Hello! Sorry it's been a while for an update-real life got in the way! Most of the story is drafted out now just needs a bit of editing! Thank you so much for the kind review LokiLover-hope this one meets with approval! :D

Chapter 2

They reached Caleb's command post in record time managing to avoid any lurking shades and stomping Roboidz in the process. Once they piled into the room all eyes were on her. Caleb was almost vibrating with anticipation.

"So what is it? What's Neuros? Is it something to do with N Lab? Something big I'll bet. And sneaky too. Something that's so important to the kettle heads that they'll do everything to stop us getting to it? Is it? Is It?"

One of the recruits hit him on the arm in an attempt to stem the words, "Give her a chance to answer first!"

He looked a little abashed, "Right, yes, sorry, ahem, what is Neuros?"

She'd been knocked back a little by the intensity of his questioning, Too many things to answer at once! Her mind went momentarily blank. She just stared at him. Really stared at him. Something was wrong. Something that was setting off a big red warning bell at the back of her brain. Something that was important, vital. He was stopping, waiting for her to answer him. To explain her claim. Neuros. What it was, what it meant. She wouldn't disappoint. The alarms kept ringing.

"Neuros, is, well, from what Galen told me it's..." She looked him in the face. It suddenly clicked.

"HYPERBOLIC ATOMS! She leapt about a foot in the air, "You're CYBERNETIC! You've got implants! Do you have any idea how circuit-fryingly dangerous that was?"

She grabbed his bionic arm. "I didn't spend the last 5years building a matter transporter to reach you on Futuregate just to fuse you!" She fumed, examining his arm in mounting exasperation. "Roboid tech! Just as I thought! There's one in your head too! Do you know what this is? It's an EMP generator. If I'd of hit you It'dve been mission over! It shuts down technology, specifically bio electronics. Roboidz. You. Shutting down a head connection could shut your whole brain down."

All three of them gaped at her with incomprehension.

"I could've KILLED you!" She exploded in explanation, "I'm so stupid!," She yelled at herself "I should have noticed earlier, from the way you talked in the broadcasts! I'm so very VERY...," She looked back at him from her rant and saw the effect of her words, "going overboard here," She closed her mouth giving him his arm back.

"Got a little carried there, too used to my own company and ranting at myself. Sorry." She paused, "Shutting up now."

The recruits stared between them. On the one side Caleb had actually been shocked silent as his cradled his offending arm trying not to look grievously hurt and on the other Lexa, who, looking uncomfortably embarrassed was biting her lip and staring at the floor.

Neither of them made a move.

Time for some 21st century lessons in damage control.

"Well, Caleb may be a cyborg but you've got weird hair." The younger girl joined in, looking Lexa up and down with a critical eye, " And you've got odd boots!"

"What?" The comment threw her totally off her train of thought.

"I mean," The judgmental voice continued, "is that wiring in there? And pencils?"

She reached up to her cluttered corkscrew curls self consciously.

"I need somewhere to keep stuff!" She argued.

"That's why pockets were invented!" The recruit retorted.

"Well I'm a bit short on pocket space," indicating her tight jump suit and ragged skirts, "plus I'm rubbish at sewing to make some more."

"You could always ask Caleb, he made these uniforms for us." The recruits winked at each other, "he can sew alright but just don't ask him to tell a joke!"

"Oi! My humour's just too sophisticated for you lot to understand!" Came his indignant defence as he joined in.

"No, they're just bad!" The pair of them laughed.

"But he can juggle though! Really well!" Piped up the girl.

Caleb swung around in surprise, "How do you know that?"

"'Coz you practice when you think we're not looking!"

"You sneaky recruits!"

"Stealth training Caleb, all about the training!" The girl laughed.

"Speaking of which," Added the boy, "are you going to tell us about Neuros soon? Coz, we'd really like to beat it."

As simple as that, the uncomfortable tension had been broken.

They settled in the Command post, Lexa spoke quickly to Caleb before beginning,

"I am sorry, I didn't mean to be rude, been used to my own company for far too long."

