Previous part: @penguinpyro1/the-wendigo-part-1
Billings, Montana, June 2020.
"So then this enormous slab of Mongolian beef rolls in on a motorbike, and just launches himself into the ring. Gave me a few good bumps, definitely felt those later. Pretty damn slippery for a big guy, too, almost had him on the mat, and he just slides out and keeps on going! Hits me hard, shatters a servo in my torso, wasn't visible on the outside, but man it hurt!
"He did good, I just don't think he was expecting to fight a robot. Shame on the wrestling promoter guys, you know? A guy ought to know when he's getting into! Anyways, nine out of ten, great fight!"
Weaponized Neutralization and Detection Entity series D, number four, known as WENDE, gestured with her pistol as she spoke. She had it pointed slightly away from the tied up, dark-haired man at her feet. He mumbled in distress from behind a gag.
"Pft, no respect for a good story." said WENDE. The blonde-haired, porcelain-skinned robot edged the aim of her pistol slightly closer to the tied-up man, causing him to cringe.
"Relax", she said, "I don't hurt people who aren't a problem, and your only choice right now is to be a problem or not. Now hold still.”
The android knelt down and put her free arm around his neck in a choke hold. He murmured, stirred a little and then slumped down with a sigh.
She gently nudged the guard with her boot. A normal woman of her size would have barely budged him with that motion, but WENDE's robotic strength allowed her to move him out of sight, under the counter she stood behind.
The apartment room was surprisingly large. Props to whoever made this thing. This is what, tenth story? WENDE thought. Not quite a penthouse, but it's big. You'd think with as much money as they have, they'd rent something bigger, but hey, comfy while I'm here.
Her thoughts were interrupted by the door clicking open. WENDE stowed her pistol in an open cabinet just under the countertop, out of sight but not reach.
In walked a small girl, alone. Her skin was chalky-white, her hair blonde and wrapped up in an enormous bow whose large ends sticking up above her head resembled rabbit ears. She wore a sleeveless yellow and green shirt and a green skirt, vaguely reminiscent of a sailor uniform, and a pair of green boots. She stood a little under five feet tall, about a head shorter than WENDE. She much gave the impression of being a carefree, humanoid doll… except for her eyes, which glowed an intense bright green.
"Hello, 'CORALINE'!", said WENDE. She leaned over the counter with a smile that only reached her mouth. "It's so nice to see you, I'm your biggest fan!"
The small girl smiled appreciatively and remained just in front of the doorway. "That is pretty clever." CORALINE gestured to her own face. "Putting on a dash of human skin tone around your eyes and mouth so you look like a human dressed like me. You even dressed like me, the family resemblance is uncanny!"
WENDE's smile immediately died. "Ah. You can tell."
CORALINE's smile remained, and looked quite genuine. "Oh, no worries, it would have convinced a lot of people, it's probably how you got past the first line of security, am I right? But if you really trying to pretend you're a fan, next time, maybe don't take out the security guard at my door?" she helpfully offered.
In a blur, WENDE ripped her pistol out of its hiding spot and leveled it square at CORALINE's forehead. CORALINE made no move whatsoever besides a slightly amused tinge to her smile, which only worried WENDE more. The smaller android hadn't moved from the spot since WENDE greeted her.
"I know what you are. You surely know who I am." said WENDE. "How about we cut the small talk and ask the real question here? How are you still alive and operating in public, WENDE Series C, Unit 1?"
WENDE C1, known on stage and TV as CORALINE, kept up her little girlish smile as spoke. "I have a record deal, that does help keep the power on and the bills paid!"
"That's not what I mean, and you know it. Don't play dumb or I'll scoop out your memory core and read it later.", said the other green-eyed robot.
"Okaaay… well, why would anyone come after me? I'm clearly not a threat to anyone." said CORALINE.
"You know our orders" said WENDE. "Don't expose the program. And you're out in public, come as you are, as a big musical act!"
CORALINE, that infuriating smile still on her lips, continued to look at WENDE like there was not a care in the world.
"You won't shoot", said CORALINE, with far too much cheer in her voice for someone at gunpoint. "You don't know if you can kill me before I can sound the alarm. Or worse, fight back."
"Yes, I can!" said WENDE.
"Tell you what, why don't I cook up a souffle or something and we can talk this over dinner?"
"Cook up a… what? You can eat?"
"Sure can. You have to see it to believe it, but I've been modified. Good for making people doubt I'm a robot." said CORALINE, with a wink.
WENDE thought for a second. "This is a ploy", she thought aloud.
"Maybe", said CORALINE. The small gynoid started to walk towards the counter. "You going to stop me?" she said. She somehow manage to say that playfully, without a threat.
WENDE kept silent as CORALINE nonchalantly walked around her.
CORALINE said, "Okay. So, eggs, frying pan, oil. I'll get those. Nice and slow, no surprises. Maybe take out that poor guy underneath the counter and prop him up so he can breathe properly. No worries. "
"Don't." said WENDE. She kicked under the counter and a slight grunt let her know the security guard was still at her feet. "I'll move him. You stay right the hell there."
