by Rob Vlock
Ivy blinked at him. “You’re like ants?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Shallix 2.0 stepped over to Ivy and ruffled her hair. “Do what you will to any individual entity, the Synthetic Command will live on to continue the war against humanity, yes? In other words, we are invincible. We will continue our quest to rid the planet of its human scourge.”
“If you’re invincible,” I snapped, “why are you trying so hard to stop us?”
The Tick merely regarded me with Dr. Shallix’s unblinking eyes.
“You are no more than a nuisance, yes? A group of children and an old man.” Juan, or Shallix 2.0, or whoever he was, stroked his chin. “In fact, your feeble efforts are somewhat refreshing, yes? A little diversion in the midst of our inexorable march toward total domination of the planet. Which is why I allowed Three and Two Omicron to restore Bing 808’s connection to our network. We wanted you to find us.”
Alicia drew her knife. “Well, now that we have, the fun’s over. Because as I see it, there are nine of us and only one of you. The odds are totally in our favor.”
A smile played at Shallix 2.0’s lips, spreading wider and wider until he erupted into laughter.
Dix, spurred on by Alicia’s defiance, growled at him. “You think that’s funny? Let’s see if you’re still laughing when we kick your butt from here to next Tuesday!”
The laugh slowly died away. “No, no. I laugh simply because I have just thought of another, more apt analogy for the Synthetic race. We are not ants. But bees, yes? Another sort of hive mind. One that carries a decidedly deadly . . . sting.”
The elevator doors whispered open behind us.
As we turned, we saw the rear wall of the elevator slide up into the ceiling, revealing a massive second space that had been hidden behind it. And within this large, darkened room stood an uncountable number of what looked like human forms. The figures surged out though through the elevator into the light of the office.
They weren’t human at all. While they each had two arms, two legs, and a head, that’s pretty much where the resemblance ended. They stood about four feet tall. Their faces had a single large eye set into the center of an otherwise blank facade. They had no mouths. No noses. On either side of their skulls, swiveling back and forth like a pair of radar arrays, were big dish-shaped ears.
But worst of all were the things that hung at the ends of their arms. Bulbous, fleshy, club-like nodules the size of watermelons. And these were covered in spines, like cacti.
Thor growled.
“Yikes!” 808 exclaimed. “And I thought you humans were ugly.”
“What . . . what are they?” Mitsuo gasped.
Yuki elbowed him. “I can’t see. Can you describe them?”
He shook his head. “You don’t want to know.”
The sea of creatures surrounded us, positioning themselves about half a dozen feet from us on every side. More and more flooded out through the elevator. They smelled like newly mowed grass and body odor. It was a combination of aromas that, despite stirring memories of my father cutting the lawn in July, filled me with unrestrained terror. Once the hundreds of club-handed Ticks were in place, Shallix 2.0 cleared his throat theatrically.
“We are pleased to introduce you to our android army,” he said with unmistakable pride. “While we had created six of you as fail-safes to ensure the destruction of humanity, we always had a contingency plan should you fail. Which, sadly, you have, yes? Quite disappointing. But no matter. On our orders, our android army will soon march out of hiding all over the world.”
Alicia, who apparently was far from ready to give up, snorted. “I’ve seen cacti more intimidating than these.”
To emphasize her point, she thrust her arm out toward the large black eye of the nearest Tick. It made no move to defend itself. Her blade plunged into the orb to the hilt. A crackling sound echoed off the walls, and the smell of burning electronics met my nose.
If this act of violence bothered Shallix 2.0, he didn’t show it. He just continued. “The entire android army is under our control, yes? They are immobile now. But do not be deceived. Once we tell them to attack, you will have the chance to observe their operation firsthand, yes? At least until they destroy you. It will not be a pleasant experience.”
One of the cactus creatures stepped toward us and extended a club. We shrank back, but the thing just stood there.
