The watchmen moved like a horde of the dead, flesh hanging from machine. Some wielded weapons—swords, guns, knives, batons—while others used hands of gears, wires, and plating, tearing the armored royal guards in two.
The cyborg restraining Rora dropped her as though he’d entirely forgotten her existence and ran toward an oncoming soldier.
Reaching for her crutch, Gwen scrambled to her feet and hurried over to Rora. “Come on!”
Rora wrapped an arm under Gwen, and the two narrowly missed an arctic bear as it barreled over the ground where they’d just been. Screams erupted as the creature sank its teeth into the nearest soldier, tearing his arm from his body with its cyborg jaws.
But it wasn’t just the watchmen and the animals.
Around them, the performers fell on top of the soldiers. They didn’t flinch as the bladed end of the guns stabbed through flesh and machine. Clawing at each other as much as the soldiers, one by one, the performers took the soldiers down.
Bodies sodden with blood littered the floor like discarded set props.
Mouth agape, Gwen and Rora stared at each other. The performers, watchmen, and animals had turned into mindless zombies, throwing themselves into danger to kill the emperor’s soldiers. Yet… Gwen and Rora were unaffected.
Before Gwen could think more about it, she spotted movement.
Emmeline moved across the ballroom toward the emperor. Bears, lions, tigers, and every other cyborg animal moved around her as though programmed not to touch her.
Bastian’s chip.
Lunging, Gwen caught Emmeline’s ankle, and they both tumbled to the ground and into the middle of the roaring beasts.
“Get off me!” Emmeline screamed as she clawed at Gwen with her metal fingernails.
Managing to dodge a few of Emmeline’s swipes, Gwen scrambled on top of the Mistress. As she did, Emmeline became more frantic, her talons biting into Gwen’s neck, face—whatever she could reach.
“I know why you are unchanged,” Emmeline gasped, eyes fearful. “But why are they? No one else should be able to move on their own right now.”
They?
Looking up, Gwen spotted Marzanna, still bound at the wrists, as she retreated into a corner, away from an approaching soldier. Rora had picked up one of the watchmen’s wooden batons and hurried after her.
Gasping, Gwen realized what she meant.
The only cyborgs in the ballroom not under Emmeline’s control were the two Gwen had tinkered. Somehow, tinkering with their chips using the portable mainframe a few weeks ago had saved them from this fate.
The coding.
Gwen must have overridden the Mistress’s coding. Either that, or rebooting their system had. But why wasn’t Gwen a mindless zombie? She couldn’t tinker her own chip.
Emmeline landed a blow to Gwen’s jaw, and she toppled sideways. The Mistress pushed to her feet, screaming as she watched the emperor and a troop of his soldiers disappear through a doorway.
Groaning, Gwen struggled to get up. Where had her crutch gone?
“I’ll finish you later,” Emmeline hissed before watchmen surrounded her and marched in pursuit of the emperor.
Crawling over to where her crutch had fallen a short distance away, Gwen grabbed it before hurrying after her friends.
Screaming, Marzanna held up bound hands as the soldier aimed his gun. At the same time, Rora swung the wooden baton against his breastplate, which rang loudly. Spinning, he turned and prepared to fire his gun at Rora.
Raising her pistol, Gwen aimed and fired.
The bullet landed neatly between the soldier’s eyes. He swayed for a moment before collapsing.
Hearing the gunshot, nearby soldiers turned. Within moments, countless soldiers descended upon them. Far more than Gwen could have fought off on a good day, and there wasn’t time to reload her pistol.
“We have to get out of here!” Rora grabbed Gwen, hauling her toward the ballroom doors.
Marzanna ran behind them with the soldiers at her heels.
With trembling hands, Rora unbolted the ballroom door, and they narrowly missed several gunshots.
Not knowing where they were going, they turned down countless hallways, desperate to get away from the madness. But the voices of soldiers were never far behind.
“In here!” Marzanna opened what could only be a storage closet before the three pushed inside and closed the door after them.
