GRAND CENTRAL MALL

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They were greeted with a stairway inside the building, and Will rushed up the steps. Scout stirred in his arms, and he let the little bot down, who scrambled up the stairs alongside Remy and Rebecca.

A crack of thunder came from behind them, and Will saw the back door being blasted into fragments. The two bots came scrambling behind them, lasers streaming from their mouths.

Red light filled his eyes before Will ducked low over the stairs. Bits of the metal railing got blasted into slag, and the wall above them was scorched black.

"Shit!" Will cursed, and the trio ran up the stairs, ducking low.

Even more intense combat sounded from below as the bots made their way up the stairs. They were fighting each other as much as they were hunting the three of them. Will scrambled up the stairs on all fours, dodging errant lasers the bots fired at each other.

Another blast brushed past their heads. Will gritted his teeth and rammed into the very first stairway door he spotted. The trio broke into the back rooms of the mall's first floor. They raced past utility rooms and offices and made it to the mall proper.

Behind them, the bots were closing in, the sound of their pounding robot limbs growing ever closer.

Will looked around frantically. "Come on, come on. It has to be around here somewhere."

"What's the plan, Will?" Remy panted beside him.

"We need a map," said Will as he scanned the mall aisle.

Rebecca, too winded to speak, frantically pointed to the side, and Will spotted an information kiosk. On a podium was a map of the entire mall.

"Yes!" Will angled his helmet and took a few quick photographs as he ran past it. The suit processed the data, and a map displayed on his visor. An icon flashed on the first floor, displaying his location with the caption - "You are here."

With a few quick eye commands, Will sent the map over to Remy and Rebecca. "Look for the nearest exit next to the subway."

The mall was right next to where they had climbed out of the subway. They just had to make it there before the bots caught up to them.

Laser light flew over their heads, and one of the shop's signs exploded in a shower of sparks.

"Damn! This way, hurry!"

They ducked into a supermarket and ran through a maze of shelves. Even hidden amongst the Domestic supply aisle, there was no mistaking the metallic footfalls of the two hunter bots. They knocked aside shelves and display racks as they searched for them.

Laser light bloomed once again as they fired into the ceiling. Tiles fell from above along with ducts and insulation.

Will cursed and made a run for it before they were buried. The bots tracked them immediately and made a beeline for them. The trio zigzagged amongst the shelves as they tried to throw the bots off their tail. Shelves exploded around them as more laser light followed.

"I have it!" Remy exclaimed, and on Will's visor, the map updated, but this time with directions. They had to make it down from the first floor and then leg it all the way across the mall to the other side.

Two more lasers flew over their heads, and Remy cursed. "We need to lose them somehow. At this rate, they will get us before we reach the exit."

Will scanned the map as he ran. There had to be something that they could use. His eyes darted over a clothing shop.

"There." He marked the spot and sent the map to Remy and Becca.

"Ray-Rays?" asked Remy. "You thinking what I'm thinking?"

"Yeah, get the program ready," gasped Will. His head pounded, and his heart was beating out of his chest. His spine tingled, and the familiar ache was spreading from his right knee. Will gritted his teeth and willed his body to move. He knew what was coming. He had to hold on just a bit longer.

Laser light flew over their heads and struck the ceiling again. More concrete and insulation rained down on them, and the trio ran out of the mart, covering their heads. Scout bounded beside them and had his rear cameras trained on the enemy bots. More explosions shook the mart as the bots fired at each other.

They ran up the mall aisle and followed the map on their HUD. Their location got updated as they moved.

"Here!" yelled Remy, and they turned around a corner and ran into Ray-Rays. The large clothing store was of the high-end variety, and expensive clothes were displayed prominently on the mannequins.

They ran through the kids' section, and racks of clothing were lined up. Will pushed past the clothes and made his way deeper into the shop.

"To the back!" yelled Will. "That's where the most expensive ones will be."

"What are we doing here?" asked Rebecca breathlessly. "Where are we going?"

"We are going to try a VDoS attack," said Remy. "Confuse the visual processors and crash the droids."

"It throws them into a logic doom loop," continued Will. "Anything that lights up or has a display would do."

