Chapter 141: SNFUBAR

“Maybe one of Chicago’s Tinkers put their lair here before it fell?” Perry thought out loud.

“That’s possible,” Nat said. “If they were one of the curators, maybe, but while people going in and out of the vault is uncommon, it’s not that uncommon. Somebody would’ve seen it.”

“Seen what?” The android cop asked, his curiosity getting the better of him despite everyone being distracted enough for him to have slipped away.

“That.” Perry said, pointing at the looming steel.

“What? The wall? Is there something weird about it?” he asked.

Paradox and Wraith shared a glance, then looked up at the door.

“There’s a relationship between the android and the door,” Chemestro said, crossing his arms. “Therefore the chances of there being a relation between the Replicators and the door itself have increased substantially.”

“Oh, is that what that meant?” Plagius asked.

“This…could be one of Professor Replica’s old labs,” Mass Driver said, stepping forward and touching the solid steel.

“That’s bad, right?” Moonlight Flash asked. “We don’t want anything to do with him, do we?” Her brother nodded along. They’d grown up on Earth after all. Despite being immersed in Manitian culture since birth, they were still aware of certain cautionary tales.

“Generally it’s a stupid thing to break into a Tinker’s lab unprepared, but this might be worth it,” Mass Driver murmured.

“Worth getting killed for?” Perry clarified.

“Imagine if we found an off switch for the Replicators, or some kind of master code,” Mass Driver said softly before glancing back at them. “So yes, it might be worth it.”

“What are you guys TALKING about!?” J.C. demanded, walking up to the door, and motioning to it, “There’s nothing he-oh, shit where’d that come from?” he stumbled backward from the door.

“Take cover on the other side of the vault door,” Chemestro said. “I’ll get it open.”

It was less than a minute later that Chemestro called them over, having converted a human-sized section of door into a pile of iron sand.

“No traps?” Perry asked as he approached. Tinkers were supposed to be paranoid about intruders.

“Strangely, no,” Chemestro said, his helmet motionless as he stared into the darkness.

“That’s a good sign,” Mass Driver said, taking a tentative step into the darkened hallway. “Means it’s an older lab. Tinkers didn’t really have a culture of death-traps until the mid to late seventies. Like so many other things, Professor replica was a first adopter of death traps, but that was mostly because everyone was trying to kill him for about a decade.”

“But if it’s an old lair, how would it be able to mindwipe any of these modern androids?” Perry asked, pointing at their hostage/robot repellant.

“Could be built into their programming, and not so much this thing’s.” Natalie supplied.

That’s fair. The whole situation was setting off alarm bells in Perry’s head, but the HINT of a chance at averting the extinction of every sapient species that called Earth home dictated that he swallow any discomfort and investigate further.

“Me, Mass Driver and Hardcase inside, everyone else watches our backs,” Perry said. He and Mass Driver were very hard to kill, and Nat had knack for robotics that was as good as, or better than Perry’s. Plus her enchanted jewelry made her resistant to surprise attacks.

the other six supers nodded and formed a loose half-circle around the door as the three of them ventured into the lab.

The air…felt heavy, even through Perry’s suit. Perry wasn’t sure if he was imagining it because he was possibly in the lair of the most dangerous Tinker in human history, or if his Attunement was trying to tell him something.

Perry opened up the floodlights on the front of his helmet, and Nat did the same, flooding the abandoned facility with light.

Cold, humorless steel walls scattered the light around the room, revealing a desk, several workbenches filled with tools and half-assembled gadgets. Beyond were row after row of strange round pods, stretching beyond the range of Perry’s floodlights.

“that air compressor was recalled in nineteen seventy three, and none of the tool models here came off the assembly line after that date.” Hardcase said, scanning the tool-laden workbench.

Her helmet tilted up towards Perry, and he could picture her blushing underneath.

“W-What, I like tools, okay!? My dad and I fix old cars for fun, and sometimes you have to track down old parts, and old tools, and they’re cool, and…”

“I didn’t say anything,” Perry said, raising his hands.

I was thinking it, though.

They pushed deeper into the lair, and Perry noticed the egg-like pods began getting smaller and smaller, more refined, like they’d been going through iteration after iteration.

“What are these?” Perry asked, rapping on one with his knuckles as they passed. With the way the tubes fed into them from above, they kinda looked like uteruses. Is it uteri?

