Prototype Exodus (Prototype D Series Book 2)

by Jason D. Morrow

  “They’re dying up there,” Hazel said.

  “They are fighting hard,” Des said.

  “I don’t want you to die, Des.”

  The robot turned his head toward her. He couldn’t see her in the traditional sense. He could see patterns of her. The warmth of her skin. The noise she made. This version of Des was in the dark.

  “We only have to stand our ground for a few minutes,” he said.

  The rumbling traveled from one end of the ceiling to the other. She could hear screams from the fighters above. She could hear Nolan yelling for everyone to fall back.

  Her eyes immediately found the door at the other end of the room. It was the only way in or out. Where did Nolan think all those people would go? They would bottle-neck and no one would be able to get in unless Esroy and his troops tore their way through.

  “Get me into the room,” Des said.

  “What?”

  “The EMP,” he said. “Punch in the code.”

  “Des, you can’t set it off. Not yet!”

  “I’m not going to set it off, but we need it to be ready.”

  Hazel turned toward the panel and pressed the code. Des walked into the room and stood for a second as he tried to reconstruct from memory where the switch was. Hazel looked back when the door on the other side of the giant room flung open, and the Outlanders from the parking garage started flooding in.

  Des felt the wall for the large switch and then pushed it upward. The EMP was activated, and the center core started spinning rapidly.

  “What is it doing?” she asked.

  “Charging up,” Des said. “All we have to do is hit the button.”

  Des walked back out of the room and Hazel shut the door behind her. She lifted her gun and took aim, waiting for the robots to push through.

  A lot of the Outlanders who had clamored into the lower level were covered with blue paint and red blood. She didn’t know how many had died, but it would soon be all of them if they didn’t hurry. She hoped the Outlander robots would be out of the city soon.

  As she stared at the door, she saw Nolan get through and he sprinted toward her.

  “We’re running out of time!” he yelled as he came near. He looked at Des. “Your robots better hurry up.”

  Des didn’t get a chance to respond. Enemy robots were coming in now, and the guns blared throughout the room. There was no stopping the noise as bursts continued from both sides, a deafening cacophony of bullets slamming against metal and rock.

  Hazel wasn’t coy about firing either. She took every shot she could at the approaching robots.

  But her insides went cold when she saw Esroy barge into the room. He was bigger than Des was, and newly built. She had never seen him like this. He fired his gun from a barrel in his arm, taking the lives of people who just wanted to be free.

  She felt horrified, like she had created some sort of monster. Her arms felt too weak to hold her gun in the air. She let it drop to her side as tears came to her eyes. She started to walk forward, ignoring the cries from Des for her to stop.

  She did stop, but not before she was in the middle of the room and she yelled as loudly as she could, “Esroy!”

  The robot smiled widely and he held up his hand for his robots to stop everything they were doing. The robots obeyed him without so much as a flinch. This resulted in a few of their deaths, but even the Outlanders gave pause at the effect Esroy had.

  Bodies of both humans and robots littered the ground. Some of them were still alive, squirming, trying to stay awake. Others had barricaded themselves behind columns. Others were out in the open, holding to their weapons, waiting for the slightest movement.

  The entire room was silent but for the dying whose injuries produced too much pain to stay quiet.

  “Why are you doing this?” Hazel said.

  “You would destroy me,” Esroy said. He pointed to the door of the EMP. “I don’t plan on letting that happen.”

  Hazel could hear the tapping of feet coming up behind her rather slowly. A blind Des pushed past her and stood between Esroy and Hazel.

  “Get away from her,” Des said.

  “You see,” Esroy said, “this is an age-old problem. For some reason you always choose him over me.” Esroy shook his head and looked at Hazel. “Now I’m choosing me over you.”

  There was no warning, and without sight, Des was unable to stop the punch that slammed into the side of his head. Des flew to the ground. Before he could pick himself back up, Esroy lifted his wrist into the air, aimed at Hazel’s chest, and fired.

