Part Two
"Are you sure?" Bob asked quietly, standing behind her.
She nodded slowly, feeling the uncertainty in her own mind that was expressed on Bob's face.
"Its the only way." Dot whispered, her voice was quiet but seemed to echo through the room. "If Mouse's statistics our correct, we have a chance to defeat her, but only if we act now. There's no time to waste."
The silence was like a living thing in the room. AndrAIa glanced at Matrix who was starring at his feet. She could feel the wariness coming from him. She could hear alot of things wither her sensitive ears. She moved over and placed her hand in his, trying to comfort him.
"All right then, we need to start assembling attack forces." Dot announced, breaking the silence.
She looked around the room at the others. Slowly, one by one they all nodded at her. She smiled shakily, realizing for the first time since Matrix and Bob had returned that they were a team again.
'Just like the old times.' She thought glancing behind her at Bob who nodded.
"Here's the plan of attack." She announced, pulling up schematics. "Well of most of our force attack through the main parts, just long enough for us to get in. Well come up through the tunnels running under the academy." Dot rotated the map to show them the red line running along the corridors.
"This is how we're going to get through. We believe that the throne room is at the heart of the academy, from the information Turbo had sent us before the attack. Now, the tunnel ends here." She pointed to the middle of a corridor. "There are guards postioned here and here." Red dots appeared where the corridor turned into other corridors in two places. AndrAIa you'll attack the one to the north part of the corridor. Ray you'll take the one to the south. Bob, Matrix and Mouse will go up through these air shafts and follow the tunnel till it stops, here."
Dot pointed to a room next to Daemon's inner sanctum. "There is a pair of guards here, you should be able to take care of them. I'll be with the main attack force. Which will branch off right here." Dot pointed to a spot in the tunnels that bisected the tunnel.
"Any questions?" Dot looked around at the others. "No? Good."
Daemon brought her knees up to her chest, her eyes brimming with tears. They were going to come, she knew it. She had been a virus to long not to understand the nature of sprites. Especially sprites who had been trapped into a corner.
She bit her lip, not wanting Mercury to hear her. Everything was backfiring. Everything. She couldn't stop it, she had only wanted the guardians to pay for what they had done for her.
She knew it had been to easy. It had been so easy to lure the guardians into her little trap. It had been one of the easiest. Guardians didn't expect their own to be infected.
She swallowed hard. She didn't want to be deleted, not even with her safe guard. She was only v1.4. She tried to think of a way out of her predicament. She found none.
She closed her eyes, the image of her father came to mind. He smiled down at her, her lips curved into a smile. She remembered him so well. He winked at her and reached down to pick her up.
She opened her eyes to the same dark room. Mercury was working on a terminal away from her as to not irritate her with the light that projected from it.
'Suck it up.' She told herself, her mind reviewing the facts.
She stood up and moved over to a terminal that lay unused. She turned the lights on in the front of the large room, creating a large light in the center of the room. Mercury did not even look up.
She moved back to her throne and sighed.
Dot stood alone in the room, staring out of the window onto the where the binomes were going over their vehicles, checking the subroutines and adding new weapons that Matrix had helped to design.
Behind her, she heard the door open. She didn't turn to look, she hardly noticed she was so lost in her depressing thoughts.
She felt warm hands on her bare arms. The moved up and down, easing her chills. She leaned back against the armoured chest of guardian 452. His eyebrows rose in surprise.
Ever since their kiss after the system had restarted, she had been so nervous around him. He had never seen her as the kind to get shooken up over a kiss. If only he could see inside her mind.
She was to worried to think of her actions. Dot needed the strength that Bob offered. Just as his arms had warmed her arms, his strength eased her worry. She had a feeling that as long as he was there, fighting alongside them, everything would be all right. He had always had that affect on her.
She had been so afraid that if they got close things would change. So afraid that he would be deleted during the attack on the guardians and that she would be alone, alone forever this time. In her heart, she knew that she loved him, had loved him since before he had been lost in the Web.
She also knew that she would probably never tell him. She couldn't ever deal with the pain if she lost him after that. Her mind refused to except it, though, claiming it was only a physical attraction to a good friend.
She laid her head on his shoulders and he locked his arms under her breasts in response. Neither said a word, both lost in their own thoughts. He placed his lips on the top of her head and stopped.
They both stared down at the binomes and thought their own thoughts about what lay ahead.
