Chapter 3

Robots In Disguise

Sally's vision flickered and statics obscured it as the world slowly came into focus after she regained consciousness. It was like trying tune into the right channel on one of those comically old TVs with antennae.

"Max?" she asked, her vision finally clearing, and despite the small amount of light there was, she could still recognise the dimly lit chamber that she and Max had found. She wasn't sure what had happened, or how long she had been out, but she did know that she hadn't been alone, and she needed to find her friend.

Bringing a hand to rub her aching head, she stopped when she saw just how it looked. Rather than the flesh and bone she had grown up with, her hand was now an elegant mechanical construction. Memories of what happened flowing back into her mind, she instantly grabbed it with her other hand, hoping that it was only a hallucination or a metal glove, but that was quickly proven false, and her other hand was just the same, and it didn't stop there, but continued up her arms.

Panic forming in her mind, she felt all over her body, only to feel the slick, segmented metal plates, and she knew that her changes didn't stop there, that they vent even deeper, all the way to her core.

"Sally?" she heard Max's voice, and it was as if a beacon of light was lit in her sea of darkness.

"Max!" she looked at the direction of his voice, only to gasp when she saw that whatever had happened to her, had also happened to him.

Even as he stumbled towards her in the dim light, she could clearly see that his entire body was covered by metal plates that moved and shifted slightly as he moved. His hair had been replaced with fine, brown strands of fiber optics, and she reached up to feel that her own red hair had undergone the same change, hers being red.

"Sally! Are you okay?!" he asked as he knelt and grabbed her by her shoulder. His face was still the same, only metallic and his brown eyes were now golden optics, and as he looked into her eyes, she saw her reflection, with her face also being metallic and her green eyes emerald green optics.

"Max… what… what happened to us? What are we?" she felt on the verge of tears, it was so unreal, impossible really, and yet it had still happened.

"I-I don't know… it looks like… like we both have been turned into… into some kind of robots."

"R-robots?!" Sally looked back at her hands and then Max again. "That's impossible! Something like that just can't happen!" she looked at her hands again. "It just can't…"

But no matter how much she wanted to deny it, the truth was right in front of her, and as her eyes focused, readouts, numbers, and gauges started to appear in her field of vision.

"What now?!" she cried out. "What's with all these numbers!?"

"You too, I take it…" Max mused, taking a moment to go over what he saw on his own personal heads-up display. "Energy levels, core temperature, ambient temperature, structural integrity…" He sighed, or rather vented, seeing his core temperature dropping slightly for a moment. "That settles it, I guess… we are robots now."

"This can't be real… it just can't be real… it can't… god, how am I going to explain this to my family…" Sally sobbed, nearly wept, but no matter how much she felt like crying, no tears came from her new mechanical eyes.

"Sally…" Max could see that even if he was still struggling with wrapping his head around this, Sally was in far worse shape, her inability to suspend her disbelief only worsening her condition.

Up until that very moment, she had always been the stronger and more confident of the two, and to see her so utterly broken was outright painful for Max.

Pushing his own distress aside, he put his arms around Sally and pulled her into a hug.

She stiffened a bit at first from his touch, but soon found a reliable shoulder to cry on, if only figuratively. Despite being made of metal, there was a warmth to their touch that they could feel, and that was comforting for Sally.

"I can't… I can't go back home… not looking like this…" she sobbed.

"Sally, it's okay." Max hushed as soothingly as he could. "You're not alone, I'm right here, and I won't abandon you. We're in this together, and we will figure it out."

"Figure it out…? Look at us, Max… we're machines now… machine freaks…"

"That's not true!" Max snapped with a caring voice, placing his hands on Sally's cheeks and looking her in the eyes. "We may be machines now, but that's not all we are. When I look into your eyes, even though they have changed, I still see the tomboy girl that I met at camp. The same girl that helped me through it all. The girl whom I promised to take to the cinema after camp, and who promised me to never stop being my best friend."

