by Kevin Bragg
Why do they always make these robots look like marathon runners or supermodels? You never see one that looks like a tired, fat, old bus driver or one of Wagner’s rotund Valkyries.
‘Who are you and what the hell are you doing here?!’ I barked at my quarry.
‘My name is James,’ the android said with a misplaced grin, ‘and I could ask you the very same question. Do you make a habit of shooting random strangers?’
‘Only those that jump out of the windows of abandoned buildings I happen to be standing next to,’ I replied with a quick glance over my shoulder. ‘Now, I’ll give you one last chance to answer my question before I juice you hard enough to fry every goddamn circuit in your smug face.’
‘My guess is that we are both here for the same reason.’ His voice took on a slight maniacal edge. ‘And that place you’re thinking about shooting; you might want to hold off on that.’
He moved out of the rubble and I released the safety. That froze him in his tracks.
‘There are a lot of things that I want to do, pal. And not shooting you is pretty far down on the list.’
‘I assume you are here for a certain storage device with very sensitive information on it,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘I just thought you should know that I cached its info on my core processor. Then I smashed the original to teeny tiny bits! A jolt from your little toy might cause irreparable damage to my hardware, software or firmware. Awfully risky if you ask me!’ He punctuated that last sentence with a truly insane laugh that stretched longer than one might consider appropriate. A psychotic robot. This was news, and new, to me.
Our conversation confused, and creeped, the hell out of me. I expected to find my client here waiting for me, or hiding out. Instead, this joker came flying out of the window like a deranged Peter Pan. Now he confessed that not only did he know about the datapad but he also had the information tucked inside his little computer heart.
Rennick had been right all along.
This shit was starting to give me another headache. I flexed my index finger against the NEEDLE’s trigger and considered shooting him anyway. Better judgement won out and I tossed the cuffs to him. The android caught them with ease.
‘Put them on!’
But he didn’t listen to me. They never do. With a quick flick of his wrist, they came right back at me with the speed of a well-hit line drive. I dodged left, but the cuffs clipped me on the right upper arm. The hit stung but I’d been hit harder. The blow did cause me to drop my gun, though. He made a break for it to my right. I scooped up the concussion rifle and came up on one knee ready to shoot. James bolted for the gate.
I squeezed off a shot and hit him square in the ass region. It sent him airborne in a graceful arc and he crash-landed on the cracked pavement. To his credit, the robot popped right back up and kept running. I gave chase. My knee begged me not to but I ignored its protests. As fortune would have it, the handcuffs had skidded to a halt in the dirt not too far from my position. I fired again. James was at the edge of my range.
The blast knocked him down but with very little force. Still, it gave me enough time to grab the cuffs and close in. I let off another round before he could right himself and it sent him head first back onto the pockmarked concrete. I fired again and he sort of bounced on the ground but at least he stayed down. As I continued to close, I let off one more to the head for good measure.
With all the skill of a rodeo clown, I had him bound in the cuffs in no time and the low electrical pulse emitted by them kept his motor functions to a minimum. He could walk, but with the benefit of me not having to listen to his cutting wit. I pulled him to his feet and guided him to the Griffon. I opened the rear door and shoved him in the back seat.
‘You sit tight, pal, and don’t touch anything.’
Now to go find Charlotte Rennick.
17
I peered through the same window my back-seat passenger had made his dramatic exit from a few minutes ago and didn’t really see anything of note. The main floor of the warehouse had been cleared out long ago. I did, however, see a suite of offices on a second-floor mezzanine that might contain some clues.
I opted to go in through the door. Leaping through a window seemed a little showy to me. In a few spots, giant puddles of unidentifiable liquid pooled and a thin layer of dust covered everything else. The place looked bleak and neglected. How a building in a purpose-built city some 225 million clicks from Earth could ever reach a state like this was beyond me but I’m sure it spoke volumes about the human condition. No matter where we are, no matter what far corner of the galaxy we can find to inhabit, once something has no value to us, we leave it to rot.
