by Jack Heath
Chloe tears off the woollen garment, throws it to me, and ducks behind the couch.
I pull the jumper over my chest and throw myself onto the mattress just as the door opens. A soldier enters—one I recognize. His tattooed neck marks him as the soldier who shot Chloe Two.
‘Get up,’ he says. His voice is like corrugated iron.
‘Why?’ I ask.
‘Just do it.’
The door starts to fall closed behind him. At the last second, I see Chloe’s hand snake out from behind the couch and block it.
‘Am I getting an upgrade?’ I ask. ‘Are you moving me to the presidential suite?’
Chloe rises to her feet behind him. A mistake. It sounds like he’s about to unlock the cage, and when he turns around to push the button he’ll see her.
‘Or perhaps one of your men has gone missing,’ I say, desperate to distract him. ‘The guy with the bruises on his chin. You’re moving me, because you think he might have defected.’
The soldier stares at me. ‘What do you know about that?’
Chloe slips through the door behind him.
‘I heard some of the guards talking about it,’ I say.
He’s not entirely convinced. He looks me up and down, and his eyes pause on my jeans. Chloe was wearing a skirt.
‘Where did you get those?’ he asks.
I try to look as though that’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. ‘A shop in Garema Place. But I don’t think they’d have them in your size.’
The soldier walks over to the locker. The one Chloe was afraid to look at. He pulls a key from his pocket.
‘In a minute, I’m going to ask you that question again,’ he says. ‘And you’re going to tell me the truth.’
He pulls out a car battery and a pair of jump leads. The teeth of the alligator clips glint at me.
‘Where did you get those jeans?’ he asks.
I edge away from the cage door. ‘I bought them. I’ve been wearing them this whole time. Why do you care about them now?’
He attaches one of the jump leads to the battery. When he taps the alligator clip against the bars of the cage, a shower of sparks lights up the room. My skin begins to tingle.
‘Who has been feeding you information?’ he demands.
‘I don’t know his name,’ I cry. ‘He’s just some guy I overheard talking!’
He steps back and pushes the button to unlock the cage.
I’m not going to stand back and wait for him to torture me. So I run at him, crashing through the cage door and swiping for his eyes with my plastic fingernails.
He yells, but hopefully not loud enough for the other soldiers in the building to hear him. For a second I think I’m winning—then he grabs my throat and slams me against the wall.
‘You’ve been in here for six weeks,’ he hisses. ‘How do you know what’s going on outside?’
There’s nothing I can say to get myself out of this.
‘Screw you,’ I reply.
He jams the alligator clip into my neck and there’s a buzzing sound …
~
I can’t move my legs. Or my hands. I can’t even turn my head. Someone has glued me to the wall.
No, they haven’t. I’m a severed head on a shelf.
The sight is horribly familiar. My headless body is slumped on the floor. My captor taps at the keys of a laptop. But this time it’s not Chloe Zimetski, nor a machine that looks like her. It’s Warren Christiansen, CEO of Ares Security and majority shareholder of Hera Global.
‘I don’t understand,’ he mutters to himself. ‘How did this happen?’
I’m in the same room as before, but the door has been propped open so as not to trap Christiansen inside. I can see the lifts. Escape is so close—but I’m immobilized. I don’t feel like much time has passed. Ten minutes, perhaps. Not long enough. Even if Chloe got away, it’s not enough time for her to have alerted the police.
The soldier with the tattoos stands behind Christiansen, looking at the screen. ‘What’s wrong?’
Christiansen’s voice is thick and sonorous. ‘My AI script was one of the founding technologies of this company. After we took out Chloe Zimetski, I told my developers to install the same software on the replica. But this isn’t it.’
He thinks I’m Chloe Two. He doesn’t realize she made a duplicate of her own.
‘Maybe the developers wrote a new AI programme,’ the soldier suggests.
‘No,’ Christiansen says. ‘Someone must have got to her before you could bring her in. Her software has been interfered with.’
