Lucy powered on once the solar waves of the sun reached the solar panel that was charging her battery. Most days involved Lucy searching the city for anything that she could catalogue into her storage. Most articles that she found were old books, very rare, or tablets that still held some data on them for her to upload.

Ever since Henry left to look for Norman, she was alone and lived a quiet life of exploring the city. There were pockets of radiation filled zones that gave her limited time to access whatever was in that area, usually nothing. Something changed in recent months though; these zones started becoming a refuge for her.

The “clinks”, as named by Norman, were only ever seen a few times roaming the streets of Paris. They were easy to avoid and were so few that it was easy to never have to see them again. Within the last two months; the number of clinks in Paris alone rose roughly 1000% percent and fired almost immediately on sight whenever Lucy crossed their path. For the first time in a hundred years, Lucy had to being adapting to survival if she wanted to remain intact until the two arrived. Her once long, silver hair was cut short and darkened to conceal her appearance from being easily spotted. Today was different then recent; she knew that Henry’s signal was beginning to appear on her map again and that he was close. She had to get back to the Louvre and prepare to rendezvous…

Once my system was fully charged I disconnected myself from the panel and closed my chest that acted as a cover for my internals. In order to protect the valuable cargo within my chest, I started wearing ballistics’ vest and carrying a rifle that I looted off one of the clinks. I despised any sort of confrontations, but the number of clinks left me with no choice.

The pyramid was a day’s trip away from my current location and I knew I would have to travel through a hot zone to get there the fastest. If I’m not there to welcome Henry, a pack of clinks could jump him and leave him disassembled in the streets. Something about their behaviour was different; before they would order you to stop, but would never actually engage you. Now all the clinks did was fire at anything that moved out of whack, as if their programming had all been changed.

I was currently residing inside a four story hotel that overlooked the canal towards the Eiffel Tower, or where the tower once stood. On the street below me were two clinks that marched down the street. As they mechanically scanned their surroundings, I took position at the front doors of the hotel waiting for them to get far enough for me to jolt across the street. Once I knew that the clinks wouldn’t hear my print I took the opportunity to sprint towards an alley on the opposite end of the street. These once deserted streets were now consistently patrolled by these aggressive machines who acted as if there was something that needed constant patrolling.

Now I was in a sort of market place or plaza, either way it was pretty open and made my position exposed. From what I could tell there was nothing around, but it was at least a 100meter stretch to the other side of the plaza. As I stepped out from the safety of the alleyway I could see there was piles of stone debris scattered around the plaza’s floor accompanied by the decaying remains of skeletal corpses.

The people here must’ve not known what was coming towards them.

As I was halfway across the plaza, watching my step as not to create any noise with my footsteps, the metallic clinking of mechanical footsteps erupted behind me from the alleyway which I travelled through recently. The two clinks that passed me earlier were standing at the gape of the alley, scanning the debris below them for footprints.
My footprints.

Running now would mean a straight shot for getting pelted in the back by a hail of explosive, energized bullets that could tear through me easily. I had two objects: Hide and wait for them to past, or try fighting back. Firstly I had to find some cover to conceal myself.

A stone pillar was toppled onto the floor of the plaza only two meters away. I did not hesitate in hoping over the edge of the pillar and taking cover behind its stone structure. While I was properly concealed, I took the opportunity to upholster the rifle from my back and ensure that it was loaded. The rifle was a .50 Caliber, bolt action with “smart” rounds that aided the trajectory of the bullet to remain straight for up to a hundred kilometers. By software in the bullets were most likely faulty, but I wasn’t far enough that I needed to rely on them.

While I was peeking around the edge of the pillar to find the location of the mechanical soldiers, I could see there were two entrances to the plaza aside from the alley on the side. The entrance closer to the opposite end was closed off by a rusty, steel gate. The entrance in front of me was also guarded by a steel gate, but one of the doors lay off its hinges. If I could fit myself through the opening of the gates, I will be ok.

The clinks must’ve been able to analyze my route, because they were now aiming towards the direction of the pillar I hid behind. One thing I knew about them is that they had a 0.75 second reaction time to sudden actions, but only a 1.75 second reaction to slow actions. If my hardware was still as good as it was when I was fabricated; I would be able to get a shot off within the 1.75 second reaction time if I plan out my attack efficiently. My plan was to fire off one round, hopefully hit one of the two, hide in cover and move down the pillar until I was in clear sight of the gate. The stone pillar wouldn’t be able to take more than a few seconds of their rounds before crumbling to dust.

I listened attentively for their footsteps. Once they were ten meters away, I’d fire my first shot.

The time came and I could hear that they were close to my location, so I aimed the rifle against the pillar and carefully crept my aim towards the edge where I could hear one set of footsteps behind. Within a split second I could see the first clink aiming towards the middle of the pillar, a few feet off from where I was peeking. 1. 25 seconds to go. My synthetic fingertip pulled on the trigger of the rifle to the best of its ability. 0.75 seconds left. Once the trigger reached the end of its line and the hammer within the metal construction of the firearm struck the primer of the large caliber bullet; the barrel of the rifle erupted with a bang and ball of smoke and fire pushed the ballistic through the air and into the chest of the first clink.

