Ant barely heard him. “Are you all right? You look hot and bothered.”
Liam grimaced. “Something’s happening.” He patted his belly, then pulled up his shirt. “It’s spreading fast now.”
Ant and Madison gasped. Liam’s entire stomach had taken on a hard, plastic sheen. His pant legs around the shins and knees stretched tighter and tighter as his robot body took form. A sudden ripping sound along one of the seams indicated he was about to bust out.
“Too late to take ’em off,” Ant said, pointing. “I’ll get some scissors.”
“You’re going to cut his pants off?” Madison said, rising and holding her hands to her face. She looked shocked, though it was probably less about seeing Liam without pants and more to do with the terrifying transformation into a mechanical boy.
Ant dashed about the room trying to recall where he’d seen some scissors, but most of his attention was on Liam, who now lurched to his feet and hobbled about, bent double. “Okay, this is really bad,” he said in a wavering voice. “I can’t walk.”
Madison reached for his arm. “Does it hurt?”
“No, it’s just—my legs are stiff.”
With another tearing sound, his left shin suddenly expanded into a blocky shape, and his pant leg flapped loose. The rip widened all the way up the leg, exposing more dull-white plastic that quickly took shape and smoothed out. A similar thing started with the right leg, and seconds later, Liam’s pants were ripped open to his boxers.
A silence fell. Liam looked mortified, and his cheeks flushed red as Madison raised an eyebrow. “Bright green?” she said.
Before Liam could respond, the shredded jeans fell away in a heap, and his brand-new robot legs quickly completed their transformation, now fully inhuman, all plastic casing. Across his midriff and chest, plastic bulged from under his skin, warping into shape as his stomach caved inward. Still in place, his boxers looked even more ridiculous now.
Though his legs were thick and bulky, his ankles and knees were impossibly thin, and so was his ever-narrowing waist. Stunned, Ant watched as wires snaked down from the underside of where his rib cage would be if he had ribs. The ends of the multicolored wires seemed to sniff the air before finding their way to his new artificial hips and plugging themselves in somewhere deep within. Ant couldn’t guess what they did or why they were needed.
Liam, still holding his t-shirt high to expose his chest, seemed to have frozen in terror, his face white as a sheet. He looked up at Ant with wide eyes. “It’s . . . it’s gone,” he whispered.
“What’s gone?” Madison said.
Gesturing vaguely toward his midsection where his boxers seemed about to fall away, Liam said nothing but had a pitiful, pleading expression.
Ant understood. His friend was now fully mechanical from the feet all the way up to the chest. “It’ll grow back when you’re done with the mission,” he muttered.
Unexpectedly, Madison laughed. “Wait. Are you talking about your boy-parts?”
“This is serious!” Liam snapped, glaring at her. “What if I need to go to the bathroom?”
“Somehow, I think those nanobots would have taken that into consideration,” Ant said softly, fascinated and horrified at the same time. “Same with your stomach. You won’t need to eat for a while. Holy heck, you only have human arms and shoulders left—and your head!”
Liam whisked his shirt off as the change swept upward. His shoulders were already expanding, the skin stretching thinner and thinner before turning white and gaining a plastic sheen. Angular details had melted into view all over the robot casing, grooves and ridges as though he were made up of separate panels and components. More wires appeared, buried deep under the casing around the shoulder joints. Ant wondered again about all the wires and tiny screws here and there. What was the point of such details? The robot was forming out of nothing!
As the process continued, Liam raised his arms and watched with his mouth hanging open. Flesh and bone melted away from his elbows, leaving only mechanical joints and thin connecting rods—normal enough for a robot but utterly surreal for a human.
Liam looked like he had gloves on now. While his fingers hardened and became complete, the nanobots spread higher, now closing in around his neck.
“His head,” Madison gasped, stepping back now and moving to Ant’s side.
“Liam—” Ant started.
His friend had taken on a haunted look as though he knew he was about to die. His neck caved inward at the sides, revealing more of the black, bony structure while the top of his head bulged out of shape. His face remained intact like it were being saved for last. The process slowed, the nanobots apparently taking great care in this final stage. Abruptly, a faceplate grew straight out of Liam’s forehead, then angled downward and slid over his face.
The transformation ended.
A long silence followed, with Liam standing as still as a statue.
“You okay?” Ant whispered.
He and Madison edged forward.
“Liam?” she said in a shaky voice. “Are you . . . are you alive?”
Their friend’s head looked rather like a motorcycle helmet complete with a glass visor across the top half of his face and a respiratory mask covering his mouth and chin. The visor had a honey-orange tint, too thick and dark to reveal anything but blackness beyond. The pale-grey dome on top glinted under the ceiling light.
“You’re freaking me out, buddy,” Ant said, his heart thumping. What if his friend was dead, his brain eaten by nanobots and turned into a mass of wires and computer chips? “Say something.”
Abruptly, a red light winked into life on Liam’s smooth chest plate. At the same time, a faint beep sounded from inside his helmet, and he tilted his head a couple of inches to one side. His fingers flexed, and his arms lifted a fraction, the tiny whirr of servos emanating from his shoulders.
“Liam,” Madison said, raising her voice, “you’d better say something, or so help me I’ll—”
“Shh,” Liam interrupted. “Mission details downloading.”
His voice, though muffled, was reassuringly human. Ant breathed a sigh of relief and hung his head for a moment, closing his eyes and thanking the stars that his friend’s personality seemed intact.