"S'alright really, in a way it's sort of nice to actually have someone care that much." She looked at him in surprise.

He cleared his throat to cover any response,

"So what is this Neuros?"

"Well, from what Galen could gather," Lexa began.

"Who's Galen?" Asked the boy

"The leader of our resistance cell group."

Caleb currently didn't care who this person was only what information he knew. There would be time for more questions later. "So what did he know?"

"His theory was that Neuros is the organism that's controlling the Roboidz. Directing them, giving all the orders and masterminding their projects"

"Like a queen bee?"

"Exactly"

"Like what?" puzzled Caleb

"A queen bee? You know, like bees in a hive, buzzy things flying around, making honey, getting in the way, living in big colony all being ruled over by one big bee, the queen who tells them what to do."

Caleb's face was a total blank.

"Okay, forget that for now, bees can wait. What's important is that's what Lexa reckons that is exactly what's controlling the Roboidz isn't it?"

"Yes," agreed Lexa, eager to discuss resistance matters again, "In the resistance we tried to contact other groups, you know, via radio signals Galen had been trying for years" She smiled, "it worked sometimes but as he moved about he began to notice behaviour pattern. If his radio was on then Roboidz would find him, and us. Then there was the voice."

"What voice?"

"An evil one, it usually said stuff along the lines of all humans would be destroyed. But it was heard just before a Roboidz attack. Like they knew. Like the voice knew where we were and sent in the ground troops."

"What did it sound like?"

"Evil. Pure and sinister. A female cybernetic snarl that brought death whenever it was heard." Came the vehement description.

"Oh." Well what else could you say to a description like that?

"Anyway, that's what we thought Neuros was, that voice was controlling them, organizing them, they always knew where we were. That has to be it!" She insisted, eyes blazing with conviction.

"If Neuros is controlling them then where is it? It must be based somewhere!," Caleb exclaimed, mind racing over the possibilities she had just unleashed.

"Like a central command point?" Asked the boy

"Yeah, somewhere physical we can get to and shut down permanently." Caleb's eyes were glittering at the thought, voice betraying the steel of his core. He WOULD find a way to beat these metal monsters, once and for all.

"There is," Stated Lexa matter-of-factly, all eyes swiveled to her as she continued, "Galen reckoned he found the exact location but we could never get there." She pulled a battered looking piece of paper from her top pocket and handed it over to Caleb and the recruits.

It was a well worn map, hand written and often read. The three of them leant in to look. Caleb's eyes went wide.

"It's somewhere called N Lab." She explained simply.

All three faces shot up to meet hers.

"What?" She puzzled

"We know where this is!"

"Really?," She almost leapt out of her mis-matched boots, "I mean, I know it's on Futuregate, but…"

"I only found it in the blueprints last night." Cut in Caleb excitedly, "But," He paused peering intently at the drawing, "What are these lines? They're not in the version I've seen."

"It's a schematic diagram but I've never been able to make proper sense of it. I mean, regular schematic criss crosses? What's the point in that?"

"Caleb," Piped up one of the recruits, " didn't you say you'd come across something called a Neuros Web?"

"Yes, a while ago," He paused, cottoning on, "good thinking recruit-you reckon Neuros is some kind of cybernetic spider?" Emphasizing the point with spidery flickings of his fingers.

"No."

"Oh." He dropped his hands in disappointment.

"But I do think it's sat at the centre of a web just like a spider." The girl explained, smiling at her leader.

"What do you mean?" Asked the boy.

"Well, look at the map, there's something at the centre. See here," She pointed, "That square in the middle of all the triangles. I reckon that's got to be the central command point."

"The Neuros hub." Caleb re-iterated.

"Uhuh."

"So if these lines are the Neuros web…" Began Lexa.

"Yes?"

"Then what is it? What's it made of?" She wondered.

"I have no idea," answered Caleb honestly, " but look here, what are these dots?" he suddenly frowned at the map.

"What dots?" She peered closer.

"Those ones at the corner points of some of the triangles." He pointed to the features he'd noticed.

