Children of Dawn

by B. C. Johnson

  Prologue

  Christopher Sykes could see his breath before him in the frigid midnight air, but his breath was hardly the thing on his mind. He fell face first into a puddle, what creatures scattered as he collided with the freezing fluid, he could not even begin to make out. Get up! He told himself. Get up before they find you!

  His legs kept moving, though he could swear he had no energy left to fuel them. Sykes wanted to look back, but he could not spare the second. Still Sykes pushed on, still he bulleted through the thick underbrush towards something he couldn’t see. Freedom!

  He could swear he heard dogs, snarling, biting, ravaging canines that would be on him at any second. How ironic. He told himself.

  Finally it was there, the shack in the middle of the dense wood of the northwest. He had fled for two days and nights, constantly staying one step in front of his pursuers, and for what? My Fortune! My Retirement!

  He burst through the door and locked it behind him. Surely they would be upon him soon, but he didn’t care, he was taken care of now. He turned to see the figure in the shadows. “Have you brought what I asked for?” The figure asked.

  Sykes, out of breath, nodded. “I’ve got it, you got my reward?”

  “Show it to me!” The figure demanded.

  “You show your’s first!” Sykes spat back. “I won’t hand anything over until I see the money!”

  The figure raised his hand from his side, within it was not the suitcase of cleanly washed hundreds that Sykes had anticipated, but a silenced Beretta 9mm. Sykes had been around enough to recognize that ancient model. Two quick shots ripped through the winter night air as Sykes felt the splintering pain rip through his upper left chest. The figure had shot with perfect aim.

  As Sykes fell to the ground in a heap, the figure moved across the wooden floor to his collapsed prey, his every footstep echoing through Sykes’ thoughts. “But…I…made a deal with…”

  “You have fulfilled your purpose.” The figure interrupted him, bending down and digging through the wounded man’s coat pocket.

  The shooter found what he was looking for and transferred it to his own coat. He turned, pulling up his collar and preparing to leave out a back door of the small cabin. Sykes cried after him. “How…could you…do this?” He managed.

  “You are a worthy sacrifice for people to know the truth. You have done your country a great service.” The figure said as he walked out the door. “A great service indeed.”

  The figure moved into the frigid night, walking a few feet to a black vehicle awaiting him. He opened the passenger door and got in. “Drive” He demanded.

  The vehicle lifted a few feet from the ground and sped off into the night as the sounds of dog’s barking could be heard off in the distance, but the foot patrols would come far too late to save their quarry, or to collect what he had stolen. Christopher Sykes was dead before the door shut behind his killer.

  The figure reached into his pocket and held up what he had killed the man for. A plastic casing enclosing a single silver disc reflected the street light’s glow as the car sped onto an empty highway. “We finally have it.” He said to himself. “We’ll see what the Tribunal has been hiding soon enough.”

  Chapter 1

  Access Log

  File number 137486

  Android Serial number: 2338

  Codename: Anna

  28 September 2313

  0345 hrs.

  I am neither human, nor machine. I am neither dead, nor alive. I am metals and gears, skin and bone. I am immortal, I am impenetrable, I am Android.

  That was the statement ingrained into Anna’s memory, the only thing she could ever retrieve from her databanks as to what she was. Of course she had learned much more of the context to her being, but it never boiled down to anything further than that statement. She was not human, she was Android.

  Her race was something that had been made by the Tribunal as their greatest police officers. They were the last line in inflicting the government’s justice on the populous. A race of super soldiers with only one order, maintain tranquility.

  The Tribunal was the nation’s answer to the chaos after the war. In the early part of the 21st century, the conflicts in the middle east escalated past the point of reconciliation. Containment was thought to be a last ditch effort to pacify hostilities in the region, which did not sit well with the locals. Forsaken by the world’s nations, the leaders of the region struck back in brutal force, eventually escalating the crisis to envelop the entire world in war. Anna could never find much on the extranet about the war, at least not a lot the Tribunal would allow without privileged access. Even Androids could only access level two classed information. Suffice to say the nations of the world fought and died for fruitless reasons, and left behind destruction and anarchy in their wake.

  After decades of useless war, the founders of the Tribunal created the sovereign nation of Arcadia, the new utopia risen from the barrens left behind. It was this nation Anna had been created to protect.

  She was pulled from her musings by a man in a trench coat walked out of the high rise hotel. Anna watched him from the rooftop opposite. Her visual sensors magnified, verifying he was the correct individual she was waiting for. “Target sighted, beginning pursuit” She said to herself.

  She wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular. The Androids worked off a sort of informational web. They had no higher headquarters or chain of command. Each Android worked alone, or at the very most, in small groups. Each agent moved freely, accessing leads and information through a subverted level of the extranet, the information circulatory system of Arcadia. Everything transferred through the extranet, television, correspondence, even information, all monitored and secured by the Tribunal. The Androids reported their cases through a subsystem reserved for them, and their computer systems analyzed growing threats based upon those reports and acted accordingly. Investigations were started and stopped based on relevance and threat, and directives sent through the agents based on their initial programming. It was a much more efficient way to maintain order without all the red tape, and also helped keep them immune to tampering or outside influence. The perfect enforcers, devoid of political ties or power struggles. Lady Justice’s truly blind and fair police.

