But the SEALs’ bullets struck with little effect against the three neuromorphs—Landers, Blount, and Phillips—standing before the table on the stage. In front of them lay the torn-apart remains of what had been the replicas Lanny Malcolm, Randall Black, and John Travis.
“They’ve been fighting,” called out Mencken from the doorway. “Power struggle.”
“Stay outside!” shouted Blake to the others, shifting his body painfully around to get better cover behind a row of metal seats. DeFranco had evaded the gunfire and taken cover down the row. “We’ve got three in here,” he said into his comm. “Take a look.”
Blake pulled out a microbug and flipped it into the room. He used a controller on his wrist to guide it down the auditorium aisle to a good view of the three neuromorphs.
“If you surrender, we will not kill you,” said Landers, wielding the assault rifle. The other two neuromorphs also held weapons.
“Fuck you and the other appliances,” said Blake. Then, into his comm, “Ask the geeks what they want us to do. They need a brain, right? They want all three? Please put in your fucking order.”
“They want Landers,” came back the answer from James. “He probably has the information.” James paused a moment, then said, “Hell, Garry said you should just ask him. Maybe he’s so confident he won’t lie.”
Blake shrugged and shouted. “Say, Landers, do you happen to have in your artificial shit-for-brains the data on all the replicas.”
“Yup,” said Landers in his southern accent. “I surely do.” He took the opportunity to fire a spray of bullets at both Blake and DeFranco, ripping into the fabric of the metal-backed auditorium seats.
“He does,” reported Blake. Then, to DeFranco, “Let’s take the other two out. But it’ll be a bitch taking down Landers without damaging the brain.”
“I’ll handle that,” said DeFranco.
Blake could see him shifting to pull weapons from his pack. “I’ll take the woman . . . or whatever the hell it is,” said DeFranco. “Ready?”
In perfect unison borne of their training, they held up the stubby tubes of Javelinas, targeted them on Blount and Phillips and fired them. The SEALs hunkered behind the seats to survive the explosions that reverberated through the auditorium, blowing the two replicas into twisted unrecognizable piles of secondskin, electrogel, and carbon fiber. The explosion on Blount sent his head arcing into the air, turning slowly over and over and landing with a clatter on the tenth row.
Fortunately, the breacher DeFranco had his four snakelike mobile explosive charges. He popped up with one in his hand and three more cradled in his other arm. One after the other, he targeted them and sailed them as hard as he could toward the stage.
Again Landers answered with a spray of bullets, but now there appeared from the wings four Infilmorphs, which joined him in peppering the auditorium with gunfire, tearing at the seating and walls. They also lofted grenades out into the auditorium, detonating in the rows to transform the seats into shards of twisted metal and smoking fabric. Two Infilmorphs leaped from the stage and disappeared among the rows of seating. Blake and DeFranco could hear the scratching of their talons on concrete, as they made their way up the aisle.
The other two had just moved toward the apron of the stage when they exploded into flying legs and bodies. Blake turned to see James holding the spent tubes of two Javelinas, dried blood on his arm.
“About fuckin’ time,” said Blake.
On the stage, Landers was still intent on firing the assault rifle, so he ignored the slithering forms winding their sinuous way toward him. He appeared to take no notice as one climbed his back and tightened around one shoulder. Yet another enfolded the other shoulder, and two more encircled his legs.
They exploded all at once, neatly severing his limbs and causing his torso and head to slam to the floor, helpless.
“Okay, I took him down; it’s your turn,” said DeFranco. One of the Infilmorphs clambered over a row of seats near him, and he turned to face it, as it launched a grenade. He dived backward as the grenade blew apart a row of seats. Within seconds, he rose up holding a Javelina and launched it, blowing the Infilmorph into a shredded heap of inert parts.
“Can you guys handle the last bug?” asked Blake, without waiting for an answer, sprinting to the stage. “I’ve got a brain to catch.”
