The Sentinel slowly turned its head left, then right, as if it were searching for something. It let out another metallic screech.

Atticus was frozen still. The magnet made him invisible to the system, but only so long as he didn’t interact with anything. It was one of those things Atticus didn’t quite understand, but he assumed the system was tracking the anomalies he created in the software, not Atticus himself. Every time he touched something, it left a kind of fingerprint behind. He hadn’t told Dion about it yet, but every time he entered the nexus, the sentinels were faster and more accurate at locating him. 

There was another metallic screeching sound from somewhere behind him. It sounded far away, so he couldn’t be sure. They were closing in on him. He couldn’t just stand there and do nothing forever. He needed to get home. He was running out of time. Or maybe he was already out of time. It was that whole ‘physics’ thing, again. Time didn’t work the same way in the nexus.

Atticus pulled at the data around him and, a split second later, slammed his hands into the floor with as much internal force as he could. Enormous, jagged, red spikes of corrupt data erupted like a wave in the direction of the first Sentinel. He heard it screech from behind one of the spiked pillars as he sprinted down the nearest hall. 

Each door he ran past had a locked symbol on it, asking for passwords. The hall seemed to stretch on forever; no sign of a break or corridor or anything at all. If he didn’t break off the path soon, they would catch up to him. They were fast in real life, but they were faster in the nexus. Again, no physics. Atticus risked a look back over his shoulder and saw not one, not two, but three Sentinels running after him. They were gaining fast. Colourful language echoed repeatedly in his brain. At least he didn’t need air or rest in the nexus. Don’t look back. Don’t look back!

Atticus made a beeline for one of the infinite walls, gathering data as he ran. He encased himself with a red shield that sparked and zapped at his surroundings. In his wake, the white was slowly turning red with that same spiderweb-y-lightning pattern of corruption, like a slow-moving virus. The collision with the wall was more like running into a soft pillow made of static as the wall warped and yielded to the red mass in his hands. With a snapping noise, the wall tore open, slowly disintegrating into a shiny dust. 

The new room he was in was full of holodisplays. Each one showed a different angle of streets and buildings from the point of view of the surveillance drones that patrolled the real world. Atticus recognised some of the streets, especially the main road near their apartment. He had an idea. He wasn’t positive it would work, but running was an equally bad idea and wasn’t working out for him.

Atticus let go of the data shield. The corruption fell away and began to spread through the room. The red lightning crept quickly, engulfing the floor and then the walls. He moved away from the epicentre to stand near his make-shift entrance. The infection spread up the walls until it began to seep into the displays. One after another, the displays fizzled and glitched, turning solid red and cutting off the live feed. It was almost too easy. Almost? It was definitely easy.

The Sentinels paused as soon as they entered the surveillance room. The way they could be sprinting one second, and dead still the next was uncomfortable. Momentum wasn’t a thing here either. It was like a glitch in a computer game. A chorus of screeches and wailing rang out in Atty’s head as they looked around, unable to tell where the anomaly was amongst the fiercely glitching environment. They split up, each covering a section of the room.

One came so close to him that he gasped and nearly stepped back. It might have been centimetres, it might have been less. Atticus was sure it saw him. It was looking right at him. But how could it see him? Did the magnet come off? He was about to pull more data to defend himself when it turned and joined the others in their search.

He wasn’t going to waste the chance. Atticus slowly backed away through the opening he had punched into the wall. The data was still fraying at the edges of the breach. As he suspected, the creeping darkness of the isolation protocol was engulfing the area of the hall to prevent the corruption from spreading further. Relief washed over him as the wall flickered and a blue, transparent shield encased the room, trapping the three Sentinels inside. 

“Query.” The floating search bar popped up. “Location of Oryxs Access Node M4012.”

Atticus couldn’t get out of the nexus the same way he got in. In the same way that the surveillance room was now isolated, the access panel in their apartment would still be locked down as well. The access node would be close enough that he could figure out how to get home once he left the nexus and entered a local network in the building; somewhere the Sentinels didn’t patrol.

He legged it down the hall as fast as he could. It wasn’t until he found the hall with the red data spikes that he was sure he was going in the right direction. Sure enough, when he turned around, he saw the illuminated open doorway. He was so ready to leave this place.

Suddenly, Atticus slid to a stop. His hands hit the floor, but his eyes were locked on the Sentinel. It was standing in the room he needed, just on the other side of the door, its back toward Atticus. Profanity after profanity raced through his mind while he tried to stay dead still. Why was it here, of all places? He hadn’t touched anything here yet.

The killing machine didn’t move either. It stayed standing with its back to the hall, like a statue. OX6405 was printed on the back of its metal-plated armour. Each Sentinel had an ID number that denoted the planet on which they were stationed, along with its unit number. ‘OX’ was the planet Orxys, and ‘6405’ was its production number.

Only NexTech knew how many Sentinels existed. They had been instrumental in humanity’s survival after the dimensions collided. More creatures had spilled out of the gates than humanity could handle by themselves with their primitive weapons, even with ManaTech. The Sentinels were better soldiers than humans, but they were expensive to make. They were not manufactured in bulk, but they also didn’t need fixing. For all Atticus knew, the unit in front of him could be hundreds of years old. It might have even been on the battlefield six hundred years ago.

