by S. Harrison
Flashes of red flicker through my eyelids, and I snap my eyes open. A jiggling circle of light dances over me for a split second, then flits away as frantic footsteps approach. The sound of shoes pounding the pavement gets louder and louder and closer and closer, until it seems like it’s almost on top of me. Suddenly there’s a ferocious grunting screech, a streak of light, and an almighty crack, and right before my eyes, glass and splinters of black plastic burst in every direction. The filaments around my neck and forehead instantly disintegrate into black powder, the Lobot’s legs release, and I inhale a huge, gasping breath as I forcefully thrust my arms out in front of me, catapulting the spider, end over end, high into the air. I hear it land on the grass, and I scramble backward across the path as Bit dashes past me and screeches again, leaping at the Lobot as she swings her heavy flashlight over her head, bringing it down hard on the twitching spider with a definitive and gratifying thud.
Crouching over her conquered foe like a triumphant lioness, Bit glances back at me. I asked for a miracle. And there she is. Panting for air and with a wide-eyed, adrenalized expression on her face, she almost looks psychotic as she quickly scoots across the path to my side. “Are you OK?” she asks between breaths.
“Brody,” I rasp as I rub at my throat. “Lobot injected him. We have to carry him.”
Bit tosses her shattered flashlight away, takes my hand, and helps me up, and we both hurry over to Brody. He’s lying on his side, his legs flopped loosely behind him. “Help me,” he pleads, holding his arm out toward us. “I can feel it spreading.”
“Brody,” Bit whimpers as she kneels beside him and touches his face. He tries to smile up at her, but it’s plain to see how scared he is. I don’t blame him at all. My nerves are shot to hell, and I’m not the one who’s lying on the ground, paralyzed from the waist down.
“We’ve got you, Brody,” I say as I crouch as low as I can and sling his arm over my shoulder. I manage to lift his upper body high enough off the ground for Bit to go around to the other side and position herself under his other arm. Grunting with effort, Bit and I manage to haul Brody upright, and we’re off, awkwardly jostling our way along the path toward the door in the hillside.
It is not easy going. Brody is heavy. It would be a huge help if he could move his legs even a little, and of course I know he would if he could, but with his lower body paralyzed, it’s like carrying dead weight. As hard as she’s trying, I can tell that Bit is struggling. I try to take more than my share of Brody’s weight to compensate, and it takes every ounce of my strength to hold him up and run at the same time. I attempt to block out the pain of exertion by focusing all my attention on the door to the reservoir, so I don’t notice the sound at all until Bit raises the alert. “What . . . is . . . that?” she hisses through her labored breaths and grunts.
I turn my head slightly to the side, and suddenly, the sound is all that I can hear. It’s a rustling, shuffling, shifting sound, like a thousand scuttling crabs moving all at once. I know exactly what that sound means, and I curse out loud, spitting a string of expletives through my gritted teeth that would make a salty old sailor proud. Bit glares at me, clearly shocked by my swearing, but her look of surprise pales in comparison to the expression that flashes onto her face as she takes a peek behind us.
She doesn’t scream, but her panic shows as her gaze flicks straight ahead, and she arches her back, lifting her shoulders higher as her legs begin pumping beneath her with a new and urgent vigor. Brody suddenly feels lighter from her increased effort, but as he takes a look back along the path, the weight of our situation bears down on him, and it’s his turn to let the curse words fly as the scrambling sound gets louder and louder behind us. Sixty yards. We only have sixty yards to go. We can make it. We can make it. We can make it.
“We’re not gonna make it!” shouts Brody.
I quickly glance over my shoulder, and to my absolute horror I realize . . . that Brody is right. Writhing over each other on a rolling, moving wave of flurrying legs are hundreds and hundreds of robotic spiders, pouring along the path, scampering through the grass and flattening shrubs and bushes with their sheer numbers as they stampede toward us, rows upon rows of beady red glowing eyes jumping and flitting and darting in every direction inside the tumbling mass of black. Even with Bit’s renewed, adrenaline-fueled pace, we’re still going way too slow. There’s absolutely no way that we can escape them.
“Leave me!” Brody yells.
“Noooo!” screeches Bit.