"Then what the hell lights up in a clothes shop?" asked Rebecca when she spotted a garish pantsuit with mirror-like bling attached to the fabric.

"Oh..." said Rebecca, remembering the fashion decades past where there was a penchant for adding lights to clothing.

"This is your plan?" asked Rebecca. "Even if you find one, it's probably ruined after all these years."

"Keep your fingers crossed that at least one of them has a subspace weave in them," said Will as they ran to the back end of the store.

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"Watch out, they have caught up to us!" yelled Remy. Will glanced at Scout's camera feed, and the two hunter bots were hot on their heels. The spiderling jumped and skittered between the clothing racks while the coyote just bulldozed its way through. It opened its maw, and red light gathered once again.

"Duck!" Will yelled, and the laser came fast and quick. It nearly took their heads off, and clothes started to burn. The three kept their heads low as they grabbed as many blinged-up clothes as they could.

Will powered up his suit's external field and crudely ran it over the clothes.

"Dud, dud, dud," Will muttered as he ran. Most of the clothes stayed inert.

"This one is broken too," Remy tossed aside the rejected clothes.

Will passed his hand over the final set of clothes, and one of them lit up. "Yes!"

"Here!" Rebecca thrust out a jacket too, and Remy grabbed them. He began to program them while on the move, and Will dragged him along so that he wouldn't crash.

Remy quickly uploaded the code, and two jackets and one horrendous bell-bottoms lit up like neon signs in his hands.

"Done!" He tossed the two jackets to Rebecca and Will.

Another explosion rocked the shop as the bots closed the gap. The chittering of the spiderling got louder as it skittered closer.

Will took a running leap and hooked the jacket along with its hanger onto a large sign. As soon as the bots came into view, the jacket started playing a sequence of flashes. The spider paused for a scant few seconds before ignoring the errant piece of clothing. The coyote was a lot more direct and blasted the jacket off the sign.

Remy cursed and hung the bell-bottoms on a nearby rack, and Rebecca followed suit with her jacket. Both flashed violently enough to cause a seizure.

Two lasers arrived in answer, and Rebecca screamed as the red flash nearly took her arm off. The three ducked and ran through the shop with their heads bent low.

"Why is it not working?" Remy cursed.

Will glanced back at the two bots who seemed completely unaffected by their hacking attempt. This shouldn't have been possible.

Will gritted his teeth. "Tip the shelves."

Remy looked at the racks of clothing and the heavy shelves in the store and immediately understood. Both of them rammed their shoulders into a nearby shelf stand, and it toppled over. It crashed into the one behind it, which crashed into the next one, and soon there was a cascading row of shelves headed for the two drones.

Will watched with bated breath. The spiderling would be the first one to get buried. The coyote was further away, and it had every chance to take advantage of the situation and cripple the spider bot. This was the chance he had been waiting for. They had been helpless against two bots, but if one of them got taken out, then with Scout at his side, there was a chance of taking out the remaining one.

Through the video feed, Will saw the drones' cameras fixing their sights on them and the incoming shelves that were about to bury them. Judging by the speed and trajectory, there was no way for them to dodge this.

Just as they reached the shop exit, the bots' behavior changed. Despite their inhuman visage, Will sensed it. Both drones seemed to be considering their current damage levels and their escaping quarry. In a blink of an eye, their electronic brains ran through their decision trees and found their actions suboptimal.

The quarry must be captured. The quarry must not be captured by the enemy. The quarry must not escape.

The drones, in smooth synchronous movements, disengaged for a heartbeat before simultaneously firing at Will.

Will heard the dual ping of the lasers, and his world turned red before his vision was blocked by a grey metallic shell.

"Scout!"

The drone had shielded him from the blast. Scout was sent flying, and its upper shell was smoking. One of its legs got sheared off, and its hull was cracked open, but despite that, the robot still held strong. Shaking itself off, the drone rushed after them through the exit without missing a beat.

There was a loud boom behind them, and the drones got buried.

The trio stumbled out of the shop. The backwash of the lasers had their suit shields flickering, and Will could feel the lick of radiation on his skin. He rotated his own personal field and fended off the intrusion. Beside him, Remy gasped as he ran.

