William Wenton and the Lost City

by Bobbie Peers

  A red beam shot out of one of the machine’s menacing eyes, and it scanned the pyramid. Soon its shiny metal fingers started working, moving the various pieces of the pyramid, as if it were a completely ordinary Rubik’s Cube.

  William had to do something. And he had to do it now!

  Benjamin had been very explicit that they needed to keep the robot from destroying the orbulator. William looked around. Everyone’s attention was focused on the robot on the stage.

  He suddenly remembered what he had under his jacket: the robot head he’d found in the storeroom. He carefully pulled it out. Its eyes were glowing red.

  “Are you ready to help me one more time?” William whispered.

  “Everything for the revolution,” the robot head whispered back.

  “Uh, what are you doing?” Iscia looked at what William was holding in his hands.

  “I’m using the head,” William whispered back, and stood up.

  “William, are you crazy?” was the last thing Iscia managed to say before William raised the robot head and hurled it at the stage as hard as he could.

  “VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!” the robot head yelled as it sailed through the air and hit the crypto-bot on the stage right in the chest. The head bounced off the massive robot body and rolled across the floor. The crypto-annihilator stopped what it was doing for a split second, then continued twisting and turning the pieces on the pyramid.

  Goffman turned and fixed his eyes on William.

  “Grab her!” Goffman yelled, pointing to William.

  The two closest guard bots rolled toward William with their passivators raised.

  William shot a look at the robot onstage. It continued working on the code pyramid like nothing had happened. The guard bots were now only feet away, and there was nowhere William could run.

  Suddenly there was a bang and a loud whistling sound up on the stage, and everyone stopped moving. William had heard that sound before.

  He looked toward the crypto-bot. It had stopped moving. It held the code pyramid up in front of itself as sparks began spewing out from the pyramid, and it vibrated violently.

  “Noooo!” Goffman shouted, and ran toward the crypto-annihilator.

  Goffman stopped as a glowing light appeared inside the pyramid. The light grew brighter and brighter, and the whole pyramid seemed to explode with energy. A loud zap shot through the room, followed by a crash. William instinctively turned his head away from the explosion and held both hands up in front of his face.

  Then everything went silent.

  When William opened his eyes again and looked toward the stage, the crypto-annihilator (or what used to be the crypto-annihilator) wasn’t sitting in the chair. A large lump of glowing metal lay on the floor next to the table. A pair of robot legs poked out from the pile. It looked like lava with legs. The pyramid sat on the floor next to it.

  “What happened?” Goffman shouted.

  “It looks like your plan failed, Goffman,” a voice shouted from the crowd.

  “VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!” another voice yelled. One of the audience members turned off her hologram mask. It was a robot that appeared to be made of scrap parts. It had to be one of Benjamin’s clatter bots.

  William looked around. Maybe there were others down here too. And sure enough, one by one more of the meeting’s attendees stood up and cried out, “VIVA LA REVOLUCIÓN!”

  “Meet me by the exit,” William said, pushing Iscia toward the door.

  “Where are you going?” Iscia asked, holding on to his arm.

  “I’m getting the pyramid back!” William pulled free of her grasp and plowed into the fray. He climbed over chair backs on his way toward the stage. All around him clatter bots and brand-new guard bots were at one another’s throats.

  One of the revolutionary robots right in front of William was hit by a passivator beam and collapsed to the floor. Another beam zapped past his face. William dropped to the floor, crawling forward.

  He reached the edge of the stage and cautiously stuck his head up before climbing onto the stage and crawling toward the glowing heap of smoking metal. He reached for the pyramid, but then he heard Goffman’s voice behind him.

  “Stop!”

  William stiffened, waiting to be hit in the back by a passivator ray.

  But that didn’t happen. Instead, Goffman stepped behind the robot and stared at William for what felt like forever. His one eye was looking to the side. William had seen that before. It looked familiar.

  Goffman leaned forward and found the button on the back of William’s hologram mask. With a zap a gleam of light shot out before his eyes.

  “Would you look at that?” Goffman said. “I figured you’d find a way to get back to the Institute.”

  William didn’t respond. He just couldn’t understand what had changed Goffman this way.

  A passivator beam strafed Goffman’s shoulder, and he staggered backward and stopped for an instant before collapsing. William looked around and spotted Iscia a little way away. She was holding a passivator in her hands.

  “Come on!” she yelled.

  “Hold on,” William shouted back.

  He bent down and grabbed the pyramid. He tried to lift it, but it wouldn’t budge. Part of it was stuck in the molten metal. William tried again. It was completely stuck.

  “Look out,” Iscia shouted.

  William looked up and spotted two guard bots heading for the stage, both with their passivators aimed at him.

  He cast a desperate glance at the pyramid before hurling himself off the stage and racing over to Iscia. Together they dashed for the door at the far end of the room. Empty-handed.

  21

  William and Iscia stumbled through the cellar door and into the park. A passivator beam shot out of the opening behind them, hitting the iron door. BAM! It sounded like someone had struck an enormous gong, alerting the guard bots in the park to the fact that something was going on—and where they should search.

