14-1: Caitlyn

The bipedal ones went first. Whatever complex programming they had was apparently not designed for tilted surfaces. They fell over almost immediately, laser fire littering the ceiling.

The small round ones gripped to the surfaces, but apparently they only had enough power to grip or attack. They stayed there like metal barnacles. So did the spiders, which Caitlyn thought were harmless if you didn’t get close? She couldn’t quite be sure.

The aerial ones were fine, of course – except without their support they were being picked off by Sapphire and Charles, Charlie, whatever, whose shadowy blobs moved slowly but when half the corridor was filled with them that wasn’t a problem. Slowly, they were winning.

Except the floor was continuing to tilt away from them, and Kat wasn’t getting up.

‘Come on Kat,’ Caitlyn pleaded, ‘stay with me.’

‘I’m not even… unconscious…’ panted Kat.

‘Oh for fuck’s sake. Here.’

Then Daz was loading the fallen Kat onto their back with their boxer’s strength, and fluttering into the air. Caitlyn felt a pang of something. Then she felt a larger pang of something else as the building groaned around them. She grabbed for a handle on one of the locked doors.

The bipedal robots were actually toppling away down the corridor. The remaining aerial ones were flying haphazardly, perhaps not calibrated for their new horribly angled surroundings, and crashing into walls and glass. Some of the barnacles lost their grip, hit other robots, and exploded.

Charles was hanging from the wall by his blade. Hayley seemed to be clutching onto universe code, if the way her arm kept glitching into different forms was anything to go by. Sapphire… well, Sapphire just seemed to be coping. That was Sapphire for you.

Then… the tilting stopped.

The building righted itself, not quickly enough to cause whiplash but quicker than it had leant in the first place. The robots were still flailing around, those that hadn’t fallen down the corridor, but the humans were safe and no longer tumbling.

A couple of the barnacles cottoned onto the reverted orientation and began charging their weapons. They were pierced by glowing swords or hacked to pieces by a prosthetic before they could finish. The remaining spiders beeped angrily, until Daz grabbed one and threw it at the others. Then they scuttled off around the curve of the building, out of sight.

‘The absolute fuck was that?’ said Daz, panting slightly as they unloaded their cargo.

As if in answer, Hayley’s watch rang.

‘Hey… You what? That was you!? Where are you? No no, come down to the ground floor, I’ll get you… Jesus Christ man…’ She vanished into the lift without providing clarification.

There was, for a short while, only the sound of ventilation systems and robots malfunctioning somewhere to interrupt the heavy breathing of the remaining five. As was somehow inevitable but would have been unimaginable two weeks ago, Sapphire broke it.

‘Charles, Daz, with me. I need some help with the final bunch. Caitlyn, get Kat rested up. I need her to recharge my light swords.’

‘Okay!’ said Caitlyn.

It was only until after the other three had walked away around the bend of the floor, Daz pontificating loudly on what might have caused the building’s sloping (working hypothesis: the World Government giving them a hand up to help defeat Brytech), that Caitlyn realised what they’d done. For a short period of time, Caitlyn and Kat were all alone.

‘So,’ mumbled Kat, rolling onto her back. ‘Are you going to “get me rested up”?’

Caitlyn felt blood rushing to her face.

‘Er,’ she said. ‘Um. Do you, er, want to put your, er, head on my…?’

‘No. I want to keep lying horizontally for a bit. Unless you have a snack.’

‘I don’t have a snack, no. Sorry.’

‘Didn’t think you would. You didn’t strike me as the snacking type.’

Somewhere in the distance, there was the sound of a robot being forcibly shut down. It almost didn’t carry over the sound of Caitlyn’s heartbeat in her own ears.

‘This carpet’s quite comfy you know. Except I think I have a circuit board under my arse.’

‘Er. Um.’

‘Oh for God’s sake.’ Kat tried to pick herself up off the ground, failed, and slumped back. ‘Do you fancy me, or by asking this am I interrupting your journey of self-discovery?’

Caitlyn had to stop herself from screaming. Another robot wasn’t so lucky.

‘I-I-I-I-I’

‘Because you should know, I’m a mess. Meditation and prayer haven’t made me miraculously healthier. They just… make the problems more bearable. And occasionally I do drink. That’s a coin flip as to whether it helps sad brain forget its sadness for a while, or makes it sadder.’

‘I-I-I-I-I’

‘And I really do fucking love music.’ She sighed. ‘Despite the nerves, and the people laughing at me. I love playing music, and I love writing music, and you’re so much better at it than I will ever be and that sucks, and that won’t stop sucking if we start kissing each other occasionally.’

