The group stepped through the opened doors. Ratcatcher tensed, expecting an ambush. A turret on a wall, a sudden leap of a machine bot, maybe a hidden mine. But as the drones made a fly by across the room, Elina gestured that everything was safe, and the girl relaxed a bit. Compared to the spacious hall before, this room looked smallish. The floor was covered with bone dust and the mummified remains of a few insectoids, occasionally lit by a spark of electricity from the torn chords hanging from the ceiling. The narrow walls bore both cracks and scratches, some more recent than others. Ratcatcher’s eyes picked up a few used shell casings on the floor. She picked one and let the ‘system analyzer’ in her armor make a judgment. Whoever was shooting here, it’s been years since that casing was fired.
Their target rested on a table on the other side of the room, illuminating the area around it with a reddish glow. The ‘artifact’ was made in the shape of a cone, showing its insides through a transparent screen.
“A lamp…” Vasily said it in a dead tone. “A freaking lava lamp.”
“We came all the way for this?” Carlos asked. “I could’ve bought a hundred damn things in a nearby mall! Hell, I think they are being sold even in these boondocks!”
“It’s not even a good one,” Esmeralda added, sending everyone the logo painted on the lamp. “Clinkers are known for their crappy plastic cases. Look, there’s already a tiny splinter at the bottom.”
“Hey, a prize is a prize.” Ratcatcher shook her shoulders, and the armor gave a whine, trying to replicate the movement. “Let’s be positive. At least this thing is compact.”
“Cut the chatter, people!” Elina snapped and moved toward the goal. “Keep a watch on your surroundings. Vasily, Eliza, with me.”
Ratcatcher obediently followed the leader, watching her back. They passed through several tables that had seen better days. Most of them have been broken by now, either by scavengers or the parasites that occasionally sneak into the base. The remains of a few broken terminals littered the floor, and Ratcatcher heard a display crack beneath her heavy foot. But most terminals had been taken away, no doubt sold either to museums or to the highest bidder.
Still worried about any possible trap, Ratcatcher lowered herself to all fours, using the sensors in her hands to check the surroundings as Elina took the lava lamp. She heard it. The scraping of sand against the metal fingers. The trainee zoomed in on the sand just to be sure that she didn’t imagine things when Edward groaned.
The boy fell on one knee, holding a hand against his helmet. His loud breathing made Elina and the others turn around. Rowen was already on his knees near him, and Jumail loomed over his comrade from behind.
“Edward!” His sister cried out.
“Esmi…” the boy breathed out. “Limit your zone, now! Grngh…” He grabbed Rowen with a trembling hand and tried to stand up. “Everyone, something is coming! Rage, nothing but hatred and fury!”
The room shook, and Ratcatcher found herself being flipped on the back. Elina flew over her, and the girl’s body was sent away when something broke the floor beneath her legs, lifting pointy shards of broken metal and stone upward. Vasily caught them, heaving his teammates back on their legs when another surge of shaking came, shattering the entire wall. Ratcatcher’s eyes widened upon seeing a three-fingered clawed hand emerging from beneath the ground.
It reached all the way to the ceiling, biting into the metal and pushing, helping the massive body climb out of the underground, widening the hole with a violent twitching of mighty shoulders. The machine that came out of the hole had an egg-shaped torso, with overlapping armor covering the center of its torso. With column-like limbs, it helped its body climb first on its knees, then stand at full height, scraping the ceiling. Try as she might, Ratcatcher could not see any joints on the machine; its legs and arms were solid shells made of a strange alloy that allowed the mechanisms inside to bend and move as freely as they pleased.
“What… what the hell is this?” Elina asked with a trembling voice. “There is no data on such bots in my HUD!”
The machine stood stationary for a few long moments, only its fingers spasmed incessantly. Vasily spread his arms wide, forcing Elina and Ratcatcher to retreat slowly, step by step. The girl tensed, listening to the warnings of her own power armor. This silently standing piece of metal was scanning them. She returned the favor, feeling the cold sweat running down her spine. Nothing. Elina spoke truthfully. The HUD gave her the machine’s size but failed to provide any information about alloy, speed, or behavior patterns. The electromagnetic waves coming from her suit washed over the machine, failing to penetrate and scan its interior.
Esmeralda had helped her brother stand up and released the drones, giving everyone an omnidirectional view of the machine.
“Three escaped bioweapons,” the robot thundered in an emotionless voice. “Return to your cells or face annihilation. Civil rights protesters. The Ibis Company respects your desire to express yourself, but reminds you that we operate in full compliance with the law. Please surrender your weapons; the security teams will be here pronto. Please comply, and no one will be harmed.”
