“Where’s Brent?” whimpers Blondie. “We can’t leave without Brent and Brody.”
Almost as if summoned by the blue-eyed, blonde-haired teenage witch I suspect she is, the husky boy, who’s apparently called “Brody,” comes jogging around the corner at the other end of the short passageway with an anxious-looking Brent hot on his heels. Both boys are casting worried looks over their shoulders as they approach.
Brody bounds toward the others, clearly spooked about something. “Ah . . . guys?” he says shakily. He spots the Drones standing in the elevator and comes to a skidding halt, his eyes wide and fearful as Brent bumps clumsily into his back.
“What the hell?” Brent asks, glaring at the war robots from behind Brody’s shoulder.
“It’s OK. These ones aren’t online,” Otto says as, thanks to a grunting push from me, another heavy android falls into the corridor with a loud thud.
Brody looks at the two Drones facedown on the floor and seems momentarily relieved, but Brent’s startled expression doesn’t shift. “It’s a shame the same can’t be said for the other ones,” he says, nervously peering back down the hall. “They’re coming.”
“No. They’re not coming,” Ryan says, looking past the two boys.
Blondie follows Ryan’s sight line, clutches her hands over her mouth, and expels a muffled scream into her trembling palms.
“They’re here,” says Otto.
Standing in a three-two formation by the curve at the end of the corridor are the five remaining Drones from the white room. Their face masks aren’t black anymore; now, each and every one is a highly disconcerting shade of bright red.
“Hurry!” I yell. “Move these; I’ll take care of the other ones!” I step out of the elevator, and everyone springs into action. Brent and Brody leap over the two huge androids lying facedown on the floor and begin pulling at the third one in the front row as Blondie, Otto, and Ryan attend to the fourth.
I walk slowly and cautiously toward the gang of service Drone Templates, unwilling to provoke an attack just in case they actually don’t pose any threat. They might just be observing us, but if that’s the case, then why are their masks bright red? It is a traditional color of warning, after all. I decide to stop right there. I won’t make a move until they do. I feel like a gunslinger facing a posse of cattle rustlers at high noon. All that’s missing is a mournful whistle and a lone tumbleweed rolling by.
I watch them closely. They haven’t moved since they rounded that corner. My attention flicks from the face of one to the next to the next, but quickly skips back and stops on the center Drone in the front row of three. Its mask has changed. It’s not solid red anymore, but has begun blinking from black to red, black, red, black, red. What is it doing? This isn’t any kind of Drone behavior that I’ve ever seen or read about before. I suddenly feel on edge. If this situation heads south, I had better be ready. I conjure an image in my head of my fingertips dipping into liquid steel. Almost immediately, I can feel a tingling sensation as the bones at the ends of my fingers harden under my skin, fusing into calcified spear tips.
There’s grunting and a loud slam behind me as another Drone falls, but I don’t turn to look. With both eyes fixed on the center service Drone, I call out over my shoulder, “Hurry up, back there!” There’s another throaty groan of effort and another heavy thud as the fourth Drone topples behind me. That was the sound I was waiting for. It’s time to leave. I’m about to turn and take my place in the lift when Brent suddenly walks past me. Then Brody and Otto, Blondie, and Ryan—all of them—slowly walk backward toward the group of service Drones with expressions of fretful trepidation wrought on their faces. Otto looks at me, her brow creased, her chin dimpled with fear. “Infinity?” she squeaks.
My heart sinks.
I slowly turn around to see the only reason why any of them would be heading
toward
and not
away
from the pack of five potential killer robots at the far end of the hall. The four Crimson-Class Drones in the back row are still standing motionless in the elevator, except now all of their previously unresponsive face masks are blinking. Red. Black. Red. Black. Red.
Oh no.
I jump back a step as the four fallen Drones, with their masks flashing red light on the smooth white floor, begin to move, their powerful hands thudding heavily on the ground as they all begin pushing themselves up onto their feet.
I look up and down the passageway, ordering my thoughts into focused options, when a deep and familiar computerized voice booms from the walls, echoing throughout the corridor.
“Vocalization restored.”
It’s a voice I recognize.
“Onix!” I yell at the ceiling. “Is that you, Onix?”
“Processing capacity at nineteen percent,”
announces the voice.
“Onix! It’s me!” I shout. “It’s Infinity!”
“Motion detectors register unauthorized personnel on Cortex Level One.”
If it is Onix, he either can’t hear me, doesn’t recognize me, or, worse, knows exactly who I am and is preparing to set the Drones on all of us, regardless.
“Onix!” I yell again. “Verify voice-command authority Infinity One!”
