Attack Doll 1: Violet Lost

  After the light from the teleporter died away, I just stood there trying to recover my breath, hands resting on my knees. Knowing that Padma had gotten away had lifted a huge weight from my shoulders, but I still felt exhausted. My force shield was gone, all except the indigo light surrounding me, and it would be a while before it came back. If it ever came back; I wasn't sure whether it could recharge itself when I was out of contact with HQ. I hastily tapped out the code for camouflage mode, but nothing happened.

  "It looks like you missed the last train home, Blue Prime," JB Swift's voice came over his microphone.

  "Indigo, actually," I panted. "Blue is my older brother. He's a lot bigger than me. You should let me go; he's the one you really want."

  "Trying to play 'Three Billy Goats Gruff', eh?" JB Swift chuckled. He actually had a big voice for such a little guy, and quite a pleasant-sounding laugh. "Too bad I'm not a troll living under a bridge; you will never see your big brother Blue again. There's no way out for you now."

  "Don't be too sure." I looked around. The Zoinks nearest me were starting to stir. If I wanted to escape this room I would have to do it soon. I made a sudden dash for the door.

  Something clipped me behind the knee, and I fell back with a cry. I turned in time to see JB Swift speeding away from me. He skidded to a stop, and I could see a length of pipe in his hand. He waggled a finger at me. "Ah ah ahh! Can't have you escaping that way."

  "How about this way, then?" I dived behind a Zoink and tried to crawl on hands and knees for the door. He dashed forward and damn near broke my arm, hitting me with that pipe again. I couldn't believe how fast he was. "I'm sorry to have to disable you," he was saying, "but I simply cannot allow you to leave."

  "Then it looks like you and I have a problem." I pushed myself to my feet. My knee hurt, but I had survived worse. This time I kept my eyes on him as I began walking toward the door. I saw him twitch, and then, before I could jump up as I had planned, my knee exploded with pain, and I sprawled full-length onto the floor again.

  Damn! I slapped the floor in frustration. There was no way to dodge his attacks; he was just too fast. How had Shelley ever managed to beat him? Thinking back, I remembered that Prime Commander had said said something about his reflexes, how they didn't keep up with his speed. Could I use that against him somehow?

  I struggled part-way to my feet again, but then I sank back down with a groan, pretending that my knee had given out. (Believe me, it wasn't hard!) I pushed myself up with my left arm, the arm that was away from him, keeping my right arm close to my body as if it were hurting something awful. (That wasn't hard either.) Watching him closely, I started to pull myself forward toward the door. I waited until I saw him start to twitch, and then I simply swung my right arm down in a hard backfist.

  He had zoomed forward again, pipe swinging for my left arm, as I had hoped. This time, though, the back of my right fist was suddenly in his way and he ran smack into it at top speed. It hurt, even with the sap glove. Hurt him a lot worse, though. He dropped the pipe and wobbled around a bit, rubber-legged. I could practically see the little birdies chirping around his head. Gave me plenty of time to grab him by the scruff of the neck. I crawled forward and slammed him as hard as I could against the wall. He sagged to the floor and fell on his face, unconscious, or at least not moving. Yeah, I could see why Enclave gave up on their speed experiments.

  I pushed myself painfully upright. JB Swift had really done something to that knee; it really didn't want to support my weight any more. Around me, most of the Zoinks had gotten to their feet and were heading my way. I wasn't sure what they would do without someone to direct them, and I didn't want to find out. I hobbled for the door as quickly as I could.

  As it turned out, "as quickly as I could" wasn't quite quickly enough. A few Zoinks grabbed me on my way out. I pounded them, but somehow, pounding Zoinks isn't the same without a force shield. They slowed me down, which gave the other ones time to catch up, and soon I was in the middle of a full-scale Zoink melee, with no special powers and a bad knee.

