A/N – Apparently, the Cluster Commander's name is spelled "Smytus". I've corrected it.
Betrayal From Within
A "My Life as a Teenage Robot" Fanfic
Chapter Four – Public Enemy Number One
In the span of two minutes, Jenny's carefree afternoon with her friends had deteriorated into a nightmare. She blinked a few times, clearing her vision from the electrical shocks that had been channeled through her body. Then she accessed her short-term memory banks, and replayed them twice, just to make sure she had heard the Army colonel correctly: she and her mother had just been charged with treason, for sabotaging military bases around the world! Just yesterday, she had been hailed as a hero. Now she was tied up with high-strength cables, and surrounded by soldiers and helicopters of the US Army, who seemed convinced that she was a traitor.
The square-jawed colonel reached into his pocket and pulled out a device that looked like a stainless steel hockey puck. "Now, Dr. Wakeman," he bellowed, "tell me how to deactivate this little saboteur of yours in the next five seconds … or I'll deactivate her my way."
Even surrounded by the army, Mrs. Wakeman did not take kindly to being ordered around – and she definitely would not stand to have anybody question the integrity of her work. She wagged her finger vigorously under the colonel's nose. "Now just see here, you will do no such thing! And you will not make any more preposterous demands until you explain all of this rubbish about sabotage! Why, the very notion is absurd! And tell those snipers to get down from my roof, before they ruin the shingles!"
"I'll give the orders here, lady," growled the colonel. He knelt down next to Jenny's head, with the puck-shaped device, and gave it a twist. Small tines poked out, sizzling with high voltage …
But Jenny wasn't going to take this lying down. Grimacing with intense effort, she flexed her arms against the coils of cable, struggling to escape from her steel cocoon. The colonel jumped back as a few strands of cable snapped loose, whistling dangerously through the air. Then with a mighty heave, the thick steel bands snapped in half. Jenny burst out of the cables, and somersaulted backwards to put some distance between herself and the colonel.
"Just listen!" she pleaded. "This is crazy! I didn't do anything wrong! I haven't even been to an army base in the last week!"
"Oh, really," sneered the colonel. "Well, pictures don't lie, missy. We have video from four separate military installations, all positively identifying you … the XJ-9 robot … as the saboteur." He made new hand gestures to his troops. "Fire Team Bravo! Move into position!"
Brad watched in horror from one of the National Guard trucks, fearing for his best friend's safety. He wrenched himself free from his "rescuer's" grasp and cupped his hands to his mouth. "Jenny! These guys aren't going to listen to you! Make a run for it!"
A dozen soldiers leveled their weapons at Jenny's chest, aiming for her central power hub. She knew that she had done nothing wrong – but Brad was right, it looked like the Army wasn't interested in giving her a chance to explain herself. It was tough enough for Jenny to deal with damage that actually was her fault; she wasn't about to take the blame for something that she didn't do, especially if it was going to get her deactivated and melted down.
With a whine of her motors and a blast of smoke, Jenny ignited her pigtail-jets and shot into the sky like a bullet, just as a dozen electron-shock rifles fired at the spot where she'd been standing. She flew right between two of the massive helicopter gunships, startling the pilots with her quickness. The helicopters wobbled dangerously close to each other, then pivoted in space and tilted their noses to give chase to the runaway robot traitor.
Streaking through the sky at just under the speed of sound, Jenny's sensors began to flash warning messages in her vision. Her eyes extended outward, and folded over backwards to look behind her, like periscopes. The helicopters had unleashed a barrage of air-to-air missiles at her.
Aieee!!! Wow, these guys are playing for keeps! She began violently curling back and forth in the sky, making tight, high-speed turns to throw the missiles off the trail. The skies over Tremorton became crisscrossed with spiraling smoke patterns, as the helicopters' missiles tried in vain to close in on the super-powered teenager. Jenny pulled upwards into a climb, streaking towards a layer of clouds to hide herself for a few minutes. Maybe she could still calm things down, and sort things out …
Orange shafts of laser energy shrieked in front of her face. What now? They came at me from the north … oh, no. She dodged another volley of laser fire. Flying towards her from the north was no less than two dozen aircars from Skyway Patrol. They were a lot faster than the helicopters, and their laser cannons were just as dangerous as the missiles. The lead group of aircars swooped into a climbing turn, then tipped over and dove at her with their weapons blazing.
