Broken Hero Read Online Free Page B

could really use the distraction.
    Instead I am acutely aware of the club. Of my fingers scrabbling at the smooth floorboards, my feet drumming up and down in a panicked, senseless frenzy. I can feel the wind of the club descending. A foot away. Six inches. Five. Four.
    I am going to die.
    Three.
    Really, genuinely going to die.
    Two.
    And it’s probably going to hurt very badly.
    One.

4
    There is a sound like trains colliding. Like the world ending. And I don’t remember it being this noisy last time I died. And then I think, well, if Descartes was right… I am thinking, so I must be being. Or to put it another way, I am not being dead.
    I realize I have closed my eyes. I could not quite stare death in the face. I open them.
    The robot is not there. The club is not there. Not quite.
    Adrenaline still has me clenched in its crushing grip. Time is ducking under the usual rules. The robot is in midair. The club is whipping sideways, sliding away from me, from the side of my ear, the distance increasing. Its ruined leg is spinning free from its body. There is a long, protracted, “
Naaaaaaa!
” echoing out of its chittering mouth.
    I sit. I watch it fly away, collapse. There is an enormous, ruinous boom of sound. It slaps me like I’m a misbehaving child.
    Clyde. Clyde at the very last possible moment. Pulling power out of some other reality’s proverbial arse. Clyde saving me.
    And then I vomit. All over the bartender, unfortunately. He’s still not really together enough to object. And he is a bartender. This can’t be the first time it’s happened to him.
    From the tangled ball of metal comes a jerking, clicking voice. “
Gooten ma ma ma.
”
    And suddenly all my fear, all my terror, is sublimated. It is rage, pure and blinding. I am dragging myself to my feet, heaving myself up on the bar, with arms that feel stiff and useless, with hands and fingers that are shaking, with a shoulder that screams in pain, and goddamn this fucking piece of scrap metal. Fuck it straight to hell.
    My pistol is still in my hand. I advance, through billowing clouds of dust, stumbling over rubble. I hold the gun out in front of me, clenched in a death grip, my knuckles white. Behind me I can hear Felicity calling my name, but it’s dim, something heard through water. I have something to take care of before I fully come back to the world.
    The shadow of the robot resolves through the cloud of devastation. It is tattered and twitching. Its arm stump jerks through a repeating cycle of movements. Its eyes snap back and forth.
    “
Ma. Ma. Ma. Ma
,” it repeats over and over, hard and guttural. The exposed gears in its head stop and start.
    I point my pistol.
    “Fuck you.”
    I empty what’s left of the magazine into its head. Its eyes shatter. Gears spin away. Metal mangles. It stops jerking, lies still.
    And just for good measure I vomit again, all over the bloody thing. Bloody deserves it.
    I stand there for a moment, staring at the metal corpse. Trying to work out where my head’s at. Trying to find my way back to baseline. But all I can see is that club descending over and over. All I can think about is that feeling of powerlessness. It’s all I can do to stop myself from loading a new magazine and shooting the thing some more.
    “Arthur!” A hand grabs my arm. Felicity’s. She breaks through my fog. She fixes me with a stare, looks deep, searching to see if I’m OK. I don’t think I am.
    “We have to get out of here,” she says.
    To emphasize her point, half the ceiling collapses.
    I hack and cough as dust swallows us. I try to get my bearings. I want to run. I want to scream. I want to fight. I don’t know what I want. I try to hang onto the last scraps of my professionalism.
    “The bartender,” I manage when I stop hacking. “We have to—”
    “Together.”
    It’s hard to find the bar in the fog, but the moaning ceiling adds urgency. “Here!” Felicity yells. We both grab an arm. It takes a lot, but he