  After I got hit in the head a few dozen times, it occurred to me that I didn't really need to beat these guys into submission. (Which was a good thing, 'cause ain't no way that was happening!) All I had to do was stay out of their way. That by itself would be challenging but doable.

  I fought my way free of them and headed to the back of the room. Sure enough, they followed after me like I was the Pied Piper. I led them into a corner, and once they were almost on me, I darted to one side, circled around them, and made for the door. (Yeah, right, I "darted". I don't know whether you've ever been repeatedly smashed in the knee by a pipe-wielding super-speedster, but let me tell you, darting anywhere isn't exactly an option afterwards. Let's just say I hobbled with all possible speed.)

  This time I made it out, though, and I shut the door tight behind me. I wasn't sure whether Zoinks were smart enough to open doors, but I figured it would at least slow them up a bit.

  But where to go now? Li Lin-fa's cell? Maybe, if I could wake her up and get her to unlock the cell door and let me hide under her cot. Then I might be able to stay out of sight until my force shield recharged itself. After that, I could turn myself invisible again and initiate another healing coma. Then I'd be as good as new. Yeah, that would be worth a shot. At this point, Li Lin-fa was the closest thing I had to an ally in this place.

  Of course, if JB Swift's gassy bosses forced him to activate Lily again before I finished recharging, then I would be spotted right away. Worse, I would be trapped inside her cell.

  I stopped for a moment. The word "trapped" tickled something in the back of my mind. What was it? Something about a trap. Something important . . .

  Well, whatever it was, it was being shy. Try as I might, I couldn't bring it forward. Eventually, I shrugged and began making my way down Indigo highway. And as luck would have it, I ran smack into a patrol of Zoinks almost right away. As soon as I spotted them, I ducked into a nearby room. They must have been unusually perceptive for Zoinks, though, because they followed me right in.

  Now, you may have noticed that I don't normally go in for using weapons. I mean, I understand their necessity when we're about to make one of Enclave's monsters go bye-bye, but for general fighting, I don't like to use 'em much. I figure my hands and feet do enough for me that weapons are usually not necessary, and I don't want to learn to rely on them.

  But with a bum knee and a right arm and shoulder that had been bothering me ever since I landed on them wrong? I decided that maybe it was time to break out a little artillery. Or at least start swinging some chairs, which is what I did. The room I had gone into seemed to be a break room of some sort, and there were all kinds of kitchen-type chairs sitting around. I grabbed one and started whaling away on the Zoinks as they came through the door.

  Three of them went down right away, and they stayed down, too. The fourth one decided he was going to be a problem. He was a smart Zoink. A genius Zoink, in fact, because he actually picked up a chair of his own and started attacking me with it.

  We played dueling chairs for a little bit. I may not use weapons much, but I have trained with them quite a lot, even found weapons like chairs. Mr. Genius Zoink got in a lucky shot to my head, but then I got mad. Bam! bam! bam! and it was nighty-night, genius Zoink.

  That hit to the head had me worried, though, because I remembered the concussion that Padma had given me. I put the chair down and sat down on it to take stock of myself. Blurred vision? No. Nausea? No. Dizziness? No. Headache? Well yeah, duh! I had just gotten whalloped in the head. But okay, probably no concussion.

  And then I realized that not only had that smack in the head not given me a concussion, but it had knocked loose the idea that had been rattling around in the back of my head. A trap! Of course! How could I have been so stupid? There had been a way out all along,
and I had been so preoccupied with finding Padma that I completely missed it.

  Feeling suddenly energized, I shot up from the chair, and then out the door and down the corridor I went, searching anxiously for one particular intersection. I vaguely remembered that the storage room I had in mind was near a red-green crossing, and it was fairly large, so it must have been pretty far out from the hub.

  I found a red hallway and turned down it. If I've described this place well enough, you'll realize that there were actually two red hallways -- one that spiraled clockwise, and another that spiraled counter-clockwise -- and I had no idea which one I was looking for. Better to make a choice than to dither, though. I was starting out from my own indigo hallway, so I reasoned that the next one would be blue, and then green after that. Two intersections and I would be home free. If I remembered correctly and if I had chosen the correct red hallway.