“Let us explain how you will meet your end,” Shallix 2.0 continued, pointing to the hundreds of needles that stuck out from the Tick’s club hand. Each glistened with black fluid, like medicine dripping out of a hypodermic syringe. “The fluid you see is actually a suspension of fully autonomous nanobots, no bigger than a human blood cell, yes? Once injected, they behave according to their victim’s biology. In Synthetics, they travel through the body, disassembling the neural pathways leading from the CPU, leaving the victim completely paralyzed—alive but helpless, a lump of agonized living flesh.”
He paused, waiting for a reaction.
Will gave him one. “What . . . what about humans?” he asked in a barely audible whisper.
Shallix 2.0 flashed him a broad smile. “You will be happy to know that humans are far luckier, yes? The nanobots simply travel to the brain and take it apart cell by cell until nothing is left but a jumbled collection of brain tissue. More of a soup, really. Exquisitely painful, but short-lived, yes? Once injected, death is rapid and inevitable. Now, if you have no more questions . . .”
He walked away from us through the sea of deadly Ticks, which parted before him like an opening zipper as he moved.
“. . . It is time for you to die, yes?”
CHAPTER 42.0:
< value= [The Muse Pays a Visit] >
I COULD SEE SHALLIX 2.0 over the army of Ticks as he retreated toward his desk. He sat at the chair, cracked his knuckles, and said in a voice free from any emotion, “Commence.”
Before the Ticks had even moved an inch, Alicia sprang into action, stabbing, slashing, whirling. She managed to keep the cactus men closest to us at bay, but there were simply too many of them for her to make a dent in their numbers.
“I could use some help, here!” She grunted as she dodged a Tick’s lethal club and heaved her last throwing star deep into its body.
Thor dashed to her side and clamped his jaws around one of the creature’s heads. He crunched down until its CPU crackled and its body went limp.
“We’re on it, Alicia!” Yuki cried. “Mi, I need some code, now!”
Mitsuo clasped her hand and they both closed their eyes. A moment later, a swath of Ticks fell to the floor like marionettes whose strings had been cut.
Shallix 2.0’s laugh reached my ears above the din of battle. “You may fell some, but not all. It is hopeless, yes? Submit to your fate. It will be easier.”
“Mi, Yu!” I shouted. “Forget the cactus men! You have to go after Shallix 2.0! He controls the army! Shut him down!”
Mitsuo looked at me, smiled, and nodded curtly. “One fried Shallix coming up! Yuki, I have some special code for you. Make sure he gets it!”
Yuki focused her attention on the man behind the desk. And then fell to the floor. Mitsuo collapsed on top of her, still grasping her hand in his.
“Mi! Yu!” I screamed.
“They were foolish to try to infiltrate our defenses, yes? We are far too well protected from transmitted attack. Unless we are mistaken, they have overloaded their CPUs with their foolish attack against us.”
Nooo! A wave of grief broke over me—I told them to attack Shallix 2.0! This was my fault! I stumbled and fell to my knees.
Junkman Sam pulled me back just as a cactus hand came slamming down. “Come on! We’ll worry about them later. Right now we need you!”
But we didn’t need me. What we really needed was a miracle! We didn’t get a miracle. What we got was a song.
Just as the Ticks were closing in around us, Dix took a deep breath and . . .
Ivy, I have a gift for you.
Well, rea
lly it’s a banana peel.
But at least it isn’t pee or poo.
It just shows how I really feel.
I’d heard some pretty horrible things come out of Dix’s mouth before. But compared to this, they were like the gentle beating of angels’ wings.
The sounds that Dixon Watts now produced stabbed into my brain like a red-hot knife. It was agonizing. I slapped my hands over my ears to block out his caterwauling.
And every cactus man in the room did the exact same thing.
It took a second or two before they realized what they had just done. Despite their lack of facial features, an expression of dread seemed to flash across every one of their faces as they understood they had just stuck themselves with their own spines.
Then the nanobots did their work, and the floor shook with the impact of a thousand paralyzed Ticks dropping to the ground simultaneously.
I blinked at Dix.
He laughed. “You never know when the muse is gonna pay you a visit.”
