Previous Story: 95. The Big Escape - The Ultimate Hack

As Goddess approached Ryder and the enormous robot, Lady Rose gestured for Crimson and Jenny to follow her in the opposite direction. A man called Kuznetzov — apparently a Cynfo engineer — came hurrying up rambling about something, but Crimson shut him down. Lady Rose met Rhino and the gunmen behind the convertible and they all looked on as Goddess appealed to her former employer.

"What’s my name?"

"Goddess," he said calmly, the robot humming ominously beside him.

"That’s right. And you are Ryder Arcadia, CEO of Cynfo Tech. There’s no reason why you can’t come with me across the bridge. This whole nightmare will be over. We can go to the beach house, Ryder — just the two of us. What do you think?" 

"I think you don’t understand this situation at all. Unfortunately, you have become weak and narrow-minded. You’re not seeing the bigger picture. All that matters is saving them. I have to save them all."

Lady Rose turned to Crimson. "Any ideas?"

"We can take cover behind the car, then all fire simultaneously at the centre of that thing. Might weaken the shield."

"Good thinking." Lady Rose informed the others of the plan, then watched Goddess walk away from Arcadia. As she neared the car, Rose shouted: "Get down. Now!"

As Goddess threw herself to the ground, the Red Dragons and the Cynfo people opened up. Lady Rose was grabbed by Little Jenny, who dumped her unceremoniously behind the convertible. Rose covered her ears as numerous guns unloaded into the robot, shell casings flying everywhere.

"It ain’t happening!" yelled Rhino after a few seconds. "Hey, stay where you are!"

Lady Rose was bemused to see her gunmen flee.

"That’s not good," added Rhino. Suddenly the car leaped backwards, knocking Lady Rose over. Little Jenny helped her up as Crimson fled, too, her usual calm expression replaced by naked terror.

The robot stomped forward, one swing of its arm — and the buzzing chainsaw — destroying the hood of the convertible. Ryder Arcadia looked on with approval as the robot stepped onto the car and now aimed the chainsaw at Jenny and Rose, who suddenly seemed alone. The field shimmered again as Jenny emptied the magazine of her TEK 9.

The rattling chainsaw came near, causing both women to duck. On the second swing, Jenny made a grab for its lower arm. She somehow avoided the saw and held on, but was pulled off her feet, landing awkwardly several yards away. Rose was all set to run, when a large figure bolted past and jumped onto the trunk of the wrecked convertible.

She had never been so glad to see one of the do-gooders. The Creator who called himself Plate hacked at the robot’s leg with his great-sword. The edge of the blade seemed to shimmer and vibrate and Plate succeeded in slicing off a piece of metal. Redeemer’s defensive field was apparently reserved for ballistic attacks, not melee weapons.

Plate’s success encouraged another of the Creators. Rose didn’t know her name, but this woman was carrying some kind of handgun. As Rose retreated towards the overturned SUPERMART truck, the new arrival fired the gun. The weapon released a white, web-like material that wrapped itself around the robot’s upper half, tying the arms to the body. Redeemer now tottered upon the convertible while Plate continued to hack at anything he could reach.

As she crouched down in the shadows beside the truck, Rose saw doubt upon Ryder Arcadia’s face for the first time. 

 ----

H3x was 20 feet away, close to the transporters. The do-gooders were trying to calm the vulnerable people, but were having only mixed success. H3x shook her head; she had no idea while they had brought ill and elderly into this dangerous situation. Shutting out the surrounding noise, she concentrated on her hand-mounted hacking device, manipulating controls only she could see, trying to infiltrate the robot. She had made a little progress when some kind of intrusion countermeasure fought back. H3x couldn’t stop herself crying out as a vicious electric shock shot through the implant on the side of her head. She knew instantly that her hacking implants were too damaged to use for the time being.

"Damn it!"

"You OK?" asked Hiko, the do-gooder who’d apparently designed the ingenious floating transporters.

"Not exactly. That thing’s got I.C.E. — just fried my hacking implant."

"The others might be able to defeat it."

"Maybe, but there’s another problem. Them." H3x pointed to the closest of her puppets. Now free of control, the CyMS were already advancing.