  I was just coming in sight of the blue hallway when an alarm began to sound. JB Swift must have woken up and tried to warn everybody. There were no sounds of tramping feet coming my way so far, though, so I kept going, limping along as fast as I could. Past blue, and I had nearly made it to green when I saw a monster coming around the bend straight toward me.

  I stopped. There were no nearby doorways to duck into, nowhere to hide. It looked like I would have to fight my way past this guy. He wasn't exactly Bill the Cement-mixer, but he could have passed for his slightly smaller brother. With a groan of despair, I set myself. Better to attack than to defend, I decided as I began running toward him to try a jumping sidekick.

  It almost worked. He seemed to be off in his own little world and didn't spot me until I was in the air heading for him. But then he looked up and swung a hand the size of a Thanksgiving turkey, slapping my whole body up against the wall. Not a good feeling, let me tell you; I think he broke a couple of ribs. I scrabbled back from him along the floor while he watched me with what seemed like puzzled amazement. Then he appeared to hear the alarm ringing and put two and two together. He pointed a bratwurst-sized finger at me and growled something that might have been, "Stop right there!"

  Leaning heavily against the wall, I pushed myself to my feet. "Like hell I will!" I snarled. "Try to catch me, Chuckles!"

  He spread his arms wide and lumbered toward me, which is kind of what I had hoped he would do. I waited and watched him closely, and when I felt I had judged his motion correctly, I dove between him and the wall. Made it! I almost wished I hadn't, because I landed on those cracked ribs of mine, and I cried out with the pain of it.

  Chuckles had turned himself around by the time I got back to my feet. We had kind of a funny footrace then, the type you see in bad horror movies. He was trundling toward me, his arms outstretched, and I was backing away from him, on my feet but barely able to walk. I kept glancing behind me, hoping to see a green glow, and I let out a whoop of excitement when I finally saw it.

  I limped double-time around the green corner to where the door I was looking for should be. Had to be, if I entertained any hopes at all of escaping. And guess what? Glory be, it was there. Surrounded by Zoinks.

  They didn't see me at first. I wanted to stand there and say every single very bad word I knew in every language I spoke, but there wasn't time. Even Zoinks would eventually notice me standing there swearing. I charged into them, knocking most of them off-balance, and then I quickly tried the doorknob. Locked. Of course.

  I slapped my hands against the door in frustration. It rattled loosely, and it sounded like it was made of wood. That inspired me, and I started pounding in earnest then, hitting it as hard as I could near the knob with my sap gloves. The door jamb started to splinter, and for a moment I thought I might actually make it inside. Before I could completely batter the door down, though, the Zoinks grabbed me, and they held me fast until Chuckles came around the corner.

  He looked mad. Now, Enclave monsters always look mad -- I guess it's supposed to frighten us humans -- but this one looked especially pissed. Maybe he didn't like being called Chuckles or something. All I know is, he walked over to me, raised a huge hand, and swatted me against the wall, Zoinks and all. The Zoinks tumbled to the ground and scooted away from him, which left me standing by myself. Barely. Chuckles raised his other hand and slammed me the other way, right against the door jamb. That really hurt, probably because the doorknob drove itself directly into my hip. Then he did the same thing over again, first to one side and then the other, while I bounced off the walls like a rag doll. And then he did it again.

  My right shoulder seemed to be on fire in at least two different places, and I couldn't move my right arm at all. When Chuckles raised his hand to swat me for the seventh time, I really started to wonder whether I was going to survive this. I mean, there was literally nothing I could do to defend myself at this point.

  Slam! Up against the wall. Slam! Up against the door. Except that this time I didn't stop at the door; somehow I crashed right through it and into some machinery. It took me a moment to realize my good luck. This was the one place in the entire Enclave compound that I wanted to be, and Chuckles had sent me in here.