“Wait! Whoa! Hold on a minute!” Ivy was struggling to her feet. “What the heck just happened? Other than the incredibly repulsive singing, I mean.”
Dix grinned at her. “I have to say, that worked better than I thought it would.”
Will scratched his head. “You—you knew they’d do that when you sang?”
Dix looked around at the motionless Ticks. “I was hoping!”
“Well, don’t celebrate yet.” Alicia got to her feet and removed her knife from the body of a fallen Tick. “We still have one more to worry about.”
We all turned to face Shallix 2.0. He stared slack-jawed at the horde of immobilized Ticks strewn about the room. Then he turned his gaze on us, and for the first time ever, I felt like I could detect true emotion in his eyes. Rage.
Shallix 2.0 trembled with fury. But then a look of calm stole over his features, far more disturbing than his anger of a few moments before. “It is an inconvenience. But no matter. We can rebuild our army, yes? In the meantime, we still have a weapon left at our disposal that we have yet to unleash.”
“And what weapon might that be?” I asked.
A broad smile grew on his face. “You.”
Before I even had a chance to process what he said, the voice burst out in my head.
KILL THEM! KILL THEM NOW!
The pressure was so intense, I dropped to my knees. All my reason was engulfed by a wave of molten rage more intense than anything I’d ever felt.
I sprang into action. My arm lashed out and connected with Sam’s chin, knocking him to the floor.
And then everything shifted into slow motion.
Alicia, who normally had reflexes like a cheetah, seemed to be swimming in molasses. Will, too, was trapped in some sort of super-slo-mo playback.
The voice said, They are not moving slowly, Seven. You are moving far faster than any human could dream of. We have removed your restrictions, yes? And now you can unleash the full extent of your abilities on these humans. You are as fast and strong as any Tick yet created, yes?
I dodged Alicia’s fist as it swung slowly toward my face. I dropped her with an elbow to the back of the head as her momentum carried her past me.
Before she even hit the floor, I had already kicked Will’s legs out from under him.
A chuckle burst out of my mouth while, at the same time, a scream of anguish echoed within.
It was like there were two Svens. One, fueled by pure hate, delighted at the harm he was inflicting on these pathetic humans. The other, watching the scene unfold with growing alarm, powerless to stop it.
What was happening? What was he doing to me? How could he make me turn on the people I cared about the most?
Again, the voice spoke.
Did you not wonder why only you could hear us when we spoke to you, Seven? You are the last of the Omicrons. We built you differently, yes? With a . . . remote control, if you will. Initially, we could only reach you during those times your emotion processors were overtaxed, drawing power from your incursion defenses. Which was why you could hear us only during times of high emotional stress. But now that you are in close proximity, you are fully under our control. And you will kill your friends. There is no way you can escape it.
While he was talking, my fury magnified. I was a machine, propelled to destroy everyone who stood in the way of our glorious Synthetic revolution.
I acted without remorse, throwing that obnoxious little Ivy to the floor, landing a vicious kick to the mutt’s ribs, and knocking out Dix with an uppercut to the chin. It was all as easy for me as blinking. Finally, the weak, human Sven Carter was shoved aside and only the unstoppable Seven Omicron remained!
The rage flowed through me like electricity. There was nothing I could do to stop it. And, as the anger grew and flourished, I knew I didn’t want to.
I looked around and saw that I was the only one left standing.
Well done, Seven. Now finish the job. Start with your friend Alicia, yes? She has been a major irritant to us.
Yes. Who did Alicia think she was, barging into my life with her big green eyes and her moral high ground and her stupid knife? She’d caused me nothing but trouble ever since I’d first laid eyes on her. Bossing me around. Trying to divert me from my true destiny . . .
I stepped over to Alicia’s prone form. Her green eyes opened and fixed me with an unfocused stare. I raised my foot over her throat.
Something gave me pause. Something about the way she looked at me, the emotion on her face. It wasn’t fear. And it wasn’t hate. It was simply sadness.
“Sven . . .”