  56

  Des led the convoy toward the gate despite the massive amount of soldiers there to stop them. He linked to the comm frequency of every Outlander robot within the convoy and encouraged them further.

  “No matter what you do,” Des said. “Don’t stop. Don’t stop. We’re going to ram straight through the barricade.”

  His passenger looked at him when he said this, but Des just shook his head. “You have a seat belt.”

  He didn’t know if this plan would work. He didn’t know if it would kill him. He knew he was made of tough material, and so were these robots, but that didn’t mean a crash couldn’t be fatal.

  Bullets pounded into the front of his truck, the windshield spider-webbing all across. His passenger had just clipped his seat belt in when a flurry of bullets punched through his chest and neck. Des tried to swerve out of the way, but the damage had been done. A stray bullet must have severed a circuit, and the robot sat limp beside him.

  Des gripped the steering wheel as tightly as he could and stared straight ahead. Every couple of seconds a bullet would hit his chest or shoulder, but he ignored them as they ricocheted throughout the bed of the truck.

  He zoomed in ahead of him and he could see General Bracken on top of one of the trucks, directing his troop’s aim on specific vehicles.

  Des’ engine started to smoke, and flames burst in front of him, obstructing his view. But he had nowhere else to go. They were only a hundred yards or so from the outer wall. They were so close.

  At fifty yards, the firing stopped immediately when the opposing soldiers realized that Des and his fellow drivers weren’t going to slow down.

  Human and robot alike spread in two directions, trying to get out of the path of destruction, but it was too late. Des let out a scream as his truck rammed into the first military vehicle, the sound of slamming metal and screeching rubber screaming through the air.

  Des flew through the cracked windshield and didn’t hit the ground for another fifteen or twenty feet. His legs and arms sparked as he scraped against the asphalt, sliding another ten feet before he came to a slow stop.

  When he was sure that he was still alive, he got to his feet, his internal systems starting an automatic damage overview.

  None of his systems had failed. He was dented and scraped, but it was still in good, working condition. Other trucks crashed into the barricade with as much speed as Des. Some made it out alive while others smashed through the front windshield and broke into pieces on the ground.

  Des didn’t have time to feel sorry for them. He got on the comm and immediately ordered those who could to get to the gate and start breaking it down. There were robots everywhere Des looked. Some of them wore the blue paint, others of them did not. They shot at each other, wrestled each other, pulled apart limbs, took off heads.

  Des ran for the gate. For the moment, he was the only one there. Pushing, shoving, slamming, doing everything he could to get it open. But it was far too large for him.

  He felt bullets run up and down his back, and he ducked low and jumped out of the way behind a truck. These soldiers wore the black uniforms of Bracken’s elite. One of them came too close and Des reached for his rifle, snatched it out of his hands, and slammed the butt of it into the man’s face.

  Des got on comm. “Get to the gate!” he shouted.

  The Outlander robots were all out of the trucks by this point. Each of them did what they c
ould to push forward. Some were caught off guard by the Mainlander robots, and others were shot through the neck by Bracken’s elite soldiers.

  Des slammed a fist into another man’s head and then an elbow into another. He ran back to the gate again and started beating on it in vain. Why weren’t the others coming? He could hear them fighting. He could hear guns going off.

  He had no other choice but to go back and fight with them. Being in the lead vehicle must have given him a position advantage, though he was as stuck as the rest of them, it seemed.

  He turned, but stopped in his tracks when he saw Bracken standing in front of him. There were fifteen elite soldiers on either side of him.

  “Drop the gun, Des,” Bracken said. “These soldiers are good. And with this many at this close of a range, one of them is bound to get a good shot at your memory core.”

  Bracken wasn’t bluffing, and Des knew he was right. With the beating he had taken already, he wouldn’t stand chance against so many guns at point blank.

  He let the rifle fall from his fingers.