Once Ant had steadied his nerves and composed himself, he stepped toward Liam and rapped sharply on the faceplate, looking for a hinge of some sort. “Hey, Mackenzie. Open up.”
Liam made an impatient noise and reached up to feel around his helmeted head. Even before his hands touched the visor, it slid upward and back with a hiss, and he peered out from deep within the opening.
The helmet clung tightly to his head, leaving only his distinctly human eyes, brow, and the bridge of his nose exposed. In fact, the rest of his head appeared to be the helmet, his human skull fused with the robot one. Presumably his mouth still worked behind that respirator, which made Ant think about other fleshy parts like the lips and tongue and throat . . . Just where did Liam end and the robot begin?
Liam mumbled something.
“What?” Madison demanded, moving closer to peer into the recess. “Speak up. You’re all muffled.”
“This is weird,” Liam said a bit louder. “Hang on, I think I can . . . Ah.”
Something inside activated with a soft click, and now Liam’s breathing could be heard through the respirator. When he next spoke, his voice came out clear and amplified.
“How’s that? Better? I just needed to—”
“Shh!” Ant said urgently. “Keep it down. The house is big but not that big. There might be cleaners walking about in the hall.”
“I’m getting a download,” Liam went on in a quieter voice. Ant had to admire the reverberating rumble. It sounded cool, a little like Darth Vader only not as deep. “It’s like it’s streaming directly into my head. I can’t see it or read it, but . . . well, it’s like someone’s whispering in my ear. No, wait, it’s not like that. It’s more like—”
“What does it say?” Madis
on asked impatiently.
“Don’t know yet. I’m only getting bits and pieces. It’s like waiting for a YouTube video to load on a slow connection; it keeps stopping and starting and jumping around. I should be able to play it all back as soon as it’s loaded.”
Ant couldn’t imagine a more surreal situation. His friend was a robot, all pale-grey and shiny, an ultra-slick, agile-looking fighting machine with bright green boxers around his ankles.
“Do you have any weapons?” Ant asked.
Before Liam could answer, a sudden flash made Ant duck and whirl around. To his astonishment, a vertical shaft of brilliant light appeared, rapidly expanding into a glowing disk about five feet across. It shimmered and pulsed, then plunged inward, forming a tunnel . . .
“Did you know about this wormhole?” Ant demanded, glaring at Madison. “Did you forget to tell us about a message?”
She looked ashen. “I know nothing about it. I guess I didn’t need to write myself a message because we’re already right here. What more is there to say?”
Liam took a few steps toward the wormhole as it began to swirl and pick up momentum.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Ant said, automatically reaching out to grab his friend’s arm. Not only did it feel cold and plastic, it seemed immovable, like a statue. “Don’t go rushing off. Let’s figure out how we’re—”
“I have to go,” Liam murmured in his synthesized voice. “The mission has started. I’m seeing ‘urgent’ written everywhere. That’s why the final changes happened so fast. It was supposed to take a few days, but they need me right now.”
“Who?” Madison cried, moving to stand between him and the wormhole. Her black hair streamed backward in the suction. “Who’s ‘they’? Tell us everything!”
The wormhole began to flicker.
“I don’t have time,” Liam said, reaching out to push Madison aside. She stumbled sideways, and when she tried to grab his arm and push back, she might as well have been grappling with a thousand-pound gorilla. “The wormhole’s already collapsing to prevent anything coming through after me. I have to go now before it’s too late.”
“Leave it!” Ant yelled, rushing around to Liam’s other side as Madison tugged ineffectually on his outstretched arm. “You don’t have to do this! Just let it close, and then it’ll be too late to join the mission. Big deal! What are they going to do, sue you?”
Annoyingly, Liam didn’t answer. He just stepped closer to the wormhole until he began to sway back and forth, even his tremendous weight caught up in the powerful dimensional tug.
Madison looked like she was about to get sucked up too. Ant ducked around Liam and grabbed her arm, pulling her back, watching as Liam raised a foot off the ground, poised to step into the wormhole.
“Liam,” Ant warned.
His friend paused a moment longer, his head swiveling a few inches. “Back soon,” he rumbled. Then he stepped forward and was whisked away by the tunnel, spinning slowly as he receded into the distance amid flickering light and patches of blackness filled with stars.
Madison lunged, but Ant held her back.
A second later, the wormhole broke apart, scattering in an explosion of lighter-than-air will-o’-wisps that quickly faded to nothing.
The two of them clung to each other, gaping at the empty space in the middle of the room. Their friend was gone. Who knew when—or even if—he would be back.
END OF PART 4
COMING NEXT
As Liam hurtled through the wormhole, a sense of déjà vu hit him. No, more than that—the very real feeling he’d actually been here before. He tried to spin around, certain he was being watched by someone just behind him, but maneuverability was nigh impossible considering his high-velocity weightlessness.
Still, he knew. He’d witnessed this very scene when he’d used the time wand. He’d visited a few places in his near future: first his house in the aftermath of the wonderstorm attack, then Madison’s bedroom when she’d asked the two boys to witness her sleep writing, and this moment right now, wearing some kind of armor as he sped through a wormhole.
He sighed inwardly. Easy mistake to make. It’s not a suit of armor at all. I’m a robot.
The tale continues in Nanobot Warriors.
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