The Rendering (9 page)

Suddenly, the thing
was
facing me.

A bony knob on its shoulder swiveled and throbbed; then its legs tensed and the monkeybeast leapt from chair to chair—right toward me!

I slammed the door and ran, but a second later, the thing smashed through and skidded across the hall to the opposite wall. The biodroid wasted a few seconds stomping the wreckage of the door into smaller bits of wreckage—nasty temper. Then it turned toward me, and a stubby gun barrel slid from its armpit.

I dodged behind a snack machine, and the monkeybeast blasted a hole in concrete wall down the corridor.

Looking around, I saw … nothing. No way out. Just a long
hallway with a few doors at one end and a snack machine in the middle.

And a monkeybeast, stalking closer for the kill.

For the record, Douglas, the machine to which you are referring did not vend snacks
.

Looked like a snack machine to me.

That particular model dispensed preprogrammed nutrient media for the researchers, for propagation of—

Whatever. I’m pretty sure I saw potato chips.

Anyway, the vending machine didn’t offer much cover. And once the biodroid stepped closer, the machine offered no cover at all.

Just me and a monkeybeast, five feet apart. The gun muzzle swiveled, aiming at my forehead.

Killed by an armpit gun. What a way to go.

I closed my eyes and waited for the end.

Then I heard something.

A scrabbling. A
pok! Pok-pok! Bzzzzt—thwing!

I opened one eye and saw the biodroid reeling backward, swaying and stumbling and beating itself on the face and
neck. It was trying to dislodge the centipede draped across its head, five fiber-optic antennae wriggling madly, trying to burrow into the droid.

I understood in a flash that the centipede had been trying to protect me, to save me from the monkeybeast. It hadn’t been trying to
eat
me; it had been trying to
herd
me.

Well, I can take a hint.

I stood and ran. The sounds of the fight—crashing and pounding and an electric zapping—followed me around the corner and through the double doors. As I fled, I frantically consulted the map from the snake-fridge room that had been helpfully translated into
Arsenal Five
levels.

I saw the route in a flash and shoved through swinging doors into a small medical bay. In the corner, I crawled under a storage cabinet to an unlocked grate on the floor. I squeezed through and wormed my way along a vent until I fell into a conference room in the particle accelerator wing. I raced down the hall into a lab and pushed into the air lock.

Then I waited for the far side of the air lock to open. Seconds ticked by. The countdown continued. A screen on the wall flashed information about the BattleArmor development lab and the virtual reality combat simulators.

I read it as I waited for the door to unseal, shifting my weight from my left foot to my right. I’d never heard of the BattleArmor or the combat sim before then and thought they didn’t matter.

Wrong again.

I muttered, “C’mon, open!” as I read, and finally the air lock door unsealed.

Then I trotted along the doughnut-shaped tunnel, counting the manhole covers—made from some shimmering plastic alloy—as I ran: one, two, three, four, five, six …

At the seventh, I knelt and yanked at the cool smooth handles and my vision started to darken. I felt dizzy and lightheaded and

       the world

and I fell on my butt, breathing hard.

What was
that?

It felt worse than panic, worse than exhaustion.

I remembered what the Center’s voice had said:
Brain waves compromised
. Were dizzy spells some aftereffect of getting stuck in the Holographic Hub? Just what I needed right then.

Luckily, when I shook my head, my vision cleared. So I finished tugging at the manhole cover, and with a
shhhh
of depressurization, the seal broke.

I slipped through and found myself in a vertical shaft.

I climbed down the ladder—three stories underground—then stopped at the access hatch. Workshop seven was just around the corner.

Only one problem: the hatch was secured with a complex electronic lock with a card-swipe, retinal scanner, and keypad.

I slumped in defeat, completely baffled.

Then I got the glimmering of an idea. A bad idea, but not worse than letting Roach steal the only copy of the Protocol. Not worse than failing to download another copy that could be used against him. And
definitely
not worse than being locked inside the Center when a nuke exploded.

So I tapped
707
on the keypad. I waited a second, then tapped
7070707
.

Then:

Because whenever I text,
707
means SOS. And I really, really needed help.

Then I waited. And waited. Yet nobody answered.

Well, unless you count the announcement in the distance: “Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in thirty-four minutes. Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in thirty-four minutes.”

Then the keypad beeped twice, and I looked more closely. Three letters flashed at me:
BUG?

I tapped in
JJ!
(I called Jamie JJ online.)

Jamie:
RUIT?
(Are you in trouble?)

Well, I didn’t want to say too much, in case Roach was somehow monitoring the conversation. Fortunately, Jamie and I texted enough that we used the same shorthand. And even more fortunately, she was using her newly supercharged laptop, with a direct link to the Holographic Hub, which monitored the entire Center.

I’ll explain about her laptop later—but right then, the important thing was that my desperate call for help had popped onto her screen.

I thought for a second, then entered
EMRTW
. (Evil Monkeys Rule the World. Telling her I was in trouble.)

Jamie:
WUN?
(What do you need?)

Me:
FRED.
(Friggin’ Ridiculous Electronic Device.)

Jamie:
LB4?
(Like before?)

Me:
ATSL.
(Along the Same Lines.)

Jamie:
…

Me (frantically):
OPNTHELOKINEDU2OPEN HATCH!

Jamie:
UNLOCK?

Me:
Y.
(Yessssssssssssssssssss!)

