by Phoenix Ward
“I don’t like this place,” Beth said, watching the people around her through the corners of her eyes.
“I wouldn’t expect you to,” Simon replied. “However, it has its own kind of charm. Some people really find comfort in a place like this.”
“People I wouldn’t want to talk to,” Beth commented.
Simon ignored her and continued along the walkway. He took her past a left turn, away from where the capsules usually picked up their passengers, towards the hollows where stores and bathrooms were kept. They walked past a small liquor store, outside which a child no older than five cried while standing in a shirt made for a tall fat man. Beth wanted to go to the child and ask her if she was okay, where her parents might be, and if she needed help. She resisted, however, realizing that such generosity would make her stick out like a sore thumb. Everyone passing by, seeing her caring for a stranger, would instantly think, “oh yeah, that’s a cop right there.”
They went through a sort of tunnel that connected their plaza to another part of the station. That led to a sort of market square area, totally separate from the hyperloop platforms and the passengers waiting for their ride to arrive. There was a large gun store built into the wall, the windows of which were barred and covered in neon signs advertising various gun brands. Beth saw adverts for Smith and Wesson, Heckler, Colt, and even a couple brands she was unfamiliar with. The store appeared to sell both legal, industry-approved firearms and black market guns designed by engineers working against the law. The adverts showed a digital model of each weapon through Beth’s internal retina display when she focused on them. One looked like a miniature chaingun, reduced to the size of a small submachine gun. Another one looked like a sawed-off shotgun with three barrels.
They make some pretty scary weapons on the black market, Beth observed. I wouldn’t want to be on the wrong end of any of those monsters.
In front of the gun store, a medley of different food stands, trinket booths, and other wares were laid out for potential customers to peruse. Beth saw one lanky white kid trying on a kimono in front of one of the clothing stands. He admired his reflection, and Beth couldn’t help but smirk a little. The guy probably thought he was some bold samurai warrior, or maybe a guileful ninja. But he was just a kid.
“How much farther?” Beth asked her mechanical companion.
“Not too far,” the I.I. replied. “It’s just up this way.”
They walked past a trio of bodyshells, all looking around the crowd like they were searching for someone. They each had cheap models, with a single-lens head attached on a thin stalk of metal and rubber. They looked more like security cameras with thin, aluminum bodies. They were covered in various bumper stickers, which some I.I.s wore like a human does a tattoo. They were speaking in Mandarin, so Beth couldn’t understand them. They ignored the detective and her companion as they walked back to the stations.
“Here we are,” Simon said as they approached a nondescript pillar outside of an import store. Beth looked around, expecting to see something telltale to tip her off to the meeting place, but she didn’t see anything unlike the rest of the station. The pillar was a little dilapidated, perhaps, but so were at least half of the walls they passed. There was even one that crumbled out onto the walkway, exposing the water system behind it, and no one seemed concerned by it. However, Simon seemed certain that this was the spot.
There was no one there. Beth looked around at the faces nearest to her, looking for any expression of expectation.
“Where is she?” Beth asked.
“On her way, I imagine,” Simon replied. “She’s probably playing it safe and letting us show up first so she can scope us out. Make sure we aren’t anyone we didn’t say we’d be.”
“Well I hope she doesn’t take too long,” the detective commented, looking around at the squalor of their particular corner.
They were posted up in front of a ramen shop, but through the curtains in the windows, Beth couldn’t tell if it was in business or not. She liked to imagine that she saw a flutter of the curtains every now and then — perhaps a beam of light behind them.
I could really go for a bowl right now, she said, looking longingly at the restaurant. Something warm that wasn’t heated up over a campfire.
There was a stuffed tiger bolted to the floor right beside the restaurant. It was used to prop up a sandwich board, which announced lunch specials, but the chalk seemed so faded and worn that it was doubtful anyone had changed it in months.
Maybe it’s closed down, she thought sadly.
Simon was alert, looking over every face that came within fifteen feet of them. There was no way to discern his thoughts, but Beth kept her doubts and questions to herself. As each minute bled on and they continued to wait, she felt more and more anxious. She became increasingly aware of every face that looked her way, every pair of uncertain eyes. The large men with tattoos and scars made her particularly nervous. She was glad she didn’t have her purse or anything of value on her. Other than her clothes, she was naked. No gun, no badge, no I.D. She’d left everything when she tried to meet Marcus at the mall.
A group of four vagabonds wrestled with each other outside a food stand. Apparently, some passenger bought a large meal and only took a few bites before his capsule arrived, and had abandoned it. Now there were some grungy tunnel-dwellers, all smelling the fresh food like coyotes in the wild. They approached and laid their respective claims on the grub. What started as loud bickering had picked up into a full-blown fist fight. Dirty ponchos and torn hoodies were thrown about as the homeless people tore at each other. They were like sharks who had just smelled blood, writhing and working themselves into a frenzy. People passing by made wide berths to avoid them.