  The target Anna was tracking was suspected of having ties to a sleeper cell within Arcadia, a group with possible motives to overthrow the Tribunal. Though she worked as an agent of peace and not necessarily an agent of the Tribunal itself, her programming had accounted that an overthrow of the political machine that held Arcadia together would spread chaos through both the Citizenry and the Civilian populace, thus posing a serious threat. The safest action would be to find the leaders of this sleeper cell and concurrently neutralize them. Permanently.

  The target continued into an alleyway, glancing over his shoulder nervously, almost tripping over himself a few times. In his arms he held an enlarged envelope. Anna smirked. “Target has package.”

  The rain came then, pouring down on the inhabitants of the metropolis. Most sensible people ran for cover or safety indoors, but the target continued through the streets, going up sidewalks, running across avenues, up alleys, and back down, always switching, as if he knew he was being tailed. Anna kept perfect track, jumping from rooftop to rooftop, propelling herself with support from her robotic interior. She may have looked like an innocent and beautiful woman in her late twenties in a skin tight tactical stealth suit, but she had the agility of a pre-war Olympic gymnast, and the strength of a cage fighter on steroids.

  Eventually her target thought himself safe, because he slowed to a regular pace and stopped his paranoid darting from street to street. They were in the Civilian sector now. The section of the city reserved for those who cho
se not to take part in the political decision makings of Arcadia. Every person born into Arcadia was classified at first as a Civilian, then only through military service or graduation from a finishing school program (closely resembling pre-war universities) did someone attain Citizen Status. With such status a person could vote, run for office, and take part in all political proceedings. It was thought of as an honor and privilege, and voter turnout had changed from pre-war thirty percent to one hundred percent. Those choosing to not earn citizenship were cordoned off and worked maintenance or lower responsibility jobs, their every need looked after by the Tribunal. For as long as Arcadia had stood this had been the way of things, and the nation thrived.

  The target walked towards the back door of a bar, knocking on it and looking about again, making sure for the hundredth time he hadn’t been followed. Anna found a shadowed nook on the roof overlooking the door, magnifying her view well enough to watch it. She snapped pictures of the targets face into her databanks, instantly transferring them to the extranet for analysis. Soon another man walked from the door into the alleyway, she took facial scans of him as well. The two men talked, their hand motions indicating elevated stress levels. As Anna moved to a better position to view the meeting, her facial scans came back with a beeping in her ear. She opened the message in a mini window in her optic sensors, where a human’s eyes normally were. The message read in her consciousness. “Target verified as Alan Trosky, Citizen, bank teller for Arcadia National Treasury and Funds, ID number 549-72-8452. No prior implications of crimes against Arcadia.”

  Anna clicked to the next man, the one who had exited from the door. “Second Target verified as Devon Trosky, Citizen, private entrepreneur, Owner of Bar titled ‘The Bullrush’, ID number 549-72-8451.”

  Anna thought. “Hmm, sequential serial numbers… twins.”

  The two men argued further, before Devon allowed his brother entrance into the bar. He scanned the alleyway a few times before closing the door behind him. Anna reported. “Target has entered establishment ‘The Bullrush’ Civilian sector 5. Switching to thermal scan.”

  Her vision changed to a flush of blues and varied degrees of reds and oranges, indicating where heat was. The rain was working in her favor, cooling everything around her so she could see into the bar more easily. Even robotic forms gave off some sort of heat, which helped her see people even if they had augments to their bodies. Robotic science was an ever growing business, many people placing their faith in robotic implants for various body parts. All augments documented by serial number and stored in Tribunal databases.

  Within the bar she could see a grouping of individuals on a higher level from that of the patrons. “A meeting.” Anna said to herself.

  Anna turned back to her regular optics and started out across the rooftops towards street level access. She pulled back her left sleeve to expose a touch screen embedded into her forearm. She clicked a few buttons, placing a charge she had set to arm, then detonate. The bar erupted into a plume of fire and smoke, the charge she had secretly placed within the bank teller’s envelope earlier succeeding in its job. Anna could hear the sirens of fire and police vehicles speeding her way as she clambered down from the rooftops.

  Her video log was stored and transferred as she set foot on the sidewalk a couple streets over. She would let the regular police investigate and determine the casualties of the blast, if the meeting had been the leaders for the cell she had been tracking, she would know soon enough. The rain continued to pour down on her as she reached her car parked along the street. She entered, powered up her vehicle, and allowed it to speed down the street towards the core of Arcadia’s downtown. The car patched into the road network, mapped out the fastest and safest route, and continued to pilot itself as Anna reviewed her recent investigations. For months she had been tracking down and eliminating various sections of this group, but every time she thought she had found the group’s core leadership, another pocket had appeared. She wondered if this organization worked much like her own, a free flowing web of informers and enactors, simply working together rather than working from one leader. She quickly squashed those thoughts, Humans were not capable of working in such an organization, even with robotic implants. Their human brains just couldn’t work fast enough, that and they each had some unexplainable desire for power and control. There had to be a leader, somewhere.

