Binary Pair

by Michael-Scott Earle

  Yet.

  “No more doors,” Paula observed after we had walked for another five minutes down the hall.

  “There must be larger rooms on each side. The water treatment rooms were some hundred meters wide and two hundred long,” Kasta explained.

  “Ahh.”

  “Up ahead. Another group of drones.” I raised my rifle a bit and angled the front down so it would pass over the metal birds down the hallway.

  “And another set of doors,” Kasta observed.

  “And more blood,” Paula whispered.

  The engineer was correct; the walls were practically painted brown with crusted blood. It was on the ceiling, the walls, and the two doors. We still hadn’t seen any bodies though, but I didn’t know if that was a good or bad sign. Maybe it didn’t matter. I doubted anyone was alive down here.

  “I’ll send my drones in once you pop open the door,” Kasta said as soon as I grabbed the handle of the door on the right. I nodded, and then cracked the metal wide enough for them to fit through.

  Kasta didn’t say anything for a few moments, but she did let out a sigh.

  “There are bodies inside. It does look like a control center. Lots of terminals, and a scaled model of the city.”

  “Any of those bird-drones in there?” I asked.

  “About twenty. Looks like they killed all these people. Oh!” Kasta gasped, and Paula’s eyes opened wide.

  “What’s wro--” I started to say, but the android continued.

  “This is the place we are looking for. One of the terminals is still on. I also found out how the drones got in. There is a large air duct. Looks like it was broken open from the inside.”

  “Let’s go in,” I said. The twins nodded, and I pushed the door open.

  The room was most definitely a control center. My flashlight reflected off dead screens on the opposite side of the room, and a quick sweep of my rifle showed that all the walls were lined with control terminals, chairs, and corpses.

  The stench was awful, but I had been around plenty of dead bodies. These corpses had not been exposed to the sun or bugs, so they rotted slowly, and were in the various stage of mummification. The sight was still disturbing. They were riddled with holes, and dead their dead faces were contorted in agony or terror. The pile of corpses near the door made me think the people in this room tried to escape into the main hallway, but then they found more of the bird-drones there.

  “I’m…” Paula started to say, and I knew she would start puking before she doubled over and vomited. Kasta seemed to teleport next to Paula, and the android woman pulled her sister’s hair away from her face and patted her on the back.

  “Fuck,” Paula said when she finished puking. “That’s embarrassing.”

  “Why? I’m used to it. I would be surprised if you didn’t puke.” I gave her a smile, and the beautiful engineer grunted. Then she bent over and heaved again.

  There was a single screen with the power on, and I walked across the room so I could get a better look at it. The letters on the terminal controls and screen were in the Russian text, so I couldn’t actually read it, but the icons did seem to hint that it was functioning.

  Paula stopped puking for the second time, and then they both walked over to me. Kasta sat in front of the terminal without saying anything, but Paula gave me an apologetic look.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said.

  “Alright.” She sighed and then rested her hand on the back of Kasta’s chair. I could see her hand was shaking, and I felt remorse punch me in the chest. I was asking too much of her again. Same with Zea and Eve. None of my friends were soldiers, and I was putting them in scenarios that would have tested all but the most stoic of warriors.

  “This terminal has access to all the other bunkers. Ohhh. Look at this.” Kasta pointed at her screen. “I can actually open communications with the other three bunkers. Should I try?”

  “Will Lith Dae know?” I asked.

  “I doubt it. I believe it is an underground connection, but I can’t be sure,” Kasta answered.

  “Let’s try,” I said. “Won’t hurt for them to know we are trying to help them with the bird-drones.”

  “I think this should do it.” Kasta pressed a few keys on her terminal interface and then she leaned into a microphone. I didn’t understand her words, but I was very thankful that she figured out how to speak their language.

  “Hmm.” Kasta turned to us after she had asked a few questions into the microphone. “I’m not sure if it is broken, or if there is no one on the other side.”

