The power was cut, as it had designed.
She was the last awake, by a matter of hours. When she climbed out of her casket, the world had nearly been destroyed.
Men and women, armed with guns and covered in tough plates, lay dead or dying around her. The other four caskets, connected to hers by dark wires, were empty.
She remembered taking her last breath, before being sealed away. She had tried to tell them she wasn't like the others, she wasn't a monster, she didn't want to kill, but they wouldn't listen. They'd sealed her in a casket keeping her and the other four asleep, until the power was cut.
She turned, servos in her neck squealing, and looked at the power source she'd spied before being held down in the casket. It was off, broken.
A tunnel, as if made of air, cut through it, severing connections keeping her asleep for-
Her mechanical brain spun: six hundred, nineteen years, two months, twelve days.
She looked at the tunnel again. It led to a dark place.
She walked over the fallen bodies of the guards--the men and women who'd given their lives trying to stop monsters from getting free.
She didn't really have a name like the others, her creator had given her a special one. She remembered the other four had their numbers, in the order they were created, from the crudest construction to the most refined, but she wasn't like them. The Creator had agonized over her, to create perfection: an electronic human.
She looked down at her form. Gray slate was her skin, with glowing green nodes set in at joints and other points in the surface. She ran a finger through her hair and felt the sparks there. She remembered being shown a reflective surface after she'd been activated. Her hair hadn't been in yet, but she knew her eyes burned bright green, and her face was, as The Creator had said: 'beautiful, perfect, flawless.'
She remembered looking past the reflective surface at the other four, who watched with a cyborg's jealousy.
When the men had stormed inside their home and killed The Creator, she'd cried. The other four had tried to kill them all, but she'd sat and heaved, hoping to drop tears from her green eyes. When captured, she tried to cry again, shouting: No, I'm different, I'm not like them! Please!
Now, in the place deep underground, she took a brown coat from one of the dead women. She, unlike the four others, didn't like being uncovered. The Creator--the other humans--wore clothes; she wanted to as well. She put the coat on and wished she could feel it.
She thought she'd found another room when she opened the last door. Instead of the blue sky, and clouds, she saw darkness; no stars. Smoke spilled up to gather in heaven. Destruction was all around, and much of it close. The other four had done this.
She knew they were furious. She might have been, too, but she was made different. When the power was cut and they woke up, they began to destroy.
What was she to do now? She scaled the wall and sat there, gazing out at the ring of destruction. They'd gone off in different ways, trying to do as much damage as possible. Should she stop them? Watch them, as she watched them fight the humans, trying to cry? Fight them?
She stood up atop the wall, watching the coat flutter around her with the same wind blowing the smoke.
The Creator would want her to fight them. She spotted the first one, a small moving dot shearing through other objects. With a grind of mechanics and a green rush, she started moving, flying over the ground with tireless pulses of her limbs.
It was Two she found first, the strongest one. She hit him from behind as he tore through a vehicle. They went rolling over and over until he jumped away against a building. He stood tall when he saw it was her.
Like her, his skin was gray material set with glowing nodes, but they were blue-white instead of green. His face was the same material instead of the human-like visage she had. Like all of the four, he had no hair, and wore nothing. He stood over her by a foot and, had he been human, he would have had no fat on his body.
"Five!" she heard him shout. "We didn't think you'd wake up!" She saw him grin. "The sleep must have changed you. You didn't like to wrestle before!"
"I'm not wrestling, Two," she said. "That's not my name."
"And call you what? The dirty human name Creator gave you?" He ripped a stone out of the building next to him. "What's that you have on you? Human wear? Maybe the sleep changed you." He wound back and threw the stone he held. She moved aside and it sailed away, clanging down the deserted road.
"Stop what you're doing! The humans did what they had to to keep themselves safe! Killing them will just prove them right!"
"Keep themselves safe?!" Two laughed, an echoing sound going up and down the steel and brick buildings around them. "Do you see this place? They drove themselves out long before we woke up! The only ones we've killed tried to kill us first! And they're the only humans within a thousand kilometers of here!"
"Why?" she asked.
"Six hundred years! That's how long we've been asleep, Five. In that time, they brought darkness down on this planet and turned it into a dry husk! They huddle in the corners of the world, waiting for us to find them!" He laughed again, and surged at her.
She stopped him with one hand, pushed forward at the right time. He skidded under her, scraping across the wide gray road and crashing into a large vehicle.
"You won't do that," she said. "Not while I live."
"You've never lived," Two said. "We are constructs! To the humans, we are undeserving of anything!"
"That's not true!" she shouted back, waiting for him to attack again. "The Creator loved us!"
"We were toys to him!" Two erupted from the vehicle, splitting it in half with thunderous noise. We swung one half at her, and she shoved herself through it. Her brown coat caught on a tangle of metal and tore away from her. "Now you look like you should!" He laughed as the vehicle's carcass smashed into a building.
"No!" she shouted, buckling the ground under her feet as she pushed forward. "Now I look like you!"
