MECHANICAL MENACE PART V

The crew faces an old enemy. End game

V. PRINCE

“Man, next time I see that chick, I'm gonna shove my foot up her butt. I'm not playin'.” Marion grumbled.

“Does anybody have a light?” Fleana asked.

A row of fluorescent lights blared from the ceiling. A long corridor stretched out before us. The floor was a metal grate, which I guess was why I had two to three sprained fingers. The hallway we were in looked like it was part of a lab. It was too clean and high tech to be a part of a sewer, but that didn't make me feel any better. By now I seriously hated labs. It only reminded me of needles and scientists and painful experiments. It didn't help when I knew there was a psychotic machine who was bent on revenge down there waiting for us.

“Nevermind.” Fleana's voice had gotten small.

“What now?” Katrina massaged her lower back.

“Guess we go forward.” I told her.

“And what? Run into the sociopath we may have injured?”

Fleana nodded sarcastically. “Your right, Tropical. Let's go back and�"Oh, wait. Maybe the 'sociopath' could be behind us all along, knowing that we go that way instead. I mean, we could sit tight and wait for Prince's brother to come find us, but how long will that take? Long enough for him to find us here of all places? Perhaps the killer will find us anyway.”

“Alright, alright! You've made your point. Let's go.”

With that we began walking down the corridor, some of us more limping. Good thing Biotic-Abiotic bones heal quickly.

I pushed a door, and man, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The room was a factory of death bots. Conveyor belts carried parts and cranes rapidly put them together, boxed super weapons ready to be released into the world.

I didn't know what Ecosystem Corporation was planning to do with them, but it clearly wasn't meant to benefit anyone.

A familiar creaking noise touched my ears. I looked up to find the lead cyborg standing above us on a balcony.

“I made some new friends when you left me to die on that fateful day.” His digitized voice said.

I just continued staring at him.

“Oh, don't fret over these creations. People here are much like myself. Tired of being outcasted, tired of the injustice the world gives us, wanting the destruction of those who only crave destruction. You know like yourselves.”

I continued to stare.

“What? No comment?”

“I was just wondering…” Katrina tilted her head as she peered at his chest. “About the machines. How exactly are they expected to help anyone?”

“I'm glad you asked. When I was reborn, the executives, your grandparents, saw Drift's�"the woman you met�"and my potential. Oh, we saw eye to eye very soon indeed. She loved my mechanics and we bonded. She hates children y'know�"or maybe that's just you.”

“What's her beef?” Fleana asked.

“Oh, nothing you did, but dear ol’ mommy and daddy have skeletons in their closets. They weren't very fond of her. I'm afraid she still has some bitter feelings over how they treated her. It's such a shame when kids pick on each other.”

Fleana rubbed her chin. “That's impossible.”

“You don't believe that it's possible that your seemingly clean nosed mother has some funk in her nostrils.”

“First off, ew. Second, no because Mrs. Rosethorne, y'know our teacher. Keeps reminding me of how much of troublemakers my mom and the rest of our parents were back in Levels Academy. However, she also told me how avoidant they were of people for a whole lot of reasons. My mom for example always stayed in the library because grandma had always pressured her about getting good grades and thus became practically incapable of saying more than a few sentences to other people at a time. Aurora was a bit of a prankster for a time but his schemes always backfired and he eventually grew out of it after one year. Flare was a big loner who no one wanted to talk to. And Storm, well, she was a foreigner. She was well liked. Her big problem was not knowing how to act according to customs.”

“What's you point, girl?'

“My point, my dear old janitor is when Mrs. Rosethorne told me this, I wondered why she did. She told me 'I already knew'. Despite being totally different people, me and my mother are very much alike. Sort of like I was a clone of her. We may have found trouble in one way or another and our lives are definitely different from others, but in the end we are both well meaning people who are afraid of hurting anyone unlike you. What really seals it was you were there. I can sense emotions like reading a book y’know. You knew how my mother was in school, and you know that Drift was actually a sensitive girl who misread our parents' actions.”

