“We’re going to need every advantage we can get. I’m giving you full access to my systems, real-time sensor data. Whatever you can do to enhance functioning, have at it.”
Elkin doesn’t waste a moment. Keystrokes echo through Muzibot’s systems, and his senses sharpen, especially his vision—so clear, he can even make out the individual rivets on the steel rooftops of the robotics labs all the way out in New Brighton. A streak of feathers breezes across the downtown skyline. It’s that beast with Nomvula dangling from its talon. Elkin zooms in, so fast it’s like they’re there, every detail so crisp. She’s still breathing, Muzibot notices. We’ll be there soon, he whispers to her in his mind.
Mega-Muzibot stoops and snatches up Rife and Riya, clutching them loosely in his fist. “Let’s go!” he says. His booming voice rattles all the windows in the vicinity. The ground tremors with each clomping step, though in seconds, Elkin’s got his movements fluid enough to run. His stride covers half a dozen city blocks, footsteps leaving behind craters and buildings quaking on their foundations. The beast lands on a rooftop, releases Nomvula. She goes limp, a pile of rags at the feet of yet another beast—birdlike and feathered all over, but undeniably female. Half woman, half eagle. Sydney.
Fight, Nomvula, he thinks. Why doesn’t she fight?
Sydney grins with beaked lips, then squawks, raising her fingered wings up to the heavens. Lightning rains down into her cupped palms, leaving in them a dagger of burning white light so intense, Muzibot has to dampen his visual input to even look that direction. She aims the blade at Nomvula, no victory speech, no nothing, just death in her eyes, and eagerness.
Muzibot screams the scream of three hundred and eighty enraged bots, then lunges for Sydney with his hand bearing down on her like the scoop of a bulldozer. She sees him and stumbles backward, a solid sign that Muzibot’s got the upper hand. His fist clamps around her. Tight. Tighter. He squeezes until he feels her hollow avian bones breaking in a satisfying crunch. Pride surges through his circuitry, maybe a little cockiness, too, but damn it, he’s earned it. They’ve earned it. He and Elkin have been through so much—life, death, and in between. Muzi’s seen more than any human mind should bear, and then he’d been stripped of his humanity as well. But with all the damage Sydney has done, she couldn’t take away his heart. He’s still the same him, even if he’s got BlisterGel running through his veins instead of blood. Muzikayise McCarthy still has his spark.
Muzibot sets Rife and Riya on the rooftop, next to Nomvula’s limp body. “Is she—?”
Riya examines Nomvula all over, then looks back up at Muzibot. “She’s breathing. She doesn’t appear to be hurt. There’s not even a scratch on her.”
“Muzi, we’ve got systems overheating, here,” Elkin calls from the cockpit. “Something’s wrong with your hand.”
Muzibot squeezes out of reflex, but there’s resistance. His fist glows red like he’s holding molten rock. Metal ripples in viscous waves, and in the next instant, his fist becomes a bright sun, obliterating the remnants of blackened bot husks. Sydney emerges from the smoldering haze, grinning wide and flapping her wings.
“Those were my orders. Bring her back without a scratch on her,” Sydney says. She soars back up to the rooftop where Rife and Riya scramble out of her way as she lands and kneels before Nomvula. She rubs her feathered hand over Nomvula’s smooth, brown cheek. “Such a flawless creature. Pity that’s about to change.”
Sydney drags one of her talons over Nomvula’s cheek, splitting it like ripened fruit. Nomvula’s cry is but a whisper, but it dredges up so much anger in Muzibot. He raises his good hand and swipes Sydney away like a fly. Only she’s still there after the impact. Only there’d been no impact. There’s nothing left of his hand other than a curling wisp of smoke. Eighteen bots, instantaneously gone from the collective.
“I’m on it,” Elkin says, voice amazingly calm.
Mega-Muzibot tingles all over as bots detach from their positions and rearrange themselves, forming two new hands.
Sydney smiles. “So giant robot boy has a little helper. How very clever of you. But your little attacks are futile. Truth is, Nomvula is too weak to fight. I’ve got thousands of believers on my side now, more than enough to stomp the life out of her. Right after I decommission you, that is.”
Sydney whistles and four beasts drop out of the sky and take their perches, like guards around Nomvula. Sydney rises to her feet, cracks her knuckles. A punch comes out of nowhere, like a cannon to the chest. Muzibot stumbles backward across the lawn of Holy Trinity Church and catches himself on the steeple. Centuries-old brick shifts under his weight.
His systems are reeling, warnings and disconnects raging through him like a thunderstorm. “Another hit like that, and it’s all over,” Muzibot says to Elkin. “Tell me you’ve got something.”
“I’ve got something,” Elkin boasts. “Still downloading. Just eight more seconds.”
“We haven’t got eight seconds!” Muzibot looks up at Sydney, her fist drawn, looking like something snatched directly from his nightmares. And yet there’s an odd beauty about her, and more than that, arrogance. She knows she commands attention, respect, demands awe. Maybe he can use her arrogance against her, buy a little time. “Go ahead and kill me,” he shouts. “My name will live on, inspire millions. I’ll always be known as the robot who stood up to the fourth-most-powerful entity in the world, and there will be others eager to take my place.”
“And I will slice them down, just like I’m about to . . .” She falters. Something flickers in her eyes. “Wait, what do you mean, ‘fourth most powerful’?”
Just recalibrating your systems. Not much longer, comes a text message from Elkin, written across his visual input.
“Well, there’s Mr. Tau, of course.”
Sydney snarls, then spits. But she doesn’t deny it. Muzibot’s struck a nerve. He tries hard to come up with a second, but he’s drawing a blank. Sydney’s feathered hackles raise, posture shifting from defensive and suspicious to annoyed and lethal.
“I don’t have time for these games,” she hisses.
A stream of data spreads through Muzibot’s neural network. Intense bliss paints the whole world white. His nasal emulators suggest that something’s burning, and Muzibot has a nagging suspicion that it’s him. What the hell was that? he screams at Elkin, but before he gets an answer, Sydney’s supernatural fist is barreling toward Muzibot’s face. Something inside him ignites, and all at once he knows exactly what to do.
Muzibot shifts his center of gravity, slides out of her path, and, using her momentum against her, he grabs her ankle between his thumb and forefinger and slams her into the street. The ground trembles and asphalt disintegrates into a cloud of smoke. Muzibot shakes his head in awe, trying to figure out how his patchwork metal body had moved so fluidly.
“Jujitsu,” Elkin says. “The art of softness. Sometimes the best offense is a good defense.”