Carmody and the Electric Dragon

10th District Maintenance Tunnels, Pan City

“So tell me again why I am crawling about in the tunnels under our District?” complained Sarah Evermore. She was in the lead of her small group, the lamp strapped to her head wavering from side to side as she clomped along the maintenance tunnel. Like all her friends she was dressed in a blue worker’s coverall to protect her own clothes beneath, practical but not stylish.

“I keep telling you, Eric wants us to become familiar with moving about under the city” her friend Achmed explained for what felt like the hundredth time. He too had a bright light shining from his forehead, strapped over his second favourite black hat. When he had been informed of the location of this training exercise he had made sure he only wore clothes he was willing to have ruined, even if they were protected by the coveralls.

“At least you guys had nothing better to do tonight” muttered Carmody from the rear of the trio. “All my family are going to mum’s restaurant for our weekly dinner then a movie” She swung her cricket bat at the wall in frustration and yelped in alarm as a chunk of concrete was knocked out. “Whoops, my bad!” she apologised to the wall.

Achmed sighed and realised he was going to be the only voice of reason in this group. Not for the first time he wished that Eric had paired him up with Lilly, but she was in the second group with Eric. The boy suspected Eric had not wanted to risk being alone with either Sarah or Carmody, so he sent them both off with Achmed.

“Just pick one already” he muttered to himself, thinking of Eric and the boy’s awkward situation with the two girls.

“Pick one what?” Sarah asked, turning back to face Achmed and blinding him utterly with her headlamp. Her friend hastily shielded his eyes and blinked away the spots in his vision.

“Ah, pick one of those two tunnels ahead” improvised Achmed, glancing over her shoulder at the T-Junction in the tunnels.

“Shouldn’t we pick the one that is marked on the map Eric gave you?” Carmody asked, leaning over the boy’s shoulder to see the datapad he was carrying.

Sarah leaned against the concrete wall of the tunnel, kicking her feet idly against the metal pipes and cables that festooned the sides and ceiling.

“I wish I was in Eric’s team” she said darkly. “At least he knows which way to go”

Achmed had enough by now of the pair of girls. They were his friends but they made it hard to like them some days.

“Look, like Eric told us, the tunnels run everywhere under Pan City. Thousands of them, going for kilometres, used for power and water, sewage, Expressways, Metro tunnels, you name it. They are a perfect place for bad guys to hide out as there are not many security cameras down here. So we need to be comfortable exploring them, finding our way around without getting lost”

“Okay, I get it” Sarah replied, relenting at last. She stood up and faced the two tunnel choices ahead of the group. “So which way do we go to reach the meeting point?”

“Oh, sorry, I don’t know” Achmed admitted sheepishly. “I think we are lost!”

“What!” the two girls yelled in perfect unison.

=====

In another set of tunnels, some distance away, Eric and Lilly were striding confidently along a pipe-lined corridor, their headlamps shining into the dimness ahead of them. It was quite scary being this far under the city thought Lilly, yet at least she had the most capable member of their group with her.

When Eric had told the members of the AURA Project they were going on an overnight training exercise, Lilly had imagined some sort of exotic jungle surrounds, sleeping in tents in the wilderness, fighting off wild animals and the like.

She had not expected to be told they would enter the dirty, dark tunnels under their own high school. The only wild animals they had encountered were some horribly large black rats and a small snake, all of which had run away once she started screaming. Although technically the snake had slithered away rather than running.

“I wonder how the other team are doing?” she asked Eric, who was in the lead. “They should be at the first meeting point by now”

“We’ll meet them soon” Eric agreed. “It is a shame these deep tunnels block the phone and network signals, as I really want to make sure they don’t get lost”

“Doesn’t the Quantum network work anywhere, Eric?” Lilly wondered. They were all aware he had a Quantum processor in his head, making him one of the Enhanced as well as a young Avatar of the Archimedes Network. Archimedes was a powerful Artificial Intelligence who controlled much of Pan City and could literally take control of Eric’s body whenever it wanted to.

“It works down here, that is true” Eric replied. “But to talk to our friends on their phones or datapads I need to link to the regular network. The only ones I can talk to using the Quantum network are the Guards at the Post, or my big brother Two”

“And Archimedes” added Lilly, then regretted her words as soon as she spoke them.

