by Russ Linton
A sense of loss settled around Drake. This vague idea that something was amiss began with the enigmatic expressions of the investors and heightened with the cold breeze of an A/C vent on his exposed skin. His high-end cashmere business suit had been tailored in the finest Sicilian shops. But as far as Drake was concerned, the suit was merely a mat of dead goat hair and offered little of true value; no sensors for relaying breathing, heart rate, or perspiration of his targets. Any number of simple biometrics could have given valuable clues regarding the investors’ moods—he’d need to consider constructing such a device. However, at this moment, he was stuck making less than scientific assumptions based on body language.
He’d purchased a book on the subject—after a quick skim, it was now collecting dust somewhere in his office.
Careful calculation rested behind Drake’s selection process for the investors seated before him. Through years of research, planning, intelligence gathering, surveillance, other…tactics, an elite cadre of global billionaire financiers had been lured to his table. Now, the fate of his company rested on these more conventional negotiations, which Drake accepted as a necessity. Of the twelve, three were key to his success.
Sheikh Nabil Hamad met his gaze with a smile. Thirteen-billion-dollar net worth, owner of the world’s largest construction conglomerate. Business and pleasure often overrode his more public religious sentiments. The sheikh was a closet wine connoisseur. Drake had learned this many years ago at the relatively cheap cost of a jilted wife; one of seventeen. Over the past four years, Drake had combined a steady flow of rare vintages along with his uncanny knack for predicting large scale downtown reconstruction projects. Hamad viewed Drake as a solid partner.
Next was Meredith Wainwright, the wealthy daughter of a media baron. She grinned vacuously, her folder unopened. Plump, no, absolutely corpulent, and a face adored only for the five-and-a-half billion dollars that had so recently been transferred into her accounts. He’d expended much effort into securing her support. Six months prior, her father had passed away due to exceptionally rare complications from an insect bite. A tragedy. Drake returned the smile.
Then there was Kerin Townsend.
Drake had debated Kerin’s inclusion. Townsend’s finances were abundant, his eye for innovation unsurpassed, but as a cutting-edge software firm’s CEO, with contacts throughout Silicon Valley, Drake couldn’t help but be concerned. Handing over even a rough sketch of his life’s work to Kerin could be a fatal mistake. He could be courting either blatant theft or the creation of an extremely well-positioned competitor. That’s what he would have done in Townsend’s shoes. But Drake felt over-prepared for that scenario—playing dirty was his game.
The silence in the room became deafening. Drake wiped sweaty palms on the cashmere suit. He reached to his waist and when his hand did not wrap reassuringly around a certain small black box, he plunged his fist into a pocket.
Hands in pockets. He knew that would not do. This communicated dissatisfaction with one’s self-image according to what he could recall of the book. No, he needed his hands in front. Confident. He tugged the collar of his jacket, smoothed his tie and pushed his shoulders back. The investors remained focused. Smart phones emerged, pens scribbled notes, but many sat in quiet contemplation. Drake examined the faces again, fighting to keep the corners of his mouth upturned and eyes relaxed.
Townsend peered up, his curly hair framing the face of a forty-year-old cherub tucked away behind chunky designer glasses. If the silence were to burst, Drake would not have chosen Townsend as the one to stick the pin. “Fascinating concept, William. This idea of a Distributive Hive on the nano-scale. I daresay, revolutionary, if it indeed works. However, will there be any—”
Ring. Buzz.
“Umm, will there be any chance for us to tour—” Townsend tried to continue.
Ring. Buzz.
Drake crushed an irritated scowl, making what he hoped was a passably apologetic expression. He reached into his pocket and fumbled with the phone. He’d hired administrative assistants to attend to his every need. Take calls, make appointments, adjust schedules, bring coffee, massage his feet, even, if the whim struck. But only he answered this phone.
Now, finally and unfortunately the center of attention, he pressed the buzzing phone against his chest.
“I do apologize, apparently our time is up. Save those intriguing questions, please, and we’ll attend to them immediately after lunch.”
