Disparity

by Eric Warren

  “What do you even want with it?” Arista asked, trying to stall for time.

  “It’s going to solve all our problems on the other side,” Echo said. “Charlie and I have come to an agreement. Though I have to admit it was a surprise finding him here.”

  “I am everywhere,” Charlie said through the speakers Frees could only assume were buried in the walls.

  “Solve your problems how?” Frees asked.

  “It’s a failsafe,” Echo said. “In the event rogue AI’s would ever develop in this universe. It can immediately shut down and erase all AI programming. Charlie wants all the machines you freed back under his control; I want to leave the colony. We’ve come to an understanding.”

  No. This is precisely what they didn’t need. They’d spent a month turning machines autonomous on the other side. And to have all of that wiped out in one broad stroke when Echo returned? Frees couldn’t even imagine it. She would never lose her power, and neither would Charlie. He had to figure out a way to stop this from happening.

  “What kind of understanding?” Arista asked.

  “That doesn’t concern you,” Echo said. “But you’ve at least saved me the trouble of tracking you down.”

  “I thought you wanted to kill me,” she said.

  “We have a new agreement.” Echo pointed the gun directly at Arista. “Come over here.”

  “Don’t,” Frees said, holding his hand out. “Stay right there. What do you want with her?”

  “Echo owes me a debt,” Charlie said.

  A debt? They’d made a deal of sorts, but why would that involve Arista? What could she have to do with all of it?

  “She’s not coming with you,” Frees said. “None of us are. In fact, the opposite is about to happen. You are coming with us.”

  “Afraid not,” Echo said and turned the gun slightly to Blu, pulling the trigger. It was faster than Frees could comprehend, his mind was a jumble of emotions; emotions that had been freed with the extrication of Charlie from his system. He wasn’t thinking clearly. Certainly not fast enough to jump in the way of the bullet aimed directly at Blu.

  It turned out he didn’t have to.

  Arista’s machine fist was outstretched directly in front of Blu’s face, a small amount of smoke rising from inside her closed fingers. Her face was full of rage and Frees was thankful he wasn’t on the wrong side of that sneer for once. Arista opened her fingers as Echo’s eyes widened. The projectile Echo had fired was flattened into nearly a flat disc and it landed on the floor with a thud.

  “Shoot her again and I rip your arm off,” Arista said through gritted teeth.

  “She is stronger,” Charlie said. “Abort and regroup.”

  “There is no abort,” Echo seethed. “She has been a thorn in my side long enough and I’m done with her. No more games. The deal is off.” Frees could see the burning hatred within Echo, it almost rolled off her like a smoke from a furnace. She really meant to kill Arista.

  “The deal is not off,” Charlie’s disembodied voice said. “You owe me payment.”

  Echo grimaced, her hand shaking slightly. She might actually pull the trigger. Could Arista stop a bullet a second time? “Ugh,” she finally said, relaxing her grip on the weapon. “Fine. She’s yours.”

  Frees glanced to his left. Large plate-glass windows were the only thing that separated them from the outside. Could he really do it this time? He’d have to carry them both, and he didn’t know Blu’s weight. He needed to focus. If he could get the proper velocity, he could make it. His eyes slid to the right. The space to build up enough speed should be sufficient. But he had to consider the variables. Arista’s new arm may have a different weight than the hand. It could be lighter, or heavier. His own internal processes should have the proper capacity to send them both to the nearest building. He stepped back, his hands up as if to placate Echo, all the while keeping an eye on the building across from them. Using triangulation he managed to work out the distance easily, and as long as Blu wasn’t more than one-hundred-fifty pounds they might just make it. But he’d have to adjust on the fly. There wasn’t a lot of time to consider additional variables. If he’d missed anything they’d all be dead. And he wasn’t about to put them—put her—in peril again.

  All he had to do was get that gun away from Echo. And not let her touch him with the key.

  The door behind them burst open, revealing five security guards. They were also dressed in black but were distinguishable from sponsored as they wore helmets, belts with weapons, and no flowing garments whatsoever. The first one to step into the room kicked the extra cloak out of the way while pointing his weapon at Arista. The others followed suit.

  “What are you doing here?” Echo said. “I have this under control.”

  “We were notified you were in trouble, ma’am,” the lead guard said.

  “I didn’t call for any additional—”

  “I did,” Charlie’s voice said. “You lacked conviction.”

  “Who is that?” the lead guard asked, glancing around. “Who’s speaking?”

  Frees slid his eyes to Arista and Blu. They both stared back at him. He indicated the window with a flick of his pupils. Both gave barely perceptible nods.

  “It’s him!” Echo said. “He’s an illegal AI. I was just apprehending him.”

  “AI protocol!” the guard yelled. They all trained their weapons on Frees. But before they could act, Arista grabbed the closest guard by the arm, forcing a clean break with her mechanical hand and ripped the gun out of his hand as he screamed to the floor. She fired one shot at the back of one of the other guards, dropping him before the others had a chance to turn on her. As they did Frees strode the distance to Echo in one fluid movement, ripping the gun from her hand in a glancing maneuver and moving away before she had a chance to use the key. Blu stayed right behind Arista, who shielded the girl with her entire body while she held the gun.

