Cryo-Man (Cryo-Man series, #1) (12 page)

CHAPTER TWELVE

             
I dream of chasing the boy again… his laughter is so loud in my mind, his smile so clear… but soon I’m on the ground once more, handing him the phone to call CIFPOL as he begins to cry and ask about Heaven…

             
The dream isn’t nearly as complete as other times and cuts off before I hear myself remind him of the box. At first I’m worried that
that
memory is fading from my mind but at least I remember the rest of the details. A blast of frigid air stings my face, snapping me back to my new reality, snapping my mind back to the memory of what was happening before I went black.

             
Panic erupts within me as my eyes open. Large chunks of glass are missing from my glass dome but at least I can see the bluish glow of dozens of cryo-chambers above. I’m about to start looking around the rest of the cryo-room when a nearby voice stops me.

             
“Don’t move,” a gruff voice says. It sounds clearer now that a glass dome no longer drowns out my hearing. “Keep your eyes closed, there’s a lot of glass around your face.”

             
It takes a moment to recognize the gurgling in the voice; I’ve never heard E sound like this before, sound pained. He steps closer and I see that he looks different, too. His hair is singed, his already-deformed face now dotted with black soot. A grimace is etched across his face but I can’t tell if it’s any worse than usual.

             
“I’m fine,” he says through gritted teeth. “You should start worrying about yourself. Now close your eyes.”

             
I do as he says. His hand brushes against my cheek as he clears away more of the broken glass. I almost forgot what it was like to feel the touch of someone else. I want to apologize for breaking my glass helmet – again – but the last thing I want is to open my mouth to shards of glass.

             
“Thought I might lose you there,” E says quietly. His voice is still strained but I sense something else in it: concern. “Your core was affected, but luckily not as much as the others.”

             
“I tried to get far away,” I say.

             
“I know, I never should’ve risked you like that; I thought it was a better choice than having you fight. I didn’t realize your power core was in such bad shape. But I just finished installing a new one that’s less damaged than the last,” he says.

             
I want to lift my head to see the new part of me but E continues to clear away glass. It feels like he’s gently rubbing my face but when I crack my eyes to take a peek, I see that his hands are actually shaking, worse than I’ve seen them yet. I’m probably lucky to have survived core replacement with his hands so unsteady. Once he clears away the rest of the glass, he tells me to stand and follow him toward the sterile room.

             
“We need to find you a new dome,” he says. “You’re lucky we have more spare parts to choose from.”

             
When I stand, smaller bits of glass fall away from the dome. My face hurts, the first actual pain I’ve felt since waking in this world. I carefully touch my cheek with a cold, metallic pincer. When I pull it away, I see my ‘finger’ specked with blood. I’m about to ask how hurt I am but see E limping so badly I expect him to tip over at any moment.

             
“Are you okay?” I ask, suddenly ashamed for worrying about my own little scratch.

             
“Fine,” E says quickly. “But next time, don’t climb so high. I nearly killed myself trying to dislodge you from your perch. Wish I could’ve been gentler trying to get you down but you were ten feet up and I was in a hurry to replace your core. You’re lucky the first robot I zapped was already turned off before I unleashed the pulse.”

             
As he limps away, I notice huge chunks of concrete littering the floor. When I look up at the far wall, I can’t believe the level of destruction. Dozens of smaller holes are cut into the wall, the path I took to the top. But I also see a huge gouge about ten feet above the floor; that must’ve stopped my plunge before I blacked out. I turn and rush to catch up to E, feeling as strong as ever.

             
“So what happened? Did the rest of the assassin bots retreat?” I ask.

             
Behind the disfigurements and black smudges, E’s lips curl into a pained – yet satisfied – grin.

             
“Ha! They’d only be so lucky,” E says.

             
A thin layer of smoke still hangs in the hallway. It grows heavier the farther we walk, a particularly thick cloud of it emerging from the supply room down the hall. But the most surprising thing I spot is the mass of twisted metal now blocking our path. I’m about to ask E why he dragged the destroyed robots out of the garbage room but I suddenly understand why he looks so pleased with himself.

             
“There were
that
many?” I ask in awe.

             
E nods and keeps walking, barely able to squeeze by them on the way to the sterile room. I hesitate before approaching the pile, especially considering my last encounter with robots thought to be destroyed. E reads my mind.

             
“It’s okay, I was extra careful to disable their trackers this time,” he says. “But not before I sent a coded message to Robotropolis Headquarters saying this place is empty.”

             
I nod and leap atop the pile, landing on it only briefly before jumping to the floor beyond. I follow E and for the first time I notice how he keeps his left arm pinned close to his body. But that doesn’t stop him from yanking at one of the robots next to the bigger pile.

             
“How did you stop them all?” I ask.

             
“One of the first things I did when I found this place was build a small EM pulse using supplies and equipment from the control room,” he says. “It was similar to the technology inside the remote I swiped from Robotropolis researchers. I thought there was only enough juice for a quick pulse to put the robots in temporary shutdown, not unlike what the remote could do before it was destroyed. But the blast was more powerful than I expected, its radius much wider. Hoped you’d gotten far enough to avoid trouble but I rushed to check you first anyway.”

