by K. F. Breene
“You don’t celebrate life by hacking it up and putting it into robots,” Roe said, cocking his gun.
“We create humans, and then hack them up and use their parts in other humans,” Trent countered. “We end one person’s life to prolong another’s.”
“Yes, but we don’t celebrate life. We’re a cold, ruthless, barbaric species that don’t look far beyond material good and our own selfishness. So if they do celebrate life, we’ll win over them because we don’t celebrate nothin’ but power.”
“Great Divinity, you are a real downer, bro-yo,” Dagger said.
“That’s one word for it,” Trent muttered.
Millicent could barely see Roe’s grin as she dug into the computer, easily batting aside their sign-on parameters. She opened it up to the pirate network and basically waved her daughter in. “Okay, Marie, you have front-row access. On my say-so, we’ll destroy all their systems beyond repair. We’ll seal in some viruses afterward in case we didn’t do a thorough job crashing things.”
“Okay, Mommy. Wow, this is complex.”
“Just do what you can, baby.”
“I’m excited. This is a real challenge,” Marie chirped happily. “Not like when you have me do those exercises, because those aren’t really—”
“Quietly, baby,” Millicent said with a shock of irritation. “Do it quietly.”
She ignored Ryker’s dark chuckle.
“She’s right, though,” Danissa said, her fingers flying over one of their screens. “This is complex. And if not for binary code, we’d be lost. Their warnings are all in those strange characters.”
“What’d you think, that they would speak Standard?” Roe asked with humor in his voice.
“What’s that?” Suzi asked as a strange clicking sound permeated the space at the far end of the room next to a second door.
Dagger rolled another light orb her way and immediately followed, checking the handle. Thankfully, it was locked.
Millicent glanced at her wrist. Her stomach rolled again, and a burst of perspiration coated her forehead. “Those are robots. They’ll be coming down the stairwell we just emptied, too. Make sure it’s closed and locked. A barricade wouldn’t go amiss, either. Their goal is probably to chop us up and use us for parts.”
“The door we came through is already closed and locked,” someone hollered. “Here, help me grab—”
A loud thump cut off the trooper. Dagger moved Suzi back from the second door as another thump shook it. A loud bang hit the first door.
“We’re trapped,” Terik said.
“No, we are in a prime defensive position.” Ryker stood at the front of the room, equidistant from the two doors. “Arm yourselves. If you get wounded, fall back and watch the children. If someone has already fallen back with the children, you get the glorious privilege of fighting wounded. You’ll be in good company. Millicent, we are counting on you.”
Millicent bit her lip as she scrutinized the strange security measures. She hadn’t seen anything like them before—complex didn’t even describe it. It didn’t take a genius to know that once she was past this, she would have their beating heart resting in her hands.
The question was, could she, Danissa, and Marie crack it open before the robots got into the room?
She glanced at her wrist screen—specifically, at the blue dots now roaming around the floors. “I’ll be seeing you shortly,” she said with fierce determination. “I will not die down here. I will not become one of your robots.”
Chapter 21
Trent clutched his gun with white knuckles. “Am I fighting, or watching the children?”
“Are you wounded?” Ryker asked, surveying a big block holding other smaller blocks. Trent had no idea what any of it was, other than that it was computer related.
“That’s rhetorical, isn’t it?” he asked drolly.
With a show of incredible strength, Ryker grunted and slid the huge piece of possible furniture toward the door. Dagger joined a moment later, and even though the odds were not in their favor, these two incredibly strong men made Trent grateful he was on this side of the equation.
He actually hoped Roe was right. They’d need barbarianism to get them out of this mess, Trent had no doubt.
“Let’s get the other side,” Ryker said to Dagger, and jerked his head toward the other door.
“Children.” Trent put out his arms to herd them. “Let’s get you back.”
“No!” Billy ran at him. Knowing what that meant, Trent braced himself and caught Billy’s shoulders as the little boy neared, effectively dodging his kick. “Stay here! Right here. Because they can chew through the ceiling.”
As one, everyone but the two systems workers looked up.
