I AM MAN, page 12
“Are you hurt?” Code asked, running a medical scan through his visual sensors. Her report flashed in his feed while she spoke: minor bruises, increased heartrate, dehydration.
“I’m fine,” Clora said. She turned to the staircase, tugging Code’s sleeve as she moved. “It’s Zero-four. She’s the one who’s hurt.”
The she-Skel stood hunched over, one hand on the wall to stable herself. She was leaking fluids from her left knee and had a hole in her armor so deep, it left circuits exposed in her chest. X5 swallowed, feeling a very human chill crawl up and down his metal spine. This was bad.
“Can you walk?” he asked, already knowing the answer.
X04 chuckled. Sparks flew from the hole in her chest when she did. “I can limp.”
“I’ll carry you—”
“And leave the princess to defend herself?” Another terrible laugh. She fell to her knees and coughed up fluids, sparking the whole time.
Clora dropped to her side. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispered shakily.
“There is nothing you can do,” X04 said calmly. With a grunt, she leaned against the wall and beckoned for X5 to come closer. “Their orders are to kill us and take the princess alive.”
“Well,” he said, scanning her injuries, “they’ve nearly succeeded.”
“Listen to me—” she stopped to cough up more fluids, blood and oil shot from her mouth together.
This is really bad, X5 thought. Skel were designed to preserve their organic parts at all costs, it was rare to see blood coming from a unit. X04’s report covered his field of vision for a moment, he cleared it to look at her but not before seeing a list of critical injuries. If it hadn’t been clear before, it was certainly clear now; X04 was going to die here.
“I hacked the transport systems while we waited for you. A sand rider will meet you by the east exit—if you can make it, it will automatically sync to your systems. Just input your coordinates and it will take you there on its own.”
“East,” Clora said, her voice trembling.
“Yes, princess.” X04 leaned over, her chest sparking; glowing blue eyes blinked off and on as she issued an internal command. “This is for you.” A compartment in her chest armor opened to reveal a singed notebook—the journal X5 had tried to hide for the princess not long ago.
Code stared at it, remembering when it’d been stolen from him. A wave of anger hit him. “You stole that from me.”
“But she gave it back,” Clora explained.
He blinked at her, still trying to figure out why, how, and when the princess and Pyg’s former Skel had become friends.
“It’s complicated,” Clora muttered, clutching the notebook.
“And this is for you, Guardian.” X04 cradled her hand, flexing her fingers open and close. Then, with a pop!, her middle finger came off and she passed it to X5.
He didn’t reach for it. “Um…”
“I have lived a long time,” she confessed. “All those who truly knew me are now dead. I should be happy to die and join them. But part of me wants to stay. Take this, so someone in this universe will know that I once lived.”
“I won’t forget you, Zero-four,” Clora said, tears filling her eyes. She took the metal finger and tucked it, and the notebook, into the heavy folds of her dress—which X5 realized, with utter shock, were actually large pockets. “I’ll never forget you,” the princess blubbered.
Code looked away, diving into his feed. This whole scene was getting out of hand. Clora was being all human and emotional, X04 was dying right in front of him. Meanwhile, his live map relayed two Guardians and a Soldier were quickly approaching. Like a jerk, the Soldier displayed its ID on the tracker map so X5 knew exactly who he was dealing with.
A unit identified as Code-S14 was on its way to their location. It would be there in less than one minute.
“We’ve got to hurry,” X5 said, returning his vision to the girls.
Clora was sobbing, holding X04’s hand—the one with the missing finger.
“I’ll always remember—” Code started but he cut himself off.
X04 was already dead.
The faint crystal blue glow of her Core began to fade until it was nothing but a dim light—then it started to flicker.
“We’ve got to go,” X5 grunted, dragging Clora to her feet.
“Wait!” she screamed, still holding the she-Skel’s hand.
“She’s dead!” he yelled, yanking her away. “And her Core is still activated.”
