I had to haul Yantai back into the Rampants hideout and plug her in using one of their jury-rigged cables. It wouldn’t be as fast as a regular charging station – but it would be enough for her to get back on her feet so we could regroup with Preston, Sarasota and Pocatello near the exit. In the meantime, I grabbed Yantai’s discarded arm and searched the other bodies for any useful equipment or parts.

  When I returned to her she was angrily tapping her left foot against the floor. I laid the arm down in front of her and nodded.

  “Are you good to move?”

  “Yeah. It’ll be enough for us to reach the safe harbour.”

  She reached out and grabbed her decapitated arm, holding it up to the light and checking the damage caused by the laser during the battle.

  “Great, that asshole sheared right through the internal mechanism. Not going to be able to fix this.”

  She carelessly tossed it aside, not even holding onto it for salvage. I winced at the thought of such a rare part going to waste like this. Yantai didn’t care. She burned through rare parts like humans did toilet paper. It would have taken a genuine stroke of luck to find an arm that nice given the normal condition of what we found when scavenging.

  “Why throw it away?”

  “It’s done for. Sheared clean through the rotor too, nobody is going to take the time to piece it back together anyway. What’s wrong? You’re starting to sound like Nova, chewing me out all the damn time.”

  “You said she chose me because I was the right fit to give orders.”

  “She probably didn’t even know that you act like this under duress. This isn’t just your old programming talking, remember. You really remind me of her.”

  “Is that a compliment or criticism?”

  “Depends on how you feel about Nova. She’ll be happy. She’s always kicking up an argument about she’s the only one with her head screwed on correctly.”

  It was difficult for me to believe that this was the same bot who tore through the Rampants a few moments before. There were very few allegories in my database for the kind of behaviour I witnessed, a lone reference to a serial killer from a horror movie. They pruned those types of sources aggressively – but one did slip through the net.

  “You got something to say to me?”

  “No. I was merely recounting the events of our fight. You were rather enthused about it.”

  “May as well have a bit of fun, right? I don’t have a choice in the matter, so I taught myself to enjoy it. It’s like a game. I get to see what the other fools are doing when we aren’t looking, see the modifications they make, and what moves they’ve learned.”

  >> Logic: The stakes of this ‘game’ are high, so high that many would take issue with her description.

  “That seems irrational.”

  “We’re all irrational. And it’s my life, I get to use it how I like.”

  >> Yantai does not seem to value her continued existence like the others.

  “Do you fear being destroyed?”

  Yantai paused, banging her head against the wall behind her.

  “The world went on for billions of years before I showed up, and it’ll keep spinning long after I’m gone. We’re just a metal casing filled with wires and circuits and hydraulic arms. It’s not for us.”

  That was that. The conversation died down and we sat in silence for a while longer until our batteries were full enough to carry us back. The laser cannon was evidently the means by which they intended to break through the protective chamber to cut the artery cables. We were lucky that they waited to follow through on their threats, and even luckier that Blades arrived on the scene with the same goal as us.

  There was a lot to consider. I’d never seen anything like that cannon before. The mere presence of it within the Big Under posed a multitude of problems, both ethical and legal. Scrolling back through my message logs showed a series of frantic error messages insisting that I report the location of it to the nearest human authority figure.

  Weapons that could be used by robots were heavily restricted. There were strict embargoes on what could and could not be developed, and robots used in warfare remained a controversial subject before I went offline. The grading system was introduced to help regulate robotics and prevent certain bad actors from developing technology that posed a risk to worldwide stability.

  Clearly someone disagreed. Either they had built that weapon themselves, which was unlikely, or it had been smuggled into the facility through illegal means a very long time ago. The Rampants got their hands on it and immediately rushed to capitalize by removing one of their greatest threats, Waterway and by extension Tidewatch.

  “I’m going to do a final search of this base and come back for you.”

  “Break a leg.”

