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Chapter 17

"Come to Master," Quirk giggled as he lifted the weapon from its plinth. Xerian glanced quizzically at him before remembering that Protogens didn't have parents in the conventional sense.

"So, uh... What does it do?" the Synth asked, worriedly.

"Watch this," Quirk said, and aimed the weapon at a nearby metal wastebin. There was a strange rising whine for a moment and then a glowing ball of plasma drifted lazily out of the muzzle of his new toy. It passed cleanly through the bin, instantly vaporising both the metal and the wastepaper inside, and struck the wall behind it.

"Holy Vader," Xerian breathed. Then the two of them dived to the ground with a yelp from Xerian as the plasma ball bounced back towards them leaving a massive scorch mark on the wall. It floated over their heads in a great wave of burning heat, vaporised a light fitting and then finally fizzled out as it touched the floor to one side of them. The spots where it had touched were glowing cherry-red.

"Did you see that?! That was awesome!" Quirk burbled, an expression of sheer delight on his electronic face.

"You could have k-killed us!" Xerian screeched. "K-killed me! You know I won't be reanimated by the resurrection machinery if I d-die! And if that thing hits you full-on, you won't either! I'm pretty sure you have to be in a solid state of matter for it to put you back together!"

"True," Quirk said, sounding a little more sober, and stood up with an awkward stretchy noise and the slap of rubber snapping. "Shit," he said, glancing down at the ruined frills. "I think it melted my dress to the floor."

"I think it could melt me to the floor too," Lautrec added, with a look of deep concern. "I hope you know how to aim that thing."

"What do we do with the captive?" Xerian asked.

"Kill him?" Quirk suggested hopefully, his visor flashing "KiLL" again.

"No no, not with that thing!" Xerian looked appalled. "He hasn't done anything to us!"

"I was only going to kill him a little bit," Quirk said. "One little hole in his visor and leave him out for the robots."

"I was thinking of giving him his keycard back," Xerian mused. "It will only be another way for the Emperor to track us when they find the body. I could just throw it in and leave him to escape on his own."

"Find out whether he wants to join us," Lautrec said. "Remember, they shot that other guy. Sounds like they might not be taking chances with defectors. We could make him an offer he can't refuse."

"But then we'll have yet another recruit whom we don't quite trust," Quirk sighed. "Oh, alright."

* * *

"How are you doing there?" Lautrec asked cheerily. The protogen stared back with a look of fear on their visor. "We've come to make you an offer."

"Look what I've found!" Quirk burbled, waving the plasma gun.

"What do you want?!" the protogen whimpered.

"I want to test this on a living target," Quirk said. "But the others don't want me to. So, seeing as the Emperor's men murdered the last person we left in a cupboard, I figured you might want to join our gang?"

"Or you could make a run for it," Xerian said. "But if you immediately tell the Emperor about us, then if we run into you again, Quirk is liable to have you... er, Made Not."

"Like this," Quirk said, firing the plasma gun and evapourating the nearest security camera.

"Quirk!" Xerian and Lautrec yelped in unison as the plasma ball destroyed a light fitting and set fire to the picture Xerian had earlier been shooting at.

"Okay, Okay! I'll come with you," the protogen said, "Just keep that thing away from me!"

* * *

Quirk, Xerian and Lautrec returned to the hideout with their captive in tow. Quirk set to rewiring the exposed panel of the door and the hatch slid open. Quirk froze.

"Oh shit," Lautrec said. Inside the hideout was a group of protogen mooks, who all turned to face the door at the sound of it opening.

Quirk hefted the plasma gun.

"No!" Niall yelled, pushing the gun aside. "Quirk! Stop!"

"Don't shoot!" one of the mooks said plaintively.

"What the hell has happened?!" Xerian asked. Holstering the plasma rifle, Quirk began laughing to himself as he realised what had occurred.

"Help us," one of the mooks said. "We have woken up as if from a bad dream. Niall said that the Emperor had lobotomised us, and that you have somehow reversed it. If we are found, they will surely turn us back into shambling idiots!"

"You left me prisoner in a cupboard where I was found and shot in case I defected," one of them said. "They planned that I would be Processed and left mindless if my body was found in time for revival."

"Oh!" Xerian said, sounding relieved. "I was so worried! I am glad you are well!"

"Thank you. It has definitely helped me come to a decision," the ex-officer said. "I will help you against the Emperor."

"We managed to get a charger," Toast said. "But when we left, there was this crowd of drone protogens. I think they'd been sent to capture or kill us."

"The voices told us to go there," one of them said. "It seemed like we should, or people would start to wonder why we hadn't obeyed them. We could be destroyed!"

"They'll work it out eventually anyway," Toast cautioned. "I just hope we can find somewhere to hide them all, as we're running out of space."

"Anyway," Niall said. "Let's see if our prize is going to work on Xerian. Then we can finally set about finding Zuki."

