Escape from Metal
Chapter 5: DEATH and FEAR

“Can I open my eyes yet?” Jake asked slightly scared.

“Yes, you can open your eyes” The woman said slightly annoyed.

“Are you sure I’m not hanging over the pit?” Jake said still scared.

The woman sighed as she moved closer cutting the cable Jake was hanging on. He hit the floor with a thud.

“See no pit.” She said blankly.

As Jake opened his eyes he saw more of the same metal as before. Whatever this place was it had a very boring designer for the floors and walls. He looked up to where they just came from. They were considerably lower in the pit. Yet even here there was scattered corpses of people and robots alike. Some were still sparking and smoking. The design was identical to many of the other platforms they had stopped on except this one had an enormous tunnel leading away from the pit.

Jake sat there still in a state of shock after having to zip-line several times over an inky black abyss. He still clutched the woman’s metal bow in his hands. Like a child he held it close to his chest.

“Ahem” The woman said as she stood in front of him with one hand outstretched to him.

As Jake reached out his hand to hers, she simply took her bow and started walking towards a tunnel. Jake begrudgingly and irritated got up. As he wiped the dust from his clothes and started to follow the woman.

“Hey...hey wait up!” Jake called out as he tried to catch up with her. “Where are we going, who are you and could you please tell me what the hell is going on.”

Without even looking at him she said “Too many questions. No time. Keep moving.”

“I need to know if this is a bad dream or if it’s not... I would like to know why I’m being chased by a killer robot.”

She kept walking towards the tunnel without saying a word to him. Her stride was that of confidence and fortitude. Jake was just someone she happened to save. He wasn’t essential for her survival after all she had done fine without him for all this time.

“Look if you don’t shut up and hurry. Then we’re as good as dead, now keep quiet and follow me.” She said firmly.

Jake felt like he was a little kid who’d been told to go to his room. He followed a few paces behind the woman. His head hanging as he looked at the floor with its alien looking patterns.

It was everywhere, it seemed to go on forever. This place was one giant metal floor.The silence of this place was eerily quiet, as if it wanted to say something to Jake. As if it desperately needed to but it couldn’t.

All there was, was a light breeze and the creaking of metal. Then there was something... something piercing the inside of his ears. It sounded all too familiar.

“Uh, I know you said I shouldn’t talk and that you wanted to walk swiftly in peace.” Jake said panicked. “But we might have a slight problem.”

“Yeah? What’s the problem.” She said seemingly in thought.

Her question was answered as out of the shadows came a familiar sight. The four-blade armed robot. As it came closer as a predator stalking its prey.

The robot seemed more composed, it was accompanied by a familiar whirring. The flashing of its eyes had stopped and the gaping hole on its head had been roughly patched with a metal plate. As it came closer it started dragging its two bottom blades on the floor and it started rubbing the other two blades together.

The sight of it walking slowly towards them was terrifying as well as the screeching and grinding of the clash of metal. It had an air of terror to it. Its earlier condition of chaos and instability replace by a focused and unified hunter.

Jake didn’t know what to do. He felt his heart sink, he couldn’t go through that not again. He already lost Ben, would he now also lose this woman. The only one who seemed to know what was going on.

She was ready as she with the confidence of a thousand suns took out her bow notched an arrow and prepare to fire. She wouldn’t miss not again. That was until another figure emerged out of the shadows.

“Bravo” A woman said as she stepped out the shadows slowly clapping her hands. “You’ve almost saved another one.”

She moved gracefully as her cape gently fluttered in the wind. She seemed strangely happy as she slowly moved closer.

She wore white and black clothes, with a white cape with red on the interior of it. Her blue eyes seemed to look straight through a person. Well, it looked blue Jake couldn’t quite tell from this distance. Her one eye as the other was covered by her black hair’s fringe almost clashing with her clothes.

“How many have you almost...saved?”

“10...20 maybe 100?” The woman said deviously as Jakes eyes widened in surprise. “Oh... Ooo you didn’t tell him did you. In fact, I’m willing to bet you didn’t tell him anything.”

The hooded woman holding the bow maintained her steely gaze. Her eyes barely visible from underneath the hood she wore.

“It doesn’t matter though I’ve come to collect him.” She said as she stroked the side of the hunter’s face with the back of her hand.

“You see he hurt my friend here and I don’t let anyone hurt my friends.” She said with a grin.

