The Android Chronicles Book One: The Android Defense

by Marling Sloan

  “We need to go to the Adventis building,” Luke said. “Make sure everyone there is safe.”

  “That’s the last place we should go,” Trista said. She pointed to the television screen, where images of the Adventis building surrounded by smoke and flames were flashing.

  Brigite looked stricken.

  “There’s tons of androids in there! And the other X-droids!”

  “There’s more of you there?” Jake said. “Okay, we have to go there now.”

  He did not seem to be intentionally trying to be funny.

  Trista grabbed her car keys.

  “I hope we’ll all fit in my car,” she said.

  Miranda cowered in the dressing room of Luke’s room as she heard shots and screams all throughout the building. She tried not to breathe as she heard the door of the room opening and heavy footsteps enter.

  “Come out, come out, wherever you are, android,” Captain Mercenare said. “You and I have unfinished business.”

  Miranda hunched lower to the ground.

  “I don’t see anyone here,” she heard another android say.

  “He’s here,” Mercenare said.

  There was a moment and then the doors of the dressing room were pulled open.

  Mercenare dragged Miranda out, who flailed her arms and legs.

  “Please! Let go of me!”

  “She’s an Adventis android, Captain,” another Super Soldier said.

  “She’s a message we’re going to send,” Mercenare said.

  Miranda screamed as he pulled her bodily to the window. He took a sheet from Luke’s bed and wound it around her body.

  “Open the window,” he said.

  The other Super Soldier hastily obeyed.

  Mercenare pulled a lighter from his pocket and lit the sheet on fire. At the same time he threw Miranda out of the window of the room.

  Miranda fell through the air before she came to a thudding stop against the glass side of the building. Her body blazed up in flames.

  Chapter 35.

  Trista brought her car to a sharp stop in front of the police barricade around the Adventis building. They all got out of the car.

  Immediately two police officers came up to them.

  “All of you need to leave,” one of them said. “Or else we’ll have to take you into custody.”

  Mandelie looked up in horror at the side of the building, where a small, burning figure was hanging from a window.

  “Is that a person?”

  Luke stared at the figure.

  “That’s my room,” he said, before he realized what the figure was.

  “No!” he said. He ran towards the building but was set upon by two police officers, who grabbed him and threw him to the ground.

  “Stop!” Mandelie said. She was grabbed by another police officer, who cuffed her hands behind her back. The same thing happened to Brigite, Trista, and Jake.

  “What? You’ve got the wrong people!” Jake said.

  The officer holding Mandelie flashed his badge in front of her face.

  “FBI,” he said. “Don’t say another word.”

  “We need to do something, Damian,” Carlie said, unable to tear her eyes away from the chaos outside the window.

  “What do you suggest?” Damian said. “I can’t move my legs.”

  The ground beneath them shook, as if in an earthquake. Carlie heard the sound of breaking glass and then screams.

  “The Super Soldiers got into the hospital!” she said.

  Damian looked sick.

  Mandelie tried not to shake as she sat in the bare interrogation room of a government building. Her hands were cuffed behind her chair. She could see a dark window behind which ostensibly other FBI agents were standing, watching her. She did not know where Luke and the others had been taken.

  The door opened and a man in a dark suit came in.

  He sat down in a chair across form her.

  He set a piece of paper down on the desk.

  “Name?” he said.

  “Mandelie Miles.”

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen,” Mandelie said.

  “Are you a student?”

  “I’m home-schooled,” Mandelie said.

  “Can you explain to me what you were doing trying to get into the Adventis building, when everyone else was trying to get out?”

  “We were trying to rescue the androids inside it,” Mandelie said. “That’s the truth.”

  “Rescue the androids,” the FBI agent said. He shook his head.

  “This is not a good time to be running into burning buildings, Miss Miles. The city is on lockdown. We’re trying to find the ones responsible for these murdering robots. Do you have anything you want to tell me?”

  “Where are my friends?” Mandelie said.

  “That’s none of your concern,” the man said.

  Luke’s face was unreadable as the FBI agent sat down in front of him in his own interrogation room. His hands were similarly cuffed behind his chair.

  The FBI agent looked at him with barely concealed dislike.

  “You’re an android, right?”

  “Yes,” Luke said.

  “Can you tell me anything about what’s going on out there?”

  “It’s what happens whenever any civilization meets another civilization more equipped to survive than they are,” Luke said. “Civilizations do not meet their fates willingly.”

  “You’re on thin ice, I’m warning you,” the man said. “Whose side are you on?”

  “If I told you I was on your side, you would not believe me,” Luke said. “Perhaps your energy would be better spent fighting the true enemy outside these walls.”

  Luke had a flashback of memory as he was pushed into a small containment room and its door slid shut on his face. He looked out through the bars and saw the guard walking away from him.

  Unlike his jail cell before, this one did not even had a bed or chair within it. Luke sat on the hard ground and leaned against the wall.

  He closed his eyes and accessed his communication console.

  “Mandelie, where are you?”

