by Ash Gray
Rigg’s hand morphed into a buzz saw on reflex, and she stood between Morganith and Hari, grimly waiting for the fight to come. Her heart fluttered when Lisa grabbed her arm, cringing against her in silent horror.
“Three days and notta licka trouble,” Rigg complained. “I knew it was too good ta be true.”
“Can you detect what that thing is, Lisa?” Hari asked. Her staff was folded up in her hand, and she extended it with a snap, the buzz saws on each end unfurling to wink in the starlight like deadly paper fans.
“One moment,” Lisa answered. “Scanning.”
Lisa was holding to Rigg’s arm with both hands, and Rigg felt the robot’s entire body go still, heard her brain clicking. Rigg glanced at Lisa and saw her golden eyes blink and burn red. A red net of light extended from them in a square as she scanned in the approaching creature’s general direction. Her scanning light moved slowly up and down, extending so far that it disappeared into the trees.
“It’s gettin’ closer,” Rigg said tensely. The ground trembled so violently under her boots, her knees were threatening to knock.
“Scanning,” Lisa repeated in a monotone.
“Come on, bucket boobs,” Morganith said through her teeth. She raised her shotgun as the unseen leviathan drew nearer, preparing to fire. “Tell us what it is so we can fight or bail!”
“Patience is a virtue,” Lisa answered in the same monotone.
“Not for me, it’s not,” Morganith grumbled.
“I dunno,” said Rigg, “maybe we should just r-run.”
“Only if it’s smaller than ah breadbox,” said Hari, giving her buzz saws a whirl.
Morganith gave a short, breathy laugh. “Remember that time it was ah breadbox?”
“Scanning,” Lisa repeated. “Scanning Complete.” Her eyes clicked, turning golden again as the red mesh of light dissipated. Beams of yellow light reached from her eyes instead, creating a circular spotlight that glared over the trees directly in front of them. The creature came faster, Lisa’s glowing eyes having pinpointed their location for it.
“Well?” Morganith demanded of Lisa.
A tree somewhere fell with a groan in the darkness. The four of them leapt as it slammed down, shaking the world in a riot of dust.
“What is it?!” Hari begged.
“It is . . .” began Lisa, but she needn’t have finished. A giant mechanical frog rolled out of the darkness and into Lisa’s light; round, blank eyes gleaming like yellow headlights as it came to a smooth, rattling stop. Rigg glanced beyond it and could see it had trampled its eager way to them, leaving a path of destruction its wake. In place of legs, it had been fitted with the rolling tracks of a tank. Its rusty metal body was peeling with green paint, and its great, wide, toothless mouth was open to reveal a red synthetic tongue. Its yellow throat, made of withered cloth, ballooned out when it croaked, regarding them with the greedy, hungry expression of a predator.
Hari took a stumbling step back, pushing her welding goggles back from her eyes to regard the creature in disbelief. “You gotta be kiddin’ me,” she said. “Who would waste their scrap makin’ somethin’ like this?”
“You?” Morganith suggested.
“Proto-Frog Unit 365,” said Lisa factually. “Prototype Age: One Hundred and Nine. Designated Perimeter: Purva Forest. Function: To Cull The Population Of Wild Spiders --”
“Hmm. That makes sense, actually,” said Hari, shrugging contently.
The proto-frog gave a croaking, creaking scream and opened its mouth, raising the hairs on Rigg’s neck.
“Great, things make sense,” said Morganith sarcastically. “Now that Hari’s comfortable, can we fight for our lives?”
The frog’s great tongue lashed directly for Lisa, swinging about like a rubber lasso as it whistled through the dry air. Rigg pushed Lisa out of harm’s way and took the tongue across her cheek. It hit her so hard, she went flying several feet and heard Lisa scream her name. She landed hard on her back and just lay there for several seconds, letting every dull ache in her body slowly pulse away. She hadn’t been wearing her gasmask, so the tongue’s bristles had raked her flesh, like claws scraping up blood. Her cheek had been covered in some sort of acid that bubbled her skin until the blistering pain tore a scream from her mouth. Her face and front were dripping with the green liquid when she managed to sit up, silently grateful for the leather chest guard strapped over her shirt.
