Quarantine
an excerpt

Jason Riley was among the first to die. Of course, he did not know this at the time, but that did not change the fact that he was.

He ran in to his room at high speed. He fumbled with the wire for about ten solid seconds before he managed to locate The Net Connector at the end of it. He frantically pulled it out to his chair, where he sat down and shoved his finger in to the Connector, feeling the sharp prick of the needle pierce his skin. He tried not to think about the fact that he knew exactly what happened when The Net Connector sampled his blood. Shivers ran down his spine just thinking about it, and the urgency of what he was doing returned to him, and he relaxed a bit more in to the chair.

He felt the jolt and slight dematerializing feeling of entering The Net. He closed his eyes, forcing back the bite of nausea that creeps up his throat. He can almost feel his particles flying apart, though he knows that the feeling is only in his mind. There is a great, long feeling of complete nothingness for a while, which always manages to creep him right the hell out.

He gasped as stark whiteness bled in to his vision painfully quickly, and he felt all of his molecules snapping together in a materialization that often left him wondering where his brain had ended up. He shook his head--and the rest of his body--to clear his mind and regain the feeling in his limbs. “God, I hate that,” he said quietly to him self. He shook his head and got back to the task at hand. He dashed forward to one of the teller booths. “Connect me to Residential 389,” he gasped.

“Yes, sir,” the teller replied sarcastically. Jason rolled his eyes; clearly the teller had had a busy day, but he did not have to take it out on him. Especially since Jason was in a hurry. He kept looking over his shoulder as if he expected some one to come up behind him. He knew it did not work like that, too. But he did it anyway.