Lyre: Don’t react.

Sabrina froze, hand poised over the mouse as she blinked at the computer screen. There were many things she was used to seeing pop up randomly; this was not one of them.

Lyre: At least not insofar as someone outside of yourself would realize you’ve received a random message.

“Right…” She muttered, completely ignoring the whole “don’t react” thing. This sort of message system was something she had heard about, but as far as she knew, it wasn’t installed on her computer. It was used in the outside world, at least some outside worlds, for instant communication. Why would she be getting one?

Lyre: I know you’re there.

“Thank you, O’ mysterious stranger”, she muttered. There wasn’t an X on the window… rather strange in and of itself. It wasn’t even labeled, just a blank little bar. Oh well, this was what ctrl alt delete was good for. Ignoring the message, she flipped to that program, pleased to see that a random string of numbers representing the blank window there. Ending tasks was easy.

Error: Action requires restricted privileges. In other words, stop trying to ignore me and answer the message.

“Fine.”

1337: What?

Lyre: Just making sure it worked. Thanks.

Sabrina clenched her teeth. Answering probably had been a mistake. She had heard of hackers, and it was just her luck that some peon from the outside world had decided to infiltrate the training facility and chosen her to fuck with. The fact that her name simply appeared as random numbers whereas the other girl’s was a name solidified the assumption.

Lyre: You aren’t very talkative.

1337: You tested your system. I’m studying. Go away.

Lyre: Not planning to report this then?

“You want to be reported, punk?” She muttered, glaring at the screen. This was… unprecedented. A completely random quirk in her otherwise predictable life. Everything, even her speech patterns, were just copied off of things she had learned. Nothing from culture… someone from the outside… that was culture. That was almost like a dream.

Lyre: I’m not from outside. I just dream. Talk to you later.

The window disappeared from the page – and her task manager – as the single door to her small room opened. No one came in, of course, but through the filmy field of power she could see an adult grabbing something then reaching through to set a syringe on the table by the door. The door closed, becoming a framed stretch of wall once again.

“Well finally!” Sabrina exclaimed, spinning her stool around and leaping for the syringe. The injection meant that lessons, which were randomly given in everything from language to fighting, were over for her until the lights blinked for bed.

Today has been an especially long day. She thought, absentmindedly uncapping the short needle and stabbing it into her leg.

--------------------

Tien leaned forward to rest his elbows on the desk. That had been… somewhat productive. Okay, not really, but at least he had discovered that hijacking the message system the administrators used for his own uses was definitely possible.

Their whole world was fucked. Okay, so technically the “school” was hanging around on some moon colony, but the worlds that they’d eventually been sent to? Fucked. At least, if his dreams were right they were.

It only vaguely appealed to him that, with how aware he was becoming, he wouldn’t be one of the nightmares visiting terror upon people… but then where did that put him? Just as fucked as everyone else.

And no one else here seemed to have any idea. Even the administrators kept sending e-mails back and forth on how they were going to make things better in the worlds… granted, better for them didn’t necessarily mean better for everyone else, but what he saw didn’t come with any good for anything except for the killers. Killers that he happened to recognize from the brief times he actually spent with the other children here. At first he had been among them in his nightmares, lately he had been simply absent.

In some ways, that was even more disturbing than before.

He sighed, glancing at the syringe that had come through his door not long after the system had alerted him to Sabrina’s doing the same. Unlike most of the students here, he knew what it was for. It was a specially mixed drug formula that both kept them in a primarily human form and allowed their minds to hold significantly more information than any human’s normally would. A few hundred languages, histories and cultures, mathematics, any sort of science… it could all be stuffed into the mind of a child. Just one drug and you’re smart enough to learn it all so we can make you into unstoppable spies and assassins! Jackasses.

He’d take the damn drug later. They never actually tried to collect the syringes until after everyone was asleep anyway. And in many ways they assumed that, since Tien couldn’t speak, he wasn’t as smart. The writings and everything else were obvious evidence that he was, if not as smart, smarter than many children here… but one handicap and everyone’s instant response was to assume otherwise. Well, they sucked. And they were stupid, since they seemed to assume that being mute also made him deaf. It was amazing what people would tell their peers in the presence of a child who couldn’t verbally repeat it. Strike that, it was amazing they would even talk around him at all.

