Lark tried to estimate. They kept coming and coming. A faint electrical tang carried on the wind as their steady, rhythmic march continued. “I don’t know. A lot.”
“What about trucks?” Skye asked. “Their human operators?”
Lark slowly rose to stand, easing behind a tree trunk. She scanned the column. They kept clicking by like wheels inside a pocket watch. “I don’t see any. Maybe they’re bringing up the rear.”
Suddenly, the entire army stopped. The first few rows shifted their weapons into firing position. The bear cub burst into a flaming ball of fur and fell from the tree with an agonizing cry. Lark’s heart beat faster.
“I think they have laser weapons,” Diego said in a stunned monotone. Lark glanced at him. He’d gone pale.
“Lasers?” Wes replied in disbelief.
“If they can build robots, they can construct lasers,” came Skye’s practical response. “They’re headed south, right? Along the road we were on when we split up?”
“Yeah,” Lark answered. They were marching again, leaving the charred cub and scorched tree behind. “I can see the end of their files now.” Empathy for the small bear threatened to flood her heart, but she had to remain focused on the mission. She couldn’t wait to direct her wrath toward the humans responsible. Only … “Hey, Captain? There aren’t any.”
“Any what?”
“Any people.”
The slap of metal feet on concrete slowly dissipated as the ranks of robots marched farther away. Their backs lacked individuality as much as their fronts. Oval heads mounted on armored bodies carrying weapons beyond Lark’s understanding. They might have the shape of a person, with arms and legs, but there was nothing human about them.
The pigeons cooed nervously from their crate on Lark’s back, as if they felt her tension and the threat below. “Shh,” she murmured. “It’s OK. They can’t get you.”
“What do we do now?” asked Diego.
“Follow them,” Luke instructed, “but from a safe distance.”
“Yeah,” said Lark. “The dirt bikes are loud, and we don’t know how well they hear.”
“At this rate, they could reach Stonevale by tomorrow,” Skye speculated. “Do they stop functioning when it gets dark?”
Wes answered, “They likely have battery-stored energy, but I can’t guess how long it would last.”
“OK, new plan,” said Luke.
Lark heard a muffled thud over her headset. “Are you OK? What happened?”
“Oh, just took a tree branch to the face,” he replied. “Lark, you write the messages and send two pigeons immediately—one to Nelanta, the other to Stonevale. Estimate a number. Tell them the robots are coming, and this is nota joke. Then follow them. Got it? Word has to reach our leaders before the mechanical army does.”
“Yes, sir, I’m on it.” Lark lowered the crate from her shoulder and noticed her whole body quivering. Maybe it was from the motorbike, or the adrenaline, or the realization of heightened stakes. Steadying her hand, she pulled a notepad and pencil from her pocket and scrawled the messages.
“Fly true, little pigeons,” she bade them, lifting each one skyward from the cliff top. She watched them fly south and southwest until they were both out of sight.
Chapter thirty-three
Sovereign
Clover Hollow, Appalachia, same day
Soren hadn’t left his father’s office since First Cipher LeCun called him in. He felt guilty leaving his mother and sister to handle his father’s affairs, confused about what had gone wrong, and devastated that he didn’t get to say goodbye.
Aides had brought in food and drinks. Soren and Dr. Halberg took turns napping on the couch, but neither had slept in two days. Adélard had kept his workspace antiseptically clean, his notes precise and in order. Only a single family photo served as a reminder that he had been a man, not a machine. Soren remembered the day it had been taken four years ago. It was on Illumination Day, and they had all attended the festival together. A photographer had a booth set up. Dad won a stuffed bear for Gabriella in one of the games. It had been a good day, a happy day.
Soren returned his focus to the terminal. He’d double-checked all his father’s programming, every algorithm and equation, and found no errors. He dug deeper into the keystroke records and systems layers, scrutinizing each line. Exhausted and on his last nerve, Soren spotted something that jerked him out of his haze.
“It migrated the advisory node into executive space,” Soren muttered, eyes racing over the code. “Dr. Halberg,” he said a few minutes later, voice sharp with suspicion. “There’s a supervisory layer in the stack that wasn’t here before.”
The older engineer swiveled his desk chair to face Soren. “Impossible. I didn’t—”