Infinity Lost (21 page)

The giant robot lifts its bulbous green leg and brings its huge foot down on the soldier with a pounding slam, crushing him and the metal chair flat to the ground. All that can be seen is one of his boots, the bent-up corners of the platform, and blood squeezing from beneath the tread of the giant green foot, soaking into the surrounding sandy-colored dirt in a creeping blotch of dark red.

The R.A.M. looks up and points its arm at the grandstand.
“COME OUT, INFINITY. I WANT TO SEE YOUR FACE BEFORE I CLEANSE THE EARTH OF YOU.”

Professor Francis’s voice shakily issues from behind the grandstand amid the fearful whimpers and muffled sobbing of our classmates.
“There’s no one here by that name!”

My fingernails dig deep into my palms, every fiber in my body screaming out in anger at my absolute uselessness. I look from our screen to the one across the room and back again, pointlessly wishing that at least one of the displays might be showing something, anything, other than this. All six of us are standing now, our hands covering our mouths in a futile attempt to block out the horror unfolding right before our eyes.

“SEND INFINITY OUT OR EVERY ONE OF YOU WILL DIE,”
demands the R.A.M.; its guttural mechanical voice is cold and emotionless.

“I swear there’s no one here by that name! Please, whoever you are . . . have mercy, these are innocent children!”
begs Professor Francis.

“IF INFINITY IS PERMITTED TO EXIST ANY LONGER, YOU ARE ALL AS GOOD AS DEAD, ANYWAY.”

“What . . . what are you talking about?”

“I DON’T NEED TO EXPLAIN MYSELF TO YOU. YOUR TIME IS UP.”

The robot raises its arm . . . and opens fire.

The seats on one side of the grandstand are torn apart in a raging storm of bullets. Miss Cole, Ashley Farver, and Sherrie Polito are killed instantly, obliterated in a flurry of plastic shards, shredded clothing, and splatters of bloodied meat. Their bodies seem to explode with the force of the projectiles, scattering scraps of their flesh in all directions.

Through the gaps of the splintering seats, I see Millie and Amy. They’re both aghast with anguish, their open-mouthed screams completely drowned out by the cacophony of the R.A.M.’s deafening gunfire as their pale, tortured faces are speckled red with the remains of the three young women who were standing right beside them.

Bit quickly turns away from the display, Margaux is screaming, Brent is sobbing, Brody and Ryan are frozen solid, and I drop to my knees as tears stream down my face, unable to take my eyes away from the brutal slaughter that is happening because of me.

The shooting suddenly ceases and the rest of the group bolts from behind the collapsing grandstand in a haphazard pack, wailing in absolute terror, hugging the curved wooden boundary as they go. Percy leads the way, desperately yelling into his control module. But there aren’t any doors opening in the dome, no walls forming to protect them, no soldiers storming in to their rescue. There is nowhere to run except around the edge of a wide, closed circle.

They’re all going to die out there.

Trailing at the back of the group are the two slowest, Professor Francis and Dean McCarthy. In class, Professor Francis would often brag about how he was a track and field champion when he was young. But he’s an old man now; those days are gone, and try as he might he’s just not fast enough. It doesn’t help that he’s desperately trying to assist Dean, whose shaky legs are half-dragging in the dirt behind him as he hobbles to keep up.

The R.A.M. levels its arm toward the struggling pair. The rail-guns flare with white flame again as Dean trips over his own feet, dragging the Professor down into the dirt as the projectiles spew forth, barely missing their heads but blazing right through Millie Grantham’s body instead, disintegrating her top half into liquid and splattering it across the thick wooden barrier like scarlet human paint. Millie’s tattered, headless, armless, school-uniformed carcass topples into the dirt as Margaux wails her name from the other side of the room.

My mind wants to reject this reality. This can’t be happening.

The R.A.M.’s head swivels quickly to the right, its attention suddenly piqued.

“THERE YOU ARE, CHILD.”

The robot lunges forward onto its heavy bulbous knee and takes careful aim at one particular girl, obviously wanting to relish the triumphant moment of my murder. But that’s not me Nanny Theresa is aiming at. We have similar figures, similar long, straight, jet-black hair and pale skin, but that isn’t me out there. If only she wasn’t shielding her face when she ran, maybe Jennifer Cheng wouldn’t be the next one to die.

