Gentle music began to play, echoing and slightly tinny, but soothing nonetheless. It reminded Annie of the sorts of instrumental tunes her parents would play in their restaurant back home. Suddenly, the labyrinth felt less gloomy, less inscrutable, less deadly.
“I think the music is meant to tell us it’s safe to come out for a bit,” she suggested.
“Why?” asked Bala. “I mean, what did we do to earn this relief?”
“Lord knows. Maybe Krikili had to take a bathroom break?” Annie laughed, then stopped when she heard how she sounded – croaky and slightly unhinged. “Sorry,” she said. “It’s been a long day, and blood-loss doesn’t agree with me.’
Bala placed a supportive hand on Annie’s shoulder. “I understand.” She indicated the way to their left. “Based on the movement of the lights, they want us to go that way. I do not entirely trust them, but…”
“But beggars can’t be choosers? Yeah, it’s take their advice or nothing at this point. Come on, let’s get the prof moving.”
They set out again, following the lights. There was no way of knowing how long this respite would last, but they couldn’t hurry with Rivers in her current condition. In the end, they spent well over an hour wending their way down through various passages before they reached their destination.
The trail of lights ended at a shaft of sorts, one without sides. They were standing in what appeared to be a roughly circular passage, with the base of the interior wall missing.
Annie peered into the gap. “There’s light at the bottom,” she reported. “Reckon there’s a circular room down there. I’ll dive in and see if there’s a safe way for you guys to bring Rivers down.”
Without waiting to see if her crewmates had any objection, Annie sat herself on the edge of the shaft and pushed off. The surface was smooth and not too steep, and she slid along on her back without any great discomfort, shielding her wounded arm as best she could. After a few seconds of this the wall before her face discontinued, and she found herself in a broad, brightly coloured chamber. A few more seconds and she had reached ground level, skidding a few yards more on her back before coming to a halt.
Annie lay there a moment, deathly tired. The music felt very relaxing. She could honestly just close her eyes and fall asleep …
“Nah. No quitting, now nor never. Geddup.” She began to scramble to her feet.
And froze. There by her hand lay a single yellow slipper.
Disbelieving, she picked it up. Made, primarily, from simple cotton, it was a strikingly mundane item to find in a place like this. There could be only one possible owner, of course.
“Gypsy! Hey, Gypsy! You here?”
No response. Annie took a closer look at her surroundings. She realised that the room was not circular, as she had supposed, but roughly heart-shaped, with a number of smaller chambers adjoining it. The décor was quite garish, with great swathes of rainbow colour adorning floor, walls and ceiling. It was as though someone had poured water on an artist’s palette and let the colours run together; a psychedelic treat after the steady diet of monochrome they’d been fed lately.
Annie abruptly remembered that she was supposed to be finding a safe way down here for the others. And there it was – a gently inclined staircase cut into one wall.
“Go round to your left!” she called up to them. “There’s stairs!”
After hearing Bala’s confirmation, Annie turned to once again survey her surroundings. This time, she spotted Gypsy almost immediately.
The mathematician was huddled on the floor in the middle of the antechamber dead opposite. She was alone. Jogging across to her, Annie found herself entering a circular space with a number of smaller rooms adjoining it. Ante-antechambers, she decided. These, again, were circular, their floors bearing a fine layer of grey dust. Directly opposite was a heavy steel door with a barred window at head-height. Written above it was a single word.
Exit.
Annie paid this little heed for the moment. Gypsy was kneeling in the centre of the room, facing away from the entrance. She didn’t respond when the technician spoke her name, instead staring vacantly at a dark patch on the ground before her. Drawing closer, Annie saw that it was a button, dark, flat and wide. It was depressed slightly into the floor and had the Matan word for safety written across it in sharp white letters.
That’s why Krikili stopped, she thought. Gypsy found the way out – this button triggered a safe period so the rest of us could come join her. She saved the day. Always knew she had it in her.
