by Brian Savage
She took the photo in both hands. She looked at it for a second before looking up at Jack. “So, because this is the remote group’s office symbol, it had to have been one of us, and because Josh and I were logged into the aerial systems at the time, we were your first suspects?”
“You, Josh, and one other,” Jack said, taking the photo back between his pointer finger and thumb. “It made the most sense, and honestly, it’s all we had to go on.”
“Do you really think someone who could hack into the aerial in the first place would be so stupid as to leave this glaringly obvious piece of evidence behind?” She crossed her arms across her chest.
“Not stupid. Complacent.” Jack propped his elbow up on the window ledge. “You techies have free access to almost every system in the Corporation. Why hack, which might raise red flags, when you can access the same system with the proper credentials, hoping that the blast eliminates all evidence of your intrusion? Further, if you then figured out that evidence was left behind, you could go back in the system using the proper security credentials and make the subtractions you need.”
She started a slow clap for him. Jack controlled his facial expressions as she continued her clap, her face showing mock admiration for his theory. “One problem with your theory: I didn’t do it, and Josh got murdered by, most likely, the person who did.”
She ended her clapping with a huff and sunk her body as far back against the side of the vehicle as she could. Jack watched her. Her body stayed tense for a few minutes before she relaxed, arms collapsing back into her lap. She rubbed her left forearm with her hand, not in a massaging-muscle-pain way, but in the self-soothing habit of a kid who just lost their puppy. He reminded himself that she had just lost a friend. Someone she obviously cared about. He turned and looked out his own window. Silence reigned in the gasser.
Chapter 9
The slow roll back to the Third Ring was silent and uneventful. No more zombified old ladies creeping out the passengers as they wormed their way through the throngs of people. They exited the gasser, parked in its rightful space beneath the towering capitol building, and made their way for the door. Brant led, Aeralyn followed, and Jack brought up the rear, like a solemn procession to some unknown end. The only sound besides the never-ceasing rain was the clip-clop of their heels in the echoing underground cement parking garage.
They made their way to the agents’ entrance, taking a little extra time at each door as they requested visitor access for Aeralyn. She had never been on the agent floors of the capital building before, and felt a bit apprehensive. Agents represented a power over people, which she despised, even as she worked for the very Corporation that held that power. She swallowed her disgust in herself, as she followed Brant down the glass-lined hallway. She saw, on either side of her, the servers where most of her work was done, feeling the cool of the industrial air-conditioning system needed to keep them from overheating. She hugged herself, tucking her fingertips beneath her arms to ward off the chill. It could have been seventy-five degrees inside and she still would have been cold.
She followed Brant. She didn’t like the agent in front of her. Something told her he reciprocated that feeling. He was angry at her for some reason. Angry or frustrated, she couldn’t tell which. They made their way through the next set of doors and onto the metal walkway suspended above the agent’s training area. At least it’s warmer here, she thought to herself, grasping the strap on her bag in front of herself. She looked around, taking in her surroundings. Agents milled about on the walkway in their tell-tale coats. Others worked out below or were firing their weapons on the range.
They made their way to the office in the same snake-like formation the entire time. They entered, office still set to privacy mode; the sounds of the bustling office space nearly disappeared with the doors closing. Brant sat down at his desk, swiveling in his chair to face toward Jack, who stepped around Aeralyn and made his way to his own desk. Aeralyn had stopped near the doorway, unsure where to stand in the unfamiliar office.
Jack slid a small folding chair from an imperceptible position in the wall and unfolded it, indicating to Aeralyn to sit. He made his way around his desk, where he checked notifications as she sat down abruptly. Brant opened an energy drink he pulled from his desk, slurping loudly with an overly exaggerated, “Ah.” She continued watching Jack, meticulously clearing his inbox.
Eventually, he stopped swiping and looked up at her. “I’m required by policy to inform you that all conversation taking place on these premises will be video and audio recorded.”
“They weren’t before?” she asked.
“No, we had no equipment to conduct that type of interview before.” He swiveled back and forth in his chair.
“You really think your implant isn’t recording absolutely everything you do?” she said with an edge of snark.
“My security settings, set by Corporate policy on agent’s implant, won’t allow it,” Jack said matter-of-factly.
“You’re a fool if you actually believe that,” she said, looking around the room. She hadn’t said it to be an insult, rather simply matching the matter-of-fact way Jack had just spoke.
He paused before the next question, gathering his thoughts. “Are you Aeralyn Julliana James?”
“Yes.”
“Do you reside at 3032 Downing Street, number 333, First Ring 91197?”
“Yes.” She had assumed a somewhat defensive posture, her feet crossed and pushed back under her chair, hands clasped together and resting on her bag in her lap.
The holographic display in front of Jack blinked a steady heart rate, respiration rate, and voice analysis reading. All true so far.
“Are you thirty years old?”
“Yes,” she said, breathing deliberately. She knew what the scanners in the room were telling Jack. She knew what biological markers they were looking for. She had helped write the program for their polygraph-esque test.
“What do you do for the company?” Jack said, leaning back in his chair and inadvertently yawning.