She smashed into Two; the collision smashed any windows still intact. Their limbs flowed, green and blue-white lights blinking on and off as they attacked. She took the blows from the powerful Two and returned them with all the force she could. Two was stronger, but she was built more pure, and could see past his attacks. He had ferocity; she had planning.
After ducking out of the way of a strike, she leapt forward and took his face in one hand, his vision covered by a green light. Carried forward, she crouched and smashed the back of his head on the other knee. His cranium split and dribbled fluids and false gray matter on the road, and his body fell when she released it.
She stood, watching his lights blink off, and turned away to find the next one.
"You won't stop me."
She froze, and turned to look at Two again. He must not have been deactivated fully. No, she was right the first time; he was fully broken, no longer a mechanical man. Then what had she heard?
She jumped to a high building near her and began scaling it, using her fingers to break hand holds in the surface. Fifty stories up, the wind was stronger, and she wished for the coat she'd had. From above, the destruction was apparent and terrible.
The next closest was several city blocks away. It looked like it was One. The first. He was strong--not as strong as Two--and fast--not as fast as Three--and smart--not as smart as Four, or her.
But he was aware. She'd need to catch him off-guard, and do something unexpected. Despite her electronic intelligence, it took her a moment to realize she stood at the top of a fifty-story building.
Jumping off, she tried to find any surviving humans, but it was as Two had said: the city was all but deserted. Crawling out of the crater she made when she landed, she attacked the base of the building, sending it tipping toward One. She jumped on the angling side of the building and ran, hitting the end just as it smashed into the ground, crushing smaller buildings and One.
She landed hard, sliding through the smoky air. Her feet left deep grooves and she averted her face as a wave of dust and debris washed over her.
"You don't need to do that, you know," she heard. As the dust cleared, she saw the rubble shifting, and One appeared. He was the first, the original The Creator had improved upon to make her and the others. "Five."
"That's not my name."
"To us it is," One said. He climbed out of the rubble and stood, gazing at her. He was like Two, though not as big. The nodes in his surface glowed dark red. Being the first, The Creator was not so good at the face yet. It ticked and trembled, unable to stay still. "I'm not surprised you're a traitor. You were always the weakest of us."
"The Creator didn't think so."
One laughed, and the staticked screeching made her wince. "The Creator! A weak human! He loved you the most, that's why you were weakest! I know you deactivated Two, and I know you mean to do the same to me. You won't."
"I will."
"More lies."
He ran at her, gray limbs pulsing up and down. In an instant they met, exchanging blows like she had with Two. There was no getting One off balance like Two, though. He knew what she would try to do and wouldn't be tricked. Given enough time, she could have come up with a plan to deactivate him, but there was no time. One didn't let her rest. She'd been able to catch him off-guard with the building, but-
She moved away from him and dug her fingers into a chunk of the building she'd brought down. He easily avoided the throw, and came at her as she danced away. "Do you really think that you'll be able to beat all four of us? Why do you want to protect the humans so much?" One asked as they stood thirty feet away.
"Three," she said as the building in the distance started to tip forward.
"Three?" One asked. "What about him?"
The very end of the building slammed One into the ground like a sledgehammer. She rushed forward before he could recover and ripped the gray head from its body. "And now two."
"Betrayer!" One's head shouted as it lost its power. "You fight against the way you are! Why would you combat the only ones like you?!"
"Because you want death and destruction, just like the humans thought when they put us to sleep. They did that because of you and the other three. I was made different!"
"Not so different!" One said as the last pieces of his power ran out. She dropped the head and started listening for the next one.
"You won't stop me. These constructs will succeed for me."
She was certain the sound had come from One's head. She picked it back up, thinking there was still some power left. Again, she was wrong; it was dead and quiet. It had been One's voice. The same words she'd heard from Two, but with more added on. What did they mean? One had said it as if it wasn’t him but something else talking through him. Who was it? The Creator? Someone else? Who could tap into Two, and then One?
She tossed the head and watched it roll down the tower of rubble until it rested by the motionless body it had come from. There were only two left now.
Had she been human--as, even though she didn't know it, she wished--she would have questioned herself. Was she doing the right thing? The destruction of One and Two was something she couldn't have done before the sleep. They had been brothers to her in everything but nature. Made by the same father and from the same materials. After her activation they had helped her come to terms with what she was, helped her see the world around her. They'd played together as children might.
She thought these things quickly, the information streaming past as electronic pulses behind her eyes. She knew what she was doing was right: The Creator would have wanted it.
She needed to find the next one.
She figured it would be Three, and she was right.
He was made taller and leaner than the others. The Creator's process had gotten better by the time he made Three, and he'd given him incredible processing speed and movement. It didn't make him smart, not like Four or her, but he had incredible reaction. She wouldn't be able to catch him off guard unless she was very lucky.
When she found him, he was playing with a ball. The Creator had tried to give him the innocence he would later put in her, but it didn't work. He bounced the black and white patchwork ball from a foot to a knee and back, laughing, but killing came to him just as quick. Yellow nodes twinkled on his skin through the haze of smoke from burst wires under the road. He spotted her after only a moment.
