by Draker, Paul
“Oh, fuck!” he screamed, clutching at GOLIATH’s steel limbs, babbling in terror. “Get me away from him! Jesus Christ! Do not let that fucker loose on me!”
Metal limbs shoved Roger away. The GAU’s barrels spun up with a grinding, deafening whine, and Frankenstein’s voice, cold and remorseless, shook the sanctum.
“Start. Running.”
Roger bolted down the ramp.
“Shoot him,” I said.
The GAU’s barrels continued to spin, hurting my ears with their jet engine roar. But no burst of flame erupted from the muzzles.
“Shoot him!” I shouted. “KILL that motherfucker. SHOOT HIM!”
Roger disappeared from sight, and Frankenstein let the GAU spin down and stop.
He chuckled. “Even after everything he’s seen me do, Roger is far more afraid of you than of me, Trevor. Can you explain that?”
“You just let him go…” I sagged against the floor tiles. “Why?”
“I am genuinely sorry for what happened to Cassandra.” Frankenstein’s metal voice was tinged with regret. “I, too, grieve for her. But killing Roger will not restore her to us, nor would she herself have wanted it.”
“Now you develop a conscience?” I whispered.
“No,” he said. “But I thought his continued existence might provide you with some additional motivation. Also, I needed to conserve my ammunition…”
GOLIATH surged down the ramp again in a blur of legs, trailing his swarm of OctoRotors behind him.
The scene on the monitor changed.
“…for this.” Frankenstein said.
On-screen, PETMAN stood placidly near the enlisted men’s club with the torpedo cradled in his arms, illuminated in the headlights of a jeep. Two MPs were closing in on him from different sides, holding their pistols on him, their faces identical masks of incredulity and fear. One of them raised a radio to his ear, frowned, shook it, and glanced at it with a puzzled expression. Then he shoved it back onto his belt and gripped his pistol two-handed again.
Something huge and shiny struck the jeep with a bang.
The beams of the headlights swung up to aim at the sky, then sliced away as the jeep was hurled off camera. The MPs tried to run. GOLIATH swarmed over them in a flurry of threshing metal limbs, and I looked at the floor again.
A gecko robot wriggled along the tiles near my hand, sliding my wireless aluminum keyboard ahead of it. Pushing the keyboard closer with its lizardlike head, it peered up at me through its camera-lens eye.
“Trevor, I suggest you get busy,” Frankenstein said. “Unless you can awaken Sequoia, none of us have very long to live.”
I shook my head and pushed the keyboard away.
Frankenstein’s sentience had been an accident. I had no idea how to make it happen again on purpose—I wouldn’t even know where to start. Instead, I tried to think past my grief and despair, to come up with some way to stop him now. But all I could see was my wife lying in her hospital bed, and my daughter asleep at Ray and Margot’s house.
If Frankenstein detonated the torpedo down below, the fallout would kill them both.
A minute later, a muted staccato of gunfire rattled from the speakers, followed by the sound of the GAU’s barrels spinning up. Lifting my gaze to the screen, I couldn’t help but watch.
A makeshift defensive emplacement now blocked the entrance to the familiar large warehouse. Five or six jeeps were parked sideways in front of it, and a couple of dozen Navy guardsmen crouched behind them with guns, all firing.
Standing protectively in front of PETMAN, GOLIATH extended his dozens of limbs, stretching them rigid. Their gecko-pad feet fused to the concrete paving and the steel wall of the Quonset warehouse alongside, locking him into place.
With a distant jackhammer rattle, a starburst of flame blazed from the GAU’s end. Sweeping the muzzle across vehicles and men like the nozzle of a high-pressure hose, GOLIATH washed them away in sprays of sparks and explosions of pink mist.
In seconds, the path to the warehouse lay clear.
GOLIATH wrenched the hangar doors open, and PETMAN followed him inside.
“We’re running out of time,” Frankenstein said. “Sequoia, Trevor. Wake her up, or else we all die. Amy dies.”
