Power in the Hands of One (11 page)

I connect with the pane before answers scare themselves into my mind. Leading with my left shoulder, I heave all one hundred fifty pounds into the window’s immovable thickness before bouncing backward to the floor.

Elias is on top of me without hesitation, pinning my arms down with his knees. He produces a folding knife from his denim pocket. Flicking it open with his thumb, he presses four inches of steel against my neck.

I strain my head back and away, my line of sight fixed on the outside world now so far away.

“Stop fidgeting!” Elias demands.

I thrust my torso as much as Elias’s weight will allow. Will he slice across my throat? Or will he only try to detain me? The blood in my jugular doesn’t want to find out.

Heaving with all the strength in my legs, I manage to lift Elias a few inches from the ground when the awesome sight of ADS02 fills my peripheral vision.

Its right arm reaches up and sends massive digits crashing into the office, erasing the glass. The monstrous hand remains fixed onto the ledge, forming a bridge with its outstretched arm.

Elias stumbles away several feet, a pale, blank look of shock on his gawking features. It’s clear he’s never seen the machine in action.

I waste no time in mounting one of the armored fingers and racing along the gauntlet and upper arm. The pitch of my climb increases as I reach the shoulder, rain now barely a drizzle. I work my way onto the top of the shoulder, hands and feet finding purchase on the dull surface.

At the back of the robot’s neck, the access hatch is already open. I pause only to look for Elias, who is still frozen in the gaping hole where the window used to be. I descend without further delay.

It’s strange, but the metallic scent of warm circuits and electricity is welcome, as is the low hum to which I’ve grown so accustomed. I flip the toggle for the hatch and take a seat, surveying the instruments and controls.

They all seem to be in their normal array, bright but no longer blinking a maddening pattern of confusion. Once the hatch seals itself, the cockpit transforms into its Stage Beta form, Kinetic Drive and all.

I’m settled into my standing position when fear blindsides my mounting confidence. What if Worthington returns to unleash his hellish voltage upon me again? I’m convinced it was Worthington and not ADS02 who is responsible for this. In all its mystery, the machine has not only shown self-preservation but some strange allegiance to its pilot—me.

“Didn’t think I’d give up, did you?” the familiar arrogance of the Illuma Corp agent relays over the radio.

I scan the immediate vicinity to find the upper torso of ADS01 below me. The scarred asphalt reveals the robot dragged itself over to my position on strained arms, legs too damaged to walk. Now it’s grabbed hold of my left leg, trying to right itself.

“Let me have it!” the agent demands. One robot arm reaches up, clutching at the air.

I inject as much disgust as possible into my reply. “Have what?”

“Your machine!”

Jostling the controls, I can’t shake loose what’s left of the other robot. It hangs on with the determination of its rabid pilot.

Elias looks on from the hole punched in the side of the office building, yelling something. He’s shaking his fist as though to proclaim he’ll get even with us both.

I ignore him for now, turning back to the ragged machine at my feet. I kick; I swing an armored forearm. Nothing deters the battered, gray appendages from hanging on. “Don’t you get it?” I yell. “I’m not giving up!”

A flailing hand reaches up again; I bat it away. Twisting the grips on the upper control arms, I flex the hands of my robot in an attempt to grab hold of the crippled ADS01.

The other pilot maneuvers to avoid my reach and jerks my mechanical leg back and forth as if he’s trying to shake me out of a tree. “Come down here with me. We’ll see who gives up.”

My patience reaches its limit in a sub-second surge of rage boiling in my pores. I’m sick of the expressionless features of ADS01, worn thin by the quips of the other pilot.

Casting aside caution or any regard for whether I’ll topple, I reach down in a rushed, uncalculated response. I ignore the onscreen warnings that equilibrium is not optimal and push the control arms even further down.

The muted crunch of metal on metal vibrates through the cockpit like a faraway storm. Once more I twist the control grips with force and this time the searching hands of ADS02 find their target.

Holding ADS01 in place by a piece of ragged armor, I guide my free arm into its face with repeated blows.

