The Rising(102)

As near as she could tell, the farthest section of the plant was churning out finished limbs and steel body parts imitating the human endoskeleton in the tradition of the Terminator movies, which scared her no matter how many times she watched them. The next sequence along the line was responsible for assembling the pieces in a fashion akin to the automated car factories she’d seen, with robotic arms swaying about soldering, screwing, affixing, and clamping. And when one broke down she pictured some robotic drone sweeping into repair action, designed and built expressly for that purpose.

Machines building machines.

A machine army to be commanded by whoever came through the wormhole channel, which must have been somewhere else in the complex, out of sight from this vantage point, if Donati’s conclusions about her findings were correct.

The pale surface flesh was sprayed on the fully assembled cyborgs in thick sheaths at a final station before they dropped down a conveyor through the floor, likely toward another assembly line where their unfinished chips would be programmed to enable them to spring to mechanical life at the flip of a switch. Capable of accepting complex instructions and fulfilling assignments as detailed and specific as the one that brought four to Alex’s house in the guise of fake cops. Looking, talking, and acting almost entirely human.

Then Sam remembered the strange language she’d heard them conversing in outside Alex’s house. Obviously the language of their home planet, the programming performed by designers limited to expertise in that language. She guessed the cyborgs were equipped with learning chips capable of cross-converting one language instantly into another to the point where they would always “think” in their native language but speak in the language of whomever they found themselves among. No reason to do that when they weren’t aware anyone else was listening, to save functional RAM and power.

Machines indeed. If only she could find the plug and pull it. If only it was that simple.

“I should’ve brought explosives,” Raiff said, still straight and stiff as steel.

“You’d need a boatload to make an impact here,” Donati told him. “And that says nothing about the God-knows-how-many other facilities like this that are out there.”

“I’ll find them,” Raiff said, but his voice lacked the surety his words implied. “I’ll find them all.”

“Right now, this is the one where they’re going to open the wormhole,” Alex interjected. “This is the only one that matters. For now, anyway.”

Raiff ran his eyes along the endless expanse around him. “Now’s all we’ve got, Dancer.”

Alex led the way down the catwalk, bringing them to the midpoint of the massive underground assembly line beneath them. They rounded a corner and came into clearer view of the next stage of the process, where the unfinished cyborgs were sprayed with flesh-colored tint, had glass eyes fitted over their swirling orbs. It looked also like the assembling mechanism fit them with distinguishing features, like various hairstyles and facial lines, scars, flesh tones. This suggested the assemblers built each unit with infiltration in mind, as well as assault.

And speaking of assault, another assembly station that had just come into Alex’s view was making stubby, rifle-like weapons with short, thick barrels. He had no idea what they fired but doubted very much it was bullets as he, or anyone else, understood them. He thought of all the science fiction movies he tried to watch after Sam boasted enthusiastically of their classic nature. He’d never finished a single one, but remembered enough of what he had seen to realize that this scene could have been lifted from any number of them, in one way or another. Art unknowingly imitating life that was much too real.

“Still no trace of the wormhole mechanism,” Sam noted.

“It would almost surely require its own level,” Donati explained. “The energy required to open the wormhole, formulate the space bridge, at this end would result in incredible, even immeasurable heat transference from radiation that would require a particle accelerator on the level of Cern, Brookhaven, or Tevatron.”

“Or Laboratory Z, right, Doctor?” Alex asked him. “What would it look like?”

“A tunnel, long and tubular. It would have to be tubular to properly use electromagnetic fields to propel charged particles to high speeds and to contain them in well-defined beams. The very definition of a supercollider. It would use oscillating field accelerators to generate radio-frequency electromagnetic fields to achieve the particle acceleration.”

“If we can’t see it now,” Alex picked up, when Donati seemed to run out of breath, “it’s got to be beneath us.”

Almost on cue, a steel spiral staircase that looked like a massive drill bit forging deep into the bowels of the Earth appeared before him. Alex never hesitated. Still holding Sam’s hand tight, he started toward it, forgetting all about the invisible safety line the chip in his head formed around the four of them.

“I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Dancer,” Raiff said, holding his ground. “At least let me—”

A shrill, piercing alarm swallowed the rest of his words.

“Raiff!” Alex yelled to him, realizing he and Sam had strayed a dozen feet ahead, clearly too much separation to continue projecting a protective shroud over them.

“Keep going!” Raiff shouted. “Go!”

Alex yanked Sam on toward the exposed stairwell, her eyes having trouble breaking their hold on Donati’s.