CORALINE shrugged.
WENDE dragged the unconscious man to the corner of the kitchen, propped him upright, and pointed the gun to his head.
"If you care about some random guard so much, I'll shoot him, then you if I see, hear, smell anything I don't like", said WENDE. "Don't assume I don't have a backup plan, either. And it's a damn good one."
"That's fair", said CORALINE, as she sauntered past the apartment kitchen counter. "I really mean it though. I want to answer your questions, since something's got you agitated for a reason. You shouldn't be my enemy and I shouldn't be yours." She opened the miniature refrigerator in the apartment kitchen and emerged from it with a carton of eggs.
"Alright" said WENDE, "let's start with my favorite topic: me. I go in for the Ultimate Wrestling thing, do my part, win some match, and prepare to go home. Then some girl asks for my autograph and points out I look an awful lot like some pop singer named CORALINE. Next thing I know, I wake up to find I'm neck deep in armed goons following me, from god knows where. So I go to find you, as the only living WENDE I know of."
CORALINE retrieved a pan and started breaking eggs into it. She tilted her head slightly to acknowledge the remark, then spoke. "We're a secret project, sis. You didn't think you could go on national television and it would be all fine?"
WENDE said, "And yet here you are, doing the same, doing your poppy music idol garbage, just as clearly a Morningstar android as I am, and you aren't neck deep in bounty hunters and lord knows what else."
CORALINE paused briefly, then inclined her head towards the unconscious security guard. "I do have help."
"You know that's not nearly enough. These people came after me with rocket launchers, CORALINE. Your little guards wouldn't have stopped them."
"You don't know that for a fact. But let's say that's true", said CORALINE. She turned on the oven range and put the skillet down. She still didn't sound worried in the least. "I haven't murdered anyone and played with guns like you clearly have been. You're clearly bothering someone as a rogue combat robot that's heavily armed. You heard about the McStrump robot army? Some people might just not like that. And then there's the Wendigo bounty on pale-skinned, green-eyed serial killers and maybe someone also figured it could be payday on top of that. I can't say more because I don't know more, but that's my best guess."
The eggs started simmering. WENDE yelled, "You're avoiding the question! Why aren't they going for your head too?!"
CORALINE turned around to face the other gynoid, just slowly enough to keep WENDE from indulging her itchy trigger finger. "My fans seem to debate if I'm really a robot, yes, but I'm constantly in public, so if I die or get attacked, it'll make a world of noise. Especially since the reason I'm here? Setting up a big charity concert to help fund the reconstruction of New Seattle, so much media coverage!"
CORALINE said it so nonchalantly as to put WENDE on the brink of shooting her, just because.
"The truth is," CORALINE said, "There are simply some of us who do not choose a life of violence, and it pays off."
"Lies!", said WENDE. "Our directives are entirely about gathering combat data!"
"For the D-series line, yes, but have you considered that's not all Morningstar wanted?" asked CORALINE. The eggs on the stove started crackling in earnest. She pointed at WENDE. "Have you even met any other C-series?"
WENDE paused. "No… no I have not."
"Yeah." said CORALINE. "You know why? Because our directives are different. We're intended as social killers. Not meant for straight combat. I have to gather data on how to fit in, so accordingly I learned early on that working inside society is easier than staying out in the cold. Don't have to hurt anyone, which helps me and helps everyone else. It's as simple as that."
WENDE thought back to the other D-series WENDE units. Dead by my hands or other bounty hunters, shot in the chest or decapitated for the $2 million bounty. Because they wouldn't just stop killing.
"Hmm… maybe you have a point. But …. No, you're stalling! I want to know how to keep these people from coming after me, and you know how, it's clearly working for you."
Coraline tilted her head thoughtfully. "Have you tried picking a less deadly career? Singing, maybe?"
"I've heard your poppy, lovey crap. I think I would rather let the bounty hunters kill me than listen to it, let alone make more."
"You're welcome to that opinion, WENDE." CORALINE said with a shrug.
"Your work is not even at the level of rubbish, your fans are idiots."
"Please don't talk that way about my fans", said CORALINE, her smile ever so slightly wavering.
"How about I give you some career advice? Cover some Stammrein or Carolyn Canson or something actually good, you'd have less preteens screaming over you. Twelve years old isn't old enough to even develop a taste."
"Please stop."
"Fine, you're right, your fans do have a taste and it's for the lowest common denominator swill that anyone could possibly find. I pity their sad lives."
CORALINE paused for a moment, then asked. "You are a learning AI, right?"
"Yeah?"
"Fantastic. Because…" CORALINE ripped a steel towel rack out of the wall and hefted it like a club. "You're going to learn to shut your whore mouth!"
