The roof of the War Rig was screaming.
It wasn't the wind. It was the sound of diamond-tipped steel chewing through armor plating.
ZZZZZT. ZZZZZT.
Sparks showered down into the cab like welding rain. They hissed as they hit the leather seats, burning small black holes in the upholstery.
"They're through the outer hull!" Hughes shrieked. He was curled under the dashboard, clutching a bundle of wires. "They're eating the insulation!"
Jason looked up.
The ceiling of the truck was vibrating. A dozen distinct points of metal were glowing cherry-red.
POP.
A drill bit punched through the steel directly above the passenger seat. It spun violently, dripping hot oil onto the floor mat.
Hemingway didn't flinch.
He stood up, bracing his boots against the dashboard. He swung his sledgehammer with a grunt of primal exertion.
CLANG.
The hammer smashed the drill bit sideways. The metal snapped. The drone outside shrieked—a mechanical squeal of dying gears—and went silent.
"One down!" Hemingway yelled, wiping soot from his beard. "Five hundred to go!"
"My turret is jammed!" O'Malley roared from the hatch above. "They're clogging the barrel! I can't traverse!"
Jason kicked the door open and leaned out.
The sky was black with them.
The Termites weren't flying randomly. They were a swarm. A carpet of mechanical beetles crawling over the War Rig, looking for a way in.
They covered the windshield. They clogged the air intakes. They were drilling into the wheel wells.
Jason raised his rifle and fired.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Three drones exploded. Black fluid splattered the glass.
It didn't matter. For every one he killed, three more landed.
He was shooting at a landslide.
"Save your ammo!" Jason yelled, ducking back inside as a Termite tried to bore into his shoulder. "Bullets are useless!"
"Then what do we use?" Hemingway grabbed a sawed-off shotgun. "Kind words?"
Jason looked at the dashboard.
The radar screen was a mess of static. But beneath the noise, there was a pulse.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
It was rhythmic. A heartbeat.
Jason watched the drones on the hood.
They drilled in sync with the pulse.
Thump—drill. Thump—drill.
They paused for a microsecond between beats to cool their motors.
"They aren't individual units," Jason realized. "They're networked. They're all listening to the same drummer."
He looked out the shattered back window.
The Broadcast Tower in the distance was pulsing red against the night sky.
"The Tower," Jason said. "It's sending a control frequency. It's the conductor."
He turned to Hughes.
"Howard! The comms dish on the roof. Is it still functional?"
Hughes looked up from the floor, face smeared with grease. "The servo is broken, but the transmitter is intact! Why?"
"We need to jam them," Jason said. "We need to scream louder than the Tower."
"With what power?" Hughes pointed at the battery gauge. It was flashing red at 8%. "If I divert power to the transmitter, the wheels stop turning! We become a stationary target!"
"We're already a target!" Jason grabbed Hughes by the collar of his flight suit. "And in thirty seconds, we're going to be a coffin! Divert the power!"
Hughes swallowed hard. He saw the look in Jason's eyes. It wasn't a request.
"Fine!" Hughes scrambled to the fuse box. "Rerouting auxiliary! Don't blame me if the engine melts!"
The lights in the cab flickered and died. The hum of the electric motor faded.
The War Rig began to slow down, coasting over the rocky ground.
The sound of drilling got louder. Without the engine noise, it was terrifying. Like being inside a tin can while someone crushed it.
"We have signal!" Hughes yelled. "What frequency do I broadcast?"
"Not a frequency," Jason said. "A feedback loop."
He turned to the back seat.
Amelia Earhart was curled in a ball. She had ripped the cooling tube out of her neck. She was rocking back and forth, hands over her ears.
"Get them out," she whispered. "Get them out of my head."
Jason climbed into the back. He grabbed her wrists.
Her skin was ice cold. Her eyes were unfocused, darting around looking for threats that weren't there.
"Amelia," Jason said sharply.
She didn't hear him. She was lost in the phantom data.
"Amelia!" Jason shook her.
She gasped, focusing on him. Her pupils were dilated, clicking like camera shutters.
"The noise," she whimpered. "The Tower. It's so loud, Jason. It commands. Submit. Sleep. Obey."
"I know," Jason said. He reached for the interface cable hanging from the roof console. It was a thick black wire with a multi-pin jack. "I need you to send it back."
Amelia saw the cable. She recoiled, scrambling backward until she hit the door.
"No," she begged. "No, please. Don't plug me in. I just got free. It's dark in there."
"I'm not putting you back in the box," Jason said, his voice low and urgent. "I'm giving you a megaphone."
"I can't!" she sobbed. "If I connect, he'll see me! Ezra will see me!"
CRUNCH.
A drill bit punched through the roof right above Amelia's head. It snagged her flight jacket, twisting the fabric.
She screamed.
Jason cut the fabric with his knife. He pulled her free.
