Adam's POV
"Jeez, how long does it take to walk five blocks?" I muttered out loud, checking my watch as I drummed my fingers against the stone wall behind me.

I was leaning against the stone side of an old fountain that stood in the centre of a small park. The pale beige rim was caked with moss after so long. Looking into the water at the base of the fountain, I could see several small silver coins sitting on the bottom, each contained within a thin layer of grime.

'I guess they've been there for a long time...' I thought. The things you notice when you're bored.

"Hey!" A familiar voice called out as I looked up, smiling as I recognised the owner of the voice to be my partner Ty.

Ty had dark brown hair under a pair of black and green headphones, styled to it covered one of his light red eyes. He wore a plain white v-neck under a bright green trench coat, a small band of bright purple going through the middle of the jacket and on the lining on the bottom and the sleeves. He had grey pants on and black and purple runners. A large, straight, double-edged diamond sword hung in its sheath at his waist.

Aside from his headphones and colour scheme, he was dressed exactly like me. The only difference was that I wore a pair of sunglasses, a gold and purple amulet, a golden sword and a colour scheme mainly containing black, grey and yellow.

"What took you so long?!" I laughed as he ran up to me, panting.

"Everything... Slept in, traffic, the weird guy that lives in the apartment under me." Ty sighed.

I laughed. "Wow... Why does that guy keep bothering you?"

"How should I know?" Ty asked, rolling his eyes. "So what's our job now?"

I smiled and pulled out my phone, opening up the job list on it and reading it out loud. "We have an emergency contact from Sparkles Tech. Apparently, the entire server on the third floor has been infiltrated by a virus and is destroying a bunch of important files."

"Anything else?"

I kept reading and finally said, "Yeah, apparently they're having a conference to plan about launching a new game sometime and the files for that game are on the third floor, so they need us to make sure they aren't corrupted for the conference."

"They do realise we're just glitches right? Not programmers," Ty said. "If they're corrupted when we get there then we need to destroy them."

"Let's not tell them that..." I said, putting my phone back in my pocket.

Ty nodded. "Agreed. So where is Sparkles Tech again?"

"Uhh... A few blocks away I think, I remember it has the large 'S' logo on the front," I said.

"So to Sparkles Tech?"

