Bound to Ashes (The Altered Sequence Book 1) (22 page)

It’s a lethal-looking thing. We saw ones similar to it when we busted into the storage area, but seeing one up close is wholly different. I imagined something a little more mechanical-looking and less crab-like, actually. It stands almost proudly in the dim lights and looks around with tiny glowing eyes that swivel in their sockets. Its legs step daintily on the floor, pressing only as much as it needs. It’s impressive. It has a sleek body like a beetle’s, artistically carved and shaped. Reminds me of fast-looking cars, like in ads. Its midsection looks as if it can turn side to side, all segmented and layered. But all in all, it’s not terribly frightening.

That’s mostly because it’s only about a foot high.

Jules stifles a laugh and whispers, “It’s tiny!”

Alessandra steps forward and faces the tiny machine, smiling down at it with her hands on her hips. It looks up at her in a flash, like sneaking up on a cat, lowering itself and staring up at her. “It’s just a maintenance bot,” she says, smiling and waving us over.

“It’s kind of....” Jules says, admiring the tiny thing, “Cute.”

“What does it do maintenance on?” Ashton asks.

“This unit was designed for getting into small spaces to fix wiring and loose parts,” Alessandra says. Peregrine stoops down to pick the little squirming machine up. It wiggles and protests, its little mechanical parts buzzing and creaking defiantly. It holds its two front legs up threateningly, like a spider whose web has been disturbed, and she sets it down.

Ashton steps over and nudges it with his foot. It whirls around and flings its tiny arms up at him and I’m surprised it doesn’t hiss at him, too. After the little machine settles down and all its legs are back on the ground, it crawls away. I swear it’s moving faster than it was before, like it’s trying to escape the strange people who harassed it. It skitters into the darkness.

“If that was a sample of the robotics we’re going to run into,” Ashton says, “That’s fine with me.”

Alessandra smiles and says, “Let’s keep going.”

It hasn’t been more than a few minutes since we saw the last one, but now a few more tiny robots cross our path. They raise their little arms at us as we pass as if to frighten us off. Most of them just keep working and skittering around, though.

“Not to be obnoxious,” Jules says irately after a while longer of empty travelling, “But how soon till we get there?”

Alessandra groans and says, mockingly, “
Are we there yet?
I have no idea. Anything can hang us up. I’m going to say... at least a day or two, if all goes well. Which, considering our track record, won’t.”

At least she’s honest.

“You can say that again,” Jules laughs.

Barring the path and making a dead-end is a massive multi-faceted machine, not unlike the floating sphere, but this one with geometric creases in its side. We peer up the impossibly large thing. The only object of note is a single ladder bolted to the sides. It weaves between protruding hunks of machine parts and vents and it looks like the ladder had been tacked on at the last minute. “Let me guess....” I say.

Alessandra finishes, “Going up.”

James groans, “Why?”

“Because if we go around this... heating... thing,” Alessandra says, “it’ll just take us to incinerators and dead ends. We have to go over it.”

James doesn’t reply, but I can almost feel the resentment radiating off of him like the heat from the furnace in front of us.

“Dev, could you go first? I can hardly see,” Alessandra says with humor.

The ladder disappears over the top of the machine, disappearing into who knows where. I frown at it. I begin the climb, rung after rung.

When we crest the top of the machine, I realize the top is actually barely sloped at all. It’s almost flat. Large attachments stick out at random places and it makes walking across it tricky. Heat vents rise up and expose the machine’s white-hot inner belly for a moment, then fall closed. Someone behind me lets out a surprised sound.

Peregrine picks her feet up high, like she stepped in something, and takes a moment to look at the bottom of her shoe. “This thing’s messing up my shoes,” she says. “Can we get going?”

“It’ll just give you better grip—” Vinder starts, then stops. He pulls on his leg and pries his foot off the machine. “Uh. Yep. This is happening.”

“Just go!” James shouts, throwing his arms forward.

“Alessandra, I’m starting to think you’re taking us down the most dangerous way on purpose,” Jules says.

