We will all go together when we go [Closed to bomb teams]

[kawalskyeffect]

There were 8 bombs spread around the ship. The teams were assigned. They had their orders, now they had to carry them out. And pray to whatever they held dear that they could disarm them in time.

Tick tock.

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Bomb 4- Dustin, John and Sarah Connor

[kawalskyeffect]

There was one very special terminal in Engineering, waiting just for them to hack into it. And then explode. Of course, if they didn’t hack into it, it was going to explode anyway. Good luck getting into its system without letting the command pathways know about it.

[quark_assassin]

The area was fairly quiet, for now. A brief scuffling was the only thing that gave away the intruder upon the premise, a shuffling of fabric, the soft padding of bare feet against squishy floors. The faintest humming, ambiance that blended into the running of consoles and Stacy's pulse and breathing, and a strong red glow that flashed around the corner briefly before its owner pulled it back and pressed himself upon the opposite wall.

Dustin held his breath.

The V-12 FPL was held against his side like a grossly oversized pistol, tank bubbling slowly, veins pulsing between slate-stained metal with silent power. It hadn't done him very much good so far-Dustin had expected to find defenses, automated turrets, attack aliens, whatever, there had to be more than just a terminal and a bomb. Then again, maybe he just needed an excuse to shoot something. There was always that.

But it all seemed too easy. It wasn't sitting right with Dustin at all. Maybe-maybe there were some sensory defenses, an invisible trigger or some sort. Or perhaps

[hack_rat]

Alex said softly over the comm ring so as to barely disturb the silence, "Dustin, Alex a-approaching from l-left." He turned the corner and approached Dustin from the left, as said. He might not have been anywhere near as good as a professional at this whole creeping around places, but the last few months had taught him a few things.

After having Mikel nearly attacking him because of a failure to communicate his location, he learned that you never startle a person on high alert. Even Alice seemed to understand the situation. She sat quietly on his shoulder having refused to let Alex leave her in the room.

Alex slipped along the wall, noting the other teen's uneasy shadow. In this situation, it was probably a good thing to have.

Alex wasn't entirely sure what it was the boy was doing with his cellphone, but he figured it was somehow useful. He connected his new power source into his laptop and powered it up, hoping beyond hope that something would be compatible. Oh, how much easier that would make things. If nothing was, well,

[quark_assassin]

The scan picked Alex and his furred companion out first, two overlapping blips of energy and massed body heat on the screen, and thus he was expecting company. What Dustin was not expecting was for his comm ring to alert him afterwards, and the small, meek voice that came over the other end, which did little to reassure him of how events were playing out.

The genius jerked around to see the two--he was expecting two--individuals turn the left corner, and was again let down when he noticed that it was actually a boy and a rat, albeit a boy with a laptop that was clearly aware of what kind of shit was going down here, but a boy nonetheless. Dustin, on the other hand (and despite first appearances), was a short, frail, 28-year-old paranoid mastermind, grizzled and scarred and serious-looking and considerably more prepared to handle himself than he assumed this 'Alex' kid was. At least Dustin had a gun. Alex had a pet

[hack_rat]

Alex straightened himself for once, glowering at the older guy. "I'm a world renowned hacker. I hear this bomb needs s-someone to hack in to diffuse it. I have less than an hour. Now, i-is it safe to enter

[quark_assassin]

Dustin might've been small, but as many other crewmembers here knew, he could sure as hell stare a person down, even if said person was a child. Questioning Dustin's handle of a situation was a gutsy move, one that would either earn a fraction of his respect or have him cast off the aggressor as ignorant of who he was dealing with. Unfortunately for Alex, he earned the latter.

"You will listen and you will listen very carefully," the genius leaned forward, sparkling green eyes narrowed and unmoving like two medieval fortresses lined with steel and energy barriers, "You could be the ancient king of Persia for all I care, but I don't give two shits about what you were or how you expect people to treat you. My priotiry is to diffuse this bomb, and the longer I have to spend pretending to be your mother and lecturing you, the more time we waste and the more eventual fatalities there will be. So if you want to be useful and not get in the way, you will kindly shut your mousy little trap and do as you're told, do you understand

[hack_rat]

Alex managed to hold the other guy's stare, unwavering. It helped that Alex was quite a bit taller, having straightened to his full 6'1". This guy didn't get it. Alex was here for the same exact thing. Alex's pride didn't go beyond knowing that he was capable of doing this. He didn't expect any special treatment- and dismissing him as 'just a kid' was special treatment. He was treated as a professional on his world- like any other professional. It wasn't special treatment, just normal respect for another human.

Alex also wanted to focus on diffusing the bomb. That was why is first question was if it was safe to go in. He was thoroughly pissed off that Dustin was wasting time. If he didn't know it would just waste more time he would have slugged the little snot and gone to the terminal and started his job

[quark_assassin]

Dustin took Alex's silence as a sign of agreement--he had said for him to shut his trap, hadn't he?--so the fact that he'd somehow managed to keep his eyes level wasn't such a terrible concern. The kid certainly had some nerve, though. If he kept it up then he might've just gotten them killed.

Which was, unfortunately, what he almost did anyways.

