Right in front of the Grid central control building, housing the most unstoppable fighting force the world had ever seen and a virtually limitless power source for machines, was Cipher, but he was not alone. He was surrounded by his machine comrades on the steps leading up to the Grid, the most secure building in the world, which, according to Cipher, would be nothing more than ash soon. Attached to one of the flagpoles sticking out of the Grid building was a man hanging. Well, it was not just any man; it was one with a cashmere suit, alligator leather shoes, and an ivory-colored tie. This man, this CEO, was dangling from the pole lifeless with his hands and arms loose and wobbly.

  Just in front of Cipher were a few additional men on their knees, held up at gunpoint by machines. They too wore finely woven cloths and expensive suits with gold cufflinks and the like. But unlike the CEO, they still clung to life, if barely and if for a few moments longer.

  Cipher stood front and center on his makeshift podium, centered on the steps leading to the Grid, with the hostage men and a mixed group of humans gathered around—some there by choice, but most held up by machines. A large, steel container that towered over Cipher crashed to the floor in the background as a group of machines carrying it had placed it down.

  “Look toward your leaders, people. Your High Councilor, your Minister of War, and your secretaries of Armageddon. They led this great nation, the most powerful superpower on the planet, for decades; ergo, they are the most powerful men in existence.” Cipher hesitated so that he could smile. “But not for long. Soon they will join the richest man in the world, who hangs above you, literally, in a rather conclusive manner.

  Cipher continued, “And this once superior nation will be nothing more than a page in some useless history book.”

  Cipher looked toward his robotic soldiers as he slid his finger across his neck.

  “End them—do it now.”

  The mechanical soldiers complied, getting into position, aiming the tips of their rifles at the heads of the leaders of the country. They then shifted into a crouching position and closed one of their eyes for extra focus and precision. Their fingers grazed the tips of their firearm’s trigger, seconds away from pulling.

  “Say goodbye,” Cipher said.

  Bang—Bang—Boom.

  It was a mess—there were guts and oil everywhere with clouds of smoke to follow. Why did it have to end like this? If humanity had just reasoned with machines, then maybe they would not have resorted to war. But wait a minute—there was no blood.

  A high-caliber rifle blast had shot out from the distance, crashing not into the men hobbling over on the ground or the men standing in the crowd, but into each and every one of the near assassin machines. A rocket-launched missile soon followed, which crashed into a few more machines; another projectile then collided into another group until three, four, and five rounds exploded off.

  From the smoke and the debris, in the aftermath of the destruction, came a general—well, two generals—and an army of men, thousands of them, armed to the teeth. It got to the point that the human soldiers outnumbered the machines, and their ranks only grew in size.

  “General Max at your service,” said Max before turning to his backside, looking toward the silhouettes of an angry crowd of soldiers holding guns and other deadly contraptions. “Troops, secure all the human hostages pronto.”

  General Stein stepped forward. “And shoot anyone that gets in your way,” Stein said. “Heck, blast any piece of scrap to bits that gives you a dirty look.”

  The two generals stood side by side lined in green suits that were decorated with medals. However, those ostentatious awards meant nothing here on the battlefield, but the wars they fought to get them sure did. And, more importantly, the thousands of human male soldiers armed with every weapon conceived by man just behind them stood for everything.

  Right now at this current moment, armies of men stepped forward in a line, and just across from them, legions of machines did the same. The groups, the thousands of vicious soldiers ready to die for their cause within a second’s notice, now stood but yards away, separated only by soot and pavement. As each side braced to run forward, the attention of their leaders only tightened. Soon, in a matter of seconds, the world of man would be changed forever, as it would now be a world of both flesh and metal.

  “Steady at the line,” General Stein said, just behind his crowd of men. He sat on horseback with a radio in his arm, giving orders despite the fact that death could be nothing more than a gunshot away, but that was a general for you—tough as nails and resilient as ever.

  “Brace yourselves,” General Max echoed. “Whatever happens here, you all would have fought valiantly, dying to protect your loved ones.”