             
When E found me dangling on the wall by a single robotic arm, he hurried to get me down. He knew the pulsed robots had severely damaged power cores so he ran to the one he disabled first with the less powerful remote. After quickly removing its core, he rushed back to me to make the switch before returning to the pile of robots.

             
“I assumed their cores were completely fried but by the time I reached them again, some were beginning to stir,” E explains. “I hurried to destroy their cores but the last one reactivated before I could get to its power supply. I had to finish it off with my bare hands.”

             
E pulls so hard on the robot’s glass dome that he falls over. It looks like he merely lost his balance and I expect him to pop up and get back to work. But he remains on the floor – balancing himself with one arm only – and takes deep, choking breaths. I offer a hand to help but he ignores it.

             
“I told you I’m fine,” he gasps. “Just this smoke getting to me. It’s not clearing as much as I thought; hopefully the pulse didn’t damage the facility’s air filtration system beyond repair.”

             
I can’t smell smoke – and I have no way of breathing it in – so it has little effect on me. But once E mentions it, my eyes begin to water now that I have no dome to protect them. I can’t stand by idly and watch E’s labored breathing so I focus farther down the hallway, where smoke continues to seep out of the supply room’s open door. I hurry to the door, planning to close it and cut off the flow of smoke. But I barely grab the handle before looking inside the room at the source of so much smoke.

             
It’s obvious that a fire recently ravaged this room. A fire extinguisher sits on the floor beside smoky debris freshly extinguished and a large blackened blot. E must’ve forgotten the part of the story where he put out fires. I’m so shocked at the level of destruction that it takes several minutes to realize most of the damage was done to the food and medical supplies. The glass cabinet is thoroughly destroyed, the stacks of food nowhere to be seen except for a few blackened cans scattered around the room. Obviously the destruction of the supplies matters little to my well being but I realize immediately what it means for E.

             
“The food,” I say, unable to take my eyes off the damage. I look back down the hallway, where E doesn’t respond. He’s caught his breath but remains bent over the fallen robots. “Please tell me you have more food supplies somewhere.”

             
E ignores my question, as seems to be the case whenever he’s not in the mood to answer something.

             
“Some of these robot parts are good, brand new. Might be useful to give you a few upgrades,” he says. “They may help a bunch of other patients here, too. Might be a good idea to start combing medical folders right away for the strongest candidates to be converted. Most of these power cores are in terrible shape but they should be good enough to keep humans alive until replacements can be located.” E turns toward me and looks very serious. “It’ll be more important than ever that you not break more of your parts.”

             
“What are you going to eat?” I ask, refusing to drop the subject.

             
E turns back toward the robots. “Certainly not the canned crud that’s been stored here for years. I actually ate better when I was imprisoned at Robotropolis.”

             
E speaks with a nonchalance that makes me worried about whether he plans to even
try
surviving.

             
“You won’t live long without eating,” I say.

             
He chuckles, which leads to another bout of coughing. “You clearly never ate the food here. I think it might be better for my health
without
it.”

             
E finally stands with my new glass dome in hand. He staggers slightly to one side, clearly woozy, and puts his left hand against the wall to brace himself. His head hangs low as he gasps for breath. I finally see the large red splotch on his left side that his arm had been covering.

             
“You’re hurt,” I say, rushing to him.

             
E takes a deep gurgled breath before letting go of the wall and lowering his arm. Like always, he shakes off my attempt to help.

             
“I’m fine,” he insists. “The last robot I put down must’ve gotten off a lucky shot. But the bullet only grazed me.”

             
“You should rest,” I say, not knowing how else to help.

             
I try to lead E to his bedroom but he shakes his head. He continues to head toward the sterile room.

             
“There’s no time in resting now,” he says, annoyed. “We need to focus on getting stuff done before it’s too late.”

             
“Too late for what?” I ask though I have a sinking feeling I already know that answer.

             
“I’m sorry,” E says. “But we both know how this is going to end for me. I’m hoping to help a few more people before my time is up. It’s more important than ever that you learn how to put these robots together. You’ll need to fix yourself once I’m gone, maybe even try to convert some of the other frozen humans.”

             
Now it’s my turn to shake my head. “You promised me you had a lot of time left. I don’t want anything to happen to that promise.”

             
“I know but I don’t have much choice now,” E says.

             
“I can help,” I say. “I can go out and find you food and medicine on the surface.”

             
E shakes his head so vehemently that he begins to cough again. His lungs haven’t calmed when he starts talking, his face beneath the lesions now bright red.

             
“That’s not an option,” he says, trying to sound forceful though he barely chokes out the words. “There are too many dangers. I don’t want you risking yourself with radiation and other assassin bots on the surface.”

             
My instinct is to stop arguing, to do whatever E commands me. But like an insolent teenager learning to disagree with a parent, I refuse to sit back and accept whatever he tells me.

             
“You will fix my dome, you will make it airtight. The radiation won’t be able to get to me,” I say. E shakes his head and opens his mouth to object but I don’t give him the chance. “If you die, I’m not staying here alone. So you either let me go to the surface and try to save you or I’m going there as soon as you’re gone.”