The Ayngel's Bell

The Ayngel’s Bell

Chapter One:

            3000 feet underground laid a cavern that was transformed into a lab by one of the greatest scientist of that time period. Bleeping lights and flashing noises filled the lab. His machines and gadgets where a symphony of chaos. “Dr. Chase, we’re running out of time. They’ll be here any moment.” Mr. Heddings yelled over his shoulder as he scrambled back and forth around the lab gathering supplies and equipment. “I only need a couple more minutes Heddings. Just a couple more minutes. She’s almost ready.” He leaned over the body of a young woman who was laid out on a cold steel table. Her chest was opened with wires and cables hanging out. Sighing, Mr.Heddings nodded in acceptance and continued packing. He located only the essential blueprints and documents and stuffed them all into a folder as Dr.Chase put final touches on his latest project. He was creating an “angel” as he constantly would refer to it.  She was seemingly human with the exception of a few things. Her internal make up was all wires, chips, and plugs; creatively arranged to be connected to one main motherboard located in the center of her chest. She was a robot glazed in synthetic skin.
            Just as Dr. Chase closed up her chest and locked it with a blue tinted key, the wall in front of them exploded. Smoke and debris from the equipment lined along that wall erupted inward followed by lines of red laser lights. A team of armed men filtered in the room within seconds yelling and pointed their guns towards Chase and Heddings. “Step away from the android!” they yelled as they charged towards them. Chase slid the key into the pocket of the android’s pants just as one of the men grabbed him and threw him to the ground. “What’s our order Alpha?” the man holding down Chase asked. An armed man, noticeably larger than the rest of them, walked in through the hole blown into the wall and looked around. “Extract then dispose the Android. Clean Everything Else.” The man holding down Chase nodded once and then without another second stood and shot him in the head.
            Heddings flinched and looked away from the now lifeless Doctor. “The Ayngel’s Bell will sound... and you all... will rue this day” he mumbled to himself. He stared into the goggles of Alpha with sympathy. “If only you weren’t so stubborn.” Alpha shrugged casually to himself. “If only you weren’t so naive.” In one timeless motion, he raises his gun to Heddings’ forehead and pulls the trigger.

Chapter 2:

            I was sitting at the bottom of a hill on the side of the river bank. It was my secret hide out because it was shrouded by shade from the trees and bushes at the top of the hill. I had built a shack down here a couple years back as like an escape from life. I stocked it with everything I needed like food, clothes, a bed, and my tool kit. I was a self proclaimed robot engineer. I tinkered here and there, made little bots to help around, and worked with a team of techs. We hack systems, and screw with the government for a living. The governments been corrupt and working on something big for the couple years. Our plan was to eventually break past their security system and find out exactly what they were planning. 

-Brrrringggg-
My cell phone goes off, breaking my thoughts. 

“ Oh my gosh Lawrence! We need to meet. Like now. KT found activity with the gov’s shadow team.” 

Just as I’m about to respond to the excited voice on the phone, a female body comes tumbling down the hill and topples over the edge of the bank into the river. Reflexes gots the best of me and before I actually realized it, my phone was on the ground and I was jumping into the river after her. Her body floated a couple feet ahead of me, being pulled by the current. The river would get rough if we floated too much further down stream. Kicking a little with my legs I covered the distance between us and caught her by the arm. She was unconscious, but hopefully not dead. I caught hold a large branch handing in the river and with much effort and exertion pulled the two onto land. My body begged me to relax for a moment but my mind was too locked on making sure I didn’t just save dead weight. 

“Hey lady, come on and wake.” 

I pushed down on her chest a couple times but nothing happened. Placing my ear to her chest, I could hear something. It didn’t sound like a normal heart beat but it was something. I scrambled for my phone and called my car. It locked onto our location and with a couple minutes my car came gliding down the hill and spun into a perfect park. The door jutted open and I lifted her into the back seat. Sitting down next to her the doors close and the car’s auto voice asked “Where to, bro?” 

“Nearest Hospital.” 

The car shifted gears then blow up the hill, skidded onto the road, and zoomed off. Horns and yells rang around the car as I sat in the back of the car trying to figure out what to do with the her. After a moment I remembered something I had learned in a health class; CPR. I pushed her silver hair out of her face and leaned down. When I touched my lips to hers there was a sharp electric surge that shoot through me and sent me jutting up and hitting my head on the car roof. “Are you okay?” the car asked me. “Y-yeah. Just focus on the road.” I could feel the car tense and speed up  but then suddenly the car jerked and pulled over to the side. 
“Losing Power. Please remove source of energy loss bro.” 

Pushing down the passenger front seat and climbing into the driver’s seat I pulled open the car’s operating menu. 
“Unknown source of energy lose. Please Remove. Unknown source of energy loss.”