In the moment she said my name, something ignited within my chest, an ember of human kindness at the center of the whirlwind of Synthetic anger inside me.
That spark grew and fought for control. Images from my life played inside my mind like a rapid-fire slide show. My parents looking down at me in my crib, their faces alight with love. Will, helping me retrieve my backpack from the tree where Brandon Marks had thrown it in third grade. Alicia risking her life to save mine.
I stood mesmerized as a single tear trickled from the corner of Alicia’s eye. She continued to gaze up at me, saddened but still powerful and unafraid in the face of defeat.
And then whatever bonds had been tying me to Shallix 2.0’s will suddenly snapped. I brought my foot down. Not on Alicia’s throat, but on the solid floor beneath me. I turned on the man who, a second before, had had complete control over me. And I knew what I had to do to save my friends.
With all my newfound speed and strength, I rushed at Shallix 2.0. I drove my shoulder into his stomach, and the two of us crashed through the glass wall of the office, to the seventy-five-story drop immediately beyond.
CHAPTER 43.0:
< value= [Going Down] >
THE ARMS OF GRAVITY DRAGGED us toward the pavement hundreds of feet below.
So this is how it ends, I thought. At least I’ve saved my friends.
I caught sight of Shallix 2.0’s face as we tumbled. It was frozen in terror. Ha! I hope you pee your pants, you big—
SLAM!
Pain coursed through my body. Which was weird because I figured hitting the ground from seventy-five stories up would kill you before you even had a chance to feel it.
I looked around and it became clear. We’d landed on a window washer’s platform half a dozen floors down from Shallix 2.0’s office. Luckily, I had landed on something fairly soft—Shallix 2.0. He, on the other hand, wasn’t quite so lucky. Both of his legs were splayed out in completely different directions.
As I shook the stars out of my eyes, I heard the sound of his bones mending. His emergency repair system was kicking in. Almost before I realized what was happening, his legs were as good as new. Which meant I was stuck with him alone on a platform about ten feet long by six feet wide and seven hundred feet above the street.
Definitely not good.
“So here we are, yes?” Shallix 2.0 drawled with a smile, standing up and testing o
ut his newly repaired legs. He grabbed me by the throat and lifted me over the edge of the platform.
I struggled against his grip, but even my newfound strength wasn’t enough to break free.
“It is just you and us, Seven. But do not worry! Your friends will not miss out, yes? Once we destroy you, we will be sure to go back upstairs and kill them, too.”
I glanced down at the pavement and watched people milling about in the street like tiny insects.
Shallix 2.0 smiled. “I know what you are wondering. Will your emergency repair system work if you fall from this height? Let me disabuse you of that futile hope. We are two hundred fifty meters up. From here, a mass of fifty-five kilograms—that is you—will hit the ground in 7.14 seconds at a speed of approximately two hundred fifty-two kilometers per hour. Energy at impact: over one hundred thirty-four thousand joules. Trust me, that is more than enough to destroy a humanoid Synthetic.”
My feet dangled helplessly in the air. “At least let my friends go. They don’t deserve to die!”
“Oh, sweetheart. You are so adorable!” he cooed in Roz’s voice. “But you should know there’s no hope for them. Or for the rest of the human race. As much as I’m enjoying our little chat, we do have other people to kill. So we should say our good-byes now.”
Suddenly, Alicia’s head popped out over the rim of broken glass six stories above.
“Sven, look out!” She heaved something over the edge.
It tumbled toward us for a moment before I realized what it was: the paralyzed body of a cactus man. And it was heading straight for us!
Shallix 2.0 looked up just in time to take about a hundred needles to the face. His grip on my throat loosened. I grabbed the railing at the edge of the platform just in time to keep myself from falling.
He turned to look at me. “Golly gee! This is definitely not fun!”
And with that, he flopped onto the railing, flipped over it, and, without a sound, plunged to the asphalt seven hundred feet below.
I found the buttons that controlled the window washer’s platform and pushed the one marked with an arrow pointing up.
