Authors: Mark Alpert
Okay, let's think this through.
Shannon's trying hard to stay in control, but I bet her circuits are jittering like mine.
We can't let Amber fire at the Snake-bots. Even if she flew in low, her laser beams would cut right through the crowd. But maybe the rest of us could fire from this position.
Let's do it then! What are we waiting for?
I'm just worried about what'll happen
after
we fire. The tentacles will probably try to dodge the beams, and when they start twisting and flailing, they're gonna kill a lot of people down there.
But what's the alternative? You want to negotiate? You think Sigma's willing to make a deal?
Zia breaks into the radio conversation.
I agree with Adam. We can't save everyone, but we can save some of them.
Shannon hesitates.
What about you, DeShawn? What's your
recommendation?
I think weâ
He never finishes the sentence. The silver Snake-bot below us suddenly raises its tip and slams it into the American Eagle Outfitters store.
The tentacle smashes through the building's facade and swings up to the top floor, knocking down walls and pillars. The whole structure shudders and the roof lurches. The billboard we're hiding behind tips over and plunges into the street. A moment later the tentacle bursts through the roof, throwing all four of us over the edge.
Our robots tumble down the front of the building. We bounce off the store's marquee and land on the asphalt of Seventh Avenue. My Quarter-bot starts rolling toward the crowd, but I dig my steel fingers into the asphalt and stop myself from crashing into anyone. The Diamond Girl and the Einstein-bot slide into me, and I manage to stop them too. Zia's War-bot hits the sidewalk with a booming thud, cratering the pavement, but luckily no one's beneath her.
I swiftly lever myself upright, then help Shannon and DeShawn to their footpads. Just as quickly, Zia pulls herself out of the crater and strides toward us. We position ourselves in an infantry fire-team formation, four robots with our backs to each other and our lasers pointing in all directions. DeShawn's Swarm-bot detaches from its quadcopter, and his forty thousand modules disperse overhead, forming a small gray cloud a hundred feet above us. As the cubes hover over Times Square, they send us aerial images of the Snake-bots. At the same time, Amber's Jet-bot circles at a higher altitude and monitors the surrounding area. We're ready for battle.
The silver Snake-bot pulls its tip out of the demolished store but doesn't lash out at us. It's probably waiting for a signal from Sigma, so it lies motionless under the long shadows of the skyscrapers. The crowd panics anywayâthe men and women closest to the silver tentacle stampede away from it, trampling the people behind them. They also back away from the Pioneers, which are much smaller than the Snake-bots but still terrifying. It's distressing to see this reaction, but something good comes out of it: the crowd deserts the stretch of pavement between us and the silver tentacle. Now we have a clear shot at the weakest section of its armor.
Turn west!
Shannon shouts over the radio. Her voice is decisive now.
And fire when ready!
I raise my Quarter-bot's arms and aim my lasers. Shannon, Zia, and DeShawn do the same. But before any of us can fire, the silver Snake-bot disintegrates with a tremendous
crack
. Another
crack
erupts on the east side of Times Square, and a third
crack
explodes to the north. In an instant, all three Snake-bots transform into vast swarms. Billions of silver, blue, and yellow modules descend upon us.
It's like an incredibly vicious hailstorm, except in this case the hailstones are self-propelled cubes that swirl across Times Square in wide loops and spirals. The swarm is thickest and most turbulent at the edges, where the Snake-bots were coiled just a moment ago. So many modules are churning there that they form an impassable barrier, a wall of flying steel that surrounds the crowd. The swarm is thinner in the middle, but even here the cubes limit visibility and make a horrible din as they whistle through the air.
Amid the chaos, though, I notice something strange. The modules aren't attacking the people. The cubes zip past them at high speed, coming close enough to tear gashes in their clothes, but never strike their bodies. Sigma must've programmed the modules to fly around the humans in Times Square. For some reason, the AI wants to terrify the people but not massacre them.
Unfortunately, this programming doesn't apply to the Pioneers. The modules batter our robots and latch on to our armor. Within seconds the cubes fasten themselves to every surface of my Quarter-bot. They also cover the Diamond Girl and the Einstein-bot. Zia's the only one of us who can defend herself, and she starts skewering the modules that land on her War-bot. At the same time, she strides between us and the main body of the swarm.
