Wild Fyre (27 page)

{

 
EdAndMaco();

/*****

“T
HOSE
WIRES
ARE
DEAD
, right?” Ed asked.

“Depends,” Maco said. “If they’re attached to normal breakers, then they would have tripped when the saw shorted them. Either way, just don’t touch them and you’ll be fine.”

“What do you mean, either way? What if they’re not hooked up to normal breakers?”

“They could reset themselves after a few seconds if no short is detected. Like I said, just don’t touch them and you won’t get shocked. House current rarely ever kills,” Maco said.

Ed’s hesitation evaporated when he heard the whine of the small propellers. He looked up and saw a small helicopter drone descending on their position. Ed dove in through the small hole they had cut in the side of the building, pulling himself through with little regard for the singed wires in the wall.

“Move, Maco,” he yelled.
 

Ed spun on the floor and reached back through the hole to grab Maco’s hands and pull him through.
 

Maco grunted as the probe hit his leg. The spike jabbed through his pants and into his calf. Maco jerked away from Ed as his leg muscles contracted involuntarily. Ed scrambled over to Maco, unsure of what to do, when Maco stopped shaking and went limp.

“What happened?” Ed said.

Maco batted a numb hand at his own leg and dislodged the electrode.

“M-M-Move,” Maco said, stuttering.

“What?” Ed asked.

Maco shoved Ed away.

Metal probes, trailing tiny filaments of wires shot through the hole in the wall. Ed heard the buzzing of several more helicopter drones outside. The probes skidded to a stop on the bare wood floor. The wires crossed and tiny blue lightning erupted at the intersections. The probes withdrew as the drones flew away.

“Are you okay?” Ed asked.

“Yeah,” Maco said. He was rubbing his calf. “I don’t think it got me with full strength.”

Ed stood.

The room was an empty library. They had been lucky to cut through the wall at a section with no bookshelves. Most of the walls were lined with deep dark wood. Ed helped Maco to his feet.
 

“We should have brought the chainsaw,” Maco said.
 

“I’m not going back out there now,” Ed said.

“No, of course not,” Maco said. “Do you know where the servers are?”

There was only one door out of the empty library. Ed pointed to it. Maco nodded and crossed the floor. He opened the door and peeked through to a carpeted hallway. Maco stepped through and Ed followed.

“I’ve only been on this floor, but I think they said the servers were downstairs,” Ed said.

Maco opened another door from the hallway. He found an empty closet.

Ed opened the next door down and revealed a room with high ceilings and a tile floor.

“Maybe the stairs are near the center of the building?” Ed asked.

Maco opened the door to a bathroom. He flipped on the lights. On the other side of the toilet, a door was about halfway open. Maco went in to look. He found another closet and shut off the lights as he left.

The hall took a turn.

“This place is a maze,” Maco said.

Ed nodded.

After a short run, the hall continued straight and another hallway split left. Ed glanced—the left hall seemed to end at a set of doors out to a patio. The men continued straight. Windows on their left rose to a ceiling that vaulted upwards. Up the wall, they saw a balcony from the second floor.
 

“What’s up there?” Maco asked.

Ed shrugged.

“I hear fans up there,” Maco said. “Sounds like equipment.”

“There are doors up here,” Ed said. He walked forward and tried to look through the crack between two big double doors. He turned the handle and pushed through into a long dining room. Swinging doors on the right were propped open and led to the kitchen Ahead, another set of doors were closed.

The long table in the center of the room looked like it had an inch of dust on the wood finish. It had no chairs.

“Maco, come on,” Ed said.

Maco closed the doors behind him.

Ed went for the doors at the other end. Maco approached the swinging doors to the kitchen.

“Locked,” Ed said, jiggling the handle

The light coming through the tall windows caught the dust swirling up from the table.

“We can go through the kitchen, maybe,” Maco said. He disappeared through the swinging doors. “I don’t understand the floor plan of this place. Why did they make it so hard to get from one side to the other?”