  Bracken did not have a smile on his face. He did not glory in the moment. He stared at Des with anger in his eyes.

  “You shouldn’t have come back here, Des.”

  Des didn’t move.

  “I just want to leave,” Des said. “That’s what all of us want.”

  “So your friends can set off the EMP that I created,” Bracken said. This time he smiled and nodded. “I should have foreseen that Nolan would find out about that. Then again, all this happened because you came back.”

  “It would have happened eventually,” Des said. “With or without me.”

  “Yes, but with you, Mainland has descended into chaos.”

  Des heard a crackle from his comm reception. Bracken wouldn’t be able to hear it. His elite soldiers wouldn’t be able to hear it. But Des could hear it clearly. It was N1216.

  “We’re coming up,” he shouted. “The barricade was strong, but we’re getting through to the gate.”

  Des didn’t dare respond. He just needed to distract Bracken a little longer. Keep him engaged in conversation until his companions could take out these soldiers.

  “I never meant for any of this to happen,” Des said. “I only came here to find out why my village was targeted by your nuclear bomb.”

  Bracken squinted. “Your villagers weren’t targeted. You were targeted.”

  Des didn’t know how that was possible. Sadness. Anger. Hatred. These emotions flooded into him. He wanted to ask why, but he couldn’t seem to get the words out. He wanted to speak, but his mind wouldn’t let him. He felt like he was about to cry, but he knew he couldn’t.

  “We had drones scouting your village for months,” Bracken said. “And only because they were so close to Mainland.”

  “They were hundreds of miles away!” Des shouted. He wanted to kill Bracken. He wanted to break the man in half.

  “When Esroy and I discovered that you were among them, we decided to change the coordinates in the last moment.” He shrugged. “There was always a threat of you coming back and stirring things up again. It’s just ironic that what we did is what made you come back. We shot ourselves in the foot.”

  Des’ jaws clenched together and his hands were balled into fists. He couldn’t wait for the others to get here and provide a distraction.

  “Shoot him!” Bracken shouted.

  The soldiers opened fire, but Des had already started running. Dirt and asphalt shot up into the air as bullets pelted the ground next to him, some of them skipping off his metal armor. Bracken lifted a gun, a smile on his face. Des recognized the gun immediately. With a wider barrel than any of the others, this one was meant to subdue the robot with metal netting. Just as Bracken pulled the trigger, Des dropped to the ground on his back.

  The metal netting grazed the top of Des’ head but landed against the wall next to him. It crumpled into a ball on the ground uselessly. When Des raised his head, he noticed that Bracken’s elite soldiers were no longer firing at him, rather, their backs were turned as they tried to fight off the onslaught of blue-painted robots.

  Des stood from the ground and was face-to-face with Bracken. The general didn’t back down, instead he jumped at Des and wrapped his large hands around the robot’s neck.

  Des hadn’t been ready for the lunge, and the two of them fell to the ground hard. Bracken was on top of him, doing everything he could to hold the robot down. Then he quickly reached behind him, grabbed a pistol from his belt and shoved the barrel underneath Des’ chin.

  Des reached for Bracken’s wrist, but it was too late. Bracken squeezed the trigger and the bullet burst through the metal into Des’ head.

  Des felt his arms go limp and he rolled onto his side. Everything seemed to go into a fog and he couldn’t hear a thing. Warning lights within his system told him of structural and internal damage—possibly fatal.

  Des tried to concentrate…he tried to keep his mind focused, but he couldn’t even see straight.

  Then came the final assessment: Memory core has become dislodged. Sensory cable has been severed.

  Des knew that couldn’t be good, but it was simple fix. All he had to do was put it back. He lifted his head as much as he could off the ground and smacked it into the asphalt.

  Some of his hearing came back, and he could hear Bracken shooting at the coming robots. The pressure sensors in his left arm gained some function as well. This was all he needed.

