Page 10 of The Naga Inventor's Clever Mate

“There,” Corin announced, flicking the tip of his tail toward a doorway in the distance. “The next hydro plant.” That was technically more than one word, but I didn’t think it counted. I crossed my fingers behind my back for luck and hoped fervently that we’d find the warriors behind that door.

When it slid open without hesitation to Corin’s hand wave over the doorplate, my stomach dropped in dismay. That door wouldn’t open unless the warrior had escaped, but more likely, it opened because this was the room Farah and Zeidon had been trapped in—the one the Naga robot had unlocked.

Corin pulled his blades free from the small of his back as he slithered inside. Rushing water greeted us, much louder with the door open than it had been in the tunnel. Light spilled out too; this hydro plant was brightly lit, unlike the last one. I was more cautious as I approached, peeking into the room with a hip pressed against the wall. If I’d had my gun, I would have led with it. As it was, I clutched a knife.

It took only a few seconds to conclude that the cavernous room was empty. Then, I took in the differences between this hydro plant and the last one. Bright lights weren’t the only clue that this location was in much better shape. The control system was lit up, all the screens were clean and glowing, and the turbines were silent as they spun, propelled by the force of the water running through the straight, narrow channel. There was no rust, no clogging water plants, and no grinding noises.

“Look,” Corin said. He'd approached the rushing water near where it exited the large room, and he pointed to the other side. Scorch marks marred the stone floor: one darkened, soot-covered spot, and several smaller spots farther away.

“Do you think that's where Farah threw Vrash's core onto the ground?” I asked. That's what the brave woman had done—threatened the robot so it would release a trapped Zeidon from beneath the metal gate that had blocked the rushing water.

Corin nodded, his expression grim. “Damn it, we wasted our time. And that core is gone. That’s bad news.” Ah, there were his words, but he sounded so worried that I refrained from gloating. I understood why he was worried. If that core was returned to the robot, we hadn’t seen the last of it. Its time alone beneath the mountain for centuries hadn’t done it any good; it was completely deranged.

“Do you think it’s already fully repaired?” I asked. I wasn’t entirely clear on the timeline. I knew Zeidon and Farah had been back with us for a few days before we’d set out on this mission, and I also knew that Zeidon had decapitated the robot body of the ‘Revenant,’ as he called it. When that had taken place and how long it took to repair such damage, no clue.

Corin shrugged one shoulder, making it obvious that he didn’t know either. “How far to the next location?” I asked him instead. That was the only thing we could focus on. We needed to find the warriors and free them before they starved. I turned in the doorway and glanced back the way we’d come. Would we have to backtrack much? I should have taken a peek at Corin’s map.

“About the same as we’ve already traveled,” Corin said. “I hope.” He didn’t leave the edge of the water, still staring at the scorch marks as if they held all the answers. My eyes were drawn from him to Triff, for the first time noticing what the little bot was up to. If it were a dog, I’d say it was sniffing around the corners of the room, but this was a cleaning bot… It was humming and spinning the cleaning disk, polishing the floor as it went, but its lights were also blinking in frantic, busy patterns.

It suddenly shot away from the corner with a squeak and raced for the water. I thought it was going to end up in the churning stream, but at the last moment, it swerved and clattered on top of a thin walk bridge across the top of a turbine. I clutched my fingers to my chest as I watched it cross, too fast to be safe. “Triff!” I called out, as if that would bring the bot back from whatever madness had hold of it.

While I had just frozen in place and stared, Corin leaped into action at the sight of the bot disappearing across the channel. He raced onto the turbine after it, hands outstretched to grab the robot, but he was too late. It managed to slip into a small hole in the opposing wall just as Corin dove for it with a shout. “Triff, damn it! Come back here…” Then his words turned into a storm of curses, and he came racing back over the water toward me.

It looked to me like he was about to pick me up and carry me, but at the last moment, he refrained. “Keep up!” he ordered as he ducked into the tunnel and pulled out his leather map. I broke into a run and chased after his rapidly departing form, confused about what was happening. There was no way that Corin would abandon Triff to its own devices, so he had to know of a way to locate the little robot.

“What happened?” I asked. I had to shout my question a second time to make Corin hear me. He was too fast for me to keep up, but I could see him in the distance. We were also traveling through a tunnel that had seen no visitors in a long time; he was leaving obvious tracks for me to follow.