The words scanned across the screen repeatedly as the car’s battery meter continued to drop. “We do not have time for this!” I yelled half at myself and half at the car as I slammed my hands on the wheel. Suddenly from the back of the car there was a loud crashing sound and then a thud. I turned around to see the girl trying to climb out of the back window frantically. I grabbed the side of her leg and pulled her back into the car. 
“Let go!” she screamed and then pressed her back into the door of the car like she was trying to melt through it. Her face was panicked and confused and her eyes were...well... I don’t even know... they were an electric blue color. “Calm it down, k. I just saved your life.” The insides of both her eyebrows creased down and she stared at me intently. “What is going on?” 
I looked at her confused then climbed into the back seat to sit next to her. She was cautious but said nothing. “You came rolling down a hill and went straight into the city’s main river. I saved you’re life. Was taking you towards a hospital but I see you’re fine now.” 
Her body physically relaxes and she stares out my broken car window. “I don’t... remember...anything...” 

I sighed excessively and stared down at the floor of my car. “Look, I have to get...somewhere. Can I drop you off, uhm...” 

“Canta” she said cutting me off. “My name is Canta... Can... I come with you?” 

Her eyes locked to mine and she tilted her head in a way that made her silver hair fall perfectly over half her face. “Please...”

There was no way I could say no so I simply nodded twice. “But we’ll have to walk. Car needs to sit and recharge.” 

We stepped out the car, I turned on the solar panels on the roof of the car, and we headed towards my tech team’s headquarters. 

Chapter 4:

It’s been about 2 months since the day I first met Lawrence and his band of rebels. So much has happened. That first day when I met them I knew something was wrong with me. Something was… unnatural. When I had first awakened in Lawrence’s car, it was like I was being electrocuted and overwhelmed with this surging energy. I felt it again when I had touched my fingers to that keyboard in their headquarters. It was like I could link to the systems and feel them; I could physically and emotionally feel them. I told Lawrence about it that night when him and I were alone and he told me not to worry about it. “Don’t worry about anything Canta. We’ll take care of you.”

They made me a room within their hq and despite the fact that it upset the rest of his team, Lawrence took me out every day with him to do different things. Some day’s we’d run errands, other days we’d watch ‘normal’ people living their ‘normal lives’. We lived in a world where humans and robots co existed under a government run by a super computer and three old men. Normal people had families and went to schools and had normal honest jobs. They were, for the most part, oblivious of the world Lawrence and I lived in. We could see things for what they were because we looked at the bigger picture. After looking over the files that we downloaded that first day we realized that the government was creating android, robots that could pass as humans, so that they could use them to infiltrate the other countries and take over. It was a world-wide law passed at the beginning of the AI- robot coexistence Era though, that it was illegal to make a robot that looked and acted human. Anyone caught doing so would be sentenced to life in prison or even death depending on the AI they created. 

As of this moment, Lawrence, his team, and I were the only people who knew exactly what was going on in the core of the Government and we were the only people who could do anything to stop it before it went too far. We had a program called ‘The Ayngel’s Bell’. It was the strongest virus on the planet, designed to totally crumble the government and annihilate all the androids. The Super God Virus Code. It was going to be my job to install the program since out of the five of us, I was the best coder and hack. Over the past two months we’ve been planning our infiltration plans and battle tactics. The one thing we didn’t go over though was the code for the Super God Virus. Last night I finally asked them how exactly they were planning for me to install it. I could hear Harrison and KT’s body stutter and raise a few degrees. I caught the weird jerk in Lawrence’s laugh as he tried to shake off the topic.

“We have all that under control, Canta. Don’t worry about it at all.” Erika said when the boys didn’t speak up right away.

They were hiding something. I couldn’t tell what but from their bodies I knew it was something they thought would be problematic for me to know. I pretended to be clueless, smiled, and said “Okay!” and then walked off to my room to do intense thinking. By now though, Lawrence knew my habits and patterns. The others accepted me dropping the subject but he knew better that that. When I went into my room I could hear them arguing.

“She needs to know the truth! We need to tell her now while we have the time.” Lawrence pleaded.

Erika snorted, like she did often. “We don’t have to tell her anything. We’ll tell her when we get in.”

“Do you not understand how this is going to end? Don’t you think she has a right to know?”

“Right!? She’s a -“

I think they remembered that I could hear them and because Harrison and KT hushed her and the conversation stopped. Lawrence burst in a couple seconds later.

“C’mon. We’re leaving for a while.” He said staring at me. There was something odd in his eyes. Sadness? Maybe worry.

He took my hand and pulled me through the base. Erika was glaring at him, Harrison was giving me a sympathetic look, and KT was doing something on the left desk system, trying to stay out of the situation.

Lawrence led me outside and then let go of my hand and relaxed. “What’s wrong?” I asked trying to piece together everything but my mind just couldn’t connect the dots. He looked at me again with those odd eyes. “Look Canta. I need to tell you something. I don’t care if it upsets any of them. You deserve to know.”

“Know what?”