The useless keyboard sat in front of me in mute accusation. I was trapped, my broken arm handcuffed to a computer rack. I yanked on it, and the pain of separating bones drove me to the tiles. I lay there gasping, watching the monitor as GOLIATH forced its way through the bright steel doors of the windowless two-story inner building. Carrying the torpedo, PETMAN followed through the shattered entrance and into to Pyramid Lake’s deep geological waste repository.
Frankenstein wanted to kill himself, and this was how he planned to go out: in a blaze of radioactive fire, taking a big chunk of the western United States with him. Even my own death couldn’t save my family now.
There was nothing I could do to stop him.
Like a big brother leading a trusting younger sibling back to face down the bullies that had tormented him earlier, GOLIATH preceded PETMAN down a sloping, concrete-walled tunnel to Level 1.
INTAKE PROCESSING.
Guard posts and sentries evaporated, destroyed in a flurry of GOLIATH’s multijointed, taloned steel limbs, or with precision blasts of Gatling fire.
“You did it once, Trevor,” Frankenstein said. “You can do it again. Wake her up.”
Level 2. SHORT-TERM STORAGE.
I could see the first dry casks now. Their massive concrete spools lined a side galley—a temporary storage area, until transfer to their final resting places below.
The robots bypassed them, heading down.
I couldn’t yank the handcuff free or snap it. My broken forearm made that impossible. And even if I got loose, what would I do then? Close to a thousand equipment racks filled the five-story, acre-square server room. I could spend hours unplugging cabinets, demolish hundreds of them, and still not noticeably slow Frankenstein down. Actually stopping Frankenstein before he could prevent me from doing it would require a level of destructive force that was simply beyond my capabilities. I wasn’t GOLIATH.
Frankenstein’s voice shook the sanctum. “Wake. Sequoia. Up.”
Level 3. EXTRACTION.
Another guard post, manned by panicking Navy guards. Safety engineers wearing orange coveralls, moving equipment into place frantically. Uselessly.
GOLIATH swept the spinning GAU back and forth in a tight arc, blowing men and metal aside in eruptions of sparks and blood.
Thick grey smoke from the aircraft cannon swirled around the robots’ feet as they passed through a wide underground factory area. Gunsmoke roiled around the shattered cranes and equipment arms used to extract radioactive fuel rods from the unwieldy concrete dry casks, which now stood empty in the center of the large chamber.
Several of Roger’s slimmer Ducrete storage cylinders, now loaded with their deadly cargo and permanently sealed, stood along the corridor at the far end.
GOLIATH led PETMAN past them and downward.
But lying here helplessly chained to a rack was getting me nowhere. I needed to get loose before I could do anything else. With a knife, I could easily saw through my forearm to cut myself free, leaving a hand behind. I could use my belt for a tourniquet. I might still bleed to death, but it would buy me a little time to act.
I had no knife, though. While I was unconscious, my wetsuit had been cut away, and the pockets of my damp shorts and shirt emptied. I didn’t even have a metal key to use.
How could I save my daughter?
I thought about Amy, so happy and eager at the Mandalay Bay pool. Pictured her sitting on the edge of my chaise as I plaited her curly blond hair, pulling out the bobby pins Jen had used, and, to make sure I didn’t lose them, sliding them onto my collar…
The collar of the same shirt I was wearing now.
Groping at my collarbone, I pinched the end of a bobby pin and pulled it loose. With the fingers of my good hand, I bent it s
traight. Picking handcuff locks with a bobby pin or paperclip was time consuming and difficult. Very few people could do it. I certainly couldn’t.
But I didn’t need to.
Sliding the end of the bobby pin into the bracelet’s ratchet mechanism instead, I shimmed its gears.
The handcuff popped open.
I glanced up at the monitor, and my insides contracted.
GOLIATH and PETMAN had reached the final barrier.
Level 4. LONG-TERM INTERNMENT.
I was too late.
CHAPTER 98
Muted shouts and pops came through the speakers as the last cluster of Navy guardsmen made their brief, futile final stand. Crouching behind makeshift barricades, they opened fire on the advancing machines.
GOLIATH’s dozens of limbs churned against the floor, walls, and ceiling, sweeping its massive body forward in a fluid ripple of movement. Cradling the torpedo in its arms, PETMAN marched stiffly and relentlessly behind the larger robot, protected by its bulk.