‘I-I-I-I-I’

She turned over and smiled directly at Caitlyn. ‘Except you know all that already, don’t you?’

Everybody told Caitlyn she was beautiful. It had been her mother’s pride and joy, the only compliment her father could bring himself to give her – never mind any of her actual accomplishments, at school or in music. Strangers in the street had thought she needed to know she was beautiful since before her periods had started. She’d received her first marriage proposal aged thirteen, her first declaration of eternal love aged twelve, and her first proposition from a man twenty years her senior before that. No article about her competition wins could stop itself from also mentioning how attractive she was, most commending her, some blaming her, as if it was her doing either way. The number of men who suddenly had a deep and abiding interest in classical music moments after she met them… She’d lost count long ago.

She had never been more sure of anything in her life: Kat’s face in that moment, sweaty and panting and with one eyebrow raised in sarcastic amusement, was more beautiful than she’d ever been.

‘…I think I’m bi,’ she said, and felt immensely stupid.

‘I’d prefer that you were straight but couldn’t resist my immense charms,’ said Kat, ‘but fair enough.’ She turned her head. ‘Lift’s coming, kiss me now or suck it up until afterwards.’

‘I think… I’d rather wait and make sure we both get through this alive, if… er, is that okay?.’

‘All that desperate pining and you wouldn’t smooch my corpse? I’m hurt. No, really I am. That circuit’s digging into my hip. Ow.’

She managed it this time, levering herself up onto her arms as the door opened, to reveal Hayley and…

‘Rob!’ yelped Caitlyn.

It was he. Big wet eyes, hair tied back in a ponytail, wearing an ill-fitting suit and a tie with… were they dolphins? His face was bright red and as sweaty as any of them, except not all of it was sweat. He managed a smile, but the slightest gust would have blown it away.

‘H-hey you twoof!’

Caitlyn swept him up in a hug. Not something she did with many boys, but this one was demisexual apparently – and she was really very glad to see him again.

‘Hey traitor,’ said Kat, getting to her feet. ‘Hales, are we cool with the kid?’

‘He just saved us from getting shot up by a bunch of robots,’ said Hayley. ‘I’d say we’re cool.’

‘PUPPY!’

Caitlyn ducked sideways as Daz whizzed through the air and into Rob, smashing him back against the lift. They bounced off its squishy surface and into a tangle of bodies. She couldn’t tell if Daz was hugging him or throttling him.

‘Did you just do that now?’ yelled Daz, right into poor Rob’s ear. ‘And are you with the World Government? Scream once for yes and twice for yes but I’m lying.’

‘Argh!’

‘I fucking knew it!’

‘Let him go you clown,’ said Hayley, hauling Daz up by the shoulders.

‘How did you manage to bend the building?’ said Sapphire.

‘Ah, er, it wasn’t actually that hard. Er, literally I guess. I just found a supporting pillar on the fifth floor and… you know.’ Rob mimed his softness power.

‘He says that,’ said Hayley. ‘I found him trapped under a bunch of ceiling debris, bleeding from his nose and eyes. I don’t care how squishy it was, he was lucky he wasn’t crushed to death.’

‘So cool,’ breathed Charles.

‘Ah, it wasn’t that bad. It was like being in a big pile of soft toys… Actually no it was quite bad, I thought I was going to be crushed to death and I basically kept going out of shame and PLEASE let me back in the group!’

He fell to his knees.

‘I made that arrangement before I met you all, if I’d known it would, I wouldn’t have, I didn’t want anybody to die, I helped right, I gave Hayley that card, and she said it was good, and I’M SORRYYYYYY- ow!’ He clutched his cheek where it had been punched.

‘That’s enough.’ Sapphire yanked Rob to his feet. ‘We have fifty minutes until the Wordstone goes off again and gives Ash Brytic a power. You’re in here now with the rest of us, and Miriam isn’t, and I have somehow found myself in some sort of leadership position, so I say you’re pardoned for as long as you can stop being a wet blanket. Now, there are two doors down there.’ She pointed to the far end of the corridor. ‘Charles, which door does Alex say Ash will have gone into?’

No response from the teenager.

‘Fine, Charlie then.’

Still nothing.

‘Hey.’

Sapphire poked him in the shoulder. Charles looked at her, and at all of them; and his eyes were as big and wet as Rob’s had been.

‘I think Alex and my aunt are in trouble.’

Kat‘s third secret has been unlocked!

Kat’s bio is complete!

All character bios are complete!

Content Warnings: blood, male attention to underage girls (mentioned)