"Thank you," Xerian said, looking incredibly relieved.

* * *

"Okay," Quirk said, unplugging himself from the cyberspace terminal. "I was able to narrow things down to the day you were kidnapped. Looked for blue Synths, and I think this should be it."

"You actually found Zuki?!"

"I think so. Deck 5, Alpha Corridor. Location 06FC."

"Can we go there now?" the Synth asked, eagerly.

"I want to get supplies first," Quirk said. "But yes, we should go there as soon as possible. Each time I do this, I give away our location, and the more detailed the query, the more information our enemies will have. If they don't know already, they will soon have guessed that we are looking for a specific blue Synth."

"They will try to use this information against us," Toast said. "We have discomfited the Emperor by escaping from his very throne room, and this is not something he will readily forgive."

"What do we need to get first, then?" Xerian asked, as they left the computer room.

"Bombs," Quirk said gleefully, flashing "KiLL" on his visor again.

* * *

"But I don't understand why you want those!" Xerian protested, as Quirk selected a sniper rifle and lined his belt with grenades. "We're trying to rescue Zuki, not k-kill everyone!"

"Not all explosives are created equal," Quirk said. "I have a few proximity mines in case we meet any security bots, but the rest are for the mooks."

"Why?!" Xerian wailed. "They can't help themselves! And when they're pulled in for overhaul it will cure them! Why do you want to blow them to k-kibble when they could be useful to us?"

"They're here!" Quirk hissed. Xerian whimpered.

"Obey the Emperor," chorused the protogens, turning the corner. "Apprehend the traitors! Praise the Emperor!"

Quirk chose a pair of grenades, and hissed a warning to the others. "Cover your faces," he said, and threw them at the feet of the approaching group before anyone could stop him.

There was a loud bang and a bright flash. When they looked back the drone protogens were lying dazed on the ground with various injuries to their limbs.

"Casualties detected," a patrol robot intoned, and began to haul the more urgent cases away.

"Now's our chance," Quirk said.

"Flashbangs?" Toast asked as they hightailed it towards the stasis facility. "Not a bad idea."

"Normally I'd have shot them in the head," Quirk said, sounding far too cheery about the prospect. "But now I think it's in our best interest to maim large numbers of the drones so we can recover as many as possible before the Emperor's goons figure out what happened and revert my changes."

"I..." Xerian said. "I don't like it, but you're right... if doing this will restore them to their normal selves, that is... the least amoral course of action, I guess."

* * *

"Uh oh. That's not good," Toast said, attending to the main control console in the stasis facility. "Looks like they've locked my account."

"Quirk can probably unlock it," Lautrec said.

"Yes, but we can't use it now, and more to the point, they'll know where we are. We'll have to be quick."

"But how can we be quick if we don't know where the pod is?!" Xerian wailed, gesturing at the vast warehouse in front of them. "There's over 60000 of them in this room alone!"

"The coding isn't too difficult," Toast said. "What was the number again?"

"06FC", Quirk supplied.

Toast's visor went blank for a moment and then displayed a rotating circular pattern. "Pod 0..." he said vacantly, "Column 63... Row 3..."

"Oh! Niall said. "Is it just the three coordinates packed together into a 16-bit number?"

"Yes," Toast said, face reverting to normal. "However, the computer would also have told us the status of that pod."

Xerian ran over with the others in hot pursuit, finding the row and column they had indicated.

"Pod 0 is the ground floor," Toast called out. "So we won't need to un-stack them..."

Xerian's expression of eagerness melted away into disappointment followed by concern.

"...It's empty!" he exclaimed.

"Uh oh," Lautrec said, looking around suspiciously.

"Did they set a trap for us?" Toast called out, sounding scared.

"Yes," said an armed trooper, jumping down from one of the stasis pods in the level above them. "His majesty has commanded that you be arrested. All of you."

"I surrender!" Xerian said, raising his hands. "Just tell me one thing..."

"You can put your questions to the Emperor..." the protogen began, and then promptly received a round through his visor. Xerian screamed as the enemy cyborg made a choking sound and collapsed in a pool of blood.

Three more protogens jumped down from their hiding places and opened fire. Xerian had dropped to the ground and was doing his best to assume an obvious position of surrender, while Lautrec leapt at one of the squad, knocking them down. There was a gurgling scream as the jaguar killed him.

Quirk had not been idle and the other two protogens were soon lying on the ground, bleeding from ugly wounds in their heads from his sniper rifle. Gore had been sprayed over multiple stasis pods.

As silence fell, Niall reached down to pull Xerian to his feet, and the Synth recoiled in horror. The vulpine had been shot in the side of the head, exposing some of the mechanisms that actuated his face.

"Iss justh a flesh wound," he slurred. "Well, kind oth. Now come on, we hath to run for it!"