by Mel Odom
The weapon was powered for a ten meter distance, half the knockdown distance of the projectile weapons carried by the NAPD. Even though the weapon was non-lethal and only caused paralysis and unconsciousness, the department didn’t want to deal with liability suits.
Shelly came up behind me and stepped away from the duct opening. Both of us were quiet. We knew how to move and our footwear was specially cushioned.
But the three men were jacked up on adrenaline, fearful and uncertain because their operation hadn’t gone as smoothly as they’d hoped. They’d lain in wait, and they knew they had nothing left to lose.
A bright light flared to life in front of me and pinned me in the darkness. I shot out a hand to push Shelly away because I had already guessed what was coming. My fingertips barely brushed her jacket because she was already in motion, ducking low and going to the side.
A handful of bullets smashed against my chest and knocked me backward. If I hadn’t been off-balance reaching for Shelly, I might have been able to stand against them. But I wasn’t. I stepped backward, into the duct opening, and fell.
“Drake!” Shelly’s concern was evident.
I caught one of the rungs with my free hand and locked on. The bar bent under my sudden descent, but it held. I was a lot heavier than a human. I spoke softly over the comm, knowing that Shelly could hear me.
“I’m fine. I’m coming back up.” I pulled myself back up.
The light had shifted and I assumed the assassins were searching for Shelly. My programming flared to life, impelling me to prevent anyone from harming her.
“New Angeles Police!” Shelly sounded confident, but a little rushed, as she identified herself.
Off to my left, a man spoke. “How many are there?”
“Two. But one of them dropped back into the duct.” That man was also to the left. Having them bunched up was good.
“Doesn’t matter. She’s probably already called for reinforcements.”
Shelly had. So had I. Dispatch was already responding, letting us know that uniformed units were already on their way.
I came up the shaft in the darkness. My infrared vision was harder to maintain with the light bouncing around the room, but the light also provided me a target.
In a split-second, my targeting software came on-line and green crosshairs formed in my vision. I pointed the Synap at the man holding the light.
“New Angeles Police.” I spoke calmly; I had to issue the warning before I could fire my weapon. “Put down your weapons and—”
The man swung the light back toward me and opened fire. The muzzle flashes from the weapon threw highlights back over him, making it even easier to see him. The pistol was suppressed, so the actual noise from the shots was less than a vigorous cough and the sound was lost in the hum of machinery around us.
Two of the bullets struck me in the chest. Another hit me in the arm. I was set this time, turned sideways to present a smaller target, and they ricocheted off me. A direct hit would have staggered me back because the gun was powerful, at least a 12.7mm.
TARGET IS WITHIN EFFECTIVE RANGE.
I fired the Synap; it shrilled at a high decibel rate that Shelly called a “banshee scream,” and a blue bolt streaked across the 8.13 meters to strike the man. For 0.03 seconds, the man’s body turned virulent blue as the Synap burst cycled through the natural electromagnetic current of his flesh and blood.
Then he dropped bonelessly and the flashlight rolled across the floor, throwing shadows against the walls.
One of the men cursed. “It’s a golem!”
The term was a derogative one many anti-android humans used to refer to both bioroids and clones. The origin was a Jewish myth about a soulless monster that could be raised for protection in times of need. As far as epithets went, I thought it was particularly fitting. I had no personal feelings on the matter.
“I got something for golems.” The other man spoke more confidently than his partner.
I searched the darkness for the men. I tracked the reverberations of the voices. Angles and vertices showed on my crosshairs, estimating the point of origin.
In one massive eruption of sound and light, I knew where one of the men was. My vidware picked him up just as the muzzle flash of a compact rifle lit his face. I recognized the weapon as a 20mm anti-materiel rifle, something that was normally used to take out bulletproof vehicles and tanks. It was squat and wicked-looking, with a massive barrel.
The specifics of the Croatian-made weapon bounced through me at the same time I realized that I wouldn’t be able to evade the bullet. I turned as quickly as I could, which was very fast, but the bullet traveled at 850 meters per second.
I had no chance.
The bullet struck me in the lower left side and spun me around. Instantly, my programming recognized and assessed the damage. I had a large hole in my side and the articulation of my left hip was partially blocked with debris from my own body.
There was a slight warning pain within the operating parameters, but no more than necessary. The pain was only there to register that I had been damaged and would not continue if it interfered with my programming. The programming that dictated I protect Shelly from these men.
The man fired again and again. The only advantage I had was that the weapon was slow to cycle the next round. The bullets blew fist-sized holes in the wall behind me, chewing through the carbosteel as if it were tissue paper.
“Drake! Get out of there!”
I couldn’t run effectively. I had already weighed evasion against retaliation. Retaliation came out on top. I lifted the Synap and took aim.
TARGET IS BEYOND EFFECTIVE RANGE.
Having no choice, I went at the shooter, managing two lurching steps. The nanobots that worked within my body to rewire systems and maximize performance under less than optimal circumstances were already hard at work making repairs.
TARGET IS WITHIN EFFECTIVE RANGE.