A fragile smile stretched across his face as he backed from the room. The group watched with a mix of understanding, annoyance, and the seemingly favorite poker face. He turned and stalked into the hall, bursting into a small side office. Shocked, the girl at her desk swallowed a gasp. With a flare of his eyes, she was on her feet and then disappeared into the hallway. He snapped the phone to an ear and swatted the door closed.
“This had better be good. Earth-shattering,” Drake spat into the phone.
“Yes, sir.” A youthful voice with vowels stretched loose under a hint of colonial sophistication answered. “There is a thing you need to see.”
“Yes, there is. I need to see several million dollars. Do you have that, Xamse? Do you?”
“N-no, sir. But I thought you would need to see this.”
“You don’t think. The drones are programmed, you monitor. That simple,” Drake growled. “Mumbai?”
“No, sir. Mumbai goes according to your plan. The problem is U5345.”
“The Arctic deployment? So, our client’s intelligence proved useful?”
“Yes, sir. However, we lost contact, sir.”
“What do you mean, ‘lost contact’?” Drake spoke as he started for the door and then stopped short, bringing the phone back to his ear. “Xamse, if this is in any way operator error, you’ll find yourself back on the front lines shooting at your playmates. Understood?” Faint static crackled on the line before Drake severed the connection and stormed toward an elevator.
*
An electric pulse hummed throughout the room as Drake stepped out of the secure elevator. The sound soothed his hurried thoughts and erased the unbearable atmosphere of the boardroom. Workstations lined the walls, their smaller screens scrolling with an endless parade of data. A single large display bathed the chamber in flickering light. On this central screen, a tiny metal room showed through a glowing tear in a heavy security door. A white halo stained the lower portion of the screen, bleeding out in a circle.
They’d received the intelligence about the bunker earlier in the day. The circumstances made Drake suspicious. Out of the blue, his client had procured information which Drake had spent nearly two years searching for. A breach of normal protocol, the information had come over a secure channel directly from Killcreek. Then again, what was normal for Killcreek? The facility was so classified, even his handlers barely knew more than the codename.
But just in case they were rethinking his contract, Drake had sent the single drone as a scout instead of personally attending to the matter. From the video feed, apparently the tip was legitimate.
“This.” A young dark-skinned man motioned tensely to a computer terminal. His hair was cropped close on both sides and a ridge of tight curls grew down the center. From beneath a slender black band around his neck, a ragged scar stretched from ear to ear.
Drake devoured the space between them. “How did this happen?”
The boy spoke without looking up. “I am unsure. We lost connection. Video is only now reestablished.”
“The nanomechs?”
“Yes, sir. They follow default protocols to restore the uplink first.”
“I’m aware of their programming. I want full operational control. Now.”
“Working on it, sir.”
Drake’s eyes flicked to a bank of smaller screens. Several feeds depicted scenes from across the globe. Calm blue skylines, cities half a world away twinkling in the night, the shattered boardwalk along the Thames. Another showed a stretch of highway along the business d
istrict of Mumbai. Beside that, a formation of drones cut through a cloudy sky, a timer counting down in the corner of the screen.
Placing his hands on the control panel, Drake leaned in to examine the main monitor. The image jumped erratically between an obscured view of the tiny space and a frozen picture distorted along invisible lines. Between the bouts of interference, he could see a small room with a metal grating on the floor. A workstation with several monitors. A chair. The room appeared empty.
A high-pitched whine blasted the air. Xamse cringed as the wail descended several octaves and settled into an annoying buzz. “Audio restored, sir.”
“Obviously,” Drake sneered. The view had also begun to clear. In the lower corner, no longer obscured by the slowly fading halo of interference, a metal door with a small window swung upward. The screen jerked and once again faded into a seizure of static. “Get it back.”
From his suit pocket, Drake retrieved a black box. Xamse noted the movement and sweat beaded along his forehead. Drake’s index finger tapped impatiently on the box. The sharp clicking drowned out the buzz of the speakers. Xamse’s shoulders tightened and his keyboard rattled with frantic typing. “I’m trying, sir.”
“Try harder.”
