The tour train exited the Proving Ground dome after skirting the inner wall. It was darker outside now, dusk encroaching upon the evening. The train descended down a ramp to the ground, metal guide tracks transitioning to asphalt. They passed the edge of a parking lot filled with rows upon rows of standing drones that had graduated from the Proving Ground and waiting to be shipped off for further testing. A pall of silence fell over the kids as they stared uneasily at the ranks of motionless Cereborgs as if fearing an imminent Robot Revolution.

"Um... Mr. Fuller, sir?" Sean craned his neck, catching the man's eye, "If you've figured out how to triple fuel cell power density, why aren't we seeing that technology in cars?" It would revolutionize transportation.

"What makes you think we've managed to do that?" Richard raised an eyebrow, "And call me Richard, by the way."

"Well," Sean paused, going over the math again in his head, "I thought state-of-art was only 1 kilowatt per liter. A 1500 kilowatt stack would be a cube over a meter wide. That's not even considering hydrogen storage. There wouldn't be much room for anything else."

"Good catch," Richard nodded, his eyes smiling, "You seem like a smart kid. Can you think why the market isn't flooded with our cells?"

Sean thought for a minute, "They cost a lot, maybe?"

"Indeed," Richard clapped his hands once, "Cost is the biggest reason why things do or do not happen. Each 500 kilowatt unit alone costs thirty times more than a sedan. No way that's going on the market anytime soon. But its chump change for Uncle Sam. The Cereborg costs the Army as much as a F-35 fighter jet. And you know what? That's good value for what these bad boys can do."

"A most astute observation, Richard," Reg nodded vigorously.

Sean didn't bother rolling his eyes at Reg as the cart train wound its way between parallel yellow guide markers painted on the tarmac. New Haven's skyline glittered in the distance, lit bright orange by the setting sun.

"... Up ahead is the Battle Damage Analysis Lab a.k.a the Pit," the automated voice whispered again. The convoy entered a low wide building and came to a stop in a room that seemed positively cramped compared to the cavernous spaces they had passed through.

"Let's take a break, kids," Richard was the first to shrug off his seat belt and step out, "Feel free to look around."

Sean stepped out on the metal floor textured in anti-slip diamond weave and looked around with interest. The room wasn't unlike a sophisticated garage. Over two dozen Cereborg drones displaying varied degrees of wear and tear cluttered the space. Engineers in grey lab coats poured over monitors suspended from the ceiling on retractable arms, their keyboards clacking intermittently. Multicolored wiring harnesses snaked all over the floor from each drone to merge into a central server hub. The kids clustered in groups chattering excitedly around the Cereborgs. Some drones were missing their tail, some missing a limb, but every drone was pockmarked with dents covering every square inch much like dimples on a golf ball. Interspersed with the dents were larger punctures that dotted the drones like a collander. Sean whistled at the battle scars.

Richard walked briskly up to a woman in a business suit who was chatting with one of the engineers.

"Richard," the woman exclaimed with a strained smile, "Glad you could make it."

"Masha, what's the update?" Richard paused, turning back to the tour group and raising his voice, "Where are my manners... kids, if I could have your attention please. Allow me to introduce Dr. Masha Smirnov, Director of Research."

Masha was a middle aged woman with close-cropped blond hair and cold blue eyes behind rimless glasses. Her expression was sharp but haggard.

"Should we step into a conference room, perhaps?" Masha's eyes flickered past Richard.

"Don't worry, we can trust these kids not to spill any beans," Richard waved dismissively, "I want them to see how we actually work here. Off the script."

Flattery through show of trust, thought Sean cynically, not very subtle.

"Just received an update from Camp Sarajevo," Masha sighed, "It's not good. They fielded the Mod-A batch as soon as they received them two weeks ago. They keep losing 40 percent of the units, give or take."

"40 percent?" Richard's face tightened, "I thought it was 35."

"It's slowly getting worse," Masha replied grimly, "My designers are rushing to release Mod-B as fast as they can. We can retro-fit and ship once we fab the pieces. Thicker armor over the fuel cells, tanks and processors.. more composite layers to absorb energy... the works."

She pointed to the near wall that was all glass, beyond which was an open workspace where dozens of designers toiled behind CAD stations.

"Dammit," Richard scowled, his eyes losing their humor, "The Army can't afford to hemorrhage that many units... we can't afford it. If this continues they'll wash their hands off the Cereborgs and switch back to aerial drones and using grunts as cannon fodder. We all lose."

"I know," nodded Masha, "Mod-B should work... it better work. We can't keep adding armor without losing performance."

"Is the enemy using bigger guns, or something?" Sean asked with interest.

"Not really," Masha shook her head, "GORGON has always used anti-tank automatic rifles against our drones... that's the holes you see all over. We build multiple redundancy into our power systems and hydraulics. Three fuel cells. Multiple distributed H2 tanks. And three duplicate brain processors... though we don't publicize that. We hardly ever lost any drones. Until a month ago, when we started losing 30 percent of drones. The Army has been shipping back the most badly damaged units that make it back to base... that's what you see here... to see if we can stop the losses."