The hunter started running towards them, barely making a sound as it got closer. The hooded woman released an arrow as it soared through the air whistling as it went. The hunter swiftly dodged to the side and kept going towards them.

She fired another arrow. It dodged again. She fired another. It dodged again. It was getting too close to them. She notched an arrow with a cylinder at the end of it. It landed a few meters from the hunter.

A cloud of smoke erupted as it landed.

“C’mon” The hooded woman said as she ran towards the tunnel with Jack slightly behind her.

The hunter swung its arms wildly in the smoke.

“It’s just smoke you have thermal vision. After them you useless scrap heap!” The woman commanded.

The hunter leapt out of the smoke as it started pursuing. Even with their head start the hunter was gaining on them quickly with an inhuman speed but with the silence of the mourning.

The light flashed and then there was darkness. Jakes heart was racing as he was running as fast as he could. His legs felt as light as a feather, but he could feel the hunter close behind him. He breathed faster than he thought he could and blinked more than he ever thought he would need to.

Jake was close behind the hooded woman, she occasionally fired arrows past him. Either she was extremely lucky as they just barely whizzed past his face or she was extremely precise with her shots. Time seemed to slow as the arrows went past his face.

They slowly spun, occasionally reflecting light off their metallic shaft. As it seemed to part the floating particles in its way. Every time the Hunter either dodge the shot or split the arrow in half with its blades.

“One left.” The woman said coolly.

“One what?” Jake said in a semi panicked state.

Without missing a beat, she shot one arrow like before with a cylinder on its end. Once again it erupted into a cloud of smoke.

The mysterious woman cracked a smile as she watched a from a distance away behind the robot. They had tried the same trick twice, a fatal move as anyone facing a hunter soon discovered. Not that they would live to tell the tale to anyone else.

Quite satisfied with herself, knowing she had done it again. She eliminated another loose end. One less problem to worry about. Her self-assured victory was quickly interrupted when she saw the blazing red light in the smoke.

Her hunter “friend” was completely confused as to where they had gone. If it couldn’t use its thermal sensors, it couldn’t replace them. The mysterious woman was, in a strange way happy that they had gotten away. She enjoyed these long games with a worthy opponent. After all it had been so long since she faced one.

Once the Hunter figured out that the flare was disrupting its thermal vision it promptly crushed it under its foot and immediately started scanning for them through the clearing smoke. As the red hue of its scanner glided across the smoke slinking up and down to replace an opening to escape through. Its single red eye searching without pause and with its maximum setting on.

Jakes heart was still going at a million kilometres per second. As he sat down against a wall. Putting his head against it and looking up. He tried to think of something else, somewhere else but he couldn’t. He couldn’t think of anything or nothing he just sat there.

The world around him seemed to blur and slow down. The hooded woman talked to another woman a few meters from him. Where she came from, he wasn’t sure, but he didn’t care he just wanted to get away from here. He couldn’t make out anything they were saying in his haze. Each breath a terrible reminder of what was chasing him. He felt as if his breaths were becoming heavier and heavier.

The hooded woman was his only hope. He cracked half a smile as he realised that if she could save him, she was going to do it with a bow. He thought she would have at least had some sort of a gun.

“Hey, man c’mon get up.” The other woman said as she helped Jake to his feet.

“Names Aisha, I’ve set up a hologram in the breach of the door so the hunter can’t replace us for a few minutes. She said point to a wall that looked identical to the rest.

Jake guessed either he was still a bit hazy, or it was doing its job. It was now that he got to get a proper look at her. She had russet-brown skin and a curly black afro hair. With deep hazel-coloured eyes. Her clothes seemed too rugged for someone that looked like her. With the industrial goggles on her hair and manufacturing workers clothes.

“Hey, focus.” She said slightly shaking Jake. “I need you to watch the holo while Gwen and I try to replace a way out of here.”

“Gwen?”

“She didn’t tell you, her name? Well, I’m not surprised she’s not exactly one for words.”

Jake turned himself to face the supposed fake wall. As Aisha and Gwen scurried to replace a way out of the dead-end room. Aisha had a small bounce in her step even when they were almost facing certain doom, she’d pace from one side to the other.

In a way that instead of projecting anxiety, she radiated confidence and focus. She would walk back and forth talking to herself and stopping to confer with Gwen. Then she would go back and walk again.

Jake could hear her say under her breath. “What do we know... No that won’t work... how about.”

