I froze, holding Leo’s lifeless body in my arms as the guards aimed their guns at my head. They stared at me, their eyes were wide with terror.

"Holy shit," the guard on the left said, a burly, middle-aged woman. Her hands shook as she held her gun at me, "How many of you are there?"

“How many?" I repeated. "Have you seen more robots like me? How many of them were there?"

I watched as the two guards exchanged a nervous look like they were unsure if they should talk. They seemed terrified, I doubted that they knew what I was, or even what Purkins was doing. Being a government contract it probably would have been top secret.

As I adjusted Leo's weight in my arms, the guards flinched, their fingers tightened on the gun's trigger.

"Woah, woah, let's not go getting all trigger-happy now..."

The guard on the right, a young man with hair swooping down in front of his face, finally spoke up. "Drop the body and put your hands on your head, please," he said, shaking so much he was starting to make me nervous.

"Don't say please," said the burly woman angrily at the young man as she slapped him upside the head, "it makes us look weak."

"Weak? We're staring at a giant 7-foot-tall robot, we are absurdly weak!" he replied, rubbing the back of his head where he had just been hit.

"Do not sass me, kid! You know what happens when you sass me..."

"I wasn't sassing you…"

"Why are they talking to each other like that?" asked Sheila, snapping me out of my trance of watching them bicker.

"I don't know," I whispered as they continued arguing.

They were arguing so much that they seemed to have forgotten all about me. I probably could have snuck off without them even noticing if it wasn't for the fact that they were standing in front of the door.

A third figure suddenly loomed behind them. A mountain of a man, easily as tall as me, but twice as broad, he squeezed through the doorway and into the light, his uniform stretched tight across his barrel chest.

"What in the Sam Hill is going on here?" His voice boomed, silencing the bickering duo.

The new guard's eyes locked onto me, then dropped to Leo's lifeless form in my arms. Unlike his colleagues, there wasn't a hint of fear in him.

"Well, well. Looks like we managed to catch ourselves one of the big kitties," he drawled, a smirk playing on his lips.

"Sir," the young guard, Tommy stammered, "We were just about to..."

"I'm sure you were," he said, cutting off Tommy as he strode forward, past the young guard. As he passed the woman his hand slipped down to the woman's ass and gave it a squeeze. The woman gave a sly smirk in response.

"Eww, gross," said Sheila.

I took a step back as he approached, my tail whipped wildly behind me.

"Now, kitty," the big guy said, his voice eerily calm, "why don't you put down your friend, turn around and put your hands behind your back.

"This is it, this is your chance!" said Sheila excitedly, "You're only one skill point away from leveling up your hand combat. Kick his butt!"

One point. He was a big guy, but I could take him, I'd taken on much worse in the last couple of hours.

"What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" The big guy said, chuckling at his own joke.

I took another step back as I carefully set Leo down on the ground. The bag of stims slipped off of his body, tumbling beside him. I looked up to see the guard's smirk widen as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs from a pocket on his belt.

I took my chance and lunged forward.

My metal fist connected with the guard's jaw making a loud CRACK sound. His head snapped back, but he didn't go down. Instead, he stumbled back a step, shaking his head like a pit bull that had just tasted a lemon.

"Oh, you're gonna regret that, kitty," he growled, spitting out a glob of blood before charging at me.

His fists swung about wildly with no strategy or precision. I ducked under his first fist and managed to land a solid blow to his gut.

"You did it!" yelled Sheila as 'Hand Combat +1' appeared below the XP bar. The XP bar filled up, all the way to the end before resetting and filling up a little more. I wasn't sure if it had done that before when I had reached level 2 but it seemed like the leftover XP had carried over into the next level. Finally, 'LEVEL 3' appeared in big bold text.

"Newt, look out!" yelled Sheila as the big guy's fists hammered down on my head, making my health drop to 610HP.

"Get him baby!" yelled the woman.

I squatted down, sweeping my leg out, and caught him behind the knees. He toppled over, hitting the ground with a thud that shook the room. But, before I had a chance to do anything else, he grabbed my leg and pulled it out from under me, sending me flying down to the ground with him.

We grappled on the ground, each of us occasionally getting a punch on the other. His punches felt like sledgehammers, even against my metal body. My health continued dropping, but luckily, I was faster, more agile. I managed to slip out of his grasp pretty easily and land a few quick jabs to his face.