Sean looked around at the motionless Cereborgs. The gunmetal killers stared back with big red eye lenses that seemed to gleam with alien calculation... with malevolent intelligence. Something tickled Sean's memory, some tidbit from one of his books that rendered this scene oddly familiar, but he couldn't put his finger on it. The Ni-Cr-Mo steel bandsaw teeth were dented but looked functional. Atleast there was no dried blood on them, Sean suppressed a shudder. Someone must have hosed them down. One of the sophomore girls gave a little shriek as a claw twitched on one of the Cereborgs.

"Don't worry," laughed a grey-coated engineer, "these drones are all on diagnostic mode... they won't hurt you, I promise."

"Hey," piped up Kaitlyn suddenly, "you said these drones are all shipped back from the warzone or whatever, right? What if the enemy has smuggled a bomb into one of these after capturing a drone and then letting it go?"

The highschoolers all stared at Kaitlyn and then began to edge away from the drones.

"Each drone is X-rayed and goes through several layers of scans," Masha said earnestly, "both at base camp and here on site."

"What about the hydrogen tanks?" Reg asked, "They're extremely flammable, right? Could GORGON attach a detonator?"

Sean nodded surprised. That was an insightful comment.

"One of the first things we check," Masha smiled grimly, "I assure you there isn't a single component on any of these drones that we didn't put in."

"Can they be hacked?" ventured another girl.

"Good question," Masha smiled, more warmly this time, "it would take the computing resources of a nation state, but GORGON could do it. But it won't do them any good. If any one of the brains gets compromised, the other two will reformat the affected brain and then wipe themselves. Without our proprietary AI the Cereborg is just deadweight."

Reg was walking around examining all the damaged units, "Funny that most of the eye pieces are undamaged though. A few are cracked, but they are in pretty good condition considering the damage the units have taken."

"Would take a direct hit from an anti-tank round to damage those optics," one of the engineers replied, "Those lenses are pretty tough."

""Rom... I mean Reg's right," Sean stared at the pristinely glowering eye pieces, "they are all in pretty good condition... shit. Reg's freaking right. That's uncanny considering that the rest of the skull is riddled with holes."

The room fell silent at Sean's outburst. Reg looked surprised at Sean's ringing endorsement.

"I don't see what that's got..." began another engineer.

"Tell me," interrupted Sean, "what would happed if both those eye pieces got taken out?"

"The drones would be operating blind," Masha replied, "using onboard radar and sonar."

"And if the enemy jammed those?" persisted Sean.

"The drones would be unable to navigate," Masha confirmed, "the Cereborg is programmed to shutdown and brick its processors if that happens in enemy territory."

"Bingo," exclaimed Sean, "there's your culprit."

"But there's hardly any damage to the optics," protested an engineer, "as you can see."

"Abraham Wald would disagree," whispered Sean and started to laugh, slowly at first then gathering in hysteria. The others stared at him as if he had lost his mind.

"Who the heck is Abraham Wald?" frowned Richard.

"He ran the Statistical Research Group for the US military," explained Sean, "back during World War Two. The military asked him to figure out where to add armor to their aircraft returning from bombing missions in Europe. They were losing too many planes, you see. So they showed Wald samples of their damaged planes. They where all riddled with bullet holes all over the wings and fuselage. Except their engines. Their engines were untouched. Do you see the parallel?"

"Ah," Masha got it immediately, to her credit, "their samples were biased."

"That's right," Sean grinned at her, "all the samples they had were of planes that made it back. And Wald knew right away that the engines needed armor ASAP."

"I don't..." began Richard.

"Only the planes that didn't suffer engine damage made it back safely," Masha explained to her boss, "the ones that suffered engine damage never made it back."

"Much like the optics on these Cereborgs," Sean nodded, "that's what you need to armor. Not the fuel cells or tanks, since they obviously lasted long enough to make it back to base camp."

There was complete silence in the room. Judith stared at Sean with the same shocked expression that was mirrored on her father.

"Do we have a statistician looking at this problem?" Richard asked softly, turning to Masha.

"Not yet," Masha looked slightly embarassed.

"Do it," Richard growled, "Now."

"On it," Masha nodded pulling out her phone.

"If this pans out," Richard looked Sean in the eye, "I'll owe you one... this country will owe you one."

Not to mention your stock price, thought Sean and shrugged, ""I just read it in a book. It was Reg who caught it."

"Masha," one of the engineers spoke up, his tone urgent, "one of the drones has switched to combat mode."

"What," Masha sounded startled, "how..."

"A target criteria has been activated," the engineer replied staring at his monitor, "...threshold flag has flipped... it's Unit # CC17"

"Shut it down," ordered Masha, "Now."

"What's going on?" demanded Richard.

"Shutdown command ignored," the engineer sounded panicked, his hand's flying rapidly over the keyboard, "Core dump command ignored."

Sean turned to a metallic creak behind him. One of the Cereborgs was moving forward, its diagnostic harnesses going taught and ripping from their sockets with popping noises. The kids scattered slowly backing away, Sean among them. The monstrous head was looking directly at Sean, turning to track him as he moved. The grinning jaws opened wide as the bandsaw teeth whined spooling up. Sean froze, staring at the vast hypnotic red eyes that were unblemished despite the armor penetrating holes that dotted its cranium. It lunged forward.

"Sean," yelled Judith, "Run"

Sean ran. The gunmetal nightmare surged after him.

END OF CHAPTER