“I would rather not speak to him” her friend said darkly. As much as he appreciated the help Archimedes had given Sarah and himself against Mr Albright, he knew better than to trust the AI.

“So, are we nearly there?” Lilly asked to change the subject.

Eric consulted the internal maps stored on his processor and compared that to the route he had taken them on.

“Yes, the meeting chamber is right around the next corner” he said with confidence. Taking the lead he turned around the designated corner and saw a solid wall of concrete. Lilly joined him, their combined lights showing no gap in the wall whatsoever. A complete dead end.

“Um, Eric, are we lost?”

=====

“Eenie-meanie-minie-moe” Sarah intoned in the ancient ritual of trying to pick one of the two directions they should go in. She had performed the ritual three times already, switching her index finger from one tunnel to the other as she called it out. Each time she had ended up pointing at the left hand tunnel.

“It looks like we are destined to go this way” she announced.

“You do realise that if you start on the same tunnel each time, using exactly the same rhyme, you are always going to get the same result?” asked an exasperated Achmed.

“What do you mean?” asked Sarah and Achmed hung his head in silent acceptance.

“Fine” he muttered. “Left tunnel it is”

The three friends walked slowly down the tunnel, their headlamps vital now as the overhead lights became scarcer and the darkness pressed in. Skittering sounds could be heard around them, occasional gleams from little eyes reflecting the lights the trio wore.

“What is making those noises?” asked a concerned Sarah at the front of the group, her head swinging wildly from left to right.

“It’s Okay, probably just rats” Achmed told her.

“That is definitely not Okay!” Sarah yelled back. She noticed the tunnel they were following was starting to slope downwards, with lines of water running down the side walls and forming into little streams along the concrete floor.

“Are we going under a canal?” Sarah asked. There were a number of them running through the middle of Pan City, all of them emptying out into the harbour. Achmed consulted his datapad, tapping the map of the tunnels larger then smaller, trying to work out where they were.

“If we are going under a canal, we must be about here” he announced and the two girls huddled next to him, looking at the datapad screen.

“We must have gone in the completely wrong direction!” Carmody yelled at Achmed.

“Don’t blame me, Sarah was in the lead. I just followed her!” the boy yelled back, fed up with them both.

“Hey! You were the one with the map!” Sarah chimed in, clenching her fists in anger.

Something touched Ahmed’s foot and he screamed in fright, dropping the datapad onto the floor. It landed with a sharp cracking sound and the display screen died. All three of the friends looked down at the damp tunnel floor, their headlamps focussed on Achmed’s boots.

A small robot of some kind sat there on six articulated legs, its round body about a hand’s width across. It looked like it was made from yellow plastic, with black hazard stripes down the back. Two long serrated pincers of shiny metal extended from the front like jaws on a bug and these were clamped around Achmed’s left foot, squeezing gently.

He screamed again and jumped backwards, slamming his head against the tunnel wall. As he jumped, he kicked his foot wildly and the yellow robot flew up and landed on Sarah. More screaming ensued and it took a few minutes for them all to calm down.

“Is everyone Okay?” demanded Carmody, her bat held two handed like a sword. She swept her head around the tunnel, shining the lamp into every corner and over her friends. Sarah was flat against the wall, visible by her headlamp. Achmed was huddled on the floor, rubbing his head, the lamp he wore broken when he hit the tunnel side.

There was no sign of the robot bug.

“Guys, where did it go?” Carmody asked worriedly. Achmed just muttered something so she looked at Sarah. Her friend was still standing with her back to the wall, a strange expression on her face. Sarah looked right at Carmody, her eyes wide and terrified.

She slowly turned around and asked her friends a question with a quavering voice.

“Is there something on my back?”

So Carmody said the one thing that would terrify anyone who had just asked that kind of question.

“Sarah, stay very, very still”

Carmody stepped slowly forwards, her bat held high in two hands. Her eyes were locked like laser beams on Sarah’s back where the robot bug was holding on, legs grabbing her coveralls. The long metal pincers were touching the nape of Sarah’s neck, glinting in the light from Carmody’s headlamp.

“Hee-yah!” Carmody yelled and swung Excalibur in rapid arc, slamming into the little robot with a crunching impact. Plastic shattered and the yellow machine flew into the opposite wall then fell to the wet floor. It lay there on its back, broken legs curling up like a dead bug.

