Gen One

by Amy Bartelloni

  “I’ll see you on the other side, Z.” She leaned in and kissed his lips gently. “I’ve got this,” she told him.

  “Dee—” He took her hand and pulled her back. Whiskey was yelling to Leo. They’d jumped into the fight. “I didn’t mean to suggest you were weak. You’re the strongest person I know.” He broke eye contact. “I just didn’t want you hurt. I was selfish.”

  “It’s okay.” She took his hand and kissed the outside of it. “Just get better. I’ll yell at you later.”

  It took all she had to pull away from him and get Leo. The bot was capable of assisting Zane back to the boat, and quickly. He leaned over and helped Zane up, propping him by the arm.

  “The zoos?” Whiskey asked. She’d somehow got another weapon, an old-fashioned gun, one like those Rank’s men had. She checked the ammo, and it was loaded with eight rounds. Not much, but better than nothing.

  Leo pointed up the street. “Two blocks and turn right. There’s a building that used to be a stadium. It’s now used for…well, you’ll see.”

  “The others are there, attacking,” Zane added. “But Dee—it’s not pretty in there.”

  Delilah nodded. She snapped the ammo back in place. “Okay.” She didn’t have time to think about not pretty. From the shape of Zane, though, she could imagine.

  “Dee,” Zane called, as Leo assisted him down the steps. The fighting lulled as the men and bots had made their way closer to the zoos. “Be safe,” he said.

  “You too,” she told him. Leo nodded, and Whiskey and Delilah turned and ran down the steps toward the fighting.

  It wasn’t hard to discern which way the zoos were from the sound of the blasters and the flashes lighting up the sky. The battle had moved north, from what Delilah could tell. The ground shook when the giant bots stomped past. Delilah and Whiskey activated their scramblers and hid until they passed. Otherwise the city was deserted of life. Whiskey led them down empty streets that were once commercial centers. Clothes still hung in some of the windows as if no time had passed. An advertisement for a coffee shop hung over a smashed window. Debris floated down from one of the buildings when an explosion rocked the streets ahead of them.

  They stopped at the side of a building and peered around the corner. Whiskey pulled her back in the shadows as a group of bots crossed a street in the distance, shooting as they passed, but making little noise otherwise. They didn’t need to.

  “Are these all Rank’s men?” Delilah asked, holding tightly to the gun in her hand. There were only eight rounds. She’d have to make them count.

  Whiskey twirled the blaster on her finger. “It’s possible there was a more coordinated attack,” she answered with a smile. The scarf Leo had put on her had been discarded to help bind Zane’s injury. A shadow of brown hair covered her skull, but it only served to make her appear fiercer.

  They stepped out of the alley onto a once busy city street. The smell of smoke hung in the air, and in front of them a plume of black rose in the sky. Delilah winced as a body was thrown across a street ahead of them. Man or bot, she couldn’t tell. It looked human though, and when it slammed into the window of a high rise and smashed the glass, it didn’t move. They backtracked to another side street.

  “Did your people break Zane out?” Delilah asked. They slowed as they approached streets where the fighting was the most intense. The marquee for the old stadium was in front of them, but the electronic board was covered with a white sheet. A chill crawled up Delilah’s spine at the plain, black wording on it, which read “HUMAN CONTAINMENT ZONE.”

  “Fighting’s been going on since we arrived,” Whiskey said. She pulled Delilah into an alleyway between buildings. Delilah peered into the buildings they passed. Empty. Falling apart. Some trashed. She couldn’t imagine the lives they lived here only a couple generations ago. At the same time, she knew Zane would have a field day scrounging all this old tech.

  “Was that the plan all along?” Delilah pursed her lips. She didn’t like being left out, but there was no reason for her to know the entirety of their plans.

  Whiskey gave her a half smile. “The plan was fluid,” she replied. She still had the remains of the makeup Leo had put on her, and she wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand, leaving a black streak down her cheek. “Gah. I hate this stuff.”

