Cynophobia

☠₃₀☠

"Dad!" I yelled running over to him.

The Watchers howled with anger, throwing themselves at the Strikers. "Traitors! How could you attack the one who gave us this power?" Orca snarled.

"Easily, he had the program prevent me from harming Cynthia, but he never thought that his own creation would turn on him. It is his own fault for being foolish. Do not just stand there, he's going to try and deactivate all of us!" Alpha growled. "Fight for your lives!"

More Watchers poured into the room. My father weakly reached for a usb, his arm shaking. "He's the only one who can stop them, we need to get out of here."

Alpha charged into my father, sending him flying away from the table. The usb landed at my feet, I picked it up.

Bella and Zena helped support my father. The Saint Bernard looked at me. "Orca will lead you to the bunker, I will join you in a few moments. Don't let them get hold of the usb."

Cairo helped me haul my father to a back hallway. A Striker came running at us. I was ready to fend it off with my pole. Orca slammed it against the wall, I could hear metal dent as he did so. The Watcher bit behind his neck and tossed him into two other Strikers approaching us. "Keep going."

The hallway started to slope down. There was another steel door at the end. Rags looked at me, "Only the little one and the creator can open this door. Place your palm against the scanner, it will only open to the programming inside of you."

I touched the cool sheet of metal. The door cracked open. Cairo swung it open and I dragged my father inside. Loki handed me Obsidian, we walked to the back of the concrete bunker. Rags and Loki stood guard in front of the door, waiting for the Watchers to catch up.

"Dad?" I whispered. "Don't die, we still have to turn off Alpha."

His hazy blue eyes focused on me. He reached up and weakly grabbed my shoulder. "I'm sorry for what I've done. I know you won't be able to forgive me, but I need you to do one more thing. The usb I gave you contains all of the programs you will need to shut them down. You can deactivate them, but it only allows you to deactivate one group, not single Pronines. You can also free them all from the killer program, but it does not ensure that they will stop."

I pulled the usb out of my pocket and stared at it.

He pulled something out of his lab coat. "In the future, us this. It's the cable that allows you to change their programming if you connect it to them."

I examined to wire. At one end there was a usb plug and at the other it matched the shape of the plug in Loki's head.

"I've made lots of mistakes in my life, but I know you were never one of them," he gasped weakly. Every breath he took looked like he was breathing with an anvil on his chest. Eventually, he stopped breathing.

My eyes watered with tears. Cairo grabbed a blanket from one of the kits and laid it over him. He knelt down and wrapped an arm around me.

Bella, Orca, and Zena rushed into the bunker. The Watchers closed the steel door behind them. The sound of Strikers crashing into it sounded like thunder.

Loki walked over to me, rubbing his head against mine to wipe my tears away. "He died doing what was right, just like Zeta, Slate, and Dakota."

"I can't forgive him for what he's done," I whispered.

"You don't have to," Cairo said gently. "You only need to accept his change of heart at the end. With the usb, we can finally end what he started."