“Just like the old days, huh?” Toby laughed, releasing its first straight magazine and loading in a second one, charging it with a crack.
“Yeah, but these places used to have more competent guards around …”
“Elias!” The loudspeaker in the cargo bay of the Rotorbird was loud enough to be heard in the warehouse. “I got movement farther up — something’s coming toward you. Might be a Titan model. I’ll get in position to —”
Boom!
The crates behind me exploded into shrapnel, flooring me as something massive sprinted past. The aircraft lurched and swerved. I glimpsed Allen spewing clear liquid from its mouth into the sea below. The aircraft successfully dodged whatever was trying to grab it, flying out of sight for the moment. The massive figure turned around to face Toby and me as I pushed myself from the ground.
He was about seven feet tall, dressed in ragged clothes like mine, and he had so many metal attachments on him that a war vet might confuse him with a Manual. His hands were stripped and retrofitted with mechanical augmentations. Everything below the knuckles was probably bolted onto his bones. The tubes which ran from the massive backpack attached to his shoulders powered his mechanical bits and pumped chemical mixtures into his blood to keep him from feeling pain. His face was thick and greyish with bloodshot eyes, and he wore a retracting mask that pulled to either side of his head.
“Of course they have a fucking Auger.” I put two bullets into his chest, only to see them get squashed against the dermal plating he had under his clothing. “Goddamn it!”
As the thing ran toward me, Toby put half a magazine into him. The .45 rounds could get through the dermal plating, but it wasn’t enough to stop this beast, especially with all the medical equipment in and on it pumping away. I made a run for it, heading for the bramble of crates ahead of me with the intention of going straight through and continuing northward toward the other adjacent warehouses. I looked back but couldn’t tell whether Toby had bit it or the Auger had just ignored it. He’d probably been too crazed to process the difference between a worker bot and a brand new one.
I found a spot in the labyrinth where I could rest, feeling my heart running at a mile a minute. The Auger was losing its shit, smashing things to try and find me. Meanwhile, the sound of the Rotorbird’s propellers moved from the west side of the warehouse to right above me. Looking up through a ceiling window, I could see the bird scouting for another way inside. Unluckily for me, it wouldn’t be much of a distraction to the Auger all the way up there.
The click of a drawn hammer made my head snap back down to see a gun barrel pressed to the side of my head, held by a Red-eye. Despite the rust and patchwork of parts keeping it operational, I could see that it was a Swinger bot. No doubt a Swinger with police programming that I myself had put in. To my surprise, it didn’t fire, though the trigger was half-pulled.
Was it him?
I wanted to level my own weapon and protect myself, but I was frozen in place. I couldn’t pull the trigger.
I’m going to die here, I thought.
My brain went fuzzy as a loud crash and several gunshots sounded.
I blinked a few times and looked around, realizing that I was unharmed. The Automatic in front of me was crushed under the weight of another metallic body and had a few more holes in its chest than before. The body lying atop the Red-eyed Swinger was Allen, who held a smoking 1911 and was groaning and pulling itself to its feet.
“Where the hell did you come from?” I finally said. Feeling glass in my hair, I looked up at the broken window.
“I jumped,” it said, nursing fresh wounds that were hidden under its suit.
I looked down at the motionless Automatic. James. There it was … dead again. Or was it? My brain was whirling. Was it really James? Was it really trying to kill me? Had Allen killed the right Automatic?
“Detective!” Allen yelled to get my attention. “I think we should move.”
I knew the monster of a man had heard the crash and the gunshots, because I could hear everything that lay between him and me being crushed or thrown out of the way as he approached. Instinct took over as I ran, and Allen followed close behind.
We neared the northern wall of the warehouse, where a large metal door between this building and the next was thankfully open. We ran through, Allen grabbing the sliding door and throwing it closed with inhuman strength. This gave us a few seconds to look around and note that this building, which was much larger than the previous one, was even more full of crates and containers. Some held Automatic parts, others alcohol, weapons, even car parts.
The Auger began bashing against the closed metal door, leaving several impressive dents. Rather than waiting to see what other damage it could do, we ran, putting several feet between us and the entrance, and hid behind some boxes.
“Detective, what is that?” Allen asked, panic in its voice.
“We call them Augers. Mean, nasty assholes who trade out flesh for metal. The tech isn’t good enough to completely replace limbs, so they just bolt the metal bits onto bone, which I’ve heard is pretty painful. It also means he has to carry a Tesla Battery on his back, which is our best bet to beat him.”
“I’m sorry to ask redundant questions, Elias, but aren’t Augers mechanical devices used for digging into dirt for the implementation of supports?” Allen looked very worried, even if it didn’t mean to. I figured it wasn’t always in control of its expressions.
The metal door finally flew open, slamming into a
