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Chapter 22

Lord Cyra smiled. "Your proposal has merit, fox!" he said. "But I warn you - do not try to deceive me. Remember, your synthetic friends are still within my power for now..." he gestured menacingly with the variable sword. "And as you say, we don't have much medical infrastructure for them at this stage."

"You'd really do that?" Lautrec sounded horrified. "You'd seriously build an army of death machines for that fluffball?"

"If doing so will save Xerian and the Outer Rim, I would do it for their sake," Niall said.

"That's a terrible idea, boss!" the jaguar whimpered.

"Silence, cat!" Lord Cyra snapped. "Any further insolence and your friends will suffer!"

"But it is objectively a bad idea!" Lautrec protested. "What will Quirk do if he hears Niall has gone over to your side?! He'll kill us all!"

"Ah, I see!" the Emperor smiled evilly. "I'll take care of Quirk. His interfering days will soon be over. And then, my new golden age can begin!"

At that moment, the throne room door glowed cherry-red and melted.

"Special delivery for Lord Cyra," Quirk yelled, waving his plasma rifle. "Your death-a-gram has arrived!"

Aiming the weapon with a crazed expression, he pulled the trigger. There was a warning beep and nothing happened.

"Kill him!" The Emperor screamed.

"KiLL," Quirk said vacantly, his visor flashing the word again. He clipped the drained plasma weapon to his belt with one hand and with surprising speed pulled a handgun with the other like some kind of bad Western movie.

"Stay back!" Lord Cyra screamed. "I mean it! Stop now, or they die!"

Quirk fired at one of the officers, slaying them instantly. "Kill, kill, kill," he burbled.

"I warned you!" The Emperor screeched. "I warned you all!" His black-gloved hand came down with a decisive stroke.

"NO!" Xerian screamed, as Rexx's head toppled to the floor, bouncing and coming to rest in a growing pool of purple fluid, a look of shock in his eyes. The red Synth's body toppled over, slumping to the ground as his tail and limbs quivered.

With an expression of naked fury, Niall pulled his arms apart and shattered the manacles that bound them. Reflexes clocked up to maximum, he turned to Lord Cyra, batting the energy blade aside with one armoured glove, and with his other, he punched the Emperor full in the nose. The visor cracked and the protogen fell backwards to the ground. He lay there twitching.

Relieving the Emperor of his weapon, the fox used it to slice through the manacles binding Eris and Toast, before deactivating it and throwing it to Quirk whose visor was now displaying a coherent face once more. The fox strode quickly towards the fallen Synth, while the half-crazed protogen busily dispatched any remaining officers who had not yet fled.

"Rexx..." Xerian was sobbing. "No.. No!"

Niall lifted up the dying Synth's head and examined it critically. "We can put him in stasis," he said, tucking it under one arm. "That should keep him alive until we can effect a more permanent solution."

"Yes," Eris said. "After Xerian's incident in your realm, it was strongly recommended for Synths to have extra power storage installed in their craniums. Previously, decapitation would be fatal within 30 seconds - but assuming he was upgraded he should last for at least 15 minutes."

"That's still not long," Quirk pointed out. "We have to get there, maybe fight our way there, and operate the machinery while he still has reserve power."

"It was also recommended to get an emergency power socket added," Eris pointed out. "Look at the base of the horns. It's polarity and voltage protected. But whether we can rig together a suitable connector in time..."

There was a blue flash. Eris uttered an oath and a length of cable appeared in the centre of the room.

"It's a miracle!" Lautrec said piously. "Praise Bob!"

"Yeah. Sorry about this, Lautrec," Niall said. "We're going to have to plug this into you."

"I don't like Rexx," the panther admitted. "But I don't want him to die, either. Do it."

Niall located the armour flap on the paralysed jaguar's shoulder and opened it, plugging the cable in and linking the robotic cat to the severed head of Rexx. The blank visor flickered and his eyes appeared, an expression of pain and fear.

"Can you hear me, Rexx?" Niall asked gently. "I don't expect you can speak. But you should be able to blink, right...? One for no, Two for yes...?"

The Synth did so, blinking twice.

"Good. I've connected you to an emergency power source. We're going to try put you and your body into stasis as I'm not sure I have the tooling or experience to repair you right now."

At that moment, several robots entered the throne room and swiftly removed the Emperor. Niall tensed, fearing that the robots might also attempt to retrieve Rexx, but after a brief pause they moved past him and made off with the decapitated protogens Quirk had provided.

"Pick him up and go," Quirk insisted. "We don't have much time - reinforcements will arrive, and they'll guess where we're heading!"

Toast picked up Lautrec and they ran down the corridor, Quirk leading the way as the others followed bearing the two crippled robots.

