Time Was (27 page)

—he was stunned into immobility.

He lay there waiting for the pain to kick in, looking upward at the edge of the roof where Itazura now stood, looking down at him.

Itazura smiled, then swung his sword down toward the surface of the roof like a golfer trying to get a good shot off the first tee, and the next thing Gash knew there was his sword, sailing out into the air, and all he could think was:
I can't move, I can't move, and the goddamn thing's coming right at me
—

—but Itazura had known what he was doing, knew exactly how much pressure to apply, what arc to aim for, and when the sword came down it landed three feet to Gash's left side.

“And it was just getting interesting,” said Itazura, shaking his head.

Gash felt the sensation returning to his body and looked down to see if he could move his legs, and it was the sweetest thing he'd ever seen, that little twitch of his foot, because that meant that his spinal cord was okay, he wouldn't end up in a wheelchair or sitting on a corner with a tin can begging for pity-coin from passersby, and he tried to grab his sword but his shoulder blade made it clear to him that it wasn't a good idea right now—at least there were no broken bones, just a lot of cuts and bruises and—oh, yeah—pain, mustn't forget about that—so all he could do was look up at his opponent and scream, “This isn't finished yet! You hear, motherfucker?
I'll get you, I swear I'll bleed you like a hog, YOU HEAR ME?
”

Above him, Itazura gave a two-fingered salute and said, “Look forward to it.”

Then turned and ran back, leaving Gash alone on the roof with his disgrace and pain and crippling, crushing fury.

“I'll cut you into a thousand pieces, Mary! You hear me? You're dead! I'm talking to a dead man! A DEAD MAAAAAAAAAAANNNNNNN!”

But there was only the echo of his voice for an answer. . . .

In the alley, most of the Stompers had either been knocked senseless or had undergone an attack of common sense and run away to regroup.

One group of robots had managed to knock over a truck and scatter into the night, but the majority of them had been herded into the sewer by Stonewall and Psy–4 while Radiant and Killaine kept watch for a second wave of attackers.

“Did anyone see where Itzy went?” called Radiant.

“He took off after one of the Stompers right after we got here,” said Psy–4.

“And you complain about
my
temper.” Killaine laughed.

Then Radiant held up her hands, signaling silence.

“What is it?” asked Stonewall.

“They're coming back. We only fought half of them. Others were waiting.”

As soon as she finished speaking, the rumbling roar of the next wave of Stompers came shooting toward them.

“Come on!” called Psy–4, pushing the last of the robots into the drain.

Killaine and Radiant followed right after.

Psy–4 reached into a small pack attached to his belt and removed two grenades.

“Move everyone down by the ladder and take cover,” he said.

Radiant grabbed his arm. “What the hell do you think you're doing?”

“I'm going to blow the entrance so the Stompers can't follow us in. Now will you please go with the rest?”

“No. I won't leave you here.”

“Radiant, I—”

“Shut up,” she snapped, grabbing one of the grenades from his grip.

Psy–4 began to say something, thought better of it, and touched her cheek. “Pull the pin and throw. We'll have three seconds before they blow.”

“Oh, good—a race! Betcha I win.”

“Oh, for the love of—”

His words cut off when he saw the figure suddenly drop down at the mouth of the drain.

Psy–4 immediately ran forward, drawing back his fist to deliver a crippling blow, if necessary, but at the same moment he struck out, the intruder spun around and danced past him.

“Yeah, I was worried about you, too,” said Itazura.

Psy–4 glared at him, shook his fist, then—despite himself—smiled.

And that's when the next mass of Stompers rounded the corner and came at them.

“Now!” shouted Psy–4.

Both he and Radiant pulled their pins.

Tossed the grenades at the mouth of the drain just as a Stomper readied a ShellBlaster.

Then the three of them ran like hell.

The grenades went off at the same time the ShellBlaster hit its mark, and the explosion was magnified to several times what it should have been, blasting pipe and concrete and water in all directions.

Psy–4, Radiant, and Itazura were less than halfway to the safe end of the tunnel when the blast hit them.

They flew the rest of the way.

When they hit the ground, all three of them were stunned into momentary unconsciousness.

The dust and debris was so thick in the sewer it might as well have been a deep-sea fog.

But when everything cleared, the work lights were still on—miraculously enough—and the three of them were a bit shaken but mostly unharmed.

“Damn,” said Radiant through a series of coughs. “I broke a nail.”

“Will the suffering never end?” said Itazura.

“Come on,” snapped Psy–4, rising to his feet and dusting himself off. “Let's go see how the others are.”

They had just reached the safe area when, from above them, somewhere past the top of the ladder, the echo of an inhumanly pained scream came crashing down. . . .

Rudy forced his temple up against the Doc's cheek, slowly maneuvering his head so that he could sink his teeth into some soft part of the man's face.

Zac drew his head back for another butt but Rudy craned his neck to keep their heads together. Underneath him Rudy's hand scrambled for a hold on his wrist, so Zac jerked his body into an upward arch and brought his right knee up into Rudy's groin at exactly the same time Rudy brought his left knee up into Zac's, and the two of them connected with much less force than they had hoped and only managed to entangle themselves worse than before.

And Rudy's fingers found the Doc's wrist.

And Rudy pressed his nose and chin into skin.

And Rudy pulled his lower jaw down until he could feel his teeth touching soft, soft flesh. Then he latched on with all he had.

There was a mad, intense, electrifying, hysterical, almost erotic glee to it—biting into human flesh! Bite, bite, bite! Glee and hatred and revenge and power!

Zac screamed in agony, his body jolting in brutal jerks, a great fish electrocuted by the searing pain of the barb.

