Cyborg was quickly discovering how hard it could be.
It seemed a lot easier when he assumed the zombie kids would stay in their little packs. Instead, he discovered they were fanning out individually, which made matters more difficult. More difficult to spot, and more numbers to keep track of.
The sounds of Halloween had died down, and in the virtually absolute silence every single creak of his movement sounded like a cacophony to his enhanced hearing. The light of the full moon bathing the city highlighted his reflective surfaces. The wooden buildings he found himself surrounded by limited his field of vision. His skill with stealth was subpar. And he was still stuck with the task of getting to the bottom of this mystery without any backup.
He'd chosen the T-Car as his immediate destination because attempting to walk the length of the city was never recommended, even less so with hazardous city-wide conditions in effect. The tactical necessity did nothing to ease his nerves.
At the corner of a house, with its edge to his left, he peered across the street, to the next house. No movement. He looked to the right, down the street he'd need to cross. No movement he could detect. He deployed his "finger-cam" and gripped the corner, using the camera to check that direction without needing to break his concealment. No movement he could detect here, either.
After taking a deep breath, he stealthily ran across the street. Or so he tried to convince himself, as the accelerated footfalls echoed far louder in his mind than they did in his ears. Each step he nervously glanced in some direction, completely expecting to be discovered at any time. He took another deep breath when he finally made it to the shadow of the next building.
That was the thirty-seventh time he'd performed that dash procedure. He was nearing an isolated industrial park, the same one he'd parked the T-Car in. He was fairly relieved at the visible sign of progress, as he was almost beginning to wonder if he was actually getting anywhere.
He sidestepped along the length of the new building, making a special effort to duck behind the huge jack-o-lantern. To keep from dwelling on fear, he was mentally running through options for the next set of movement as he went. The buildings in the industrial park were taller and wider than the ones he was stepping through, which would normally complicate his current travel procedure; however a number of them also had short walls surrounding them, which could significantly reduce the chance of detection.
As he was in the midst of consideration, the sudden sound of rustling leaves reached his ears from behind.
He whipped his head towards the direction of the sound, and armed his sonic cannon...and found nothing. No sign of movement anywhere. Despite the panic, he remembered to activate an X-ray imaging mode, in case something was hiding behind that jack-o-lantern as he had just done himself. But still, there was nothing there.
Taking a few seconds to force himself to dismiss it as nerves or simply some wind he had failed to notice, he turned around, ready to continue forward. This time he saw something, a ghost costume produced out of a simple sheet. Its bearer was walking across the intersection, left to right from Cyborg's perspective.
Cyborg instinctively let out a startled yell, and half a second later covered his mouth with his hand, realizing what a bad idea that was.
The damage had already been done.
The costume's step became a turn, and stopped to face Cyborg. After a second, its wearer uttered "Cyborg" with a boy's voice, in a monotonous tone that seemed more of a statement than a yell despite its high volume.
"Cyborg." That one was a girl's voice, from...somewhere far behind Cyborg.
"Cyborg." A different girl's voice to his right, the exact source obscured by the building on the opposite side of the street.
"Cyborg." A boy's voice, obscured by the building right next to him.
The boy Cyborg saw started walking towards him, as the number and density of voices melded into an eerie cacophony.
Cyborg's first thought was to neutralize the immediate threat. Very quickly followed by his second thought: A mental image of a newspaper, with "Crime Fighting Cyborg Goes Haywire" as the front page headline and various components of his systems listed in the classifieds. He growled to himself, with the realization that harming even zombie little kids would cause a great deal of problems later. After all, someone was bound to notice their kid missing once this whole situation was resolved.
That was assuming he could resolve it, an assumption that was becoming less plausible the longer he stood around waiting to be surrounded. He went with his first idea and tried running down the middle of the street, past the kid.
The kid lunged at Cyborg with an outstretched hand, but couldn't establish a grip, and the hand slipped off Cyborg's leg as he ran by. Sparing a glance behind, Cyborg saw the kid slowly return to a standing position, before stubbornly plodding along after Cyborg at the same walking pace as before.
Cyborg, still running, was mildly relieved that the kid was unable or unwilling to go any faster. There was no way he'd catch up with Cyborg's running speed, and probably wouldn't have a chance even if he did run. Cyborg reasoned that as long as he stayed out of the kids' reach, he'd have no problem.
But the sheer number of kids would be a problem in its own right. Cyborg hadn't been focusing on the background noise of intermixed voices saying his name, with his attention focused on evading the one kid. The sounds had ceased, but now there were numerous other trick-or-treaters entering his field of vision, all shambling towards him. The rate was more of a trickle now, but he had no doubts it would advance to a pour given sufficient time.
Still running, Cyborg hazarded a glance behind him. Sure enough, there were zombie kids coming onto the street from that direction as well. That settled it, he'd need to find someplace to hide, where he could cut off their access. At least long enough to come up with a plan. There was a warehouse on the outer edge of that industrial park, the edge nearest Cyborg's location. It would have to do, even if it would prove more difficult to secure all the entry points a warehouse was bound to have.
All a question of if he could get there. He set his mind more firmly on running, uncertain whether the resulting perception of faster speed was real or imaginary. Taking an active hand at matters did much to suppress the anxiety, and he wasn't going to let himself be distracted by trivial matters.
Keeping his eye peeled as he continued his sprint, he noticed that all of the kids he saw headed directly for him. This was actually quite advantageous, he realized; because the vast majority of them were appearing from the sides, the geometry of the situation meant they clustered along the side of the road. It wasn't until he was within twenty feet or so that they branched off into the road, and since Cyborg was running down the middle it meant they couldn't catch him.
