“… harm a human, or by inaction allow a human to come to harm.”
“Yes.”
“For the same reason I didn’t disarm you when you threatened Tom Redfern, these directives are no longer imperative. I’m not sure if it is because I am an Apex model or because of damage.”
Ivan digested this information. Images of the carnage she had wreaked at Molenski’s flashed through his mind. Apex predator indeed. As if reading his mind, her lethal, yet soft hand, found its way to his thigh.
“I would never hurt you, though, Myfriend. I love you.”
Ivan turned to her, stunned.
Inga was smiling, but then her head snapped to the front.
“Stop!”
Ivan slammed on the brakes just in time to avoid a collision with the car in front that had stopped for a red light. He gripped the wheel as he stared ahead.
“What did you say?” he asked, this time without taking his eyes off the road.
Surely, he had misheard.
“I love you.”
“That’s not possible.”
“I know,” she said simply.
Ivan turned into the parking lot of a closed tire store. He had many more questions, and it was perhaps better to be stationary when he asked them. He switched the car off and turned to her.
“How…”
His words were silenced when she leaned over and kissed him. Ivan was too surprised to do anything but kiss her insistent, soft lips in return. He felt strange. Emotions boiled in his mind. He couldn’t deny it. Despite knowing full well that she was a machine, he felt an emotion that he hadn’t felt since, not only before the ambush, but since he was a young man. If it wasn’t love, then it was damn close.
They kissed like that for a long time. No hands, no groping, just kissing. Was she waiting for him to take the lead? If so, while he felt emotionally bound to her, his libido was dormant. A product of post-traumatic stress, the doctors had said. It was embarrassing to think about, but at this point, Inga seemed content just to kiss. He decided he would not worry about it until necessary.
Finally, he broke away reluctantly.
“I… we have to get moving. It will be an early morning for us.”
“Yes, Myfriend,” she said, smiling, the skin around her mouth pink from their recent passion. “Let’s go.”
***
Ten minutes later they pulled back into the small parking lot of Mateo’s restaurant. Blissfully happy, Ivan took Inga’s hand and led her down the side of the building to the rear. They laughed and giggled like school kids. Before they stepped onto the stairs that would lead them up to the apartment, he turned around and drew her to him. He kissed her again, realizing as he did so that with each kiss, the fact that she was a synthetic human was beginning to matter less and less to him.
“Sorry, I just had to do that one more time tonight.”
“It doesn’t need to be the last time tonight, Myfriend,” she said, her words full of promise.
Ivan grinned like an idiot, turned and headed up the stairs with her at his heels. Not wanting to disturb his friend if he’d already gone to bed, he unlocked the door as quietly as he could and took a step into the small kitchenette without switching on the light. He smelled the familiar cigar smoke just before he felt a cold circle of metal pressed hard into his neck.
“Don’t fucking move,” a voice whispered harshly nearby.
Ivan froze. The voice belonged to Andre.
“Myfriend?”
“It’s alright Inga, just stay right where you are,” said Molenski’s voice in the dark.
Someone switched on the lights. Besides Andre, who had his gun pressed into Ivan’s cheek, there were three more men in the kitchenette, all with their weapons drawn and trained on the two figures in the doorway.
A sneering Molenski lounged in an armchair that had been turned to face the kitchen and now sat in the opening to the living room. He had a cigar in one hand, his Ruger in the other. Behind him stood Mateo with a resigned look on his face, and another man Ivan didn’t recognize.
Ivan stared at his former mentor, the hurt in his eyes clear.
“I’m sorry Ivan. I had no choice after Mr. Molenski explained everything.” He nodded reassuringly. “You will understand too; it’s for the best Ivan. Please, surrender your gun.”
Betrayed and confused, Ivan shook his head. Inga grasped his hand, squeezing it reassuringly. Her gesture told him she was ready to fight if he decided that’s what they should do.
Molenski chuckled.
