Binding Foxgirls III

by Simon Archer

  I exchanged a look with Cindra, and another with Clem. And then we leapt into action.

  I grabbed hold of Casal first, pressing him down against the desk in front of Achilles and wrapping my fingers around his neck.

  “You’re going to give me all your access codes, to all your weapons, to all your money and all your personnel, and you’re going to give them to me now, our I’m going to perform a binding on you right here on this desk and leave you brain dead,” I threatened him, jostling him against the desk until his throat gurgled.

  “Hey, you can’t--” another one of the board members tried to say, but Clem and the foxgirls had done their due diligence. My team totally surrounded these guys now, and Cindra scratched the one who had spoken across the face, her claws like a giant set of knives.

  He screamed out in pain and clutched his face some more.

  Some of them tried to fight, and some of them were even pretty good at it. They pulled out guns and fired shots at us, tried to do all kinds of things to get us to leave them alone. But we had guns of our own, and foxgirl claws, and holo knives, and grenades, and binder powers. And in the end, they knew all this. They knew that it was useless.

  It didn’t take us long to dispense with them. The main problem was not letting any of them leave. Kinley had to chase down and tackle two runners as I kept Casal pinned to the side of the desk. We couldn’t let any of them tell about what they’d seen, what we had done. And worse, the second one of them walked outside, it might not be hard for them to piece together that the holograms weren’t real.

  But eventually, all of the board members were dead or dying. Except, that is, Casal. And Achilles himself, of course.

  “All right, man,” I said, slamming the guy against the desk again. “What’d I say? Give me what I want, or I’ll make you give it to me.” I pressed my face right up to his for emphasis. He knew damn well what I wanted, and I didn’t want him to forget for a single second who he was dealing with here.

  “Okay, okay,” the guy finally managed, his voice coming out hoarse and mangled from the death grip I had on it. “But how do I know you’re not going to kill me, anyway?”

  “What do you have to lose?” I asked with a shrug. “I might kill you anyway, but I might let you go. And given that you clearly only care about yourself, you obviously don’t think keeping all those things from me is worth dying for.”

  Casal grimaced, the best he was able, but relented.

  “Everything’s in the compartment beneath the desk,” he said, blood dribbling down his chin. “Everything.”

  “Check for me,” I instructed Clem. “You know where. Where we found the burner phone in Elias’s deck.” God, that felt like a million years ago.

  Clem ducked down behind the desk and shifted around for a while as Achilles screamed and writhed and tried to break free from his bonds to no avail.

  “Here,” Clem said at long last, popping back up and handing a remote with several buttons and a set of instructions over to me. I studied both and saw that there was contact information for all sorts of people in the instructions.

  “What will all of this do for me?” I asked Casal, pointing at it. “Does this give me access to all of your firepower? All of your wealth?”

  “Only with… seal…” Casal sputtered. He was coughing up blood now as I continued to hold him down tightly around the throat. I eased up a bit, but not entirely.

  “Come on, man, out with it,” I snapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that… it means that you need him to approve the transfer,” Casal said, flinching as if bracing for another blow from me.

  “Can’t you do that?” I asked. “You ran the company while he was gone, after all.”

  “He still had to approve most things,” Casal said, and even in this state, I could tell that it pained him to admit it. “And I can’t approve a transfer like that. It takes a retinal scan and a voice command.”

  “Well, I’ll just have to see what I can do about that,” I said, turning my attention to Achilles and snapping Casal’s neck in one quick motion, sending him flailing lifeless to the floor in a bloody, gurgling mess.

  And just like that, Achilles snapped out of his bonds.

  It stunned me at first, and I couldn’t do anything but just stand there and stare at him, unencumbered and possessing his full mobility.

  “Well, now that I’ve taken care of those traitors,” he said, straightening his suit jacket cheerfully. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “How… how did you...?” Clem stammered, gawking at the man now standing in front of us. “I don’t understand.”