  Delilah gestured to the marquee. “Do you know how to get in?” she asked.

  Whiskey glanced over her shoulder, where laser fire flashed from a group of humans taking shelter next to the stairs, and a couple Gen Two bots who were too close for comfort.

  “Not that way,” she murmured. She looked behind them where the alley narrowed. It was risky. Who knew if they’d find bots around the corner, and if they did, they’d be trapped.

  “We have to risk it,” Whiskey decided. She took two steps back. “There are several side entrances if we can circle the building. The plan was to engage them all.”

  “With how many forces?” Delilah asked quietly. The bots might not be able to see them with the scrambler, but it was possible they could pick up on their voices. Or maybe that was scrambled, too. She wasn’t sure how it worked and wished Brute were around to ask. He wasn’t with the other prisoners they’d released.

  “However many Rank could muster.” Whiskey paused at the end of the alley. “It’s war, Dee.” The alley opened into a narrow street. They were farther from the convention center, but could circle around.

  “Where did they take the men?” Delilah asked, still thinking of Brute. She jumped when several shots were fired, but the noise carried from a few streets away. An explosion lit up the sky. They must have been taking out the major weapons. Delilah had a feeling the fight would get uglier. She didn’t know what the bots retained for weapons, but if it was even a fraction of what they used to have, their fight would be bloody.

  Whiskey nodded ahead of them. “Here,” she answered. She paused in front of another street. It led to the side of the building. There was no fighting there, but a dead body lay across the street, surrounded by a pool of blood.

  Whiskey approached the body slowly. She tapped it with her toe and the head rolled to the side. Its eyes, wide and brown, were open and looked far away. Human, Delilah thought. He wore black pants and shirt, though the shirt had a large gash from which he’d bled out. Whiskey stopped and looked right at her.

  “I know we’ve warned you about what’s in there. But knowing, and seeing…” She trailed off and looked Delilah up and down.

  “I’ll be fine. I can handle it.” Delilah rubbed her hands down her arms. The warm day had chilled, and she had goosebumps. Maybe it was seeing the dead body. She couldn’t help wondering if the soldier had a family, and who he was.

  “Okay.” Whiskey didn’t look convinced, but there was no turning back. She walked to the end of the street, past former stores, some with their windows smashed. They dodged teams of robots, who engaged Rank’s forces all over. Delilah stepped over another body, or what was left of it anyway, and tried to settle her stomach. The scene was sure to get worse before it got better, and she couldn’t afford to be weak.

  The end of the street was empty and quiet. The fighting had moved to the far side. Delilah covered her head when something dropped from the sky and exploded a few streets away. Whiskey looked over her shoulder with concern.

  “Artillery is online. We should hurry,” she commented. Delilah followed her as Whiskey scampered out from the safety of the street and to a nondescript black door. They stepped over the twitching skeleton of a bot. Whiskey aimed her blaster and put it out of its misery, then kicked it for good measure. She pushed on the door with her shoulder and it opened.

  “Go.” She ushered Delilah in and looked around behind them before pulling the door closed. They were in a long, dimly lit hallway smelling of sweat and must. Delilah stepped in something sticky, then lifted her foot, grimaced, and stepped to the side, but the who
le hallway was covered. The smell was metallic and tangy.

  “Blood,” Whiskey said grimly. She held the blaster in front of her. Delilah’s stomach turned at the thought of the whole hallway flooded. A massacre had happened here, but where were the bodies? Her hand shook, and she tried to breathe through her mouth, but the taste of blood was in the air.

  Whiskey motioned her to be quiet as they crept past offices, which were set up as torture chambers. Some contained cots; some had metallic beds with the restraints broken. Some rooms still held the bodies, or what was left of them, strapped on the beds. That was all it took. Delilah had to pause and be sick, though there was nothing left in her stomach. Whiskey waited at the end of the hall where blood spatter covered from floor to ceiling.