“I am a techie who works as part of the remote work group,” she said, shaking the stray strand of hair from one of her eyes.
“What were you working on yesterday afternoon between noon and fifteen hundred?”
“I was programing a navigational system update into corporate aerials.”
“Was this a work ticket or everyday work?” Jack asked.
“The remote workers only conduct work ticket-based troubleshooting,” she replied.
“Was this a normal problem that you could have been working on, on any other given day?” Jack said, rephrasing the question.
“I didn’t find anything unusual about it,” she said.
“Did you remotely access an aerial that was in flight?” Jack said, looking a little more intently at her face.
“I don’t remember; I got a lot updated,” she said.
“You sure you don’t remember?” Jack said, noticing a slight increase in her heart rate.
“I might have accessed a few while they were still being used, but at no time did I alter their current functions. I don’t do sloppy work.” There was some defensiveness in her voice. The monitor showed a slight heart rate elevation, but her voice analysis showed truth in her statements. Jack decided to switch up his line of questioning.
“Did you know Joshua Harraves?” Her heart rate increased again, as did her breathing rate.
“Yes,” she said, dropping her head, as was her habit when on the verge of tears. She realized inwardly that she hated crying in front of people. She hated showing weakness of any kind.
“How did you know Joshua Harraves?” Jack asked, adjusting a few settings on his holographic display.
“He was…” was all she managed to get out of her mouth when the entire two floors went pitch black.
It was only a momentary lapse in light, but it reminded Jack that they were, indeed, underground. His display started rebooting. The glass wall of their office was clear
now, the standard setting having been reverted back to after the loss of power. Outside the office, agents looked up at the lights, confused, before slowly going back to their conversations. More than a few were gathering things from the steel walkway, having either ran into or tripped over each other in their movement after the power had gone out.
“We apologize for the inconvenience; we have experienced a small power surge due to a recent update. Please bear with us, as this may occur again,” a voice over the loud speakers said, in a soothing, robotic voice. As if by magic, the power went out again with her last syllable.
They sat together in the dark, cave-like blackness, unable to see. The quiet drone of the outside hustle and bustle became silence as conversations and movement were cut off or impossible in the darkness.
Lights flashed back on, causing all three of them to squint automatically at the glare. Everything began rebooting again.
“Hopefully, that’s the last of the interruptions,” Jack said to no one in particular.
Brant swiveled to watch the agents outside the office resuming their previous actions, more interested in that than the questions that Jack had been asking before. A small crowd was growing on the walkway that joined the two opposite sides. Agents lined the left side, watching down below. Brant figured it must be a team practicing clearing a building, doing extremely well, or surprisingly poorly. That, or a few agents were practicing force-on-force actions using the stun guns. Everyone loved to watch those events. Entire office clans had been created for that part of regular, albeit sparse, training. He looked back over his shoulder at Jack. His partner had never been eliminated from a force-on-force game, carrying his team multiple times to victory despite huge odds. He was one of the only agents with Civil War veteran status, and police service during the Purges. He looked back to the walkway, curiosity growing.
“Almost ready,” Jack said, restarting the program. “By law, I am required to notify you that the following interview will be audio and visually recorded, and I hope that the start of this interview is still likewise recorded.”
Aeralyn shifted in the uncomfortable metal chair, hands still clasped in her lap, feet still tucked underneath her. Brant stood and walked his way to the glass. The crowd on the walkway had nearly obstructed all traffic and was still growing. He couldn’t make out what they were looking at, but was extremely close to breaking the two-agents-per-subject protocol to find out. Besides, he reasoned, there was no way she could get off the agents’ floor without himself or Jack going with her, much less escape from the world’s greatest detective, Jack. He laughed inwardly but stayed put.
All of a sudden, there was an explosion of kinetically reactive glass from in front of the bystanders on the walkway. The bystanders fell backward, shielding their faces, as a metal streak shot into the air, before losing speed and coming down on the walkway on the other side of the chasm. Brant stood in wide-eyed disbelief, at a baddie out of the training area, and the fact that it had busted through the kinetic glass, which was said to be unbreakable. He must have been jumping against it over and over and over again, Brant thought, the crowd on the walkway now making sense.
He watched the baddie stand to its full eight-foot height, turn, and begin making its way down the steel walkway to the crossway. Agents stopped and stared on either side as it passed, menacing red light glowing from between its armored head pieces. The baddie turned onto the crosswalk and began shoving its way through the crowd of dumbfounded agents.
“Jack…” Brant said, hands in his pants pockets.
Jack looked up, stopping the question he had been asking Aeralyn. He looked past Jack and paused mid-adjustment on the holographic display, brain trying to come to terms with what he was seeing. Aeralyn likewise turned in her chair and eyed the large robot making its way down the crosswalk. Jack’s monitor beeped at him. Aeralyn’s heart rate was increasing. He looked at the girl, her face masked with fear.
“Lockdown,” Jack said, activating the security feature of their office. The door audibly latched, and a hexagonal pattern appeared on the glass. The baddie turned slightly on the walkway right outside of the office, and mid-step brought its arm up and down on the glass in a blur.
