Page 139 of Even Robots Die
Awesome. We’re going to get rained on. The battle isn’t going to get easier.
It’s like everything is against us.
I send darts, shoot. Recharge. And start again.
I’m soon going to be short on darts. I already have to be careful with the gun’s ammunition. I started with a couple hundred bullets and I’ve had to get another three chargers of a hundred already.
I can see it, though. Our stocks are depleting fast, and I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to keep this up.
I’m covered in sweat and blood—most of it being mine, even if the wounds are shallow. Brice hasn’t left my side, and we’ve been fighting back-to-back, but he still keeps fussing each time I get hurt.
“Arggh!” I scream as a bullet hits my shoulder.
I touch my shoulder, but no blood appears on my fingers. The bullet hit the reinforced straps of my wings.
I don’t know where the sniper is, but I don’t have time to find out because another bullet hits me in the stomach from the side.
I hear a hiss at my back, and with barely a glance behind me, I see that Brice has been hit too.
How on earth did they manage to hit us both so fast? There is no one at the right distance for that kind of bullet from what I can see on my heat scanner.
I fist my shirt to my stomach to try to stop the bleeding.
I look around us and stop focusing on only Brice and I and realize we’re not the only ones being targeted. I can see people landing, blood dripping from their slouched forms all around us. And the only reason I’m not doing the same is because I’m stubborn as hell, andalso because, weirdly, with all the adrenaline coursing my body, the wound in my stomach is barely hurting more than when I was curled on myself because of my period.
Brice is having none of this, though.
Careful of my wings, he plasters my back to his front and forces us to the ground.
I turn off the wings—I’m not a complete idiot, I’m not going to fight him so I can keep helping in the sky—and Brice steers us to the ground.
“You’re done,” Brice says once we’ve reached a safe area. “You’re not fighting anymore.”
He’s about to leave me where I stand when Charles arrives with Christina and Elhyor.
I tense at the possibility that Brice could attack him. They had a conversation over holos, the kind of call where both people allow the holo to display a holographic version of themselves in real time in front of the other. It didn’t trigger any rage inside of Brice, but this is the first time they’re in each other’s vicinity, and … it’s tense, but there is no outburst.
“We need to fall back,” Christina says, oblivious to the turmoil inside of me. “They just positioned huge guns at the windows. It’s what hit you and more than half of our troops. The ones on the ground aren’t as impacted, but with so many getting injured, it’s becoming difficult to protect the troops on the ground from the flying nets. If I didn’t know they need to be recharged, I would think they have unlimited power with those.”
Sadly, they look like they have way more of those net launchers than we initially thought. It would have been better if we could have trained the warriors who were given mechanical wings, too.
I feel like maybe finally starting an all-out war wasn’t my best idea. There are so many people bleeding around us. I don’t even want to know how many people we lost.
This is all my fault.
“There is something that could be done.”
It takes me a second to realize that the voice that just spoke out loud came from my holo. I’m not the only one who is surprised, either. Only Brice is looking at me, realizing before everyone else who this voice belongs to.
“What do you mean, Milton?” I ask out loud.
I don’t see the point in murmuring or mouthing the words—my own AI decided to speak to everyone and not just to me, there is a high chance it will do so again, anyway.
“I can take over all the mechanical wings and lead them to attack the guns. There is a ninety-three percent chance I could cut all of the cannons in under ten minutes,” Milton says.
I hold my breath because everyone around me is looking at me with horror in their eyes.
It’s not lost on me that my AI basically just told everyone that if it decided to do so, it could annihilate every one of us. Bird or not.
