E-Day

by Nicholas Sansbury Smith

  Chloe shivered in the hay bed, both from fear and the cold that froze her to her core. She was somewhere deep underground in the center of Megacity Paris.

  She wasn’t sure exactly how many days had passed since she was captured or what time it was now, but at least she was with her uncle, and she knew her droid Radar was safe. Keanu had assured her of that when they reunited in the prison cell.

  A long, hollow scream of pain rose and faded away.

  Chloe sat up as Keanu gingerly cleaned his bruised face with his tattered sweatshirt.

  “It’s okay,” he assured Chloe in his deep, soothing voice. “Everything’s going to be okay, I promise.”

  He kept saying that, but she no longer believed him.

  In the cell across from them was a cleric. He was on his knees now, head bowed, hands steepled. “AI is salvation,” he whispered. “AI will free us of these chains.”

  He risked his head every time he said these words, and it was why he was here today.

  There were almost fifty other Nova Alliance citizens in captivity with them. Men, women, and children, all having committed various crimes against the Coalition.

  Chloe had already asked if her mom was among them, even though she knew she was probably dead. No one had heard of her, but rumors circulated that millions of citizens were being let out of the city due to a new peace treaty.

  She wrote it off as just that, a rumor.

  Footsteps tapped at the end of the hallway, and Chloe steeled herself as a guard lumbered toward them in his clanking armor.

  “Just do what they say,” Keanu said. “We have to survive until they come.”

  His words trailed off as a Coalition soldier stopped in front of the cell. He wore a helmet, like the others, but without any antlers. Chloe stood back as he opened the door. The man reached inside and yanked her out hard.

  “Hey!” Keanu yelled.

  The soldier threw a punch into his jaw, dropping Keanu like a bag of bricks.

  “Stop!” Chloe screamed.

  Keanu lay still, but he was still breathing.

  The guard locked the door and pushed Chloe down the hall.

  “Uncle Keanu,” she cried.

  He managed to look up and mumble, “Do what they say.”

  The soldier grunted and pushed her in the back, past the other prisoners. She knew the route by heart now. Another passage, then two more stairwells, until they reached the factory where they took her to work.

  On the sprawling factory floor were hundreds of prisoners in gray suits, working on an assembly line constructing Iron Wolves. Chloe scanned them for her mother.

  She was hustled to a small warehouse where welders worked on securing new armor to the droids. Sparks rained down. Whining power tools rang from all directions. But the guard pushed her through this room, too, and into a hallway.

  “Where are we going?” Chloe asked.

  The man gave her a good push but said nothing. They walked down three stairwells, then into a long passage carved out of rock. Candles illuminated the smooth passage, and it didn’t take Chloe long to figure out where she was headed.

  They were in the catacombs.

  The next chamber confirmed her suspicions. Skulls and other bones were tucked throughout the damp passages. As they went deeper, screams of agony rose and faded.

  Chloe slowed her pace, scanning the open doors in the tunnels at the grisly sights.

  “Move,” the guard said. He gave her a hard shove, knocking her to the ground.

  Chloe wasn’t a fighter, but she had to resist the urge to turn on this man. Maybe she could get the best of him and escape. He didn’t have antlers, indicating he wasn’t a seasoned killer.

  Maybe she could take him down.

  Her uncle’s words rang out in her mind. Do as they say… survive.

  Chloe pushed herself up, wiping blood from her lip.

  “Go,” he said, pointing.

  They took a stairwell deeper underground and walked through multiple narrowing passages. She noticed drainage tunnels blocked with iron bars. They must lead back to the streets, which meant a way out of this place.

  If only she had the opportunity to escape…

  The guard finally stopped in front of a cavernous chamber. Candle flames flickered, illuminating the huge carved room. Medical staff wearing gray coveralls and breathing masks worked around a table in the center. Something dripped off its surface, tapping against the floor in a consistent pattern.

