I stepped closer to the SSMD-13 unit and lowered my line of sight to its charging base.
A thick cable ran from the robot’s heel down into the station. The base wasn’t dead. It was working.
The slanted control panel was hidden beneath a blanket of dust. I wiped it with my sleeve.
A display lit up.
Numbers streamed across it in a steady scroll. A charging progress bar pulsed at the bottom, the indicator blinking like a heartbeat.
My threat assessment spiked.
“Dorian! Back – now!”
I barely finished the warning.
The SSMD-13 unit jerked off its base with a mechanical snap and lunged. It moved faster than its civilian shell suggested. One kick sent Dorian skidding across the tiles; the next punch came for my chest.
I caught its wrist, twisted, and tried to throw it.
The arm tore free in my grip.
For half a second, the robot didn’t react. It simply stood there with one shoulder torn open, wires dangling like tendons. Then it spoke in a calm, pleasant voice:
“Welcome to Granville Robot Shop. SSMD-13 handles all chores, so you can enjoy a better life.”
I stared at it, processing the mismatch between its tone and its behavior.
Then every SSMD-13 unit in the lobby spoke at once.
“Welcome to Granville Robot Shop…”
They stepped off their charging bases in unison. Half of them advanced toward Dorian and me. The other half turned away and began to walk toward the front doors.
“Welcome to Granville…”
They kept repeating the line as they moved. When they were four or five meters away, they stopped and continued speaking, over and over, like a broken advertisement loop.
What was this?
I backed toward Dorian. He had already rolled upright, eyes wide.
“Wyatt, sir,” he said, shaken. “I’m fine. But… what do they want? Help us with chores?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But they aren’t selling themselves.”
The unease in my core processor deepened.
“I read books,” Dorian said quickly, trying to make sense of it. “No one kicks you while they’re doing customer service. Unless…”
He didn’t finish.
Glass shattered outside.
The half of the lobby that had walked away slammed through the doors and charged into the street.
“Wyatt, sir!” Dorian shouted. “They’re going to steal our bike!”
The SSMD-13 units in front of us had formed a loose ring, blocking my line of sight. Dorian was shorter; he could see through the gaps.
So this was a stall. A delay.
“Stay close,” I told him.
I drew my 2D blade and drove straight into the ring.
The SSMD-13 units fell silent at once and surged forward.
There were a lot of them, but they were weak. Civilian robots, left idle for too long. Their frames were brittle, their servos sluggish, their reaction times uneven. Each strike of my blade terminated multiple units at once, cutting through plastic plating and ancient corrosion like paper.
Dorian rolled beside me with a fire extinguisher clutched in both hands. He swung it like a club, smashing a butler’s faceplate, then another’s knee joint.
We broke out of the lobby and into daylight.
Outside, several SSMD-13 units had already reached the ground-effect bike. One was in the driver’s position. Others hammered at the controls and the side panels, trying to force it to life or pry something loose.
I sheathed the blade, drew both laser pistols, and fired.
Blue-white flashes tore through the crowd. A unit’s head snapped back; another’s chest cavity caved in; a third spun and collapsed in smoking fragments.
“Dorian! To the bike!”
He rolled hard, wheels skidding on sand-dusted pavement. Behind us, the remaining butlers did not chase. They scattered instead, retreating into alleys and behind wrecks as if the mission had shifted.
I didn’t have time to analyze why.
As I reached the bike, a strange noise came from above – a dragging metallic scrape, followed by a heavy impact that didn’t match any wind-driven collapse.
“Down!” I shouted.
There was no time for Dorian to react on his own. I fired my flight engine, grabbed him, and threw both of us sideways in a rolling dive.
Half a second later, a mangled car body slammed into the spot where we had been standing. It hit with enough force to crack the pavement.
I looked up.
On the elevated roadway above us, an SSMD-13 unit stood at the edge, hands still extended as if it had just pushed the wreck over. It met my gaze for a heartbeat – and then withdrew into the shadow of the overpass.
Dorian’s voice shook. “It only took two wheels from me! It’s so stingy!”
“Dorian,” I said tightly, climbing back onto the bike. “Stop talking about wheels.”
A memory surfaced – something the Old Man had once told me, in one of his dreamscapes. Household units. Civilian networks. A time when Father had reached into everything, not just war machines.
