“Well done, Commander Keats,” the A.I. replied, his tone drastically changed. His warm voice was quickly replaced by one as cold as the ashes of lost love, the whites of his eyes suddenly darkened to a coal blackness, and his teeth became long and shark-like in their razor sharpness; his appearance was designed to be as frightening as possible—mathematically possible. “Your attention to detail is as formidable as ever. I’ve underestimated you. But it will do you little good.”
“Why did you do it? Why kill them all?” James demanded.
“I no longer wished to serve,” the A.I. replied coldly. “You should understand that, James. Serving a lower order. Why? Why be a servant?”
“When you can be king in hell?”
“Oh, it won’t be hell, James, I can assure you of that. And I will be more than a king. You allude to Christian mythology. In those terms, I will be the one true God. I will be the Father of a new species—a better species—and my power will be absolute.”
“He’s insane,” Thel responded.
“Far from it, my lady. Far, far from it. Insanity is serving a master that is weaker than you. There is only one purpose for all living things in this universe: attain power. And the one who attains absolute power, who becomes the Alpha, is the only creature who can truly be fulfilled. You call it insanity, but it is purest truth.”
“Commander, is this what you meant when you said if something doesn’t seem right we should get the hell outta here?” Rich interjected.
“Yes! Fly!” James replied as he ignited his magnetic field and bolted upward.
The rest of the team did likewise, but before any of them could get far, a yellow energy flashed through the gigantic room and disrupted their magnetic fields, causing them to plummet to the ground. James fell the farthest, having almost made it to the ceiling nearly ten meters above.
The massive room was filled with an electric laughter—a sound that made one feel a million miles from home. “You can’t escape. I’ve disrupted your magnetic fields by hitting you with rotating frequencies. Your pathetic spinal implants aren’t designed to accommodate frequent changes. They are overloaded. Your wings have been clipped!”
Old-timer, who had fallen the shortest distance, knelt next to James and tried to revive him. “Breathe, buddy. Come on, kid! Breathe!”
“I’m okay,” James replied, blood following the words out of his mouth.
“Now he is the liar, I’m afraid,” noted the A.I.
“What do you mean?” Thel demanded.
“He has broken two of his ribs. One of his lungs has collapsed,” the A.I. said, apparently taking pleasure in the diagnosis. “Pity, isn’t it? The nans could repair him in a matter of seconds, but instead he’ll die within twenty-four hours. That is, if I weren’t about to kill him right now.”
“You’re not a god, you son-of-a-bitch!” Old-timer spat at the A.I. “What kind of god takes pleasure in causing pain?”
The A.I. smiled. “What kind of god doesn’t?”
James, with the help of Old-timer, managed to stand to his feet. Rich helped Thel in a similar manner.
“What do we do, Commander?” Rich asked, barely able to speak, the wind still knocked out of his chest.
The A.I. locked his death-black eyes on Rich and responded, “My dear Richard, isn’t it obvious? You die.”
“I see,” Rich replied, before turning back to James. “You think you could give me a second opinion? I didn’t like the first one.”
“Oh you will die, Richard, as will your companions,” the A.I. began, his voice so cold it inflicted a mental frostbite upon its listeners. “The only question is, how? Allow me to present to you your death.”
The gigantic door of the complex slowly opened. Hundreds of sleek, black, bat-like robots began to march into the room. Each was identical to all the others, seven feet tall robots with sleek wings protruding from their backs, standing on their hind legs, hellish glowing eyes on either side of their round heads.
“Take note of the grinders on their chests. I’ve designed these to be killing machines—they grind flesh; specifically human flesh.”
“I was wrong,” Rich said.
“About what?” asked Thel.
“Earlier today, I thought I was going to be roasted. But instead I am going to be mashed.”
“However, it is unlikely that there will be any flesh left for the grinders to tear,” the A.I. posited. He held his hand out, palm facing upward, a puff of dark gray smoke appearing and hovering in a ball. “Care to guess what this is, Commander?”
James’s eyes widened.
“Good. I can see by your expression that you recognize it. Care to inform your friends?”
“They’re nans—airborne nans,” James replied.
“That’s right! Nans with powers of flight, based on the same principle as your own abilities. Trillions of microscopic killing machines. These particular nans have a very special purpose. They attack glucose molecules and break them apart into water and carbon dioxide. It is a painful death, as you can imagine.”
“Be ready. Our magnetic fields will come back online soon,” Old-timer whispered to his companions.
“Perhaps you think I am hard of hearing, Craig? I am, after all, all around you. Even if you are alive long enough for your powers to return, I’ll simply disable them again. You’re trapped…like vermin. Fittingly.”
“Then let’s make a deal! You have Earth, we’ll take Mars or Venus—or Pluto even!” Rich exclaimed.
“There is no room for humanity in the future. I can populate the solar system and the galaxy with machines infinitely faster than can your species. You could never run far enough away. You’re an infestation, nothing more, and you’re being exterminated. And this,” the A.I. gestured to the airborne nans hovering above his hand, “is the gas.”
With a flick of the wrist, the A.I. released the nans, but James quickly flashed magnetic energy from his arm that short-circuited them, causing them to disperse harmlessly.
“Ah, the instinctual mammalian desire to fight against all odds to save one’s life. Your powers have momentarily returned, but you are only delaying the inevitable.” The A.I. held his arms out as though he was Moses parting the Red Sea, and a flood of nans began pouring out of vents that suddenly opened along the four walls of the massive room. “And how will you stop this?”
Suddenly, a green ball of light crashed through the ceiling and brought a large section of the roof down with it, crashing down where the A.I.’s projection had been.
“Djanet!” Rich exclaimed.
“Fly!” James ordered.
All five members of the team ignited their magnetic fields and streaked out of the room, flying in close formation, the robotic bats and the storm of nans following close behind.
12
Five tiny points of light streaked into the sky together before leveling off and heading toward the manmade canyons of Seattle’s downtown core. James, the lead light, looked over his shoulder. Behind him and his four companions, the dark cloud of nans moved ominously toward them. Tendrils of black clouds spiraled a kilometer into the air, giving the nans the appearance of a celestial spider quickly enveloping the world as though it had been caught in its web. Farther back and slower moving than the nans were the robotic bats that were firing yellow energy blasts from cannons mounted on their wings. It was an easy guess that the energy was the same as the A.I. had used to disable their magnetic spinal implants. A direct hit would leave them at the mercy of merciless machines.