"Shoot it! Shoot the damn thing!" The woman yelled.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Tommy raise his gun, his hands shook wildly. Tommy's finger tightened on the trigger…

BANG!

I braced myself, ready for the impact, but nothing.

Suddenly, the big guard let out a howl of pain. "You idiot!" He roared at Tommy as I looked over at him, the bullet had nicked the big guy's right shoulder.

"My baby!" yelled the woman as she ran over, past me, to the big guy.

I had leveled up, there was no reason to stick around. I needed to get the hell out of there. I scurried over to where Leo's body was, reaching for the bag of stims and pulling out the one that Sheila said was an adrenaline booster. With a quick jab, I injected it into my socket. The liquid disappeared into my body with a hiss, and the adrenaline hit me like rocket fuel mixed with an espresso. Everything around me felt like it had slowed down and I felt invincible. The big guard's eyes widened as I sprung to my feet.

This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.

"What the..." he started to say, but I was already moving.

I lifted up Leo's body, which now was incredibly light. I threw him over my shoulder with one hand as I picked up the bag of stims with the other. The woman and the big guy moved so slowly, like they were stuck in molasses and the kid looked like he was frozen solid. I ran straight past all of them, everything around me turned into a blur as I flew through the door and down the corridor. The adrenaline stim supercharged my robotic muscles, I was moving faster than I'd ever moved before, faster than anybody had probably ever moved before.

"Woah, slow down, I'm gonna throw up!" Sheila's voice chirped in my head.

"I can't!" I yelped, my feet barely touching the ground.

I tried to slow down, but my legs pumped like pistons with a mind of their own, carrying me forward at breakneck speeds.

Suddenly, I tripped over something on the ground. I was moving so fast, I couldn't stop. Leo slipped from my arms as I skidded and tumbled along the ground. I barreled straight through a wall, crashing into a desk as my health dropped down to 430hp.

"Well, that's one way to stop," said Sheila.

I took a deep breath, trying to calm myself as I sat up, very slowly. I looked at the bag of stims that I'd amazingly managed to hold onto. Luckily but also unluckily, two of the stims had broken. Leaving me with only one red health stim and one yellow XP stim, but it was better than nothing.

I focused on each movement as I stood up, taking deep breaths, trying to keep myself under control. I walked over to where Leo had fallen, his body looked unscathed from the tumble. I looked past him, seeing what I had tripped over. A man, a guard, lay sprawled out on the ground, dead. Behind him, four more bodies also lay on the ground, littered through the corridor, all covered in scratch marks. I'd only ever seen one dead body before, and it looked nothing like these.

"You've gotta go," yelled Sheila as the faint sound of footsteps grew louder.

I placed the stim bag on top of Leo's chest as I picked him up, cradling him back in my arms, and began jogging, keeping the pace as steady as I could. Eventually, I saw the foyer at the end of one of the corridors, sunlight shone through the giant windows. Making me realize I hadn't even thought about how long we had been in this hellscape, or if it was even the same day?

As my eyes adjusted to the sunlight I noticed a lot of people huddled around the outside of the building. Two more security guards were posted at the door, they drew their guns as soon as they saw me. Luckily, the door was open, so I focused on speeding up. Steadily, I increased my speed as I held Leo's body tight against me and dropped my head into my chest.

Even with my head tucked, the sunlight nearly blinded me as I burst through the door, feeling brighter than it had ever done before. I slowed down as I lifted my head, my eyes adapted to the daylight and I saw the faces of the people scattered around me as they made an impromptu path so that I didn't bowl them over. It was a chaotic mixture of screams and curiosity from the crowd. Some people ran for the hills, while others pulled out their phones trying to get evidence of the large humanoid-cat-robot.

I continued through the crowd, looking behind me, the guards were close behind. Their guns were held high in the sky so that they didn't shoot the crowd.

"Where are we going?" Sheila asked, her voice a mixture of fear and excitement.

I hadn't thought that far ahead. I would have headed to the main gate but that would probably have more guards covering it.

"The hole in the fence," I replied, seeing that as the only safe option.

"What hole?" she asked as I realized that had been in my old body, without Sheila. It felt weird to think about, like it was so long ago, a different lifetime.

"It's our way out," I said.