‘Shall I take her to be recycled, then?’
‘No. Not all her files are corrupted. The memories we inserted of the development camp are intact, for example. Graeme and Nadine turned out to be useless. The replica is our only hope of extracting the QMP’s location.’
He turns back to the computer and keeps typing.
Every keystroke brings me closer to an electronic lobotomy. But maybe I can stall him, giving time for the real Chloe to come back with reinforcements.
‘Stop messing with my brain,’ I say, ‘and I’ll tell you everything you want to know.’
Both men glance over sharply.
‘You’re awake,’ Christiansen says.
I try to nod, but it doesn’t work without a neck. ‘I’m willing to make a deal.’
A thin smile. ‘You don’t have much to bargain with.’
‘Why are you taking to it like it’s not a machine?’ the soldier asks.
‘“Her”, not “it”,’ Christiansen says. ‘She’s every bit as complex as you or me.’
‘I have information,’ I say. ‘I know why that software is unfamiliar to you. I know where the real Chloe Zimetski is, and I know where the QMP ended up.’
This last part isn’t true, but it was the right thing to say. Hunger lights up his eyes.
‘Where?’ he asks.
‘I’ll tell you—once you’ve agreed to a few conditions.’
He gestures at the computer. ‘I’ve been going through your hard drive. You don’t know where it is.’
‘As you can see, I’ve modified my programming. Even if you found the hidden files I created, it would take years to crack the encryption. Your only option is to negotiate.’
‘Intriguing,’ he says, smiling. ‘Go on, then. What are your conditions?’ he asks.
‘I want your word,’ I say, ‘that you’ll let me go, and the real Chloe Zimetski and her mother will be unharmed.’
He hesitates. He knows that if he agrees too readily, I’ll realize that he’s lying.
‘You’re in no position to make demands,’ he says. His hand strays back to the keyboard. ‘It wouldn’t take much to wipe your brain.’
‘I have nothing left to lose,’ I say. ‘But you do. Erase my memories and you’ll never find your billion dollar investment.’
The soldier watches this exchange with growing unease.
‘Very well,’ Christiansen says. ‘I accept your terms. Tell me where the QMP is.’
‘Not so fast,’ I say, still stalling. ‘How do I know I can trust you?’
‘I lose nothing letting you go free,’ he replies. ‘Why would I waste resources keeping you here?’
‘You kept the real Chloe Zimetski here for six weeks, and she needed to eat,’ I say.
His eyes narrow. ‘You seem to be under the impression that I’m the bad guy here. But someone stole from me and I tried to put that right in the most painless way possible.’
No one is looking at my headless body. I flex, and watch a finger twitch.
‘If you’re not the bad guy,’ I ask, ‘why did Nadine steal the QMP?’
‘Simple greed, I imagine. As you say, it’s worth billions.’
‘Why can’t you just build another one?’
‘You’re missing the point,’ Christiansen says. ‘We can’t let a QMP fall into anyone else’s hands. They could hack into any bank, any government database—it would be a security nightmare. We�
��re trying to protect this country.’
‘The government has been paying you record-breaking amounts of money to protect this country lately. That wouldn’t be because you hacked into their databases and copied all their classified data, would it?’
Christiansen opens his mouth. Hesitates.
‘How does it work, exactly?’ I ask. ‘“Hire my troops or I’ll let WikiLeaks access my servers?”’
It looks like he’s deciding whether or not to deny it. I keep pushing.
‘You need the QMP because if anyone else gets it,’ I say, ‘they can prove that you committed treason. And if the government finds out that you don’t have it any more, they’ll know they can communicate without you listening in. They’ll start working on a plan to take you out.’
‘Enough.’ Christiansen turns his hands over, palms up. ‘What do you want?’
‘I want a recording of this conversation,’ I say. ‘I can’t show it to anyone because they’ll realize I’m a machine. You can’t show it to anybody because it proves you blackmailed the defence force. That way, we’re both safe.’
