Prodigy Returns (book 3)

Chapter Fifty

Rising from the depths of the underground facility, the three emerged onto the street level to make their journey back to Maxim's compound. They took less than ten paces before Maxim realized something was amiss.

Taking notice at the subtle change in Maxim's behaviour, Kyodin asked, "What is it, father?"

"Did you hear that?" Maxim asked.

The three men stood in silence.

"You too have become paranoid," Archimedes chuckled in an old-man way. "There's nothing moving out here except the breeze."

"Paranoia keeps you alive, old friend. My intuition is picking up something."

"Who are you, Spider-Man?" Archimedes asked.

"I've accomplished great feats in my life by trusting my intuition."

"Dad, who's Spider-Man?"

"He's a fictional character from Earth who could sense danger before it happened."

Before Maxim could finish his explanation, the group realized they were surrounded by bots, both surface droids and sky drones. Nearly two dozen bots closed in from all angles. The more Maxim and Kyodin looked around, the more they could spot. They showed up in various forms, seemingly looking for a fight.

"Archimedes, what's going on?" Maxim said with worry.

"I'm not sure."

"I do," Kyodin said, checking for his ring. "It's me they're after. I don't have my rock with me, it must have fallen off when your friend attacked us earlier."

"Everyone just remain calm and don't move," Maxim said. "There's not that many of them."

"If these bots want a fight," Archimedes said, "then lets show them what we humans are made of."

Archimedes lifted his weapon and sent a blast right down the street through the middle of the pack. The metal robots flipped through the air as the energy shockwave divided them like a parting sea. Thunderous echoes reverberated off the surrounding buildings followed by the sounds of crunching metal and glass. Maxim and Kyodin raised their weapons too and began firing. The bots retaliated in kind and fired back.

The trio spread out and looked for cover from the onslaught. By now, more robots started to spill out from every building and even underground. The sky darkened as a fleet swarmed in from above.

The snaking mechanical arms of the octo-walkers took no mercy on the urban terrain as the giant bots smashed their way toward the group.

"We can't stay here!" Maxim shouted. "Kyodin, take my Jacey stone and get as far away as you can. Archimedes and I will hold them off!"

"That's never going to happen, father," Kyodin said, refusing to leave his father behind. "It's all of us, or none of us."

"I may have some friends who can help," Archimedes said.

"Friends?" Maxim said. "What friends?"

Emerging from the surround buildings, a group of covert operatives joined the alliance. Maxim took notice of the allies and said, "RTs? You have a stash of RTs?"

"I was saving them for a rainy day, and it looks like a storm is coming."

Nearly a dozen Earth robots joined the fight. The ten-foot tall droids went undetected by the alien machines and attacked them unexpectedly from all angles. Maxim was one of the chief architects in the RTs' development. When in office, he had allocated a sizable budget for the creation of the battle bots against great dissension, many of whom argued they were in no need for such heavily weaponized war machines. Despite the opposition, Maxim went through with the program anyway, but had never seen them in a real-life combat situation. They brought a dozen RTs with them on the mission for a purpose such as this, but were of little use without human pilots operating them. Maxim wondered how they were being operated, but saved his questioning for later.

The RTs battled the alien bots long enough for Maxim, Kyodin, and Archimedes to escape.