Castle of Cyborgs

by Adrian C. Bott

  Axel dived away from the window just as a deafening shrannggg tore through the craft.

  All the lights went off, then back on, but flickering. Axel smelled smoke. Cold, fresh air blew in his face. How was that possible? He was inside the MOT-BOL and its windows didn’t open …

  Then he saw the holes in the hull. Holes so big you could drive a truck through them.

  Axel thought: Those blasts punched right through and out the other side!

  BEAST was still locked in place in the middle of the craft. His eyes were wide with fear.

  ‘We’re going down!’ Agent Omega screamed.

  Axel had never been sure what sort of mysterious anti-gravity engines kept the MOT-BOL up in the sky, but one thing was for sure. They weren’t working anymore.

  Wind whistled up and around Axel as the craft plunged towards the waiting mountains.

  Omega grabbed Axel’s shoulder. ‘Get into BEAST and get out of here while you’ve got a chance!’

  ‘But what about you?’

  ‘Gonna crash-land if I can. This old meatball’s tougher than it looks. Go!’

  Axel pulled open BEAST’s canopy, climbed in and thumped the release control. They went into free-fall for a second, then BEAST’s foot-rockets fired and they shot off through the sky, away from the doomed MOT-BOL. It fell like a meteor, trailing smoke behind it.

  Axel tried to get his bearings. The turrets were still blazing away, filling the air with torpedo-sized pulses of energy.

  He and BEAST rocketed towards the castle walls. What an ugly building it was! It was like a great stone vegetable that had sprouted in the dark. He didn’t want to think of the experiments that must be going on inside. Maybe there really was a monster down in the dungeons. Merging man with machine … But his dad was in there too, somewhere. And Axel needed to find him.

  Axel shook himself, trying to focus. ‘BEAST, scan for a way in,’ he said.

  ‘MAIN GATEWAY IS DEFENDED BY TURRETS,’ BEAST said. ‘NO OTHER ENTRANCES FOUND.’

  ‘Guess we’ll just have to make one, then.’ Axel scanned the wall for its weakest spot. ‘There! Land and shift into JACKHAMMER form.’

  From somewhere in the distance came a dull ker-thoom. The MOT-BOL had crashed to the ground. Axel prayed Agent Omega was still alive.

  BEAST shifted. A thick metal dome covered his head, like a construction worker’s helmet. His right fist thickened and became a hammer. His left fist folded away and a whizzing drill slid out of his arm.

  With a yell, Axel shoved the drill deep into the castle wall, hoping to weaken it. A spray of dust and stone chips blasted out. He bored two more holes then swung the hammer.

  JACKHAMMER packed a punch, all right. The whole wall shuddered. A hideous gargoyle that had squatted in place for five hundred years broke off and smashed to bits on the ground below.

  Axel swung another blow and this time, the ancient blocks gave way. Through clouds of dust, Axel saw they’d opened up a hole that might be wide enough to clamber through.

  He started towards it – and a terrible howl echoed across the landscape.

  It was a howl to freeze the blood. It was like the cry of a hungry wolf, but metallic somehow, like the twanging of a giant steel spring.

  ‘INCOMING LIFE FORM,’ BEAST warned.

  ‘I see it!’ Axel gulped.

  The creature came creeping through the forest, its red eyes glowing.

  It had been a wolf, once. It still had the shape of that wild animal, and BEAST could hear its savage heart thumping. But its body was covered with metal as well as fur, and the teeth it bared were sharp shards of steel.

  Cyberwolf!

  The cyberwolf slipped between the thick pine trunks, keeping to the shadows, its eyes shining bright as hot coals. It moved slowly, but showed no fear at all.

  ‘It’s getting ready to attack,’ Axel said.

  He glanced at the hole in the wall. It might be big enough to squeeze through, but what if it wasn’t? He imagined BEAST stuck halfway. The cyberwolf would sink its metal razor teeth into BEAST’s legs and drag him out. Then, when he was helpless on his back in the snow, it would tear him to pieces.

  No way would Axel let that happen. JACKHAMMER wasn’t supposed to be a combat form, but a hammer was still a hammer and a drill was a drill. He glared at the cyberwolf and swung the hammer down to strike the ground – thoooom.

