(This is only the second draft of the book Worthless. Expect typos, plot holes, odd subplots and the occassionally wrongly named character, especially minor characters. It is made public only to give people a rough idea of how the final story will look)

Chapter 53

The entire city really was a traffic mess. Cars were blocking everything, traffic jams the like of which I had not seen in Nakskov my entire life. Every single one had a logical explanation, from a flat tyre blocking other cars to complex gridlocks that made it impossible for anything to move. We took the more obscure route, back around the sugar factory and the gravel paths around the harbor. The traffic situation had people distracted, but a young girl running at blazing speeds with a smaller, younger girl piggybacking would likely still turn a few head, if done too publicly!
The moment we left the city streets, we left the traffic chaos. The entire thing had an insane and completely artificial feel to it, as if cars were breaking down and crowding up on purpose. The woman in white had orchestrated it, somehow, there was no point in doubting that. But the question remained why, and what else she had been doing.
We soon found that out.
As the small hamlet that surrounded the old school buildings came into view, Emilie slowed down. It was not entirely out of the blue. The last long stretch, mostly just long, straight road, she began to wobble, losing her bearings a little, and then a little more. The trees near the school had just come into view when she finally stopped completely.
"What's..."
"Legs," she panted, gritting her teeth soon after. As I climbed inelegantly off her back, I gave her legs a quick look. They were covered in skintight leggings, under her greyish knee-long cutoff jeans. They also looked very wrong! The shins were slightly twisted and a bit more bent, one of them clearly in multiple places.
"Can you even walk on those?" I asked, letting a bit of my horror at the sight slip into my voice.
"Honey, I can dance the lambada during a kickboxing match," she answered, utterly out of breath, yet grinning wide, "I just can't run like that anymore."
She looked like a drunk, stumbling slightly with each step she took, but she made it forward.
The leaves on the trees made odd sounds around us, a rustling that seemed too fast and constantly stopped and started. Emilie was the first to look up, and she stopped at what she saw, poking me in the shoulder, then pointing up. It looked like clear skies, at first. But watching the clouds felt like watching a phone screen as its camera showed what it saw. Colors were weirdly off in places, and there was an ever so slight stutter to the various streaks that could be seen.
"Capture ships," Emilie whispered, "like the ones at the house." She then looked away from the strange skies, and instead looked straight at me. "She usually only uses one."
I had no time to pry her for stories of how she would know that. Looking back, towards town, the sky looked the same in way too many places.
"She's definitely using more than one here," I mumbled a bit out loud. Then I started running towards the school. It took a second to notice that Emilie still stuck to walking speeds, but she just waved me off.
The place was crawling. There were people everywhere, turning the sleepy little community into something that resembled an open air rave fest during a half hour break. A bizarre mix of ages, styles, ethnicities and other population groups stood around in one big, very evenly spaced mass. None of them moved. Some turned their heads as I walked discretely along the sidewalk, my hoodie covering my face in case of recognition. It was a gamble, a bet that they were waiting for the woman's orders, or for something else, and that they were not supposed to attack random strangers. Anything else would be insane, causing a free-for-all mass brawl the moment some hapless local went for a walk with his dog. No, they were robot copies of locals, waiting for their owner to oversee the last onslaught on the school. Vanity or tactics, she was not gambling it on the dubious initiatives of a bunch of machines.
The school grounds were watched closely. Near any door, they cluttered in dense packs. To keep up appearances, I took a turn in the other direction, seeking out the small grocery store nearby. The bell dinged, and a very bored teenage boy sprang to life behind the counter.
"Hey!" he proclaimed with a smile. Something told me that the parade of mindless drones outside was frightening away the usual clientel.
"Hey," I cleverly replied, flashing him a courtesy smile, perfectly aware that my tight hoodie and solemn demeanour made me look a lot like I had something to hide.
"I'm not, you know, gonna rob the place or anything," I let slip out, my thoughts briefly overclouding my better judgment.
"Oh, that's really, like, cool of you," the boy replied, smiling and nodding as if applauding my life choices.
"What's with the festival of duh out there?" I asked, pointing out to the street. He shrugged, looking like he was awkwardly trying to think of something funny to say.
"They've been there for a few hours. I think it's like, a flash mob or something. You know, performance art?"
"For hours? Out here? There's nobody to see it."
He looked toward the street, entirely by reflex, since he had no nearby window to actually look through.
"Rehersal?" he guessed, trying to salvage the idea. I just nodded, not wanting to be impolite, or to waste a lot of time on aimless debate. Instead, I walked over and picked the first diet cola I spotted.
Outside, I made a conscious effort to open the soda loudly, forcing the notion that it was my sole reason for even being there. A chill ran down my spine as every robot copy, in true B-movie horror fashion, turned to look at me, silently and without moving. Just dozens and dozens of lifeless eyes. Losing my cool for a second, I took a step back. To my horror, I bumped into something. Turning my own head, I found myself looking at the boy from the store.
"Are you Ida?" he asked, and I could feel the hair on my arms stand up!