“A mere robot!” Vasily laughed, pushing both girls back. “Stay back, everyone; the professional will take care of it.” He waved his hand at the mech. “Bow.”
The machine shifted, facing the boy. Vasily’s icon flashed and disappeared from the HUD, turning black. His backpack and the rest of the armor went silent, the atomic spark within it extinguished by the emergency shutdown. And the flying drones fell lifelessly to the ground like leaves from a tree.
“It… it just hacked me!” Vasily cried out, his voice muffled inside the helmet, and the boy himself struggled to move, locked in place by the massive weight of his armor. “The damn thing has overridden the operational system, forcing it to start a full reboot!”
“Unauthorized access detected. Self-defense directives are active,” the mechanical voice boomed. “Have a nice hunt, officer.”
“Get away from me! Run! For God’s sake, just run!” Vasily shouted in panic to the approaching Elina and Ratcatcher.
“FREAKS!” The voice coming from the robot’s speakers no longer sounded mechanical. It was a trembling male voice, the voice of a tormented person; his scream was a mix of pure anguish, panic, and hate. So much hate. Directed at them.
The machine’s left arm moved, making a full sweep and ripping chunks out of the ceiling with its clawed fingers. Ratcatcher jumped forward, ignoring Vasily’s cries, and pulled the boy back, finding Elina right next to her. But they were too late. The arm moved downward with a speed far greater than could be expected from such a massive body.
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Before the claws could’ve ripped the group into pieces, a figure landed before them, taking a swing on the sabers. The force behind the blow exploded the sand beneath the legs of their savior, pushing him deep into the web of cracks spreading around the legs encased in the suit of biological armor. Instructor Augustus groaned, struggling to hold against the might of his foe.
“Retreat!” Augustus commanded and kicked back, sending Vasily and the girls back.
His opponent used this very moment to make a swing with another hand, pushing Augustus on one knee with his left. Ratcatcher yelled a warning, seeing the swipe aimed at the instructor’s exposed side, when Jumail rushed past them, stopping the attack with four of his front limbs. With a click of his mandibles, the Malformed pried the arm up, moving the claws away from the man.
“Play with someone your own size,” Jumail advised, pushing the machine’s arm aside.
He struck. It was only then that Ratcatcher realized just how fast this boy could be. For all his massive size, his limbs turned into a blur; the claws at the end of each of his limbs slammed against the metal corpus, filling the room with a tingling sound. The speed behind his thrusts pushed some of the sand and dead insectoids to the walls. His non-stop attacks reminded Ratcatcher of the workings of an industrial drill, only this drill had numerous tips and never lingered at one point. It covered the mech’s body with the blows, trying to find a weak spot or tear out the metal plate, opening the vulnerable mechanical workings inside.
And it was useless. The machine stumbled for a second, still pinning Augustus to the ground. Then it kicked, rocking Jumail’s head against the ceiling and shattering one of his mandibles. It followed up with an upward swing, goring the more vulnerable underbelly with the claws, and Ratcatcher heard Jumail scream. Blue ichor got spilled on the ceiling, falling in an arc down on the trainees, along with the humanoid arms and pieces of Jumail’s chitin. Ratcatcher caught one of the arms, letting go of it after it twitched.
“Screw you!” Ratcatcher shouted nervously after their opponent moved his arm, reaching out to the Malformed who fell on his back. “Rowen!”
“On it!” The boy responded through his teeth, and the arm slowed down. But didn’t stop, despite the boy’s telekinesis.
She was ready to rush forward. Ratcatcher knew that it was a certain death; she knew that her fists wouldn’t leave even a dent on the steel body, but she refused to stay here and see Jumail die. Truth be told, even now she was afraid of Jumail. The boy reminded her of the spiders a little too much. But none of it mattered now. He had friends and family, and she will never abandon her comrades. No matter the cost.
“Eliza, throw me!” Elina grabbed Ratcatcher by the shoulder, stopping the girl.
Without thinking, the girl obeyed, grabbing the leader by the waist and throwing her at the machine. She started asking what the hell she was planning next, only to have Carlos yank her back while Edward and Esmeralda helped Vasily move to the corridor. The boy’s armor slowly came back to life, and his backpack started humming once more.
Elina bounced off the machine, landing on the ground with her hands tightly clasped together. Giving out a wordless cry, Elina released the grip, unleashing the shockwave, which made even Ratcatcher tremble. The sound disappeared for a second, and tables and corpses turned into dust, splattering against the walls. The mech itself got thrown back, losing its hold on the Augustus, and Elina moved backward, propelled by her own shockwave. With her back against Jumail’s body, she moved the shocked trainee back to the entrance. Ratcatcher and Carlos moved to help Jumail stand up. The machine ended up falling into the hole it had made before, grabbing the floor with two arms and struggling to climb back as another shockwave unleashed by Elina collapsed a piece of the ceiling on top of it.
