“Now,” she said.
Chapel rushed in and got his shoulder right into the prancing thing’s side and this time he felt it shift under his weight. Inch by inch he knocked it back, even as its three working legs scrambled beneath it, desperately looking for purchase. He wouldn’t give it a chance and kept pushing — until the whole thing went over, falling over on its side where its legs kicked uselessly at empty air.
“Three to go,” Angel said, but before Chapel could reply, both of them turned to look up at the ruined east wing of the house.
They could hear Julia screaming from up there.
The two of them raced up the slope, watching in every direction in case one of the four-legged machines came flying out of the shadows. From the muffled sound of Julia’s shouts it was clear she’d tried to escape into the house, but the robots must have followed her in. Chapel and Angel hurried through the garden and up the steps, then Chapel pressed his back against the wall of the house, right next to a place where a broken window would let him get inside. He took a heavy wrench from his backpack — the best weapon he had — and looked over at Angel. She was panting, her eyes wide, but it looked like she was ready for this.
“Watch my back,” he told her. Then he ducked inside the house.
It was pitch-black inside, and even when he switched on his flashlight, it gave only enough illumination to show him the rough outlines of broken furniture and, at the far end of the room, an open doorway. He had no way of knowing whether Julia had come this way or what lay beyond that door, but he didn’t waste any time wondering. Calling for Angel to follow him, he headed into a hallway that ran the length of the wing. Angel pointed her own light at the ceiling, then moved it back and forth. “Look,” she said. “That’s Cat-5 cable hanging up there.”
Chapel spared a glance for the bundle of cables that hung on hooks from the ceiling, strung up like bunting. It might be more evidence that the mansion was, in fact, a secret data center, but it didn’t help him find Julia.
Standard operating procedure suggested he should stay quiet and keep his light off as much as possible. Standard operating procedure was very useful for infiltrating locations that were possibly full of unseen enemies in the middle of the night.
SOP be damned. “Julia!” he shouted as loud as he could. “Julia! Where are you? Are you okay?”
Angel winced and took a step away from him, as if he were inviting the wrath of the gods and lightning might hit him at any moment. When there was no reply, she pushed open a side door and pointed her light into the room beyond. “Clear,” she said and moved to the next door. “Clear.”
“Julia!” Chapel shouted. Why wasn’t she answering? He was pretty sure the four-legged robots weren’t programmed to kill them. Otherwise, why not give them better weaponry than their spindly legs? But maybe Julia had hurt herself by accident, somewhere in the house. Maybe she had fallen through rotten floorboards or something had collapsed on top of her—
“Clear,” Angel said, taking another doorway.
“Stop saying that,” Chapel snapped. She hadn’t been trained for this kind of operation. She had no idea what “clear” really meant, especially not when she was just pointing her light into the middle of each room. Chapel sighed. “Corners,” he said.
“What?”
“You check each corner of the room, one, two, three, four. Even then, you don’t say ‘clear’ unless you’re sure there are no doors or closets or even cupboards in there. If there are, you need to check every one of them.”
Angel looked hurt. “On TV—”
“On TV, they don’t fire real bullets,” he told her. He ran to the end of the hallway. “Julia!” he shouted.
Had he heard something? Had Julia responded? He couldn’t be sure his mind wasn’t just playing tricks on him. He’d thought he’d heard footsteps that stopped as soon as he called out.
It could have been anything. At the end of the hall was a huge foyer, with a cracked marble floor and a huge staircase leading up to the second story. The stairs looked intact, and more bundles of cable ran along the wall, following the risers. A little moonlight came in through tall windows and made the stone floor glow.
“Julia!” he shouted.
Nothing. He started across the floor, intending to climb those stairs. Behind him Angel stepped into the room and pointed her light across the foyer, at the entrance to the far wing.
Her light picked out a dark shape, crouching on four segmented legs. A shape with no head.
“Shit!” she cried out, the expletive lost as the robot started screeching away, its spindly feet lifting high and then stepping down hard on the slippery marble.
“Upstairs,” Chapel said. “Maybe it can’t climb!”
But he was pretty sure it could.
He pushed Angel ahead of him, moving her up the steps as quickly as he could. The stairs were, in fact, completely intact, untouched by the general ruin of the mansion, and they made good time.
Better time than the robot, anyway. He’d been right; it could climb stairs, but it was a slow process. The machine had to test each new step with each of its feet, bearing down on one leg, then the other to make sure it would hold its weight. By the time Chapel and Angel reached the top of the stairs, the robot was only halfway up.
Which was good, except for one problem — it meant they couldn’t get back down, if they needed to.
“Keep moving,” he told her. “Keep looking for Julia.”
Angel’s light hurried on ahead of them, following the bundles of cable that ran along the wall.
“I said to ignore those,” Chapel said. “Look for—”
“I’ve got a hunch,” Angel told him. “I’m supposed to go with those, right? Hunches?”
Chapel shook his head. This was no time to argue. He shoved open a door and stumbled inside, his light hitting each of the corners. Nothing there.
“This way,” Angel said, grabbing his arm.
Behind them, the robot was three-quarters of its way up the stairs. Chapel cursed and followed Angel. Together they headed down a long hallway with doors on either side. The bundles of cabling rose to the ceiling again. Occasionally one strand of cable would break off from the rest and disappear through a doorway, but the majority of the bundle continued in a nearly straight line toward the end of the hall. A big pair of doors stood there, one of them open just a crack. A hole had been drilled through the wall above the doors and the entire bundle of cable disappeared through it. Whatever lay beyond those doors clearly needed a lot of cable, though Chapel had no idea what that might mean.
He started to bellow for Julia again, but Angel reached up and clamped one hand over his mouth. Had she heard something? Seen something? He put his back against the wall and looked up and down the hallway, trying to determine what had alerted her.
Then he heard it. The screeching of robotic legs. The machine had made it to the top of the stairs and was coming closer, or — no, it wasn’t just one set of legs—
Angel ran to the double doors and threw them open. The room beyond was well lit and gave off the distinctive hum of server racks breathing together like the bees in a hive. None of that mattered to Chapel, though.
He could think of only one thing as Angel stepped inside the server room.
“Corners!” he called out.
Just before someone grabbed Angel and hauled her, screaming, out of view.
Angel’s scream cut off abruptly. The only thing Chapel could hear was the screech of the robot or robots behind him, coming closer.
The doors to the server room closed as if under their own power. Chapel ran forward and beat on the doors with his fists, calling Angel’s name. Glancing over his shoulder, he saw not one but two of the headless robots approaching, their thin legs stepping high on the carpeted floor of the hallway.