The screen flicked back to life, and the blinding halo shrank to a fuzzy ring. A young man crouched in the corner of the room by the open hatch.
His sweatshirt hung like an empty sack from angular shoulders. Emblazoned on the shirt in large block letters was the word GIANTS. He looked toward the camera with wide eyes sunken into a pale face. A matted shock of dark hair sprouted at a slant from his scalp. His more masculine features, a broad jawline with a knotted chin, sat incongruously atop narrow shoulders. Keeping low to the ground, the young man crept forward.
“There’s our little saboteur. My, how you haven’t grown.” Drake drummed his fingers on the control panel and scanned the room again, paying particular attention to the open hatch. “I see an escape route, perhaps, yet there you are. Curious.”
“Sensors back up, sir. They’re reporting—”
“The signature from an electromagnetic pulse?” Drake interrupted.
Xamse’s cadence at the keyboard faltered. “Yes. You are correct, sir.”
“Perhaps I should have gone myself. My battle armor is properly shielded. This drone evidently was not. Whose fault might that be?”
“Working on control, sir. Might have partial in three minutes. Nanomechs reporting now. Getting diagnostic feeds back online.” Xamse rattled the accomplishments off with increasing urgency.
The young man onscreen walked forward, peering past the camera and cautiously reaching out until his hand disappeared out of view. With a defiant nod, he twisted his mouth. The screen flickered briefly and returned with a new obstruction sliding its way down the middle in a long, slimy trail.
Exasperation escaped Drake’s lips. “Reports on anything useful at the location before I reduce it to rubble?”
“A data center was present, sir.”
“Explain ‘was’.”
“Apparently it’s been destroyed. The heat was tremendous. I’m registering an area behind the drone at several hundred degrees Fahrenheit.”
The young man disappeared off-screen, and a wheeled office chair hurtled toward the camera. Drake’s scowl deepened. “In that case, send a recovery team to be sure. In the meantime, when the drone’s control is restored, kill the boy.”
“Shall we not take him, like his mother…?” Drake’s glare pinched Xamse’s question into a trailing whisper. “Yes, sir.”
Drake wheeled to exit, the looming business lunch seeping into his thoughts. He sighed wistfully and took in the control center, pausing to let the biometric scan complete and open the security doors. Now he’d have to return to a world of negotiations, pleasantries—of being willing to give ground in order to build his fledgling technology empire. The nanomechs would be a household name, no doubt, and the sooner he concluded his prior commitments, the better.
As the doors slid open, Drake turned. He crossed to the control panel and tapped an image on the smaller screen. It blinked and shifted to the large display. Sounds of rapid gunfire and screams echoed through the room. An orange flash of fire reflected in Drake’s eyes, and a crimson streak zipped from corner to corner. “We do have a decoy on standby in Mumbai, do we not?”
“Yes, sir. All per your plans, sir.” Xamse said, nodding vigorously.
“On second thought,” Drake grabbed a headset draped on a nearby chair, “take the boy alive. We may wrap up ahead of schedule.”
Chapter 7
“Are you watching this, you, bastard?” My confidence slips and the last word comes out jittery. That doesn’t simply take the edge off the adrenaline, but completely dulls what’s left.
I was pumped about the Black Beetle watching me spit in his face. But I’ve had up-close, personal experience with the real deal, and this has all the markings of another drone. Both have the same basic humanoid shape and pincered arms, but the drones are thinner, less articulated.
A gleam of greenish light sparks behind the eyes. There’s power; an active process, or only a residual charge? Edging closer, I hear a faint crackle from deep inside. One of the arms twitches and I jump away. The robot watches mutely.
I creep forward again and risk trailing a finger across the exterior.
The skin is practically seamless, though along joints, booted hydraulics peek out from the sleek frame. A thin crack on the chest catches my eye as tiny sparks dance inside. I wedge the blade of my multi-tool underneath it and run the length of the seam. Without warning, the plate slides off and crashes to the ground, exposing the inner workings.
It’s fucking brilliant.