“That’s not good,” Roe said.
A scratching sound was the only other warning they got. A square of ceiling, topped with a strange sort of animal, dropped from the sky and landed on a computer. A spark flew up. Something sizzled.
It flew up a moment later, its four legs, each ending in claws, writhing in the air as if it were running. The body smashed against the wall. It broke into pieces and rained down onto the floor. Out of the hole in the ceiling, spiders and other insects crawled like a disturbed hive. Black-and-silver shiny bodies scrabbled upside down across the ceiling. One dropped, its legs flailing. It landed, upside down, near Millicent.
Before Ryker could even move, Millicent jumped up. A gun propelled out of her suit and into her hand. She aimed and shot, landing three bullets in its exposed abdomen. The thing spasmed and curled up. Dead.
“Can you burn with that fire?” Ryker shouted at Terik over the din. A thud hit the door. The large, extremely heavy blockade bumped forward. “Or is it just for light?”
“I can kill faster than a real fire could,” he yelled back, seemingly unafraid. If not for the boy’s shaking hands, Trent would have assumed the kid had no fear.
“Then kill the bugs on the ceiling!” Ryker shouted, his gun pointed upward. “How many are coming, Millie?”
“Hordes. Scores of them. Buy us time, Ryker. Use everything you’ve got and buy us time.”
Fire raged across the ceiling, so hot half the people in the room threw up their hands. The flames didn’t lick at the walls or reach down to the floor. It corroded the metal of the spiders and blistered their strange mechanical faces. High-pitched whines and spasming bodies dropped onto the supercomputer. They bounced off and fell, consumed by flames.
Still more robots poured out of the hole. They started dropping quickly out of the burning heat and hitting the ground and bouncing. Barely scorched, they righted themselves, ready to do battle.
“Here we go!” Ryker surged forward, launched over a component of the supercomputer, and landed on top of a spider.
The door bumped again. The blockade shifted forward another few inches. A thunk hit the other door as well, with the same effect.
“What the hell is behind those doors?” Trent asked, his gun out. He shot at a spider going for Millicent. The bullet hit its mark, knocking the robot off course. Trent followed it up with another shot, curling the thing up. “Kicking might not work on the new ones, but guns still do.”
“Should I use the EMP gun?” Ryker shouted.
“No!” Millicent yelled. “It’ll affect the computer. Use guns if you have aim. We’re halfway there.”
Gunshots popped through the room. Another two thumps pushed the blockades forward. Trent heaved himself against one of them, but he wasn’t strong enough to move it back. Whatever was on the other side of that door had to be massive. Either that or there were a lot of them.
Something slashed his leg. He called out in surprise and turned. A spider sliced at him. Before the blade landed, the thing was flying across the room. It hit the wall and crunched.
“Save your strength, Suzi,” Ryker hollered, much to Trent’s dismay. Ryker kicked one spider and shot another. With hands as fast as lightning, he bent forward and ripped another bot’s leg before grabb
ing it and hurling it against the wall.
The blockade bumped forward. The door behind it crashed. A thick robotic arm ending in six razor-sharp claws curled around, groping for Holy knew what. Mind buzzing and body primed with adrenaline, Trent opened fire. The bullets struck the claw and arm. Smoke curled away as something mighty roared on the other side of the door.
Millicent and Danissa both glanced up with wide eyes. Millicent looked back at the computer first, her brow furrowing.
Spiders dropped to the ground like rain.
“Hurry!” Roe yelled, shooting at the robots running at him.
Trent shot, too, his aim loose, not that it mattered—they were packed in so closely, he’d hit one if not another. Another swipe from a clawed appendage had him gritting his teeth. The robots were backing him against the wall now.
Ryker kicked and shot at the same time, over and over. They were backing him up, too. Pushing him toward Millicent. Dagger was at Danissa’s back, his face hard and drenched with sweat.
Billy yelled something. The thumping behind the door increased. The blockage pushed forward, and this time it fell. The items in it crashed to the floor. The door cracked and then wobbled, broken from its hinges. Trent’s insides pinched.