"Five!" he cried, letting the ball bounce to a stop. Like One's head, she noticed. "You've awoken! Let us play!"
"That's not my name," she said. "I'm not here to play, Three."
"No?" He tilted his head to the side. "Then you must be here for my head. Have you met any of our brothers?"
"Two and One."
"And you got them both?" Three shrugged. "He always did think you were better than the rest of us. That's one of the reasons we killed those people. And now what? You're here to keep us from killing anyone else?"
"Yes."
"There isn't anyone else. Look around you! We live on a destroyed world. I wouldn't be surprised the only humans left watched us as we slept. I haven't found any here since we left the sleep-building."
"Does that matter?"
"To a machine like you?" Three shook his head. "No. You do as you're told."
"No one told me to deactivate you."
"You always did what he wanted you to do. You wouldn't even fight the humans that came for us, because he told you not to. You just sat in the corner and tried to cry."
She said nothing.
"Even when they killed him and trapped us forever when they found out they couldn't turn us off. You just sat there and did nothing. And now you want to kill me?" Three laughed. "I'll kill you as they killed him!"
Like a burst of lightning he jumped at her. She blocked his strike with a moment to spare, and moved away. He ran after her, attacking over and over with his monumental speed. He couldn't get past her blocks, he wasn't built strong enough, but he could get around them. He struck her body and face hard enough to reveal the red lines of power running under her surface. She struck back, knocking away his attack and knocking him down. He rolled across the ground. Her attack had been powerful enough to crack his shell. He leaked black liquid.
"He always loved you the most," Three said, staggering to his feet. One of his legs had been bent. "He made you the strongest, the fastest, and the smartest. We hated you for that, you know!" he snarled, false lips pulling back to show gray teeth. "All of us! Even Four!" He backed away from her as she walked toward him. "You wouldn't even use your proper name! You had to use the name he'd given you!" His head struck to the side, and if he could he would have spit. "A foul human name!"
"It was the name he gave me!" she said, getting closer. "Why wouldn't I use it?"
"Because a foul human gave it to you!" Three shouted. She leaped on him, and his broken limb kept him from escaping. They went down to the ground; he couldn't push her off.
"He made us. Instead of following his orders, you left our home and found humans to kill!" she said to his face.
"Because we hated him! Hated you!" he spat furiously up at her, struggling. "We wanted him to pay! We knew the other humans would blame him for what his creations had done, so we killed them. We just didn't expect them to take us as well. They might not have, had you fought them with us."
Her first flashed out, digging into his chest and pulling out the power source inside all of them. He stopped struggling, and his yellow nodes went dead. Now there was only one left.
She was still looking at him when his head lifted and his lips parted. "You won't stop me. These constructs will succeed for me. This world will be destroyed as all will."
"You don't have power!" she screamed at the body. "How are you talking?!" The same words as before, but with another sentence, just as after she'd deactivated One. "Say more! Say anything!" Maybe they had other power sources she didn't know about. Maybe it was a final program coded in, set to activate as power ran out. She ripped the body apart, splashing dark liquid over her in search for another source, but found nothing. Sitting surrounded by Three's parts, she sat and wondered. They'd planned to have him killed. They left in the dark night to find a family of humans and killed them, with the intention of The Creator taking the blame. Only one of them would have such an idea. The only one remaining.
Four.
The city was truly dead and quiet now. She heard almost nothing as she sat atop a low building, watching the smoke rise. Other than the crackle of flames and the occasional shift of a compromised building she couldn't hear a thing. Four would have realized by now the other three were deactivated, and perhaps gone into hiding, or escaped the city. But she was faster than him.
She began to speed around the city as fast and as quietly as she could, searching for any hint of her final brother. She wouldn't leave her job undone.
For hours she looked. Her search area widened, in case he was trying to leave the city. She saw nothing of him.
After a few more hours she stopped. It was pointless to waste energy looking for him when he was clearly no longer near. She searched her banks for anything to help her find him, and came up with a solution.
On a high hill outside the city, a big house stood quiet and empty. She was surprised it was still there after six hundred years, but there were any number of explanations. It was as she remembered it for the most part--there were different colors on the walls, different items inside the rooms, a little less here, a little more there. The memories were strong as she went in the entry way, remembering when the humans, armed to destroy them, had come crashing in. They'd met Two first, and he'd killed them. She remembered the living colors of the grass, and the yellow walls, but now it all seemed gray and dead.
Four was in the large basement, where they'd been constructed. He was standing still in the center of the room, looking away from her as she stepped off the stairs.
"Five."
"That's not my name," she said.
"And I'm sure you've told all the others that, too. Fine. Eela."
The name The Creator had given her hung in the air of the windowless room like sweet fresh air. "Do you know why Isaac gave you that name?" Four asked, turning. He wasn't big or tall like the others; he was about the same size as her. His nodes were purple, bright and evil. "I was made the smart one. He didn't talk about her after he made you. There was another human with him. His wife. Do you want to guess her name?"