"They shrugged off the VDoS attack like it was nothing," said Remy. "This makes no sense."

Will bit his lip. Remy had been right. The VDoS didn't even faze the bots. This was not possible. Judging by their size and build, they shouldn't have an etherite cubit powerful enough to pull that off. Even if they wanted to install one, there just wasn't enough space for its shielding. And yet, the drones were far smarter than they had any right to be.

A feeling of dread crept up Will's spine. This was wrong. There was something definitely wrong.

"R3mY @!" Will began, but the coms were filled with static.

"Wh@t wa5 Th@t?!"

"Wh@ts g0in On?"

Remy froze and almost fell over. "Shit!"

He immediately bashed his suit to go into a hard reset, and a muffled voice came through his helmet. "They are trying to get into our coms!"

"Reset. Reset. Reset now!"

Will and Becca hard reset their suits too and immediately felt the radiation pour in.

"Shit!"

It stabbed into them like knives, and the cold seeped in. Thousands of ants crawled up his skin, and Will's field flared up to shield himself. He gritted his teeth, and his heart rate shot through the roof. As the cold dug into him, he felt his metal leg spasm.

"Oh, not right now, you damned thing!" Will cursed as they crashed through different shops.

"Which way are we going?" asked Rebecca, and Will realized that with the suit dead, they had also lost their map. He quickly recalled their path from memory and remembered that they had to go one level down right around the corner.

"This way!" he yelled. The trio raced around the bend, and they were about a hundred feet from the escalators leading down.

They ran down the aisle overlooking the central atrium. Over the edges of the first floor, large red banners hung down. Will glanced past the banners to try and recall the next step in the map, but the raking pain of his right knee kept him unfocused.

Every move was agony, and he could feel the radiation digging into him. It poked at him like a thousand relentless tiny blades. His skin bubbled and boiled over. Any second, he could lose control of his leg and become undone.

"Dammit, keep it together," he hissed.

Rebecca was not faring well either. "It's too quiet," she gasped. "Where are they?"

Will glanced around, and he too noticed the unnatural quiet. Did they lose them? The three of them had done quite a bit of damage to the bots, and they were already heavily damaged fighting each other. Hopefully, they had neutralized each other.

He could no longer hear the heavy footfalls of the drones, and the mall was practically a graveyard.

"What's going on?" asked Becca.

"It doesn't matter; we just have to get to the exit," said Will wildly.

"Wait, I hear something," said Becca. "Ahead of us!"

"No, it's from behind," said Remy.

Will strained his ears and listened. The faint sounds registered, and he exclaimed, "It's both! They are trying to box us in!"

Sure enough, the spiderling and the coyote were coming at them from different directions. They were trying to stop them from reaching the escalator.

It was the perfect pincer maneuver. While they were running headlessly while their suits were going haywire, the bots had been silently making their way towards the only exit out of the first floor.

"Damn tin cans are working together now?" Remy exclaimed.

Will couldn't believe this was possible. This kind of chain of thought required high-level thinking. A system that sophisticated couldn't possibly be housed by anything as small as the two bots, and yet here they were.

It was one thing to foil a VDoS attack, but a whole another thing to know when to work cooperatively with your enemies and know when to betray them. To be capable of this level of deception, to be this devious was not easy. There was no way, absolutely no way that an AI chip this sophisticated could be fit into such a small drone. What the hell was going on?

Will watched the two drones closing in on them balefully. They had them. Both of them wouldn't even need their lasers. They would rip them apart with their clamping jaws, and there was nothing they could do about it. They were trapped like rats, and the outcome was inevitable.

"We can't get past them," Remy echoed his thoughts.

"We jump," said Becca quietly.

"What?"

"We jump," said Becca, indicating the railing beside them. They were only one floor up. They could make it down, but would they be getting back up again? That was the question.

"Well, shit," said Remy.

Will and Remy shared a look. "We jump," said Remy.

"We jump," repeated Will. He scooped up Scout, and Remy followed. Both boys swung off of the second-story railing and jumped.