"No. Nope, definitely not," I answered, quickly forcing on a smile. "Hi, I'm Roberta, I'm here for the... over at the... you know? Could you hold this for me?"
Smiling like a complete tool, I handed him the can of soda to hold. A bit surprised, he took it and, for just the briefest of moments, stared at it. I suckerpunched him in the gut before he had a chance to look back up at me.
Everybody was suddenly moving! Like gathering flies, the dozens of robot people in the street casually strolled towards me, not even showing enough respect to at least run! There was no way out, no way back, no way through. They were everywhere!
Which was when a rumbling sound pierced the air! Sounding like a thousand growling dogs, a bright green tractor plowed its way through the robot copies a bit farther down the road, and the ones surrounding me stopped, looking first at it, then at me, then it again. And then, they finally ran!
"Holy shit, this baby can move!" screamed Emilie as she drove the tractor straight through the ones that failed to get away in time, obstructed by their robot buddies. "Climb on!"
I looked at the chunks of robot sprayed across the road, then at the plexiglass door that she had kicked open to invite me into the vehicle. But then, I looked past it.
"It's too big!" I shouted, pointing at the school building nearby. The gate leading into the schoolyard was clearly meant for cars only. Emilie looked at the building, then looked back down the road.
"Other entrances?"
"Holy #*@!, are those robots?!" I suddenly heard the boy in the store yell out.
"Is he a robot?" yelled Emilie from the tractor.
"Oh #*@!," I heard myself whisper. "Dude, I'm so sorry, it's just... I'm under a lot of... Forget it, is there a back door?"
He nodded, frantically, eyes wide open.
"Go, get, run. Get away."
He kept staring wildeyed at me, and a bit out the door.
"#*@!ing schoo, dude!"
Scrambling to get on his feet, he turned to run, then stopped.
"Look, don't hurt me, but this guy got here before the... them. He said for someone called Ida to find him by the courtyard entrance with the big tree."
Giving me and the robot debris in the street outside one last look, the boy darted off to find the escape exit from it all, leaving me with little more than a guilty feeling in my gut for punching him in his gut.
"It's not gonna work, we need to get in there!" I yelled at Emilie as she tried to figure out what most other things in the tractor were meant to do. She mouthed some silent cursing as she slammed the dashboard, her eyes scanning the near surroundings for the robot copies that survived and were now fishing for a revenge strategy. Without warning, she stomped down her foot on the accelerator. The metal monster roared and fought its way to a good speed, crushing damaged robots and debris underneath its huge wheels.
The gate was not that far away. It was tempting to just run. The robots were now moving faster, clearly feeling more urgency. Assuming that was even a thing for them, of course, feeling something. And inside the gate, waiting patiently in the courtyard, I could see more of them. They were like a plague of locusts, feeding off the school buildings, eyeing out me as some next meal on legs. They were all here, it seemed, with none dropping down from the invisible ships above. Or maybe they were just invisible, too, until they touched ground.
"Hop on!" a shout suddenly called out, and everything went dark as the rear of the large tractor was parked up against the store, forcing me back inside! A small step, perhaps for maintenance or when attaching tools to the big vehicle, was just low enough that I could get on.
"It's too big, Em, the gate is too old!" I yelled, but rather than an answer, I first got an ear full of revving engine.
"It'll fit!" she yelled back between revs. "Eventually!"
Wondering what the hell that meant, I clutched the nearest thing that even looked like a railing, as the machine roared to life and thrust forward.
"Watch your head!" came the warning from inside the canopy, and I looked around bewildered, the machine taking up enough space that I could stand on my own shoulders before having my head in any kind of...
The tractor slammed into the old building with a loud crash! Spinning on compacted dirt and gravel, the mighty wheels effectively became digging shovels, ripping through the quaint old pathway leading into the courtyard. Emilie's warning still in my head, I ducked close to the machine and covered my head with as much hood as I could, right before a deep crunch was folowed by twisted metal and splintered plexiglass tumbling down from up there. I wanted to look, to know what the hell she was doing, but I was in no way ready to risk my eyes for it! For a good minute or so, the world was a spray of gravel and a flood of scraping, screeching sounds from above, the tractor making irregular, sudden thrusts forward.
And then, it was free! I nearly lost my grip as the entire vehicle bolted forward for a few seconds, until she got it under her control again. Crushed plaster from the top of the arched gate fell like snow from my hood as I peeked out at the world again, and I immediately turned, still clutching the tractor's railing, to see a nasty chunk scraped from the top of the tunnel into the courtyard, more plaster everywhere, mixing with metal and plexiglass debris. And just outside the tunnel, multiple robots were flailing about, much of their outer layers sandblasted away by the gravel spray. They looked like large, broken toys.
"They don't, like, shoot anything, right?!" yelled Emilie from atop the tractor, in what had moments earlier been the canopy. Now, it was a few metal bits sticking up, bent back and out of shape.
"I actually don't know," I answered, realizing how quickly everything could have ended on that account. "I don't think so, they're just cheap copies of people."