Sure enough, just as Blake mounted the stage, Landers’ brain erupted from his chest, rolling across the stage for several feet before sprouting the spidery legs that would enable its escape. It skittered away from Blake toward the backstage exit, but Blake had anticipated that move. He lunged forward, grabbing the obsidian sphere, and holding it away from his body, its six legs flailing the air.
Blake slammed the brain to the floor, holding it down with his foot, leaning his full weight on the sphere as its legs thrashed against the floor, trying to escape. The surprising strength of the legs was almost too much for him to manage, but he knew how to fix that. Pulling out his pistol, he held it against one of the arms where it met the body and fired. The arm blew away from the body.
“Gotcha, you nasty little fucker,” he muttered, proceeding to fire five more bullets, severing the rest of the legs. Finally, the neuromorphic brain was left only with feebly waving stumps where once had been legs.
Behind him, Blake heard the explosion of a Javelina, and turned to see pieces of the last Infilmorph skitter down the auditorium aisle.
“Pitbull, go get the geeks,” he ordered. “Let’s see if this thing is what they want. Jammer, for Chrissake, quit bleeding.”
• • •
Leah was ready for whoever—or whatever—would come through the door of her room. When the explosions began to shake the room, she had prepared herself for battle. She had managed to rip off one leg of the metal table to make a club. Of course, going up against one of the armored robots would probably be useless. But maybe she could manage to pierce its eye sockets, blinding it and giving her some small chance of escape.
She had a good idea of the layout of the facility. The androids had anesthetized her when they captured her; but she had regained consciousness as they had arrived. Luckily she still had the presence of mind to pretend to be knocked out.
The door unlocked and opened, and she drew back the metal leg.
Patrick appeared, and she uttered a gasp of joy. “Dear God, you found me! You found me!” she leaped forward and embraced him, and he embraced her back.
“We’ve got to go,” he said.
“Absolutely!” she said, grinning happily. “I don’t have much to pack. Let’s blow this joint.
“We’ve got to go,” he repeated.
“Did you bring a fork?” she joked. “That’s my weapon of choice, y’know.”
He paused a moment, frowning. “No. We’ve got to go.”
He took the hand not holding the table leg and led her into the hall and out the door into the main cavern. They reached the neuromorph assembly area, where the long row of half-finished units stood silent. Scattered among them were the battered, broken remains of other, armored neuromorphs.
“What the hell happened here?”
“We’ve got to go,” repeated Patrick.
Her heart began to pound with a realization she wanted to reject, but couldn’t. They rounded a corner to see Harmon standing over Lane, who was crouched on the concrete over an opened black case.
Harmon was the first to spot them. His expression became puzzled, and he bent down and tapped Lane on the shoulder. “Cap?” he asked. “Where’s your exosuit? I thought you were—”
“HE’S A ‘MORPH!” shouted Leah trying to wrest herself free of a grip that tightened painfully vice-like around her wrist. “IT’S NOT PATRICK!” She brought up the table leg and slammed it against the android’s head, tearing away the secondskin and revealing the electrogel beneath.
“We’ve got to go,” repeated the android, drawing a pistol with his other hand and aiming it at Harmon and Lane.
“Like h
ell!” Leah slammed the table leg as hard as she could down on the barrel of the machine pistol, deflecting its aim and causing the android to turn its attention to her. She then stabbed the flattened end of the table leg between her wrist and the thumb of the hand that held her in its grip. She wrenched the table leg upward as hard as she could, oblivious to the pain that shot through her wrist.
She managed to raise the thumb just enough to tear her wrist from the android’s grasp. She looked up to see Harmon aiming a short cylinder at the android, and Lane waving wildly for her to get out of the way. She dove sideways, slamming against the building wall, just as the Patrick replica exploded, the blast flinging it backward, its head torn off, its shattered limbs dangling like those of a stringless puppet.
Her ears were ringing from the blast, and her head was woozy, as she felt two sets of strong arms lift her up to a sitting position.