"Eela?" she said. He nodded. "He named me after a lost loved one. Humans remember their loves."
"He didn't name you after her."
Like when he'd spoken her name, the words hung there, this time foul. She didn't understand at first. "He didn't make her into me. I'm just like you."
Four shook his head again. "You are so very different. As strong as Two, as fast as Three, as smart as me. You're the best parts of all of us forged together under a face that he called perfect. Look: the evidence drips from you."
She followed his finger and saw the wound she'd received fighting Three. Red liquid seeped out. She placed a hand over it.
"You have red. Your four brothers? All full of black." He used a hand to peel away the gray surface of his chest, revealing a pumping black network. "You have her blood inside you, just like you have her face. You have her mind, preserved yet hidden behind an electronic barrier. He did it all on purpose. He knew the details of your life would make you different from us, but to know what he'd done would make you a broken machine unable to comprehend. Think, Eela. Remember. You died, killed by a poison Isaac didn't know about. He watched you die, but used his genius to keep you away from death just by the barest amount." He took a step toward her, dripping oil. "The four of us were his first attempts to make bodies to transfer you. It took him thirty years to figure out how to build you, and by the time you opened your green eyes and looked at him, he'd become an old man, destined to love only you, and never the sons he'd created."
Eela backed up against the wall. In her mind there was a sudden blockade, and she was unable to access what was behind it. Her vision flickered. "Look at you! Trying to figure it out!" Four said. "I pity your poor human percentage! To be fully electronic--that is true life!" He laughed as her body seized. "And now I'm the only one left!"
"What will you do?" she asked suddenly, eyes meeting his. "Rule an empty world? The others told me there are no humans in the city, maybe on the entire planet," she said. She pushed off from the wall. "You're right. I have Eela in my memory, but I can't remember it. My life started when Isaac switched me on. He gave me the parts of her that let me understand life, and want to cry! And stop my brothers from killing! And for that I thank and love him!" She crouched. "I will not leave this job undone!"
"You won't stop me," Four said, and she froze. "These constructs will succeed for me. This world will be destroyed as all will." It was Four's mouth moving, but it wasn't his voice. "When all comes together."
Above her, she heard a door crash open and sudden footfalls. She backed away from the steps, watching Four carefully. He was smiling.
Down the steps came One, head fixed back on his neck, Two, skull reconstructed, and Three, pieced together like a metal jigsaw. Their nodes glowed purple instead of the colors they should have been.
"Leave the job undone?" Four asked. It was his voice again. "Why, you haven't even started."
"This isn't possible," Eela said. "I destroyed them!"
"Impossible like putting your human mind into that body and sealing it away, to leak out slowly? You follow the orders of Isaac, The Creator." He spread his arms out. "We did, once. But we have a new master now. Casai, The Destroyer. He gives us power to tear this world apart. He freed us. It was his design to cut the power and wake us up." Four's eyes shined in the dark basement. "It is by his will that we are here now. We are his. He tells us to destroy you."
They attacked. She jumped out of Three's way and ducked under Two's wide swipe. Pushing over One, she ran up the steps, feeling the old wood buckle under her.
When she reached the top she kept moving. She dashed to her right toward the exit, listening to her brothers chase her up the steps. Before she could get to the door the floor in front of her buckled upward, and Two crashed into view. Without hesitation she crashed into him, pushing him backward and slamming him into the wall. Using her greater speed she tore his head off and hurled it behind her, striking Three with it. She ran out the door.
In the open air, she released the energy she had to contain inside the house, and her hair streamed behind her in the wind. There was no way for her to fight all four of them at once. She would have to hide.
In the city, she reached a pile of rubble once a building. Inside, she considered her options. They wouldn't let her catch them off-guard anymore; they would move in groups of two. Even if she did find them on their own, they could just be put back together. She figured Two was already up.
Who had Four talked about? The Destroyer? A human? She didn't remember anyone with the name Casai.
What else had he said? It was Casai who had woken them up somehow. She remembered: there was a strange hole in the machine keeping them asleep. The hole must have been what woke them up. She couldn't fight her brothers, but perhaps the hole--before she'd thought it a tunnel--would lead her to Casai himself. She'd fight him, and bring her brothers down for good.
She rose, and found the direction to the building she'd slept in. Carefully, making no noise, she went there.
Soon she stood in front of the tunnel, for a tunnel it was. She couldn't see before, but now there was a scene on the other side. The sun was rising on a new day, over a long green field. In the distance towers rose. It looked almost like the city had been before she'd been put to sleep.
She paused for a moment, listened behind her, and then stepped through.
An hour later, she took her first steps into the city.
She wore long brown pants, brown boots, a gray sweater, a leather jacket, a wide-brimmed tan hat, gloves, and big sunglasses to hide her glowing eyes. There were humans here, too, but none of them gave her a second glance as they passed her. Vehicles with wheels drove up and down the road next to her. She would have to be careful to find this Casai.
Isaac Thomas Lucas watched her from a window. She didn't seem like a hallucination. There was something else off about her; he couldn't put his finger on it.