Clora sniffled, running to keep up with his long strides. “What does that mean?”
He glanced down at her. “She’s going to self-destruct.”
With a single nod, Clora understood the situation. She wiped the tears from her eyes and pulled her hand from X5 to hitch up her skirts and run beside him. If he had a real heart, it would have melted into his hollow chest cavity. The last three months had been all about Clora—the last week had nearly cost him his life over Clora. But X5 had been fine with that because the princess was his client, and any good Guardian would willingly give its life for a client.
He remembered when the princess could barely look at him. Remembered when she’d been uncomfortable around him. He even remembered when she’d been having the nightmares each night and pretending each morning that everything was alright. Clora had been one of his most awkward and frustrating clients to date, but she was also the very first client to willingly put her life in danger for him.
Code glanced down at her as she ran beside him. If they made it out of this alive, he would thank her.
X04 had told them to find the east exit; a sand rider would be waiting, and it would automatically sync to his systems. He pulled up the live map of the dungeons and quickly routed their escape. S14 and the two Guardians were close, but that didn’t matter; if he’d kept proper count, they only had a few more seconds until—
The entire corridor shifted, falling to the side like gravity had just wrinkled on top of them. The wall belched debris, coughing out smoke and rocks and chunks of cement. The organic eardrums encased in the noise detectors of X5’s head rang as he clumsily found his feet. He blinked through the smoke, waiting for his visual sensors to recalibrate from the sudden shock.
There was debris everywhere, but the worst of it was behind. Code turned around to see the rest of the dungeons and froze in place when he saw a wall of rocks. X04’s self-destruct had destroyed half the pyramid basement and left them buried in the mess. Alerts went off on Code’s feed, a critical warning flashed in his eyes—apparently, he was severely damaged, but he didn’t feel any pain. He looked down to check himself, patting his chest for injury. That’s when he noticed his right hand was missing.
Oh.
Chapter Eleven
Sharp pain swelled in X5’s wrist as his Core’s preservation mechanism kicked in and cauterized the organic parts that’d been ripped away and exposed. He turned down each one of his nerve sensors to dull the pain of having your hand blown off in an explosion. Then panic set in.
“Clora!” he screamed, turning left and right. The infrared vision activated but the sights were corrupted by black splotches. He must have sustained a head injury—though he couldn’t say for sure since he couldn’t feel much pain with his sensors turned down.
In the distance, someone coughed.
“Clora!” Code shouted again.
“I’m here!” she squeaked back.
Relief rolled over him, but the panic wasn’t completely gone. He still couldn’t find her. “Are you hurt?” he called into the darkness.
There was a pause. “I don’t think so!”
X5 walked toward her voice, wishing X04 was still alive. She’d been so much more advanced than him. If he’d had the facts correct, it was because of her dismantled Core. With her freewill, X04 could do things a normal-functioning central module wouldn’t allow or would ultimately override. Things like creating viruses deadly enough to kill a D-class frame, hacking transport systems, and singlehandedly shutting down the security system of an entire Pureblood palace.
If X04 were still alive, the situation might be different. But it was because of her sacrifice that they’d been able to get away. X5 wasn’t as advanced as she’d been, but he was good at his job. He could have taken on the two Guardians, but not even an overprotective Guardian built to guard Pureblood royals could stand for long against a Soldier of equal quality. And S14 had been ready for him. Was probably happy to fight him. It also didn’t help that Code hadn’t had a full recharge since arriving at the palace—and he had no weapons other than the soft cannons built into his body. If X04 hadn’t sacrificed herself, he wasn’t sure they would have gotten away.
“Are you hurt?” Clora called.
X5 found her tripping over a pile of rocks, her hands extended as she traversed through the darkness. “Uh,” he said, glancing down at his stump. “I’ll be fine.”
“Looks like the explosion cut us off from the reinforcements.”