The recruits gathered closer eager to see what else had been discovered.

"Oh yes, hey look, they make squares!" noted the girl excitedly.

"What?"

"Squares".

"Are you sure?" asked the boy, looking dubious

"Yes look," A small finger traced the shrinking patterns, "There."

"Let me see that." She passed it over to him as he looked at the map this was and that, "It's a net." He announced.

"It was a web a minute ago." Commented Caleb, confused.

"No, I mean It's a design net. An Ikea design by the looks of things."

"Ikea?"

"Flatpack."

"What?" Both adults looked thoroughly lost.

"What he's trying to say," The girl translated " is that it's actually showing a 3D structure but to draw it out quickly it's shown flat in 2D. The markers tell you where it needs to be 3D."

"Right, but how can we get that to tell us something useful?"

"Well we have to make sure we've got all the measure points right to start with."

"How do we do that?" This sort of coded plotting was entirely new to him, but Caleb, as ever when he caught the whiff of progress threw himself into the information acquisition with full throttle.

"If it helps, all the triangles are the same size." Offered Lexa

"They are?"

"I had this long enough to look at it every which way, I measured them all ages ago." What she didn't add was that she was horrified at herself for having over looked such blatant clues. How had she and Io missed them? Galen would've been furious.

"So they're equilateral?"

"Entirely,"

"And that's good because?"

"Because it makes things a whole lot easier!" The girl beamed, " we can work out exactly what size and shape the net is." She paused, looking intently at the map. "Except, oh." she looked down her face falling"

"Except what? What's the matter?" Caleb question urgently, he wasn't about to let something thwart them now.

"We don't know the scale." She announced dejectedly, " Without that we've got no idea how big the web is or how big Neuros is . What if there's not enough of us to bring it down?

"But we can work it out." Assured Caleb

"How?" The small face upturned hopefully.

"Well, take a look, my map of N Lab comes from the original blue prints, there should be an indicator on that." Caleb fetched his copies, laying them down flat till the 3 pieces melded. " Now pass me Lexa's map." He placed her copy over his tweaking them ever so slightly till it rested exactly where he wanted it.

"See?"

They saw.

The pieces were a perfect fit, the same size and, more importantly, the same scale.

"What does your copy say?" Asked the boy, his eyes glinting in steely determination.

"1:35"

"Okay," He reasoned, "It's just like those up scaling maths problems at school. So if we know the measurements of the individual triangles.

"1.5cm." Supplied Lexa.

"Right. So," He jotted him info down on a scrap of paper, " 1.5cm x 35cm = 52.5cm."

"And that's the length of one side?"

"Yep and the whole area is half the base x the height, so one triangle equals..."

Both recruits dropped their heads, noses almost pressed to the paper amidst a fervor of intense mutterings, occasional words escaped, sounding like 'square it," "divide that!" "no, root it!" Caleb and Lexa looked up at each other over the recruits' heads and shrugged shoulders. Caleb took out his own notebook jotting down a few figures whilst Lexa, stared hard at her copy, there had to be a way of showing what the recruits found.

"Right, got it!" Came a triumphant chorus a few minutes later , " Area of each triangle is 119.2cm2." they explained looking pleased with themselves.

"Excellent work recruits!" Enthused Caleb, his workings, completed a while ago, showed exactly the same thing.

"Can I have a look?" Lexa took the workings and scanned them briefly, "right, one second and I'll see if I can get this flatpack to fold out." She took out a rusted, gaffer taped devise from a pocket, switched it one and started typing rapidly.

"What's she doing?" One on the recruits whispered.

"I don't know, looks complicated though" It fizzed loudly, "and dangerous!" Caleb observed, as all three of them took a hasty step backwards. Lexa, oblivious, pointed the gizmo at the diagram, scanning over it. She went back to typing.

"What do you think it…?"

"There!" She announced, pleased at her progress, "That should do it. "Activate!"

With that command her pocket calculator projected a small 3D hologram of the Neuros web. A complete schematic image of it.