  ‘Come on!’ he yelled.

  The cyberwolf hesitated. Then it gave a steely growl, answering Axel’s challenge. It padded out from the forest, letting Axel see it clearly. Slowly, it bared its massive steel teeth and licked its lips with a shiny snakelike tongue. At the tongue’s tip was a lethal-looking spike.

  It wants me to be afraid, Axel thought. And I AM afraid. But I’m not going to show it.

  ‘What are you supposed to be?’ Axel mocked. ‘Part dog, part dustbin?’

  The cyberwolf showed no sign of understanding. It kept coming, slowly and purposefully.

  Axel watched it closely, ready for the moment it would break into a charge.

  Pad, pad, pad.

  Any second now.

  Pad, pad, pad.

  Come on, attack! What are you waiting for?

  Like lightning the thought flashed across Axel’s brain: this thing wants me to keep watching it! Because while I’m looking one way, something else must be sneaking up on me!

  Axel spun around. He saw two more cyberwolves – lean, fast-moving brutes – only metres away. They leaped.

  BEAST’s hammer slammed down on one of them, hard and heavy. It went skidding sideways across the snow, yelping in a high-pitched screech. The other wolf caught hold of BEAST’s shoulder and ripped a piece of armour plating clean off.

  Axel whacked it. There was a skree of grinding metal and the cyberwolf’s eyes flickered. It fell back and landed with a sound like a bag of coins.

  Axel turned back to face the first cyberwolf. It paced back and forth and glared at him hatefully.

  ‘Did I spoil your surprise?’ Axel taunted.

  The wolf howled and howled again. At first Axel thought it was just angry, but then he realised it was a summoning howl. More cyberwolves emerged from the forest – nine, ten, eleven of them – and each one looked just as mean as the first!

  Axel backed BEAST up against the wall, so at least he couldn’t be attacked from behind.

  The wolves grinned and stalked across the snow towards them.

  BEAST moaned, ‘THERE ARE TOO MANY, AXEL!’

  He’s right, Axel thought. We can’t win this! They’ll keep coming until BEAST’s torn to bits. How am I meant to fight these things? Even if we shift to a fighting form like GALAHAD, we’re still outnumbered!

  Maybe fighting the wolves hand-to-hand was wrong. Maybe he could fight their minds somehow. After all, despite their cyborg bodies, they were still animals. What were wolves afraid of?

  ‘BEAST, go into HECKFIRE form, as fast as you can!’

  BEAST shifted.

  The wolves fell back and circled warily. What was this new trick?

  BEAST fell forward as his arms and legs turned into the clawed limbs of his dragon form. Smoke rose from his mouth, which grew into a long snout.

  Axel let loose the biggest fire blast he could summon – not at the wolves, but into the air above them. A huge ball of fire bloomed out, bathing the mountainside in angry light.

  All the wolves instantly went into a wild panic. They turned and ran, howling in fear. Axel sent a few more blasts of flame after them, just to speed them up a bit.

  ‘It worked! The fire drove them away!’

  Time to move. He shifted BEAST into his regular form, then squeezed through the hole in the wall and into the dark hallway beyond.

  ‘I’m coming, Dad,’ he whispered. ‘Wherever you are, hang in there. I’m not leaving without you.’

  They crept through a warren of wood-panelled corridors, hunting for a computer terminal. Tiny cleaning robots buzzed back and forth on the flagstone floors, paying
no attention to them – at least, Axel hoped they weren’t.

  Eventually they found their way into a grand hall, like a cross between a wicked baron’s home and a mad scientist’s lair. A black marble-topped dining table, engraved with a circuit-board design, almost filled the room. Suits of armour stood by the doors, but the helmets’ eye-slits glowed red, shining out scanning beams that tracked back and forth. There were animal heads mounted on the walls, but they all had robotic parts.

  The open fireplace was the largest Axel had ever seen, big enough to roast an ox over. It, too, was a mix of ancient and futuristic parts. BEAST’s display told Axel that the bricks were centuries old, but the flames that danced in the hearth were holograms projected from beneath.

  ‘This place is weird,’ Axel said. ‘But at least we made it inside. Right?’

  But the far door crashed open before they could take another step.

