Machinations (26 page)

“Hey!” he objects.

“Just trying to keep you on your toes,” I lie.

“Done,” Zelda announces a short while later. “You should know, the moment this generator goes on, it'll be a beacon for the machines. They'll know we're here.”

“Judging by our welcome party, I'd say there's a good chance they already know,” Rankin points out. “Everyone—save the Commander, of course—switch off your night vision. Once those lights go up, it won't be a pretty sight for anyone with theirs still on.”

Zelda works whatever technological witchcraft she does and the generator lights up like a Christmas tree, all blinking blue lights on a gray metal trunk. It sounds like distant thunder as it powers on, a low growl building in volume. Within a minute, the ceiling lights begin flickering to life, like eyelids fluttering open after a deep sleep. From the door, Ortega informs us the guide-rail lights in the hallway have also come back. It'll take time for the generator to repower the entire base, but for now the lights in the general vicinity will hopefully serve.

“Let there be light,” Zelda announces, her dark face smirking in the pale glow. Lefevre doesn't look impressed with his sister's irreverence.

“Company!” Kennedy cries, pulling his head inside. “I don't think they saw me, but they're headed this way. Three, probably more. Scouts.”

“Seal the doors,” I order. Ortega's way ahead of me; the door squeals shut over my words. “Clarence told me there were two exits built into this room, should one be blocked by a collapse or whatever else. Look around. It has to be here somewhere. That's our way out.”

Kennedy objects. “Why don't we stand and fight? We can defend from here, and we outnumber them.”

“We outnumber the trio out there
now
,” Rankin says. “But a few brawls with them and theirs, and they'll even the odds right quick.”

“If we stay on the move, we stay alive,” I add. “Remember, we're not here to pick fights. We have to find out what happened to the evac teams.”

Zelda claps a hand on her gun. “No reason we can't do both, though.”

Most scout models aren't nearly as dangerous as their predator cousins, but it's easy to forget when they're buzzing just beyond a steel door like angry wasps defending a nest. I don't know how many inches of metal separate us from the machines, or whether it's enough to hold them back or not, but I'm not eager to stick around and find out, either.

“The door's here,” Samuel calls from the eastern corner of the room, partially concealed behind a fence of wires and other electronic equipment.

The sound outside intensifies.

Time to go.

A second before Samuel palms the access panel, I notice what looks like a water stain at the base of the door, dark and ominous.

“Wait, Sam—” I start to say, too late.

The door opens. A body falls toward him, collapsing at his ankles. He staggers backward, but Lefevre's there to steady him at the last moment.

Machines train their optics on us from several yards away.

There's no mistaking that they've seen us, and closing the door will only trap us inside, almost certainly putting an end to the mission and ultimately our lives. That's if we could even get the door closed in time, which seems unlikely as they acquire their targets.

I acquire mine faster, shoving into Samuel and Lefevre to fire a few shots from my EMP-G. The trio burst with static blue, but not before getting off some shots of their own. Bullets fly past me, forcing the team behind cover. One digs into the material of my suit, singeing my skin and drawing blood, but is just off course enough to avoid piercing flesh.

Rankin, Ortega, and Zelda dash past me, moving in for the kill, using more traditional weaponry to destroy the cores.

“Everyone okay?” I ask and receive the right number of affirmations.

Kennedy hasn't moved from his spot—just a few feet away from where the corpse lies, still twitching. Newly deceased, then. Maybe there are other survivors…

The fresh horror in Kennedy's eyes pulls me away from my cold, comfortable logic.
He looks so young,
I think.
And afraid.
I wish I could tell him I remember what it was like, the first time I confronted death. But I can't. That part of my life is lost to me. All I know is that somewhere along the road, I learned how to handle trauma. Given enough time, I hope the kid will, too. Nothing like throwing someone into the deep end of the pool to teach them how to swim.

“Hey, Kennedy,” I say, disrupting his line of sight to the dead body by stepping in front of him. “Staying or coming?” He accepts the distraction, carefully skirting the disfigured man, an obvious victim of multiple gunshot wounds.

“I think he was trying to reach the generator room,” Kennedy says. “He almost made it. Look. He was so close.”

“Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, kiddo,” Zelda says.

“Lucky for us, we've got a few of the latter on hand,” Rankin adds with a grin, giving Kennedy a good-natured thump on the shoulder. “Let's keep 'er moving.”

The dead man outside the generator room isn't the only corpse we come across, nor are the machines we encountered outside the generator room the last we have to dispatch. Churchill consists of one massive level, as opposed to McKinley's smaller five, resulting in a concentration of its population—and now the remnants of those who drew the short straws when it came time to evacuate. Or else those who were brave enough to stay behind to give others a chance.

