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corridors.
    Where he stopped.
    Dumbfounded.
    Emma, Angel, and Bobby almost ran into him.
    “What …,” Bobby whispered.
    “How,” Emma said, “did
they
find us?”
    Twenty feet to Ethan’s right—down corridor G-422—stood a cluster of ten robots.
    They were like the ones he’d run into at the ghost city of New Taos. They balanced on a single wheel and towered ten feet tall. But these were different, because instead of parabolic antennae dishes in their hands, they had jackhammers, plasma cutting torches, or hydraulically powered claws.
    And instead of a helmeted head with a single slit like the New Taos guardians, these guys each had threecameras mounted where a normal face should have been.
    What held all the robots’ attention was a solid steel bulkhead that had dropped and sealed off the rest of corridor G-422.
    Three robots with plasma torches melted a gash in the middle of the bulkhead wall. Lines of molten steel dribbled down. At the other end of this tear, three robots grabbed the wall with claws, while the last few pounded at it with jackhammers.
    Together they were slowly peeling back the steel like it was an orange rind.
    One of the robots paused.
    Its head swiveled toward Ethan … and its jackhammering subsided.
    For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
    Then all the other nine robots simultaneously stopped their work and turned.
    Icy horror flooded through Ethan.
    “Run …,” he whispered to his team. “Run for your lives!”

   7   

THEY’RE ALIVE
    E THAN BOLTED .
    Bobby, Emma, and Angel were right behind him.
    Just one of those robots was strong enough to paste him and the others. Ten robots? He didn’t want to think about it. They’d be dead meat if they got caught.
    But Ethan
had
to think about it. That’s what commanders were supposed to do.
    There was no way he could outrun a nuclear-powered wheeled death machine.
    So Ethan skidded to a halt, turned, and raised his crowbar.
    This made about as much sense as fighting an I.C.E. midair with a glider … but he was going to try
something
before he got flattened.
    As he turned, he saw the robots maneuvering around the intersection corner. His brain vapor locked seeing the tons of metal men push and shove to get ahead of one another in order to crush him.
    They were so big, though, only two could fit side by side in the tunnel. And as one broke ahead of the other, it came at Ethan down the
middle
of the corridor. It blocked the others behind it.
    A lucky break. Kind of.
    At least he’d only be squished by one of them. “Go!” he ordered his team. “I’ll stay and slow it down.”
    “Not by yourself, Ethan,” Bobby said, and stood by him.
    Emma shot him a
don’t be stupid
look and halted as well.
    Angel stopped. Her one eye not covered by her angular haircut looked at Ethan and then the robot. She rushed forward, grabbed Emma’s plasma torch, and shoved her rivet gun into his sister’s hands.
    Emma looked at it, not understanding.
    Angel didn’t explain. She turned and ran, leaving them behind.
    Ethan didn’t have time to think about her crazy actions, because the first robot was almost on him.
    He raised his crowbar again. This was reckless, suicidal, and just as crazy as anything Angel had ever done. That didn’t matter.
    Emma gritted her teeth and opened fire.
    Rivets sparked off the robot’s shell. One metal projectile shattered a camera lens.
    The robot shook its head, momentarily disoriented … but it didn’t slow down.
    It rolled at Ethan fast, so close now, he smelled the grease from its joints.
    Bobby shoved Ethan out of the way—an instant before the robot would’ve flattened him—and then Bobby chucked his chain at the robot’s wheel.
    The robot clipped Bobby on the arm, which spun him around.
    The chain, though, sucked into the wheel well and wrapped around the axle.
    The wheel seized—
    And the rest of the robot kept moving forward.
    Its body whipped around the immobilized wheel.
    It slammed into the