IV

Bastian zipped the pest controller's jumpsuit over his own clothes, and pulled the stolen cap over his face, a cage embroidered on the front of it. The controller had been a welcome treat. Bastian had been careful to slice his throat surgically with a glass bottle shard. Fang marks raised all sorts of alarms with the authorities. A dog cowered in a cage at the back of the van, whimpering pitifully. Bastian felt sorry for it, it looked like a living skeleton, its ribs protruding from its body. He glanced at the corpse lying on the floor of the van, and shrugged.

"Waste not, want not," he told the dog, unbolting its cage.

He slipped out of the van, leaving the door ajar for the dog, and approached the back of the museum. He carried a rectangular cage, and the name'Dennis' embroidered on the front of his jumpsuit.

At the security desk, a security guard looked at him skeptically. "You're here for what?"

"I don't make the calls. I catch the pests," he said dejectedly. "Do you want your robo-conference to be overrun with vermin or not?"

"I'm going to have to check with your company."

"Fine by me," Bastian said, putting on an air of arrogance. 

"Oh, yup. You're coming up on the screen. What's your full name?" the guard asked.

"It's Dennis. Dennis -uh-"

The security guard narrowed his eyes.

Bastian thought quickly. He bludgeoned the security guard with the cage. The man collapsed to the floor. Bastian bundled him under the desk hurriedly, and checked the screen.

"Dennis Angoris. Huh."

He patted security guard down, looking for a security tag. Annoyance burnt through him when he found none. There were none in the desk either.

The amphibian smell was close, Bastian realized, as he scented the air. It mingled with human blood. By the accompanying smells, he guessed it coming from a bathroom. He hadn't used a toilet for centuries; not for their traditional purpose anyway. As he approached the door, he noted two sets of small wet footprints leaving the bathroom.

He investigated the alluring smell of blood, pushing open the bathroom door. The stall at the end of the room was occupied. An irregular heartbeat thumped in the stall, close to the ground. The best thing about toilets, Bastian had found, was a lack of security cameras. He took the stall adjacent to the occupied one and knelt down, peering under the adjacent wall. In the other stall lay an unconscious security guard, in a puddle of blood and half frozen water. The toilet itself had jagged spears of ice sticking from it. The frog and meerkat were dangerous; he would have to be careful not to underestimate them when they finally did cross paths. 

Bastian put his hand under the stall, reaching for the man's wrist. He admired the security guard's gloves. Iron knuckles were embedded the black polyfibre. He pulled the glove off and slipped it on own his hand. A perfect fit.

As he yanked the guard's other arm under the door, his body thunked hard against the wall. Bastian removed the other glove. After appropriating it to his hand, he glanced at the man's exposed wrist. This was too good of an opportunity to miss. He cut a careful line across the man's wrist, and savored the first draw of blood as it pulsed over his tongue.

While he was feeding, Bastian realized the guard might have a security pass. With his free hand, he grabbed the blood bag's belt and pulled, slamming the body against the wall. Something cracked, though Bastian didn't particularly care what. Humans were pathetically frail. He reached under the wall, but found no security tag affixed to his belt or pockets. Frustrated, he pulled the body toward him again, rotating it for the left pocket. There was nothing. Not even in his shirt pocket.

Bastian dropped the man's wrist, where it fell slack on the tiled ground. Blood pooled on the titled ground. He adjusted his new gloves. Perhaps the animals had taken the swipe card. It was odd; but Bastian had learned to take the odd with a pinch of salt. As much as he doubted it, if the dead could rise, animals could take out security guards. That intrigued him. Maybe they weren't affiliated with the superhero after all.

After leaving the cage behind and locking the second stall. He followed the wet footprints out of the bathroom. They led under a door protected by a key swipe. Bastian scowled, this was going to hurt. He took a run up, and lined his shoulder up with the door. A meaty smack resounded in his ears, as his momentum forced the door open. Two things happened simultaneously: the bones in his shoulder jutted out from his flesh, and a wailing alarm pierced the air.

*

Lars and Seth followed the map to the conference hall, where the AI unit was being stored. A large generator hummed behind the stage, a focal point of the room. Lars skimmed the sign by the generator. The entire museum was off the grid, relying on a combination of solar power and bio-matter to light and heat it.

The room was large, and warm. The AI stood imposingly on the stage. Seth flinched, jumping aside skittishly when he saw it. It's so realistic, Lars thought. He dismounted Seth, and stood directly in front of their target, trying to avoid the irrational panic that was building in his veins.

The silver form was muscled and lithe. Tonight humankind was going to place Automated Intelligence inside a human cast. You don't know it yet, but your kind is going to kill them all, he thought. This conference was the first domino that had toppled human civilization. By changing history tonight, they would avert that. If they could create alternate futures that weren't monotonous and robot ruled; the human race would be saved. That was what they were here to do.

They stood out of view behind the AI unit's legs, while Lars played with the dial on his communicator. Base has already written the updated code, all they had to do was get it into the robot's head. The code interface was deep within the robot's body. Luckily it could be altered wirelessly. Base'd based the coding on a abandoned model they'd recovered from the future. The future models were virtually identical to this one, except faceless. The face had no purpose in robot monotony.

