Serial Designation

Chapter 2

Ms. Beverly let loose a hail of bullets on the invisible figure, and as the bullets flew there were many flashes of color as the unseen robot screeched and charged forward invisibly, making many hole marks in the ground from its many metallic spider legs. The unseen creature lifted up Collin and threw him into Veronix, who had to drop her hammer to catch him. Ms. Beverly's bullets were still doing nothing as she also tried not to hit any students.

A teenage girl by the name of Eve tried throwing her baseball bat at the creature still invisible, but it must've seen it coming because the bat missed and almost hit me instead. Eve gulped.

Then the robot finally showed itself when one of the 11-year-olds hit it hard with a golf club. It had the appearance of a normal teenage boy, 16 in age, but the appearance was ruined by the many many holes in his body and face for Ms. Beverly's and my guns, but all the holes were closing fast, showing its ability to quickly self-heal. It had a very loose-fitting sky-blue hoodie and blue jeans ripped at the knees. All of us could only see its left eye because its tan hair was covering its right eye. The eye glowed bright purple, in the shape of an x, more like a display screen than an actual eye, because it kept glitching into the warning sign.

Then everything went downhill. The Designation seemed even more aggressive when it wasn't invisible, and it showed this by stabbing Collin straight the stomach with one of its spider legs protruding from its back and whipping him around into Eve, who caught him and set him down as he started coughing blood. Then its mouth opened super wide, and shot a huge metallic net out of a cannon from its now-huge mouth, and the net wrapped up Ms. Beverly's arms, rendering her gun useless.

That's when she got the hint. "We must get back to the Pods safely–" She was literally cut off when the Designation had sliced her in half. By this point Eve had run away to her Pod, leaving me and Veronix alone because the Designation had already killed everyone else in the short period of Ms. Beverly talking. It then closed on me.

Veronix whispered something in my ear, but I was too terrified to register what she said. She then snuck quietly around the Designation as it crawled at me fast. I raised my arm at the last second and shot it through the eye. It reared back and hissed, then lunged at me, pinning me down on the ground. I braced myself to be disemboweled.

The Veronix came up behind the monster and whacked across the head so hard with her hammer that it flew to my let about two meters, and something fell out of its head.

"Got it," she said, and spat at it.

Then she helped me up. I looked around at all the bodies around us, then away at the Spider Designation that did it all.

"What are we going to do?" I ask.

Veronix looks mortified as she slowly shakes her head.

I look back at the lifeless robot, then notice something shiny on the ground. I walk over, pick it up, and examine it.

"This fell out of its head when you hit it." I show it to her. It had "D-C4L" on it, and it looked like...

I gasp. "Oh, my god, Nix! This is its programming chip!!"

She looked confused. "Ooookay?"

"This mostly has the programming that makes it do what it does! If we could examine it, we could see how the others work! Maybe we can stop this!"

"Look, sis, I know you're really excited right now, but that's a little lofty–"

She was cut off by the Designation stirring. It sat up, and the display screens for its eyes said:

YOU DIED

[LMAO IDIOT]

VIBE: HARSHED

RESTARTING SYSTEMS

[100%]

LOG: DAY 21523

ERROR

INTERNAL SERVERS DENIED ACCESS TO INITIAL PROGRAMMING.

ACTIVATING SAFE MODE.

Its eyes returned to their normal x's, but they were now green. Its spider limbs also retracted. It stood up, brushed itself off, then saw us as if for the first time. Then it smiled.

"Hello!" it said, and put its hand out to shake ours.

Me and Veronix took a step back.

"Oh. Am I that bad-looking?" It lowered its hand sadly. I'm now starting to think its supposed to be a he.

I was about to say something when he gasped. "W-what happened here?"

Then it dawned on me what the chip really was. "Ooooooooh. Uh, you uh. Nevermind."

Veronix stepped forward. "What's your name?"

He looked confused. "Name?"

"Uuuuuuh–" I start.

"What people address you by," Veronix says.

"Oh! I'm Designation-C4L. Or, you can call me Carl, cause that's what it looks like."

We looked at the chip in my hand.

"Ooooo what's that?" He says getting closer.

We look at him and come to an immediate decision. Well, different decisions.

Hers seems to be to destroy the computer chip, but I hold it away from her. Mine is to examine it and see what it does, but most importantly keep it away from D-C4L—Carl.

"This," I say, still trying to keep it from Veronix, "is a very bad thing that needs to be examined. It can make things do... very bad things." I decided not to tell Carl that it made him kill all these people.

"Oh! Okay! I will not touch it." But he still looked quite curious.

I pull Veronix back and turn around so we're in a two-person football huddle. "We're gonna have to lock it up when we get home."

"Why? You know they don't know houses can have people in them, right? If we just go home, we can..." She trailed off at the look on my face. "What."

"Well, if he doesn't have the bloodthirsty urge to murder literally everyone anymore—"

"We are NOT keeping him."

"But we broke him! We're responsible for him now! And maybe he could help us!"

"Whatcha guys talkin' about?"

We jumped and turned around. Carl was politely standing there, closer than before.

"Uuuuh, we... uh. Do you wanna come with us to our house?" I said.

Carl blinked. "What is a 'house?'"

Oh, boy.