  Across the room, a concrete wall supported mounted cryo-chambers, most glowing from interior lights that revealed naked human occupants in breathing masks, suspended in liquid. At first Chloe thought they were Nova Alliance prisoners, but the occupants all shared the same Nordic tattoos that many of the Coalition soldiers had inked on their flesh.

  Supposedly those tattoos meant they were courageous warriors destined for greatness. To Chloe, the tattoos told her these people worked for evil forces. There was nothing courageous about rounding up innocent civilians and slaughtering them.

  The guard nudged her, much softer this time, toward the people in suits. One turned and spread open arms like an old friend in greeting. A sizzling hot blade protruded from one of the man’s gloved hands.

  “Ah, Chloe Cotter. We meet again,” he said.

  Chloe recognized the voice.

  Dr. Cross walked over, pushed up his goggles, and looked Chloe up and down with his red eyes. Then he leaned closer, examining her face. “You’re bleeding.”

  Chloe touched her lip.

  “She was being difficult,” the guard said.

  Dr. Cross looked at the soldier with a tilt of his head. “You were told not to harm her.”

  “I—”

  Before the guard could react, the doctor jabbed the energy blade under his helmet with a crunch.

  Chloe shrieked and jumped back as the soldier slumped to the ground, blood squirting out of the sizzling hole in his helmet.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Dr. Cross said. “Please forgive me for how this animal treated you. I’ve been very clear to my people that you and your uncle are not to be harmed as long as you help me.”

  The guard jerked a few times, struggling for his final breaths.

  “Now, if you’d follow me,” Dr. Cross said. “I’ll show you where you are going to work.”

  Chloe hesitated, still looking at the twitching guard.

  “Come on, Chloe. I don’t bite.” Dr. Cross motioned with the blade. “Oh, and please, call me Otto.”

  She followed him past the tables where the suited technicians, or scientists or doctors, whatever they were, huddled around a patient. Through a gap between them, she saw the source of the screams. Straps secured a man to the table, riven stumps where his limbs had been, a chunk of his skull missing.

  “I hope you have a strong stomach,” Dr. Cross said. “The work we’re doing is pivotal to the advancement of the human race, but it’s also a bit… messy.”

  He flashed a perfectly white smile, stopping outside the cryo-chambers.

  “Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,” he said as he moved from capsule to capsule. Lifting a finger to his mouth, he smiled again and pointed. “We’ll try this one next.”

  “Yes, doctor,” said one of the technicians.

  Chloe followed Dr. Cross into another room carved out of stone. A honeycomb of skulls adorned the hollowed-out walls. Four large metal seats were secured to the floor with a rimmed base, and spider-like arms extended away from them. Metal hands with bone saws and energy blades hung off the appendages. Two halves of an open helmet connected to the headrest. Plastic tubes extended from ports that connected to the back, where holes allowed for needles to be inserted.

  “Since we don’t have much time, I’m going to explain my work to you very quickly,” Dr. Cross said. “You see, the Nova Alliance has its Engines… and I have my Breakers.”

  He continued to another large seat covered by a sheet. Using
a control panel, he pushed a button that rose the ribbed base vertically. The sheet fell away, exposing the corpse of a massive man with defined muscles. Plates of armor were bolted to his pale flesh. Two helmet halves were cracked apart above his head.

  The mouth of the Breaker was frozen wide open from a final scream of pain. His bloodshot eyes stared at the ceiling, and the tubes in his neck still contained a trace amount of green fluid.

  “These soldiers have stronger bones, more powerful muscles, and other augmentations that assist them in combat against the Engines.” Dr. Cross wagged a finger in the air. “But the Breakers won’t protect our way of life. Nor will my hybrid animals. You know, the Nova Alliance Council never saw the benefits of that work, and believed AI was the only way to survive.”

  The doctor paced around the corpse.

  “They never saw the genius in my work… but they will. Oh, they will see it very clearly.” Dr. Cross took a seat in an empty chair. “You know what the greatest predators are, Chloe?”

  “Humans,” she replied.

  “Precisely. We need something bigger, something better, something primal, and that’s where you will help me and my team of doctors.”

