She found various holes and plugged them with the fingers of her right hand. One particular gap required her to press her entire index finger it from the side. She searched further with her other hand, but didn’t find anything else, and hoped she’d gotten all of them—she didn’t have much air left to expel from her artificial lungs.
She blew.
There was still resistance.
She blew again. Again. Less resistance that last time.
Again.
Barely any resistance. That final time, she also felt cool air on the fingertips serving as plugs.
Breathe!
And breathe she did, using the rifle barrel like a glorified straw. Her vision quickly returned to normal.
The Scorpion must have noticed when she expunged the air, because she received a broadcast. You deceiving bitch!
The foot stepped away, and no longer pinned her. Rhea immediately tried to push herself to the surface, but as she did so, a hand wrapped around her throat, and hoisted her forcibly from the pool. It lifted her into the air and spun her around, so that she hung directly in front of The Scorpion. His big fingers reached all the way around her neck, which was relatively tiny in comparison.
“I’ll choke the life out of you myself, then,” The Scorpion said, and squeezed.
Rhea slid her lips off the metal tube, and lowered it with one arm, letting it dangle beside her. She almost dropped it entirely as she struggled to breathe. But no air would pass through her constricted throat.
The flare yet burned, so that colors and textures filled out her LIDAR feed. Yet those colors were quickly growing dim once more, courtesy of her brain’s lack of oxygen.
Her gaze dropped to the rifle piece she held. The tip was jagged. Sharp. Something that could be used to penetrate.
She glanced at The Scorpion’s face, into that smug expression, and then her eyes dropped to his torso.
Then she rammed the metal piece into the lower right of his chest, using all her strength.
The tip penetrated his body, and then The Scorpion shuddered. He released her.
Rhea waded to shore, coughing and struggling for breath. Behind her The Scorpion continued to spasm beneath the light of the flare. His tail slapped the surface repeatedly, and at random. He walked toward shore, each step slower than the last, until finally he collapsed, his head smashing onto the rock right next to the pool. The rest of his body remained submerged. Well, except for his tail, which continued to randomly twitch. Otherwise, he didn’t get up.
The metal rifle protruded from his left side, where it had curled upward upon impact.
Rhea realized she had stabbed his power cell. That was the only way. Luck? No. She knew where it was, somehow.
The question was, how did I know that?
The placement of the power cell was different in all models of cyborgs. She knew that much from her Net browsing. Her particular power supply was located close to her heart, for example. It was usually well-armored, too, so some luck had been involved here.
Either way, the effect of damaging such a cell was deadly to a cyborg. Without power, the artificial lungs would cease to operate, and the human brain would soon die.
She sat down on the shore nearby and wrapped her arms around her knees so that she hugged her legs to her chest. She absently dismissed the LIDAR feed so that she was relying on the illumination from the flare alone, and then she stared at The Scorpion. His tail continued to occasionally spasm, though the intervals between each convulsion became longer and longer, with the intensity also less each time, until the tail, too, ceased all motion.
Rhea rested her head on her knees and wept in relief.
21
Rhea heard the comforting susurrations of a small drone’s rotors, followed by quick footsteps. She looked up.
Will and Horatio arrived running.
With a sigh, she stood.
Horatio slowed down while passing the fallen cyborg; Will meanwhile continued toward Rhea.
“Are you all right?” Will said when he reached her side.
He checked her face, no doubt noticing the freshly abraded artificial skin.
“A bit shaken up, but I’ll live,” she said, breaking free of his grasp.
“What happened here?” Will glanced at the fallen cyborg.
Horatio arrived. “It looks like she perforated his power cell. Though how she managed to know where that cell was stored in this model, I don’t know.”
“Luck,” Rhea said.
Though the doubt must have been obvious in her voice, neither Will nor Horatio said anything to refute her.
“That looks like his rifle,” Will said, nodding at the piece of metal protruding from the dead cyborg. “You took it from him, and did that?”
“Yeah, it was a… messy… fight,” she said.
Will was still gazing at the body. “So, you can do it, after all.”
“Do what?” she asked suspiciously.
Will shrugged. “Kill a man. Or in this case, a cyborg. Not that there’s much difference when a human brain is involved. Though I suppose I should have expected as much, given how you behaved with the bioweapons. You got a real killer instinct going on.”
“Okay,” she said.
Will regarded her with an uncertain expression on his face. “So tell me, how does that make you feel, what you did here?”
“Depressed, mostly,” she said. “And relieved.”
“Nothing else?” Will pressed.
She paused. Then nodded. “Powerful. He was twice as tall as me. Twice as strong. I still prevailed.”
“Don’t get too drunk on that feeling,” Will said. “It’s a path that won’t lead anywhere you want to go, trust me.”
“Killing to feel power?” she said. “Trust me, I don’t intend to. The guilt won’t let me.”
Will returned his attention to the body. “So he attacked first, I assume?”
She narrowed her eyes. “What do you think?”
He looked back at her, and apparently her expression wasn’t lost at him, because he pursed his lips thoughtfully. Then: “Do you mind if we review the footage?”
She shrugged. She accessed her recorded archives on her HUD and transmitted the past five minutes to him.
Will made a variety of facial expressions over the next few minutes, ranging from utmost
