Android: Mimic (The Identity Trilogy)

by Mel Odom

  Shelly suddenly stood in front of me. She looked aggrieved and agitated, and I knew that she hated feeling helpless. I had been with her once when she’d tried to talk a woman out of taking her own life in a suicidal jump from an apartment building. Talking hadn’t worked. The woman had plummeted to her death.

  “The house, Drake. It’s your only hope.” Shelly waved us forward.

  I ran, dodging from tree to tree as we took a zig-zag path back to the house. Bullets raked the ground and the trees and brush behind us, but I knew the team wasn’t trying to kill us. Not yet.

  Shelly faded away just as I ran toward her, pushing through the last bits of her. I felt a chill as I crossed the space she had just been standing in. I had not known she had manifested some kind of physical presence.

  The last ten meters to the house were bereft of trees and brush. The grounds were immaculate, a section of tamed tropical paradise. We had no cover. I didn’t hesitate because the only advantage we had was the lead we had from the start that was now rapidly disappearing.

  Breath rasped through my lungs. Even though I had experienced the sensation and the stress before, I still was not accustomed to it. As a bioroid, I didn’t breathe. My continued existence didn’t hinge on oxygen exchange. That something so fragile could mean the difference between life and death was still astonishing to me.

  I had always known how vulnerable humans were. That was part of the basic programming of the neural channeling, and I had extensive anatomical background added for my position as a New Angeles homicide detective. I would never forget how Shelly Nolan had died in my arms.

  “You’re not going to get away, Parker.” The man’s threatening voice was projected through a speaker system designed into his sea suit. It was a psychological weapon designed to break down a quarry’s defenses.

  Mara looked over her shoulder, trying to see how close they were, because she’d been spooked by that voice. She stumbled and nearly fell, her floppy hat falling from her head. I caught her, managed to keep us both upright, and powered on toward the small flight of steps that led up to the cabin. Our feet pounded against the real wood floors.

  Exotic getaways like this were expensive. Living space on Earth was at a premium, with most of the populace living in arcologies made up of buildings hundreds of stories tall; all fertile land outside of the megapoli was used for growing crops. Fringe areas, like this beach, were sometimes left for tourist development when the land was vulnerable to salt water seepage that got into the ground water. Most plants would not grow well in those circumstances, but mangrove swamps and orchids still proved profitable, even though people couldn’t eat them. However, corporate execs still liked to use the wood and flowers as stations of power unattainable by the masses.

  I waved my hand in front of the reader. The temporary e-ID that had been overlaid on the back of my hand flashed through the security system and the door unlocked. I pulled us through and slammed the panic button on the wall beside the door.

  Immediately, the door locked and armored shutters dropped into place over the windows. In seconds, the cabin became a relatively impregnable fortress.

  Guests that came to the beach to stay were generally wealthy and wanted to get away from their other lives, including the necessary security teams that lived with them on a daily basis. The incidence for kidnapping in these areas was high. That was one criminal enterprise that remained extremely profitable, enough so that the low rate of success for practitioners still didn’t deter efforts.

  Most criminals weren’t as well-trained as the team that closed in on us.

  I thought rapidly as I studied Mara to make sure she wasn’t harmed. If this memory was from before the time she had redesigned the neural channeling software that Haas-Bioroid used to manufacture their units, the ultimate success she was to have with MirrorMorph, Inc. lay before her. Her company was small, completely under her control, and was successful enough to provide her a lavish lifestyle.

  So she had escaped the threat that currently faced us.

  “Simon, do you know what’s going on? Who are those people?”

  “I don’t know.” The answer was the truth. I didn’t know, and I knew Simon didn’t know either. I felt his thoughts stirring in mine, closer than I’d ever been to him before. Closer even than when I’d taken his last dying breath in a hospital years from now.

  Mara wasn’t one to sit back. She’d trained her whole life to succeed and to problem solve. She ran to the bedroom we shared—they shared. I didn’t remember any of their intimate relationship. As a homicide detective, I knew about such things, but I had no experience with them. Pleasure bioroids, on the other hand—specially programmed and equipped male and female bioroids—spent their whole careers experiencing such things.

  I followed her.

  Throwing her sunglasses on the bed and grabbing her PAD, Mara keyed the unit to life and tried to connect with emergency services. She looked at me, grim and desperate, her eyes round with fear. “I can’t get out. The signals are jammed.”

  The panic button I’d hit to lock down the cabin was supposed to send out a distress signal. I didn’t trust it now. The attack had been too well choreographed to hope for that to work.

  I wondered why they had chosen to attack during the day instead of coming at night when Mara and Simon would have been sleeping, or at least caught more unawares. I deduced that there was a timetable in play that I wasn’t aware of—something unexpected had occurred and now they only had a brief window of opportunity to achieve success.

  Before I knew what I was doing, I knelt by the bedside and reached under the mattress. I pulled out an H&K 12mm pistol, expertly dropped the magazine to check the load, then racked the slide to chamber a round. Next to the pistol, there were two additional magazines of ammunition.

  Mara stared at me like she’d never seen me before. “Simon?”