The electrical activation of the glass spidered through the small hexagonal design. Brant had flinched when the large fist had come down, still holding the stun gun device it used in the simulations. Agents outside of the office still looked on, dumbfounded, as the baddie began battering the glass with both fists. Brant backed away from the glass, drawing his weapon. Jack reached a hand out toward Aeralyn, motioning her behind his desk, as he walked up to stand beside his partner. Aeralyn peeked out from behind the desk and watched the robot battering the glass between the two agents’ silhouettes.
Jack zipped up his jacket and pulled his hood over his head. Brant set his weapon down on his desk, and did the same, then retrieved it. Jack drew his weapon.
“I doubt hitting it in the head, chest, or hips is actually going to take it down. This definitely isn’t a simulation,” Jack said, as a thin, hairline crack illuminated by the broken hex connections started to form and run down the length of the glass.
“No. If we can get enough shots to the joints, we might be able to stop it,” Brant said, eyeing the growing crack ruefully.
“Try the eye first. Take out its vision—if it even sees that way. Watch out for the arms, though; regardless of our jackets, it’s going to hurt.” Jack aimed his weapon at the crack just above and now dissecting the robot’s face.
“You think it’s after the girl?” Brant asked.
Jack looked back over his shoulder at the girl’s eyes, peeking out just above the edge of his desk. “Probably.”
The agents on the outside of the office finally started jumping into action. Pistols were drawn and shots began to come irregularly from the crowd. The baddie, sensing the growing threat on his side of the glass, began turning and firing his weapon with ultimate precision. Agents fell, writhing and screaming as their bodies were racked with electrically induced convulsions. The baddie would fire a few rounds before turning back and resuming his beating on the glass, turn and fire, and turn and strike. The monotony of the attack was only altered by the growing noise from the outside, as agents brought out kinetic glass riot shields to build armored fighting points along the walkway.
Aeralyn crouched down beside the desk. She could see the robot battering away, then shooting agents, just to turn back and continue its barrage. From the look of the glass, she reasoned that they would have another minute or two before the number of connection breaks in the kinetic glass rendered it completely useless as a defense. She felt helpless and scared. She hated the feeling of being a bystander in her own life. She hated relying on people to do things for her, things that most men had assumed she needed doing. There had to be something she could do.
She looked back over the desk. The robot was firing at the agents, having advanced to the nearest shield point to throw the agents off the walkway by hand. It was now walking with a slight limp, it seemed. Enough rounds had been fired into the baddie to damage something in one of its legs. She looked around the office. From this side of the desk, she could see the holographic projection that still showed her vital signs. Her heart was racing around 110 and her respirations showed in the twenties as she struggled to formulate a plan. As heroic as the two agents looked, standing between her and the robot, she had no doubt about the futility of their protection.
The agent’s desk! she thought, the idea a spark of hope in her mind. She was a techie and a hacker. She could use his desk to try and sever the connection between the baddie and whoever was controlling him. At the very least, override the commands and shut it down. She quickly pulled the display into her hand and attempted to pair it with her implant, using her normal tech overrides to gain limited access. She heard a few small pieces of glass hit the floor. Peeking up, it appeared the robot had finally smashed a large enough hole in the glass to push his fingers throu
gh, and was now pulling the glass apart. Jack and Brant began firing through the crack, mostly striking the solid plate of armor of the baddie’s chest, but scoring a few fingers as well. She ducked back down and continued to work her way through the system, seeking greater access on the agent’s workstation.
Jack and Brant stood side by side, firing at the hand as it made its way further and further through the glass. Brant stopped firing and holstered, jumping behind his desk and driving it all the way against the glass. He dodged a jab from the baddie’s arm and walked his way back to where he’d been standing before.
“Why’d you do that?” Jack asked.
“Well, I didn’t want to die and have anyone say, ‘He didn’t do all that he could,’” Brant said, shooting off another of the baddie’s fingers.
Jack laughed a full, real laugh. “Well, it wasn’t much, was it!”
Brant joined in the laughing, both agents caught up in the futility of the situation. Most agents that had attempted to take down the baddie had been incapacitated; the small number that remained took pot shots from the other walkway. The hex design was slowly fading and flickering sporadically. The baddie backed up on the crosswalk, before taking two great leaps and crashing through the glass.
Brant jumped to the right, diving out of the way of his desk, which flipped up and on to its top. The baddie came down hard, falling over top of the upturned desk. Jack took a step forward and to the left, firing round after round into the back of the baddie’s head and what he hoped was the “brain” of the robot. The red light blinked off, even as an arm shot out, striking Jack directly in the chest and launching him into the wall behind him. Jack felt the air leave him. The hex jacket kept a hole from being punched through him, but it didn’t absorb the shock of the fist or the wall.
Brant fired at the baddie’s back, as it attempted to right itself, still partially straddling the desk. Both its arms came up, swinging wildly from side to side. Jack’s rounds had found at least the visual cortex of the robot’s body. A heavy metal arm slammed into the wall just above Jack’s head, crushing plaster and concrete as it continued swinging wildly. Brant stood and started making his way around the end of the desk, keeping up the steady stream of shots, aimed on the shoulder joints of the robot.
