Page 138 of Even Robots Die
I look over my shoulder and see that Brice is far enough away, and I turn in a tight circle under the net. The movement makes the wings slice through the net, and it opens.
I’m out from under it and fly down to cut it some more to help Brice get out, too.
Before I know it, that last bird that came to attack us is on my back with a gun—the normal kind this time—under my chin.
“Let him fall,” he growls at my back.
“Yes, of course,” I tell him with as much sarcasm as I can muster, grabbing the hand that’s holding his gun. “Now.”
The bird has no time to register the word before his body convulses and he drops the gun as he falls to his death—okay, maybe not his death, but it’s still going to hurt between the electric shock and the fall.
I help Brice out of the net just short of having him crash to the ground—the smile on his face makes me think he knows I could have been faster and that it’ll mean retribution later, but that’s a problem for future me—and we land right when Charles and a team of six men and women arrive.
I let Brice deal with his men. Weapons are exchanged, explanations on how the battle is unraveling, too—even if I pretty much already know this thanks to my heat signature map—and then we’re back in the sky.
“I would love it if you didn’t fly right into the arms of a net next time,” Brice tells me, adjusting the knives and guns he just retrieved from Charles in the different holsters on his body. I don’t know how he can do that while flying. I can barely think about anything other than controlling my wings to fly correctly. I have to remind myself that this is only my first flight, and even if I built the wings and know them perfectly, I wasn’t born flying. Brice was, and he’s had many years for it to become second nature—or is it first?
“I would love it if I could have a killer body and be rich, but as you can see, we can’t always get what we want,” I answer him sarcastically.
“You’ve got the body already,” he says as he faces me. “And if you knew the things I want to do to that body, you would never doubt that.”
The deep growl that follows his words is what does it for me. I don’t care what my body looks like when he talks about it that way, because whatever I think about it, he definitely thinks something different, and I want to know and feel what he promises.
Holding my position in the air is harder than I thought, though—especially with what is running through my mind—but at least I don’t need to beat my wings to stay still in the sky. That’s the beauty of propulsion. The wings might look bird-like, but they definitely don’t work the same. They’re just here for better aerodynamics and to cut nets and people to pieces.
“Tell you what, if we survive today, you’ll get to show me all those things,” I tell him, and for good measure, I give him a peck on the lips. “But in the meantime … we’ve got birds to pluck from the sky.”
And I fly away from him and towards where most of the action of the battle is happening while rubbing my thighs together.
Why do I have to get horny in the most inappropriate moments?
I’m such a mess.
I guess I’m about to be a fighting mess. I hold up the gun Charles provided for me and take a deep breath.
I’ve always been in the shadows of this war. All I need is to finally walk into the light of it.
I hate it, but let’s face it, there is no way we can change things for this world if the birds aren’t taken down.
81
Florentine
We’ve been fighting for hours, and I don’t mean that like it’s a feeling. We’ve literally been fighting for hours and it feels like it’s never-ending.
We initially thought we had bigger numbers than the birds and that the battle would be easily won with the addition of my mechanical wings, but it’s not that easy.
The people who have been given wings aren’t used to them and, yes, they’ve been doing a damn good job at cutting the nets before they get to the ground—trapping bat shifters or just covering troops on the ground—but they can’t fight the same as the birds who have been flying their whole life.
They’ve been falling and falling.
Each time one is grounded, they’re replaced by someone else. But seeing their comrades being wounded—mortally or not—and falling to the ground is straining the morale of the troops. It’s also not helping the war effort because it forces us to keep the strongest bat shifters from fighting in order to retrieve them before they crash to the ground. We’ve also had to have flying warriors retrieve those who tried to fly for the sun.
No Icarus syndrome here, just people who tensed under the wounds they sustained and couldn’t control their wings anymore.
Mine are the only ones that are controlled by myself through an AI, so they’re easier to deal with.
From the corner of my eye, I see a dark cloud coming our way from the south.