  Smoke hung in the air, but it carried the odor of burned meat, and Delilah would have been sick again if there was anything left. Before she caught up with Whiskey, another explosion shook the building. Ahead were shouts and fighting. They had to press on. Whiskey offered to let her stay back, but there was no going back now. What would she even go back to? She shook her head, and they pressed further into the building. Delilah’s hands shook, but her footsteps never faltered.

  They emerged into a curved hallway. There was less blood, though red footprints crossed the floor. There had been fighting here, but curiously, no bodies. Far away, flashes lit up the hall and shouts echoed, but only the remains of a skeletal bot sat crumpled in the corner. Twitching.

  Whiskey stomped over to him and yanked its arm so the bot was lying flat on its back. Delilah turned away. The bot had half a face, but it looked like the other side had been ripped off. Flesh hung off its electronic parts. It was the only human aspect of the bot, and the one human looking eye crinkled up in agony.

  “Don’t…can’t…must…save.” The bot twitched with each word, and its left eye sparked.

  Whiskey kicked it hard in the midsection, but the bot didn’t flinch. Either it didn’t feel pain, or the sensors were off. Or it was too wounded to care.

  “What happened here?” she asked.

  “Hive. Hive. Hive,” it repeated, until Whiskey kicked it again.

  “What about the hive?” she asked.

  The one eye that focused rolled its gaze over to her. The other eye sparked and went out. Its silver lid closed.

  “Hive. Mind. Glitching. Glitching. Glitching.” He continued on in this way until Whiskey shot him with her blaster, and the bot silenced forever. There was something sad about his half face, lying lifeless on the floor, and a little macabre. Robot skin could be very lifelike, but the way the tendons hung on to the bot’s face made her wonder if it was real skin. And if it was, who it came from.

  “Interesting.” Whiskey looked up and down the hall. “The hive mind is glitching. They can’t think without it. They never could.”

  “That’s good, right?” Delilah crossed the hall and looked in a large, open doorway. There was a curtain beyond, and the sounds of heavy fighting and wailing, along with some kind of animal noises she couldn’t recognize. She shied back.

  “Glitching isn’t perfect.” Whiskey crossed the hall to her. “Completely down, yes. Yay. Glitching means it’s sometimes working and sometimes not.”

  From the look on her face, Delilah figured they weren’t quite ready to celebrate. She put one hand on the curtain, ready to free these people and get the hell out of there, glitches or no glitches. She didn’t pull it though, until Whiskey reached out and took the curtain from her, yanking it open.

  “No going back now, rookie,” she said. Her smile was hollow, because beyond where they stood Delilah got her first look at the bots’ zoo, and the scene was worse than she imagined.

  Delilah had never really visualized the zoos. They were a concept, abstract at best. A prison, maybe, if she had to think about them at all. A fairy tale monster. But she couldn’t deny the horror of what was in front of her anymore. The zoos were real, but she wasn’t sure the beings inside the cages were even human anymore.

  They’d come into the arena on a second level, which was lucky because roars echoed from the open, oval area downstairs. A series of crudely constructed cages covered the stands. Next to them, the thing in the cage reached out, and Delilah jumped instinctively back. The creature had robot arms, ending in claws that scratched toward Delilah. Its torso was arguably human, but above the neck human and bot parts merged, oozing flesh. It clicked its jaw, and Delilah saw sharp teeth inside.

  “What is it?” Delilah asked.

  “They’re not all like that,” Whiskey said, looking around. Most of the action was taking place in the arena below them. The aisle with the cages was mostly empty. Delilah only wished the cages were. “These are the experiments. They don’t usually live long.”

  Delilah looked at the robot/human hybrid. “Are we going to let them go?”

  Whiskey shook her head sadly. “We have no way of knowing if they’re connected to the hive. I’m sorry, Delilah, but they’re too far gone.”

  Whiskey took off at a fast trot, and Delilah followed past cages containing even more grotesque combinations of humans and bots and animals. A human head with a bot torso reared up on horse’s legs. A human with metal snakes for hair reached through the bars, grabbing at them and screaming for help. Delilah stopped a few paces out of her reach. Several feet ahead, Whiskey whipped around and double tracked.