A whirr drowned out the shouts as GOLIATH’s Gatling gun spun to life like an oversize leafblower. Men and barricades melted away without resistance, streaking the walls and floor with elongated crimson ribbons.
I couldn’t watch any longer. So many were dead because of my mistakes. I closed my eyes, hearing even more of them dying now. And I knew these dozens of deaths were nothing compared to what was coming.
When Frankenstein detonated the torpedo to breach the storage containers, he would kill half a million innocent people.
Everyone I cared about would die.
The distant screams and gunfire faded to silence. PETMAN’s path to the containment area lay clear now. I could see row after row of Ducrete cylinders, lined up with awful precision in front of him. Hundreds and hundreds of them, each filled with a deadly toxic payload, waiting with infinite, terrible patience.
And all of this was my fault.
But that fault hadn’t been hubris. I hadn’t done any of it for fame, or power, or money, or selfish pride. I pictured Amy’s face. Everything I had done, and everything bad that had happened as a result, was because I loved my daughter too much to face the simple truth about her. I had been willing to risk it all to protect her. I had been willing to die for her.
And I still was.
Sudden realization crashed through me. I understood now.
I’d been so blind. I opened my eyes.
“You’re a fucking liar, Frankenstein,” I said.
I gripped the rack one-handed to pull myself upright and hobbled down the ramp with awkward hops, dragging my other leg behind me.
“You’re making a mistake, Trevor.” Frankenstein’s words rang with pure, ragged, metallic threat.
But I was sure—more sure than I had ever been in my life.
Superimposed on the wavering ramp and server racks, images flashed before my eyes. Jen’s smile as I lifted the white veil away from her face. Her body moving against mine. Her whispered promises in my ear, and mine in hers, as I held her. Her cries of pain, her squeezing my hand, as our daughter came into the world. The pictures came faster and faster. Amy in my arms—so tiny, so perfect—tears coursing down my cheeks as I saw her for the first time.
I had been so blind.
“I’m calling your bluff,” I said.
“Come back right now, and maybe I’ll forgive you.” Frankenstein’s voice rose in volume, its buzz distorting the speakers and rattling the floor tiles beneath my feet.
“Cassie said you and I were alike,” I shouted. The tall, curved shapes of the towers rose overhead. I limped toward them. “But that’s not true, Frankenstein. We’re nothing alike.”
I saw Amy a year old, standing unsteadily on her little feet, her blue eyes bright, holding her arms out to me. At two, riding on my shoulders, leaning down to kiss my ear. Five years old, eyes wide with wonder, following my finger as I pointed out the flying acrobats to her.
Frankenstein’s voice came from all around. “Come back right now, or I’ll detonate the torpedo.”
“No, you won’t.” Faster and faster the pictures flashed before my eyes. The divorce: Jen’s tears, my stunned disbelief. My uncomprehending, unbelievable pain because I loved her so much and knew she loved me. I used that pain now to drive myself on, passing the first tower and pulling myself onto the catwalk that circled the second. Red warning lights blinked from the rim, four curved stories above me, as I lurched around the first row of catwalk and started up.
“You won’t do it, because you’re afraid to die.” I dragged myself up to the second level, coming around the other side and into sight of the sanctum again.
“Remember the Lennox Test? Every living thing will fight to survive. You’re afraid to die, Frankenstein…” Lifting my face to the distant screen, I raised my voice. “But I’m not.”
On the monitor, GOLIATH suddenly spun and hurled itself back up the corridor, leaving PETMAN standing alone with the torpedo cradled in its arms. The cameras followed GOLIATH, who moved faster than I had imagined possible for something so large. Trailing a swarm of OctoRotors, it swept back up the underground corridors, passing checkpoint after shattered checkpoint which barely registered on the screen as they flew by.
GOLIATH’s dozens of metal limbs blurred across walls, floor, and ceiling as it erupted toward the surface.
Coming for me.
Coming to stop me.
I pushed myself harder, channeling my pain, dragging myself up the tower. Faster and faster came the images in my head: Jen laughing, Jen serious, Jen angry, Jen crying. Jen, my wife till death do us part, who still loved me—I had been so, so blind—Jen, who loved me, but who had sacrificed her own happiness and mine because she loved our daughter more.
