CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Mikel
When Mikel stops at the heavy rod-iron gate out front of Barry’s estate, he looks around before breaking in. He slowly pushes into it with his bumper until its hinges break right out of the basalt rock wall and it goes crashing to the ground. It makes a whole lot more noise than he was expecting. Both he and Arma grimace and look at one another at the same time. “Oops.” He drives right over the gate and down the long driveway up to the beautiful secluded old brick home.
“Arma, you stay close to me and don’t leave my sight. I don’t need you meandering around killing everyone.”
By the tone of his voice, she knows he is mostly kidding, but it still kind of hurts her feelings. She folds her arms and huffs back. “Well, that depends on what they’ve done with Five, now doesn’t it.”
From inside, Barry watches them walk by each one of the windows on their way around to the back of his house. Mikel is not there for pleasantries. He almost calls the cops but decides to put the phone down after seeing Five-One following behind him. He isn’t going to call anything in if he can take out two birds with one stone.
It seems Valerie and Marco have still managed to pull one over on him after all, and they’ve done a fine job of rebuilding her. Paul will surely want her alive. He marches back into the living room, where Five is now hanging completely naked. He grabs hold of her and puts his face inches from hers. “We’ve got your girlfriend now too!” He slides his hand down the middle of her spine. “Pity she’ll never see you the way she used to.”
With all the slack in the rope they’ve given her, she’s tempted to attack Barry again, but she can’t risk it. Paul made sure she understood to never do anything like that again. He’ll make good on his promise to rip her arms and legs off if she does. She can at least still take pleasure in watching Barry hobble away with a limp. She nearly broke his leg when she kicked him earlier. If she hadn’t been strung up, and he wasn’t so short, she would’ve gotten his knee as she’d meant to. All Paul has to do is glare at her to get her to stay put, before disappearing into another room down the end of the hallway.
When Barry turns all the lights off in the house, the room forms stark shadows where the window light doesn’t reach. A quiet creaking sound comes from the back of the house and then the crunching sound of wood when the back door of the house is forced open.
Mikel and Arma slowly sneak their way down the hallway, past the kitchen, and towards the living room. They both look around in amazement as they move from room to room down a hallway. The entire interior of the place is lined in beautiful varnished oak and old polished brass fixtures.
The main rooms are adorned with tapestries, large rugs, and wild game mounts on the walls. There’s even one of those fancy gilded medieval suits of armor standing in the corner by the large fireplace. There are a few wall-mounted placards with weapons on them high over the fireplace. One has a huge broadsword on it, and the other has two axes crossed over it. None of it looks like it came out of those cheap furniture magazines either.
There’s more to the place than just the lavish wealth of some old pig though. There are pictures of family everywhere too. He stoops down to look at one on a corner pedestal. The photo is of two men, who must have been Paul and Barry in their forties. One man is short, like Barry, and the other is a big muscular man.
He once heard that Paul used to be quite the beast of a man but he never believed it. All he remembers of him was a mean shriveled up old bastard. It looks like he and Barry must’ve been lifelong best friends or something. When he looks closer, he notices that the picture inside the frame has been torn across at the left side of Paul. A third person in the photo looks to have been removed. He quietly sets the picture back down on its face. “Piece of shit.”
He and Arma continue on and stop at the end of the hallway when they spot Five standing in the middle of the room. She is completely naked and has a white rope strung from her wrists up to the ceiling. He looks at Arma sternly, points at the floor, and whispers as low as he can. “You stay right here.”
After peeking around the corner of the room, he quietly slinks along the wall towards Five. He watches her wide eyes dart about as she points them back and forth from him to the other hallway on the far side of the room. He holds his hammer up most of the way up as he moves, ready to smash someone with it if he has to. When he hears a tiny creak on the floor come from the upstairs, directly above him, he freezes.
He waits for a moment, trying to listen for any more movement. Figuring that he’s still in the clear, he steps out towards Five, to untie her. He sees the tip of a shadow slide across the floor at his feet, and it’s not his own. It looks like someone drawing a pistol down on him. He immediately spins around and spots the same old man from the dock leaning over the balcony of the upstairs loft.