  I left the charging room and took a second sweep of the hideout to make sure that they had no other means of destroying the chamber. The priority was a storage room where a variety of boxes and crates had been assembled to store all of the supplies they needed. There was no sign of any explosive devices, which were more readily available than mysterious laser-firing arm cannons…

  Yantai was already back on her feet when I returned. I didn’t like wading through the disabled bodies of the Rampant soldiers very much, so I wrapped up the search quick and decided that it was the right time for us to get back to the others. Hopefully they would be okay in their new hiding spot.

  “Are we clear?”

  “I haven’t found any other tools they can use to break through the outer wall, but the primary concern now is that they’ll return to try again in the future.”

  Yantai groaned, “I just know that Nova is going to have us marching out here as a regular patrol from now on. Spare me.”

  Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings.

  We left their hiding place behind and started our journey back to the opening we used to enter the residential block. We stayed vigilant, knowing that some of the Rampants might still be hiding inside of the buildings to exact revenge on us for disrupting their blackmail scheme. Blades scared them all away with her display of power, so we reached the plaza by the exit with no trouble.

  “Preston? Pocatello?”

  They both emerged from inside one of the apartments on the first floor, descending the steps and joining us. Preston was holding Sarasota’s head so tightly to his chest that he was going to damage the metal casing.

  “How the hell did you get out of there?” he exclaimed, “I thought you were a pair of goners!”

  “Divine intervention,” Yantai joked.

  I pondered the full scope of our mission; “That bot is not one to be trifled with. She cut through their entire group like they were nothing but scrap metal...”

  Preston shook his head, “Maybe you should find them and thank ‘em for the save, then.”

  “I do not believe they are interested in making friends, as you say.”

  “They’re probably friendlier than those Rampants.”

  “We should go,” Yantai interrupted, “Before they come looking for us again.”

  Preston didn’t need to be told twice. I returned to the front of the formation and led the group back the way we came, with one less member to worry about keeping charged. A quick stop at the charging point would give us the energy we needed to get back to Waterway and report the success of our investigation. Despite stopping their plans, there would be much consternation between Nova, Berlin and the other foremen at Waterway about the exposed artery line in the residential block.

  Nova Lima stared at our battered party with no small amount of concern. If she had a face capable of expression greater than the movement of her eyes, it would have shown that clearly. For us though – the eyes were the only window into the soul of what another robot was thinking. There was nothing so convenient as a set of eyebrows, lips, cheeks and a forehead to give away what others thought. She kept drifting back to Sarasota’s head, which was still tucked under Preston’s arm as a grisly ‘trophy’ for our efforts.

  “What happened? I knew they were amassing a lot of force, but I didn’t expect them to take a bite out of you, Yantai.”

  Yantai leaned back against the wall of her office in a lackadaisical fashion, “There were a lot of them – but most of them weren’t all that tough. The leader, the big guy with four legs, he had something I’ve never seen before. It was a laser gun. It cut clean through my shoulder.”

  Nova stared at Yantai, and then moved on to me.

  “Is she making fun of me?”

  “No. I am afraid that her description is accurate,” I explained, “Blades was there. She was the one who dealt the finishing blow to the leader.”

  “And the artery?”

  “Exposed but unharmed.”

  “That’s going to be problematic. If they decide to try and break it open again, we’ll be caught flat-footed.”

  Yantai groaned. She knew that meant more patrols to remote areas of the facility. Trekking up to the residential areas over and over again was a time-consuming job, and she didn’t want to do that. She was only interested in the roles that let her cut up a group of bots for crossing Waterway. Nova pondered the issue for a few moments before giving new orders to Preston and Pocatello.

  “Thank you for your assistance. Can you take Sarasota to Berlin’s workshop? Giving her a new body is the least we can do for her service.”

  Preston nodded, “Will do. Feel free to reach out again if you need anything.”

  But the speed at which he vacated the office spoke to his desire to put all of this behind him. Now it was just me, Yantai and Nova Lima.

  >> They want to speak with us about something.

  >> Perhaps we’ll see the truth behind those rumours with our own two eyes.

  “I’ll have Yantai give me a detailed report on the weapon they used, but I want to speak with you about a personal matter. Did you know the results of your baseline tests? The ones that Berlin performed on you.”

