Out of the three, Coil was the only one to pay his tab. They left the charging hole as a group, Battery and Coil following Fuse’s lead with bated curiosity. Street 99 had subpar nightlife. Bowling alleys, pawn shops, abandoned arcades and oil depots filled the streets, all built from dusty grey bricks originally mined in the caves below the city. Newer buildings like in Streets 400 to 600 were all constructed from newer, synthetic materials, but the old techniques could still be found in the outer Streets like 99. Only one or two other robots could be seen walking 99 at this hour. At one point, someone rode their bike down the desolate road, clearly on their way to somewhere far shinier. Neither Battery nor Coil could think of any conversation topics to bring up, so the three remained silent. Fuse had told them she would prove the legitimacy of her out-of-the-box excursion once they arrived at the Proving Box. Despite the foreboding name, Battery was quietly confidant it was just going to be an initiation into a super-secret club of Psychobox-escapers. Coil was quietly confident that Fuse’s claim was just a ruse and that the pair would be stripped down for parts after arriving at the Proving Box. Neither shared their quiet confidences with the other.

Eventually, Fuse stopped in front of a gated alley between two Buckbucks oil depots. Why the Buckbucks Corporation felt it necessary to build their stores so close together remained an enigma. Fuse produced a blocky key from her plastic poncho and unlocked the gate, gesturing for the pair to follow.

‘We gonna start talking now?’ asked Battery.

Fuse held a finger to her lips and shook her head, then continued into the darkened alley. Battery shrugged and followed. Coil silently planned his escape route. The alley stank of rust and spilt gasoline. Pieces of glass and plastic crunched underfoot. Overturned dumpsters spilt out their decaying waste. What appeared to be someone’s detached arm hung from a hook. They soon reached the end of the alley, only to find themselves at another door. Rather than the flimsy metal bars of the gate at the start of the alley, this door was solid and sturdy. A slit for someone to peek through was built into its centre. Fuse rapped her reinforced knuckles on the door. Two dull purple lights appeared in the slit. Someone a little hyped up on psychic energy, it seemed.

‘Password?’ the eyes whispered.

‘Password,’ Fuse replied at the same, barely audible level.

The door creaked open, revealing an incredibly short robot on the other side. He had needed to stand on a box to even reach the eye-slit in the door. Curiously, he only had one arm. The short robot eyed Battery and Coil with suspicion, but then stepped aside, allowing the three to enter the room beyond (which was somehow even darker than the alley).

After Battery, Coil and Fuse had entered the room, the short robot carefully shut the door behind them, engulfing the trio in darkness. Slowly, a dim purple light bloomed overhead. Revealed in the soft glow was a huge robot at the other end of the room, collapsed under the weight of his plated skin. Bent and broken piping, misplaced gears and malfunctioning hydraulics stuck out from his still body like clumps of hair. Great bundles of cables connected him to floor, walls and ceiling. They throbbed with energy. The rest of the room was barren and dusty. Stone brick and grey curtains. Lumpy, squared pillars. The short robot leaned against one of them, still piercing Battery and Coil with his cold stare. Near the huge robot was a locked door like the one the trio had entered through.

‘Nice décor,’ Battery said.

The huge robot suddenly burst into a high-pitched whine, the crushed joints of his body struggling to thrash about. Fuse held up a finger to her lips, her eyes wide in anger. Battery shrugged. His heavy shoulders clinked in their joints. Fuse turned to the huge robot and began to move her hands in some rapid, violent form of sign language. The huge robot’s whining calmed and he rested back into stillness.

‘More participants, Fuse?’ he croaked. His voice was tinny and flat.

‘Oh, so he can talk?’ said Battery.

The huge robot burst into another shrill screech. Coil cringed.

‘Shut up!’ Fuse whispered to Battery as she signed to the robot again.

Battery grinned and strutted straight up to the animate mound of metal. ‘So you don’t like noise, huh?’

‘Diode, help,’ Fuse said to the small robot, panic seeping into her voice.

‘Hey!’ Battery shouted at the big guy. ‘What’s outside the box?’

The giant robot exploded into a shrieking, convulsing mess of metal.

‘Diode!’ pleaded Fuse as she cracked open a vial of psychic oil.

‘HEY!’ roared Battery, ‘I’M TALKING TO YOU! HOW DO WE GET OUT?’

Something picked him up from behind, throwing him into the air. He twisted around to see Fuse brimming with purple light, gripping him with unfiltered telekinesis. Diode leapt into the air. With a psychically enhanced swing of his single arm, he punched the suspended Battery, creating a mighty clang that only seemed to upset the giant robot more. Fuse dropped Battery’s dented, unconscious body and turned to Coil.

‘Him too,’ said Diode as the big robot screeched in the background.

Coil was knocked out cold in less than four seconds.