“Voice-command authority denied,”
replies Onix.
Oh, crap. Seems like it’s option three. All the Crimson-Class Drones are standing at attention now.
“Internal cameras are currently off-line,”
says Onix.
“Security Level Red.”
With my heart pounding in my chest, I glance at the war Drones. Their faces stop flashing. The sight of eight bloodred masks to my right and five more at the end of the hall to my left doesn’t exactly instill me with confidence.
“Priority Alpha,”
says Onix, and the words jar in my mind. I’ve heard those two words strung together many times before, and I’ve never once heard a friendly sentence follow them. I’m hoping against my better judgement that this time will be the exception. Onix says three more words, and everyone’s eyes go as wide as hollow-point bullet holes.
“Terminate all intruders.”
“Terminate?” Brent squeaks. Beside him, Margaux sobs and sniffles into her hands. “Doesn’t that mean . . . kill?” he asks redundantly as his head swings back and forth from one group of Drones to the other.
“Infinity?” Otto whimpers, looking understandably terrified. “What do we do?”
I thrust my arm to the left, pointing directly at the five service Drones at the end of the corridor as I shout my loud, guttural, and, quite frankly, obvious response.
“Don’t just stand there, you idiots . . . RUN!”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Adrenaline surges through me, flooding my body as my battlefield instincts slam into high gear. My chemically heightened brain immediately begins processing my surroundings at a vastly increased rate, causing my perception of time to slow down by a factor of two. All around me, wide-eyed, panicked expressions move on ashen faces with half-speed undulations as everyone scrambles to run, limbs flailing in a slow-motion flurry of school uniforms.
With images of compression pistons pumping through my mind, my legs thrust my body into action, my shoes squeaking against the shiny floor as I take off after the group. I’m right behind them, but after two short steps, I stomp the ground like a hydraulic battering ram and launch myself, diving through the air, arms outstretched, sailing clear over the heads of Brent and Brody, who are fleeing. I curl as I hit the ground and roll up onto my feet a good ten meters out in front of them as the formation of five service Drones up ahead, their orders clear, begin marching down the corridor toward us.
I smile to myself as a wave of pleasure pulses through me. Time to have a little fun.
I sprint toward the Drones, then veer at the last second and jump at the crystal wall to my right. I plant my foot, kick off the wall, and spin toward the third android in the front row, spiraling a full 360 degrees as I whip my leg in a swooping arc and slam my foot square on the side of the Drone’s head. A web of cracks splinters across the robot’s mask, its color flashing from bright red to black as its head separates from its neck and bounces inside its silver body stocking like a paddleball. The decapitated Drone skitters into its two neighbors, and they tumble to the floor.
It was a brutal kick, and that third Drone is no longer a threat, but judging by the telltale alert going off in my head, I’ve broken a couple of bones in my foot. Ignoring the injury, I spring up from the floor, spearing the two Drones in the back row with the sharpened bones of my fingertips: one through the chest and the other through its abdomen. I pull my arms out of each robot’s breastplate and stomach in a splatter of squirting orange glue. One of their faces blinks out as it falls, but the Drone I skewered through the gut is still active. With its red mask only inches from my nose, it reaches up and clutches my throat. I quickly mountain-peak my hands and thrust them between the Drone’s wrists, breaking its choke hold.
I grab the gutted Drone by the neck, and my arm becomes a blur as I dagger my hand through its mask in a flurry of stabs. The red glow snuffs out, and the robot crumples as my hair is violently jerked backward. The Drone behind me has grabbed the end of my ponytail like a leash. I slide toward the robot to slacken the tether, and then I pump my legs and spring off the ground in a high aerial backflip. Upside down, I reach out and cup my hands under the Drone’s chin, my shoes tapping across the jagged ceiling as I drop behind it. Half-blinded by the strands of my own hair tightened across my face, I let momentum and gravity do the work and pull the robot down to the floor. I quickly slump into a crouch and hammer my arms down, slamming the Drone’s artificial skull into the ground and cracking open the back of its head like a walnut shell.
The robot’s deactivated hand releases, and I flick my hair back to see the last one pushing up from the floor. I pounce at it, catch its neck with a hook-armed clothesline, and spiral-twist my body as I kick high into the air. The Drone is completely swept into an airborne spin, and with a satisfying metallic crunching sound, I release its throat and finish this violent little dance with a tight backflip, landing softly on my feet as the android’s body flumps beside me in a heap on the cool white floor. Five Drones down . . . Ten seconds flat.
The group has stopped running and is just standing there, staring at me crouching among a tangle of orange-blood-leaking silver corpses. “Move, move, move!” I yell.