The three women breathed heavily, trying to suppress their gasping breaths as the soldiers trundled past the closed door. When the sounds of their footsteps faded, air whooshed out of Gwen’s lungs.
Looking around, she noticed a handful of cleaning supplies and a small window in the corner of the room, which let in enough sunlight to see.
“What happened?” Rora whispered. “Why is everyone acting like that?”
“And why aren’t we mindless soldiers?” Marzanna added.
Quickly, Gwen explained her revelation.
“I have to go back,” Marzanna said. “I have to find Akio.”
Removing a knife from her boot, Gwen cut the bonds on Marzanna’s wrists. “We will. But we need a plan if we have any hope of saving everyone and getting off this planet alive. Because we can’t stay here. If the Mistress doesn’t kill the emperor, the man will hunt us down after today. If not as retribution for what Emmeline did, he will search for us in his crazy plan to make a weapon to destroy all cyborgs.”
Rora paled.
“As if our lives weren’t complicated enough.” Marzanna sighed heavily. “What do you have in mind?”
Gwen scratched the shaved side of her head. “My last plan failed spectacularly.”
“Well,” Rora began, “there are only three of us and a lot more of them. We’ll need a distraction.”
Nodding, Gwen said, “Did either of you see the dragon when the cyborg animals appeared?”
Slowly, they both shook their heads.
“You want to free it.” Understanding dawned in Rora’s piercing brown eyes. “I’ll bet it’s still in the stable. The Mistress probably wasn’t able to turn it into a cyborg she could control in time, so she would’ve left it behind.”
Thank the stars for small mercies. The damage a dragon under Emmeline’s control could have done would have been earth-shattering.
“I’ll release the dragon,” Rora said. “I can move the fastest and climb through the stable window, if need be.”
Gwen turned to Marzanna. “That leaves rescuing Bastian and Akio to us. We’ll also need to find Emmeline to get Bastian’s chip back and convince her to set the cyborgs free. If we don’t, all of the performers and watchmen will die in her crazy plan for revenge.”
“If we don’t,” Marzanna said, “she’s going to start a war.”
She probably already has.
“More reason not to fuck up,” Gwen said. “Rora, once you free the dragon, meet us in the palace gardens. We’ll regroup with as many people as we can and head for the docks. Hopefully, we can get Obedient up and running before the city is on high alert and its friendly citizens are upon us.”
Adjusting the crutch under an arm, Gwen reached for the door.
“Wait.”
Stopping, Gwen turned to Rora. “What is it?”
Shifting past the cleaning supplies, Rora came closer to Gwen. “Before we go, there’s something I need to say.” Pausing, she bit her lip. “I’m sorry. For my part in using you, I’m so sorry. But I care about you, Gwen. And I’m going to prove it. You’ll see.”
Marzanna cleared her throat.
Not knowing what to say, Gwen simply nodded. “Alright then. Let’s go save the cyborgs. Shall we?”
With a racing heart, Gwen watched Rora disappear down a hallway, headed for the courtyard and the stable beyond.
Checking the hall a second time, Gwen and Marzanna headed back toward the ballroom. As they did, they encountered countless bodies lying in the hallways, both cyborg and human. Reaching down, Gwen picked up a gun and passed it to Marzanna. She then reloaded her pistol and took several knives off the bodies and stuck them in her empty sheaths.
As they neared the ballroom, raised voices echoed down the hall.
“Titus! Come out and face me, you coward!”
Emmeline.
Gwen and Marzanna hurried toward the sound.
Down several more hallways, Emmeline and a group of fifty watchmen stood before a massive oak door with metal embellishments. The watchmen had somehow acquired a table and were ramming it into the door. Splinters of wood flew in every direction while the door appeared unchanged.
As Gwen approached Emmeline, the sound of bells in the city proper sounded through the windows. The city knew something was amiss.
They were running out of time.
If they didn’t get the hell out of the palace and soon, there would be soldiers and mobs of angry humans. Neither of which Gwen fancied seeing today.
