Borough of Bones

by John Conroe

  “Contact, target down. It came from behind…” was all I got out when my comm went nuts with multiple voices and gunshots. One of those voices was Elizabeth’s. I turned, yelling into my microphone, “Carl, go.”

  To his credit, he was, I think, a milisecond from making that choice on his own, but my yell freed his feet faster and he ran back down the tunnel toward the gunshots we could hear, while more shots and voices filled my ear.

  I turned to Rikki. “Clear?”

  “Clear. Unit secure,” came the response, which freed my own feet to race to the node junction.

  When I got out, I found Carl standing up and pulling his pistol back from the head segment of another infiltrator. Elizabeth was back against the wall, her booted foot on the drone bot’s head, her weapon in a two-hand hold, Brutus hovering over the still-twitching bot.

  “Status?” Yoshida’s voice demanded over the comm.

  I looked at the other two, saw Elizabeth pull two centimeters of the infiltrator’s poison needle from the bottom of her boot. She looked at me with a thumbs up. It hadn’t penetrated the shank of her tough recycled plastic footwear. I got a nod of affirmation from Carl that he was okay and replied, “Two targets down. One from second tunnel and one from…” I glanced at Elizabeth, who pointed to the third tunnel, “the tunnel we hadn’t cleared yet. No injuries. Be warned that one of them went undetected by Rikki until it attacked.”

  “Determine how, immediately!” Yoshida said.

  “You guys okay?”

  They both nodded, both almost simultaneously dropping their partial magazines and slamming fresh ones into their pistols.

  I went back into the tunnel with Rikki, moving slowly and scanning everything till we got to the dead bot. Rikki flew further back to the point where the bot had appeared. Powerful LEDs lit up the ceiling as I moved closer. Up in the concrete roof of the tunnel was a small hollow, a squared-off section that must have once housed something else but was now empty. It was just big enough for the Spider’s spy to hide itself.

  I used my virtual assistant to video the spot, then headed back out. When I got to the node, carrying the dead bot, I found Yoshida and Rift waiting with Kottos and Abate. I had the AI send the video to the whole team as I threw the spybot on the ground next to the other one.

  Eric came hurrying up with a metal case. He was wearing latex gloves, eyes focused on the bots.

  “Alright. We’re going to send drones down every one of the tunnels all the way to the end and then back. We’ll have them look for these kind of spots particularly. Then we’ll have the waiting soldiers work their way back to us to verify. We can’t afford to miss any of them,” Yoshida said.

  We did just that. Sending drones back and forth, scouring the tunnels much faster than humans could. Then Yoshida’s waiting troops at the tunnel ends walked back down them to our end, doing a second, slower sweep. We ended up driving two more out into the open, where the drones killed them dead. All told, we had the two from our node, three from Yoshida’s, and the other two from the remaining tunnels combined.

  Our group, the original response team, saddled up and headed out as the sky was turning the purple of predawn. The remaining soldiers would come along after the last sweeps. None of the suits were still there when we exited the muni building, but from Yoshida’s terse comments and orders, I was thinking that the general was highly concerned. Seven infiltrators in the city systems and one in the biggest corporation on Earth. So not good for the head of Zone Defense.

  The van dropped me at my door, the major giving me a instructions to be back at Roosevelt by eleven hundred hours.

  Weary, I carried my almost depleted Berkut up to the apartment, let myself in, and crashed hard.

  Chapter 22

  I was just suddenly sitting upright, in complete darkness, heart drumming, breathing too fast, listening for the scuttle of the bot. Where was my gun? A light? Where was I? And why couldn’t I hear the killer coming my way?

  Tick-tick-tick-tick. Fast, flowing together, followed by another four ticks. Rikki? A tiny light suddenly illuminating the tunnel. Only it wasn’t a tunnel. My room? The familiar whir of fans brought the light my way and then a slight weight settled on my legs. A dream? No, a nightmare. But I couldn’t remember any of it, just terror. My t-shirt and shorts were soaked with sweat, but my heart at least had stopped trying to gallop out of my chest and my breathing slowed as I focused on the weight of my drone. “Ssstatus?” I croaked out.

  “Clear. Out of the Zone. In Gurung quarters. No hostile UAV or UGVs within sensor range,” came the quiet reply.

  Home. I was home. No drones other than mine. “Light,” I said and my AI assistant turned on the room lights, blinding me. “Dim.” The bright flare lessened to a soft glow.

