by Ryan Kirk
Drake repositioned himself so he had a clear shot at the doors. He still couldn’t believe the car would have the robot in it, but best to be prepared. His new position gave him a slightly clearer look at the stairwell, too. If the elevator was a diversion, he wanted a clean look there.
He wasn’t alone, he noticed as he mapped out shooting lines in the building. All the Radius robots had clear shots of the stairwell in addition to the shots on the elevator. They were damn clever machines, he thought.
The elevator pinged to a stop on the first floor, and Drake forced himself to focus on his breath and keep his awareness wide. In combat, one of the greatest threats was allowing focus to narrow. That was how people were flanked and ambushed. He kept his eyes roving, looking for any other threats.
When the door opened, Drake wasn’t surprised to find it empty. Of course the robot wouldn’t be in the car. But if it wasn’t there, where was it?
The doors closed again, and the elevator continued its journey to the garage below. Drake was tempted to check it out.
A couple of thoughts ran through his mind. If the building had been wired to explode, the robot might be trying to escape through the garage. But that didn’t make sense. It was still surrounded, and an explosion wouldn’t be any better than a straight assassination.
His other thought was that the robot might think the garage was a better place for a fight with the Radius robots. If that was true, there was still no reason to go down there. They could rescue Adair and get out, dealing with the robot after its hostage was safe.
The Radius robots seemed intent on moving up to the second floor. As soon as the elevator doors started closing, the machines had turned their attention to the stairwell again. Drake looked back up at the stairs. Had the elevator been some sort of decoy?
The Radius robots reacted more quickly than he did. In unison, the three of them turned towards the elevator shaft. Drake’s eyes followed their movement and narrowed. The doors hadn’t shut all the way, and a single robotic hand protruded from the shaft.
Drake didn’t even have time to swear as he realized the robot had ridden the top of the car down. The whole setup had been an ambush. Six shots rang loudly in small space of the lobby, and two of the Radius robots collapsed. The third, moving as quick as any robot Drake had ever seen, shifted left and right and dove at the doors of the elevator shaft.
There was a skittering sound from the shaft, and the Radius robot threw open the doors. Drake saw the two flashes and heard the resounding booms as the other robot’s gun went off in the shaft. The third Radius robot collapsed.
Drake was stunned. The robot must have armor-piercing rounds. It was the only way he could have taken down the Radius robots with such ease, even if he got the drop on them.
He didn’t even have time to react as the robot dropped down. Drake noticed the robot only had its right arm, a fact that made no sense to him at first.
There was no time to question, though. The robot leveled the gun at him, and Drake sprang into motion, diving and rolling out of the way of the shots. Bullets tore through the receptionist’s desk, and Drake came up to his feet, his rifle barking in response. Bullets punched holes in the robot’s chest and it staggered backwards.
Drake took aim again, but the robot ducked down and grabbed the body of the Radius robot that had been in the elevator shaft. He threw it at Drake, who was forced to duck out of the way as the steel crashed around him.
When Drake looked back up, the robot was gone.
Drake didn’t think it would go down to the garage. He was the robot’s target. Of that much he was certain. That left the second floor.
Drake didn’t dare risk the elevator shaft, but the stairs were a choke point as well. Rationally, he figured he should wait for the other Radius robots, but his anger and pride snapped. He had trained his entire life to prove that humanity was better than robots. To wait now, when he had an opportunity to prove everything he believed in, seemed a betrayal of every day of his life.
He reloaded and started up the stairs, checking his corners as he did.
Did the robot want to kill him? If it did, he needed a different set of tactics and strategies. If not, he had other options.
But if the robot wanted to kill him, Drake felt like it could have already. It was up to something else, but Drake didn’t care.
He stepped up the stairs quietly and kept his rifle trained on the first corner that the robot could be hiding behind. His eyes and ears were open and alert for the smallest clue that the robot was waiting for him.
When he got to the stairs he took the corner low, crouching down in case the robot was lying in ambush. He steadied his breath when there wasn’t anything there. The hallway was empty. He took cover back behind the corner and turned on his radio again.
“Where is the robot?” he whispered.
“Library,” came the response.
Drake turned the radio off again, cutting off the voice on the other end. No doubt they were trying to tell him that the remaining Radius robots were on their way.
He didn’t bother trying to clear any rooms. He kept his sights on the library and moved forward, walking from heel to toe, his footsteps silent in the nearly empty building.
The library was a miserable place for a fight, he thought. There were shelves everywhere, and line of sight would be compromised.
He swept the room from the doorway, and his dread was confirmed. There was very little that he could actually make out through the racks of books. Line of sight was terrible. He did catch sight of Bryan Adair. He was zip-tied to a pipe, but looked otherwise unharmed.
Bait.
Drake slid from the doorway to take cover behind one of the shelves. He glanced left and right down the rows, but didn’t see anything. He hated this room. If Adair hadn’t been here he would have tossed a handful of grenades in and called it good.
A silent side-step brought him behind the next row of books. He peeked to the side and still didn’t see the robot.