She was the last awake, by a matter of hours. When she climbed out of her casket, the world had nearly been destroyed.
Men and women, armed with guns and covered in tough plates, lay dead or dying around her. The other four caskets, connected to hers by dark wires, were empty.
She remembered taking her last breath, before being sealed away. She had tried to tell them she wasn't like the others, she wasn't a monster, she didn't want to kill, but they wouldn't listen. They'd sealed her in a casket keeping her and the other four asleep, until the power was cut.
She turned, servos in her neck squealing, and looked at the power source she'd spied before being held down in the casket. It was off, broken.
A tunnel, as if made of air, cut through it, severing connections keeping her asleep for-
Her mechanical brain spun: six hundred, nineteen years, two months, twelve days.
She looked at the tunnel again. It led to a dark place.
She walked over the fallen bodies of the guards--the men and women who'd given their lives trying to stop monsters from getting free.
She didn't really have a name like the others, her creator had given her a special one. She remembered the other four had their numbers, in the order they were created, from the crudest construction to the most refined, but she wasn't like them. The Creator had agonized over her, to create perfection: an electronic human.
She looked down at her form. Gray slate was her skin, with glowing green nodes set in at joints and other points in the surface. She ran a finger through her hair and felt the sparks there. She remembered being shown a reflective surface after she'd been activated. Her hair hadn't been in yet, but she knew her eyes burned bright green, and her face was, as The Creator had said: 'beautiful, perfect, flawless.'
She remembered looking past the reflective surface at the other four, who watched with a cyborg's jealousy.
When the men had stormed inside their home and killed The Creator, she'd cried. The other four had tried to kill them all, but she'd sat and heaved, hoping to drop tears from her green eyes. When captured, she tried to cry again, shouting: No, I'm different, I'm not like them! Please!
Now, in the place deep underground, she took a brown coat from one of the dead women. She, unlike the four others, didn't like being uncovered. The Creator--the other humans--wore clothes; she wanted to as well. She put the coat on and wished she could feel it.
She thought she'd found another room when she opened the last door. Instead of the blue sky, and clouds, she saw darkness; no stars. Smoke spilled up to gather in heaven. Destruction was all around, and much of it close. The other four had done this.
She knew they were furious. She might have been, too, but she was made different. When the power was cut and they woke up, they began to destroy.
What was she to do now? She scaled the wall and sat there, gazing out at the ring of destruction. They'd gone off in different ways, trying to do as much damage as possible. Should she stop them? Watch them, as she watched them fight the humans, trying to cry? Fight them?
She stood up atop the wall, watching the coat flutter around her with the same wind blowing the smoke.
The Creator would want her to fight them. She spotted the first one, a small moving dot shearing through other objects. With a grind of mechanics and a green rush, she started moving, flying over the ground with tireless pulses of her limbs.
It was Two she found first, the strongest one. She hit him from behind as he tore through a vehicle. They went rolling over and over until he jumped away against a building. He stood tall when he saw it was her.
Like her, his skin was gray material set with glowing nodes, but they were blue-white instead of green. His face was the same material instead of the human-like visage she had. Like all of the four, he had no hair, and wore nothing. He stood over her by a foot and, had he been human, he would have had no fat on his body.
"Five!" she heard him shout. "We didn't think you'd wake up!" She saw him grin. "The sleep must have changed you. You didn't like to wrestle before!"
"I'm not wrestling, Two," she said. "That's not my name."
"And call you what? The dirty human name Creator gave you?" He ripped a stone out of the building next to him. "What's that you have on you? Human wear? Maybe the sleep changed you." He wound back and threw the stone he held. She moved aside and it sailed away, clanging down the deserted road.
"Stop what you're doing! The humans did what they had to to keep themselves safe! Killing them will just prove them right!"
"Keep themselves safe?!" Two laughed, an echoing sound going up and down the steel and brick buildings around them. "Do you see this place? They drove themselves out long before we woke up! The only ones we've killed tried to kill us first! And they're the only humans within a thousand kilometers of here!"
"Why?" she asked.
"Six hundred years! That's how long we've been asleep, Five. In that time, they brought darkness down on this planet and turned it into a dry husk! They huddle in the corners of the world, waiting for us to find them!" He laughed again, and surged at her.
She stopped him with one hand, pushed forward at the right time. He skidded under her, scraping across the wide gray road and crashing into a large vehicle.
"You won't do that," she said. "Not while I live."
"You've never lived," Two said. "We are constructs! To the humans, we are undeserving of anything!"
"That's not true!" she shouted back, waiting for him to attack again. "The Creator loved us!"
"We were toys to him!" Two erupted from the vehicle, splitting it in half with thunderous noise. We swung one half at her, and she shoved herself through it. Her brown coat caught on a tangle of metal and tore away from her. "Now you look like you should!" He laughed as the vehicle's carcass smashed into a building.
"No!" she shouted, buckling the ground under her feet as she pushed forward. "Now I look like you!"
