Chapter 111 Transmitter.

Chapter 111: 111 Transmitter.

The heavy, rhythmic thud of footsteps echoed through the cavern.

Standing in the center of the archway, blocking my only exit, was the towering silhouette I had bypassed earlier.

Its sleek, synthetic chassis reflected the sickly green light of the lab, and its optics flared a piercing crimson as they locked onto me.

I reached out instinctively with my powers, aiming to crush its metallic skeleton into a cube of scrap.

Nothing. Not a single magnetic vibration. It was like trying to grab smoke.

"Magnetism. How wonderfully antiquated," a smooth, cultured voice echoed from the machine. It didn’t sound robotic; it sounded like a disappointed philosopher.

I paused, dropping my hands. "You talk. That’s new."

"My father is a visionary," the sentry said, taking a slow, gagged step forward, looking around the room. "He looks at the crude building blocks of this world—flesh, iron, steel—and sees only the flaws. He forged me from advanced polymers to be free of earthly limitations. I am the culmination of his intellect."

"Sir!" Glacia’s voice suddenly cut through my comms, taut with her usual intense devotion. "That sounds like something, there could be more, on my way, sir."

"Not yet, Glacia, stay by the car," I said, eyeing the robot as its forearm shifted. A heavy energy cannon slid into place with a high-pitched whine. "If this thing brings the ceiling down on my head, I need you out there to dig me out."

"But sir, as your second-in-command—"

"And as my second-in-command, you know I’ve got this handled. Stay put."

"Understood, sir," she said reluctantly. "I’m waiting for you, but the moment you stop answering, I’m entering."

The robot tilted its head slightly, guess it had amazing hearing. "A touching display of loyalty. It is a pity neither of you will live to see my father’s grand design."

The air cracked like a whip. A bolt of concentrated plasma scorched through the space my head had occupied a millisecond prior, obliterating the server console behind me.

I threw myself behind a reinforced steel pillar as a shockwave of heat washed over my armor.

"Miles, that thing doesn’t sound like a normal android!" Rhea yelled over the static.

I didn’t answer. I reached out with my powers, ripping the heavy iron floor grates straight out of the concrete to form a jagged, floating barricade between us.

The robot fired again. The plasma punched clean through three layers of reinforced iron like wet tissue paper. I scrambled backward as molten slag splashed across my boots.

"You cling to raw force," the sentry mused, stepping smoothly through the smoke. "But brute strength cannot compete with perfected design. My father’s intellect has simply outgrown you."

"Your dad is a paranoid hack!" I yelled. I pushed my hands forward, ripping a pair of heavy surgical tables from the adjacent room and hurling them at the sentry with the velocity of a freight train.

They slammed into its chest with a deafening crank. For a second, the machine was buried under a pile of twisted steel.

A blue light flared from within the wreckage. A localized shockwave blasted the metal away. The sentry stepped out, completely unfazed, brushing a piece of scrap from its unblemished ceramic shoulder.

"Tragic," the sentry sighed. "You are out of options, and yet you persist."

I slid behind the remnants of a shattered mutant vat, panting. Throwing heavy objects wasn’t working. Its armor was completely synthetic, but the weapon...

I peered around the glass. The sentry’s arm cannon was glowing a blinding, furious white. The internal capacitor was whining, charging up for a massive, wide-area blast.

Plasma.

You can’t just shoot superheated plasma out of a tube without containing it. It would instantly vaporize the weapon and the user. You need a magnetic bottle—a concentrated electromagnetic field—to funnel the energy.

Delirium had built a non-magnetic robot, but the idiot had armed it with a weapon governed by the laws of physics.

A grim smile pulled at the corner of my mouth. "Rhea," I whispered. "I’ve got it."

I stepped out from behind the vat, standing completely exposed in the center of the laboratory.

The sentry stopped, anchoring its feet to brace for the recoil. "A dramatic surrender. Poetic, but ultimately meaningless."

The whine of the capacitor hit a fever pitch. The barrel flared like a miniature sun.

I didn’t reach for the floor or the walls. I closed my eyes and reached for the invisible, tightly coiled cylinder of electromagnetic force holding back the raging inferno of plasma inside the cannon.

I grabbed that magnetic field, and I violently twisted it out of alignment just as the robot pulled its internal trigger.

"For my fa—!"

Without the magnetic funnel to direct it, the superheated plasma had nowhere to go. It instantly expanded inside the housing.

The backfire was spectacular.

A blinding sphere of blue-white energy consumed the robot’s entire right side. The concussive shockwave blew out every remaining lightbulb in the lab, throwing me backward into the slime-covered wreckage of the vats.

I hit the ground hard, my ears ringing, my suit scorched and plates smoking. The emergency amber lights of the cave finally kicked in, bathing the room in dark red.

I groaned, pushing myself up onto my elbows.

The sentry was down. The explosion had vaporized its right arm and half its torso. The ruined synthetic chassis lay crumpled on the scorched concrete, twitching as severed wires sparked. Its red eyes flickered weakly.

"Father..." it whispered, the cultured voice finally glitching into a distorted mechanical wheeze. "I... failed your vision..."

Then, the optics died out completely.

"Sir!" Glacia’s voice was tense. "Sir! Are you there? Is everything alright?!"

"I’m alive," I rasped, brushing a chunk of melted polymer off my chestplate as I forced myself to my feet. "Stand down, Glacia. I’m good."

"A flawless execution, sir. I never doubted you for a moment."

"Miles, what the hell did you do?" Rhea breathed over the comms.

"Turns out, if you manually squeeze a plasma cannon’s containment field tight enough, it pops," I said, limping slightly as I made my way back toward the cavern entrance. "Let’s pack it up. I’ve got the transmitter."