  “This way!” William cried out.

  They had to find a place to hide. Somewhere they could think, a place where they could plan what to do next. William had been so certain that he would manage to get the orbulator. Now they were going to have to improvise.

  They ran into the darkness, zigzagging through large and small bushes.

  “There,” Iscia said, pointing to a row of tall trees along the dark lake shore.

  “Wait,” William said, and stopped. They stood listening. The hum of the guard bots grew closer.

  William and Iscia continued toward the line of trees, stopping in front of the first one they came to.

  Iscia jumped up and grabbed one of the lowest branches and, with an effortless motion, swung herself up so she was sitting on the branch.

  “Come on,” she said, reaching down for William.

  “Where did you learn to do that?” he whispered, and grasped her hand.

  “My yard was full of trees when I was little,” she whispered back.

  William was not as graceful as Iscia, but a few seconds later he was sitting on the branch beside her.

  “We need to climb up higher.” Iscia started climbing.

  She moved upward quickly and silently, twisting like a lizard between the thick branches. William tried to copy her. Climbing trees in the dark was nowhere near as easy as she made it look.

  And yet he made his way up, and it wasn’t too long before they were both sitting at the top of the tall tree, looking down at the guard bots’ red search beams as they hunted for them far below. William looked up. The tree they were sitting in towered over the others, and he could see all the way to the Institute’s main building at the opposite end of the park.

  The branches and the trunk were much thinner up here, and every slight movement they made caused everything to sway. The branch William was sitting on was no thicker than his wrist. He felt like it might break at any moment.

  “What do we do now?” Iscia whispered.

  “No idea,” William replied.
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  He looked around for some way to escape but quickly realized that there was nowhere for them to go. The other trees were too far away. And it was too far to jump down. They were trapped. All they could do was wait and hope they wouldn’t be discovered.

  William realized with horror what it would be like to be passivized while up in a tree. First they would lose all control of their bodies. Then they would tip off the branches and crash to the ground.

  “Can you believe Goffman stole the thumb drive to get his hands on the antiluridium?” William whispered.

  Iscia shook her head sadly. “I thought he’d changed lately, but he’s gone completely crazy. I—”

  She was interrupted by a sound from below them.

  Two guard bots had stopped at the foot of their tree. Iscia grabbed hold of William’s arm. The guard bots’ red beams hit the tree and started moving upward.

  Higher and higher.

  William held his breath as he followed the progress of the beams with his eyes. It was happening fast. They were already halfway up the tree now. William and Iscia were only seconds from being discovered.

  Suddenly the sound of a powerful explosion rang out somewhere in the distance. The whole tree shook.

  The beams stopped just beneath them.

  William spotted a dark column of smoke rising from the roof of the Institute building.

  When he looked down again, the red beams were gone, and he heard the guard bots’ electric motors humming away from them in the darkness.

  William and Iscia sat quietly until they were completely sure the guard bots were gone. They stared at the orange flames flickering out of a big hole in the roof of the main building.

  “It looks like something exploded up in the storeroom,” Iscia said, her voice fearful.

  “Benjamin and the others are up there,” William said. And before he was actually aware of what he was doing, he was on his way down the tree trunk. “We have to do something.”

  It was much faster getting down than it had been climbing up.

  William lowered himself from the bottom branch. Iscia landed right next to him. They heard the humming of guard bots moving away from them, toward the main building.

  “What in the world is going on?” Iscia asked.

  “There’s only one way to find out,” William said, and started walking toward the Institute.

  “Are you crazy?” protested Iscia. “It’s crawling with guard bots over there.”

  “What else are we going to do?” William said, turning to face her. “We have to do something. Benjamin is in there. He needs help.”

  A few minutes later they were running through the park, heading for the main building.

  They slowed down as they approached. The moon was high in the sky, and the cold light reflected off the guard bots assembled on the lawn.

  “We have to get past them,” William said decisively. He knew he couldn’t abandon Benjamin. And he knew what he had to do, even if the thought of it terrified him. It was the only chance they had.

  “Wait here until I come back,” he told Iscia. “Hide, and don’t come out no matter what happens.”

  “What do you mean?” Iscia asked.

  “Just wait here,” William urged before he turned and started walking toward the guard bots. “If I’m not back in half an hour, then get out of here.”

  “But they’re going to passivize you” he heard Iscia say from behind him; he kept going anyway.

  He stopped a little way from a group of guard bots. There were more than thirty of them. They all had their backs to him as they peered up at the burning roof. A fire alarm was going off somewhere inside the building.

  William looked around and spotted a rock in the flower bed right beside him. He picked it up.

  “HEY!” he yelled, and threw the rock as hard as he could at the guard bots.

  It hit one of them right on the head with a hollow clank.

  They all turned toward him.

  The guard bot, which now had a large dent in the back of its head, raised its passivator and fired.

  22

  William dangled like a rag between two guard bots rolling at top speed down a hallway in the main building.

