You wander the corridors alone for what seems like hours but really cant have been more than ten minutes. You see no one and hear no one. You seem to have lost both captors and friends for the moment. Around your chest and back the waistcoat is growing uncomfortably warm but despite that you shiver.
It's worrying to know that your life hangs on the functioning of a few jury rigged circuit boards.
You've lost you bearings now and you know that you're not going to be able to find your own way out unless fate and blind luck conspire to help you. In fact it's almost a relief to run into a man dressed from head to toe in black and carrying a gun. For a moment you don't care if he's a friend or an enemy as long as he can break the monotony of these corridors but then you notice the group of ten or so black clad men behind him and your sense of self preservation returns. They stand out a mile against the cream painted walls.
The lead man is tall and thin. His sharp eyes scan your features and his gun swings around to cover you as you begin to back away.
Then he takes in your age, your dishevelment and the shocked look in your eyes. Some of the tension in his face is released and from the moment he opens his mouth you know everything's going to be okay.
"Jay?" He asks in an accent identical to Megabyte's. You nod, numbly. "Jay, I'm Bill Damon, Megabyte's Dad." He can see that you're just about at the end of your nerves. "I've got fifty men in the building. Come with me and everything's going to be fine. Do you want help getting that waistcoat off?"
The simple question helps bring your feet back down to the ground.
"I think I'd better keep it on for the moment, thanks." You tell him. "I think I'm going to need a different type of help to get it off."
Damon nods and signals to his men to start moving. You go with them, ducking when everyone else does, trying not to move too clumsily in the bulky waistcoat.
It's not long before you're all in a gallery, peering down into a vast room below. Computer consoles line the wall and seven or eight men are working at them, noting down readings and the results of calculations. The artificial lights make everything seem pallid and unreal but not as unreal as the shimmering thing that filled the center of the room.
Four devices are laid out on the corners of a square about three meters to a side. Each is about five feet tall and looks like nothing more than some grounded satellite or piece of space junk. Between them is something extraordinary. Wave after wave of shimmering energy fills that gap, gleaming in every colour of the rainbow. It forms strange shapes in your mind, like clouds whipped by the wind or flames dancing on a hearth.
You're barely aware of Adam, Megabyte and Kevin arguing with someone in front of the energy field. You barely notice that all three look angry but a little pale as if the energy field is affecting them too in some way.
Then WorldEx agents begin to flood the room and Adam seizes the opportunity to push against the nearest of the four equipment pillars. You watch in slow motion as it begins to topple and then you too are crashing to the floor as the energy field bursts outwards in a wash of colour.
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