Before taking my split second to retreat back into cover I saw the chest of the clink burst into flame as the .50 cal bullet torn a clean hole through its chest cavity and sent the remains of its internals flying out from the gaping hole in a cascade of sparks and shrapnel. One down.

On cue, the second clink began firing at my location behind the pillar. Stone and dust blew around me like a storm. Chunks of stone began ripping through my clothing and the ground on the other side of the pillar was jumping up from the stone floor. After barely managing to reload a second round into the barrel of the rifle, I worked against my code’s logic and ran away towards the gate, not before aiming my rifle again and firing at the second clink. My shot did not aim true. The .50 cal round only slid across the chin of the machine and sent its head jolting to the side, at least this would buy me some time.

As I ran at the capacity of my synthetic muscles would allow me the clink dropped the empty magazine from its assault rifle and rapidly loaded in a backup magazine into the mag well of the rifle. Both the clink and I pulled back the slides of our rifles, reloading them. Turning around to fire another shot at the clink, I saw that it already managed to orientate itself and aim its rifle straight at me. Two shots fired at the same time, one of its and one from mine. The .50 cal round hit the clink straight in the chest, causing its top half to separate from its bottom half in another cascade of sparks. As I witnessed this, I felt my body flying backwards through the air as if someone had pushed me backwards.

The clink managed to hit me in the shoulder, sending me flying backwards towards the direction of the gate. Once I hit the ground, the circuits in my hardware glitches out for a moment and needed to reboot before I could continue moving. This reboot process happens when our models receive trauma, our female frames aren’t designed to take as much impact compared to some of the bulkier, male models. The reboot process ensured no drives were damaged or corrupted by the damage.

My retinas swirled around until they were fully operational. My body was covered in dust and debris from the stone pillar that was shredded apart around me earlier. My right arm still clutching the rifle was moving fine, but my system reported heavy damage to my left side. A glance over to my left side revealed that the fabric surrounding my left shoulder was torn apart and that my carbon fiber shell had been pierced through. My left arm worked slightly, barely managing to make a fist or move it much passed the elbow.

I needed to be more careful, I’m lucky I’d been struck where I had been.

Before even managing to get myself off from the stone floor below me; there was a commotion happening at the entrance of the adjacent gate: the sound of clinks trying to breach the steel doors of the gate. Did the sound attract them? I wondered.

It wasn’t the sound of the gunfight that brought them to my position, but the second clink who lay in halves was using its beacon to transmit its location. I needed to take it out before anymore come. After pulling back the handle of the rifle and loading another round into the chamber; I fired at the clink on the ground until its head exploded into pieces. After reloading another round I knew I only had three left and would have to make them count. The thought came to me to steal the clink’s rifle.

As I made a dash for the automatic rifle laying a few feet away from the corpse of the clink I was interrupted by the sight of half a dozen more making their way through the entrance of the alleyway where they shortly started investigating the area. My dusty appearance must’ve concealed myself from this distance, but it wouldn’t last long. I made the decision to ditch the automatic rifle and decided to instead make a run for the busted, steel gate behind me.

Not long after making a dash for the gate the sound of gunfire erupted behind me from the direction of the alleyway where a hail of bullets smacked the ground at my feet. The years of radioactive decay must’ve been disrupting their aiming systems, or else I wouldn’t have been as lucky as I was to have managed to not be struck.

The gate, only a few feet away from me, was being torn to spreads by the clink’s automatic fire. When the bullets hit the surface of the door’s metal they created a flash and proceeded to melt straight through the metal like it was clay. The opening at the top of the busted gate was my only option out and I needed to be efficient in my approach or else my cybernetic death would be imminent.

When I was in position, the first thing I did was fling the strap of my rifle over my shoulder then proceeded to kick off the stone frame of the gate and reached the edge of the busted door. A round fired beside my hand and another managed to blow off the tip of my pinky finger on my right hand.

I barely managed to pull myself over before falling off the edge of the door, falling onto the pile of rubble below me. The other side of steel door was blown out looking like a balloon halfway through popping. It was crucial that I get far away from here.

The street to my left led to a destroyed bridge overlooking the canal, dead end. To my right was a decimated church that stood in the middle of a square, the buildings surrounding it have long since fallen onto themselves. I made the decision to make it for the church; it would provide the most space to hide and shelter compared to the surrounding buildings.

The street remained littered with rubbishing that was blown in from the storm, pampering the roads with chunks of metal and concrete. The small cars which once drove on these streets were either toppled over or slowly degrading into nothing. Cautiously, weaving past the rubble as not to draw too much attention to where I was currently crossing the street I saw that there were two more clinks down the road heading in the direction of the plaza. The two weren’t aware that I was crossing the street only a little ways down from where they patrolled, it was best to leave it this way.

The stairs leading towards the front of the church were littered with brick and falling debris that added more challenge for remaining quiet. The wooden doors to the cathedral were long since crumbled into sawdust. Just as I was pushing through the entrance way, the sound of something heavy falling erupted from where I previously was. They must’ve broken down the steel doors and would soon be searching the surrounding area.

Once I was inside the cathedral, my worries didn’t cease to go away. 

Next Chapter: Six