“Thanks,” said Lane. “We would have been dead meat.”
“Is Patrick alive?” she managed to whisper. “Is he alive?”
“He’s fine. We separated, so that he and one of the programmer-guys could go find you and the other people.”
“I know where they are,” she said. “I heard others when I was brought in. They’re being held in rooms near me.”
Harmon spoke into the comm, “Cap, good news. Leah’s with us. She’s okay. She’s taking us to the people.”
Leah tried to rise, as Lane snapped the black case shut and pulled out a medical kit. But Harmon gently held her shoulders. “Not just yet, missy. Oopsie’s got to do a little procedure first. Just relax and hold still.”
“Yeah, please,” she said groggily. She leaned forward and felt fingers gently going over her scalp, stopping at a spot at the base of her skull that was the epicenter of a throbbing headache, and where she had felt a wound.
“Easy . . . easy . . . easy . . . ,” Lane murmured to himself. Then, with a sharp motion, he pitched his hand away, flinging something out into the cavern.
A sharp bang echoed through the cavern, and she flinched.
“What the hell was that!” she exclaimed.
“Not to worry. Just a little gadget the ‘morphs were using. They never told you about it, I guess, because they wanted to be able to use it when necessary.”
As Lane applied a bandage to her scalp, she shuddered at the realization that the blast she’d just heard might have erupted in her brain. But she managed to quickly recover. There were people still to rescue.
She pulled herself up and began to lead them into the nearest entrance and through the stark corridors from one building to another. Harmon relayed Leah’s directions to Patrick, until they reached the wing where she had been held.
They rounded a corner, and she saw Patrick with another man. With a gasp, she rushed to embrace him, and this time, it was the wonderful, familiar feeling she had enjoyed so many times.
“My God!” said Patrick. “I thought I’d lost you!”
“Did you bring a fork?” asked Leah.
Patrick paused in brief confusion, then realized the reference and laughed. “No, but Oopsie has a little something that will take care of this place.”
“I just wanted to hear you laugh,” said Leah. “That’s what was missing before.”
“Before?” he asked.
“They made a replica of you. But I knew.”
Patrick introduced her to Jonas Ainsley and told his story, including the fact that his family was being held.
“Okay,” she finally said. “Let’s get these people out.” She led them to the third floor of the building, into a long corridor of locked doors. They were brought up short by the sight of two armored robots standing guard, but they were curiously inactive. They remained so, as the group approached.
“No consensus,” said Ainsley. “The network has broken down. They don’t have any hive mind to tell them what to do. That’s great news!”
“How so?” asked Leah.
“It means there’s no consensus to kill the humans . . . at least for now.”
“But the replica? That thing still tried to take me.”
“I’m sure some of the ‘morphs, like that one, and the Defenders, had received instructions before the breakdown, and they just kept carrying them out.”
The jarring thump of distant explosions shook the building, and Patrick immediately called Blake.
“No problem, Cap,” said Blake over the comm. “We got into a little shit here. Jammer got a teensy cut, and he’s crying like a baby. We got a brain for the geeks to explore. We’ll head for the rally point.”
“Roger that. We’ve reached the captives. Scout our extraction route.”
He and Leah joined the others in going door to door, freeing captives, as Lane attached explosive charges to the motionless robots and set timers. They checked each captive for injuries and told them to gather outside the building in the main cavern. They took care not to mention the possibility that at any moment some neuromorph might manage to trigger the charges inside their heads, killing them.
Ainsley was the fastest, moving frantically down the hall, flinging open doors, searching for his family.
At the fourth door, he opened it and exclaimed, “Thank God!” disappearing into the room. After a while, he appeared with his arm around his wife, carrying a little girl. Behind him came his parents, each holding a boy; followed by his other relatives.
They debriefed the captives, discovering that, although they had managed to free forty-three people; to their despair another twenty had been killed after the neuromorphs had deemed them “extraneous.”
