Thirium 310

Chapter 9

November 6, 2038
7:52pm

"Follow me," North says as she starts jogging through the warehouse grounds. We follow suit. A security guard's flashlight brightens a path and we hide behind one of the crates to avoid being seen by him. He stays in his spot. Doesn't move. "We need to find another way," I say.
"I know. Come on," North replies. We follow her again in a different direction, this time up the crates. Smart. They'll never see us up here.

We make our way through the maze of crates and finally reach the warehouse, but there are drones scouting the area. "You guys know how to take down a drone?" I ask. The group shakes their head. I smirk. "Watch and learn."

I head to a drone on the right side, climbing a crate and at the right moment, jumping on it. I get distracted for a brief moment, a new report came in. One involving a homicide and a destroyed android. That's worth investigating. . .that could have been another android, plus Connor will be there. Huh? Why am I thinking about Connor. . . Because he's different. He's dangerous and I need to keep my eye on him. . .

The drone tries to flick me off, catching me off guard but I hold on tight and squeeze it hard, breaking it and taking it down. I punch it hard just to make sure it's completely destroyed. I quickly press myself up the wall to avoid being seen by the second drone. I see Markus jump onto that drone, quickly taking it down too. The others jump down and join us.

"Nice going Markus. . .you're really making a good impression," I say as I walk past him. He gives me a small smile. North catches up to me and whispers in my ear.
"Are you flirting with him?"
"No, definitely not!" I defend.
"Good." Then she passes me. Good?

We make it to the supply crates, open them up and fill our bags. "We have enough," Josh says. "Let's go." But no one answers him. We watch as Markus opens a bigger box, one containing our kind in there. Three.
"Why aren't you like us? Don't you want to be free?" Markus says as I walk towards him. He grabs onto one of the androids arms, and he comes to life. He looks around as if seeing the world for the first time. Markus does the same to the other two androids who react the same.

"How did you do that?" I ask. He looks me in the eyes but doesn't say anything, then walks back to the group. I didn't know we could free them as well.

"Guys, let's do something big," I say.
"What do you mean?" Josh asks.
"Well we're here. Might as well get as much as we possibly can."
"How?" North asks.
"There," Markus says, pointing to a group of androids in the distance. They're all security androids. They can't see us, at least they haven't but we crouch and go behind a crate just in case.

"You want us to take them down?" Simon asks.
"No, he wants us to free them. Like he did with them," I say motioning to the three androids that were just packed in that big box.
"Exactly. If we get them to join us, we'll have more hands and more supplies," Markus states.
"Plus, we'll free more of our people, let's do it."
"But how?" North asks.
"Follow my lead," Markus says.

We creep through the path, keeping ourselves concealed behind the boxes of supplies and huge crates. They don't see us. "Stay here," Markus says to us but I don't listen. I follow him.
"Celeste, what are you doing?" North snaps. I ignore her and keep moving. Markus looks back at me, seeing me following but he lets me.
"On my signal we run behind them and free them," he tells me.
"So we just interface, right? Just connect with them?" I double check.
"Exactly." I nod. I stand behind him looking over his shoulder. The security androids all face the other side, not one looking in our direction. "Now," he says.

We run towards them, taking ahold of one androids shoulder each. There's four of them, so we do the exact same thing with the other two. It's actually a strange experience interfacing. You go into each others minds and can see the world through their eyes as it is, presently. You go into their thoughts, the exposed ones. All these androids have are instructions, I just give them a boost to help them break down their walls. I can also feel them in my system too, but I only show them what it's like to be free, they can't see anything personal, anything from my past.

"You're free now. Come with us to Jericho," Markus says to them.
"Wha-what? Who are you?" one of the androids asks.
"I'm Markus."
"And I'm Celeste. We came to free you from the humans, to give you your own life."
"You can come with us and help us, or you can stay here and obey them." The androids look at each other. They're confused but they know what they want.
"How can we help?" The same android asks.

The six of us head back to the group still hiding. "That was. . .well I've never seen anything like that," Simon says. Markus nods.
"Come on, we can use an extra pair of hands. The more parts and blue blood we get, the better," Josh says. We head back towards the crates that had all the supplies we need and find some bags laying around they can fill.

We have seven more androids joining us, and seven more bags of supplies. This is great, and this is more than enough, at least for now. It's so much better not doing this alone, we can get more. But Josh, Simon and North didn't listen to me when I suggested someone should come with me. . .why did they listen to Markus? Could it be that he's the one we've been waiting for? The android who will lead Jericho into freedom. . .rA9? No. I don't believe in that, but I do know that there's something special about Markus. I think things might change.