  “Well, then there are many things that we fail to understand about each other,” Achilles said grimly. “Now, what is this I hear about you managing to bring an entire army here from your stupid little island? I must say, I am impressed. You’ve put on quite the show, Mr. Joch.”

  “You lived on that island yourself for… what? It must’ve been more than half your life,” I scoffed. “It’s your home, too, in a way, so I wouldn’t go around insulting it if I were you.”

  “I holed up in enemy territory,” Achilles laughed. “Fighting a war for my people, just like my forefathers. It wasn’t my home. It was my battlefield.”

  “And now your home is ours,” I said with a small smile. “Fitting, isn’t it?”

  “Not for long,” Achilles growled, rolling up his sleeves. I had to laugh.

  “Really?” I asked him. “After the showing that you put up last time, I wouldn’t hold your breath if I were you.” It was true. Achilles was an expert, beyond an expert, at pulling strings behind the scenes, but when it came down to hand to hand combat, the guy left a lot to be desired. His only real physical advantage was that he could withstand bindings and soul gazes.

  “I have more than you think up my sleeve,” he said, the corner of his mouth twitching upward.

  “You mean your resistance to our powers?” I asked, exchanging a smirk with Clem. “We know, and we don’t particularly care anymore. You see, Achilles, you don’t know more than we do anymore. You don’t have the advantage. We don’t need to perform a soul gaze or binding on you. We just need to kill you, or capture you, take you home, and kill you if we’re lucky.” Achilles’s own smirk seemed to flicker for a moment, but he recovered after a brief pause. I may not have been able to read his mind, but I could certainly read his body language. And it was giving him away.

  “No,” he said finally. “That’s not what I meant.”

  And then, before I realized what was happening or could move to stop him, he reached beneath his disheveled white collared shirt and pressed something. I wasn’t sure what, at first, but then it glowed green beneath the thin shirt. And then, almost out of thin air, about two or three dozen automatons came crawling out of the walls.

  Yep. Literal fucking killer robots came out of the walls. Seriously. Every time I thought things couldn’t get any worse… or weirder.

  “You see?” Achilles asked, grinning widely as he held out his arms with glee to behold his new robot army. “I don’t need to be a good fighter. I’m too fucking rich and powerful for that. Just because you like to get down and dirty when you don’t have to, Joch, doesn’t mean the rest of us do, too.”

  The robots were tall and spindly, their limbs made of glistening steel. But that didn’t mean that they weren’t imposing figures. They certainly were. They were all about two feet taller than me, even, and they carried machine guns in their arms. And their hands were basically giant clubs. Their arms and legs clanked against their bodies and each other as they slowly walked to surround us all. I could hear more clanking coming from outside the office, and I knew that there were more where these came from. The question was, was it just here on the top floor, or were they everywhere in the Tibor Enterprises building? Or worse, all over Direfall?

  “You don’t want to do this, Tibor,” I warned, turning my attention back to Achilles. “If anything happens to us, that army
outside--”

  But he cut me off, which was startling. Usually, I was the one doing the cutting off around here. “Please,” he scoffed, laughing jovially with a booming sound that filled the whole room. “I just killed my entire board, Joch. Or rather, I let you kill them. I’m on the final stretch of my battle, just like you. It’s time to pull out all the tools in my arsenal, win or lose. And judging by the looks on your friends’ faces, I think I’m the one who has the upper hand now.” He laughed some more and continued to hold out his arms as the robots clanked around us. It all combined to produce such a sickening sound, the stuff of nightmares.

  I looked around at my teammates. They ran the gamut from concerned to nauseated to downright panicked. Kira looked like she was just about to burst into tears. Clem was still clearly trying to work out how those robots had come out of those walls so fast. Cindra was breathing deeply, trying to collect herself. Only Kinley looked ready to pounce on those things as she eyed the nearest one to her disdainfully, her fists clenched and a deep growling sound emanating from her throat.