“Emmeline! Stop!” Hobbling over to the Mistress, Gwen had to shout to be heard above the city’s tolling bells and the banging of the table against the door. “Look around you!” She gestured to the countless bodies, both human and cyborg, that littered the hallways. “How many good people are you going to kill for your vendetta? If we don’t leave now, we’re all dead.”
“I’m almost there.” Emmeline spoke as though talking to herself. Sweat beaded on her temples, and her normally immaculate red hair was in disarray.
“There’s no way you’re making it through that door anytime soon,” Gwen said. “And the longer we wait, the closer the city guard is to filling the palace. The feds will be here soon if they aren’t already.”
Even though her eyes were trained on the door as the watchmen pounded the table against it, doubt flickered in Emmeline’s gaze.
“What the emperor did to you and your family is unspeakable.” Gwen leaned closer to the Mistress. “I’m sorry about what happened. But these cyborgs”—she pointed at the watchmen—“are relying on you. They are your creations and your new family. They need you to protect them now. Protect them like you wish you could have protected your other family.”
Gwen thought of the family she couldn’t remember, her memories of them completely gone.
Slowly, she dropped her hand to the pistol at her hip. She didn’t reach for it, though. Instead, she waited, watching Emmeline.
If the Mistress wasn’t going to protect the cyborgs, then she had to be taken down. Gwen prayed she could figure out that damned remote control quickly enough to get the cyborgs to head toward the docks.
When Emmeline sighed, it was as though the eye of the storm settled over them. Despite the bells in the distance, there was quiet as the group of watchmen stopped and held the splintered table between them, sensing their Mistress.
Removing a device from her pocket, Emmeline clicked several buttons. Suddenly, the remaining watchmen and performers turned from the door and moved to surround Emmeline, Gwen, and Marzanna.
Gwen nodded. “Are the performers programmed to know where to go? Or can you return their free will?”
Emmeline shook her head. “I need to manually work on each chip to remove my override. For now, all of the cyborgs know to retreat to the ship.”
That would have to be good enough for now.
“Have them meet us in the gardens.”
In the ballroom, Marzanna ran to Akio, who sported a number of superficial injuries but nothing fatal.
Scanning the room, Gwen looked for the one person she longed for most in the world.
She spotted Bastian at the back of the ballroom, standing at the door leading to the gardens. Hurrying over, she ran a hand over his face, which was smeared with blood. She looked over him before sighing in relief. Thank the stars, he didn’t appear to have any major injuries either.
“I can’t wait to have you back,” she whispered.
His gaze was fixed on a far wall, his eyes vacant.
As the cyborgs filtered into the gardens, Gwen waited beside Bastian at the door.
Emmeline appeared with the last of the watchmen. Even now, their unmasked faces were startling. Flesh and machine layered over each other as though the Mistress had tried to fit as much of the technology as she possibly could into each person.
Before Emmeline could walk past her, Gwen caught her arm. Allowing her crutch to clatter to the floor, she removed the pistol from its holster and cocked it. She didn’t point it at the Mistress, but the implication was clear. “I’ll ask nicely only once. Before we go any farther, give me Bastian’s chip. Right fucking now.”
Emmeline’s eyes narrowed as something primal flickered across her gaze. Slowly, she reached into a hidden pocket on her dress before passing a small object to Gwen. Glancing down, she held a small chip with the strange marbling.
Slowly, she raised the pistol to Emmeline. “Fuck with Bastian’s brain or memories again, and you’re a dead woman.” Turning from the Mistress, she glanced around at the crowd of unmoving cyborgs. “What the fuck are you all waiting for? Let’s go!”
As Gwen tucked Bastian’s chip into a pocket, she breathed a sigh of relief. But she didn’t dare to hope. Not yet. They still had to make it out of Allegiant alive. And there was no telling what awaited them outside of the palace gates.
Skidding to a halt, Gwen looked around as the cyborgs marched through the gardens and toward the main gates.
Turning to Marzanna, Gwen said, “Where’s Rora?”