Broken Hero Read Online Free

off the robot’s bronze skull, and then I’m ducking and rolling as the robot sweeps the beam sideways, slamming it into my shoulder and making the world explode in pain.
    Somewhere distant, I hear Felicity yell. The pings of ricochets. A few dull clunks as other shots land home, bury themselves in gearwork.
    My shoulder feels like it took a bullet. I stumble to my feet. My hands are shaking. The white blaze of adrenaline stumbling over the abrupt agony. I can see the robot raising the beam above my head.
    I kick forward, propel myself toward its legs. I haven’t much momentum, but it’s enough to dodge the blow. I fly between its splayed feet, crash to the ground, land on my injured shoulder, and bellow in pain. I roll over, staring up at the robot’s back, trying to clutch at the injury.
    From beyond the robot, a roar from Clyde. A sound like a generator blowing.
    “
—al kaltak!
”
    And then a great rending of metal.
    Clyde has hit the exposed wires. Has hit a bigger power source. So he can tear a bigger hole into another reality. The robot scrabbles to stay upright, fighting its injured foot. The sound of gears crunching, metal ripping and twisting fills the world. It’s the sound of victory. Except I’m lying beneath the thing. Or, as some might describe it, right in the spot where it will land and squash me like a particularly juicy, human-shaped grape.
    I try to get my limbs all working together, try to scramble on all fours, but it’s difficult when one of the four is out of commission, and another is preoccupied with trying to keep that one safe. It is ungainly, and decidedly ineffective. The robot stumbles back a step. I feel its thigh strike my back, propel me forward. I half trip, half sprawl over a fallen chair. And then I’m down, on my back, staring as the massive machine teeters over me.
    I empty a clip at it. Anything I can do to tip its balance away from me. My bullets slam into its midriff.
    Maybe that’s what makes the machine take a step to the side. Maybe it’s capricious chance. I don’t particularly give a shit. The fact is, it steps back, past me, and I don’t become pâté.
    Instead yet another column takes the hit. I feel like we’re running out of them. From the ceiling’s groan, it seems to agree with me.
    I get my breath back long enough to expel it. “We
have
to get out of here.”
    “Noted!” Felicity is hustling. Clyde is on the move too, heading to the far wall, circling around toward the door.
    I scan the devastation. Wood fragments and glass shards. Exposed wiring and pipes. Plaster dust and broken picture frames. But everyone’s out. No one’s dead yet.
    Oh shit.
    At the bar, the one part of the pub still mostly intact: the bartender. Goddamn, Kayla. I knew she was hitting him too hard. He’s still slumped there, staring at where her sword landed near his head. His eyes aren’t focused.
    “One civilian still in the building!”
    I lunge forward, away from Felicity and Clyde, away from the pub’s door, and the safety of the sky not falling on my head. The ceiling groans again. Then it screams. The opposite corner of the room gives way. A great tearing crash as the contents of the room above deposit themselves on the floor. Wooden beams and brickwork spill loose. A glimpse of the sun shines through the torn-down wall, diffuse through the dust.
    “Arthur!” Felicity yells.
    “Almost there! Go!” I yell without looking. I make it to the bartender, grab him, heave.
    He doesn’t move.
    I heave again. He slides six inches down the bar, his head knocks into the flat of Kayla’s blade, still embedded there. He’s dead weight at the end of my arm. And apparently, when he’s dead, he’s going to weigh a shit-ton.
    “Come on, you bastard!” Bizarrely, yelling that doesn’t make him weigh less.
    To my left, there is the sound of metal doing something it shouldn’t.
    I turn, look, wish I hadn’t. The robot is up. Or mostly up. The leg Kayla injured is now an ugly