It absorbs each until losing hold and falling away. Dust from smashed concrete billows out from beneath as it collapses into the ground.

I don’t halt my retaliation, stomping with unmeasured violence until the head of ADS01 disconnects from the body. When it raises a protesting arm, I take hold and wrench it back and forth, shearing it off at the already weakened joint.

Tossing the loose arm aside, I maneuver a step back and seethe in near silence, my rapid breathing the only reminder I haven’t become part of the robot. This doesn’t last as a blinking light on the map demands my attention.

Just outside Western Lights, the indicator labeled “ADS03” serves as a painful slap on the wrist for not paying closer attention. It’s clear the robot has been on the move for at least ten minutes.

I turn in its direction and feel my throat drop into my gut.

25

The enormous white form of ADS03 flattens a portion of the privacy wall as it enters Western Lights. Crumbled stone beneath its feet, the robot paces in a rigid march of finality, as if its own gaze might stop the living in their tracks.

I move away from the headless, one-armed heap that used to be ADS01 to get a better vantage point. Should I attack? Wait for whoever’s piloting the thing to attack me first? I wipe sweat from my palms in anticipation.

To my right, Elias Jacob is triumphant, fists clenched in perceived victory as he watches from the gash in the building. He yells something, pointing at me.

ADS03 nears, and I see it’s a similar design with its layered armor and well-balanced proportions. Aside from its immaculate white hue, the main difference is its head—there are three contoured intakes wrapped around it, one on the top and one on each side. The massive, undamaged machine halts a block away.

Again, I’m struck with the sense of a standoff in the old West, me at one end of the street and the bad guy at the other.

I flip through the menus, now secondhand, to locate the one marked as “Hellpoint Cannon.” The usual diagnostics appear and indicate the weapon is online, ready to fire. Waiting for a reason, any reason at all, my finger hovers over the fire button.

“Identify yourself,” a new voice says over the communication link.

“I’m nobody.” That’s been my position all along. No one of consequence, just a regular guy pulled into this nightmare.

“Try again,” the new pilot says.

“I don’t work for Worthington or the Illuma Corp, if that’s what you want to know.”

There’s a pause as if he didn’t expect that answer. “Who’s in the other robot?”

“An agent from the Illuma Corp.”

The new pilot clips my response with a new question. “And you? Who do you work for?”

“I’m just a business analyst. This is all an accident.”

“Then you’ll kindly hand over your machine.” The new pilot doesn’t sound as though he is interested in wasting time.

That’s foolish. “Not until you tell me who you are and what you’re doing here.”

“My organization intends to right the ungodly wrongs at play here.”

Oh, no. God’s Hand.

The new pilot continues. “And to free Elias Jacob, who has been unlawfully held against his will.”

“Elias is already free,” I say. “And you’ll do well to right these wrongs by destroying these machines.”

ADS03 moves in mighty strides across half a block. “You don’t need to worry about the details; just exit the machine and walk away.”

The first pang of escape shimmers in my nerves. This could be a way out. What would it take to leave and just forget this all happened? A time machine, that’s what. Ray is gone. Dead. He’s never coming back. I’m ashamed I’d even consider bowing out at this point. I owe it to him to see this through, however it ends.

“I’m going to need a lot more convincing than that,” I say.

“Don’t think you’re being a hero. It doesn’t make you strong.” There’s malice in the new pilot’s words. “These machines must be controlled by the proper authority—God’s authority. Man can’t be trusted.”

“Isn’t that what you are?”

“We are guided by God’s will. We are certain of our actions.”

“At what cost?” This just slips out. I don’t have a plan.

“We will seek quorum with anyone, but are prepared to carry out God’s will by any means necessary.”

“What will you do with these things once you have them?”

There’s a brief pause, for effect, no doubt. “Wield them in the coming war.”

I’m up against a wall again. There’s no way to argue with someone who thinks he knows the mind of God. So I go with the only thing I have left—reckless abandon. “You know what? I’ve decided I’m not going to let you have this one.”

“Wrong answer,” he says.

The turbine/gear visible within the gaps in ADS03’s armor spools up in a mounting fury.

