Browser City

Chapter 5: Mr High Expectations

Aethelred's was the second face Shannon saw after waking up. The first had been Ragna's, of course. She smiled at her brother. She still felt groggy due to the epic fight in her system between the poison and the cure that Ragna had administered her.

"Shannon, how are you feeling?" Aethelred asked his sister with a warm smile, sitting beside her on a chair in the health exam room.

"Tired and drowsy. I've felt better," she replied whispering and trying to sit up.

"Take it easy," he added in a hurry and with concern in his voice. He stopped her from sitting up. "You've been shot with paralysing darts. But you're strong. You'll be back on track in no time, sis."

Her leg had been bandaged, as well as her hands. They still hurt, obviously.

"What about the malware and the spyware? Have they caused any more harm?" she asked with worry.

"We're not sure yet," he replied with sad eyes, but he went on with a harsh voice: "Shannon, I won't let you out this time. You have to leave it to Ned and Ajax. It's their job – not yours."

"But I-!" she exclaimed feeling outraged.

"No buts," he said, cutting off her sentence. He had expected her to complain. "I'm serious, Shannon. You're far too valuable to be out on the streets looking for them to either delete you or infect you," he added with worry, but then he continued with fatherly affection: "Browser City can't survive without you. Look, I get it. You feel guilty, but from where I stand, I don't think you are. The User should know better, and you know that. He got clickbaited. So what? We should be ready to handle damage control. That's what we're going to do, okay sis?"

"I'm not staying put, doing nothing, while those two infect and destroy our city," she complained anyway.

"You'll stay in the Core with me, doing what you do best:" he insisted calmly, "take care of the User and follow his search commands. Otherwise, I'm not sealing the Core at all."

"You can't do that. The Core would be exposed to danger!" she exclaimed, unable to believe his words.

"Yes, I can – and I will. You're far too important to this city," he went on trying to convince her, "– to me. Stay, please. I'm begging, as your brother, to comply. Stop being so egocentric and stubborn like a read-only file. If you don't want to comply with my polite demand, I will be forced to command you to obey," he added then with a harsher, deep tone of voice, "– as your leader."

Shannon didn't dare to reply after that. Her brother could sound outstandingly imposing with that deep voice of his.

All of a sudden, she noticed a pair of dark brown eyes scanning her from behind her brother's back.

It was Ajax, leaning on the wall at the far back, right beside the exam room's door, with both his arms crossed over his chest and his right leg raised with his foot resting flat on the wall. The only element that didn't fit was the somewhat downcast aura around him.

"What's he doing here?" Shannon asked her brother with a dry voice, her blue eyes scanning Ajax with distrust. She considered his presence there as inconvenient as a long password that hadn't been saved in the auto sign-in setup options.

Aethelred turned his face to Ajax instinctively, and then he replied:

"Ajax Eagleye has requested to come here with me. I haven't found it in my heart to deny such a simple, polite request," he said feeling that his sister was frowning harshly and unjustly on such an idea.

She silently scoffed at the concepts of 'simple' and 'polite' being tied to Ajax. From her point of view, he was an arsehole with pride issues... and a weird tendency to flirt with the enemy for fun.