"That's what the web will look like." The three looked sideways at it, impressed. "Scaled down of course" She added

"Cool!" Came the approving response.

"What is that thing?"

"This? It's the professor, my own little portable computer-handy thing for situations like this- what do you think? I built it myself" She looked slightly anxious, as if hoping for their approval.

"It's better than Caleb's mission builds!" came the cheeky accolade.

Oi!" He looked mildly affronted, "I only had what I could scavenge around the ship!" He turned to Lexa, "Anyway this certainly shows what we're up against," he noted, smiling again , "However," he took out his pointing stick, "I think we have a problem," He extended it, checking against the small triangles till he reached the right length. "This is how long 52.5cm is, and this," he produced a pen and proceeded to draw out a Neuros triangle on the floor, "is the whole space there is." The triangle was impressively small. To make his point Caleb tried the tape against himself-it barely cleared his shoulders, " I can't fit through there, and nor, " he tried the tape against the young woman besides him, "can Lexa. It's up to you pair to disable Neuros. The final mission. Are you up for it recruits?"

They looked scared. But determination was burning in their eyes.

Unified and unflinching they answered.

"Of course. We won't let you down."

"Excellent! That's why you're Elite recruits!"

"But what about us?" Questioned Lexa worriedly, "We can't just let them risk themselves alone."

"Course we can't. Do you really think the Roboidz are going to leave their controller unguarded?"

"She considered, not a chance in hell, it'd be swarming. "Good point. So what's the plan?"

"You remember our meeting?"

"It was 30 minutes ago," She reminded him looking non-plussed, " Oh," realization dawned, "I see! Brilliant!"

The recruit picked up on what was being proposed.

" But it can't just be you firing, what if you hit Caleb?" she asked, full of concern.

"What if there's too many to stop with one charge?" Added the boy pragmatically.

"Well..."

"What about the Laser cannons?" He offered, his young face hopeful at the chance to get to use them again.

"The what?" Quizzed Lexa, interest piquing.

"The Laser cannons, we used them on some Roboidz this morning! They were awesome! You just had to aim them at the Roboidz faces and it blew them up!"

Her mouth fell open.

"That's, that's," She was struggling to gather herself, her tone hardening in strategic eagerness, "you really have a weapon that can kill Roboidz outright? I thought that was a Resistance myth! Where did you find it?"

"Caleb made them," came the simple answer.

Her eyes rounded to the size of juggling balls. She turned to face Futuregate's rebel leader.

"You? You made them?" she asked in complete astonishment.

"Yep!" The boyish grin illuminated his glowing pride.

"Really?" Her tone full of total disbelief.

His grin faltered, unsure of what to make of her voice.

"Er, yes, I did, I mean, it took me a while, some welding and lots of gaffer tape but I got them working eventually".

"It's not possible." It wasn't a question of wonderment, just a cold stated fact.

"It is." His own tone growing hard, unused to being doubted

"Then you must be…"

"A genius?" he supplied.

"Well, I was going with insane." She retorted.

"Yes, well, I" Her words registered with him, "What? Insane?" he protested indignantly.

"How does it work?" She ignored him, cutting over with her own question.

"It's far too technical for you to understand" he answered huffily.

"Try me" she persisted.

"Fine." He answered as fast as humanly possible, "Bio-electric charged, magnesium cased projectiles."

"How did you assemble all the parts?" She quizzed, unperturbed by his brusque reply, "How do you get the charging to stay stable and not over heat the magnesium?"

"Safety mechanism."

"Plastic?" She pressed.

"Cap trigger, blocks the flow between each new round, prevents over charging and exploding."

"And the bio electrics?"

"Using bio-rods as cells. They're powerful enough to run about 50 bursts."

"Well."

"Yes?"

"Fair enough."

"That's It?"

She nodded. "We could've used someone like you with us." Her affirmation eased the suddenly frosty atmosphere as she softened again over her millary-like core.

"Can I see them?" She asked tentatively, excitement tinting her voice

"Not here"

"Why not?" Her disappointment was evident

"That's the only snag." Began the boy.

