Mallory was alone when she received the call to action. There was no one around to see her shout at the ceiling, for lack of anything else to shout at, “DAMN IT.”

BRAWN had been a frustration to her. She had grown to like him, or at least the personality he current inhabited. Whereas a person might be reasoned with, his choice to chase the team originally had been no choice at all, rather a directive Dragaunus had programmed into him. That was no fault of BRAWN’s, and she did not hold it against him. A command from an officer could override a previous command, but a person would be able to evaluate and compare their morality. BRAWN seemed to have capacity to learn. She had hoped he would be able to gain the ability to question protocols, with time.

She had enough time to quick change, and begin to make her way to the lab, where the overtalkative head was being stored, when she was intercepted by the Pond’s own security bots.

They were ugly things, spheroid with gangly limbs rather than bipedal, and no one had bothered to mask their intentions with a chipper attitude.

These bots were not as dangerous as their previous incarnations. After the incursion where Dragaunus and his goons had infiltrated the Pond and set the system after the ducks, there was a general agreement that the bots needed to be a deterrent rather than a lethal force. They needed to be able to turn someone back with minimal harm, especially in the odd case the person they were pursuing was an unlucky human than had somehow managed to wander their way in. The bots had been reequipped with energy weapons of middling intensity, something that would not maim, but would leave an unpleasant burn.

That was the theory, anyway. Mallory had not been expecting the bots. She found herself caught in the shoulder by a laser, and one with exceptionally good aim managed to singe her hair. She was certain they were not supposed to make head shots–too likely that it would catch someone in the eye. She was able to draw her weapon with the other hand and get off a few rounds without jostling the shoulder too much, and when more bots joined the first wave, she began a tactical retreat. It didn’t matter if they were not intended to be deadly. With the frequency of fire and two bots seemingly replacing every one she brought down, it was going to be unpleasant if she stayed.

She was herded by their pursuit, away from the lab, though she was not sure where they were pushing her instead. She was able to disable several more. She had explosive rounds, if it came to that. She passed the point in her mental tally where she was sure she had reached the limit of how many bots were supposed to exist in the whole facility, and yet there were more still coming, from somewhere, to rejoin their friends.

Mallory gave up on picking them off, and turned to sprint through the halls, in the hopes that a little bit of distance would show a new plan of attack.

She twisted down angles and corridors that were thankfully empty, though she was aware there was no way she was not being watched the entire time. Even if she dropped her communicator to remove its tracker, there were camera feeds at every juncture to track movement in the bowels of the base. If it was true they had lost control of Drake One, then BRAWN would be able to see her, unless she wanted to waste shots and time on every single camera as she went. She ran until her legs began to threaten to come out from under her. She slowed slightly and was pleased to find it did not appear that the bots had suddenly gained any strange feats of speed. She could outrun them, at least for a bit. Good. The wound on her shoulder throbbed with every swing of her arm.

She nearly collided with Duke and Grin as she turned a corner. She stopped short, stumbling, and found that she could not articulate why she was there over her heavy breath.

They needed no explanation, as they appeared to be in the same situation as she. Her escape route was now filled with even more bots, coming from the other direction. They were not penned in, not in the maze of the Pond’s design, but if there were exponentially more bots than she could count, and somehow that number was replenishing and growing, it would be a short matter of time before they were simply overrun.

“I take it that direction isn’t goin’ to be very helpful,” Duke observed, glancing at her over the drawn saber. It was a silly thing, in this situation, but perhaps some of the bots had gotten into close enough quarters with the two drakes to warrant it. She shook her head, still breathing hard. Grin appeared to have given up on his usual tactic of punching through everything and landed on a canon of his own.

“I don’t suppose you have any bright ideas?” Duke asked.

“I don’t... think we can…get to the lab,” she said.

“How are we goin’ to shut it down if we can’t even make it there?” Duke said, frustrated.

“Drake One,” Mallory suggested. “Security system. Shut it down.”

“Do you think that’s possible?” Duke said, doubtfully. “Can it be shut down?”

“Done it before.”

“Sure, when it was just a bunch of lizards pressin’ buttons.”

“Damn thing is just parts,” she said, finally feeling the strength to stand. “If I have to...rip out wires with my bare hands...eventually I’ll find something important enough…it fries.”

“Oh, you’re excited about that aren’t you?” Duke smirked.

“Would you believe that I actually just don’t want to be shot pieces?”

Duke looked to Grin, who worked quietly and methodically through the line of oncoming bots as they spoke with his canon. Grin only shrugged. “Tanya will be displeased.”

“Then next time she can not hand control of it over to a homicidal robot,” Mallory said. “If we can break the security system, it could give her a chance to get to the lab and disable BRAWN personally.”

Duke nodded, squaring himself back up towards the oncoming horde. “Alright, I don’t have anythin’ better.”

“Does anyone know where the other three are?” Mallory said, looking back the way she had come. It appeared that her own pursuers had finally caught up with them, and they were going to be sandwiched between the two oncoming waves. “Nosedive and the rookies.”

“Nosedive is suppos’ to be on shift on Drake One, I’m not sure where the other two got to.”

Mallory grumbled. “Well, hopefully between the three of them they have some common sense.”

“We’re going to have a hard time pushin’ forward and guardin’ our back with three little blasters and none of Wildwing’s shielding,” Duke mused.

“Oh, I’ve got good news about that,” Mallory said. She fired an explosive puck above the wave pursuing her, embedding it in the ceiling. It chirped softly to itself, before detonating, and bringing a mass of steel, support, and cable down on top of the horde, stopping its advance, and cutting off the hallway completely.

“Well, we’re all goin’ to get blamed for that,” Duke sighed, turning back to the task at hand.