Book Five, Chapter 42: Defensive Protocols
"Where do we need to go?" Andrew asked.
"That stairway there," Bobby said. "That should lead us to the Upper Platform. That’ll lead us to the helm. Somewhere along there should be the manual override that will let us reset the AI."
The puzzles that had been there had disappeared. This was wholly a fighting movie now.
"That’s real specific," Michael said.
"I’ve never even been up to the helm. They never even let me in the ship after it had taken to the sky. Worried I might contaminate it."
That got a chuckle.
As they took a few steps forward toward the upper platform—one staircase and a jog to salvation—a giant creature emerged from the broken door to Bobby’s lab.
It wasn’t a bedbug—well, not all of it.
It was a bull, but instead of a head and horns, it had a large set of metal pipes and computer arrays sticking out of its neck as it had just broken down from its position in one of the large vats the livestock were kept in. Attached to its back were the strangest-looking bedbugs I had ever seen, connected directly to its spine.