The Thing in the Valley
Chapter 4: The Thing
Disclaimer: If it's in this fic, I don't own it.
"Shut up, Kade."
Kade's smug grin only grew. "I didn't say anything."
"Shut up, still!" Cody pointed accusingly at his brother's face. "That! Stop doing that! Shut up!"
Kade crossed his arms defiantly. "But I'm not saying anything," he cooed in the smuggest "big brother" voice that he could. Ah, it was nice to be reminded that he was the oldest, the bravest, and the biggest brother in the family. Cody, afraid of robots. Heh!
"You're saying it with your face!" Cody threw himself onto the living room sofa and covered up with the thickest blanket he could pull out of the hall closet. His little voice muffled by the blanket, Cody snapped back, "You'd be scared too, if you saw it!"
"Sure I would," Kade chuckled. "Who wouldn't be scared of the terrible, horrible, half-finished robot lady?"
Charlie's voice blasted over Kade's communicator. "Attention all units! We've got a situation. The robot has gotten loose in the tunnels under Greene Laboratories. Doc and Frankie are in immediate danger."
Heatwave and the other Burns siblings were receiving the message at the same time. Charlie continued. "Repeat, Doc and Frankie are in immediate danger, and their exact location is unknown. I need everyone to enter the tunnels, fan out, and search for them."
Blades's rotors buzzed in terror. "We have to go down there? In the tunnels, in the dark, at night? With that thing?"
"I knew it was pure evil," growled Heatwave.
"Given the information we have received, there is no indication that the creature is evil," Chase summarized. "We only know that Frankie and Doctor Greene are in danger."
"It can't be any worse than the last time one of Doctor Greene's inventions went bad," Dani soothed. When the Rescue Bots all shot her a unified incredulous look, she shrugged. "At least this time it's not a dinosaur?"
The Rescue Bots pondered.
Boulder giggled. It was a nervous giggle, but he giggled nonetheless. Heatwave grimaced, but a heavy line of tension left his shoulders. Chase patted Blades on the back reassuringly.
Graham sighed in relief and stood up. "All right, that'll be our motto. 'No matter how bad it is, it's not a dinosaur this time.' Sound good?"
They didn't have time to agree. Kade and Charlie exited the elevator and sprinted to Heatwave, who transformed just in time to open his door and let Kade inside. Boulder and Chase transformed for their respective drivers.
"Blades, I think you'll be carrying me," Dani stated.
"All right, team," thundered Charlie. "Let's roll out!"
Heatwave groused. "Well." He tapped a light fixture. "At least it's bright down here."
Something mechanical broke (by the screeching, crunching sound in the distance), and all the lights blinked out. From the girly, terrified shrieking sound in the distance, it seemed Blades had noticed.
Kade whined, "Why did you say it? Isn't watching movies ALL that you guys do? Why did you feel the need to say it?"
"Well, I'm sorry!" Heatwave nearly screamed without being sorry at all. "But isn't a certain human always reminding me that real life doesn't work like the movies?"
"Yikes! Okay, chill." Kade pulled a flashlight out of his coat pocket and activated his intercom. "Graham?"
"Yeah, light's out on my side, too." Graham sat cross-legged in Boulder's front seat, tapping his coordinates into his tablet computer. His location, according to the outdated maps, didn't exist, but at least he could hone in on the other Rescue Bots. Each bot formed the corner of a square that radiated outward from the bunker. He was currently the top-leftmost dot, somewhere under City Hall. He guessed from their headings that Chase and Charlie were the top right dot, and either bottom dot could be Dani and Blades or Heatwave and Kade. "We've got on our headlights, so we're good. Any sign of Doc and Frankie?"
"Nothing yet," said Charlie. He kept one hand firmly on Chase's steering wheel, even though he wasn't driving. "I'm getting a lot of calls from the town. Power's out up top, too."
Heatwave switched on his headlights just as Kade flipped on his flashlight. The light didn't travel far; if anything, it just made the tunnel look even darker, each branching passage framed in inky black.
"I'm gonna muck around in the wires," Kade announced. "Maybe there's a breaker box or so-"
Something screamed, something inhuman and broken, something sharp and steely, its cry warbling and keening as if it needed everything alive to know it was in agony. Two more cries, young and old, Frankie and Doc, echoed back.
Kade shouted "Holy Christmas!", both at the noise and at the sensation of Heatwave lifting him by the armpits and clutching him to his chest like a tiny teddy bear. "Put me down, Heatwave!"
Somewhere under the zoo, Blades hunkered against a wall, rotors pressed protectively against the cool surface, nearly blind. His robot mode didn't have headlights that faced forward, and his night vision was just on the side of useless with Dani and her flashlight burning into his optics. He let her take charge, grateful to fall back and just sort of stay paralyzed with fear for a bit. Until he was needed, yeah. Until he was needed, he'd stay with his back pressed up against the wall where nothing could sneak up on him.