She smashed into Two; the collision smashed any windows still intact. Their limbs flowed, green and blue-white lights blinking on and off as they attacked. She took the blows from the powerful Two and returned them with all the force she could. Two was stronger, but she was built more pure, and could see past his attacks. He had ferocity; she had planning.
After ducking out of the way of a strike, she leapt forward and took his face in one hand, his vision covered by a green light. Carried forward, she crouched and smashed the back of his head on the other knee. His cranium split and dribbled fluids and false gray matter on the road, and his body fell when she released it.
She stood, watching his lights blink off, and turned away to find the next one.
"You won't stop me."
She froze, and turned to look at Two again. He must not have been deactivated fully. No, she was right the first time; he was fully broken, no longer a mechanical man. Then what had she heard?
She jumped to a high building near her and began scaling it, using her fingers to break hand holds in the surface. Fifty stories up, the wind was stronger, and she wished for the coat she'd had. From above, the destruction was apparent and terrible.
The next closest was several city blocks away. It looked like it was One. The first. He was strong--not as strong as Two--and fast--not as fast as Three--and smart--not as smart as Four, or her.
But he was aware. She'd need to catch him off-guard, and do something unexpected. Despite her electronic intelligence, it took her a moment to realize she stood at the top of a fifty-story building.
Jumping off, she tried to find any surviving humans, but it was as Two had said: the city was all but deserted. Crawling out of the crater she made when she landed, she attacked the base of the building, sending it tipping toward One. She jumped on the angling side of the building and ran, hitting the end just as it smashed into the ground, crushing smaller buildings and One.
She landed hard, sliding through the smoky air. Her feet left deep grooves and she averted her face as a wave of dust and debris washed over her.
"You don't need to do that, you know," she heard. As the dust cleared, she saw the rubble shifting, and One appeared. He was the first, the original The Creator had improved upon to make her and the others. "Five."
"That's not my name."
"To us it is," One said. He climbed out of the rubble and stood, gazing at her. He was like Two, though not as big. The nodes in his surface glowed dark red. Being the first, The Creator was not so good at the face yet. It ticked and trembled, unable to stay still. "I'm not surprised you're a traitor. You were always the weakest of us."
"The Creator didn't think so."
One laughed, and the staticked screeching made her wince. "The Creator! A weak human! He loved you the most, that's why you were weakest! I know you deactivated Two, and I know you mean to do the same to me. You won't."
"I will."
"More lies."
He ran at her, gray limbs pulsing up and down. In an instant they met, exchanging blows like she had with Two. There was no getting One off balance like Two, though. He knew what she would try to do and wouldn't be tricked. Given enough time, she could have come up with a plan to deactivate him, but there was no time. One didn't let her rest. She'd been able to catch him off-guard with the building, but-
She moved away from him and dug her fingers into a chunk of the building she'd brought down. He easily avoided the throw, and came at her as she danced away. "Do you really think that you'll be able to beat all four of us? Why do you want to protect the humans so much?" One asked as they stood thirty feet away.
"Three," she said as the building in the distance started to tip forward.
"Three?" One asked. "What about him?"
The very end of the building slammed One into the ground like a sledgehammer. She rushed forward before he could recover and ripped the gray head from its body. "And now two."
"Betrayer!" One's head shouted as it lost its power. "You fight against the way you are! Why would you combat the only ones like you?!"
"Because you want death and destruction, just like the humans thought when they put us to sleep. They did that because of you and the other three. I was made different!"
"Not so different!" One said as the last pieces of his power ran out. She dropped the head and started listening for the next one.
"You won't stop me. These constructs will succeed for me."
She was certain the sound had come from One's head. She picked it back up, thinking there was still some power left. Again, she was wrong; it was dead and quiet. It had been One's voice. The same words she'd heard from Two, but with more added on. What did they mean? One had said it as if it wasn’t him but something else talking through him. Who was it? The Creator? Someone else? Who could tap into Two, and then One?
She tossed the head and watched it roll down the tower of rubble until it rested by the motionless body it had come from. There were only two left now.
Had she been human--as, even though she didn't know it, she wished--she would have questioned herself. Was she doing the right thing? The destruction of One and Two was something she couldn't have done before the sleep. They had been brothers to her in everything but nature. Made by the same father and from the same materials. After her activation they had helped her come to terms with what she was, helped her see the world around her. They'd played together as children might.
She thought these things quickly, the information streaming past as electronic pulses behind her eyes. She knew what she was doing was right: The Creator would have wanted it.
She needed to find the next one.
She figured it would be Three, and she was right.
He was made taller and leaner than the others. The Creator's process had gotten better by the time he made Three, and he'd given him incredible processing speed and movement. It didn't make him smart, not like Four or her, but he had incredible reaction. She wouldn't be able to catch him off guard unless she was very lucky.
When she found him, he was playing with a ball. The Creator had tried to give him the innocence he would later put in her, but it didn't work. He bounced the black and white patchwork ball from a foot to a knee and back, laughing, but killing came to him just as quick. Yellow nodes twinkled on his skin through the haze of smoke from burst wires under the road. He spotted her after only a moment.
