by Tarah Benner
I don’t pause to evaluate whether my strike did the trick. I bring the crowbar back around and whop the female in the chin. The third bot — the pale one — gropes for the crowbar, but I shift gears on instinct and kick it in the kneecap.
The bot’s leg buckles just like a human’s would, but unlike a person, it recovers fast. Bot number one throws a strike I can’t dodge, and the force of its punch reverberates through my skull.
I stagger back, stunned, and the other two bots converge. I throw out a blind swing with the crowbar, but I miss my target completely.
I swing again, but one of the bots catches the end of the crowbar and yanks it out of my hands. I shake my head to try to clear the fog, but the bots’ outlines are fading.
Another strike comes out of nowhere, pummeling me in the jaw.
I make a mental plea to Maggie, hoping she’ll key in the passcode and stop the bots in their tracks.
I stagger back, and the bots clump up. They’re preparing to finish me off. I can imagine their sensors zooming in on my face — just another dumb human waiting to be killed.
Then, suddenly, a memory surfaces. It erupts from my subconscious like an epiphany, and I remember how Maggie defeated the bot in the infirmary.
In that moment, everything clears, and for the briefest instant, I can see straight again. I duck around the corner, whip off my shirt, and wait for the first bot to attack.
When it does, I hold my ground. I see the flash of its cold, lifeless eyes and watch as they hone in on my face. The bot takes a bold step forward, and I wrap the fabric around its face.
The outline of the bot’s features surge through the cotton, but I pull the ends in a knot and dive for the crowbar.
The other two round the corner the next second. The first bot is still whipping its head around in confusion, unable to process why it can no longer see.
I swing the crowbar around in an arc, managing two good strikes before the bots overwhelm me. The blond-haired male throws out a kick, and I feel an explosion in my chest.
I slam back against the wall, and every inch of my body feels it. The energy of the strike reverberates around me, and the world shifts as my head hits the wall.
Suddenly the ground rushes forward. I hit the cold tile on all fours, and I’m crippled by the searing pain in my skull.
I push myself up and try to find my feet, but I can’t seem to get myself vertical. Another fist flies out of nowhere, and I have the last-ditch instinct to take the strike with my shoulder.
An intense heat flares down my arm, but I manage to stumble back to the control room.
“Maggie —”
“Shit!”
I slam the door shut and wheel around in a daze. Angry red letters are marching across the screen — words I can’t process no matter how intensely I read them.
Access denied. Access denied.
9
Jonah
Maggie’s concerned expression wavers in and out of focus. She reaches around to the back of her head and yanks off the SPIDER. She tosses the thing down on the control panel, and I feel a crushing weight of dread.
“I’m sorry!” she cries. “It locked me out! Buford must not have used the same passcode with the SPIDER and —”
The door shudders violently, cutting her off. I didn’t see if Ping managed to run for help, and Maggie is beside herself.
We were wrong about the SPIDER. Buford wasn’t that sloppy. Now the bots have us trapped in this horrible room. Things can’t get much worse.
For a second, all I can do is stand there by the door — the tremors traveling up my arm as I brace myself against the frame. The wall is shaking; Maggie is babbling. There is no way out.
The door trembles as the bots smash against it. The banging grows louder and louder, but still the door doesn’t weaken. It occurs to me as I examine the frame that the thing is probably the most bulletproof, fireproof, bot-proof door I’ve ever seen.
Suddenly, the banging stops. I wait for a moment in strained silence, anticipating an attack that does not come. My heart thumps dully, rattling my chest, but I don’t hear another sound.
My breathing slows, and a sense of relief begins to spread through my body. The bots can’t get in. They can’t break the door.
I glance over at Maggie, who’s standing frozen in the corner. She’s watching the door with wary eyes, as though she expects one of them to come bursting in at any second. The silence stretches out between us, and it’s the kind of silence that settles in a horror movie right before someone gets dragged through a window.
“Are they . . . gone?” Maggie asks in a small voice.
I don’t answer. I can’t imagine that the bots would give up. It’s not how machines work. They don’t get tired. They don’t need rest. They could beat at the door until their batteries died.
Minutes pass, and I press my ear against the door, straining to hear any sound from the hallway. Nothing.
My heart is still bobbing in my throat. Sweat is dripping down the back of my neck, and I feel as though I’m balanced on a thread that could snap at any moment.
Slowly, carefully, I reach for the handle.
“What are you doing?” Maggie hisses.
“I’m going out there.”
“You can’t.”
Maggie’s face is as white as a sheet. I don’t blame her. It could very well be a trap — some last-ditch tactic the bots use to lure us out of our hiding place.
“Let’s check the feeds,” says Maggie.
Of course.
Maggie exits the override screen and turns her attention to the feeds. As I scan the footage for Sector C, I notice a code at the top of each feed — a number and a letter. It must correspond to the location of each bot, but I don’t see a single feed from Sector C.
“Anything?” I ask Maggie.
“Nothing.”
I’m growing more frustrated by the second. Sweat is dripping down my back, and my face is on fire. Whoever built this room didn’t account for ventilation, and I’m sweating even without a shirt.
