Cyrus Noble Chapter 3

When I got back, what I heard wasn't at all what I expected. Laughter. I ran to the room I left them at. I opened the door and saw a machine, a robot, doing what I think is a dance, and the younger kids were laughing. The older ones were watching them thoroughly and jumped when I came in. I said, "What is this?" The machine turned to me. "I am Project: A-23, Codenamed: Arsenal. Built for service and defensive protocols. How may I be of service?" I glared at it. "By shutting down." The older, blond girl stepped in front of me. "Wait. He's just like us. He's a prototype, just like us. He was in here with us when you put us in here. He found some painkiller pills that helped the new guy. He's good." I looked back and forth between the robot and girl. I sighed. I tossed the bag of (some what) food on the floor. The kids fell on it and start snacking away. I said, "Robot." It turned to me and corrected me, "Arsenal." "Arsenal. I want you to clean out the Dam of dead bodies and/or scientists. When you are sure that its cleaned out, report back here for further orders." Then I thought of how small this room was. "Before you do that though, find a lounge, or something, and clean that out first. Then come back here to escort the experiments to that lounge." He bowed slightly. "Of course.......I do apologize, what is your name?" I thought about it. Did I have a name? Then I remembered. "Cyrus. My name is Cyrus." I walked off and the older girl called after me. "Hey! Where are you going?" I called back. "You guys want some clothes other than those gowns? There's a town somewhere near here, I'll be right back." Anyway, I did find a town less than a mile away from the cabin. It was night when I got there, so most of the shops were closed. I got a cart to wheel around town. I stole some clothes and food. I found a pair of hiking boots that looked pretty promising, so I took them. I had to work quickly, but I was trained for this kind of stuff. And more. I was able to use a natural mountain trail to cut through the woods and back into the dam. I found the robot digging a trench a little ways away from the Dam. It waved when it saw me. Looks like I got everything for everybody here. Soon, the guys started picking there own names. Jazz got hers when she picked up a forgotten i-touch and fell in love with the music it had on there. Viktor got his when he heard the name on some movie, and he ended up misspelling it. Megan found a name tag on the ground, after studying it for a long while, she found out how to say the name on it and she kept it. We called Mag Magnet when we saw what he could do. He didn't mind, in fact, he seemed to like his name. Sara just picked a name out of the air. She saw the name on a stuffed animal once, and she liked it. I still don't know how my name came to be, but its the only thing I remember. A couple months later, when everyone was claiming guest rooms, I had to go and see Sara. She saw something on TV earlier that day about a dad telling his kid a bedtime story, and now she wanted me to do it for some reason. I was making something stupid about a noble knight and a goblin saving a princess, when she interrupted with a question. "What does noble mean?" She asked tiredly. I said, "Um, oh gee, I don't know. Something good people have, I guess. Like, noble means good hearted, I guess?" She nodded in her bed, as if that made perfect sense. "You're noble, Cyrus. You're Cyrus Noble." She then drifted off to sleep, and ever sense, the name Cyrus Noble somehow stuck to me. Jazz hacked into a computer. "I just saw what they typed in on the keyboard one time." She said, "I don't know what it said, but I know what it was. We can get on the Internet, and onto some files now." The Internet was our main source of education. We all could (generally) read, kind-of write, and pretty much speak. We had a training course that was made for the maneuverability of the experiment. We used it to go over battle simulations. It went pretty well. I just thought that if we were ever attacked, we would be able to surprise them by being prepared. The only reason we stayed here was because of its convenient location. A town nearby, a fresh water lake, plus, there was already a limited number of food already. For a year and a half, we went on, undisturbed. But one day, everything changed.