  Nothing—just my room. Picking up Rikki, I set him on the bed, then moved across the room to my dresser, where I grabbed a little LED light, pulled my pistol from my harness, and then, as an afterthought, grabbed my kukri as well. I set all three on my bedside table and climbed back under the covers. The apartment was all quiet. “Time?”

  “Oh-four-thirty-two,” Rikki replied, beating the assistant by half a second. I’d only been asleep for maybe forty minutes.

  I lay back, suddenly cold, and pulled my blankets over my clammy skin. Tried to remember the dream. Just flashes of blood and fear with no context or content. A feeling of hopeless terror.

  Rikki suddenly lifted off the bed, hovered forward, the breeze of his fans fluttering the sheets before he lowered down to settle on my chest. Our standard position for sleeping in the Zone. Me on my back, weapons at hand, his light weight on my chest to warn me of approaching danger with the least amount of noise or disturbance.

  I had had a nightmare. Just a dream gone bad. But we were safe in our apartment, the best detection system possible had just given the all clear and now was lying on me in our combat rest position.

  “Weapon status?”

  “Armed. Magazine full.”

  I had stopped checking weapons with the local NYPD precinct at the first thought of danger to my family. Rikki was one of my most powerful weapons and likely the first to detect a problem, so he was staying fully armed as far as I was concerned. Mom knew, and Aama had always thought all weapons should always be loaded. The twins didn’t know, but probably didn’t care. They had been trained to be weapon savvy from birth and were totally comfortable with my drone, which was good because his current mission parameters were to protect them above all else.

  Mental security checklist complete, I let my eyes close and tried some breathing techniques my father had taught me. My heart slowed but I still saw flashes of wet red and felt the rattle of steel claws against the ground.

  It was a long time before I fell into a restless sleep.

  When I finally made it out to the family room later that morning, I found the whole fam awake and lounging around, the evil twins still in their pajamas while Mom and Aama were dressed but very casually.

  “What, no school?” I asked, heading for the coffee.

  “Saturday, bonehead,” Gabby shot back without looking up from the holo fashion projection she was lazily purveying. Creature Two was studying a tablet, which likely meant she was reading blogs, with the highest probability being celebrity news.

  I was mildly stunned that it was Saturday… I had lost all track of the calendar.

  “You got in late?” Mom asked.

  “More like I got in early… this morning.”

  “And it went okay?”

  “Yeah. But there’s a whole hornets’ nest stirred up now. Drones have escaped the Zone,” I said.

  “Should we leave?” she asked, her quiet words causing the twins to snap around so fast, it’s a wonder their spines stayed intact.

  “Leave? Why would we leave?” Monique asked, her tone already taking on a dangerous note of rebellion.

  “Did you not hear your brother? Drones have escaped the Zone,” Mom said, her voice even and direct.

>   “They what?” Gabby asked, sitting upright.

  “A small number of modified bots have gotten out,” I said. “They have been focused on infiltrating computer systems, and if they have had access to outside networks, then they know all of our names and roughly where we live. They likely know the address for the building across the street, but yes, there is a risk they could find us here. There could come a time when you should all head upstate to visit Grandpa and Grandma,” I said.

  Neither terrible twin said a word, which was frankly more disturbing than if they had freaked out. They looked scared and I felt like complete shit.

  “Girls, do you have your emergency bags packed?” Mom asked, voice all business. Emergency bags?

  “Yes, Mom,” they said at exactly the same time and in the same voice. It weirds some people out, just like when they start and finish each other’s sentences. I ignored it, still back on the go bags. When had that happened?

  Mom smiled at my expression. “We’ve been prepared since Drone Night,” she said.

  “Of course we have,” Aama said. “Did you think we didn’t learn any lessons?”

  “I never thought about it,” I answered honestly.

  “Because you were with your father, learning the Zone. But being prepared was and is just as important to us. Girls, I suggest you update anything that you can’t live without, remembering that you have to keep the same bags. No increase in size.”

  “Okay,” Gabby said, frowning. Monique was already standing up to go and I was wondering who these girls were and what had happened to my sisters. Then they were off to their room, chattering rapidly about who was taking what.

  I looked at Mom and Aama.

  “They are Ghurka too, Ajaya,” Aama said, handing me a plate of breakfast.

  Just when you think you know the people you grew up with.

  Zone Defense was buzzing when I got there, a hive turned upside down. But an orderly hive, as the worker bees either continued their tasks, albeit with a note of anxiety, or streamed down the halls toward the auditorium. A couple of Yoshida’s people saw me, nodding at me in greeting.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  “No need to get all blue in the face; it’s a briefing,” Specialist Corcoran said with a laugh at her own joke. Short and muscular, she was almost always smiling. “We’re all supposed to go, your sneaky students too, plus most of the active force on duty.”

