The Kingdom: Becoming The Enemy

Chapter Nine: The Journey Home

"Let's take them down." Patrious' robotic voice yelled over the rushing wind.

Patrious and Cog landed cleanly on the grassy floor. Surrounded by trees, they were in a clearing. Liken was not so smooth.

His cadaverbot clipped a tree on the outside of the clearing after he lost control during his decent. Liken's bot twisted and crashed into the ground, sending Liken diving towards the soft ground. He rolled as he hit and stood to run from the large piece of mangled metal rolling towards him.

It was catching too fast, not starting to slow down yet. Liken dived, desperately, out of the way of the death ball and looked up to see Cog and Patrious enjoyed the event far more than he did.

They roared with laughter, "What a fool!" Cog said with tears in his eyes. Patrious was still able to laugh with his new body despite not being able to show it with a smile.

"What are you guys laughing for? I could've been killed!"

"That's the best part!" The dummy's voice yelled.

"You should've seen your face!" Cog yelled as he began to impersonate Liken with a terrified, open mouthed, tongue hanging out, wide eyed look on his face. He ran in circles flailing his arms while Patrious shook the dummy's head and laughed some more.

Liken waited for them to stop with his arms crossed and couldn't hold in a soft groan escaping because of his shoulder.

A few seconds passed and Cog stopped what he would say is a completely accurate impression.

"Alright. Let's get serious here." The general spoke through his dying giggles.

"They can track these things. Cog, what's the best way to kill them?"

"I may be able to disable their trackers if you give me some time. Then we'd be able to keep them." Cog replied.

"I'm not taking any chances. We don't know how much time we have."

"Besides, what am I gonna ride on?" Liken felt ignored.

"Alright, fine. Now how should we shut them down?"

"I don't know, I asked you! Just because I'm mostly machine now doesn't mean I'm an expert." The dummy's eyes glowed slightly brighter as Patrious' mind raced, They think I'm machine now. This is ridiculous! I'm still a general damn it!

Liken walked over to his mangled cadaverbot, took his pistol out from the back of his pants and the top of the cadaverbot's head exploded as he pulled the trigger.

"Looks like I'm an expert now." Liken said, still angry at the beast for almost killing him.

Patrious shrugged while the bot's eyes went grey and did the same to the other two.

"I thought you wanted me to do it quietly." Cog stared at Patrious, disappointed that he wouldn't get the chance to show off his expertise again.

"No point now. Liken already made enough noise. We better get moving, they'll be looking for us. Take what you can use from them and let's get moving, we're heading to HQ. You have two minutes."

Two minutes later Cog was lagging behind the other two, shirtless, carrying random cadaverbot parts that he thought he needed with his shirt as a sack. Liken and Patrious just snapped off the bots' talons to use as knives.

They left the clearing, into the cover of the forest.

"What's he need all that crap for?" Liken said after he looked away from Cog and to Patrious.

"Why don't you ask him? He's the engineer, not me."

"You never know what might come in handy." Cog said as he jogged up with his filled shirt slung over his back. "Besides, we don't want any of my augs going haywire while we're out here. I'll be able to make these compatible for my parts. By the way, you guys are heading the wrong way, the base is this way." Cog was referring to his implanted maps and tracking software. He could use them to navigate anywhere in the world and if they malfunctioned they'd all be lost.