The bodies are impossible to miss, lying where they were gunned down or slouched against the wall where they decided to die. Mostly men, but some women, too, all growing cold, along with my hope of encountering other survivors. After a while, we stop checking pulses. And through all this, I keep expecting to see Camus's face in the permanently frozen features of the dead, making it especially hard to stay focused. Thankfully, he isn't among the ones we pass.

There are other carcasses whose skeletons are metal instead of bone. Machines with their hearts cut out, gutted and broken. Seems the residents of Churchill gave as good as they got.

“Good for them,” Ortega remarks with quiet appreciation.

All the same, it's increasingly clear to us that rescue came too late for Churchill.

We press farther in, our progress slow and cautious. The machines are more hindrance than threat as long as we catch them off guard, and most times we do. The few times we don't leave us worse for wear, but we suffer no casualties. Not yet.

“Anyone else feeling warmer?” Rankin inquires as we near Churchill's equivalent of our war room. He runs a finger around his collar, separating it from his sweating neck. “Someone's turned the heaters on.” He gives Zelda a look.

“It wasn't me,” she says, nondefensively. “The machines were in a kind of sleep mode, conserving energy. Now they're awake and heating up the place. Standard operating procedure, since the cold slows them down.”

“How hot are we talking now?”

“They'll run optimally anywhere between forty and one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, but they can withstand up to a hundred and eighty degrees, some models even more. Thankfully, the heaters here won't go above ninety.”

“I don't even remember what ninety degrees feels like,” I remark.

“Texas in July,” Rankin says with a certain fondness, and a smile that speaks of summer barbeques, pool parties, fireworks. “Can't say I'll be too comfortable in this getup, though.”

Oh.
It suddenly dawns on me.
Clever robots.

“That's the point,” I say. “They want us as uncomfortable as possible. Edgy, so we slip up.”

Zelda looks impressed with my deduction, which is as close to respect as I'm likely to get from her.

My prediction proves correct, much to our misfortune. In under an hour, the temperature manages to climb to what feels like at least seventy-five degrees, and doesn't stop there. We start roasting in our suits, overheated by the layers beneath. They're no longer necessary inside the Churchill sauna, but if we're forced to make a quick exit onto the freezing tundra above, we'll need every bit of clothing we have to survive. It's a double-edged sword, carving pounds from our flesh in the form of sweat. I can't speak to the discomfort of the others, but I find it increasingly difficult to breathe, pressed down by the heat.

“New Mexico,” I grumble, remembering what Camus told me. “Right. What was I thinking? I miss the cold already.”

“Can we hack into the thermostat controls from Command?” Samuel asks, pushing some of his hair back from his eyes. The strands lay flat on his forehead, matted and dark with sweat from his helmet, his cheeks flushed from the heat and exertion.

“Maybe,” Zelda replies. “But I won't know until we get there.”

We get there soon enough. However, the doors are sealed from the inside, making getting
in
another matter entirely. After Zelda fails to hack the door panel, Rankin and Lefevre try brute force, but none of the three are successful. Samuel uses his head, suggesting another room to try, a military command center of sorts in the diagrams Clarence drew up. Before we can put it to a vote, something shuts off the hall lights.

I hear the clack of visors slipping down—everyone switching their night vision back on. Everyone but me. I close my eyes, once again counting on my other senses instead.

Like something out of my nightmares, the
whir-whir-whir
of a machine reaches my ears. Not
a
machine, but machines, plural. Four or five or ten; I have no way of knowing the exact number. I clutch my EMP-G, its grip and trigger greased by perspiration.

“Here they come,” Rankin murmurs. I hear his gun power on—a sound more reassuring than it has any right to be, given what it means is coming.

There's a fraction of a second where the sound of grinding metal halts—I'm guessing the moment when the machines turn the corner and spot us.

I inhale and open my eyes a mere second before the corridor shatters into a prism of light and noise.

The flashes from the machines' muzzles give the corridor the aspect of an old black-and-white film, movement stilted and stuttering in the brief moments when a visual is made possible. There's also the blue glow whenever an electromagnetic pulse finds its target, shocking the hall with color. Darkness waits in between, swallowing most of the action.

Are we winning?

Losing?

It's impossible to tell.

I take cover behind an overturned trash receptacle and squeeze the trigger again. Again. Again.

As far as places to make a stand go, I soon realize this isn't a very good one. We're in the middle of one hall, bisected by another, with very little in the way of cover. The machines seem to understand this fatal miscalculation, and begin infiltrating our huddled mass from both the left and the right. Just to maintain our quota of consistently bad luck, we've walked right into a well-coordinated trap, or else stumbled into an indefensible location by mistake. The expression “like shooting fish in a barrel” comes to mind.

