Page 113 of Shadow Blind

For fuck’s sake! What the hell were the damn things up to now? These vibrations Lovett spoke of, they were deliberate. He instinctively knew that. They served a purpose. What purpose, he didn’t know, not yet. But his little robots were adapting, mutating in response to their environment. After each attempt to eradicate them, their ridges expanded, thickened, turned into some kind of fucking armor.

Currently, the only thing in his favor was that the prototype was contained.

The observation went through him like an electric shock. Was that the purpose behind the vibrations? Were they trying to free themselves? Lovett had said the five-ton containment tank had moved. Impossible to believe, yet everything the nanobots were doing was supposed to be impossible. What if they were trying to vibrate it off its table, hoping to crack it open and escape? Was that even possible?

Were his NNB26 prototype nanobots that intelligent?

At the lab’s security panel, he punched in his code and bent for a retinal scan. The door unlocked with a pressurized hiss. The lab seemed colder, more sterile and eye-poppingly brighter than he remembered, even though he’d visited two days earlier. It was also empty—other than Lovett. Clark had transferred the rest of the lab personnel to other projects in other buildings.

The heavy, silver door closed behind him, sealing him inside the room with acres of stainless steel and bright white light. He heard the vibration Lovett had mentioned the instant he stepped inside. The humming emanated from the center of the room, where the silver tank sat on its thick, stainless steel table. The vibration reverberated throughout the lab, alternating between a deep, guttural buzz and a high-pitched hum. Even from a distance, he could see the tank shiver.

The sound reminded him of a hive of extremely pissed off bees.

He’d left his laptop in his office, so Clark crossed to the computer terminal across from the tank. The interior of the tank, magnified by 400,000x through the EMC, was already displayed on the screen.

“Any idea what they’re doing?” Clark asked, studying the NNB26 bots.

“Not even an inkling,” Lovett said, watching the trembling tank with an uneasy grimace.

Clark frowned, staring at the screen. The bots had mutated on the heels of the liquid nitrogen bath. They looked tick-like now, with triangular bodies, multiple legs—or appendages that resembled legs—and a turquoise-colored shell. Currently, they were clustered on top of each other in an oblong ball. The sphere shivered and churned, which had to be what was causing the vibrations.

He’d read that bees shivered their flight muscles and wings during winter. The combined shivering of thousands of bees generated enough heat to keep the hive warm during cold weather. Was that what the NNB26 bots were doing? Were they generating heat with their vibrations?

Clark lowered himself into the chair in front of the terminal and rolled it closer to the screen. Were his eyes playing tricks on him, or was the ball of bots getting bigger…rounder? “When did the vibration start?”

“As soon as they reformed after I dosed them with liquid helium. The intensity of the vibrations has grown throughout the day.”

Hmm…interesting. If their vibrations were about creating warmth, they could be reacting to the minus 269 degree Celsius temperature of their recent bath. Not to mention the temperatures of their earlier liquid nitrogen dosing. Perhaps they were still recovering and mutating from the extreme cold temperatures they’d been subjected to. He accessed the saved video and backed through the footage.

After several minutes of scrolling through the tapes, he leaned back in his chair and stared at the computer screen. There was no doubt—the bot swarm was getting bigger. The ball was markedly smaller in previous footage.

What the hell were they doing?

“What about the bots in the clean room vat? Are they vibrating too?”

“Not that we’re aware of. I’ve been checking the big tank periodically. So far, no vibrations in there.”

The buzzing in the testing tank suddenly deepened to a roar. Clark shot a look at the computer screen and froze in shock. What the fuck? The bot ball had tripled in size. How had they done that so quickly and with no new components to replicate themselves?

The five-ton tank shook.

Jesus Christ!

Clark stared in shock as the tank slid closer to the edge by a solid inch. The roar increased. The NNB26 prototype cluster tripled again.

Good God! Clark gasped.

“Watch out!” Clark shouted as the container shot forward, straight toward Lovett.

Instead of ducking to the side, as Clark had expected, the doctor shot out a hand, as if to stop the tank from flying off the table. Which was instinctive and insane. The tank weighed ten thousand pounds. Lovett couldn’t stop it.

Except the tank lurched to a stop at the exact moment Lovett’s palm hit the exterior. A static crackle joined the roar.

Lovett seized, his entire body twitching. His eyes bulged. His mouth contorted into a silent scream. His hand and arm blackened, smoke curling up from his clothes and the charred flesh beneath. Urine soaked Lovett’s crotch. Then he dropped like a sack of bones, hitting the tile floor with a weighty thud.

Clark gagged as the smell of burning flesh and cloth filled the lab. His legs shook as he rose to his feet and stumbled over to the smoking bundle of cooked meat. It was instantly obvious there was nothing anyone could do for the man. His eyes weren’t even fixed. Or staring. They were just puddles of white goo.

Surprised that his legs were holding him up, he backed his way to the computer chair without taking his gaze off the tank. The bot container was still now. And silent. Ominously silent. He collapsed into his chair and stared in dumfounded disbelief at Lovett’s smoking body.

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