MECHANICAL MENACE PART III

The death bots pay the crew a visit.

III. MARION

Now, the reasonable thing you would expect us to do in a story like this was find out who that cyborg was and destroy it, but to be honest we disregarded it and went on with our lives as normal.

My dad gave the orb to the police so that they will have a lead on the mysterious robot attacks. Sounds good, right? Problem solved, right? Not exactly.

I would like to say it was a normal day at Levels Academy but then I would be lying. Somehow the death bots found their way into our school. Little mechanical spiders scuttled across the floors; tentacles popped out of lockers, I had to save Zach from one those…twice; and there was even a shootout in the teacher’s lounge. I giggled when I saw Mrs. Rosethorne trot into class, her hair in a tattered mess and her dress full of holes, and then she made me write “I will not laugh at my teacher after she has been shot” a hundred times. Still worth it.

It was actually starting to be sort of a nice day for once, and that’s probably where I messed up. As soon as my friends and me stepped outside, we found out that we had a bunch of red, humanoid death bots waiting for us. They had just appeared. No notice or anything.

We have come for you. They whirred.

“Not again.” Fleana despaired.

“Yeah, well, this time they picked the wrong guy to mess with. I got this guys.” Zach charged at the machines before I got the chance to pull him back, and then got blasted by one of the bots right into the recyclables.

“Looks like bravado goes right out the window when you’re flat on your butt.” Asa brushed a strand of hair out of her face.

“'Licia,” I nodded at the door. “go help Zach and then go get some help. The four of us--”

“Five.” Asa leered at me. “You guys can’t have all the fun.”

“Whatever. Let's just do this.”

If only plans like that were easy to pull off. As soon as the action started, the death bots went straight for Alicia and Zach. Asa aimed for one in the back, but found out quickly that these machines aren’t easily affected by lightning bolts. She only managed to shear off its left shoulder and slowed it down by a split second.

“What gives!” She stomped her foot. “That blast was like ten thousand volts!”

“What? You thought Ecosystem Corporation wouldn’t think to shockproof their machines?” Katrina rolled her eyes. “Ace cup your palms together and make a grenade like this.”

Kat generated a bright blue ball of energy between her fingertips and detonated it onto a few death bots. Asa followed her example but was making clumps that worked more like land mines. Fleana used her wind powers to send a few tumbling off school grounds hundreds of feet below and Prince was freezing the circuits of everyone he touched. Tongues of flames leapt from my palms and made holes in each mecha, but no matter how productive we were, the mechas wouldn’t stop until they were literally scraps of metal.

Finally, they managed to overpower us. Cold metal hands gripped my triceps and held both my arms to the sky. One had Kat point her finger towards Fleana so that she had no choice but to shoot her if she even thought about blasting, which left Fleana no option but to land and get smothered by the heaps of metal and gears. Asa took a shot to the head, and later wasn’t moving. And one bot had Prince place his own hand on his throat so the next thing freezes would give him a literal head cold.

I heard a mangled laugh erupt in the crowd of death bots.

“I hope you've already said your goodbyes.” The mechanical voice came from a mecha that was twice as large as the rest. His glowing red eye focused on my blue irises. He was humanoid and looked kind of familiar, but one thing was for sure: he was hard to look at. It looked like his face didn't heal right after spending a night in an oven. Whatever part of his body was missing, a piece of machinery replaced, which quite frankly was almost everything. There was hardly any doubt it. This dude had been in a horrible accident, and had barely been rescued from the scrap heap, and now he was going to make the whole world pay starting with my friends and me.

The thing leered at the four of us while kicking Asa’s body to the side. “Yes, the professor would love to see you bunch. She’s very eager to break you all down and see what makes you tick.”

I tilted my head. “Professor?”

“Yes. She's really eager to meet you. 'course if you want, I could just break you down now. I do owe you one.”

“Oh, who are you?! And who is this 'professor'? Feel free to answer in any order if you could.”

“No, screw the questions.” A voice said before a wave of bright orange flames tore through the crowd of machines. My brother Matt cracked his red knuckles. It looked like brought his girlfriend, Nathan, and Susan with him. “Just let the numbskulls go and you could keep the rest of your toys.”

“Oh? So you managed to get backup.” The cyborg said. “In any case, you’re in no position to give me orders. Unless, of course, you want blood on your hands.”

The bot twisted my neck to make a point and one had a raised foot over Asa’s head.

Just as Matthew was about to do something, Susan shoved her forearm into his chest. “Wait Matt. We can't afford them getting killed.”

“But if I just move fast enough…” He thought.

“No.” Caroline pushed her glasses further up her nose. “You’ll burn four out of five of them.”

“Then what then?!”

All of a sudden, Prince's backpack crawled off his shoulders and right into Nathan’s arms.

The cyborg laughed. “What is that?”

“My homework assignment.” Prince explained. “You go home and work on it so that you'll find the answer you need. The answers are all in my Backpack.”

Nathan nodded in his direction. “Alright, as a T.A, I’ll have to look at it. I hope it’s not hard to figure out.”

“I don’t know why you even bother.” The cyborg snorted. “Where these guys are going, homework is the last thing they need to worry about.”

Fleana perked up. “No more homework?”

I shook my head at her.

“You could have the Asian girl back.”

The death bot kicked Asa over to Matthew’s feet. Lord knows she was going to feel that in the morning.

My brother scooped her up and nodded in my direction. It didn’t bring much comfort, but maybe that was because I was being crammed into the trunk of the hummer parked out front.

Author's Note

If you like what you've read check out book one and two on Amazon.com by Xavier McDougle