  There stood Professor Payne, the overseer of the Neuron Institute. Men in black suits and sunglasses, with leather gloves and stern faces, filed past him and into the room. They stood pointing their fingers at Axel as if they were guns.

  Then something tall and silvery stalked in, and Axel felt a fear grip him unlike anything he’d felt before. It was a robotic angel with a snarling, fanged face like a vampire. There was no mercy in those blank oval eyes.

  ‘I suggest you take a seat, young man,’ said Professor Payne. ‘Make yourself comfortable. After all, you’re not going anywhere.’

  Axel remembered Professor Payne clearly from the last time they’d met. Mr Grabbem had been showing some powerful people around his factory, and Payne had been one of them: a stiff, unsmiling man who looked about as healthy as a waxwork. He had the glassy, dead eyes of a stuffed animal. Axel was sure that his skin must be some kind of rubber, with circuits and sliding pistons underneath.

  The Neuron Institute agents kept their fingers pointed at him. BEAST’s display read ROBOTIC HANDS – POWERFUL CRUSHING GRIP – ARMOUR-PIERCING DART FINGERS.

  Armour-piercing darts? Suddenly Axel didn’t feel so safe inside BEAST’s heavily-armoured body.

  He scanned the robotic angel next, and almost gasped aloud. It was a walking weapons factory – laser cannon, smart bombs, even a tractor beam to drag targets towards it. How could they stand a chance against something that powerful?

  We’d have been safer out among the cyberwolves, he thought.

  ‘Come, come,’ said Professor Payne irritably. ‘You are not a stupid boy. You can see you are outnumbered and outgunned. Yes?’

  ‘Looks that way,’ said Axel.

  ‘Very good. There is only one logical thing for you to do, then. You will do exactly as you are told, or we will destroy you and your robot. Is that clear?’

  Axel hesitated. Something didn’t add up.

  There were a lot of weapons pointed at him. Easily enough to destroy them. In fact, there were far more than enough.

  Weird. Why would a logical, efficient man like the Professor bring many times more weapons than he needed? It would be like taking out a tank with an atom bomb.

  In an instant, Axel had it: because it’s a bluff! He isn’t planning to destroy us right away – he just wants me to think he will!

  Axel took a deep breath. He said, ‘No.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘No. Because I don’t believe you, Professor.’

  The professor blinked and swallowed. His eyes seemed to move back into his skull for a second, like a frog’s. ‘Explain yourself.’

  ‘You aren’t going to destroy us. Not yet. You need something from us. Or we wouldn’t be talking like this. You would have blasted us already.’

  ‘JUST SHOOT THEM!’ rasped the robotic angel. ‘DON’T YOU KNOW WHO THEY ARE? THAT’S AXEL AND BEAST!’

  Axel felt a nasty shock as the robotic angel said his name. How did it know who they were? Professor Payne held up a warning finger. ‘I shall say this only once. Grabbem are welcome here, even when they visit unexpectedly. But I do not take orders from them.’

  So, the angel was from Grabbem! That explained how it knew who Axel and BEAST were. But what was it doing here? Was it some new kind of battle robot? And why did it sound so … lifelike? Its voice had been full of a very human anger, but Axel couldn’t see any human parts. It didn’t make sense.

  The angel folded its arms. ‘WHATEVER,’ it said.

  The Professor smiled, but you could tell he wasn’t used to it, because it looked like a gash slowly appearing in a fatty piece of ham. ‘At ease, gentlemen,’ he said to the agents. ‘The boy has bravely stood his ground, and for that he has earned my respect.’

  The agents withdrew their pointing gun-fingers and stood with their arms folded behind their backs. The robotic angel made a disgusted ‘tchah’ sound and leaned against the wall to watch what was coming next.

  Axel let himself relax, but not too much. He’d bought himself some time. Now he had to find a way out of here and track down his dad. All the doors were blocked by agents, so he’d have to find another route. One they wouldn’t have thought of.

  Secretly, he typed a message so only BEAST could see it: Where does that fireplace lead to?

  Instantly, faint blue lines appeared on BEAST’s screen, showing – as if in X-ray – the shape of the chimney beyond. It was wider than Axel had dared to hope. The only question was, would it be wide enough?