* * *

"There," Toast said, as the stasis field formed around Rexx. "That will keep him suspended until you are able to fix him up."

"Good," Quirk said. "Now, let's get out of here. I think it's time we got our reinforcements."

"Not so fast," Xerian said, putting a restraining hand on the protogen's shoulder.

"What?!" Quirk looked unsettled at the Synth's stony expression.

"Why should we trust you or your plans?" Xerian asked coldly. "I have not forgotten that we had almost reached a compromise with the Emperor, Quirk. It wasn't perfect, but it would at least have given us breathing space!
"It would have given us hope, a starting point to negotiate a proper solution that everyone could agree to!
"And then, just as things were starting to look up, you burst into the room and k-killed everyone and now Rexx has been b-beheaded and the Emperor is out to f-finish us all off! You've ruined everything!"

Quirk stood there trembling slightly, an angry and hurt expression on his face. He pointed an angry finger at Xerian, but before he could say anything, Niall interrupted.

"It wasn't entirely his fault," he said slowly. "Quirk has been very good about not going into murder mode lately. But the second the Emperor himself says the word 'kill', suddenly he goes berserk. Literally. Don't you think that's an interesting coincidence...?"

"Oh," Xerian said, and looked at Quirk with an appalled expression. "You mean... The Emperor accidentally switched on his combat implants?"

"Remember, he was built to be Lord Cyra's pet killing machine," Niall said. "A verbal trigger seems an obvious feature, does it not?"

"Shit," Quirk looked miserable.

"Well, the good news is that you immediately started killing the Emperor's buddies," Niall pointed out. "So it clearly doesn't put you under his control. If we're lucky, he'll be more careful next time."

"If there is a next time," Toast said glumly. "You heard his speech in the holding cell - he'll kill us out of hand now."

"True," Xerian sighed. "Alright, Quirk," lead on.

* * *

"What was your deal with the Emperor going to be anyway?" Quirk asked suspiciously.

"Well, I think it's academic now," Niall sighed, "Nobody gets everything they want when agreeing a compromise, and yes, I think you were the party with the biggest losses. But... I offered to help him build robots based on our technology. In exchange, he would let Xerian and the other Synths go."

"And what about me?" Quirk demanded angrily. "What about my people? All the protogens he has enslaved? Think of all the civilisations he could conquer with that kind of technology! And do you think that bastard actually would leave Xerian's worlds alone when he could knock them down like dominoes?"

"Perhaps not," Niall said. "But it was worth a try. What you forget is that even with their fancy matter-fabrication tech, it would take at least a year to get a prototype working, most likely more. That would have bought us time, Quirk. A year for Xerian to warn the authorities and for for his people to build defences. A year for you to escape and regroup - as the Emperor did - or arrange a truce with him, or to neutralise him if that is your wish."

"That's true," Quirk grumbled. "But it still feels like you were selling me out."

"Not willingly, Quirk. I hoped to minimize the harm to you. After all, if I had truly intended to betray you, we'd have delivered you to the Emperor by now," Niall pointed out.

"There they are!" a voice yelled. "Take them for the Emperor!"

Blaster shots flashed beside them, narrowly missing Xerian's arm.

"Run!" Quirk yelled, and bolted for the nearest door with the others in tow.

"This ought to slow them down," he grinned evilly, locating a fresh power module and clipping it onto the plasma gun.

"Quirk! No!" Niall yelled as the protogen poked the gun out the door and fired once.

Yells of panic rang out as the glowing ball bounced down the walls of the corridor, scattering the oncoming troops. Quirk fired again, but this time the orb of plasma ricocheted off the ceiling and straight back towards him.

The protogen leapt aside and the sphere grazed Xerian's left elbow, incinerating it instantly.

"Was this some act of vengeance?!" Niall snarled, taking Xerian by the shoulder and disconnecting the destroyed limb from the screaming android. It was still hot to the touch.

"I'm sorry!" Quirk protested with an appalled expression. "I'm sorry! It was an accident! It seemed like a good idea at the time!" Niall eyed him strangely for a moment.

"Well, disconnecting it should stop the pain," the incubus sighed. "I know that much. What I don't know is whether it would be better to reattach it so that his self-repair systems can regrow it, or whether we'll need to replace it."

"Thank you," Xerian said, looking distressed. "I'm not a medic, but damage like that... It would take weeks to repair. Usually we'd swap it out unless there was a good reason, like... Sometimes Synths are prone to the Theseus Complex and disassociate from replacement modules. It's not rational, but beings who experience emotions aren't guaranteed to be."

"We'll figure something out," Niall promised.

"We'll have to deal with this later, when the situation is stabilised," Quirk warned them. "Right now, we have to run for the elevator and get the hell out of here!"