  Her companion, Specialist Rose, on the other hand, always seemed a bit morose. She was my height and also muscular. Actually, muscular described every single one of Yoshida’s people. Most active military are fit, but the major’s group took it to almost religious levels.

  “Oh, I hadn’t heard. The major just told me to report in by eleven hundred,” I said, falling into step with them.

  “I’m sure you’re supposed to be there as well. Heard you were out half the night in tunnels,” Corcoran said.

  “You guys weren’t part of the fun?”

  “Nope, we had the night off. But rumor has it that’s about to change. Leaves are all cancelled,” the young soldier said with her trademark smile.

  I rubbed my face. “This shit takes forever to wear off.”

  Corcoran laughed. “It’s actually almost gone, but Sergeant Rift has been highly amused by it, so, well, you know.”

  “Anything for morale,” I said. Corcoran laughed again and even Rose made a noise. More of a grunt than a laugh, but whatever.

  We entered the auditorium up at the back and wound down the sides to find a lower level. The two specialists moved to a cluster of their own squad mates, who were sitting about halfway down the slope of the amphitheater-style seating. Two rows of seats in front of them were open, then there was another cluster of soldiers, my trainees.

  I ended up picking a seat on the aisle in one of the empty rows between the two groups. I had to smile as I pictured Astrid analyzing my choice. She had always been intrigued by psychology. She’d say something about me seeing myself as an outsider between the two groups, belonging to neither but involved with both.

  Down front, in the swarm of admin officers, I spotted both General Davis and Major Yoshida as well as a half dozen of the more senior officers I was slightly familiar with. I also saw Agents Black and White sitting in front seats between the officers and a large group of dark suits. Lots of suits. Last night’s activities had really kicked the government in the teeth.

  General Davis stood up and moved to the front, turning to face the audience. The hum of voices cut off like a switch had been thrown, at least among the soldiers. The suits didn’t have the instant discipline of military.

  Davis waited a moment more than he normally did, looking at the cluster of important civilians till they quieted down.

  “At twelve thirty-one hundred hours this morning, Zone Defense personnel began an operation underneath Brooklyn, inside the municipal computing complex. During the ensuing hours, we disabled and collected seven drones of unknown construction interspersed throughout the city control network,” Davis said. Behind him, holographic images appeared, showing a line of dead and damaged infiltrators on a white table.

  “Earlier yesterday, a single similar unit was recovered inside a corporate drone hive in New Jersey,” he continued. The images pulled back, getting small enough to now include another unit set slightly apart from the others.

  “While examinations continue, we are more than reasonably certain that these units came from within the Zone.”

  The civilians reacted with a mixture of fear, disbelief, outrage, and shock. The military folks contained their responses better, but theirs was a blend of shame, guilt, and anger.

  “Dr. Aaron Zurloft will comment on their designs which, as I mentioned, are unique and previously unknown.”

  Davis stepped back and Yoshida’s pet scientist moved confidently into his space.

  “The units you see before you are composed of approximately sixty-five percent 3D printed parts and thirty-five percent salvaged pieces from a combination of Crab and Meerkat UGVs. No two are exactly identical, yet all eight share many features. The seven found in the municipal computing area range from this simple specimen, which is armed with just a hypodermic needle and a small vial of very outdated hydrogen cyanide, to this unit that has multiple hypodermic injection needles, several toxins, and a dual-purpose laser that can both interface with a fiber optic system as well as potentially blind a human.

  “The first unit has mismatched legs. The second uses mixed pairs of matching appendages, but the remaining five all use complete sets from either Crab or Meerkat, but not both.

  “Our working hypothesis is that the increasing sophistication of each unit indicates a steady refinement and improvement of design.”

  He paused and looked out over the audience, very comfortable with lecturing. “The eighth unit gave us pause. It was recovered first, and our initial theory was that it was an earlier experiment before the others were emplaced in the city systems. But analysis and comparison show it to be the newest and most sophisticated yet. It uses matched pairs of appendages, but each pair is carefully selected from donor UGVs to balance the overall unit. Its weapons are more advanced, using a hypodermic of freshly purified nicotine, a more powerful laser, and a new weapon, something we’re calling a pneumatic shotgun. Uses air compressed in chambers by the action of the front two legs to propel a cloud of fiberglass needles coated in nicotine. And this machine is the only one that had detachable sensors it could emplace around its area of operation.