Android

29

When I hit the ground, I groaned in pain as the air got knocked clean out of my lungs. "A little warning next time Jupiter!" I wheezed, gripping onto the wall to help myself up as I listened to the gunshots from above close in. We must've fallen a good seven feet; Jupiter is lucky I didn't break something or twist an ankle.

"To late now. Here! Reload your gun," He said, shoving a clip in my hand as he quickly picked up his crowbar.

"I don't know how to reload! No one showed me." I said, trying to keep my voice quiet but my ringing ears made it hard to judge the volume of my voice. Shaking his head at me, Jupiter took the gun from me began to reload it as I picked up my sledgehammer.

"Put your hood back on, the party is just getting started," He said as he finished reloading the gun and tossed it back to me.

"I kind of figured." I sighed, taking my gun back from him and pulling my hood back over my head. "What now?" I asked and he opened his mouth to tell me but before he could the brightly lit hall became dark and the sound of a siren wailing broke out.

"No, no, no, no! Follow me, quick!" He shouted above the wail of the alarm and as the dark hallways filled with a ghostly red light, I followed him down the corridor with my hammer ready to go. I wasn't going to touch my gun unless I absolutely had to.

"What's wrong? Are the alarms bad?" I asked stupidly, wanting to know why Jupiter went from calm to panicky as he led us down the maze of halls. His sense of direction was incredible. I wonder how they programmed that into him.

"They're really bad Abigail because they set off-" He then grabbed me by my jacket and pushed me up against the wall before pressing himself against me.

"What are you doing?" I asked, the sudden pressure of being pressed between Jupiter and the wall hurting my lungs.

"Don't move, if the drifters sense movement they'll shoot to kill," Jupiter said, lowering his voice to a whisper.

"Drifters? What are drifters?" I asked, just as a soft buzzing sound began to echo through the hallways with the siren. Then from the direction we originally came from, a cluster of glowing dark blue spheres appeared in the air and attached to each one was the barrel of a very tiny gun. As they floated down the halls, they scanned the open air with a light blue light, pausing on the occasion. While they did, Jupiter gripped my jacket to hold me still as he watched them. Within moments of appearing, they stopped barely a foot away from us and I felt like my heartbeat was suffocating me. Slowly then, one of the spheres turned towards me and I could feel the heat from its blue light on my face as it moved its beam over Jupiter and me. All together it was probably focused on us for a few seconds at most, but it felt like hours and when it finally did turn away, I slowly exhaled. After that they began to move down the hallway and soon disappeared. "Does the alarm set them off?" I finally dared to whispered and Jupiter nodded slowly as he pushed himself away from me.

"They come in waves, we have maybe thirty seconds before the next one. We need to get a move on," He said, gesturing for me to follow him as we began to make our way down the hall again.

"Do you have any idea where you're going?" I asked, still needing to speak over the alarm.

"Slightly." He admitted. "We've never actually tried this before, this is my first time inside one of Titan's hideouts," He said, just as the alarm turned off and the lights turned back on in the hall.

"Nice to see one of you isn't a coward," A velvety voice purred, and I gripped the handle of my hammer hard as the two of us whipped around to see a group of human looking droids leaning against the wall. Instantly I recognized a few of them as the men who had taken my siblings, making that all to familiar anger swell again.