Who: Patrick and Darcy, then open to everyone on Swan Where: outside the O'Reillys' pod
The alarm scared the shit out of Darcy, jerking her up from a dead sleep. She twisted up in the blanket she was under trying to get up, hands over her ears. “Pat! PATRICK!” she shouted over the noise. She scrambled off the couch, wearing clothes she’d stolen from her brother, a long-sleeved henley and a pair of plaid boxers. “Patrick!”
Who in the universe could sleep through that kind of noise? Not Patrick O’Reilly, especially not when he’d been in jail for three years and had slept very lightly. Very. He was doing better here than he’d been, but the clamor plus Darcy’s shrieking got him moving quickly. He hadn’t put any clothes on to sleep, so he quickly yanked on a pair of faded jeans and hauled ass out of the bedroom and downstairs. “What is it?” he said, his tone terse and urgent. Whatever it was was coming from outside, he realized.
In the time it took Patrick to get downstairs, two robots had descended upon the glass dome of the house, banging at it with what appeared to be tools. Darcy was sure she was having a nightmare, she had to be, and had wound up on the far side of the couch, curled in a ball, head covered with her hands. The alarms reminded her of the sirens that day, the day of the car accident, and even now she could feel the ache in her arm from where it had broken. She didn’t even realize she was screaming.
Unamused would be a great word to describe Patrick’s mindset right now. He cast a glare through the glass at the marauding robots, but his sister was screaming. He had to deal with that first. He bit back a sigh of exasperation, not at Darcy but at this entire situation that was occurring at this ungodly hour, and moved to the couch to sit down next to his sister. “Darce? C’mon, c’mon, you’re okay.” He reached out, willing to pet her hair, hold her, however she wanted to be soothed. Or if she didn’t, he was aware he might be hit.
Her screams tapered off at the attention, but the alarm was still going, the robots were still pounding on the walls. “Make it stop, make it stop,” she repeated, hands fisted in her hair. In the back of her mind she knew she was panicking, that they needed to get out of there and do something, but she couldn’t help it. She was stuck where she was.
Patrick didn’t want to take a chance on the robots hurting his sister, so maybe right where she was was the place for her to be. “Tell you what,” he said, one arm around her soothingly. “You stay here, where it’s safe, and I’ll go see what I can do.” After giving her a light squeeze, he got up and put on shoes before sighing and heading outside. Why would robots attack their pod? Glancing around, he noticed that the pods nearby seemed undisturbed.
“Why’d you pick us for this special honor, asshole?” he muttered to the nearest robot before approaching it to see if it had a damn shut-off switch.