“I’m slowing you down! Leave me!” he shouts again.
“We can make it!” grunts Bit. Up ahead I see Dr. Pierce push the door open and duck inside. The door is only forty yards away, but I know that what Bit just said simply isn’t true. We’re not going to make it.
Brody leans his head in close to my ear, and when he speaks it sounds as if it’s the most important thing he will ever say. “Promise me, Finn, keep her safe.” At that moment I know Brody is about to do what has to be done.
“I promise,” I reply. We exchange a solemn look, and then Brody twists his wrists from our hands and wrenches his arms away from us.
Brody flumps onto the path behind us as the wave of spiders closes in. Bit turns back and lets out an anguished wail. “Brooodyyyyy!”
Brody ignores her completely and stares directly at me, his face racked with a strange mix of fear and determination. “Get out of here!” he bellows.
Panting for breath and with abject terror contorting her face, Bit glances back and forth between Brody and the writhing oncoming rush of Lobots. She reaches out to him, and I quickly hold her back as she tries to lunge toward him.
“I’m not going to leave you,” she screeches.
Brody’s face twists into an angry snarl as he looks me right in the eyes and barks his final demand. “Finn! Get her out of here . . . now!”
With no time to lose, I quickly grab Bit firmly by her wrist and take off, dragging her along beside me as she screams over her shoulder. “Noooo!”
“Run goddammit!” I scream at her. “Don’t look back! Ruuuuun!”
With tears welling in her eyes behind her glasses, Bit does as I say and sprints on in silence. I saw the signs, the shy glances, the shared smiles and fleeting touches, the way pink flushed into her cheeks when she looked at him. Bit and Brody had grown close over the last few hours. An instant relationship forged from the fires of tragedy. So I know why she can’t bring herself to look back as he’s taken, but I allow myself one last glance, a mental keepsake of the bravest boy I’ve ever known.
He’s lying there on the path, feverishly scrambling through his satchel as the teeming mass of spiders closes in on him. He only has a few more seconds of freedom before they reach him. With a lump in my throat, I grudgingly turn away and look straight ahead. I don’t want to watch when they engulf him, coil around him, clamp to his head, and drain away everything that made him who he was. That’s not how I want to remember him. If I make it out of here alive, I’ll tell anyone who will listen that the last time I saw the Brody Sharp that I knew, he was searching in his bag for a makeshift weapon to beat as many of those hellish machines into the ground as he could before they took him. Against overwhelming odds, and with no way to escape, he sacrificed himself for us . . . and went out fighting till the bitter end.
Unburdened from carrying Brody, we’re able to stay ahead of the Lobots, but only barely, as the horrible cacophony of scuttling gets louder and louder behind us. Up ahead I can see Dr. Pierce’s horrified face peek out from behind the door as he readies himself to close it. Still clutching tightly to Bit’s arm, I pull her along as we get closer and closer.
Only thirty yards and we’re home free.
“Where’s the boy?!” Dr. Pierce shouts toward us.
Only twenty-five yards to go.
“He’s gone!” I call ahead.
Twenty yards to go. We’re gonna make it.
“Hurry!” shouts Dr. Pierce. “They’re right behind you!”
Fift
een yards. Lungs on fire.
Twelve yards. Legs straining.
Ten yards to go and we’re there.
Nine . . .
Eight . . .
Seven . . .
We’re mere steps away from safety when, all of a sudden, to my absolute horror, Bit stumbles and falls toward the pavement. I scream out loud, pulling her wrist with all my might, and a surge of incredible strength suddenly ripples through the muscles of my arm. Bit’s feet leave the ground completely as I fling her toward the door. She shrieks with surprise as she flies through the air, hits the pavement at the foot of the doorway, and tumbles inside.
I hear the ominous sound of spitting expulsions, and the strap of my satchel tugs at my neck as a Lobot zip-lines through the air and grabs on to my bag. I quickly pull the strap over my head and let the satchel go, but panic erupts in my mind with a blazing fury as I feel filaments coil tightly around my leg and one of my arms. The slimy cables tighten as spiders reel themselves toward me. Spindly legs clamp tightly around my thigh and my bicep as I dive headlong through the opening. With perfect split-second timing, Dr. Pierce forcefully slams the entrance shut, and I hit the smooth concrete floor, haphazardly splaying on my stomach as I hear the wave of Lobots thudding and battering against the sturdy metal door behind me.