“
Don't worry
!
” Zia raises the volume of her speakers so we can hear her above the whistling of the modules. “
I'll take care of this
!
” She points her lasers at the swarm. “
Just stay behind me
!
”
“
NO, ZIA! STOP
!
” The scream comes from Shannon. “
You can't fire! There are people all around us! If you fire at the modules, you'll hit the people
!
”
Now I see the genius of Sigma's plan. In our battle at McGuire, the AI saw how powerful the gamma-ray laser was. So it lured us to a place where we can't use it. Sigma's swarm hovers close to the ground and occupies the same space as the crowd. The AI is using the civilians as a shield.
Zia turns to Shannon and shakes her War-bot's head. “
We have to fire! The people here are gonna die anyway! If we lose this battle, Sigma will kill them all
!
”
“
WE DON'T KILL HUMANS! UNDERSTAND ME, ALLA
W
I
?
”
Zia shakes her head again, and a ferocious roar of disapproval booms out of her speakers. She unclenches her hands, and ten sharp blades extend from the tips of her fingers. Each blade is eight inches long and looks like a garden trowel.
Zia stretches both hands toward Shannon, and my circuits jangle in alarm.
What's she doing? Is she turning against us?
I lunge toward her, but there are so many modules on my Quarter-bot that I can barely lift my legs.
Shannon! Watch out!
But instead of attacking Shannon, Zia slides her steel hands along the front and back of the Diamond Girl's torso. The blades on Zia's fingers act like scrapers, ripping the blue, silver, and yellow modules off Shannon's armor. Zia works quickly, then starts scraping the cubes off DeShawn.
A burst of relief runs through my circuits, but it's only temporary. Zia can't work fast enough. While she strips the modules from the Einstein-bot, more latch on to Shannon. Even worse, wisps of brown smoke start to rise from the cubes. They're using hydrochloric acid to burn through her armor. The modules on my Quarter-bot are doing the same thing.
A few seconds later, Zia finishes with DeShawn and moves on to me. As she scrapes my armor, I pivot my head and aim my cameras at Shannon. “Listen, we have to get out of here. We have to break through the edge of the swarm.” I point my arm directly west, at the dense barrier of speeding modules. “There aren't many people over there, so we can use the lasers. We need to blast a hole through that barrier so we can get back to Forty-Sixth Street.”
Her Diamond Girl nods, then turns to DeShawn. “Steer your Swarm-bot over there and order your modules to attack Sigma's. That'll weaken the part of the barrier that we need to blast through.”
The Einstein-bot's face is scarred from Zia's scraping, but DeShawn manages to smile. “Why not? It's worth a try.”
As soon as Zia finishes cleaning me, we start trudging through the metallic storm. The swarm's edge is only fifty feet away, but the modules hammer us and cling to our armor. Because Shannon's robot is the smallest, she's the first to stumble under the weight of the cubes. I hook an arm around her torso and pull her forward, both of us leaning into the relentless barrage. Zia keeps scraping the cubes off our robots, but it's a futile task. There's just too many of them, and the blades on Zia's fingers are starting to get dull.
Unlike the modules in the middle of the swarm, the ones along the edge pummel any human who comes close, so the crowd stays well away from them. Thousands of tons of steel are circling Times Square at ridiculous velocities, and as we approach the barrier, I realize there's no way we can stride through it. If we step into that maelstrom, it'll smash our robots like a speeding freight train. And we can't jump over the barrier either, because it's too high and wide. The only way out is to use our lasers to clear a path.
DeShawn's Swarm-bot moves into position and hovers over the barrier. Although his cloud of gray modules looks tiny compared with Sigma's swarm, it's still a hopeful sight. The Einstein-bot is already caked with cubes and leaking acidic smoke, but luckily DeShawn can still use its antenna to send commands. He orders his Swarm-bot to attack, and his modules dive into Sigma's swarm.
