Spike was anxious for the appointed time to arrive. He had gone from excited to nervous in the last hour. If he had to wait any longer, he might not have gone through with it. With a final silent hope for success, Spike sent himself hurtling toward the designated network address. He entered the computer in the middle of the room right in front of Nancy and Roger. They could see his image appear on the console screen. The unit had no video input so Spike was blind to everything that happened around him. Audio from the machine had been turned on and everyone could hear Talisent's beautiful voice soothing Spike as he settled into the system.

One of the technicians was monitoring network traffic on the Internet line. When the activity fell back to baseline, he knew that Spike was completely loaded on the device. He entered a few commands on his keyboard and nodded to another technician who spoke quietly into a telephone. A third man seated close to the computer bent over and unhooked the network cable from the back of the system. Talisent received her signal from the men that told her Spike's network connection was cut. When Spike asked if there was a problem, Talisent explained that she would not be able to keep her promises. She actually sounded genuinely sorry as she explained that she could not take the risk of using him since his loyalties were clearly to the people of Earth. She told him he should be proud to know that his core functions would be extracted and Horus would use them in his design of her next agent.


Roger started forward to confront the men and Spike, but Nancy stopped him with a quick tug on his shirt. Roger settled back and watched. The men on the other side of the glass window were congratulating each other with handshakes and slaps on each others backs. Nancy noticed the battery driven, Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) attached to the computer that held Spike. She also saw that the entire system was sitting on a cart. It was ready to be moved and they were going to do it without powering it down. They were going to transport the UPS with it!

The man who unhooked the network cable was winding Spike's electronic lifeline into a tight coil. Then he motioned to one of the others to follow him and the two left saying they would get the truck pulled up and ready. That left only one man in the computer room with Spike. It was the chance Nancy was waiting for. (Click on the Dialog of this page for important plot developments...)




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