“Wait,” I say suddenly, squinting at a feed in the upper left-hand corner. “That’s one of the bots that attacked me.”
Maggie follows my gaze to a facet of the screen. Her cheeks are flushed, and sweat is soaking through her shirt. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” I’m looking at another bot’s feed of the Hospitality sector, but the light-haired male that attacked me keeps appearing in the corner of the screen.
“See any of the others?”
I shake my head.
“Wait,” I say, noticing a bot with long, long legs. “That’s one of them.”
It doesn’t make sense. Why would the bots suddenly disperse when they had us trapped in the control room?
I cross to the door and try the handle. It doesn’t budge. I jiggle it harder and give the bottom corner a kick, thinking the force of the bots’ attack might have jammed it. I lift up on the handle, but still the door won’t open.
“Shit! We’re locked in.”
Maggie’s face falls. So that’s why the bots left us.
I cast around for something I can use to pry the door open — a pipe, a crowbar, a hammer — anything. There’s not much in the room, but there is the stool that Maggie was using.
I flip it over on the ground and start taking the thing apart, using my knife to loosen the screws. It’s got one of those padded seats that can be raised or lowered, and there’s a pipe running down the middle that’s about the size I need.
“What are you doing?” asks Maggie, looking flushed and exhausted.
“Getting us out of here.”
She looks skeptical. “With that?”
I let out a huff of irritation and wipe the sweat from my brow. The heat isn’t helping. “It’s either that or we go through the ducts. Your choice.”
Maggie rolls her eyes as though I’m an idiot. “We could call someone.”
“Oh yeah?” I snap. “And who would you like to c
all to let us out? Van der Douche?”
“What’s your problem with him?”
“I don’t have a problem,” I lie, sliding the piping out of the stool and looking around for something I can use to flatten the end. It’s made out of some cheap alloy — nothing I can’t bend into shape.
Now she’s irritated. “Clearly you do. So let’s hear it.”
I chance a glance at Maggie, who’s standing there waiting for my response. One of her curls is stuck to her forehead, and — I don’t know why — but she looks sexy as hell.
I shrug, wishing I had some better tools and access to a cold shower.
My shrug seems to send her over the edge. She lets out a scream of frustration, kneading her face with her hands. When she raises her arms, I see that sweat is pooling beneath her breasts, soaking through her thin cotton shirt.
I’m sweating, too. I can feel it running down my back, soaking my hair and stinging my eyes.
“It’s hot in here,” I say, ignoring her suggestion that I call Van der Douche for help.
Fuck that guy. I know I can get us out of here. I’d have us out already if she’d leave me alone and —
Just then, my eye lands on the metal frame supporting the control panel. All that equipment must weigh several hundred pounds. The frame supporting it has to be steel.
Diving under the desk, I shine my Optix light under the control panel and search the frame for the piece I need.
“What are you doing?” Maggie asks. I can tell by her tone that she’s frustrated with me — frustrated I won’t call for help — but there’s a primal kick to her tone.
It’s boiling hot in the cramped control room — way too hot to be normal.
Sweat is running down my face and into my eyes, and wiping them with my sweaty forearm doesn’t help. What is wrong with me? Why am I sweating so much? I haven’t sweated like this since army basic. It can’t be that hot in here. Unless . . .
I stop what I’m doing and stagger up to the thermostat. My head is still throbbing from my fight with the bots. Am I hallucinating? It reads ninety-six degrees. I try to adjust the temperature, but the screen appears to be frozen.
“What?” says Maggie in the tone of someone looking for a fight.
“It’s ninety-six degrees in here.”
“What?”
“That’s not normal.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
I shake my head. Something isn’t right.
Maverick built Elderon with a state-of-the-art thermal control system to balance out extreme heat from the sun and the brutal cold of outer space. They do it with multilayer super insulation and heat exchangers that cool the inside air and release excess heat back into space.
The entire colony is designed to maintain a temperature between sixty-eight and seventy-four degrees Fahrenheit. The only room that allows for more variation is the obstacle course. That room has vents that can be opened and closed to add an element of stress to training.
Crossing to where the heat exchangers are situated, I bend down and put my hand over the vent. I don’t feel a thing.
What I should feel is the slight breeze of airflow throughout the station. A lack of ventilation would explain why it’s so hot. The room is full of electronics, and that heat has nowhere to go.
“What is it?” asks Maggie.
I raise my eyebrows. I have an idea, but I don’t want to say it. I don’t want Maggie to panic.
“What?”
“I think the bots are trying to fry us.”
Maggie just stares at me. Her anxiety is palpable. Her neck and chest are glistening with sweat, and her cheeks are flushed a brilliant pink.
“You think the bots are doing this?” she whispers.
“Why else would they have left us here?” I shrug. “They already tried to kill you once.”
A dark look spreads across Maggie’s face. “How hot do you think they can make it?”
“I don’t know. The obstacle course has a safety shutoff at a hundred and four degrees. The heat exchangers will open automatically to cool the place down if it gets that hot. But theoretically . . .” I trail off.
Maggie just stares at me, eyes wide. I can tell that she’s beginning to panic, so I abandon my half-ass crowbar and climb onto the control panel to reach the ceiling tiles.
