“Faster, Athena!” Seth ordered.

“I’m trying!” Athena retorted. “This is all we got in this old girl.”

Another volley of bullets pelted the cyber shields. Odd, triangular ships zipped by the windows, releasing torrent after torrent of ammunition on the ancient cursor.

The I-Beam responded back with fire of its own. Gavin swiveled in the portside hideout, jabbing the fire buttons of his two-barreled machine gun. Cooper fidgeted with the starboard gun’s slider, adjusting his aim to follow another SB fighter.

Gavin cussed as a shot took out one of his barrels. “There’s too many of them!”

“At least ten if not more,” Cooper said, abandoning aiming and just firing into oblivion. “Divert all auxiliary power to the cyber shields.”

“Not gonna happen!” Athena crackled through their earpieces. “We need the power for the thrusters.”

Seth typed away on the I-Beam’s ancient computer panels in the cockpit, rerouting power. He glanced into the oncoming mass of dizzying digital specks fogging up the sky. “Once we’re in the Pixels, it’ll be hard to see. We’ll have to rely on our own orbital coordinates to make it through.”

“Like I haven’t flown in the Pixels before,” Athena said dryly. “I could do it with my eyes closed.”

“Let’s hope so!” Gavin grumbled. One of his electrical bullets found a stray SB fighter. “Haha! Yes! Die, you maggots!”

Seth watched in a mixture of awe and terror as Athena steered directly into the Pixels. All natural light vanished into a blinking, reflecting mess of flashing pink and yellow lights. Seth held his hand to his head just to steady himself.

Evan huddled in the corner of the cargo hold as the lightning bullets crackled and zipped all around the ship. Occasionally, one crashed into the cyber defenses and hit the cursor, rocking it back and forth. But as the I-Beam retreated further into the Pixels, less bullets flew around the ship. Eventually, the bullets ceased altogether, and the cursor quietly cruised through the labyrinthian Pixels.

Jess scrambled into the cargo hold, breathing hard. “Just stay calm. We are gonna be okay. Athena is the best pilot in the whole Monitor.”

As if on cue, a kamikaze SB fighter dive-bombed into one of the cursor’s rear engines, chopping it off completely. The ship keeled hard to the starboard, spiraling downward out of the Pixels.

“Yeah, sure,” Evan muttered sarcastically. “Perfectly okay.”

“C’mon, baby, don’t do this!!” Athena tugged hard on the joysticks, trying to right the ship.

“We’re losing Trace-47!” Seth said. “That fighter must have hit the fuel lines.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Gavin grumbled.

“Jess!!” Athena ordered. “Get the Keystroke to the safe room! Cooper! Gavin! You too. We’re gonna have a bumpy landing.”

“How did they find us?” Cooper pondered. “We were all alone in the Pixels.”

“A glitch, I guess,” Seth muttered. “We just happened to have bad glitch this time around.”

Jess tugged on Evan’s arm, pulling him to his feet. “Come on! What are you waiting for?”

“I’m a prisoner, aren’t I?” Evan mumbled moodily. “Since when do I have rights?”

“Let’s go!! Your life is at stake.”

“Since when do you care about my life? You don’t know a single thing about me!” Evan snapped.

Jess shoved him roughly out of the cargo hold, rage swirling in her crystal eyes. “We’ll settle this later. Scram, or I carry you.” That seemed to do the trick.

The I-Beam continued in its spiral descent, plummeting thousands of feet out of the sky to the dark, perilous unknown regions below. Athena pulled hard, trying to get the nose up.

“Seth!! Reroute the shield power to the Anti-Grav.”

While Seth’s fingers flew across the keypad, the other crammed into the safe room.

“You’re standing on my foot,” Gavin muttered.

“Oh, shut up!” Jess said. “What’s more valuable? A toe or a life?”

Gavin sighed. “We need a bigger crash room.”

“Twenty seconds to impact!” Seth warned. “We’re going too fast!”

“You don’t think I’m aware?!” Athena snapped. “Where’s my Anti-Grav?”

Seth sighed his this-ship-is-too-old sigh. “Coming online in thirty.”

“We don’t have thirty!!”

Both Seth and Athena bolted from the cockpit. Moments later, the ancient I-Beam slammed nose-first into the ground and crumpled into a burning ball of metal. The cursor bounced half a mile and rolled to a stop, deathly silence floating after the crash subsided.