  “Try a few more times, and then we’ll worry about the door.” I glanced around the control room again and saw another group of bodies below the broken air duct.

  “Alright,” Kasta said, and she repeated the same phrase into the microphone a few more times. There was no answer through the terminal, and the three of us let out long sighs.

  “I’m hoping that the system is still down, and they are all alive,” Paula said.

  “Me too,” her sister said.

  “Can you open the door? Sooner we get over there the sooner we’ll know.”

  “Let me work on it,” she replied, and she pressed a few more buttons on the screen.

  I watched Kasta shift through the terminal menu for about ten minutes, but I really had no idea what she was doing. Paula did seem to know though, and she pointed to an icon on one particular window after I had given up paying attention to what the screen showed. Kasta clicked there, and then they both let out a laugh.

  “Find it?” I asked as a map of the city came onto their screen.

  “Paula saw it,” Kasta said.

  “I thought you didn’t know the language?” I asked the engineer.

  “I taught myself how to read it when we got back to Persephone,” Paula explained.

  “Uhh. How? When?”

  “When you told us to go to sleep.” The blonde woman shrugged. “I can’t speak it though.”

  “That’s amazing. How many hours did you--”

  “My sister is a genius,” Kasta proclaimed with unmistakable pride.

  “Yeah, she is.” I nodded at Paula, and the engineer’s face turned a bit red. “Can you open the doors of the other bunker?”

  “Aye, Captain. The control is right here.” Kasta pressed on the bunker icon on the top left mark of the map, and a menu expanded down. “You want me to open it?”

  “Yeah. Then let’s get the fuck out of here. I feel like things are all working out as we planned.”

  “Here we go,” Kasta said, and then she pressed the button on the screen.

  “Shit!” Paula and I screamed together when the lights came on in the control room. It felt like someone was digging hot pokers into my eyes.

  “Turn off the light!” I shouted as I covered my face with my right arm.

  “I’m trying!” Kasta shouted as her fingers danced across the keys.

  “Try faster!” Paula shouted, and her words were filled with agony.

  “I’m trying faster!” Kasta hissed. “Damn it! They won’t turn off. The power in this bunker needs to be on to send the signal to the other bunker!”

  “Can you turn the lights off and still send the signal? Shouldn’t it already be opening?” I growled and tried to pull my arm away from my face. The lights in the room were probably not that bright, but I’d gotten so used to the darkness, and the sudden illumination was causing my eyes to water.

  “I don’t know! I can figure it out in ten minutes. I just need to toggle through some of these menus and--”

  “We don’t have ten minutes!” Paula shouted. “The light is going to power up the drones!”

  “Hmmm. Well, shit. That’s true,” Kasta sighed. “Let me turn them off and then I can try and figure out how to-- uh oh.”

  “Uh oh?” Paula and I asked.

  “The lights aren’t turning off,” Kasta whispered. “The bunker’s main power is on now, and it needs a password to shut down.”

  “H
ow do you know?” I asked.

  “I’m looking at a screen that says ‘Type in administrator password to shut down the power grid.’ If Zea was here, she could probably hack this, but I don’t know how to do it.”

  “Damn.” I pulled my arm away from my face and managed to get my right eyelid opened a hair. It was painful, but I pried both of my eyes open.

  Then I saw one of the bird-drone’s wings twitch.

  “We need to get the hell out of here,” I growled.

  “I might be able to figure out how to--” Kasta started to say, and I realized that she hadn’t seen the drone move because she was staring at her screen.

  “No! The drones are starting to move. We need to go!” I shouted.

  “I still can’t see!” Paula screeched.

  “I’ve got you.” I slung both of our rifles over my shoulder and scooped her up in my arms. She was still covering her eyes with her hands, but as soon as I lifted her, she buried her face into the armor plates on my chest.

  “Go,” I ordered Kasta, who was still frantically pressing buttons on the terminal.

