Hiro exhaled through pursed lips as he sat back, still getting ahold of himself after what had happened. For all that, another breach to his security? At least this one wasn't some stranger hacking him from outside, but still...
"I don't get it," he said. "I mean, I could understand if they'd left that file as a trap to lure me back, but if they did that, why wouldn't they want to exploit that? The last time they were trying to use me for something, now they just attacked me outright."
Riko frowned. "Not quite outright - maybe they didn't like you playing around in their system, especially with whatever that program was. But yeah, it's kind of weird that they'd have let you in in the first place, if they didn't mean to let you at that."
The cyborg nodded. "I don't get why it'd be such a risk for me to play around with a universe simulator, or whatever that was. I mean, worst case I'm chewing up processing time, right? It's not like it was an admin tool or something. And even then they'd have to have a cap on how much I could use. But if they were trying to lure me back, why give me free reign at all?"
Riko shrugged. "Maybe they weren't? Maybe they didn't intend to leave that behind?"
Hiro nodded. "Maybe not. The virus didn't make its own retreat, it was killed off by hand - so maybe it brought this along for itself, not for me. That'd explain why they let me in in the first place, and why it had a bunch of stuff I wasn't supposed to use..."
"And why it took a minute for them to catch on," the tiger-girl said. "For all they knew, it might've been their own virus calling, except you went off to play instead of reporting in."
"Right," Hiro said. "But I suppose now that they've figured that out, they'll block it off."
Riko nodded. "Should we delete the program, then?"
He thought for a moment. The last thing he wanted was another invasion of his brain, and it was probably useless now anyway...but on the other hand...what if he threw it away, and then wanted it later? There might be something he could learn about who had targeted him and why, and what the deal was with the program he found on their server...
"...nnno..." he said, hesitantly. "We'd better hang onto it - but flag it as non-executable for now, would you?"
Riko nodded. "Done."
Alex felt a tap on her shoulder, and looked up from the game she was playing. It was Sally. She paused and set the controller down, and stood up. It still felt so weird to be the same height as her former little sister... "What's up?" she asked.
Sally moved over to Alex's bed and plopped down on top of it, then hunched forward, looking at her a bit too intently. "Sis, I um...I did some research on...eggs," she said.
Alex sighed and sat back down at her desk, wheeling the chair over closer to her sister. Their parents had decided to let them take the rest of the week off of school, so that they could get through this and go back to their new class having some idea of what to expect, but Alex still wasn't quite able to comprehend the thing to begin with, let alone understand how she might deal with it in everyday life. "A...and?" she said, not really sure she wanted to know.
Sally shrugged. "There's good news and bad news," she said. "By most accounts, it does hurt more than menstruation - but it's much shorter."
The dragon-girl frowned. "I...um, I don't really have any frame of reference for that, sis."
Sally nodded. "Well," she said, "for normal girls, it's...it hurts, sometimes it hurts a lot, but it kind of comes and goes, and one of the worst parts is that it goes on for days. With ov-oviposition, it's really uncomfortable when they actually come out, but it happens pretty quick, and we've already seen that the lead-up isn't really painful or anything."
Alex raised an eyebrow. "'We?'"
Sally nodded and took Alex's scaled hand, placing it on her abdomen. Alex gasped softly as she felt objects underneath - softer and less pronounced than her own developing eggs, which by now made bumps that were quite visible when she had her clothes off, and were apparently hard-shelled. "I think they showed up last night," she said. "Judging by yours, I think they should be out by Sunday...the shell is the last part, so you'll probably be tonight or tomorrow."
Alex bit her lip. "Sis...I can't...how can I do this? I'm not a...I don't know how to..." All this time, she hadn't been that bothered by becoming a girl, but faced with this she started to understand just what a change it was, in some ways...
Sally shushed her. "It'll be okay, Alex." She leaned over to hug her. "You'll be okay. You can handle it. You were brave enough to risk yourself just to see what things were like in the daytime, I know you can handle it, sis." She smiled, her red hair like a halo of flame around her face. "Anyway, the moms who've become egg-layers all say it's not as bad as having a baby."
Alex gulped. The thought of that almost made her glad to be operating on an alternative system. Not that she was planning to have kids or anything, but just the possibility... She shuddered. She just hoped it would be over soon...but Sally had made her feel better, a bit. She hugged her back. "Thanks, sis," she said.