CHAPTER NINE
Gasping for air, I’m trying to stand up when sharp stabs of pain in my arm and leg cause my jaw to clench shut, and a horrified groan rattles from my throat as I realize the spiders’ hypodermic needles are biting into my flesh. One of my legs stops working almost immediately, and I collapse onto the ground.
I kick against the floor with the other foot, scrambling backward in a panicked, illogical attempt to escape the two machines clamped on to my thigh and upper arm. My back hits up against the concrete wall of the passageway as I desperately try to pry one of the Lobots from my now completely immobile, loosely hanging arm.
“Dr. Pierce! Help!” screeches Bit as she leaps to her feet and lunges at the spider that’s biting into my bicep. Still panting to catch her breath, Bit grabs the sides of its body and pulls with all her might, but the Lobot is much too strong, and her efforts are futile.
Dr. Pierce calmly reaches into the pocket of his lab coat, pulls out a screwdriver, and strides over to me. He places one of his knees on the back of the spider attached to my leg, and holding the screwdriver in both hands like a dagger, he takes careful aim and plunges it into the tiny gap between the Lobot’s body and the back of its head. With a determined and purposeful look on his face, he wrenches the screwdriver vigorously from side to side like he’s trying to shuck a giant and particularly stubborn oyster.
Suddenly there’s a bright blue spark. The Lobot’s four red eyes blink out, and its robotic limbs immediately release their grip. The cables squeezing around my leg instantly turn into black powder, and Dr. Pierce grabs the machine by one of its deactivated appendages and flings it, sending it clattering onto the concrete floor behind him.
He quickly moves up to my arm and shoves Bit to the side with an unceremonious nudge of his leg. “Out of the way, girly!” he barks as he positions the screwdriver in the right place and stabs it into the second spider. There’s another blue flicker of light and a buzz of electricity as the slimy tendril disintegrates and the red fades from its eyes.
Bit clutches the sides of its body and pries it off me. “Her neck,” she says, her eyes wide with worry. “There’s blood on her neck.”
Dr. Pierce leans in. “Looks like one almost got her,” he says as he studies the underside of my jaw. “But it’s OK. The punctures have already closed.”
My healed cuts are cold comfort, and I’m absolutely terrified as the paralyzing drug continues to creep through me. I can still move one arm, and I grab Dr. Pierce’s lab coat, clutching it in distress.
“Help,” I murmur feebly. He gently takes me by the shoulders and moves me so I’m lying flat on the floor. I can’t move either of my legs now, and I can feel the drug spreading from my bitten arm and moving across my chest and up my neck into my face.
“It’s working fast. The X-27 must have hit a vein, but don’t worry, you’re going to be alright,” he attempts to say soothingly. “Try to stay calm. The paralytic will wear off soon.”
“Why isn’t she healing the poison away?” asks Bit.
“I’m not sure,” replies Dr. Pierce. “Given what we witnessed in my lab, it’s clear that we still don’t know everything about the limits of Finn’s physiology. Perhaps her advanced healing only reacts to pain, because apart from the paralysis, she’s fine.”
“She’s obviously not fine!” blurts Bit.
“What I mean, girly, is that technically, she isn’t hurt.”
“Then how long will it take until she’s better?” asks Bit.
“Well,” says Dr. Pierce, “after an X-27 attaches to a subject’s head and gains control of them, it injects an antidote to counteract the paralytic. But without the antidote it usually takes approximately thirty minutes for the drug to naturally work its way out of the individual’s system. Unfortunately Finn got a double dose, so it may be up to an hour before she’s able to move again.”
“An hour?!” exclaims Bit. “But, what if we extract the antidote from these dead ones?”
Dr. Pierce sighs in frustration. “I’ve destroyed the power sources for the injectors. I could take one of them apart, and I suppose I might be able to devise a way to manually operate one of the needles, but I’m afraid that would take almost as long. Finn will just have to wait it out. I’ll contact the others and let them know what’s happened, and, Finn, the best thing you can do is try and relax and stay calm.”
