Agent on the Run (The Agents for Good) (13 page)

Everyone was very busy in their assigned tasks. Did Jane hope for us to sneak through the hustle and bustle type atmosphere without going noticed?

I doubted the success of that, as I was the only black person I’d seen in the place so far. I was about to say as much when Jane turned to me and said, “Wait here a moment. You’ll receive further instruction from Flicker.”

Jane turned back to the access door and I hurriedly asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Clear the way.” Was all she said before she went through the door and into the busy control room.

Clear the way?

I watched Jane step into the center of the space and then her hands came up with what looked like two halves of a stick. She jammed the two pieces together to form one unbroken rod and there was an intense blue explosion of color that had an electric like feel to it that engulfed the control room.

The access door was blown off its mounts and I was knocked to the floor, as the acrid electrical smoke from the other room poured out into the hallway.

Coughing I got back up to my feet and stumbled into the room that Jane had entered. Everything electrical within the room was fried and it was dark except for some emergency lighting here and there. The people were all dead, only for the fact that they weren’t people. They were the most artfully crafted true to life machines I had ever seen in my life.

It was as if I had just walked into an old Terminator movie. The explosion of blue electric flame hadn’t done much damage to the structure of the room, but everything electrical, as well as the people like machines, was blown apart and charred. Walking through the smoke hazed scene was otherworldly to say the least. No pun intended.

I found what was left of Jane. Just like everyone else in the room she hadn’t been human. She’d just been a mirage of a human. Everything had been a mirage of deceit. What the heck was going on here?

I knelt down and moved around the blown open fuse panel partitions of what was left of Jane’s metallic skull. I saw something of interest. Behind one plastic yet believable and still intact ear clinging to the metallic skull was a round disc. Everything went quite within me as I saw that disc.

I felt the positive emotion that Flicker was in my thoughts before I felt the framing of her question, “Are you okay honey?”

I felt both intense relief at knowing that she was alive and anger over how I had been duped by her.

“You have a lot of explaining to do honey!” I stated with mind felt intensity.

“I know I do, but your reactions had to be authentic for this to be pulled off.”

“You were in control of Jane the whole time weren’t you?” I asked, as I quickly put things together.

“Yes, I’m sorry that I deceived you!”

My thoughts ran over what I’d been made to think by the Jane persona, as to what I was to have been created into under her knife. “I should give you the spanking of a lifetime!” I gritted out, even as I felt my embarrassment flush my face with hot blood.

“Is that a threat or a promise?”

“Oh it’s a promise!” I affirmed.

“Okay then, if it will make you feel better, but you’ve got to let me into the facility. Preferably before my oxygen runs out!”

Concern took over within me and I quickly got to my feet and asked, “Where are you?”

“I hitched a ride on an outer compartment of the vessel that brought you here.”

I shook my head; so much about all this was absolutely crazy. I had just gotten back to the states from tangling with a bionic gorilla intent on raping my girlfriend and feeding himself with my flesh, only to walk into the realm of a science fiction novel complete with evil robots and death ray blasters. Things couldn’t get any worse, at least I hoped not.

“I’m coming for you. Can you direct me?” I asked.

“Take the hall beyond. Follow it to the end and make a left. Go straight through an open gallery to the hall beyond that one. Go down it and make a right and you’ll see me in a pressure chamber. Engage the pressure lock and open the door once the atmosphere has stabilized.”

My brain scrambled, as I tried to copy all that down. “How much air do you have?” I asked.

There was a slight pause, which was telling, before she responded, “I don’t have much. Please hurry!”

I took off running. The hall beyond was still lit up unaffected by the blue explosion and peopled with oncoming first responders. I lifted the blaster and gave it a try. Oh cool!

I probably shouldn’t react that exuberantly to killing several somethings with a few clicks of the trigger, but they weren’t human so it wasn’t too bad of me, was it?

The weapon really was cool. With every squeeze of the trigger blue jolts of energy shot out and encased my intended victims causing them to falter and pitch forward in a mass of burning wires and blown circuits.