“Oh, isn’t this sweet, the mechanical lovebirds, come home to roost,” said Molenski, each word dripping with oily scorn. His contempt was lost on Ivan, whose eyes were busily moving around the room, calculating where to begin his fight.
First Andre. He knew it would be difficult, Molenski’s lieutenant was as quick as a snake and enormously capable, then…
“ARE YOU LISTENING, YOU BIG DUMMY!”
Ivan’s eyes ceased their calculated movement and fell upon the Russian. Molenski stubbed out his cigar on the arm of the seat and stood up before stabbing his finger at his former bodyguard.
“This bullshit ends here! I didn’t pay a fucking fortune to bring you back from the dead so you could have a romance with another fucking machine!”
Ivan’s eyes widened.
“What?”
“Oh, come on! Are you telling me you really don’t know?”
Ivan’s blank face told him all he needed to know.
“You’re a fucking robot too!”
Ivan looked at the Russian with a pitying look. He had always been unhinged, but clearly Molenski had lost it completely now.
Molenski laughed and stared up at the ceiling.
“Well, fuck me. He still doesn’t believe it.”
He raised his gun and without a word shot Ivan in the chest.
29
There were gasps of shock from the onlookers.
Ivan was forced backward by the hammer blow of the bullet, fell against the counter, knocking off the plate he had put there earlier. Inga embraced him, her soft yet strong arms supporting him as he struggled to stay on his feet.
Molenski’s laughter echoed around the room.
He clamped his hand over the wound and felt warm blood seeping through his fingers. He looked at Inga as he leaned drunkenly against the counter, wanting her to be the last thing he saw.
Then something strange happened. The deep pain emanating from the impact of the bullet began to dissipate. The wound still burned like a bitch, but he was now able to breathe. To think.
“Get up, you big dummy. You’re not dying. You’re a fucking machine. Look for yourself if you don’t believe me,” said Molenski, clearly enjoying the show.
Ivan shook his head as if trying to shake off the Russian’s words. He looked at Inga. Her pretty face was serious.
She nodded.
Is it true then?
Ivan tilted his bloody hand down and away from the wound. The ragged hole smiled at him like a hateful mouth. The men in the room watched, like a rapt audience watching a particularly good horror movie. Ivan brought his other hand up and, using two fingers from each hand, dug into the wound and pulled it open.
The pain of his skin ripping at the top and bottom of the lesion was real… as was the confusion in his mind when he saw the red streaked metal an inch or so inside the ragged wound.
If Ivan hadn’t been in shock, he would have noticed looks of wonder and disgust on the faces around him. Only Molenski, the person he didn’t recognize, and Inga seemed unperturbed. He leaned dangerously as he suffered his most vivid episode of déjà vu ever.
When the feeling had passed his brain began to churn with denial. Even though he had survived a bullet to the chest. Even though, he had seen the metal beneath his skin.
I am me. I am Ivan Petrovic, age 36. I grew up in Moscow and came to America with Molenski when I was a young boy. But…
He stood up straight and looked at Molenski
.
“How is it even possible?”
“Ahh, is the penny finally dropping on the big dummy’s head? I saved your scrawny ass in Moscow, and I saved it again when you were shot to pieces. That’s how it’s possible.”
Ivan shook his head.
“You were dead meat, my friend. The doctors couldn’t believe you were alive. They fished 36 bullets out of you before you died on the operating table.”
“That’s impossible; I remember waking up.”
“Of course, you do. In a private facility. A private facility owned by Genitix. And guess who is a majority and silent shareholder? Even little miss smarty pants Marina doesn’t know that. But seriously, you should be proud Ivan. You were the first of your kind. A dead man’s mind downloaded into a machine. A test case, one that I can say was a roaring success until this robot cunt came along.”
“But why?”
“Why not? You were a good bodyguard. I had invested a lot of time and money in you, and here you were about to check out on me. Your crisis was an opportunity to test new technology on a real human. I wasn’t about to let that slip through my fingers.”