“Triff went into a repair bot tunnel. I’m certain he’s chasing after one of those bots. It might have been spying on us.” Corin’s words trailed off, softer and softer as he replied, and the distance between us grew. I felt a pang of worry when he swung around a corner and I could no longer see him. What if this was the plan? Separate us so we were easy targets? My empty gun meant I was defenseless if anything attacked me. I wasn’t a warrior like Kalani, or brave and inventive like Vera and Farah.

When I reached the corner I’d last seen Corin, I was completely out of breath from running. A stitch in my side ached fiercely, and panic clogged my throat. I nearly missed it in my fear, but at the last moment, I realized Corin’s trail had turned into a room instead of continuing ahead. I skidded to a stop, nearly tripped over my feet, but clawed myself upright by grabbing the doorjamb.

Then I saw what was inside, and it felt like my heart wanted to explode inside my chest; horror, fear, and disgust all combined in a powerful mass of emotions. Disgust won out, along with a wave of nausea that threatened to make me throw up. This wasn’t what I’d expected to discover at the end of that mad chase.

Chapter 8

Corin

I would never have dashed ahead as far as I had if I hadn’t known that Min-Ji could keep up. Worry for Triff had made me race as fast as I dared through the tunnels, in what I hoped was the right direction. I hadn’t scribbled the repair bot tunnels down on my map, but Ihadseen them when I made it.

Triff was exactly where I expected him to be when I ducked into the control room. Like the one I’d arrived in, this was a room directly connected to the air regulation systems, with a similar control unit at the center and grates leading in several directions, along with pipes controlling water, air, and power. I didn’t expect the rest of the… things that filled the room.

The stench hit me first. It had leaked into the tunnel, and I recognized it for what it was in a heartbeat. Any hunter worth his salt would—that was decay. Something was rotting, and it didn’t take a genius to figure out what. The long, sprawled-out body right beside the control unit was the first thing anyone saw when they entered. It was swarmed by the spindly, firesprite-like bodies of the repair bots, but whatever they were trying to do to fix this, it wasn’t working.

The little bots were crawling everywhere; I’d never seen this many of them in one place, let alone this many activated ones. No wonder Zeidon and I hadn’t been able to find any of these bots inside Ahoshaga, the damn Revenant had collected them all. Even while horror at what I was seeing still filled me, I also felt a pang of hope. If I could get control of all these repair bots, I could do so much.

On the control panel, wires lay in several long coils, and a head sat in the middle, hooked up to all those cables. Red eyes glowed from a metal face, partially covered by decomposing scales. I didn’t understand everything I was seeing, but I could take a guess. The Revenant’s body was made of metal parts and flesh parts, and those fleshy parts were failing after Zeidon had decapitated him. Good.

The cables that connected the control unit of the Revenant—the head—to the screens and computers controlling the systems below Ahoshaga weren’t so good. What kind of evil things had he been able to do that way? And it wasn’t just the controls of the hydro plants and the doors in this place; he had control of the airflow, the power, and the water up in Ahoshaga too. That was the real horror.

Triff was at the back of the small room. I could see the shining silver of his domed top as he burst from a small repair-bot tunnel. Several of the repair bots skittered out of the hole ahead of him, making chittering noises and clacking their spindly legs together. The entire horde of bots that covered the body shifted and clacked, raising up on their back legs as they directed all their attention at Triff. If they attacked, the cleaning bot wouldn’t stand a chance!

“Hey!” I shouted, tapping my obsidian knife against the metal-reinforced chain sewn into the leather protection on my arm. It made a nice, satisfying clang, and as one, the horde of repair bots shifted to face me. My scales rattled along my spine in unease at how unnatural that was.

I knew they were bots, not living things; I knew how they were put together and how to take them apart, but it still felt like a living entity was threatening me with a hostile, menacing display. It was a bit like staring down an enraged horde of Vakarsa beasts alone. Dumb, but together, absolutely capable of killing a hunter.

My senses were on high alert, battle-ready. I knew where Triff was, and I knew exactly where Min-Ji was, too, in the doorway just behind me. Nobody was going to harm either of them; I’d make sure of it. I might have wanted to be a Shaman once upon a time, but I’d been trained as a hunter, and I was one of the best.

The bots rattled and shivered as they stared at me, still moving as one single being, but I knew who was responsible for that—what. The Revenant’s head couldn’t move, and its jaw seemed unhinged, but the core that Farah had left behind glowed beneath its metal dome. It was controlling them somehow; the Revenant was the true threat.

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