I bite hard into my fist as the R.A.M. fires again, loudly tearing a splintering furrow into the barrier behind Jennifer. Chips of pulverized wood spray the back of her head as the encroaching torrent of gunfire closes in on her. Margaux screams and Bit grabs me, sobbing into my shoulder, unable to watch when suddenly, inches from Jennifer’s neck, the gunfire bizarrely changes direction, zigzagging over her head. The swath of bullets continues upward, gouging a wide gash in the shiny black wall of the dome as it goes, exposing a long patch of the sunny blue sky and fluffy white clouds outside. A ray of hope lights in my heart; there still may be some small chance of escape for them all. Jennifer feels the breeze on her cheek; she skids in the dirt and throws herself at the wooden barrier. She claws at the splintered furrow carved into it, reaching for the edge of the gash in the dome wall, but the barrier is almost ten feet tall and cruelly too high for her to climb.

The gunfire has stopped. I look over at the R.A.M. and its guns bursts forth again, but this time its weapons are aimed directly upward, burning a gaping hole in the high black curve far above the mechanoid’s head. Something very strange is happening.

The R.A.M. has inexplicably grabbed its own arm with its other hand and is pointing it up, wrestling its own limb away from the terrified group. Amy Dee, Karla, and Percy have all turned back from their pointless circular sprint and are desperately running to Jennifer and the large, sky-blue cut in the side of the dome.

“STOP THIS MADNESS, THERESA!”
bellows the R.A.M. It topples over, landing on its side in the dirt with a heavy thud.
“NO! I WON’T STOP UNTIL INFINITY IS GONE!”
it roars at itself.

I had always suspected that Nanny Theresa was deluded, even deranged, but now I think her downloaded mind must have been completely warped and shattered her consciousness into full-blown insanity. What other reason could there possibly be for the horrific murders of my schoolmates, and now arguing with herself, fighting herself to the ground?

The mechanoid’s back arches and contorts; it rolls on the dirt, its guns firing sporadic uncontrolled bursts, peppering random holes in the high black canopy.
“IT’S NOT HER FAULT! SHE DOESN’T DESERVE TO DIE! NONE OF THESE CHILDREN DO!”
it shouts as it rolls and grapples with itself.

On the far side of the arena, I can see Percy doing his best to hoist Jennifer up and over the top of the ten-foot-high barrier toward the gash, which I notice, to my dismay, is slowly but steadily healing itself closed.

“Go! Get out of there!” Brody yells at the display. With Percy’s help, Jennifer heaves herself up, rolls out through the gap, and drops out of sight.

“Yes!” shouts Ryan.

Percy hurriedly issues some instructions to the others then crouches low as Amy Dee leaps feet-first onto his shoulders. He quickly stands, boosting her up toward the shrinking gap. She sidles through the steadily contracting swath of blue and drops out of sight as well, quickly followed by a shrieking Karla Bassano.

Only she, the Professor, Dean, and Percy are left, but they’re quickly running out of time. Most of the smaller holes higher up have completely sealed shut, and what used to be a large gap cut into the dome is now barely wide enough for Karla to squeeze through. She scrambles up from Percy’s shoulders onto the top of the barrier and shimmies sideways on her stomach into the now-tiny and ever-decreasing hole. Karla kicks both legs through the small space in an attempt to drop out feet-first.

But she isn’t fast enough.

The shiny black glass completely envelops her body from the bridge of her nose down. There’s an awful wrenching, tightening sound, like a thick dry rope that’s being twisted to breaking point. A desperate muffled scream can be heard coming from the glossy dark surface. The scream is gruesomely silenced with a sickening
thock
as the top of Karla’s skull, complete with its mane of beautiful, thick, shiny brown curls, is guillotined clean off, toppling from the side of the dome and dropping onto Percy’s back like a brain-filled bowl of bone and hair.

With a horrific realization, Percy arches upward, frantically pulling his blood-spattered blazer from his shoulders. He throws it to the ground behind him, too afraid to look down at what he has cast aside, and is promptly pelted in the face with one of Karla’s hands and three of her fingers.

I quickly turn away; Bit’s face is ashen white and Margaux loudly vomits onto the floor.

“THEY ARE ALL AS GOOD AS DEAD ANYWAY! YOU CAN’T STOP ME, GENEVIEVE!”

At the sound of my mother’s name, I spin back to the screen, focusing all my attention on the section of the display where the R.A.M. is.

