Chapter One
Smoke bomb!
The only indication of the explosion had been a small
crackle and a flash of blinding light. Instead of shock waves of blasting heat,
however, dark smoke instantly mushroomed in the warehouse, blocking all light.
And sucking out all oxygen.
Like any human, my body and lungs needed oxygen to
survive. As the dense, choking smoke filled my vision, I fought panic. If I
weren’t seeing this through the eyes of a robot, I’d be dead as soon as my
lungs ran short of air.
“Targets! Targets! Targets!” a deep voice yelled from
somewhere in the smoke. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
Weird, high-pitched hissing sounds whined past my
microphones.
More screaming.
Something—or someone—banged into the hard titanium shell
of my robot.
By the clank, I knew I’d been hit by another robot. Mine
was one of nearly two dozen robots in the room. But that was about all I knew.
I’d connected to this robot body only 30 seconds before.
Barely enough time to look around and see the small army of other robots.
Thousands of miles away, the nervous system of my own body
was plugged in to a computer that allowed me to control this robot through my
own brain waves. I had done that plenty—handled a robot—but not like this
before.
Because this robot was different.
It rode on wheels, like the one I was used to controlling.
But this one was much shorter, with four arms. Two arms ended with the normal
titanium hands that I’d trained with my entire life. Two others ended in round
tubes.
I had no idea what to do with those tubes.
The weird hissing sounds continued to buzz overtop in the
black confusion of the smoke.
“Ten seconds!” the voice screamed. “Kill! Kill! Kill!”
I made a mental command to switch to infrared, something I
should have done the instant the smoke mushroomed.
My robot’s controls switched away from visual, and the
four video lenses mounted on top of the stem of the robot body blinkered shut.
Temperature sensors gave me instant feedback of my
surroundings. What I saw in the shades of blue and orange and red was
completely eerie.
The smoke roiled in clouds of cool blue, telling me the
bomb had not been a heat detonator, nor something intended to explode anything
but the smoke. My infrared detected glowing red shapes in the smoke. Human
shapes.
“Fifteen seconds! Kill! Kill! Kill!”
Around those red human shapes and me was a frenzy of
movement, the faintly red outlines of the titanium shells at room temperature.
They scurried back and forth in the smoke. Laser shots zipped from their
extended arms, piercing the shading of the smoke.
Laser shots? This was the purpose of the tubes at the end
of my extra arms?
I lifted one arm and pointed at the ceiling.
I thought out a mental command. Fire?
Nothing happened.
I tried another mental command. Shoot?
Nothing.
Kill?
It fired. A weird buzzing sound came from my extended arm.
My infrared picked up a hot laser that left a tight red glowing circle in the
ceiling.
I was shooting!
“Twenty seconds! Kill! Kill! Kill!”
As I began to orient myself and focus better, I saw that
the laser beams were going through those human forms, like dozens of blindingly
fast arrows zinging through the smoke.
Kill? As in kill people?
Robots spun and circled in all directions. The human
shapes ran or crouched or fell.
More laser beams.
More targets pierced.
But where were the screams of dying people?
“Kill! Kill! Kill!”
I scanned with my infrared again. There were only two
remaining human figures. One pushed against the far wall, as if it were trying
to claw its way out of danger. The other collapsed as I watched.
“Thirty seconds! Kill! Kill!”
It seemed as if all the robots turned their attention to
the red glow of that final human shape against the far wall. Dozens of laser
beams zipped toward the upper body, and instantly the shape fell.
“Thirty-three seconds! And stop! Back to visuals.”
A giant whoosh began to roar.
I unblinkered my video lenses. I saw fans in the ceiling
sucking away the smoke.
As the smoke lifted and the bare walls of the warehouse
began to appear beyond all the other robots, I looked for all the bodies of the
humans who had been shot with laser beams.
Nothing.
Where were the bodies?
I had no time to wonder.
A door opened on the far wall and a man in a soldier’s
uniform appeared.
“Thirty-three seconds! You are bumbling, pathetic fools!”
he shouted through pale, thin lips. He had short blond hair, and his arm and
shoulder muscles looked like small, smooth boulders under the tightness of his
clothing. His thick neck bulged with veins. “Your opponents were totally blind!
And you took over half a minute to kill them!”
Kill them? But where were they?
“And you! Number 17!”
He strode toward my robot body, pointing a flashlight in
his right hand at me. Stopping in front of me, he slapped the flashlight in the
open palm of his left hand.
“Look above you!” he roared. “Two ceiling holes! Do you
think the human soldiers are going to fly to get away?”
I tilted my video lenses up to where he pointed. Little
wisps of smoke curled from where I had fired.
“Those were the only two shots you fired!” he yelled.
Lifting his cold gray eyes off my robot body, he looked around. “All of you!”
he shouted. “Each shot you take is monitored by computer! We see exactly what
you do!”
He directed his next words back to me. “What, you were
trying to be merciful? To simulated computer targets?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t trust my robot voice to not
reveal who I really was—an enemy infiltrator, not the scared kid this man
thought he was controlling. I was just glad my actual body was thousands of
miles from this terrifying giant.
“When the time comes to kill, you will kill! Hear
me? Or you will be killed! One flick of a computer switch and your death chip
will be activated. Understand?”
He wasn’t asking as if he expected an answer. It was a
direct command.
“All of you!” he roared to the other robots. “Let Number
17 here be an example.”
He lifted the flashlight high, like he was going to hit me
with it. I almost backed away. Then he lowered it and smiled. “Sweet dreams.”
He touched the robot’s body stem lightly with the
flashlight. That’s when I discovered it wasn’t a flashlight.
I heard myself scream as an electrical shock ripped
through my consciousness.
And I fell into a darkness far blacker than any room
filled with smoke.