There sure were a lot of these robot things, in fact I was really beginning to hope that this weapon didn’t have some kind of recharge function coming up, because the attacking robo girls and boys were not happy at all.

Crossing the open gallery was an experience. I just held the trigger down and commenced mass robotic destruction. I gained the other hallway and tore down it unimpeded. I made the right and I saw a glass panel head. It was the pressure chamber compartment and Flicker dressed in a spacesuit was collapsed on the floor!

“Flicker!” I exclaimed, but I got no reply.

I jammed away at the probable sequence of buttons on the display and the chamber began to pressurize. I waited in anxious frustration for the atmosphere to equalize before I ripped the hatch door open and began dragging Flicker out of the small room. She had to weigh a ton!

Fumbling, I managed to get her helmet off. Her features were cold and still.

“No, you come back to me!” I yelled out frantically.

I propped her head back and forced her lips apart and breathed air into her, as I barely controlled myself to keep from blowing to forcefully and hurting her lungs. I gave her another breath and then I started chest compressions, which was made difficult by the bulky suit she wore.

I was about to give her another breath, when I was torn away from her and hurled out across the hall to slam into the adjoining wall. Glancing up I saw my assailant was one of the human robot kinds like Flicker, only of the walking vegetable variety. In a word the situation was not good!

I ducked out away from the wall, as a metallic fist pulverized the material of the wall where my head had just been. In my lunge away from the wall I tumbled down the hall and came up with the blue ray gun. Flipping over onto my back I let the fast approaching robot have an energy blast, only to my horror it didn’t work!

The gun fired and the blue electric cloud coated over the robot man like it had the others, but there was no sparking or sizzle of fuses blowing. Apparently the blaster didn’t work on this kind of robotic creation. What a shame!

What a dirty rotten shame I thought to myself abstractly, as I was flung through the air helter-skelter for the second time. I skidded off the ceiling and dropped ten feet to land hard on the floor. I shouldn’t still be conscious, but desperation drove me to be.

I crawled as best as I could the remaining distance to Flicker. I had just reached her, when I felt the sworded arm of the robot stab down through me anchoring me to the floor. I winced at the gut rending pain, but I lifted my fist and slammed it down hammer like onto the center of Flicker’s chest.

Flicker flew upward with a gasp of air and then screamed out at the sight before her and moved at the speed of light. Dimly through the shock I noticed the robot’s bloody electrical sparking head roll off to the side of me.

“Asta lavista buddy, say hello to my girlfriend!” It was odd the things one thinks up, when one is dying.

Someone was saying something. I glanced up to see Flicker. Her face was awash with tears, but they didn’t diminish her beauty at all.

“I love you.” I managed to say before I just couldn’t hold my eyes open any longer.

Flicker clutched Utah to herself and cried out desperately, “Oh God!”

She didn’t care about destroying what the Code had become anymore. All she cared about was the man bleeding out in her arms. She had cut the robot’s blade off and it still remained within Utah. If she’d removed it Utah would have bled out in seconds.

Flicker didn’t know what to do. Cradling Utah’s tall frame gently in her arms she got to her feet and headed for where the space vessel was. Maybe she could get back to Earth and get him to a hospital, but bitterly she knew he’d never make it. What else could she do though?

She made it to the open gallery, but standing in the middle of the space she could bitterly see that she could get no farther than this. The humanoid Code manifestations had retreated in order to preserve their number, but they had brought in reinforcements to do their work for them. Ringed around the whole open gallery where the robot warriors of her own engineered kind. There was simply too many of them to even attempt to resist against.

Flicker knelt down and tenderly laid Utah onto the floor and with one last glance around she folded her metallic fingers together, “My man is dying! Can’t you do something about this Jesus?”