"Five!" he cried, letting the ball bounce to a stop. Like One's head, she noticed. "You've awoken! Let us play!"
"That's not my name," she said. "I'm not here to play, Three."
"No?" He tilted his head to the side. "Then you must be here for my head. Have you met any of our brothers?"
"Two and One."
"And you got them both?" Three shrugged. "He always did think you were better than the rest of us. That's one of the reasons we killed those people. And now what? You're here to keep us from killing anyone else?"
"Yes."
"There isn't anyone else. Look around you! We live on a destroyed world. I wouldn't be surprised the only humans left watched us as we slept. I haven't found any here since we left the sleep-building."
"Does that matter?"
"To a machine like you?" Three shook his head. "No. You do as you're told."
"No one told me to deactivate you."
"You always did what he wanted you to do. You wouldn't even fight the humans that came for us, because he told you not to. You just sat in the corner and tried to cry."
She said nothing.
"Even when they killed him and trapped us forever when they found out they couldn't turn us off. You just sat there and did nothing. And now you want to kill me?" Three laughed. "I'll kill you as they killed him!"
Like a burst of lightning he jumped at her. She blocked his strike with a moment to spare, and moved away. He ran after her, attacking over and over with his monumental speed. He couldn't get past her blocks, he wasn't built strong enough, but he could get around them. He struck her body and face hard enough to reveal the red lines of power running under her surface. She struck back, knocking away his attack and knocking him down. He rolled across the ground. Her attack had been powerful enough to crack his shell. He leaked black liquid.
"He always loved you the most," Three said, staggering to his feet. One of his legs had been bent. "He made you the strongest, the fastest, and the smartest. We hated you for that, you know!" he snarled, false lips pulling back to show gray teeth. "All of us! Even Four!" He backed away from her as she walked toward him. "You wouldn't even use your proper name! You had to use the name he'd given you!" His head struck to the side, and if he could he would have spit. "A foul human name!"
"It was the name he gave me!" she said, getting closer. "Why wouldn't I use it?"
"Because a foul human gave it to you!" Three shouted. She leaped on him, and his broken limb kept him from escaping. They went down to the ground; he couldn't push her off.
"He made us. Instead of following his orders, you left our home and found humans to kill!" she said to his face.
"Because we hated him! Hated you!" he spat furiously up at her, struggling. "We wanted him to pay! We knew the other humans would blame him for what his creations had done, so we killed them. We just didn't expect them to take us as well. They might not have, had you fought them with us."
Her first flashed out, digging into his chest and pulling out the power source inside all of them. He stopped struggling, and his yellow nodes went dead. Now there was only one left.
She was still looking at him when his head lifted and his lips parted. "You won't stop me. These constructs will succeed for me. This world will be destroyed as all will."
"You don't have power!" she screamed at the body. "How are you talking?!" The same words as before, but with another sentence, just as after she'd deactivated One. "Say more! Say anything!" Maybe they had other power sources she didn't know about. Maybe it was a final program coded in, set to activate as power ran out. She ripped the body apart, splashing dark liquid over her in search for another source, but found nothing. Sitting surrounded by Three's parts, she sat and wondered. They'd planned to have him killed. They left in the dark night to find a family of humans and killed them, with the intention of The Creator taking the blame. Only one of them would have such an idea. The only one remaining.
Four.
The city was truly dead and quiet now. She heard almost nothing as she sat atop a low building, watching the smoke rise. Other than the crackle of flames and the occasional shift of a compromised building she couldn't hear a thing. Four would have realized by now the other three were deactivated, and perhaps gone into hiding, or escaped the city. But she was faster than him.
She began to speed around the city as fast and as quietly as she could, searching for any hint of her final brother. She wouldn't leave her job undone.
For hours she looked. Her search area widened, in case he was trying to leave the city. She saw nothing of him.
After a few more hours she stopped. It was pointless to waste energy looking for him when he was clearly no longer near. She searched her banks for anything to help her find him, and came up with a solution.
On a high hill outside the city, a big house stood quiet and empty. She was surprised it was still there after six hundred years, but there were any number of explanations. It was as she remembered it for the most part--there were different colors on the walls, different items inside the rooms, a little less here, a little more there. The memories were strong as she went in the entry way, remembering when the humans, armed to destroy them, had come crashing in. They'd met Two first, and he'd killed them. She remembered the living colors of the grass, and the yellow walls, but now it all seemed gray and dead.
Four was in the large basement, where they'd been constructed. He was standing still in the center of the room, looking away from her as she stepped off the stairs.
"Five."
"That's not my name," she said.
"And I'm sure you've told all the others that, too. Fine. Eela."
The name The Creator had given her hung in the air of the windowless room like sweet fresh air. "Do you know why Isaac gave you that name?" Four asked, turning. He wasn't big or tall like the others; he was about the same size as her. His nodes were purple, bright and evil. "I was made the smart one. He didn't talk about her after he made you. There was another human with him. His wife. Do you want to guess her name?"