 -----

Gadget could hear more than he could see. With the terminal hack complete, he and Pai were now back on the access road that led up to the toll gates; too low to spot their allies. But they could hear the metallic impacts and shouts and screams from what sounded like a battle.

He and Pai had problems of their own. They were in the middle of another group of CyMS that had broken off from a large horde and headed down the access road. Thankfully, Pai’s Firewall program was keeping the CyMS at bay, but they were still only halfway to the toll gates. Progress was slow.

Gadget had his rifle at the ready. Suddenly, a beeping alarm sounded from Pai’s computer.

"Uh-oh," she said. "Power’s running low. I’ll need to break for ambient recharge."

Gadget cursed. “Uh-oh” didn’t seem to really cover it.

 -----

H3x didn’t consider it much of a plan, but it actually seemed to be working. The scheme had been the suggestion of the inventor, Hiko, and her friend Kuklacı was helping out. Hiko had asked how they might attract the puppet CyMS, and H3x had suggested a specific frequency of electromagnetic noise. After a swift modification, Kuklacı’s spider drones were now leading the former puppets away from the column back towards the city.

"Thanks," said H3x rather sheepishly, "we really didn’t need another problem." 

 -----

Lady Rose knew she should have already retreated, but there was a morbid fascination in watching the do-gooders take on the robot. They didn’t lack for courage; that much was obvious. The second thing keeping her there was Jenny. Her loyal bodyguard had twisted her ankle and was now sheltering with Rose beside the overturned truck.

Still fighting despite its bound arms, Redeemer fell off the metallic carcass of the convertible and struck the ground, the impact shearing the white webs. Once it had righted itself, the robot was free once more. Though the jackhammer wasn’t yet activated, Redeemer swung at its swarming foes. Lady Rose watched Buck, Cyborg and Lucky all take evasive action while continuing to attack when they could.

The big man named Thug waited until the robot was distracted, then ran past it and attacked Ryder Arcadia. Lady Rose hoped he would be successful, but Arcadia simply caught his swinging iron pipe in one hand. With unnatural ease, the executive grabbed the big man and threw him several yards into one of the bridge cables.

"What the hell?" remarked Jenny. "Looks like the robot’s not the only tough one."

"Indeed," replied Rose. "And I think they’re going to win this one, so we better leave. You’re going to have to walk, Jenny." Though there was a major size and weight differential, Rose helped her old friend up.

 -----

Goddess was surprised to see the bookish engineer Kuznetsov suddenly standing beside her. "What are you doing here?"

"I’ve been trying to tell you, Ms. Mazanderani. I found the blueprint for that… thing in the database you gave me when we evacuated Cynfo Tech after Mr. Arcadia mentioned its name. After a quick glance, it uses mainly off-the-shelf Cynfo software and data processors, even though somehow Mr. Arcadia was able to boost its power generation by tenfold, and that deflector shield uses technology that…

“Get to the point, Kuznetsov!” exclaimed Goddess, impatiently.

"Oh, yes, ma’am, sorry. As you know, all Cynfo software is installed with a back door that we can exploit to gather data for Mr. Arcadia. I believe we can use the back door to upload a white noise virus Winner created, called ‘Snow Storm,’, to disrupt the data processors. Maybe that will at least slow it down, so we can better deal with it.”

"How?" asked Goddess.

Kuznetsov produced a small, cylindrical device.

"That’s just a signal booster," snapped Goddess. Kuznetsov had never been on the level of someone like Winner. 

"Exactly," answered the oblivious Russian. "It contains Snow Storm, which will cause a DoS attack on the main data processor of that thing, and hopefully overwhelm its processing bandwidth and slow it down. This signal booster will help us wirelessly hack it from right here.

"Ah, good work. Just tell me how to operate it."

 -----

Rose and Jenny had not gotten far when Redeemer noticed them once more. Its awkward but surprisingly quick stride covered the distance quickly.

Jenny tried to speed up, but her ankle gave way. She was in too much pain to even think about defending them. Rose grabbed the TEK 9 from her belt and was pleased to find that Jenny had reloaded it. As the robot towered over them, she fired five shots. The shells were easily deflected by the shimmering shield.