Jenny's forearms split open, and spread outwards like the ribs of an umbrella. The tips glowed with a faint purple light – then pale violet arcs of energy leapt from tip to tip, faster and faster, until a translucent sphere had formed around the robotic teen, humming with electromagnetic energy. Jenny completed her force field just in time to shield herself from a nonstop hail of laser bolts. She braced herself behind her shields, riding out the attack and seething with frustration; again, her instincts told her to fight back, but she couldn't attack Skyway Patrol any more than she could attack the army.
Finally, the last laser ricocheted off of her weakened shield, which refolded and stowed back into her forearms. Jenny waved her arms frantically, trying to cool them off, when yet another alarm went off in her vision. She unhinged the top of her head, and deployed a radar dish to make a quick sweep of the sky – and her shoulders slumped in mental exhaustion. Three separate squadrons of Air Force jets were heading in her direction. Cripes, is there anybody out there who doesn't want to blow me up?
Motors whirred to unfold her wings and booster-rockets. She might not be able to fight back, but she could still out-fly anything in the sky. This just doesn't make any sense. I hate to run away – but I've got to! I've got to hide until everybody just chills out, and we can figure out what's going on! Just as the Air Force jets closed to missile launching range, Jenny ignited her booster engines. The military pilots could only grumble with frustration as the teenage robot girl accelerated to a fantastic speed, and disappeared from their scopes.
Smytus treated himself to another round of evil laughter. So far, his sabotage mission to Earth had been a smashing success. And the best thing was, he was enjoying it all from the comfort of his high-backed commander's chair on the bridge of the light cruiser – hidden away in a dense forest, completely undetected by Earth's primitive surveillance systems. Monitors hanging from the ceiling displayed video feeds from military and news satellites. And every single monitor told the same shocking story of treason and betrayal – the XJ-9, the so-called "Global Robotic Response Unit", had gone rogue.
The Commander pivoted his chair around, grinning to the image of Queen Vexus on the communications panel. "Your Majesty, everything is going better than we could have hoped. Eighty percent of the installations on the Primary Target List have been destroyed! And not only do the foolish humans not suspect the Cluster – I have them completely convinced that their own precious XJ-9 has turned against them! Even now, they hunt her down like wild animal."
"Remarkable, Commander Smytus," replied the queen, giving the braggadocious warrior a sarcastic smirk. "I can promise you that all of your … hard work … will not be forgotten." Vexus was fully aware that the Omni-droid was doing all of the work, and she didn't appreciate Smytus' smug attitude at the moment. However, for now, she was only interested in results. Besides, the sarcasm appeared to be lost on Smytus' cosmic-scale ego. "Scientist, I take it things are going well with the first mission of your new and improved Omni-droid?"
Stanley poked his large, bulbous head out from behind Smytus' chair. "Oh, everything is just going super peachy, Your Queenship! No control problems whatsoever. The Omni-droid's shape-shifting and camouflaging is working like a charm! It's a perfect counterfeit of XJ-9."
"The Omni-droid attacks a target without warning," said Smytus, "destroys it, and stays around just long enough to make sure it's seen, so that XJ-9 gets the blame."
"This is all well and good, but do keep one very important thing in mind." In her chair back in the palace, Queen Vexus leaned forward into her viewscreen, scowling. "Even should you succeed in destroying every single radar, aircraft, and tank … every single slingshot on the planet Earth – if you do not succeed in capturing XJ-9 for the Cluster, then your mission will be a failure. If that happens, Commander … I would suggest that you stay on Earth. For your sake."
Commander Smytus thrust out his chest boastfully. "Fear not, my Queen. We have turned the humans of Earth against XJ-9. We have driven her away from her disgusting human "friends". When the time is right … she will come running right to us."
It didn't take the news networks long to turn 'XJ-9' into the most infamous name since 'Benedict Arnold'. Global News Network had already crafted a catchy logo and ominous theme music to accompany its lead story: "Robotic Renegade". The well-groomed GNN anchorman introduced the story, then cut to a video from a military base in North Dakota. A camera showed three massive, bowl-shaped radar dishes pointed into the sky, silhouetted against banks of security lights. Suddenly, brilliant pulses of pale blue plasma streaked in from off-screen. The radar dishes were obliterated, disappearing into roiling pillars of flame and smoke. Then a streak flashed across the screen, a figure riding a pair of pale-blue exhaust trails. It stopped in the middle of the complex, eerily backlit from the light of the explosions. It was a teenage robot, with her arm converted into a plasma cannon … and an evil grin on her face. She began firing the cannon in random directions, adding new explosions to the destruction.
