by Katie Vack
There was a dull thud and a cloud of smoke, then the door swung open to reveal the unguarded interior. He swung inwards, touching down lightly in a long corridor full of computer banks, a number sparking where they'd been struck by flying debris. Sora quickly followed him in, one handed, which sent a rapidly quelled twinge of guilt down his spine.
They made their way over to a large box they'd been told regulated the power flow. It was easy, really. Remarkably easy. Too easy. And so, as if as a direct result of this assessment, things suddenly became complicated.
From out of the shadows stepped four medieval armoured figures. At least, that was what they looked like at first glance. In reality they were all mechanical constructs, repurposed robotic guardians of the train. They weren't carrying the stun guns they'd been issued with at their creation, but wicked cleaver-like swords, blades grey with disuse but lethal nonetheless. Eight glowing blue lights fixed themselves upon the intruders, emanating from empty eye sockets.
The pair looked at each other for a split second, both wondering whether there was anything to be said. There wasn't. Grayson ran off towards the power regulator, and Sora dropped back into a defensive stance, raising her glaive in a one handed grip. "Get on with it, then."
* * *
The first machine charged her, swinging wildly towards her with its brutish blade, and she skipped easily to the side. She thrust towards its throat, where the armour should be weak, but her blade glanced off harmlessly with barely a scratch. It swung again, clunkily and clumsily, and she leaped the blade, stabbing instead for its soulless eye socket. The robot tilted its head to the side at the last moment, and again she did nothing more than damage the paintwork.
She fell back to recover, but no break was forthcoming. It powered on towards her, swinging again, and again. She ducked and rolled, and it hit nothing but air, but her answering strike was just as ineffective. A second guardian appeared behind her and she rolled again, coming to her feet to face the two and noticing that the other pair had taken the opportunity to move past towards the preoccupied lumin. Keeping her head level, she rushed her opponents, waiting for their sluggish strikes, and then when the left one lashed out with a horizontal slash she leaped into the air, using the sword as a springboard to launch her away.
She flew past the escaping two, lashing out with a strike in an attempt to gain their attention. She slid to a stop before them and they dropped back, computer chips designating her as the new priority threat as they turned their weapons on her. Normally she would have said something here to put them off, but under these circumstances it didn't look like it would work. So she settled for grinning and settling once again into a ready stance. Nobody was getting past.
* * *
Grayson punched out with all his might towards the control box, eager shadows wreathing his fist, and the dented and battered panel swung open. He moved up to it, inspecting the exposed internals. Crayton and the Doctor had told him how this would work, but he couldn't spot any of the components they'd previously outlined to him. His attention was drawn momentarily to the fight nearby, but he thrust it from his mind. He didn't have time to worry about his partner.
Again he scanned the control box, but there was no logic to the runaway cables and scattered components. The circuit was wrong. It was nothing like he'd been instructed. And he had no idea what else to do with it.
"Halfling to Tinman," he grated into the earpiece, trying to keep the rising panic out of his voice, "we have a problem."
"What kind of problem?" The reply was near instantaneous, rimmed with something that sounded suspiciously like anxiety.
"The circuit's wrong. It's nothing like you told me. I can't do anything with it."
"How can it be wrong? Just take some of the power from one of the transformer outputs."
"That's what I'm saying. There aren't any."
"None at all?"
"None."
A few seconds passed, then "Oh, hell."
"What do I do?"
"There's only one thing you can do. Describe it to me."
* * *
Sora dodged again, swaying to the side as the blade swooped harmlessly past her head, cutting off an isolated lock of hair. The bleached strands fell softly to the floor and her eyes narrowed in anger, although she had yet to figure out how to direct it. She could be as pissed as she liked, but it wasn't going to help her here. She was made for slicing up soft targets, not destroying solid metal robots.
Again, she hopped over a low swipe from another guardian, landing a few metres from her previous spot, holding none of her usual grace or poise. She wasn't made for endurance contests like this. She cut down her opponents before they had a chance to do the same to her, and if they were equally skilled then at least she could draw power from their injuries. What she didn't do was fight for protracted periods of time. The only way she was managing it now was because of the strength her partner had lent her.
Why had he done that? An attempt at recompense for stealing her life? She didn't know. But to feel the thoughts, the pure strength of will, of her partner at the back of mind was what was allowing her to fight on. Funny. She'd never thought having someone relying upon you could make such a difference.
The problem here, she decided as she evaded another decapitating blow, was the match-up. These machines really weren't that good. They were slow, and imprecise, and had the equivalent combat experience of the average five year old. If they were living beings she'd have torn them apart long ago. Even being outnumbered four-to-one wasn't that big an issue. But these things felt no pain, bled no blood, and their very bodies were practically solid lumps of armour. There was nothing her speed could do to break through their defences.
If she was a poison, they were her antidote. The one thing that could possibly counteract her. It was as though they had been picked here just to deal with her specifically. The traitor, she realised with another surge of fury. They'd stupidly, naively, pretty much forgotten about him in the lead up to this. And so they'd left themselves open.
She snarled, snapping suddenly from defence into aggression. She didn't like being underestimated. It was patronising. Bracing herself against the metal floor, she charged the nearest robot, leaping at it with her staff in a two-handed grip. There was no reaction to her attack- they had capacity for neither surprise nor indecision- but nor could they move fast enough to stop her.
The cleaver-blade sung round in a crescent and she twisted in the air, a disembowelling strike instead biting a chunk out of her side, and then she crashed into the soldier like a feral tiger.