  “We don’t have time for this.” She grabbed Delilah’s arm and pulled.

  “Give me your blaster,” Delilah replied. The gun would be too loud and imprecise, and she needed to get this done in one shot.

  Whiskey gave her a long look and handed her the palm-sized device. Delilah had held one before. The girl quieted when she aimed. Her eyes filled with tears and she mouthed the words ‘thank you.’ Delilah pulled the trigger without hesitation. She didn’t know if the girl could recover with surgery, but how do you recover from having snakes for hair? She was already dead. Delilah just fired the final shot.

  The small laser didn’t incinerate people, like the governor’s had, but instead jolted them with so much electricity their heart stopped. When the girl fell, her eyes sparked.

  “She’s connected.” Whiskey took the laser back and pulled her along. “If they didn’t know we were here before, they do now.”

  She paused to look into the arena, and Delilah’s stomach fell. She didn’t think anything was worse than the horrible experiments, although as the cages went on the subjects appeared more and more human. Delilah had trouble leaving them behind. But in the arena…

  The roar she heard was from an animal, all right. A real animal. Lions, she thought, if she had to guess, though she’d only seen pictures. Five cages on the side of the arena held other animals that were going crazy, but the lion had been let out. Bots and humans fought around it, but the animal seemed to have no side. It lashed out at everyone.

  Delilah caught on to what was happening and pulled Whiskey’s arm. “They’re defenseless.” She pointed to the humans in the arena. The bots in control of the animals had let them out on purpose. Sporadic fighting broke out in the stands behind them, and here and there, a laser blasted.

  “Whiskey!” Delilah jumped as a lion leapt at the closest human. He wasn’t fast enough, and the animal grabbed on to his arm. Delilah couldn’t watch, but the man’s screams echoed in the arena until they faded away. “We have to help them!” Delilah cried, but her feet rooted to the spot. Behind them, the human experiments screamed and cried to get out. It was the stuff of nightmares.

  Whiskey watched the fighting on the other side of the arena, then to the cages lining the upstairs. Cages containing humans, or what looked like humans. She screamed when something whizzed by Whiskey, knocking her down to the floor. A burn smoked on Whiskey’s sleeve, but it missed her flesh by a hair.

  They got up fast and sprinted past cages with the sad human bot experiments. Delilah
tried not to stare, but it was hard when some of them were screaming and pleading with her. One girl lay on the floor, her fingers on the bars. The robotic bottom half of her body was rotted and coming apart, much like the body that washed up on shore. The smell was horrific.

  “Her body is rejecting it,” Whiskey slowed down and said sadly. The girl in the cage hissed and Delilah took a step back.

  “Come on.” Whiskey led her past case after case, each more horrifying than the last. When they got to the children, Delilah had to force herself not to look.

  “Ahead,” Whiskey told her. In a doorway, two men fought a bot, both ducking behind rows of chairs. Thanks to their scramblers, they hadn’t been seen.

  “How do we get past them?” Delilah shouted over the roar of the lion. She could see the human cages on the other side of the doorway, the men and women reaching out. Human men and women.

  Whiskey looked around. Behind them, where the upper seats used to be, were the cages. Below them were the seats where the two men ducked.

  “Give me a boost,” Whiskey said. She gestured to the closest cage. Whatever creature had been inside, which had a full mane and robotic legs, was dead. Or at least Delilah hoped.

  “They’ll see you,” Delilah said. She made a ladder with her hands and boosted Whiskey up. She paused at the top, turned back, and smiled.

  “I’m good at hiding,” she said. “Wait for me.”

  Delilah considered sneaking up to the men to offer her help, but surprising them would likely end up in her getting shot, too. If Whiskey could take out the bot from above, she’d be able to join her. She crouched behind a row of seats, turning her head to the fighting in the arena.