The Receiver

2 9 - S W A R M

A strip of emergency light in the elevator floor illuminates the Sisters' faces from below in a ghostly fluorescent glow, the only light in the hollow box carrying them up countless stories, closer and still so far from me. Tangled vines and gray-capped mushrooms adorn the walls, the light offering a better view of the inside.

The Samurai shifts her sword from her right fist to her left and back again, restless. Wedged between them, much closer than necessary in the spacious box, is Keiko, her mini katanas sheathed in metal scabbards on either hip while she flips a butterfly knife between her fingers like other children might solve a 3D puzzle cube or toss a hacky sack back and forth.

Then, finally, the elevator slows, and gradually comes to a stop. There's a ding and the large doors whisper open.

Standing less than ten feet from the lift are sweepers in blocked sets, unarmed and stationary, facing left toward the front of the cavernous room. It's dark and gray and cave-like, just how I always imagined the subway to be, back before the tunnels flooded.

What must be a thousand of them turn their faceless heads in the Sisters' direction as their eyeless faces stare wordlessly at them for what feels like a minute stretched into an hour.

Finally, the silence is broken by the clapping of Keiko's hands as she bounces up and down on the balls of her feet, smiling up at The Samurai in anticipation of the slaughter that is to come.

"Yay!" she sings.

The sound rouses Jin and Iris from their immobility and the first raises her endless blade and slices the nearest sweepers along the waist, leveling the first half dozen rows of them in two point five seconds.

The Samurai moves deeper into the thick of them, bouncing on wobbly robot legs like her little sis, using her katana like a cane to assist her in an old-school dance move that must match whatever psycho killer tune is playing in her head.

There is no denying it—she's a woman in her element.

She raises her sword above her head and the real fun begins.

While Jin handles the sweepers now coming for her from every direction, Iris uses her blades to stab straight into the skulls attached to the groping torsos of the dismembered droids.

A head-splitting cry pierces the air and see Keiko's mouth open as she shoots out of the elevator like a rabid kamikaze warrior, tearing through a horde of droids twenty feet to the left of Iris, slicing off arms and legs before they can grab her, her demi swords and little white teeth bared.

The look in Keiko's black eyes must scare Iris enough so that the expressionless bots aren't so intimidating anymore. Roundhouse kicking a sweeper in the head, my sister crunches its big glass eye to bits and turns in time to spear four sweepers running toward her, two on each blade, right through their chestplates. Swinging them around, she slams them into two more, knocking them to their knees and kneeling to slide off the four she's skewered.

Ready for more, she springs back to her feet, wielding her blades as if they're light as feathers.

Despite the seemingly impermeable flock of angry fists and feet, the three of them manage to cut a path through a tidal wave of moving metal, each woman handling herself, fighting a dozen or more at a time: Jin heaves her precious sword above her head with both fists, bringing it down with each new surge of bots and fending off the individuals with a kick to the chest; Keiko is still yelling like a maniac, jabbing and stabbing at every bot that steps within three feet of her; and Iris, with her twin blades, makes crisscrossing motions as if dividing an intrepid, silver sea.