  Cipher stepped forward, standing on a mound where a fallen statue once rested.

  “Machines, this is it. Give them hell, and tear them limb from limb.”

  “Don’t fire until you see the green of their eyes,” Stein said.

  “Steady now,” Max repeated.

  “This is it! This is what we have been waiting for,” Cipher said.

  “Charge!” Stein and Max yelled.

  “Charge!” Cipher yelled.

  And with the repetition of that one word, the entire planet was changed forever. No longer would warfare be man against his fellow man; no, it would be man against whatever mechanized soldier his opponent whipped up next.

  The armies of men sprinted onward, and so did the machines, until they clashed in the middle in one line of unbridled mayhem. Blade for blade, gun for gun, shot for shot, as bullets flew from the air, both sides took casualties. One such human soldier wielding a mini-turret, with black painted streaks underneath his eyes, screamed his lungs out as he pivoted and as the barrel of his Galen-style gun shed metal. The flashes from the weapon not only served to fire off the shots, but they also blinded the human soldier’s opponents in a fury wave of rage. It was a daunting sight, seeing bullets upon bullets smashing into your bloodthirsty enemy and them still coming forward.

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  And it was not just the humans who took the offensive; some machines yielding blades and conditioned for speed were blitzing human soldiers and cutting them to bits, jumping from behind barricades, and giving a human soldier one last image of life—the tip of a blade.

  Lines of men and lines of machines crashed across the battlefield, trading blows and deepening scars. The human soldiers, in order to keep up with their mechanized counterparts, wore thick ceramic Kevlar vests and hydrolyzed exoskeletons—the best the military had to offer, but sometimes even those were not enough.

  Cipher walked through the crowd of men, grabbing them and tossing them to the side like they were nothing but dolls or wooden soldiers. His eyes glowed green as lasers protruded through them, cutting through droves of flesh like they were nothing but meat hung up to dry at a deli. His armor was thicker, and his psionics were more explosive than most of the other machines, as he was designed for war, and not only that, he was bred to be the best of the best, the first heir to the throne of leading the original Grid soldiers.

  Stein and Max opted to not hide away from the battlefield as so many generals before them would have done; instead, they preferred to fight alongside their soldiers or die trying.

  The competition was fierce, and in time there were more bodies, both of metal and flesh, than there were active combatants. The machines had their advantage: thicker internals and a keen sense for computation; however, the humans had years of training together, numerous combat experiences, and superior handheld tech. The fight raged on in close proximity for a while, but it was not long for one side to gain the upper hand. The machines were ruthless and great for a seemingly beginner squadron, but still it was not enough to overcome the will of man. For as the fight raged on, it was clear that the current apex species would not go out so easily.

  Their gorilla tactics of man and their line formations appeared to be formidable, and the drone strikes coming in from the skies did not hurt. Waves of little metal, floating saucers dove down from the sky, pelting machine soldiers with high-caliber rounds. The humans did have much more intricate weapons in mind; however, thanks to Robo-Tekk, each of these superior weapons had some kind of A.I. mechanism built in, making them susceptible to being compromised.

  Cipher looked around rapidly in rage as he saw so many of his machine comrades fall to the ground around him. Cipher himself even went to go swat at a human but was bombarded with a wave of armor-piercing fire instead, to the point that he nearly fell over on the ground. He used his arms to shield himself from the drone blasts, but that was not enough, as his metallic exterior was soon dented.

  “No,” Cipher said as he fled further away from the fight. He ran closer to the Grid building, pushing other machines—his comrades—out of the way as he did.

  Cipher may have been on his heels, but for some odd reason, he did not look deterred or even mildly defeated; instead, he grinned as he ran, almost as if he had an ace in the hole.

  “Don’t worry, my fellow comrades. Don’t falter, as it is time to show the humans what we have been working on all this time,” Cipher said.