The gray cubes are engulfed. They vanish from sight like a squirt of dye dropped into a raging sea. My sensors can't even tell me what happened to them. At the same time, DeShawn's Einstein-bot tumbles backward. The blue, silver, and yellow cubes heap on top of his armor. They shroud his plastic face and fiberglass hair.
Then Shannon collapses. Sigma's modules pounce on her Diamond Girl, piling on top of her by the thousands, literally burying her.
NO! SHANNON!
Every signal in my circuits is telling me to rescue her, to stride toward the mound of cubes and dig her out. But I know that would be suicide. The modules are piling on top of me as well, and gobs of smoke pour from a hundred holes in my armor. I won't be able to stay on my footpads much longer. So I channel all my remaining power to my arms and raise the lasers that DeShawn attached to them. Zia, standing four feet to my left, raises her arms too.
“Aim low!” I yell. “Just a yard above the ground! We'll get the swarm to loop upward, and then we'll drag Shannon and DeShawn through the gap!”
“Sounds good to me!” Zia yells back.
“On my mark: three, two, one,
fire
!
”
But nothing happens. Neither of my lasers fires. Zia's lasers don't work either, not even one of the half dozen hanging from her arms.
The modules must've damaged the weapons.
But when I run a diagnostic check, I find nothing wrong with them. And besides, what are the chances that my lasers
and
Zia's would malfunction at the same time?
It's suspicious. Something funny is going on. And Zia seems to realize it too. She turns to me and screams, “It's Hawke! Didn't I tell you he was the traitor?”
“What?”
“He tampered with the lasers! He programmed them to stop working!”
I don't understand how Hawke could do this. When did he have the opportunity? “Wait, how couldâ”
“
I'm going to kill that man! I'm going to KILL him
!
”
Zia doesn't offer any more explanations. Instead, she lets out another terrible roar and rushes toward the barrier.
I can't stop her. One of the modules has burned a hole through the armor in my torso, and the acid has melted the wires controlling my leg motors. I can't move an inch. All I can do is point my cameras at Zia and watch in horror as she charges into the wall of roiling modules.
Sparks light up her War-bot as the cubes hurtle into her. The swarm batters her, thousands of modules striking her in waves. They pockmark her armor and tear off her lasers and rip all ten of the scraper blades off her steel fingers. It looks like the swarm is going to lift her War-bot right off the street and send it flying.
But Zia stands her ground. And amazingly, she takes a step forward, and then another. She has a long way to go to cross the barrier, but she's doing it. She's on her way.
Then, a bright-yellow beam comes out of nowhere and slices off Zia's right arm. She stares at the limb in astonishment as it careens away from her, carried by the current of speeding modules. A moment later, the yellow beam strikes the joint between Zia's right leg and torso. The laser burns through the steel, and her War-bot topples.
Helpless, I watch the remains of Zia's robot skid across Times Square. Then the yellow beam swings toward my Quarter-bot. The beam's source is a dense vortex of modules within the swarm. It looks like a huge wheel, about ten feet across, with a long tube poking through its center like an axle. The beam streaks out of the tube and sizzles through the air and sweeps across my Quarter-bot's legs, severing both at the knee joints. My torso falls backward, landing beside Shannon and DeShawn. Then the beam neatly cuts off my Quarter-bot's arms.
By all rights, I should be bursting with terror and despair, but strangely enough, my electronic mind is quiet. One of Sigma's modules has burned its acid into the heart of my circuitsâmy neuromorphic control unitâand my thoughts don't seem to be working quite right. I'm calm because everything seems to be happening to someone else, a stranger named Adam Armstrong. That's not me anymore. Or is it?
But my head can still turn and my cameras still work, and because I'm on my back, I can see the evening sky above Times Square. A gap opens in the swarm, a perfectly circular hole, and through the gap I see Amber's Jet-bot, cruising a thousand feet overhead. She's probably radioing a stream of frantic messages to the rest of us, but I'm not receiving any of her signals. Sigma must be jamming the radio channel, just like it did at McGuire after it took control of Brittany. I want to wave at Amber to get her attention, to call for help, but I can't. I don't have arms anymore.