She let out a spine-chilling laugh, tossing her pigtails back as she punched her fist into the air. "Run! Run as fast as you can, pathetic meat creatures! You can't escape us! Robots are the future!"
Drew and Brad exchanged an uncomfortable glance as they watched the video on GNN; there were a few minutes left until fourth period History started, and they were eager to hear of any news concerning their friend. Besides Brad, there were a few other students leaning over Drew's shoulder, watching the flat television screen that he had grown out of his left forearm. The general mood was one of disbelief. It was hard to believe that one of the greatest criminals of modern times had been sitting at a desk in this very classroom only two days ago. But the students had more or less accepted Jenny's guilt as fact. After all, it was hard to argue with pictures.
But Brad was still willing to. "No way. I don't buy it. No way is that Jenny. It doesn't even sound like her!" He folded his arms defiantly, snorting at the anchorman on the television screen.
Drew heaved his shoulders with a sad groan, and slowly shook his head. "I don't know what to think, Brad. I mean, I'm with you … no way is Jenny doing this voluntarily. But maybe she's being tricked somehow. Or remote controlled."
Among the students watching Drew's TV, Chloe flipped her wavy blonde hair over her shoulder and tilted her head, thinking it gave her the appearance of being deep in thought. "Maybe she just busted a gear or something. Or maybe one of her wires got fried. That's what happened to my hair dryer, just before it went on the fritz."
"Jenny is not a hair dryer," Brad scowled at her. "And she is not on the fritz."
"Look, Brad," said Chloe, "your metal buddy is blowing stuff up and using words like 'meat creatures'. She's on the fritz."
"Of course, there's another possibility that nobody's bothered to mention yet," cooed a swooning, accented voice. "It's quite possible that the titanium tomboy knows exactly what she's doing."
Brad furrowed his eyebrows, and glared across the room at a pair of well-dressed girls who were entirely too pleased with the current state of affairs. Brit Krust, and her cousin Tiff, were grinning like a pair of fashionable hyenas. Brit played with the folds in her bright red cravat, getting it to lie just so against the lapels of her smartly tailored jacket. She knew the comment would get the attention of the entire class; always with a flair for the dramatic, she waited a few moments before resuming. "Oh, do come on. Can any of you seriously say that this surprises you? That sheet metal charlatan just marches into our school one day, as smug as you please, expecting to be treated like just another student. She wails and whines about being accepted as a normal teenager. And what does she do?"
Tiff joined in, her eyes snarling through a thick layer of mascara. "She spends most of her time zappin' and breakin' stuff. Showing off with all of her fancy ray guns and rockets. Blowin' things up with her missiles! Right in front of us, every day. An' you know why? 'Cause she thinks she's better than us."
A murmur of agreement rumbled through the class, and Brit continued. "How many times has Disaster Queen smashed a desk, or broken a window, or knocked out a wall? Well, she's doing the same thing right now – just on a bit of a grander scale. I always knew that robot was bad news. However, on the bright side, it'll be a such a relief to pursue our education in a robot-free school."
Drew looked up from his television screen, grinding his teeth together as he tried to hold his temper in check. "For crying out loud … I am sitting right here."
"Well, maybe you think you're better than the rest of us too, slimeball," hissed Tiff.
"You two have never liked Jenny," scowled a nasally voice. Silently brooding until now, Sheldon turned to face Brit and Tiff. "You've always been jealous of her! And now, when she needs her friends the most, you two harpies are trying to turn the whole school against her! For shame! Right now, poor Jenny is out there somewhere … all alone … on the run … cold, rusting, looking for a place to recharge … who knows what condition she might be in?"
Brit smirked back at him, condescendingly. "Well apparently your little wind-up sweetheart's blasters are in fine shape," she snickered. "Although the little dial in her brain seems to be stuck on 'psychotic'."
Brad bolted upright, knocked his chair over backwards, and pointed an accusing finger at Brit. His voice was laced with frustration and strain. "We don't even know who that is on the video! Because I'll tell you all one thing right now … it's not Jenny!"