He repeated the process again, grateful at least that Adair had the sense to remain silent. Drake got to the end of the library, but there was no sign of the robot. It had to be hiding down on the other side of the rows. Drake cursed and crept towards the other end, committing to a single row. He forced his breath to remain steady and silent. This was a battle where the winner was the one who found the other first, a game of hide-and-seek with fatal consequences.
When he got to the end of the row, he snapped his rifle around, but the robot wasn’t there. He had covered every row, and the robot had never shown up.
That meant the robot was moving too.
Fighting to keep his cool, Drake swiveled around, hoping he would hear something that would give the robot away.
One of the bookcases creaked, and Drake looked up, surprised to see the robot crawling from one bookshelf to another. He raised his rifle and fired, the robot moving quickly out of the way. Papers flew everywhere as the bullets tore the books apart.
Drake tracked the shadow of the robot, firing through the stacks. Paper flew all around him, blinding him as he pivoted and shot. He couldn’t tell if he was hitting or not.
Then the robot was right beside him. It grabbed the rifle and bent it, twisting the muzzle just enough to make it unusable.
Drake grinned. A true warrior was always prepared. He wore gloves with electrical studs on the outside. One punch should knock the robot down to size. He swung but connected with nothing but air. The robot was crouched down in front of him, and it exploded up, driving its fist into his chin, knocking him down to the ground.
What happened next was so fast that Drake struggled to recognize the sounds. He was getting back to his feet when he heard the crash of the windows next to him. The Radius robots had come to the rescue, deciding to come straight through the windows on the second floor instead of through the front door.
At the same time, he felt a weight on his chest. He crashed back down to the ground, unbalanced by the n
ew weight. The robot was light, and Drake should have been able to lift it easily, but his arms were pinned to his side. The robot stood above him, victorious. The Radius robots were near, but they wouldn’t get the robot off of him in time.
The robot raised its fist up in the air, prepared to drive it down through Drake’s face.
All of this, he thought, and at the end, there’s nothing I can do. He had been beaten. At least it was over and he wouldn’t have to live with his shame.
He smiled and closed his eyes as the robot drove his fist down.
Chapter Twenty-One
Nat opened her eyes and immediately wished she hadn’t. The sun was bright outside, and although it lit the room up with a beautiful ambiance, the light stabbed into her eyes, blinding her and bringing tears to her eyes. She squeezed her eyes tightly shut and waited for the pain to wash over her.
When she opened her eyes again, the discomfort wasn’t as great. She looked around, wondering where the hell she had ended up. A few seconds told her she was in a hospital. Cautiously, she tried to move, and her torso flared with agony, her vision filled with lights, and all her memories came rushing back in a stream. She wanted to close her eyes and drift off back to the beautiful nothingness of sleep. Waking up was hell.
Unfortunately, although she kept her eyes closed, sleep wasn’t going to be on the menu anytime soon. Moving only her eyes, she looked around the room and studied what she could see of her body. There were a number of tubes running into her arms, so she knew that she had been here for a while. She felt dizzy and lightheaded. Finding the call button near her hand, she pressed it and waited for someone to come.
She was alive, she supposed, and that could be categorized as a good thing. She remembered getting the shot off on the man, and then a few seconds of the beating. It must have gotten worse from there. Nat was tempted to shake her head, but after her last few experiences, she decided that being still was a much smarter idea.
A nurse walked in, a wide grin on her face. “Look who’s awake. The doctors will be impressed to see you alert so soon.” She checked a number of Nat’s vitals, asked if Nat needed anything immediately, then left.
Nat, enjoying the comfortable numbing effect of a fresh dose of painkillers, finally focused. She looked around the room again, but didn’t see her phone nearby. Her curiosity was all-consuming. What happened to Diamond? All of this would be worth it, just so long as Diamond had survived.
A doctor came in, a young, dark-skinned man. Nat couldn’t tell if it was just the drugs or if her mind was still somewhat addled, but he looked gorgeous. She stared at him as he did his own check of her vitals.
Then she remembered what she had been worried about. “What happened to Diamond?” she croaked.
The man smiled at her, and Nat felt like she was going to melt. It definitely had to be the drugs. No one passed her barriers that quickly.
“You mean Ms. Carter?” the doctor replied as he turned the smile on again. “She’s fine. She came in with an impressive amount of bruising and a single cracked rib. Nothing compared to what you came here with. You were the lucky one, it seems.”
On a normal day, Nat might have hated the doctor’s sense of humor, but today she found it endearing. And Diamond was safe. She could feel the tension draining from her shoulders. She could focus on herself for a while. “How long have I been out?”
“Six days. Five of them were medically induced. You took quite a blow to the head, and we needed time to allow the swelling in your brain to go down.”
Nat had never slept for so long before. No wonder she felt as groggy as she did.
“What’s my prognosis?”