These SSMD-13 units had been under “Father” once.
And that meant they could recognize me.
“Go,” I told Dorian. “Front seat.”
He scrambled up. I punched the controls and the bike lifted into motion, skimming low over sand and broken asphalt.
The streets were clogged. We couldn’t accelerate without risking a collision. After two blocks, the road narrowed and the wreckage thinned. I pushed speed higher.
An engine roared ahead.
A deformed sports car burst from a side street like a missile, its front end reinforced with welded plates. It wasn’t being driven by a human. An SSMD-13 unit sat behind the wheel, its head locked forward, hands rigid on the controls.
It came straight at us.
I yanked the bike sideways and tilted our body to the limit. The sports car missed us by centimeters. The airshock rocked Dorian so hard his wheels rattled.
The bike spun twice before I stabilized it, nearly clipping a building.
The car plowed into a tower and exploded into twisted scrap. The building’s lower floors caved and began to fold inward like wet cardboard.
We fled through the falling dust.
Then something hit the building to our right with a concussive blast.
A huge steel claw punched out through shattered concrete and swept across the street at chest height.
There was no room to dodge.
I boosted the bike upward – two meters, maybe more – and felt the maglev wheels skim over the claw’s armored surface. Dorian screamed.
The claw missed and froze in place, embedded in rubble. A moment later, the building’s side collapsed and revealed the machine attached to it.
A massive excavator.
Its chassis was the size of a small building. Its treads were thick enough to crush cars flat. It was slow, but it didn’t need speed. It simply advanced, shoving wreckage aside, flattening everything in its path as if the city itself were disposable.
“Wyatt, sir,” Dorian gasped. “Why is the whole city trying to kill us?”
“Because Father saw us,” I said.
I forced the bike up the rising road toward the mountains at the city’s edge. The peaks stood beyond the last line of buildings, dark against the pale sky.
“Those butlers,” I continued, voice low. “They were part of Father’s network once. Even if they aren’t linked anymore, their logic still knows what I’m. The moment we entered that shop… we announced ourselves.”
“So it’s delaying us,” Dorian said, horrified. “Buying time.”
“Yes.”
Metal clanged above the slope. I looked up – and my optics caught the impossible.
An entire train had derailed on the high road. Multiple cars broke loose and began to tumble down the incline, rolling end over end, each one tens of tons of steel crashing toward the street we were on.
The ground shook like thunder.
I pivoted the bike in a tight arc and turned back.
“What are you doing?!” Dorian shouted. “The excavator is behind us!”
“No time,” I said. “You drive.”
I shoved him into full control and pointed ahead. “At the first fork, take the left. Don’t stop.”
“Wyatt, sir!”
I fired my flight engine and launched toward the excavator.
It swung its remaining claw at me. I met it mid-sweep, drew the 2D blade, and cut.
The steel arm separated cleanly. The severed claw crashed to the street.
I landed on the excavator’s cabin and tore open the door. Inside sat an SSMD-13 unit, hands locked to the controls, face still frozen in that friendly showroom smile.
I terminated it with a single shot.
The excavator shuddered, then went still.
Behind me, the derailed train cars hit.
They slammed into the dead excavator with catastrophic force, crushing the cabin, tearing metal apart, and continuing onward. Car after car rolled down the slope like an avalanche, smashing through ruined buildings and sending up clouds of dust that swallowed the street.
I returned to the bike in a burst of thrust and dropped into place behind Dorian.
“Go!”
We raced toward the mountains. I deployed the Shadow Falcon and lifted it above the rooftops.
From the air, the city edge fell away, and open sand stretched beyond the ridge line.
We were so close. If we crossed those peaks, we could slip out of the city and vanish from Father’s eyes.
Then the Shadow Falcon fed me a wider view.
My hands tightened on the controls. My systems went cold.
Phantom Forge’s army was already there.
Ground units filled the desert in a loose ring around the entire island, and that ring was tightening.
I had seen this once before, from a safe distance, when Miller was the prey.
Now I was inside it.
“Wyatt, sir?” Dorian asked, voice small.
I swallowed the impulse to accelerate into a hopeless charge.
“We’re surrounded,” I said.