to spell "ATTACK" to her. It didn't help matters any that she kept thinking back to the AI that had tormented her and stripped away her memory...not that there was a visisble similarity, but at this point things were just piling on. Fists clenching, body quivering, she gave a banshee scream and rushed across the room towards the virus.
It noticed her midway in, but she was faster, and it hadn't had a chance to react by the time she reached it. The ME fairy grabbed her opponent and heaved it off of the platform it occupied, throwing it to the floor. She leapt atop it and punched it right square in the center of its glowing thing. That seemed to stun it, but did no real damage, but she hit it a few more times anyway; it felt good...
"Effie!" Dennis said. "Use your editor; take it apart!"
He was right; she wasn't going to get rid of it this way, and the more time she wasted, the more chance it would have to attack. For the moment, though, it was still getting its bearings after her attack. She whipped out her editor and tried to get at its code...success! With both of them running in privileged mode, there was nothing keeping her from tearing it apart. Then again, she was equally unprotected...but she was faster. She mashed her hand onto the screen, grabbing great chunks of data and dragging them to the trash. Piece by piece...
Stop.
She didn't.
STOP.
She kept tearing at it.
STOP STOP '§TOP '§Ï„OP '§Ï„Þß ®'»'±'€'¿Ã?ÞÑ...
She ignored it as its messages dissolved into line noise, tearing away more chunks until finally it hit a divide-by-zero exception, crashed, and was unceremoniously removed from the task list by the kernel. She reached delicately into the memory manager and set it for immediate garbage-collection, then got up, panting, and staggered towards Dennis, collapsing into his arms. He kissed her on the cheek. "You were wonderful," he said.
She smiled, sighed happily, and hugged him.
Cleanup was quite a bit less exciting than the battle had been; they spent what felt like hours digging out bits of the virus from the different systems it had taken hold on, and had to excavate its additions from Hiro's directive file. Effie was a little confused that it even existed; it was empty other than the virus's hasty additions and something to do with that picture of a fairy-girl Effie had seen earlier, but Hiro was adamant that they leave that one in place. And once they'd gotten the last of it cleaned out, they'd had to spend even more time constructing a patch to prevent foreign code from installing itself over the wireless...
Finally, finally, they were done; they went back to the platforms they'd came in on, returned to the auditory core, and set the proper interrupt handlers back in place, no longer privileged. It was a relief, really. They activated the recall program, and snapped back to Mikey in a fraction of a second.
Hiro picked himself up off the floor. He was, for the moment, grateful that the virus hadn't gotten outside of its little electronic box; it meant that the only thing he felt was a little sore after having stood in place for so long. Still, he was a bit mentally exhausted from its assault. "Th-thanks," he said, and this time he really did feel grateful. "I...I figured out what it wanted. That little girl who went past...blue-hair? It was after her."
Mikey frowned. "The...the one with the three ponytails?" He nodded. She gasped. "Why would it be after Becca?"
"I dunno," he said. "But as soon as it saw her it went crazy and tried to get me to follow. You know her?"
She nodded. "She's...um...she's staying with us," she said. She wasn't sure if Becca wanted the truth about her identity being spread around.
"Well, keep an eye on her," he said. The robot-girl nodded. "I will, thanks."
I got a copy of what it was trying to send out, Dennis said. No idea what it means, but maybe we can decode it later.
David glanced at Rachel. "Are you really over eighteen?"
The devil-girl chuckled softly. "Of course not," she whispered. "Would I be in high school? But she had enough on her mind at the time. 'Sides, it's not like it's a crime to call a girl attractive." She smirked. "If I were a vain devil, I just might say it's a statement of fact."
She put a little more strut into her walk, feeling a bit flattered. David followed just behind her, finding it difficult to not notice.