But …
“Hey there, Gypsy Moth.” Keeping her tone as easy and natural as she could, Annie knelt before her friend. “You good?”
She hadn’t expected a response, but Gypsy raised her head slightly and spoke in a soft monotone.
“Fine thanks, yes. I’m okay, I think, so…”
There was a robotic quality to the bland response, as though Gypsy were speaking on autopilot. Her expression was distant and glazed. Still, she wasn’t entirely catatonic, as Annie had initially feared.
“Where’s your mother?” she asked gently.
Gypsy was silent for a moment before responding.
“She had to … she was … yes. Soon be back. We should wait for her.”
“Right,” said Annie. She knew there was no way Alice would ever abandon her daughter, and looking closely she saw flecks of blood on Gypsy’s face with no wound to match them. “Don’t worry. You’re gonna be alright now.”
Footsteps drew near. Iris and Bala entered the antechamber, slowing to a halt as they took in the scene. Annie reached out to draw Gypsy to her feet. The mathematician immediately tensed up, her arms as stiff as wood where Annie touched them.
“I found your slipper. Can I put it on you?”
That did the trick. Mumbling her thanks, Gypsy stood and let Annie slide the misplaced footwear on without resistance. The technician glanced back at where Iris and Bala stood, still holding the comatose Rivers between them. She inclined her head toward the exit.
“Ki?” Bala prompted.
“Oh!” Annie cursed herself. She’d forgotten all about Ferguson. “Yeah, she might be on her way. How long do we wait?”
“We saw her,” said Gypsy. “But then … then, it took her…” Gesturing vaguely upwards, she trailed off.
Annie and Bala exchanged looks. No-one else was coming. They’d lost three crewmates in here. At least they wouldn’t lose any more.
“This way, G-Moth.” Annie steered Gypsy towards the exit with a gentle hand on her back. She noticed a rack of gleaming weapons next to the exit door. They were embossed with gold and looked to be of a markedly higher quality than those they’d been using up until now.
Annie’s blood froze. Why were they being given weapons, unless they still had some fighting to do?
She pressed a hand to the exit door and pushed. Nothing. It didn’t budge.
“You gotta be kidding me! Haven’t we done enough?”
Tugging at the bars yielded only frustration. Annie could feel the faintest of air movement on her fingertips, and realised, after looking as far as her limited field of vision would allow her, that the space beyond the door was a shaft leading upwards. This was a clear path to the surface. Freedom, if they could just think their way past this one final barrier.
Freedom, held tantalisingly out of reach.
“What’s this?” asked Iris. She had moved alongside Annie and was studying a break in the surface of the wall, just above the weapons rack. “Everything has a meaning here.”
Annie nudged the doctor aside so that she could have a look for herself. She saw a square, shallow indentation. In the centre of each of its four sides was a metallic patch.
“Okay,” said Annie. “I’m thinkin’ this is another locking mechanism. Or unlocking, hopefully. Connect these four points with something conductive and the door opens, right?” She rubbed furiously at her temples, trying to nurse her tired brain back into gear. “So, what’ve we seen that might
be conductive?”
“No,” said Bala. “Not what. Who.” She was standing by one of the ante-antechambers, looking thoughtfully at her shoes. The grey dust Annie had noticed earlier was evidently magnetic – it now coated the little iron loops through which the scientist’s shoelaces were threaded.
“Who?” Annie repeated uncomprehendingly. “What do you mean? No robots here.”
“Krikili,” said Iris softly.
“Yes.” Bala indicated Sandra Rivers, now lying on the ground where she and Iris had set the stretcher. “Sandra had it right. The puppet-masters behind this challenge have done everything they can to make us perceive Krikili as an unearthly demon, but it is a machine, just as she’s said all along. When it’s hunted us, a set program has governed its actions. That’s why it only takes one of us at a time; that’s why it fled as soon as the music started. A robot, following instructions.”