  “I can--”

  “Now!” I growled, and the android sprang out of her chair. We ran toward the exit of the control room, and I thought that I saw another one of the bird-drones twitch.

  Kasta opened the door for me, and I saw her drones exit before I ran out into the hallway with Paula in my arms. The lights out here were a bit brighter than inside of the control room, but I resisted the desire to close my eyelids. My eyes, face, and brain were hurting, but getting ripped apart by a hundred needles would be much more painful.

  Two of the bird-drones on the ground made obvious twitching movements.

  “Damn,” I growled, and I felt the beast scream to be let free. “How much time do we have until those fuckers are flying?”

  “Not enough,” Kasta said.

  Chapter 16

  Kasta’s drones beat us to the elevator, but they still had to wait for us to press the button. The android hammered the first-floor button as soon as we stepped inside, but it still felt like the doors took forever to close. The elevator numbers seemed to move impossibly slow, and Paula let out an aggravated sigh.

  “Can you see?” I asked her, and the doors to the elevator opened with a buzzing noise.

  “Hurts, but yes,” Paula said, and I released my cradle hold so she could stand. “The lights are really damn bright.”

  “And they are charging the drones much faster than our flashlights” Kasta commented, and I wondered if the citizens in this bunker turned off the lights to stop the drones from killing them.

  We ran out of the elevator, but Paula stumbled a bit, and I had to keep her from tripping. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, and it looked like she was still in discomfort. She kept running though, and we made it to the door that would take us out of Housing block 1A.

  “Wait,” Kasta said as I put my hand on the doors to the main hallway of the bunker. “Let me send my drones out.

  “Good idea,” I said as I opened the doors wide enough for her small robots to escape.

  “Looks clear,” she said after a few moments. “I don’t hear any wings.”

  “Let’s move.” I pushed open the door, and we ran until we came to the larger double doors that led out to the room where our car was parked on the elevator.

  It was the room with thousands of powerless drones on the ground.

  “I’ll send in my recon drones,” Kasta whispered, and I cracked open the door just wide enough to let them fly through. The other room wasn’t as bright as the hallway, and I could see that the bird-drones were still on the ground.

  “There are some moving, but they are lethargic,” Kasta said.

  “Okay, let’s go in--”

  “Wait!” Kasta hissed as she put her hand on my chest. “No. There are some flying. Damn.”

  “How many?”

  “Ahhh. Ten. They aren’t moving fast. I can get in the car, wait for them to all fly, and then drive over to this door.” Kasta reached for the door handle.

  “What if the ones on the ground don’t start flying?” Paula asked.

  “I could push them away. They don’t attack me,” Kasta answered.

  “They didn’t earlier, but that doesn’t mean they won’t now,” I said.

  “They won’t they only--”

  “Hey.” Paula pointed behind us, and we all turned to look down the hallway.

  There looked to be a flock of bird-drones flying down the hallway toward us. They were still a hundred meters away, so we only had a few seconds to figure out what we were going to do.

  “Shit,” Kasta said.

  “Take your rifle,” I said as I handed Paula her weapon.

  “Can you hold them off while I get the--”

  “No, we are running to the car. Move!” I interrupted Kasta by swinging open the door. Both of the women gasped, but then they ran into the room. I followed behind them and then closed the door.

  The entire floor of the massive room was twitching like it was made of feathery metal worms. The sight made my heart hammer into my chest, and the car suddenly seemed to be ten kilometers away, instead of just two hundred meters.

  “Go,” I hissed, but the women were running ahead of me through the trail that Kasta once cleared.

  Some of the drones had twitched onto the path, and the twins stepped over them as they ran. I was less careful though, and I crushed each of the strays under my boot as I jogged. There was a flutter of wings to my right, and I turned to point my rifle at the flock of drones twisting through the air some fifty meters away. Kasta was right, the ones flying did seem rather lethargic, and it seemed like they didn’t know we were here.

  Then Paula tripped and fell forward with a cry of panic.