"He already sees you!" Jason roared. "He is killing us, Amelia! Right now! You are the only one who speaks his language!"
He held up the cable.
"Do you want to hide?" Jason asked. "Or do you want to tell him to shut the fuck up?"
Amelia stared at the cable. Her breathing was ragged. Tears of black oil leaked from her tear ducts.
She looked at the ceiling. At the sparks falling on her friends.
She stopped shaking.
Her face hardened. The terrified pilot vanished. The machine took over.
"Give it to me," she said cold.
Jason handed her the jack.
She didn't hesitate. She jammed it into the port at the base of her skull.
CLICK.
Her back arched violently. Her jaw clamped shut.
The veins in her neck turned black as the data flooded her nervous system.
"Howard!" Jason yelled. "Open the channel! Wide band! Maximum gain!"
"Channel open!" Hughes flipped a switch. "Mic is hot!"
Amelia didn't speak.
She opened her mouth.
It wasn't a human sound.
It was a digital screech. A blast of raw, corrupted data. It sounded like a dial-up modem amplified through a jet engine.
SCREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEECH.
The speakers in the cab blew out instantly. Smoke poured from the dashboard.
Jason clapped his hands over his ears. He felt his teeth vibrating. Blood trickled from his nose.
Outside, the world went crazy.
The Termites on the windshield froze. Their red eyes strobed wildly.
Then, they popped.
Not an explosion of fire, but an overload of circuitry. Their internal capacitors burst.
Pop. Pop. Pop. Pop.
It sounded like bubble wrap being stomped on by a giant.
The drilling stopped.
The mechanical whine died.
Hundreds of heavy metal drones lost their grip on the truck. They slid off the hood. They rolled off the roof.
They rained down onto the desert floor, hitting the rocks with the sound of hail on a tin roof.
Clatter. Thud. Crunch.
Amelia kept screaming. Her eyes were glowing bright blue, illuminating the dark cab like twin flashlights.
"That's enough!" Jason grabbed her shoulder. "Amelia! Cut it!"
She didn't stop. She was locked in the loop. She was burning out.
Jason grabbed the cable.
He yanked it out of her neck.
SNAP.
Amelia collapsed forward, limp as a ragdoll.
Silence slammed back into the cab.
It was absolute. No engine. No drilling. No wind.
Just the heavy breathing of four terrified men.
"Is she dead?" O'Malley whispered, climbing down from the turret. His face was covered in hydraulic fluid.
Jason checked her pulse. It was faint, fluttering like a trapped bird.
"She's overheating," Jason said. "Water. Now."
Hemingway uncorked his canteen. He poured it over Amelia's head. The water hissed as it hit her skin, turning to steam.
She groaned. Her eyes fluttered open. The blue glow faded to a dull gray.
"Did I..." she rasped, her voice wrecked. "Did I get him?"
Jason looked out the window.
The ground around the War Rig was a graveyard of scrap metal. Thousands of drones lay dead in the dirt, smoke curling from their chassis.
"Yeah," Jason said. "You got him."
"Good," she whispered. And passed out.
"We have a problem," Hughes said from the floor.
He tapped the battery gauge.
It was dead black. Zero percent.
"The surge fried the cells," Hughes said, his voice trembling. "We pushed too much current through the dish. The capacitors are fused."
"Can we fix it?" Jason asked.
"With a machine shop? Maybe," Hughes wiped grease from his forehead. "Here? With a screwdriver and a prayer? No. The War Rig is a brick, Jason. We aren't going anywhere."
Jason looked out at the Badlands.
They were miles from civilization. No food. No water. And a dead truck.
But the worst part wasn't the isolation.
It was the Tower.
In the distance, the skeletal broadcast tower had changed color.
The soft, pulsing red was gone.
Now, it was a solid, blinding white.
And the Thump-Thump rhythm was gone.
It was replaced by a low, constant hum. A vibration that Jason could feel in his molars.
"He knows," Hemingway said, loading a shell into his shotgun. "We just poked the eye of God."
Jason grabbed his rifle. He kicked the door open and stepped out onto the dead drones.
The ground crunched under his boots.
He looked at the Tower. The white light was mesmerizing. It felt... peaceful.
Too peaceful.
"Gather the weapons," Jason ordered, forcing himself to look away from the light. "We can't stay in the truck. It's a metal oven."
"Where do we go?" O'Malley asked. "There's nothing out here but rocks and that damn light."
Jason stared at the Tower.
He felt a pull. A gentle tug in the back of his mind. Come closer. Lay down your burden. Rest.
He shook his head violently.
"We don't run away," Jason said, his voice grim. "We walk toward the light."
"That sounds like dying, Boss," O'Malley muttered.
"No," Jason said. "That sounds like a boarding party."
He pointed his rifle at the white eye of the Tower.
"That thing just tried to eat my brain," Jason said. "I think it's time we went and unplugged it."