Chapter Seven: I told you so

.

.

.

.

.

"Somebody pinch me," Alex said. He found himself staring at an assembly line teeming with 50-foot-tall, purple-and-maroon-armored Sentinel robots. Scores of the machines loomed already complete and still scores more rested in various stages of completion. Arms on hooks that hung from the ceiling, armored chestplates, legs, dangerous-looking laser cannons and various other pieces of equipment populated the conveyor belts that cris-crossed the factory floor. Computer workstations sprouted up at various intersections and two ladders led to the second level where engineers had worked on the electronics in the robot's heads. "Ow." He winced as Karli slammed a fist into his shoulder. "I said pinch, not punch."

"Tomato, Tom-ahh-to," she replied.

"Karli, what do you need?" Scott asked.

"Just give me thirty seconds to interface and we'll have our very own Gundam."

Blank faces stared back at her.

"Big O?"

More blank stares.

"Gigantor?"

Nada.

"Really?"

"Sorry," they said in unison.

Then a lightbulb went on in her head. "Optimus Prime?"

"Oh," all three brothers said in unison.

"In thirty seconds we'll have our very own Optimus Prime," Alex said. "Sweet."

Scott removed his glasses with one hand. "Alright people, get to work."

...

Forty-five seconds later, chunks of metal wrapped in red-orange flame fell from the sky like molten rain as Scott, Alex, and Gabriel unleashed shaft after shaft of destructive energy on the lifeless automatons, destroying a dozen machines.

In the heat of the moment, Scott almost fired upon Karli's Sentinel as it hummed to life and stepped forward. Then, he watched as it raised its left fist high, then drove its elbow down into the chest of the Sentinel to its left, causing the machine to collapse under the force of the impact, it's chest plate caved in like a catcher's mitt. Then, Scott watched as Karli commanded her new toy to use it's right arm to hammer the Sentinel to its right until it crashed to the ground, headless.

"Take the kid gloves off," Scott yelled at Karli over the cacophony of destruction around them, and she did, as a burst of energy from the palm of her robot's hand cut one of the stationary sentinels in half.

One hundred yards away, Alex watched and shook his head.

...

"Who else has had enough of this?" Gabriel asked after five minutes of blasting the helpless, mechanical titans.

"We knew this would be a marathon coming in," Scott said.

"A marathon of boredom," Alex added. "Karli, can't you at least make them fight back or something?"

"No," Scott said. "It's time for Karli to stop playing rock-em sock-em robots anyway and upload the virus."

"What do we need a virus for?" Alex asked, then he held up his fists, crackling with blue-white energy. "We've got these."

Gabriel laughed.

"Yeah, well, as impressive as those are, it's still possible that some tech weenie could salvage the hard drives after we bust up the computers. This virus will wipe the computers clean."

"What about the paper files?" Gabriel asked.

"We went over this in class, children."

"Screw you, this is my first mission!"

"The guy who runs this place, Dr. Trask, keeps all the paper files in his office," Karli said.

"At least somebody paid attention." Scott frowned at his brothers.

"And where is his office?"

"That concrete bunker way in the back."

"Well get to it, smart guy. We'll clean up here."

...

"Look out!" Gabriel yelled, moments later, as he dove into Karli, knocking her out of the way as a blast of laser fire from a previously unmoving sentinel cratered the ground.

"What the hell is going on?" Alex dodged a column of pink-white energy and returned fire, disintegrating the entire right side of the Sentinel's body with one massive burst. The frayed left side collapsed and shook the ground underneath them.

"Be careful what you wish for," Karli said.

"You did this?" Alex shouted. Then he froze as he heard the sound of half a hundred Sentinels coming to life.

...

The 50-foot-tall Sentinels stumbled forward with jerky, ponderous movements, more walking tank instead of fighter jets. Their highly sensitive electronic radar tracked the four mutants with pinpoint accuracy, and in the enclosed space, the CPUs calculated the chance of survival for the intruders at approximately zero-point-one percent. Each armed with a high-intensity plasma cannon, all 50 remaining sentinels opened fire at once. Of the 50 shots fired, 48 of them missed, leaving 48 smoking holes in the ground.