The only deviation from the human form was a set of twin canisters strapped to its back. Transparent, perma-glass. The left for fuel, the right a catchment for chlorine, a byproduct of its existence.

The device on Lars' arm lit up.

"Authority code?" the voice asked him. "Speedo, HYR, Ocean-swim, dive-bomb." Lars said, listing off the flippered Gods in plastic form.

"Authority code accepted," the voice said, as the screen flashed green. "Initiating upload."

At that moment, a shrieking siren sounded, red security lights began flashing. "Heat rate accelerating," his suit informed him. Seth pulled his paws over his ears.

The generator, Lars thought. If I can just disable it. If he'd had the time, he would've disabled the entire security system. But now he couldn't leave the transfer range of the AI Unit. Lars sighed, and sent flurry of icicles into the top of generator. He willed them to melt. Shortly after, the whirring machine sparked, and black smoke flooded out of it. There was a crash, and the building fell into darkness. The sirens stopped, but the flashing red lights continued.

"How long do we have to stay here?" Seth said, glancing around the room.

Lars looked at his communicator, "We're almost at 25% We just have to finish the update."

Thudding footsteps filled the air. They sheltered behind the AI Unit. Seth sniffed the air. "The death smell is back. It's close."

*

Bastian had no idea how the lights had turned off, but the lazy red lights was more comfortable than fluorescents in any case. He could still hear the siren ringing in his ears. He'd been following the smell, until he'd nearly walked into a security guard. She was now chasing him down with an antique gun; one that still fired lead pellets.

"Stop! I'm warning you!" she yelled.

Bastian pushed through a set of double doors, he was in a conference room that reeked of smoke. The pulsating red lights looked hellish as they reflected off the robot onstage. There was a loud bang. Pain exploded in his chest like he'd been impaled by a hot poker. He stumbled, and fell to the floor, feigning serious injury. The guard foolishly approached him.

He grabbed the woman's ankles, and pulled her off her feet. The guard's eyes bulged as her back hit the floor, winding her. Erring on caution, Bastian knocked the gun out of her hands. It scattered toward the stage, as he rolled atop the guard, one hand clamped over her mouth, the other pinning her wrists against the floor.

"You shot me, Lauretta," he leered, reading the name off her uniform. "That wasn't very nice, was it?"

A scared moan trembled in Lauretta throat.

Bastian found himself at an impasse. For the first time in a very long time, he wasn't actually hungry. He was sated. The blood pulsing at the skin at the woman's cheeks was still there, yet he wasn't drooling.

She bucked her hips underneath him, and he smirked. "I think it's only fair to get even with you."

He looked for the gun, but it had disappeared from view. The mammal-amphibian smell was very close.

"Happy Halloween," he told her, as he wrapped his cold fingers around her thin neck.

After her struggling ceased, he stood up, and walked towards the stage. "I know you're here," he said, dragging the unconscious body behind him. He slowed to push his protruding shoulder bones back beneath his flesh. They crunched into place. Black blood congealed around the holes in his pale skin. He felt his body expelling the bullet from his chest cavity.

Scanning the dark room, Bastian tried to locate their heartbeats amongst the broken whirring of the generator behind the stage. He regarded the robot. So this was what the crowds were making such a fuss over. He hoped it wouldn't replace the Authorities. It looked formidable, much more capable of dealing damage. The frog was climbing the robot's arm.

There was a growl, and sharp teeth bit into his leg. Bastian snarled and kicked. The meerkat flew across the room, colliding with foot of the stage. It yelped, and scurried between the legs of the robot.The frog looked up, and barked at his companion, who whimpered back. Then he turned on the vampire. Bastian wasn't afraid of many things, but the frog's eyes made him weary. It was too alive.

"I don't like rats who bite me," Bastian told the frog.

The frog glanced down at the glowing panel on his arm. "I don't like corpses that kick my friends."

"Did you just-" Had it... spoken? Losing his sanity was something he hadn't noticed, but perhaps it had finally happened. He snarled, fangs thrusting out of his gums. He tasted his own blood on his tongue.

"-talk?" the frog asked. "Is that the word you're looking for?" He stood on two legs, began swaying on the AI's shoulder.

Bastian dodged a spear of ice that jettisoned through the air. It smashed on the ground behind him. He snarled, but failed to see the second ice blast, which gored open his left shin. "You're gonna suffer for what you've done. And I plan on being a very big part of that."

He would crush the frog's skull between his molars and smear his innards on the wall. The meerkat raised its hackles, and growled at him from beneath the robot.

"That's a little melodramatic, don't you think Seth?" the frog said, "He's not a monster; just a scientific curiosity."

Bastian couldn't believe it. They were ignoring him? How dare they ignore such a formidable enemy. He noticed the guard's gun had mysteriously been transplanted into the robot's hand.

Knocking out guards and cutting out the power, these were questionable activities. But arming robots? This was the agenda of a villain. "Where's Big Brother?" Bastian asked suspiciously.

The frog's eyes gleamed in the fluctuating red light. "Who? I'm the Blizzard. And if you don't mind, we're a little preoccupied with saving the human race here."