Sam hit the ground. Hard.
The air was sucked out from her, lungs seizing painfully.
Above her, she saw the gigantic form of Kolossal, its back to her. He seemed to be holding something in his hands. Dr. K. He dropped me to shield Dr. -
A wave of heat and wind blew its way across the gas station.
Sam laid there, gasping for breath and hissing, expecting the worst. It didn't come. Blessedly.
That's what people never seemed to remember. It's not the heat itself that sets gas or fuel to explode; it's sparks or open flames. You could light a cigarette far away from a gas station, then casually stroll in with it and nothing would happen. However, if you light the cigarette close to the fuel pumps…
Sam started crawling.
A stolen glimpse to the side showed her the ghostly blue source of the explosion. It was the Electrix, supercharged with insane power and Sam knew that the last specs of normalcy from her life were gone.
The ghostly blue light – swarming around the robot like liquid mist – didn't seem to be dimming. Instead, it grew more potent.
Sparks went flying.
Abby screamed as she watched Sam die. Her scooter almost swerved into Cubix as she covered her face.
Yes, they'd never been close, but that didn't mean she wanted her dead.
Abby's scooter lurched as Cubix steadied it with a pair of lightlines, syncing their speed and direction.
"What?" Connor asked, terror in his voice, laser-focused eyes on the road, flying for the both of them now.
Abby shook her head, unable to speak. If I don't say it, I could still pretend it didn't… That Sam isn't…
Shaking with dread, Aby looked at her scooter's dashboard, where her mobile displayed two holograms: a GPS route and an ongoing stream.
Seeing as she'd offered to let Cubix stay at her house, Connor had called to check in. Abby had been scrolling absently, chatting on speaker, when she stumbled on that particular stream from the robot recharge station.
Oh, Sam.
She was suddenly overwhelmed by guilt for all the times she'd gossiped about her. Abby knew her heart was in the right place. Well… mostly. She kept telling it to herself, anyway, because Chip and Mong definitely believed so. But the woman could be so damn infuriating! But now…
The explosion had engulfed the station. It seemed to be a singular explosion, not a chain one. It still should not have happened, the recharging bays were so structurally sound.
"Abby! Talk to me." Connor bellowed from beside her.
Abby shook her head. Connor finally let go of the controls, leaving Cubix to dictate their drive.
On the screen, dark smoke had started pooling.
And then, a shimmering blue bubble emerged from it, black tendrils churning and writhing, outlining a silhouette: long hair flaring from motion, leather jacket waving, a metallic brace on her leg, a crutch in her hand.
The black giant robot, armed to the teeth, fired at the shadowy figure from behind his barricade of self-service booths. Lasers beams swarmed like insects, but parted around the woman in the bubble. They pelted the concrete, drilling holes in cars and splintering the stone. They turned a pillar that had somehow managed to stay upright into Swiss cheese with blackened craters. They cut trails through the smoke, but Sam, all black in the gloom, didn't so much as flinch.
Kolossal's mechanical roar of fury echoed to the mobile's speakers. He grabbed hold of a self-service booth, tearing it from the ground with a terrifying lurch.
This isn't a robot, it's a caged beast.
Hoisting it up, he threw the booth at Sam.
Sam let the protective bubble drop. She put her hand up and seemed to simply swat the tons of metal aside like a bothersome mosquito. A small blue light pulsed almost imperceptibly on the bent and broken booth before going out.
"How?" Connor asked, disbelieving.
"Skystrike" Abby couldn't help but whisper.
Kolossal's fists boomed in the night as they fell on another booth, tearing it up from the ground, wires stretching then splintering, like a child undoing his Lego house.
It seemed that Dr. K. had decided Sam was too great a risk to let live. He'd given the command to fire. The Electrix was still burning bright blue somewhere to Sam's left, a pool of energy defying reality. No time to deal with him.
Sam grabbed another gravitor from the pouch strapped to her leg. Holding it like a playing card, she flicked it at the oncoming booth. The gravitor connected and the metal stalled in the air, gaining the velocity of a feather. Connected to such a large object, it only took the fraction of a second for the gravitor to lose its full charge, but the damage was done. The booth's momentum was lost. It crashed to the ground halfway between her and Kolossal.
Kolossal gave a beastly roar. Sam got out another gravitor. Three left.
The smart thing to do from here would have been to crouch down beside rubble and continue to fire. Except Sam didn't have what to fire.