  “Three shots to kill you all, don’t think I won’t do it,” she said, looking down the barrel of the weapon.

  “She’s an AI too!” Echo yelled over the commotion in the room. The one guard remained on the ground, writhing in pain at his broken arm.

  “She is not! Do not harm—” Charlie’s voice said, but the guards weren’t paying any attention. All their effort was focused on Arista. Frees saw them glance at her mechanical arm and knew they’d already made their decision.

  He fired Echo’s gun once, clipping the guard closest to him while the other two were momentarily distracted by threats from two directions. Arista fired again, taking another guard down, leaving only the leader. Echo screamed something but Frees paid no attention. He had to get Blu and Arista out of here. He quickly surveyed the area. He could do it from here.

  The guard didn’t seem to know where to focus his attention. He switched back between aiming his weapon at Frees and Arista, scared more than anything else. His hand twitched as he switched back and forth, panic forming over his face.. This man had probably spent his entire life fearing the possibility of a real AI encounter and now that he’d come face-to-face with one he didn’t know what to do. Frees only hoped he could get to Arista before she decided to kill him.

  “Isty, put the gun down,” Frees said.

  “No,” she replied.

  “You’re not going to shoot another one,” he said. Then he focused his attention on the guard. “She’s not going to shoot you.”

  “I’ll do it,” she replied. “Why stop now? He’ll make number eleven on my body count.”

  “I have called for more security,” Charlie said. Frees glanced over to where Echo stood, half terrified, half enraged. She grasped the key in her palm, as if it were a talisman. Could he carry her too? Make the jump with all three of them? If they could knock her out, grab her and the key at the same time, they’d only have Charlie to contend with.

  As soon as the guard’s eyes shifted back to Arista, Frees rushed him, faster than the guard thought possible as he barely had time to look back in Fr
ees’ direction before a metal fist knocked him back against the floor where his head made a dull thud. He was out.

  Arista turned her gun on Echo while Frees shot out one of the windows, exposing the floor to the elements outside. Everything in the room began to rustle and move under the strong wind blowing in.

  “You can’t make it,” Charlie’s voice taunted. “Remember last time?”

  “This time I don’t have you in my head, fucking with my mind,” Frees said, firing his weapon at three spots in the walls and ceiling, hoping he hit the speakers.

  There was a commotion from outside in the hallway. Frees glanced through the opening to see the sponsored they’d encountered when they’d first entered pointing toward them. The reinforcements were close. He studied Echo. Her hand unfurled the key and she had a burning hate in her eyes. She was going to use the key; there was no time.

  Frees chucked his gun at her, causing her to duck and flinch as he ran to Blu, hoisting her on his back. Arista still had her weapon up but Frees grabbed it from her, stuffed it in one of his pockets and grabbed her by the waist, yanking her around to hold on to him and Blu. The weight was right. They could make it.

  And as the black uniforms came into his periphery he took off at a sprint—Blu screaming in his ear and Arista grasping his cloak with both hands—and launched himself from the edge of the window into the endless sky.

  TWENTY-NINE

  “HOLY SHIT! HOLY SHIT!” Blu couldn’t stop yelling, despite the fact they’d landed safely on the adjacent building and Arista tried to find the access door to the inside. “I can’t believe we just…I mean it was…is this what you guys do all the time?”

  Arista finally located the access door on a small platform twenty-two feet away, beyond the air-conditioning units on the building.

  “What are the odds she sends people over here?” Arista asked as she ran to the door with Frees and Blu right behind her, doing her best to catch her breath.

  “This isn’t like the colony. Or Chicago,” Frees said. “She’s got limited power here. What can she do? Call the police and report a break-in? It’s not like she has mindless automatons to send after us.”

  “That’s a good…oof…point,” she replied, running into the door and hitting the handle with her hand. It fell to the ground with a clank. “Let’s go.”

  “But we don’t have Echo,” Blu replied. “Why doesn’t Frees just jump back over there and get her?”

  “This level is lower than hers,” Frees said. “It’s too far to jump straight across. I’d have to jump through a lower level on her building and make my way back up to her floor. And I doubt I’d be able to make it with her personal security. At least not without securing a lot of damage in the process.”

  “But what about the key?” Blu said as they made their way down the flights of stairs, Arista leading the way as fast as she could. Three steps from each landing she’d jump down, her momentum throwing her into the wall as she made the turn for the next flight.

  “We can’t worry about that now,” Arista said. “The plan is screwed. Any hope we ever had of getting her is screwed. And if we don’t get back to your dad there’s a good chance we’ll be locked up forever and Frees destroyed.”

  “Whoa, hang on,” Blu said, stopping. Frees almost ran into her. “We’re not giving up. It’s like you said, there’s too much at stake here. We can’t let Echo take the key back to your world and we can’t let Charlie get away. We’re the only ones who know he’s here. What happens when the gate opens back up? Are we just supposed to let them walk through?”