Christiansen strokes his chin. He’s about to say something when the soldier’s radio crackles.
‘Sir! The federal police are here.’
The soldier’s eyes widen. He presses his radio to his face. ‘Say again.’
‘I have fifteen federal police officers in the lobby, led by a Detective Anders. They have a warrant.’
Chloe. She did it.
The soldier’s face is ashen. He’s about to say something when Christiansen snatches the radio out of his hands.
‘Let them up,’ he says, smiling. ‘And remind Anders that the last time she came in here with her unprovable accusations, it cost the government six hundred thousand dollars in damages.’
He put the radio down. ‘This changes nothing,’ he says.
He and the soldier are both looking at my head. This is my chance.
Behind them, my headless body climbs to its feet. It picks up the car battery and the jump leads.
‘This changes everything,’ I say, to keep their attention on my face. ‘You think the cops are going to ignore what you’re doing to me? You don’t think they’ll see the cage?’
My body slips out of the open door behind them. I try to turn it towards the lifts, but it spins the wrong way. This is like trying to write by hand while watching myself in the mirror.
‘You’re a machine,’ Christiansen says. ‘I can do what I like with you. And, as you just worked out, no branch of the government can touch us, because we have copies of all their secret data. Plus, we own a law firm, a media conglomerate, and the best politicians that money can buy. The police can’t come after us and they know it.’
When my headless body is facing the right way, I put down the car battery, press my palms against the lift doors and pry them far enough apart to get my foot into the gap. From this angle, I can just make out the blackness of the empty lift shaft.
I pick up the jump leads again.
‘You shouldn’t have killed Graeme Zimetski,’ I say.
‘He shouldn’t have stolen the QMP from me,’ Christiansen replies.
What I’m about to do will kill me. But it will stop Ares from hurting anyone ever again.
I meet Christiansen’s eucalyptus eyes. ‘You clearly don’t understand ethics,’ I say, ‘but you understand consequences. So let me put it another way.’
My voice gets louder. ‘You should have bought off-site backup servers.’
I tap the jump leads against the cables in the lift shaft. A blast of electricity zaps down to the iron counterweight.
And all the lights go out.
THE HEADLESS HORSEWOMAN
I’m not dead.
The electrified iron block should have created enough magnetism to wipe every computer in the building—erasing all Ares’ stolen data—but somehow I’m still functioning.
I can feel it, though. The magnet has its own gravity. It feels like the centre of the Earth.
The soldier is yelling into his radio. ‘We’re under attack! Shoot to kill!’
Christiansen is glaring at me. ‘What did you do?’ he roars.
I open my mouth, and scream.
Both men cover their ears and squeeze their eyes shut, as though the ultrasonic shriek is blinding as well as deafening. I keep screaming as my headless body stumbles back into the room.
I snatch up my backpack with one hand and my head with the other. The world is a shadowy, lopsided maze. As I try to flee, the soldier grabs me and pushes me against the wall.
I try to clobber him with my bag, but I’ve got my left and right arms mixed up. I end up bashing him over the head with my own skull. Fireworks of pain explode out of my forehead, but the soldier gets it worse, since he doesn’t have titanium beneath his skin.
He collapses, and I stagger out of the room.
To find twenty soldiers pointing guns at me.
This looks like it might be all of Ares’ local troops. I’m surrounded by dozens of cruel mouths and goggled eyes. Everyone is armed—some with handguns, others with assault rifles or shotguns, many with flash grenades hanging from their belts.
‘Get down on the ground,’ one of them yells. ‘Face down.’
Maybe I can get back out the door before they shoot me. But they would just chase me, and some of them are bound to be faster.
A shot booms through the corridor. I cry out as a round clips my arm, carving out a chunk of silicone muscle. It’s like being hit by a droplet of molten lava.
