Micro - Michael Crichton [153]
Rick bailed out, taking his machete with him. As he fell, he flipped over on his back and saw Karen’s plane above him. Bots clung to it; she was spinning out of control. One bot shredded Karen’s propellers while another tore into the side of the plane. At that instant, Rick landed on the floor on his back, unhurt, still holding his machete.
He stood up. The generator room seemed enormous. He had no idea where the micro-control panel was; he couldn’t see the white circle. The plastic floor, glowing with light from below, was strewn with golf-ball-size grains of dirt. Looking up and around, he tried to see where Karen’s plane had gone. He couldn’t see her. The floor was a mess.
He heard a sound like “Oof!” Karen King landed on both feet, like a cat, about a hundred yards away. She had bailed out, too. She was holding her machete and staring up at the bots. A dozen of them were bobbing high overhead, holding the planes and pieces of the planes, and chopping everything up. Debris from the planes rained down. For the moment the bots seemed distracted by the planes.
“It’s this way!” Karen called, pointing with her machete.
Now he could see the white ring. He was surprised by how far away it was. They both started a desperate sprint toward the ring, jumping over debris, running an obstacle course through grit. Rick tripped while leaping over a human hair, and he sprawled.
He picked himself up. He had lost sight of Karen. “Karen?” he shouted.
Overhead, the bots had finished cutting up the planes and were now flying this way and that, hovering, swooping, fanning throughout the room, as if in seek mode. Rick wondered if the bots would be able to see them as they ran. Dozens more bots dropped from the walls and ceiling, until at least a hundred bots were flying back and forth, hunting for the intruders. Were they communicating with one another? It would be only a matter of time before the bots found them.
Chapter 50
Tensor Core
1 November, 5:10 a.m.
It’s not a bad way to die,” Drake was saying. “You hardly feel a thing.” He worked the controller.
Eric lay propped up with his back against the wall of the Omicron lab, by the door to the generator room, dizzy from the beating Drake had given him. Drake held the gun at his face, shining the light into his eyes. Eric could feel a bot cutting through his forehead. Blood had begun to drizzle down his face, getting in his eyes. He could see specks hovering in front of his eyes, their props whining like mosquitoes. Apparently Drake could direct them with the controller, because they all suddenly flew toward his face. He felt them landing on his cheeks, his neck, exploring his eyelids. A bot crawled into his shirt; he could feel it, and heard its engine buzzing.
“You see how they ignore me?” Drake worked the controller. “It’s because I have the controller.” Drake thumbed a joystick, and a bot crawled up Eric’s cheek and stopped by the corner of his eye. “I can make them crawl into any orifice in your body.”
“Why are you doing this to me?”
“Research, Eric.”
Eric felt a slight sting near the corner of his eye. The bot had planted its scissors in his skin and was making a hole. It tucked its head into the hole, and began wiggling in, snipping through skin cells with the blades. A droplet of blood beaded up on his cheek.
The police cars closed off the access road to the industrial park and set up a security perimeter around the Nanigen building. The vans moved into position, and the hostage rescue squad deployed. The flashers on the police cars played across the metal building.
Dan Watanabe waited behind one of the cars, watching the building