"Max… I…" she closed her eyes and vented a few times before looking him in the eyes again with a weak smile and new, if still weak, resolve, but it was there nonetheless. "Thank you, Max… I'm so glad you're here with me…"

"And I won't leave you, Sally, not now, not ever. We will figure this out, I promise."

"I believe you, I really do… but how?"

"I don't know, not yet anyway. But we will find a way to turn back to our old selves again, to undo this. But that will have to wait. For now, we have to get back to camp before anyone notices that we are gone."

"The camp! Oh, god, how long were we out?"

"No clue. Could have been minutes, could have been hours. But when they find out that we're missing, they might come looking for us…"

"And that could cause the same to happen to others…" Sally looked at the crystal, dim but still floating over the raised platform. "We can't let that happen. No one else should have to go through what we did. But… what should we do? What can we do?"

"Let me… just let me think for a moment. Hmm…" Max wracked his computerised brain for an answer, and he found something that might be of use. "This is too big for just the two of us, we need to get back home, to our families."

"Agreed, but how? Look at us, we'd stick out like sore thumbs on the forehead."

"We'll disguise ourselves. If we dress in our most covering, baggy clothes, and keep a very low profile, we should be able to go back to town the same way we got here."

"You think that will work?"

"Trust me, never underestimate a good hoodie, I've often worn those to avoid having to interact with people whenever I had to go out. It worked in the Assassin's Creed games, after all, and I got a spare hoodie if you need it."

Sally couldn't help but smile a little. Max was really taking charge and trying to find a solution to the problem, and at the same time he just couldn't help being the video game nerd that he was, and this idea of his just might work. It wasn't like they had any better ideas at the moment anyway, so they had to play it mostly by ear.

But first they needed to get back to camp, and that meant going through the water filled tunnel again.

The walk back to the water, though not long, was more difficult than before, as the movements of their mechanical bodies were stiff and clunky, very robot-like in a way, and they both worried that they wouldn't be able to make it through the water barrier before them.

Cautiously, Max dipped his toes into the water, bracing himself for the possibility of being short circuited, but nothing happened. It was just as when he was still human, the cool feeling of the water on his metal form actually being a bit soothing.

"I hope we don't start to rust." said Sally as they started to wade into the water.

"I don't think that's something we have to worry about. Whatever we're made of now, I doubt it's iron based. I'm more worried about surviving the water. Hopefully, we don't have to breathe any more."

"Only one way to find out."

Sally full submerged herself, expecting her lungs to start complaining after a while, but she didn't have lungs any longer, something that took her a few minutes to fully realise and then resurface.

"You were right, Max." she said. "We don't need to breathe any longer. Even if we can't swim, we can just walk on the bottom back to shore."

"This is going to be an experience, that's for sure."

Max and Sally made their way through the tunnel, reaching the end and the bottom of the lake. Their new eyes were not bothered by the water the same way as their organic ones were, and the light from the moon illuminated the lake in a way they couldn't have believed possible. It was like a completely different world down there.

Their walk was a bit on the slower side though, and so they decided to try and swim, hoping for it to be a bit faster. Much to their surprise, despite being made of metal, they could indeed swim. It wasn't as graceful as before, but it worked all the same, and it certainly sped things up, letting them reach the shore line in short order.

The moon still shone above them, and upon seeing that their clothes still lay where they had left them after stripping down for their skinny dip, they were relieved that they had only been unconscious for an hour or two at most, not days or more, so their plan could still work.

Their metal bodies quickly dried off, the water falling off their slick surfaces within seconds, but it felt strangely alien when they started getting dressed again, the fabric of their clothes feeling completely different against their metal skin.

The fact that they could actually feel with their metallic bodies was just further proof of just how strange their new existence was, and that was far from the only one.

"Come on, come on… fit already." Sally almost growled.

"You okay, Sally?" Max asked.

