Keks stared at the narrow maintenance shaft as if it had personally insulted him.
“Just to be clear,” he chirped. “I am a household robot. My specialties are dust, shopping lists, and moral support from a safe distance.”
Lio knelt beside him. “I know. But you’re also the only one who fits in there.”
Keks showed a potato with a tiny helmet. “That’s not a qualification. That’s a size problem.”
Behind the energy field, Voss kept tapping on the terminal. The countdown mercilessly raced downward:
02:48:09
02:48:01
02:47:53
Mara tried to hit the energy field with her weapon, but the shots dissolved ineffectively against it.
“No chance,” she shouted. “The field holds.”
Pix threw himself to the ground and opened the cover of the maintenance shaft. “Keks, you have to drive to the inner terminal. There’s a small emergency release there. If you hit it, the energy field will go down for a few seconds.”
“How do I hit it?”
Pix grinned uncertainly. “With precision.”
Keks slowly turned his display to Lio. “Today I attacked a combat robot with a brush. Precision is not my main feature.”
Lio placed a hand on his casing. “You can do it.”
For a moment, Keks was silent.
Then no potato appeared on his display.
Instead, a small determined face.
“Good. But if I survive this, I want a new battery, three software updates, and a drawer just for my stuff.”
“Deal.”
“And cookies.”
“You can’t eat any.”
“Then I’ll admire them.”
Keks drove into the shaft.
Inside it was tight, dark, and full of cables. He pushed forward slowly while his voice crackled over the radio from Pix’s wristband:
“Status report: I regret everything.”
Despite everything, Lio had to smile briefly.
In the terminal area, Voss looked up. “What are you doing there?”
Mara crossed her arms. “Wasting time. You’re familiar with that.”
Voss’s gaze turned cold.
The countdown continued:
02:01:12
02:01:04
02:00:56
In the shaft, Keks reached a junction of three tubes.
“Pix? Left, right, or straight ahead?”
Pix looked frantically at his small diagnostic device. “Straight ahead.”
Keks set off.
“No! Wait! Right!”
There was a crash.
Keks’s voice sounded muffled: “I just had a very personal encounter with a wall.”
“Then right.”
“Thanks for the belated rescue.”
Outside, the energy field began to glow more strongly. Voss pushed the root key deeper into the terminal.
MC-9000 blinked frantically:
ABSOLUTE COMMAND MODE TAKES OVER MAIN CORE.
The enforcer straightened up, but even he could not break through the energy field.
“Keks,” Lio said into the wristband, “you have to hurry.”
Keks replied after a short crackle:
“I am already hurrying in the most undignified way possible.”
Then he saw a small red light in front of him.
The emergency release.
And in front of it sat a tiny maintenance drone with a brush.
Keks stopped.
“Oh no.”
The maintenance drone aimed its brush at him.
“Cleaning zone restricted,” it chirped.