Everyone snaps back to reality, scrambling in a pack over the deactivated Drone bodies. I glance down the corridor toward the elevator. The Crimsons aren’t running; they’re marching like these were, but they’re closing in fast. In a speechless, fear-driven hurry, everyone disappears around the corner, and I’m right behind them, the hum of the walls punctuated by the sound of our footsteps as we all run back the way we came. I don’t look back, but I do shout ahead. “The white room! Get back to the white room!” I didn’t see any other doors on the way here, so going back to square one seems like our only option.
We run around the corner, back down a short section of passage, and then around another corner, with Blondie, surprisingly, leading the group. Not surprising that she remembers the way, but that she is such a strong and fast runner. I watch the way she swings her arms so assuredly in focused, flat-palmed swipes, the way her rigid torso follows a solid line, hardly bobbing up and down at all to the smooth rhythm of her pointed steps. The unmistakable sharp-angled back-flick of her long, fluid strides confirms it. Those are traits of a high-performance athlete. Like I said . . . surprising.
I see Blondie disappear through the door of the white room far up ahead, and even though I’m slowed by my broken foot, it isn’t long before I’m at the open doorway, too, crunching through shattered glass behind the rest of the group. We sprint through the now fully lit corridor and into the bright-white room where this aggravating chain of events began for me.
“Where to now?” Ryan asks through short, panting breaths.
“We could break another door?” Otto whispers breathlessly. “Maybe find another elevator?”
“What if there are more of those things in the next one?” asks Blondie.
“Then Finn can take them all out!” bellows Brody.
I shoot him a piercing glare, and he visibly twitches. “Sorry,” he says. “I meant
Infinity
can take them out.” His expression transforms into a wide grin. “I mean, seriously, did you see that back there? That was the most badass thing I’ve ever seen!”
“I don’t stand a chance against those big Drones,” I say. “None of us do. They’re heavily armored and combat tough.”
“How do you know that?” Ryan asks.
I pretend like I didn’t hear him.
“If there are more of those things around, and I bet there will be . . . then we’re gonna need weapons,” I say.
“There’s a Security Station on the way to Dome Two,” says Otto. “There might be some weapons there? I’m also hoping it’s where our phones and computer slates are.”
“We can call for help!” screeches Blondie.
“We need to get out of here first,” Brent chips in.
“What are those?” I ask, pointing at each of the nondescript frosted-glass cubicles in the two far corners of the room.
“Toilets,” answers Otto.
“That could be our way out of here,” I say, striding over to the cubicle on the right. I slot my fingers into the handle-shaped indent in the door and swing it open. The room is small but well designed, with a hand basin built into the top of the toilet tank to save space. Beside that is a small hand dryer, and above the toilet, set in the center of the cubicle, is exactly what I was hoping for: a vent for an extractor fan. Knowing that the Crimsons will be here any second, I turn and run to the Nanny Theresa Drone I dispatched earlier. Everyone else stands there watching and frowning as I kneel in a puddle of slippery orange slime, grab the Drone’s severed arm from the floor, and race back to the cubicle.
I jump up onto the toilet seat and use the carbon-metal-composite “bones” in the Drone’s forearm as a lever to force the vent cover from the wall. A large, square section pops off without too much effort. It clatters to the floor, and I’m pleasantly surprised to see that the box-shaped opening to the duct is large, almost industrial-factory size. I expected a hole barely big enough for me to fit in, but even Brody could get his husky bulk in here. That’s a shame really; he’s a dolt, and a small vent would have been a good excuse to leave him behind. Judging by these indented nozzles and blinking diodes running along the walls inside, this looks like a multipurpose conduit of some kind, and this toilet cubicle happened to be built in the perfect place to connect with it.
I step down and beckon to Otto. “C’mon! Let’s go!” She runs to the cubicle and leaps onto the toilet seat as I grab her legs, boosting her up into the duct. There’s a hollow thrumming of hands and knees as Otto crawls deeper in, but a sound of a different kind makes me turn and stare at the doorway across the room.
It’s the sound of glass crunching under the approaching thumps of heavy footsteps. And I’m not the only one who hears it.
“Out of my way!” screeches Blondie, shoving Brent to one side. She eyes the square opening, does one of those skip steps that gymnasts always do, and sprints across the room. She springs onto the seat and impressively dives headfirst into the hole, the entire length of her body completely disappearing into the duct as the first of the two-and-a-half-meters-tall Crimson-Class Combat Drones ducks under the top of the doorway and enters the room.
The three boys sprint to the cubicle door. “I’m next!” Brent announces as he jumps up and hoists himself into the duct, grunting and kicking as he goes. The first Drone advances as a second and then third stomp in behind it.
