“Right,” said Amanda, her eyes now moist. “Maybe some other time.”
It was hard to tell in the dim light, but Amanda thought she saw the sides of Keiko’s mouth turn up ever so slightly.
“For now, I need to focus on the job at hand.”
The building began to shake harder. Keiko’s body adapted to the movement, allowing her to remain standing. Once she had stabilized, she looked into the cubicle once again. In a moment when the guards were looking elsewhere, Keiko reached out with both hands and pulled Carmen and Amanda closer, so close that their bodies were touching. She spoke in a low voice. “It is time to act. I need to let you know what I am about to do.” She glanced up again and noted that the guards were still distracted. “I have been equipped with a self-destruct mechanism,” she explained, pointing at her torso. “I will set my timer for thirty seconds, and then I am going to pull Jorg Koehler away from the controls. I will drag him over to the window where I will detonate soon thereafter. The explosion will be minimal, but—”
“Wait, wait, wait.” Carmen said. “What do you mean by ‘minimal’?”
“You do not have to worry because the explosion will be limited to approximately ten meters. There is always the chance that things will not go as planned, so as soon as I move for Jorg, I need both of you to take cover over there.” She gestured toward a row of filing cabinets on their right that Carmen hadn’t noticed before.
“And what about my team?”
“Your friends are just outside. I have already used my communications system to send them a message that they should come in once they hear the explosion. The guards will try to save Jorg, and when the explosion takes place, most or all of them will die. And even if they do not, they will at least be turned away when the others come in.”
Carmen opened her mouth to protest but then stopped. After thinking about it for a moment, the Italian slowly nodded her head.
Keiko bowed slightly and then lifted her sweater, exposing a panel on the side of her torso. As she reached out to enter the code, two cuffed hands shot out and grabbed hers before she could make the entry.
“No!” Amanda said in a panicked voice. “I can’t let you do this.”
Keiko looked down at the American girl. The humanoid shifted her hand so that she could grab Amanda’s and then gave it a quick squeeze. “I have to. Your father meant everything to me. And now it is time to save the person he loved so much.”
“No,” Amanda said, her voice rising. “No.”
“You have the heart of your father,” Keiko said, and then exercising her power, she pulled free from Amanda’s hands and made the appropriate entries on her panel. There was a long beep, and then the number 30 appeared on the LED screen. A second later the number 29 appeared. The countdown had begun.
As Keiko pulled her sweater down and prepared to move, Amanda looked to her left and saw that one of the guards had noticed the humanoid. He likely didn’t know what she had done, but he realized something was amiss.
Lifting his rifle, he walked toward them. He had only made it two steps when the building itself began to shake, this time so hard that it seemed unlikely it would remain standing much longer. The guard stumbled but then regained his balance as Keiko began walking toward her destination. He shouted at her to stop, but there was so much noise in the room that no one else heard him.
As Keiko crossed the room, no one seemed to notice, including Koehler. Some were focused on the screen, and others were focused on maintaining their balance.
Amanda heard a gunshot and saw heads turn at the sound. Marrese was staring at Keiko, his expression a mixture of both loathing and alarm. He screamed something to the armed men around him, and shots came from all directions, each of them ricocheting off of Keiko’s five-millimeter titanium covering like hail bouncing off the hood of a car. Two of the guards dropped their rifles and jumped onto Keiko, trying to wrench her head from her body. The robot threw them off as though swatting away flies, flinging their bodies across the room.
Amanda looked at Koehler, who seemed aware of what the bot was trying to do. Reaching into his jacket, he pulled out a SIG Sauer P226 pistol and lifted it with both hands. Steadying the gun, he seemed to be aiming at her head. But just as he was about to squeeze the trigger, Keiko lowered her head and bull-rushed him. The move seemed to startle the German, who squeezed off two wild shots and then dove to his right. But it was too late. Keiko wrapped her powerful arms around his torso and lifted him from the ground as if he were made of Styrofoam. She locked him against her chest, turned, and marched toward the windows.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Just away from the action, sitting in a seat at the back of the command cubicle, was a surprisingly calm Alexander Mironov. As soon as the Russian had seen Keiko marching toward Koehler, he had slipped away and pulled out his cell phone. He was tapping through a number of screens, searching for the one that would bring a quick end to this uprising. His movements were quick, but they were also surprisingly composed.
In a few seconds, he had pulled up the Renaissance security system and calmly swiped through the options using the touch screen. He eventually found what he was looking for: the command and control program for the humanoid that had his head of security in a bear hug. A few more taps of the screen, and she would be permanently disabled — even her self-destruct function, which Mironov assumed she had already activated. He was mad at himself for not doing this before.
Seconds later he came to the screen he had been looking for. He smiled as he realized he was only seconds away from eliminating the last thing that stood in their way.
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Carmen cursed herself for losing focus. Rather than following the instructions to hide from the coming blast, she had instead been thinking about grabbing one of the rifles that the guards had discarded when they jumped Keiko. Most of the Renaissance security team was facing the window, and it would have been easy for someone to simply mow them all down. But the weapons were lying too far away to grab in time, and she also doubted she could fire them with her hands still cuffed. In other words, she had wasted precious seconds.
But there was still time left, so she grabbed Amanda by the arm and pulled her toward the row of filing cabinets about twenty feet away.
When they had traversed about three-quarters of the distance, she realized that she probably only had a second or two left. Using her cuffed hands as best she could, she pushed Amanda toward the space behind the cabinets.
Then, after taking one more step, Carmen dove right as the blast was triggered.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
WOULD YOU LIKE TO DISABLE ALL FUNCTIONS?
As Mironov lifted his finger and prepared to tap the “Y” button, he decided to look up one last time. He wanted to see the robot’s body shut down with his own eyes, and see the victory that would be so sweet. The monster that Higgs had created had caused him much trouble, and he would delight in seeing her demise.
His eyes on Keiko, the Russian lifted his finger and brought it down toward the screen. But before he could make contact, an explosion ripped through the room.
Computer screens, keyboards, clipboards, and a host of other items flew toward him like shrapnel. A blunt object hit his midsection with a thud, knocking him underneath one of the counters.