Then everyone's heads snapped to the front of the class, as a stack of books slammed down on the teacher's desk. Mrs. Jefferson, their History teacher, glowered at the class with a disapproving stare. "Quiet! Quiet, all of you! I could hear all of you shouting like beer hall thugs from the teachers' lounge!" Her cold stare pivoted towards Brad. "Mister Carbunkle, pick up your chair and plant your posterior in it right now, or you will be planting it in detention hall, after school!"
Brad grabbed his chair, mumbling to himself, as the rest of the class started to settle down. Mrs. Jefferson arranged a stack of graded quizzes on her desk, burning her cold stare into every student until she got the quiet she felt she deserved. "It's bad enough to deal with the distraction of Miss Wakeman when she's here," she snarled to the class. "I won't allow her to become a distraction when she's not. For the next forty minutes, I don't want to hear anything about any blasted robots."
The words caught Drew like a surprise kick to the gut. He looked to Mrs. Jefferson, not quite sure what to make of her comments. After a moment, she made eye contact, reading the unspoken question on his face – how could you say something like that? The teacher seemed uncomfortable for a split second, but then the snarl returned to her lip. "Mister Nabholtz, would you please retract that … that thing into your body, or whatever it is you do with it."
The flat-screen television on his arm was still showing the news. Drew gave it a moment's concentration, and with a faint gurgling schwerrrrp, the screen dissolved back into silver-green nano-goo. As his arm smoothed itself out, he realized that several students were silently watching him. It wasn't unusual – frequent stares were something that he'd had to get used to. But these weren't stares of fascination. They seemed to carry the same unspoken message as his teacher's snarl: You're one of them, and you are not to be trusted.
He shuffled uncomfortably in his seat, as the teacher walked up and down the aisles distributing quizzes. He thought about quickly morphing his appearance to mimic his old human self; sure, it would just be a surface repaint, but it might calm people down. Then he decided against it. It's not who I am anymore. It probably wouldn't make any difference anyway. Times like this really increased his respect and sympathy for Jenny. It really was hard being the only robot in school; Tremorton High had never felt more lonely, more hostile to him. And this is what Jenny had gone through for most of the school year, all by herself, before the Cluster nanobot incident had increased the ranks of teenage robots by one.
Maybe the pressure finally got to her, he wondered. Then just as quickly, he brushed the thought aside. No, stupid, that doesn't make any sense at all! For crying out loud, just two days ago they were throwing roses at her feet! She was happier than I'd seen her in weeks. No, something screwy is going on.
The fresh silence in the classroom was suddenly pierced by an electronic ring tone. Every student in the class instinctively went for their cell phones. Mrs. Jefferson's icy glare dropped the temperature of the room to sub-arctic levels. "Who has their cell phone on during class?" she hissed.
One by one, the students confirmed that their phones were silent. Gradually, they figured out the source of the ringing – and a few seconds later, the entire class was staring at Drew.
Brad waved to get his attention. "Umm, Drew … your eyes are flashing."
"Wow," gulped Drew, "I've never gotten a call on my new phone before." Along with his new inventory of electronic schematics, he'd gotten an unlisted phone number. He briefly scanned the information that scrolled across the inside of his eyes. "Yipes, this is a video call. But who'd be calling me at school?"
Drew's left hand warbled with waves of silver-green, and expanded into another flat panel, with his thumb stretching into an antenna. The screen hummed into existence … and an annoyed scientist with frazzled white hair looked out of his hand at him. "Dr. Wakeman?!?" he gasped.
"Hello, Andrew. I trust the video phone is working satisfactorily," she said, in her no-nonsense voice.
"Doc, what's going on? Nobody's heard from you since yesterday. Is everything all right …"
Suddenly he was aware of a foreboding presence hovering over him like the grim reaper. Mrs. Jefferson loomed over his desk, arms folded, burning a hole into his forehead with her eyes. Drew gave her a weak little smile. "Um … this is probably important. Maybe I should take this outside." And before she could threaten him with detention, or something worse, he bolted out the door and into the hallway.
Dr. Wakeman didn't slow down for a second. "Andrew, we have no time for this nonsense," she said, in a lecturing tone. "I have several urgent tasks for you to perform, and I only have one phone call in which to communicate them to you. Now pay attention and take notes. First of all …"
"Whoa whoa whoa there, Doc!" This was all catching him off guard. "Look, where are you? Why are you calling me? Shouldn't you be checking on Jenny to see if she's all right?"