Lifeblood flows through arteries of high gauge wire. Thick cables transmit signals along a spine of alloy and polymer. Actuators. Hydraulic pistons. Transmitters. Processors. The schematics are as clear in my mind as any tangle of valves and veins would be to a surgeon with their patient’s chest spread open on an operating table. I knocked the drone senseless with the EMP, but I have a strange urge to resuscitate and coax it back to life.
A tiny shower of sparks cascades from the neck. I reach out and let them shower my palm. There could be some serious voltage running rampant inside, but I don’t care. The bits of heat tingle as the embers strike and then fade.
Muted glows deeper in the chest cavity flash on and off, in a definite pattern and not the frantic spurts of a system gone haywire. A process booting? Internal repair? The last spasms of life?
I delve into the chest cavity and brush aside wires until I locate the main power supply. It’s an enclosed cylinder the size of my own chest marked with a radiological symbol. Not even with all the digging around at this crazy, secret bunker have I seen anything remotely this cool. The genius mind that built this death machine has all the wires bundled, color coded, and easily accessible. I would have done it this way myself. Maybe I even could. A titanium bodyguard at my command.
No. Bringing this beauty back to life and reprogramming her not to smash me into a pulp won’t happen before I freeze to death. So, unlike a surgeon, I slice an artery. Knowing the right one to cut is too easy. Those traces of light in the faceted eyes fade and I slip past the lifeless shell.
How’s that, Dad? Eliminate the threat. Don’t pull punches.
The library is destroyed, and the air is filled with pungent smoke. Beneath the grating on the floor lies a pool of liquid metal and silicon, pulsing with heat. On the side facing the intense heat of the melted server, the terminal desk has buckled. Left without solid footing, the monitor lies smashed on the floor. I check the thumb drive in my pocket, just to be sure.
Away from the library, the frostbitten air of the fractured bunker takes hold.
You’ll freeze to death in minutes, son.
I head to my cell and my limbs lose feeling within the first few steps. With shaking hands, I grab my backpack and drop my multi-tool in the outside pocket. My
cell has managed to retain more heat than the hallway, but a shiver begins along my spine and spreads outward. A few more essentials—iPod, a plastic collector’s case with my few remaining baseball cards—and the thumb drive all go in my backpack. Used to be sad that my entire life could fit in a backpack, but now, it’s damn convenient.
I head for the airlock, forcing myself to wade into the frozen air. I squint into the glowing snowscape and shove my hands under my arms, trying to squeeze every last ounce of heat out of my body. No sign of Dad. With waxy fingers I fumble at the parka and gloves on the wall. The moon boots, too.
The new layers of clothing seem to do jack and shit. I tear my eyes off the gaping hole in my prison wall. There’s heat in the library. All the other environmental controls seem to be shot whether from robot attack or the EMP. At the library’s entrance, I stop short and gag as I hit a wall of smoke. Air so thick, it feels like the vaporized computer is trying to reassemble in my sinuses. But there’s one more thing I need. I zip the parka hood tight around my face and skirt the edges of the smoking pit.
The shelves are mangled. Some are melted together, others crushed beneath the robot’s charge. I sift through the debris until I find it, splayed open, the edges blackened. I stuff The Swiss Family Robinson in my backpack, and the library is the spare parts room again.
I slip by the lifeless robot, giving it a swift kick as I pass. I tripped the beacon maybe fifteen, twenty minutes ago and ‘launched’ the pod. Dad should’ve had plenty of time to get to the far side of wherever this lands. I huddle on the steps to the pod to wait.
If I’m launching into his custody again, I might as well make him fly his ass here to pick me up. The server bonfire should stay hot for a while and provide a bit of heat. Maybe I’ll roast some marshmallows while I wait. Of course, we don’t have marshmallows. Wonder how tasty these boots are?
Cold builds. Heat from the destroyed server isn’t reaching into the safe room anymore. I could move to the crater. Maybe hole up in the pod. Dammit. He needs to see this—me standing over the smoking remains of this drone. Spencer Harrington, his powerless mini-not-me, kickin’ robot ass. I’ll wait. My teeth might grind to nubs from all this chattering, but I’ll wait.
