Operation Paperclip - Chapter 4
The Penultimate Installment!
Table of Contents if you need to catch up before reading this chapter.
CHAPTER 4
The mechanical arms stopped just short of cracking ribs as they hauled Armstrong from the floor like a rag doll. He struggled, but the steel grips didn’t budge. He was dropped onto a table without ceremony The surface beneath his still damp skin felt slick and cold. It was covered in restraints already prepped for him.
Goons emerged from the shadows, their blank-eyed, slow, mechanical movements telling Armstrong that they were not in their own driver’s seats. Regardless of their lack of free will, they were strong enough to easily keep him from struggling free as they strapped his wrists, his chest and his ankles to the table with the thick, stiff leather bindings. One checked his pulse with detached curiosity and reported the number to the Doctor across the room.
Dr. Satan approached with a syringe filled with a liquid that pulsed with the same lurid red glow he had seen earlier in the flask. The Element.
His hand was steady. His eyes were clinical. His smile was decidedly not that of a medical professional.
“Your resistance is admirable,” he said, casually, as if discussing the weather or the Red Sox. “But we all serve something in the end. You’re just overdue for reassignment.”
He raised the needle.
*BOOM!*
The elevator door exploded inward, stone and steel flying in all directions. Through the smoke and fire stepped Spy Smasher. His cape billowing, cowl tight, eyes hidden behind tinted goggles he strode through the swirling dust and with a single punch laid out the nearest mindless soldier. Grinding one fist into his other palm, he advanced on the Doctor.
Dr. Satan staggered back. “Impossible,” he breathed. “You’re here,” He looked at the table where Armstrong was redoubling his efforts to struggle free, “You cannot be there,” His voice trailed off in confusion. Rallying, he defiantly shouted, “I checked your bio-metrics!”
Spy Smasher didn’t answer. He simply continued to stalk towards the Doctor, batting the needle from his hand before the mind controlled minions could close in on him. Shoving the Doctor behind them protectively, they swarmed around Spy Smasher, one goon catching a flying knee to the throat for his trouble. Another was thrown across the lab with a shoulder toss so hard he knocked over a console and a filing cabinet.
Armstrong blinked up from the table, stunned, then grinned in recognition. He played out the bluff, trying to act like his government agent secret identity, not the masked hero alter ego. Perhaps they might convince the Doctor his intelligence was wrong and Armstrong wasn’t Spy Smasher after all. It would be best if they could.
“Took you long enough, Spy Smasher!”
The goggled man ripped the restraints loose with brutal efficiency, then passed Alan a pistol.
Across the room, Dr. Satan was frantically throwing levers and slamming buttons on a console. The effort had a result and a new and ominous sound caused the two men to turn towards a new threat, the noises coming from what had seemed a pile of scrap metal in a dark corner. With the inevitability of an avalanche, the grinding, throbbing rhythm grew louder and more menacing. The pile of scrap metal was moving, unfolding into something massive and terrifying.
The robot activated, rising to its full height, a huge cylindrical body teetering on chunky, riveted legs, its multi jointed arms reaching for them even as it found its balance.. Eyes glowing and chest hissing, it lumbered into motion with terrifying force and deceptive speed.
Spy Smasher launched at it, fists flying, cape snapping like a whip. Alan joined him, low and fast, aiming for joints, vents, and hinges. They hit it with everything they could reach. Pipes, chairs, even a typewriter bounced off its metal hide but nothing so much as slowed its deadly progress. It steadily forced them back toward the elevator shaft and neither bullets nor blunt objects were enough to be enough.
Dr. Satan was gone. He had vanished in the chaos, a trapdoor sliding shut behind him with a hiss.
“It’s not going down!” Alan shouted, flinging a bottle of something foul ineffectually at the metal behemoth. The robot swatted a steel table aside like cardboard and the gargantuan arms swiped back at Armstrong so quickly he had to backpedal furiously, nearly losing his balance.
“Then we go up!” the goggled Smasher barked.
They turned and sprinted to the elevator shaft, its door agape where Spy Smasher had blown it in. Armstrong could see now that it must’ve been behind the dummy elevator that he had walked into. The seam in the ceiling in front of the destroyed door showing where the tank he had wound up in had risen back up. They were no longer even trying to slow the mechanical terror.
The elevator car was long gone, the hired help apparently in enough control of their faculties to exercise the better part of valour and beat feet. Only the thick electrical cable tethered to the bottom of the lift remained. They grabbed hold and climbed. Hand over hand. The rubber casing of the cable was slick beneath their grip, but desperation lent strength to their hands. Below, the robot looked up... and began to climb as well. Its clawed hands bit into the concrete walls like climbing picks, legs spread wide in an ungainly chimney climb.
“Of course it climbs,” Spy Smasher muttered. “Why wouldn’t it climb?”
“Save the sarcasm for when we’re not about to die!” wheezed Armstrong, his breath coming in ragged pulls as he dragged himself higher.
They climbed faster. The shaft echoed with their huffing breaths and the slow, steady pursuit of a machine that had no concept of fatigue. If the elevator car had stopped on the main floor, blocking the only way out of the shaft, their efforts would amount to nothing but a slight delay of the inevitable. Neither man knew if there was an exit above and there was no light to see by in any case. They doggedly kept climbing. There was nothing else they could do.
Operation Paperclip concludes with chapter 5, here!
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