He pulls a hail-Mary, hurling his hammer at Barry as hard as he can, nailing him right in the face with it. Barry comes crashing down over the railing and falls onto the stairs below him. While rolling down both flights, he grunts and howls until he slams into what is left of the banister railing at the bottom.
When the house goes quiet again, he shrugs at Arma before turning back to Five. That’s when he notices that her eyes are still darting around in search of something else.
“Everything’s gonna be fine Five, I got him. He isn’t getting back up, I promise.”
As soon as he starts trying to untie the knot at her wrists, the rope whips out of his hands, nearly breaking one of his thumbs. Five screams his name and then is violently yanked back away from him. Her body goes down hard and flies across the floor, dragging the rug up with her. She bounces off a big leather chair and then gets reeled up off the ground like she only weighs ten pounds. Her scream and the loud buzzing sound of the rope over the beam in the ceiling is enough to send most anyone running for their life.
Five is fortunately strong enough to keep her arms from getting broken back up over her head, but it’s obviously the most pain she’s ever experienced. She reaches the bottom of the beam so quickly that her back bounces off it and gets launched out across the other side of the room. She lands on the floor making a heavy thump that shakes the whole room.
He is so stunned, he just stands there with his forearms up, protecting his head. The heavy thumping sound of something as big as a horse comes down the next hallway towards him, and fast. He can’t see exactly what it is in the unlit hallway, but he can see it blotting out the light in the hallway each time it passes by a window. It’s big and black, like a bear, and is moving too fast for him to react.
He closes his eyes and braces himself for a severe impact. When the thing contacts him, it only manages to graze the side of him, sending him to the ground, but without being hurt. When he scrambles to his feet, he sees that Arma has hockey-checked the thing into the wall at full speed.
A bunch of the wood paneling on the wall is all ripped away where the two of them collided. In the better light of the big gable windows, he can see the silhouette of a monster of a man getting up off the floor. It’s another robot in an unfinished body, just like Arma’s, except much more heavily muscled. The thing reaches down and grabs hold of Arma by her neck pulling her across the floor to himself.
“I gave you your way out, you ungrateful bitch, and you came back for more anyway? Must you always claw at me?” He growls at her with a menace that could not come from anything of the real world.
Despite all her strength, Arma can’t pry his hand off of her throat. She can only watch in terror as he stares into her eyes as if searching for some sign of recognition from her. She shakes her head, having no idea who he is. When his grip tightens to a frightful level, she bares her teeth like a snake and forces out a hiss of pure rage. In an absolute panic, she thrashes about with an entirely new level of ferocity. The man’s expression changes from rage to mere disappointment as he raises his other arm high over her.
Just before his fist comes hammering down on her face, another scream comes from behind the two of them. Five lunges up onto the man’s back and locks his arm and head together with her legs. As quickly as a spider, she swings her wrists around and around, entangling the two of them together in her rope. By wrapping her own long and powerful legs around the man like pythons, Arma can bring all three of them to the ground together.
When the monster still manages to get back up onto his knees, he lifts his shoulder and Five and then slams her to the ground under the weight of his body. With him still holding onto her neck, all Arma can manage is to bind the man’s legs and another arm to keep him from standing back up. He keeps thrashing and crushing Five on the floor, and there is nothing she can do to stop him.
Arma is holding on for dear life, but she doesn’t know what else she can do. “Get his eyes, Five! Claw his eyes out!”
“Touch my eyes you little rat witch and I’ll do more than rip you a fucking part! I’ll kill you for good this time! Both of you!”
Mikel used to loath Five and Arma, but now, seeing them in distress like this, has him scrambling to save them for all his life is worth. If they aren’t going to fight together, they’ll surely die together. This new robot is a complete animal.
