CHAPTER 21 — ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE

EARTH – WEEK 3 DAY 3

GIBBS RESIDENCY

"Start the magic, Doc. Can't wait to see what that coward's up to!!"

Exclaiming in curiosity, Edward saw the digitizer in excitement as the circular ringed device shone white light from its black track-ball-like sphere at its center, which blinded him with its radiance. Following the radiance, a gush of wind started taking over the room, flowing continuously in a circular motion. This gush of wind started forming a whirlwind, increasing its intensity as the books and papers in the room started floating mildly in the air.

"Something's wrong here. Better we'll turn it on later after modification."

"I see nothing wrong, let it be."

It took less time for the whirlwind to turn into a tornado, gradually increasing its speed as Gibbs falls from his chair and gets pushed to the corner of the room outside the purview of Ed. This time, even the video call got disturbed Ed frequently by network errors, but such small disturbances couldn't stop him from witnessing the strange turn of events occurring in front of him. As the tornado became stronger, Doc warned Ed one last time:

"This is getting out of control, son. We need to stop it somehow!"

"This is something like time travel shit, Doc. I'm enjoying this."

Not longer after Ed said this, his video call got disconnected abruptly as the mobile phone flew right into the tornado and got flung with great force into one of the shelves, breaking it down into motherboard and irrelevant plastic pieces mercilessly. The tornado intensified and showed no signs of stopping any sooner, followed by the digitizer blinding the room with its shiny white light. This blinding prompted Doc to close his eyes, rolling himself into a corner like a turtle in its shell to protect himself from the forthcoming danger. So much so that even after the tornado and white light ceased from existence, he couldn't muster up the courage to turn around and witness the result for himself. This sequence of events shook even the mercs outside the basement, as their fists grappled into their guns even harder, albeit with the minor shaking of their palms.

About half an hour later, as the dust and tornado settled in the room, not before the bright shining and blinding light dimmed in the digitizer, the guards heaved a little sigh of relief as their hands stopped shaking from the tension. Somehow or the other, gathering up all the courage left in his brittle, frail weak old body, Gibbs finally took his hands back and slowly turned his head to see the room behind him. What caught his eyes next surprised him for his life.

Two mysterious entities appeared standing on the floor, resembling humans with the same pair of hands and legs, although their feet aren't visible yet. Shaking their heads in confusion, their faces are covered with the same glossy metal-like, shining black mask, with small circle shapes on each side of their face, the border ribbon glowing in neon-orange radium color as if the being inside is taking breath like a normal human. Barring their masks, or faces as they may turn out to be, their whole body is covered with a stylized neon-orange radium ribbon, forming circular shapes on either side of their chests and the longest ribbon line extending from the neck to the hips. Their lace-less, miniature neon-orange ribboned, black shoes are indistinguishable from the body, looking as if they are part of the body rather than part of the clothing. As they adjusted themselves to the strange new world they'd just landed in, their sights landed on the only old man in the room, who sat down and slowly removed his hands from his face.

The mere sight of that old man was enough of a confirmation for those two men in action that they'd landed in the User World, a feat they'd never thought would be a possibility for them and only them. Although they'd been positioned at the Portal exactly for such unprecedented situations, they'd landed on the other side of the realm sooner than the others in their squad. One of the men quickly grabbed hold of the fretting Gibbs by his neck and lifted him. The sheer muscle power of this sleek and taller man is that he was able to achieve this whole feat with just a single yet slim hand, a feat impossible for an ordinary man with no biceps. Gibbs immediately concluded that these entities were no ordinary humans. Hell, not even human by any standard. If any, they seemed taller, robotic humanoids with no face, with an appearance resembling that of a black ops soldier, scuba diver, or a secret ninja assassin. But these conclusions couldn't help any better than releasing the stranglehold of the enemy, barely letting Walter wails and cry out from his mouth.

Ignoring the old man rapidly hitting hands on his face, the killer drew out the Identity Disc from his back and repeated the order two more times until his buddy hit him with the circular face of the Disc on his head. It's as if his reasonable counterpart suggested the better option of leaving the harmless weak User and focusing on their programmed instructions at hand, rather than playing good cop bad cop with him. What's surprising is that these entities, called RollerBlades by the General in Argon, are sculpted into warrior assassins, the sole reward for their skill being the highest number of deresolutions a RollerBlade can achieve. Their speech and intellectual impediments are a failsafe to ensure their unwavering, unquestioning, and stone-hearted path to their mission. Sparing Gibbs could've been part of their programming, wherein they're discouraged from executing tasks with the least priority and prioritizing those which pave a shorter and faster path towards their goal, kinda like the experimental reinforcement learning being tested on beta AI and ML Training Models. The pragmatic one, being slow to act guy he is, made careful steps towards the door, wielding his Disc with an attacking stance in his right hand.

