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Chapter 9

Sami summoned a nova from her hand, as brilliant and blinding as staring directly into the sun. Redbacks screamed and vainly threw their hands across their eyes, stumbling away from the searing glare of her Shining. I landed with a slamming boom onto the concrete floor, right beside Vinny, Earl and Eleanor. The light faded away and I reactivated my optics, seeing the stunned faces of the people I cared about.

"David?" gasped Eleanor, her eyes streaming with tears in the aftermath of Sami's light blast.

"I'm here, Eleanor" I answered and scooped her up with my left arm. "And I brought your friends with me"

All around us could be heard cries of alarm as Skitterbugs dropped from the ceiling where they had concealed themselves. More surged from the hidden nooks and corners of the chamber, racing on wheels, crawling on legs and flying on tiny rotors towards the half-blinded humans.

Gunfire spat from overhead and I heard screams as the bullets smacked into flesh. Return gunfire ripped out from close by, wildly firing towards the ceiling and upper walls of the chamber. Lights were shattered and the darkness grew, filled with the staccato flashes of weapons firing.

It was utter chaos, exactly as Sami and I had hoped it would be. I heard Sung-Tae screaming orders, trying to organise the Redbacks into a proper defence. It wouldn't take them long but our plan wasn't to stay and try and defeat so many enemies. Our plan was much simpler.

Free our friends and then run like hell!

Eleanor clambered onto my back like I ordered her too, clinging tightly with her hands looped around my neck. I snapped the plastic ties that held Vinny captive and then quickly did the same for Earl. A Redback staggered into me, eyes still smarting from Sami's flash. I punched him in the chest, about half strength, feeling his ribs crack as he cried out and fell away from us.

"David, go without me!" Vinny begged me urgently. "I can't run and I'll slow you down!"

"We aren't leaving anyone!" I told him sternly and lifted him into my arms. "Earl, can you follow me?"

"Sheriff, I'll follow you anywhere!" he grinned madly at me, his eyes wild and his purple hair sticking out in all directions.

I didn't reply, just took off towards one of the smaller side tunnels. A Redback woman rushed us from the side, swinging a heavy bladed machete. Without pausing I shifted Vinny to one arm and slammed the other against her weapon, sending it flying away. She made to follow us until Earl swung his fist into her face, breaking her nose and spinning her around in a spray of bright red blood.

"You shouldn't hit women!" Eleanor chastised him from her perch on my back.

"Sorry" Earl and I said in unison and I swear I heard him laugh as we ran down the narrow service shaft. We took a series of random turns as junctions appeared, letting the sounds of furious Redbacks fade into the distance. Finally I slowed and stopped, letting my two humans onto the floor and then straightening up to my full height.

"You can find your way back to Deep Below from here, can't you?" I asked Vinny. I took my rifle from it was slung over one shoulder and handed it to the older man. He took it and gave me a searching look.

"Yeah, I can" he agreed slowly. "But I get the feeling you aren't coming with us, David"

"I need to make sure Sami gets out of there too" I replied. "She's the Mayor of Deep Below and the town won't survive without her"

I thought he was going to argue with me, yet he nodded his head in agreement. It was Eleanor who refused me.

"No, you can't go back!" she cried. "Those Redbacks want to destroy you David! I heard them talking about how you are the only thing stopping them from taking over Deep Below. You can't let them kill you!"

"They can't kill me, Eleanor" I told her gently, crouching down so that my sensors were on a level with her red-rimmed eyes. "I'm a machine so I was never really alive"

"That's a lie!" she shouted in my face and beat her small hands against me, right where the bronze star was mounted on my chest plate. I took her fists in my own thick metal hands carefully and laid them against my vocoder, the closest thing I had to lips.

"I'm a mechanical so I can't lie, Eleanor. Go home now with Earl and Vinny and let me be what I need to be. Can you do that for me?"

"What do you need to be?" she demanded, tears spilling from her eyes.

"A Sheriff"

She regarded me solemnly and then nodded too, gifting me with her benediction.

"Come home right after, okay?" she insisted.

"I promise"

With that I released her hands, so small and fragile compared to mine. I stood and gave one last tilt of my head to the two men who had found me and given me a life I could never have imagined.

"Don't disappoint the kid, David" Vinny told me with his usual grin. He took Eleanor by the hand and the three of them moved away, following Vinny's unerring sense of direction in the Undercity. I waited until they were out of sight then took the broken Shock Rod from its clip at my waist.

With brute strength I levered the device open, exposing the connection pins to the small batteries in its core. Before it had been crushed in the fall into the pit trap it had been fully charged, the batteries containing considerable stored energy. I aligned the pins with the power socket on my wrist and drove the device down hard.

Raw electricity arced into my mechanical veins, channelled through my internal circuits and ending its journey in my Quantum batteries. A wisp of pale blue smoke drifted up from the socket as I drew the empty rod back and dropped it onto the tunnel floor with a dull clang.

Four percent.

That was all I had left in me, barely enough to fight a kitten let alone the Redbacks, their strange leader and the girl who commanded the Skitterbugs.

From somewhere down the labyrinth of tunnels, shouts and the boom of guns echoed its way to me. Sami was still fighting, a flesh and blood woman with a broken arm and a ferocity that would not allow her to surrender.

"I'm coming, Mayor" I said to the empty tunnel and began to run towards the sound of the guns.