Siege by Mark Alpert

dioxide level. It doubles as I step toward the bodies, and doubles again when I point the sensor at the bottom of the pile. Someone’s breathing down there!
    Without any hesitation I pull the corpses off the top of the heap and uncover a feverish, unconscious girl who was hidden beneath them. She’s slender and blond and wears frayed jeans and a black T-shirt. I recognize her instantly.
    It’s Brittany Taylor. I’ve known her since kindergarten, but she’s much more than an old friend. She’s the girl I used to dream about when I was still human.
    For a thousandth of a second, I just stare at her. She’s not supposed to be here. She ran away from home over a year ago and started living on the streets of New York City. Dad told me she’s been staying at a youth shelter in Manhattan for the past six months. So why is she here? Why did she come back to Yorktown Heights just in time for the anthrax outbreak?
    My circuits analyze a dozen possible explanations, but the answer is obvious. Sigma used Brittany once before. The AI captured and tortured her because it knew how much she meant to me. Now it’s happening again.
    â€œBrittany?” Her name sounds so strange coming out of my loudspeakers. “Can you hear me?”
    No response. She’s gone into shock, just like Jack Parker. She’s dying.
    I bend low and cradle her in my Quarter-bot’s arms. She’s so light, so incredibly light. Her pulse is rapid but weak, a barely perceptible quiver in her neck. Her head lolls against my elbow joint, and her long blond hair is draped over my steel armor. I scan her with all my medical sensors, but there’s nothing I can do for her. Wake up, Brittany! Open your eyes!
    Holding her against my torso, I run toward Shannon and Zia. “Let’s go, let’s go! This is the last one!”
    Shannon trains her cameras on the unconscious girl in my arms. She knows all about my history with Brittany. I told Shannon about her in our very first conversation, before we even became Pioneers. Now Shannon’s circuits are probably racing toward the same conclusion I just made: that Brittany’s appearance here is no accident. But to her credit, Shannon simply nods her Diamond Girl’s head and follows me out of the gym, still holding Tim Rodriguez in one of her glittering arms. Zia brings up the rear, carrying both Jack Parker and the freshman girl.
    We charge down the long corridor, retracing our steps. Our footpads clang against the linoleum floor, and the noise echoes up and down the hallway. In less than fifteen seconds, we’re back in the high school’s lobby and almost out of the building.
    Then my acoustic sensor picks up the sound of an explosion. A percussive boom erupts from outside the building and shatters the glass panels in the high school’s front doors.
    All three of us stop in our tracks. Through the shattered doors we see the V-22 in flames. A few yards in front of the burning aircraft, the ground has split into a gaping chasm, and extending upward from the muddy gap in the earth is an enormous steel tentacle, at least ten feet thick and a hundred feet tall. It looks like a hugely oversize version of the Snake-bot. It towers over Yorktown High, twisting and coiling in midair. Its silver skin glows in the evening light.
    The tentacle’s shiny tip turns downward. It points at the high school’s broken doors, like the head of a giant cobra that’s ready to strike. Then it hurtles toward us.

CHAPTER
6
    We have just enough time to turn around and shield the students we’re carrying. Then the huge Snake-bot smashes into the brickwork above the school’s front doors, and the lobby’s ceiling collapses.
    Chunks of plaster and concrete rain down on us and bounce off our armor, but we’re already running. We reverse course and charge down the school’s main hallway, striding even faster than before, our robots hunched over the