A jolt went through the tractor the instant I finished reassuring her, and moments later, more robot parts flew by, spat out by the big wheels. From the best of my assesments, she was taking the entire courtyard, either for safety's sake or as a destructive victory lap. It only ended once she got to the main entrance of the school. As the wrecked tractor came to a halt, me dangling like a pair of fluffy dice behind it, I could see Mischa's baffled face through the entrance windows, gaping out at us.
"Jesus, what did you... Oh shit, is that the running girl?!" he shouted from the door as he opened it for us. His eyes quickly scanned the courtyard for any surviving robots to come attack, but Emilie's rampage had cleared the area quite well. For now.
"Yeah, friends call me Emilie," she said as she ducked through the door, having more or less just jumped down to the ground on her bent legs.
"Hi, Emilie..." Mischa confusedly replied, looking over at me as I dangled back and forth like a landlocked sailor. "You okay!"
I gave him two thumbs up, fearing that any more spoken words would be followed by me hurling!

"What the hell are they doing out there?"
Emilie's question gave a soft echo down the empty hallway. We had quietly and quickly found our way inside and up to the best viewing point towards the world outside. Through locked glass doors, we could see more and more of the robot copies gather outside, the smashed ones being carried away to a spot amongst some trees, sheltered from view by anyone passing along the road. Cables like tentacles appeared out of a flicker to lower new robots down and take away the broken ones. A casual eye would never notice the shimmering shape hovering just above the trees, but once you knew where to look, the ships were hard not to notice.
"Why aren't they just rushing us? They could smash through these doors like they were made of corn flakes."
Mischa and I looked at each other, neither wanting to admit how little we still understood. I could see by the look in his eyes that he still thought of her as the unwilling ally cornered in the street. No doubt he expected her to smash through the door, jump down the stairs and disappear into the horizon again.
"They've been there for hours," Mischa said, not really answering anything, perhaps even making the question even more puzzling. "They just stand around most of the time, but some of them kinda pace the ground or something. It creeps me the #*@! out."
There was that old scifi horror vibe to them. Mindless people, ganging up like a zombie horde. The less they physically did, the more disturbing they seemed.
"There's a time machine below this place," I said, a bit out of the blue. I had no answers, but felt that they both deserved some kind of information, useful or not.
"A what?" asked Mischa, turning his eyes away from the glass door.
"Time machine," Emilie echoed. "This whole place is a pirate relay for illegal time travel."
"Pirates?! What the #*@! is going on here, Ida?"
I wanted to give a clear and concise answer, but my mind wasn't really finding the exact words. In a fit of desperation, I found myself looking at Emilie.
"Time travel is illegal, kinda," she said, sounding very annoyed with either what she said, or that she had to say it. "Those who don't fall in line get hunted down and taken back. Or worse."
She paused in a peculiar way, as if her thoughts became distant with that last remark. She soon snapped back, though.
"So some time travelers got pissed and started helping those who wanted to get away. And now these rebels or whatever you wanna call them are getting hunted down by the ones in charge. And they've got a time machine somewhere in here, apparently. It's hooked into some technobabble main timestream highway or something that the ones in charge also use."
"Like pirating cable," Mischa added, as if it was the most normal thing in the world. But he didn't think any of this was normal, I could see that in his eyes. He was too calm, too focused, too unemotional. He did that, when things got too big to fit in his view of the world. The only question was how long he would, because after that...
"We still have a situation here, people," I said calmly, taking an extra peek out the glass door. The robot copies were still out there, slowly rebuilding their numbers after Emilie's little tractor stunt.
"What? They're not doing anything," Mischa remarked.
"Yeah, that's kinda what freaks me out."
My mind raced. They just stood there, looking around. It looked like the biggest, most boring garden party in Nakskov history.
"They're waiting," Emilie mumbled, clearly speaking what she was thinking, without a filter. "They're waiting for someone to... I don't know, tell what to do? They're machines, they don't act on their own. Right?"
Immediately thinking of my own robot copy, who had taken things into her own hands, I got nervous about the truth in that. It made sense, especially given the situation. But still...
"They're waiting for her," I mumbled, barely even knowing why.
"Her? The white lady?"
"Yeah. She needs to be here."
"Why?"
I looked at the both of them, buying a bit of time to gather my thoughts and phrase everything right.
"The rebel time travelers gave me a task," I sighed, wishing I could have found a way around the matter. "The time machine is broken, and it keeps them from using it. It also leaks some time travel energy stuff that #*@!s up every time traveler that gets near it. That's why they haven't fixed it."
Both of them looked at me, but while Mischa was just trying to keep up, Emilie was clearly crunching with some thoughts, fitting this new information into something she already knew.
"The woman in white can't get close, not in a normal way, at least. She has stuff that can neutralize this time energy crap, but I only ever saw her do it in small doses."
The image of the woman poking me in the chest with the weird rod that sucked the time energy out of me bubbled up in my mind, and I had to suppress it to focus on the matter at hand.
They were still waiting outside. The wrecked bodies had been taken away, replaced with new ones. I could spot several just from the window who I had seen destroyed. Square one. We were back at it.
