Mech

Chapter 3: Trapped

I wasn't just going to sit around at the camp while the rest of the group, my sister included, did all the work. I stood up abruptly and made my way towards the drop.

"Where you off to, sweet-pea? Didn't you hear, you supposed to help guard camp!" Anna Lynn called.

"You know me, Anna Lynn, I ain't waiting around while they do all the work." I called back.

She simply grinned and shook her head, "Watch yourself out there, and bring Silvia home!"

I cocked the gun and slid it into the back of my pants, tucking my shirt over it and easing into a sprint to catch up to the Conways. Didn't take me long, they were just inside the forest along the edge of the drop.

"Hey, Ian, wait up!" I yelled, ducking under a pipe and hurrying towards him.

Jason had gone a bit ahead of him, but they both stopped and waited for me to catch up.

"What, got bored already?" Ian asked, lending me a hand as I crawled carefully over a large air pipe and under a steaming hot one.

I smiled and took his hand, watching my head as I came safely to the other side. Jason backtracked a bit and leaned against a pipe that bent upward and back forwards farther up.

"I thought the General said stay at camp. You never do follow rules, do you," He paused, "You're just like Max."

I stood as tall as I could for a 5'4 girl and walked right up to the much taller teen, "Listen here, you, don't it bother you that they sent Max instead of me? I'm way more capable of helping than that blunderin' idiot! Somethin' ain't right about this and you know it. I know this side of the forest like the back of my hand, now you gonna let me tag along or do I gotta keep on by myself?"

Jason laughed, "Ah, that's so..Micah. Come on then, don't slow us down."

He started his trek again, crawling through the pipes ahead. I heard Ian chuckle behind me and I shot him a warning glare. He shut up real quick. I followed closely behind Jason, and Ian was just behind me. We called out for Silvia all the way to the center of the forest. The big water pipe, the one we got our water from deeper in the heart, bent over the edge of the drop and went straight down into the water treatment factory. The glass on the roof had shattered, no doubt the malfunctioning robots' fault. Demolition robots went out of control, smashing windows, breaking pipes, a whole mess of trouble. Repair bots that still worked fixed some of their mistakes, but they also made new ones. They built useless structures all over the place, assembling pipes that connected to nothing, building factory frames and leaving hollow building shells, littering the ground with metal parts and such..Mech was a mess all around. The pipe forest was a nightmare of things to crawl over, under, through, but even outside there were tons of random metal structures and hunks of scrap everywhere. The cities were even worse. Still, they provided good cover if you ever had to hide from something for any reason, whether it be a Cycoff or a soldier or whatever.

Jason halted the group and tapped on the water pipe with a wrench, shaking it. A few seconds of silence later the pipe shook again, and we knew General Trenton had made it to the center of the forest. We continued our journey for around an hour, moving very slow and carful to catch any hint of Silvia's presence, before finally reaching the opposite end of the pipe forest. We found nothing. Looking down towards the wall, General Trenton and Uncle Jeb emerged. They quickly ran to meet us.

"Anything?" Jason asked.

"Nothin'.." Uncle Jeb answered, then looked at me, "Weren't you supposed to stay at camp?"

"I had to help, Uncle Jeb! Silvia won't make it out here on her own!" I shouted.

"Shhh! Quiet, all'a you!" General Trenton demanded.