Some of the predators, with all the innate wisdom of their programming, tire of the inefficient back and forth and decide to go in for the kill the old-fashioned way. While several up ahead keep us pinned down near the war-room door, others attempt to flank us. Some of the team shelter in the alcove of the door to avoid the maneuver. I don't have that luxury.

I hear Samuel shout my name—

Then something slams into me with enough force to knock the gun from my hand and the air from my lungs. I twist violently, trying to break away from the metal monster, but its strength is at least twice my own. I only succeed in ripping my combat suit and worse. A painful jolt shoots through my arm and neck, telling me all I need to know about the wound.

My world shrinks to a pair of red optics and a few feet of wrestling space. The machine's predatory features are made up of too many jagged angles to ever look friendly. And as it bears down on me, I have the terrible thought
This may be the last thing I ever see
. A definite downgrade from last time, and Camus's handsome face. Even as I thrash and fumble for my weapon lying some feet away, I try to hold an image of him in my mind. I don't want to go to the grave taking the machine's ugly visage with me.

But really, I don't want to die at all.

The commotion continues around me, but it seems distant and detached from my current reality. Blood thrums in my ears, fast and angry, even as the adrenaline starts to calm me, taking the edge off my panic. The voice in my head sounds suspiciously like Camus.
Think
, it says, and I do.

Recalling all the rounds of training back at Churchill, I knock into the machine using the flat base of my elbow. It's not enough to damage it, but it buys me time for my real target. I gouge the machine's optics—those red marbles that have hunted and haunted me in the dark—with my fingers.

It tries to pull back, but I grab it by using my injured arm, causing a scream of pain to travel through my shoulder and out of my mouth. Still, I don't let go. My fingers dig in around the plastic shielding acting as a protective membrane, for want of eyelids. The circuits behind give me a little shock as I tear them and twist.

The machine
whirs,
and for once, instead of frightening, the sound seems more plaintive. They weren't programmed to feel pain, but they recognize damage to their systems, and that's when their self-preservation routines take over. I hate to make any comparison between man and machine, but they're like us in that way. Survival first.

After much pulling and twisting, I yank the optics free, effectively blinding the machine, and shove it away. As I suspected and hoped it would, without being able to see its target, the machine reverts to the prior event in its programming—searching for me. I roll away, clutching my limp arm to my chest. When I come up, it's with my EMP-G in hand. I fire twice, the second time just for spite. Someone else finishes the job with a quick double tap to the machine's core processor.

Still the machines come on, murderous and endless.

My head swims, aching something fierce. It's hard to figure out who is who in the chaos, but the machines are unmistakable with their gleaming skeletons.

“McKinley!” a voice shouts.

I can barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. At first, I think I imagine it. But as I look, half in a daze, I see the war room door is open. A dark silhouette stands in the light.

“Come on!” the figure yells, waving for us.

The next thing I know, I'm inside Churchill's floodlit central command room.

I find Samuel first. He's bleeding from a cut on his head. I probe it gently, not wanting to make it worse. “You're hurt,” I say, stating the obvious. The excitement of the battle is lingering as shock, I think. However, knowing I'm in shock and handling it are two completely different beasts.

Samuel takes my hand away, saying my name and something else.

“What?” I respond, sure I've misheard him.

“Ortega's dead,” Zelda repeats more callously.

Samuel's expression is hard but sad. “He took several shots to the chest. There wasn't anything…” Emotion stops him. He clears his throat and gives his head a violent shake. It won't make the memory go away. I know that all too well. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I say, looking around, still half in a daze. “Mostly. I think my shoulder's dislocated.”

“Let's see…”

While Samuel tends to my injury, I finally tune in to the larger conversation. Lefevre and Rankin are speaking with a man. He's tall, but not wide, with dark hair and strong, appealing features. On his tired face, he has some sealed cuts, old yellowing bruises, and a unique pair of—

“Glasses!” I blurt out, wincing when I try to move. Samuel reminds me to hold still.

Glasses comes to me instead.

“Menace,” he says with a smile tempered by loss. “Am I glad to see you and your team.”

“If that's true, why didn't you open the damn door earlier?” Zelda demands, getting in his face. Despite her bluntness, I think she may be grieving for Ortega in her own angry way.

Glasses's expression breaks. “I should have,” he admits, clearly shamed by his cowardice. “But I didn't—couldn't know who or what was out there until I got the cameras up and working again. It took me longer than I'd have liked. The electricity's been out. The backup generator—”