“And if we trash it, there should be parts we can scavenge to spring the lock,” said Annie. “Nice thinking, buddy.”
The technician pulled a sword from the rack. It fair sang through the air as she gave it an experimental swish; she could see her weary face reflected in the shining blade. Flawless. It looked as though it had been polished mere minutes ago, which perhaps it had. Certainly, the weapon was human-sized, unlike the heavy pieces they’d been struggling with up until now.
She sighed. “Well, this is gonna be a tough fight, but at least they’ve given us proper weapons this time.”
Without warning, the soothing music stopped. Their grace period had come to an end.
Bala’s eyes were not on the weaponry. They were again cast downwards.
“Proper tools,” she repeated. “Yes. They have.”
XIII
It is how you show up at the showdown that counts.
– Homer H. Norton
Bala stood alongside Iris and Annie, awaiting the coming of Krikili. They each held a sword; it would be up to the three of them to win this final fight. Gypsy, they’d soon agreed, would be unable to contribute to their plan. They had left the mathematician inside one of the dusty side rooms along with Rivers. She had gone in there without protest and was now crouched with her back to a wall, her head between her hands.
Bala had no time to think about Gypsy and her loss. Even if her theories about Krikili were correct, taking down their nemesis wouldn’t be easy. Too many unknowns.
It had been several minutes since the music stopped. The better part of that time had been spent in silence – once Bala had outlined her idea and the hurried preparations were complete, there was nothing more to say, nothing more to do but stand in a line across the entrance and wait for the trial ahead, eyes and ears straining for any hint of the enemy.
There …
Bala heard the faintest clink of metal from above and behind them. It was almost inaudible against the sound of their breathing; she’d probably have missed it if her ears hadn’t been trained in that direction, and the opening they’d noticed there.
It was jagged and irregular, but wide enough for Krikili to get through. Bala wasn’t surprised at all that the robot was using that as its means of entrance – the women had done their best not to let on to any hidden observers that they’d noticed its existence. Krikili had probably calculated that it was taking them by surprise.
It was wrong.
Bala waited for the mechanical monster to flow down through the opening, feeling rather than hearing its movements, the hairs on the back of her neck standing on end in response to subtle changes in the air.
When she judged Krikili to have fully materialised, Bala whirled, snatching up the sole remaining backpack from its place at her feet and swinging it so as to disgorge its contents, all in one fluid motion. A cloud of tiny grey magnetic particles flew into the centre of Krikili’s shroud of darkness, vanishing from view.
The result was instantaneous. Krikili’s body seemed to spasm, its limbs thrashing about with none of the slow, sinister elegance they had become used to. A grating, rasping ululation issued forth from somewhere deep within it, part scream and part roar. Evidently, it had been programmed to know when it was in trouble.
Bala’s sense of smell had given her the crucial clue as to Krikili’s true nature; that rotten odour it exuded. She had smelt it before when working with exposed neodymium – a highly magnetic element. That was how the robot moved, how it twisted and shaped itself so flexibly, through the manipulation of magnetic force.
And how did one disrupt that force? Could it be blocked? No … at least, not by any technique known to the human species. But it could be diverted, deflected from its intended target. All one needed was another, more conductive magnet. Precisely what they’d been given, in the form of the grey dust.
There was no knowing how much dust was needed to completely disable Krikili; Bala retreated to a spot near the door where they’d piled further reserves of the substance in readiness, scooping it into the backpack with all the speed her tired limbs could muster. She glanced back over her shoulder. As planned, her companions were casting further magnetic powder into Krikili’s dark shroud, which was itself rapidly disintegrating. Annie looked more than a little wild as she pressed a hand over the mechanical monster’s mouth, as though force-feeding it.
“Careful,” Bala cautioned, rising to her feet, the backpack filled to the brim. “It’s still dangerous.”
As though to punctuate her words, Krikili whirled its many limbs about itself, much as it had done in the tunnels before it claimed Buchu. Hampered as it was, the attack was much less graceful this time.
