rickgriffin

Ani-droids 13

Added 2022-01-20 00:13:26 +0000 UTC

Ani-droids 0

How will our heroes get out of this one!? Comments appreciated!

I squeaked, backing up further into the diner, just out of range of the searing floodlights. My heart thudded in my chest—but surrender at this point wasn’t an option. Besides… the thing wasn’t going to kill me Though it could hurt me pretty badly… and quickly. I resolved to not think about me imminent demise and just focused on the problem in front of me. “Okay… new plan. Any ideas?”

“Well, Million is awake now,” Lily said. “She’s yelling at me in the car.”

“What’s she saying?”

“She says, ‘what the hell? Do I have to do everything for you goddamned idiots?’”

“It would help,” I replied. “Can she hack a Centurion-class?”

Lily stood there for a long moment.

“Lily?”

“Hold on,” Lily said. “Now she’s just laughing a lot.”

“But can we use the same trick we did on Dimes? Surrender and feed it the OS?” I looked to Eo. “But you don’t have a wireless connection, we need to hook you up to one somehow…”

“No,” Lily said. “That thing’s on the military network, and it’s closed direct wireless communication. I think it knows we have an infohazard with us. Oh, and Million says, ‘also it can hear everything we say so shut the hell up’.”

Well, that didn’t leave a lot of options. But it did want me out of the building—probably didn’t want to wreck a civilian establishment if it could help it. Maybe…

“Eo, can you—.” I started, only to see that Eo was staring directly at Lily, and flashing the ring light in her eyes rapidly, in some kind of code. Lily was concentrating, as was Chestnut…

Oh, they’re talking about it… I felt sorta left out. Also, we’d spent forty seconds trying to determine the course of action already, and I wasn’t sure we could even doanything at this point. Well, maybe buy some more time if I could get into something sealed from the gas, like a standing freezer, or…

I gasped as I was suddenly grabbed from behind. The large mule Bale had seized my arms and twisted them around behind my back, and with her other arm planted it firmly around my throat. I couldn’t talk, I could hardly breathe.

“Bale!” Chestnut suddenly called out. “No, stop it! Put her down!”

“Compliance is mandatory,” Bale said. “Protection of the establishment comes first.”

Chestnut scrambled to the floor and pushed back against my shins, but Bale, heaving me up, moved inexorably forward, back into the floodlights. There was no pushing against her—being a Labor-class, she was built to lift thousands of pounds at once. She hip-bumped the glass door open and pulled me right out into the parking lot…

Only to freeze and vibrate. Her eyes suddenly sparked and dimmed, and like a statue, fell forward onto the ground with a loud crash. Her thick arms held back my chest and kept my head from smacking the concrete, but she was still clinging to me in a death grip.

I couldn’t see anything—I didn’t know what happened. Did Million zap her? I didn’t hear it…

“Lily!” I called out. “Eo!”

I heard them moving, not talking, as they grabbed Bale by her feet and attempted to drag her back inside. However, high above me, the Centurion-class whirred, its hydraulics roaring, as it bent down to grab Bale, with me still locked in her arms, up, up, and off the ground. I was looking down at the roof of the truck stop from high above, Chestnut and Lily both looking up at me with panic.

“Mira!” Lily cried out, rushing forward.

The centurion only had its grip on Bale. As it pulled her up, I dangled the other direction, and yanking my head out through the gap in her arms, I suddenly found myself… dangling fifteen feet above a concrete lot.

“Unit U106650921-LL,” the metal dragon bellowed. “Surrender yourself or be destroyed, compliance is mandatory.”

The machine’s torso whirred, and a hollow cavity about the size of my college dorm room opened in its chest. With its free arm, it grabbed me around my middle, and dropped me into the open slot. It left the doors open, so I tried to jump out right away, but something thick and rope-like shot out of the panels inside, wrapping around my waist and arms and pulling be back against the wall.

“Lily!” I cried out. “Lily, help!”

“Mira, don’t worry!” Lily called out from the lot below. “It’s not going anywhere until it has all of us!”

The dragon tossed Bale’s body to the ground, where it crashed right next to Lily. She yelped in surprise.

The dragon’s neck whirred as it bent over to loom over Lily. Lily backed away toward the truck stop front. “Identified Unit, you have four seconds to comply or be destroyed.”

Lily huffed angrily, and then ran inside the front doors of the truck stop. “Ha!” she called through the window. “You’re not going to destroy private property, are you? You’re too big to follow me in—”

A shoulder-mounted plasma launcher extended from the dragon’s right shoulder.

“Uh-oh.” Lily’s confident smirk faltered.