Four intersections down the road, Cyborg had a problem: He needed to turn. The buildings on the right were now plain-looking buildings instead of decorated, his sign that he'd reached the edge of the industrial park, but the kids were still collected along the sides of the road. Even worse, he saw a set of kids approaching down the street he was on; he'd be surrounded in a matter of seconds if he kept going.
All of which meant he might be forced to try rushing through a less than ideal spot, and hoping for the best. He subtly slowed his advance, both to give himself extra time before reaching that dead end and so he could more easily estimate possible—
There.
It was one lane of the road with a zombie kid on either side, but it would have to do. He abruptly turned towards the middle of the opening and charged, gritting his teeth as he watched the two, both wearing the pointy hats typical of a witch costume. As did the others, they approached him directly as he neared, his clearance between the two slowly tapering as the lines of kids beside them condensed.
The girl on the left suddenly leapt at him. His instinctive response, learned from years of football, was to shift to the right. Unfortunately his mass was significantly less back then, and inertia thwarted his instinctive movement.
He felt her grab his left leg in midair, pulling him off balance as momentum tried to carry the rest of him past that leg. As his plummet to the street began, he bent his right knee and shoved his foot against the ground, transforming the fall into a makeshift leap.
Cyborg grunted as he hit the pavement, but the jump forced the girl off of her own feet, and she had released her grasp. Getting back to his feet, he saw that he'd made it past the line of kids. As he resuming his running towards the warehouse, he noticed that the one girl was still attempting to rise; she was painstakingly pushing her torso back with her hands, rather than simply bringing a leg in front of her.
He quickly discovered that that side of the line was clear, probably because all of the kids that formed the line had come from there. But whatever extra time that might give him, he still had none to spare. He sent a map to his arm's readout and hazarded a glance at it; the warehouse was right around the corner.
Rounding the corner, the human-sized door in the middle of the wall was the first feature Cyborg saw on the two-story metal building. Running up to the door, he found it unsurprisingly locked. For an instant, he considered simply ramming his way through it; but realized that a pile of splinters would be far less of an impediment for his pursuers, unless he could reseal the doorway before they arrived.
And the sight of the kids coming around the corners on both sides showed that time was in short supply.
Trying to come up with an acceptable alternative, he rattled the doorknob. The doorknob, as well as the deadbolt and the metal door itself, seemed secure enough against usual intrusion measures. But Cyborg smirked, as an idea came to mind.
He reconfigured his right hand into his chainsaw attachment, and set to work on the edge of the door. Carving the width of the saw into the narrow door frame took some time, but the downward motion splitting the deadbolt and the doorknob's latch was far easier. Glancing to both sides at the oncoming crowd of kids, he estimated he had about fifteen seconds left for the next part of his operation.
He turned sideways and pushed the newly unrestrained door open, while switching his hand into a welding attachment. Once inside, he closed the door and set to welding it to its frame. He tried to ignore his panic, as doing the job incompletely by rushing would be just as bad, or worse, than failing to finish.
Just as he'd fused the majority of the door, a loud slam hit the surface, and Cyborg squealed in shock. But the door held. Then there was another slam, and another...and soon, an incessant pounding began, and echoed throughout the building. But still, the door held. He forced himself to turn around amidst the noise, in case there was another weak point he'd have to plug.
The warehouse was dark, save for the moonlight streaming in through a window in the ceiling. Activating his shoulder lamp, he looked around. This warehouse was definitely under low demand; the telltale markings on the floor showed that it used to have storage racks, but none were visible now. And the only used storage was a stack of boxes, on pallets, in the middle of the largely open building.
Still trying to suppress his anxiety as the sound of attempted breaking slowly spread from the door to the walls around it, Cyborg sprinted around the stack of boxes, since it blocked his view...and saw a set of truck doors on the other side of the warehouse. He ran the rest of the way to them, prepared to try fusing these as well.
It turned out to be unnecessary, as the doors were locked directly into the floor with heavy-duty bolts. It'd be easier to break through the door than it would be to break the bolts, and these doors were far heavier than the one that was still holding them off. They were meant to service large trucks, after all.
A resounding clang showed that the kids intended to test Cyborg's theory of durability. By this point noise was ringing out from every direction, and similarly echoing in every direction. Cyborg instinctively covered his ears as he tried to locate some way to get out of reach if he had to, but there was nothing. There was no railing marking the second floor, no other exits that he could see. A handful of support columns were all that reached up to the roof.
Abruptly, all the bangs and clangs stopped, though it took a few seconds for the echoes to die down. It took a few seconds for Cyborg to realize that the onslaught had stopped, but even then he couldn't believe it was happening. He activated his X-ray imaging once more, and saw...an entire crowd of kids, standing on the other side of the door. Not moving away, not looking around, not circling, just standing.
Confused, Cyborg walked around the building, still looking through the wall. There were hundreds of them out there, layers pressing against the building's exterior. His X-ray mode didn't distinguish shapes well, so he had to estimate the count by looking for what appeared to be heads; he had no doubt the number was actually higher.
He checked for any visible external staircases or ladders while he was at it, but there was nothing of the sort on the outside of the building either. He breathed a sigh of relief, as he'd managed to get out of immediate danger. He still didn't like how they all just stopped, but he'd live with it for now. If they didn't want to get in, fine by Cyborg.
The sudden sound of the roof window shattering, followed by glass fragments hitting the concrete floor and shattering further, dashed Cyborg's hopes.