Jamie:
UNTCO.
(You Need to Chill Out.)

Me (hyperventilating):
STPPYNOZGTW!
(Stop picking your nose, get to work!)

Ten seconds later …

The access hatch:
Shhhhhht
.

Unlocked!

Me:
UROCK.

Jamie:
LYLAB.

Me:
LYLAS.

Love You Like a Brother. Love You Like a Sister.

Long story short: I found workshop seven around the corner.

Hiding behind a janitorial cart, I eased closer and closer, then stopped, ten feet outside the room. Just in time to watch Roach’s men wheeling this huge pod into the service elevator.

And on the side of the pod, in big letters:

HOSTLINK

I’d arrived too late. Instead of downloading the Protocol into the three cloned skunks, here’s what I’d achieved: I’d moved a few steaks around.

Perfect. We needed a hero, and we got a T-bone delivery boy.

To make matters worse, Commander Hund loomed inside the freight elevator, his implanted eye scanning the corridor as the soldiers loaded more crates.

He tapped his communicator and said, “HostLink secured. Bring us up.”

“Excellent,” Roach replied. “With the Protocol and the HostLink, we cannot conceivably be defeated.”

“The boy—”

“Ignore him. In twenty-five minutes, he’ll be vaporized.”

“He’s right in front of me,” Hund said, looking at the janitorial cart. “He thinks he’s hiding.”

“Then kill him, what do I care? Just don’t delay!”

Hund pulled his guns and blasted away, not even aiming for me, just shredding the cart. Floor wax and glass cleaner splashed everywhere, and I was exposed, crouched in the middle of the hall.

Hund bared his teeth. “Should I wait twenty-five minutes—or put you out of your misery right now?”

I shook my head.

“Your wish is my command,” he said as the elevator doors started closing. “But here’s a parting gift.”

Then he shot me.

In my calf.

A terrible burning pain.

Agony.

I curled into a tight ball. Maybe I screamed.

Something hissed and popped and crawled toward me—the centipede, looking pretty rough. Charred and cracked and missing half its segments.

Two of its antennae probed the bullet hole—and in about five seconds, the pain turned to numbness. I blinked the tears from my eyes. My heartbeat slowed a little. My breath stopped coming in short harsh gasps. And a minute after that, the centipede finished sewing the hole in my leg closed.

“Um, thanks,” I squeaked.

The centipede reared back and sprayed a clear adhesive patch on the wound. A cool sensation penetrated my skin,
and the scent of eucalyptus mixed with the lingering stench of melted plastic and gunpowder.

“Are you the AI?” I asked, suddenly calm. Probably from a sedative in that spray. “Can you talk?”

Three of the centipede’s segments cocked, almost quizzically. Then, with a sudden
ttz-pop
, it keeled over. The tractor treads on the underside spun momentarily, then stopped as a cloud of black smoke belched forth.

I don’t know what was in that painkiller, but I patted the centipede on the head and stood. My leg didn’t hurt; I wasn’t even limping. And my mind was clear.

I pored over the map. For the first time, I knew exactly what to do.

“Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in twenty-four minutes. Self-destruct initiated. Detonation sequence in twenty-four minutes.”

Twenty-four minutes. Plenty of time.

I grabbed the specimen pack with the steaks and ran. Corridor to vent shaft to access ladder. Supply depot to executive washroom to hallway.

And from the hallway to the BattleArmor development
lab, a big square room with equipment and paperwork strewn everywhere in the aftermath of the explosion. But the blast hadn’t even scratched the prototype Quantuum 19 BattleArmor.

At that time, I didn’t know anything about the BattleArmor other than the name, which I’d read on the screen inside the air lock. Well, and the fact that nobody ever got the prototype working right. I didn’t care about that. I was just looking for places to plug in the steaks. The massive ilatfanium-alloy suit loomed in the corner of the room, with thick cables snaking around plates of impenetrable armor, from gauntlets to a half mask.

I darted to the console beside the BattleArmor, then stopped, eyeing the dozens of switches. No idea how to do this. So I flipped every switch and spoke into the console. “If you can hear me, get ready. Steak’s on.”

I plugged one of the steaks into a port on the prototype and nothing happened. So I popped the safety cap beside the port and pressed the button.

Nothing continued to happen.

Huh
.

I gave the console a good whack.

Still nothing.

“That’s just great,” I muttered.

I didn’t really care when kilns exploded or streetlights
flickered—and fine, people called me Bug—but this was a bad time for my technology curse to kick in.

I just shook my head and crossed toward the door. I had one more chance, if I remembered the information on that air lock screen right. Maybe not as good as the BattleArmor, but I wasn’t about to quit now.

Halfway across the room, I heard a sudden humming. I turned and saw the steak pulsing and glowing a faint blue at the BattleArmor port.

“That’s more like it,” I said.

Then the steak turned brighter. And brighter. And hotter. Until some papers on the floor caught fire, and plastic started melting off computers and cables, and a fire alarm sounded.

The steak streamed inside the suit through the port, growing bigger and hotter and brighter until I had to look away.

The heat forced me into the hallway, and a moment before I slammed the door, the entire lab burst into a raging blue fire.

Well.
That
hadn’t gone as planned.

Not that I really had a plan. Still, I’d hoped for something more constructive than setting the place on fire.

No time to worry, though. Instead, I’d check the map and start Plan B.