"Wait, this is, like, a rebel base or something, right?" asked Mischa, his eyes suddenly glowing with renewed energy.
"Yeah, why?"
"Nobody would put something as crazy as a time machine in a place that's not defended, right?"
Both Emilie and I were suddenly looking at him with annoyed anticipation.
"What you getting at, dude?" asked Emilie.
"Mischa," said Mischa. "My friends call me, well, Mischa. And I mean, there must be some kind of defenses around here. Traps, weapons, something. Right?"
It made sense. In a single look at Emilie, I could tell that she agreed.
"Spread out," Emilie said, speaking about as much with her hands as with her words. "We need to cover as much ground as possible."
We all bolted in different directions, never stopping to plan anything. Of course, that only dawned on me as I was running down the stairs to the lower level of the building. Standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking at the dirty, slightly messy space around me, I felt my heart pounding at the thought of having to cover an entire floor by myself! That, and the sudden sprinting down stairs probably got the pulse up a bit, too.
I ran straight for the room that had the time machine hidden beneath the floorboards. It looked perfectly normal, like any storage room at an average school. A few shelves, a few rolling tables, but nothing else worth remarking. The adjacent room had heavier tables and lots of cupboards, but everything was still empty, apart from a few art supplies abandoned ages ago by long forgotten students. Then I felt a buzz in my pocket.
"Is prolly hid. L 4 secret shit," said the text from Mischa. I looked up and looked around the room again. If there was anything hidden, it was hidden well, not a weird mark or...
In two leaps, I stood in the room with the time machine hidden under the floor again. For seconds that felt like an eternity, I fumbled at the door, trying to find whatever hidden sensor would open the thing. And then, I heard a click!
Stepping back, I just barely avoided the floorboards as they began shifting around. Like before, they unfolded like some giant's origami project, boards sliding under and over boards to open up a passage down to... well, that was the question.
The same pale light met me as had met me before, as well. Blue, mostly, with green streaks in the mix, forming a strange techno rave display on pause. There were flickers, brief lapses in the steady lights, but they seemed to be unintentional, perhaps caused by a bad power connection or dust getting in front of a lightsource.
The stairs down were crude, the first part dug into the foundation of the building like some kind of mine, the last part dug into the earth beneath and supported by makeshift beams made of whatever strong materials had apparently been at hand at the time. Some were thick wooden beams, others were salvaged equipment made from old steel. This was no sleek rebel base. It was an emergency operation.
In the far end of the rather large room that had been crudely excavated, a platform stood, surrounded by five weird, bendy towers, looking more than anything like fingerhs reaching up from beneath. With jury-rigged screens and old computers wired together around it, it screamed time machine to anyone who knew what this place was used for.
My eyes quickly moved beyond the bizarre monstrousity, gliding over the walls and fixating on a series of slanted metal crates. A bit hesitantly, I walked over to the nearest one, examining it with every step I took towards it, to the point that I nearly tripped and fell over scattered bits of gear that were clearly discarded from somewhere. The crates themselves looked like refitted cargo boxes, the kind that planes and cargo trucks might use. That similarity evaporated when I actually got close enough to touch one of them.
"dwnstirs nw" was all I wrote, cursing every letter I felt could not be cut. The text only got sent when I moved out of the artificial cave, the signal too weak to break through whatever stone and dirt surrounded it, and concrete above. Both Mischa and Emilie came racing down, Emilie almost collapsing on her damaged legs going down the stairs!
"We've got gear," I told them, brandishing an almost excited smile!
Going back down, both of them followed me very nervously as I descnded the crude stairway. Even before they reached the bottom, they both stopped to stare slackjawed at the contents of the underground cave, and perhaps at the cave itself, as well!
"Is that..."
Emilie never finished the sentence, her face contorted into a twisted knot of skeptic wonder.
"I think so," I answered calmly, "but I never really saw it used as a time machine."
Tossing Mischa a stray glance before focusing on the crates, I noticed an almost dead expression come over his face, as if he was having a stroke. Emilie began moving again, but he did not. He just stood there, near the bottom of the crude stairs, his eyes gazing into the distance.
"Hey, Misch... You okay?" I asked, feeling increasingly worried about the possible answer. He said nothing, and I waved at him, trying to catch some kind of attention. His lips slowly began moving, but his eyes stayed weirdly unfocused and aimed at the machine.
"That's a time machine?" he asked, something in his voice adding greatly to my worries.
"Yeah, think so," I answered, at first thinking nothing of it. It was a big thing to absorb, and he had already dealt with a lot over the last few days.
"A time machine" he repeated, his voice slipping away a bit.
"Yeah," I answered again, this time letting my voice show my worry a little more. "Misch, I talked about this. That's what's going on. There are time travelers in Nakskov. They have used this. But right n..."
"It's a time machine," he repeated. But this time, his voice sounded strangely firm and serious, although still also in some kind of shock. "It can go through time."
I looked over at the machine, trying to recall any and every detail that Karen had given me on how it worked.
"No, I think it just sends someone out. After some time in the psat or future, they snap back."