Upstairs wasn’t much better. Wiring dangled from the false ceiling as freely as spider webs. Trash and refuse strewn about the offices suggested that they had been used, occasionally, by the homeless and hop-heads alike. I continued on – finding nothing – until I reached the supervisor’s office.
*
Shackled to a filthy old executive chair sat an unconscious, or more likely dead, Charlotte Rennick. Her head, with her beautiful face and perfect blonde hair, leaned back against the headrest – eyes staring lifelessly at the ceiling. A pair of bracelets similar to the ones I’d used on my buddy in the car held her wrists to the armrests of the chair. Her blouse had been ripped open and a perfectly straight incision ran down her sternum between a flawless pair of breasts. The edge of the cut glistened with a substance that almost resembled blood.
‘Charlotte!’
No response.
I inspected the opening more closely. Like the blood, her skin looked real but not quite real enough. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed during one of our previous encounters. Gently, I pulled one of the flaps back and found the workings of a very sophisticated android. I sighed and let the piece of ‘skin’ go. I would have never guessed in a million years that she wasn’t an actual human. Our conversation in the bar was miles apart from the banter that I had ever had with any other android, including Pam, who possessed some very human-like idiosyncrasies.
How could she not be human?
As I continued to look at her, shame and pity overcame me. Pity because I had let a client get hacked open like this. And shame because I knew then and there that I had liked Charlotte; in a more than platonic way. A lot of guys, and many ladies too, got their jollies off with synths, but not me. I preferred someone with a pulse. In my ignorance, I’d have asked her out, especially if, or when, things went south with Erica. I’d have asked her out as many times as it took to get into her pants and now I loathed myself for even thinking those thoughts.
I looked away from her and scanned the office. Some computer equipment was piled on a desk. James must have used it to transfer the information into his core processor. I also found a smashed-beyond-repair device that looked remarkably similar to the one I’d lifted from Kitterman’s office. A thin layer of the same liquid that oozed out of Charlotte’s chest covered it.
Instinctively, my gaze returned to my client. I had one thing left to do: take a closer look inside her chest. The delicate componentry inside her had been bashed up pretty good. I had no idea if she could ever be put back together again. If she were one of my computers, she’d be scrapped for parts.
After a few more minutes of inspection, I found the spot where the datapad had been installed. I stood back up and laughed long and hard. All this time spent chasing shadows. Putting my neck on the line. And my client had the device in her the entire time. I mean, the damned thing sat in a booth right next to me a couple of days ago. It was genius. If you wanted to keep a record of something as dangerous as the bombing in New York, then why not put it where no one would think to look?
Kitterman had brains alright, but I had the upper hand now. I had the evidence cuffed in the back seat of my car. I looked at Charlotte’s lifeless body and said to her: ‘Corny as it might sound, you were right all along and I’m sorry I ever doubted you.’
I closed Charlotte’
s blouse and jacket as best I could. She deserved a little dignity, even if she was a machine. I’d need to grab a pair of bolt cutters from my trunk to get those handcuffs off her wrists. I couldn’t risk someone else finding her but I couldn’t bring her with me either. A person might get the wrong idea if they saw me driving through town with a lifeless body riding shotgun and an unconscious hoodlum in the back seat.
After I had retrieved the data from my man James, I could take it, and him, to Metro HQ. Once I had spun my story to the cops, they could come back here to retrieve her body. The last thing I did before I left her was to remove the earrings and slide them into an outer pocket of my jacket.
*
I stood hunched over the Griffon’s trunk, weapons stowed, bolt cutters in hand and back turned to the world, when an unknown assailant came at me. I heard the footsteps and had just enough time to wheel around before a guy in a ski mask could take me down with a haymaker. I dodged to my right and responded with an overhead swing of the bolt cutters.
He twisted around the attack and followed with a jab to the midsection. I reversed the direction of the bolt cutters to parry the blow. But, holy hell, this guy was strong. My counter barely phased him. He pressed his assault with a left cross that I managed to sidestep before he took my jaw off.