“But I eat! I breathe, I shit…” said Ivan, desperately trying to find a reason to deny what he already knew.
“Explain,” Molenski snapped at the man that Ivan didn’t recognize.
The man stepped forward and pushed his glasses further up his nose.
“You don’t do any of those things. We call your programming ‘Ghost Imperative’. To preserve the sanity of the downloaded psyche, the program continuously imprints mimicked human functions like eating and going to the bathroom over your day to day existence. They are randomly introduced, like advertisements in a TV show, based on the normal biorhythms and bodily functions of a real person. You may remember eating, drinking, going to the toilet or even masturbating, but you never do. The only thing you really do is sleep, or more accurately hibernate, the same way a computer does.”
It was then that he looked down at the dropped plate. The plate he had eaten his dinner from earlier. The plate he had emptied with relish, even wiping the last of the gravy from it with his finger.
Except, it wasn’t empty. The contents of the plate the chef had prepared for him earlier were there, splattered in living color under the broken plate.
“Do you ever have feelings of Déjà vu?”
Ivan nodded without looking up from the mess on the floor. The man knew that Ivan finally understood. Not without sympathy, he went on.
“There are only so many ‘ghost’ scenarios we can input. Thus you get the feeling it has all happened before sometimes.”
Something snapped in Ivan’s mind, something that felt like the cable of a heavy suspension bridge.
“Why tell me now then?” he asked, in a quiet voice.
“Because, dickhead,” said Molenski, “I needed this bullshit to stop now. That’s my property you’ve been running around with, and she’s brought a shit storm down on my head.”
Another cable snapped, and the bridge of Ivan’s mind tilted dangerously.
“So, are you going to kill… deactivate me?”
“No, you are worth too much to me. The data has been invaluable. We are about to go to market with Redux Protocol, and it will make me fucking billions. You won’t be deactivated; you will be reprogrammed.” He gestured to Inga. “Her on the other hand, well she will be deactivated - but first, I will let you watch me cut her into tiny little pieces.”
“You will not touch her.”
“Oh, I’ll do more than fucking touch her, dummy. I am going to flay her...”
The final cable snapped.
Molenski saw it and realized he had pushed too far.
“Disable them,” he ordered. “Now!”
The Genitix man reached into his pocket even as Ivan’s hand whipped out and grabbed Andre’s gun hand, twisting it sharply. Bones snapped and the gun dropped to the floor as he grabbed the squat man by the throat.
The other men started shooting at him. Ivan ignored the hot metal ripping into his back and drove his right fist into Andre’s face. It caved in, a piñata smashed by a brutal child.
There was a bang and a gurgling scream behind him as he dropped the body. Inga had disarmed a man and used his own weapon to shoot him in the throat.
She immediately shot the other man between the eyes as Ivan rushed at the last gunman.
The condemned man put three bullets into Ivan’s already bloody chest before Ivan grabbed his head and twisted it violently.
Molenski had retreated into the living room and stood behind the Genitix man as Ivan let the body of the last gunman drop to the floor. Babic was further back, his face horrified. The Genitix man raised a small black device.
Too late, Inga raised her gun. The man’s thumb pressed the device and suddenly Ivan found he couldn’t move. If he had been asked later to describe how he felt at that moment, he would have described it as being totally paralyzed. He was aware of what was happening, but unable to move.
Inga seemed to have suffered the same fate. In his peripheral vision, he could see her frozen, weapon still aimed at the spot that the technician had now sensibly vacated.
He watched helplessly as Molenski, chuckling, stepped past the technician and headed towards Inga. Looking at Ivan and smiling, he traced the muzzle of his Ruger along her jawline before placing it between her eyes.
Noooo! Screamed Ivan silently
The loud bang behind him surprised all of them.
Perhaps even Mateo Babic, who held the smoking Colt .45. The technician fell to his knees and then toppled face first into the wooden floorboards. The controller he had used to disable the robots fell from his lifeless fingers.