...

"Move!" Scott shouted before a titanic blast of energy blew him twenty feet through the air where he crashed into a computer terminal and blacked out.

...

Things were happening too fast for Gabriel's body to respond. Though he'd had training, he hadn't had anywhere near the amount of training and experience that his two older brothers did, and when the 50 sentinels lurched to life, he dove for cover. He almost made it, but for one errant beam that blasted him into the east wall, 30 feet from where Scott landed. He too, slipped into unconsciousness.

...

Karli's sentinel sprang into action, firing three quick bursts with the right hand. Then it slid to a stop and fired three more shots with the left hand. All six beams hit their mark and blew apart a half-dozen enemy sentinels. "You just had to get cocky, didn't you?"

"Can't help it." Alex forced a smile as energy rode forward from both of his hands in one long electric blue column. A second later, two sentinels standing one-in-front-of-the-other exploded into massive black-yellow clouds of smoke and fire. "Keep them off my brothers."

"Alex, I don't know how to tell you this, but the boys took some pretty bad hits." An incoming burst of fire cut her sentinel's left arm in half. The frayed wires spat out a fountain of yellow sparks. "Damn it."

"Don't worry about them, they'll be fine. Just don't let them get stepped on." He extended both arms out wide and the energy lept from his hands. Sedan-sized holes punched into two more enemy sentinels turning them into giant statues of flaming wreckage.

...

Scott woke up with a splitting headache. His shirt had been almost burned completely off, and he could already feel the mass of purple bruises forming on his back, from where he hit the wall. He surveyed the battlefield. Pyres raged all around him, singeing the hair on his arms. Thick clouds of oily black smoke threatened to choke him, and smoldering wreckage and debris blocked his sight of the rest of his team. Nearly three dozen sentinels stilled roamed, unleashing hellish burst after hellish burst at whatever mutant still stood. He didn't see Karli's sentinel fighting back so he assumed it had been destroyed. If that was the case she would either be laying low or dead, and Alex and Gabriel would be fighting for the four of them.

Scott climbed a fifteen foot pile of debris for a better view. Down below, he spotted Karli taking cover behind a pile of giant mechanical body parts, as Alex fought alone against the remaining sentinels. At a distance of 200 meters Scott opened fire sending a long, sustained beam of crimson energy lancing across the battlefield. 200 meters away, three sentinel heads erupted into great, orange fireballs. Alex glanced over at him and waved. Where's Gabriel? He scanned the ground, beginning with where he stood and worked his way outward until he spotted his baby brother laying in a crumpled, glowing heap against the wall. "No!" He took a step toward the youngest Summers brother, but an internal voice gave him pause. Finish the job, Scott. Then worry about casualties.

He ran for the office and a pair of Sentinels lumbered across his path, palms outstretched. He dropped them both with a sweeping blast from his eyes.

"Stop!" He saw two scientists making a run for the stairs: Trask and an unknown female. Scott tired of this battle, and he saw a way to end it. He lashed out with a devastating blast, blowing the ground apart in front of them, and hurling the scientists ten feet through the air.

Then, he made his way through the black smoke and obliterated the door to Trask's office. Once inside, he set about destroying everything.

...

Scott had just completed his task when he heard Alex scream, "NO!"

He burst through the office door and back into the factory to find the last two dozen sentinels frozen in place, their once sinister, glowing eyes, now lifeless and dim. He kept searching until he found Alex and a healthy, smokey-handed Gabriel. Then he tracked Alex's gaze and found a sentinel. Underneath its massive left foot lay Trask and his assistant's flattened, mangled corpses. He continued tracking and found Karli holding the remote.

"Shit," he whispered.

Alex glared at him and then shouted at the top of his lungs, "I TOLD YOU SO!"