by Eric Warren
“What would be the point of that?” Frees asked.
“I know why,” Arista said and they both turned to look at her. “If the humans are getting too emotional while they’re taking out Peacekeepers, any husks standing around have the potential to wake up. They’re eliminating the possibility of needing to deal with more autonomous machines. I bet some of the humans can’t control their mental states while they…work.”
“That’s terrible,” Zubrowski said.
Arista nodded again. “I know. And it sickens me that I’m even related to them.” Her eyes flicked to Frees but he wasn’t watching her, he was keeping a lookout.
“Here.” Zubrowski led them through a nondescript door with no markings anywhere. Arista couldn’t help but find the bare walls, floors, and ceiling cold and unwelcoming. The humans had built it all; the machines only used it after they’d eliminated humanity. Or, at least, thought they’d eliminated them.
The room was dark with monitors all along the far wall, each one bathing the room in a blue light though the screens were blank. It reminded Arista of a security office as there was a desk and one lone chair.
“This is a monitoring office,” Zubrowski said. “They were Charlie’s idea, we have them all over the building. They were supposed to search and monitor this part of the world for human activity.”
Arista exchanged glances with Frees. “Paranoid,” she said under her breath.
Zubrowski walked over and typed a command into the console. Each monitor lit up at the same time, displaying different grids of the city. “This is just Chicago,” Zubrowski said. “But each dot represents human life signs.”
Arista studied the monitors. Red dots would appear then a few moments later disappear. As she watched all the monitors at once she realized humans were swarming the city. “There must be hundreds. Sy lied about the size of the colony.”
“Unless they sent the entire colony here,” Frees said.
Zubrowski shook his head. “I made it to the main comm terminals. We’re getting alerts from London and Japan. This isn’t isolated.”
Arista turned to Frees. “Do you think Mitsu and Takai are okay?”
“I’m sure they’re fine. We haven’t been gone very long. Not more than an hour at least.” He watched the monitors for a moment. “When did this start?”
“Three hours, twenty-seven minutes ago,” Zubrowski said, not taking his eyes off the screens. “What I don’t understand is how they keep appearing and disappearing like that. Unless the surveillance system is faulty.”
“It’s not that,” Arista said. “They have this technology called a refractor. It allows them to disappear, both visually and on sensors. The only problem is they can’t do anything but move while its active. They have to drop the shield before they can do anything.” Her eyes flicked to the door leading to the hallway. “Like shoot someone.”
Frees put his hand on her shoulder, snapping her away from her wandering thoughts. “Do you still want to find one?”
Did she? It was probably the only way they’d ever be able to find the location of the colony, but if the humans were mounting a full-scale attack she wasn’t exactly sure what they should do. Part of her wanted to go back to Japan, to make sure Mitsu and Takai were okay, despite knowing them for such a short time. In fact, anything she could do to protect machine life was preferable to interacting with more humans. But there was no denying it. They needed the information if she wanted to rescue her parents and she couldn’t avoid it. They’d have to find someone.
“Yes. We need that location.”
Frees screwed up is face in concern. Despite having no skin, he could be surprisingly expressive. She was so used to it now it would be odd to see him with skin. Sometimes she even caught the micromovements of the motors underneath his polymorphic coating and it appeared partially translucent.
Frees turned to Zubrowski. “Can you set up a direct feed from this terminal to me? We need to track them in real-time if we’re planning on capturing one.
“Yes sir, but I’ll need to stay in here to monitor the connection,” Zubrowski said.
“How many Peacekeepers have they killed?” Arista asked, trying to keep her mind from wandering off what Zubrowski was saying.
“Oh, I…I’m sorry, ma’am, I don’t have that information yet. I’d have to check the inventory numbers. Most of them don’t see it coming though, they’re still out hunting you.”
Arista pursed her lips. Figured. And now it was up to her to help save the very machines that were trying to find and kill both her and Frees. The universe sure had a strange sense of irony.
“Let’s get down there and get this over with,” she said, watching the lights blink on and off.
Two
It had only taken a few moments for Zubrowski to set up the link. They left him in the surveillance room and made their way back down the too-white hallways with their too-clean floors to the stairwell. They had thirteen more floors to go until they reached the ground.
“It always comes back to this building, doesn’t it?” Frees asked from behind her. He’d let Arista go ahead of him since her balance still wasn’t perfect and she had to grip the handrail more often than she would have preferred.
“Seems like it. I just want to find one and get this over with. I’m not sure how many more humans I can stomach.” She held the handrail tight as she hit the landing of floor twelve, turned the corner and started all over again.
“You do know once we get the coordinates we’re going to be in the middle of more humans than you can count, right?”
“You mean I’m going to be in the middle of them,” she called back. “How exactly are we supposed to disguise…that?” She motioned with her short arm, throwing it back behind her. It still ached, but not as bad as she would have expected so soon after a major surgery.
“What, you don’t think the hoodie will work?” he asked, playfully.
She rolled her eyes. “Maybe if you tell everyone you have a cold we can keep a mask on you.”
