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We all nodded. Each one of us clutched two knives with white knuckled hands.
Jackson depressed the button and tossed it toward the front entrance. The breath caught in my throat as we waited, tense.
The second I deflated with disappointment, they came, nine robots converging on the wristcom from all sides.
“Ms. Bennet?” one called, turning its head three hundred and sixty degrees in search of the source. “We have come to escort you to safety.”
“I’ll be safer when you’re shut down,” Nicole said, leaping out and sliding the tip of the knife in the slot behind his neck. Jackson and Travis joined in, but my eyes were glued to Nicole, who spun and dodged, jamming knives into silicone necks like a choreographed dance.
I snapped out of it when a robot came at Nicole from behind. With a yell, I hurtled out of my hiding spot around the corner and leaped on its back, stabbing the vulnerable spot.
“Taking out some pent-up aggression?” Nicole asked, smoothing her hair back into place.
“Saving your ass,” I said, gathering my own hair and wishing for a simple rubber band.
“Well, thank you.”
“Nice work,” I said.
“You think all I’ve had are private piano lessons and ballet? I have ten years of martial arts training from some of the finest instructors in the world.”
“If you two are done having a moment, we should go inside.” Jackson put me in a chokehold and rubbed a noogie on top of my head.
I slipped out and shoved him. “You’re right. We have to find him.”
“Assuming he isn’t the killer, which I still think likely, what if they already got him?” Travis asked. “What if all of this is a risk we shouldn’t have taken?”
“What if they didn’t?” I shot back. “We just took out another bunch of these things. There are only like eight left. We can do this!”
“The rest are probably on their way now,” Nicole pointed out.
“All the more reason to hurry,” I said and led the way inside.
I thought by giving myself no time to consider what was coming I’d be able to handle it because I wouldn’t have a choice. I was wrong.
Jackson and Nicole rushed past me as I froze in my tracks. Water pooled on the ground near one of the dark hallways surrounding the central room. Travis pressed against me from behind, and though I knew he was doing it to support me, all I wanted to do was run.
“There’s a ton of broken glass here too,” Jackson said, kneeling by the puddle.
Nicole wrinkled her nose. “It smells like bad sushi.”
I tried to speak, but I couldn’t. All I could see was the ocean surrounding me, the too-thin layer of glass ready to crack and send the weight of the Atlantic over our heads.
“Come on.” Travis lifted me and carried me outside. “You shouldn’t be in there.”
“I…I thought I could,” was all I could manage.
“You have a hero complex, you know that?” He grinned and set me down.
He reached for me, and I flinched.
Travis took a large step back. “You’ve been acting weird. I assume it’s PC. I get it, you know. But I guess maybe that isn’t it. I saw the two of you get all hot and bothered when he lifted you out of the stasis chamber.”
I drew a deep breath of stale air and stared overhead at the dark “sky.” “This isn’t about Mason. You hid your diagnosis.”
The silence made me look up at him. Travis stared at his hands as he clenched and unclenched his fists. He looked more vulnerable than I’d ever seen him.
“I was afraid you’d react like this.” He sounded like a little boy.
