Retaliation

A Chapter by BrynnaW.

He woke with a start. Sweat dripping down his forehead and his body shaking. Who knew that Dagger's talk about retaliation would get me so riled up? Where is she anyway? Hack studied the room and found that she was curled up on the bed with the sheets still neatly covering the mattress beneath her body. Next to her was the laptop, open with a small ball bouncing around the black screen. She must have been up not too long ago, the screen should have turned black by now. He quietly stood up from the couch, stretching his back. As he neared Dagger's bed, Hack got on his knees and wobbled to her bed side. He slowly turned the laptop in his direction while swiping a finger over the touch pad. A low murmur escaped Dagger's lips as the bright screen burst to life through the dark room. He stumbled backward, trying to darken the screen a little. His eyes began to relax as the screen became dull.

What was she looking at? The arrow hovered over the page but saw that she was only looking at a diagram of something. Then he moved the arrow to the second tab at the bottom of the screen. It darkened and gray codes began to fill the screen as it reloaded or updated what she was looking at. The codes read:

Threat Level: 0%

Threat Neutralized: 100%

First Mode: FgInkae9er244

Second Mode: P0kL610010

Third Mode:------

Third Mode Not Loaded

Reboot

The screen went black again. What the heck? Hack rested the side of his head in the palm of his hand. What was she doing? The memory card... Did she put it in? He checked the slots on the computer but found that nothing was placed inside. Slowly, his eyes crept up to study her figure. Her face seemed to be at peace but by the way she was curled up, she seemed as though she were protecting something. He looked at her hands and saw that one was open across her stomach while the other was underneath the pillow. Gently, Hack lifted the side of the pillow to see her hand balled up in a tight fist, securing whatever was inside of it.

Feeling a hot breath on her cheek, Dagger opened her eyes, startled to see Hack peeking under her head. She sprung up with anger but Hack caught her just before she began to yell at him. With his hand covering her mouth, he pointed to Zero's sleeping figure now stretched across the entire couch. He watched her eyes to see if she understood before removing his hand. Her glare continued to pierce through him. Codes lined the screen again but he ignored them.

"Where'd you get that?" He pointed to her fist.

Cautiously, she opened her fist to reveal the memory card, "I took it."

"From?"

"Base... He had no more need for it so I took it. Figured that there might be some sort of code to shut down HardDrive, as he's now called. Also, who knows, there could be some explanations to all this."

"Have you entered it?"

"No, I've been kind of afraid to. All night I was checking the stats." Dagger turned the laptop around to face her again with a quiet yawn.

"What do you mean stats? Stats for what?" Hack asked while crawling onto the bed and sitting next to her so that he could also view the screen.

"You'll see..."

The screen updated again:

Threat Level: 0%

Threat Neutralized: 100%

First Mode: FgInkae9er244

Second Mode: P0kL610010

Third Mode: 011000100

Re----

Retaliation...