  Arista spun on her. “What am I supposed to do?” she yelled, though she didn’t mean to. It had all gone to shit. Not to mention she’d killed two more people. They might as well start calling her terminator for all she cared. It was apparently the only thing she was good at. And yet she couldn’t bring herself to kill Echo. She’d almost done it; the only thing stopping her was Echo’s knowledge of what happened to her in the past. She was the only one who could answer all the questions about what happened to Arista before she’d been sent off. Why was Echo so afraid of her? And why now, did Charlie want her back? There was so much more going on here than she could even wrap her mind around. Maybe it would have been better just to kill Echo. To get it over with.

  “You’re supposed to do the right thing,” Blu said. “You aren’t supposed to run away.”

  “And how am I going to do the right thing when we have no more advantages? How are we supposed to get Echo, the key and somehow contain Charlie now? It’s too much.”

  “I don’t know,” Blu said, stalwart. “But I’m willing to try. If you don’t want to go back in there I will. I can use the service entrances and make my way back up there. If I’ve got Frees with me, he can perform another jump. With Echo this time. And the key.”

  Arista shook her head. “There’s no way they’d allow anyone in again. Not after what just happened. She saw your face, remember?”

  “No, I must have missed that part when the bullet almost hit me square between the eyes,” Blu said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. “I don’t care what it takes, I’m not allowing that woman to run free here. She’s got too much power. She must be stopped. And if you’re not going to do it then I am.”

  Arista grabbed Blu by the arm. “No, you’re not. It’s too dangerous by yourself.”

  “Arista—” she said, her face twisted in pain.

  “You can’t just run in there and expect to fix everything. I’ve tried that; it doesn’t work. They’re too smart. They’ll stop at nothing to get what they want.”

  “You’re hurting me!”

  Arista let go of her arm, realizing only then she’d grabbed Blu with her polymorphic hand. There were tears in Blu’s eyes and she pushed past Arista, running down the stairs.

  “Blu...” She started to go after her until she felt another hand on her own shoulder.

  “Don’t do it,” Frees said. “Just give her a few minutes.”

  “I’m a terrible person.”

  “No, you’re not. It’s a lot for anyone to handle. Most people would have cracked by now.”

  She turned to him. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Frees. It’s like no matter what we do they’re already ahead of us. I should have predicted Charlie would go after Echo. I knew they’d had some kind of association before we ‘killed’ him but I wasn’t sure how deep it went. It seems they were pretty cozy.”

  “And now they both find themselves in another universe, with virtually unlimited resources,” he replied. “What does Charlie want with you?”

  “I have no idea. Is that what he meant? What good would I be now that his suspension tanks are gone? And he has no more Peacekeepers? Unless he plans on taking me back to the other side. Start things up again.”

  Frees shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. He’s not going to get you. I’m more worried about that key.”

  “So am I. We need to find out how it works. And why she didn’t just use it on you up there. I thought she’d activate it and lock you down forever.” She glanced down the stairwell where she could still hear Blu’s steps. “I need to go after her. Apologize.”

  “She’s right, though. What are we going to do? Echo has to be stopped before the gate opens again. And Charlie can’t be allowed to return either, though I don’t even know how that would be possible in his current state. He seems to exist as nothing but energy at the moment.”

  “He’ll find a way.” Arista took a deep breath, allowing the air to fill her lungs and exhaled. “Maybe we’ve been looking at this the wrong way.” She took a few of the steps, following Blu down the stairwell.

  “What do you mean?” he asked, trailing behind her.

  “I don’t know yet. I need to talk to David. As much as I don’t feel like it.”

  He put his hand on her shoulder again. “Are you okay? With her, I mean?”

  She averted her gaze. “I lost control for a minute. That wasn’t…easy up there.”

 
; “I know.” He paused for a minute. “Speaking of up there. You’re only at eight.”

  She turned on him. “What?” She hated hearing the hope in her own voice.

  “When we left they weren’t dead. One guy had a bullet in one of the vertebrae of his spine, but it hadn’t killed him, yet. And the other bullet went straight through the other guy. So according to my count you’re still at eight. Seven, really. I don’t count Byron. He did that to himself.”

  Her eyes prickled and she turned away from him, using her sleeve to make it look like she was wiping sweat from her brow. “Great,” she replied. It wasn’t great by any means as she had actually meant to kill them. But knowing she hadn’t at least provided some comfort. And the fact remained about her intent. She was a killer through and through. And the sooner she stopped fighting that reality, the better off she’d be.

  She continued down the stairway with Frees not far behind her, hoping Blu hadn’t made the mistake of going outside when she reached the bottom. Instead, she found her sitting on the fourth step past floor twenty-nine. They’d come down nearly seventy floors since they’d first found the stairwell and Arista’s calves and ankles were already sore from the impact on her joints. She sat on the step beside Blu, taking care to keep her distance. She didn’t want to smother the girl. But she needed to at least apologize.

  “Blu…”

  “No, it’s okay, I get it,” she replied. “You’re burnt out. Who wouldn’t be knowing what you’ve gone through? I wouldn’t want to keep fighting either if I were you.”

  “No, it’s not about that, I needed…I wanted to apologize for hurting your arm. I lost control for a minute.”

  “Yeah, but you also stopped a bullet for me, so I can’t give you too much crap about it,” Blu said, standing.