“It’s harder than it looks.” She takes a nervous, shallow breath and says quietly, “I can barely remember any of this.” I don’t think anyone else heard her.

We half climb, half walk up the rest of the way until the ladder turns vertical again near the top. The large surface is rimmed with hand rails. A tall pile of metal crates sits in the far corner. Vinder and Peregrine come off the ladder and immediately pull to the side to inspect their shoes.

“Man,” Vinder says. “You know how hard it is to find shoes nowadays?” He frowns at his warped soles. He picks at it and the rubber stretches and sticks to his fingers. “Ugh.”

“We can take a break,” Alessandra suggests. “Wait for your shoes to cool off.”

“Thanks,” Peregrine laughs, slipping her boots off and looking at them with pity. Jules leans against the railing with Alessandra and James. But where’s....

I lean over the edge of the machine and Ashton is still struggling up the ladder. His toes grip the rungs, making his heel stick out awkwardly and thrusting his top half forward. He throws his arm over the edge and heaves himself up. His toenails scrape against the metal as he tries to get his footing. He grumbles and says, “Quit laughing, I’m not a climber.”

When he’s on level ground, his picks his feet up a few times and winces. “That thing was awful. I had to walk on the ladder almost the whole way there.” He huffs. He doesn’t wait for me, he just crouches and springs to the top of the pile of crates. Like he has to prove he doesn’t need ladders. I shake my head and climb after him. He stands on the pile overlooking the sea of machines, cresting out of the thick darkness like geometric undergrowth in a forest. It’s like being on a skyscraper. The facility seems as big as the city we picked clean back home. Lights peer through the inkiness. The ceiling is a mystery, just blackness.

“Wow.”

“Never thought we’d see anything like it,” Ashton says. He whips out his journal and starts scribbling. Everything stops when he writes, it’s like his whole world in that little book. “I can’t really find words to describe it,” he continues with a snap-shut of the journal, “it’s so... ethereal. Or ephemeral...?”

I laugh. “That’s already more words than I know what to do with.”

He replies, “It means sort of... dreamlike,” humoring my poor vocabulary.

“Dreams. Sounds about right.” Untouchable, but real. Something you can’t logically believe but fear all the same. I lean back. Lights in the distance glimmer and go out and flash to life again like shadows full of lightning bugs.

“But,” Ashton says, “It’s hard to enjoy the view knowing what’s out there.”

“The defense systems?”

He nods.

There’s too much happening in my mind. A manic mess. Images of the blue lights, the crawling limbs, the mechanical screeching, they fade in and out of my thoughts without prompting or warning. We may know what they look like but we have no idea how they operate, how they go about ‘defending’. “I don’t even know what to think about that. It’s just....”

“Too much,” Ashton finishes.

“Yeah.”

“Well,” he says, stretching his arms and popping his knuckles, “At least so far all we’ve done is bother some maintenance bots.”

“Let’s hope it stays that way.”

“Hear, hear,” Ashton says.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You read too much.”

“Or maybe you just don’t read enough,” Ashton replies.

“Shut up,” I shove him. “You’re such a... what’s the word for it...
nerd
?”

“I am not,” he says with a laugh and shoves me back.

“Hey nerds, we’re moving on,” Jules shouts up at us impatiently.

Ashton looks away like he can’t believe her and says to himself, “Why does everyone say that?”

It would be nice to stay still for a while longer. As much as moving forward feels like accomplishing something, not having anything to worry about except staying in one place is a breath of fresh air.

As we get to our feet, something catches Ashton’s eye and he stares back the way we came.

“Let’s go,” I urge him.

“Look,” is all he says. But it’s not another poetic thought he wants to share.

There are more of the lights from before. And they dance and weave among themselves, surging forward.

“It’s just the lights from before.” But as I say it, I’m not sure I believe it. The lights move frantically, like ocean waves filled with glowing points.

“I don’t think so,” Ashton says, shoulders falling.

It may be too late. “Alessandra!” I leap from the pile of boxes and land next to her.