“Let’s get these charges out . . . ,” said Patrick, “. . . starting with the children.”
Ainsley and his wife hugged the little girl, to keep her calm, as Lane gently extracted the charge from her head.
“Don’t be afraid, little lady,” he whispered. “You’ll hear a big bang, but don’t be scared.”
With that, he flung the charge out into the cavern, where it exploded—the sound of its reverberation mixing with horrified cries from the captives. Two thundering explosions from within the building signaled that the charges Lane had set had detonated, destroying the guards.
Lane had just begun to extract the charge from the little boy when a muffled pop and screams came from the group. They shrank back from a young woman who had crumpled to the ground, brain matter oozing from a crack in her skull, her eyes protruding from their sockets.
“EVERYBODY, PULL THOSE THINGS OUT OF YOUR HEADS AND PITCH THEM AWAY!” shouted Lane. “NOW!”
“Somehow, they’ve started to trigger them!” exclaimed Ainsley, who reached over and yanked the charge from his wife’s head, pitched it away, and did the same for his son. His parents managed to pull the charge from the other son’s head and fling it into the cavern. But both of them collapsed as charges detonated in their own heads.
A staccato round of sharp bangs from the flung charges echoed through the cavern, like a string of firecrackers detonating. More ominously also came the muffled pops of charges detonating inside heads; and the anguished screams and cries of people seeing their friends die.
After only minutes, the cavern grew quiet again, except for piteous sobbing and moaning.
Lane went from victim to victim, checking to see whether any had survived, shaking his head each time.
“What’s going on, Cap?” Patrick heard Blake ask over the comm.
“Somehow the charges started going off,” said Patrick.
“It was Landers!” exclaimed Blake. “When he became the alpha, and we neutralized him and took his brain, that must have triggered a destruct mechanism.”
“Well, who knows what other traps they laid?” asked Patrick. “We’ll be at the rally point ASAP.”
• • •
“It’s still out there,” declared Blake, when Patrick and his team reached the closed blast doors. Mencken stood beside the keypad. He had opened the inner door, and they could hear even through its three feet of st
eel, the muffled thunk of an occasional bullet striking the door. The Arachnimorph outside was conserving its ammunition, but still testing the door’s integrity.
“Yeah, and for all we know, it has reinforcements,” said Patrick. Leah stood beside him, and huddling behind them were the dozens of freed captives. “The important thing is, you got a brain?”
“Yup,” said Blake, opening his pack. Inside it rested Landers’ brain, its stumps barely moving. “It tried to bug out, but I took off its legs. It still has a little juice left.”
“Enough to trigger the charges in the people’s heads,” said Leah sadly. “We lost some, but saved most of them. Now what do we do?”
Patrick slipped on his googles and stared through them for a long minute. “Okay, I’m looking at the base plans. We’re at the north doors. I see a truck turnaround at the south doors to the exit tunnel. So, that’s where supplies and cargo go in. I’d bet there are trucks inside those doors. Jammer, Pitbull, check if there’s a clear path to that door. See if there are trucks we can use to get these people out. Load up with Javelinas. I’ve got a little diversion plan we can try. Oopsie, you get your gadget ready.”
James and DeFranco moved out of the door area holding the rocket tubes, while Oopsie Lane followed them, carrying his black case deeper into the main cavern. The babynuke would do maximum damage if detonated there.
“Greg, you think you can open the outer blast door enough for me to scout what’s out there?”
Menken gave a dubious shrug. “Well, best I can do is start the opening process, then try to reverse it before it opens all the way. We may be exposed.”
Blake stepped up. “Cap, you mean, so I can scout what’s out there. You’re too important to risk that. They could have an army of pre-programmed Defenders out there.”
“The best I’ll do, Needle, is let you come along,” said Patrick. “We may need firepower to repel whatever’s out there.”
The distant sound of two explosions resounded from down the corridor.
“Give me your sitrep,” instructed Patrick over the comm.
The Neuromorphs Page 28