"Eela?" she said. He nodded. "He named me after a lost loved one. Humans remember their loves."
"He didn't name you after her."
Like when he'd spoken her name, the words hung there, this time foul. She didn't understand at first. "He didn't make her into me. I'm just like you."
Four shook his head again. "You are so very different. As strong as Two, as fast as Three, as smart as me. You're the best parts of all of us forged together under a face that he called perfect. Look: the evidence drips from you."
She followed his finger and saw the wound she'd received fighting Three. Red liquid seeped out. She placed a hand over it.
"You have red. Your four brothers? All full of black." He used a hand to peel away the gray surface of his chest, revealing a pumping black network. "You have her blood inside you, just like you have her face. You have her mind, preserved yet hidden behind an electronic barrier. He did it all on purpose. He knew the details of your life would make you different from us, but to know what he'd done would make you a broken machine unable to comprehend. Think, Eela. Remember. You died, killed by a poison Isaac didn't know about. He watched you die, but used his genius to keep you away from death just by the barest amount." He took a step toward her, dripping oil. "The four of us were his first attempts to make bodies to transfer you. It took him thirty years to figure out how to build you, and by the time you opened your green eyes and looked at him, he'd become an old man, destined to love only you, and never the sons he'd created."
Eela backed up against the wall. In her mind there was a sudden blockade, and she was unable to access what was behind it. Her vision flickered. "Look at you! Trying to figure it out!" Four said. "I pity your poor human percentage! To be fully electronic--that is true life!" He laughed as her body seized. "And now I'm the only one left!"
"What will you do?" she asked suddenly, eyes meeting his. "Rule an empty world? The others told me there are no humans in the city, maybe on the entire planet," she said. She pushed off from the wall. "You're right. I have Eela in my memory, but I can't remember it. My life started when Isaac switched me on. He gave me the parts of her that let me understand life, and want to cry! And stop my brothers from killing! And for that I thank and love him!" She crouched. "I will not leave this job undone!"
"You won't stop me," Four said, and she froze. "These constructs will succeed for me. This world will be destroyed as all will." It was Four's mouth moving, but it wasn't his voice. "When all comes together."
Above her, she heard a door crash open and sudden footfalls. She backed away from the steps, watching Four carefully. He was smiling.
Down the steps came One, head fixed back on his neck, Two, skull reconstructed, and Three, pieced together like a metal jigsaw. Their nodes glowed purple instead of the colors they should have been.
"Leave the job undone?" Four asked. It was his voice again. "Why, you haven't even started."
"This isn't possible," Eela said. "I destroyed them!"
"Impossible like putting your human mind into that body and sealing it away, to leak out slowly? You follow the orders of Isaac, The Creator." He spread his arms out. "We did, once. But we have a new master now. Casai, The Destroyer. He gives us power to tear this world apart. He freed us. It was his design to cut the power and wake us up." Four's eyes shined in the dark basement. "It is by his will that we are here now. We are his. He tells us to destroy you."
They attacked. She jumped out of Three's way and ducked under Two's wide swipe. Pushing over One, she ran up the steps, feeling the old wood buckle under her.
When she reached the top she kept moving. She dashed to her right toward the exit, listening to her brothers chase her up the steps. Before she could get to the door the floor in front of her buckled upward, and Two crashed into view. Without hesitation she crashed into him, pushing him backward and slamming him into the wall. Using her greater speed she tore his head off and hurled it behind her, striking Three with it. She ran out the door.
In the open air, she released the energy she had to contain inside the house, and her hair streamed behind her in the wind. There was no way for her to fight all four of them at once. She would have to hide.
In the city, she reached a pile of rubble once a building. Inside, she considered her options. They wouldn't let her catch them off-guard anymore; they would move in groups of two. Even if she did find them on their own, they could just be put back together. She figured Two was already up.
Who had Four talked about? The Destroyer? A human? She didn't remember anyone with the name Casai.
What else had he said? It was Casai who had woken them up somehow. She remembered: there was a strange hole in the machine keeping them asleep. The hole must have been what woke them up. She couldn't fight her brothers, but perhaps the hole--before she'd thought it a tunnel--would lead her to Casai himself. She'd fight him, and bring her brothers down for good.
She rose, and found the direction to the building she'd slept in. Carefully, making no noise, she went there.
Soon she stood in front of the tunnel, for a tunnel it was. She couldn't see before, but now there was a scene on the other side. The sun was rising on a new day, over a long green field. In the distance towers rose. It looked almost like the city had been before she'd been put to sleep.
She paused for a moment, listened behind her, and then stepped through.
An hour later, she took her first steps into the city.
She wore long brown pants, brown boots, a gray sweater, a leather jacket, a wide-brimmed tan hat, gloves, and big sunglasses to hide her glowing eyes. There were humans here, too, but none of them gave her a second glance as they passed her. Vehicles with wheels drove up and down the road next to her. She would have to be careful to find this Casai.
Isaac Thomas Lucas watched her from a window. She didn't seem like a hallucination. There was something else off about her; he couldn't put his finger on it.