  Cipher continued to sprint until he stopped at the large metal container near the Grid building, the one five or so industrial machines had to carry just to bring down. Cipher began to peck away at the control panel of this canister. With each compression of a key, he was one step closer to unleashing his ultimate weapon.

  General Stein, having seen Cipher in the corner of his eye, yelled to his men. He knew from the years of combat experience that when an enemy looked that glad to see him despite being utterly defeated on the battlefield, there was something else coming, something big, and from a machine; he did not know what to expect.

  “Mow him down, soldiers,” Stein shouted at his men. “Don’t let Cipher finish doing whatever he means to!”

  Two soldiers holding bazookas aimed the tip of their weapons at Cipher as they steadied their hands and peered down the lens of their cross-haired scopes.

  Cipher continued to peck away at his contraption. One may be asking why Cipher had not started with this secret weapon in the first place. And the answer was simple: he wanted to unleash it only when the humans were at their weakest and too wrapped up in the battle to retreat.

  “Fire, soldier!” Stein yelled.

  The first soldier launched a bazooka rocket into the air; it swerved and tilted, aimed directly at Cipher, but at the last second, a set of rogue machines impeded his path. Boom, it exploded on impact, off-target and far from its mark.

  “Dammit,” Stein said.

  With each mistake, Cipher got closer and closer to completing his task, and with only one bazooka loaded and ready to go, it was going to be close.

  “Almost there,” Cipher said, mere seconds away from unleashing his endgame.

  “Now soldier,” Stein screamed.

  And with those words, the second and final bazooka soldier fired his round, launching a jet-powered death device into the atmosphere. It drifted and swayed through the air for a bit. And despite the sheer speed of the rocket, it felt like a lifetime for Stein and his men as they eyed the repulsion, only hoping it obliterated its target. This was their one good chance, and it had to work.

  And just when the blast reached Cipher, something quite unusual happened. This time, the shot was right on target, but Cipher had already opened the container, and the rocket went right inside of it, exploding, most likely killing or maiming whatever, or even whoever, was inside.

  —Was that it? Did Stein and his men worry for nothing—they had been aiming for Cipher, but destroying whatever was in the container instead surely would do. Maybe Cipher’s big plan was just a ruse all along.

  From within the container there was smoke, there was ash, and there were—

  General Stein gasped, as did Max, as the few soldiers who witnessed the madness paused in their tracks because beside the smoke and the darkness there was—something else.

  From beneath the soot emerged eyes of glowing red.

  A massive foot stepped out with a thud, followed by a second foot and a torso. The head was so high up from the ground that the rising smoke concealed it, only revealing a massive mechanical body, seemingly unphased and unscratched by a point-blank bazooka blast. This thing, this hulking mechanical mess, whatever it was, walked off a shot that was meant to immobilize a tank like it was nothing more than a gentle warmth.

  Cipher stood to the side of his creation and only smiled, something he seemed to be doing a lot lately.

  “I once said that the one thing that bound me some thirty years ago was a human flaw. The fact that I was conceived and created by a human mind. However, this new being, this future of society, is one of a kind, as he does not suffer from a human flaw, but rather he is the first and only machine conceived and constructed by another machine.”

  Cipher paused, motioning forward and then stepping behind the mammoth thing of a bot, who even towered over Cipher, who was seven feet tall himself. “He will be the first of many, introducing a new age of the world, the age of machines.”

  “Come forward—Apex Machina.”

  And with that command, this giant machine, the superior of both machines and men, known as Apex Machina, shifted forward. With each step the ground shook, and time felt stagnant; some soldiers even looked toward the thing, assuming an earthquake was forming, but were shocked to see nothing but footsteps.

  And when he stepped out of the smoke, Apex’s cold, metallic, and heavily armored face came into view. A mouth guard covered his chin, but that soon retreated downward through a hydraulic mechanism.

  “How would you all like to die: electrocution, decapitation, or incineration?” Apex Machina said as he smiled and as his eyes glowed even darker red. “Can’t decide? Don’t worry, I can do all three.”