“Artificial wombs,” Natalie said.

“No, really?” Perry asked, surprised his first guess had been right.

“This one’s open so you can see inside,” she said, motioning him to check it out.

“They don’t function exactly the same as a real womb, but it’s close enough,” Natalie said, detaching her flashlight from her helmet and pointing up into the pod. “These two tubes pump in a slurry of raw ingredients, and the emitters on the sides tease them into creating a baby android.”

“That makes 3-D printing look like a joke,” Perry muttered. “And this was the seventies?”

“We hit the jackpot,” Mass Driver said through his teeth, grinning like a wild animal. “We’re finally gonna beat you, you bastard.”

Perry and Hardcase shared a glance before peeling away from the robo-lady-parts and approaching where Mass Driver stood in front of an ancient computer, grinning like a maniac.

“What’cha got there?” Perry asked.

“This is one of Replica’s first lairs. Maybe his first ever,” Mass driver said, eyes glued to the screen. “If theres a way to shut those fuckwads down for good, It’s On. This. Computer. We need to bring it back to Nexus.”

Mass Driver leaned down to inspect the side of the ancient computer, locating the power cable and following it across the room, around a torso-sized lump of meteorite, where he paused, reaching down with a frown.

“Light!” Mass Driver shouted as he straightened with something in his hand, prompting the two of them to approach, illuminating the cloth in his hand.

It was a hyperweave suit, black with bits of jagged green decorating the sides and shoulders.

“I recognize this,” Mass Driver muttered. “Bio-Master wore this in the eighties. What the hell is it…Oh, fuck.”

Thummm.

The lumpy meteorite beside them hummed with power, its pitted surface began folding in on itself hypnotically as it raised to head-height.

“Shi-“ The meteorite opened up, revealing a brilliant light that Perry could feel through his armor, tickling his very soul. The light flooded the ancient lair, brighter than the surface of the sun.

A moment later, the light faded, and Mass Driver’s empty hyperweave fluttered to the ground, along with Bio-Master’s.

Oh, that’s not good.

“Perry, help!” Natalie shouted, her feet dragging across the floor as the glowing maw of the kaleidoscopic lump of metal turned to face her.

Perry set Gor’s disintegration to basketball-sized and shot the machine…accomplishing nothing. The metal pedestal the thing had been resting on seemed to throb with absorbed power.

Nat’s feet dragged across the steel floor.

Without thinking, Perry jumped in between his girlfriend and the thing, and punched it right in its stupid kaleidoscope face.

Flash!

A flash of light washed over Perry as Nat bumped into his back.

OW.

Perry felt like he’d just gone through another soul surgery. His entire soul ached, and if someone tried to hug him, he’d kick their ass.

But…I’m still alive? Perry thought, glancing up at the machine.

The floating Rorschach test began wobbling violently , the thrumming power spiking over and over, retching like a cat with a hairball…or a machine with something caught in its gears. Perry could guess what.

Well then. Perry tried shooting the pedestal with every weapon he’d brought, which did jack-all.

“Perry, they’re coming!” Nat said, tugging on his arm. He could hear combat from outside.

Of course they are.

“One second,” Perry muttered, wading through the pedestal’s defensive field and smashing it with his fists. The pedestal crumpled to simple force, and the infinitely folding meteorite dimmed, falling to the ground.

Perry caught the lump of iron and, using his suit’s power, snapped the offending contraption over his knee before tossing it aside.

Perry straightened and scanned the room as it rapidly filled with Replicators falling in through the ceiling, ignoring them.

That wasn’t a simple disintegration beam, that was the hypothesized people-grinder that allowed Professor Replica to make perfect robo-clones of people. It had become obvious that the Replicators WANTED them to come here.

Perry didn’t intend to let them get what they wanted.

Somewhere in here, one of the robo-wombs is working on a Mass-Driver clone. Which one is it?

Perry scooped up Nat and dodged around a Replicator sending waves through spacetime that carved gouges out of the environment.

Which one…

Perry instructed his armor’s sensors to brighten any pod that had heightened energy or vibrations compared to the rest.

The pod in question lit up like a Christmas tree, and Perry turned his jets up to max, driving his entire body through the pod like a battering ram, shielding Nat as much as he could from the impact.

