Attack of the Giant Robot Chickens Read Free Page B

getting. Have fun.” Then he slid the door shut behind him and was gone.
    The Ambassador looked at me levelly for a moment, then sighed. She sat back down and gestured that I should as well, so I perched on the bed across from her.
    “So what’s the job?” I asked.
    She shrugged, then said, “I think I might have a way to take down the chickens.”
    I stared at her for a second then swallowed.
    “You’re joking.”
    “I believe joking’s your thing,” she replied.
    “All right, I’ll bite. How?”
    She looked annoyed for a moment. “I don’t know.”
    I smirked. “OK, so you have a way to take down the chickens, but you don’t know what it is?”
    She took a deep breath and seemed to count to ten in her head. “I’ve run across this guy who might know. He’s been living in Aberdeen University and when I last talked to him he said that he was close to discovering something.”
    I thought about it for a second. It might be possible. And if the guy was telling the truth then this could be huge. “Where do I come in?”
    For the first time she looked angry, not just annoyed. “This guy’s a bit of a jerk. Even worse than you. He won’t tell me what it is because he reckons I don’t belong to any group. He wants a representative of one of the bigger groups in the city to guarantee his demands will be met.”
    “His demands?”
    “Yeah. He wants food and clothing. And a few other things I think.”
    I nodded. There were tonnes of clothes and enough food that we didn’t have to worry for a while. Luckily there weren’t that many of us.
    “Well that shouldn’t be too hard. Should I load up some stuff now?”
    “He wants it on a regular basis.”
    That was more of a problem. A one-off gift of food? Notreally an issue. Giving it to him weekly, or even monthly, would be much harder. And that wasn’t counting having to carry it across the city to him if he was set on staying at the university. That would be incredibly dangerous.
    “Does Noah know about this?”
    She stood up, towering over me. “Of course he knows. And he agrees with me. If the information turns out to be good then he’s willing to take the risk.”
    “Of course he is.” I got up as well. Having the Ambassador looming over me was unsettling. “So when do we set off?”
    She gestured towards the door. “Right now, of course. Get your stuff. We’re leaving.”
    All that I had left in the world was a backpack that I kept stowed under my bed. I can’t say that anything in it was exactly mine. It was filled with stuff I’d nicked from the various shops around, especially the nearby camping shop. It had been put together in case I ever got chucked out of the gang or they came under attack and I had to run. This seemed pretty close to getting chucked out, so I heaved it up on to my back and joined the Ambassador on the platform.
    She saw me and raised an eyebrow. I could see that she’d got a similar bag on her back.
    “Great minds,” I said to her. She huffed, obviously insulted, and walked away without saying anything.
    “So are we bringing this guy any food or anything?” I asked, hurrying to catch up with her. I couldn’t see any extra supplies on her, though she might have had some in her backpack. She shook her head.
    “No, just seeing you will be enough.”
    “Yeah, right. When are things ever this easy? How will he know that you didn’t just grab some random kid?”
    The slight hesitation before she took her next step told me that she hadn’t thought of that, but she quickly recovered. “That would be a problem no matter who I brought. This guy is smart, though. He’ll see sense.”
    She didn’t say anything else, just led the way over the turnstiles and out to the front of the train station, where there was a huge empty foyer. The place gave me the creeps, especially when I was the only one there. Maybe it was the size, and feeling so alone where there should have been so many people. Maybe it was memories of the