Ed followed Maco into the kitchen. One wall was all cabinets. The other had appliances and counters. In the center, the sink and cutting boards were mounted in a long island.
 

“Maybe it makes the house seem even bigger?”

“Wait,” Maco said. “You hear that?”

“More fans?”

Maco shook his head. Ed finally heard it. It was the low hum of a small motor approaching from the far doorway. Maco dropped to a crouch and motioned for Ed to do the same. The noise stopped, whirred, and then stopped again. They heard the thing roll over the threshold and on to the slate floor of the kitchen.

Maco pointed. Ed shuffled back towards the swinging doors. On the other side of the island, they heard the motor stop.

Ed pointed towards the swinging doors and raised his eyebrows. Maco shrugged. Ed paused at the end of the island and waited for Maco to come alongside. Maco put up a finger and leaned his head around the edge slowly. He saw the corner of the boxy device. It was gray metal and stood only a couple of feet tall. Maco could see one of its knobby wheels where it rested on the tile. He leaned out a little farther.

The thing rolled forward and Maco saw that a little arm stuck out of the top of the box. It had a little claw on the end.
 

Maco motioned to Ed back towards the other end of the island. He waited for the little box to get close to the corner so they would have enough time to sneak around the other side.

Box rolled another inch and stopped. Ed was at the far end, waving for Maco to join him.

Maco waited another second, to see if the thing would come farther. It seemed to be waiting for something. It didn’t move as Maco crawled down and joined Ed. The two men prepared to bolt for the door.

Ed counted it off with his fingers—three, two, one. When he closed his fist, they bolted for the door.
 

Maco glanced over at the little box as they ran. The claw spun as he glanced.

Orange light flared in Maco’s eyes and consumed his vision. He stumbled through the door and crashed into the wall on the other side of the hall.

“Come on,” Ed said.

Maco flailed with his arms outstretched. Behind them in the kitchen, the little machine spun and began to roll after them.

“Maco, come on,” Ed said. Maco turned and fell to his knees.

“I’m blind, Ed. It flashed my eyes. I can’t see,” Maco said.

CH.18.Investigation ()
 

{

 
Ploss();

/*****

D
ETECTIVE
P
LOSS
USED
THE
pedestal of the birdbath to smash the handle from the French doors. They wouldn’t budge. He tried to smash the glass, but the concrete pedestal just bounced, sending a jolt up through his arms. Next, he tried the heavy pedestal on a window. That glass was impervious as well, but the wooden frame around the pane smashed and Ploss got his fingers in enough to pry it away. He ripped the protective glass from the window. Behind it, the real window was normal glass and the pedestal went right through. Ploss reached in carefully to unlock and slide up the window before boosting himself up over the edge.
 

He heard a shot from the foyer.

Ploss slipped on the glass and came down on his bad ankle. He grunted with the pain.

He shuffled towards the long hall and saw Aster pointing his gun at a gray box on the floor. Aster circled it slowly as Ploss limped up.

“What is it?” Ploss asked. “Another one of those manufacturing robots?”

“Something like that, I think,” Aster said. “It gave up pretty easy when I put a bullet through its circuit board.”

“Good to know,” Ploss said. “You look like hell.”

Aster dabbed at the blood congealing on his forehead. “Airbag,” he said.

“Should we find Ed and what’s his name?”

“Yeah,” Aster said. “I saw them on a monitor. They were in a room with bookcases the last I saw. Let’s try this way.”

Aster pointed to an arched doorway on the left that led beneath the stairway to an open hall. The floor was rich red tile, laid out in a diagonal pattern. On either side, arches opened up to airy little rooms. The ones on the left featured big windows to let in lots of light. On the right, they had tall ceilings and echoed their footsteps back to the detectives as they limped along.
 

Ploss held his gun near his shoulder. Aster’s gun-hand hung at his side.

They rounded the corner carefully—stealing a glance before committing.

Ploss opened a door. “Stairs to the basement,” he said.