He was still staring at it. But all of a sudden, he slowly tilted his head. I noticed that he had tears in his eyes. He wasn't crying, but something was swelling up in him. I put the pieces together when he looked at the watch I had given back to him.
"Paul..." he whispered, from the looks of it mostly to himself. Then he flinched, turning his eyes straight at me. There was a fire in them I had never seen before. "Ida, I can get him back," he said in a loud but whispering tone. "I can... go back for him. Right?"
Before I could answer him, I felt Emilie's hand on my shoulder.
"We have no time. They could storm us at any time," she whispered in my ear. I could only nod.
"Misch, we can deal with that later. Right now we have..."
"I want him back!!"
The outburst made both Emilie and myself freeze up. Mischa was shaking, tears making their way down his face. The adrenaline had worn off, the stoic, singleminded Mischa was gone. Replaced, perhaps, with a differently singleminded one.
"Mischa, I barely know how to..."
"You're smart," he half yelled, half whimpered. "You have your freaky time travel friends. You can figure it out!"
I looked over my shoulder, seeing Emilie reach into the crate I had already opened. It contained the brass knuckle things that the time travelers had used to destroy robots before, lots of them, along with similar devices that seemed to be weapons based on the same technology. They all had a style that looked homemade, but unlike the room itself, they looked like nothing about them was improvised.
"Maybe!" I shouted, feeling a sudden chill infest my body. It was a mix of fear and guilt I had never felt before. "Maybe we can, maybe this thing can do it, but I don't know enough about it, and I don't think they are going to..."
"Make them!" he yelled, pushing his voice to the point that it broke. Becoming aware of how rash he sounded, I could see in his eyes how he regained some control of himself. His voice even calmed, at least a little. "I've helped you out, Ida," he almost hissed. "I've stuck my neck out like #*@! these last few days. I was there for you. Don't bail on me. Not on this. Not this, Ida."
With my heart hurting like someone had reached through my chest and beaten it, I looked at him for a few seconds, looked at how he was shivering, his fingers twitching and his breath so deep and rapid that his chest looked like a loudspeaker playing a rock opera.
"I will figure it out, Misch. I promise."
As I watched, his breath became steadily slower, and he started blinking a little more. Finally, he wiped tears away with the end of his sleeve.
"You promise?"
"I promise."
He remained at the end of the stairs, taking one last look at the time machine as it glowed a dull blue in the end of the room.
"Don't #*@!ing play me on this, Ida. I swe..."
"Not playing you. We do this, get all this over with, and we'll figure out how to do it."
It took him a few seconds, but in the end, he climbed down the last bit of stair. He never broke eye contact with me as he passed me towards the crates.

It was getting a little late. The first long shadows had appeared out on the open fields of grass around the buildings. The robot copies were still there as we came up from the basement, lugging whatever we could carry. Mischa and I was hauling the most, Emilie's legs showing more on more the burden of heavy ude while damaged. For the same reason, she was the one to look at the robots outside the most.
"Something's different," she muttered, making me rush over to look. "See, they're all standing a lot closer than before. And more of them are walking about."
I stared intensely at the figures pacing the lawn. At first, I saw nothing new, but it slowly dawned on me that she had a point.
"Emilie, does it look to you like they might be cleaning the lawn?" I asked, not really thinking about the oddity of those words.
"Why would they be..."
She stopped, and like a bad movie, we both turned at the same time, looking first at each other, then at the poorly lit floor.
"That black stuff on the floor, is that the stuff that's..."
"Yeah," I cut in, knowing very well where she was going with it. "It's from when the time machine blew. It #*@!s up any attempt to..."
"Mischa!" yelled Emilie in a move that should have made me flinch, but my fearful reactions were entirely centered on the robots outside. "They're clearing the way for the bitch in white!"
With little doodads dangling from shoulder, waist and hands, Mischa came stumbling down the hallway, his confused expression only just visible in the increasingly murky dark building.
"They what?" he asked, sounding half out of breath. I turned away from the glass door.
"They're not waiting. The #*@!ers are cleaning this black shit from the area so that their time traveling boss and her real minions can get through," I said through gritted teeth, feeling a growl in my throat as the words made their way out.
"They've been doing that for hours?" he asked, dumping items rather unceremonously on the floor near us. I nodded. "What about your time travel friends, didn't they need that to get here, too?"
The same thought had been running through my mind over and over since I realized it. And then, the pieces finally fell into place.
"Jesus #*@!ing Christ, I'm such a #*@!ing sap!" I hissed, punching the door so hard an actual crack appeared in one of the glass panes.
"What?" came the instant response from both of them. I was breathing heavy, trying to get my anger under control before answering them.
"How much you wanna bet that they counted on this? That they expected her to clear the way for them?"
Looking over the faces of the other two, I raised the anti-robot knuckle gun I had put on my right hand. I had one on the left, as well, but the rash punch at the door made me think it might need replacing.
"They've got all this shit, wanna bet they have a stash elsewhere? The robots clear most of the way, they come in blasting and use the machine to escape. Sound like a strategy to you?"
