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Eerie quiet fell over the western neighborhood as Germaine and Vic trudged back towards the dome on the horizon. A journey of ten minutes by tram was going to take over thirty on foot.

“Not a soul around,” Germaine mused.

That was for the best. Nobody to complain that they’d cut the power.

The walk back to the Futureplex was a slog, owning to the heavy pressure of ninety-percent humidity.

“Power’s back on. Dan seems to have flipped the circuits,” Soto said over the radio.

“The computers are booting up.” Miss Diaz’s voice could be heard over the radio.

Vic and Germaine picked up the pace. Rather than return through the garage, they walked to the tram stop on the wall’s outer perimeter. Stairs let them back up to the platform while a maintenance walkway allowed them to sneak back in on the fourth floor.

Trams remained stalled deep in the guts off this tunnel. They were forced to squeeze between each tram and the wall. Vic took the lead, and Germaine saw no reason not to let him. He’d lived here before, after all.

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Within, the Futureplex was aglow with neon splendor. Signage, once inert, was now illuminated a hazy purple, even moving around on hinges. Anything to catch the eye.

“Starting to look a lot like Vegas,” Germaine mused.

“Where?” Vic asked.

“Vegas? City with a bunch of casinos?”

“Ah, like Reno. Got movies about that place, back in Sevastopol.”

“Something like that.” Germaine stopped to get his bearings. “Reno’s where you go for a quick divorce. Or did, in my parent’s day.”

The radio crackled to life. Its signal was clear now that they were back under the dome.

“Get off the show floor.” Miss Diaz said, urgent.

“What’s that, over?” Germaine said into the radio.

There was a delay, as Soto grabbed the radio. “Hide. In. A Store.”

The avenue at the edge of International Boulevard was empty. Germaine looked about, confused.

Vic, however, glanced down the street, alert.

“Go west. Towards food court,” he said.

They stuck to the “sidewalk,” keeping low per Vic’s lead. A quick right brought them to the food court.

“Go into gift shop,” Vic said.

Germaine dived over the counter while Vic slid under a median. Together, they stared out from over the counter.

“What’re we looking for?” Germaine asked.

“Automated security.” Vic peered over the edge of a counter.

The store and the street beyond were still abandoned. Nothing stirred.

Something was moving about in the vents at their back.

“There’s something in the walls,” Germaine said.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

A grating sat loose near the floor. Germaine poked it open with his bolt-cutters. The grate fell with a clang. Within was that clerk from before.

“Now you’ve done it!” the clerk said. “For two years I’ve been coming in here, putting in hours to cheese the overtime sensors, clocking all my friends in, and heading home. Now you’ve gone and brought every security drone in the ‘Plex down on us!”

The clerk inched further back into the vent, just barely wide enough for a grown man to crawl through at a crouch.

“Where are you going?” Germaine said.

“Sticking to the vents. It’s the only safe route.” The clerk said.

“Hey! Get back here.”

But the clerk had already taken off. The sounds of scuffed knees against sheet metal echoing down the shaft receded into the distance.

“What’s got him spooked?”

Outside, the street was bleached red by a crimson floodlight. Twin beams scanned, independent of each other.

“Stay down,” Vic said.

A curved claw like a rake appeared at the doorway. The rake was welded to a pneumatic iron tube as thick as a girder, which was soon followed by a second, identical appendage.

Four elongated limbs appeared at the doorway. They were attached to a cylindrical drum, an over-long chassis of one of those sweeper bots. Welded to the top of the drum was an animatronics’ head devoid of fur and with wireframe ears. Bulbous bug-eyes changed hues to cast crimson searchlights. The automaton passed the gift shop. No inch of the street escaped its gaze.

The red hue receded as the automaton continued down the street.

Germaine turned to Vic. “Have you seen these things before?”

Vic shook his head. “They were human-sized, used for tourists in the old days.”

“Great.” Germaine reached for his gun. “Would you happen to know what their weakness is?”

Vic looked to Germaine, then back to the empty street. “They’ll attack on sight. Must investigate sounds at least. They respond slower.”

Oh, good. A relative silver lining.

“Germaine, respond. Over.”

It was Soto, over the radio.

“Are you seeing these things?” Germaine responded.

“Yes. We can see thirty of them from here. Where are you?”

“Food court.”

“Rodger.” A pause as their mission control got their bearings. “Go north. Due north, then turn towards the tower. You should be okay.”

Germaine kept a death-grip on his revolver.

“Alright, it’s a sprint.”

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The pair ran straight down the northernmost avenue. Only once did they have a quick fright – when another four-armed monstrosity scanned the road from a walkway directly above.

The pair walked in the shadows under the walkway, where the red light could not touch. The automaton paid no heed to their heavy footsteps.

A right turn left the control tower in sight. The road was clear, though distant rumbling of machinery betrayed the presence of other sentries in the wings.

The pair locked and barred the door behind them. The control room door remained ajar, and they gave Soto a fright when they ran through.

“What the hell are those!?” Germaine stammered.

“You’re back.” Miss Diaz was head-down, preoccupied with a computer.

“Power should’ve turned on,” Soto said. “Including the security systems, apparently.”

“Hey, Boss lady,” Germaine said. “What the hell are these things?”

“I was expecting mobile cameras, maybe an alarm and a motion sensor thrown on an animatronic.” Miss Diaz typed a bit, mostly talking to herself. “This… saves me the work of modifying the patrol bots for combat. Still, these numbers are a pittance. Have to activate the main garrison.”

From the observation deck, the crew could make out routes for every automaton currently in the field. Only three dozen or so were active at any given time; every twenty minutes the sentries would slink back behind a security office, to be instantly replaced by a fresh sentry. Battery life was the primary limitation with free-roaming automata.

Each bot scanned along a pre-programmed route. Pathfinding shouldn’t be too difficult amidst the static layout of the Futureplex’s streets. Just tell the bots when to patrol and maybe set up tokens to designate authorized personnel and let them go to town as automated bouncers.

Hell of a force multiplier, Germaine thought.

“These are only a skeleton crew. There should be a full garrison waiting in the walls,” Diaz said.

Then, as if they weren’t alone and unsupported, surrounded by killbots, Miss Diaz casually pressed the enter key. Red lights flickered green on a panel overlooking the windows.

“Upper floors are open,” she announced. “We need only to get up there and check. Elevators should take us there.”

“You still haven’t told us what the endgame is here,” Germaine said. “We’re not going to be able to haul any loot back to the airport with those things lurking around.”

Miss Diaz was already on her way to the door, only to be blocked by Germaine. Germaine’s gun pointed at Diaz, who was checked when Vic pulled out a surprise gun. Then Soto aimed a gun at Vic.

In an instant, it was a standoff.

“What are we doing here?” Soto asked, pulling out another gun.

“I have not lied about your payoff,” Miss Diaz said. “There are more valuable things than base scrap metal. The keys to the kingdom, for instance.”

“Keys to the,” Germaine stammered. “What? You want us to hold this place? The five of us?”

Miss Diaz waved Germaine off, dismissively. “If we can make it to Devereaux’s command center, we won’t have to.”

There was supposed to be another gun at their right flank, keeping Vic in check. Germaine became acutely aware that Dan was not on the scene. Ah, no matter; he’d catch up soon enough, surely…

Miss Diaz moved towards the door. “Perhaps we can continue this conversation on the twentieth floor.”

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