“Don’t even joke about that!”
She snorted. Frees was the biggest hypochondriac she’d ever met, and he couldn’t even get ill. She’d thought going through the procedure of cutting her arm off might have given him a stronger “stomach”, but she’d been wrong.
“What are we going to do, when we find one?” Frees asked.
“Need to change the conversation to keep your mind off creepy crawlies?” she taunted.
“Arista. Seriously.”
She turned to stare at him; his face was set but his eyes were filled with worry. For whom? The human they needed to interrogate? “We get them to talk, no matter what it takes,” she replied. “We’re getting those coordinates.”
“No matter what?” he asked.
“No matter what.”
They reached the streets through a service door in the rear of the Cadre HQ, spilling onto the dark alleyway. Despite being the middle of the morning, storm clouds had formed over the city, coating the city in a light drizzle.
Arista motioned to Frees. “You’re the one with the map. Where is our closest target?”
He looked off into the distance, apparently accessing the map being fed to him by Zubrowski. “Two blocks north, three blocks west.”
“How long as the dot been active?” She shielded her eyes from the rain that turned from a drizzle to a constant pelting.
“Twenty seconds. They’re staying on for an average of three to four minutes each.”
Arista scoffed. “The time it takes to eliminate a Peacekeeper and move on.”
“Remember,” Frees said, making his way down the alleyway to the main street where people were running for cover to get out of the rain. “The Peacekeepers are still looking for us, so we have to be careful. We don’t want to attract a lot of unwanted attention.”
She nodded. This would need to be delicate.
“And don’t let your emotions get the best of you,” Frees said. “We don’t need you t
urning a lot of the husks and giving the humans more targets.”
“You don’t have to remind me,” Arista replied. “If there’s one thing you don’t need to remind me of, it’s that.”
She followed his lead through the streets, pulling her hood up over her head. Hopefully to any Peacekeeper passing by they just looked like two people running to get out of the rain. Each time Frees turned a corner she surveyed the area ahead, then turn her gaze back down so as not to catch the eye of anyone scrutinizing them. But the streets had emptied out. Only a couple of people with umbrellas remained.
“Here,” Frees said. “We’re close.” He stopped, leaning up against the building so they were buffeted by an overhang. Arista was soaked already; the water had seeped into her hoodie probably doubling its weight.
“I need to get something water resistant,” she said. She scanned the road, looking for anyone but seeing nothing. “Where is he?”
Frees pulled his features together. “I…think he disappeared already. He was fast.”
She sighed. This would take a few tries at least. “Do you have his last location?”
Frees pointed across the street. “The Continental Hotel.” It was a giant stone edifice stretching high into the sky. It was old construction, built in the early years of humanity’s reign. And yet it had survived all this time.
“In a room?” Arista asked, taking it in. What would a Peacekeeper be doing in a room?
Frees shrugged and they raced across the street, Arista’s boots splashing through the puddles. They entered the lobby and Arista had to stifle the urge to whistle. The Device measured the chandelier-ordained ceiling at twenty-five feet tall and almost all marble. Directly in front of them was a giant fountain with water coming off what looked like a slab of granite into a shallow pool. To the left a luxurious restaurant and the right looked to be the elevators. Directly behind the fountain were the check-in desks, fully staffed and handling the needs of would-be patrons.
Arista marveled at it all. The machines continued their prescribed paths, even now, long after Charlie had been killed. They had to push their way through a huddle of people standing in near the doors as they out the rain. Otherwise people moved about normally, as if there weren’t a bunch of human vigilantes hunting down autonomous machines all over the city.
“Now where?” Arista asked. She had the sudden urge to book a room and take a nice, hot shower. When was the last time she’d slept in anything other than a hundred-year-old bed? It was tempting.
“Fifteen floors up,” Frees said. “West wing. Do you think they would have left the Peacekeeper here?”
“After they killed them?” Arista asked. “Why not? What else are they going to do with them? They didn’t seem to have a problem leaving them in Cadre HQ to rot.”
She was more interested in finding out why a Peacekeeper was here. Did they think she and Frees would be so careless as to book rooms in a hotel? Then again, it’d been nearly a month since Charlie put out the call for the Peacekeepers to find them; perhaps they were desperate.
“We’ve gotta find a way to rescind that order,” Arista said as they stepped inside the elevator. “Keep these things from hunting us.” She felt Frees’ eyes on her; she already knew what he was going to say. “I know, I know. If we could find a way to transmit something to all the machines at once we could give everyone autonomy at once. Problem solved.” She craned her neck at him.
“Did I say anything?” he asked, mock innocence in his voice.
“You’re thinking it.”
“Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. You’ll never know.”
Arista couldn’t help but smile and shake her head. In that moment she realized just how thankful she was to have him along. Once she thought she could do all of this alone; she had wanted to go to Japan alone but he’d insisted on accompanying her. It was a good thing too, because if he’d stayed behind Sy might have killed him along with Jill and Max.
But that wasn’t the only reason. With Frees things felt less…lonely.