  The Professor took a seat opposite Axel and studied him carefully. ‘You are correct, Axel. I do want something from you. I need to study you. The way you and that robot work together is phenomenal. We could learn a great deal.’

  ‘Why would I help someone like you?’ Axel scoffed.

  ‘Ah. You think me a simple villain, I see. Someone who turns living beings into cyborg monsters, purely for the fun of it.’ ‘Sounds about right.’

  ‘Then tell me this,’ said the Professor. ‘In all your days of fighting against Grabbem Industries, have you ever asked yourself what will happen when they win?’

  ‘They won’t!’

  ‘Oh, but they will,’ Professor Payne said. ‘Grabbem are too strong to be stopped now. They will take over more and more of the planet: conquering, plundering and ravaging everything in their path. They will leave it scarred and burned, stripped of its natural resources. A wasteland. And what manner of creatures do you suppose will survive, when this planet becomes a waking nightmare?’

  Axel thought back to the cyberwolves. He imagined a world turned into a red desert, the skies smoky with pollution. Barely any food. Almost no water. A human who could survive that would have to be tough, specially adapted. Maybe it would have a breathing mask instead of a mouth. And cyborg eyes instead of fragile, human eyes …

  ‘So that’s it,’ he said in a hollow voice. He remembered his mum’s fear – that his dad would have become some horrible machine –and shuddered.

  ‘I see you understand our work now,’ replied the Professor. ‘We are preparing a new breed of beings – humans and animals made strong with technology. Strong enough to rule over a ruined world!’

  BEAST didn’t dare to speak out loud. Instead he flashed up a message on his internal screen: AXEL STOP THEM AXEL PLEASE.

  ‘Is that what you’ve done with my father?’ Axel demanded.

  The robotic angel jerked to attention. ‘FATHER?’ it said. It didn’t sound mocking or cruel. It just sounded surprised.

  The Professor steepled his fingers. ‘And now we get to the point of your little visit. No, Axel. Your father is not being prepared for the world to come. He is part of a far more exciting experiment, in the Tower of the Living Computer!’

  Axel was trembling. ‘Take me to him now, or I swear I’ll bring this whole filthy castle down around your ears!’

  The agents surrounding Axel whipped their fingers up to point at him once again.

  ‘Don’t bother with the threats,’ said Professor Payne coolly. ‘One more outburst like that and I just might give you to our Grabbem friend here.’

  The
robotic angel punched a fist into its open palm.

  Axel had heard enough. He started to walk, slowly, around the great table. The fireplace, with its holographic fire, was only a few metres away. The agents’ fingers followed him as he moved.

  ‘Take me to my dad,’ he said.

  ‘Not until you agree to give me what I want,’ said the Professor.

  Axel reached the fireplace. It was so huge that you could have driven a truck into it. He stood with his back to the dancing, heatless flames.

  ‘So, you want to know the secret of how BEAST and I work together?’ he said.

  The Professor craned forward. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘We’re friends, you jerk,’ Axel said. ‘That’s all. There’s no secret.’

  ‘Ah.’ The Professor’s face fell. ‘I was mistaken, then. You have no value to me at all. Agents? Blast them.’

  This was the moment Axel had waited for.

  As the agents opened fire, he quickly dived away from the hail of darts and into the fireplace. The chimney shaft gaped above him.

  ‘Bye!’ he said, and gave a little wave.

  ‘NO!’ screamed the angel.

  Axel fired BEAST’s foot rockets. Like Santa in reverse, they shot up the chimney. The sounds of yelling and gunfire echoed all around them as they rushed on into the darkness …

  The chimney walls were black with the soot of centuries and crisscrossed with hanging cobwebs. They looked so crumbly that Axel was scared they might cause a cave-in. He flew BEAST carefully up the very centre of the chimney shaft, missing the edges by a hair’s breadth.

  As soon as he could be sure they were out of danger – for now, at least – Axel slowed down.

  ‘We have to find the Tower of the Living Computer,’ he said. ‘If we keep going up, we’ll come out the top of the chimney. The turrets will shoot at us, but we might be able to dodge …’

  ‘AXEL, ARE WE GOING UP?’ said BEAST.

  ‘Yeah. Well done back there, by the way. You did great.’