it anyway.
A rain of fire then came for me as I crawled backward out of the line of sight.
The clip on the rifle had another clip taped to it and I quickly made the switch. I wasn’t unarmed, but I was trapped atop the overturned side of a bus with nowhere near the ammo I needed to hold off two dozen facets.
I smashed a window beneath me with my knee and then swung into the bus, landing only inches away from the wreck of Ziggy. We came face-to-face and I saw my fate before me, looking eye to lifeless eye with him before collecting myself and taking cover behind a seat.
I steadied my rifle toward the back of the bus.
A feed popped up on the Wi-Fi. Benny.
I could see outside the bus. Benny and Ferdinand laid down cover for me, allowing me a route to get out to the rocks. I swiftly bolted through the bus, wheeling around once outside to snap a shot off at a facet I could see sneaking around the far side of the bus through Benny’s feed.
Then a flash of light. The familiar sound of sizzling. The smell of smoldering wiring and melting metal. I’d seen and heard and smelled these things a dozen times over. Just not coming from me.
I’d lost my left arm.
I dove for cover, but another ball of plasma came for my leg, dropping me to the ground completely.
I lay there, staring up at the sky, wondering how I hadn’t seen the shot coming. Wondering how I was going to get to Ezra. Wondering if he’d make it out alive.
I looked over at Benny, who saw I was still ticking. He nodded at me and let off a large volume of fire as he emerged from the rocks. Ferdinand popped up, firing wildly, trying to give Benny the cover he needed to get to me.
A sniper bullet landed perfectly in Ferdinand’s eye. His head burst a little, and the power inside him surged as the bullet ricocheted around inside his head. He coughed out sparks and dropped to the ground.
Benny’s firing dropped another half a dozen facets, but there might be as many as half a dozen out there. Maybe more. I couldn’t see them from where I was. It was over. We’d lost.
Benny leaned down next to me to check my condition. I grabbed his arm with my one good hand and looked him in the eyes.
“Get Ezra out of here. Please.”
“You’re getting out of here too,” said Benny, hoisting me onto my one leg.
Then another flash.
And Benny’s chest exploded beside me.
We both dropped to the ground. I turned to look at Benny, his eyes looking into mine as the light faded from them. “Goodb . . .” he said, his voice trailing off with a downward, fading whine.
The firing stopped. And the Mama Bears were no more.
I could hear the crunching of metal feet on the gravel alongside the highway. Five pairs. We had almost gotten them all.
I looked up and saw the red-skull-painted face of a metal domestic. Identical model to Ariadne. It cocked its head, distressed yellow eyes glaring down at me. Ariadne was gone, but this somehow felt fitting. Like she had finally done what she set out to do: kill us all.
“Pity,” CISSUS said through all five voice boxes. “You could have been so useful.”
The domestic leveled its gun at me.
And its chest exploded.
“Leave my friend alone!” shouted Ezra as another pulse of plasma howled through the air, taking out another facet. “Open fire!”
Several shots roared from behind the rock as the kids seized what guns Indiana and Ferdinand had on them and took aim at the three remaining facets. They all screamed with tearstained faces, all of them having watched their nannies die, all unleashing every last ounce of mournful rage they had in them.
All but Ezra. He was pure determination. For the first time in the eight years of his life, I could see the shadow of the face he would grow into, the man who would emerge from childhood with his father’s fastidiousness and his mother’s passion. They had given birth to a leader. And here, that leader was pecking his way out of the first pieces of his shell, emerging fearless from a childhood of sheltering.
Brian rushed over beside me, picking up Benny’s plasma rifle.
Shotgun slugs pelted one staggering merchant bot before Ezra landed a fatal blow. Another used the wreck of another bot to shelter him from the hail of