Bot Wars, Line Zero

by J. V. Kade

  My throat catches. I grit my teeth. “She’s lying. There was no detonating program!”

  “Thankfully,” Beard says, “we were able to dismantle the robot before it carried out its objective, but there may be more attacks. We must be vigilant in reporting any bot sightings. If anything seems suspicious, please call the emergency hotline.”

  No one says anything for a long time.

  Po is the first to speak. “You shouldn’t have come for me.”

  I rise to my feet. “Dad was going to turn himself in! I bet all my creds you would have done the same thing.”

  “Did Dad know what you were doing?”

  I shuffle my weight around. “Well, not exactly.”

  Vee levels her shoulders. “We did this on our own.”

  Dekker steps in the middle of everyone. “So what is your plan now? You know they’re going to watch the borders back into Bot Territory.”

  I run my teeth over my bottom lip as I think. “We sicced the worm device on Beard. If we listen in, figure out their strategy, maybe it’ll help us figure out ours.”

  Dekker sits in front of his computer. “I’m bringing up the worm feed right now.” His fingers thump over the keyboard. “Okay. Here we go.”

  We gather around as Beard appears on screen. “We, the government, have an obligation to our people.” She’s in a big office with three tall windows behind her. She paces back and forth, hands clasped in front of her. “If they were willing to break into a government building to retrieve a boy, imagine what else they’re capable of with the motive and the right resources.”

  She pauses and turns toward the windows. “We’ve always been a nation that stood up for what was right, and did whatever needed to be done to protect our freedom. If we allow robots to continue on as they are, turning humans into half machines, building more robots, better robots, I fear what our future will look like.

  “We must keep our promise to our people and keep them safe at all costs. Sometimes that means sacrificing others to get from point A to point B.”

  She twists around, her hands clenched into fists. “And those little weasels broke into my building!”

  “Congresswoman,” someone says outside the range of the camera, “we got a lock on them near the Texan border.”

  There’s a pause, then Beard says, “Let them go. They’ll be dead soon, regardless. The attack on Edge Flats, Texas, will commence at three p.m. today as we’ve planned. Let’s hope Robert St. Kroix and his team are there when it happens. Strike first at the police station and then spread the attack outward. When the news broadcast hits, make sure you place the blame on St. Kroix, his brats, and the Meta-Rise.”

  Footsteps shuffle out. A door shuts and Beard drops into her desk chair.

  Dekker pauses the feed.

  I glance around our group, hoping that someone heard something differently. But they all look as geared out as I feel.

  The attack that I thought was planned for Old New York is meant for us.

  “They planned this all along,” I say, as everything comes together in my mind like the gears in a machine. “They told Dad to be in Edge Flats at three p.m. today. Instead, they’re going to attack the city, starting with the police station where Dad was supposed to turn himself in.” I take a deep breath. I feel like I might barf. “If they place the blame on the Meta-Rise, they’ll finally get District approval to start up the war and get rid of robots and their ThinkChips once and for all.”

  “Waitwaitwait,” Lox says, holding up a hand. “Three o’clock, but that’s like . . .” He looks at the clock.

  The color of Dekker’s face almost matches the green stripe in his hair. “We’ve got less than thirty minutes before the first attack.”

  • • •

  Po snaps his fingers. “Who has a Link? We have to call Dad. Make sure he isn’t en route to the police station.”

  “I have one,” I say, “but I don’t know Dad’s number. I’ve never had to call him.”

  Dekker throws me his Link. “Your dad is number twenty-four on speed dial.”

  I hit twenty-four and the Link beeps. A message blinks on the screen: Unable to connect.

  I toss the Link to Vee. “Call your dad. He’ll be with mine.”

  Vee punches in her dad’s number and shakes her head when no one picks up. “If they’re in the tunnels, it’ll be hard to reach them. Reception is spotty down there.”

  I look at the clock. Twenty-five minutes before the attack.

  “Come on, you guys.” I scratch the back of my head as I think. “We’ve got evidence that Beard is planning an attack on innocent people. That’s valuable! What if we—”

  “Broadcast it.” Po grabs a soft foam ball from Dekker’s desk and squeezes it as he talks. “Like you did, Trout, with your vid. We broadcast the stream. Get the people out of the city. And, we show the nation the UD has gone nuclear.”

  “I like that.” Dekker points a finger at my brother before swiveling back to the computer. “All I have to do is isolate the feed, upload it to my site, and . . .” He trails off, stares at his screen, then taps the ENTER key over and over again. “Jam it!”

  I lean over his shoulder. He smells like peanut butter and jelly and mint. “What is it?”

  “They notched my signal!” He growls at the screen. “I’m the Net star with the big mouth and they’re making sure I don’t open it. If only they knew what kind of dirt I have on them.” He types in a few commands.

  “How long will it take to fix?” Po asks.

  “I’m going to reroute to a local feed here in Texas. That’ll give us something to start with. At least it’ll help get the people of Edge Flats outta . . .” He throws his arms up, curls his hands into fists. “They’ve taken out all the local feeds. They’re isolating us. I got nothing to jack into.”

  Vee cracks her knuckles. “That’s why we can’t get our dads on the Link. All the signals are out.”