I squeezed the trigger and the shrill pierced the room again. The shooter lit up in bright blue as the bolt struck him and his last round whistled by me only centimeters from my head. At the same time, though, Shelly took aim. A bright ruby dot formed on the man’s chest and Shelly fired.
My programming became conflicted. It was a problem with bioroids, and Shelly knew it. I went forward immediately to attempt resuscitation of the wounded man. Human life had to be preserved first and foremost. There was no way to write subroutines that allowed for different circumstances. Programmers had tried, but there had been too many problems. In the end, the government android licensing bureaus had insisted on the purity of the Three Directives.
I knelt beside the fallen man as the third man broke and ran. If I’d had a shot at him, I might have taken it. But I didn’t. He remained in the shadows and behind the equipment.
Instead, I concentrated on saving the life of the man Shelly had shot. She ran past me, knowing from experience that I couldn’t be swayed from my efforts.
And that set up another conflict within me. I knew Shelly was rushing into danger and needed me to cover her back, but I knew that the man in front of me was going to die if I didn’t help him.
I holstered my weapon and opened the jacket pocket where I carried a first-aid kit. I placed a hand against the wounded man’s neck. His pulse was weak and thready. He was unconscious from my Synap blast. I ripped his shirt open.
Shelly’s round had taken the man high over the heart. I didn’t have x-ray capabilities, but I thought perhaps the bullet had missed the aortic arch. If that was compromised, he was a dead man. I took out a compress and tried to press it against his chest to control the bleeding.
“Dispatch, this is Detective Drake.”
“Dispatch reads you, Drake.”
“I need EMTs on-site. One of the perpetrators has been grievously wounded. His life is threatened.”
“Drake, this is Lieutenant Ormond. Where is your partner?” Ormond didn’t like me, and he didn’t like the decision the NAPD had made to ad
d bioroids to the police force, especially the homicide division. In particular, his homicide division.
“Detective Nolan is in pursuit of a third perpetrator.” I held the compress against the man’s chest and felt his life fading from him. His heartbeat slowed and his blood pressure dropped, but he wasn’t dead. I couldn’t leave him. The decision was clear and unalterable.
“Leave that man and go to your partner.”
“I can’t do that, sir.”
“You don’t leave your partner.”
“Sir, she left me.”
Ormond cursed. “Detective Nolan. Shelly.” He knew her on a personal level, not just from work. He had trained her as an investigator. And he’d been the first to protest her acceptance of me as a partner.
“Stay out of my head, Emil. I’m busy.” Shelly was breathless, hurried. “Drake, when you get free, the perp has reached the hopper pad.”
She knew the man I was tending was going to die. So did I, but I was locked to him and couldn’t move. The programming was relentless and unbreakable.
I mapped the egress to the hopper pad from the hotel schematic. The buzz of the nanobots remained constant and my leg’s articulation slowly crawled back toward normal.
With a final cough, the man I was tending to died. His life signs flatlined. I suspected the aortic arch had been nicked after all, as I had feared.
I pushed myself to my feet and hurried toward the hopper pad egress. My damaged leg slowed me and threw me off my balance. “Dispatch, the perpetrator is dead. I am en route to Detective Nolan.”
“Hurry.” That was Ormond, not Dispatch.
I took hold of the rungs that led up to the hopper pad. The route was an emergency entrance for firefighters that might need access to the water standpipes in the top floor. I hauled myself up. “How far out are the support units?”
“Uniform hopper ETA is one minute thirty-seven seconds.”
“Affirmative.” The emergency door overhead had been left open. Rain sluiced into the duct and spattered my face as I crawled out onto the rooftop.
*
The rainstorm had grown stronger and now whipped across the rooftop. Despite the gutters built around the roof, water stood two centimeters deep in most places.
Lightning flared across the sky, searing the darkness like a brand. The rain diluted the Synap’s effectiveness, range, and strength because it had been designed as a passive weapon. The charge automatically began powering down under the existing conditions.
I ran as best as I could with the damaged leg. I dodged hoppers and chased moving shadows created by the lightning and the surrounding neon lights of other businesses.
Halfway across the rooftop, I spotted Shelly running along the building’s edge. She held her weapon in both hands, concentrating on the line of hoppers to her right. I focused on the hoppers as well, and I saw the third man before she did.
He stood in the shadows of a large luxury hopper. His back was to the vehicle. Panic etched his face. He was a man with no way out and he knew it, but he couldn’t go down without a fight. He lifted his pistol and took aim.
“Shelly!” My voice amplified to public address loudness, tearing across the rooftop in a deafening boom. I’d hoped to startle the man as I lifted my Synap.
TARGET IS BEY—
I ignored the script and fired. The Synap pulsed and the blue bolt leaped across the intervening distance. The man lit up bright blue, but he remained unaffected and on his feet.
He squeezed the trigger of his weapon as Shelly turned.
The bullet struck her. I saw her jerk backward and tumble slowly over the roof’s edge.
Calculating the distance and the necessary effort, I threw the Synap at the same time I changed direction and raced toward Shelly. The weapon flew through the air and struck the assassin in the head, rendering him unconscious.