But no less deadly.
A curved blade sliced across Iris’ throat. Her delicate features contorting with rage and horror, she staggered back, clutching at the wound, stumbling over and hitting the ground hard. Another scythe-like limb caught the pack in Bala’s hands full on, ripping it to shreds and spilling its contents onto the floor. The blade did not return to Krikili, instead flying loose and striking the floor with a clatter, but the damage had been done.
Annie, who had escaped the attack unscathed, acted without hesitation, diving headlong at the main body of Krikili and bearing it to the ground. She lunged for the skull-like head, and Bala realised that there was a hole there, just as Annie had theorised. It was a small opening, but the technician had slender wrists – she managed to jam her good hand into the gap.
Yes, thought Bala, so absorbed in her shipmate’s struggle that she herself momentarily froze in place. Finish it!
Letting out a wordless cry, victory mixed with pain, Annie wrenched her hand back out again. She was trailing blood from where her wrist had run past the jagged edges of Krikili’s wound, but she held a fistful of wires, their ends trailing back into the grey skull until she jerked them higher and snapped the connections.
One of Krikili’s eyes froze. The individual lights that comprised it had ceased their spiralling motion. They began to flicker on and off.
But there was no other effect. Krikili fought on.
One of the robot’s spidery hands closed about Annie’s body. With a spasmodic motion, it flung her away. Even in its weakened state, Krikili's power was immense – Annie struck the wall hard, sliding to the brightly-coloured floor in a crumpled heap.
In a flash of insight, Bala realised their mistake. Even now, they were treating Krikili as they would a human opponent with human weaknesses, but why should a robot keep its brains in its head? A more central location made logical sense.
The body.
Seek the heart!
Wasting no time cursing herself for her foggy thinking, Bala leapt upon her enemy. The gouts of smoke periodically firing from the metal body clogged her throat and obscured her vision, but she found what she was looking for by touch – the shape of a cross overlaid on a circle. They had seen it briefly in the 4D maze. Krikili’s heart and power source, which, she felt certain, would be just the right size to fit the door locking mechanism.
It wouldn’t come out. The heart
rested flush in a cavity in Krikili’s chest – Bala could barely even force her fingernails into the tiny cracks about the artefact’s edges. She reached into her belt and drew out a dagger, one of the new weapons the Gatarans had provided for them, and tried to wedge it into the cracks. The finely-honed blade scratched and skittered over the metal surface, finding no purchase.
As Bala leaned forward, desperately trying to get a clear look at what she was doing, a particularly strong burst of smoke issued forth from a spot inches from her face. She recoiled, coughing and spluttering, almost despairing of her task but knowing full well there was no other way.
Krikili’s face loomed up at her out of the smoke. Even now, with the head revealed as nothing but a prop, it maintained the pretence of scrutinising her with its glowing eyes, one swirling, the other locked and flickering. She realised that the robot was slowly recovering from the disruptive effects the magnetic dust had wrecked upon its control systems. The metal segments comprising its limbs were drawing together, moving with some of their former articulation and grace.
Bala wrenched her attention back to the robot’s heart, just in time to see the black smoke clear for a blessed instant. There was the shape of the circle and cross, glowing dully red, and there, at the very top … Yes! A small groove, semi-circular, half the size of a fingernail. It was promptly obscured by another blast of smoke, but one glimpse had been enough. Closing her mouth and eyes against further distractions, she located the groove with her fingers and jabbed the end of her dagger into place.
Metal fingers instantly clutched at her body. It seemed that Krikili had been programmed with a knowledge of its own Achilles’ heel. Bala flailed out with her free arm, striking Krikili’s limb and having the satisfaction of feeling its metallic segments break apart under the impact. But the motion caused her blade to slip out of place; she had to spend precious seconds repositioning it. Finally, she was ready. Ignoring a horrific roar that issued forth from somewhere in the form beneath her, Bala braced herself as best she could and began to prise the heart out.
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