Spider-Bots Rising

Chapter Sixteen: Ararack

Chuck landed right on top of Abby, covering her crumpled body with his. At that exact moment, hot red laser beams shot at them from every direction.

They all hit Chuck at once. For a moment his whole body glowed ruby red. Then he sagged, and lay still.

"CHUCK!" the Dreamseeker cried out, horrified. Without pausing to think she scrambled down the steep rock wall towards him. She scraped her arms and banged her knees on the way down but didn't notice. Her heart felt like it was beating in her throat. Nigel followed close behind.

She stumbled to the canyon floor and ran over to the heap that was Chuck and Abby. She lifted Chuck's limp body and carefully lay him down on the ground. His one visible eye was closed. Gentle coils of smoke rose off of his body.

"I-I-Is he okay?" It was Abby. She had some fresh dents in her metal, but seemed to be alright. Her sensors were trained on Chuck. "He. Saved. Me," she said. "Is he–"

"I don't know!" the Dreamseeker said looking down at Chuck. She felt panicky and close to tears.

"Come now, let me have a look," Nigel said squeezing in close to Chuck's face. He bent low over Chuck's mouth, and then his chest. Then he turned back towards the others. "He's okay. He's alive, just knocked out."

The Dreamseeker felt a wave a relief roll through her. Her own body almost went limp with the force of it.

But just then a hundred robotic voices made her muscles tense all over again: "Lasers. Reload."

Suddenly she remembered where they were. She remembered that they were vastly outnumbered by the bots. They were exposed, with nowhere to run. She saw the sensors of the closest bots glow brightly once again. Tiny red laser dots scattered on her chest.

"STOP," the command boomed suddenly through the canyon. The Dreamseeker felt the ground shiver beneath her boots. The spider-bots did not look away, but their sensors dimmed.

The Dreamseeker looked left and right for the source of the voice. To her right she saw nothing but the winding path of the canyon. To her left was only the bright, pulsing orb.

But then she sensed movement in front of her, and she looked up.

Crawling slowly out of an inlet high up on the canyon wall was another gigantic spider-bot. This bot was larger even than Aranay had been. It had the same wide, fan-shaped metal body of the bots they had seen at Aranay's nest in the Duskmare Forest. The circular monitor on its back flashed with small green lights. After a moment the lights settled into the shape of one huge staring eye. A blazing green eye to match the one in the center of its great silver head.

"You think the Queen would leave herself unprotected?" it said, emerging fully from the shadows. "You think she would do that after what happened to my brother, Aranay? Do you think she would just wait quietly as you destroyed everything she has built? No!," the bot thundered. She left me at the gate to dispose of you. She left me, her greatest servant, her strongest aid: Ararack."

The Dreamseeker, Abby, and Nigel all stepped silently in front of Chuck, guarding him from the bot.

"But even if I wasn't here," Ararack continued casually, "your attempt at getting in just now? Pathetic. You really thought that this living error message would fool us?" He pointed lazily at Abby and tilted his head. "The Web would never confuse this for a real spider-bot. She will never be one of us. She is a mistake. A walking glitch. A defect. A freak."

Abby beeped once quietly. Then all the fear in the Dreamseeker's body suddenly boiled into rage. She felt it bubbling up inside her stomach and chest.

"You better watch that metallic mouth of yours," she called. "Abby is a spider-bot. In fact, she's the best spider-bot I've ever known. But she's not like you. And she's not some brainwashed sheep. She is kind, and smart, and unique! She thinks for herself! The things that you call glitches are what make her strong enough to beat sad little bots like you."

Ararack turned towards the Dreamseeker. The pupil of the green eye in his monitor narrowed.

The Dreamseeker continued, rage pulsing through her. "We're here to take down the World Wide Web. So you can either try and stop us, or get out of the way."

Ararack laughed. He had the same laugh as his brother: creaking, rattling, hollow. "Very good, Dreamseeker," he said. "You're certainly right about a few things. First of all, I think it's time that some of our friends got out of the way. It isn't nice to fight in front of the children."

Ararack twitched a golden leg in the air. At once every spider-bot in the canyon snapped to attention. All of them except Abby. Their heads turned sharply back towards the orb. Then they were charging towards it in a frantic mass. Now they were no longer marching in orderly rows. They scrambled madly, crashing into each other without seeming to notice or care. Many bots were crushed and trampled in the frenzy. But their eyes remained blank. After a moment, they had all vanished into the orb.

"Secondly, I will, of course, be stopping you here," Ararack said, creeping down the cliffside. He took a few steps towards them across the now empty canyon. "But you are wrong about what you are seeing here," he said, looking at the orb. "This is not the World Wide Web. It was that at one time, perhaps. But that was child's play. Now it has become something greater. Something more powerful. Something our Queen calls, The Dark Web." The lights on his monitor began to collect themselves in the center of his back. They became a solid circle of green light glowing brighter and brighter. "I just thought I'd clear that up for you. Before it's too late."

With a massive clap of thunder, the storm finally hit. Rain pounded down from above. Lightning struck and bleached everything white.

Ararack attacked.