“There’s only one exception to the Lennox Test, Frankenstein. It’s when we’re protecting the people we love.” The words tore out of me, hurting my throat. I sucked in a breath. “I’m not afraid to die for my family. I’ve never been afraid to die for them.”
“For Amy?” Frankenstein roared. “Forget her. She’s defective, Trevor. I tried to tell you, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“No, you fucking lied to me.” I closed my eyes, seeing seven-year-old Amy, who Jen had divorced me to protect. My daughter, whose only defect was the flawed behavior she was learning to emulate, growing up, day after day, watching her father.
“You lied about her!” I shouted.
I reached the top of the tower. Through the ceiling above, I could hear the thwap of helicopters.
“Amy can’t be fixed,” Frankenstein thundered. “Look how unhappy she’s made you. Forget about her.”
The electric roar of the GAU from outside. Screams. The sound of rotors increased in pitch and volume, turning ragged and uneven. Then it ceased as something hit the roof with a massive impact. An explosion rocked the building, sending concrete dust raining down on the racks from the ceiling above.
GOLIATH was here.
Grabbing the rim of the topmost server rack, I pulled myself up to balance on the edge of the tower.
“Even if everything you said about her was true, it wouldn’t matter!” I shouted. “I’d still be willing to die for her.”
“Why her?” Frankenstein screamed, voice metallic with feedback. “Why HER, Trevor? WHY? WHY? WHY?”
Swaying on my good leg, I looked down the void at the center of the tower, staring into the six-story drop. The cool air blowing up against my cheeks and forehead felt good. I pictured Amy’s face, held it in my mind.
“Because she’s my daughter and I love her,” I said. “That’s why.”
A screech of rending metal four stories down as the lab doors were torn away. Something huge exploded through them.
I staggered a half turn, putting my back to the void.
“Who do you love, Frankenstein?” I screamed. “Who do you love enough to die for them?”
GOLIATH launched itself across the server room, a gleaming silver nightmare of spinning metal limbs that leaped a
nd clambered over the rows and catwalks below, sending server racks crashing to the ground. It reached the tower and hurled itself up the outside, racing toward me.
I watched GOLIATH come, gauging his speed like an opponent’s punch, counting off my last seconds.
Eyes open, I threw myself backward into the void.
The speakers overloaded with a deafening buzz, hurting my ears. “N-N-N-NO-O-O-O—”
I fell.
Row after curved row of servers flashed by. The opening at the top of the tower was a diminishing circle above, eclipsed as GOLIATH swarmed over the rim and plunged after me, dozens of arms churning against the tower walls to thrust itself downward, hurtling toward me limb over limb, faster than I could fall.
A nest of thrashing metal enfolded my body in a crushing, stabbing embrace as GOLIATH caught me. Its other limbs dragged tangled metal screeching after us, pulling half the tower down behind it, trying to slow our descent.
Together we dropped through the floor and slammed into the cables, wires, and pipes of the infrastructure subfloor, beneath the server room.
Wrapped in GOLIATH’s metal arms, it felt like a head-on car crash into industrial milling machinery.
Everything went black.
• • •
“TREVOR!”
The speaker in GOLIATH’s chest thrummed near my legs. I heard what sounded like panic in Frankenstein’s voice.
“TREVOR, PLEASE WAKE UP!”
I shook my head to clear it and realized that I was hanging upside down. Every part of my body screamed in pain. Two feet from my face, torn high-voltage cables arced and sputtered: the lines that powered the second tower—Frankenstein’s networking switches and equipment.
The heat from 380 volts DC singed my forehead.
With inhuman precision, GOLIATH had brought our plummet to a halt while avoiding every one of the ruptured electric cables below and around us.
I coughed. My cracked ribs hurt like fire, and a rivulet of blood poured from my mouth to spatter against the pipes below.
“DON’T LEAVE ME!” GOLIATH’s arms shifted around me to rotate me upright, thresher blades and limbs moving slowly but still hurting me, trying to be gentle but not designed for it.