A vision overwhelmed her then. She was in a field of wildflowers and all of her looked real, even though she still knew the parts of her weren’t. She didn’t understand it. Suddenly she was walking through the flowers and a little girl was beside her laughing. The girl’s skin was a soft chocolate in comparison to the vanilla tone of her skin. The little girl took off screaming, “Daddy! Daddy!” Flicker looked up to see a man coming through the flowers toward them. It was Utah only it wasn’t. The man’s name was Sean. Utah was Sean? The girl jumped into the man’s outstretched arms crying out joyously in her jubilance at being in her father’s arms. The girl turned back to her and cried out for her to come along too. Flicker started to move forward, as she stared into the little girls blue eyes that were a match for her own. What did all this mean?”

“A promise of what is to come.”

The words had been spoken into her very soul and Flicker glanced up, as she opened her eyes back to the present. She saw that the robot warriors were advancing, as their self-styled robotic masters watched from the periphery eager for the kill to come.

Flicker stood up and stepped forward to straddle Utah’s motionless form. Her arms lengthened and formed into swords, as talons elongated from her feet and helped her grip the floor, as she planted herself ready to defend her man. She looked down at Utah and pointed a sword appendage, as if it was an admonishing finger at him, “I claim the promise! So don’t you even think about dying on me! We’ve got a baby girl to enjoy making and then raising and I claim that future and all the joy that it holds for us in the power of Jesus’s Name. I say it and even now I claim it!”

“Amen April! Amen!”

Flicker’s eyes rose to see a man in black standing, but ten feet from her. Who was he and how had he gotten there and how on Earth did he know her real name?

“You know my name?” Flicker asked hesitantly.

“I do.” The stranger affirmed.

“Are you an angel?” Flicker asked.

“No, just a man that believes and trusts in the Master of all life the same as you now do.”

“Why are you here?”

“To help you claim your promise.”

“How did you get here?” Flicker asked in consternation.

The man smiled, “Behold a mystery that I still do not even understand and yet I am obedient to the Father and I tremble and humbly obey His Holy Spirit’s command wherever He may lead me for I will ever seek the Lord’s command and rule over my life’s journey. April are you ready to claim the promise that has been given to you?”

Flicker straightened and said, “Yes!”

“Well then let’s be at it then. Protect your man and I’ll deal with the rest.” The man of mystery turned away, as he pulled two short swords from his waist and charged the encroaching enemy line of robot warriors.

Flicker swallowed, as she watched the stranger launch himself into the fight with a speed and a tenacity of skill that she doubted that even with her augmented capabilities that she could ever equal. Thankfully the stranger was on her side. A fact of which she sent off a prayer of gratitude to her Heavenly Provider, who had met her need once again in a miraculous way.

A few robots broke free of the struggle and came at her, whom she savagely repelled back, as enraged as any lioness would against a pack of giggling hyenas intent on claiming her cub for a snack. She managed to sever one’s spinal feed and it fell comatose to the floor, as she parried and dodged the swings of the other two who were trying to hack away at both her and Utah lying on the ground.

One of the robots abruptly fell, quickly followed by the other one to reveal the stranger standing behind them. Flicker blinked and stared around the gallery. There were no robots left standing. Half of them were dead, with the other half lying comatose upon the floor unlinked from their chain of command.

Flicker shook her head, as her hands reformed from the swords they had been, “Who are you?”

“My name is Elon Gideon. Let’s have a look at your man.”

Both of them knelt and Elon pulled Utah over onto his side. For a moment Flicker thought Utah was dead, but then she saw a shallow breath and allowed herself to relax slightly. He was still bleeding badly though.

Elon glanced up at her, his face sweaty, “You can heat the metal of your hands up can’t you?”

But of course why hadn’t she thought of that!

Flicker’s fingers turned molten red and she pushed them down to the wound on Utah’s back, as Elon pulled the broken blade forward out the front. Utah didn’t move, as her fingers burnt and cauterized the flesh of his back, but Flicker felt the pain for him and cried in sobs of anguish at what she was causing.

Elon squeezed her shoulder consolingly, “That’s enough April.”

Elon eased Utah over onto his back and Flicker did not like what she saw. Utah must be near death, why he wasn’t dead already was a mystery. She reached for the sword shard to pull it all the way free so she could cauterize the front, but Elon stopped her with a shake of his head.