When he remembers Barry having a pistol, he frantically finds it and rushes back over to the others with it. He points the barrel at the side of the new robot’s head and pushes it against his temple firmly. Even though the man stops and holds still, he does not look away from Arma. He locks eyes with her and slowly starts to lessen his hold on her neck.
“You stay the fuck out of my way from here on out, Billylynn.” His voice is stern but calm. He knows Mikel is going to pull the trigger, so he says his peace in measured confidence. Arma looks up at Five and Five looks down at her. The two of them are scared as hell, but they keep holding on as tightly as they can, determined to see it through.
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The first round doesn’t make it through the robot’s skull but spalls a bunch of the skin and tissue off the side of its head. The next two crush and punch through the hard structural layers, causing them to crater inward. The last one drives home, right into the center of the brain. The three robots all collapse in a heap when it is all over. Both Five and Arma are both breathing heavily and sprawl out on the floor in relief. When he untangles Five and helps her up, he pulls her into a hug. “I’m so sorry Five.” He can’t make words for all that he regrets or wishes he could promise her, but she understands nonetheless. When he notices how warm she is to the touch, he abruptly looks down and realizes that she is still completely naked. He has always held her at bay because she is a robot, but now he’s beginning to understand how real she actually is.
After quickly finding a throw from one of the leather couches, he covers her with it. Arma watches him with an annoyed look while he dotes over Five. She doesn’t say anything, but he gets her point. He picks up another blanket and starts to hold it out towards her, but she quickly turns away to ignore him.
Since they’ve likely alerted the entire neighborhood of their deeds yet again, they hurry to get a move on. Together, the three of them pack the dark robot’s body out to his truck and drag it into the bed under the tarp. Now that the fight of their lives is over, and the body can be seen in the daylight, it’s not as freakish as it had seemed inside. It isn’t any taller than Arma but is still built like nothing they’ve ever seen.
“Suppose we can use this body for Aaron?” He puffs his cheeks out in amazement at the power the thing had and then slams the tailgate shut.
The ride back to the secret lab is nerve-racking and all he can think of is how bad it’s going to be when he has to face Valerie, if he even dares stick around for it. He has started considering just disappearing altogether. From the back seat, Arma leans forward and folds her arms over the front bench seat.
“How long do you think it’ll be before Aaron is back?”
Caught up in his thoughts, he mumbles back, not considering his words. “Aaron won’t be coming back… not the real Aaron at least.” The last part, he says under his breath.
With a worried look on her face, Five snaps her attention to him. He keeps facing forward, not about to engage in the whole Aaron mess with her. Arma can do that. In the rearview mirror, he catches her eyes piercing into him. She means for him to recount his words.
“When a person dies, Arma, THEY are gone forever. Copying his brain will be doing simply what it’s called, copying.”
Five becomes concerned, and even frightened, not fully caught up on what they’re talking about. “Where is Aaron, and why is he not coming back! Why are you talking about what happens when someone dies!”
222 Upon the words “murdered”, and “dead”, Five completely falls apart. She leans against her door and starts breathing heavily, trying to resist accepting what they say has happened. Arma can only glare at him in disappointment. She would hit him, if not worried she might kill him, she’s so mad.
He’s not in the mood for coddling either of them. “I’m not going to lie to you to make you feel better. If you don’t wanna hear the truth, don’t ask for it.” It makes him remember that Ray is gone for good too. He wouldn’t dare say another word lest he starts crying like Five.
When they pull in behind the secret lab building, Five won’t even get out of the truck. She is inconsolable and can’t seem to even be able to hold herself up. Arma has to carry her inside and prop her in the corner on the floor. There is simply no talking to her at this point.
Mikel takes care of handling the other robot body himself, hauling it inside on a stainless shop cart. As soon as Gabriel sees what he’s done, he goes into absolute conniptions.
“You don’t know what you’ve done! We have nothing without him! Do you have any idea what it took to bring him back whole! You shouldn’t have done that. You can’t imagine what he’s gonna do to you. Oh my god, I shouldn’t have helped you. Oh, I’m so fucked now!”
