His forces hadn’t been decimated, so much as grotesquely cannibalized.
Eric Flynn watched the carnage unfold before his wide, unblinking eyes, and cursed the day he began trusting his own opinion as infallible.
Artificial intelligence, his inspired brain had cried, is the future of crime.
Mechanical humans, it had continued, are unstoppable, unswayable, unbeatable.
He ducked just in time to avoid being struck squarely in the face by a severed combination arm/plasma-cannon, leaking coolants macabrely.
The undead eyes of his nemesis’ creations were now locked on him.
He could do little more than bolt, recalling the events of the last two days.
“He’s a ghost in the business, kid.”
Eric rolled his eyes and adjusted his intentionally disrespectful posture on his throne.
“I didn’t ask whether or not his operation was breathing, Kently, I want to know if he can haunt me. God, listen to yourself. You leave your watertight assurances wide open for me to poke holes in them.” He shook his head, due more to neurosis than disdain. “It’s too easy.”
Kently sighed. “He’s a corpse.”
“Ever heard of zombies?” Eric’s brow went up. “No. Of course you haven’t. You’re far too bohemian.”
“He’s nothing.”
“There we go.” Eric grinned, revealing a mouth bristling with an unusual amount of prickly teeth. “Tell me about Mr. Nothing, then. I want to be sure he’ll stay nothing until I’m burning him in his bed.”
“Not to sound ignorant, Mr. Fly-“ Beneath Eric’s sudden glare, he reconsidered. “Killswitch, but why do you need to bother the old man, after all?”
“He’s on my land.” Eric breathed, rubbing his nails on his parka experimentally. “I claimed the whole district, and he’s doing his vile work on my property.”
“Vile work, sir?”
“Just rumors, but I’ve been hearing quite a few.” Eric chuckled. “Necromancy.”
Kently took an understanding gulp of air. “I see. And given your aversions to-“
“I have no aversions, Kently, only sensibilities.” Eric snapped, sitting up in his throne. “Now unless you’d like me to have the palace drones scatter your entrails to the winds, you’ll quit with the judgments and scram.”
The manservant bowed, gazing through the panel of plexiglass that separated them. He paused before turning fully. “Are you planning on attending the slaughter in person, sir?”
“Perhaps.” Eric shrugged. “Now scram.” He narrowed his eyes after the manservant. “Scram faster. God in heaven, they told me the British were punctual.”
When the man had gone, Eric rose from his throne and made his way towards the lower rooms.
The throne room was the only chamber in the palace that possessed a separator. Out of the forty-five rooms, Kently was permitted in four. The other forty-one were glimpsed only by Eric Flynn and whatever inventions he saw fit to bestow sight upon.
Kently communicated with him through intercoms, a priviledge that Eric often thought the butler abused.
He hadn’t killed his family and caretakers simply to be pestered by one more human insufferably interested human.
Eric collapsed into his favorite office chair before scooting expertly across the room and smashing the play button on his radio.
Music, free of human voice, filled only by action.
He worked with music, supplying the lyrics in the form of the to-do lists that papered his enormous workspace.
The first verse documented the slasher-tron-3b’s various necessary tune-ups.
By the second bridge, he was musing over whether or not to double-plate the Crush-95-XV’s proton cores.
He should have double-played the Crush-95-XV’s double proton cores.
They had a nasty habit of exploding after being ripped from the robots chests and hurled into the ground.
The blast knocked him down, flattening him against the loose sand of the eastern dunes.
Eric attempted to scramble to his feet but slipped on the terrain. He could only crawl, scrambling with desperation so as not to slip back towards the hordes of oncoming Revenants.
A pair of brown loafers were staring at him smugly.
He snarled and clawed at them. They did not retreat, adding further insult to his current circumstances.
He glanced up, following the bony ankles that protruded from their tops up to a pair of corduroys in a sort of vague light brown, a blue sweater, trimmed in with a fluttered, long white labcoat, until a pale neck and head appeared at the very top.
The adversary did not seem to care enough about Flynn to glance down.
His vibrant blue eyes, nearly lost behind his thick glasses, were locked upon the battle ahead. His full lips were curled into an appreciative smile, his hands were buried in his coat pockets.
He looked like a man watching the sunrise.
He should have been old.
Eric clenched his teeth, clawing again at the man’s shoes, daring him to notice.
Kently said he’d be old.
“Well, how old is he?” Eric turned away from the intercom, but his voice would still carry through successfully as he bent over his newest project.
“Older than me,” Kently replied. “Fifty, say, sixty years?”
Eric snorted. “And he’s still alive, after all this?”
“He was quite a villain in his younger days. Some might even compare the two of you.”
“And some might be idiotic beyond a genius’s comprehension. Powersaw.” He snatched the tool from the arms of the assistant bot and lowered his welding goggles before setting it to the metalweave.
“Master Killswitch, I really would appreciate it if you’d warn me before you flood the radio with that screeching.”
