Book Five, Chapter 42: Defensive Protocols

“Where do we need to go?” Andrew asked.

“That stairway there,” Bobby said. “That should lead us to the Upper Platform. That’ll lead us to the helm. Somewhere along there should be the manual override that will let us reset the AI.”

The puzzles that had been there had disappeared. This was wholly a fighting movie now.

“That’s real specific,” Michael said.

“I’ve never even been up to the helm. They never even let me in the ship after it had taken to the sky. Worried I might contaminate it.”

That got a chuckle.

As they took a few steps forward toward the upper platform—one staircase and a jog to salvation—a giant creature emerged from the broken door to Bobby’s lab.

It wasn’t a bedbug—well, not all of it.

It was a bull, but instead of a head and horns, it had a large set of metal pipes and computer arrays sticking out of its neck as it had just broken down from its position in one of the large vats the livestock were kept in. Attached to its back were the strangest-looking bedbugs I had ever seen, connected directly to its spine.

Carousel was showing off. If we were going to play monster maker, so was it.

“Run!” Michael screamed.

And he was right to do so because the bull charged—its metal pipes just as deadly as any horns. I wasn’t sure how it was locating them. Perhaps the bedbugs could see, or maybe it was by the sense of touch, which bedbugs were supposed to have an acute ability for. But either way, it homed right in on them.

Michael pushed the others forward and took the full brunt of the beast’s attack, sending him flying across the room. Andrew started running toward him, but Bobby grabbed Andrew’s arm and said, “We have to get the manual override! If we can turn on defensive protocols, this will all be over.”

Dina’s voice came over the intercom near me.

“Tell me when I need to cut the wire,” she said.

“Give them a chance,” I said.

We had a backup plan.

It seemed to me that there was one quick way to give us humans an advantage over whatever monsters Carousel was going to cook up: destroy the artificial gravity machine.

Dina had Kimberly as backup (who conveniently knew a lot about this gravity machine model). She had used her Scrunchie ability to put a lot of power behind her Mettle to help defend against an ambush by nearby bugs. If push came to shove, Dina would turn gravity off under the guise of some malfunction.

It wasn’t a perfect option, though, because although the lights had been malfunctioning, the narrative wasn’t well set up for gravity to go out. It would at least give Bobby a chance at escape or even a chance at getting to the helm.

Michael was back on his feet and yelled, “Go on! I’ll distract this thing!” He found his pipe on the ground, and as the cyborg parasitic bull attacked him, he hit it in the leg and jumped out of the way.

More creatures poured out of Bobby’s lab and chased after Bobby and the others, but I couldn’t follow them to help.

I had to trust Bobby. If anything, we needed to help Michael, who was struggling against the bull, and the other creatures that decided to join the fight. One parasite, which had chicken feathers, had grabbed onto Michael’s leg and stuck its long needle-like appendage into his skin. He screamed in anger.

“Time out!” Antoine yelled from beside me, and then the both of us ran toward Michael as all of the monsters in the hallway toned down their attacks, if only for a moment.

Antoine’s Time Out ability didn’t last long and only allowed a slight advantage, but that was all we needed. The action was Off-Screen for a moment.

As Michael continued to whack at the monsters around him, Antoine and I joined in the barrage.

Antoine, in fact, took his own pipe and broke the bull’s leg at the spot where Michael had hit it before.

I wasn’t sure that was easy to do in the real world, but this was a movie, and that was precisely what Mettle was for. To be fair, that bull didn’t get a lot of exercise, so its bones weren’t going to be the strongest.

A few more good whacks freed Michael, and then Antoine grabbed me by the arm and dragged me back to where we had been hiding.

Michael went back On-Screen and was right back in the fight as if we had never been there—but now, the tide was turning.

For a moment.

More bugs poured out, and it was clear Michael was about to be overwhelmed. One of the bedbugs managed to separate Michael from his pipe somehow, leaving him with nothing but his fists to defend himself.

I looked at Antoine.

We had been lucky in this storyline that Second Blood could be something as simple as a reveal that many of the humans on the ship were dead due to human-like mutants.

But this storyline still had a blood toll.

It was a hard story to escape without injury if you went the physical route. Those few teams that had tried it, survived, and written about it in the Atlas were clear about that.

This story was bloody, and it was always going to be.

Stolen story; please report.

We knew we might lose a surrogate.

Michael was not resigned to his fate, but he became overwhelmed. Suddenly, Andrew appeared from nowhere, having run back from the upper platform, this time wielding some sort of railing as a weapon. He was doing his best to get back to Michael and protect him.

I found the nearest intercom and said, “How are we doing, Isaac?”

“We’re fine,” he said.

I waited for more details.

“What do you mean we’re fine?” Antoine said. “It looks like the end out here.”

But before he could answer, I found out what he meant.

Bobby had found his way to the manual override for IBECS, and being the highest-ranked living and conscious person on board, he became the acting captain.

And I knew that because the words “Welcome, Commanding Officer Gill” came over the loudspeaker. Whatever obstacles they had come across on the upper platform, they had overcome them.

Though I did not see it, it became clear that Bobby initiated defense protocol against all invaders because as soon as he did, IBECS came to life.

Arms first reached down from the ceiling, and then torsos and heads came down to connect to them.

There were at least a dozen when I looked left and right, all designed to look more like a ship’s crew than mean robots—but that didn’t stop them from being effective.

They began systematically dismantling the bedbugs of all sizes, perhaps missing only those as small as nature intended.

Antoine and I watched in amazement and relief as our plan finally came to fruition. We were around the corner from the action, we were safe, and we thought that no more bad could happen.

The drone swung through the air, efficiently bisecting bug after bug and beast after beast.

It could kill them with one strike, stabbing their vital organs quickly. They didn’t stand a chance.