“I've been readin’ you since you grabbed me.” Marion interjected. “During the car ride, I realized who you were. The bond you share with that woman is you two thinking we did something to ya, but ironically you both know that we didn't harm any of you.”

“But since your egos are bruised,” Kat added. “You couldn’t move on with your lives. You have to get us back for the 'wrongs' we did. You want to break us for your getting broken, and the woman wants to hurt us because we look like our parents when they were younger.”

“Double bonus because it also hurts them now if we got killed.” I summed up.

The cyborg laughed and acted confident. “Puh-thetic. 'cause you know you'll never beat m--”

Katrina blasted the side of his face. “You know cyborg. I thought I would regret getting you killed.”

“I knew it! I knew it! You--”

I iced over his mouth.

“But,” Katrina continued. “I realize now that everyone is better off without you. You’re a gaslighter, a manipulator, a bully, and no longer worth fighting. Even when he’s not here to tell me this, I know that even grandpa thinks you’re a burden. He knows that my friends and I could destroy you without breaking a sweat. He only used you to deliver us to that stupid board and float an offer to us.”

The cyborg managed to rip off the ice. “I�"I don’t know how many times I have to tell ya. You. Can. Never. Beat. Me!”

“We already did.” Katrina gestured to the frozen spires that I had conjured just as they were talking.

Fleana summoned a ball of compressed air and blasted the base, causing the spires to collapse on top of the machine, damaging his circuits. Though his eyes grew dim, I knew he wasn’t dead. He was no longer alive enough to be dead.

“Well, that was easy.” Fleana stated. “I think we’re done here.”

“Not quite.” Marion lit his thumb.

We watched as the firefighters doused the flames that consumed the building. The fire didn’t spread far, but it still got the job done.

“Do you think anybody was still inside?” Kat wondered.

“Who cares.” Fleana dismissed.

“Right.” I agreed.

“Well, that’s not very pleasant.” Storm quipped.

“Well, you weren’t kidnapped, processed and then sentenced to death.” Her daughter pointed out.

“True.”

“But I don’t understand why you brought him.” Matthew pointed at the shattered remains of the cyborg.

“We needed a battering ram.” Fleana smirked. “His head was hard enough.”

“Yeah, we got stuck inside that building when the fire got outta hand.” I explained.

“Didn’t think the plan through, huh?” My brother sneered.

“Nope, but at least the death bots are gone.”

“Well, thank God for that.” Susan rolled her eyes. “So what are we going to do with him?”

“I think I have an idea.”

“Geez, what a wide load.” Matthew groaned with the rest of us as we dragged the metallic body close to the lake that was created by the Maim. Like the name implied it was a big cesspool of crap and poison that would kill pretty much anything that touches it.

“Seriously.” Caroline grunted. “How did you use him as a battering ram?”

“I froze the floor and rode him.” I explained.

“Like a dog.” Marion quipped.

Finally, we stopped just as his arms dangled into the water. Already the metal was beginning to rust and shear off.

“God.” Susan clutched her nose. “How could people make a river so foul?”

I looked at the tall building that at one time held a DNA symbol that represented the lab where my friends and I were born nestled in the neighboring industrial park. We stood on that very building almost one year ago handling another science experiment gone wrong courtesy of dear old grandad and his godforsaken company. We had to do some grim things, and unlike the movies and some novels, not everyone got a happy ending.

The building now had an Ecosystem Corporation symbol on it, a little Earth in the middle of a recycling symbol. I wonder what they had in store for us next.

“It may be bad for the environment, but I don’t care.” Fleana pushed the mech with her foot. “Adios muchacho.”

“You will not be missed.” I told him.

We watched as his bulky, metal body sunk beneath the surface, but somehow I think, no, I knew he will be back. And we’ll be waiting. Cliche but true.

Author's Note

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