“Kently, I’d appreciate it if you’d set the oven on high for my dinner and crawl on in.”
There was a moment of uncomfortable silence on the manservant’s end. “Will that be all?”
“No,” Eric replied, frowning thoughtfully. “What’s his name, one more time?”
“Doctor Shyam,” Eric croaked, snagging his fingers on the cuffs of the man’s corduroy pants, “I’ve beaten you.”
“Your plan was ingenious, I must admit.” Dr. Shyam replied without glancing down. “Who would have thought that all this time, you wanted to have your creations devoured before your very eyes?” His expression remained unchanged, despite his evident sarcasm. “I would have never guessed.”
“You think you’re so much more intelligent?”
“I think the answer should be obvious.”
Eric snarled again, trickling mucus and saliva into the sand. “You think you’re better?”
“Once again,” Shyam sighed. “Rhetorical.”
“You said I wanted my troops consumed.” Eric breathed.
Shyam finally met his gaze, brow raised. “I did.”
Eric’s grin was slick with conceited victory. “You’re half right.”
He slammed his hand down upon the wristband of his other hand, pushing a barely raised button.
At first, there was nothing.
And then the pops.
Too small, at first, like glass baubles underfoot.
Then louder, a whole host of helium balloons, exploding in the heat.
The carnage was incredible.
As the robot’s half-digested forms combusted within a revenant’s belly, the entire creature was consumed in a gleeful burst of bright red.
They were occurring all across the battlefield, staining the sand with gore and metal, mixed.
And still, Shyam was smiling.
Eric rose fully to his feet, throwing aside his façade of defeat, and did his best to look the doctor in the eye. The eight inches of height the man possessed over him did little to benefit his efforts.
“As I said before, Doctor,” Eric giggled. “Beaten.”
He then took great satisfaction in delivering a suckerpunch to the man’s grinning face.
Eric hated touching humans, but when such a small interaction could produce so great an amount of blood, he considered the disgust a worthwhile price.
Shyam’s nose was streaming, his glasses smashed. He lay upon the ground, struggling slowly to rise.
Eric slammed his boot into the doctor’s narrow chest and held the position, smiling down at him.
“They said you were a great strategist, doctor, and of that I have no doubt.”
Shyam’s open mouth was filling with blood, dying his teeth pink as he bared them in pain. Eric was prompted to deliver another blow, cracking several of the man’s ribs.
“You strategized, but in the end were outsmart. And now, you forfeit.” Eric shook his head, consumed by deep, odd chuckles, not unlike retching. “You’ve never learned to defend yourself, always hiding behind your silly little puppets. It’s an outdated game. My generation has no such weaknesses; we cover our flaws with work, train our bodies and our minds. We watch our backs.”
“Not very well.” The woman’s voice registered in Eric’s ears seconds after the sudden blow knocked him several yards forward, somersaulting over Shyam’s collapsed form and crashing face-first into the sand.
When he opened his eyes, she was standing over him.
Young, beautiful, and becomingly proportioned, the woman made him feel utterly hopeless.
He hated girls. They always seemed to make him stupid.
He couldn’t find the words to say.
The woman’s smile was a perfect agony. “There’s a difference between weakness and reliance, kid. The doctor makes the monsters, deals with your pathetic little toys, and, when it’s all over and you’re so sure of your victory, I protect him. I’m the guardian, Mr. Flynn,” she placed a stiletto-heeled boot on his chest, mirroring his previous postion. “And I do a damn good job of it.”
She allowed him to mentally formulate a reply before delivering a deft blow across his head, felling him to unconsciousness.
She was at Shyam’s side a split-second later, helping him to his feet.
He leaned forward, spitting a gob of blood and saliva towards the sand before he attempted to speak.
“Did you finish him?”
“Can you breath?” She asked, gently tracing his ribcage with an open palm.
“I’m a doctor, in case you miraculously forgot. I’d know if I had a collapsed lung.” He let out a deep, shuttering cough. “It’s punctured at the worst. Ah.” He let out a cry of pain, keeling over.
“You operate every single day of your life, and yet you nearly faint over cracked ribs.” She sighed. “Really, darling, I expected better.”
He nearly fell, supported only by the woman’s calm grip. It was a moment of shallow breathing before he could must his next comment. “We all know you’re the strong one, dear.”
“Let’s just get you home.” She replied.
“You didn’t answer my question.” He said, coughing again. “Did you kill the nuisance?”
“You’ll be glad next month.” She replied.
He groaned. “Darling, please.”
“You’re going to have to rebuild your army, and I know you can’t possibly avoid procrastinating with new projects unless you’ve a real reason.” She justified. “Besides, think of how much he has to learn. By the end of this, you might harvest some decent cranial matter.”
“I seriously doubt that.” He snapped. They were silent for a long while. “You do have a good point about the army, though.”
“I know.”
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