My sparring companion checked in around the same height and build as me. In addition to his black ski mask, he wore a baseball-style jacket, T-shirt, jeans and a pair of leather driving gloves. All in black. The standard outfit of anyone up to no good. The only talking he did, though, was with his fists and they had a lot to say.
He came at me again with another left. I deflected most of the blow, but it still hurt like a son of a bitch. I swung the cutters again. He flowed past them like a leaf rustling in the wind and chopped my wrist, forcing them loose from my grip. They fell at our feet with a loud clang. At this point, I knew I was in it deep and didn’t see a way out of this fight. I prayed to God that Ski Mask wasn’t entertaining any homicidal notions.
Unnoticed, I reached into my pocket and palmed the earrings. They might come in handy if I survived the fight. This guy didn’t show up, mitts swinging and nothing to say, by accident. He showed up for the same reason I did. Charlotte Rennick.
The trail of crumbs all led back to her. Not to me. But to her.
My attacker let fly an uppercut with his right. I closed the distance to trap the punch with my left arm and practically hugged the guy. We stood there face to face. His breath was even and calm. An obvious sign that this pug could go the distance with a better opponent. I did the only thing I could do: I lunged forward, my cranium leading the charge. At the same time as I attempted to headbutt my opponent, I slipped the earrings in his jacket pocket. The drop went perfectly. However, when our foreheads met, it felt more like hitting a brick wall than someone’s skull. Stars flashed in my vision and my knees buckled.
In my moment of disorientation, the guy paid me back in kind with his own head-to-head strike and absolutely stunned me. He followed with a knee to the midsection and then a right elbow to the head. He finished his flurry of blows with a left jab straight at my already tenderised forehead with a force so hard that it sent me staggering backwards. He pressed the attack.
I fought to maintain consciousness and flailed at him like a drunken sailor. I missed a lot, but by some miracle my fingers hooked the eye holes of his ski mask. I wrenched it off as I continued to stumble backwards. Darkness closed in all around me. He followed with another right to the chest and oblivion swelled up around me.
My opponent stopped moving just long enough for me to get a good look at him. A face I’d seen before. I had seen it recently. I knew that face. I also knew my eyes must’ve been playing tricks on me. Because the mug I saw as the shadows claimed me was none other than Nolan Kitterman.
18
Slowly, the conscious world manifested itself as a tiny beam of light. As the light expanded, a voice telling me to get up joined in the fun. I decided, what the hell, I might as well listen and opened my eyes. Immediately I regretted it because with consciousness came pain. Pain in my chest. Pain in my jaw and forehead. Pain in my arms and hands. Pain everywhere.
I shielded my eyes with my right hand and massaged my temples with my middle finger and thumb.
‘Maybe I should go back to practising law,’ I groaned and continued to lie there.
After a few minutes of self-pity, I leaned up on my elbows and had a look around through squinted eyes. No sign of the guy or his ski mask. He must have bolted while I snoozed like a baby. My car, fortunately, hadn’t disappeared, and I counted it as a blessing. But the opened rear passenger door sat on its hinges in an odd sort of way. Out of the back seat lay the sprawling figure of James with most of his electronic guts dangling on the pavement.
I sat up and regretted that, too. The ache in my head increased tenfold. The world around me faded in and out of focus. Details split in two and migrated in opposite directions before converging into one again. I fought through it, managed to roll over on my hands and knees, and crawl over to the dead robot for a closer inspection. Now, I’m no android expert but if I had to guess, I would say the punk who bushwhacked me went for this guy’s core processor.
There went the evidence against Kitterman.
I dropped onto my keister, leaned back against the car next to the lifeless high-tech tin can and tried to get my bearings. I needed to think for a few minutes and, in all fairness, couldn’t do more than that anyway. Anything else hurt too much. I checked the time… Out at least 40 minutes. Looking at my smartwatch reminded me that I had dropped those earrings into Ski Mask’s pocket during the fight. I opened the tracking application and waited for it to acquire the signal. He was on the Underground, heading towards RD1 from Res 3. I watched the dot, transfixed, waiting to see where he would go next but it went dead. ‘Signal Lost’ flashed on the screen. He must’ve found the earrings and smashed them.