Sarah stifled a scream as she felt the bat brush her coveralls, then turned and looked at the robot on the tunnel floor.

“Thanks, Carmody” she said with relief.

Calm once more, all three of them gathered close around the lifeless robot, their remaining headlamps shining over the broken machine. A thick black oil was seeping from a crack in the main body, pooling on the tunnel floor and mixing with the water there.

“That is really weird” said Achmed, peering closely. “It looks like one of the maintenance robots they use in the tunnels, but it should be operating under the control of a Drone Supervisor. These don’t have their own computer brains onboard to operate independently”

“Couldn’t it just be lost?” suggested Sarah. “I know we are”

Achmed glared up at his friend from where he was crouched.

“Not going to let that go, are you?” he said. He glanced at Carmody then realised she had a look of utter horror on her face. “What’s the matter, Carmody?”

She didn’t reply straight away, just pointed with her bat at the oil forming a little slick across the water.

“What is that black stuff?” she whispered.

Achmed peered closer, sniffing the air, then reaching out an inquisitive finger. He had nearly touched it when he stopped at the loud shout of “NO” from Carmody. The boy and girl both jumped back as she shouted and the three of them retreated up the tunnel a few steps.

“I’m sorry guys, it just reminded me of…” Carmody began, then stopped as a loud crash sounded behind them. They turned as one, huddled together, and their headlamps shone up the tunnel from the direction they had come.

Moving into the light came another robot, but this one was much bigger than the first. It nearly filled the tunnel, a large circular body with dozens of arms like tentacles attached to the centre. Each winding arm ended with a snipper, or a clamp or a little gas torch, waving with menace in the air. Black camera lenses regarded them impassively from the main body, a sense of danger coming from the machine.

“What the heck is that thing?” squealed Sarah, who had enough of robots already this evening.

“It’s a repair robot” Achmed answered. “These run off their own Dumb AI. They are programmed to avoid humans so we should be safe”

“It doesn’t look safe to me” Carmody said and pulled herself from the arms of her friends. She stood in front of them protectively, her bat pointed right at the robot. “None shall pass!” she shouted in her strongest voice.

The robot seemed to pause, its arms momentarily stilled.

“I’ve always wanted to say that” Carmody admitted to her friends. “Ever since I saw it in this old movie”

“Hey Achmed, can’t you control it with your Scanner ability?” Sarah suggested to the boy, the two of them still clutching each other’s arms.

“I’ll give it a try” he agreed and fell silent as he reached out with his power. “The robot brain is definitely active” he called out to his friends, “But it seems to be operating strangely, like there is someone else driving it”

Achmed’s eyes widened in shock as he registered what he had detected. He was about to shout a warning when the robot suddenly charged forwards.

The next few minutes were a blur of shouts, thumping crashes and wildly flashing lights as the three friends fought the robot. It attacked them like something possessed, the three of them taking small cuts, bruises and burns as the tentacle arms lashed at them.

The robot had lost some of its arms, crushed by Carmody’s powerful blows with Excalibur. Yet she could not get close enough to strike the central body, the many arms keeping her at bay. Sarah, Achmed and Carmody had to run, fleeing blindly down the tunnel as it took them into the dark depths beneath the city.

Carmody paused at one point, to catch her breath, and realised with horror she had become separated from her two friends. Worst of all, her headlamp had been struck by one of the tentacle arms and it chose now to finally flicker into darkness.

“Um, guys, are you out there?” she whispered. Nobody answered her, only an oppressive silence. She felt around herself and touched a damp, slimy wall. She moved along it carefully, unsure of what direction she was going in, hoping to reach an area that had lights.

She saw a dim glow ahead, a red emergency light. With a cry of relief she started to run towards it, glad to have found a light at last. Then she stumbled over a raised barrier, unseen in the poor light and fell down a ventilation shaft. A very deep one.

Carmody let out one long, wailing scream as she fell, then that cut off suddenly as she hit the floor. Silence reigned in the darkness once more.

=====

“Did you hear something?” Sarah said to Achmed. They were walking slowly along a badly lit tunnel, Sarah’s headlamp shining on the wet floor, dripping walls and pipes oozing rust. Achmed had her hand gripped tightly, telling her it was so they did not get separated like Carmody had been. The young girl did not mind, but she idly wished it was another boy’s hand she was holding.