The chainsaw was still spinning and now came towards them with a deafening shriek.

Rose cowered beside Jenny. Is this it? The most successful few weeks of my life and I’m going to be sliced up by a killer robot? Definitely didn’t see that coming.

Throwing herself away from the deadly saw, Rose hit the ground on her back. Despite her injury, Jenny lay in front of her, even now determined to protect.

Rose knew she had to speak; she might not get another chance: "Jenny, I have to tell you something."

Even in this awful moment, Jenny’s eyes were full of hope. "Yes?"

"You’re the best friend I’ve ever had."

Rose was surprised to see something close to disappointment. Even so, the pair held hands as the chainsaw loomed once again, sparks flying from the tumult of metal.

Then, Redeemer abruptly straightened up. Movements sluggish, it retreated and looked around, as if confused. Rose spied Goddess standing just behind the robot, an unlikely grin on her beautiful face.

With the robot static, they had the perfect chance to attack. Rose could never have predicted the form that attack would take.

In seconds, she was gazing at a familiar reptilian face. Xi — the Komodo dragon she had previously owned — had clamped her artificial jaw around the leg of the robot. Xi pulled, causing Redeemer to totter once more. With a squawk, a bald eagle then joined the fray, powerful mechanical claws tearing at the blue triangle that seemed to provide the robot’s vision. In seconds, glass had been shattered and several wires pulled out. The third animal to attack was the most fearsome of all — a Grizzly bear that swiped at the unbalanced robot with a metallic claw, sending it staggering.

But the jackhammer drill began to vibrate. And, even though Redeemer was flailing about as if blinded, it could still do a huge amount of damage.

Then the ground shuddered. At the sound of a mighty roar, the three animals got clear. The elephant seemed to come out of nowhere, and it was moving quickly when it struck Redeemer. Blue electrical energy wreathed both tusks, augmenting the physical power of the impact. The robot was knocked flying through the air — right over the top of Goddess — before landing on the edge of a concrete block. The impact seemed to break its back and the metal creation slumped as if dead. The powerful hum could no longer be heard.

The poor elephant had hurt itself, too, and now stood still, wheezing as blood dripped from its trunk.

Still holding Jenny’s hand, Lady Rose saw Ryder Arcadia run to his robotic enforcer, desperately using some device to try and revive it. But the fearsome robot was clearly beyond help.

"No!" he yelled, kicking the ground with rage. "It can’t be! How will I save them all now?

Not for the first time, Rose was impressed with the bravery of Goddess. Arcadia’s former assistant approached him, still somehow looking stylish amidst all the chaos. A light breeze ruffled her dark locks and she held out a hand to the crazed CEO.

"Ryder."

He turned around, eyes fixed on her, even though the animals were close by.

"You. You betrayed me. You did this."

"Ryder, there is still a chance to come back. I know the real you is in there somewhere."

With a manic shriek, he threw himself at her, encircling her throat with his hands. Lady Rose saw some of the do-gooders rushing to help, but they were beaten to it by the animals. She felt a surge of pride as Xi intervened once more. The Komodo dragon scuttled towards Arcadia and swung her tail, thrashing his legs. Arcadia was knocked towards the nearest bridge cable.

"What the hell? I’ll just have to kill you all, then!" Picking up a stray piece of metal, Arcadia swung at Xi. It was the last thing he would ever do.

The bear charged him, catching him with its shoulder and sending Ryder clean over the safety barrier. With a desperate cry, the crazed executive was sent tumbling towards the water hundreds of feet below.

"Ha!" came the cry from the Russian Cynfo engineer. He raised a fist. "That’s for Winner, you traitorous bastard!"

"Ryder!" screamed Goddess, before dropping to the ground. Her stylish suit now covered in grime, her usual composure had deserted her.

Rose realized that something was going on behind them, but she only wanted to do one thing. Helping Jenny to her feet, the pair of them hurried towards the animals. Rose felt no fear and she cried with joy when Xi lumbered over to her. With an affectionate grunt, the Komodo nosed her former owner. Rose knelt down and stroked her. "Together again at last. My darling Xi."

Next Story: 97. The Big Escape - Aureus Gate Crossing