The air is thick, hot, and close. Inside the tiny shed, darkness reigns, broken only by flickering red and yellow glints from the fires outside, seeping through cracks and ill-fitting wooden slats.
The door is locked with a crude padlock.
The door has an armed guard outside.
This is not how it was meant to be.
Annabel, twenty-three, sits slumped against the wall, staring at the jagged outline of the door to her left. No help there. She shifts her gaze to the other occupant of this stifling space—the man slouched against the opposite wall, half-hidden in shadow.
Tom is a reporter for Foreign Affairs, here to cover the same military exercise Annabel was protesting—until Boko Haram fighters scooped them both up and dumped them in this makeshift prison on the outskirts of Damboa, Northern Nigeria.
Boko Haram territory.
What will tomorrow bring?
Tom breaks the silence. “We should be introduced. I’m Tom. From the UK. I work for Foreign Affairs. It’s a US political magazine. You?”
“Annabel. I’m a postgrad at Middlebury, a liberal arts college in Vermont. I’m here to protest the racist deployment of autonomous AI weapons against the people.”
She hugs her cardigan closer. The night air is cooling. The dirt floor is damp. Her back aches from trying to find a comfortable position. A bucket looms in the corner, dimly visible in the flickering gloom.
She shudders. Their toilet.
“What’s going to happen to us?” she whispers.
“Me?” Tom shrugs. “I’m a hostage for ransom, or I get the machete. They’ll start with demands—they always need cash. The US doesn’t like paying, and I’m not a national. Doesn’t look good.”
His expression is one of exaggerated dismay. British bravado. She wonders if he knows she’s noticed.
“As for you,” he continues, “they’ll assume you’ve got a rich daddy with excellent connections. You’re prime ransom material. Then again, the more devout might decide you’d make a fine jihadi bride. If they start giving you lessons in theology, I’d suggest paying attention.”
Annabel shudders again. It had all seemed so thrilling, so righteous. Even the kidnapping had felt like part of the adventure. Now, she’s filthy, hungry, aching, and staring at a bucket.
It’s finally sinking in.
This is real.
A scratching noise to her right. Her mind jumps to rats.
The bug is two centimeters long, having burrowed under the wall. It scans the room, registers the two occupants, notes the absence of guards—then whispers in an American voice.
“You guys can hear me?”
Tom, unfazed, murmurs, “Sure. I think I saw one of you at the briefing.”
The bug ignores him. “In two minutes, we’re burning out a section of the back wall. You’ll be able to crawl out. When you do, we’ll have you away in no time.”
The bug sits motionless. The ground shifts where it emerged. A larger ‘creature’ surfaces—mole-like, the size of a cat, a refugee from the Boston Dynamics Hell Lab.
It scuttles to a corner, opposite the door, faceted eyes locked forward with machine intensity. Tubular arms weave a precise pattern, zeroing in on the entryway.
Tom catches Annabel’s eye. “Jesus, it’s a Lynx. Saw it at the exhibition. Whatever you do, stay clear of that thing—and don’t block its view!”
Annabel’s mind stutters, emotions frozen. Terror gibbers at the edges of her thoughts. Her frail body, surrounded by dark, lethal energies.
No one can predict how this will play out.
The acrid scent of burning wood. The stealthy rasp of a saw. A faint outline of a hatch emerges—a new door. Their way out.
Is that the distant thump-thump of a helicopter?
The guard stirs. Sniffs the air. Then, suspicion. The fumbling of a key. A muttered curse in a liquid tongue. The door creaks open, not in panic, but measured wariness.
The Kalashnikov enters first, then the soldier, eyes adjusting to the gloom.
The two Westerners freeze.
The Lynx calculates.
Then everything erupts.
The soldier inhales sharply, eyes locking onto the mechanical predator crouched on the earthen floor. He swings his rifle up—
A rush of air.
He’s yanked from his feet, flung backward, crumpling without a sound.
The Lynx recoils.
Wood splinters. The hatch swings open.
“Out!” says the bug.
Annabel scrambles on all fours, breath shallow, heart hammering.
Outside, a matte-black steel box looms—an elevator car? A portaloo? The TARDIS?
A soldier in black camo gestures her in, carbine held steady.
“In here, ma’am.”
A lift cable extends skyward.
The three of them are inside. The helicopter a kilometer above cranks its engines. The steel hawser tightens. They rise. At 400 meters and 300 klicks per hour, they stabilize in the airflow. A twenty-minute flight to the US military’s forward operating base.
The soldier stands, braced, silent.
Tom exhales. “Non-lethal fléchette swarm. The Lynx decided that a quiet extraction was best achieved by tranquilizing the guard. The needles penetrated his shirt—no armor. Optimal solution.”
Annabel, sprawled on the floor, barely listens.
Tom, almost to himself: “You know why I approve of AI weapons? They’re better than human soldiers—smarter, more informed, better judgment, less emotion... less panic.”
Annabel yawns, stretches against the steel walls.
“Take tonight,” Tom muses. “These Boko Haram boys? The West demonizes them, but that’s Big Oil talking. The North’s always had a raw deal. Their egalitarian Islam—it’s primitive, sure, but it gives them purpose, an ethos…
“I’m glad that kid wasn’t killed. And obviously, I’m glad to be out of there.”
Annabel isn’t listening.
She’s thinking about civilization. About hot showers. About clean sheets.
What an adventure.
Does anyone think this will stop her anti-AI campaign?
Not a chance.
She has renewed vigour.
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