"What about the time..."
"They don't care about that," I interrupted him. "Once they're gone, who the #*@! cares if that bitch gets her hands on some crappy little time machine. I doubt she'd even care about it herself. She just wants to plug a hole."
"So they're betting this place will be overrun, with or without us in it?"
I leaned against the cracked pane, the feeling of betrayal weighing in my chest like a lead ball.
"I don't know. Maybe they had a way out for us, maybe not. I just know they want out, and they'll use whatever they can to get it."
"How about we #*@! up their plans?" said Emilie from behind us. We both turned to look at the girl as she fitted as many of the doodads to her body as humanly possible. She had even taken the skin-like shell off of her legs, leaving the internal mechanisms exposed and hanging more items from little protrusions on them. The bent steel core, effectively her artificial leg bones, looked like someone had whacked them over a rock, each of them bent in its own unique way. Nothing in her attitude hinted that she gave a #*@! about that right now.
"What you got in mind, Rambo?" asked Mischa, and I noted a look in his eyes that was more than just his curiousity being piqued.
Emilie took a few clumsy steps towards the door, each one letting her calibrate the weight of all the gear a little better, until she seemed barely affected by it at all.
"They expect the robots to do the cleaning and pave a way for them, right?"
We looked at each other, then at her, and nodded. "Can't clean much if we blow the hell out of them. Maybe we can even take down some of those flying #*@!ers, too."
Mischa didn't skip a beat, marching right over and grabbing everything his scrawny body could carry. I suddenly realized that I was smiling. Then I did the same.
The glass door unlocked with a thick click, and while I managed to push the handle down, it was Mischa who kicked the thing open. As Emilie and I ducked out, he covered us, firing the knuckle guns from both hands. With a quick glance, I noticed that very few of his shots actually seemed to hit, the dusty blue streaks flying through the air and striking the ground with no real effect. But a few found targets, causing limbs to overload and even a few heads to pop like fireworks in a lego model. Most of all, dozens of them turned to look at us as we made our way down the concrete staircase leading from the door down to the large parking lot on the opposite side from the courtyard.
We got to the bottom of the stairs easily, when Emilie pulled one of the doodads dangling from her naked metal legs. With an uneasy look at me, she pushed buttons on either side of it and threw it into the parking lot, while I fired the knuckle guns over her shoulder. For a moment, I refused to duck back down, carried away by how easily I hit the robots in the lot when they were all so close together. She pulled me down right before a powerful static filled the air, making hair rise and skin tingle. When we looked up again, nearly a dozen of them lay twitching on the ground while their comrades simply trampled them to get to us.
And then, they started firing back.
It started from behind their ranks, out in the grassy fields, orange and yellow streaks like thin lines cutting through the evening air. Like a very narrow hailstorm, they peppered the brick walls around us with sparks as they chipped away at the buildings. Then they moved forward.
"Ida," yelled Mischa from atop the stairs, "I think we may need your friends to join in!"
As I bolted back up the stairs, cursing under my breath at how it felt like a sudden retreat, I felt the warmth of the orange lines that came too close for comfort. Ducking inside the still open glass door, which had lost several panes at this point, I quickly smelled the stinging scent of burned clothes. In a desperate dance, I managed to put out the scattered holes in my clothes that lucky shots had left. Apart from one very sore mark, like a very local sunburn, I had lucked out. The few walls outside were not the best protection, but in retrospect, I felt lucky to not be dragging bleeding limbs behind me!
The noise from outside persisted as I rushed through the dark hallways and down the stairs. Every now and then, I could feel a strange electricity run through everything, guessing that another doodad had been thrown by one of them outside.
Only once I stood in the room, facing the time machine and the entire, wildly complicated mechanism of wires, computer parts and strange electronics, did the sounds from outside fade to nearly nothing. The soil and concrete around and above the artificial cave muffled it, making it sound like a very distant rumble somewhere. It seemed almost harmless that way.
Mumbling to myself what Karen had explained to me, I looked over the entire web of machinery. Behind the platform, she had said. Look for a large, dark grey box, one with a mess of wires and cables sticking out its top, but nowhere else. I found it, lurking silently behind a small wall of computers that had been disassembled and reassembled into some frankensteinian electronics monster. The grey box had a large swell in its side, like it had badly overheated.
As she had described it, there was a small metal handle on the top edge of the box, and I pulled it. The thing popped open like a cookie jar, and black smoke billowed out. Once it cleared, I could see the intricate mechanics inside. Three small latches, all of them bent slightly out of shape but still intact, came open with barely audible pops. The machine tried desperately to assist, some mechanism inside whining badly as it fought to push out the box that the latches had held in place, but failed. I fumbled a bit to pull out the manual handle attached to the box, and gave it a tug. It sounded like dragging wood on gravel, but the box finally came out. Suddenly unobstructed, the machine took over, moving the small box into place and opening it. And inside was the center of the entire debacle. A small block, about the size of a fat wallet, looking like a fancy external harddisk. Except it was cracked, with a dull green glow emanating from inside of it. I held it carefully between my fingers and lifted it out.
