Chapter 21
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mal flung her arm out and managed to brush Xander’s hand.
His mechanical fingers clamped onto hers with a punishing grip. She heard her panting breaths as she dangled over the wicked metal spikes beneath.
“I’ve got you. Hold still.” He pulled her up like she weighed nothing.
She felt the hem of her dress catch on something, heard it tear. Then he pulled her over the edge, and she scrambled into his lap, wrapping her arms and legs around him.
“Xander, Xander, Xander.” She couldn’t focus.
“Shhh.” He pressed his lips to her hair. His own hold on her was so tight she could barely breathe.
“I am so glad you’re fast.” One second later, and he would have missed her. She shuddered.
A strange clanking sound came from behind them. They both swiveled to look.
Mal frowned. It sounded like wheels…no, not quite. Tracks. It sounded like tracks moving across the ground.
The robot wheeled into view, and the air rushed out of her lungs.
It was bigger than Xander, maybe by a foot. It ran on tracks, had a long, solid body, and lots of arms. Each held a different weapon. Sword, knife, laser pistol, energy weapon, and a few other things she didn’t recognize.
“Stay back, Malin.” Xander rose slowly and set her behind him.
She looked between the two. She’d seen Xander fight and knew he was good. But a sense of dread turned her stomach. She was all-too-aware that his systems weren’t all back up and running.
The robot stopped and raised one arm. Laser fire hit the ground in a long trace. Mal stumbled backward. The laser fire hit right where Xander had been standing.
But he was already gone.
She crouched down behind a lump of metal. She watched as Xander ran, then leaped into the air, over the top of the robot.
He landed behind it and landed a hard kick to the robot’s midsection.
The machine rocked, but was already turning a hundred and eighty degrees to face him again.
Xander kept moving. Darting, leaping, landing blows where he could. The machine didn’t appear to be affected. Except when he managed to break off one arm.
She forced herself to take her gaze off Xander and study the robot. She took in all the parts, amazed that anything this dangerous could be made from scrap.
It had armor plates covering certain areas, under which she guessed were its power and control centers.
Then she spotted it.
A weakness.
She leaned out from behind her cover. “Xander! Flexible joint right at the base. Joining it to the tracks.” When laser fire came her way, she ducked.
“Stay down,” he roared.
She did but inched to the side to see around.
Xander was airborne again. Damn, the man moved like no one she’d ever seen before. Pure poetry. He slammed his foot into the joint.
The top half of the robot tilted and its tracks whirred. Then Xander slammed out with his mechanical arm, grabbed the bent joint, and yanked.
The top of the robot fell to the ground, its many arms flailing. The tracks spun in a circle, completely disconnected from the main body of the robot.
Xander ripped off the armor plate at the top of the robot. It exposed the blinking lights of the control center. Then he slammed his foot down.
All movement stopped.
Thank the stars. Mal rose.
Xander stepped over the twisted metal and headed her way. She smiled at him, the expression fading when she heard a skittering noise.
Behind him. The remains of the robot were moving.
What the—? As she watched, pieces of the robot began to break apart. In horror, she saw the robot had been made of smaller machines that pieced together to make the whole. They looked like little six-legged, silver metallic insects with quivering bodies.
And mouths filled with sharp metal teeth.
The crowd of tiny robots, each about the size of Xander’s hands, moved together in some eerie formation.
“Xander! Watch out—”
He was already turning, but the pack of robots leaped into the air and covered him.
He went down under the onslaught. She knew he was fighting, but all she could see was an undulating cloud of silver.
Jesus. Mal searched around her, saw a long pipe sticking out from the wall. She pried it off and ran.
She smacked at the robots closest to her that were not on top of Xander. She heard a satisfying crunch and kept swinging.
Some flew through the air and hit the walls. Others she crushed.
“Xander!”
Suddenly, he pushed upright. She saw a bright glow, felt a pulse of energy in the air, and the crowd of robots flew off him. Like they’d been blasted outward.
His clothes were tattered and all over, she saw small patches of blood. Especially on his face. On one side of his cheek, the robots had bitten through and underneath the torn skin she saw…metal.
“We need to go.” He grabbed her arm and yanked her forward. “The energy pulse will have dazed them but not for long.”
They’d taken three steps when the skittering sound filled the air again. One glance over her shoulder and she saw the little robots righting themselves, preparing to launch again.
“Run!” he growled.
