Avatara

Robert Ash, a boy with antisocial behaviours. A troublemaker and truant, but still a boy that needed saving. Grace urged herself to remain resolute in her d.e.s.i.r.e to stop this disaster. She had an idea, and realised that having some sort of feeling for Jazz as well as her fear of the consequences of this nightmare situation, put her in a weird dizzying state of confusion. She let these states of mind go for a moment and got back to goal-directed thinking.

"His real body must be at Sheldrake Enterprises," said Grace. "Grimm would not be able to join his avatara with Knightmare's, without having their real bodies connected in the same room, and finding Knightmare's body would be easy once his avatara was captured."

"But Grimm is just an Army leader, with no technical skill, how did he know he could do that?" said Jazz.

"Rylan Spector," said Grace. "He was the supervisor of the group. We discovered spirit fusion was possible when soulcasting. He must have told Grimm about this when deciding what to do with Knightmare."

"Of course, Spector was your supervisor" said Jazz, as he tapped his forehead. He suddenly stood up and grabbed his phone of a counter.

"What are you doing?" said Grace.

"I'm texting my guys, to keep themselves posted outside Sheldrake Enterprises," said Jazz. "But we've got to be subtle, Sheldrake is a protected government service like MI6, we can't just storm in there. Anyway, you wanted us to meet here, so what do you have in mind?"

"We can shut down all the avatara from my computer," said Grace. Walker looked at her with a blank expression. But it didn't seem to be due to lack of understanding, rather disbelief.

"Look the way I see it we have two choices." She brought out her laptop from her bag and put it on the table. "I am sure you know about the iron dome. The government's surveillance system that tracks activity over the whole of London."

"Yes," said Jazz. "But it's not actually that good, anyone with good hacking skills like me or you can evade its detection."

"True, but the reason why I am mentioning is because if I hack the iron dome itself, I can jam the system and shut down all internet wave communications all over London. The way I figure it that will scatter all the avatara forcing spirits back into their real bodies, including Grimm and Knightmare's hybrid."

"That sounds like a bad idea," said Jazz. "Shutting down the internet capability would cause absolute chaos.

"It would only be for 30 seconds," said Grace.

"If one someone found out I was part of such a thing, I would be struck off the force."

"This is high level work, Walker, I mean Jazz," said Grace. "They, whoever they are will never find out. I will be in and out of the system so quick using high level cryptic cover. There are lots of things I am not confident about but with these things I'm in my element."

"What was the second choice?" said Jazz.

"You don't want to hear it," said Grace. "I don't want anybody to be killed."

"Ok, option 1 it is then." Jazz acted jovial in his response suggesting an open mind. He seemed to be a bit of a maverick given his police officer status. Perhaps that's why he was an undercover one.

Jazz put the television back on indicating he was assured that Grace would be calm. Knightmare-Grimm and the other avatara on the screen seemed to be moving about. It was easy enough to tell where Knightmare-Grimm was because he was being engulfed by all the weaker avatara. Although due to the heavy shimmering of the avatara it was impossible to see any close details.

Grace first ran some code to hide her computer's location when calling the internet. Then she quickly moved onto hacking into government systems to find the iron dome. She found what she was looking for within two minutes. A buggy piece of script in the iron dome software which made it vulnerable. She planted and executed a chunk of code that made the iron dome system overdrive in loops, cutting off its execution lines for recording.

"I've done it," she said.

On the tv screen, Jazz saw all the avatara suddenly disappear.

"Whoa," he said. "They've just gone."

Within moments people started to get up from the ground.

"Yes," said Grace. "I think that has stopped Knightmare-Grimm too."

"The evidence against Grimm is huge now. I think I can use this to get a special warrant to search Sheldrake Enterprises," said Jazz. "Are you sure the Knightmare-Grimm disappeared as well?"

"Well his avatara should have disintegrated like the others. I am pretty sure he and Knightmare real bodies are waking up at Sheldrake right now. Anyway, it's not over yet. I have to find a way to disable the avatara apps that all these people have." Grace felt unable to calculate how she would do this. Faintly, she hoped Jazz would suggest something that the police or law could enforce.

"How are you going to do that? The app is on their phones now. We can only ensure it is disabled by taking each and every phone that got it. Some of the phones may not be connected to the internet, you would have to identify where these phones are now to make sure they are all wiped. Not to mention that illegal copies will be made."

"Thanks for pointing all of those issues out," replied Grace. She stood up and ready to leave. "For the record, when I came to meet you and Knightmare, I hoped we could have worked out a way to shut down the Avatara kernel at Sheldrake. Instead I found a silly kid and a cop. But you are right it's my mistake, I'm so foolish."

"No, it's not like that," said Jazz. His left hand found itself planted on Grace's right shoulder. "Listen, I can help you shut down the Avatara kernel but you need to understand that the genie is out of the bottle. All the government agencies will know about it now and lives could be at risk, including yours Grace. Grimm might be the top person at Sheldrake but it belongs to the government and you know what kind of government we have now."

Grace didn't say anything so Jazz continued trying to dig himself out of a hole. "Grace I do care, and I care about you, I want ---"

Suddenly there was a crash through the large scale window of Jazz's flat. A piece of glass flew through the air and cut Jazz just beneath his left eye. "Ow," he said. Both he and Grace fell back onto the sofa due to force of whatever came through the window.

"You think your stupid trick can stop us? We are immortal!"

Both Grace and Jazz recognised the voice.