“I’ll help you up,” Brody says to Ryan. “You can’t climb with that shoulder.”
Ryan nods a thank-you to Brody, jumps up onto the seat, and grabs the lip of the vent with his good arm as Brody cups the heel of Ryan’s shoe. The Drones are only a few steps away. I need to buy the boys some time.
I move away from the cubicle, circling to the right, waving my arms in the air—all three arms if you count the severed android limb clutched in the palm of my left hand. “Over here!” I yell. “Come and get me!”
The two Drones at the front turn and thud toward me, and I break into a run, curving around in a wide arc, heading straight for the rest of the robots emerging from the smashed doorway. There are six in all now; the room is getting crowded, and I’m suddenly wondering what the hell I’m doing. It’s true: I made a deal with Otto to get these kids to safety. But is it worth risking my life? I can’t kill Richard Blackstone and get Finn out of my head if my brains are squished between a Combat Drone’s fingers.
There’s no time for deeper psychoanalysis as I leap off the ground in a horizontal dropkick and slam the fifth Drone in the side. It staggers slightly as I land, prone, on the floor. The Drone looks down at me with its bloodred mask, and I roll backward up onto my feet. The number of killer robots whose attention is solely focused on me has risen to three. All eight Crimsons are in the room now, and to say that the situation is not looking good would be a massive understatement. I quickly back away and manage to catch a glimpse of the vent between the wide silver shoulders of the three Drones trudging in my direction. Ryan has made it in, but Brody is still hanging halfway out, and a Drone is almost on him. If it gets a good hold on his leg, he’s as good as dead.
I shouldn’t care. If it drags him from the vent, it will make it easier for me to escape. But something deep inside is irking me. Brody is a worthless waste of space; he means nothing to me. But then why is the thought of not trying to help him making me feel so . . .
guilty
?
With absolutely no time left to ponder it further, I focus on assessing the situation. Three huge Drones are almost upon me, and I’m backed against a wall. I’m excellent at emotional compartmentalization, but even I have to admit that it’s really hard not to be scared out of my damn mind right now. There is an escape route, but it’s gonna take some miraculous timing and a Grand Canyon–size amount of luck.
No more thinking, Infinity.
This is do or die.
Adrenaline surges, and high gear kicks in as the first massive Drone reaches for me. I quickly crouch away from it while thrusting my hand toward it, offering the Drone the severed robot arm instead of mine as I mentally strengthen and prepare my leg muscles to jump like I’ve never jumped before. My grip on the wrist of the severed arm is so tight that it would take a crowbar to pry my hand loose, but the plan will only work if this Crimson-Class Drone plays its part.
Gladly, the Drone takes the bait. Its huge, four-fingered clamp of a hand snaps shut on the end of the stump like a bear trap, and I tense every muscle in my torso as the Drone’s arm becomes a silver catapult, whipping away the orange-goop-dripping appendage with incredible force as I spring from the floor with all my might, holding on to the cutoff arm for dear life. With jarring acceleration I’m whisked off my feet. I release the arm at the last second, and I’m flung through the air, my back skimming the low ceiling as I sail over the heads of the other Drones. With narrow-eyed concentration, I tuck and somersault, landing feetfirst on the back of another Drone’s neck. Caught off guard in midstride, the robot’s legs slightly buckle as I leapfrog from its back in the direction of the Drone nearest the vent. I land squarely on the android’s shoulders from behind, its head wedged between my thighs as it leans over the toilet bowl, grabbing for Brody’s shoe. I wrench my blazer up over my head and in one quick, continuous movement pull it down over the Drone’s face mask.
The android begins turning its head from side to side, momentarily disoriented underneath the shroud, its synthetic muscles flexing as it raises its arms to pull the blazer away. With the Drone distracted, Brody doesn’t hesitate to scramble farther into the duct, leaving just enough room behind him for me. A quick glance over my shoulder tells me that I only have a couple of seconds to jump from this swiveling silver bronco before the other Drones are on me, so with the vent opening swaying and bobbing in my line of sight . . . I take a chance. I splay my arms, reach out for the edge of the vent, and release my legs—but as soon as I do, I know that I’ve messed this up very badly.
The robot pivots along with me, and my body swings out horizontally. I screw my eyes shut a millisecond before the gong sound of my head hitting the thin frosted wall of the cubicle becomes the deafening crack-shattering of glass as my face goes completely through it. My legs go loose, and I drop, landing hard. The room is spinning as I feel blood beginning to stream down my forehead into my eyes. My focus is gone, my mind is reeling, and my vision is swimming.