I hop backward and rub my foot where Yubin-kun has run it over. The machine’s intention light blinks at me frantically. On the wall, the red dot reaches my floor. My time is up.
A burst of cool air blows from the service elevator across the hall from the main elevator bank. Its door panel slides out of the way and I see a steel box inside, just a little bigger than the mailbot. On its sticky wheels, Yubin-kun slides into the cramped space with Mikiko still lying on top.
There is just enough room for me to squeeze inside, too.
As I enter, I hear the main elevator doors open across the hall. I look up just in time to see the plastic grin of the Big Happy domestic robot standing inside the blood-coated elevator. Streaks of red liquid bead on its casing. Its head twists back and forth, scanning.
The head stops, its lifeless purple camera eyes locked onto me.
Then, the door of my service elevator slides closed. Just before the floor drops out from under me, I squeeze out a few words to my new comrade. “Thank you, Yubin-kun,” I say. “I am in your debt, my friend.”
Yubin-kun was the first of Takeo’s comrades in arms. In the harrowing months following Zero Hour, Takeo would find many more friends willing to help his cause.
6. AVTOMAT
My day is going kind of nice.
In the wake of the congressional hearing regarding the SAP incident, Paul Blanton was charged with dereliction of duty and scheduled to be court-martialed. During Zero Hour, Paul found himself locked up on a base in Afghanistan. This unusual circumstance placed the young soldier in a unique position to make an invaluable contribution to the human resistance—and to survive.
Back in Oklahoma, my dad used to tell me that if I didn’t straighten up and act like a man, I’d end up dead or in jail. Lonnie Wayne was right about that, which is why I ended up enlisted. But still. Thank god I was in lockup for Zero Hour.
I’m laying on my cell bunk, back against the cinder block wall and my combat boots propped up on the steel toilet. Got a rag over my face to keep the dust out of my nostrils. I’ve been incarcerated ever since my SAP unit lost its mind and started wasting people.
I’m not the exercising type. For me, these six months have meant a lot of magazines to read. Staying warm means growing a beard.
Boring, sure, but all the same, my day is going kind of nice. I’m perusing a four-month-old issue of some stateside celebrity rag. Learning all about how “movie stars are just like us.” They like to eat at restaurants, go shopping, take their kids to the park—shit like that.
Just like us. Yeah. By us, I don’t think they mean me.
It’s an educated guess, but I doubt that movie stars care about repairing militarized humanoid robots that are designed to subdue and pacify a murderously angry population in an occupied country. Or being thrown into a thirteen-by-seven-foot cell with one tiny window just for performing your glamorous job.
“Bruce Lee?” I ask. He hates it when I call him that. “Did you know movie stars are just like us? Who knew, man?”
Jason Lee stops doing sit-ups. He looks up at me where I’m leaning back into the corner of our cell. “Quiet,” he says. “Do you hear that?”
“Hear wha—”
And then a tank round discharges through the wall across the room. A blazing shower of rebar and cement shreds my cell mate into big flabby chunks of flesh wrapped in what’s left of dust-colored army fatigues. Jason was here and now he’s gone. Like a magic trick. I can’t even process this.
I’m huddled in the corner—miraculously uninjured. Through the bars, I see the duty officer is no longer at his desk. There isn’t any desk anymore. Just chunks of rubble. For a split second, I can see through the new hole that’s been blasted in the wall across the room.
There are, as I suspected, tanks on the other side of it.
A cloud of frigid dust rolls into the room, and I start to shiver. Jason Lee was correct: It’s a cold motherfucker out there. It registers that despite the new renovation across the room, the bars of my cell are just as strong and steady as before.
My hearing starts to return. Visibility is nil, but I identify a trickling sound, like a creek or something. It’s what’s left of Jason Lee, bleeding out.
Also, my magazine seems to have disappeared.
Fuck.
I press my face against the mesh-wire-reinforced window of my cell. Outside, the base has gone FUBAR. I’ve got eyes on the alley leading to the main pavilion of the Kabul green zone. A couple of friendly soldiers are out there, crouched against a mud-brick wall. They look young, confused. They’re in full rig: backpacks, body armor, goggles, knee pads—all that crap.
How safe can safety goggles make a war?
The lead soldier peeks his head around the corner. He hops back, excited. He yanks out a Javelin antitank missile launcher and loads it, fast and smooth. Good training. Just then, an American tank cruises past the alleyway and spits a shell without stopping. It lobs over the base and away from us. I feel the building quake as the shell impacts somewhere.
Through the window, I watch the antitank soldier step out of the alley, sit down cross-legged with that log on his shoulder, and get filleted by incoming antipersonnel tank fire. It’s an automated tank protection system that targets certain silhouettes—like “guy holding antitank weapon”—within a certain radius.
Any insurgent would have known better.
I frown, forehead pressed against the thick window. My hands are jammed in my armpits to stay warm. I got no idea why that American tank just erased a friendly soldier, but I have a feeling that it has something to do with SAP One committing suicide.
The remaining soldier in the alley watches his buddy go down in pieces, turns, and runs back toward me. Just then, a billowing black cloth blocks my view. It’s a robe. A bad guy just crossed in front of my window. I hear small arms fire, close.
Bad guys
The robe flutters away and the whole alley just disappears, replaced by black smoke. The glass of my window buckles and fractures, slicing my forehead open. I hear the hollow concussion a split second later. I fall back onto my bunk, grab the blanket, and pull it over my shoulders. Check my face. My fingers come away bloody. When I look back out the fractured window, there are only dust-covered lumps in the alley. Bodies of soldiers, locals, and insurgents.
The tanks are killing
It is becoming very clear to me that I’ve got to find a way out of this cell if I want my future to include