The elevator bell chimed a subdued ding and the doors opened on fifteen. Frees led them down the carpeted hallway until they reached room 1515.
“May I get the door for you, m’lady?” Frees asked.
“By all means,” Arista responded, doing a terrible impression of a British accent.
Frees grabbed the handle and snapped it off with a quick yank, then reached into the mechanism and pulled it from the door, causing the metal around the lock to bend and warp. He pushed the door and it swung with some resistance, revealing the room before them.
“Wow,” Arista said, surveying the area. “They know how to do it right here.” It was at least a deluxe suite with multiple rooms and plush furniture. The main room had a large picture window on the far side looking out onto the city with modern, yet comfortable-looking furniture adorning the main space. Off to the side was a kitchenette with full amenities and Arista’s stomach growled. Those Japanese fruits had not been nearly enough. She had half a mind to break into the minibar and raid whatever was in there, despite the fact her system couldn’t stomach it. Lightning lit up the sky outside, reflecting through the large windows. Something caught Arista’s attention off to the side of the room, but she wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light or something else.
Frees had gone to check on the bedroom, and as soon as she was about to take a closer look at the picture window he made a noise that got her attention.
“What did you find?” She moved around the fireplace separating the two spaces.
“Here he is.”
Arista took stock of the situation. A man, not much larger than Frees lay splayed out on the bed, his face frozen in the same sort of terror they saw back at Cadre HQ. “Same hole in the chest.”
“That’s not what’s interesting. Look.” Frees pointed around the man. Beside him were several food wrappers and discarded to-go boxes. Arista looked behind her to see the television playing a nature program. The Peacekeeper’s shoes were lying at the foot of the bed in a disorderly fashion, like he’d kicked them off.
“What the hell?” she said. “Was he…taking a vacation?”
“Sure looks like it.” Frees picked up a few of the wrappers and boxes, smelling the contents.
“That doesn’t make any sense. They’re Peacekeepers, they’re loyal to the Cadre. And even with Charlie gone—” She furrowed her brow. There’s no way this could mean what she thought it meant. Could it? Were the Peacekeepers breaking free from their programming? Were they becoming fully self-sufficient individuals? Charlie had said something about that, his fear of them turning on him.
“Arista!” Frees yelled, pushing her out of the way. She tripped, landing on the far side of the bed, falling on her injured arm. Pain shot through the metal sleeve as she hit the floor. Frees grunted at something she couldn’t see.
“Frees, what’s happening?” She reached up and grabbed the side of the bed, pushing herself up and as she did something hit it, causing the springs to bounce. The Peacekeeper shifted from his spot on the bed, falling off to the side as Arista managed to get out of the way.
She glanced over to see Frees in hand-to-hand combat with a man she’d never seen before. Where had he come from? Frees was on top of him on the bed, holding his arm out to the side while the man kicked and flailed about, gnashing his teeth. Arista followed the man’s arm to the gun he held.
It was like the kind of gun Sy had. The one that put holes in machines’ chests.
“Grab it, quick!” Frees yelled.
She dove on the bed, wrenching the gun from his hand and when she pointed it at him, her arm was steady as it had ever been, he finally stopped writhing. “Who are you?” Arista asked. His eyes weren’t orange or red, so he wasn’t a Peacekeeper or auto. Which meant he was either a husk or a human. His eyes were a penetrating blue like she’d never seen before. They regarded her.
“Byron,” he said through clenched teeth.
“Human?” she asked.
He nodded.
“Pretty strong for a human,” Frees said, holding him down. Byron gave a jerk, trying to throw Frees off balance and while it didn’t work, Arista noticed he managed to move Frees more than he should be able to.
“Just calm down,” she said, brandishing the weapon at him. “I’ve seen what these things do to machines, I can only imagine what they would do to a human.”
“That’s right,” Byron growled. “Act like you know how to use that thing.”
She shook it off, turning to Frees. “Where did he come from?”
“He appeared behind you, must have been using his refractor.” Frees hadn’t taken his eyes off Byron.
“So this is your handiwork then.” Arista indicated the slumped form of the Peacekeeper on the side of the bed. “Why didn’t you leave?”
“I saw you coming.” He grinned.
Of course. If Sy could track her that meant any human could. They all knew where she was at any given moment. “And what were you going to do with me?” she asked. He twisted again but Frees had reinforced his hold and his human muscles couldn’t compete. She decided to try a different tactic. “Why are you killing all the Peacekeepers? What is the colony’s plan?”
Byron only smiled in return.
That smile. It reminded her of what Sy used to do, to taunt her. At first Arista had thought she’d been genuine but after everything happened and she saw Sy for who she really was, that damn smile had become something that set Arista on edge. Her toothy grin. A vision of her strolling over and beating Byron with the butt of the gun flashed through her mind.
She smiled back. “Okay, I guess we’re going to do this the hard way.”
Three
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Frees asked, as they made their way back down to the lobby. He’d ripped the cord off one of the floor lamps and tied it around Byron’s hands, binding them behind his back before escorting him from the room and back to the elevators.
