A sci-fi serial in 69 parts featuring original art with every chapter.
Braggadocio between American and Japanese robotics engineers on social media becomes serious once corporate backers join the fray and commission build teams for an international...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Lumin was trapped in Biz's control bell. The way her body sloshed back and forth in the ferrofluid told her that BZ-X was in transit, but where and why remained a mystery. "Hello?! Is anybody out there?" she yelled into her helmet, pretending her calls could somehow be heard six inches beyond her face. "Get me out of this damn tank!"
At last, the ferrofluid began draining into BZ-X's reserve tanks. "About time!" Lumin removed her helmet and tossed it aside as the oily goo finished sliding away from her body. When her eyes adjusted to the light, she could clearly see the massive dent Hayashi's robot had left in the wall of the ferrotank. "Holy shit."
The warped and twisted hatch above Lumin finally cracked open with a scraping clunk and the retrieval harness began to lower. After detaching from the tank's control arm, she slipped into the harness and activated the winch. Something felt wrong as she ascended to the hatch. "Skip...anyone?"
Lumin lifted from the bell, noticing the yellow, robotic arm that had popped open BZ-X's crumpled hatch with its reinforced claws. "Jammed shut. No wonder it took so long," she said to herself.
Lumin gasped as she crested the lip of the tank. Blue sky surrounding her in every direction from an array of picture windows. BZ-X was sitting upright in the middle of a huge, cylindrical room with his legs splayed out like a toddler on a play mat—an armless toddler with a crumpled head. After squeezing her body out of the harness, she stumbled across Biz's battered retrieval platform for a better view near the railing. Leaning forward, she saw the ground two thousand feet below. "Whoa."
The constant hum of enormous turbines made Lumin realize she was inside the cargo hold of the hulking Cloudskim airship they used to move Biz to and from the arena. She climbed down a ladder to the grated floor of the airship and hurried closer to one of the windows. The streets around the Vegas strip were completely gridlocked with traffic. Specks of people were rushing out of the casinos and hotels in a panic. Fires were dotting the landscape in every direction. An odd, olive green skyscraper in the distance caught Lumin's eye and sent a shiver down her spine.
Lumin recoiled in terror with her hands over her mouth. Her wet feet slipped through a puddle of ferrofluid and her legs went out from under her. Before her body hit the ground, a pair of arms wrapped around her. She stood back up swiftly and pivoted, twisting out of the person's grasp.
"What are you doing here?"
"Hello, Miss Mira," said Eldridge Roundstone.
Lumin felt like she was hyperventilating. She didn't want to acknowledge her ex-boyfriend's presence and especially not the weird green monolith on the ground below. After taking a deep breath she forced herself to take another look outside. "Christ...that's not a skyscraper. It's moving! It's alive!"
"Here, use these," Eldridge handed Lumin a pair of binoculars. "Don't worry, we're well out of harm's way."
Lumin snatched the binoculars from Eldridge and brought them to her eyes. She focused them on the towering beast and waited for her hands to stop shaking. Comparing the creature to a few nearby buildings, she surmised it was at least 400 feet tall. "Impossible!"
