Chapter 24

Min-Ji

"Come here," Corin demanded, his tail hooking around my ankle to yank me close until I tumbled into his lap. His scales started to glow with his mating sigils, and he let them blaze, his glow competing with the screens in front of us. "I should have known you'd follow me in here. Listen closely, my clever mate. I have a plan."

He whispered in my ear as he outlined what he was going to do, and I feared that meant the Revenant was listening in. Corin didn't include Artek but left the Shaman to guard our backs from his position at the door. I could see that the male had pulled a small handheld scanner from a pouch and was aiming it at the fine mist of gas to identify what it was.

"But Triff?" I asked quietly. I tried to breathe shallowly so I wasn't pulling too much of the white mist into my lungs, but it was stinging my eyes a little. My worry for the little bot was echoed in Corin; he gave me a sad headshake and a worried frown. He didn't know what had happened to Triff, and right now we had bigger things to worry about—like the megalomaniac robot hooked into Haven's main controls. We had to find where his core was and destroy it.

When Corin moved his hands back to the keyboard in front of him, the gas hissed, more of it flowing into the room. It was a heavy kind of gas that pooled around my ankles like fog, but the room was going to fill up at some point and take away all our oxygen if nothing changed. I jumped to my feet, feeling a bit more confident when my mate kept a loop of his long tail around my hips. "Hey, Vrash! You dickhead! Is that all you've got? Why do you think you're going to win? You're nothing! You're just a stupid talking head! A relic from the past."

I heard Artek draw in a shocked breath behind me, and I cast him a cheerful grin over my shoulder. He looked worried, but when I kept talking trash and darted my eyes quickly to Corin, he caught on to the plan. I knew he was a clever male. When I paused to draw in a shallow inhale of air through the collar of my shirt, he leaped into the silence.

"You think this gas is going to hurt us? You're outdated. You know nothing of the Naga of the future. And you think you can shape a new Serant?" That definitely did the trick, and I hid a smile behind my hand at how silly it was to enrage a robot like this on purpose. A robot should be cool and rational, but this being was utterly insane. Corin's plan was working, even if it was super simple, but simple was often the best.

As Vrash launched into a very incoherent speech about his plans for Haven once he'd booted the usurpers—us—Corin worked steadily at the control hub. His fingers flew over the controls. When the gas stopped hissing, and the vents whirred as fans blew clean air instead, I knew he'd regained some control.

"Got it. I need to cut power," Corin said just as Triff careened back into the room with a squeal. He was followed by a horde of cleaning bots, and at first, I thought he was being chased, but when he circled the room, they did the same, and more of the gas dispersed. Had he gone to get his friends? Was this our backup?

"You can't cut my power!" Vrash shouted. "The power is mine, you insolent, inbred barbarian!" Corin just smiled in response to the insult, and I did my best to hurl a few back, drawing the robot's attention away from what Corin was doing. I followed Artek's lead, marching around the room and waving my hands at the machines that lined most of one wall. Anything to distract the machine from the true threat.

The crystals above our heads had already been powered down, like every other light source inside Ahoshaga. Now, the screens all flickered off except for one—the one in front of Corin. A cursor and some symbols flashed over its dark surface before it, too, suddenly shut off. Triff and his horde of bots came to a stop around my ankles. Darkness filled the room, except for the glitter of purple and green lights on their domed tops. We all held our breath as we waited.

"Did you locate the core?" Artek dared to ask after ten seconds of tense silence. Nobody moved. The lights nor machines didn't turn back on, but was that good or bad news? Corin nodded, his voice hushed as he explained Vrash's location to us. Much closer than I thought he'd ever get, nestled right behind the wall of computers in front of us, not that I could see them in the dark.

I instantly pictured a spidery lair of cables and glittering lights on the other side, with Vrash's creepy head sitting at the center, glowing red eyes gleaming. The blue core that powered his personality beamed light through the metal dome of his head. Something out of an old science fiction movie, horrific and evil. It was probably nothing like that, but the thought of that robot squatting behind the wall like a malevolent spider made my stomach churn.

"How do we get him out of there?" I asked, aiming my question in the direction of my mate. I could still see him because his sigils glowed on his chest and down his tail, a loop still hooked around my waist. It wasn't enough to see by, but at least I knew where he was. My fingers curled against his scales, taking comfort in his presence.

"I'll have to yank him out through the maintenance bot tunnel with my tail," Corin said as he started to wind his tail free from around me and slid it across the floor to what I had to assume was the access hatch. The little tunnels were very inconspicuous and only a little bigger than a cat door. It seemed like a terrible idea to slide his tail in there. He wouldn't be able to see what he was doing; there could be a booby trap or something.

As though my thought had jinxed it, something flickered in the dark, and power surged. The crystal lights blazed with it, so bright it blinded me. The entire control hub booted, coming online with all its screens glowing a bright white. It hurt, and dazed, I slapped my hands over my face to protect myself from the glare. It meant that for precious seconds, I didn't see what was happening, but I heard it.

Corin shouted, a loud, pain-filled noise. I heard a heavy thud that made my heart leap into my throat as I fought to get my eyes to work. Artek shouted too. "Corin!" I heard him move, his scales sliding over the floor in a rush. The Naga male would have been better protected against the sudden light with his extra eyelids. When I managed to get my teary eyes to work by squinting, I saw that he had crossed the room and was pulling Corin away from the wall by his armpits. My mate was passed out, his head lolling limply on his neck, and his body was a deadweight.

