by Simon Archer
I turned my head to look back at Cindra and met her eyes. I didn’t dare reach down to squeeze her hand for fear of alerting the robots to our presence, but she knew through our bond what I meant. She looked back at me, and even though she appeared to be a completely different person, with different colored eyes, even, I would know that soulful gaze anywhere.
Together, we regained our composure. And even though I couldn’t look into their eyes since they lined up behind Cindra, I reached out to Kira and Kinley, too. We breathed slowly but quietly until we were ready to begin again. I squeezed Clem’s shoulders reassuringly and started again.
We had to stop several more times, but we got better and better as we made our way across the room. When we finally reached the elevator, Clem collapsed against it, pressing the button and holding his hand there over it, just to make sure that the system got the point that we needed the thing there, fast.
I could feel Cindra’s chest rising and heart beating fast against my shoulder as the elevator took its sweet time coming back up to us. It had no doubt been busy taking more and more people out into the streets to flee, though I wondered how many had come back inside to seek shelter once they’d realized that they weren’t getting out of those congested streets anytime soon.
Finally, the elevator arrived and opened for us. Almost as one, the robots all swiveled to face us again. I closed my eyes and shook my head, cursing internally.
So I turned around to face them and motioned for the others to do the same. They did, though they looked confused by this request.
But just as I’d thought, the things didn’t shoot. They realized who we were. Or at least, who we weren’t. Or who they thought we weren’t.
Slowly, I motioned with my hands for everyone to back up into the elevator while still facing the automatons. They did so, catching it right before the doors swiveled shut again. And then, right as the door began to close in front of me, I darted back out into the room full of armed robots and binder desks.
Cindra opened her mouth as if to scream at me, but I pressed a finger to my mouth again, and I watched her and Clem and the other foxgirls’ shocked, enraged, and frightened faces disappear behind the doors as they shot downward toward safety.
I reached out through our bonds to soothe the foxgirls, to explain to them that this was the only thing I could do, the only answer. But they weren’t having it, which I’d expected, I supposed. I was going to get more than an earful when I got out of this thing. But I couldn’t worry about this, not then. I had work to do.
And with that thought, I swiveled to face the robots again. And then slowly, I marched back around them all over again, without missing a beat this time. Alone, I didn’t need to stop and gather myself. Reaching Achilles was motivation enough to keep myself calm and collected the whole way through.
The gaping hole in the back wall was smoking now. The burning embers of the fire from the grenade explosion had faded away to be replaced by the billowing pools of smoke that now filled the room and my lungs. I stopped briefly to catch my breath and then stepped over the wreckage to enter what remained of the carbon copy of Elias Berg’s office once again.
The remains of the dead robots… can robots be dead? I didn’t know… were scattered throughout the area. A leg there, an arm over there, and a machine gun back there. A thin head with desolate eyes rolled to touch against the toe of my boot. I nudged it out of the way, trying to avoid making a sound. The robots behind me remained facing the elevator.
I gingerly stepped over and around the robot bodies, trying not to touch any of them or make any noise for fear that any of them still had some juice left in ‘em. But they didn’t, and I made it to the desk where I had left Achilles unencumbered.
He was nowhere to be found. Not a body, not a hulking form lying in wait, nothing. I looked around, confused and shocked.
And then, I felt a searing pain against the back of my head. It took everything I had left in me not to scream.
I swiveled on my feet, my head throbbing and the liquid sensation of what was no doubt blood beginning to drip down the back of my neck and on to my shoulders, to face Achilles, standing there looming over me, brandishing that disembodied robot head in his hand.
He moved to swing it again, but I ducked down out of his way and did a somersault across the floor. This was not how this ended. This was not how this fucking ended. There was no way. After everything I’d been through, the man I had sought for so long would not best me in this final battle. A man who was such a coward that he wouldn’t even face me himself until now. He was such an inferior fighter that it barely took anything to best him the last time.
As I rolled across the floor, I pulled out my holo knife. When I was back on my feet, I remained crouched down and sped at him, intending to plunge the weapon into his abdomen. But instead, it barreled straight into that robot head, which foreseeing my blow he’d pushed down to cover his stomach.
Before I could pull my holo knife back out of the thing, Achilles threw the head, with my holo knife still lodged solidly inside it, across the room.
I reached for another grenade only to find that I’d used my last one of the first set of robots. Dammit. I couldn’t find the gun I’d taken from one of the shippers, either, and then I remembered that I’d given it to Lin and Malthe for extra protection since they didn’t have any of their own. Dammit again.
The good thing was that Achilles appeared equally unarmed. The robots were his last line of defense. And now here I was, attacking him again, and he only had his fists. Despite his advanced size, that wasn’t much, I knew.
But he did have one advantage. The world swam in front of me. There was no way that I didn’t have some kind of concussion. And I didn’t have any weapons or backup. Achilles might just have managed to bring me down to his level.
He lunged at me again, and I swerved away from him again, forward this time. As the floor loomed in front of me, I wanted nothing more than to lie down and let the world stop swimming. But no, I couldn’t do that. Not yet.
