Page 140 of Even Robots Die
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 Ariël, 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.
82
Florentine
The first thing Brice does when we arrive is to demand the doctor to tend to me. There were nurses on the battlefield, but the idea was just to dress the wounds and then send the people to the nearest hospitals—human hospitals, that is—so it means no one was really healed while in Versailles.
Which also means Elhyor knew some of his people would return to Notre Dame needing patching up.