Gwen on the other hand was standing almost as still as a statue if it hadn’t been for her breathing, he would’ve probably thought she was dead. She didn’t say a word. Her eyes told no story, it wasn’t eyes of desperation or sadness or happiness just empty and staring.

Staring at Aisha watching her walk Jakes mind began to wonder in this temporary terrifying calm. He thought if this was over, would this be the end? Would he die in a strange place with strange people and a thing he never knew was even possible.

He felt like a sailor in the eye of a storm at peace but only just before the worst would break out.An ocean of questions began to fill his mind once again. Where did he fit into all of this he was beginning to feel pretty useless. He couldn’t shoot a bow like Gwen or at all probably. He definitely didn’t have Aisha’s confidence and calm or that little spring in her step.

So here he sat at his final hour. Staring at a floating fake wall waiting for some sort of mechanical monstrosity to get him. All while a woman with a cape smiled and beamed at his demise.

“Hunter progress report on locating the runaways?” The mystery woman asked slyly in a calm voice with a tinge of chaos in it.

“All spectrums of visual analysis are inconclusive however there is a high probability that the runaways are still in a close proximity.”

“Switching to human deception psychology subroutine to determine evasion tactics being employed.” The hunter said as it wondered around searching methodically for Jake and his new accomplices.

“I think I’ve got it.” Aisha said excited. “So, the walls and floors are super condensed alloys so they’re nearly impossible to break without the right equipment.”

“This is the good news?” Gwen said sarcastically.

“Well, yes but what you probably don’t know is that they are extremely high maintenance and with the maintenance in all the lower levels offline, they then started to degenerate.”

Gwen crossed her arms and raised one eyebrow as she looked at Aisha.

“You know...”

“I know I know, it’s one of the strongest alloys how can a lack of maintenance make it degenerate? Aisha said mimicking Gwen’s voice.

I don’t know. I don’t build these things.” Aisha said as she started walking to the nearest wall.

“What I do know is if we can replace the weakest so-called rusted wall, we can get out of here.”

“Uh guys, we might have another problem.” Jake said slightly nervous.

The hunter slowly walked through the holo. One of its blades went through the illusion first. The false light projection running over the blade like an upside-down waterfall. Another blade came through and another until the entire robot had stepped through the holo.

The mysterious woman followed close behind it with her hands inside her coat pockets. She seemed quite happy with herself.

“Here we are again, ready to give up or would you prefer die trying? Personally, I’d prefer the latter.” She said with a smile.

She clicked her fingers and the hunter bolted towards them at tremendous speed. Luckily for Jake he wasn’t standing anywhere near Gwen and Aisha. Unluckily for him the robot decided to charge at him. Jake still sitting against the wall barely had enough time to roll out of the way as the robot barrelled past him.

With its bottom pair of blades cutting the floor. As it ran past Jake could feel the wind following the robot and see his reflection in one of the blades. Funny he never thought a killing machine would be that clean. Not that he really ever thought about killing machines cleanliness.

The robot had trouble stopping himself and ran straight into the wall, creating a hole i big enough for a person. It stood up and cast off the remnants of the wall and rose out of the dust. Ready to strike.

Aisha immediately ran towards the holo screaming. “Over here bucket of bolts.”

The robot started chasing her leaving their escape wide open. Without hesitation Jake ran into the hole and vanished into the dust. Gwen started notching another arrow small electrical arch’s

danced on the point of it. Ashia came closer and closer to the holo where the mystery woman was waiting for her.

The mystery woman stood calmly as Aisha came closer. When she was a meter away, she unholstered a knife and tried to strike at Aisha. Aisha at the last moment slide under her just barely missing the knife.

She grabbed the holo and quickly stood up. The next few seconds seemed to slow and blur for Gwen. As both the mystery woman and the hunter had cornered Aisha. Gwen let loose an arrow as Aisha screamed run. The EMP arrow flew over the robot’s head. Just barely missing it and sealing Aishas fate

Gwen against all her instincts and inclination towards her friend ran as the last thing she saw of Aisha was her turning on the holo to make a sort of house of mirrors. The entire room had the exact same holo project onto all the available space. The walls, floor and roof.

Gwen was just behind the projection of the fake hole. She knew what Aisha had done. As she screamed in pain. The hunter impaled her with all four of its blades. As Gwen ran her face was unmoved, but in the shattering of a part of her she shed a single tear.

She couldn’t stop replaying that moment in her mind. Her scream. The smile... the smile the mystery woman had on her face. One of accomplishment and absolute satisfaction.