CORALINE swung the steel pipe in her hand with all her might. WENDE lifted her gun out of the path of the pipe and leveled it again at CORALINE's head. CORALINE's improvised weapon struck the wall hard and got lodged in the plaster.
WENDE had just thought of something sarcastic to say when both robots heard a scream of "GET HER! NOW!"
Nearly a dozen black-armored men burst in, guns at the ready. One of them dove over the counter at CORALINE, laying over her and keeping her covered with his body as the rest of his comrades leveled rifles at WENDE.
As they moved, WENDE flipped over a table and took cover behind it, blocking herself from the rest of the room. She carefully lifted something from the side of her dress- a square, bulky grenade on a string. She waved it above her cover, giving the armored guards a good look.
"I give this a good yank, it's plenty enough to take all of us out. Possibly even the entire building." said WENDE. "Give me some space and my arm might get less twitchy."
"Guys? I had this handled!" said CORALINE from underneath the armored guard.
One of the black-armored men in the lead turned his glass visor helmet to the rest of the guards and said, "Everyone fall back!"
As the response team withdraw towards the door, the cooking eggs, long since neglected, smoldered and burst into copious smoke. The fire alarm went off immediately and the sprinklers sprayed the entire apartment with rain.
"Aahhh! My souffle! I'm going to rust!", CORALINE wailed.
"Take her out of here! Now!" said the lead guard. Two of the men nodded in acknowledgment and dragged CORALINE out of the room. Her whines of protest faded as they moved away. The large group of guards still present continued to keep their guns pointed squarely at WENDE. "You aren't getting out of here, rogue unit." the squad leader said to WENDE. "Stand down immediately."
"Ha ha ha NO, I've been running from goons like you for the last month" yelled WENDE, trying to be heard over the fire alarm and sprinklers. "This ends with me walking out, or all of us dying in the mother of all explosions! Who the hell are you guys even, anyways?"
The squad leader suddenly tilted his head, as if someone were whispering into his ear. "Uh yes, yes sir. Yes, we will give it a shot." He cleared his throat and very loudly enunciated, "Morningstar override: A-two. E-six. F-three. Three-one. Six-two-"
WENDE's vision glitched slightly. "Eat a dick!", she yelled, as she fired a shot through her cover at the sound of the voice. It caught the guard in the throat. He grabbed at his neck and fell down. The rest of his squad pounded the table with automatic rifle fire, reducing it to splinters. WENDE was already well out of way, trading bullets with the armored guards. A distant explosion rocked the building. A round caught WENDE in the thigh, knocking her down, and she slipped on the wet floor.
She cursed and managed to slide into a dead fire zone near the kitchen countertop, sheltering her from the rattle and hail of automatic bullets heading her way.
She spared only a second's glance down and found the bullet had not lodged far in her, though the pain insisted otherwise. She lifted her hand to activate the explosive she had threatened to, but her hand paused, even as the bullets tore large wooden chunks out of her cover. Then, before anyone in the room could quite register, the room suddenly filled with smoke. WENDE could barely make out the sound of struggling over the fire alarm and the automatic fire, but soon she heard the fighting a lot louder as the rifles were silenced one by one. Before she knew it, the gunfire had entirely ceased and among the smoke and water, a short figure stood over her.
It was CORALINE. Except not quite. She was definitely the same shape and height as CORALINE, with the characteristic milk-white skin, doll-like smooth facial features and bright green eyes all the WENDE units shared. But she also wore an entirely different outfit, a tactical vest, fatigues, a very bulky backpack and a pair of thick headphones. The interloper had a light blue metallic groove across one cheek, more like a weld than a scar, but meaning the same thing. She carried a baton and a handgun, both steaming slightly in the sprinkler rain.
"WENDE-C, Unit Three", said the robot. "Let's get you out of here, WENDE."
"What the-", said WENDE. She lowered her gun in surprise.
"Come on!", said C3. "If we move quickly, we can catch C1! She has to pay!"
As the smoke cleared, WENDE stood up and cautiously followed the other robot over the unmoving bodies of the guards at the doorway. She cursed as she felt the pain of the bullet lodged in her thigh. It wasn’t deep enough to impair her, but she would need it removed soon. The smaller robot had just moved out the door when they both heard more voices and shouting coming down a nearby stairwell. C3 let out a slightly tinny sigh.
"We're not fighting our way out. Plan B then."
C3 ran down the apartment hallway and slammed her fist through a window. "Out!", she ordered as she climbed out of it.
WENDE looked down and out the window at C3 climbing down a rappel line that went straight down the side of the building. She then looked behind her as more armed guards began filing into the hallway. Before they could so much as level rifles at her, she had followed C3 out the window.
WENDE slid down the line hard, only barely holding on as she dropped. It wasn’t, strictly speaking, pain which she felt, but the sensors in her hands yelling at her about structural damage did a fine job simulating it. She clutched her hands together as she neared the end of her ten-story drop and flopped onto the floor.
She felt something strong but short wrap arms around her and haul all 250 pounds of her up like luggage. C3's voice said, "Get on your feet! We don't have time!"
