From his seat in the compact car, hands gripping the wheel, Adam stared at the Cyclops.

  There it was, a marvel of technology, hovering above the avenue, over the cars passing below, dressed just like a human, in line with protocol.

  But this particular outfit had a story to tell.

  The Cyclops’s purple trench coat was so worn that one sleeve was gone, and half of the other was shredded. Through the tears, Adam saw arms made of solid silicone muscles, filled with circuitry and partly covered with metal plating.

  Under the coat, the automaton wore a dark jumpsuit, ripped at the knee, exposing his robotic legs and bare feet, which lacked the standard-issue boots. Those feet explained why this android could fly, unlike others who could only walk on the ceiling.

  The Cyclops’s feet emitted a faint silver glow, like the thrusters on jetpacks. An anti-gravity system. A feature like that had to be illegal.

  And another striking thing about this Cyclops: the shape of his visor. This red eye wasn’t a small circle like the ones on current models; it was a huge vertical oval that covered most of its face.

  “It’s an A60 model,” Adam noted. “An A60-R8. The shape of that eye…”

  The Cyclops landed thirty to fifty feet ahead of them, his bare feet crunching against the pavement.

  Juzo got out of the car, closing the door behind him.

  “Stay inside and stay ready,” he ordered.

  “Wait! Where are you going? Ready for what?!” Adam yelled, throwing open the passenger door. “I’m not leaving you here! Get back in!”

  But when he tried to restart the car, the control lights flickered, and the engine clicked off. He tried turning it back on, but it was dead. Was the android jamming it?

  Adam got out; if he had to escape, he’d do it on foot, but he wasn’t about to sit in the car, waiting for the Cyclops to come for him. His legs wobbled, and he leaned against the door, using it as a shield.

  With a leap, Juzo slid over the hood and joined him.

  “Do you know if it has a name? A serial number?” Adam asked. But seeing his brother’s face, he knew the answer was no. So he raised his voice, addressing the Cyclops over the noise of traffic, “Android, what’s your license number? Respond and verify your orders!”

  The android advanced silently.

  “He won’t answer,” Juzo said.

  “Every Cyclops has an obedience matrix,” Adam argued. “If we get his serial number, maybe we can alter his protocols and save ourselves a fight.”

  The A60 extended an arm toward them, and from his palm emerged a long cannon. His fingers drew electric charges from the air, like tiny lightning rods, which concentrated at the weapon’s muzzle. The static electricity made shreds of his coat and trench flap in the air.

  “Surrender, and it will all end quickly,” he said in a synthesized voice.

  Adam tried to back away, but Juzo grabbed his arm. What the hell? Was his brother going to hand him over to the android? Or use him as a human shield?

  A sphere of blue energy appeared at the muzzle of the Cyclops’s cannon.

  Adam held his breath.

  The A60 fired.

  Adam closed his eyes, and before he could brace himself for the impact, he felt a tug where Juzo was gripping him, followed by an arm wrapping tightly around his waist. His face was pressed against his brother’s chest, catching the scent of damp fabric from Juzo’s combat jacket mixed with sweat. He felt the ground vanish beneath his feet and heard a blast, followed by the light patter of falling debris. He realized instantly—it was chunks of asphalt. The energy bomb had exploded in the street!

  He opened his eyes and found himself in near darkness, held tightly against Juzo. He tried to wriggle free but couldn’t, so he turned his head—and realized they were flying. The vertigo knocked the breath out of him.

  They were hundreds of feet above the elevated avenue, far above the passing cars, his blue compact double-parked below, and a crater now obscured by a cloud of dust—the aftermath of the enemy’s attack.

  It was only then that Adam understood what had happened: Juzo had wrapped him in his arms, and after deploying the booster wings from underneath his fabric backpack, had launched himself into the sky like a human projectile, carrying him along.

  “Hold on tight!” the soldier warned.

  Adam didn’t need to be told; he locked his hands around his brother’s waist, squeezed with all his might, and screamed in fear until he ran out of air.

  “Shut up!” Juzo ordered.

  Adam closed his mouth and heard a crackling sound approaching. His brother made a sharp turn, and a ball of energy shot past them, close enough to ruffle their hair. The Cyclops was coming after them, with an electrical storm gathering at the end of his cannon, ready to fire again.