With meals going on it was pretty much impossible for him to track down more students like Sabrina… Well, not impossible, it was just that with so many less children on computers his movements were more likely to be noticed now, and much easier to narrow down. He was fully aware that, should they decide to search his computer, even his careful purging couldn’t keep them from at least finding the access that he’d created for himself.

Which left… a less fun type of research. At least going into the dining hall let him identify the people in his dreams. Sighing again, he stood up and grabbed the syringe, wincing slightly as he simply injected the drug into his leg and left it where it had been set.

For a moment he was tempted to do the unthinkable and actually see if he could pick the lock and swing his door open. Most of the children probably didn’t realize that the school contained actual hallways – tiny thin things, mostly used for air passage and mundane personnel now that magic made them obsolete – and it wasn’t technically against the rules to go out there… But there was always the chance that a adult might actually find out, and that was another thing that would give him away.

Later. Now, he’d go eat… Actually eating would be a very smart thing, since not signing in at the cafeteria at least once a day meant a visit from a medic to make sure he was alright, and forgetting multiple days in a row meant restriction from his computer.

-----------------

Sabrina’s eyes flickered about as she sat in the dining hall. Theoretically, everyone had to come here at around this time, so she should be able to spot the mysterious hacker-girl. Theoretically. Unfortunately since she’d noticed the restricted age group a couple years before, it would be luck if the hacker was in the same age block.

“Hey.”

Sabrina’s vision was obscured as a hand let down on one shoulder and a face swung around her opposite shoulder to peer at her. “What’s wrong with you today?” He asked, using her shoulder to swing himself back to her left side and slip onto the bench besides her, smoothing his red hair back into some semblance of order as he did so.

“Nothing is wrong with me.” Sabrina muttered, stabbing at her food, which she had barely touched.

“Uh huh. Sure.” He twisted again, this time in his own seat, and caught her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

Sabrina felt the walls in her mind shudder and fall under Theo’s gaze. It always seemed to happen like that, and simply vowing to avoid his gaze was easier said than done. She simply couldn’t look away, and couldn’t stop hissing out the short story under her breath.

Theo didn’t release her gaze until she was done. “Huh.”

“It’s not that big of a thing.” She muttered, turning back to her food and poking at it. Now it was really cold and rather congealed. Gross.

“Someone bypassed the security of the compound.” He said, voice containing enough ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ flavor that she didn’t bother comment again.

“I bet you we could find them.”

Sabrina hid a grin. For however freaky Theo was, one thing she could always count on was that he never chose the logical path. Anyone else would have told her that they needed to report it to a superior… that wasn’t in Theo’s makeup. No one quite knew why, but it was one of the many things that both made the boy very strange, and got him in trouble quite often.

She twisted her head to watch the boy as he ate his own –still warm—food, obviously thinking over what she had told him. Some people even went so far to say that his problem was that he couldn’t fear things.

“I think we should find them.” He said, apparently having convinced himself that this was their problem. “After all, if they contacted you specifically then maybe that has something to do with us. Specifically. Not just random hacking.”

“She just had numbers as my name.” Sabrina pointed out.

“But she contacted someone who wouldn’t report her.” Theo said, chasing an errant bit of food around his plate.

“So you’re saying that something in my files shows me to be a deviant?”

He glanced up at her, a bit of red hair barely failing to mask his amused expression, “Or that you’re an independent thinker with a trend of solving problems yourself before reaching for a higher authority.”

“You know.” Sabrina said, finally pushing her plate away and deciding that eating the cold mess wasn’t worth it, “people don’t tend to talk like that.”

“Our speech patterns are off of random things we’ve studied. And who cares? I’m right.”

She looked over at the boy for a moment, face blank, before saying, “Yes. You’re right. So now what?”

“How should I know, she contacted you.”

Sabrina clenched her teeth, glaring at her food, “Well you were the one who suggested finding her.”

Theo glanced up at her, grinned, and then swept his eyes slowly across the room. It was about half filled, maybe a hundred people.

“What?”

“We’re really far away from civilization.” He said, the glance he gave her out of the corner of his eyes a sure sign that he was trying to hint at something sly.

“And?” His games were not something that she felt like playing. The conversation had annoyed her. Why, she couldn’t say, but Theo tended to have that affect on her if they actually talked for more than a couple of minutes.

