Lost Friends, Chapter Four

A short jog through the ruinous neighbourhood brought Dylan, Bret, Joe, Phoenix, Jeffrey and Kumiko to the monolith of concrete and chrome that was the Mekanikron building. Gone was the bright sunshine and clear blue sky of earlier that day. A preternatural twilight was throwing all into oppressive gloom, and in the heavens beyond the skyscraper’s peak the clouds were circling as if caught in the beginnings of a hurricane. Dylan was wearing his satellite headset, and said into its microphone: “Talk to me, Doctor Mendelssohn, how much longer do we have until the rift opens?”

“Two hours at the most,” came back the Doctor’s reply. “You must step up the operation exponentially, Dylan.”

The Four Heroes and their allies entered the complex through the sprawl of factory buildings and laboratories at its base, proceeding cautiously through the silent corridors to the control room deep within the basement. A sliding double-door yielded to Dylan’s powers, revealing a vast spacious chamber in near-complete darkness. The only illumination was coming from the perspex-walled box at the far end, in which the second group of humans trapped in the Ring of Fire sat or lay beneath a sterile white glow. They were alive, but the energy-leeching properties of their cell had drained them of all but their last vestige of strength, feeding it into those The Four Heroes suspected they would be meeting very soon.

Dylan reached out a hand and tested the electrics. “They’ve disabled the lights,” he reported grimly.

“In those shadows their shields will make them all but invisible,” Bret advised. “Stay close, everyone, and be on your toes.”

Together they made their way slowly into the control room, walking back-to-back in a tight group with powers and skills tensed for action, each of the six alert for danger from whichever direction he or she was facing. The only sound came from their footsteps until they gained the dead centre of the floor…and none but Bret, with his finely-honed superhuman battle prowess, heard the tiny noise at that point which would otherwise have spelled their doom.

“Move!” he yelled.

Our heroes flung themselves apart as a Mekanikron robot melted out of the darkness directly above and plunged upon them. Panels on its forelimbs retraced to reveal twin circular saw-blades spinning in a blur, which summarily slashed apart the flooring the humans had vacated seconds earlier. Six crablike legs clattered onto the ground as the robot landed, and withdrawing its saws it vanished again.

More of its kind were emerging into view, swinging their blades in wide arcs that forced the intruders onto the defensive and broke their formation. “Exercise extreme care, friends!” Jeffrey shouted, as he dodged ever backward to avoid the attacks. “Those saws may be sufficient to piece even the rubberoid qualities of my blubbery body!”

“Looks like they can’t use their weapons while they’re shielded, though, which is one thing,” Bret observed, driving a blue-shining fist into the head-module of one and stilling its advances forever. Jeffrey meanwhile flung himself face-first onto the control room floor and bounced twenty feet into the air to escape the robot that was making attempts on him, while Phoenix cried: “Aim for ze cell, it is zeir powair source! Without it, zey cannot function!”

Joe swept his arm around at once and fired off a ball of flame in the direction of the white florescent walls, but one of the robots sprang out of nothing and deflected it with its armoured carapace. While it was visible Phoenix turned her revolver on it and put it out of action, but Joe’s second foray was likewise repelled by a defender from the dark. As Kumiko skated lightning-quick into close quarters with the foe, two more materialized at Joe’s elbow and he had no choice but to break off his assault. Kumiko lashed out at her opponent with a roundhouse kick, but it was gone before her roller-skate could connect.

“Oh, it’s the art of invisibility, is it?” she declared, her brown eyes sparkling dangerously. “Hate to tell you, but I’m the last one of our gang you want to try that on!”

Holding still, Kumiko waited for the unseen enemy to make the first move. When it flashed back into sight and clove its saw-blades at her, her reflexes were equal to it and she sped out of their lethal path, following up with a boot to the robot’s underbelly that caught it unawares. Her blow did not deactivate its shielding device however, so although Kumiko wasted no time in aiming another strike, the robot was faster and disappeared before her palms hit home.

“Accessing human language database,” the robot prattled from the dark. “Appropriate response selected. Too slow, roller-girl!”

“Some programmer at Mekanikron had way too much time on his hands!” Kumiko exclaimed, as once again the robot reappeared, she dodged and retaliated, and the dance began anew. Elsewhere on the battlefield Dylan had surrounded himself with an orbiting belt of metallic fragments to keep the robots at a distance, and from it was launching columns of debris in the hopes of striking an invisible foe at random. Just then a robot swam into view close at hand, and its shell sprang open to reveal a quadruple-barrelled launcher aimed at him.

“Missiles, hit the deck!” Dylan yelled, throwing himself down as the robot fired off all four rockets at once. They screamed over Dylan’s head and tore at Joe, who managed to take a pair of them out with a flame-burst before rolling out of the path of the remaining two. Bret saw them approach him from behind as he duelled with his latest mechanical opponent and reverse-somersaulted away, so the missiles impacted upon the robot and pulverized it.