  “I don’t know where I am,” Mandelie said. “I’m in some kind of jail cell.”

  “So am I,” Luke said. “Are you alright?”

  “I’m okay,” Mandelie said. “What are we going to do now?”

  “I’ll try to think of something,” Luke said.

  He closed his communication console. He searched his vast data storage, trying to find any piece of information that might be useful to him in their current predicament.

  The hour dragged on.

  Luke heard a slight noise, like footsteps coming down the hall towards him.

  He stood.

  Brigite’s bright blue wig came into view as she looked up at him. She jingled a set of keys in her hand.

  Luke smiled.

  “Not bad. How did you do it?”

  “Human men are the same everywhere,” Brigite said, as she unlocked his door. “It didn’t take me five minutes to distract the guard and knock him out.”

  Lina and Ledia were hiding behind the door of Damian’s office, which they had barricaded with several pieces of heavy furniture.

  Ledia was nearly hyperventilating. She paced the floor and covered her ears, trying not to listen to the sounds of screaming that occasionally reached them.

  “I don’t get it,” she said. “Why would Adventis androids attack other androids? What do they want?”

  Lina was trying to reach Carlie on her phone.

  “Where are they?” she fumed.

  Luke used his location sensors to find Mandelie, Jake, and Trista. Brigite unlocked the doors of their cells and they reunited with relief.

  Luke took Mandelie’s hand.

  “The only way we’ll get out of here is by attracting as little attention as possible,” he said.

  They heard shouts of alarm and footsteps racing down a hallway close to them.

  “Too late,�
� Jake said.

  Luke turned around and saw FBI agents turning the corner. They saw them and drew their guns.

  “Run!” Mandelie said.

  The four of them began racing down the hall in the opposite direction from the FBI agents.

  “We need to split up,” Luke said. “Mandelie, come with me. Brigite, go with Jake and Trista. Meet us in the back of the building in five minutes.”

  Brigite, Jake, and Trista ran down a set of stairs. Luke and Mandelie kept running down the hallway.

  “Do you know where you’re going?” Mandelie said.

  “Of course,” Luke said.

  Mandelie screamed when they turned a corner and she ran straight into the arms of an FBI agent. She fell to the ground, the man trying to get a hold of her.

  Luke grabbed him and punched him in the face, knocking him unconscious.

  “Keep going!” he said. “Follow me.”

  Brigite, Jake, and Trista met a crowd of FBI agents at the bottom of the stairs. They ran back up, only to see another group of FBI agents. They were surrounded.

  The only thing behind them was a window. Jake glanced at it and then broke it with his elbow. He began climbing through it.

  “What are you doing?” Trista said. “We’re on the sixteenth floor!”

  “Trust me,” Jake said. He grabbed Brigite and pulled her onto the window, and then he helped Trista up.

  The three of them stared down at the dizzying drop below them to a parking lot.

  “I won’t survive that fall,” Brigite said.

  “You’ll be okay,” Jake said. “Hold on to my hand, both of you. On my count, jump. One, two, three.”

  They jumped from the window.

  Trista screamed as they plummeted to the ground but then she realized they were gradually slowing down. She looked at Jake’s shoes.

  “You’re wearing the anti-gravity shoes!”

  “And they’re working,” Jake said. He grinned.

  The three of them landed gently on the top of a car, just as Luke and Mandelie burst out of the building.

  “We need to take one of these cars,” Luke said.

  The five of them ran to a rusty-looking sedan. Luke tore the door open with immense strength. He sat in the driver’s seat and touched the ignition with his hand.

  An electric current ran from his hand into the car engine, which roared to life.

  “Get in,” Luke said. The other four jumped into the car.

  Luke pressed the accelerator and the car burst from the parking lot.

  Chapter 36.

  When she heard the Super Soldiers entering the hospital, Carlie had quickly made up her mind what to do.

  She ripped the IV tubes from Damian’s body.

  “Oh, no,” Damian said. “I know what you’re going to do.”

  “Shut up,” Carlie said. “I’m risking my life for this.”

  She threw her weight into pushing the wheeled hospital bed out of the room. They could hear explosions, screams, and breaking glass coming from the floor above them.

  “We don’t have any time,” Damian said. “You have to hurry. Am I really that heavy?”

  “It’s the stupid bed,” Carlie said. Finally she managed to push the bed through the door. She wheeled it down the hallway, as fast as she could.

  “Get to the elevator,” Damian said.

  Carlie looked over her shoulder and saw six Super Soldiers walking down the hallway. They noticed her and began racing towards her.

  “Come on, Carlie!” Damian said.

  Carlie pushed the hospital bed in front of her, moving faster than she had ever done before. They reached the elevator and Carlie pushed the button.

  The elevator doors opened. Carlie pushed the bed inside.

  She punched the button frantically. The doors closed, seconds before one of the Super Soldiers threw himself against them.

  Carlie collapsed against the bed.

  “The hard part isn’t over yet,” Damian said.

