The circular drones sliced through the air with a barely-audible whirr as they flew. Despite their speed, Rush caught up to the speeding drones in a single bound. He was already sick of everyone screaming and running around, so Rush decided to resolve the problem as soon as possible. To that end, he jumped up and grabbed the first drone within reach.

No sooner had he grasped the drone than it sparked with electricity, sending a painful shock through his arm. His muscles tensed, and the armored gauntlet clamped down, crushing the drone before it could continue to shock him.

“They’re set to stun,” Rush said. He’d been electrocuted more than a few times, and knew a low voltage when he felt one.

“Makes sense for shoplifting,” Liam said. He ducked under a table and rolled out the opposite side, to give himself some breathing room. “Still don’t want to touch one!”

“Rush, take them out,” Giza said, as she continued to run.

“Trying,” Rush said. “Elvis, can you turn these things off, or something?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” Elvis said. “Not without a network access point.”

Then he would have to do things manually. Rush grabbed one of the display stands that had previously held gift shop merchandise and wielded it like a bat, swinging for the swarm of drones still chasing Giza. The base of the stand knocked two out of the air, but left two more still chasing her.

“Rush! Help!”

Rush turned to see Jack and Eiffel also being chased. He switched directions and hurled the merchandise stand at the drones, managing to crush a few of them. He started searching for a new weapon and picked up a shelf just in time to hear Giza scream. One of the drones had slammed into her shoulder and sparked to life.

“Giza!”

He swung the shelf at the drones, hit a few, and kept swinging. The disc-shaped drones dodged and weaved between his strikes, but persistence and desperation won out. His frantic strikes took out the last drone, and he tossed the shelf aside.

The drone that had struck Giza was still clinging to her shoulder, sending a low-voltage electric shock through her body. He grabbed another drone, this time without a nasty shock. Elvis had taken the initiative and partially activated the electric grips, allowing the low-voltage charge to be safely dissipated into the suit.

“Giza? Are you okay?”

“I’m okay,” Giza said, through gritted teeth. The pain was mostly gone, but her muscles felt locked in place. “I-”

Another bout of screaming cut her off. Some of the drones had caught up to Jack, and were electrocuting him just as they had Giza. Liam had tried to intervene, but he did not have any gauntlets to absorb the shock, so the slightest touch had sent him reeling. Rush sprinted across the room towards Jack.

He swatted a drone out of the air as he ran past the swarm chasing Eiffel, and then snatched the two drones off of Jack, crushing one in each hand. He tossed the wreckage aside and then swung at some still in the air, but they swerved around his strikes. One swerved so hard it impacted a nearby wall and ended up flickering and falling down. Apparently the century-old drones were only barely in operating condition.

As soon as he regained feeling in his hands, Liam waved them high to try and get attention from the scattered teenagers.

“Hey! Stop running around the room like morons! Follow me, now!”

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Liam ran after Giza and grabbed her, forcing her to follow, and then moved to intercept the others. Eiffel had helped Jack to his feet and was helping him run while all the nearby drones were distracted by Rush, so it was an easy interception. Liam corralled them against one of the walls and urged them to run.

“It’s easier for them to chase us if we’re all together,” Jack grunted, as he tried to pull away. Liam grabbed him and pulled him right back in.

“That’s the point,” Liam said. “We get them together so Rush can take them out all at once with that cannon.”

“That feels like overkill.”

“Would you rather get electrocuted again?”

“Rush! We’re coming your way?”

Since he was close enough to have heard their entire conversation, Rush gave a quick nod to confirm he was on board with the plan. The first thing he did was fall backwards and lie on the ground. As anticipated, the security drones believed that he was now surrendering or incapacitated, so their programming compelled them to follow the “active” threats. Liam took a moment to curse the fact that evading the drones was that god damn simple, but kept running.

By moving as a herd, the Junkers managed to get the drones to cluster into a single swarm that followed them around the room. Liam took the lead and started dashing towards Rush.

“Alright, coming to you, kid,” Liam snapped. “Get ready!”

“Already am.”

“Good man,” Liam said, as he dashed past the prone Rush. “Now!”

As his comrades passed by, Rush sprang up, arm extended, and fired off his concussive cannon.

Fifteen seconds later, when Rush finally regained his senses, the room was still ringing from the echoes of the burst. What had once been a swarm of drones was now a scattering of dust and metal across the floor, and there was a visible dent in the wall Rush had fired towards.

“Apologies, Mr. Rush, I didn’t fully consider the logistics of using mecha-class weaponry under the circumstances,” Elvis said.

“What was that?” Giza said. Her own voice sounded muffled and distant, and she prodded at her ears in confusion.

“That was the concussive cannon,” Rush said. His helmet came with built-in ear protection, so he hadn’t been quite as affected by the thunderous shockwave. “I’ve never used it in an enclosed space before.”

“What?”

“I said the concussive cannon made an unexpectedly loud noise in a confined space.”

“What?”

“Everyone shut up,” Liam shouted. “Give your hearing a little time to adjust before you try to talk.”

His shout was loud enough to actually be audible, so the teenagers waited and milled around the empty room, making sure all the drones had been destroyed and that no more were coming. It seemed as though the drones were spent, but Rush slammed a fist into the slots in the wall they had emerged from to seal them shut. Once that was done, Rush removed his helmet and looked at Jack and Giza picking through the scrap of the shattered drones.

“Can you hear me now?”

“Hmm? Yeah, kind of,” Giza said. She stuck a finger in her ear and dug around as if there were some physical blockage she could root out.

“Are you all okay?” Rush said. “Other than the hearing damage.”

“My fingers are still twitching, but that’s nothing new,” Jack said. Any electrical expert got a few shocks over the years, no matter how good they were, and Jack wasn’t that good.

“Those security drones probably weren’t designed to do much harm,” Liam said. “Shoplifting was a pretty minor offense.”

“That was a lot of voltage for a ‘minor offense’,” Giza said. Her shoulder was still burning.

“The Imperium wasn’t exactly easy on criminals,” Liam said. Unlike the Scrapworld kids, he’d gone to school and studied history.

“Elvis says I should tell you the Imperium had a firm and fair system of equitable punishment,” Rush said. Liam rolled his eyes.

“Sure, right,” Liam said. “The Imperium was tough, but I’ll give them credit where it’s due. They never did anything as heinous as, say, condemn people to a life of slave labor in an inhospitable space junkyard.”

No one found his joke amusing, so Liam changed the subject.

“Rush, if that goo in your brain knows so much about the Imperium, can it tell us if there’s more security here?”

Rush froze in place and stared blankly forward for a few seconds, as he often did when “talking” to Elvis. Liam found it unnerving, especially with the featureless helmet of the Scrapper suit.

“He says he has no idea,” Rush said. “Security network is above his clearance level. A facility this big is bound to have more security than a few drones, though.”

The centuries-old network was still running, but Elvis was locked out of most of it. All he could access was the public information, like a few long-defunct schedules, gift shops hours, and a basic facility map. Even the map only stretched a few rooms in, however.

“Well, maybe you should clear the next few rooms without us,” Liam said. “Rest of us can pack up the clothes here and recover while you go ahead.”

Rush nodded and headed for the door without a word.

“Don’t go too far ahead, kid,” Liam commanded. “Report back every room or so, let us know if the coast is clear.”

“Or if there’s anything else we need to run from,” Eiffel added.

“Or that.”