The shadow tendrils were the first tip-off; if Dustin hadn't done that scan earlier and determined that Alex was, for the most part, free of extensive mutations, then he may just have shot him then and there. Shadow manipulation on that scale was rare and usually confined to the Shade community, thus the temporary flash of fear that sputtered its way through Dustin's subconscious was understandable. Of course, he reasoned quickly thereafter, Alex was definitely not a Shade, the phone would've picked up on such a malignant creature even without the scan, right

[hack_rat]

Several tendrils wrapped around Dustin. He had seen a ripple of fear because of them earlier, but that didn't stop him from using them now. They were in front of a terminal with a code that connected to a bomb. Accidentally hitting a single key could cause it to explode. Alex was not about to let Dustin risk that.

"I-I'm not about to touch c-code I haven't read. But while you w-waste your time looking for non-existent enemies, I figured I would r-read what you're too busy to fill me in on. The code's a loop. What info's being passed an' between what?" Alex had barely gotten three seconds to look at the screen before Dustin attempted to tackle him aside. Still, he had managed to read a nice beginning chunk of code, enough to tell him that there was something odd about the way the detonation was rigged.

[quark_assassin]

...Which was, you know, essentially what Dustin was trying to do. Prevent Alex from pressing any keys I mean. Of course that was all in vain, what with those shadow powers that the kid had, and with a sudden lurch Dustin found himself imprisoned within the shadowy tendrils he'd recognized only moments ago. Desperate--and still expecting Alex to start decoding any moment now and blow them all up--Dustin struggled violently and depressed the trigger still clasped tightly in his hand

[hack_rat]

Alex had returned to reading the code, since it was clear that Dustin wasn't going to be cooperative. He noticed a few bits of interesting code as he watched it run, constantly repeating. He noticed that part of what it was doing was a constant check of the code. It was making sure that there was no edits being done. Well, that was Trouble with a capital T.

"Th-the code, it won-" Dustin's gun fired, and Alex stopped, stunned.

It hadn't hurt. It was a bit surprising, since he could use those tendrils to feel, but instead it felt like a weight had been lifted. The anger weakened a bit. Alex turned to Dustin, pulling back the one of the three tendrils that had not been destroyed. "W-w-what the h-hell was th-that?" The question was shocked, not angry. Not even irritated. Simply amazed, and a little frightened. Had this guy come from his world? Was it a new weapon the government had made? Maybe this guy was even from a future point in his world

[quark_assassin]

Dustin dropped to the ground and immediately raised the V-12. Alex's initial amazement was disregarded; he'd been attacked, this idiot wasn't cooperating and wasn't willing to cooperate, and from the brief bit of semi-convincing, 'Oh I'm here to help because I can program,' he'd been stabbed in the back. Dustin had no qualms about effectively putting Alex in his place.

But now it seemed as if the kid's mood was changing, and he was actually willing to give helpful suggestions rather than intentionally recalcitrant ones. Perhaps he'd frightened him enough to modify his attitude? It was worth the risk; at any rate Dustin had certainly established that he could do some damage if needed.

He lowered the gun, glaring, and motioned with a jerk of the head to an inactive terminal next to the rigged one. "--Right. Get that one running, write a start-up sequence if you have to, and start setting up a program to counteract the code running on the other terminal. I'll connect the two and tell you when to transfer."

[hack_rat]

Finally, the idiot guy understood he was here to help. The guy's shadow weakened, showing the change from his attack mode. Well, good. The two really didn't need to be fighting

[quark_assassin]

And Dustin immediately got to work.

There was a compact space between the two terminals, dark and claustrophobic, but the rigged computer's secondary access panel was there and the clean one could be otherwise modified to connect the two, so Dustin had no qualms-and no physical difficulties-squeezing in and curling against the wall. The V-12, however, had suddenly become cumbersome here, the humming was distracting as it blocked out the telling clicks of machinery and buzzes of electrical signals as they passed through foreign cables. He reluctantly gave the gun's scanner a tap with his palm, it collapsed, and he replaced it in its spacious backpack home.

Giving said access panel the actual name of 'access panel' was rather lenient, as it was, so Dustin found out, two screws and a patched slice of metal that was probably added due to manual modifications at an earlier date-not to mention said screws were not actually screws, or at least not any type of screw that could be undone with an Earth-based tool (especially since they lacked

[hack_rat]

Alex frowned at Dustin. That was entirely unhelpful. Well, instead he would just have to add in a code to have it search for open ports and then pass the code through all. With it set up properly now he continued his coding.

Before long Alex began humming a tune as he coded. It happened to be the same as the one he had been humming when he had been working on the code for the Doctor. He was mostly unconcious of the fact that he was humming. He went over to the other computer to check the rest of the code, commiting as much to memory at a time as he could.

As an after thought he mentioned, "Alice c-can grab wires and the like. J-just say her which one an' say 'get', an' she'll bring the end that's c-connected to the terminal."

[quark_assassin]

Yes, how unfortunate for Alex that he no longer had to worry about counteracting potential system barriers via port insertion and modified drive readers, nor did he have the luxury of modifying, even creating entire chunks of code specifically for running a program through all the possible insertion points at Dustin's discretion, who had oh so horribly decided that a direct connection with his phone serving as intermediary, which would read and translate anything thrown though it either automatically or via on-the-spot proofreading, was the more efficient way to go due to time constraints and the simple concern of not being preoccupied with conflicting software and keeping on task.

In the meanwhile, Dustin ignored Alex and continued to work.

The wires themselves were proving less of a problem than might be expected of such an endeavor--they were easy enough to retrieve with the aforementioned pair of needle-nose pliers and a LED flashlight--figuring out which ones were required, however, and identifying all of the bizarre machinery