  Mercenare moved leisurely through the halls of Product Development, stepping over broken bodies of androids in his path. He looked in every room before he was satisfied that nothing was left forgotten.

  He walked back to the glass front of Product Development, where a scattered group of X-droids and a few other androids was tied up and sitting against the wall. Super Soldiers stood in front of them, keeping an eye on them.

  Mercenare stooped down in front of one of the X-droids.

  “I’m sure you’ll find some way of showing me your gratitude for not killing you,” he said.

  Carlie shook in her shoes when the elevator stopped on the basement level. The doors opened slowly and she pushed Damian’s hospital bed out.

  She looked around but there seemed be nothing in the parking garage.

  “My car’s somewhere around here,” she said.

  “Forget your car, Carlie,” Damian said, with an effort. His pain medication was clearly taking an effect on him. “Steal any one of these damn cars.”

  “How?”

  “Seriously? Just smash the window with your … I don’t know, your heel or something. Put me in the driver’s seat and I’ll handle it from then on.”

  “Okay then,” Carlie said.

  She pushed the bed towards a shining black Jaguar and took off one of her heels. She smashed the window and unlocked the door.

  Then she pulled Damian from the bed and set him in the driver’s seat.

  “Good thing my adoptive dad was a mechanic,” Damian said. He took one of his own car keys and pried the ignition open with it. He took the wires inside it and touched a few of them together.

  The car roared to life.

  “I won’t be able to control the brakes,” Damian said. “You’ll have to sit in my lap and drive.”

  “Why don’t I just put you in the passenger seat?”

  “I liked my idea better, but suit yourself.”

  Luke had driven the old sedan out of the chaos of the city and to Malibu. The Super Soldiers did not seem to have made their way north of the city yet. Still there were police cars everywhere.

  “Where should we go?” Trista said. “I don’t think going to the lab is a good idea.”

  “It’s a good idea and it’s a bad idea,” Luke said. “The lab is concealed in the hills. Most people do not know its location.”

  “I think we should go to the lab,” Mandelie said. “Luke’s right. It’s too dangerous being out in the open right now.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” Jake said. “Are androids really going to try to kill everyone?”

  Brigite put her hand on his knee.

  “Not all androids.”

  Luke smirked as he caught sight of Jake’s face in the rearview mirror.

  Lina and Ledia were sitting silently in Damian’s office when they heard a loud, panicked banging on the door.

  “Mr. Foster, are you in there? It’s Tony! Let me in!”

  “Tony’s alive?” Ledia said in astonishment.

  “It’s Lina!” Lina said. “Hold on, Tony.”

  She and Ledia moved aside the huge pieces of furniture in front of the door. Finally they opened it.

  Tony stumbled inside. His face was covered with sweat.

  “They got Derrin,” he said. He shuddered.

  “Sit down,” Lina said, steering him to the couch.

  Tony sat on the couch, in a daze.

  “How depressingly ironic,” Damian said, looking at the backseat as Carlie drove the Jaguar through the besieged city streets.

  “There’s a wheelchair folded up back here, Carlie. I guess whoever owned this car must have been handicapped.”

  Carlie did not say anything. She was too busy looking around with aghast eyes at the police officers who swarmed the sidewalks, exchanging gunfire with the Super Soldiers running through the city.

  A bullet crashed through the window, narrowly missing her arm.

  Carlie screamed.

  “There’s bullets
going off all around us, Damian,” she said. “Where should we go?”

  “Let’s head for my lake house in Tahoe,” Damian said.

  Carlie shot him a disbelieving look.

  “I’m not suggesting we take a vacation, Carlie. We can lay low there. It’s rural. It’s on a lake. The androids won’t pay any attention to it.”

  “Alright,” Carlie said. “I just want to get away from here.”

  Chapter 37.

  Luke parked the sedan as quietly as possible in front of the laboratory. The trees around them were shrouded in darkness.

  As Mandelie got out of the car she felt the same eerie, unsettling feeling she had the previous time she had come to the lab.

  “This is where you came from?” Brigite said to Luke.

  “Yes,” Luke said.

  “Let’s go inside,” Trista said.

  Mercenare stood on the roof of the Adventis building, the wind rushing over him. A group of Super Soldiers stood a short distance behind him.

  Mercenare raised his head as a helicopter descended from the sky. It landed on the roof.

  A white-haired man with a sharp sallow face, dressed in a gray suit, came out of the helicopter. He was followed by a Super Soldier, pulling a blindfolded man along with him.

  Mercenare saluted the white-haired man.

  “The building is ours?” the man said.

  “Yes,” Mercenare said.

  The white-haired man turned to look at the hostage man.

  “Welcome to the future, Dr. Miles.”

  “Anyone brave enough to go raid a Jack in the Box, or a McDonald’s?” Jake said.

  The five of them were lying on blankets on the floor of the laboratory. Trista was staring up at the ceiling, trying to fall asleep. Mandelie was sitting with her back against the wall, leaning her head on Luke’s shoulder.