Rudy brought his knee up once again, harder than before, and felt DocScrap crumple when he connected.

Zac fell off the kid but the punk's teeth remained embedded deep in his wrist.

Then Singer was there, his large metal hands gripping the back of the punk's jacket and lifting him up from the floor.

But Rudy's teeth wouldn't let go.

Zac thrashed, howling, and managed to get a grip on one of the punk's guns.

Rudy was laughing through the blood.

Singer kept pulling the kid back.

And Zac swung up with as much force as he could rally from the fog of pain, slamming the side of the gun into the kid's head; once, twice, three times.

Rudy's teeth let go after number three.

Singer turned around and lay Rudy on the floor, then turned his attention to Zac.

That's when Rudy rose from the floor, his bandages soaked in blood, and stumble-ran down the hallway until he came to one of the few windows in the building that wasn't covered by iron bars or wire mesh from outside.

He ripped off his jacket and wrapped it around his arm, then slammed it through the glass, kicked away the remaining shards, and perched there like a bird readying for flight.

It was a good twenty-foot drop.

But he'd lucked out.

Here in Cemetery Ridge, trash piles were as common as concrete, and there was a doozy of a heap just to his right, so he crawled out onto the too-narrow ledge and began to swing, one, two, three—and threw himself down toward the garbage.

He hit with a sickening
whumpf!
and was immediately covered in rotted food, newspapers, and assorted other foul-smelling things that he decided he'd rather not study too closely.

It took him a moment to crawl out of the filth, but once he was free he didn't bother to look back, he just ran, his peripheral vision quickly memorizing a handful of nearby landmarks.

This wasn't finished.

He'd be back.

And next time, he'd carry serious hardware for the job.

Feeling not the least bit discouraged, he ran on. . . .

Killaine was trying to get Zac to sit still, but he was far too agitated to comply with her wishes.

“I want everything ready to move out of here as soon as possible.”

“Don't you think you're overreacting a bit?” asked Killaine.

“One of the Stompers found his way in here! If one of them can do it, the others can.”

“They won't be coming in through the sewer,” said Psy–4. “We pretty much trashed the entrance.”

“But the kid knows where we are now!” snapped Zac. “How long do you think it'll take him to round up his cronies and come back?”

Killaine shook her head. “I don't think he will.”

“Why's that?”

“Because I caught a glimpse of him right before he jumped. That was our initiate from earlier.”

Itazura glared at her. “If you were close enough to recognize him, why the hell didn't you
go after and grab him?
”

“Because I decided that it was more important to see if Zachary was all right. You're certainly not going to tell me that my concern was misplaced, are you?”

“. . . no, guess not . . .”

Zac touched Killaine's hand. “You sure it was him?”

“Yes. So if he was up here trying to get you, that means he isn't in yet, so the other Stompers won't help him—it's part of their twisted little code of honor. An initiate has to prove he or she can survive on their own. Until he accomplishes what he set out to do, he's alone.”

“
Very
alone,” added Stonewall.

“I think we'll be safe here for a few more days, at least,” said Psy–4. “But just to be safe, Stoner and I will triple-enforce the downstairs doors. We've been stockpiling steel sheets just in case something like this happened.”

Zac winced as Killaine began cleaning the wound. “Do whatever you have to to protect us here until we can move to the backup location. We
are
moving. We haven't lasted this long by taking unnecessary risks and I'm not partial to starting now.”

 

In the now-empty restricted area of the main lab, Sam Preston sat before a massive computer console, staring through the glass partition that physically separated all the technicians from the mainframe. He tried not to think about the bodies up in his office, or the pain in his body, or the moments ticking away from his life.

And not only
his.

He stared at the glass container atop the system.

He stared at the electrodes and monitoring wires and cables that ran into the container, snaking through the mixture of neural fluid and liquid lambda to reach their target.

And so he stared at the small robotic brain that was the center of the system.

He reached down, flipped a switch, and brought the brain online.

“Hello, Roy,” he whispered to it through a cloud of pain.

Within the system, the child whispered,
Hello, Daddy.

My son
, thought Preston.
My good, fine boy. Can you ever forgive me?

Then he did the damnedest thing.

He started to cry.

 

A thousand miles away, Annabelle Donohoe sat in her darkened office, gently fondling the locket around her neck.

After a moment, she reached behind her neck and unhooked the clasp on the gold chain.

She turned the locket over in her hands and pressed the small catch.

The locket opened.

She stared wistfully at the two small photographs contained within.

The one on the left was of her holding a newborn baby.

The one on the right was of that baby as he'd looked as a boy on his fourth birthday.

Three months before he'd died.

“Oh, Roy,” she whispered. “My son, my good boy.”

Then thought:
I'll get him for what he did to you.

And the damnedest thing happened then.

She began to cry.

 

Killaine placed her hand defiantly upon her hips and glared at Zac. “I'd rather not be the one to leave here today, especially not after last night.”

Zac rubbed his eyes with his good hand, winced at the pain in his other, heavily bandaged hand, and sighed. “Killaine, I don't quite know how to put this to you, but . . .”

“But what?”

“Look, you were an immeasurable help to me last night. You probably saved my hand.”

“One of us had to learn how to apply our medical programming. I only wish we'd had more supplies in the first-aid kit to—”

Zac held up his bandaged hand. “You did wonderfully, Killaine. Really, you did. And I was very impressed with the way you handled yourself in the sewer this morning. The robots were pretty shaken up by what happened, and you were . . . well, surprisingly pleasant to them during the repair process, and I appreciate that.”

She began impatiently tapping her foot. “Yes . . .?”

“Did I forget to mention how delicious breakfast was?”

“No. In fact, Zachary, that's the
third
time you've said something about it.”