by Mel Odom
I turned to the woman.
She shook her head and tears glittered in her eyes. “I can’t. I can’t go out there.”
“You can’t stay in here. If they find you, they’re going to kill you.” I said that and I knew it was the truth, but I didn’t know where that certainty had come from. I couldn’t verify the information. In my job as a detective, every fact had to be verified. What I experienced now ran counter to that.
Something thumped against the door.
I glanced at the vid cube. The men had evidently given up trying to get in with the e-card. One of them drew back a foot to kick again.
Boom.
I looked at the woman. “That door isn’t going to hold. If there are two of them out there, you can bet there will be more.” I wasn’t certain how I knew that, but I knew what I told her was true. “Trust me.”
I wished I knew her name. Little things like that helped when dealing with humans. They put a lot of stock in their identities. So much importance is tied to a human’s name.
“Don’t let me fall.” She approached me with trepidation.
“I won’t.” I set down the vid cube. With my assistance, she climbed onto my back, wrapping her arms around my neck and her legs around my waist. I knew something was wrong because she felt heavy. In addition to being durable and fast, bioroids are strong. I didn’t feel as strong as I normally did. I shouldn’t have noticed her weight at all, but I did. Not only that, but I felt the warmth of her flesh against me.
I knew I could carry her, though. I threw a leg over the window and climbed out. She clung to me more fiercely and tucked her head into the back of my neck. I smelled her again in spite of the winds that whipped around the building. She was lilac and salt.
Cautiously, I climbed down the side of the building. My hands and feet moved effortlessly, finding the cracks and crevices I needed. The wind made it harder to hang on, but I managed. The stones bit into my fingertips and brought more pain that I’d ever felt before.
My body was constructed to effortlessly manage pain. Pain was an operating parameter, a built-in system of checks and balances so I would not harm humans or other property that I interacted with. I ignored the pain and kept going.
I heard the door give way in the hotel room we’d just left at the same time I reached the window of the room beneath me.
“They’re not here.” The man’s voice was muffled by the hood that he wore, but I still heard him.
“They’ve got to be here. Search the closets.”
“Look. The window’s broken.”
In a crab-like position, my hands dug in tightly and my left leg bent up to above my waist, barely able to maintain my grip, I drew back my right leg and kicked my foot through the window. Glass exploded and fell into the room.
I climbed down further, got a foot on the sill, and turned immediately sideways to put the woman inside the room. Above me, I saw a pair of hooded heads peer out of the room we’d just left. A fraction of a second later, they pointed their pistols down at me.
I shoved myself into the room, letting gravity do part of the work. Heavy-caliber shots blasted through the night and the muzzle flashes briefly lit up the darkness outside.
I fell and the woman fell with me. I was the first to my feet and I helped her up. The room was dark for just a moment, then someone turned on a bedside lamp.
On the bed nearby, a young couple looked at us in shock. The woman wrapped her arms around the man as he faced us. “What are you doing here?”
Both of them wore tattoos over their entire bodies. They looked like corp material, mid-level execs, with carefully colored hair and lean bodies.
I held up my hands. “We aren’t going to hurt you.”
“Get out of this room! Get out of this room, now! I’m calling security!” The man reached for the comm-pad beside the bed.
I thought security was a good idea.
The woman didn’t. She grabbed my arm and pulled me into motion. “We’ve got to go. They’ll have paid the hotel security people off. We won’t be safe.”
I took her word for it because I didn’t know. I followed her lead and we ran for the door. I got there first. We went through the door and into the ornate hallway.
Stairwells were at either end of the hall. An elevator bank was somewhere in the middle of the floor according to the signage. I headed for the stairwell our two attackers had come up, thinking there would be no one else in there if everyone coming up that way was already here, and that there was a greater possibility of their being another team in the other stairwell.
I rushed through the door, my left hand on the woman’s arm, dragging her after me. I had to go more slowly so she could keep up. I headed down immediately, leading the way at a pace she could maintain. We managed two flights of stairs before two hooded men stepped into view from below.
Neither of them hesitated to draw their weapons and fire. The woman screamed behind me as I knocked her back on the stairwell above the men. Bullets cut the air over my head and thudded into the stairwell from below. I knew the men wouldn’t hesitate to round the stairwell to come after us and I knew we didn’t have a chance if we tried to run.
Before I knew what I was doing, I drew the pistol from the shoulder holster and leaned over the edge of the stairwell to take aim. My programming went haywire, resisting the impulse to fire the weapon, but I couldn’t stop myself and I didn’t know why.
I couldn’t take a human life.
With cold efficiency, I sighted the men’s heads as bullets continued to chip at the stairwell. Vibrations ran through the steel and cement structure. One of the steps near the woman’s head exploded as the heavy rounds shattered the cement. She screamed again.
I knew the powered hoods would turn a bullet. They’d been designed to deflect injury unless hit full on, and most faces have a lot of curves and planes. The hoods’ construction added to that deflection ratio. But even if the bullet didn’t penetrate, the hydrostatic shock of the round striking the armored head couldn’t prevent the brain taking damage. The injury would involve a concussion at the least, and permanent brain damage at the worst.