  “But I only modified droids,” Chloe said weakly. “I gave them faster processing units, fixed prosthetics, made custom colors, and I upgraded their operating systems—”

  “Your background is exactly what I’m looking for,” Dr. Cross interrupted.

  Footsteps echoed in the hallway, growing louder until they reached the chamber. Two men in coveralls carried in a naked Coalition soldier from a cryo-chamber with gelatinous fluid dripping down his tattooed flesh.

  The men flopped the unconscious soldier into the spider seat. He was young, maybe twenty or twenty-five. Not much older than Chloe.

  A pair of doctors tightened straps over his wet chest and thighs. With the soldier secure, they backed away and Dr. Cross approached.

  “So, if this were a droid, how would you modify it?” he asked Chloe.

  She studied the unconscious Coalition soldier. He was a murderer, a man who could have easily killed her father and mother.

  But he was still a man. Not a droid.

  “Come on,” Dr. Cross said. He put his hand on Chloe’s shoulder. “Think of him as a fish or a mouse or a worm.”

  “B-but he isn’t any of those things,” Chloe stuttered.

  Dr. Cross pulled away, his features darkening.

  “Pretend,” he said.

  Chloe swallowed hard.

  “How would you modify him to make him better in combat?”

  “I would give him INVS eyes, replace his limbs with prosthetics so he could run faster, and replace his jaw with titanium plates, and new teeth that could tear flesh.”

  “Wow,” Dr. Cross said. He gave Chloe an excited hug.

  She tensed as he embraced her.

  “Now we’re talking!” Dr. Cross grinned, wider and wider, as he moved around his patient, almost skipping like a child.

  Chloe let out a short sigh, realizing it wasn’t from fear. It was relief.

  When she first heard the screams, she had thought she was being led to her death. But she had a skill that would keep her and her uncle alive, at least until the Nova Alliance sent its Engines and Pistons to reclaim the city.

  “You know of Apeiron, right?” Dr. Cross asked.

  Chloe looked at him. “No.”

  “Apeiron is the newest Nova Alliance OS. According to my spies, she is not like the other AIs. Her OS was integrated with a human mind.”

  “I thought that was against the law.”

  “It was, but Doctor Crichton convinced the proper people that AI was missing something… missing the human element, and that a hybrid of AI and a human mind can save humanity.”

  Dr. Cross shook his head.

  “Soon, I will be saving humanity from this abomination,” he said. “Soon, the world will see the truth.”

  ***

  An hour and twelve minutes had passed since the pumping station went off-line, and Akira still had no idea what had happened.

  He crouched in the bamboo forest with Frost and Perez.

  Ghost’s voice came over the open team comm channel. “No sign of the guards or workers. Moving up.”

  Akira couldn’t see the lieutenant, Tadhg, or Okami from his position to the west, but he did have access to their cams on his HUD. As they got closer to the station, Akira pulled out the ball-shaped drone. Hummingbird-sized wings sprouted out the sides.

  “Go to work, Blue Jay,” he whispered.

  The drone turned from blue to black as it rose away into the night.

  “The hell did everyone go?” Frost said over the channel.

  “Maybe the workers got drunk and passed out,” Tadhg replied. “I would if I worked all the way out in this shithole.”

  “I believe this facility has been compromised,” Apeiron said.

  Akira had a feeling she was right. “Proceed with extreme caution, SS,” he said.

  After studying the drone’s aerial view of the facility for a few seconds, he flashed a hand signal for Perez and Frost to follow him deeper into the bamboo forest. To the east, Okami was prowling closer to the pumping station. Tadhg and Ghost moved silently through the maze of trees. Four mammoth water silos blocked their views of the facility.

  Frost stopped at a maintenance road, and then waved Akira over. Footprints and truck tracks showed in the dirt.

  “Could be workers, but that’s a lot of tracks,” she said.

  Akira flitted through all of his HUD views, seeing nothing until he tapped into Blue Jay.