I flung myself forward the last few meters as Shelly went over the side head-first. I locked a hand around her ankle, stopped her fall, and gently drew her back onto the rooftop.
She didn’t move. She didn’t say anything.
The pulse in her foot was already gone.
When I got her onto the rooftop, I saw the bullet hole in her forehead just above her left eye.
The support team arrived forty-nine seconds later. I held Shelly until they took her from me.
Chapter Eight
The day the NAPD buried Shelly, rain filled the city.
I don’t know what prompted me to go to the funeral. There was nothing I could do, no benefit to be gained by anyone. I could not replace what Kurt Nolan and his two daughters—Shelly’s children—had lost, nor could I offer them solace.
I didn’t have the words, other than the impersonal responses I had in my cache dedicated to dealing with victims at a crime scene. Once I made contact with bereaved victims, my first order of business was to find them appropriate human counseling.
At the church, I sat in the back row and reviewed my personality index, looking for something that might have crept through the neural channeling that would guide me in what I was supposed to do. I didn’t truly feel anything. My emotions had been effectively negated during the personality transfer, allowing me to operate coolly and calmly within the parameters established by the Three Directives.
Shelly was gone and there was nothing I could do about that. I accepted it the same way I accepted the sun coming up. Her death was a fact.
I missed Shelly. With her, I’d had a certain amount of stimulus. We’d had work to do. For the last three days since her death, I’d shown up at work and sat at our desks. I’d talked to no one and no one had talked to me. I’d waited for assignments that didn’t come.
On the day of the funeral, Lieutenant Ormond told me not to come in. Since I had nowhere else to go, I went to the funeral. Sitting at home by myself had seemed…incomplete. I couldn’t explain it any better than that.
Everyone dressed in black. Kurt was there in a black suit. His two daughters, in black dresses, stood at his side. The youngest daughter, Susan, came to me and took me by the hand. Not wishing to hurt her feelings, I let her pull me up to join the family.
During the graveside service, Susan pulled me down so she could speak in my ear. “I know you can’t cry for Mommy, so I’ll cry for you.”
“Thank you.” I didn’t know what else to say. I stood at Susan’s side and we got through the service.
After the service, Kurt took Susan by the hand and looked at me with pain and anger. “You should have been there for her. She should have had a real cop at her side.”
I didn’t argue. A real cop would have had a real gun and would have killed the man who had killed Shelly. But, a real cop would have died earlier in the building. If things had been different, they would have been different, but there were no guarantees that the outcome would have been affected. If the man’s aim had been better with the 20mm rifle, I wouldn’t have been there either. No one seemed to acknowledge that.
I continued standing at the gravesite, not knowing what to do, as the rain pelted the ground and streams ran through the grass and into the open hole. Soon, everyone left and I stood there and watched the casket lowered into the rainwater and mud. A backhoe scooped sloppy dirt into the hole and covered Shelly’s body.
It seemed like a bad place for her body to be, but I knew Shelly was no longer there.
When night came, I went home. I had nowhere else to go.
*
The next morning, I showed up at work again. I checked the bulletin board where all the assignments were listed. I had no work to do. I had no new partner to do it with. I didn’t know what was to become of me.
There was a possibility that I could be deactivated, sent back to Haas-Bioroid, and repurposed. I didn’t care for that scenario. Everything that was me, everything that I had become, would be erased. Even though I knew the feeling was illogical and couldn’t really sway me, I felt unsettled.
I exchanged one office for another, slipping away in
to the virtual reality inside my programming where I sat at another desk and didn’t know what to do.
During the last seven years of my life, I had never seen a single day when I didn’t have an agenda or a plan.
I needed work.
*
Craig Dormoth, one of the newest detectives, talked to me that afternoon. He was young, blond, and in good shape—one of the men that other detectives didn’t care for so much because he was constantly pushing to achieve. Shelly had told me that Craig was a detective that would move through the department quickly. I thought other detectives realized that, too, and many of them were jealous.
“Drake, can I talk to you for a moment?”
“Of course.” He was already talking to me.
He started to get Shelly’s chair, then hesitated a moment and got a chair from a neighboring desk. He sat and looked at me. “I know this has to be hard.”
“Are you referring to Shelly’s death?” Sometimes it was confusing trying to understand what humans were talking about in their conversations. Shelly had always taken the time to spell out the things I needed to know, making sure I comprehended what she wished me to.
“Yes, I am.”
“All right.” I waited.
“How are you doing?”
“I am fine. Thank you.” That was one of the earliest programmed responses. Humans liked to think that everyone was fine so I always answered that I was fine.
“Have you thought about talking to anyone?”
The question confused me. “I am talking to you.”
Craig shook his head. “Not me. Someone else. Someone…someone you might need to talk to.”
“There is no one I need to talk to. I have no assignments. There is no investigation to pursue.”
“I mean, someone to talk to about Shelly’s death.”
I thought about that for a moment. “I don’t think so. As far as I’m aware, everyone that needs to know Shelly is dead knows this is the case. I have filled out all the requisite forms, made all the vid tapes, and I’ve outlined that night and its events for the forspec teams. Everything that could be known about that night is known.”