Bullets whizzed by as I broke free from the crowd. I sped up, back into a jog, which was still about twice as fast as the guards were running. A couple of bullets pinged off my metal skin, leaving small dents. I was bulletproof? Sort of…

It still hurt like a bitch, and my health bar still dropped, but they weren't lethal shots like they would have been to a human.

I ran through the facility, easily losing the guards. I looked around at the oddly shaped buildings, trying to figure out if any of them seemed familiar.

"Sheila, any chance you could get a map of this place?" I panted.

"I'm as lost as you are," she replied unsurprisingly.

"We came in through the east side, right? Or was it the west?" I muttered to myself, I would have given anything to have my brothers with me, even though they would have been rolling their eyes and laughing at how lost I was.

The hum of an engine grew louder in the distance. My feet skidded along the ground as I came to a stop. I turned around just in time to see a golf buggy with 'security' written in large bold letters on the front of it. Behind the wheel sat the female guard, with the big guard crammed in next to her and Tommy's little face stuck out, over their shoulders from the back seat.

"Shit," I muttered as I ducked behind a nearby building.

I peered around the corner of the building, watching as the buggy approached, the guards' heads swiveled left and right, looking for me.

"They're looking for us," Sheila chimed in.

"No kidding," I whispered back, as the adrenaline continued to surge through me.

"Any idea how long these stims last?" I asked.

"About 30 minutes."

"Right. And how long has it been since I took it?"

"Beats me," she replied like I had asked an impossible question.

I bit my tongue, fighting the urge to start an argument that would have just wasted time.

As the buggy rolled past, I ducked back behind the cover of the building. Right next to me stood a young woman who had managed to sneak up on me, a Gilgatech patch sewn onto her shirt. Her eyes were as wide as dinner plates, frozen in shock as she stared at me.

"Um, hi," I whispered, trying to sound as friendly and non-threatening as possible.

Her eyes darted from my face down to Leo's body and then back to my face. But still, she just stood there, unable to move anything but her eyes. The sound of the buggy's engine faded into the distance.

"Alrighty then, I think I'll head out," I said as I backed away, not taking my eyes off her.

"She's gonna scream," said Sheila, "You're gonna have to knock her out."

"I'm not going to knock her out!" I whispered to Sheila as I continued walking backward.

"Please don't scream," I pleaded as I turned around the corner of the building.

As soon as I had disappeared around the corner, out of her vision, she let out a god-awful scream.

"Told you," said Sheila.

"But I asked her not to," I said as I broke out into an all-out sprint, trying to get as far away from the scream as I could, the buildings blurred around me as I ran.

When I was far enough away, I slowed down back to a jog so that I could take a look around. I weaved between structures that all looked the same. I needed to get out of here, the adrenaline was still flowing through me, but I wasn't sure for how much longer.

"We've been here before," Sheila pointed out as we passed a building that to me, looked like every other weird building around it.

The whir of the engine returned. I quickly ducked behind another building, holding my breath as the buggy rolled past. But this time, they slowed to a stop right near where I was hiding.

"I swear, I saw something Sir," Tommy's voice drifted over.

"You better hope so this time!" the female guard barked.

I peeked around the corner, spotting the big guard and the woman coming right for me. The big guard grabbed a walkie off of his belt and raised it to his mouth.

"Udolf, are you back at the office?" said the big guard.

"Not yet, sir," replied a voice through the device.

"Well, you better hurry boy! You know what happens if you fail orders."

I backed up, sneaking around the building as quietly as possible. I wrapped the entire building, making my way back behind the security buggy.

I looked around but couldn't see anyone, so I ran straight for the buggy. As soon as I reached it I put Leo in the passenger seat, then jumped into the driver seat, jamming the stim bag between Leo's and my body.

I had forgotten how big I was now, luckily there was no roof so that wasn't an issue. What was an issue though were my legs.

I could barely squeeze them under the steering wheel, I felt around on the floor of the buggy, eventually finding the accelerator as I pressed it down with my foot. The buggy lunged forward with surprising speed, the tires squealed as we took off. I looked over to see the big guard and the woman as they turned to look at the buggy, shock etched onto their faces. I chuckled to myself as they disappeared into the distance behind us.

"That was awesome!" said Sheila.

"Not too ba…"

"Stop the vehicle!" a voice yelped from behind me.

I almost jumped out of my metal skin. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Tommy's wide-eyed face stared back at me, the gun in his hand pointed right at my head.

"Fuck," I muttered, as -$1 appeared in my vision.