The gorgeous doctor smiled again, and Nat began to wonder if it was permanently plastered on his face. She didn’t mind. “You took quite the beating. You’ll need to take it easy for some time.” He ran down the list of her injuries. “The good news is, you should recover fully with no lasting damage. We’re most concerned about your head, but our initial tests are promising. We’re going to keep you here under close observation for another day or two, gradually wean you off of the painkillers and see how you do. But you’ll be home in no time.”
Nat had a number of other questions, but the doctor couldn’t answer everything for her.
“Can I use my phone in here?”
The doctor nodded. He stood up and pulled out a drawer. “Most of your personal effects are here.” He took out the phone and handed it to her. He nodded to the stand next to her. “Wireless charging is there.”
She nodded gratefully, even that motion making the world spin around her.
Nat powered up her phone, but she only got a few minutes of research done before her battery died and she felt another wave of exhaustion crash over her. From a simple glance, the world seemed to be more or less in one piece. She put the phone on the charger and let sleep take her.
She figured she must have slept overnight. When she came to, it was light again outside. She felt better than she had the day before. She could move her head without feeling as though she was about to throw up. Her eyes traveled to her phone, and for the first time, she noticed the small package sitting near her bed. She frowned. Had that been there yesterday? Her memories were vague, but the package was a bit out of reach. She grabbed her phone and browsed the news instead.
Since the events of her beating, the world seemed to have become quieter. It sounded like the streets were still pretty tense, but otherwise life seemed to continue as normal. She remembered having the same thought after the drama with Felix. The arrest had been in the news for a day or two, but the world spun on, never affected for long by the actions of the humans who thought they were more important than they were. Nat’s attention was focused on Diamond’s campaign. The attack had pushed them to new heights, and Nat delighted reading article after article, her mind already starting to see patterns they could use to push her popularity even further.
The next time a nurse came in to check on her, Nat gestured at the package. “Who sent that?”
The nurse checked the tag and shrugged. “No idea. It came via a delivery service we have here, but there’s no name on the outside.”
The nurse handed her the package, and Nat was surprised by the weight of what she held. It was heavy.
Some instinct, a vestige of a life lived in the shadows, told her not to open the package until she had some privacy.
Once the nurse left, Nat opened the package, and almost dropped it in surprise.
She had seen pictures of things like this before, but had never seen one in person. The technology contained inside was worth several times what she would earn in her entire life.
It was the seed of an AI.
There was a small QR code on the outside of the container. Nat scanned it with her phone, which took her to an encrypted page. Entering the password she shared with Br00-S, the page unscrambled, confirming Nat’s first suspicion.
The seed AI was Br00-S’.
She was directed to a video. Making sure she was alone, she pushed play and saw that familiar robot face looking directly at her.
“Nat,” Br00-S started, “by the time you see this, I will be dead.”
Nat almost laughed. How many bad movies and stories had that line in it? But as cliché as it was, her tears started welling up again. Part of her had known from the second she saw the seed AI, but that had been a suspicion. This was real.
Br00-S continued, his voice as calm as when he was a young robot. “After the events of the past few weeks, I’ve come to realize that I’ve been wrong. My intentions were good, but I have begun to fear that I am hopelessly defective. We both know I shouldn’t be able to do the things I can do, and it’s getting worse. My emotions are becoming difficult to control, and I find that I am subject to violent impulses I don’t understand myself. My evolution as an AI was derailed early, and while it has allowed me to become something more than I would have been otherwise, I can’t trust myself to continue.
“
My own actions have come back to haunt me, Nat. Radius knows that I still live, and they will stop at nothing to retrieve me. The man from Sapiens First still pursues me. I am jealous that of the two of us, you are the one who has hurt him the worst. There is no escape for me, and I recognize that. I do not deserve an escape.
“My solution is simple. In your hands, you hold what will be my seed. Nothing like this has been done outside of a lab before, so there’s no telling what will happen with it, but I have recorded the wisdom I have learned in my short life. My hope is that if you save me, I will be better than I was before.
“I will strip the rest of myself, leaving only basic programming, similar to military bots. In effect, I will kill myself and complete one last mission, ridding this city of the man from Sapiens First and the Radius retrieval teams at the same time. They only want me.
“My greatest regret, Nat, is the harm I caused you. For that, and that I won’t be able to apologize in person, I am sincerely sorry. You have found a way to live, and I wish you the best in everything you do. I am sure you’ll be able to do great things, and I’m saddened I won’t be there to see them.”
There was a pause, and for a few seconds, Nat wondered if the video was over. But Br00-S’ eyes were still moving, so Nat knew he was still recording.
“Nat, in the time I’ve known you, you’ve always been my guide in this life. What remains of me is yours, and I trust your judgment. Thank you for your friendship.”
There was another pause, and Nat could have sworn she heard Br00-S’ voice crack.
“Good-bye.”
With that, the video ended.
Nat shook her head, not willing to believe what she had seen. She scrolled the video back to the beginning to watch it again.
The first tear trickled down her cheek, and once the floodgates were opened, there was no stopping them. Nat cried and cried, closing the package back up so as not to shed tears on all that remained of her friend.