Around them, the smoke had started clearing and Sam spared a glance at her surroundings. She really hoped the other Electrix models had taken the cue and scurried away. The station's neon sign had fallen off and was hissing with sparks and the front glass doors had been shattered, but otherwise the main building didn't seem to be severely damaged.
Another lurching tear announced a booth soon to come her way.
There's no rhyme or reason to him. He's just raging mad. And those lasers...
The law was very clear. Civilian grade robots were not allowed weapons. Military grade robots were allowed weapons that only worked on other robots. No robot was allowed to kill anything, not even a squirrel, by means of ammunition. Building such a robot was one of the gravest offences, punishable with lifetime in a jail cell, while your robot would be obliterated.
Dr. K. didn't care. Whatever his plan was, he was all in.
Sam flicked the gravitor, her hand already prepared with another one by the time the booth toppled with a crunch.
At this rate, she'd run out of gadgets soon, but she didn't have anywhere to go. She was boxed in. To her right: the main building, rubble and the first booth she'd stopped. Kolossal in the front, Electrix to the left. Apartment buildings in the back. Apartments with people in them.
Kolossal roared. Dr. K was just behind him, secure in his contraption, hands clasped behind his back.
Something about the way he hovered there, a white and red stain in the night sky, imperious and in control … Something about the way his eyes found Sam, and locked on to her…
A pillar that had barely been standing upright collapsed on the rubble with thunder like reverberations.
Screams.
Mechanical screams, like metal grinding against metal. Contrary to what one might expect, a robot's scream was somehow more gut-wrenching than any human scream could be. An unholy, bone-chilling cacophony. Sam felt a sense of panic.
And found herself unable to move, unable to raise her hand to throw the gravitor on that pillar. Memories took over and played again and again in her mind.
Kolossal was wrestling with another booth, but that seemed distant now, unimportant.
I can make a throw like that, she thought to herself, angry. I've done it a dozen times.
She'd only missed once. She couldn't move, couldn't think. Looking away from that pillar was impossible.
She saw the booth flying at her in a daze, her limbs paralyzed. The gravitor in her hand felt heavy, useless.
She became faintly aware of a soft hum in the air, like vibration from loud music.
And then sleek cubic modules zipped through the air, shifting and rotating with precise fluid movements. They latched onto the booth like an awesome puzzle, not only slowing it down, but beginning to push, accelerating, heaving it through the air towards Kolossal.
His strength worked against him, as he wasn't quick enough to dodge.
Cubix was here.
Sam blinked, the fog of her panic starting to lift.
To her right, Connor and Abby were climbing up to the mound of slightly smoking rubble, trying to rescue the robot. To her right, Maximix was manfully wrestling with the Electrix, whose blue light had dimmed considerably.
Making her decision, Sam limped toward Abby and Connor, getting as close as she could through the debris.
"Connor!" She yelled.
The kid turned to look. Well, Not-Bother-Me, it seems it's up to you.
Sam undid the pouch on her leg and lobbed it up entirely. Connor caught it by its straps.
"Put all the remaining ones on that pillar. Then activate them at once and be ready to push. Get Abby to do it with you." She shouted up.
Not-Bother-Me nodded. Sparks help you kid.
A heavy thud announced that Kolossal had finally managed to wrestle the booth from on top of him. Cubix hovered above, steady. The giant android formed his hand – not the clawed one – into the laser gun. It had at least a dozen barrels.
At that moment, Dr. K. raised his hand in an efficient motion. And Kolossal stopped at once. The old man were observing the scene, like a slaughterman casting an eye over the day's catch.
His eyes caught Sam's and he nodded. A draw, that nod seemed to say. What on earth had happened to that man?
He clicked his hover-seat back on Kolossal's shoulder and the robot rose a couple inches from the ground, hovering as well. Then, he turned around and drifted into the night.
Cubix looked at him, then back at Connor.
The fallen pillar fell again, like a giant bowling skittle. First smoothly, weightlessly, then as if someone had cut its invisible.
Sirens were whaling somewhere nearby.
Sam heard Abby and Connor grunt and heave at something heavy. And then, Cubix was there, having made his own decision. He lifted the Electrix smoothly, then came back for the kids, and evacuated them too.
Hover cars with red and blue lines pulled up, squadrons getting out in formation.
Great timing, chaps, Sam thought, sitting down on an upturned charging bay, exhausted.