A massive robot filled the door frame. Humanoid in form, it had tree-trunk arms and even bigger legs. Made of something like chrome, it should’ve been jerky, like the spiders. Instead, it moved with the grace of a living being, lethal and dangerous, clearly intensely strong.
“Now you can help, Suzi,” Ryker said, barely heard over the roar of the flames and skittering of spiders.
The humanoid robot roared like an animal, louder and deeper than the bears on Paradise. The noise shook the room. Tendrils of fear curled around Trent’s bones.
“We’re out of time, princess,” Ryker yelled, bracing himself, his eyes rooted to the huge robot.
“Almost,” Trent heard. He hoped he had heard, anyway, because in another few minutes, they’d all be dead or captured.
A slash above the knee made him stumble. He shot downward until he heard click, click, click.
“Shit.” Trent kicked at a spider as he dug into his utility belt for more ammo. Pain vibrated through his foot. The spider barely bumped back.
The huge robot lunged for Ryker. Another massive robot crashed through the blockade on the other side of the room.
Ryker leapt up and grabbed hold of a massive arm. Somehow he twisted his body around, dragging the arm with him. It went behind the robot’s back. Ryker, half the thing’s size, wrapped his legs around its waist and shoved the thing’s elbow upward. A satisfying crack preceded a deep-chested roar. The robot swung its other arm, trying unsuccessfully to reach Ryker on its back. It then swung its whole upper body.
Ryker wrenched the arm again and then yanked it clear off. He dropped to the ground and raced back toward Millicent, where an invisible wall created by Suzi protected her from the spiders.
Dagger ran at the second massive robot.
A sharp pain in Trent’s leg drove him to the ground, submerging him in a sea of spider robots. One of the arms came out near Trent, what had seemed like mostly useless appendages by the strange robot face, and snatched his chin. More robot hands grabbed his wrists. They pushed in. A claw aimed for his neck as, somewhere in the background, a thrushing sound overrode people’s screams, making cold dribble down his spine.
Suddenly he knew exactly how they collected brains for their robots, and he was about to experience it firsthand.
“Trent is under fire,” Ryker yelled, his voice dim in the roar surrounding Millicent.
She bit her lip, not allowing herself to look up. Not allowing herself to focus on anything but the complex code at her fingertips. She could see Danissa’s efforts and the mysterious unraveling that was Marie’s work, but they still had so much more to break. They had to move faster.
“We need a miracle,” she muttered before wiping sweat off her brow.
A roar made Millicent clench her teeth. Dagger screamed.
Still Millicent watched the screen.
“Is Daddy okay?” Marie’s voice sounded in her ear.
“Daddy is fine, baby. We have to hurry. Hurry, Marie.”
“Can I cheat this time, Mommy?”
Millicent wiped her brow again, sweat trickling down her temple. Trent’s ear-piercing scream froze her for a moment. She couldn’t help glancing back. A robot was slicing into his neck.
“Cheat, baby!” Millicent said, having no idea what her daughter meant by “cheat” and not caring. A gun filled her hand. She turned back and shot into that cluster of bodies. Her bullets slammed home. Robots shook and curled. Blood ran down Trent’s neck. His eyes, still open, looked around in panic.
He was still alive. For the moment.
A roar cut off abruptly. A loud crack preceded a heavy metal head rolling across the floor. The robot body followed a moment later, hitting the ground and shaking Millicent’s screen. Blood drenching one side of his body, Ryker jumped onto the computer desk, ran across it—cracking one of the screens—and then launched himself at the other massive robot heading toward Millicent.
“Holy,” Millicent said, fear stealing her breath. The lights in the room flickered. Her screen fuzzed with snow. Suzi screamed at the exact moment a spider slashed Millicent’s thigh.
“I’m locked out,” Danissa screamed, terror screwing up her face. “I’m locked out! They’ve locked me out!”
“No.” Millicent shot at the spider. Another took its place. Loud thrushing filled the room.