He stayed silent for a moment, then sighed, “I doubt it’s someone from outside. The system is self-contained, and we’re far away from basically everything.”

“So you think someone here is hacking the system? A student. Like, one of the people they have under constant surveillance?”

“Not constant. If it were constant and complete, they would have already been questioning you as to the conversation you had with the hacker—“

“Or they already know and are investigating.”

“—and wanting to know why you didn’t report it immediately.”

She frowned at the table. Damn. She hadn’t thought about the possibility of getting herself in trouble because of this. Stupid hacker. Gods people were more trouble than they were worth. “Well if it’s a student then how are we supposed to find them?” She finally said, grabbing onto the table and leaning backwards as her eyes flickered over the room filled with people. Theoretically it was easier to find someone stuck in the same place as she was… except not really.

“No idea.” Theo said, finishing the last of a food with a grin before slipping up from the bench. “Tell me when you figure that out and I’ll help.”

Sabrina quelled the urge to strangle the boy as he bounced away – literally bouncing on his heels as he walked, his red hair enough of a moving contrast with everything around him that he drew the eyes of many people he passed --. He somehow had managed to make annoying her into an art. A very, very annoying art.

And she still was barely closer to figuring out this whole thing. Wasn’t life just peachy.

-------------------

Lyre: Didn’t report this yet?

1337: If you would like your ass in hot water I’d be more than happy to help you.

Tien smiled and rested his fingers on the keyboard. He couldn’t be sure, but that was a fairly good indication that she hadn’t reported the intrusion. Granted, he doubted there was any easy way for them to go into the system and find out exactly which student had managed to crack their security, – if indeed he was the only one; doubtful with the amount of intelligent kids in this place – but it would be a lot easier for him to move unseen if they weren’t looking for him.

Lyre: I think I’m fine where I am, thank you.

He paused, not sure exactly what he should do now. He had contact with someone; specifically, he had contact with someone who hadn’t reported him and whose records indicated was more of a free thinker than many of the students here… but what he could actually do with that was confusing. What was he supposed to say? ‘I’ve been having dreams about all of you becoming evil killers, please stop’?

1337: The person standing behind me begs to differ.

Tien froze, the smile slipping from his face and his breathe catching.

1337: Something must be intrinsically wrong with your situation, or you wouldn’t have gone to the trouble of hacking into a system that supports your current existence.

He breathed again. Even if it had been someone official, it wouldn’t have mattered. Not really. He had already gone over this. Granted that wasn’t all the way out the window yet, but it was much less of a possibility with theory being discussed.

1337: So what is it? Are you some jackass of a girl with a dangerous sense of humor or are you actually going somewhere with all of this?

Tien leaned back in his chair, bringing his knees up and resting his arms on them. He had expected to poke at her a bit more, try and see closer to where she stood on everything… not be called out on anything.

He debated leaving her – and the mysterious person behind her – hanging… but that would be entirely contrary to what he was trying to do. It wasn’t like they could catch him even if it was an official. He leaned towards the computer again, resting his hands on the cool keys for a moment.

Lyre: I need to change my dreams.

She could take that however she would.

1337: If your dreams involve harassing other girls then no shit.

Apparently she either wasn’t as perceptive as she appeared on paper, or she was looking a bit deeper into the statement and answering sarcastically. Either way it was slightly frustrating. Tien sighed, resting his forehead on the palm of his hand as he gazed at the screen in bemusement. After a moment he typed out with his free hand.

Lyre: No. Dreams. Nightmares if you will, only mine will come true if I don’t change them.

--------------

Sabrina blinked at her computer screen. “What the fuck?”

She could feel the chair shifting a bit as Theo shrugged. He was leaning against the back of her chair, arms crossed on the upper edge.

“Can we just write her off as a crazy and be done with it?” She asked, twisting around to look at the boy with her eyebrows raised. He had randomly decided to return to the hall and follow her back to her room. Curiosity at least was something that could get the better of him. Especially once he realized that their mystery person was likely to contact her again after the dinner periods were over.

“Maybe she’s fucking with us.” He suggested.

Twisting around in her chair, she faced him, studying his expression for a moment. “You don’t think so.”

“No. I think she’s either crazy or serious.”

It was impossible to tell if he was serious or sarcastic, so instead of answering one or the other Sabrina turned back towards her computer. Right in time to see the window disappear from her computer screen.

“Well shit.”