"Ugh, not really. My sports bra barely fits any longer. I always take a few sizes smaller than I really am, just to make sure my tits are keep in place when I'm, you know, active. But now… ugh… my tits are just solid lumps of metal! They can't be squished and adjusted any more!"

"Yet another thing that's different about us then. I'm sure you already noticed, but neither of us have any genitalia any longer either."

"Yeah, I noticed that too. Kinda hard not too when we both were naked so long. Actually, you know what, screw the bra. It won't do any good either way any longer."

In short order, they dressed as best they could with the clothes they had left behind, but they did not fit as well as they used to. In addition to the changes they had already noticed, their general body shapes had also changed a bit, with Max having broader shoulders and a slightly more muscular build than before, while Sally had had her curves somewhat enhanced, a further reason that her bra hadn't fit.

Still, it didn't matter if it was a bit haphazardly, as they were going to change into more covering clothes once they got back to the camp.

The walk through the forest went increasingly smooth as they got closer, their stiff and clunky movements growing more smooth and fluid as they got used to their new bodies, resulting in a magical mix of human grace and mechanical precision.

This came to be of great use to Max and Sally as they had to carefully sneak through the camp, for while it was still dark, it was early in the morning, and people were bound to be more easily awoken. If they could only make it to their tents, they would be fine, at least for the moment.

Their new and improved precision came in handy, not to mention their eyes, letting them avoid tripping on any guy lines of the other tents, especially since the moon had since become hidden behind clouds. Last thing they needed was to cause a ruckus and be discovered.

First, they stopped at Max's tent, and he quickly, yet silently, opened it, and handed Sally one dark green hoodie. With a silent nod as thanks, Sally hurried off to her tent to dress 'appropriately', while Max closed himself in in his tent and did the same.

Max's hoodie fell over his robotic form like a cloak, the drawstrings tightening around his middle to create the illusion of a more human silhouette. Sally's baggy pants and the borrowed, oversized hoodie managed to conceal most of her transformed body, with the fabric stretching slightly around her enhanced curves.

It was far from perfect, but it was the best they could do.
All they could do now was wait, and pray that when the sun rose and everyone were to break camp, they would all be too busy to notice that Max and Sally were really robots in disguise.

Time crept slowly for Max and Sally, as they didn't dare sleep in case someone would be so rude as to enter to wake them, and possibly seeing their robotic forms, so all they could do was lay and wait for dawn, something that was both boring and unnerving.

The still and calm camp was a strong contrast to the turmoil of thoughts and emotions that raced through their minds, and try as they might, they just couldn't push away the fears of what might happen if they were to be discovered.

Would they be feared and hunted? Would they be disassembled and studied? Each new scenario was worse than the last.

Finally, dawn arrived, and soon after, the voice of one of the camp leaders echoed among the tents.

"Gooood morning everyone! Time to get up and at it! We've got a long day ahead of us, so get up, have something to eat, and then we break camp!"

Max and Sally, despite being in separate tents, both decided to wait until they could hear that people were up and about, being busy with making whatever breakfast they intended to eat and then shuffle around as they started to pack up their tents.

Once they felt that they could move around without drawing attention to them did they leave their own tents and began packing up as well, constantly keeping their hoods pulled down as much as possible and their heads down to avoid being seen as they worked.

Had they still been humans, their hearts would have pounded like crazy, their hands would have shook like small earthquakes, and sweat would have flowed down their foreheads like a torrent, but their robot bodies had none of those 'flaws', a blessing in disguise to be sure, but that didn't mean they didn't feel the nerves that came with it all.

With their tents and backpacks packed, everyone followed the camp leaders onto the hiking trail that had brought them there in the first place. It was a three hour hike back to the bus stop, and Max and Sally stayed in the far back the entire time, keeping their heads down and only speaking in whispers with each other as they planned ahead as best they could.

The next challenge would be the actual bus ride. All the four hours of it.

So far, so good, but there are surely more challenges ahead of them.