She hit it glaive first, all of her momentum transferred to the minute point of the blade as it collided cleanly with the eye socket. She brought her body around, muscles bulging as she hammered at the only obvious weak point. The very tip of her blade cracked the glass, bent and snapped, and then the rest plunged through the armour and into the mechanical brainpan.
The machine fell to the floor and she landed just past it, rolling to a stop. She rose to her feet, smirking in self-satisfaction, and then all the colour seemed to drain from her face. She glanced down at her hand, clasped onto the left side of her waist. A lot of blood. That was a lot of blood. She swayed on the spot, dizzy and lightheaded. She hadn't realised just how deeply that blade had bit.
She raised her hand to her right ear, groping for the earpiece, and found nothing but a sopping mess. She tried again in confusion. There was nothing. That cut she'd thought had sliced off a lock of hair had gone straight through her earpiece, cutting it and her ear neatly in half. She was isolated. She had nothing.
The machine she'd impaled wasn't dead. It reached for the staff sticking out of its eye socket, yanking it out and dropping it clattering to the floor as it rose shakily back to a combat posture. Two of the unharmed ones turned to face her, now directly between her and her defenceless partner.
The third one made straight for him.
* * *
Grayson stood like a stone, ey
es closed, hands pressed against the heart of the machine. There was a way, Crayton had told him, but he had to cut straight through the first level of the circuit and into the second. And apparently it wouldn't be pretty.
His shadows flowed through the metal box, mind searching with a determined pace for the cable he wanted. It was in here, he knew, somewhere. All he had to do was find it. He had a little under a minute left for this, but to rush it was to fail, and to die. Calm, he thought to himself, focus.
Locked into his work, he was completely oblivious to the events outside of his consciousness. He didn't see it as Sora was struck. He didn't hear the patter of her blood as it drained onto the ground, didn't smell the salty tang of her life dripping away. And he didn't feel the impacts of the armoured feet, rushing his way like a runaway train.
He probed deeper into the machine, slipping past the superficial upper layer and down into the real organs. Here was what he wanted. Here was his target. His mind wrapped itself around the mental image, cocooning it just as his shadows did the physical. He enveloped it with his consciousness, reading every tiny dent and impression, every spark of energy racing through the vein.
He braced his mind against the incoming blow, shutting it off and forgetting about it completely. Anything less than the highest possible mental state was going to kill him here. The original plan had been to divert the current away from just one of the rails, putting it off significantly enough to force the train out of the field.
But it didn't look like that was going to happen anymore.
* * *
Sora half ran, half stumbled between the three robots, falling to her knees as a new wound was opened along the back of her leg. She shambled to her feet, forcing herself onwards against all the pain. Grayson was defenceless. She had to help him. Had to rescue him.
She took off again, arm, braced against a wall for support. She was fast, and Grayson's assassin was slow, but she couldn't do much in her severely wounded state. The burning grew in her leg, her head, her abdomen. She wasn't sure she could make it. No, that wasn't true. She didn't have a choice.
* * *
Grayson breathed out, slowly, calmly. He was in control. A cold control that would have terrified him on any other day. It was almost as if he had stopped caring, like he'd detached himself from the world and no longer cared what happened to him. The resigned detachment of the slowly dying. Except that this time, that wasn't the case. This time, he was the one in control.
He sucked in air, deeply but not desperately. His mind flashed back to the silvan, fighting to buy him time as he stood here wasting time. Then he lost all thought. His shadows tightened around the cable, alive with the power flowing by just below them, and he let it in. All of it.
* * *
Suddenly, the world turned on its head. Grayson lit up like a shooting star, glowing a blindingly fluorescent blue as he was thrown against the wall, snapping every one of his ribs, breaking his back, cracking his skull, his collarbone, seemingly every bone in his body. He dropped into a crumpled and bloody heap, sparking madly, clothes reduced to ash.
Sora found her mind shutting down at the sight of him, lying there broken and bleeding like a discarded ragdoll. He was dead. He had just killed himself, right there in front of her. Her mind was clouded, as though the very effort of thinking was too much for her. She'd never figured out what she really thought of him, but now she never would. He was just another dead memory.
A dead memory with a murderous robot bearing down on him. A murderous robot who still thought he was a threat. Who still thought he was... he was...
She cursed herself for her momentary stupidity, running again, pain completely forgotten under the circumstances. How many times had she counted people for dead, only for them to rise again when she least expected it? He was alive. Of course he was alive. She could even feel him, could sense his life force, through his blood. Weak, perhaps, but there nonetheless.
She sprinted down the car as it began to tilt, ignoring her screaming lungs, comfortable numbness replaced by a roaring hatred. He couldn't fight, she couldn't fight. She couldn't be his sword this time, but that didn't matter. She didn't need to be. All she needed to do was call for help.
Somehow she managed to catch up to the hunting machine, drawing alongside a few metres away from the prone boy. She hurled herself on top of him, hand scrambling frantically for the earpiece. "Angel! Angel, you bastard, get in here right this-"
The cleaver fell, splitting her collarbone, glancing off her spine, biting a chunk out of her hip bone as it opened a great ravine through her back, from her right shoulder to left hip. All feeling fled her body, replaced but a sensation of emptiness. The earpiece fell hopelessly from her deadened hand. Her voice seemed weak and hollow somehow, even to her fading hearing. "Oh."
Then the world vanished completely.