  A priority message came through to her consciousness, screaming an alarm in her ear. She opened the video call immediately. It was the Main Access to Data and Reconnaissance Executive, or M.A.D.R.E, the central computer system of Arcadia. If a city could have a soul, M.A.D.R.E was Arcadia’s face and voice. “Android 2338” M.A.D.R.E said.

  “Confirmed” Anna replied.

  M.A.D.R.E’s digitally created face lightened. To Androids, M.A.D.R.E was their mother. She was in charge of the creation and programming of every Android, and even arranged them each an individual personality. She also gave each a name, even against the Tribunal’s intention. “The Chairman wishes an audience with you Anna.” M.A.D.R.E’s soothing voice exclaimed.

  “With me?” Anna spoke surprised.

  “Yes, immediately. If you are not too busy.” M.A.D.R.E smiled.

  She then logged off, leaving Anna to herself as the car took the onramp to the Downtown Freeway. Anna couldn’t wipe the shocked look from her face. “What would the Chairman of the Tribunal want with me?”

  Chapter 2

  Access Log

  File number 137487

  Android Serial number: 2338

  Codename: Anna

  28 September 2313

  0500 hrs.

  In every way conceivable, Anna had tried to find some reason why the Chairman would want to see her. Why would he ever need to see an Android? All androids answered to M.A.D.R.E, no one else. Human interaction was simply not done for fear of tampering with investigations, except perhaps when some routine maintenance needed to occur; however, when that occurred M.A.D.R.E put the Android into hibernation and watched over the entire event. Such a request from the Chairman was unheard of, but of course, Anna couldn’t refuse.

  She was in the lower security sector, underneath the expansive capitol complex in the center of the city. The lower sector consisted of miles of tunnels and offices, secure in a massive underground bunker. This had been the original city in the beginning, the early survivors of the war staying below, waiting for the nuclear proliferation the Chairman promised. It was here the dream of Arcadia had been envisioned and orchestrated. Anna had never been this deep before.

  Guards eyed her with a mixture of curiosity and uneasiness, young men and women, none over the age of twenty-four. These halls housed the most important administrators, politicians, and generals of Arcadia, yet it was patrolled by those seeking citizenship. Somehow being close to the brass was supposed to keep them on their toes and instill the honor every citizen needed. From what Anna saw, it worked.

  She came to a doorway guarded by two large soldiers. They stood rigidly at attention as M.A.D.R.E’s voice came from a speaker just above Anna. “He’s waiting for you inside, go on in.”

  The doorway slid upwards, revealing a darkened apartment, light filtering in from an office on the right. “Come in my dear.” A male voice beckoned.

  Anna gracefully walked into the office, there an elderly man sat behind an elaborate desk with a digital tablet in hand. He smiled, put down the pad, and stood. Anna saluted sharply and he returned the sign of respect. “Relax, I imagine you’re quite curious as to your being here.” He said.

  Chairman Adam Fairchild was nothing like Anna expected. He had single handedly saved hundreds of survivors during the worst part of the war, bringing them below to the undercity as if he had known the bombs were about to rain down. He picked very important people to join him, people he knew would help him start the city he envisioned. To date he had been the only Chairman, duly elected by the people he had saved in the first election, and had never lost since. He was characterized in
his bio as being charismatic, handsome, and an ingenious political, business, and military leader. Of course, it was hard to separate the man from the myth. If Anna’s programming hadn’t been overriding her personality, she probably would have felt overwhelmingly nervous.

  Chairman Fairchild sat and motioned for Anna to do the same in the chair next to her, she looked at it, and looked back at him. Fairchild chuckled. “Right, you guys don’t really have time for pleasantries do you?”

  Anna’s face was solid. “We are not programmed to handle ‘pleasantries’ sir.”

  Fairchild seemed unnerved talking with her. “Well, I can respect that. Listen, I know this is unheard of, but let me assure you, M.A.D.R.E is monitoring our entire conversation. I’m not here to meddle in your affairs, this is simply a courtesy.”

  “For what?” Anna spat bluntly.

  Fairchild lit a cigarette and blew out the smoke. It lazily hung in the air over the desk, as if he was trying to wrap himself in a smog of mystery. “We have a new mission for you, one that is unlike any your kind has ever faced.”

  Finally he was speaking Anna’s language. “I am ready for whatever the Tribunal wishes of me.”

  “This isn’t coming from the Tribunal.” Fairchild explained.

  Anna was caught off guard. “Not from the Tribunal… I don’t understand.”

  “This mission must stay in the highest level of secrecy, for I fear our Tribunal might be infiltrated and not acting in the best interests of Arcadia.” Fairchild elaborated.

  This was unheard of. The Tribunal had never been “corrupt”. It was the seat of power, the will of the citizenry and the protector of the civilian workforce. How could there be corruption? Fairchild saw Anna’s expression and squinted. “You’re not supposed to react that way…” He thought aloud.

  Anna caught herself and straightened again, her face becoming stone. Fairchild smiled. “I knew I picked the right one…” He said.