AlexMcGilvery Array - Nano Bytes

They heard Monica scream from the rooftop, the yell conveying horror, fear, and the fury of hell’s last survivor in one. «You think she’s finally gotten herself into a situation she can’t handle?» Lawrence said.

«Doubtful. All the same, I’d appreciate you getting us there in time to see the show.»

«If the spiders want to imprison us in these towers, I say let them. Lock me in with some TV and running water, and I’ll take the unpaid retirement. A pair of fortysomes, we don’t have the reflexes to last much longer. Monica though and…»

He was about to say Peter, before he stopped himself. He and Monica were about the same age. So, Lawrence had a soft spot after all; it was probably just a tumor in his brain from which the dreams of a better tomorrow originated, one where Monica and Peter were somehow happily married and having the time of their lives turning their endless robo war into one big rodeo for one huge family of grandkids.

At least he was content to entertain these dreams in his sleep, as the daydreaming could well cause Monica her life. Lawrence reached the rim of the roof moments later, using the time Sasha had taken to figure out what’s what to his advantage.

The second they were over the roof it was clear she had no idea at all what was what.

There was no contingent of spiders to greet Lawrence and Sasha on the rooftop in overwhelming numbers, sort of what they’d come to expect. Instead, Monica was surrounded by the human prisoners, freed now that they had been modified. They were trying to take Monica down. She was fending them off only half–heartedly, slowed as much by the tears in her eyes which blurred her vision, as by the thoughts of killing her own kind.

One of her human opponents came at her on eight robotic legs. Another tried to lase her with his hollow bionic eyes, converted to leaser weapons. She deflected the lasers with the shined–to–a-mirror’s-reflectiveness tips of two of her spider’s legs. She kicked away the human spider on eight legs with another of her spider’s legs each time he tried to climb up her.

The two pregnant looking males, their bellies swollen like women in their ninth month with child, kept squirting fire and acid at her respectively along throats and out mouths that had been modified. Monica fended off the blasts with metal plates yanked off the rooftop air–conditioners, using another two of her spider’s legs.

Lawrence emitted a shriek that startled Sasha out of the trance she’s slipped into, hypnotized by the unfolding horror. He painted the entire scene with a swatch of fire extending from their robospider. Only Monica, perched high up on her spider was spared. The humans on the ground didn’t stand a chance, modified or not.

Monica turned at him with fire of her own, only for now it was just up in her eyes. Sasha thought for certain they were but a heartbeat away from feeling the flames of her robospider.

«Come on!» Lawrence shouted. «There are still others who can be saved.» It was only then that Monica and Sasha even noticed the assembly line in progress against the far walls. Humans laid out on assembly lines. The robospiders popped over the rim of the building just long enough to deposit one of their partially cocooned victims, bound by metal strands that cut into their flesh. The strands were used just sparingly enough to keep the humans from wriggling free.

As the conveyor belt moved along they were modified according to which rolling ramp they were on. There were ramps along each of the four riser walls. The scene was easy to overlook amid the confusion as the ones doing the modifying were themselves human, or at least humanoid. At first glance they looked like little more than captive and cowering humans standing as far back from the conflict as they could get.

Lawrence busied himself with snipping the lines about the partly cocooned humans, using the tips of his robospider’s legs. Monica, for her part, had calmed down enough to keep the humanoid surgeons away from the assembly line where Lawrence was doing his work, or they’d have kept right on working on their victims. Staring at them with their hollow bionic eyes, cutting away with their cold steel manipulators where once they had hands.

Sasha climbed down from the spider, ripped open her backpack and pulled out a pouch of syringes. They were usually used to sedate those dying an otherwise painful death. She used the syringes instead to take out the humanoid surgeons, putting them to sleep for now until she and the others of her kind could determine what to do with them. The surgeons were so lost in their work, few gave much resistance because few even noticed her.

As the humans on the conveyor belts were cut free of their bonds, many made it to the surgeons ahead of her and gave them a piece of their minds, ending them with the same finality that Lawrence had shown earlier.

«No!» Monica screamed. She rushed over and dangled two of the vengeful humans up off the ground, slipping the tips of two of her robo spiders’ legs under their pants belts.

«Everyone stop!» Sasha shouted, seeing Lawrence redirecting his attention away from the cocooned victims toward the remaining surgeons. He’d already pinned one against the wall and spit asphalt over him, making a permanent bas–relief of him. And was preparing to do the same with another one he was dangling off the ground.

«Lawrence,” Sasha said, «like it or not there are three species now, and you’re holding one of the emissaries from the one species that might well be able to broker a peace between the other two species.»

«You’ve lost your mind yet again.» Lawrence spat out the bile rising in his throat. He pinned the victim he was dangling against the wall and was about to signal his robospider to spit asphalt on him when Sasha came between Lawrence’s victim and him.

«Maybe you think there’s some other way we can win this?» she said.

«The spiders don’t have brains you can reason with, just programming.»

«Maybe at one time,” Sasha said. «Now, I’m not so sure. Hell, if we can’t broker a peace, then we can at least turn the humanoids against our enemy. They still have more in common with us.»

«So you say,” Lawrence said, undeterred, sidestepping her and blasting the latest victim in his hands with asphalt and making a bas–relief of him.

Sasha emitted a primal scream. «Why must you be so inflexible! It was this very same unwillingness to adapt that sent our son to the sanitarium.»

Lawrence seemed to come out of his fugue some at the mention of Peter. He released the third victim he’d scooped up intending to bas–relief.

«Give Monica and I a chance to get through to the humanoids,” Sasha said, noticing that Monica was using her own robospider to cocoon the humanoids and the determined vengeful humans both, just enough to put them out of commission for now without hurting them.

Lawrence took a second to take in the big picture. «Yeah, sure, one hell is as good as another.»

«I don’t understand how even after all this time…»

«We don’t think they’ll ever come out of it,” the doctor said.

«Ask anyone and they’ll tell you, Sasha and Lawrence were two of the toughest people they ever knew,” Robin said, her eyes glued to the therapy room where her parents were battling for their lives against giant robotic spiders, or so they thought.

«Maybe that’s the problem,” the doc suggested. «Hard as nails, just not pliable enough to deal with what this world had to throw at them.»

«But our world is a relative utopia compared to that post–apocalyptic hell.»

«One man’s heaven…»

She regarded the Native American doctor, towering nearly a foot above her, his hair braided tightly and running nearly to his waist. His ripped physique barely hidden behind a stretched tee shirt and peel–them–on–and-off jeans. He must have figured one look at his contours was more placating than a typical doctor’s smock and stethoscope. He was gorgeous enough to be a supermodel. You could put his face under a microscope and look for hours without finding a flaw. Nano–enhanced, of course. They all were.