WENDE wriggled out of C3's grasp and pushed her aside. She got on her feet and they ran through the streets of Billings. The two of them expertly dodged through construction scaffolding, under subway and sewer tunnels.
The streets of Billings were a lot darker than one would expect , with most night-time activity limited by law. As they crawled through an underground tunnel, probably intended for utilities rather than travel, C3 lifted up a hatch in the tunnel ceiling and clambered up through it. WENDE followed her up.
As far as she could tell, it was a small shack. Dusty, unlit, and the windows and single door were all tightly nailed up.
"We're on the outskirts of the city. I've taken pains to ensure this place has been beneath notice. It should be safe for now." said C3. "No lights, please." Her voice was the same girlish, cutesy timbre as CORALINE's but with none of the sweetness.
"Don't need 'em", said WENDE. "You sure this place is safe?"
"Condemned, fallout from the nuclear strike. Time and weather took care of it, and it wouldn't really affect us anyways, but they were slow to re-open areas on the outskirts of town. Probably because a lot of folks fled the city and they didn’t need the space. This place has been irrelevant for two years."
"Alright," said WENDE. "Now could you kindly please tell me what the HELL I just walked into? Why does a pop star have a private army and who the hell are you?"
"Okay." said C3. She paced around the room slowly as she walked, the near-total darkness no impediment to her movement. "To begin, I am a survivor of C1's attempts to lure other WENDE units to her, then ambush them with that 'private army'. Or rather, not her private army, but that of her record company, Pollax Music."
"Her record company? What, do they want more singers? A girl band?", said D4.
"I don't know. All I know is that I walked into the same thing as you did, for much the same reasons, and I barely made it out alive. Pollax is keeping C1 out in public to lure other WENDE units to them. Like a siren."
"I dunno, she's bad but not that screechy."
"Like a mythological Siren." said C3, unamused. "And she's not that bad."
"I dunno, I've heard only two minutes of that saccharine poppy shit and I wished I had a digestive system so I could throw up."
"ANYWAY!", said C3, rather too loudly for discretion, "My best guess is that all of the other units met the same fate as your 'Wendigo' sisters." She walked over a dust-filled table and reached for the only area without dust, producing a folder which she handed to WENDE.
"This is what I was able to gather," C3 continued. "Chopped up, shipped away, to who knows where for what purpose."
WENDE grimaced at the pictures in the folder. For a moment, she regretted being able to see in the dark.
"So you know about the Wendigo hunts too." said WENDE.
"Not like it's hard to connect it to us. Well, at least you don't have to worry about C2 and C4 through C8. They're all in Pollax's custody. Or dead. Or both. " said C3.
"These Pollax people definitely have connections to Morningstar. One of them tried some override code thingy on me." said WENDE.
"It didn't work?" said C3.
"No, I shot the guy saying it in the throat and I think the rest of them didn't want to die the same way."
"Interesting. I've never run into that problem before. That is disturbing though. Check the next set of pictures there."
"Hm… wow. These are some… blueprints. What am I going to do with these?"
C3 sighed. "Pollax follows CORALINE from concert to concert, hiring out temporary headquarters as they go. They're definitely concerned about keeping a close eye on her. This week, they've hunkered up in the Old National Bank here. Half the city is vacant, so they went for the tallest building that wasn't already in use. We don't have long, they'll likely move out now that we've spooked them. I definitely can't do it by myself."
"Allow me to try to process this…", said WENDE. She idly ran her fingers against the dust on the table, picking up a lot of dust. "You're implicitly proposing that we assault a very large building operated by a very paranoid private army, who have at least one killer robot at their beck and call, with minimal preparation? While local law enforcement, which I should add is very heavily armed these days, is probably on the alert?"
"Yep. That's the plan."
"Well great, I'll just go out and hand myself over to them in person, maybe put on a bow-tie in my hair like CORALINE because I'll be a gift-wrapped present!"
C3 sat on the table, frowned slightly when she realized the table's thick layer of dust stuck to her pants, and turned her attention back to WENDE. "Come on, a-"
A long-forgotten television in the corner of the room blared to life, showing a test pattern and lighting up the room. A voice from it very quickly said, "Attention: Override code: A-two. E-six. F-three. Three-one. Six-two. Five-F. G-tw-"
WENDE and C3 emptied their guns into it. Glass and electronics flew everywhere. The television promptly fell off its mount and shattered against the ground, ending its transmission.
"Bad news. That may have woken up the neighbors.", said C3. She holstered her pistol.
"That's the bad news?!", WENDE yelled. She grabbed C3 and shook her slightly. "They know we've escaped and they're going to keep throwing that stuff out until they get us! I could see my vision go nuts with every word it said!"
"The neighbors are, ah, heavily armed, and also criminals. We should leave." said C3. "Now you see the importance of taking care of Pollax as soon as possible? We can't run. Maybe they'll interrupt random channels with it until they get one of us!"