Ducking ever so slightly, Atticus got slowly to his feet. He took a big step forward, anxiously anticipating the Sentinel turning towards him. If he could just get around it without being seen... Sentinels couldn’t follow him out of the nexus. He could make it. The access node was only a hair’s breadth away.

The Sentinel didn’t move.

Atticus took another big step forward.

It still didn’t move.

Atticus frowned. Is it broken? He took a third step.

The Sentinel whipped around, taking Atticus’ neck in one hand before he could react. The touch was sharp like razor blades as its fingers closed, preventing Atticus from moving. Black darkness crept through his body, starting at his neck and working its way out slowly toward the rest of his limbs. It felt like ice shards spreading through his soul, cracking and splintering. 

Desperate terror took over Atticus’ mind as he clawed at the hand on his neck, trying to pry himself free. Its grip on him was too strong. He tried to gather the data around him, but there was no response. If he’d had a physical body, his windpipe would have been crushed under the immense pressure.

Pain flooded Atticus’ mind as dread set in. 

The Sentinel screeched in his face; the robotic head getting so close that he could see his reflection in the screen.

Atticus screamed, too. 

Then the pain stopped. The Sentinel still had him by the neck, but they weren’t in the white room anymore. It was pitch black. Where was he?

A light flickered on overhead to reveal they were in some kind of corridor. It looked vaguely familiar, but Atticus couldn’t place it. The node was gone; this was somewhere different. It looked run-down, like a wreckage or ruin long forgotten. Is that rust?

He tried again to free himself from the Sentinel’s grasp, but it didn’t budge. It had stopped moving altogether. There was no more choking sensation. No more pain. It just… held him there.

“What is this place?” He looked around the corridor again for something that might be helpful. There were location markers printed on the walls, like most buildings in the real world.

The Sentinel’s screen lit up with a bright light, startling him. The screen typed one letter at a time as it flickered and glitched.

 “h̵͍̻̃͂o̴͚͆ṁ̶͍e̷̜͊̈́”

An abrupt, searing sensation pulsed in the back of Atty’s head. He screamed again as his consciousness whooshed backward and crashed hard into his physical body.

Atticus opened his eyes and sat up, taking a deep, desperate breath. He could taste blood in the back of his mouth. The stench of pee stung his nose and his face crinkled. He did not miss that smell. He was sitting on the living room floor, leaning against a wall.

His brother was sitting on the chair, glaring down at him under the dull ceiling light. Dion looked awful. Almost worse than Atticus felt.

“I was only gone for a few minutes, I swear,” Atticus pleaded before Dion could say anything.

“How long is a few minutes?”

“Just after I called you.”

“You called me six hours ago,” Dion stated coldly, tossing Old Fart at Atticus. He stalked off to his bedroom without another word, closing the door hard behind him.

Atticus glanced outside and, sure enough, the sun had well and truly set. There were fifty-nine missed calls and seventeen unread messages on his DataCuff. He swallowed hard, wiping blood away from his nose. More than fifteen minutes jacked in was dangerous. It triggered his seizures.

On the table nearby was a clear glass bottle with a cloudy, dark blue liquid. The bottle was nearly empty.

The little NexTech logo on the label had haunted Atticus his whole life. It was the warden to his prison sentence. So long as he was prone to seizures, he would never be free to do as he pleased. Whatever the blue liquid was, over the years, Atticus had come to understand that it wasn’t a typical medicine that any doctor or hospital could distribute.

Every doctor they had ever visited had always been a crooked back-alley quack that charged an excessive amount of money; sometimes more money than the average person could make in two years working a legitimate day job for a single vial. There had been more than one occasion where they’d had to steal it, but just finding someone who had it to start with was a challenge.

-

Dion slammed the door closed behind him. He leaned against it and let himself slide to the floor, rubbing at his chest. He was breaking out in a cold sweat, shivering violently. It was probably still shock from the poison. Every part of Dion wanted to scream as he sat there in the dark, but he just didn’t have the energy left. The overwhelming emotions swirled around in his fever-addled mind, elevated by the discomfort of nausea.

He was angry with Atticus, but more than that, he was afraid. The reckless boy had no sense of mortality. Dion had only planned to be out for a few hours, and Atticus had immediately jumped into a shark tank unsupervised. What would have happened if Dion had been any later? Worse, yet. What if he never made it home? He’d come close to losing his life.

Dion rubbed at his face and flinched when the bruise from Krause’s punch ached. He needed to earn a lot of money, and fast.

Dion pulled an old DataCuff out of his jacket pocket and twirled it between his fingers. He had stopped to pick up another one on the way home. It was the cheapest one he could find; it was so ancient that he had to replace the band with a paracord. Outside of making calls and sending messages, it had no other working functions. Even the time on it was wrong.

A little blue light lit up to indicate it was recording when Dion pushed a red button. “I need something big. Really big. I’ll take anything.” He pressed another button to send the message to the only person in the Galaxy who could help him now. He just prayed to Mother Earth that he bothered to answer.