  He reached behind his head and opened the protective cover over his memory core, fully exposing it to the outside world. If a bullet got through, Des would be gone forever.

  He felt his way to the memory core. He pushed, poked, and tried to move it into the correct position.

  His head bashed hard into the ground. Once. Twice. Bracken had turned back around and was shooting Des in the head. A third time.

  Des rolled onto his back and started to sit up, but Bracken shot him in the forehead, slamming it into the ground once more.

  Assessment: All operations fully functional.

  Des’ eyes widened and he sat up again, this time with the speed of a lightning bolt. He wrapped his hands around Bracken’s throat and then forced the general to his knees.

  The man’s face was bright red and his veins bulged from his temples and forehead. All Des had to do was squeeze a little harder and the man’s throat would be crushed. Des wanted to do it. He had to do it. Bracken deserved death. Des let go of him and Bracken fell to the ground, coughing and wheezing.

  “Des!” N1216 called out. “We’ve got to get the gate open! Our enemies are regrouping.”

  Des reached down and grabbed Bracken by the collar, and flipped him onto his back. He reached down to his belt and pulled out the man’s radio.

  “Order them to open the gate,” Des said.

  “You’re just going to kill me,” Bracken wheezed.

  “Order it!” Des snapped. “If you do, I will let you live.”

  “Why? I killed your people.”

  “Because I’m not Esroy,” Des said. “I might have been built to kill, but I can choose not to.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Bracken said.

  Des reached to the ground and grabbed Bracken’s pistol. With one hand he held the radio to Bracken’s lips. With the other, he pressed the barrel of the gun against his forehead.

  “Your choice.” Des pressed the button on the radio.

  Bracken took a deep breath, his teeth grinding. “This is General Bracken. Open the east gate.”

  It took only three seconds for the order to go through. The gate opened and the robots all started running toward the opening as fast as they could.

  Des shoved Bracken up against the wall as the Outlander robots ran past into open lands by the hundreds.

  He really wanted to kill Bracken. More than anything he wanted to. But he had gotten what he came here for. He came to Mainland looking for answers. He came seeking justice.

  He found his answers. Brac
ken had lost everything. Esroy was about to die.

  “You have oppressed the Outlanders for a very long time,” Des said. “I will let them decide what to do with you.” Des held firm to Bracken’s pistol, reared his arm back, and smashed it into the side of his head.

  Bracken crumpled forward and fell face-first into the ground. The blow could have killed him, but Des knew he was still alive.

  Des, along with a small group of robots, stood at the gate until the rest of them had gotten through. Mainlander robots tried to give chase, but Des and the others shot them down and ran away as fast as they could. Whatever Mainlander robots might survive the EMP would be destroyed in a matter of seconds by the Outlander robots.

  Des switched on his comm and made a direct link to Prototype B, Hazel, and Nolan.

  “This is Des. We’re out of the city. Set off the EMP.”

  57

  Nolan heard the command through his radio. The robots were out of the city and it was safe to set off the EMP.

  “Go,” Hazel said.

  Nolan had dragged her from the action. Esroy’s bullet had missed her heart, but she was losing a lot of blood. If she didn’t get attention quickly, she would die.

  He sat next to her, one hand on her bullet wound to try and stop the blood, another hand holding his rifle, shooting at anything not smeared with blue paint.

  Des was on top of Esroy, though he didn’t match Esroy’s physicality nor his ferocity.

  Blood and robot parts were spread all across the room. It was impossible to maintain focus with so many people and robots fighting each other.

  With every move, Esroy tried to advance toward the EMP room with Des blindly trying to keep him from it. And Des was taking a beating. One of his legs was bent and several of his fingers broken off.

  Nolan knew that setting off the EMP was up to him. All he had to do was hit the button. Everything was ready. He grabbed Hazel’s hand and pressed it against her wound.

  “Don’t remove pressure! You’ll bleed out.”