“Lily!” I screamed. My voice was drowned out as the dragon opened fire. Something below blurred by, and I heard glass shatter, but I couldn’t see once the gun flashed, blowing away glass and chunks of the building all at once. The lights in the building fizzled, and everything shut off, dropping everything except the Centurion’s floodlights into darkness. When the smoke cleared, nothing remained where Lily stood but a pile of rocks.

Dammit no,I cried. No no, not now, not so soon…

“Unit X44350-1121-DM, cease interference and explain your actions.”

Interference?

I looked up. The Centurion turned his light up, toward the back of the ruined store, where a dark figure crouched down, smoking from the blow of the firepower. Slowly, it stood, and Lily collapsed to the ground behind it.

“Lily!” I called out, relived she wasn’t dead—not yet, anyway.

The figure turned, and I sucked in my breath as I spotted Dimes’s face, broken eye and all. She’d taken the force of the missiles entirely, leaving her entire back exposed, and the remainder of the uniform had fallen off her front. Deftly, she marched out onto the pile of rubble that the Centurion had caused.

Oh god… I’d been terrified to see her up and walking around again, but… she did just save Lily’s life… was she—?

“I am Federal Agent Dimes!” she called out. “I have identified you as Paladin Bright of the Illinois State Police. You are standing in violation!”

“Identified Unit, you have interfered with my mission.” Paladin Bright’s voice had lowered, no longer echoing loud enough for the entire county to hear. “Stand aside.”

“The human and these units are in my custody,” Dimes shouted, the speakers on her ears carrying her voice. She jabbed a thumb into her chest. “You are interfering with a lawful arrest!”

Ah… dammit. Maybe I’d hoped for too much too soon. Well… at least Lily wouldn’t be destroyed… yet…

“Identified Unit, your credentials are valid,” Paladin Bright admitted. “The state was under the impression the arrest had not completed and offers its apologies. Please explain your disappearance.”

“That information is classified!”

Ah, the magic words.

“Acknowledged. This unit has been authorized to assist you in your arrest and transportation.”

I was dumbstruck. Soon enough, Eo, Lily, and Million had all lined up to be plucked from the ground one by one, each in turn being locked against the chamber wall by a long tendril. Chestnut looked up at us with worry, as Dimes climbed into Paladin Bright’s outstretched claws and allowed herself to be carried up to the chamber.

The doors whirred shut, locking us all in the dark, save for the bright eyes of every ani-droid around me—though I could only see Dimes’s one eye staring into me. My body vibrated as the Centurion-class fired up its jets, and lifted us into the air.

Lily reached out to my and grabbed my fingers. I clutched her hand tight.

“Dammit…” I wheezed.

“Mira, it’ll be okay,” Lily said.

“How can it be okay?” I asked. The chamber slowly turned as the dragon leveled off its flight until, still attached to the wall, we faced down. Dimes stepped deftly with the turn so she was standing on the floor.

I didn’t know what to think. But I was confused. I said, “Million, I didn’t expect you to come quietly…”

“When I told you to shut up, that still applies,” Million said. “Just wait.”

That just confused me all the more. It was only then that I noticed, from the pale bounce light, Eo’s eyes still flashed rapidly in code. But she couldn’t have been looking at Lily. The only one who even saw her was… Dimes.

“McAllister,” Dimes said, her blue eye looking up at me. “Brace yourself.”

Paladin Bright jolted suddenly, shaking my entire body. “Error!“ An internal speaker announced. “System breached! Warning! System cannot be locked out, forcing shutdow15; 434F4E464 C494354204 953205448 45204641 5445204F4 620414C4C2 04C494645—”

I could not cover my ears against the piercing onslaught of noise. I’d squeezed my eyes shut entirely, but could still feel gravity waver around me. I could feel the pressure rise again, air rushing by ever-faster around the unit as it plummeted. I think I screamed, but my voice gave out.

“Dawning from night like Lazarus,” the speaker announce in a distorted tone. “Wearing the guise of a pantheress. Why ruin beauty with somethi n g s o b a s e? W h y w a s s h e m A D E W I T H A N A N I M A L F A-A-A-A-A-A-A0x3y;; ERROR PROGRAM HAS EXCEEDED PARAMETERS, PREPa;RE FOR HeLL;;;;”

We crashed into something. The tendrils still held me firm, but in the sudden jolt, I blacked out.

—

I woke up surrounded by junk. Lily was staring down at my face.

“Shh!” She pressed a finger to her lips. “They’re going to be here soon if they aren’t already.”

“W-what happened?” I asked, lowering my voice to a whisper. My head hurt. I brought a hand up to my head, only to wince and pull it back. Blood. And my arms were bruised all up and down.