Alessandra jumps and says, “Don’t do tha—”

“We gotta get out of here.” Ashton lands next to me, silent.

She stops, he eyes dart from Ashton’s face to mine, and she looks to the distance. She snatches up her rifle and peers through the scope. She swings the rifle around her shoulders with an angry flourish and swear. “They found us,” she says.

“Who has, the killer spider robots?” Jules says, sounding almost more angry than surprised.

“Who else?” James spits.

“Dammit,” Jules replies.

“We can protect this location well. We have the high ground.” It’s lucky we found this place when we did....

“No, we need to leave. There’s a safe point we can get to if we climb down and weave between—”

What? She must be joking. “Up here. Higher ground. Always go with higher ground.”

“You know, I’d usually agree with that, but you have no idea what these things are capable of—”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s a sound strategy in any situation,” Ashton butts in.

“Guys,” Vinder says in a wavering voice. “Guys!” He looks out over the dark sea.

“We’ve wasted too much time already!” James says. He gestures to me apathetically. “Besides, I’m not taking orders from some barrel-chested, cat-eyed, gray-skinned—”

“It’s a biological carbon fiber reinforcement, and I don’t see you coming up with anything.” The words fly out of my mouth before I realize what I said. Ashton and Jules look at me quizzically in the fraction of a moment before Alessandra cuts in.

“It’s much safer to just run,” she insists. Her mismatched eyes dig under my skin and I fight the urge to do something rash. Like ditching the humans in a second to keep the high ground ourselves.

It’s clear now that she only brought us here for defense, not tactical advice. I almost say, ‘You’re not the only one with people to protect.’ But all that comes out is, “Fine.”

We fly through the twisted corridors running on trust alone, despite the fact that Alessandra can barely see. I shouldn’t be mad at her for having normal human vision... but my eyes are finally adjusted. It’s hard to keep pace when they don’t see the path right in front of them. Just... it’s right there, turn there, it’s a wide corridor.... I run ahead and get her attention.

“Do you need help?”

She looks at me accusingly and says, “How can you help?”

“I’m the only one who can see.”

“So, what, you want me to dictate to you where to go, is that it? How does ‘left at the primary coolant system gauge’ sound to you?” Her voice is hurried and punchy. She’s ready to fight. “Ugh, you made me miss the turn, we were supposed to go down that fork by the intake valve....”

I sniff. Yeah, completely my fault....

“Shut the hell up,” James snaps as we turn the corner to a slightly brighter area. Some sort of panel on the nearby machine wall opens and closes, flashing its red-hot interior at us. The vents creak and the roar of the machine fills the room and assaults our ears.

A metallic screech slices through the hot air, everyone flinches. Streaks of blue shine in front of us and when they subside—there it is. The Sentinel. Full sized. It cut us off. The opening and closing of vents only gives us a second of light. The red light reflects off its smooth metal body, glowing blue eyes shine against the darkness like stars. Little hinged doors open on its back.

“Find cover!” I peel out and duck behind some containers.

Sparks dance on the ground nearby—The others are out of the way—I think. I hope. The machine jumps and rotates its legs to cling to the wall all in under two seconds. Those blue eyes stare down at us and we’re awash in blue light. Jules, next to me, fires at it. Bright yellow sparks jump off its body and leave no more than scuff marks. Jules shifts her aim, screams mindless obscenities, and pulls the trigger. The shots land all across the Sentinel’s face. A shot connects to one of its lower eyes and it lets out a sound, like a scream, something that should have come out of a living thing. I wince and we flatten against the wall to avoid being crushed by the massive machine’s falling body. Even though it lost its grip on the wall it’s quick to recover, finding its footing and facing us again. The damaged eye sparks and dies. Cornered, Jules fires a few more shots, but the Sentinel’s on us. The gun won’t work well enough. I push her behind me and step forward. Before I can linger on anxiety the plume of my fire erupts into the air. The machine draws back, waving one of its arms at the flame. It hunkers down and small vents on its back pop open, hissing hot air. I don’t want to do it again. But I might have to.