The robot has staggered to one knee, still in the throes of its personal battle. Its hand is whirring loudly as its robotic fingers dent into its gun arm, shaking violently with the incredible exertion of force, while up on its domed head its eyes are flickering one at a time from sapphire blue to silvery gray and back again.

Oh my god . . . my mother is in there with Nanny Theresa! I knew she was here! That
was
her inside the silver Drone this morning! It must have been! I did see her face!

And now she’s out there fighting for us. Fighting for the lives of the ones who have survived.

I glance over at them. Percy and the Professor have both slung one of Dean’s arms over their shoulders, and all three of them are staggering back toward the crippled grandstand.

The whole R.A.M. is shaking and whirring now as two minds fight for control. It shudderingly forces its own arm down at its leg. The rail guns burst on, blazing fire at its exposed knee joint. Its leg is completely rendered in half and it drops forward onto the fizzing, sparking stump of its huge green thigh.

“ENOUGH!”
shouts the R.A.M., and with one last monumental gear-wrenching jerk it pulls its gun arm to the side with all its might, ripping its other arm right out of its socket in a shower of bright golden sparks and spurts of luminous orange fluid.

The disembodied hand on the torn-out arm finally releases its grip, and the bulbous green appendage drops into the dirt with a dull thud. The eyes on the R.A.M.’s dome head glare solid, unblinking silvery gray once again. It looks down at its own ripped-out arm like it’s the body of a fallen enemy.

“Get me out of here!” Margaux shouts from the other side of the room, and my whole body flinches from the fright. I turn to see her glaring, teary-eyed, at one of the Drones. All of them are still standing motionless in a row on the boundary line in the middle of the room.

“Help me! Somebody!” she screams right in the Drone’s black plastic face, dark tracks of mascara running down her cheeks. The Drone doesn’t move an inch.

“Surely someone else must be watching this?” says Ryan. “Why isn’t anyone helping? Where are all the soldiers we saw before?”

Ryan looks up at the walls, into the corners of the room, scanning the ceiling. “There’s got to be cameras in the walls here, too, and that nurse knows we’re in here. Where is she?”

“They can’t do anything without the computer,” says Bit. “We all saw Colonel Brash and Percy try. No one can control anything, anymore . . . nobody except the one who is controlling
that
,” she says, pointing back at the section of the screen showing the R.A.M. kneeling in the blood-splattered dirt of the arena.

“We’ll have to find our own way out. Maybe we can smash open a door? Hopefully those things won’t try to stop us,” I say, glancing toward the line of six Drones.

Ryan nods and walks over to his chair. He picks it up and strides with purpose toward door number one. “I guess we’re about to find out.” He swings the glossy-white chair back over his shoulder and hurls it as hard as he can at the frosted glass. It hits solidly with a hollow ringing sound and bounces off, narrowly missing Ryan’s legs. It skitters along the floor, across the boundary line, and comes to a stop on the other side of the room. I look back at the Drones. None of them has moved.

Brody has quickly followed Ryan’s lead and has gone to door number three. With a grunt he brings his chair down on the door with all his might, but it bounces off, too, and flies back over his head, taking him with it.

He stumbles backward, trips over his own feet, and falls flat on his back, sliding over the boundary line and onto our side of the room. He quickly jumps up, staring wide-eyed at the Drones, but none of them has moved.

“Well, I think you’ve got your answer,” Ryan says to me. “They’re offline. Welcome to the cool side of the room, Brody.”

Brody gives him a tiny smile.

“Hey you guys,” Bit says from behind me. “The R.A.M. may be damaged, but it’s still active, and Dean, Professor Francis, and Percy are still in there with it.”

“It’s not after them anymore,” says Brent. He’s kneeling by Margaux, who is sitting in her chair with her face in her hands. “You heard it. Whoever’s controlling it is looking for a female, and they are obviously not female.”

Bit gives me a worried look. I turn to the screen and see the Professor and Percy and Dean on the ground behind the toppled remains of the grandstand, gravely eyeing the huge robot, their backs purposely turned to the bloody mess of half-limbs and shredded flesh that used to be Sherrie Polito, Ashley Farver, and Miss Cole. I can’t help but notice one of Miss Cole’s patent-leather, buckle-up high heels. It’s still on her foot, a foot which is grotesquely attached to nothing more than a bloody stump lying in the dirt.