Dani, meanwhile, whipped her headlight into what she deemed the darkest corridor (subconsciously holding her flashlight like she would her handgun) and waited. "Anybody know where that noise came from?"
Graham's voice was a welcome sound from her radio. "I can't quite triangulate it, not with how it echoes in the tunnels."
"There's not anything you can do?" Dani asked, shoulders tight and aching. Blades shivered against the wall. "Can't you, like, track their heat signatures? Make it so we can't hear anybody's heartbeat except theirs?"
"Dad! Down there!"
The sound came from a hallway just to Blades's right. Dani, hoping for the best, aimed her flashlight at the floor instead of upwards, and sure enough, there were Doc and Frankie Greene's feet running towards them. They dove for Dani; Blades stepped up behind them, protecting their backs with his body, while Dani caught the both of them in a tight hug.
"There you are! We've been looking for you." Dani let Frankie and Doc catch their breath as she did some mental math. "Guys, you're a least a mile away from the laboratory. What happened?"
"Slight... equipment... malfunction!" Greene gasped, sweaty and shaking. Frankie clung to his lab coat, watching behind them with one eye, unwilling to let go of her dad. "A bit... dangerous! Nothing serious! Just-" He swallowed. "Just dangerous."
Frankie said, "It tried to eat me."
Dani mentally backpedaled a bit, missing Doc's explanation that tried to explain why his latest invention was trying to eat anybody. She shot Blades a look and was met with a helpless shrug. Luckily, the Greene missed the tiny display of emotion, still shivering and babbling in Blades's shadow.
Dani wondered when Blades grew a shadow.
A claw wrapped around his neck, sharp talons against his glass. Whatever was behind him squeezed with an unearthly strength, yet weighed nothing. It quickly wrapped around his neck and filled his vision with dead, white optics.
Blades screamed, and the thing opened its mouth and bit him in a cruel mockery of a kiss. Something Blades couldn't see slithered into his mouth and down his throat, farther, faster than he could process, scraping his insides with its metal tongue. Willing back the urge to vomit, Blades grabbed it by the head and shoved it back, reeling in disgust as its tongue stretched out and out and out, filling his insides even as he held the thing at arm's length away from him. Blades could feel it scraping at his tank aperture; desperately, he grabbed at its tongue and yanked in opposite directions, trying to break it off from the source.
Doc and Frankie ducked behind Dani as she scrambled for her intercom. "No! Dani, make sure my equipment is not damaged!"
"Bigger problems, Doctor Greene!" The intercom hissed, and Dani shouted, "All units, we have visual confirmation on the big bot. It is hostile and extremely dangerous. Blades is under attack!"
Graham answered back. "Boulder and I are closet to you, we should be there in three minutes. Hold it off!"
"How?" Dani gasped as the thing telescoped out at the spine, curling around Blades's shoulder and wrenching it backwards. In a panic, Blades threw all of his weight into one sharp tug.
The tongue snapped off the thing with a stiff pop. It screeched in pain and leaped away, pulling its components in and shrinking to half of Blades's size. Blades pulled and pulled the tongue out of his systems, still wriggling, and threw it spitefully down to the ground.
"Evil- evil thing!" Blades gasped. The tongue bled and writhed uselessly against the ground before it puttered out in a puddle of purple goo. "Evil evil evil thing!"
"Oh, my poor invention!" Doc watched his haywire invention carefully furl around itself, gasping in pain. "That will take weeks to recalibrate-"
It moved in quick flashes, as if teleporting into position rather than moving itself. It punched the far wall, arm stretched into a thin ribbon of metal and tubing, and pulled out a bundle of circuits and wires. Its hand unfolded, absorbed the miscellaneous bits through its palm and fed them up into its throat through its arm. With a satisfied moan, it stretched its reformed tongue out and out, flexing its grabby claws at the tip. Rebuilt, it stood to its full height, scraping the ceiling of the tunnels, and turned its eyes to Blades.
"It self-repairs?" Dani growled.
Doc shrugged a tiny, self-conscious shrug. "The Nanobots needed some fine-tuning." Frankie groaned in shame.
Dani sighed. "All right, Blades, we'll need to be a little rough this time."
"Rough this time. Okay." Blades widened his stance, keeping the thing square in his optics. "How rough?"
"CUT ITS HEAD OFF!" Frankie shouted.
Dani was grinning too hard to hear Doc admonish Frankie. That's what she told herself, at least. "You heard the lady, Blades!"
The thing turned and dove after the humans.
Before anyone could scream, Blades was above them, rotors spinning into the thing's face. They struck against the thing's face with a reedy twang, catching its pieces and throwing them to the ground in tiny chunks. It jumped back in shock; Blades followed it, pushing the humans back into the wall in a gust of wind.