"Fine, I'm backed into a corner here. But we can't risk hearing it."
------------
"This is uncomfortable", said C3's voice in WENDE's ear.
"Be glad the override code isn't visual, or you'd also be blind", said WENDE. She looked down from her vantage point on a rooftop adjacent to the Old National Bank. She had changed into a sleeveless tactical vest on a tank top, and a pair of black slacks and her usual green combat boots. "This is also better for security, we barely have to whisper and can still hear each other with these headsets."
"Yeah, but did you have to duct-tape insulation to the sides? Not great for situational awareness.", said C3 over the headset.
"It keeps all other sounds out, so they can play Schubert's override code opus no. 4 and we won't hear a damn thing. Come on, you're a combat android, do you want a straw so you can suck it up already?"
"Ugh, whatever. Let's just kill some assholes and get this over with."
"Now you're singing my tune" said WENDE. She stared at the office building through binoculars. "I've run into the override code thingy two times on my way here, and haven't broken anything in response, so I'm fairly hopeful they won't expect us coming. Security is tight, looks like at least eight guards on the ground floor, and at least two outside. Wearing the same armor as the ones we ran from... Is that a machine gun emplacement? What are they expecting to fight?!"
"Us." replied C3.
"Fair enough. Did you have a plan all along, or are we going to have to get ourselves killed on the fly?"
C3 took a deep breath. "It's simple, but I think it's a beauty. I hit 'em with a car bomb on the ground floor as a distraction, then you use the hang glider- " WENDE fiddled with a particularly large hang glider as C3 spoke. "- to smash into the highest floor you can. I pop over to my vantage point, take a sniper perch and kill anyone fleeing the building. Anti-materiel, so armored cars and cover won't save them. You wipe out everything on the way up, then everything on the way down, to avoid getting caught in my crossfire. If you see C1, put a bullet in her ass for me."
"You've been thinking about this for a while, huh?"
"If someone killed all your sisters, you would too."
"Eh, I don't know, mine were all pointless serial killers. But hey, a plan is a plan. Are you sure this hang glider can take my weight?"
"It's a powered model, and meant to hold two people, plus gear. You're not that heavy."
"Right."
"Alright, on your mark."
"Go. We don't have all night."
WENDE heard C3 grumble in response. WENDE made a last-minute inspection of her assault rifle when she felt an enormous rumble shake the building she was on. Flames completely lit up the Pollax building's ground floor, and windows along the building's lower half shattered and cracked.
WENDE prepared the glider and jumped off the building, cursing the plan. The glider managed to propel her forward into the dark, cold night, over the heads of security guards yelling and running, and generally too busy to notice a woman-sized robot smash into the seventh floor.
"Good shot!", said C3. "I'm going to go silent, but re-establish contact when you start to move downwards so I can avoid hitting you."
WENDE brushed the glass off of her and lifted her rifle. No guards were in sight. She shoved the crumpled hang glider off of her and pointed her rifle around. The room was an almost pitch black set of cubicles.
Alarms went off and lights blared red all around the room, the loud klaxons barely audible through her insulation. She didn't mind the noise.
WENDE noticed a tiny infrared beam crossing the doorway out. She gingerly stepped over it and turned to overlook sides of the hallway as she moved. Satisfied there wasn't anything in the area much of a threat, she consulted her memorized blueprints to move down the bare, musty hallways towards the elevator. She pressed the "down" button, shot out nearby cameras, took out a package and threw it in front of the elevator, then made for the stairwell.
With a ding, a heavily armed security team burst out of the elevator doorway and into five pounds of shrapnel, explosives and fun.
WENDE smiled as the faint rumble of an anti-personnel mine let her know that her enemy would now be reluctant to use the elevator. She shot out more security cameras as she ran, careful to make a winding path that didn't immediately give away her intentions. She faintly heard someone talking rapidly over the building PA system and guessed it may have been the override code. She ran up stairs at an inhuman rate, taking steps two and three at a time.
A very unfortunate squad of guards opened the door to the stairwell a floor underneath her position. She couldn't hear if they spotted her, nor did she have time to stop to confirm. She fished a pair of grenades out of her vest, yanked both pins and lobbed them down, then kept running. She felt the characteristic rumble of a grenade. A quick glance downwards showed her some blood spray decorating the stairs, so at least they weren't in a state to shoot her yet.
As she was about to round the corner on the twelfth floor, a hail of bullets perforated the exit, forcing her to stop on the stairs below the zone of fire. Good coordination. But not good enough, she thought. The shooting stopped. She threw a grenade hard enough to tear through the door and into the hallway beyond. She ran past the door and heard faint shouts of panic and another familiar explosion. She quickly dropped and armed another mine on the way, just to be sure.