For a moment, Beth thought about going back to the gun store and seeing if she could get something to hold in her hand and feel safe. She wished more than ever that her department-issued sidearm was clipped to her hip, but then she remembered that it had tracking tech on it. The precincts didn’t want their officers to fire a shot for just any reason, so they tracked every gun they issued. Tarov could probably use his connection in the police to track that data and find her. All in all, she was fortunate she didn’t have the weapon. She had Simon, after all.
“What’s taking so long?” the woman asked after they had stood by the pillar for over thirty minutes. “She said she was meeting us here, right?”
Simon nodded. “She gave me a map showing exactly where to meet her. I’ve double checked several times now. We’re in the right spot.”
“And she was supposed to meet us now?”
“Half an hour ago,” Simon corrected her.
They both looked at the people passing by before turning to each other.
“Something doesn’t feel right,” Beth said. There was almost something in the air that heightened her senses, like she was detecting an odor of danger.
“I agree,” Simon said after some thought. “This is starting to feel like a setup. Stay on your toes.”
How exactly am I supposed to do that? Beth wondered. What would I do if I had to defend myself right now? Smack the attacker in the face?
As if her thoughts had manifested themselves, Beth heard a small boom and a lot of small objects clatter. She turned toward the ramen restaurant, where the commotion had come from. There was a bit of motion in the black curtains in the windows. Her body tightened as she braced herself — for what, she did not know.
Then a form burst through the restaurant’s front window. The curtain flowed out into the new opening as thousands of glass shards tinkled to the tile floor. Everyone jumped back a bit, stopping their rushed walking or loud babbling to look at the form, which rolled out onto the ground and stopped about ten feet from Beth and Simon.
Simon’s bodyshell beside her raised his hands. She felt her own fist clutch at her side, but she was too startled to lift it.
The form unfolded itself and stood at its full height. It was a robotic bodyshell unlike anything Be
th had ever seen before. It towered a full foot over Simon, who she had regarded as pretty tall until this moment. Its silver-plated head was covered in three faces, like some ancient Greek theater mask. The faces were angular and full of little lights, arranged in a geometric pattern not unlike the eyes of a spider. A green glow came from its light panels, which almost seemed to smile at them. A mechanical mouth filled with dozens of sharp metal teeth grinned at them.
The thing spread out its four tentacle-like arms, each with a robotic hand on the end. The limbs were composed of several intricate joints, allowing it to move in any manner the user saw fit. Two of the hands were clutching katanas, brandishing them towards Beth and Simon like a large pair of shears. A neon blue glow covered the blades.
Simon moved in front of Beth, standing between her and the terrifying new bodyshell before them. She peered around his metal body to see the machine’s head rotate. One of the faces, its optical lights glowing purple where the other face had been green, locked into place and faced the detective and her I.I. companion.
“Gotcha,” a voice sneered out of the four-armed bodyshell.
Rubik
The machine’s violet optical lights gazed over Beth and Simon. Beth felt like she was being scanned by a security system back at the precinct, but this felt much more sinister. It almost seemed like it could glimpse into her soul and look around.
Simon held his ground. If he was afraid, Beth couldn’t tell. Nothing about his body language indicated defeat.
“Right where you’re supposed to be,” a woman’s voice comes out of the four-armed bodyshell.
“Just like they said,” it spoke again, this time in a Southern man’s voice.
“It seems like the intel was good,” another male voice said through the thing’s voice speaker. “Want me to handle this one?”
“No, this moment is mine,” a fourth voice said. This one sounded strained, like breathing was difficult.
“Oh, Lynch wants to play with his meat before he eats it,” the first voice — the woman’s — teased.
Simon and Beth looked at each other. Her companion couldn’t make any expressions, but she could sense an air of confusion about him.
“Then let him play, I say,” another woman’s voice replied. This one was much deeper and rough.
“Very well.”
“Look at the two of you,” the voice that sounded strained said. This time he was addressing Beth and Simon, rather than talking to himself. “Like flies in a web. I can’t believe you fell for our trap.”
One of the other voices, this one with a distinct Japanese accent, commented, “As I said they would.”
Simon spoke up. “What do you want?” he asked.
“Want?” the voice breathed heavily at them. “Oh, I want so many things. But my employers want you, and that’s why I’m here. I thought it would be easier to send you back to the boss piece by piece, but here we are. I have my orders.”
“Tarov sent you?” Simon asked.
Beth was still trying to take everything in. The assassin’s bodyshell seemed to be occupied by more than one I.I. It was something she’d always heard of, but never seen. Unlike Trishilan, who was an entity that identified as one individual, this bodyshell seemed to be a unit. As far as she’d ever learned, a unit was made up of several different consciousnesses, all sharing a single body but identifying individually. It seemed impractical to her, but she’d always heard that the harmony between members of a unit can make for a formidable team. A unit like this — except in an organic body rather than robotic one — had once put away the country’s biggest real estate broker when it became apparent that he was laundering money for the Russian mafia. Still, she had never encountered a unit in real life.
“Look at the girl,” the first woman’s voice said. “She looks like she’s starting to understand.”
“There is no Radar,” Simon said.
