“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I squeezed her shoulder. “We have another two weeks before we make it.”
Jade glanced up at me from her seat and gave me a small smile. “Okay. I’ll try my best.”
I turned my attention to R11. “Any luck with Bryson?”
“I have the message on repeat, running in the background. If Bryson Kelley is able to reach me, he will see the urgent display. But so far, no attempts at…” His eyes went red, and R11 rose, arms jabbing straight into the air.
“Something’s happening to him!” Luther shouted.
“Jade, what can we do?” I stumbled toward R11, and his arm stuck out, his metal fingers wrapping around my neck.
The others were yelling, and I saw Luther trying to pull R11 off me as my vision began to blur. I pounded against R11’s chest with my fists, but the efforts were useless. I couldn’t hear what anyone said, but they were panicked.
“Why…” I croaked out the word, and R11 just cocked his head.
“Eliminate threat,” R11 said.
It was Stin. I knew it.
His fingers relaxed, and I slid to the floor, landing with a thump on my back. I gasped, hand to throat, and tried to breathe. They came in raspy heaves, but I was getting air.
“Arlo.” It was Holland hovering over my face. He was in and out of focus. “Arlo, are you breathing?”
“He’s fine.” Luther was there, bending over top of my head.
“What… what happened to R11?” I tried to sit up, and Luther helped me. I scooted toward Jade’s chair, using it to prop myself up. R11 was on the floor, sprawled out.
Jade held a tool, electrical currents arcing between two metallic points. She must have shocked him. She stared at R11, then at me. “I had no choice.”
“Get Varn on the comms. Tell him…”
Luther rushed past me, contacting Killer.
“Varn, come in.”
No response came.
“Where’s their ship?” Holland asked.
“Still on course.” Luther hit the comms again. “Varn?”
“Aster here. We’ve had a slight delay,” she said.
Luther tapped his toes. “Define delay.”
“Sara. Our bot. She’s dead.”
“Dead?” Luther asked.
With Holland’s assistance, I climbed to my feet. I stumbled to the pilot’s seat as the visual of Killer’s cockpit appeared on screen.
Varn was pale, Aster grimacing with her Widowmaker in her grip. “Sara went berserk. I had to do it.”
The image showed their silver robot on the floor. Her head was nowhere in sight.
“Jinx, make sure the ship is secure. Closed loop only. Stin is trying to prevent us from getting home,” Jade said.
“Where is he?” I asked.
“Jinx had an accident.” Aster adjusted the camera angle, and there he was. His eyes were closed, and he was sprawled out on the floor. I saw blood on his chest.
“Is he alive?” My heart pounded. It was my fault he was even along on this mission.
“He’s going to be fine. I think,” Varn said. “Sara punched him in the chest. Think it stopped his heart for a minute. I hit him with a nano shot, and it knocked him out.”
“Give me access to the controls,” Jade told Varn. “I’ll take care of it. I don’t think Stin can reach our systems, but somehow he managed to claim our robots. That doesn’t bode well for our situation.”
Varn used the dash controls and nodded. “You’re good to go.”
Jade went to work, and I glanced at R11. “Send a message to Preston. Inform him of what occurred,” I ordered.
“Will do.” Luther returned to his seat.
Two weeks. How much more could go wrong before we made it to Earth?
____________
“Sir, I cannot move my limbs,” R11 said when he powered on.
“That’s because we’ve reprogrammed you.” Jade dusted her hands off and set the toolkit down.
R11’s head torqued to the side. “What did I do?”
“Stin invaded you.” I rubbed my neck. “Then tried to kill me.”
R11 whirred, his eyes fading and glowing brighter. “That’s not possible. I had firewalls in place to prevent access.”
“If it wasn’t Stin, then it was all you,” I told him.
“There is one other alternative,” R11 said.
Holland shook his head. “No way. My father would never do that.”
“Do you have records of anyone accessing your controls through the backdoor program? Bryson, maybe?”
R11 waited a moment. “That is how I was repurposed.”
“And Bryson was the only one with the ability to access this program?” Luther asked.
Holland shoved the big man in the arm. “Luther, my dad wouldn’t try to kill Arlo.”
“Then what the hell is going on?” Luther pushed Holland back. “You have a better explanation?”
“Sara was infiltrated too,” Jade added.
“R11, do all robots have this program built in?” I asked.
“That’s correct. Bryson and my connection was slightly different, a modified version of the standard protocol. But models for the last twenty-seven years have the—”
“The great robot rising,” Jade whispered.
“What’s that?” Holland asked.
“It was fifty years ago. A planetoid in the Belt was being mined by Hyper. Big job. One of the biggest to date. Two hundred humans, one executive on-site. They used an old version of bots. The Xe-98r82s. Someone forgot to disable the AI functionality in that particular model, and they toiled along for two decades, working endlessly. While Hyper gained ground in the Primaries, the robots were being mistreated. No maintenance. No upgrades. They evolved. It ended up being the biggest mine massacre on record.” Jade frowned while she spoke.
“What about the Sage disaster out by Jupiter?” Luther asked.
“More people died, but that was by human hands. Guy went psychotic and killed them all. Terrible.” I remembered hearing about the Jupiter Jailer as a cautionary tale my entire childhood. Teachers would tell us to do our homework, or the Jailer might make a visit. Now that I thought about it, they were clearly deranged for saying that to kids.
“Back to the robots… what did that Hyper massacre mean for the newer models?” Luther asked Jade.
“It became mandatory to include access