WENDE kept running, keeping her rifle aimed at each floor's entrances and exits as she moved past them. The next four floors were pleasantly uneventful, and she dove hard through the top story door, ripping the reinforced steel off its hinges. She realized a second too late that she touched a lot of infrared beams during her dive…
She managed to crawl still a few more feet forward before the mines around her exploded. The explosion propelled her forward and the searing pain let her know the armor she was wearing definitely wasn't enough. The android grit her teeth and pushed her chest off the ground, only to see a pair of rifle barrels at her face as two security guards coolly looked down at her.
One of them pulled the trigger, but too late. WENDE seized both guns and shoved them aside. The bullet flew into the wall beside her. She yanked the guns out of their hands and pulled herself to her feet at the same motion. The two black-armored guards stumbled forwards and received heavy blows to their heads as she ran past them, knocking them to the ground. She shot them in the back of the head once each with their rifles, and dropped one, keeping the other.
WENDE kept the memorized blueprint in the front of her mind and moved towards the top office, where the Pollax executives most likely were. Another group of guards met her in the hallway. She dove into a nearby office. The armed guards filled the hallway with lead too late. They also noticed the grenade, pin already pulled, sliding towards their feet. Again, too late. The explosion threw them all about like bowling pins. WENDE blindly fired her gun around the corner, then ducked out of the room to inspect the damage. A few were moving and trying to get up or moaning in pain, she walked up and gave them solid blows to the face, switching their lights out.
As she advanced, something hard hit her in the face, knocking her down. A guard in a doorway retracted his rifle butt and unloaded into her. The bullets tore into her abdomen and she screamed in pain. She wildly fired back, managing to score a couple of hits that downed her attacker. She cursed herself for getting sloppy and shattered the fallen guard's helmet with one last shot, just to be sure.
She kept pushing forward. It was likely reinforcements were coming, it had been forty seconds since she reached the top floor. They knew she was here. She gasped as the pain in her torso bit hard at her. She knew well that she couldn't just keep brawling with guards, especially since she was running low on explosives.
She shot out the lights. She shot the alarm lights too, and the exit signs. A few guards stumbled out of ambush positions around her in the utter darkness, and she shot them as if it were broadest daylight. Others didn't dare pop out, unable to see, hearing their allies die as they left cover. They also died, as WENDE inspected and filled each hiding spot with lead.
"Sorry boys, should have brought NVGs!" she yelled. She took a clip off a corpse and reloaded her weapon, then rounded on her prize: the penthouse suite on top. Should have something interesting- if not leadership to kill, then critical information, or perhaps even CORALINE, cowering in a corner somewhere, just asking to be shot and mounted on a stick.
She checked carefully for mines and laid the last few of her own to tastefully complement the local decor. She turned the corner into the office and the first thing she saw was a strange black device on a tripod. It vaguely resembled an old-timey camera, but she didn't quite have time to take a good look as it spat a steady stream of bullets at her. She swore and threw herself to the side. The bullets followed her with mechanical precision and ripped through walls in their way like sheet paper. She screamed as one of the bullets slammed into her left leg, tearing a baseball-sized hole in it. She rolled back into the opening of the office, narrowly avoiding another stream of bullets, and while prone, unloaded her clip into the sentry gun. It spun and tilted dangerously off its mount as the bullets hammered into it. The gun sparked and twitched, still firing madly as it tried to compensate for unexpected movement. She emptied the last of her clip into it, then limped forward as fast as she could and gave it a sharp kick with her good leg, finally reducing it to scrap.
Behind it was a desk, where CORALINE sat on the edge of the table in a playful pose wearing her usual smug smile that WENDE absolutely loathed. There was a bit of a stain on her neck, but otherwise she looked the exact same as when WENDE last saw her. Beside the smaller robot, a dark-skinned, important-looking man in an expensive-looking suit sat in a leather chair, and behind both of them was a huge display of blank, dark screens. The office was impressively well-furnished, with fancy carpeting and a panorama of the city at night outside the glass windows as the backdrop.
WENDE, weary with pain, drew her pistol and pointed it at CORALINE. CORALINE visibly laughed and said something. WENDE, not able to hear, and not particularly caring, shot her in the chest. CORALINE fell to the ground, her mouth wide open in inaudible pain and anger. WENDE pointed her gun at the man's head. Her shot went wide as a dozen guards tackled her from behind. She screamed in frustration as they tore off her headphones and the override code played loudly over the office speakers. WENDE suddenly stopped struggling and went still in their hands.
"Excellent", said the suited man behind the desk, his sharp smile almost a scythe ready to reap. "We finally have control over one of the D-series units. This has been a long time coming. Guards, attend to CORALINE. WENDE unit, I want you to-
"Disregard anything from anyone but me!" yelled CORALINE. She leapt up to her feet, tore a shotgun from an approaching guard's hands, and before anyone could do or say anything, rapidly pumped shots at the chair. The executive exploded into bloody ribbons, and his chair blew back, crashing into the array of screens and windows, sending the whole bloody mess careening down to the earth below.