I shook my head to clear it and pulled myself up straight, turning to face Achilles again. I raised my fist and plunged myself at him. But he met my fists in the air, closing his broad hands around my hands, pushing back against me.
And while he wasn’t the best fighter, Achilles was certainly strong. Even stronger than me, possibly, where sheer brute force was concerned. And my head wound hindered me, my eyes watering from the pain.
So we were in a battle of brute strength now, me pressing my fists against the palms of his hands. It was hard to see who had the upper hand. It went back and forth. Sometimes, it seemed like I was going to win out. But then, Achilles would regain the upper hand. And so it went, on and on and on, with no sign of stopping.
Eventually, Achilles’s eyes flickered to my wrist and lingered there. He was staring at my bracelet, I realized. And I realized again since I had somehow forgotten that my holographic face was still on. Did he even know that it was me? He had to assume as much. Or that I was Clem, at least.
In one quick motion, before I could react, he gave one final push against my right fist and then realized me, grabbing my left wrist with his other hand and then pulling off my bracelet.
I couldn’t feel my features change, but I knew they did by the look on Achilles’s face. He grinned a malicious grin from ear to ear, glowering down at me as if he had discovered my deepest, darkest secret.
“So,” he said quietly. “Holo technology. That’s how you’ve done this, Joch. I should’ve known. We don’t use it much here. It’s not clean and crisp enough for our clientele, but for yours… well, suffice it to say that it is fitting. Now tell me, is there anything else that might be holographic? Say, a certain army, perhaps?”
His eyes flickered to the window which was pretty much all blown out at that point, though the view was only of gray clouds due to the height of the building.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I said through gritted teeth.
Achilles gave a short, hollow laugh at this. “Of course you don’t,” he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. I realized that he was distracted, overcome with glee about what he thought he’d found out.
So I barreled into his stomach again, knocking him over. Then I crossed over to where he had thrown the disembodied robot head with my holo knife in it. I retrieved my weapon and brandished the head up above Achilles’s own as the man now crumpled down on the floor, holding his stomach and whimpering. No, this pathetic man wouldn’t best me. Never.
I brought the robot head down on his own. And then I did it again, and again, and again. Achilles quivered on the floor and moaned at first, but then he lay still.
Finally, I reached down and felt for a pulse. He was still alive, but he was out. Just like I wanted him. I pulled back the now bloodied collar of his shirt to reveal that thing he’d used to call the robots, but I didn’t dare touch it. I was afraid that even more would come, or that some other unknown horrible thing would happen.
I searched frantically through the wreckage of the room for that bracelet that Achilles had taken from me until I finally found it lying under a drawer of the desk. I pulled it out and put it on.
But it was no use, no good. Achilles had broken it. I pressed the button again and again, practically begging it to work again. But with one last fizzle and a final spark, the life left it completely.
I hung my head and rubbed my eyes. What now?
I looked back in the direction of the robots. There was no fucking way that we were going to get through those things while I was wearing this face. That just was not happening.
But there wasn’t another way out. Not unless...
I turned to stare out the window again. I shook my head no at the mere thought of it. Absolutely not. Not when I was like this, with this head, dealing with having to bring Achilles along to boot. No fucking way.
But there was no other fucking way. This was the only option.
I crossed over closer to the window to peer down. I couldn’t even see the ground at the bottom. Just clouds billowing all around and hostile looking ones at that.
“Well, Achilles,” I murmured as I turned back to his limp form and prepared to sling him over my back, “you were right about one thing. This ends here, one way or another, for both of us.”
And with that, I pulled my grappling hook out of my tool belt and tucked it solidly on the windowsill. Then I swung my legs over the side, Achilles still on my back, and started to climb down.
There was an awning for the next floor. I stopped for a brief rest there but quickly realized that this was going to need to happen in one streak. If I stopped, I might not start again. The world was still swimming, but I was pressing through, just like I always did.
And so we made our way down a copy of the biggest building in the entire world. The history of the world, even. The good thing about that was that the architecture was good, with nice awnings and windowsills for me to reset my grappling hook whenever I needed to do so, and to regather my bearings.
Achilles weighed me down, like the metaphorical weight he’d placed on my shoulders for the better part of a year was now bearing out in reality.
But I kept going. And going, and going, and going. Until I started to see some ground on my horizon when I looked down, and then some moving specks that I took to be people.
Every time I thought I couldn’t go on, I remembered Cindra, and Kira, and Kinley, and everyone else, everyone and everything that I had to fight for. And then I kept going. And going, and going, and going.
About two-thirds of the way down, I risked reaching out to the foxgirls in our bond. I could tell that they were safe, thank God, but they didn’t know where I was. I gently let them know. Not so someone would come up and get us, but so someone would meet us when we reached the ground.
And they did. When I finally crawled down the awning over the front doors, dragging Achilles’s still limp form behind me, I tumbled right into the foxgirls’ furry, warm, welcoming arms.