The instant it left the machine, everything changed. The dull blue light disappeared, replaced with bright lamps. The machine made a few mechanical sounds, and then the drawer that had held the broken part closed up on its own and slid back into place. Screens came on, parts moved into place. I stood there, watching the whole ballet for half a minute or so. Then came the shouts from upstairs!
I ran up, sprinting through the dark halls with feet lifted as high as possible to not trip over scattered clutter. Within what felt like less than a minute, I was at the glass door.
Everything was chaos. The robot copies had taken serious damage, and the invisible ships were doing their best to keep up, having the still active robots collect the fallen ones for repairs. But from unseen corners, down the road and behind scorched bushes at the far end of the vast lawns, blue bolts glittered as they zipped through the fading evening sunlight. Distant booms announced strange double explosions, orange flashes through which new figures seemed to arrive. The figures stumbling out of the explosions were immediately met by others, and soon after, they started firing the same blue bolts at the robots.
"I thought your said five time travelers?" mumbled Mischa, staring slackjawed into the rampant chaos of destruction. He had not fired even once since I came running up the stairs.
"I... I did. They must have had friends hiding somewhere!"
Even with what weaponry the robots had been given by their ships, it slowly turned from chaos to a slaughter, more and more explosions bringing new people in faster than the robots could be repaired.
"This is our chance, Ida," said Mischa in a strangely calm way. "We can leave. I don't think..."
His words got cut short by the crash of a window somewhere. Emilie, hiding behind the wall as before, lobbing the occassinal grenade doodad as a way to participate, suddenly came scrambling up the stairs, her legs on the verge of bending completely at this point.
"Their going through the windows," she growled as she clumsily ran by, looking like a drunk at high seas.
We stopped at the stairs. My brain was, on its own accord, mapping out the entire place, and the only real conlusion I could draw made me stop and block the others.
"We're never going to be able to cover it all," I panted, all while we heard more windows crack on the floor below. "We clear the hallways. Mischa and I go downstairs and cover a hallway each, they'll be coming in that way for the most part. Em, you shift between these two hallways. Take down any of them that get through."
Feeling almost confident about the strategy, I began down the stairs. When I realized that Mischa was not following, I turned to see both of them standing at the top of the stairs, still.
"Ida," said Mischa with a shaky voice, "are we going to die here?"
I sent Emilie a look, but found her looking just as terrified as him.
"Nobody is dying here," I said, in the most confident tone I had in me. They both took a second to compose themselves. Then they moved.
The sound of shattering windows was echoing down the downstairs hallway like slow footsteps. The first ones were already in the hall, walking at a fairly calm speed towards the open area by the stairs. Mischa and I, both of us dragging enough knuckle guns to supply a small invasion, silently took our places at each hallway. Giving each other a nod and taking a deep breath, we opened fire.
Blue glow illuminated the entire hallway, turning it bright as daylight, filling the air with the sound of robot bits rattling to the floor. We had watched war movies before, and clips kept bubbling to the surface of my mind. They were robots, soulless copies of people that were dead, likely because of the woman in white. And still, something felt weird about it. I kept reminding myself that we were very likely fighting for our lives, but still, something in me felt uncomfortable seeing them shatter and fall.
That all ended when the windows behind us shattered into tiny pieces around us! I tried to scream at Mischa, but all I could do was look on as copies scrambled through the windows surrounding the stairway between us. A few simply stepped through the door, but the rest had no patience for that, crashing through anything fragile enough to breach.
We both turned or aims on them, firing wildly down the hall and at the bursting stairway, but it felt like a flood. They walked over the wrecked remains of the fallen, pouring in without pause. It felt like drowning when a blinding blue flash filled the room.
"Elmer?"
Even before the debris of blown robot minds had all fallen to the floor, he stepped over the pile of shattered bodies on the floor. Behind him, Lisa and a handful of others followed, every last one of them armed to the teeth.
"Ida, nice to see you got the machine working," he replied in a terse voice, scanning the hallways and taking down a few surviving robots trying to get through.
"Yeah, great seeing you, too."
He gave me a look that seemed a bit more confused by the sarcastic remark than actually offended by it, as he moved through the place towards the room with the time machine. Those that had come with him never even gave me much of a look as they passed through. Amongst the last ones was Karen, who gave me a nod as she passed. I nodded back, letting her know that our agreement still stood.
"What just happened?" asked Emilie, climbing awkwardly down the stairs, her legs looking worse for every step that she took.
"I think we just won," I answered hesitantly.
"Yeah, we..." added Mischa, sounding very suspicious of the whole situation.
Even from the open area by the stairs, we could hear the machines in the artificial cave begin to charge. At first, I assumed it to be the time machine, but as the pops of remaining robots outside began to be heard, it became clear that some form of automated defenses had been turned on. While Mischa helped Emilie walk down the hall, I went ahead and down the stairs. I was just in time to watch as Karen put her hand on what looked like a scraped old touchpad hooked into the mess of computers. The creepy fingers around the platform seemed to dissolve into flying pieces, spinning around the person kneeling on the platform to fit inside of them. A bright flash filled the room, and nothing but dust fell to the floor. For a moment, I feared something had gone wrong, but everyone looked completely fine with the outcome, and the next person immediately stepped onto the platform.