Mass Driver was a sore enough loser that Perry assumed he’d rather deny the Replicators access to his abilities.

“Paradox, it’s not looking great out here!” Wraith shouted.

No shit, Perry thought, rolling out of the way of another attack that warped the fabric of reality.

“I declare my eternal l-“ Perry punched a robot in the face before it could finish triggering what he could only assume was a Wildcard sandbag similar to Breaker’s.

“Come to me!” Perry shouted, spraying Gor’s disintegration at the surrounding robots, making sure to double tap the one that was in the process of using superpowers to repair the People Photocopier.

“Heyo!” Wraith soared overhead, launching a translucent young woman out of her body. The blonde girl turned into a massive spike and pierced through a Replicator before shooting out a tentacle to grab Heather and whip her downward towards another two robots.

Heather flattened out until she was a bladelike wing, cutting the next two in half. The ghost-girl blocked an attack while Heather recovered her shape. She high fived Heather and was sucked back into the Shifter’s body.

Oh great, there’s two of them now, Perry thought.

“Boomer, catch!” Perry shouted, hefting Hardcase and tossing her towards the semi-autonomous mech.

The mech popped its cockpit open and leaned to the side while tilting at a ninety degree angle to catch Natalie perfectly in the driver’s seat before slamming the cockpit shut after her. If Sin-eater hadn’t been wearing her seat-belt, she’d have been thrown out.

“Ahahaha! This is awesome!” Plagius shouted, power seeping out of his eyes as he launched from robot to robot, draining one after another.

“Shave and a haircut!” a smaller, faster robot said, pointing at Plagius.

“Two bits!” Plagius shouted, stopping mid-sprint to do Jazz Hands.

An instant later, he fell into two separate pieces as a dimensional blades from another powered robot caught up to him.

Perry met George’s gaze and the mage gave a quick shake of his head.

Shit, Perry blasted the ‘two bits’ Sandbagger Wildcard with a blast from Static shock. The robot was designed to be fast and evasive, but Static Shock tracked the robot down like it had a mind of its own, causing the bot to hit the ground, twitching like a bug that got too close to a zapper.

Perry turned his jets on to where Plagius was staring at the ceiling, his blood spreading alarmingly across the floor.

“Mom, mommy, help,” Plagius whispered, his eyes dilated from shock.

“This is gonna hurt, buddy, but you’re gonna make it.” Perry said with more confidence than he felt, his suit jettisoning a cannister of Astra’s Mending into his hand.

Perry grabbed Plagius’s lower body and dragged it towards his torso until the two were butting up against each other.

Come on, Saint Natanya, you gotta help me with this one. He needs his circulatory system reconnected immediately or he’s going to die in seconds.

Perry turned the cap, triggering the spell, and peeled aside Plagius’s skin and guts so the cannister could get a better look at the important stuff. Perry heard fighting going on around him, but his team managed to keep them off long enough for the spell to reattach the major arteries and veins.

“Oh god, I can’t feel my legs,” Plagius muttered as the bones were stitched back together. The bleeding had slowed drastically though, so he might live.

Thank you Saint Natanya.

Always happy to help. A feminine voice echoed through his mind.

“We’ll fix that in a minute,” Perry said, hauling Plagius up into a princess-cradle. The young Drainer was holding his guts in with a trembling hand.

“Midnight, can you teleport!?”

“Of course!” She said between blasts of energy.

Perry glanced between Plagius and the computer with information that might save humanity. He should have her teleport it back to Nexus so even if they died, some good might come out of it.

But screw that. If Plagius stayed, he would absolutely get double-tapped by a stray bot, and Perry’s team took priority over maybe humanity.

“You and George teleport Plagius back to Nexus! Use these on him!” Perry said, giving them a brief instruction on operating the cannister before handing off three more to them.

“Are you sure?” George asked, carrying Plagius’s pale form.

“Just do it!” Perry shouted. A moment later, his cousins were gone.

Besides, I can get the computer back by myself.

New Quest: Return Professor Replica’s computer to Nexus for study.

Reward: (5000XP) Reputation up with Nexus, Solaris, Possibly avert extinction.

“Red light!” A new robot said as it joined the fight, pointing at Perry, freezing him in place.

Out of the corner of his eye, Perry saw the reality-warping robot break free from Chemestro long enough to send a spacetime ripple towards him, intending to repeat their earlier combo move.