  Juzo extended his arm, activated the implant in his wrist, and formed his own Fotia bomb. He launched it, and the energy sphere hung in the air for a split second before colliding with another one from the A60, disintegrating on impact.

  New attacks came swiftly, and the soldier tried to counter each one, but the Cyclops fired faster than he could generate a Fotia. Forced to go on the defensive, he shifted his focus to evasive maneuvers. One of those power grenades grazed his head; another nearly struck his back, which would have obliterated his cloth pack along with the booster wings.

  He twisted around and, like a daredevil plane on a suicidal stunt, dove toward the avenue.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Gravity, in full force, pulled the twins down, taking them from the shadows of the night, soaring above the city’s rooftops, to plummeting straight into the lights of the city, hurtling toward the street below.

  Adam felt his insides turn as an invisible hand yanked his head toward the ground; he pressed himself tightly against his brother and hoped his grip wouldn’t give under the relentless slap of the wind.

  The crackling sound of another attack drew near.

  Like lightning, a blue sphere flew over Juzo’s head and disappeared into the night. Then came another, again aimed at Juzo’s head. This time, as he dodged, the light orb streaked toward the highway and struck the trailer of a truck.

  The explosion rocked the vehicle, tipping it over and smashing it into two others, sparking a chain-reaction crash that echoed along the avenue with countless booms, honking, and screeching tires.

  The truck’s trailer erupted into a fireball, rising up toward them like the jaws of a beast hungry for its prey.

  Adam let out another scream, burying his face in his brother’s shoulder. The stench of burning fuel filled his nose, his eyes stung, and the searing heat was so intense he almost thought he’d gone up in flames. He’d never felt so hot, so terrified.

  Juzo was descending—not by choice; he was losing altitude. It was becoming harder for the booster to keep working at full capacity with Adam’s weight adding strain to the turbines.

  They were an easy target, and the A60 fired again.

  With a quick maneuver, Juzo dodged the light grenade just enough to avoid a direct hit. Still, the blast clipped his pack, turning it into a pile of charred scraps. Whatever hadn’t vaporized instantly burst into the air. Fragments of folders, scorched papers, and bits of now-destroyed items rained down over the highway like confetti from a grim celebration.

  Juzo shrugged off the remains of his pack just as another blast hit him, this time tearing off one of the booster wings with a deafening crack and a cascade of silver sparks. The remaining wing whined louder, but the glow it emitted dimmed, causing them to lose even more height.

  Using the dense column of smoke rising from the truck trailer as cover, Juzo veered toward a vast park alongside the avenue—a sprawling green space full of trees and shadows, where they could find cover and limit the number of lives at risk.

  Staying clear of streetlights and any other source of light, careful to avoid the watchful eyes of security cameras, Juzo skirted around bushes and took refuge in the shadows, descending beneath a thick canopy of leaves formed by the treetops.

  The place was deserted and dark. It would do… for now.

  Pressing a buckle on his X-shaped harness, he retracted the remaining booster.

  “Stay alert,” he warned Adam and let go of him. Adam took a few seconds to release his grip in return.

  No one around. It seemed they’d lost the android.

  Needing to steady his heart and catch his breath, Adam braced his hands against a tree and bowed his head. He felt grateful to be back on solid ground, though the way he heaved wasn’t the best way to show it.

  “What’s that son of a bitch’s plan, anyway?” he panted. “Blow us up and collect those proteins from our corpses?”

  Soaked in sweat, he peered through the trees and saw, from afar, the pileup on the highway caused by the energy blast. Flames flickered along the park’s edges, casting their eerie glow across the grass, reaching them like a ghostly red halo.

  Without meaning to, he and his brother had saved their own skins—literally—at the cost of others. Good grief! How had this meeting with his twin gone from surreal to uncomfortable and disturbing, and then escalated into a life-or-death ordeal where who knew how many innocent people had just perished?

  He closed his eyes, wishing for it all to end, for everything to just disappear. And as the weight of guilt began to settle on him, his brother shook him from it with a hand on his shoulder.

  “Follow me,” Juzo said, moving into the darker, more wooded part of the park.

  It took Adam a moment, but he found the strength to make his shaking legs obey and followed his brother.