  “I told you there were things you didn’t know about me, Mara.” I stood and tucked the two magazines in the thigh pouch on the lounging shorts I wore. I kept the pistol in my hand and crossed the room to her. I put my empty hand on her shoulder, felt her skin warm against my hand and her muscles taut with fear. “We’re going to be okay. I just need you to listen to me. Can you do that?”

  “Where did you get the gun?”

  I didn’t know, but Simon did. “I brought it with me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted you to be safe. You knew the risks when you booked this island. I warned you about this.”

  “The chances of a kidnap attempt were small. That’s what we were told.”

  Someone battered at the door and the booming sounds echoed through the enclosed cabin.

  Simon and I thought furiously. I had the blueprints of the cabin in my mind, whether I accessed them off the Net or Simon knew them, I wasn’t sure. Either was possible while I was under the influence of the memories.

  The cabin came with an underground escape route, but I was suspect of that course of action. So was Simon. Whoever was attempting to break through the security door would know about that point of retreat as well.

  The frame around the security door screeched and I knew we didn’t have much time before the cabin was invaded.

  I brought up the cabin’s security system and ran through the cameras mounted outside the structure—again one of my bioroid abilities that I could apparently access while in the memory. One man and one woman were at the front door. The man used a portable battering ram to hammer at the door while the woman stood ready with her weapon to protect him. Another man and woman were farther back toward the rear of the cabin so they could see the sides and the rear. I assumed the missing man was probably coming up through the underground escape route that let out in the jungle a hundred meters away.

  “Get your boots on.” I went to the closet and tossed her the hiking boots she’d brought for the trip. While she pulled them on, I pulled on a pair as well. We were going to have to run for it. Foot protection and ankle supp
ort were imperative.

  I wished I was in my actual bioroid body, made of stainless steel and far more enduring than Simon Blake was. I had already died as him once. I didn’t want to repeat the experience, and I didn’t know what failure would do to the memories. Maybe if I failed to repeat the memories, I’d be shut off from remembering Mara. That wouldn’t do. She was depending on me to find her and save her.

  If she was still alive.

  I pushed that from my thoughts and concentrated on the task at hand.

  “Focus, Drake.” Shelly stood in the bedroom doorway, but Mara wasn’t aware of her. “You know what you have to do. You’ve been through doors with me before. You know how dangerous it can be. One misstep, then everything goes wrong and somebody dies.” Her face hardened. “Today, you’ve got to make these guys misstep. It’s the only chance you have.”

  I turned to Mara. “Come on.” In the memory, I didn’t have the 360-degree vision I had as a bioroid. That was another benefit humans didn’t have. So I had to turn my face to Mara to see her, since I needed her to know I was talking to her.

  Humans were biologically compelled to search for facial features in order to recognize individuals. When they thought about how someone looked, they thought of features first. That was why police investigators were trained to ask for hair and eye color, for scars, birthmarks, and other distinguishing features. Height and weight didn’t even figure in for a lot of people. Retail employees had to be trained to watch for the security tape on the sides of doorways to get an idea of a perpetrator’s height.

  It was always about the face.

  “Come on.” Simon’s voice got louder, more harsh.

  Mara came toward me and I took her into the living room. The booming noise from the assault on the door sounded even louder in there. I stationed her beside the door and spoke to her softly between the blows that rained on the door.

  “This is going to happen fast.” Boom! “Stay back until I tell you to move.” Boom! “We’re going out there.”

  Mara shook her head. Boom!

  This time the doorframe screeched again and I factored in the probability that the door was already too warped to function as I’d planned. I had no other choice, though. The plan I had was desperate, a long shot in Shelly’s words, but it was all I had.

  Or I could try to disengage from the memory. That would mean I wouldn’t learn whatever I was here to learn. Every time one of these memories surfaced, I discovered something about Mara and what had happened to her.

  I locked eyes with Mara, grateful that she couldn’t see the blank silver bioroid orbs that I truly had. Now, I trusted, she saw only Simon Blake’s eyes. I repeated myself. “We’re going out there.” Boom! “Nod if you understand.”

  Reluctantly, Mara nodded. I tapped the panic button controls and removed the reinforced support from the front door. I stepped back a meter and lifted the pistol in both hands. My programming jerked and spasmed for a moment even at this “memory” of shooting a human. My hands shook.

  Then I calmed, the feeling of wrongness went away, and my hands steadied.

  Boom!

  Chapter Three

  The door flew open. Bits and pieces of the doorframe spiraled toward me, moving slowly as my reflexes took over. I had been programmed to use a Synap pistol, a bioelectrical weapon that temporarily short-circuited a target’s synapses. It didn’t matter if the target was human, clone, or bioroid. Even robots that weren’t thoroughly shielded against electrical shock shut down when hit with a charge. The training with that weapon wasn’t so different from handling a slug-thrower.

  Simon Blake had been a soldier on Mars, part of a special forces task force that had been hired on to provide security for MirrorMorph, Inc. after their last deployment. That was where Simon Blake had met Mara Parker. Both of us had training and experience.

  I lifted the H&K slightly over the man’s shoulder as he stumbled into the room. I centered the sights on the woman’s face as she swiveled her weapon and shifted for a clear shot. Before she could fire, I burned three rounds over the man’s shoulder directly into her face.