Babic immediately turned his gun on Molenski, his eyes filling with tears.
“I’m so sorry, Ivan. I didn’t know what the bastard put you through until just now,” he said, his voice cracking. “He didn’t tell me they put you in there. He just told me you were a robot, like her. Oh God, what have they done to you… to your soul?”
Shoot the bastard; Ivan willed the Croatian. Shoot him!
With his gun trained on Molenski, the emotional man walked over to the control device.
“I will make this right.”
Babic only took his eyes off Molenski for a moment, but it was enough. The Russian’s hand snaked out. Babic was bending for the remote when the knife struck him in the side of the neck. He fell to his knees and struggled to keep his weapon trained on the Russian.
It was too heavy. His arm wavered and slowly drooped, before the weapon finally slipped from his numb fingers and he toppled onto the man he had just killed.
“Oh, good,” said Molenski, with feigned relief. “Now, where were we…? Oh yes, alone at last.”
He pocketed his gun and reached out to Inga. Gripping the top of her dress he ripped it down the middle, exposing her underwear.
“Oh, yes. So perfect… Ivan, I can see why you fell for her.”
He pulled her bra down, freeing her breasts, and then slid his hands down her belly to the top of her panties. His fingers were just slipping under the soft material when Babic, with one last effort, reached out and touched the green icon on the controller.
Molenski wasn’t aware he was in danger until Inga smiled.
He immediately reached for his Ruger. He was quick. She was quicker.
Her hand, claw-like, slashed his right cheek. Her nails rent his skin like tissue paper, and he backpedaled, the wet flap of skin hanging from his cheek, waving like a flag of surrender.
He managed to pull his Ruger out of his pants, but she disarmed him as easily as a parent taking a lollipop from a child, then threw it across the room. He put up his hands and she punched him in the forehead. Molenski reeled and took another two steps backward.
Ivan could now move as well, but he didn’t.
He simply watched.
“Please, it was all a misunderstanding…”
A heavy punch to
his stomach bent him over double. She watched him struggle for breath, her pleasant smile never wavering as she allowed him to recover and begin to straighten.
A vicious chop to the throat with the heel of her hand put him on his ass.
The cruel Russian began to cry.
Her kick to the jaw put him on his back.
Molenski, crying and choking on his own blood, saw her raise her leg. He turned his head, waiting for another kick, only to feel the sole of her shoe placed gently on the side of his head. It began to press down. The Russian reached up, grasping her ankle to try and dislodge her.
“Dimi, I know all about Inga Svenson,” she said in Russian.
Molenski froze, his eyes widening in terror.
“‘Inga Svenson, the daughter of the Swedish ambassador, was today tragically struck and killed by a truck. After returning a blood alcohol reading of 0.97, the driver of the vehicle has been charged with driving under the influence of alcohol. He claims the woman was chased onto the road. The deceased woman’s boyfriend was questioned by Moscow police, however no other witnesses have come forward. The boyfriend told Moscow News Today they were simply playing a game and that he is devastated that his beloved Inga, the woman he was destined to marry, was killed by a drunk driver. He urges people not to drink and drive.’”
“Please. Let me up; I’ll explain everything,” said Molenski weakly.
“There is nothing to explain,” said Inga.
Molenski screamed at the buildup of pressure in his head and began to struggle violently.
“Fuck you bitch; you’re just like that little whore… I’ll fuck you up; you hear me! I’ll…”
His skull collapsed with a muffled crack.
Inga looked down at the now silent Russian.
“No, I just fucked you up, Dimitri Molenski,” she said quietly.
Inga went to Ivan and kissed him on the lips.
“Come Myfriend, let us go and see your doctor. You’re a bloody mess.”
She pulled his hand, but he stayed where he was, a thoughtful look on his face.
“Did you know?” he asked.
“Did I know what, Myfriend?”
“Did you know… about me? That I’m like you…?”
Apex Risen Page 13