Crap! Perry’s heart hummed in his chest as his life flashed in front of his eyes.

“Green light!” Natalie shouted, smashing the sandbagger into scrap with Boomer’s arm.

Perry blasted the jets in his suit, jumping above the ripple in spacetime, which severed dozens of pods behind him.

ZZZAAP!

Chemestro ripped out the dimensional robot’s comp-gel brain and crushed it in his fist.

“Reminds me of my brother.” Chemestro said, studying the robo-brain between his fingers before re-engaging with the other robots.

They took powers out of people and put them in their combat models. And they’re using minor Wildcard powers with deadly efficiency, Perry thought.

Cast Static Shock on any robot that speaks. Perry assigned his auto-target, which managed to silence three more sandbaggers before they became problems.

They learned quickly, and in response, every robot in the room began speaking, attracting Static Shock long enough to give one of the sandbaggers time to offer Wraith a bouquet of steel flowers.

“Why thank you!” Heather said with a bright smile, her body trapped enacting the socially-appropriate response to being offered flowers while slicey-boys bore down on her.

Wraith’s passenger reached out of Heather’s chest with razor-sharp claws and tore off the robot’s head before stepping the rest of the way out and tugging Wraith out of the way of the attack.

Wraith continued to smell the steel roses for three perilous seconds before the smile cracked and she threw the bouquet to the ground with a snarl. “God-damnit! Paradox, we can’t keep this up! Sooner or later, one of these punks is gonna get lucky!”

“Do you have a moment to talk about the lor-“

“NO!” Wraith shredded the suit-wearing robot before it could lock her into an awkward debate on religion, and Perry considered his options.

They’re not gonna stop coming, Perry thought. They had enough numbers to throw robots at them until Perry died from old age. Billions.

And Wraith was right. Sooner or later, they would get lucky.

“Chemestro, can you get us out of here?” Perry asked, pointing at the ground. They needed time to disengage, and swimming through bedrock put lots and lots of mass between them and their attackers.

Chemestro nodded.

“Hardcase, grab the computer!”

Boomer scuttled over to Professor Replica’s computer and snatched it up, ripping away the power cable before tossing it into his cockpit. Sin-Eater squawked and ducked the lump of metal as it passed over her head and landed in one of the empty passenger seats.

Perry saw the seatbelts strap themselves around the computer tower before he, Wraith and Chemestro leapt for Boomer’s cockpit.

“Tag, you’re it!” a robot said, touching Perry’s ankle, an instant before Static Shock disabled it.

Well, I mean, if I’m ‘it’, I should go tag some other robots, Perry thought, hesitating mid-flight.

“Git in dere!” the translucent blonde shoved Perry as he turned to chase some of the other robots down. Up close, he could see she was wearing homespun peasant clothes and a fierce expression, moments before her arm transformed into an enormous hammer the size of his torso, striking him in the chest.

Perry tumbled backwards, flipping end-over-end before landing in one of Boomer’s passenger seats, leaving him feeling a bit scrambled. Wow, I’m gonna have to apologize to Nat for doing that to her.

Straps whipped themselves around his waist as Boomer dove straight down.

Chemestro closed his eyes and the entire mech slipped into the earth

“Dive deep, I don’t want to get hit by nukes or any of those satellite lasers.” Perry said.

“Do not speak to me,” Chemestro said, but Perry could feel their downward momentum increase as they put hundreds of feet of solid stone between themselves and the replicators.

Once they were acceptably deep, they could make a break for Franklin City.

One moment they were having the uncomfortable experience of passing through stone, and the next, they were passing through nothing at all.

Air? Perry thought with a frown.

“Did we hit a cave?” Sin-Eater asked, leaning forward.

“I can’t see, lemme just-“

Fwoosh.

Boomer launched a flare, illuminating the cavern. It stretched out of sight, miles in every direction, disappearing into the distance with the curvature of the earth. Solid steel pillars the size of mountains supporting the ceiling.

On the ground, millions upon millions of replicators swarmed, looking like ants from this vantage point, hard at work making more of themselves, preparing to crush humanity.

“We should go back up,” Perry murmured as the replicators stopped what they were doing to look up at them, an action that rippled through the endless sea of robots as they communicated wordlessly with each other.