“I am… fine,” Jumail groaned, turning on his belly. Part of his broken mandible fell to the ground. He pushed the trembling Elina away with one leg. “It’s not mortal. I heal far faster than you.”
“Fine, my ass!” Rowen shouted. “Your bloody arms went…”
“Eh, that’s just a beard,” Jumail said, turning around with the intention of attacking the machine again. “Big deal. Take the instructor and…”
“Fall back to the Titans. That is an order, trainees.” Augustus said in a tone that left no room for argument. He swung his sabers, checking them for damage. “I will hold it here.”
“Instructor!” Edward stepped forward. “There is a brain inside of this cannister! Or something biological! This thing is…”
“FREAKS! MUTANTS! EXTERMINATE!” The robot broke through the rubble. “ELIMINATE! ANNIHILATE!”
Augustus sidestepped the kick aimed at his face, bringing both of his blades against the armored corpus. They rebounded, not leaving even a scratch, and Augustus retreated again, the machine arm slamming down into the ground, sending ripples through the metal floor. It attacked again, swinging madly and leaving craters against the walls as Augustus weaved around it like a streak of darkness, creating sparks with every strike.
It was the first time Ratcatcher had ever seen the instructor go all out, and she found it a striking difference from the way he usually deliberately limited himself during training. Augustus always invited the entire group to test their skills against him at the end of a sparring session. When he taught them about grappling, he would mostly use wide swings to help them put the new knowledge into practice. When he taught them how to dodge properly, he would always end the lesson with a hail of never-ending punches, leaving each student drenched in sweat from their efforts. Quite often he would mix several styles, teaching his students how to adapt on the fly, and if anyone had managed to beat him during the training, Augustus would take the entire group out for a celebratory feast. Such things were rare, but that made them all the more memorable because the instructor paid for everything.
And now the man was unleashed, fighting with cold clarity and the intent to kill. His precise footwork carried him away from the deadly swings. His own thrusts and slashes filled the view with blur, overloading the lenses through sheer speed. The instructor no longer tried to block the swings of his enemy, rather using the full might behind his blows to deflect incoming steel arms aside just by a few centimeters and escape the cruel claws. Seeing him move like this filled Ratcatcher with hope. If he can keep up, then surely the other trainers will arrive and help. No way can this piece of junk catch him at this rate!
And the machine came to the same opinion. It stomped, breaking a large portion of the floor. Augustus’ retreat ended up being stopped by a stone rising behind his back. The cyborg grabbed the instructor by the shoulders, slamming him against the wall. And kneed him into the wall again, breaking the sabers and creating a crater the size of several meters.
“Instructor!” Ratcatcher had made an attempt to rush to his aid when Elina grabbed her by the shoulder. “We have to…”
“Run!” Elina dragged her away. “This bastard wants you!”
“Me?” Ratcatcher asked in shock, forgetting to resist for a moment.
“Not you specifically. Vasily, Jumail, and you. You heard its babbling about freaks and protesters, right? I think it is some sort of malfunctioning AI mistaking us for a lab rat or something,” Elina stammered, forcing Ratcatcher to go before herself. “Please, please trust me. If we stay and fight, it will kill the instructor. But if we run, it might leave him and follow us!”
She looked at the others. Esmeralda had picked up the lava lamp, only now noticing that she had it in her hand. Jumail struggled to break from Rowen’s telekinetic hold and rush to help. Carlos came closer to the Malformed and whispered something to him, making the teen sigh and obey. Elina was right, and Ratcatcher knew it. If they stay here, this thing will kill him. She forced herself to run with the group, throwing one last glance back.
The claws kept hitting Augustus, rending extensive tracks across his power armor. The instructor tried to reach out for his sabers, only for the claws to close on his right arm. With a disgusting twist, both armor and arm got broken; a twist tore the bio-muscles and natural muscles, and a push tore Augustus’ arm clean at his shoulder, flinging the separated limb after the trainees. After kicking the man one last time into the wall, the mech turned and charged after the group, speeding up across the corridor. Its shoulders tore through walls, collapsing the corridor behind him as the machine started gaining on the trainees.
There was no longer any other option but to run. Ratcatcher grabbed Edward and Vasily, speeding up ahead as Elina and Carlos did the same with Esmeralda and Rowen.