Squinting through a haze of green spots, Rigg patted blindly at the ground and could hear the others shouting as they fought the mechanical beast. Her friends’ boots stamped through the grass around her, and the sound of Hari’s buzz saws whizzed above the furious roars of the proto-frog, which seemed to be pushing its determined way toward Rigg, as if it had gotten a taste of something it liked a great deal.
Rigg slowly, painfully dragged herself away through the dirt, feeling her sore body scream with every gesture. She heard the proto-frog lurch in her direction and glanced back in horror, only to find Morganith had leapt in its path.
“Oh, no ya don’t!” Morganith shouted. She fired at the proto-frog’s lower half, likely hoping to shoot out its motor. The bullets pinged off in a flash of sparks, and a thin metal arm reached from the proto-frog’s back to swipe at Morganith, who made the mistake of blocking with her mechanical arm. The creature’s pinchers locked on the false limb, and Morganith shouted in pain as it was snatched clean off, ripping her mind piece out of her neck and no doubt raking the buckles through her flesh. Her shotgun went tumbling away through the grass, and before she could locate it, the proto-frog’s metal pinchers came down on her again.
“Morganith!” Hari screamed, watching helplessly as Morganith – now without her mechanical arm and her shotgun both -- locked in furious battle with the metal beast. “Hey!” Hari shouted, swinging her staff around. “Pick on someone your own size!” She brought her staff across in a slicing gesture, her buzz saws cutting silver ribbons through the proto-frog’s green paint. It screeched another terrible cry, and now several metal arms sprouted from its back, flashing in the moonlight. The arms made a point of attacking both Hari and Morganith, who fought back fiercely.
Lying in the grass in a pained daze, Rigg listened to the battle and silently marveled that it was happening in the middle of the night, in the middle of a forest, with no one but themselves the wiser, as spiders sat on high, looking down on their peril with cool indifference. It wasn’t unlike their everyday struggles, she thought. It just involved more frogs and spiders.
Morganith fought with her fist and her feet, her half-arm flailing as she kicked her heavy boots in the mechanical beast’s side, straining her legs against it in the hope of tipping it. One of the proto-frog’s thin metal arms swept down, knocking on her on her belly, and as she pushed herself up again, its pinchers grabbed the back of her pants. Morganith smacked the arm away, and in furious retaliation, started chucking rocks that made the looming monster jitter and screech, its fat round head spinning to find her in the steady clouds of dust.
“This is for my arm!” Morganith shouted through her teeth, hurling rock after rock. “And that is for Rigg! And this is for givin’ me ah wedgie when I fell!”
“Rigg! Where are you!” Lisa called.
Rigg could see Lisa’s glowing eyes as they cast long beams, cutting through the dusty darkness in their desperate hunt for her. She tried to answer and only a feeble moan escaped. Dust swirled into her open mouth and she coughed weakly.
“Aim for the eyes!” Hari shouted and whirled her staff above her head. One of her buzz saws glanced off the proto-frog’s round yellow eye and it screeched angrily.
“Yeah, I’d be mad too if I was that ugly!” Morganith shouted back.
The proto-frog’s sharp arms came around again, and Hari took a cut across her cheek in a splash of blood. Rivet, who had been cowering inside Hari’s hood the entire time, become beside itself with fury. Though Hari protested, the tiny robot lunged out of her coat, hurling itself at the proto
-frog’s side with a wild screech. Through the spots clouding her eyes, Rigg could see the tiny robot scuttling like a crab across the proto-frog and dragging its sharp feet hard against it sides, until the metal spilt open in long, grating slices. The proto-frog croaked in pain, its menacing pinchers snatching at Rivet and never quite catching it. Each time the pinchers came close, Rivet would spring out of harm’s way, landing on some other part of the proto-frog and continuing its relentless assault.
Suddenly fed up, the proto-frog’s metal arms swiped at Morganith and Hari both, knocking them aside. Rivet made a sad clicking noise and dove into the darkness after Hari. Rigg heard her friends’ shouts somewhere in the darkness, then the ground shook violently when the creature gave a sudden desperate lurch forward. Blinded and pained, Rigg scrambled back through the dirt, fumbling and falling against the trembling ground as her friends leapt to their feet again and fought to protect her. The proto-frog, however, seemed determined to have its prey. The hunting beam of its eyes scanned across Rigg once and snapped immediately back, locking on her small frame as she crawled away. It gave a triumphant croak and came directly for her, crushing all bushes, grass, and rocks in its path like paper.