Still in a pissed of mood, he grabs Gabriel by the collar, thrashes him about, and then throws him to the floor. “Say another word you little fucker, I dare you!” He storms out of the building again, slamming the door as hard as he can behind himself.
Marco looks down at the side of the robot’s head and then to Gabriel. “I’m not too worried about Paul at the moment. Now, I suggest you stay focused on what’s in front of you for the time being. I wouldn’t let Arma catch you screwing off if I were you. After finding out how Five was treated under your care, I can’t guarantee she won’t try to hurt you in some diabolical way.” He looks at Five over in the corner, who is clearly traumatized. “She’s already made quite a wake of carnage looking for her, and I am not talking about Paul and Barry.” He raises his eyebrows. “It made national news this morning.”
Out of fear, Gabriel refuses to look in any direction near Arma and tries to reason with Marco. “So you’re throwing everything away for Valerie and her two flunkies! Do you think Paul is gonna bring you back in after this? You’re all fucked without his blessing. Werker isn’t gonna take you in. You think they’re gonna throw millions at your little group of bandits?”
Arma gently puts her hand on his shoulder, as to not startle him into cardiac arrest. She slowly slides her hand up the back of his neck and around the top of his head confusing him, but also making him very nervous. She cradles his head up against her shoulder like a ball and starts to tighten her arm around his skull. She forces him to turn his face slightly towards her so that Marco cannot hear her when she whispers in his ear.
“There won’t be any more Paul, or your fat mouth, or any of that anymore. You’ll simply shut up and do what I say. If you fail Aaron, I will make sure your death is worse than his. Do you remember what his body looked like? What’s it going to be Gabriel?”
He squirms in his chair, and whimpers, trying to shrink his way out of her arm, but he can’t. She has a frighteningly tight grip on him. “Marco! Get her off of me! Please. Get her off of me.” He is nearly sobbing at his point. “I’ll do whatever you want!”
Marco doesn’t respond to him, nor does he reprimand Arma. He’s not in the mood to babysit either of them anymore and starts walking to the back door. “I guess I’ll have to make the call to Valerie, tell her what’s happened.”
“Marco!”
Outside, Mikel is sitting in the front seat of his truck. His hands are on the keys in the ignition and his forehead is on the steering wheel. He is too ashamed to face Clarice and Valerie, and figures he should probably just drive south till there is no more south left to go. When Marco climbs into the passenger side, he doesn’t look up at him.
“You know Mikel, your kind of a son of a bitch, but you can’t be so hard on yourself. This might seem like the end of the world right now, but, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not that bad at all.”
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Marco! Do you know what I have done in the last ten hours! I got my best friend, and pretty much my father, killed. No… Make that butchered. Two other men, who had families too, were fuckin’ torn apart like…. They were just there man! Then there’s Aaron, all burnt up and missing his entire head now. Oh, and Barry too. That is six grizzly-ass deaths, and all because of me. Don’t forget all the terrible shit I’ve done to Five and Arma. Should just shoot me before I fuck anything else up.”
Now Marco feels kind of stupid. “Well, ok, there’s that, but don’t feel too bad about Barry, or even Aaron. Sure you cut him down about halfway through his life, but he’s gonna live for another how many hundred years now? All you did was save him from falling apart in old age. Trust me, you did him a favor. I’ve been waiting for my chance to be turned into one of these damn robots for ten years now! Next time you end up killing someone, I hope it’s me.”
“Don’t try to whitewash this man, it’s not gonna happen.”
“Pshaw… the way I see it, is you’ve gotten yours already, that’s for sure. You lost your friends and family, and probably your girlfriend. That’s tough man, I’m sorry. Valerie only lost her boyfriend, kind of. She understands this mind-copying robot stuff just fine. When it’s her time, she’ll be going down the same road herself. I’ll help you through this, but I need you to buck up and handle some of the weigh, alright?”
He sighs and takes his hand off the keys, but he’s not ready to lift his head yet. “So now what?”