“Yeah.” X5 pulled up his feed and tried to open the live map. It was down, but he didn’t need it. With the wall of debris behind them, the only way to go was forward.
“Do you think they’re all dead?” Clora asked, staring at his stump. She knew enough about Skel not to make a fuss, but she still couldn’t pull her eyes away from the jagged rods and torn veins poking out his ripped sleeve.
“No. But they’re in worse shape than us.”
“Will they come after us?”
“We’ll likely bump into forces waiting by the exit,” he said.
“What will happen when we see them?”
“We’ll fight them,” he told her. Then he glanced down at her, at her wide-open eyes, still staring at his stump—probably weighing their chances against Skel with two hands. He corrected himself. “We’ll try to fight them.”
It was a miracle they’d made it this far. X5 had half expected his Core to shut him down and turn himself in, just like it’d done when he’d walked in on a murder scene not long ago. But it was the kill-on-sight orders the other Skel had received that urged his central module to allow Code to escape with Clora. Because he was still her Guardian, which meant his priority was still to keep her safe. And he couldn’t keep her safe if he was hunted down and killed.
X5 led Clora through what was left of the dungeons in relative silence. They walked side by side, moving as quickly as they could. Clora had a limp, which his medical scan reported to be the result of a sprained ankle; she’d also suffered a minor concussion and was bleeding from a bad scrape on her knee. But other than that, he was sure he’d gotten the worst of the deal with his missing hand and head injury. Briefly, he wondered if he could even access his weapons systems with his injuries, but the thought was wiped away when he received a ping. It came from a non-sentient frame—which meant it could only be their rider.
“Come on,” X5 said, picking up the pace. “We’re close.”
Sure enough, as they rounded the next corner, the Guardian and the princess met a staircase which took them up to the surface and out the east exit of the pyramid. And right into a squad of palace security.
A light flashed in their faces, so bright, even X5 had to look away. “Freeze!” a voice boomed. Code recognized it immediately, but it was Clora who responded.
“Leo?” she said loudly, her hands still shielding her eyes. “Leo, let us pass!”
“You know I can’t do that, baby sister,” the voice said back. “Your Skel is a dangerous threat and right now you are its victim. If you cooperate, we can get you out of this alive. But only if you work with us.”
In other words, they were prepared to kill her, too.
“Work with them,” Code said.
Clora turned to him, squinting hard. “I am not leaving you.”
“I know. But I need you to buy us some time.”
She blinked at him, trying to figure out what he had planned, but the prince’s voice pierced through her thoughts. “Are you going to work with us, Clora-Vean?”
The princess didn’t pull her eyes away from X5 as she said, “Yes, I am.”
“Hands in the air, both of you.”
They obeyed.
“Now, princess, slowly begin walking towards the sound of my voice.”
Clora faced forward. At first, she didn’t move, but Code murmured behind her, “It’ll be alright.” So she began a slow walk forward.
He’d expected to get shot, that was the only reason Prince Helios would instruct his sister to move away—so she wouldn’t try to save him by placing herself in front of the bullet. But X5 didn’t need a Pureblood girl to take a shot for him. He hadn’t planned to get taken down by a sniper, anyway.
As Clora walked, he closed his eyes and listened to the noise around him. The signal for the sand rider was getting stronger every second, but it wasn’t until he felt the ground beneath him start to quake that he realized just how close it was. There must not have been any Skel in the security unit, because none of them noticed the gentle quaking until it was too late.
Shakily, the prince’s voice came over the megaphone. “H—hold it right there,” he said, an uncharacteristic edge of uncertainty in his tone.
Clora froze, she must have felt it too, because she glanced back over her shoulder with a knowing look in her eye. The flash of the lights shifted away, casting shade over the two for just a moment. X5 looked ahead to find the security team talking fiercely. The one holding the light beam had stepped away from his post to stare at the ground.
“What’s going on?” someone said loudly.
