Survival

by Chris Wright

  “Shit” Mike shouted, “I think they're trying to cut their way through”

  Just as suddenly as they were covered in the swarm of Nano-bots, they were let free and the metallic swarm disappeared. They all looked at each other stunned, they weren't quite sure what just happened.

  “Why did they just let us go?” David said as confused as his friends.

  The others shrugged and were just thankful that they could be on the move again. Something was still nagging at David's mind though. They were lucky to escape that situation, it was as if they were meant to be let free. Niel wasn't going to give it any more thought and just decided to concentrate on getting them out of the city. They all should have given it more thought, instead of just letting the wave of relief take over, a swarm of tiny machines don't just land on your car, have a good look at you and then swoop off for no reason. A little thought would have made them throw Niel's phone away so they couldn't be traced. It was a beacon that was easy to follow, and the Nano-bots had scanned every nook and cranny of the car, and its occupants, looking for all the information the Elite needed. All it needs for a great plan to fail is one weak link.

  Monique’s Car

  Monique pushed the car to its limits, desperate to escape the war zone behind them and get out of the city to safety. She knew that driving like this was foolhardy, but she wasn't used to adrenalin invading her bloodstream and couldn't control her flight impulse.

  “Slow down a bit” Sofia shouted. She was also a hostage to the adrenalin, but the speed at which Monique was driving alarmed her.

  “I'm sure people are still looking at us” Olivia exclaimed. Every time she looked round at the street that whizzed past outside, she saw that people's heads were always turned to them.

  More explosions rocked the downtown area behind them. They felt the ground shake and the noise echoed up and down the streets, making the car rock slightly. Monique was able to keep control easily though. If there was one skill she had beyond her professional career, it was her driving. Her dad taught her from an early age and it came so natural to her. She could have been a professional race driver, but it never appealed to her, she felt her real skill was her academic ability. She never thought though that one day she would actually be racing through the streets, if the adrenalin wasn't so jarring to her, she might have enjoyed it. She suddenly noticed something moving behind them, a strange shimmering form. It wasn't immediately obvious what it was, as it seemed to be reflecting the light around it.

  “Can one of you tell me what that is?” She said looking at them in the rear-view mirror and then glancing behind them.

  They both spun their heads round to have a better look. The road behind them was almost empty except for an odd wave-like motion centred in one area, an area that seemed to be getting closer to them. The wave-like motion suddenly rippled and the light around it scattered up into the air and turned into some kind of swarm of insects. Where the shimmering motions had been was now a sleek car. Its sights were set squarely on catching them, while the swarm of 'insects' flickered in the sunlight as they danced closer to them.

  “Am I actually seeing this?” Olivia said surprised. She had never seen anything quite like this, it was some new technology. Who knew what this could do?

  “What's the swarm guys?” asked Monique seeing the swirling mass snapping at the back of the car.

  “I don't know” Sofia shouted, “They look like insects”.

  Sofia wound down her window to glance out and have a better look. Despite the danger they were in, she was curious as to what they were. Monique sped up to get them away from the car that was hot on their tail and the swarm of reflecting sparkles. The swarm suddenly lurched forward and Sofia screamed. She pulled her head back in and wound the window back up, turning to Olivia in shock.

  “They're some kind of tiny robots” She screamed confused.

  Olivia screamed back as she noticed some of them had managed to catch up with them and had attached themselves to Sofia's hair. She pointed at them before quickly trying to brush them off her. Sofia screamed again, realising what had happened. She began to pull at her hair desperately, Olivia doing the same, but neither were able to grab them. The nano-bots jumped into the air and swung themselves around, easily able to evade being swiped away, and then they all headed for Sofia's ears and nostrils. Olivia screamed as the hoard of nano-bots dug themselves deeper inside of her, her breathing becoming hysterical.

  “What's happening back there?” Monique shouted.

