There has to be an off-switch. Every bot has one! Where was it?
She had never had to repair one of these things before. They were so few, and usually they had their own entourage of bots floating around them, working on maintaining them. If there was an off-switch, she had no idea where it was.
Huck zipped around next to her and swung around her head. “Huck! Stop it! I can’t see!” She batted him away, but he zipped back, racing around in front of her. “Stop it!” But the eye-bot wouldn’t leave her alone. After she attempted to bat it away for the third time, it jammed into her arm, pushing her backwards. “Huck! What’s gotten into you?” Again he hit her, and she stepped back, trying to avoid him. Then he zipped away, straight up into the air.
Syn followed his movement, and she saw what he had been trying to get her to pay attention to. A dark figure, draped in a drab cloak, was climbing up the beast’s far back leg.
“Who is that?” Syn shouted, but Huck made no reply.
The figure was nimble and, in a few seconds, had made its way to the beast’s back. Planting both legs in a wide stance, working to keep its balance on the rearing beast, the figure pulled a knife from a sheath on its leg and brought it down with a fury, quick and decisive, jamming it straight into the thing’s shell. Syn had expected the blade to bounce off as her spear had. Instead, it plunged straight in, and she saw shards of crimson glass explode from the impact. The figure held tight to the bucking bot and pulled something else out of another pocket. From Syn’s view, it looked like a piece of fabric with small red lights. The figure placed the piece in the hole opened up by their knife.
The beast buckled, convulsing. It roared—a horrific grating screech that sent shivers down Syn’s spine. Whatever the figure had done, it had hit something critical. A second later, the beast stopped all motion. The red lights lining its appendages went dark. The beast’s huge legs buckled underneath it, and the entire thing crashed with a slam into the desert dirt, sending a cloud of sand up, blinding Syn.
She yelled, “Bear! Arquella! Where are you?”
From the other side of the beast’s inert body, she heard Arquella’s plaintive screams, “We’re here! Bear is hurt! He’s hurt! Syn help us! Heal him! He needs you!” The bot screamed.
“I’m coming,” Syn walked through the sand cloud, trying to avoid the splayed legs of the tree mover. She gripped her spear with both hands, still aware that there was now another threat, another unknown beside the monstrosity that had just collapsed. “Huck. Help me. Where are they?”
As the dust settled, Syn peered ahead, hoping to find them. Something flashed a few meters away, and she was sure it a reflection off of Arquella’s shell. “Is that you?”
Arquella answered, much closer now, “Here! Help him!”
Bear was face forward on the ground, a huge dent on his left side and a tear in the metal along his upper edge. Surprisingly, his wheel was still spinning.
Syn dropped to her knees beside them and examined the dent. “You okay, Bear?”
The bot didn’t respond. Syn knew she wouldn’t be able to turn him over—he was far too large for that.
Arquella floated above them both. “He isn’t talking. I can’t get him to respond. Syn, you have to help him. You can heal him, right? Can’t you? Please tell me you can heal him!”
Syn held up a hand. “Let me look.” She thought to herself, Oh, please, let this be something easy. “I’ll figure it out. Just give me a moment please.”
Huck hovered around them in wide arcs, slowly observing.
Syn worked through the problem step-by-step. His wheel is going. He has power. Yet, he’s not responding. The dent was on his right side. If I remember, his power supply is on his right side. Maybe something came loose. The tear up top doesn’t look to be that deep, and nothing is hanging out. If only I had a few tools, I could get the maglocks to release on his side and take the plate off and see what’s going on.
Syn looked up to Arquella, “Do me a favor and look away. This isn’t going to be pretty.”
“What are you going to do?” The bot asked.
“Just look away, please.”
Arquella spun, although Syn still had no idea where her eyes were. She was one simple silver sphere, perfectly smooth across her entire surface.
Syn pried at a thin seam with the edge of her spear, wriggling it back and forth, hoping to put enough pressure on the maglocks to separate them. The first one popped open and she breathed out. Okay, one down, and the rest will be easier. One by one, she popped them open, moving the tip of the spear up the seam, working to not jam it in too far and to avoid slicing anything critical. She released the last one, and the entire right plate dropped down into the dust.
Syn gave an audible, “Whew!”
“What is it?” Arquella said, “Can I turn around? Is it okay to look?”
“Ya, you’re fine. And it’s going to be okay.”
Syn wriggled around inside the bot, popping out a few cables from a locking clamp. The wheel stopped spinning. She pushed them back in and then snagged another pair of cables dangling loose from the same round unit. “His power supply to his main processor just came unhooked. Doesn’t look like much is wrong. I mean, it’s hard to see—he’s got a ton of stuff jammed in here. But it’s an easy fix.” She snapped the final piece into place and heard the familiar whirr of Bear’s main system cycling up.
Arquella shook her head. “What do you mean power supply? Main processor? What are you talking about?”
Syn sighed. She had forgotten that Arquella had no idea she was a bot. “Nothing. Just… I…” Syn hesitated a moment and then gave in to Arquella’s belief, “I healed him. He’s fine. He’s healed. He’s going to be okay.” She pulled his plate back up and allowed the maglocks to grip tight, returning it to its place. Her body felt heavy suddenly—the stress of the moment had passed. Bear was safe. Arquella was safe. Huck was safe. Syn was still alive.
Just then, Bear’s nasal voice interjected, “Healed who? What happened? I kill it? Why is everything so dark?”
Syn gave a snort. “You’re facing down. Can you get yourself up?”
“Oh!” Bear’s wheel twisted, and with a few quick adjustments—Syn couldn’t understand how the lumbering bot was so nimble—Bear righted himself and stood up straight. “Did I kill it? Is it dead?”
Syn froze. The tree mover was dead. For a brief moment, she had forgotten all about the other person that had killed it. She gripped her spear tightly and rose to her feet.
From behind them, someone spoke. “Handy little devil, aren’t you? Bit o’ a miracle worker. Look atchoo!” The voice was young with an air of cynicism. It was mocking, but the joviality was false—a pretense to appear soft.
Syn spun to eye the figure from before sitting atop the fallen form of the tree mover bot, only a meter away. At this distance, Syn could easily see that it was a girl. She was as dark as Syn, but her hair was cropped unbelievably short. Her arms were covered in a gray cloth cloak that billowed around her, and only her feet and hands could be seen. her mouth and nose were covered with a red mask, so only her eyes shone through. Syn had seen those eyes before. She wouldn’t ever forget them. They were the same eyes that she had seen in the darkness when Blip had been snagged—the searching eyes that scanned the room as she hid in the pile of children’s bones.
This was one of the thieves that had taken Blip.