I manage to grunt something that sounds vaguely like “OK” as Dr. Pierce fishes his walkie-talkie from his pocket and squeezes the button. “Come in, Major Brogan. Are you there?”
“I’m reading you, Graham,” says Jonah’s voice.
“We’ve entered the reservoir door,” replies Dr. Pierce.
“That’s very good news,” says Jonah. “The R.A.M.s are still closing in on our position, but now that you’re safely inside the reservoir, we might be able to make it back to the hatch before they reach us. It seems that Brent may have actually done us a favor when he made an early run for it. We’re leaving immediately.”
“Wait,” says Dr. Pierce. “There are a few more things you need to know.”
“You can talk while we walk. Gentlemen, leave the other oxy tanks. We’re bugging out. Quickly, before those robots get any damn closer.”
“Oh thank heavens,” I hear Professor Francis say in the background.
“Now, what exactly do I need to know, Graham?” asks Jonah.
“Be advised, Major, we encountered a number of X-27 prototypes, so keep your eyes peeled. There are a few more of them than I expected.”
“How many more?” asks Jonah.
“I couldn’t say for sure,” replies Dr. Pierce. “But at a guess, I’d estimate there are almost a thousand of them right outside the door.”
“A thousand?!” exclaims Jonah. “I’m the goddamn proxy CEO of Blackstone Technologies; how the hell do I not know about this?”
“It seems Special Tactics has been keeping secrets from all of us,” Dr. Pierce says snidely. “And those secrets have resulted in casualties.”
Bit hangs her head and begins quietly sobbing.
“What’s happened, Graham?” Jonah grunts anxiously.
“Finn was injected by toxins, but she’s going to be fine. Unfortunately the same can’t be said for the young man who accompanied us. He was overwhelmed by the X-27s,” Dr. Pierce says solemnly.
“Brody,” sobs Bit. “His name was Brody.”
“Goddammit!” barks Jonah.
“They . . . got . . . Brody?” Margaux’s breathless voice hisses from Dr. Pierce’s radio.
“I . . . told . . . you!” Brent wheezes in the background. “Told . . . all . . . of you!”
“Where the hell are you two?
!” shouts Jonah.
“Following . . . promenade,” Margaux utters. “Halfway to . . . hilltop.”
“No doubt you’re triggering motion sensors all the way as you go,” says Dr. Pierce. “Those X-27s will surely be coming after you next, young lady.”
“We . . . can . . . make it!” sputters Brent.
“Well, you don’t have any other choice now,” says Jonah. “Best of luck, you two. Don’t stop, and you just might make it. Graham?”
“Yes, Major?”
“We’ve exited the stairwell and are heading for the hatch. None of us have got any time to lose. Leave Finn where she is, and you and Bettina get to the computer slate. We’ll use the tunnels to go under the R.A.M.s, and hopefully we can think of a way to draw the X-27s away from all of you and clear your path to the entrance of the neural core.”
“They’re leaving!” Brent shouts through the radio. “Ha-ha! They’re . . . leaving!”
“Hello? Brent? What do you mean?” replies Jonah.
“The spider things!” Margaux shouts in the background. “They’re . . . going away! The R.A.M., too!”
“We can . . . make it . . . to the bus!” yells Brent. “We . . . can make it!”
“That’s very good news,” Jonah replies. “When you make it to the bus, take it to the nearest town and force them to listen. Send us some help.”
“We . . . will!” says Brent.
“Good. Thank you,” says Jonah. “Are you there, Graham?”
“Yes, Major?”
“Get moving. The sooner you and Bettina retrieve her slate, the sooner we can—”
Jonah is cut off midsentence as Percy yells in the background. “There they are! They’ve seen us! Get down!”
Suddenly I hear the droning foghorn of a rail gun, a desperate scream, scuffling and scrambling, grunting, a hiss of static, and the signal is lost.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Bit and Dr. Pierce share a deeply anxious exchange. “Major Brogan?” Dr. Pierce barks into the radio. “Come in. Are you reading me?”
There’s no response, so he tries again.
