Her eyes alighted upon the third and final limb, which carried a tiny, thumbnail-sized microchip.
She shivered uncontrollably when she saw that.
Going to lose control of my body. Of everything!
The drill moved out of view behind her head, and she felt a sharp pain as the laser activated. The sickly stench of burnt plastic filled the air as her artificial skin and hair melted beneath it. Her brain case just below the area was likely liquefying as well.
Filled with despair, she strove to break her binds. Useless.
She gave up. Just like that. For the first time in her life.
It was liberating, somehow: surrendering.
Maybe this was for the best. She wouldn’t have to worry about making decisions anymore. Someone else would live her life. Well, not always. The mayor seemed to have some control over his actions. Rhea would have some, too. Assuming she was allowed to live after being presented to whoever had set the bounty.
And then, without warning, her binds opened.
DragonHunter!
Rhea slammed her arm upward, rotating the shoulder joint through an angle an ordinary human would have found impossible. Her hand struck the laser drill, and she grabbed it, tearing it from her head and breaking it away from the medical robot. The drill remained active, so she slid the tip through the strap at her neck, cutting it.
One of the security robots rushed her.
She sat up, and swung the drill into the robot’s torso, targeting the region above the power cell. The laser-tipped weapon penetrated deep into the armor; sparks of electricity traveled across the robot’s surface, and the machine collapsed.
The second robot came at her from the other side. This one had deployed the rifle barrels under its forearms, so Rhea twisted herself off the table, sliding her feet out of the straps that wrapped her lower legs.
She landed on the floor, and rolled under the table, just as the robot leaped over it and fired downward.
The robot landed, and Rhea slid her legs outward in a sweep kick, tripping the machine. She positioned the laser drill underneath the falling robot so that its torso smashed into the device when it hit the floor. Blue bolts sparked from the impact zone, and its body convulsed for several seconds before becoming still.
She smiled as she withdrew her hand, and the drill. Power cells. What a great vulnerability.
She got up, and tore the gamma scalpel from the medical robot’s second limb, figuring the device might prove useful at some point. She left behind the mind-hijacking chip. She didn’t want to touch the latter with a seven-meter pole.
She pocketed the scalpel and backed away from the medical robot, well aware that it might try to ram her.
“Stay back,” she warned the medical robot, waving the laser drill menacingly.
The remaining limb lifted, as if in surrender, and the robot retreated a pace.
She continued to back away; she glanced at the other instruments laid out on a table nearby, implements meant to be attached to the limbs of the medical robot, but none of them caught her eye.
When she was sure the robot wasn’t going to follow her, she turned toward the door.
She tried to connect to the Net again but as usual the closest access point denied her. She disabled augmented reality overlays to avoid AR spam: last thing she needed was a bunch of aberrant pixels filling her vision and blinding her at a critical moment.
There was no handle on the door, and no obvious means of opening it.
Frowning, she held the laser drill to the door. She shoved it forward, and easily perforated the surface; while the material was relatively thin, it would take too long to cut through. But she had no plans of doing so.
With her free hand she shoved a finger into the hole she’d made and curled the digit toward her in a come-hither gesture. Pulling hard, she ripped a section free. She continued peeling back sections until she could fit her entire hand through the door. Setting down the laser drill, she used both hands to rapidly tear a breach big enough to fit her entire body.
She scooped up the drill and ducked, sliding one foot through the horizontal gap she’d made, then the other.
When she was through, she stood up.
More security robots rushed around the bend to her right.
There was a T intersection almost immediately to her left. She took it.
Plasma bolts tore into the wall behind her.
She raced forward, taking another bend. She glanced at her overhead map. She was in an unmapped region of the basement, but it filled out as she went. She quickly reached the area she had mapped herself; ahead, the stairwell and elevators awaited.
The inward-sloping elevator doors were closer than the stairwells. One of them opened, and two robots emerged.
She seemed to catch them by surprise—apparently DragonHunter still had control of the security cameras. She slammed the drill into the torso of the first, and as electricity sparked across its chest, she shoved the spasming body at the second robot, knocking it down.
She entered the now empty elevator and hit the button for the fifteenth floor. She ducked behind the doorframe as the second robot opened fire; plasma bolts tore into the glass far wall of the lift. The sloping doors closed; red hot circles appeared near the center of the metal as her opponent continued to attack. But those circles faded in color as the elevator ascended.
The elevator emerged from the basement area, and the dark walls fell away around her as she entered the glass shaft that sloped up the sides of the pyramid. She glanced at the compound spread out