I fired without hesitation, two shots to each target. All four rounds found their marks. I’d never practiced with a handgun before. There was no need because my programming prevented me using one. I didn’t know if the success was attributable to my bioroid reflexes or because I was lucky. Luck was simply a mathematical progression…even the first time.
Both men fell and stayed down, their weapons dropping from lax hands.
I got the woman up and got her moving. She was barely able to stand, let alone run, because she was so scared. But she was too scared not to run, too, and I kept her moving.
When I reached the men, I placed a hand on them to read their vitals. One man’s pulse was weak and thready. The other man was dead. Evidently, the bullets had caused enough brain damage to stop his autonomic nervous system.
I waited for my programming to shut me down. That was how it was written: if I harmed a human, my body would lock down and keep me prisoner until Haas-Bioroid or the police collected me. I would be forced to keep recording the event for legal reasons. But, in effect, I would be a prisoner inside myself.
That didn’t happen. I was still mobile. My curiosity fired immediately and I was captivated by the incongruity of my situation. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I wasn’t supposed to be able to use a lethal weapon, and I wasn’t supposed to be able to take a life.
I would have stayed to try to help, but I heard footsteps thudding against the stairs above. Not only that, but more were coming from below. Evidently, whoever was pursuing us had a small army to do so.
I knelt to the unconscious man. I couldn’t touch the dead one again. I had no problems touching corpses—that was often required in my job—but I couldn’t bear to touch the one I had killed. That would have made everything more real.
And, I no longer believed any of this was real. I was trapped in some ki
nd of programming glitch that had invaded my neural channeled personality and was wreaking havoc with my memories. No, not memories. This was my imagination at work. None of this was a memory. This glitch, whatever it was, was mining fears that evidently piggybacked on the programming I had. It was the only explanation I could conceive. I was stuck in a random problem-solving scenario that was the result of a case.
I had no other answer.
I took the unconscious man’s comm from his neck. It was a button-sized device that adhered electromagnetically below his left ear. I shoved it into place below my own left ear, not knowing if it would work. In truth, the device didn’t have to be behind my ear. I could access it through touch alone. However, my programming made me emulate human action most of the time to better fit in. A human would have put the device behind his left ear, so that’s what I did. Noises vibrated along my jawbone and became words in my auditory sensors.
“—on the seventh floor. He has the woman with him.”
“Affirmative. We’re coming up from the fifth. We’ll sandwich them between us.”
Going down the stairwell was no longer an option. I forced myself to pick up the unconscious man’s weapon and was both relieved and discomfited by my ability to do so.
I’d heard my partner, Shelly Nolan, read to her children on occasion when I’d visited her. That hadn’t happened often. Her husband didn’t care for bioroids in general, but he accepted me, perhaps because I was Shelly’s partner and he depended on me to keep her safe when he couldn’t. I didn’t know what to make of his offer of friendship, so I had just accepted it as a further contract to protect humans, his in particular.
Though I would never have told Shelly, I enjoyed those times seeing her with her children. She was a good detective, and a good mother. One of the stories she had read to them came to mind now. I was Alice in Wonderland, and somehow I had fallen down the rabbit hole.
I rose with both weapons in my hands. For a fleeting moment, an image of someone else’s features reflected in the small window on the stairwell door. I only caught bits and pieces of those features, like a scattered jigsaw puzzle, and none of them seemed to fit. I attempted to replay the sight of them inside my head, something I had done effortlessly before anytime I’d tried.
Except that I couldn’t do it now.
The woman pounded on my shoulder. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” I went through the door, listening to the net of armed men grow tighter around us. From their comm chatter, I knew that they were in both stairwells, clustering like cockroaches.
I ran for the center of the floor, toward the elevator banks, the woman at my heels. When I reached the elevator banks, doors opened on one of the cages. I lifted my weapons and halted so suddenly the woman bumped into me.
Four people stood within the cage. All of them looked frightened to see me. None of them wore the faceless black hoods or reached for weapons.
I gestured with the pistols. “Out. Now.”
They hurried out, hands wrapped protectively around their heads, like that would do something to stop a bullet. One older man shielded an older woman with his body and snarled curses at me.
I ignored him and shoved a foot against the elevator door to keep it from closing. I glanced at the woman. “Inside. Come on.”
She darted inside and I started to join her, but before I could enter, the elevator across the hall from us dinged its arrival and the doors opened to reveal a pair of the hooded men. They had their weapons at the ready.
I didn’t know which of us started firing first, but the sudden roll of thunder filled the hallway. Bullets chopped through the elevator doors. My aim was better than theirs and I watched them driven backward as the bullets thudded into their armor.
Something hit me in my left side and pain flashed through me. I paid no attention to it because the pain was just a warning, nothing more. The impact drove me back inside the elevator cage and I let it. I yanked my foot back and slapped the close door button with my elbow.
I reloaded my weapons, which had blown back empty. Unexplained dizziness swept over me and I ran a diagnostic over the gyro stabilizers that controlled my equilibrium. I felt more stable. But the pain in my side didn’t fade as I’d expected it to.