"They're really big." The girl continued

"Then how did..."

"They were mounted on tripods for us"

"How big...?" Lexa asked surprised

"Caleb's the only one strong enough to lift them."

Her eyebrow rose.

"No, really. It's just him."

She turned to face Caleb, mouth half open.

He got there first, smiling grimly, "a cybernetic arm comes in useful sometimes."

She blushed self consciously, just about to look down in embarrassment, shifting uncomfortably when she caught his expression. Eyes twinkling. He quirked a grin at her.

Caleb couldn't hold on to annoyance or upset with someone for long, there were far more important things to be getting on with. Plus the fact that there was even another person for him to actually direct any emotions at, at all was a novelty and he was certainly not about to waste time with the negative ones. She was as lost as he was in this respect.

She must have been raised very differently to him, well if he could remember how he was raised…But of course she would have been anyway! He admonished himself, 'She's a full member of the resistance! Part of the ground crew! Of course she's going to see things differently!' And more seriously it seemed. Well that was probably for the best-No time for messing around with Roboidz about! Got to be focused on the Mission. He resolved. But, he mused happily, it was nice to get her appreciation for his efforts, even if it had taken a while. To know he was on the right track, from another resistance member! This was good, teamed with the Elite recruits they couldn't fail.

"So what's the plan then?"

The question snapped him off his train of thought. Back to the mission.

"Right, well, I was thinking, with the schematics as they are we've got 2 levels, if me and Lexa are on the higher level we'll have a better view of what's going on."

"And a clearer shot," Added Lexa.

"Yep. Actually, on that note recruits, you're probably best removing any tech you've got working on you."

"Why?"

"Just in case Lexa misses."

"Oi!"

"Well it is possible." He grinned.

"There is a chance I could misfire, she conceded, "but more likely 'coz the scope is so wide."

"If there anything you can do to fix it?"

"Hmm, maybe, if I can make a narrower dish," She turned to Caleb, "Do you have any spare sheeting I could use?"

"Erm," he looked about, "Should do, somewhere , got a few crates of odds and ends about."

"Right, well, I'll get on with that then," She moved to get rootling in Caleb's stores.

"Wait." Interjected a voice, "We haven't actually sorted out the full plan yet!"

"No?"

"No."

"Best get to that then shall we? It's probably quite important."

The recruits glared at him in annoyance.

"Very important." He corrected.

"What are we going to do?"

"Get through the Neuros web."

"But after that?"

"Disable Neuros."

"But how? They pressed, "How exactly do we disable Neuros?"

"In truth recruits," He signed, letting his demeanor drop a little, "I don't know. We now know Neuros is the controlling force of the Roboidz but I don't think it was around when Futuregate was designed so the blueprints are useless for giving us any more information and I've not come across any more intel from the archives I've found."

"So what then? I mean if the central part's blank then all we can do is guess! There must be a way to find out more!"

"Quite right recruit, so there should be," His eyes lit up with ideas, "How do you two fancy a sneak and creep mission?"

"Into N lab?"

"Yep."

"Awesome!"

"That's the attitude!"

"They'll never know we were there!"

"Excellent! Right recruits, onwards to N-Lab for a bit of Roboidz Reconnaissance. Joining us Lexa?"

"Try and stop me!"

With that she grabbed up her equipment and caught up with the waiting party. Caleb led the way, the blueprints branded into his mind, deep into the depths of Futuregate.

After a while of careful treading and swift high tailing they reached a doorway. The doorway.

"Okay recruits, this is it, this is going to be a real test of all your stealth skills, we're on the upper level you need to get around to the other side of N-Lab, take as close a look as you can. We need to know how Neuros is set up and what we're up against. Take a good look, we have to know everything we can about N Lab before we can end the tin can empire. We have to be absolutely silent for this recruits, they can't know we were here. When we launch our final mission, we have to surprise them, so sneak and peek only. Right we've got 2 minutes, in and out recruits. Do me proud.

They crept across the threshold.

Thanks very much for reading, please review! Next chapter should be up soon! :D