Alex stretched, reaching for the clouds, even though the roof was all she was likely to get in here. Yawning a little, she wandered over to where her father was, boots clomping gently, and found him halfway under a car, even though his latest thing was supposed to be fixing up a mantle-piece clock. “Those tyres over there” one of his grey stained pants and a old sneaker gestured in a wild ark to a stack of about six tyres, “Put ‘em with the others, thanks love.” She nodded, even if he couldn’t see her, and headed over, lugging them two at a time, one under each arm, around the barn-like door of the workshop, and out into the tyre shed. Yep they had a whole shed for tyers, stacked round the inside walls, most piles nearly touching the ceiling. Shoving the ones she was carrying inside she added them to the next layer of tyers on the inside ring. When she was done, after popping her head round the door to yell that she was going, Alex headed back to the house. A bit ramshackle, the door to the house was peeling, blue paint flecks strewn everywhere, and a few of the windows needed replacing, but all in all it was a nice place. Heading inside she clomped into the kitchen sticking her nose in the fridge and getting a good, but soft, wallop from behind, “Dinner’s nearly ready, twenty minutes, change and fetch your brother, kay?” Alex rolled her eyes but pulled her head dutifully out of the fridge. “Yes mum.” She monotoned before high-tailing it out of the kitchen. Changing out of her greasy work-clothes, into her normal gear, Alex ditched her face-stompers and padded over to the entrance to the ‘den’. The ‘Den’ was in the attic, right at the very top of the old house, and filled to bursting with stuff. Two of the walls had computer desks against them, with all sorts of technical equipment scattered on and around them. The walls above and around had bookshelves cluttered supreme with books of all shapes sizes and genres, ranging from how-to books all the way to; cheesy romances, serious brain-busting Sci-Fi, Mega kick-butt action, and dragon-filled fantasy. Rick, Alex’s skinny brother, was currently occupying one of the multiple computers blinking colours in here, it was, as her mother had said countless times before, “lit –up like a Christmas tree”, with all of the screens displaying something utterly different to all the others, and all of the blinking lights of things charging, things running, and things just saying “I’m here!” Plopping herself down in one of the empty, roller, office chairs, Alex wheeled herself up to a lap-top, ‘her’ one, if anything is this mess could be defined as a single persons. Passwording it in, she opened up her email account, tapping her fingers on the desk as she waited for it to load. Humming to herself, she glanced across to see what Rick was working on, and getting a face full of meaningless code for her efforts. “Hey, Lex?” Rick asked in a distracted sort of way, using his pet name for her. She stopped her humming, “Yeah?” “Could you do something for me?” He was focused intensely on the little black letters on his screen, “Grab the Desktop and type in what I tell you, kay?” Shrugging and glancing at her email, it having finally opened, Alex rolled her chair over and woke up the Desktop, a brand-spanking new desktop computer of Rick’s, he’d been saving up a lot of money to get this and, so far, Alex had not been allowed to touch. “Ok!” She grinned, “shoot.” Rick listed a series of numbers, letters, and symbols, taking her to a particular page, of a website, one belonging to one of Rick’s cyber-buddy friends, “There should be a link, click it, and you should,” he scooted over to another computer showing more lies of code, “End up on a screen, Yup that one,” he had glanced over and seen her screen as she followed his instructions. [color=green]>Enter The Hack >Input Username _[/color] Alex blinked, The Hack was a rumor Rick had been talking about for a few day’s, and she thought, but wasn’t sure, that he was trying to crack it. “O……kay, pick a name and type it in.” “Like what?” she asked, trying and pulling a blank. “Lex?” He suggested, receiving a death-glare in return, “Okay, then, how about ‘Anonymous’?” “A…n…o…n…o……………, how do you spell that?” “Get rid of the O and replace it with a…………” Alex started re-typing, but hit the enter key without meaning too. [color=green]>Anon[/color] Before Rick could finish, or Alex could completely register what she had done, the whole deck of computers, flashed bright white, but only The brand new Desktop, shutdown. Propelling herself backwards, as if being away from the computer would change something, Alex heard Rick’s voice, fading out then cutting off, sharp as glass; “Bloody Hell, what th………………” Glancing at him, or where Rick should have been, Alex frowned, the wall, normally a dirty shade of grey cream, was…… pulsating blueish-black, the shelves empty of books, and made up of the same late-night colour, the chair was the same, frayed fabric no longer visible, like the world had been swallowed in blue-black goop. Although not goopy. She jumped out of the Attic, it couldn’t be called the Den without the computers, books, bean-bags and moth-eaten couch, now it was just another empty room in a empty mirror house. “MUM!!! DAD!!! RICK!!!!” She pounded into the kitchen, not even bothering to question when her face-stompers had appeared on her feet. No one. Rick had vanished right in the same room, so why would anyone else not? Slouching her way back up to the attic, hoping to find a way back, although without a computer, she had no idea how to go about that, Alex spotted something she had missed before. Right where the new computer had been was a pair of gloves, made of what looked like a fairly thin material, the wrist encircled by a thick band of bright Spanish-red metal that also laid along the back of each glove in a solid lump. Unable to stem her curiosity, Alex reached a pale hand out to touch them.