Page 78 of Even Robots Die
I don’t answer anything. Instead, I look at him pathetically, as if I also believe that we’re done and that we can’t be saved.
I crawl the final thirty meters between me and him and grab his left shoe with both hands.
“Please,” I beg, channeling my inner Amélie—she’s always been good at looking at people like a sad puppy, getting away with way more than she should. Maybe this way he’ll think I’m helpless. I’m not, but he doesn’t need to know that.
The bird laughs and the sound of it gives off evil queen vibes from old animation movies.
Laugh all you want, you prick.
“Too late,” he says with a smile that would give me chills if I didn’t know what I’m about to do.
“Milton,” I say without a sound, turning my face down again so the shapeshifter doesn’t read my lips, “pump the voltage to the max, and don’t stop until I say so. Now.”
My fingers slip under the hem of the bird’s pants and touch his ankle without his notice.
When he realizes I’ve grabbed his ankle, though, it’s too late for him and my gloves have been activated for a couple of seconds already, and shock waves of electricity keep entering his body.
It takes another few seconds before the electricity coursing through his body starts doing some damage to his heart and the bird drops his second gun to grab at his chest as if he can soothe the pain in his heart by doing so.
“You’re right, it’s too late,” I tell him before I see his face crumple with resignation. He knows he’s seconds away from dying here.
“You bitch,” he says with a groan as his breath stutters and he collapses to the ground next to me.
Eyes open, unseeing, chest still. The sight is unnerving.
“You can stop now,” I tell Milton and immediately the tingling at my fingers ceases.
I should dwell on the fact I’ve taken a life for the first time in my life, but instead I retch and empty whatever was still in my stomach.
I guess I did eat that chocolate cake.
I wipe my mouth with my sleeves and try to sit up. The bullets in my legs make me scream from pain, but I grit my teeth.
If I don’t do something, it’s going to get worse.
“How long?”
Milton doesn’t question what I mean and answers immediately.
“Fourteen seconds.”
Fuck. How did that happen so quickly?
Well, at least it means we still have a chance to not end up in one of the birds’ dungeons.
“Daniel, can you help me walk?” I ask as I stand slowly and painfully.
Daniel doesn’t answer me, but he’s already next to me, his arm around my waist and carrying most of my weight.
We barely reach the jet when I hear the siren coming. Daniel probably heard them before me.
He helps me in and then I lock the door, get us airborne, and add the bulletproof layer to the windows.
“You could have done that from Blois,” Daniel exclaims without me understanding what he means.
“We didn’t need a bulletproof jet,” I tell him as I raise my head to look at him.
That’s when I realize why he’s saying that. The bulletproof screen makes the window dark gray. You can’t really see what’s happening outside, and that means we could be flying or just hovering over the ground and it would look the same.