Morganith had located her shotgun. With on one hand, she cursed and fired at the proto-frog’s face, which only seemed to slow it down momentarily. Hari shouted in frustration and sliced her buzz saws through the tracking on its wheels, but it kept going even as its tracking came away, its hungry headlight eyes fixed on Rigg. It managed to push past Morganith and Hari both, and from its back sprouted hoses, spitting sparks and fire to keep them at bay. Morganith and Hari ran behind the proto-frog in pursuit, shielding their faces from the flames, but they couldn’t get close.
Rigg pressed her back against a tree and closed her eyes, wishing she could have died in a less humiliating way. She supposed it could have been worse: the frog could have been a cute mechanical bunny. As it was looming over her, crushing its mindless, earth-shattering way through dust and grass, she tensed and braced herself to be snatched up in the winding rope of its suffocating acid tongue. But the tongue never came.
Rigg opened her eyes when she heard the proto-frog screech to a grinding, crunching halt. Lisa was standing in front of Rigg, feet heroically spread, one hand out, pushing the mechanical beast away with a frown of determination Rigg could not see. The proto-frog roared in fury to be denied its prey.
“You will not touch her!” Lisa screamed.
The proto-frog’s acid tongue lashed out in retaliation. Lisa grabbed it in both hands, screaming in shrill anguish when its acid peeled her synthetic coating. But with determination still etched across her face, she snatched the great mechanical frog into the air, and winding its tongue above her head like a lasso, she hurled it away with a roar.
Rigg cringed as the giant frog slammed through the underbrush, shaking the ground in a colossal racket that shivered up her very spine. The proto-frog banged into a cluster of trees, cracking one and forcing it over with a tremendous slam that left them all cringing. In the silence that followed, the mechanical frog lay in a motionless, defeated heap, quietly puffing out smog.
***
Though the original plan was to cross the last stretch of the forest that night, Hari insisted on making camp so that she and Morganith might tend to Rigg and Lisa’s wounds. Except for the shallow cut on her cheek, Hari was miraculously unhurt from her brief venture through the air, while Morganith had only sustained a minor burn on her chin from the frog’s spitting fire, as well the cuts on her short half-arm and the back of her neck.
Morganith quickly gathered firewood and built up a fire, while Hari sat Rigg and Lisa down and examined them both with frowning concern. When the fire was blazing against the shadowy darkness, Morganith and Rigg both straddled a log and sat facing each other as Morganith tended to the long, red burns on Rigg’s left cheek. On the opposite side of the fire, Hari spread her cloak on the grass and knelt beside Lisa on it, using a small, portable welding gun to seal the exposed wire in her flaking hands. On her shoulder, Rivet sat unharmed, watching the procedure with many sad, pitying clicks for Lisa.
Lisa patiently held her hands out as Hari peered at them through her welding goggles, but Rigg could see that Lisa was in pain. She winced ever so slightly when Hari applied the sparking beam to her synthetic skin, slowly sealing it shut with small patches of scrap metal she’d had in her bag. Rigg was secretly relieved that Hari had enough emotional intelligence not to have repaired Lisa with scrap from the proto-frog itself.
“These marks’ll never go away, kid,” Morganith told Rigg with a tisk as she applied a soothing salve to the blistering red burns.
Rigg shrugged indifferently. “Like I wasn’t ugly already, Morganith,” she said with a weak laugh.
“But I like your ugly face, kid,” Morganith returned with a frown. “I’d rather not see it disfigured.”
Rigg smiled when Morganith gave her nose a playful tweak.
Morganith’s rusty mechanical arm stood against the log they were straddling, gleaming in the firelight and looking as tired as its owner’s weary face. Morganith had removed her coat, and with it off, her short half-arm was exposed. The sleeve it was wrapped in was torn and stiff with droplets of dark, dried blood from the cuts she’d taken. With her mechanical arm thus removed, she was caring for Rigg with one hand, and Rigg stared at the small black dots that were tattooed on her fingers, thinking how it must’ve hurt to get them.
