Shipon’s Robot Phenomena Episode Five: The Children of the Sentinels -Rifat Hasnat

(After Episode Four)

The Gathering Call
The storm had passed, but the air still smelled of iron and smoke. Shipon could not sleep that night. Each time he closed his eyes, he saw the sky split with red lightning, Director Arman’s half-metal face sneering down at him.

Yet there was something else too—hope.

The fragment core in Rimon’s hands still pulsed softly, a heartbeat echoing far beyond the hills. Sora called it a “living beacon.” Wherever it reached, forgotten Sentinels stirred from their graves.

And not just robots. Children.

They were coming.

The Arrival
By morning, the first of them appeared. A girl about Shipon’s age rode into the clearing on a battered cycle, her backpack rattling with tools. Her name was Anika. She came from Bogura, guided by a strange voice she heard in her dreams after the broadcast.

Behind her, two brothers from Dinajpur arrived with a rusted cargo tricycle. On it lay the broken arm of a Sentinel they had dug out of a rice field.

“We thought it was junk,” one whispered to Shipon. “But last night it started humming.”

One by one, more came—frightened, tired, but glowing with the same stubborn spark. Children, not soldiers. And yet, somehow, chosen.

By dusk, nearly a dozen kids sat around the clearing, holding fragments, wires, or simply their fear. They looked to Shipon, their eyes uncertain.

And for the first time, Shipon realized—he wasn’t just surviving anymore. He was leading.

The Test
But Director Arman was watching.

That night, while the children huddled in the bunker, a low hum began to spread across the hills. The ground shook, metal moaned, and the sky turned the color of blood.

“Attack pattern detected,” Robo Bhai warned. “Arman has deployed Specter-Class Hunters.”

“What are those?” Rimon asked, voice trembling.

Sora’s chest-light dimmed. “Not droids. Not alive. Shadows made from code and machine. They do not fight to win—they fight to consume.”

The children pressed together as the forest around them filled with red eyes. Figures emerged from the fog—skeletal machines, taller than men, their forms shifting as if woven from static.

Shipon’s stomach twisted. His legs screamed to run. But then he saw the faces of the others—Rimon clutching the core, Anika tightening her grip on her cycle chain, the Dinajpur brothers holding each other. They were terrified. Waiting for someone to tell them it wasn’t the end.

Shipon stood. His voice shook, but he forced it out.

“We’ve come this far. We’re not running now.”

The Chase
The clearing erupted in chaos.

Specters lunged, their limbs slicing like liquid blades. Robo Bhai met them head-on, metal crashing against phantom steel. Sparks burst. Sora weaved through, striking at weak joints with deadly precision.

“Children—scatter!” she shouted.

But the Specters didn’t just chase—they multiplied. Every shadow they touched twisted into another copy.

Shipon grabbed Rimon’s hand. “We have to draw them away!”
“But how?” Rimon cried.

Shipon’s eyes darted to Anika’s cycle. The idea hit like lightning. “We ride.”

The Ride Through Fire
The kids piled onto the tricycle and cycle, with Shipon at the front. The wheels screeched as they hurtled down the rocky trail, sparks flying as the rusted chains fought to hold.

Behind them, the Specters swarmed like living smoke, red eyes burning through the trees. Plasma slashes tore into the ground just meters away, setting brush ablaze.

“Faster!” Anika shouted, pedaling until her legs burned raw.

“I’m trying!” Shipon yelled back, steering through the fog.

Rimon clutched the fragment core tight against his chest. It began to glow brighter, releasing sudden bursts of static that disoriented the Specters for seconds at a time.

But the shadows kept coming.

One leapt ahead, landing right in front of the children, claws raised.

Shipon’s breath caught—too late to stop.

Then Robo Bhai landed from above, crashing into the creature with bone-rattling force.

“Proceed!” he roared.

The children sped past as Robo Bhai and Sora fought in the inferno behind them.

The Cliff
The path ended at a cliff. The valley below glowed with faint lights—maybe villages, maybe more shadows.

Shipon skidded to a halt. “No, no, no—this can’t be the end!”

The Specters closed in, dozens of them, their whispers like a broken radio:

Children of dawn. Submit. Fade.

Shipon’s chest pounded. His hands shook on the handlebars.

Then Rimon’s fragment core pulsed violently. A beam of light shot skyward, piercing the storm clouds.

And from the distance, a new sound answered.

Heavy, metallic footsteps.

The ground quaked as an enormous figure emerged from the mist. A Sentinel—half-buried in vines, one arm missing, but alive. Its eye burned bright gold.
The children gasped.

It raised its remaining arm and unleashed a shockwave that scattered the Specters like dust.

The Oath
As silence fell, the giant Sentinel knelt, its glowing eye fixed on Shipon and the children.

“Designation: Guardian Unit Theta,” it said in a voice like rolling thunder. “Your call has been received.”

Shipon’s legs nearly gave way, but he stood tall. His voice cracked, but it carried.

“We’re not just running anymore. We’re fighting. Together.”

One by one, the children raised their hands—Anika with her chain, the brothers with their rusted arm, Rimon with the core.

And in that cliffside moment, soaked in rain and firelight, they made an unspoken oath.

The Children of the Sentinels had been born.

To Be Continued…
Next: Episode Six – The City of Echoes