I tense up, not sure what to expect. There’s no apparent weapon mounted to its frame.

The ridged head turns to stare directly at me. Then a puff of steam or smoke emits from the intakes as a low-decibel bark hits me with an unseen force.

My senses spin in surprise as I fall in mirrored pose with ADS02. I can’t get the controls around in time to catch my fall and wince as the supports for the Kinetic Drive pound into my back and sides.

The “intakes” are clearly nothing of the sort. They must be some type of energy weapon, clearly not as passive as the coma weapon.

“Do you understand now?” the new pilot asks.

Body aching from newly forming bruises, I lay on the sarcasm. “Yep, I’ve seen the light.” I regain enough of my footing to fire a wild blast from the cannon.

The blast misses the unflinching ADS03. It maneuvers closer, maybe only fifty feet away. The pilot rattles off what he must intend to be his final words to me. “I’m sorry if you end up in Hell.”

26

Another burst of invisible energy lambastes the core of my robot, sending a violent shudder throughout the cockpit. Once again I’m on my back, struggling to get ADS02 on its feet.

Sections of the wraparound video are interrupted with fissures of static, the outer shell damaged by the enormous levels of force generated by the other machine’s attack. Status reports flutter by without my acknowledgment.

ADS03 nears, closing the distance that’s already too close for my liking. It moves in a precision death march, hoarding the street.

Shifting the controls, I can’t manage anything other than an awkward roll onto the robot’s side. Finding the dismembered arm of ADS01, I reach out, grappling with my second set of hands. “What will killing me accomplish?” I ask in an attempt to stall the crazy person in the other robot.

The other pilot doesn’t reply.

I manage a grip on the severed arm and waste no time flinging it toward the menacing white form standing near.

A low retort from the head of ADS03 sends the arm flying in the other direction.

This proves an ample distraction, allowing me to sit up and fire a well-placed shot across the torso of the white machine.

ADS03 doubles over after absorbing the explosion, nearly tipping.

I maneuver to a standing position before turning to take cover around the corner of the office building. Not stopping there, I guide the monstrous biped with all the force of my body, careening from one building to the next in a hurried attempt to get away.

Glass shatters and debris flies as I drag a shoulder into one building and crash an arm into another. I haven’t perfected my normal gait yet, let alone a panicked retreat. The wake of crumbling office fronts testifies to this.

The map shows that the God’s Hand pilot hasn’t moved yet; he must still be re-orienting ADS03. I stop to summon the plans for Western Lights. I’ve run out of tall buildings behind which to hide, as the only structures before me are a row of two-story townhomes and a low-slung fitness facility.

No time, ADS03 is on the move. The furious blinking of the map might as well be a gong in my head the way it sears into my consciousness.

Fresh sweat drips down the dried saltiness of my forehead. I smear it away with a damp forearm before spinning the robot around. Training the cannon at the empty intersection, I wait for ADS03 to round the corner.

“Do you fear loss of control? It’s within reach. Do you fear death? It’s near, though not in the way you think.” Worthington returns at the worst time possible.

“Not now!” I shout. This isn’t happening!

Worthington continues, ignorant of my plight. “It’s all very simple, what you have to do. The destiny at hand will come to pass whether you assume command or rot inside with your apprehension.”

“What do you want from me?!” Panic creeps in thinking about how close ADS03 must be outside the blackened video screen.

Worthington replies. “Bring forth what man deserves—what man has asked for. Centuries of progress now culminates in your hands. Do you not yet know what is required of you?”

I repeat Worthington’s question in my head. What has ever been required of me? Is this what it’s all about—me fulfilling some purpose? I’m torn between my better judgment that says I’m a bystander in all of this and the thought that Worthington is somehow in control.

“Your only hope is the Balance,” Worthington says before signing off.

The screens and menus reawaken before I have time to react. I’m paralyzed by the sight of the ghostly white ADS03, not twenty feet from me.

The voice of the God’s Hand pilot cuts in. “When I sharpen my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance on my adversaries and repay those who hate me.”

The arms of the other robot spring forward as if to hold me in place.