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He wasn’t sure what was happening, but he was sure he was up against a hell of a lot more than a dozen Americans.
SIXTY-SEVEN
Chris Travers gave a nod to Victor Five, and then Five fired his AK-47 at the locked double doors. It took half a magazine, but eventually the locking mechanism came apart, and the door to the Cluster Room rocked open. Hash, Travers, the other three Victors, Pace, and Zoya all filed in with their guns up, and they found themselves in an immense room with tall black server cabinets arrayed in all directions.
They were surprised to find no security in the room, at least at the doorway, but they remained vigilant as they moved in two stacks, heading into the rows of mainframes.
•••
After the sound of the gunshots on the northeast side of the room, Kimmie turned to Hinton. “They’re here!” she shouted, and she ran to the open cage door. Her plan was to lock it as soon as the Sentry bots left to go fight the Americans, but when she got to the door, she turned back and saw Hinton standing behind both units, deactivating them with a hidden switch under their battery pack only he, Kimmie, Wren, and a few others in the company knew about.
“What are you doing?”
“I can’t have a shoot-out in this room. What do you think Cyrus would do if it knew its brain was at risk?”
Kimmie locked the door, turned back towards the New Zealander, and then looked at the readout on the monitor. “Five minutes,” she said, a tone of resignation in her voice as Hinton took the pistols out of the bots’ holsters and slid them into a corner, desperate to avoid any shooting inside the room.
•••
It took under a minute for Travers and his people to reach the center of the facility, and here he and Pace both leveled their guns at Anton Hinton and an Asian woman wearing a red top as they stood inside a large metal cage with a single workstation and several networked mainframe computers behind it.
A pair of humanoid robots stood there, as well, but they did not move, and there were no weapons in their hands.
“Don’t shoot!” Hinton shouted.
“Step away from the terminal!” Pace shouted back. “Hands high!”
Both of them did as instructed.
The cage door was locked, but Victor Five ran up to it, reloaded his rifle, and aimed at the metal lock.
Hinton shouted, “What are you doing?”
Travers answered, “We’re unlocking your door.”
“No! You can’t damage the equipment in here. I promise you, it will be dangerous for everybody. I’ll unlock it.”
Travers looked to Pace, and Pace nodded.
“Do it,” Travers said.
Hinton moved to the cage door, put his hand on a reader, and then pulled it open when the lock disengaged. Victor Five immediately pushed him to the ground on his stomach and then quickly searched him.
Doug then said, “Boss, I got a phone and an earpiece.”
“Take ’em. Don’t zip him, but stand him back up.”
Walking over to the robots next, Travers put a rifle barrel between the cameras on the face on one of them. “Why aren’t these machines operating?”
“I turned them off and disarmed them. I don’t want any shooting in here.”
“Tough shit.” Travers shot each machine in the face, and they both fell onto their backs.
Kimmie Lin screamed and cowered to the ground. Hinton screamed as well, a terrified expression in his eyes.
“Where are the weapons?” Travers asked, and with a hand quivering with fear, Hinton motioned to a corner of the cage at the two pistols.
Victor Five went over and collected them.