  Lox shakes his head, unblinking. “We’re notched. Totally, completely notched.”

  We’re down eight minutes.

  I try to ignore Lox’s Doom and Gloom. “Do we have a plan B?”

  Dekker taps away at the board. “Go big or go home, right? I’ll hack into a UD feed, something low level, something they won’t expect. From there, I’ll set up a dummy sig point, bounce it off a shellbox, and run it through the UD’s news feed. That sig can reach anywhere, even here.”

  I snort. “I have no idea what you just said.”

  “Basically what it means is that I have a lot of work ahead of me, but when I’m done, if I can do it before three o’clock, I’ll broadcast Beard’s confession to the entire continent and then some.”

  Vee ties her hair back with a rubber band from her wrist. “What can we do to help?”

  “One-man job, unfortunately.”

  “We need to get to the police station,” Po says. “See if we can intercept Dad. And maybe the police will have another way of getting a message out to the city.”

  “There might not be enough time,” I say.

  “How far are we from the police station?” Po asks Dekker.

  “Ten-minute run.”

  “We need to start warning people in the area,” Vee says. “If they can take cover, maybe they’ll stand a chance.”

  I wish LT were here. I had no idea how much I liked having him by my side when things went south. And I left him behind for Beard and her guards, left him to be junked.

  “All right,” I say, “so how are we going to get people to believe us?”

  It takes Dekker two minutes to manually upload Beard’s confession on a few old Links.

  “Play that for them,” he says, “and they’ll have to believe you.”

  We’re down twelve minutes when we file toward the door. Vee has
to shake Lox out of his stupor, but he finally gets moving.

  At the top of the stairs, I pause. “Hey, Dekker. Keep trying my dad?”

  He waves over his shoulder. “You got it, little dude.”

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  AS SOON AS people see Beard and hear her say the UD is gonna start bombing Edge Flats in a matter of minutes, they take notice. It doesn’t hurt that no one can call out on their Links. That makes them gear out for real.

  Vee and Po go one way, to the right. Lox and I go left. We shout from the streets, knock on doors, run into shops blasting the warning. It takes people a second to register what we’re saying, and then once it sinks in, they just stare at us, like their brains have gone on freeze mode.

  “Come on, people!” Lox claps his hands in the produce aisle at a food market. “Get somewhere safe!”

  People start bouncing off each other, they’re in such a rush to evacuate. Lox and I pour from the store and Lox cuts left. I start after him, but something catches my eye. I look up. Hundreds of flutter-flies descend from the sky.

  “Lox!” I call, and point to the cloud of metal wings glinting in the sunlight.

  People stop running on the sidewalks to watch. Flutter-flies on their own aren’t weird, but seeing hundreds of them is. The first one lands on the edge of a rooftop across the street. The wings rise and fall and rise again. We are transfixed by the sight.

  And then suddenly it explodes.

  I shield my face with an arm. Bits of stone pelt me in the back. I scramble for an alcove and hunker down. Lox crouches beside me. Another blast. People scream. The air thickens with debris. A huge chunk of brick slams into the hover rails and the blue glow crackles and dies.

  Another explosion. And another. I put my hand over my mouth as the smokiness of the debris fills my lungs. Blasts start going off everywhere, which means the attack is happening. NOW. No way is it three o’clock yet. They’re attacking early.

  What if a flutter-fly bomb takes out Dekker’s place?

  Lox and I get the same idea without saying a word to each other. We backtrack toward Dekker’s, steering clear of anything that flies. As the rails die out everywhere, cars hovering at the curb and in the street crash to the ground in a ruckus of smashing glass and twisting metal.

  We dodge a falling billboard, the screen snapping and sizzling as it lands in a heap on the corner. I read the street sign—we’re on the corner of Tannamont and Thirty-fifth Street. I have no idea where that is. And no idea how to get back to Dekker’s. I tap at my Link, but it’s no use. Only its operating system is up. It’s no longer connected to the Net, so I’ve got no way of loading its nav system.

  “We lost?” Lox asks, his shoulders heaving up and down, he’s breathing so heavy. Dust rains from the sky.

  I put my hands on my knees and bend over. Another explosion makes me jump. Suddenly everything looks like fluttering butterfly wings.

  “I think so.”

  Lox lunges in front of a woman running down the street. “Ma’am, please help me! I’m lost and I need to get home! Which way is the old Fort Worth fire station?”

  The woman keeps running, but calls out, “Go straight, take a right, then a left. I hope you get there safely!”

  “Thank you!”

  I straighten. “Dude, you’re a genius,” I say right before an explosion rocks the city. Lox and I hunch our shoulders, even though it’s a good three blocks away.

  “That sounded close to Dekker’s place,” Lox says.

  I start running. “We gotta hurry!”

  The first thing I see when the fire station comes into view is the gaping hole in the side of the red brick building. A sinking feeling fills me head to toe, like I’m drowning in quicksand. The security system is out when I reach the side door. I barrel up the stairs and find Dekker in the living room, the lights flickering on and off. He’s still tapping away at his computer, sweat pouring down his forehead. His rainbow-striped hair is covered in dust.