  The fact that they seemed so goal-oriented told William that they knew where to go. And that was exactly what he was counting on: They were taking him straight to Goffman.

  William still couldn’t move from the passivization. And it seemed like the new passivators did more than just knock out your muscles. His bones all felt like they’d been turned into rubber.

  The guard bots braked in front of a door at the end of the hall, and one of them entered a code into the control panel next to the door.

  The door opened with a blip.

  They emerged into the lobby. Clearly, they had taken one of the secret back entrances.

  The lobby was teeming with guard bots. They swarmed back and forth while gazing up at the escalators, which weren’t moving. It seemed like they were waiting for something, preparing for something.

  William could hear distant rattling and clanking from the floors above. It sounded like a massive orchestra of toddlers heading toward them.

  “Why did you bring him here?” a familiar voice yelled.

  William was just barely able to look to the side and spotted Goffman, who was pushing his way through the robots toward them. His two red-haired chauffeurs were right behind him.

  “But this is William Wenton,” one of the guard bots holding William said.

  “And he threw a rock at us,” another one said. “Very hard.”

  “At Ted,” a third said, pointing to the guard bot standing at the very back, the one with the big dent in his head.

  Goffman stopped in front of them, his brow furrowed. He hadn’t looked at William yet. His left hand was stuck inside his jacket. It reminded William of the way Napoleon often stood in paintings. It looked strange. Had Goffman injured it?

  “Nobody should be in here now. Especially not him.” Goffman pointed to William with his free hand, still without looking at him. “We’re in a state of emergency. Only authorized personnel can be in here.”

  “But he threw a rock . . .”

  “SILENCE!” Goffman yelled.

  Several of the robots lowered their heads and stared at the floor. As if they were scared to look Goffman in the eye. A dark look had come over his eyes—a darkness William hadn’t seen before—and it frightened him.

  “Get him out of here,” Goffman commanded, and pointed at the door they had just come in through. His left hand was still hidden inside his jacket.

  William tried to say something, but his mouth wasn’t working. He was dying to confront Goffman, ask why he’d done all this.

  “Out!” Goffman yelled, shoving a guard bot so it staggered backward and clanked against the robot behind it. Goffman’s body twitched, as if he were having some sort of attack. He grabbed his head.

  “Get out of here . . . NOW!” Goffman trembled, and his face contorted with pain. “Nooooo,” he said through his teeth.

  The guard bots began to wheel back toward the door. William wanted to protest, but he still couldn’t make a sound. He tried to squirm and kick his legs to get free, but was only able to flap vaguely a couple of times.

  “STOP!” Goffman yelled. “Where are you going?” His voice sounded strangely hoarse and gurgly now, as if he had something stuck in his throat.

  The guard bots stopped in their tracks. If anything, they seemed confused by the conflicting orders.

  “You just told us we should get out of here,” one of the guard bots said without turning around.

  “I said no such thing,” Goffman barked. His voice was harsh and dry now. “Come back here this instant!”

  The guard bots glanced at each other, unsure what to do.

  William dangled between them. He tried to turn his head to see behind him, but his body still wouldn’t obey.

  It was like Goffman suddenly had someone else’s voice. It
sounded like a combination of Goffman’s voice and . . .

  William froze. How could that be? She had pulverized herself with her own hand in the Crypto Portal. And why would Goffman talk with her voice?

  “You have three seconds,” Goffman hissed. “I make metal dust from disobedient robots.”

  The guard bots turned but remained in place, hesitating. William glanced at Goffman, and now he had no doubt. Somehow or other, Fritz Goffman had Cornelia Strangler’s voice.

  And for the first time since Goffman had entered the lobby, he pulled his hand out of his jacket. He did it slowly, as if he wanted William to take it in.

  It felt like an electric shock had jolted William’s body, and he gasped.

  Goffman had Cornelia Strangler’s hand, the one that had been on display in the glass case.

  “You are exactly the boy I’ve been looking for,” Goffman said in Cornelia’s hoarse voice, striding toward William. “But that softhearted fool Goffman has been fighting me.”

  Goffman pushed his way through all the guard bots. It was as if he were moving in slow motion. The mood in the lobby had changed completely. The entire space had gone quiet, and the air had gotten colder.

  Goffman stopped right in front of William and stood there staring at him before leaning forward. And now William smelled it, the same stench that had always followed Cornelia: the odor of burned rubber.

  “You’re an interesting fellow, huh?” Goffman whispered in Cornelia’s hoarse voice. “I could have used someone like you, but Goffman says you’re not worth having.”

  William didn’t respond.

  His eyes were riveted on that mechanical hand.

  A new explosion came from somewhere above them. The floor shook, and the metal bodies of all the robots in the lobby clanged as they banged into one another.

  Goffman jumped, and his face contorted in pain.

  “They’re coming,” Goffman said in his normal voice, looking up at the escalators. Then he turned to William, grabbing his collar and pulling him close. “William, get out of here. She’s inside of me. And there’s nothing I can do to stop her. You need to run.”