  “Okay, okay,” I said, taking a step back from Achilles. “We can do this.” I looked at each of my teammates in turn, trying to instill in them the kind of confidence that I knew we needed to get through this thing.

  Achilles laughed again. “How heartwarming. This should be fun to watch.”

  And with that, he abruptly took a seat behind the desk. It was my turn to gawk at him.

  “You can’t be serious,” I said. “You’re just going to sit here and let a bunch of robots fight your battle.”

  “Correction, I’m just going to sit here and watch them win it,” Achilles said pleasantly, smiling up at me. “And it’s not like you’ve never done the same, Joch.”

  “I’ve never sat one out,” I said, casting him a more than scathing gaze. “I utilize technology, but I don’t rely on it alone.”

  Achilles laughed again, even louder and longer this time. “And where would you be without it, might I ask?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at me.

  I had to admit that I didn’t have an answer to that, but I did have something to say. “At least I’m not a fucking coward.”

  Achilles didn’t seem to like that. Not one fucking bit. My comment wiped the smile off his face, and he glowered at me. But he didn’t address me again.

  “Kill them,” he snarled to the automatons. And almost as one, they clanked in our direction.

  “Run!” I screamed to my teammates, knowing without a shadow of a doubt that there would just be even more of them outside the office. But we’d still have more space out there. We could come back for Achilles.

  My teammates ran after me as the automatons chased after us. They were slow, I realized. Their bodies had a strange symmetry, not conducive to quick movements with those spindly legs and heavy machinery. Though I could see how they would fit well in the walls like that, and whoever designed them that way could manage to fit way more than they would otherwise with this design.

  But this was good. They were slow. If we could just manage to disable those machine guns, we might just be able to get out of there. But that was a big if.

  As we ran, I pulled a grenade out of my tool belt and tossed it back behind me, releasing the trigger as I threw it.

  “What are you waiting for, shoot them!” Achilles cried, but just as the slow machines were about to open fire on us, the grenade went off, erupting in a cloud of red and orange fire, topped by more clouds of billowing, cascading smoke.

  Achilles screamed, and there were more clanking noises as the automatons exploded. A couple of them made it through the explosion, limping and charred, but they were toast anyway. Their machine guns were no better than piles of dust, and a few steps in they all fell down to their knees as their spindly legs crumbled apart.

  “Is he dead?” Kira asked hopefully, her voice hoarse for some reason, perhaps from all the stress.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shaking my head. “But we can’t count on it. Or worry about it right now. We need to focus on the task at hand, which is… them.” I came to a halt outside what remained of the office. We faced off with literally dozens of those goddamn automatons, all standing there waiting for us. They trained their machine guns right on us.

  “Hold on!” I screamed, staring down at the thin metal bracelet still on my left wrist. It was a long shot, but maybe, just maybe.

  I tapped it twice, and my teammates followed my lead and did the same. And then, just as they were about to open fire, just as I had hoped, the automatons faltered. They looked around at each other in confusion. Their targets seemed to disappear. I grinned widely and looked around at the rest of my team, who were all just standing there, stunned.

  Finally, Clem seemed to realize what had happened.

  “Yee-haw!” he screamed, pumping his fist in the air. “Dammit, Joch, you’ve done it again! Who would’ve fucking thought--”

  But as he spoke, several of the automatons opened fire, aiming in his direction. And the rest followed suit, following the others’ lead.

  “Shit!” I screamed, grabbing Clem’s shoulders and pulling him down to the ground with me, and at the same time using our bonds to make sure that the foxgirls did the same.

  And when I spoke, the automatons shifted their fire on me. I exchanged a look with Cindra as we were all huddled on the ground. The gunfire didn’t follow us down there. She opened her mouth to speak, but then thought better of it and closed it as I shook my head and pressed a finger to my lips.