  Every so often, he glanced over his shoulder to make sure no one was trailing them, that there was no sign of the android; all he could see was the flickering light from the distant car accident, its glow reaching through the trees and brushing against the shadows.

  He took a deep breath, trying to muffle his footsteps on the grass to avoid giving away their location in case the enemy was near. He swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the bitter taste left by that feeling of guilt—and the queasiness from so many aerial acrobatics.

  “I think I get it,” he murmured, keeping his voice low.

  “What do you mean?” asked Juzo.

  “Well, if I were a scientist with a long-term secret project, what better option than to use androids to monitor it? They don’t talk, don’t need breaks to go smoke, you don’t have to pay them overtime, nothing. But an android like this, with such destructive power, is a threat and just as illegal as what they did to us. You heard him. ‘Surrender, and it will all end quickly’? That’s what that bastard said! A60-R8s are old models—obsolete for years—they’re supposed to have a super limited sentence bank! How the hell can someone in a country as tightly regulated as yours get away with stuff like this? I’m guessing its Directive 001 isn’t active. You know what that is, right?”

  “No android shall kill or raise its hand against a human being,” Juzo recited.

  Adam snorted. “Sounds nice, doesn’t it? All Directives do. Too bad we’re nothing but test subjects to that A60; odds are it doesn’t even count us as human. Protocol 128—you know that one too, I assume.”

  Juzo nodded. “Latent programming.”

  “Exactly. Even the A60s—the first Cyclops units to hit the market—have it baked into their code,” Adam said. “Protocol 128 lets the android resume its mission automatically, no matter if its master is dead or already forgot the order. One update is all it takes to trigger it. You said the project was suspended after losing some critical supply; well, if that supply got listed somewhere—online or wherever—that info could’ve reached the android and triggered its 128. You… Tell me the truth, do you know anything about that?”

  Juzo glanced at him over his shoulder.

  “You sure know a lot about androids for an underwear model,” was all he said.

  Was that his brother’s idea of a joke?

  “Come on, Juzo, don’t play dumb. I know you’ve got something in that pocket of yours, and I think it’s that damned supply. Why don’t you just get rid of it?”

  Juzo didn’t even turn to look at him.

  “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Well, I think I do,” Adam insisted, stopping in his tracks. “If you’ve got nothing to hide, let me see your pocket.”

  “It doesn’t matter what I have here—if you don’t keep moving, you’ll make things a lot easier for our group of enemies.”

  “Group? Are you kidding? The android brought the Eddanian woman with him—someone else too?”

  “Two mercenaries,” Juzo confirmed.

  “Mercenaries?” Adam felt his stomach turn. “No way… We need to get help from the police, right now! I know you’re on the run, but you could ask for asylum at the international embassy and—”

  “You still don’t get it, do you?” Juzo turned to him. “We’re on our own in this!”

  “On our own?” Adam pointed in the direction of the crash. “We’ll end up as dead as those people!” He searched his pockets. All he found was his ID card and the receipt from the restaurant where he’d had dinner with Trevor and the girls a few hours earlier. “My phone… Where’s my damn phone? I must’ve left it in the car… Or it fell while we were flying? Damn it!”

  “Keep it down!” Juzo ordered.

  “I need to call Trevor. If I tell him what’s happening, he might be able to help us.”

  “Gentlemen…” came a synthesized voice.

  The Cyclops!

  The brothers turned and saw a red light glowing in the darkness like a beacon of terror—the eye of an android.

  “Apologies, but the park is currently closed to pedestrians,” said the park keeper Cyclops, an android dressed in a green jumpsuit, advancing toward them with a bag full of fallen leaves in one hand and a rake in the other. “Please return to the main walkway. You will be able to enter again tomorrow after 8 a.m.”

  But before they could recover from the scare, the android halted, dropped the bag of leaves it was carrying, and its head began to shake, sparking as if short-circuiting. Its small circular eye blinked out, and a new, much larger egg-shaped red eye lit up on its rear.

  The A60-R8 in a purple trench coat had appeared behind the park keeper android and crushed its head as easily as if it were a tin can, scattering bits of metal and spurts of oil everywhere.

  Decapitated, the green-suited robot collapsed onto the grass, and the enemy Cyclops continued forward, now heading toward the twins.