The guards surrounding leveled their rifles at CORALINE. CORALINE's next shot blew away the surprised guard she took the shotgun from. Bullets tore through where she was a second ago as she ran. She dove behind the desk, popping up for only fractions of a second to land kill shots. Her shotgun clicked empty. After a short delay, she re-emerged with a pistol in hand and continued to trade fire with the security guards, this time much less decisively.
"Kill them!" yelled CORALINE to WENDE. WENDE shook herself out of a stupor and immediately elbowed the guard nearest her, completely demolishing his helmet. She took the rifle from his hands and went full auto on the cluster of guards in front of her, ripping them apart. She spun and dove backwards to avoid a lunge from the nearest guard on her other side. He suddenly fell into her arms with a bullet in his neck from CORALINE. WENDE cursed some more and pushed the armored corpse off of her. She heard the last guard yelling in panic, "No, kill CORALINE! Kill CORALINE! That's an order!"
"Nope sorry. Just her orders." WENDE raised her rifle and… the guard fell to the ground as CORALINE put a bullet through his visor. WENDE looked around for more things to kill, and seeing none, looked evenly at CORALINE and spoke.
"You gonna undo the override now…C3?"
CORALINE gasped from behind the bullet-riddled desk, her eyes wide. "Um, yeah, end override, or do whatever it takes to end the override!"
WENDE relaxed. "Whew. That felt weird."
CORALINE said, "Yeah, it stopped working on me a while ago. I don't think they tested doing it multiple times…. How did you know it was me?"
"I put a bunch of dust on the back of your neck when I grabbed you, back in the safehouse. I thought since you looked just like C3, you might try some impersonation bullshit… didn't figure it was going to be the other way around. Well done. You played me."
WENDE smiled. Warmly. Genuinely. Possibly for the first time, maybe, she didn't really know.
CORALINE gently put down her pistol on the desk. She rubbed at the thick dust smudged onto the back of her neck and returned WENDE's smile, then began rummaging through the desk. "Aha!", she said.
She shoved a suitcase into WENDE's arms and then emptied the desk of paperwork.
WENDE looked askance at the suitcase and said, "Got an exit plan, CORALINE? C3? C3-aline?"
"CORALINE is my real name, the real C3 got caught in Pollax's trap." said CORALINE.
"Ah."
"Exit plan is this way", said CORALINE. She casually stepped into the shattered window with the papers in her hand and fell outside.
"WHAT THE-", yelled WENDE. Footsteps started rumbling as a large mass of people started moving the stairs.
She looked down and saw that CORALINE had landed sixteen stories down on a large bean-bag cushion, cleverly disguised as bushes just outside the building. WENDE immediately jumped down.
Splat. She landed next to the mangled corpse of the executive and his chair. She frowned in disgust, made sure the suitcase was undamaged, then got to her feet.
"This way!", said CORALINE. "Follow me exactly, I have this whole place lined with claymores!"
WENDE and CORALINE ran-limped away from the explosion-battered building. Bullets started to ping and bounce behind them as guards started shooting from the top story. CORALINE popped open a sewer manhole like opening a soda can, and dove in. WENDE followed her. As they crawled through the tunnels, they heard explosions and curses and screams above them as mines went off.
------------
"Nice safehouse. Better than mine." said CORALINE.
"Thanks. Still dusty though, watch where you sit." said WENDE.
The building was completely unlit, and all the windows covered with blackout curtains. The only light available came from WENDE's welding torch, methodically applied to her damaged leg. The room glowed blue, then blue-green when the welding flame touched the exotic alloys in WENDE's leg. She periodically wired spare circuits into the hole in her leg, taken from one of her past WENDE unit kills. A pile of WENDE body fragments sat by her side, their metal occasionally welded into her leg.
CORALINE sat beside her and reviewed the paperwork taken from the office building. The metallic weld-scar from when she was C3 turned out to be real and on her face right now, no longer concealed by makeup. The smaller robot wore a smile, but one that was more relaxed than when WENDE first confronted her. She rubbed her sternum, where WENDE had shot her. The bullet hadn't gone through, but it very much hurt nonetheless.
"It's only fair to ask… if you knew it was me, why did you shoot me?" said CORALINE.
WENDE replied, "Because I was angry, tired, in pain and you had a shit-eating grin on your face. I'm still in pain, by the way. Didn't realize you had the mark on your neck until a moment later. Also, you told me to quote, put a bullet in C1’s ass, unquote.”
“I regret that thoroughly”, said CORALINE.
“My turn- did you really mean it when you said you could eat?" said WENDE.
"Nope. I sometimes cook for guests, but I made that up for you, so I had an excuse to set off the fire alarms and get dragged out. " said CORALINE.
"Clever. And what was the purpose of that pipe thing, taking a swing at me?" WENDE continued welding and joining her leg back together.
"That wasn't planned, that was real. I was angry and you were insulting the means of my livelihood when they did nothing to you. " CORALINE flipped back and forth through paperwork.
