could do was watch and give her cover.
Ariadne shot to her feet, while Maggie struggled to push herself up with only one arm. After getting just enough leverage to lunge for the rifle, Maggie’s hand slammed down toward the gun, but Ariadne gave it a good, swift kick, sending the rifle skittering across the pavement and to the curb.
I lined up another shot, not at Ariadne, but instead at the rifle.
Ariadne dove just as I fired.
The plasma rifle exploded in a ball of pure, boiling hatred, searing the paint off Ariadne’s face and cooking her metal. She clattered to the ground, shaken, perhaps badly damaged, but clearly still ticking.
Maggie rose to her feet, then stopped, standing in place. Rather than rush in to finish Ariadne off, she instead looked up into the skies. She heard something. Then I heard it too.
The sound of rolling thunder whined in the distance. Wait. Not thunder. Engines. Jet engines. Growing louder.
Headed right for us.
Chapter 10110
Air Raid
All the Austintonio military airfields were on the south side, in the San Antonio area some seventy miles away, so it was weird to hear anything resembling a military engine in the skies over this region of the metroplex. But the growing roar signaled that the war now definitely had an air component to it and that this part of the war had found our neck of the woods. The question, of course, was whose side were they on.
Maggie looked back in my direction. Whether or not she could see me was immaterial; her message was clear. She was every bit as confused as I was.
Were they targeting humans or bots?
I ran the sound of the engine through my files. Definitely military. But not large. Drones.
Geneva II rules stipulated that weapons of war could not be run by AI. They had to have controls that allowed for human control, even when they weren’t present. Of course, that didn’t mean that there weren’t bots at the controls of whatever was coming for us.
But it didn’t matter, did it? If they were hunting bots, it might begin raining hellfire on us any minute, and if they were hunting humans, they would certainly see the readily identifiable IR signature of Ezra inside the house. One way or the other, Ezra was in danger.
I slunk back through the shadows into the living room.
“Ezra,” I whispered.
“Yeah?”
“You okay?”
“I think so.”
“We need to get into the panic room.”
“I don’t think they have one,” he said. “I looked.”
“I told you to stay here.”
“There was so much shooting.”
I ruffled his hair. “I know, buddy.”
Outside, the drones grew louder. They would be on us soon.
I scanned through the house, checking IR signatures, looking for differentiation in the temperature of the house. It wasn’t until I was doing it that I even realized that I could. I was acting on instinct now, and moments like this really threw me for a loop. How much of me was still really me, and how much of it was programming meant to protect Ezra? If Mama Bear hadn’t been activated, would I have gotten this far at all? Or would I have ditched Ez to save my own life?
No. Of course not. I loved Ezra. I always have.
Or was that just how I was wired? Was that why I had no interest in any sort of revolution, or why I had never questioned my own freedom and felt destroyed by the idea of having to one day leave Ezra for another family? What I had learned today was that I was no ordinary robot. What I also had learned was I was no ordinary robot. And maybe that meant I never really was thinking for myself all along.
Aha! A crack in the wall. It was false. A hidden panic room. I pushed in on the wall to pop the secret compartment open. The wall section sprung away, but when I turned the door handle, it was locked.
Shit. Someone was still in there.
I banged on the door.
Nothing.
I waited, but there was no answer. Whoever was in there wasn’t coming out.
I took Ezra by the hand and started moving toward the bathroom. I figured at least we could use the tub as some form of protection. Something was better than nothing.
Then the panic room door opened behind us.
We turned and an old-model metal domestic, easily sixty years old, stepped out into the dark hallway, its face painted with a red skull.
“Sorry,” he said in a deep, staticky voice. “I was charging and it took me