He gripped my shoulders and stared at me with the most conflicted stare I’d ever encountered. Just as he was about to speak I could hear something shoot off a couple hundred feet away from us. Some deep inner instinct made me push Lawrence to the ground and raise my hand up. Before I could understand to motions, I was holding three bullets in my hand. “What are you-” he began but something inside was telling me we were in a dangerous situation and needed to relocate. I could feel something switch inside of me and then my thought process seemed to increase it’s speed by 100 folds. My mind couldn’t keep up with my motions because within seconds, I was picking up Lawrence, swinging him onto my back and then sprinting off down the pavement. Sounds waltz around me. Barely audible gun fires. I could hear each and every bullet splitting through the air and dodged them with a precision that wasn’t human. Up ahead was a large flight of stairs that lead to a walkway that went through the city’s center. I jumped on the railing and my feet shifted into wheels.

The next thing I knew I was skating down the railing, landing on the ground with sparks on my heels, jerking around a sharp corner, and then speeding down a very steep hill. For some reason I  knew there was tunnel about a 400 feet ahead. My legs swayed faster and for an instant I was flying. Unfortunately, I had gained too much speed and so when I tried to stop in the tunnel I tripped over myself and started to fall. Within the one instant that I was falling though I manage to shift Lawrence infront of me and skidded across the ground on my back. There was an odd smell of burnt rubber and my body felt… damaged. Too much was happening. I laid there, refusing to move until I got a grasp on what exactly was going on.

            Lawrence looked at me, gripped my shoulders like he had the second before all this had started and shook me. “Canta, Canta don’t shut down on me please. Respond.” He talked to me like I was some command system. My eyes shift to meet his. “Canta Respond.” He repeated as he started to lift me. I pulled away from him and stood on my own, ignoring the fact that as I stood the skates on the bottom of my feet retracted. I hugged myself for a moment, afraid that the confusion would tear me apart if I didn’t defend myself from it.  I could hear foot steps back at the stairs about 500 feet off. They didn’t come up as a threat to me even though I could tell they were trying to be. “What... Am I Lawrence?” I turned to look at him and he tried to look away but I caught him but his stubble-haired chin. “What am I?” His eyes averted mine and irritated me. Not paying attention, the hand holding his chin receded and a fine knife took its place. “You will tell me the truth.” I could feel the volume of my voice sharpen as my arm rotated backwards and fired the knife off and into the throat of someone trying to sneak up from behind us.

“You’re the Ayngel’s Bell, Canta.” He mumbled as he stared warily at the dead man behind us. Locking eyes, he continued, “You’re an Android. Built with the Super God Virus in you.”

My brain processed all the information in a second and concluded “You’ve all been using me…You’ve been lying to me all this time just to use me and them get rid of me.” He shakes me once in aggravation. 

“I’ve wanted to tell you. When we realized what you were, what would happen to you once all this was over. I wanted to tell you”

Sudden above us I could hear something coming towards us. Something heavy with propellers. A helicopter. I pulled away from him and went down to the entrance of the tunnel. Looking up I searched for the helicopter. My eyes automatically locked onto it and zoomed in. My arm raised and after a moment I could feel it dislocated, detach, and blast away from me. It shot up towards the helicopter and after a moment exploded. The copter exploded in the air and flaming pieces of metal fell to the ground.

“We need to go. We need to crash the Government’s system tonight.” I said as I walked back to Lwarence’s side. He nodded once and without another word I threw him back on my back and headed back to headquarters. Tonight had to be the night that we do what I was designed to do. I could not stay another day in a lie.

Chapter 5:

            Without any warning, Canta and Lawrence came exploding into hq. Erika, Harrison, and KT immediate were woken up. “Let’s go guys. We’re activating Ayngel’s Bell tonight.” Canta said walking over to the right desk and clicking on the tower. Harrison stumbles out of his bed and rushes over to her side. “Woah there Canta, what the problem? We’re not scheduled to attack for at least another week.” Canta stripped down the security systems of the government ‘s made building while she listened to Harrison ramble. “Can’t wait that long. We go in tonight. I just took out all the power in their main building. It should stay down for at least two hours. You guys get me in there and I’ll do the rest.” KT tried to pull her chair away from the desk but Canta’s hand shifts into a gun and points at him. “I’m not asking.”

            Erika looked at Lawrence. “You told her?” Canta shook her head before Lawrence could answer. “Not in this life time. We were attacked. They know where we are, okay. This mission has been compromised. We need to go in now or not at all.”

            KT tilted her gun away from him, afraid she’s accidently fire it off with him standing in front of it. “You don’t even know how to active the Ayngel’s Bell do you?” She let her arm drop and felt through her database. “ I have the capability to active it. I just need to get to the super computer at the center of the central base… You all can stay here if you want but I’m going.” She looked over them as they all processed. The human brain’s thought processing skill was 10 times slower than hers.

“Fine, We’ll go in tonight, but you need to be careful. There will be androids there defending the core.”  Harrison said.

Canta looked up at him and smile “I’m well aware.”

            -To Be Continued.