"To Sparkles Tech."

~~~

Sparkles Tech was a very tall building.

Then again, most of the buildings these days were. It seemed to be made of black glass and metal, going straight up covering 30 floors at least. The large logo of the company was plastered above the entrance for everyone on the sidewalk to see.

Ty looked over at me and nodded as we both headed inside, the receptionist looking up and us and nodding, recognising our uniforms and directing us to the nearest elevators. "Mr Sparkles is waiting for you on the third floor."

"Thank you," I said to her as the two of us walked over to the elevators and got inside one, two other workers getting in as well, one getting off at the second floor and one waiting for the twelfth floor.

When the elevator opened at the third floor with a ding, Ty and I stepped out into the small hallway, where a man was waiting for us.

The man had messy black hair and light blue eyes, hidden behind a pair of bright red sunglasses. He wore a white shirt and a black suit with matching shoes which were pacing around the room worriedly. Jordan Sparkles, founder and CEO of Sparkles Tech.

Jordan looked up at us and sighed with relief. "Thank God you came here so quickly!" he said, holding his hand out. "Jordan Sparkles."

I shook his hand firmly. "Nice to meet you. I'm Adam, this is my partner Ty," I said, letting go and Ty shaking his hand as well.

"So where's the virus?" Ty asked, stepping back and drumming his fingers against the hilt of his sword, eager to use it.

"Come with me," he said, gesturing at us with his hand to follow him, pushing through the glass door on the right side of the hallway and turning right.

Ty and I looked at each other and nodded, following.

Jordan then turned into a large room filled with rows of computers with only a few girls and boys scattered around the room furiously tapping away on their keyboards, saving files to USBs and trying to build up the firewalls.

Ty nudged me and pointed to one computer and I could only watch as a bright red streak of coding raced across the screen of the computer and sending sparks flying off the hard drive under the table.

A virus.

The virus seemed to be jumping along the line of computers heading towards one programmer with dark brown hair at her computer. She turned and saw the virus creeping closer to her and began to type faster, saving as many files as she could before yanking the USB out of the hard drive and diving out of her chair.

The virus reached her computer and the screen turned a bright red, the screen cracking and smoke coming out of the hard drive with a hiss.

Ty looked at me and whistles. "We got ourselves a feisty virus..."

I smirked and nodded. "You could say that again."

The girl swore loudly and got to her feet. "Stupid virus! I still had more files to save!" she yelled, hitting the table with her fist, her green eyes blazing with anger.

One of the other programmers got up and patted her back. "You did what you could..." she said, pushing her brown hair with turquoise tips out of her face.

Jordan sighed and went over to the girls. "Riley, Bella, please get the files you managed to save and take them to the 25th floor for decoding..." he said, turning and calling out to the other remaining programmers. "That goes for you all as well."

The two girls nodded silently, the turquoise tipped girl going back to her computer and pulling out her USB and leaving. The rest of the programmers nodded and left. One boy even called out to us "Give them hell!"

Ty smirked and called back "Will do!"

Soon the floor was empty except for Jordan, Ty and myself.

"So has the virus just been on this floor's server?" I asked, walking along the aisles and gazing at the damaged computers.

"Yeah, we shut off all technological access to this floor; email, social media, even the Wi-Fi's been down," Jordan replied, looking at the recently damaged computer.

Ty scoffed. "Smart... So how long has this been going for?"

"A few days, we first thought it was a faulty hard drive.... Until it blew up..."

I whistled. "Very feisty virus..."

"I'd guess two or maybe even three viruses at the rate this server has been destroyed," Ty remarked, waving smoke off one of the hard drives.

"So can you fix this?" Jordan asked warily. "We have the conference tomorrow and I can't afford the files on the database to take any more damage."

"An entire mainframe at the mercy of several viruses slowly eating away at all the files and putting the company in jeopardy?" Ty asked, summing it all up and smirking. "And here I thought today would be a challenge..."

I smirked and tapped the earpiece and microphone connected to my sunglasses. "Hey Jason? You there buddy? Can you hear me?"

After a short moment of static, I smiled as Jason's voice replied "Loud and clear guys."

"Awesome, you ready?" I asked, my fingers tapping on the rim of my amulet.

"Just tell me which server it is and I'll work my magic."

"It's server 143," Ty said, checking behind the hard drives and stating the numbers, implying that he was also connected to the conversation. "The firewall's been destroyed so you shouldn't have too much trouble finding it," he added, speaking into the microphone on his headphones.

"Got it! I'm in," Jason said as soon as Ty finished speaking. "Wow... There's quite a few in there... I'm picking up three viruses."

"Three? Well, we're in for a good fight..." I muttered. Viruses tended to work alone, occasionally teaming up with one other virus. Three working together wasn't unheard of, but they were rare.

"It's a big server... And the firewall is, sorry, 'was' pretty good on this server... I'm picking up a trojan horse and two worms."

Ty groaned. "I hate worms..."

"You hate all viruses Ty," I said, looking at him. "As do I... It's kinda in the job description."

"But I hate worms the most. They're so fricking fast."

There were many types of viruses in the world. Worms were ones that were insanely fast at chewing through files and codings, blasting through them and destroyed or corrupting any files they touched. They could be quite cocky and loved to tease us. Ty hated them with a fierce passion.

"Well I hate trojans so looks like we're both in bad luck."

"No, you hate Polymorphic viruses. There's a difference."

"Not much though... They still hide themselves then attack, which is annoying."

Trojan horses were viruses that loved to disguise themselves, whether as a popup add or an email or something. Once you clicked on them or opened them up they would have full access through your firewalls and could wreck all sorts of havoc, including open back doors into servers past the firewalls to let more viruses through. They loved to hide within the codings, which was annoying.

Polymorphic viruses can't sneak in the same way a trojan horse can but they are even better at hiding within the coding, constantly changing so you can't keep track of it while it destroys files. I despised those ones more than anything.

"Can you two stop bickering and get in there already?" Jason sighed. "The longer you wait, the more files this company loses! I like the games this company makes..."

"Yes mum," I muttered sarcastically, rolling my eyes and nodding at Ty.

"Good luck you two..." Jordan said, stepping back and folding his arms nervously.

Ty smirked. "Not about luck..." he said, placing his hand on his headphones and pressing down on the green gem on the side of them with a soft click.

Instantly, Ty froze, his body fading into a bright green exoskeleton before dissolving into bright green particles and codes, flying into the machine through the USB port on the front of the hard drive.

As soon as he had fully disappeared, I held my gold amulet up with my hand, smiling as I pressed my hand down on the purple gem in the centre.

Then the world dissolved into bright green codes as I felt myself enter the mainframe.

Time to have some fun.