With one hand, Morganith slowly squeezed ointment onto her finger before applying it in small dabs to Rigg’s face. That done, she set the tube on her knee, and finally, smoothed the dabs of ointment on with a gentle finger. Rigg silently wondered why Morganith went through the trouble: all she had to do was put her mechanical arm back on.
“I can’t believe it,” Hari said, “but the frog was almost an exact replica of the real Trimorphous Frog.”
Morganith sighed. “Dare I ask what the hell a Trimorphous Frog is?” said she wearily.
“They were giant frogs indigenous to this area in the time before time,” Hari answered. “The forest in those days was much larger, a vast tropical rainforest, and the frogs served to balance the number of giant spiders. My people considered them . . . somethin’ ova nuisance.”
“One sees why,” said Lisa dryly.
“When the humans first came to Nottica,” Hari went on, “they hunted the frogs as a delicacy and drove them to extinction.”
Morganith gave a derisive laugh. “So did the real frogs have hoses that spit fire too?”
“No,” said Hari, smiling as she concentrated on Lisa’s hands. “But they spit fire and acid just the same, if not worse. They also had a peculiar preference for eating humans.”
Morganith grunted. “Too bad there weren’t more of ‘em.”
“Hmm,” said Hari thoughtfully. “It seems even that trait was passed on to their mechanical replacements . . . if not accidentally.”
“You’d think the humans woulda been smart enough to not program the frogs to eat them,” said Morganith with a laugh.
“Proto-Frog Unit 365 was very old,” Lisa serenely reminded Morganith. “It was created during a time when such automatons were a fairly new endeavor. Today’s newer models wound not have a propensity for eating humans.”
Morganith grunted. “As I said: too bad.”
Rigg stared at the grass and silently wondered if she didn’t have human ancestry. It would explain why the proto-frog had been so focused on her and Lisa in particular . . . and why a human would have taken pity on her, leaving her on a doorstep in his jackboot for Ms. Brattle to find.
Lisa winced again, hissing through her teeth in pain.
“It’s almost over,” said Hari soothingly. “I’m alllllmost done. Maybe when we get ta Coghurst, we’ll find you new hands. There’s always a pair inna junk heap somewhere.”
“I doubt it,” Lisa answered serenely. “I am a very old, very rare model. But thank you for the thought, Hari
lotecca.”
Hari nodded and continued her work. “They don’t have to be hands from your line, you know,” she said quietly. “But I understand why you’d want identical hands. I would too, if it were me.”
“Yes,” Lisa said calmly, “using hands from a different model would hurt and would take much time to get used to.”
“You’ve got pain sensors, Lisa?” Morganith realized with a frown. Finished dabbing Rigg’s face, she proceeded to nurse her own wounds.
Rigg pulled gauze from her coat pocket and started wrapping her face.
“Yes,” Lisa answered. “The Golds believed in physically disciplining their servants. It only follows that they would want me to feel pain.”
“So you have pain sensors but no taste sensors,” said Rigg in disgust. “All the pain of life an’ none of its pleasure.”
“Exactly,” agreed Lisa quietly. Her lips curled in a small half-smile and she joked, “I am not even ticklish, unfortunately.”
Morganith laughed dryly. “That’s ah crime,” she teased, shaking her head and trading smiles with Lisa. Finished tending her wounds, she strapped on her mechanical arm, and after pushing the mind piece on the back of her neck, the robotic arm roused with a spin of its gears and she took the gauze from Rigg. “Here, I’ll do that for ya, kid. Hold still. I wanna get this right the first time. We’ve only got so much of this stuff.”
Rigg held still, but her eyes went to Lisa. “Why did you jump in front of me?” she asked, trying to keep the scolding tone from her voice. She frowned. “You could’ve been broken --”
“Rigg . . .” Hari began gently.
“No,” Rigg said firmly. “It’s dangerous for her. We don’t have pieces ta keep fixin’ her with.” She looked at Lisa again, ignoring Morganith’s careful hands as they packed her burns with gauze. Lisa was staring back at Rigg through the flames, and her golden eyes were round and sad. “Why would you risk your neck like that?” Rigg demanded crossly. “What were you thinkin’? Do you understand how badly you could’ve gotten hurt --?!”