The elevator cage dropped toward the first floor.
The woman stared at me. “You’re hurt.”
I shook my head, but I looked down all the same and felt my side. My fingers came away covered in red blood. That made no sense at all. My body had no blood in it.
Chapter Two
“Hey, partner, are you asleep?”
My vision returned to me in a rush. I looked at Shelly Nolan as she stared across our shared desk at me. My response was automatic. “Bioroids don’t sleep.”
She smiled. “Well, you definitely weren’t here.”
Around us, the New Angeles Police Department Detectives Division looked normal. I couldn’t get the image of the hotel and the firefight in the elevators out of my mind. I still smelled the burnt cordite of the spent pistol rounds and the woman’s lilac and salt scent.
A few other detectives sat at their desks, engaged in filing reports on their PADs, or talking to perpetrators or witnesses. Many of the desks were empty, and the darkness outside the windows reminded me we were on the night shift this rotation.
New Angeles, and crime, never slept.
I liked the detectives division bullpen better than the efficiency flat I lived in. Although I seldom interacted with detectives other than Shelly, I liked having them around. I couldn’t explain why exactly, but I think it had to do with the stimulus they provided. The detectives were constantly in motion and constantly talking—whether enjoying each other’s company or arguing about a case.
The stimulus there was much more involving than the stimulus I received at the flat. There was movement there, too, and conversations and arguments, but I was always on the outside of that, never involved. Plus, a homicide investigation was like a program in certain respects. A lot of the work was repetitive and I liked the predictability of it.
“Come on.”
I turned toward Shelly.
She was standing behind her side of the desk and pulling her pistol from the locked desk drawer where she kept it. Seeing the gun, looking so much like the weapon I had used in the…programming glitch…I felt uneasy. That feeling was also in the palette of emotional responses I had, and it was used both as a moral compass and as a self-preservation technique.
In this case, I decided the sensation was more the former than the latter.
“We’re going somewhere?” I was confused and I didn’t like that. Confusion wasn’t something I was programmed for.
“Yeah, we’re going somewhere. We caught a squeal.” Shelly tucked her sidearm into the holster at her hip. She was tall for a human female—175 centimeters—and she was athletic. She had dark red hair that she cropped at her jawline and collar. Her face was kind and looked younger than her thirty-five years.
Her husband, Kurt, said she was “well-endowed,” which meant she had a womanly shape. I’d had to look that up and still didn’t quite know what he was referring to. Men looked at her, and they liked what they saw. I knew he was referring to something like that, and I felt confident that it had something to do with her shape.
A “squeal” was a call about a homicide. That was cop-speak. Homicides—murders—were what we worked on. Somewhere out there a human had died at the hands of another human, or at least under suspicious circumstances. We had to survey the site and determine whether further investigation was necessary.
“You must have really been out of it.” Shelly chuckled at me.
“I wasn’t…out of it.”
“Then where were you? You’re usually the first to hear a squeal when it’s for us.”
That was true. I accessed the chron in my built-in PAD and discovered it was 0238. We were currently on the midnight to eight shift. I made a note of the time for my later field report.
“I was thinking.”
“Thinking awfully deep thoughts there, Drake.” Shelly smiled the smile that indicated she thought she was making a joke. She used my name. Many humans deliberately didn’t use my name, and I knew they did that to further designate me as an outsider. I didn’t care. I was an outsider and it worked for me.
“Yes.” I told myself that must have been it. “I was running scenarios.”
“You spend too much time in that ‘office’ of yours.”
She was the only one I’d told about the office, that part of my mind that I retreated to in order to sort out my day and my thoughts. I didn’t know if every bioroid had one of those. Shelly assumed every bioroid had that partition from the real world, but then, I was the only bioroid she knew on an intimate basis.
There was another bioroid working with the NAPD. His name was Floyd 2X3A7C. Our paths didn’t often cross, and when they did, we had nothing to say to each other. Our cases didn’t overlap, and bioroid social skills, except when required, were practically nonexistent.
Sometimes, though, when I was in the same room or the same meeting as Floyd 2X3A7C, I caught him watching me. I thought he was assessing me, taking measure of how I performed. He was the first bioroid to be assigned to the NAPD. I was the second. There were others after us. But only Floyd 2X3A7C and I had made detective grade.
I didn’t know why he would be interested in my performance. Maybe he’d had a subroutine installed by Haas-Bioroid to watch over me. Perhaps I had one that assessed him as well, though I was unaware of it.
The megacorp sometimes installed subroutines into units to ferret out information or to track trends, because the bioroid business wasn’t the only area of business development they were invested in. Haas-Bioroid had been charged with corporate spying from time to time, though they’d beaten all the charges thus far.
The other megacorps that dealt with neural channeling—imprinting brain activity onto clone minds or brain-emulating hardware like mine—had also been charged with corporate espionage for similar subroutines. Jinteki Biotech rivals Haas-Bioroid in court appearances nearly as much as they compete for the same government contracts. Their clones aren’t treated any better than bioroids, but they can pass more easily as human. In that regard, many humans hate clones more than bioroids.