  Then I turned my attention to the charging man as he came at me, roaring savagely and striking out with the battering ram. I dodged to the left and sidestepped, then dropped on my left folded knee and swept the man’s legs from under him with my right leg. As I stood once more, lunging to my feet, Simon aimed the pistol and put two rounds into the attacker’s head as the man flipped over and tried to go for his pistol. The attacker instantly sprawled loosely.

  The feedback from such a cold-blooded act almost jarred me from my hold on the memory. I held on tightly as static jumped into my vision. I heard advertising pulsing on audible channels and felt the Net feeds I monitored for breaking news clamoring for attention. I blocked them and focused on the events in the cabin.

  Knowing we had only a thin lead, I grabbed Mara’s wrist and pulled her after me as I charged through the broken door.

  The woman lay on her back on the beach where she’d fallen from the veranda. She wasn’t moving and her face was a bloody ruin. I had to squelch my need to go attend her, telling myself that she wasn’t really there and that she was already dead.

  I flattened against the side of the cabin for just an instant because I knew both attackers on the side of the building would be coming up. I pushed Mara down against the cabin, then swung out around the corner with the pistol in my left hand.

  The man spotted me and lifted the machine pistol he carried. A barrage of flechettes scraped splinters from the cabin and blew them into my face. Several of the keen-edged darts missed me by millimeters. Three more sliced across my chin and one cut my temple beside my left eye.

  Simon and I held our ground because we knew it was the only chance we had. We squeezed off rounds, aiming for the center of the man’s face. That was the harder shot to make, but I felt the odds were that the sea suit also had a kinetic weave designed to stop bullets.

  The man’s head jerked back and he spilled to the side, losing his weapon and tumbling loosely as blood flew.

  Mara started to get up. I pushed her down again, hiding her beside the cabin and below the level of the veranda. I fed a new magazine into the pistol and set my hands on the veranda’s edge as the woman peered around the corner of the cabin.

  Impulse made me want to fire. I held back, knowing the shot was not good and I couldn’t guarantee success.

  The woman spoke just loud enough to let me know she was speaking into a comm-link. “Anvil. Forge. Hammer. Bellows.”

  The code names all linked to a blacksmith’s trade. I filed that away, unable to make any connections. I didn’t know if Simon did. The violence had split us and my hold on him—and the memory—remained tenuous.

  Someone answered the woman, and I guessed that it was the other man probably covering the cabin’s escape route. I couldn’t hear his side of the conversation.

  “Two of them are down. Forge and Bellows. Bellows looks dead. Forge is KIA or unconscious inside the building. I don’t see Hammer. He was on the other side of the cabin.” Though she sounded professional, the woman also sounded stressed now. “I know, I know, Anvil. Back off. The guy has had military training. That’s the only explanation I have for what’s gone wrong here. We should have been told.”

  The other man spoke again.

  “Get here as quick as you can. They’re probably running for the docks. They’ve got a motorsailer there.”

  I remembered the motorsailer then. It was a twenty-meter yacht, one of the luxuries Mara had rented for her getaway with Simon. I didn’t know if we could get past the ship out in the ocean, but waiting here on the island till our attackers sent reinforcements from the ship at sea wasn’t a good idea.

  The woman took another cautious step out from the building. I adjusted my aim by moving the pistol in my hands, not by moving my hands. Then I squeezed the trigger, aiming for the center of her chest because I didn’t want to miss.

  The bullets caugh
t her squarely and knocked her down, but not before she could fire two rounds herself that cored through the veranda near my position.

  Unsure where the final attacker was, I spun and grabbed Mara’s arm. “Let’s go.” I pulled her into a run and we fled into the jungle.

  * * *

  Brightly colored birds exploded from the jungle and monkeys screamed as they hurled themselves from limb to limb across the emerald canopy that blocked out the colorless sky. A ragged footpath ran fifty meters down to the dock, and we ran with it.

  The rough terrain offered rocks and gnarled tree roots as potential pitfalls, but we navigated them well enough. Leaves floated down from branches ahead of us. I thought at first they were caused by the screeching monkeys, but then the flat crack of a pistol reached my ears. A turn in the trail took us out of immediate danger.

  We were ten meters from the short wooden dock where the yacht was moored. It sat serenely in the water. Things could have been worse. We could have been caught at sea when our attackers arrived.

  I stopped, breathing hard, and Mara stopped as well. She stared at me and tried to speak, her face a mask of fear.

  “Go.” I pushed her into motion again. “Get the yacht ready. It’s the only chance we have.”

  She hesitated for just a second longer, then turned and ran.

  I switched out magazines, inserting the last full one I had. At least one attacker was left, and I hadn’t confirmed the kill on the other one. I hunkered on the ground amid the brush and listened. The pistol was in both hands before me.

  Unfortunately, the man didn’t stick with the trail and came crashing through the brush only a few meters away. While I was turning to face him and bring my weapon to bear, he shot me. The bullet slammed into the top of my skull and skidded off. Blood wept down into my vision as I fired at him almost point-blank.