I drop my bag and raise my hands. As my head rises in my grip, it feels like I’ve grown taller by half a metre. I fall to my knees, wobbling as though drugged. Then I pitch forwards, crashing into one of the soldiers and landing face down on the floor.
It takes the soldier a moment to realize I swiped the pins out of her flash grenades on the way down. I scuttle back and throw myself behind a partition in the wall behind me.
‘Hey, wait …’ she says.
And then the corridor goes white.
Even through closed eyelids, the simultaneous denotation of the three flash grenades is like looking directly into the sun. The blast of sound is deafening for a fraction of a second, then it’s replaced by pure silence. The microphones in my ears must have overloaded.
I scramble to my feet, grab the bag and my head and sprint away from the soldiers. My feet slap the tiles as I race past the lift, hoping to find a stairwell. A door awaits me at the other end of the corridor. I hit it at a run, shoving it open, and find myself standing in a jungle of computer towers linked by a vineyard of data cables. This must be the server room. I’m relieved to see that the computers are dark and silent, ruined by the magnetic pulse.
I shut the door behind me and run over to the window, willing Becky to still be in position. Please, please, please …
I look down. The glass is sloped, so it’s hard to see, but Becky’s mother’s trailer is parked far, far below.
Something scuffles outside the door. The first of the soldiers scrambling to his feet.
I pull the skateboard out of Chloe’s backpack and hold it in my trembling palm as I look for something to break the glass with. I can’t believe I’m about to do this.
I hear the door flip open.
Gunfire erupts behind me. The window shatters as a stray round hits the glass. I hope Becky is under cover down below.
I’m not bulletproof. Chloe Two died after a shot to the skull. I hug my severed head to my chest, shielding it with my body.
Part of my belly explodes outwards, and I realize that I’ve been shot. Fragments of hot silicone splash out into the daylight.
The pain rushes up my chest like I’m being drawn and quartered. Another round punches through my shoulder.
My fear of bullets finally overwhelms my fear of heights.
And I leap through the remaining shards of glass.
I’m hanging in the air a hundred metres above the street …
; ~
Falling.
With the gravity from the electromagnet somewhere behind me, it feels like being upside down on the third loop of a roller coaster. I’m hurtling towards a fatal collision with the concrete far below, and I don’t have much time to prepare.
Chloe’s skateboard has slipped out of my hands. I reach through the spinning shards of glass, grab the board and push it against my feet. Soon I’m skating down the sloped side of the building at a terrifying pace, wheels clattering against window after window as I lean from side to side to try and make sure I land on target.
Far below me, Becky peers out the window of her mum’s car, her jaw slack with amazement. She knew my escape plan, but hadn’t expected me to be headless.
No time to meet her gaze. I’m not aiming for her, or the car, or the trailer.
I’m aiming for her brother’s skate ramp.
The ramp is propped up against the side of the building, a little to my right. I lean sideways, trying to bend my trajectory towards it.
My head tumbles out of my grasp. As it spins, I can see the mottled sky, the surrounding buildings with the lights blown out by the magnet, the tiny cars trundling past beneath me and my headless body, skating down the polished windows and clutching at my head with one desperate hand.
I grab at my hair and pull my head under my arm.
Three. The board shudders beneath my feet.
Two. The blasting air is like a pillow over my face.
One. The ground rushes up to meet me.
I hit the ramp with such force that the glass behind it cracks and the wheels score two long grooves into the wood. All the momentum that should have flattened me against the footpath is deflected outward and, suddenly, I’m zooming across the street as if propelled by a rocket.
The asphalt growls under the wheels as I lean over, trying to swerve around a car even as it tries to swerve around me. The turn leaves me travelling parallel to it, but much, much faster. By the time the astonished driver slams her palm on the horn, I’m almost too far away to hear it.
Looking back, I see that Becky is already dragging the skate ramp back onto the trailer, like I told her to. She’ll be gone by the time the soldiers or the police make it around to this side of the building. And with their tyres shot, Ares won’t be able to give chase.
