it into parts and completed its rapidly growing garbage skeleton.
“Wrong switch! Wrong switch!” Soul shouted and rushed towards the stairs, but fell down midway, tripping over a piece of iron pipe lying on the floor.
“Guys, run!” Omlion shouted, but his voice was drowned by the noise of the mechanism.
An arm covered in ceramic crumbs landed right in front of the stairs and blocked their escape route.
“What is this thing?!” Arewa shouted in fear as she was helping Soul get up.
“No idea, but it’s looking right at us!” Omlion replied in a slightly trembling voice. He turned his back to the children, intending to bear the brunt. As Soul got up, he pushed the pipe, and it rolled towards Omlion’s feet. The boy picked it up quickly and stood up, ready to bring the fight to the machine.
The huge robot clumsily tried to grab Omlion, but he dodged and responded with a quick blow to the ceramic arm, crashing it into tiny pieces. As if surprised, the robot stepped back, growing a new arm, this time from a rusty bicycle.
“It won’t work that way. It is recovering!” Soul realized. “Hit the photocells, they are usually very fragile!”
“Hit what?”
“The eyes! I mean, the camera!”
“Duck!” Arewa shouted, spinning some combat bolas[2] in her hands.
She threw it with force at the robot and hit the glowing triangle. The protective glass cracked, making the mechanism stagger and lose its balance for a split second.
“This is our chance, let’s run!” Soul shouted and rushed to the stairs again. Omlion was about to follow him when he spotted the bicycle arm stretching towards Arewa.
“Watch out!” he only managed to exclaim. But the robot already gripped the girl with its rusty fingers and pulled her towards itself.
Arewa got numb with fear when the monster brought her to the broken glass. The large red eye moved back and forth, studying the prey.
“Omlion, boys… help…” Arewa squeaked.
“Soul, do something, it’s a machine!” Omlion shouted to the programmer.
He froze in his tracks, looking at the robot in horror. Swallowing the lump of fear that rose in his throat, Soul nodded and rushed back to the monitor.
“Let her go, you piece of iron!” Omlion rushed forward fearlessly.
As if expecting the attack, the machine rotated, creaking and clanging, and pressed him against the wall with its free arm in a flash of an eye. The sharp blow to the wall knocked the wind out of Omlion, his eyes darkened, and the pipe fell out of his hands. Seeing this, Arewa furiously pounded her fists on the robotic arm holding her in a death grip.
“I’ve got it, guys! Hold on!” Soul shouted, frantically running his fingers across the keyboard of the old computer. Lines of symbols were reflected in his glasses, and perspiration appeared on his forehead. “I think I’ve found a vulnerability in its code! I will need a few minutes, distract it!”
The first thing Omlion saw once he got back to his senses was Soul hitting the system unit with a sneaker with all his might. “Well, this Soul is no slouch,” Omlion thought. “If only I could give him some time… Can I break out? This thing is too strong, I can’t even move. Look at Arewa – she is hitting it with her hands, biting it, and is not giving up. Why can’t I? Come on, Omlion, you’ve just found new friends, it would be stupid to screw up on the first day. And… And I never made that stupid smoothie…”
Omlion evened out his breath and concentrated, trying to remember everything Ameed taught him. Calm came to his head like a stream of fresh air, his heart began to beat slower, and his entire body seemed to be filled with electricity trying to break out. “Concentrate…” Omlion recalled Ameed’s words; they sounded clearly and distinctly in his head as if he was at another training session. “First, concentrate well before the strike and only then hit.” Having accumulated as much energy as he could hold, Omlion grit his teeth and released it.
The basement of the coffee shop was shaken by the shock wave, and plaster started falling from the walls. There was a roar all around – heaps of random items that had been stored in the basement for long years got scattered around and above. Somewhere in the corner, wooden shelves cracked and crumbled, glass shards rattled iridescently, metal parts started to make a screeching sound. There was a cloud of dust. Bewildered, the robot looked at the place where its arm used to be. Not finding the limb in the right place, it switched on the alarm lights and buzzed, trying to locate the invisible enemy. Red flashes ran around the basement, as if in a crazy laser show, and stopped at a dark silhouette next to the wall. A large white lion stood there, surrounded by fragments of glass and ceramics. Lit by the scarlet alarm lights, it looked truly minacious. The beast roared, bared its flawless fangs, and crouched to the ground, preparing to jump.
If the robot were not a robot, it would have gotten scared. However, there was no such function in its program. Having estimated the changed amount of the surrounding space, it took a defensive position and unclenched its hand holding Arewa. Once free, the girl, without thinking twice, picked up her bolas and rushed to Soul.
The lion’s silhouette, illuminated by the lights, rushed towards the enemy and hit the core of the robot with its paw. The claws pierced the metal plate, leaving four deep grooves on it.
“Oh my god, Soul, did you see that? That’s… That’s impossible!” Arewa shouted as she ran up to the programmer.
The walls of the basement shook from the fight, and the ceiling began to slowly crumble, threatening to bury everyone under the rubble. The lion kept on shredding the robot, which, in turn, leaned on it with all its weight in an attempt to immobilize the angry animal.
“Stop, you’re distracting me!” Soul said, out of breath. “Password guessing is over, I’m getting the root rights. The only step left is to enter the command.”
With trembling fingers, the boy typed into the console:
root: /stop executable process GolemActivation password: LionBoy596.
A message appeared on the screen: “Are you sure у/n?”
Once Soul removed his fingers from the keyboard, the robot’s red eye switched off; it stood still for a second, and then it fell down. Its arms broke into dozens of pieces, burying the white lion.
Soul and Arewa looked at each other, breathing fast, and exclaimed at the same time, “The lion!” “Omlion!”
CHAPTER 2. FRIENDSHIP FOR DUMMIES
Please come in, it doesn’t bite. Usually. With rare exceptions… Although, not that rare. Well, you’d better stay away!
Rasens’s place was fabulous. Arewa’s father knew a lot about elegant interiors and was not overly modest. Unreasonably expensive furnishings seemed to shout at Soul from each corner.
Rasens
Bolas is a throwing hunting weapon that consists of a ribbon or rope with leather-wrapped round stone balls at its ends.