  Sofia began to convulse, her arms and legs shooting back and forth, knocking the seat in front of her and making Monique swerve left and right. The swarm of nano-bots were still circling close to the car, small red flashes blinking in and out, followed by small red flashes under Sofia's skin. Olivia began screaming in terror, she had no idea what to do, her friend was sat in front of her, an unknown technology ripping at her insides. Sofia began bleeding from her eyes, the horror and pain etched clearly on her startled expression. Olivia was now crying, confused, scared and feeling utterly helpless. The nano-swarm smashed against the window next to Sofia, shattering the glass effortlessly and they dived in, every single one grabbing hold of Sofia. Olivia continued to watch, stunned to silence by this point. The swarm contorted Sofia's body into a shape no human should be, and wrenched her from her seat and out of the window, her blood-curdling screams bouncing round the car's interior.

  “Jesus, what the fuck...” Monique screamed as she heard her friend’s last sounds as she was pulled apart.

  If they thought they were pumped with adrenalin before, now was a whole new level. The swarm threw what remained of Sofia to the road and continued their assault on the car. Olivia saw them swirling back to Sofia's window and reached behind to pick up the fire extinguisher, pulled the safety catch and began spraying towards the window. The foam coated the swarm, causing a sudden stop to their attack, small sparks igniting the air around them. Monique took a sudden right turn to head down into a tunnel. She didn't know how they would get out of this, but she just had to drive, drive as good as she could. She couldn't see the Nano-bots when she checked her rear-view mirror.

  “Did you get them?” She asked Olivia.

  “I don't know, I saw them giving off sparks, so maybe. I didn't think that was going to work” She replied, the adrenalin now causing her voice to wobble.

  They couldn't see the swarm, only the sleek car, still hot on their heels. Monique noticed the other cars turning towards her, all of them accelerating. She did her best to swerve in and out, avoiding each collision. What was happening? Why were all these people trying to crash into them?

  “Monique” Olivia shouted, “Something is happening with that car”.

  Olivia glimpsed behind to see it slowly transforming and leaving the ground. Its central core remained the same, but the wheels disappeared, wings formed, and it lifted off the ground.

  “What the hell is that thing?” Olivia yelled, tears in her eyes.

  It felt like her whole body was going to self-implode, the adrenalin thundering relentlessly through her veins. The now flying ex-car flew towards them with two gun turrets appearing near where the wheels used to be. Monique was still too busy trying to avoid the cars that she never noticed it. The exit to the tunnel was up ahead and she took a deep breath, placed her foot on the accelerator and raced towards it, she had no other way to go. A few seconds later they emerged from the tunnel, still swerving left and right, avoiding the kamikaze drivers.

  “Why are these people trying to drive into us?” Olivia wept.

  The flying ex-car emerged from the tunnel too, keeping pace with Monique and Olivia easily. Monique saw it was still there and took another turn to the left. She took a huge sigh of relief as there appeared to be no cars on this road, just pedestrians.

  “Do you know where you're going?” Olivia asked. She wasn't familiar with this part of the city. It looked a lot more run down than the areas she knew, “We don't want to break down around h
ere”.

  Monique looked at her with a raised eyebrow.

  “We're being chased by tiny robots, a flying car, while random motorists are trying to turn us into bloodied scrap metal and you think this area is a problem?”

  Olivia thought about it. No, Monique was right, she'd take a random mugging over a robot-ripping demise any day. Without any warning a pedestrian jumped at their car, smashing into the side of it and being crushed underneath.

  “Holy shit” Monique shouted surprised.

  Then there was another, and another, each one hurtling themselves at them, trying to break through the windscreen. A crowd of people ahead turned towards them and just ran straight into the road, on a collision course with Monique and Olivia. Monique did her best to avoid most of them, but there were that many that it was impossible not to mow some down, their bodies crunching underneath the weight of the car, their screams sounding confused. Olivia caught eyes with a few of them at the point of impact, the confusion in their own minds seemed clear. She could tell by their terrified stare that they didn't know what was happening and why they were doing it.