On the other hand, both the assassins, also gun-kata experts, alerted themselves to the explosion inside the room and touched their fingers on the triggers of each of their Mac-11s in semi-automatic mode and waited for the unexpected to jump straight outta the room. They even nudged each other into the basement door:

- Hey yo, Ohio, why don't ya step inside? Be a man, will ya?

- Yeah, what happened to your omerta, Italiano?

- This isn't the caporegime, nigga. It's just an explosion, we just need to confirm if Doc made it or not.

- Who's stopping ya? The old prick can't even hold a nerf gun himself. Shooting is outta the damn question.

- Didn't you hear the buzzing sound? I think guests are waitin' for us.

- So, the Italian Achille's heel is the sound of a cricket. Duh!

- Fine! At least shoot anything coming out that isn't Doc, okay?

- What about that Tech Bum up there?

- We'll say the gig didn't take off, and we did what needs to be done. Simple.

- (sighs) Fine with me. Just save my ass from getting busted and I save yours. Deal?

- Affare.

Both the muscles tune into competition mode, vying for the top spot in their ammo waste indulgence, although when you wish for unadulterated gun porn, a semi-auto mode firing machine is not what one would prefer. Regardless, they couldn't afford the time to think about all those rules and stationed their bodies and mind towards the entrance of the room. Sweating involuntarily through their excited sweat glands, the only picture they permitted in their minds was that of the surviving, crawling body of the Doc, and nothing else. Even the boys waiting at the door have turned themselves into the reinforced AI and ML models, similar to the RollerBlades inside the room.

As soon as the head of the pragmatic RollerBlade peeped outside the room, that split second was enough for the muscles outside to put their spidey senses to work. It wasn't the Doc, and the head, or helmet, that appears to them, to resemble those covert ops soldiers from CS: GO. This cemented the fact that the Doc hasn't made it out from the explosion and they need not care for any morality or liabilities. It was a big red herring for both the brother-in-arms as their trigger-happy fingers did their work. The 9mm bullets from the Mac-11s accelerated their way from the bottom end of the barrel into their targets, perfectly breaking the target's helmet from the rear, making two parallel cuts on the masked assassin's headcover. It was a shock, even for the deadly RollerBlade at his peak form. They were trained for all kinds of weapons and ammunition: Discs, Batons, Laser Shots, Paralyzers, and whatnot. But the physical, super-speed traveling ammo i.e., the bullet is alien to these freshmen at work.

The poor muscle-for-hire didn't realize they would pay a huge price for what they've messed with….

ENCOM TOWER – ALAN'S CABIN

Post the revelation of the jailbreak into the Grid by the anonymous miscreant, the fact that only an insider would do such a feat is obvious even to the layman. Alan got his hands dirty and shook heaven and hell in search of that black sheep. CCTV Recordings, call records, System Logs, nothing left Alan's watchful eyes. Amidst the tiring work he had to do, an anomaly struck his mind. He then browsed all the recordings and clicked on Dillingers' recording. His scanner eyes covered all the video recordings possible for the thing he remembered stuck like a sore thumb.

Two days and one night passed through all the dump of Dillinger minding his own business. A week's hard work and patience finally bore the fruit he rightfully deserved, when he paused one of his video recordings of his, that of a scorching afternoon inside the sweating cabin of weird Ed.

It was at this moment that he received an urgent call from Roy:

- Alan, you need to see this.

- Faster, dude. I'm waiting to show you something as well. Might forget anytime soon.

- Patience, buddy. Check your phone.

- (Opens the picture shared by Roy) Is this one of those Port Numbers from old ENCOM servers?

- Yes.

- Did you trace it out?

- Yes, I did. Why would I call you then?

- Who?

- I have the name and address. You would not want to know, I bet my life's work.

- Ping me already, goddammit.

- Okay, fine. Check it out.

- (Views the message) No way, you're playing some dirty ass prank, you sly bum.

- He's my mentor as well, jackass. How can I mess with such a genius mind and pure heart?

- Ok…Uh…anyways, how did you get this?

- He opened the portal to the Grid, and I got the message. Don't ask me how he did it.

- He's the one who found them. How can't he? He ain't that evil, Roy. Someone's tied his hands behind him. Even you know who he is.

- Maybe. May not be. I don't have time for this conspiracy bullshit again. Not after you've tied my butt to this antique piece for what…a month?

- Okay fine. I'll confirm for myself. Is the address correct?

- A 101 percent, yes.

- (Standing up and taking his coat from the revolving chair) If you're wrong this time, I swear to God you'll repent for meeting me the first time.