I feared the worst, but when I rushed to assist Artek, his sigils started to glow at my touch. "Yes, keep hold of him," the Shaman agreed. "Your touch will stabilize him. It will draw him back." I was only too happy to comply. It was one of the worst things I'd ever witnessed, to see my always-busy Corin lifeless like that. His body was limp and heavy as we fought to pull the last of his tail free from the small passage.

Then things went from bad to worse. As Artek pulled the tip of Corin's tail free, Triff made a loud beeping noise that made me jerk my hands to my ears in reflex. Artek did the same, dropping Corin's tail in surprise. Then the bot raced across the floor to the small tunnel, with his little horde of cleaning bots following him. "No! Triff! Stop!" It was too late. Our little silver friend disappeared into the small tunnel, followed by the rest of the bots.

"What?" Corin moaned, his hands jerking to his head as he blinked his eyes. "What happened?" I drew in a relieved breath when he pulled himself into a sitting position and blinked blearily in my direction. "Are you hurt, Min-Ji?" he asked, his eyes brightening. That gave him more strength. Of course, it did. He leaned forward and pulled me into his arms, his hands running over my back to check for injury, even though he was the one who had gotten hurt.

"I'm fine. You're the one who got zapped! Artek needs to check on you." Corin didn't want to let the Shaman help, his mind already whirring as he pulled himself up by the edge of the desk and into the seat. He didn't let go of me; his arm stayed around my waist, and he may have leaned a little more on me for support than he'd intended.

"Where is Triff?" he asked as he took control of the system, or at least, he tried to. The screen didn't seem to respond to his touch, but it did flicker from bright white to a camera feed. Artek hovered behind my shoulder as the three of us leaned closer to decipher what we were seeing: darkness, a small, narrow space, and blinking purple lights beneath the faintest red and blue glow. My heart leapt in my chest when I realized what I was seeing.

"No! Triff!" I exclaimed, leaning even closer to stare at the purple lights and wondering which of them belonged to my favorite, quirky little bot. This was what the Revenant saw; he was showing us what he was seeing. That could only mean that Vrash thought he had the upper hand. Corin was trying to do something—anything—but the keyboard was not responding; he was locked out.

The same electric surge that had knocked out my mate surged through the dark space. It made the lights above our heads flicker, and the feed filled with a blue brightness that made me blink against the glare. I didn't dare close my eyes in case I missed something, but I feared the worst. Vrash was winning, and now he'd claimed another victim: first Corin, now brave little Triff.

When the light died down, the feed didn't come back, but the computers suddenly hummed around us. Screens returned to normal, displaying statistics on Haven, a feed of a hydro plant, and even one of the greenhouse outside. I shared a baffled, confused look with Corin, and then he frowned and set his hands to work on the keys. "I've got control of everything," he murmured after a moment. "I don't understand how it happened, but everything is running nominally. I will pull up the feeds of the maintenance tunnels. Vrash should still be there. I don't understand."

I held my breath as he did so, and Corin did the same, his tail hugging me tightly. "Can you find Triff? He went in after you got zapped." When Corin shared a look with Artek, I groaned; that look meant bad news. They didn't think Triff could have survived.

"Found it," Corin muttered, and the screen to his left flicked to a dark view of a small, cable-filled space. Long coils of them ran in either direction, and a narrow pathway ran alongside. "This is directly on the other side of this wall," Corin said, nodding at the screen-covered wall we were standing in front of. "I don't see Vrash or Triff. Do you?"

It was really dark, and I had a hard time making out much else beyond the cables. It did look a little similar to what Vrash had shown us, only there were no purple lights or the blue-and-red glow from the evil robot to guide us. "There," Artek exclaimed, and he jabbed a claw at the screen, tapping the surface over an odd, bulbous shape. Horror filled me when I could make out more of the round shapes now that I'd seen the first. At least a dozen, and none of them blinked purple. Those were the cleaning bots, but where was Vrash?

I had the answer a moment later when Corin managed to make the camera pan to the left. More cleaning bots were lined up along the narrow path, their round shapes a dull silver in the gloom. Then came a weird dip in the heavy cable bundles, and on that was a spindly set of legs; I recognized them as the spider legs of a repair bot. On it sat a lumpy shape, lopsided, without a hint of a spark or light. "Did Vrash overload himself when he attacked the cleaning bots?" I asked.

"I don't know," Corin said, "but he's not in control of anything now. I don't think it's a trick…" He started to rise from the seat with a groan, a hand shooting to his chest. Artek immediately clamped a hand down on his shoulder and pressed him back into the seat. "I have to retrieve the core and get Triff!" Corin said fiercely, but the Shaman shook his head.

"Not in this state. You nearly died, Corin. Guide me through it. You can do that, can't you?" the Shaman said, already moving toward the vent and sliding his tail toward the hole. I flung myself out of Corin's embracing tail before I could think better of my plan. I didn't even think about how rude it was when I snatched up the Shaman's pointy tail and jerked it back.

"No! You need to stay here and heal Corin. Who'll take care of him and the pregnant women if you get hurt? You're too important." I ignored Corin's angry snarl as he yelled that I was even more important, and flung myself on my belly to crawl into the small tunnel. He was wrong, and he knew it. The two of them were crucial to Haven. I was not. It was only a tiny tunnel, and some turned-off bots. I could do this.

I heard them moving behind me—Artek and Corin clashing, maybe—but I didn't look back. I just thanked my lucky stars that I was small and that I'd managed a terrifying crawl through the dark like this once before. I should have brought a flashlight; that would have been better. Or maybe not. Maybe it was better that I couldn't see if there were alien bugs down here with me.