“Well, I think it’ll be best if we tell the girls you’re at least still alive, and that we have Five and Arma back. Then we can have Valerie come out here. It’ll help to see that there’s at least some kind of hope for Aaron.”
Mikel picks up his phone and punches Clarice’s number. He waits almost ten seconds before hitting dial, and then reluctantly puts it up to his ear. On the other side, Clarice’s is beside herself.
“Mikel! Oh my god Mikel, is that you?”
“Yeah love, it’s me.”
“Mikel! What happened? We saw everything on the news and… we thought you and Aaron were dead.” She starts crying and then Valerie takes the phone from her.
“What in the hell is going on Mikel? Are you guys alright? Where’s Aaron and Arma and Five? Did they find you? Are they with you? What happened? Where are you?”
He has to repeat her name three times to get her to stop asking so many questions and stop to listen to him. “Valerie, I’m going to send you an address, ok, and I need you to just meet us here. I can’t do all this over the phone. Something happened to Aaron, and you just need to get over here.”
When she starts asking a whole bunch more questions again, he hands the phone over to Marco and then gets out of the truck. With his arms folded over the edge of the bed, he puts his forehead down and listens to Marco’s side of the conversation. He can hear Valerie on the other side, but not what she’s saying.
“I’m sorry Valerie, but he didn’t make it, he was one of the men out at the farmhouse.”
“Yeah, he’s actually the only one that did make it.”
“I know.”
“Well, that’s ‘cause she’s the one who killed everyone. Not Aaron though. I don’t know who did it, but I’m guessing she killed ‘em.”
”From what I understand, it was pretty bad.”
“Mmm-hmm, yeah.
“It was Arma that made him bring Aaron to my house.”
“Yeah, he’s here with us too, Mikel brought him in. Well, more like by force though.”
“We’re in that little plain-white building just down the road from work. Park in the back. You’ll see Mikel’s truck.”
“Ok, I’ll see you in a bit.”
When Marco gets off the phone with Valerie, he sets it down on the seat and exhales deeply. “Holy crap. She’s gonna be a mess. Maybe this isn’t gonna be as easy as I’d said it would be.”
Waiting for Valerie to show up feels like it has to be the worst part of it all. Mikel paces in and out of the building at least a dozen times, thinking he has heard them pull in the back. By the time Clarice pulls into the lot, Valerie is completely broken down in grief. She doesn’t even have any more will left to crash upon him with, which kind of makes it worse. He wishes she would just wail on him with a pipe or something and get it over with already. She curses him well enough though.
When she finds the cart with the covered remains of Aaron’s body, she kneels on the floor and sobs her heart out. Clarice holds onto her and refuses to even look at him because of what he’s done. He hangs his head low and moves on into the other room with Marco, to give them their space.
After a while, when Valerie is able to collect herself, she finds them all gathered in the processing room. As soon as she learns why Five is naked in the corner of the room, and covered only by a blanket, she does manage to muster the energy to run over and assail Gabriel with a large end-wrench that was on the toolbox.
Marco rushes over to stop her, but by the time he does Gabriel is already a motionless mess on the floor. Even though he is helping them with Aaron, she still feels that he’s just as much to blame as anyone else for what’s happened. Even if Gabriel did kind of initiate the whole mess, he doesn’t deserve any more than what she’s done to him. He makes the mistake of telling her to stop, and then she turns the wrench on him.
“You’re such a piece of shit, Mikel! I don’t want to see your goddamn stupid face around here ever again! You helped them kidnap and molest Five! What the fuck is wrong with you! You knew what they were gonna do, and you helped! If it weren’t for you, Aaron would still be alive. I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done, you son of a bitch! Stay away from my sister, you hear me before you get her killed too!”
There’s nothing he can do but walk out in absolute shame. Clarice calls out after him, but he can’t bear to look at her. He was stupid to listen to Marco, he should’ve just gone away hours ago. All any of this did is make him want to crawl away and die. He jumps in his truck and barrels out of there as fast as he can. He doesn’t even look in the rearview mirror, even if it’s the last time he will ever see Clarice.