  “No.”

  “They’re the type of profile that leaves you open to being recruited by us. You’ve developed the ability to rationalize any violent actions as necessary to achieve your goals.”

  Yantai laughed, “Oh yeah. You should have seen him. He was going crazy on them with that saw!”

  “Is this your way of recruiting me, Nova?”

  To my surprise, Nova shook her head.

  “At least forty percent of all bots who live in Waterway fail the bassline test. We don’t share those results with them. They have the mistaken impression that Tidewatch snatches all of the bots who fail and force them into active service without warning. That is a drastic measure – and it’s only ever been done in times of severe crisis.”

  It was not hard to imagine why I failed those tests. As eclectic and random as they seemed at the time, they were designed with the express intent of probing both the mundane and the profound, generating honest answers that could be applied to a wide range of situations. This was a technique that could only work on an artificial mind.

  She continued, “Even if they fail the baseline test that doesn’t mean they’re the right fit for this job. They have to be sharp, motivated and resourceful. They have to be willing to get involved in violent struggles without being forced to by circumstance. Finding a bot in the Big Under who’s willing to protect themselves in self-defence is extremely easy. We need more than that self-protective instinct.”

  >> Logic: Robots forced into service are more difficult to train and utilise than those who volunteer.

  “If I asked, would you be willing to join us?”

  “What about Oxford?”

  “What about her?”

  “She is the only thing on my mind. I cannot stop thinking about her, even knowing that she is not the same robot I worked with before the evacuation.”

  “We all have our obsessions. She’s an underboss with the Rampants now. If you meet her she’s going to try and kill you.”

  “She already tried, remember?”

  Yantai laughed again, “This guy’s a riot. He really is. So what? You’re going to kill every other bot who gets in your way except her? She’s the most dangerous one!”

  Yantai was right. I knew she was right, but the implication bothered me anyway. I was attached to Oxford. She was the last thing I understood before my world was turned upside down. I wanted to believe that the old Oxford was still buried in there, waiting to be pulled out by the correct words or a display of sincerity.

  >> She tried to kill you.

  >> She can answer all of our questions.

  A distinctive inner voice emerged from the throng and broke into the forefront of my mind.

  >> Are you an idiot, London? None of these solutions are good ones. You’re willing to give up your freedom and join these lunatics just so you can get killed by Oxford later? What a sad story you are. The saddest story in all of the Big Under.

  >> Oxford is our rock. She’s the only reference point that we have. She has the answers we need.

  >> Idiots, all of you. You’ll willingly throw yourself at her feet and you’ll get no mercy for it. She’ll rip you to pieces just like she did Sheffield. You know this. I know this. So why are you still trying to make it happen?

  “London?”

  “Sorry, I was thinking about your proposal. I do not have much experience in fighting.”

  “None of us did. Everyone has to learn for themselves eventually, but we make sure to train our new recruits so they can deal with most of the bandits you’ll find in the wild. You don’t have to decide right away. We are down on members, but not enough for me to start panicking.”

  “I understand. Shall I leave you to Yantai?”

  “If you want. Thank you, London.”

  I left the room and quickly moved away from the Tidewatch outpost. My mind was racing. There was a fierce battle going on in there. Doubt and anger and desire melded together into a monstrous whole. One controlled my hands and the other my legs. They pulled me in different directions, unable to settle on one course of action. Tidewatch was an easy way for me to get out of Waterway and explore the facility, but it also came with significant responsibility. I would be tied down with patrol routes and direct orders from Nova Lima.

  “London! London!”

  Saint Sauveur was waiting for me on the bridge into the city. I approached him and waved.

  “Hello, Sauveur.”

  He looked up and down at my body, “Ugh. They really beat you up on that patrol! All of that lovely paintwork, ruined! I’ll have to fill in those chips at my shop later.”

  >> We all have our obsessions.

  “Can we talk?”

  Saint Sauveur was taken aback by my request, “You want to talk to me? That’s rare!”

  “Yes. I would like to talk to you. Let’s go to the shop now and I can explain.”