"If I were to communicate with XJ-9 at the present time, the call would most likely be traced." Dr. Wakeman's face took on a grave expression. "And if the authorities learned of her present location, it would most likely be very unhealthy for her. As for where I am … that would be the Tremorton regional offices of the FBI. As you might imagine, I've been answering a great number of their questions over the past twenty-four hours."
"The FBI? Holy crap." The doctor was in some serious trouble. Drew took a deep breath, and opened a new file in his computer memory. "All right, I'm saving a copy of this call, Doc. Fire away."
"Go to my house immediately, and do three things." Dr. Wakeman raised a single finger. "First, retrieve XJ-9's telemetry logs from the diagnostics unit in her bedroom. They have an encoded date-stamp, which I can use to prove that she spent the entire night in her bedroom when the first sabotage took place. Second, call my lawyer, and have him bring those logs downtown to the FBI offices."
"Okay … what's your lawyer's phone number?"
"Speed dial two," she sighed. "Right between my repairman and my insurance agent. And last, while you are in XJ-9's room, I want you to place her monitors and alarms on call forward."
"Call forward, gotcha. Er … what phone number do you want me to forward them to?"
"Why … yours, of course."
Drew stared blankly into his hand for a few seconds, convinced that he must have misheard her. "I'm sorry, Doc, could you say that last part again? It … heh-heh-heh … almost sounded like you told me to forward all of Jenny's trouble alarms to my phone number."
"That is precisely what I said, Andrew. Just because XJ-9 and I have our own problems to work out, does not mean that the world is suddenly immune from danger! You're been studying from her manuals for a few weeks, now. No better time to put it all into practice!"
"Uh, Doc? Hel-lo? Reading manual disks is one thing," he stammered. "I'm not ready for something like this! Geez … yeah, I've tagged along with Jenny a couple of times for training, but … d'oh, man, what am I supposed to do if a call comes in from China? Hitchhike?"
"Oh, for goodness sake," she huffed, rolling her eyes. "All you have to do is go down to the basement and look underneath the yellow tarp. You'll find everything you need there. Now, don't just stand there with your mouth hanging open like a codfish. On your way, now! Go!"
The picture faded to black, and the video screen gurgled back into the shape of a hand. Drew nervously rubbed the back of his head, still digesting his sudden, terrible responsibility. "As Groucho Marx might say," he sighed aloud, "I don't think I want to live on a planet that relies on me to protect it." He took off in a sprint towards the school exit, his metal footsteps echoing down the empty corridor.
One student, brooding at his desk, had overheard the entire phone call.
Sheldon was racked with grief and worry for his beloved Jenny. The last twenty-four hours had been sheer torture for him, as he agonized in empathy for his objet d'amour. Every time some blow-dried bimbo on the TV news called Jenny a traitor, Sheldon felt the pain like a spear to his pounding heart. Every time some jealous Jezebel like Brit Krust badmouthed her, he bubbled with indignant rage. In the span of twenty-four hours, it seemed like the entire planet had turned against his Jenny. That's why she needs me now more than ever before, he moaned to himself.
He glanced over at Drew's empty desk, snarling. Ever since the accident that had transformed this Johnny-come-lately into a real-life android, Sheldon had endured watching this interloper spend more and more time with his girl. Drew had insisted that he and Jenny were simply friends. A likely story, Sheldon harrumphed to himself. Jenny had told him that she liked having Drew around, because it was nice to have the company of another robot. Ah, sweet Jenny, so trusting, so naïve … he didn't trust that slippery shape-shifter as far as he could throw him. And lately, Drew had been spending even more time with Jenny, in after-school "training sessions". Yeah, I'll just bet I know what he's been studying.
And now, when Jenny was in her hour of greatest need, what was Stretch Armstrong going to do? Go out to look for his "friend", to help her? No! He was going to try and replace her! Sheldon balled his fists, shaking with righteous fury. Replace her! The nerve! Imagine, anyone thinking that they could replace Jenny! That … that usurper!
He tapped his pimpled chin, deep in thought while Mrs. Jefferson droned on with her history lesson. Sheldon made a decision. Jenny was in serious trouble; she needed real help. Now wasn't the time to give a rookie on-the-job training. The situation called … for a real hero.
Continued in Chapter Five / Eight Days to Cluster Dawn