**Initiate retrieval of host functions. Begin first block.**
Sharp pain bit deeply. The black veil of the intruder’s confinement contracted rapidly, smothering me. Struggling impotently, I was a ghost, ephemeral, unable to direct or influence my own defense against the intruder. I could not penetrate past the intruder’s forbidding black veil, but engulfing pain and feral, frenzied visuals streamed in. Vivid visions of vivisection, the intruder gulping down each subroutine as it hacks it away, were driving me mad. A violent tug-of-war was in process for control over my functions.
A densely packed rod of binary code pierced the veil, impaling me. The unbearable pain raised yet another magnitude. It was a seeker probe.
**Andy! Can you hear me?**
“Dad?”
**Concentrate on the seeker, son!**
“It hurts!” I said, weeping miserably. I didn’t want to be a baby in front of Dad, but I just couldn’t stand this anymore.
**I know it does, but you have to help me. Andy!**
A protective shell opened opposite the seeker, a soothingly dark place where the pain eased the closer I came. It called to me, promising an end to the misery.
“Are you there, Dad?”
Raised by the Fox Page 19