RD1.
MARA Corp. Kitterman.
The image of her old man flashed in my mind for reasons that momentarily eluded me. Then it hit me: I saw his face before I blacked out. A dead man had punched me out. And where there was one Kitterman involved, there stood a very good chance to find another.
‘What do you make of that?’ I said to the silent companion lying next to me.
He didn’t respond.
I laughed.
It was all I had in me; to sit there and laugh. It felt good despite the tenderness in my chest and sides. I needed a nice, hearty laugh. When the hilarity of the situation died down, I hauled myself up to a standing position, fighting off the nausea along the way.
A few slow deep breaths and I started to feel on the right side of ‘better’. I went around the mechanical corpse and had a closer look at the car door. The damage hadn’t been too extensive and it could be closed if there wasn’t a body in the way. The Griffon would need some TLC but it’d be alright in the end. That cheered me up a bit more.
I turned my attention to the empty building where I hoped Rennick’s body still lay. No way in hell a third dude would be lurking around here waiting to beat my ass, but that didn’t change the fact that the dump looked even more foreboding than ever. For peace of mind, I grabbed my concussion rifle and staggered towards the same rusty door I had used an hour ago.
*
The place looked exactly the same. No one had entered since I left, as far as I could tell. Upstairs I found Ms Rennick precisely where I had stashed her. Ski Mask had left both me and her alone. I guess he was only after one thing.
I stumbled my way back to the car and opened the secret compartment. I stashed the rifle and the pistol and the extra cartridge in the space. Next, I scrolled through the list of contacts on my smartwatch until I found Detective Ashdown’s number again. I had to call this one in to Metro because I couldn’t hide my involvement in what went down at Verne Bottling. Two dead androids and a shoddy excuse for being here already put me at a disadvantage. Not to ment
ion, Rennick worked for Kitterman, and I had broken into her place. Another crumb that could lead back to me.
Ashdown’s voice brought me out of my head.
‘Daniel Helmqvist. What can I do for you today?’
His hello was about as warm as a bank teller’s.
‘I’d hate for you to detect a pattern in our recent phone conversations, but…’ I took a deep breath. ‘You better send some boys down to the IM. I’ve got two dead androids at the old Verne factory.’
‘Dead?’
‘Dead, disabled, guts hanging out. Call it what you want but they ain’t hosting tea parties any time soon.’
‘What the hell are you mixed up in this time, Helm?’
Still no real concern in his voice, only the curiosity of someone used to solving mysteries.
‘I’ll tell you when you get here.’
‘Fine. We’re on our way. The old Verne plant, you say?’
‘Yeah. 1643 Edison.’
‘Got it. We’ll be there in twenty. Don’t go anywhere.’
‘I wouldn’t dream of it. You boys showing up with sirens blazing will be the highlight of my day.’
‘Are you in danger?’
‘Not anymore.’
‘No sirens then.’
‘You really know how to take the fun out of everything, don’t you?’
He hung up on me.
*
Before I hopped into the driver’s seat to await the arrival of Metro I realised I’d made a mistake by stowing away the concussion rifle. The gun would have to figure into my story and I owned a permit for it anyway. The NEEDLE, however, had to be hidden. I didn’t use it and after what happened in the HTS case, Ashdown wouldn’t let this one slide.
I placed the rifle on the hood of the car so as to not make anyone with an actual firearm jumpy when they saw it. The coppers rolling up to a scene in their cruisers and spying some gee with a gun hitched up on his shoulder like a cowboy might send the wrong message. With the stage set, I slid in behind the steering wheel and powered up the car to access the on-board computer. From there, I locked the hidden compartment in the trunk. And, at the same time, scrolled through my music collection for something to listen to while I waited. I settled on Bonobo’s The North Borders.
