Necrocide

Chapter 63

Aaron and Harry glanced down into the training center where the bot used to remain dormant. The wires and cables it previously hung from were ominously swinging back and forth. Four Deadmen lay on the floor near the entrance of the training center, wading in a large pool of blood. Their heads were completely caved in, and one of them was missing an arm.

"No way," Aaron whispered. "You don't think it..."

"Oh, it did it, mate," Harry replied. "Looks like it's not just humans who aren't safe from the Ambrosia."

Violent clattering rumbled through the vents of the building. Aaron and Harry jumped at the sudden sound of the intruder as it crawled in the walls like an insect. The echoes of the clanging metal made it seem as if their intruder was everywhere at once. There was nowhere to run.

Then the clattering noises grew closer and closer until it sounded like a swarm of spiders fleeing into a crevice. Right behind the two, unfortunately curious wanderers.

"Hurry up, Aaron!" Harry whispered loudly. "We gotta get out of here!"

Aaron scrambled around the floor and yanked an empty suitcase out of a shelf below the table where he found Recorder #6. He carefully placed it on top of the table and shoved every piece of evidence he had gathered into the suitcase. His recorders, the binder, and even the rolled up blueprint were now protected by that suitcase, even at the cost of Aaron's own safety.

"Run!" Aaron shouted, and the two of them bolted back toward the space where the window used to be.

Before he could leap off behind Harry to safety, he heard a loud bang behind him, followed by what sounded like the wall crumbling behind him. The metal clanging was louder and closer than ever, and the source of it was only a few feet away. But all of it was overshadowed by the monstrous, metallic shrieks no human could ever be capable of emitting.

It grabbed Aaron by his collar and hung him above the training center, dangling him off the edge of the overlook. Aaron fearfully turned toward his attacker to find the robotic training dummy they saw earlier, with a few noticeable physical changes. Its face had large gashes where the eyes and mouth should be, glowing a sinister shade of red like the sadistic grin of a psychopath. Its free hand was twisted into a mess of needles prepared to eviscerate its victims, blood tinted around the tips. In fact, most of its previously white plastic surface was now darkened grey from the years of disrepair and its hunt for Deadmen.

"Are you ready--fight--incomplete--" the bot stuttered in an uncomfortably dissonant voice. "The trial is n-n-n-n-not over."

"What the..." Aaron muttered, terrified to look at the red lacerations that represented the bot's eyes.

Then the bot's already insidious facial expression contorted into something more horrifying than the last. Its face opened up like a doorway to reveal another large mess of needles and sharp-edged contraptions prying at Aaron's face. It pulled poor Aaron closer to the deathtrap hidden in its artificial cranium, and he stared into the two crimson lights that represented its eyes. The tentacle-like metal arms sprouting out of the robot's face left behind gashes on Aaron's face, cutting up his cheeks and forehead and nearly missing his eye.

"The trial is never complete!" the robot hissed in a demonic voice.

"Harry!" Aaron exclaimed as he pounded on the robot's arm. "Help me!"

The robot raised his free hand, and the razor-edged phalanges replacing his fingers quickly spun around like propeller blades, preparing to gore Aaron alive.

"Please, Harry!" Aaron continued, almost on the verge of tears. "I can't let down my friends again!"

Before the robot could slice through Aaron's innards, Harry tackled the robot from behind and covered its face with his hands. He ripped the small bladed rods out of the machine's head and tossed them aside, sparks flying out of the stubs where they used to be. Harry then grabbed the robot's arm with the transformed hand and ripped it out of its socket with ease. More sparks flew out of the new wound, and the bot emphasized major discomfort through another one of its metallic shrieks.