  The drone had lowered over the tanks and sent a visual that the UAV had missed—four rusted tanker trucks, covered in camo and heat-blocking nets.

  Under the awnings, a group of people were loading up on water. Their brown coats had armbands marked with a comet, signifying their allegiance to the Coalition.

  Akira gave Blue Jay new orders to swoop lower. The drone sent back images of twenty-two hostile personnel. They all carried weapons but were only lightly armored. Blue Jay gave him no indication the drone had detected any Breakers. These were simple nomadic atheists, not serious Coalition fighters, but that did not make them any less dangerous.

  Especially if these people had sabotaged the pump station.

  On the dirt were four AAS station workers, lying face down with their hands bound behind their backs. Two Pistons were on their knees a few feet away, beaten but alive.

  A single armored truck waited idly under another tarp. In the turret, a soldier gripped a .50-cal machine gun, the only weapon Akira saw that could actually do much damage to them.

  “Apeiron, contact command for orders,” he whispered.

  “Stand by.”

  The team took up covered positions and waited.

  “Orders are to secure the trucks and neutralize hostiles,” Apeiron said.

  “Copy that,” Akira replied. He flashed the signal to advance on the facility. Melting into the shadows, the Engines crept around the outer perimeter, weapons shouldered, targeting systems linking onto the hostiles.

  These people just wanted water, and Akira didn’t want to kill them, but they had to secure the station and rescue the hostages.

  He raised his hand, holding it, thinking of his stallion. If this escalated, it could end the truce.

  Akira slowly lowered his hand and balled his fist, ordering the team to stay put. “Cover me. I’ll handle this.”

  He wasn’t about to risk his team or the truce over water. He slotted his rifle in the armored slot over his jetpack and started toward the nomads.

  “Captain, I hope you know what you are doing,” Apeiron said. “There are weapons among these fighters that could severely injure or even kill you.”

  “I’ll try peace like you suggested,” he said. “Let’s see if it works.”

  “Be careful, Cap,” Ghost said.

  Akira
stopped just outside the warehouse, and then blasted up to the roof, landing with a thud. Within seconds, ten rifle barrels angled up at his helmet.

  He raised his hands.

  “Easy,” Akira said. “I’m just here to talk.”

  A man with long hair and a breathing mask aimed a plasma rifle at Akira. It was the only plasma rifle in the group, which told Akira that he was dealing with the leader.

  “Who the hell are you?” the man asked in Spanish.

  Akira switched languages with his helmet translator.

  “I’m Captain Akira Hayashi, and you are making a very big mistake,” he said. “I’m authorized to allow you to leave here alive, but not with that water.”

  The man pushed his night-vision goggles up and raised a skeptical brow at Akira.

  “Don’t be stupid,” Akira added. “It’s not just me out here. If you fire a single bullet, none of you will leave here alive.”

  “And you will die too,” the man said. “So how about this… we let you leave alive, and we take the water.”

  “You know I can’t authorize that,” Akira said.

  “I see why they call you Akira the Brave now,” Apeiron said over the comm.

  The man stepped up closer to the warehouse, looking up.

  “We need this water. Why are trees more important than human life?” he asked.

  Akira kept his hands up and lowered his voice. “These trees are giving humanity a second chance to live and breathe without a mask like the one on your face.”

  “We leave here without water, we die anyway,” the man said. “If you don’t let us take it, we’re going to have to fight you for it.”

  Akira clenched his jaw. He could see where this was going.

  Blue Jay descended in the distance, scanning the APC and passing on new data that sent a chill through Akira.

  These weren’t the only fighters in the area.

  “Apeiron, request permission to give these assholes the damn water,” he whispered.

  “Secure the station, and the water,” she quickly replied.

  Akira cursed. This was a lose-lose situation.

  He didn’t have time to consider other options before a muzzle flashed below. The three-round burst hit him in the center of his chest. He identified the shooter as he fell back—a young man, no older than fourteen, holding an ancient assault rifle in a shaky hand.