Page 82 of Even Robots Die (Even Ever After #3)
Florentine
W e’ve been fighting for hours, and I don’t mean that like it’s a feeling. We’ve literally been fighting for hours and it feels like it’s never-ending.
We initially thought we had bigger numbers than the birds and that the battle would be easily won with the addition of my mechanical wings, but it’s not that easy.
The people who have been given wings aren’t used to them and, yes, they’ve been doing a damn good job at cutting the nets before they get to the ground—trapping bat shifters or just covering troops on the ground—but they can’t fight the same as the birds who have been flying their whole life.
They’ve been falling and falling.
Each time one is grounded, they’re replaced by someone else.
But seeing their comrades being wounded—mortally or not—and falling to the ground is straining the morale of the troops.
It’s also not helping the war effort because it forces us to keep the strongest bat shifters from fighting in order to retrieve them before they crash to the ground.
We’ve also had to have flying warriors retrieve those who tried to fly for the sun .
No Icarus syndrome here, just people who tensed under the wounds they sustained and couldn’t control their wings anymore.
Mine are the only ones that are controlled by myself through an AI, so they’re easier to deal with.
From the corner of my eye, I see a dark cloud coming our way from the south.
Awesome. We’re going to get rained on. The battle isn’t going to get easier.
It’s like everything is against us.
I send darts, shoot. Recharge. And start again.
I’m soon going to be short on darts. I already have to be careful with the gun’s ammunition. I started with a couple hundred bullets and I’ve had to get another three chargers of a hundred already.
I can see it, though. Our stocks are depleting fast, and I don’t know how long we’re going to be able to keep this up.
I’m covered in sweat and blood—most of it being mine, even if the wounds are shallow. Brice hasn’t left my side, and we’ve been fighting back-to-back, but he still keeps fussing each time I get hurt.
“Arggh!” I scream as a bullet hits my shoulder.
I touch my shoulder, but no blood appears on my fingers. The bullet hit the reinforced straps of my wings.
I don’t know where the sniper is, but I don’t have time to find out because another bullet hits me in the stomach from the side.
I hear a hiss at my back, and with barely a glance behind me, I see that Brice has been hit too.
How on earth did they manage to hit us both so fast? There is no one at the right distance for that kind of bullet from what I can see on my heat scanner.
I fist my shirt to my stomach to try to stop the bleeding.
I look around us and stop focusing on only Brice and I and realize we’re not the only ones being targeted.
I can see people landing, blood dripping from their slouched forms all around us.
And the only reason I’m not doing the same is because I’m stubborn as hell, and also because, weirdly, with all the adrenaline coursing my body, the wound in my stomach is barely hurting more than when I was curled on myself because of my period.
Brice is having none of this, though.
Careful of my wings, he plasters my back to his front and forces us to the ground.
I turn off the wings—I’m not a complete idiot, I’m not going to fight him so I can keep helping in the sky—and Brice steers us to the ground.
“You’re done,” Brice says once we’ve reached a safe area. “You’re not fighting anymore.”
He’s about to leave me where I stand when Charles arrives with Christina and Elhyor.
I tense at the possibility that Brice could attack him.
They had a conversation over holos, the kind of call where both people allow the holo to display a holographic version of themselves in real time in front of the other.
It didn’t trigger any rage inside of Brice, but this is the first time they’re in each other’s vicinity, and … it’s tense, but there is no outburst.
“We need to fall back,” Christina says, oblivious to the turmoil inside of me.
“They just positioned huge guns at the windows. It’s what hit you and more than half of our troops.
The ones on the ground aren’t as impacted, but with so many getting injured, it’s becoming difficult to protect the troops on the ground from the flying nets.
If I didn’t know they need to be recharged, I would think they have unlimited power with those. ”
Sadly, they look like they have way more of those net launchers than we initially thought. It would have been better if we could have trained the warriors who were given mechanical wings, too.
I feel like maybe finally starting an all-out war wasn’t my best idea. There are so many people bleeding around us. I don’t even want to know how many people we lost.
This is all my fault.
“There is something that could be done.”