  I stumbled around, looking for what I thought I had seen here earlier. Two poles, taller than I was, standing close together. A teleport trap. There, over in the back, just like I remembered. My ticket out of here.

  I reached for the poles and struggled to pull them free left-handed. I heard a crash behind me; I turned and saw that Chuckles had smashed apart what remained of the door and was trying to come through. I say trying, because it was clear at first glance that he was simply too big to fit through. Didn't stop him from making the effort, though, which was funny, because if he had stepped back to let the Zoinks through, it would have been all over for me.

  I did my best to ignore him and concentrate on pulling out the poles. My hand kept slipping, and my whole right side was in agony, but I finally managed to wrench them free. It hurt something awful when I did that, though; I looked down and saw that a large splinter from the door -- something about the size of two of my fingers -- had embedded itself in my stomach and was sticking out about six inches. Not sure when that happened, and I didn't want to know how much of the splinter was actually inside me. There wasn't a lot of blood, not yet, but I figured there would be if I pulled it out, so in it stayed. I set the two poles upright a couple of feet apart and started looking for an on switch. And hoping that the darned thing had its own power source.

  Behind me, Chuckles had decided to do a little remodeling. I could hear him yelling in rage and smashing at the wall, probably trying to enlarge the doorway so he could get through. There wasn't anything I could do about it, though, so I shut it out as best I could. I saw a red button with the universal "power" symbol on it and pushed it. Sure enough, there was a hum and a few lights came on, along with a display screen of some sort. The screen had four numbers on it -- coordinates, I assumed. They were all set to zero, which was probably not anywhere I wanted to go. I tried to remember the coordinates for my parents' house. Wizzit had taught them to me once, just because I had asked, but I could remember learning only three numbers, not four. I quickly typed in the ones that I knew on the keypad. Should I leave the fourth number at zero? I had no idea.

  There was a sudden brightening in the gloom of the storeroom. Chuckles had torn away a good portion of the wall next to the doorway; he would be through in a matter of seconds. I decided just to type something random in the fourth position. I didn't really need to get to my house, after all. I just had to get away from here to somewhere safe so that Wizzit could bring me home. I pressed what I thought was the Start button and felt the tingling start up. I took a deep breath and stepped through the trap just as Chuckles burst through the enlarged doorway.

  In retrospect, I should probably have left the fourth number set to zero, because I think it was an elevation indicator. I started falling as soon a
s I stepped through, and below me was something that looked like it might have been Ohio. As seen from ten thousand feet up.

  "Wizzit!" I yelled at my belt buckle. "Wizzit, it's Indigo. Bring me home. Now!" Please! I added mentally. There was only silence. I was having trouble breathing this high up, and it was cold -- bitterly cold. Of course, the air rushing up past me didn't help much. Nor did the fact that I was wearing just shorts, my battle vest, and a sweaty tee-shirt. To make things worse, the splinter had gotten dislodged and blood was pouring out my side. "Wizzit!" I yelled again. I was starting to feel light-headed. Could he even hear me? Would my belt radio work without a functioning force shield?

  The wind spun me around so that I was facing up. That was kind of a blessing, because I really didn't want to watch the ground rushing up toward me. Instead, my eyes focused on the large red shape about ten feet above me. Chuckles. He had followed me through the teleport trap. I remember thinking how funny he looked as he windmilled his arms, just like he was trying to fly. And behind him trailed a stream of Zoinks that had followed him through.

  I don't think I have ever been so cold. The wind seemed to suck every bit of heat from my body within seconds, and I could practically feel the hypothermia rapidly turning my brain into mush. I pressed my hands to my side, trying to stop the flow of blood. After what seemed like an eternity, I heard Wizzit's voice say, "Bringing you home, Indigo," and I started to feel the tingling at the base of my skull that indicated that he was about to teleport me back to HQ.

  Chapter 20