Dylan’s adversary reloaded its launcher and fired on him again, but this time our hero was ready. Using his powers to take control over the projectiles’ guidance systems, he steered them off-course and sent them curving around to the machinery above the cell. However, it seemed the Mekanikron robots were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to safeguard the source of their power. There were four premature explosions followed by four showers of grey metal wreckage as a quartet of foes flung itself in front of the missiles, while Dylan’s assailant with a final scowl retracted its launcher and faded from sight.

Kumiko’s robot appeared out of nowhere and took a swipe with its saw, forcing her to duck, then vanished before she had to chance to counterattack. It rematerialized moments later and slashed at her again, missing her by inches but backing her up against a wall. Kumiko aimed her skate at it as it began to disappear, but the kick sailed only through air.

“Appropriate response selected,” burbled the robot’s voice. “Nice bodywork but she’s built for comfort not speed!”

Targeting the place from which the synthesized speech had come, Kumiko brought her foot around lightning-fast and slammed the robot’s invisible form. Apparently enraged by this, it dropped its shield and scythed its blade at her in a killing blow. Our heroine leapt straight up and the saw dug deep into the wall behind her. Using this split-second opening our heroine brought her heel down with pinpoint precision on the bolt that attached the robot’s weapon to its arm, jamming it while it was still wedged in the wall. Unable to run, retract its saw or raise its shield, the foe could only struggle frantically to free itself while Kumiko landed on its limb, boosted herself from it and skated up the vertical surface. Reaching the apex of her climb, she turned back around in a graceful dive and the toecaps of her boots caved her opponent’s body in.

Sprawling in pieces on the floor, its legs wriggling nineteen to the dozen and with one arm still embedded, the robot began to blurt out: “Accessing…accessing…accessing human language database…vwrrx…face your doom, wheeled curvy human…wrrrx...accessing…eat circular saw, fleshy roller-fool…vwrzzzx…accessing grammatical file to rework human vernacular expression ‘skate or die’ into death-threat…”

Kumiko drew back her leg and kicked its head across the room.

“Access that,” said she.

Phoenix, giving her comrades covering fire, suddenly cried out and dropped her gun as a robot shunted her with its arm while it was still shielded. She tumbled to her knees as the foe dropped its shield, and both buzzsaw blades flashed in the half-light. Bret, seeing he had mere seconds to avert calamity, wrenched the side-panel off a nearby computer unit and shouted to Jeffrey: “Variant on our first meeting, kid!”

“My elastic hide can withstand it, Mr. Stevens, pray do not hold back!” Jeffrey yelled in response and braced himself, as Bret swung the panel and whacked him in the hindquarters with all his might. The rubbery boy hurtled at the robot menacing Phoenix and hit it like a cannonball, smashing it to smithereens.

Skidding to a halt, Jeffrey ran over to the fallen girl as his four fellows ran or jumped or skated over, forming a defensive circle around Phoenix so Dylan could help her to her feet. “I’ve got you, baby, it’s OK,” he told her. “Darn it, there are too many of these things, and sooner or later they’re going to wear us down!”

“One clear shot is all I will require, my friend,” Joe declared, igniting his fist.

“Got it!” said Dylan, and activated his headset. “Doctor Mendelssohn, we need something that’ll scramble their circuits for just a few seconds – white noise, an E.M. pulse, anything!”

“Triangulating now,” Mendelssohn’s voice came back. “But Dylan, do not forget that once you have rescued their captives, you must still find a way to extinguish the Ring Of Fire if any of you are to survive the opening of the rift!”

“We’re all over it, Doctor!” Dylan replied through gritted teeth, as he dodged a saw-blade and flung some metal detritus at the enemy it belonged to. Suddenly a jarring electronic note buzzed across the scene as Doctor Mendelssohn transmitted the interference from Mars, and throughout the control room the writhing grey bodies of robots began to appear and disappear and reappear again as their systems railed noisily against the onslaught. Joe whirled around, his hand outstretched, and fired.

The bolt of flame cut across the stage in a golden flash and slagged a gaping breach in the perspex cell wall. Out went the clinical white glow, briefly plunging the control room into darkness that was dispelled when the robots ceased their protestations and exploded to a man. By the fiery light of their burning husks the prisoners rose unsteadily to their feet and gazed around, their strength and senses fast returning, and then all it took was Bret’s yell of: “Come on, let’s move!” to set them scrambling through the hole to freedom. With our heroes helping them and ushering them along the ragged folk made all possible haste to put Mekanikron and the ghastly memories it contained far behind them, while their erstwhile captors lay where they were and spluttered and fizzled and squawked their last.

END OF CHAPTER FOUR