It takes me a second to realize that the voice that just spoke out loud came from my holo. I’m not the only one who is surprised, either. Only Brice is looking at me, realizing before everyone else who this voice belongs to.
“What do you mean, Milton?” I ask out loud.
I don’t see the point in murmuring or mouthing the words—my own AI decided to speak to everyone and not just to me, there is a high chance it will do so again, anyway.
“I can take over all the mechanical wings and lead them to attack the guns. There is a ninety-three percent chance I could cut all of the cannons in under ten minutes,” Milton says.
I hold my breath because everyone around me is looking at me with horror in their eyes.
It’s not lost on me that my AI basically just told everyone that if it decided to do so, it could annihilate every one of us. Bird or not.
I take a deep breath.
“Recall all your flying people.”
It’s Elhyor who speaks for the first time.
The dragon-shifter has a commanding stature and looks like he’s used to being obeyed, and yet Christina looks him up and down like she hates the idea he could give her orders.
I’m sure she remembers how her former leader got burned to a crisp by Elhyor, though, so she doesn’t argue with him.
It might also be because Milton’s idea is the safest we have at the moment.
It takes almost fifteen minutes to gather all the mechanical wings, and during that time, we sustain even more losses. I don’t want to watch any of it, but I force myself to do so. This is all because I set things in motion. This is all because I made it happen this way.
At least I know the girls and Dad are safe.
That doesn’t change the heartbreak I’m feeling at all the people I see getting carried away because they aren’t in any shape to keep fighting. That doesn’t change the tears that threaten to fall at seeing the blood all around us.
But I can do this. I programmed Milton, so it means it’s my brain providing the solution, even if it’s indirectly.
Even in the midst of a war, Brice takes my hand and puts it over his heart. By now it’s like second nature for me, and the breathing I didn’t know was going wild calms down with each of his respirations.
“I am ready to be launched,” Milton says when all the wings have been gathered around me.
“Let me help you,” Brice tells me as he pushes the straps of my wings off my shoulders. I’m still holding on for dear life with the bullet I took in the stomach—even if someone gave me a spray and it now feels like someone put a stopper on the bullet hole—so his help is necessary.
Brice holds the wings by their straps when Milton powers them on again.
In a second, all of the wings that were on the ground take off in the direction of the castle.
Except, I realize there is something wrong with Milton’s plan. None of the guns’ cannons are poking out from the windows, and the wings are definitely not made to pass the narrow windows while flying. This isn’t going to work.
There is no way Milton can cut the cannons from the outside. It means it’ll have to dive through the windows.
“I loaded my central system directly into the wings instead of your earring. There’s a ninety-six percent chance that triggering an explosion inside the battery will also trigger the other wings, which in turn, will set the cannons at the windows on fire and will rend them inoperative,” Milton says in the device against my temple and I realize its voice sounds farther away than it usually does, a bit like a holo call.
“No!” I scream silently.
“What is wrong?” Brice asks, but I can't answer him because at the same time, Milton’s voice comes through my earpiece.
“Miss F. Being your friend has been the best dream come true. I’ve lived enough now to know that even robots die.”
There is a click on the communication line, and then static noise just before the wings all fall through the windows and explode in a boom that resonates throughout the whole place.
The building in front of us shudders and then silence follows for a few seconds.
It doesn’t stop the battle, though. No, it takes another twenty or so for that to happen.
The explosion of all of Versailles’ palace windows is a turning point, nonetheless. It gives us an edge, and the depleted morale is on their side, not ours this time.
But the last thing that tips the tides in our favor is when Ariel, the man—well, bird—I just freed arrives in all his glory. His dark brown wings, larger than most, open as he flies to fight off other birds. It looks like some of the other prisoners we freed are with him, too.
It confuses the hell out of the remaining birds, and that’s when everything dies down. Some birds turn against the people they were fighting alongside just a minute ago, and the birds that are still fighting for the angels are easily stopped and contained.
I don’t stay for the last part, though.
Brice whisks me away into the sky, and in under five minutes, we arrive at Notre Dame.