Kenji’s eyes darted from the woman to the Asian man.  If his instincts were true, this man must be Source Point’s top dog, Agent Zhou.  For the first time, Damon Wade sounded nervous.

“Can you take him?” Wade asked.

“Depends on how long you need.”

“10 minutes.”

“Can you neutralize their guns?  I’m unarmed,” Kenji advised.

At the same time, Forrester whispered to Zhou.

“He’s going to activate the virtua,” Forrester cautioned. “No guns.  Whatever Wade’s doing, I have to stop him.  Can you take the muscle?”

“We’ll find out.” Zhou holstered his gun just as the room flared to black.  Kenji and Zhou charged each other.  Wade fell back to the Source’s control panel.  Forrester, already slipping on her virtua gloves, charged at him, only to hit an invisible wall.

“Not again.”

She grunted, forming a spike in her hand, swinging it through and smashing the wall.  Advancing on Wade, she felt a sledgehammer-like fist slug her in the stomach.  V.i.V. materialized in front of her.

“You’re in my world now.”

Flexing her arm, Forrester smashed the ground near her, causing a fist to spring forth from the ground, catching V.i.V. in the chin.  She cried out and went prone.

Forrester grumbled.

“So are you.”

Across from them a fierce battle was proving to be even harder for Kenji.  Zhou may have been older, but his experience was proving invaluable. Kenji swung a leg, catching Zhou in the chest.  Zhou grunted, hearing a cracking sound, and knew it was a rib.

Wade was monitoring the progress of both fights.  V.i.V. appeared to be holding her own as she and Forrester took their battle to the air inside the virtua, flying and attempting to out-hack the other.

“V.i.V., prepare to be downloaded into Kenji’s interface,” Wade commanded.  “Try to block those shockwaves.  Your network should allow you to also improve his performance.”

“Understood.  Download complete.”

Kenji’s eyes flared purple.  Strength flowed through his aching muscles.

“Integration complete,” V.i.V chimed.

Kenji caught a punch from Zhou.  Simultaneously, V.i.V drew on her now improved bandwidth to shrug off Forrester’s renewed attacks, forcing her away.

Forrester, sensing the turning tide, quickly abandoned her battle and focused on breaking out of the virtua.

Wade seemed momentarily distracted, allowing Forrester to form a crowbar.  Stabbing the invisible wall that held them into the virtua, she pried open a hole wide enough for her to escape.  She left a ghost copy of herself to run around and distract Wade while she discreetly slipped away from the action.  Climbing onto a catwalk above the fray, she began accessing the building’s security.  She quickly saw the lower level charges were all armed.  Bypassing the command line, she generated thousands of passwords instantly, causing the system to reboot.  In the millisecond it did, she was already in.

“I’ll take those,” Forrester muttered, storing the control commands on her database

Turning her attention back to the virtua, she saw Wade at the top of the terminal, intently typing and keying commands.

With a running start, Forrester leaped off the catwalk, landing squarely behind Wade.

“Hello Damon.”

Wade swung around just in time to catch a flying fist to his jaw. Every punch impacted with a meaty thud.  Wade only offered meager resistance. Instead of feeling satisfaction, Forrester could only feel regret and allowed Wade to back up.

“Give up, Damon.  Just give up.”

Wade’s eyes burned brightly as she saw that same determination that could stop a train.

“Never.”

Wade started to fight back.  Dancing closer to the terminal, Forrester planted a bug on the panel, avoiding Wade’s strike and instead letting him hit the bug itself.  The bug immediately recognized Wade as the originator of the virtua, and shut it down.

Kenji and Zhou found themselves no longer fighting in the virtua, and thus were no longer evenly matched.  ViV’s extensive programming exhausted Kenji immediately.  Zhou obligingly dispatched him with a spinning kick into a wall by a service elevator.  Kenji tried to rise, but collapsed.

Wade now heard Faust’s voice, that disembodied sound of a snake, hissing before he was about to be bit.

“Even though they can’t hear me, rest assured, Damon, when they’re done with you, no one will ever hear you again.”

Read part 13 here.

Read part 15 here.