They both sprinted, Xander falling in behind her. This pathway was long with no junctions. The walls were getting closer together, the path getting narrower and narrower.
Please don’t be a dead end. Soon, Mal had to turn sideways to squeeze through. Xander grunted as he shoved his larger body through the small gap.
Then the path widened again and they were at another crossroads.
“Which way?” she shouted.
He was studying the paths, his jaw tight. “I don’t know.
Then she noticed something. Stylized flame shapes carved into a sheet of metal that was part of the wall.
Flames. Flames are your friends.
“This way.” She waved Xander on and took the path marked by the flames.
They kept running and the sounds of the skittering bug robots slowly died away. At the next junction, Xander veered left. But Mal looked around and saw a fire burning in an old drum, right in front of the right-hand path.
“No, that way.” She ran for it.
At the next crossroads, she picked the middle path, marked by a flame trap that blew fire across the entrance at random intervals.
They eventually slowed to a jog.
“I can’t detect the robots any longer,” he said.
She heaved a sigh. “That’s the best news I’ve had all day. Your systems are back online?”
He nodded. “And I believe we are closer to the center of the maze than before.”
She touched his cheek. “Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine. I’ve restricted blood flow to the area, and I can expedite healing there.”
She traced her finger along his eyebrow. “You have metal attached to your bones?”
He stiffened. “In some places, yes.”
Her poor cyborg. “No wonder you weigh a ton. And are so strong.” She cupped his uninjured cheek. “I don’t care about metal bones, Xander. I think you’re beautiful.”
A quirk of his lips. “Men are not beautiful, Malin.”
“They can be.” She smiled. “I think I’ve solved the first part of the riddle.”
“Go on.”
“Flames are our friends. At each junction, one path is somehow marked by flames. That’s how I picked our paths.”
His eyes flickered. “And now we’re closer to the center.” He flicked a finger at her nose. “Well done.”
Mal craned her neck, studying the roof far above. “It irks me to think of Forge up there watching us, laughing at us.”
“That, I can do something about.” Xander looked up as well, neon flaring to life in his eyes.
After about a minute, his eyes returned to normal.
“What did you do?”
“I isolated the camera frequencies and jammed the feed.”
“Really?” She imagined Forge staring at static-filled screens and smiled. “Nice job. Now what?”
“Now we keep moving.”
They moved deeper into the maze.
Xander didn’t think Malin had noticed the rip in her dress. It had left a rather intriguing split on one side that showed tantalizing glimpses of slim thigh.
He shook his head. If his team saw him now, on the run for his life, trying to find the Antikythera, and fantasizing about the woman beside him, they’d think the universe had imploded.
They reached the end of another path and came out on a platform. Below, a giant sea of junk and scrap spread out before them, blocking their way. In a few places, piles rose up like mountains or islands.
“Well, I guess we have to cross it,” she said.
He didn’t like it. His scans couldn’t detect a bottom. Something was skewing his readings. There could be anything under the sea of junk.
He looked all around and above. To their left he spotted something.
“Malin.”
She followed his gaze. A zip line was tied from their platform, stringing out across the junk to the other side.
Xander moved to it, studying the sturdy metal cable. He gripped the handles hanging down from the zip line, testing their strength. They were in good condition. “I’ll go first.”
“Wait.” She grabbed his hand, frowning as she stared intently at the line. On the other side stood another platform like the one they were standing on. There was also a ladder leading up to the platform from the junk below. “What’s the easiest path across this?”
“The zip line,” he answered automatically. Then he cursed mentally. “Don’t take the easiest path. It’s a trap.”
“I’m guessing, yes.”
“So, we go down and walk across the junk.” That wasn’t his first choice, but his gut told him it was the only way.
They both stared again at that the sea of scrap. In the distance, one part of it vibrated.
“What the hell?” Malin leaned out, frowning.
The vibration rippled through the junk for several meters before it disappeared.
Her purple gaze swung back to him. “There’s something down there.”
Xander knelt and grabbed a large, twisted lump of metal by his foot. Standing, he tested its weight. Not too heavy but heavy enough. He strode to the zip line, tied it on, and then gave a huge push.
The metal whizzed out along the cable.
As it reached the halfway point, the metal sea began vibrating again.
Suddenly, a giant mass broke out of the scrap. Xander blinked. What the hell?
It was an enormous metal…creature. A snake or monster or something.