“Leave it open,” Aster said. “This place is a maze and we might need to come back to that.”

Ploss nodded. On this section of hallway, doors blocked off the rooms on either side.

Aster stayed in the middle of the hall while Ploss opened each door and looked in each room. The hallway snaked left and back right. Ploss found a couple of closets and then the hall doubled back on itself in a tight u-turn.

Ploss opened the next door and called Aster to look in. They saw a darker room, lined with wooden bookcases. At the far end, a ragged hole in the wall let in daylight. Plaster dust and splinters were tracked in across the wood floor.

“Did they chew their way in?” Ploss asked.

“Chainsaw,” Aster said.

The detectives backed out of the room and continued down the hall.
 

“Wait,” Ploss said. “Didn’t we come from back there?” He pointed to the end of the long hall, past the closed doors of rooms they had checked.

“Yeah,” Aster said. “They built it so it looks like the hall ends. Must be an optical illusion or something.”

“Weird.”

“This is taking too long,” Aster said. He put his cast up near his mouth and yelled, “Ed? You here?”

They stood still and listened for a reply. Aster started moving again when Ploss held up his hand, signaling to stop. Ploss stood near a corner. He poked his head around the edge and pulled back. The next time, Ploss led with his gun. He fired one shot before retreating again. Aster shuffled up and looked with him. Another of the gray boxes had been dispatched.

“What do those things do, anyway?” Ploss asked.

“I don’t care to find out,” Aster said.

From up ahead, they heard a metallic thunk, like a heavy hammer coming down on an anvil. The detectives exchanged a glance and then shuffled forward cautiously. They rounded the next corner.

CH.19.Staffing ()
 

{

 
Ed();

/*****

“W
HAT
IS
IT
? W
HY
did you stop?” Maco asked.

“The car is blocking the door,” Ed said. “Can you see anything yet?”

“I think I’ve got a little vision around the edges, but nothing in front,” Maco said. “There isn’t another door?”

“Yeah, there’s a back one. Hold on,” Ed said. He left Maco standing in the foyer and he jogged over to the French doors. The handle came off in his hand. The doors remained bolted tight. “Locked,” he said, returning to Maco. “There’s another one of those robots over here, but it looks like… Yeah—it has a bullet hole in it.”

From deeper in the house they heard a shot.

“We can probably climb around the car if we’re careful,” Ed said.

“No,” Maco said. “We can get someone to look at my eyes after we finish this. Are there stairs around here?”

“Yes. There’s a staircase on the right.”

“Let’s go up and see what’s there.”

“No, Maco. She probably has a bunch more of those robots up there. It’s too dangerous.”

“It’s not going to get any less dangerous if we wait. She’ll build more and more defenses as she gets more manufacturing up and running. We have to stop her today,” Maco said.

Ed took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He opened them again and looked at Maco. The man was tilting his head, trying to make sense of the world he could no longer see.

“Okay,” Ed said. “If we see or hear any more of those things, we’re leaving.”

“Lead on.”

Ed took Maco’s arm and walked him around the green puddle that surrounded the car. He paused while Maco’s foot found the first step. Maco climbed with the aid of the bannister. At the top of the steps a carpeted hall led left and right. Maco listened carefully and then pointed left. Ed took his arm again and helped him walk down the hall.
 

The first few doors they encountered were open, revealing empty rooms. The hallway turned right and they found the balcony that overlooked the hall where they had walked earlier. Down a short hall from the balcony, the high-pitched noise of spinning fans grew louder. Ed led the way and then showed Maco through the door.

“Servers?” Maco asked.

“I don’t think so,” Ed said. “I don’t see anything that looks like server racks. I’m mean, there are racks, but it’s just ports and wires, I think.”

“Network room,” Maco said.

“Yeah?”

“Lots of blue cables everywhere?”

“Yes,” Ed said. “Blue cables plugged into all these ports and then they go into big bundles into the floor.”

“Let’s find the power supply and shut these off,” Maco said.