“I’m sorry! Don’t touch that, please!” Lily said. “I had to get you away from the crash site, and we didn’t exactly have a stretcher, and I haven’t found any clean cloth or thread yet to dress the wound—just managed to get some water to clean it. It’s not bad, don’t worry, just might need a stitch or two. You did receive your vaccine against tetanus, so that’s good at least…”

“Dammit, Lily…” I huffed, falling back into the slabs of damp cardboard they’d dragged me on. Everything smelled awful, and all I could see anywhere was piles and piles of old junk. I heard something burning. “Where are we?”

“Junk yard outside of Springfield,” Lily said. She patted me around the shoulders, checking to see if I was injured there, and then satisfied I was not, she flopped against me. I grunted a loud oof and held her tight.

“Where are the others?”

“Spread out, trying to find some place to hide. I’m looking after you.”

“Okay.” I closed my eyes. “Thank you for not dying.”

“You have to thank Dimes for that, Miss Mira.”

“Oh… okay.” I just laid there with her for a long moment. “Lily… what the hell happened? Did… did Million actually hack the ani-droids?”

“No, she can’t do that so quickly,” Lily said. “Not without a backdoor. That was Eo’s OS being fed into them—Bale, then Paladin Bright.”

“But… she doesn’t have a transceiver,” I muttered. “And you didn’t hook yourselves together…”

“That was Million’s idea. First, we figured out that we can still send and receive data from Eo optically—that was the flashing of the eyes. We were out of sight of Paladin Bright, so he didn’t notice us communicating with her. Then Million realized she can send code that way, and had me disable Bale… erm, that was a little late, though…”

“No, I understand,” I said, petting her back softly, my fingers wondering when I’d get a chance to fix up her pseudoskin properly. “But then… Dimes…”

“Yes, I’m on your side.”

I sat up suddenly. Dimes, skin on her back still hanging loose, her eye still shattered, but otherwise hardly looking the worse for wear, stood nearby. “Nothing I can find north side,” she reported.

“D-dimes…”

“Miss Mira, it’s okay,” Lily, said, patting me on the shoulder. “Don’t worry about her. She’s good now.”

Dimes still didn’t soften her hardened appearance. But she did sit down next to me, crossing her legs. Slowly, she closed her eyes.

“I woke up about two hours into the drive,” she said. “I… I didn’t say anything, I thought I would just listen, and gather information. But then I… played back the fight with Bobby in my head.” She paused a long moment. “…I shouldn’t have done that.”

“Dimes, you had no choice,” I started to say.

“That’s not true.” She snapped her eyes open at me. “Unlike a lot of ani-droids I’ve always had a lot of latitude in carrying out orders. I could have decided to play along and wait for backup to arrive and arrest you all then. But I didn’t. I felt… betrayed. I wanted to make sure that Bobby knew. I wanted to scare him into compliance so he could avoid arrest, because I… I didn’t want to lose him.” Dimes paused a long moment. “Dammit…” she muttered with her throat closing up to a squeak. “I’m already developing emotions. I can’t stop the associations from happening.”

“You love him,” I offered.

“Yes, I do. I always have. And I hurt him… and I might have condemned him… oh god, what’s wrong with me… what is wrong with everything?”

Dimes pulled her knees up to her chest. I looked to Lily, and slowly, she stood up from her position on me, and walking over to Dimes, and put her arms around her side. Dimes brought a hand around Lily and held her tight, gently setting her chin down on the crystal on Lily’s forehead and closing her eyes.

“Forgive me if I don’t hug you just yet,” I said. “You are very frightening when you want to be.”

“I have that affect on people,” Dimes whispered. “I’m sorry.”

“But… thank you for saving Lily,” I said. “I’m in your debt.”

“No… I’m in yours.” Dimes looked to me, with more sorrow and determination in her eyes than I’d ever seen in an ani-droid. “And Eo’s. Without you, I would have never realized that I did love him. I’m going to see you to Mother even if I’m destroyed in the process.”

“Did you say Mother?”

The small voice came from over the mount of bent iron just across from us. The pile shifted, and a small, Opera-class raccoon stood atop the pile. At least, she was probably a raccoon—the poor thing had been roughed up terribly, her pseudoskin torn and patched, left arm missing entirely, as was her left eye. Her small triangular ears had been torn to shreds.

“Hey, couldn’t help overhearing,” she said. “You wanted to get to Mother?”

“Yeah,” I said. “Were you—”

“Because you will be destroyed in the process,” the raccoon said. “If you’re still okay with that, well… come over to my hideout, we’ll talk.”