I’d been expecting a verbal beating after the stunt I’d pulled back there. And I may very well get one in the future. But for now, I could tell the foxgirls were just glad that I was okay. And the feeling was more than mutual.
I squeezed them back as tightly as I was able and buried my face in the crook of Cindra’s neck, allowing myself to rest my eyes finally.
29
What happened next was all a blur. People practically swarmed me on all sides. At first, I was scared because the world was still swimming all around me. I thought enemy operatives had overcome me, but then I realized that the person nearest to me was Malthe. His face and words came into focus as my attention became sharper.
“Nic, Nic, are you okay?” he was asking anxiously. “We thought you’d gotten stuck up there.”
“Did you climb down that whole damn thing with Achilles on your back?” I heard Clem asked. “Damn, Joch, you can’t stop showing me up, can you?” But there was concern in his voice despite his joking. I felt the back of my head sting and reached back to touch it. My fingers came back covered in blood.
Cindra and Kira both swarmed me then, armed with gauze and other medical supplies that we’d brought with us. They poked and prodded at my head and applied some kind of medicine to it, and I felt a little bit better.
“What’s going on?” I asked when they finished. “Where’s Achilles?”
“Got him over here, Joch,” I heard Clem say, and I turned around to see Achilles’s large form slumped on the ground, surrounded by Clem and Kinley, who were both watching him closely.
“We need to take him back to Termina,” I murmured. “Make an example of him. But we need to talk to the mayor first.”
“I’m right here, Mr. Joch,” a man’s voice said, and a very uncomfortable looking man who I recognized from the TV press conference approached me, straightening his suit jacket and making a point not to look me in the eye.
“What do you think I’m going to do if you look at me, bind you on sight?” I asked him, my voice dripping with disdain. I hadn’t intended to be so sharp with him. The plan was to be diplomatic, to win him over. But the words just spilled out. I was so damn angry at these people. They’d kept us in the dark for so long, and over practically nothing. There was no reason that we couldn’t live in peace.
“I… I don’t know, I’m sorry,” the man said, and he tried to look at me briefly but averted his eyes again, anyway.
“Where did he come from?” I asked, turning to Malthe and gesturing in the direction of the man almost dismissively.
“We’ve been busy while you were up there,” Malthe said, a grin spreading across his face. “Emil here came to us, to see if we could drop the blockade and come to some kind of agreement here.”
“Is that so?” I asked, turning back to the mayor and raising an eyebrow at him. Then I cast a glance up at the still cloudy but unobstructed sky. “I see you acquiesced.”
“Well, the truth kind of came out,” Malthe said sheepishly. Then quickly, seeing the horror on my face, “But it’s good, it’s good. Semra called.”
Well, that was probably the last thing I had expected him to say.
“Huh?” I asked, shaking my head at him, not comprehending.
“Here!” he cried, pulling what looked like a small TV out of his jacket pocket and showing it to me. Semra was there on the other side, standing on the south side docks and grinning from ear to ear, which was unusual for her.
“We did it, Joch,” she said, shaking her head as if in disbelief of her own words. “We used that shit that old shipper brought back with him to rig up this com line and give you a call once we saw on the Direfall news what was going on over there.”
“What? That’s great… I mean, what’s going on there?” I asked despite myself, even though the mayor was standing right there. But he answered before she had a chance to herself.
“I’m afraid that… uh… your forces have neutralized our forces,” he said,
clearing his throat uneasily. “In, dare I say it, record time, I might add.
“They may have the entire fucking world, but we’re still the best!” Clem proclaimed, pumping his free fist in the air in victory.
“So it doesn’t matter that the one here was fake,” Malthe explained.
“You need us to sail out there and take them on in enemy territory, and we’re more than prepared,” Semra said, seeming to relish in this possibility. “Just say the word, and we’ll get on that. They’ve got nothing on us.”
“I… must admit that she has us there,” the mayor relented. “It appears that we have a lot to learn from your people. And a lot to learn of our own, given the betrayal we’ve learned Tibor Enterprises has committed against us by bringing bindings to the outside world.” He nodded to Lin as if thanking her for providing him with this vital information.
“More than you even realize,” I said dryly. “So listen here, this is how this is going to go. There’s no more distinction between my people and your people. Termina is another continent, as far as you’re concerned. We’re self-governed. We don’t need you, and we don’t want you. But we will work together. It’ll be hard at first, but we’ll figure out how to integrate into each other’s communities and live in peace. We’ve proven we can do it on Termina before your people showed up and started messing with everything and everyone. And we’ll do it again.”
Slowly, the mayor raised his gaze to meet mine.
“You won’t seek to conquer us?” he asked, his voice small.
“All we want is equal treatment,” I assured him. “It’ll take some time, but we’ll sit together and hammer out rules and regulations to make this work. There will be growing pains, but that’s all we want. To have free rein just like everyone else, and not to be the unwitting laughingstock of the world. If we’re ever going to have that title again, we’re going to earn it.”