  I clearly communicated it through our bonds, but the foxgirls were smart. They had already figured it out, too. The automatons were programmed to kill us, and only us. And they didn’t recognize our faces when the holographic interfaces Malthe had made for us and programmed into the bracelets were on. But they could, for whatever reason, recognize our voices, which meant that we could not make a sound, not one. It was too risky.

  Clem, unfortunately, did not have the benefit of the foxgirls’ bond with me. Or their quick wit, apparently. He opened his mouth to say something, a very quizzical look on his face, but I clapped my hand over his mouth and pressed down hard before he could get so much as breath out.

  I shook my head vigorously and clapped him upside the head with my other hand. It took a minute, but he seemed to realize what was going on. Or at least what we needed to do to get away from those things.

  We stayed lying down there for a few minutes after the gunfire ceased. I craned my neck back to see that bullet holes plastered the opposite wall… or at least what was left of it after the grenade explosion was, anyway. The automatons remained standing there, pointing in our direction, but looking rather confused. Or at least as confused as robots can look, anyway.

  Finally, after the gunfire silenced for quite some time, I slowly moved to stand, holding out my hands to indicate that my teammates should stay lying down just in case they opened fire on me again.

  But they didn’t. We were okay, and I curled my fingers up to indicate that Clem and the foxgirls should stand, as well. We needed to get out of here, fast. But we had to get past all of these things first.

  I scanned the room quickly. There were automatons all over the place, interspersed among all the clear binder desks. The elevator was in the back. So we had a choice. We could leave, try to sneak by all the automatons without making a sound, go meet Malthe and Lin, and try to finish this thing together as a team. Or we could stay and make sure Achilles was dead or crippled beyond making any further moves against us.

  28

  I didn’t like either of those options. Not one damn bit. Leaving meant risking Achilles coming back stronger than ever, not taking advantage of his weakness at this moment. But staying meant adding to the risk that we would get caught and killed by the automatons and keeping Clem and the foxgirls in harm’s way.

  So I had to come up with a third option. And that option was clear, but Clem and the foxgirls were not going to like it. Not one bit. But they wouldn’t be able to pro
test without setting off the automatons’ gunfire again. It was the perfect plan. Well, in the short term. Should I get through this, I would pay for it big time in the long term, I knew. If Achilles or these robots didn’t kill me, Cindra sure would. But I didn’t have any other option. We didn’t have any other options. They had to understand that, didn’t they?

  Well, it didn’t matter. It was happening, whether they liked it or not.

  Slowly, I moved forward. I pulled Clem in front of me, holding on to his shoulders, and motioned for the foxgirls to follow along behind us as well. It would be a delicate dance moving through this area without hitting any of the automatons or binder desks, and without making any noise or communicating with one another out loud.

  That worked perfectly fine with the foxgirls. We could communicate mentally, though not through speech. It was more of a feeling, a direct communication of meaning. A purer form of communication, if you will. And I was able to use our bond to guide them and make sure they didn’t hit anything. My reflexes were their reflexes in that moment. My strengths were their strengths.

  Clem was another story, however. He wasn’t bonded to me, hence why I was holding on to him, keeping us connected even though our minds and souls weren’t. But while he may not have been the brightest bulb, Clem was an excellent binder, second only to me. And he had stellar reflexes to match. So he was okay. We were okay.

  Slowly but surely, we maneuvered around the robots and the desks. It was… terrifying, to say the least. We were afraid to so much as breath on the things, let alone walk past them.

  As we passed the first one, Cindra stiffened behind me. I could feel her and the other foxgirls’ apprehension, their terror, just as palpably as I could feel my own.

  I made the decision to stop. We were risking too much by going forward. We needed a moment to gather ourselves. But that meant that we stopped right next to the automaton. It was still facing forward, along with the rest of the robots, presumably because that was the last place that they had seen or heard us. The real us, the ones they knew to be us and not whoever these fake holographic people were.