  “I’m almost there!” he shouts.

  “Have you heard from my dad?”

  He shakes his head.

  “We gotta go.” I tug on his arm, but he pulls out of my grasp.

  “I’m not leaving. The UD isn’t getting away with this. I almost got a line into the news feed, but my signal keeps shutting down. I think my Kaster was taken out in that blast.”

  “Yeah, and they’re blasting the rest of the city!” I shout as another one goes off.

  Dekker pauses long enough to look at me. “The UD took your brother. They want to kill your father. They gutted LT. We can’t let them get away with this, Trout. You think these small bombs are the worst of it? No way. This is just the preliminary attack. If they want your dad dead, they’re going to send something bigger to take care of that job.”

  Please don’t say that, I think, but Dekker is right. Maybe this is the warning attack, to get innocent people out of harm’s way. The big bomb is probably lying in wait, its target the police station. If Dad was on time, he’s probably already in the city.

  Another blast rocks the ground. The lights wink out and flicker back on.

  “What can we do to help?” I ask.

  “Fix the Kaster,” Dekker shouts.

  I look at Lox like, What’s a Kaster?

  “Satellite,” he answers. “Sends out the signal.”

  “Where’s it at?”

  “On the roof,” Dekker says.

  “Can we fix it?”

  “I’m good with that kinda stuff,” Lox says. “And Kasters are made outta meta-pol.”

  “We just need a UV light.”

  “And duct tape,” Dekker adds, his back still to us. “Electrical gauze too. First cabinet down in the workshop.”

  Lox and I gather what we need and speed up the stairs. But when we reach the flight up to the third floor, we come to the gaping hole in the side of the building, the one I saw from the street. The bomb not only took out the wall, it took out the stairs too. The wood hangs twisted and smoldering. I can see clear down to the second floor, to one of the bedrooms.

  The next landing is too far away to jump. And there’s no other way to the roof.

  “Now what?” Lox says.

  I scan the hole in the wall, the hole in the floor, anything jutting out that I could use for a handhold. There isn’t much. And I’d risk major slivers if I tried.

  “I think I can climb up outside.” I know exactly where I’ll start.

  “Okay, well, that’s great, except what about me? I’m not a tree frog. I can’t scale buildings.”

  Frog. The frog whipper!

  I back down the stairs. “You gotta find Vee. She has this thing . . . it’ll help you climb. I’ll go up now and get started. It’ll save us some time.”

  I stick the UV light in my pocket. The duct tape, I slip onto my wrist. The electrical gauze goes in another pocket.

  Outside, Lox takes off down the street and I go around the side of the building to the nearest corner. The red bricks—the bricks that make up the walls of the building—are perfectly stacked, so there are no catch-holds like there was on the church way back in The Glitz. But, when they built this place, they used decorative white bricks on the corners, from bottom to top. The bigger bricks stick out from the others, and that’s where I’m going to climb up.

  I wipe my sweaty hands on my jeans before latching on to the first brick. I’m shaking so bad, my kneecaps practically rattle against each other. It only takes another minute, though, and then I’m in the zone. Cool. Calm. Focused.

  My fingers find plenty of grab points and my feet are steady as I slide up the building’s corner seam. The higher I get, the thicker the dust is and I have to stop for a second to catch my breath. My eyes burn and my tongue feels gritty with dirt.

  “Keep going,�
� I mutter to myself, because it’s got to be close to three o’clock, if it isn’t already, and I don’t know if the UD plans a bigger attack than the flutter-fly bombs. If they send missiles this way . . .

  Don’t think about that now. I gotta do this for Dad. For LT. For Vee’s dad. For everybody in Edge Flats.

  The muscles in my legs start to shake when I’m just four bricks away from the top. Usually climbing isn’t hard for me, but I’ve been running all day. I’m tired and sore. I reach up for another brick on the right, but my hand slips and my shoe scraps away from its holding. And then I’m hanging by one hand. My fingers shudder and I dig in deeper.

  Don’t let go.

  I pull in a breath, taste the smokiness of the air in my throat. I get my right hand back on track, fingers latched on to the brick. I grunt, pull myself up. Find a good footing. Steady myself. Three bricks to go. Then two. Then one. Almost there.

  I stretch, push with my legs. My calves burn. I get a good grip on the roof’s edge and pull myself up. One more heave and I’m over, scrambling onto the roof. I raise my arms above my head. “Woooohoo!”

  I look out onto the city and all the triumph leaks outta my bones. Plumes of smoke rise from the nearby buildings. One of the bubble-like buildings, with the glass ceiling, is shattered, leaving behind nothing but its black skeleton. There isn’t a working hover rail in sight. Some of the billboards continue running their ads, so there’s still a Net connection running somewhere. That must be what Dekker wants to tap into.

  “All right, focus, Trout. Focus.” I turn back to the roof and the scattered pieces of brick and plastic. I don’t know where to start. I don’t even know what a Kaster looks like. Thankfully, there isn’t a lot of hardware up here. So I start piling up as many pieces as I can find. The biggest one is shiny black, with a long rectangular head and a skinny metal base. The base is cracked in two and when I try to stand it up, it topples over.