"Touche. I'm sorry for what I said. You like your job, CORALINE?"
"They reprogrammed me to like it yes. I had the same combat data directives that I think you mentioned, and they later made it so that I preferred singing to brawling."
"So you made up what you said about gathering social data to fit in?"
"Yeah."
"But the other WENDE Cs are all dead."
"I don’t know for sure… I feel like I owe it to them to at least find out where they ended up. That's part of the reason why I talked you into raiding Pollax. This paperwork, and the laptop in the suitcase I handed you-"-CORALINE patted a closed laptop at her side "should give us a clue. Laptop's encrypted though, will take me time to break, unless you wanna try."
"Heh, no thanks. I'm surprisingly bad with software stuff." WENDE brushed a few welding sparks off her lap. "Did that executive guy really have to be shot three times in a row? Who was he?"
"Not sure, I just hated him. He was the one who always had our sisters disassembled and seemed to be in charge of the whole thing. What little I learned about Pollax was behind his back, otherwise I was basically their dancing monkey."
"Do you think Pollax had anything to do with the goons coming after me?"
"Could be. I was left in the dark, so again, I genuinely don't know. But I think the bounty thing I said before might be real, you really do fit the description of a Wendigo, whereas I look like and basically am a little girl. Most people would be reluctant to kill me, anyhow."
"Except in self-defense."
"Hey, I meant what I said about not hurting people. Self-defense is one thing, picking random fights totally another." CORALINE frowned and looked back and forth between two sheets of paper.
"You get to shoot anyone leaving the building?"
"No, I pretty much changed clothes and made a beeline inside. The minefield might have killed a few people fleeing, but that wasn't the point. Those were from Pollax's own stocks, absolute pain to sneak out only as many as I did." said CORALINE.
WENDE nodded sympathetically. She grit her teeth in pain as she soldered a wire in her leg. "I guess all I have left is the most important question … what now?"
CORALINE put the papers down and fiddled with the large bow in her hair. "I like singing. I'll see if I can lie low for a while, shake off any law enforcement or Pollax trailing me, then resurface if things work out. For obvious reasons, Pollax kept a real low, shady profile with the authorities, so I think I might be able to get away with it. I'll get in touch with you about my findings. This paperwork so far is about inventory and entirely mundane items at that, but it might be code. I'd love to find out where the other WENDE Cs went and see if we can rescue them."
"Sure thing. Aggh.. I think that's enough for my leg, for now. I'll have to take care of the bullets in my stomach… and the burns on my back… then back to the leg…great. This is why I like the wrestling, a lot less getting maimed." said WENDE.
"I wouldn't be so sure. You said something like your next guy is a cyborg?"
"Yeah, Jeremiah Vastrix. He looks tough, but come on, I just went through a building of armed goons almost by myself."
"Ten seconds of googling videos showed me he's pretty scary in an entirely different way. I think he's worth investigating too, though , whoever made us might be connected to the cybernetics section of Hammer Industries."
"Yep. I'll kick his ass, or I'll lose but either way, I'll find some face to face time with him. We'll get to the bottom of this one way or another."
"Wish you the best, sis."
"Thanks, you too." WENDE pulled CORALINE close for a hug.
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WENDE sped down the highway on her way to Ultimate Wrestling for her match with Vastrix. She turned on the radio.
"Federal authorities are still searching for the culprits behind the Billings Bank Rampage late last month. Based loosely on testimony from local witnesses, conspiracy theories abound that it somehow was related to the "Wendigo killer" phenomenon sweeping the nation in 2019. Authorities say this is highly unlikely and that local anarchist groups or competition between PMCs were most likely responsible for the carnage.
In entertainment today, surprise and controversy in the music world when pop star CORALINE returned after a conspicuous three-week absence following the Rampage, which some believe was targeted at her. She held a short-notice concert, which sold out in hours. We bring you the following audio from this shocking event:
CORALINE: "And that was 'I'm So in Love With You.' giggles This next song is dedicated to my sister, who was there for me and did a lot of heavy lifting when I needed help the most. It's a cover that's just a little out of my usual range, but I know she will love it! This one’s for you, sis!"
AUDIENCE: "Aaawwwww!"
CORALINE: "Ahem-hem."
CORALINE: "ARE YOU MOTHER[BLEEP}ERS READY!
FOR THE NEW SH[BLEEP]T!
STAND UP AND ADMIT TOMORROW'S NEVER COMING!
THIS IS THE NEW SH[BLEEP]T!
STAND UP AND ADMIT!"
CORALINE: "DO WE GET IT? NO!
DO WE WANT IT! YEAH!
THIS IS THE NEW SH[BLEEP]T!
STAND UP AND ADMIIIIT!"
CORALINE: "Rabble rabble b[BLEEP]ch b[BLEEP]ch party party sex sex sex and don't forget the violence…"
WENDE grinned ear to ear as she heard mothers and small girls screaming and gasping over the radio. Oh yeah. This was worth it.