Prince Helios stood off to the side; a prince among men, he was easy to point out—but not because he was so pretty. Code-X5 had locked onto the prince so easily because he was the only person in the crowd who wasn’t panicking. His gaze hadn’t shifted from Clora and her Guardian; even from his stance, fifty feet away, X5 could make out the wrinkled brow on his otherwise perfect face.
Prince Helios wore his usual black robes with gold embroidering, his hair was pulled into a tight bun, but there was a collection of bandages and fresh bruises on his face and neck. Like he’d been in a fight. His neatly plucked eyebrows lowered ever so slightly as he kept his sights on his little sister, no doubt taking notice to her calm composure.
At this point, it didn’t matter if the prince figured anything out. Before he could open his mouth to issue a command, the ground began to rumble, and the sand shifted beneath their feet. The entire security team was thrown to the ground as a great object burrowed under them. It traveled under the sand at incredible speed, just beneath the surface, as it circled the group to find its way to the beacon that’d summoned it.
With a splash of sand and dirt, a giant, beetle-shaped ship emerged from underground. Their sand rider had finally arrived. X5 felt the system ping him for coordinates, but he didn’t have time to ask Clora for a specific location. He only remembered that she’d wanted to go east. How far east? To the Star Oasis? To the nearest sand village? All the way across the Scorched Desert, through the Hollowed Forest, to the Savai Empire? There was no time to decide.
At the command of the prince, the security team—the ones who could stand and aim their weapons—began to fire. Code ran forward, covering the distance between himself and Clora in less than a second. He yanked her by the wrist and spun so his back was to the crowd, taking the brunt of the onslaught.
With D12 dead and S14 and the other two Guardians buried in the rubble, Prince Helios was out of Skel to command—or at least he couldn’t activate any more in such short notice. X5 hadn’t expected much fight from this Augment security team but, to his horror, he realized the prince had come prepared.
The bullets fired weren’t standard rounds, they were heavier, with reinforced tips and notches on the barrel to make them spin. X5 didn’t wear armor like most Skel, he hated how much it weighed him down when it mattered most. Typically, he walked around in human clothes—plain black pants, a long-sleeved shirt, combat boots, and a cloak with a hood to cover his shiny head. Normally, that was all he ever needed, even when things got tricky. But now, as rounds the size of Clora’s pinky finger shredded his backside, he would have given his other hand for just a single plate of armor.
He gasped, sucking in sand and smoke from the grenades the security team had launched. The world spun and he saw sand, then the rider, then the night sky as he fell flat on his back. His vision blinked in and out and his audio sensors nearly exploded. Warnings flashed on his feed, but he didn’t need to read them to know he’d been seriously wounded. He could feel fluids leaking out his back, seeping from the holes left by the bullets. Worse than that was the pain.
Despite turning down his nerve sensors, X5 felt a horrible burning in his chest. Like his Core was on fire. A bullet had gone through his back, scraping against his central module, and lodged itself between his Core and the bolts that kept it in place.
Everything went black.
His visual and audio sensors blanked out at once and he was alone for a moment. He thought he’d died until he heard Clora shrieking beside him. Then he felt a tug on his arm and a terrible pain in his back, his chest—in everything. He realized the princess was dragging him toward the rider, screaming and crying and trying to dodge the fresh spray of bullets.
“Clor—”
His sensors went black again. Pain shredded through his body as his Core reacted to the metal bullet grating against it. He could feel himself fading, parts of his archives vanishing from the damage—memories, traits, likes and dislikes, everything that made him him was dying in his own mind. He was forgetting himself.
Clora’s face appeared before him—no—who?
The blackness returned; pain bloomed again. A warning flashed on his feed as he awakened once more.
COMPLETE SYSTEM FAILURE
He gasped for air but sucked in sand.
Where am I?
His organic parts seized, overwhelmed by the stress of his mechanics. The strips of muscle connecting the frames of his legs cramped, his lung began to fail, his brain shut off.