“Whatever it was, it sounded a long way off” Achmed replied in a voice barely above a whisper. Once they had escaped the crazed robot there had been no sign of their friend. They had been wandering aimlessly for an hour now, trying to find the missing girl.

“Do you think the robot got her?” said a worried Sarah. Of the three of them, Carmody was the only one who could actually put up a decent fight. Sarah could deliver a pretty mean punch of course, but that only worked on flesh and blood bullies like in the school playground. She doubted it would do anything to a mechanical device like that repair robot.

“Nope” Achmed answered readily. “If that thing caught up to Carmody we would hear the fight from China”

“Yeah, I guess you are right” agreed Sarah. “Carmody is definitely a lot noisier these days” She had a small chuckle then froze, Achmed barging gently into her when she stopped suddenly.

“What now?” he muttered, trying to see past his friend. With his headlamp broken, he could only see whatever she chose to look at, lighting it up with her own lamp.

“I heard something from in front of us” she told him, her voice low and serious. Her lamp was shining over the tunnel walls in front of them, the small red lights on the ceiling leaving most of it in darkness. Then more little red lights appeared on the walls, floor and ceiling. Dozens of them, moving closer.

“Achmed, what are those red lights?” Sarah asked, her voice now sounding a bit worried. Her friend stood beside her, their shoulders touching in the narrow confines of the maintenance tunnel. He squinted at the shadows, the red lights glowing like eyes in the inky blackness.

“Ah, move your head this way” Achmed asked, grabbing the back of her head and aiming the lamp at a knot of glowing red dots. Sarah grunted angrily at the boy but moved her head as he directed, shining the light at the nearby cluster.

Yellow and black robots were creeping forwards, some with six legs, others with four. Some had long wriggling bodies of plastic segments like a worm, others hovered on tiny rotors and propellers. All of them had shiny metal spikes, or needles, or cutting blades wavering in front of them. Their eyes were the little red lights, glowing with a sense of menace.

“Is that normal?” asked a terrified Sarah, her headlamp revealing a horde of the tiny machines advancing on them.

Achmed gave her a look, one of those special looks you give your friends some days. Those days when you wonder if they are really that dense.

“No, it’s not normal” he answered and hurriedly turned her around so they could run in the other direction. Her headlamp revealed just as many tiny, horrible robots coming towards them from that side too.

“Crap on a stick!” Achmed yelled in frustration. He had no idea why all these robots had gone crazy, but he was sure they meant them harm like that big one had.

“Okay, Sarah, stick close to me” he said and pulled her close. “I am going to try something using my Scanner ability”

“What is that? Can you control all of these robots at once?”

“No, but I can try and knock out their computer processors” he replied and focussed his mind, drawing energy unconsciously into himself from the very universe around him. As a Scanner he could affect many electrical and computer operated machines using his Ability. He could also disable them, sending out a short ranged burst of energy called an Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP for short. It had a lot of side effects, but he could not think of any other solution.

The horde of flying, crawling and wriggling robot bugs was nearly on top of them. Sarah was huddled tight to her friend, watching the evil looking little machines come closer and closer. A couple of them reached their feet, metal pincers poking at their shoes, clutching at their pant legs.

“Any day now would be good” Sarah whispered to her friend.

“I need them all as close as possible” he said in reply, his mind focussed intently. He felt a sharp prick as one of the wriggling robots stuck his leg with a needle like proboscis.

“NOW!” he shouted and released all the energy he had been holding inside of his mind. The pulse was invisible to the naked eye, yet to his own Scanner senses he felt the wave of energy surge out from him. It passed effortlessly through all the robot brains and as the pulse struck them they snuffed out, the electrical signals of their computer minds erased completely.

With a rolling clatter of noise, the hordes in front and behind them fell lifelessly to the tunnel floor. At the same time all the emergency lights in the tunnel failed and Sarah’s headlamp flickered once and was extinguished.

Sarah and Achmed were holding each other tightly, the terror they had felt making them clutch the other like no-one else in their lives until this moment. There was only one thought that sprang into their minds, an identical thought that they both voiced at the same moment.

“I wish I was in the other team”