  She landed on the path, but her left arm pushed out to catch herself. The woman’s hand plunged into the mass of twitching birds, and I saw one of them twist over and try and sink its needle into her arm. Fortunately, she was wearing the plate armor that attached to our flight suit, and the needle didn’t penetrate. Paula didn’t seem to realize this though, and her urgency to roll away from the drone attacking her arm ended up placing her back on the pile of bird-drones on the other side of the cleared path. Three of the robot monsters there weren’t charged enough to fly, but they wiggled their wings in an effort to stick their needles into her skull.

  “Hold still!” I ordered as I kicked the pile of drones at her back away. Then I punched the drone on her arm off and pulled the engineer to her feet. Paula’s blue eyes were opened wide with shock, but she didn’t look injured.

  “Thank yo--” she started to say, but four of the drones I saw flapping listlessly through the air were flying toward my friend’s back. I pulled her to my side with my left hand as I yanked my rifle off my back with my right. I almost didn’t have a chance to aim, but I was used to firing this weapon now, and my first burst of bullets tore through the drones as if they were made of paper.

  “Go!” I shouted over my second burst of fire. Paula was already moving, and I saw her catch up to her sister out of the corner of my eye.

  Unfortunately, a shit ton of the bird-drones was now moving.

  They took to the air like a wave of actual birds, and I shot a line of hot bullets through the closest group. I might as well have tried to kill a snowstorm with my rifle. For every drone one of my bullets destroyed, there were three more that almost immediately took to the air. This wasn’t going to work. We just needed to get to the car and pray that they wouldn’t try to attack the metal of the hatch or the tires. I didn’t know how well the armor would actually hold up against the thousands of drones down here.

  I strafed sideways through the path as I let loose with another burst of bullets. A slow moving flock of birds was angling toward Paula, and I pivoted my rifle to aim at them. My shots were true, and I killed the six pests before they got within twenty meters of her, but the entire floor of the huge room was now fluttering, and I guess we only
had ten or fifteen seconds before the whole flock was in the air.

  We were still a good fifty meters away from the car.

  The twins were sprinting, but I caught up to them in a few strides. I couldn’t really pass them without wading through the mass of flapping metal birds, but I could punch a few choice bullets into some of the drones that looked like they were about to leap at Paula. The robots started to make their strange bird-like squawking sound, and I wondered if they were all about to take flight.

  We still had about twenty-five meters left to go.

  “Reloading!” I shouted as I reached toward my belt. Paula and Kasta hadn’t been shooting because they were focusing on sprinting, but as soon as I yelled, they both swung out their rifles and began to fire at the drones on opposite sides of the room. Their motions were so synchronized; it almost looked as if one person performed the movement.

  “I’m good! Run!” I shouted as I brought my loaded rifle up to a mass of birds circling the room. There were obviously heading toward us, but they were still a good forty meters away, and another group jumped out at Paula from the other side of the path. The blonde engineer managed to jump clear of their clumsy lunge, and she unleashed a punishing spray of bullets from her rifle as soon as they passed behind her.

  A drone slammed into my left shoulder, so I twisted my right arm back and punched it away with the front of my rifle. Another drone got tangled with my legs, but my run tore the robot in half before it could try and stab me. Then one of the machines dove into my back. The impact made me spring forward an extra half meter as I ran, and I guessed that I would have been dead at least three times by now if not for the armor attached to my flight suit.

  “I’ll hit the elevator!” Kasta said as she jumped past the car. Paula ran right behind her, and I spun around to unleash a stream of bullets into the twirling mass of drones while she dove into the back seat of the car.

  “It’s moving!” Kasta screamed over my bullets, and I took a step back toward the hatch of the egg shaped vehicle.

  The lift began to shake under me, but I saw a group of drones angle toward us from the far left side, and I turned to spray them with a healthy dose of rapid fire. Part of me felt as if I was just wasting bullets by firing into the mass of flying robots, but it did seem as if my bullets were keeping them at bay.