“They’ve come to collect us.” Danissa’s face bled of color. “They’re here to take us.”
The fire on the ceiling sputtered. Billy was screaming. Toad Man flew across the room. Millicent slammed her hand down on the screen again, trying to break it. Trying to force her way into their system like they’d done in the smart room. It was too strong.
Remembering the screen Ryker had cracked, she tried to move toward it, but spiders blocked her way.
“Help!” Trent yelled. Another spider was preparing to swipe his neck.
The second massive robot reached over its shoulder and caught Ryker by the suit. It brought its hand back. Struggling, unable to get free, Ryker dangled in front of it. The robot reached for his neck.
“Blow us up,” Danissa said, her voice somehow calm over the pandemonium. “Blow us all up.” Her gaze was imploring. “Kill us. Don’t let them turn us into robots.”
“We’ll try the EMP,” Millicent said through a burning throat.
“We’d never get out of this building. Kill us.”
Breathing heavily, her heart thudding, Millicent dug an explosive out of her pouch. She looked at Ryker, who was staring back. He nodded once as the robot’s fingers encircled his neck.
“I love you,” she said, the explosive hot in her hands.
She saw him mouth it back. Saw the feeling in his eyes. Heard, “There,” in her daughter’s voice.
Then everything went black.
Chapter 22
Her hand shaking, she held the explosive a little too hard when metallic thuds crashed to the ground. Her leg throbbed. Her heart hammered.
She was still alive.
“What’s happening?” she asked the strangely quiet room. She heard panting and movement, but there was no skitter of spiders from the hole above, no heavy tread of those massive robots.
“I cheated, like you said I could,” came her daughter’s chipper voice through the implant comms. “I had to cut out the pirate network for a moment, but it’s back up. You have to physically destroy the root now, but I cut off their wireless and disconnected almost everything. They had it all running off that computer. Everything. They’ll be down all over the world now, like you said, Mommy. Not very smart. Aunt Danissa’s system is much better. I can’t even get into her roots, and there are bunch of them it looks like.”
A screen glowed to life, illuminating Danissa’s tear-streaked face. Millicent t
apped her screen, firing it up. Behind her, metal clanked.
“They’ve stopped moving,” Trent said in what sounded like disbelief. “What happened to the light?”
“I don’t know,” Ryker said, the velvety drum of his deep voice music to Millicent’s ears. “The light spheres shut off. They don’t work anymore.”
“I got one.” Dagger’s voice was thick with pain. “Got any meds?”
Sudden light illuminated the room, pulling Millicent’s attention away from the screen. The spiders stood upright, as though awaiting instruction. The hole in the ceiling was clogged with inactivity. One of the massive robots lay on its stomach, the other on its back, apparently unable to stand on two feet if they weren’t receiving computer instruction.
“The brains must just be for problem-solving and program enhancement,” Millicent muttered, looking over all the spiders.
“They probably rely on the mother computer to organize the robots’ movement,” Danissa said.
“Suzi and Terik are passed out, but they’re alive,” Ryker called. “The rest are okay. We lost three clones and the rest of our troopers.”
“Take that, you bastard,” Danissa said, a fierce gleam in her eyes. Red characters flashed in the upper right of her screen. “That’ll disable the root.”
Millicent’s screen went dark again. Her sister had entirely crashed the system.
“I need help,” Trent said in a scratchy voice. He held his neck with a bloodstained hand. His face was pasty. “I feel cold and weak. That’s bad.”
“Got it.” Dagger moved to the other man’s side. “We’ll get you patched up.”
“Do you have any blood synthesizers?” Trent asked, sitting up amidst a cluster of robots. It was an indication of the shape he was in that he didn’t move away.
“Probably.” Dagger kicked the spiders away, stomping on one before he saw to Trent. His aggression was evident.
“What about Roe?” Millicent asked, backing away from the screens. She belatedly realized the screens were all at a strange height. Too high to sit at, but she had to stoop while standing. All were the same, and it wasn’t until she noticed a massive rolling chair at the back of the room that it struck. These beings were giants.