  “They're being controlled somehow” she shouted to Monique.

  “Controlled?”

  “Yeah, it's like they can't stop themselves, they're all terrified, look at them” She replied.

  Monique could see what Olivia meant, there did seem to be a look of complete bewilderment on their faces, which turned to dread as they realised where their bodies were being led.

  “How can someone control them?” Monique shrieked shortly before there was a deafening thump that knocked the car sideways.

  They hadn't realised that the flying ex-car had shot out two rounds that had slammed into the back of the car, completely disabling them. The car smashed into a wall on the pavement, the impact throwing Olivia's door wide open and she was flung five metres away, her body crumpling on to the hard concrete. Monique was stuck in the driver's seat, pinned down slightly by the crushed metal around her. Her forehead was bleeding. She noticed she had knocked it on the steering wheel, thankfully lightly, her airbag having the desired effect. She took a few deep breaths, checked around herself to see if she had any other injuries, but she seemed okay. She had a throbbing head and it felt like she had pulled a few muscles, but she had no overwhelming pain. She decided to carefully try and squeeze herself out of the car, emerging on her hands and knees. The flying ex-car was suddenly rushing towards them again, ready to take another shot, when suddenly it seemed to hit some resistance and hurtled to the floor, crashing dramatically into a building. That was a stroke of luck Monique thought. What wasn't a stroke of luck was the appearance of an armed soldier from the wreckage, striding towards her, his gun poised for action.

  Mateo

  Mateo typed away furiously again on his laptop, everyone else wondering how he still had any sensation left in his fingers.

  “So, what is it we're doing again?” Mariam asked him.

  “I'm sending some 'intel' to the factions I know. I'm telling them that the explosions this morning caught the Elite off guard and they have got all of their security headed for the downtown area. My thinking there is that the information will filter through to the ones who are a bit trigger happy, basically the ones who aren't affiliated with our groups. They won't be able to resist getting a few cheap shots in and trying to eliminate as much of the Elite's forces as possible” He said without taking a break from typing.

  “To take the focus off us and direct it to the south of the city, while we get away” Joaquin pipped up, happy at his own plan being put into action.

  Mariam shrugged her shoulders, she guessed it was worth a try. The rest of them were just happy to be in a moving vehicle and making their way out of there, so whatever Mateo thought was a good idea too was fine, they just left him to it. He had been typing for longer than expected though, his head never looking up from his laptop screen. Mariam knew that this meant he was up to something else too.

  “And what else are you doing there Sweety?” She asked.

  “I know a back door into the Elites systems, it interfaces with the Neuro-Net, but I've never been able to alter anything, it was just too complex. I didn't think being able to hack into people was possible, but it seems it is, so I'm looking into how, there must be a way in that I am missing.” He said, still transfixed on the screen, “I'm also going to monitor the positions of the Elites' troops, that's one thing I figured out I could do before, that was easy”.

  He continued his wild typing, the key strokes so intense they created a constant reverberating chime around the inside of the van. They drove and drove, the first ten minutes fairly uneventful, but then something changed. They heard more explosions, one after the other. It seems that someone had taken the bait. A couple of minutes later they heard craft above them, soaring high up past them and headed from the downtown area. All the while Mateo continued his quest, never flinching or looking up, no matter how loud the explosion.

  “I think your plan may be working” Christian said to Jaoquin.

  “Yeah I thought it might, thanks for your help” He replied looking over towards Mateo.

  “Well it definitely appears to be working” Mateo said, stopping his finger busting flurry of keystrokes for the first time in ten minutes “The majority of the Elites troops and equipment appear to be heading downtown, except the ones in these two areas”.

  They all looked at Mateo, waiting for some more information, but nothing came.

  “And? What about those locations?” Brandon asked, the first one to say what they were all thinking.

  “I'm just checking them now, give me a few minutes” He replied.

