“What in the hell…” Selene mumbled, while a message appeared on the blank screen a letter at a time, as if being typed by invisible hands.
Y-O-U C-A-N N-O-T S-H-O-O-T -A- T-H-O-U-G-H-T
The message was lost when Chris crushed the monitor in a fist of white knuckles. An icy wind blew through the souls of the five that’d been there that day. It was not just Chris, but each of them that saw Grendal and the Squire in their minds’ eyes now.
“Was that Machaeus as well?” said Tim to DA-Vos.
“It must be. If it can control Squires both with and without a personality matrix, perhaps it can control other machines as well?” DA-Vos supposed.
“How… how could it know?” rumbled Gendric.
“How could it hack an entire Precinct?” countered Chris, “Who cares? The important thing is, Tim is going to fry it.”
“Right,” Tim gulped, staring at the crumpled computer. “What about the girl?”
“I can get us to her,” said DA-Vos. Chris turned to the machine, wild-eyed. “I can still hear Machaeus. I know where they are bringing her, though not why.” Chris and his unit looked to one another in silent council.
“It’s as good a lead as any,” Morgan supposed.
“Let’s start with where, DA-Vos,” said Chris, “We’ll leave the why until after we shut Machaeus up for good.” DA-Vos gave a lavender nod.
On the way, Tim had plenty of questions for the most conflicted, confused of all Squires. At every turn, he stretched the limits of DA-Vos’ developing emotions and logic. With each response, Chris’ brow darkened in suspicion.
“Hey,” Selene slapped the Major General’s back. “Let up, would you? The thing’s not going to bleed, no matter how much you cut into it.”
Chapter Seven: Survivors
“They’re bringing her to a warehouse?” said Lee, rifled up along with the rest of the unit.
“No. But we can flank them if we cut through it,” DA-Vos explained.
“Clever,” Chris whispered. He stared down the iron neck of his M16 through a massive garage door to a long hall of crates.
“He was a police model,” said Finch, with Chris’ dad’s revolver pointed forward. He had laughed the gun off as a joke, until he heard an abridged version of the time it saved all of their lives. Besides, it felt ludicrous to wander the vacant alleys of Shanghai unarmed, with homicidal Squires on the loose.
Chris and the others fell silent the moment they passed under the raised warehouse shutters. The soft echo of their rolling steps was sound enough. Even DA-Vos picked up on the tension. His feet morphed to sound absorbent arches. The eight spread to hug the walls, for the cover of countless steel crates, but froze midway. A clang cemented their boots to the ground. Chris wheeled just in time to see a glossy metal snake drop the massive safety pin it’d pulled from the shutters. The dark snake slithered back whence it came, behind the crates. The shutters dropped. A second clang called all eyes forward again- the drop of the shutters on the opposite end of the warehouse. They were sealed inside. Chris jerked at DA-Vos, rifle at his head.
“You led us here! To them!” he screamed. His finger inched back on his hot steel trigger. Yellow and blue rippled through DA-Vos’ face.
“I did not know! I sensed no other Squires in here!” DA-Vos insisted. He raised no defense, even with Chris’ bullets half an inch from impacting his face. Finch shoved Chris’ barrel away, but it was Tim that stopped him from bringing it back. He sent out a shaking, bandaged finger at something behind the others.
“That’s because there weren’t any Squires in here a minute ago,” said Tim, numb.
Chris, DA-Vos, Finch, and the rest turned to what looked like a black sheet of water spreading across the floor. By the time they realized what it was, it spread from wall to wall. The black tide fractured into eight masses and arose as man-shaped frames. They were Squires, their arms Fusion barrels, by the time Chris and his unit got their own weapons up.
“Fire!” Chris bellowed, yet he was the only one who did.
The thunderous hammer of his M16 chipped away at the nanocomputers of one Squire’s crimson face. He held back the trigger until the hanging lights overhead glinted off the blackbox inside. No Fusion rays came from his allies. Chris glanced to Gendric at his side, whose finger fluttered across his trigger. His gun wouldn’t fire. A single Fusion bolt from the red Squires seared through Gendric’s skull like butter. Hs body collapsed in a lifeless heap. The next shot was from DA-Vos, whose Fusion arm was still functional. He melted the blackbox of the Squire offender. Its body dissolved to an anthill of nanocomputers.
“Gendric…” Morgan knelt by him, fingers trembling at the cauterized window through his forehead. She tried her own trigger again, to yet another useless click. A Fusion bolt jumped right through the shoulder of her armored jacket, flesh, and the floor behind her. She fell on her back, and shuffled behind a crate. Her dragon-covered arm hung by a ligament thread. There was more steam than blood from the wound. Chris yanked Tim behind the same crate with him, while the others took cover on the other side of the warehouse.
“Machaeus is blocking your Fusion-tech!” DA-Vos shouted. Chris wasn’t convinced it wasn’t DA-Vos himself, especially with his own continued ability to fire. Even if it was a sham, though, he couldn’t afford to lose another gun.
“Finch. Focus on breaking down the outer shell around their blackboxes. DA-Vos, finish the job. Everyone else, wait back here until they close in. Your rifles make good clubs. Swing hard,” Chris issued, the mission taking over. When he peeked around the crates to fire, he caught a glimpse of Gendric. His pupils shrunk inside a blazing white halo. “They’ve taken too much already.”
But, when everyone carried out the formation, nothing was so coordinated as it sounded. Tim’s sweaty back slid down the steel crate behind him. The metal stung cold through his shirt. He clung to that sharp feeling to keep from screaming, while blood, light, smoke, and death spiraled around him. Chris unloaded his rifle to open a path for DA-Vos’ Fusion ray. Finch nailed the same red Squire six times before a bolt from DA-Vos’ arm-rifle finished it. Fusion beams seared through the crate around Tim, some close enough to scald his sleeve.
Across the warehouse, Selene buckled at the waist when a bolt smoldered a hole through her. She fell on her knees just before a black wave rolled behind her. It rose to the form of a body. Selene couldn’t manage so much as a scream before her head atomized at the end of the red Squire’s Fusion barrel. Lee swung out his rifle at its head with a mourning war cry. The Squire caught the strike with its dark arm. DA-Vos struggled to get a clear shot at it, until its glossy spear ripped through Lee’s back. DA-Vos unleashed burning hell from both arm-rifles. The killer’s blackbox singed to nothing.