“That’s right,” the second man’s voice replied. “It was all a trap.”
“Who are you?” Beth asked, pushing past Simon a little so she could be seen better.
“Haha, my name is Lynch,” the gruff, strained male said.
“And I am Hilde,” the deeper woman’s voice said.
“Maru,” the Japanese voice greeted Beth.
“And we’ve also got Nick and Wolfgang in here, too,” the first woman’s voice explained. “I’m Jerri, by the way.”
“I don’t understand,” Simon said.
“They’re assassins,” Beth explained, not taking her eyes off the mechanical face pointed towards them. While they spoke, the head continued to rotate and display a different face whenever the voices changed. A new set of colored optical lights would stare back at the detective and I.I. as that part of the unit spoke.
“Collectively, we’re known as Rubik,” the four-armed machine said. “We are the best assassins in the entire Liberators.”
“In the world,” Maru corrected.
“So you’re here to kill us?” Beth asked.
I knew something was fishy about this whole thing, she thought. I’m an idiot for going along with it.
“You wish,” the voice identified as Lynch said.
“Now Lynch, have some tact,” Jerri scolded him. Then she addressed their prey. “We’d rather it didn’t come to that.”
“Surrender now, and we will take you in unharmed,” the Southern male — who Beth imagined was Nick — said. “We don’t want to have to fight you.”
“But we will,” Hilde added.
Beth looked over at her I.I. companion. How much she wished she could peer through the metal shell and see what was going on in his head. Was he coming up with a plan? Was he panicking like she was? Did he realize the jig was up, or did he have another trick up his sleeve?
“You realize that you can’t kill me with a pair of swords, right?” Simon said. He seemed to stand a bit taller, trying to match their assailants in size.
“Not regular blades, no,” Maru replied. “These, however, are cyberblades. You should know what these are — the humans tried to develop them against us.”
Beth could tell Simon fell into a stunned silence.
“That’s right,” a man with a German accent said. Beth assumed it was Wolfgang. “You understand now that if we break your bodyshell with a cyberblade, it will delete your code — forever.”
“It’ll even worm into any storage you might be kept in,” Nick said. “No matter where you are — it will delete you. There’s no coming back.”
Simon seemed to think about this for a moment.
“You won’t hurt us if we come with you?” he asked.
“You and that data of yours,” Jerri replied.
So they know about the information we have, Beth thought. I wonder if they realize what’s in it all. If they know that their boss is just an A.I. stringing them along. Somehow, she doubted it.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Simon asked. “If we give you the data, there’s no reason not to cut us into a million little pieces.”
“You’ll just have to trust us,” Wolfgang said. “Because if you don’t, we’ll certainly cut you into a million little pieces.”
Simon looked back at Beth. She replied with nervous eyes, uncertain as to what help she could offer. It felt like her brain ran at a thousand miles per second trying to come up with some way out of their predicament. All she got, however, were frightened blocks of thought telling her over and over that she was screwed. She thought of her parents and the simple life of childhood. Oh, how she wished she could be there right now.
“I’ll come with you, and I’ll give you the data, but you have to let her go,” Simon told the assassins. He gestured towards Beth with a mechanical hand.
“Simon, no!” she cried out.
Was he really ready to give in? After escaping the Liberators, being framed for his own parents’ murder, then hunted by assassins, was he really going to let Tarov win? There was no way to tell by his face. She wished desp
erately that his bodyshell was built with realistic facial capabilities, so she could pick up a wink or anything to let her know that he had a plan. She just had to hope for the best.
The people around them started to clear out. Most ran off while yelling in panic, but others stayed around to gawk at the assassin unit. Rubik took up an enormous part of the station, like a towering Xenomorph from Alien.
“You would give yourself up so easily?” the voice belonging to Maru said. He sounded disappointed.
“If it’ll keep Beth safe,” Simon replied.
The assassins seemed to confer with themselves. Beth could hear half a dozen voices, all speaking in whispers, as they went over Simon’s proposition. Then, there was silence.
“Very well,” the Wolfgang voice said. “We’ll leave her alone. But you need to delete all the data you sent her. She needs to be cleared of all sensitive information.”
“I can do that for you,” Simon said. “Just let me jump over. I can find it and clear it in just a few seconds.”
Beth was apprehensive as her bodyshell companion turned to her. His optical light focused on her, staring into her mind.
Then, without warning, Simon whispered to her.
“Run,” he said.
In the blink of an eye, he span his bodyshell around and kicked Rubik in the face with a fast-moving robot foot. The blow knocked the unit off balance, but a hiss emanated from its legs and a second pair jolted out from the torso and caught the whole mechanical frame before it fell. Like a spider rearing from a sudden disturbance, Rubik leaned back and found its balance.
Beth didn’t have any time to think about it. Her body burst into motion before her brain even knew what she was doing. She backed away and started to run through the marketplace, towards the stairs they entered the station through.
Rubik readjusted in a fraction of a second, then countered with a swipe from one of its cyberblades. The blue weapon whizzed past Simon, who had jumped back just in time to avoid being sliced in half.