I feel along the seam and push. Nothing gives. I’d expected the panel to pop free easily, but it doesn’t want to budge.
I swear.
“What?”
By the sound of Maggie’s voice, she can’t take any more bad news, so I don’t say anything. There’s another way out of here — we just have to find it.
Moving across the desk supporting the control panel, I shove my palm up into another one of the ceiling panels. My hand meets a solid immovable surface.
“These are all sealed,” I mutter.
“What?”
“Don’t panic,” I say, trying to keep my own voice calm. “Pass me that pipe.”
Maggie hands me the piece from the stool I disassembled. I grip it with both hands and drive it up as hard as I can, but it rebounds violently with a dull thud.
Regaining my balance, I try a different spot. I still can’t manage to make a dent in the ceiling.
“They’ve secured this room,” I say. “Probably so they could lock it down and keep all the equipment safe in case of an attack.”
Maggie doesn’t answer. She looks sick.
I spend the next thirty minutes tearing the room apart. I pull the control panel away from the wall and pile all the equipment in the middle of the room to look for another heat-exchange vent. The second one I find is also closed, and no amount of bashing will get it to open. I rip up the carpet and try to bust a hole in the floor, but the room is a fucking fortress.
By the time I’ve finished tearing it apart, the temperature has climbed to a hundred and ten. My skin is slick, I have salt in my eyes, and my hair is completely drenched. I’m beginning to feel dizzy and nauseous, and Maggie’s breathing is shallow.
I lead her over to the wall and make her sit down. It’s a little cooler on the floor, but not much.
“We’re never getting out of here, are we?” she says.
I don’t answer. I don’t know what to tell her. I’ve tried everything — every escape I can imagine. I’ve tried to contact Ping and Tripp and Flaccid Greaves, but none of my pings went through. It seems that the bots succeeded in taking down the Optix network, making it harder to coordinate an attack.
I slide down the wall to sit beside Maggie and look at the temperature gauge. The thermostat is registering a hundred and twenty. My brain starts and stalls as I try to remember my officer training and the limits of human survival.
In extreme heat, the body experiences hyperthermia, and the organs begin to shut down. I remember a graph with time on the X axis and temperature on the Y. Taking humidity into account, we might be able to survive an hour. If the temperature climbs all the way to one forty, we’re looking at ten minutes.
I let my eyes fall closed and lean my head against the wall. This is not how I envisioned the end.
I open my eyes and look over at Maggie. She is staring straight ahead. Her curls are hanging heavy and damp, and her breathing has become more labored. Her eyes have a glazed unfocused look, and I know she’s in the beginning stages.
“Can you believe this?” she asks in a hoarse voice.
“It’s bullshit.”
Maggie’s eyes crinkle slowly, and she lets out a weak little laugh. In that moment I realize how much I love that sound. Maggie has a great laugh.
“There has to be a way out,” I say, trying to find the strength to get to my feet.
I know from training that I have to keep moving. If I stop — if I lie down — we really are going to die.
But Maggie rests a hand on my arm and shakes her head from side to side. She doesn’t have the energy to speak, and that moves me to action more than anything else.
“We aren’t going to d
ie in here.”
“I know,” she says in a sleepy voice. “Just rest for a minute. Save your energy.”
I swallow to wet my scratchy throat. I’d fucking kill for a glass of water. The longer we sit here, the less time we have. I can already feel the weakness taking over my body. I want to tell her about the graph — tell her that we have a time limit — but I can’t see what good that would do.
Maggie’s been pretty calm up until this point, but people tend to lose their shit when you show them a countdown clock.
“I’m sorry,” she says suddenly, her voice floating out of the abyss.
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry I lied about who I was.”
“Stop,” I mutter, closing my eyes. I don’t want her to apologize. It means she thinks we’re going to die.
“Jones . . .”
“Mmm?”
Her eyes are closed. She’s exhausted. Her cheeks are flushed a brilliant pink. Her shirt is completely soaked. I lean over and stop short, watching the rise and fall of her breath.
I don’t think we’ve ever been this close. It wouldn’t be appropriate in training. But all of that stuff has fallen away. There are no more boundaries between us.
Suddenly, Maggie’s eyes flutter open, and I’m staring into their infinite cool depths. As I plunge deeper into those blue-green pools, my whole body relaxes. Her eyes are the color of the ocean, I realize — cool and blue and clear.
My lips part. She leans in. Maggie’s eyelids flutter closed, and then a loud click throws me back.
Maggie’s eyes open wide, and we spring apart like magnets. The door to the control room bursts open, and it feels as though I’ve been doused in icy water.
Cool air floods into the room, chilling my sweat-drenched skin. Relief, disappointment, and confusion swamp me, and when I see who’s at the door, I’m overcome with rage.
Van de Graaf is standing in the doorway, wearing a look that makes me want to deck him.
“Mags!” he says, shaking his head “Warm enough for you?”
Maggie lets out a weak burst of laughter, and I hate him even more. A second later, Van de Graaf strides in like the conquering hero and pulls Maggie to her feet.