"Should we maybe leave now?" asked Mischa, standing atop the crude staircase, Emilie leaning heavily on the wall behind him.
"I have something I need to do first, I just need them to be done with all of this." I pried my eyes away from the now once more spinning fingers and looked up at him as the flash erupted from the platform. "I really need your help to do it."
Disturbingly calm and stoic, Mischa walked slowly down the stairs. I could see in his eyes that he was tired, but forcing himself to nonetheless keep going. But behind that, I saw something else, something I had a hard time getting a real handle on.
"Ida, this has already gone too far. We've risked our lives, for #*@!'s sake," he said, or perhaps sighed, sounding like he was half saying goodbye. "What is there left to do?"
"You talked about Paul, right?"
The mention of his brother brought a intensity to his eyes that I was still not used to. He talked about him now and then, but that was memories. This was completely different, and with good reason.
"Ida, I want him back, but we need to be alive to do that," he said, his voice sounding as if he was forcing himself to speak calmly. Another flash from the time machine illuminated his face from the side, making him briefly look taller and more fierce than I was used to thinking of him as.
"We need to end this first," I sighed, turning to look at the next person step onto the platform. There were maybe ten more after that, which seemed like far fewer than we had seen outside. If Karen had explained, and I had understood, everything right, it looked like they had received some help from people arriving by time machine from other times. They would only stay here shortly and then disappear on their own. They would not need the machine. Only those escaping our time needed the machine.
"Why" he complained, his frustrations starting to shine through. "What the hell is it that you feel you have to prove?!"
I wanted to be angry. I wanted to tell him off, to scold him, for thinking just about himself. But I couldn't. He didn't. He would never have stuck it out if he did. He never did.
"They're out there, Misch. Tons of them. Others like her."
I looked up the staircase, at Emilie, who was now sitting on the floor, out of breath and out of strength, just trying to breathe calmly. Mischa briefly turned to look at her, too.
"Then we find them, help them one by one, as many as we can," he said, practically pleading his case. I wanted to give him that, wanted to agree and leave, leave and come back later to find a way to go back and save his brother. I wanted everything to be easy, everyone to be safe. But I knew that was not how it worked.
"We need to do more than that. We need to stop the ones hunting them."
Mischa made a few frustrated, growling sounds, clawing and rubbing his face to calm down.
"Why, Ida? What is it that..."
"If we don't, they could die!" I snapped at him, feeling my body tremble as another flash lit up the room. Outside, we could hear the battle continue, the ones that did not need the machine still taking down a horde of robot copies, no doubt.
"So could you!!" he yelled as his hands flew off his face and made strangling motions in mid air! "Do you understand this, Ida?" he added, his voice now low again, breaking, tears beginning to come from his eyes.
I nodded, shielding my eyes as I looked at the machine gearing up to send another person through time. There were four left, and then only Elmer, Lisa and Karen.
"I understand," I answered calmly, feeling tears press on the inside of my eyes, too. We stood quietly as we watched the machine send another person away, and then another. I finally broke the silence, still feeling my heart and throat make a tight and uncomfortable knot in my chest.
"You know why people love stories about religious saviors and great heroes saving the day?" I asked, Waiting a few seconds before looking at him. Judging by his face, the question had caught him completely off guard, which was hardly surprising. "Because everybody wants someone else to come along and solve all their problems."
He said nothing in reply, just stood there, a tired expression on his face.
"I'm tired of seeing people here suffer while I feel powerless to do anything about it, Misch."
I could feel it inside, that feeling that had been bubbling throughout so much of this whole ordeal, ever since I first saw the fear in Camilla's eyes. An anger. Bitterness, burning inside of me, wanting to lash out at something.
"I already started this. Its time to finish it."
Another flash glowed, and as the big fingers spun down to a stop, the last person before the ones I knew stepped onto the platform. As we watched, she knelt and soon after disappeared. As Elmer stepped up on the now empty platform and knelt down, he sent me a strange look. Anyone else might be excused for thinking it was stern, but I saw something else in it. I saw relief. Perhaps I even saw a bit of gratefulness.
The fingers spun, the flash appeared, and he was gone. As Lisa walked onto the platform, she gave Karen a nod, then looked at us.
"Good luck, Ida," she said, in a voice that made me worry a bit. I said nothing, though, just nodding back at her. She was gone soon after.
Listening to the noise that still raged outside, we all fell silent for a long moment. Finally, Karen stepped away from the screens.
"Do you..."
"I remember," I said, knowing what was on her mind. "Did you set a target?"
She nodded, smiling for the first time in a long while.
"Spain, 2280. I have some friends there. Well, some connections."
With those words, she stepped onto the platform. Before kneeling down, she sent me one last look as I took my place by the screens.
"Thank you."
I just smiled back at her. Then she knelt down, and I pushed a button. A second later, she was gone.