  It wasn't five minutes, it was less than one, and the silence was broken by Mateo swearing very loudly.

  “They're following two of ours” He said.

  “Ours? Who is it?” Mariam asked concerned.

  “We've got Niel, Mike and Dave in one car, and, shit, ok that's weird” he said, “and Monique, Sofia and Olivia in another car”.

  “What's weird?” Danny asked, knowing that the definition of weird had been stretched beyond imagination the past week, so weird could mean any number of things.

  “I managed to get into the Elite's systems that are tracking them, and there were a swarm of Nano-bots that looked like they were going to do something, but then they just flew off”.

  “Well, if they're tracking them, they want to know where they're going” Samir said, his first words uttered in around fifteen minutes, his mind still looping the horrific events from earlier around in circles.

  “Yes, so they're still tracking them, do we know how?” Brandon said nodding.

  Mateo looked back down, typed a series of commands and clicked some other buttons and swore again. It was rare that he swore, and normally Mariam would pull him up on it, but she thought she would cut him some slack, what with the Nano-bots, zombie-people, explosions and so on. In fact, it made her want to swear too, why hadn't she yet?

  “It looks like Niel still has his phone on, the idiot” Mateo said, “I need to contact him to get him to turn it off”

  “Won't you compromise us then?” Danny asked, “They will trace any signal that links to his phone”

  “No, my signal is bounced around from different locations, in and out the deep web and back, it will be impossible to pinpoint where we are”

  He pressed a few more buttons, typed a few more commands, and then phoned Niel. Niel was surprised to hear Mateo's voice, but his surprise quickly waned when Mateo told him about the tracking. It was obvious when he was told, so obvious, but his big brotherly instinct had over-ridden anything logical. He still objected to having to give the phone up, but Mateo told him he had no option. He pulled no punches, he explained that every word he was saying was being monitored. This is why Mateo hadn't given any real information over the phone, nothing to suggest their final plans. His brother would quite likely be caught in the crossfire if he was anywhere near the centre of th
e city and had anything at all to do with the bombs. There was nothing Niel could do, it was his brothers' choice to tread that path.

  Eventually, Niel conceded, he knew everything Mateo was saying was true, and he said his goodbye. Mateo watched on his laptop as the signal suddenly ceased, the traceable connection gone. He then turned his attention to how Monique's road trip was going. That's when he suddenly saw the mayhem that had occurred since he had last checked up on them a matter of minutes before. He had been able to hack into a vehicle following them, then from that vehicle into a Nano-bot close by. He could re-route the signal so it was fed back to him, and he could see exactly what the Nano-bots could see. Sofia was gone, he wasn't sure where, but there was only Monique and Olivia left. Olivia was screaming desperately in the back, grabbing hold of a fire extinguisher. Suddenly the image went, it just fizzled out as if there had been a short circuit. He clicked back to get the view from the vehicle and saw the cloud of Nano-bots sparkling, before crashing to the ground. Monique's car then entered a tunnel, the vehicle still in pursuit, it then seemed to lift off the ground, what kind of car was this?

  Mateo was momentarily confused and he had to type in a few more commands to see what he was dealing with. It was a top-secret new vehicle, part car/part plane, a sci-fi lover’s wet dream. It was armed with two gun turrets too, this wasn't looking good. He ferociously banged on his keys, trying to get some way of disabling them. The feed on the screen showed Monique and Olivia emerging from a tunnel and turning. A few more key stabs and he was able to access the weapons control panel, but it was just a few seconds too late. As Monique seemed to be mowing down a crowd of suicidal maniacs, the guns were fired, two gigantic slugs soared towards them and struck the back end causing the car to spin to the side and smash head on into a wall. A quick moment of panic set in, but then he quickly regained his composure, typed a command and the guns were disabled. The pilot was about to fire again, so he had managed it just in the nick of time. His fingers went into overdrive, pressing one key and then the next, every second a crucial moment and then he hit the enter key.