Snippet #1373600

Brihan read the message Seamstress had written and nodded. "Weapons... we do have some firearms in the command centre." With the power cut, they had to take the stairs. It was eerie, the group of them descending through the silent gloom, the corridors illuminated only by the soft blue luminescent panels set into the walls and floors at regular intervals.

Once they were in the founders' room, Brihan left some of the the other senior staff in charge of getting everyone organised and settled in, while she and Seamstress went to a weapons locker. Brihan swiped her hand on the palm reader and pressed her right eye against the retinal scanner to satisfy the security. The locker slid out of the wall and its cover slowly rose, revealing a range of firearms.

"Let's see," said Brihan. "These four are mag pistols." Small, compact handguns with gleaming silver bodies, each containing a miniature magnetic field generator for propelling bullets. "I'm pretty sure these two are plasma shotguns." The shotguns had long barrels and each was connected by a tube to a large backpack, which contained the plasma production unit. "And these... well, you can read the labels. I'm not such an expert on weapons, to be honest." She took a mag pistol for herself, nervously checking that the safety was on before holstering it in her jeans. She added three clips of ammo, which should be plenty. She wasn't planning to get involved unless she didn't have a choice. It depended on exactly what sort of invasion force was coming. Speaking of which... "Hang on. Let's see if we can get some idea of what we'll be facing before we prepare ourselves." She turned and went to the computer terminals, which were being manned a number of distressed-looking people. "Have you picked anything up?" she asked one of them.

It turned out that they had. Brihan was shown images captured from external and rooftop cameras of... a thing. A dark blur rushing past their cameras, moving extremely quickly. The technician slowed the video down and the blur resolved into some kind of robot, metallic and vaguely humanoid, in a very loose sense of the word. A single red light blinked sinisterly on its forehead and the rest of it seemed to be made of metallic limbs, claws and tentacles. Brihan swallowed. "Any idea of its capabilites?" The technician brought up another video showing a street in a different part of New York; a CCTV hack. On screen, a distortion appeared and a young man stepped out of it. Brihan recognized him as the rifter she had met earlier that day. Suddenly, a dark mass shot into the image and seized the boy. Extensions shot out of its body and did something to him before a blade flashed out and slit his throat, a jet of blood fountaining up to the sky. His limbs jerked and twitched spasmodically before he dropped to the ground and finally lay still. The hulking metal thing crouched over his corpse for a few more moments, its red eye pulsing and its head turning left and right like a bloodhound seeking out a scent, before it sped out of view as quickly as it had come.

Brihan covered her hand with her mouth. "That thing... is outside our building now?" She was shown more pictures, of the robot appearing outside Armada HQ and climbing straight up the side of the building so quickly it seemed to fly. She'd always had a vivid imagination and now it was in overdrive; her heart began to thump in her chest. That hulking metal beast was climbing and stalking right above them. She couldn't get the image of the blade out of her mind; she imagined the thing picking her up and slashing at her throat again and again, her bright blood gushing and spraying all over. She took deep calming breaths, pushed the thoughts away and forced her attention back to the situation at hand.

"Wait," she said. "Why did it let itself be captured on camera? The CCTV footage is controlled by the government, but why let itself be captured on our own cameras? Unless... " The realization hit her. "It's attacking right now. It doesn't matter if we see it because we won't have time to prepare before it destroys us."

She turned and ran back to the weapons locker. She pulled out as many of the drawers as she could, searching desperately through the contents. "It's a robot, a robot, a damn robot." It must have some weakness. She found what she was looking for: the EM grenades, which generated a powerful radiation field that disrupted machinery and scrambled its instructions. She pulled out a couple of batches and stuffed them into a backpack. She had no idea if they would work, but it was worth a try. She also packed an electric taser, which fired a metal rod into its target before delivering a powerful electric current. She couldn't think what else to pack, and besides the other mutants up there probably had more firepower than most of these firearms, so she decided to leave it at that. She took another mag pistol and a couple more clips of ammo and hoisted them on her belt. Being laden down with all these instruments of death felt awkward; she was a healer, not a fighter. But she could give as good as she got when the situation called for it. And somehow the knowledge that their enemy was a machine, not a real, thinking, feeling person, made her feel less conflicted about taking part in the battle. It also made her terrified. Humans could feel mercy, hesitation, doubt and guilt. They could be reasoned with or pleaded with. But a machine would only follow its orders to the letter and feel nothing.

She turned to Seamstress. "Let's go up."

She hadn't wanted to fight, but now she was fighting for her life.