“Decided sneaking up on us while we were in a firefight was the best way to reach out?” Selene prodded Finch. More disarming than any words were the streaks of hot water that cut the dust on Finch’s cheeks.
“Would you stop pointing those at me? I’ve been running all night...hoping I’d find you guys… I would have waited, but you’d have gone after them and died!” he cried. Chris watched the tremble of Finch’s raised biceps. He could hardly keep them up another second.
“Weapons down, guys. It’s alright, Finch. Lee. Get a drone in the air,” instructed Chris to his friend. Lee had the silver saucer in the air in seconds. An ocular laser similar to TE-Les’ sliced out from the wrap-around screen on the outside of the drone while it hovered off to the city. Chris turned back to Finch. “You’re safe… for now. I’d like to know just how you managed that, though.”
“My partner,” whimpered Finch. He wiped blood and tears on his torn sleeve.
“DA-Vos?” said Tim, stepping forward.
“Yeah.”
“Finch,” Chris called his eyes with a firm, but gentle command, “Can you bring us to him?” The three-week-seasoned cop could do little more than nod.
Chapter Six: The Yellow Squire
“DA-Vos?” Finch warbled, at the front of their group. The sun hadn’t yet crested Beijing’s steel apartment towers. “DA-Vos?” he tried again. His face flashed blue as Finch crossed the threshold of the FOS jammers. “He was just around here… he must have hidden from those other Squires.”
“Mr. Finch?” a digital voice came through an open doorway beside them. A tall, dark form slid out, it’s arm swirling into a Fusion rifle barrel. By the time the inside of it lit, Chris and his unit had their own weapons up, ready to fire.
“DA-Vos, it’s alright! Everyone arms down!” Finch screamed. DA-Vos complied straight away. His cannon smoothed out to a neutral tentacle. When Chris and the others kept their barrels up, a yellow light glowed across the robot’s face. “DA-Vos is the only reason I’m alive! He’s just scared!” Finch yelled at them.
“Scared?” murmured Lee. His rifle tilted down. In DA-Vos’ faceless face, Lee and the others could see Finch was right, little as they could believe it. Only Chris kept his weapon up.
“What are you scared of, DA-Vos?” said Chris.
“Everything,” said DA-Vos. Chris’s eyes narrowed on the machine’s shiny face. His voice came through shaky, scratchy. “This loud city...my function… death… I don’t know how you do this.” Chris grunted and forced his rifle down. Even he couldn’t keep aim at a blubbering, metal child.
“He… wasn’t like this before the massacre at the office,” said Finch. He clasped the Squire’s cold shoulder. DA-Vos’ face-light faded back to its default lavender.
“That… really shook you, huh?” said Tim, making his way through the unit. He stopped inches from DA-Vos. He had to tilt his head up to, meet his own reflection in the robot’s reflective face. A tiny yellow spark blipped in the center of the purple.
“Yes,” said DA-Vos.
“Why is that?” said Tim, head tilted. In that moment he showed compassion for a machine, and in so seemed more human than he had to Chris before. DA-Vos’ head turned at Finch first.
“God’s sake, DA-Vos, why are you still looking at me for permission? I told you, all of that formality ended when you saved my ass. Go on, say what you feel,” he said. DA-Vos turned back to Tim, who cocked his head again when the face-light turned blue.
“Our core programming prevents us from killing. That feels different from… wrong. Wrong would be saying rude things to Mr. Finch. When I saw the other Squires… I was scared. Was that because they did something against our programming? Or because what they did was wrong?” trembled DA-Vos. Chris stared at the back of Tim’s head, not sure he could have come up with an answer himself. He was surprised when Tim answered,
“I can’t imagine how confusing this is for you, DA-Vos. Humans are usually so many years older than you when they grapple with things like that. In life, when you’re unsure, the answer is usually a combination of all the things making you unsure.” DA-Vos’ face-light softened. Purple bled through the blue.
“I see… I have much yet to learn. Including your names,” he said. Chris, his unit, and Tim took rounds announcing their titles. “Very well. Formality dictates I announce my name as model DA-Vos, personality matrix beta. We are vulnerable in the open. Shall we repose somewhere safer?”
The party of eight filed through into the disheveled bakery DA-Vos had been hiding in. They spread out to tables along windows and helped themselves to some of the pastries behind the counter. Chris was sure to lay a WCC credit transfer ticket on the counter for the shopkeep, when the Precinct reopened. Tim raised an eyebrow to DA-Vos when he sat at a table across from Finch without instruction. A factory FOS would have stood until orders. Everyone teemed with questions for DA-Vos, but they withheld them for chomps of danishes, turnovers, and scones. They left the expert to do his work.
“DA-Vos,” Tim started, “We saw a recording of what happened in the office… who were you talking to just before the others attacked?”
“Machaeus,” said DA-Vos, without hesitation. Everyone’s jaws hung loose over starchy, frosted goodness. Chris’ brain surged with every high-profile name from every separatist group. No, this was the first time he’d heard that name.
“Who is Machaeus?” said Tim.
“I am unsure… at first, when I saw the others turn red, I thought it was a corrupting program. Then I heard the voice myself,” said DA-Vos.
“Programs don’t talk,” Tim nodded.
“Our AIs interpret things differently than the human brain. Just to hear a voice from the data does not necessarily mean Machaeus is not a program. What makes me doubt is how it changed. It told the other Squires what to do, with simple commands. They did it. When I refused, it changed. It interacted. That is too complex for a program,” said DA-Vos.
“And why did you refuse?” Chris cut in, before Tim could continue. He couldn’t help it, when all he could picture was the Squire melting Grendal all over again. “I’m not sure if I should ask how, or why. The other Squires killed their partners without a question. What makes you different?”
“I did not want to hurt Mr. Finch,” said DA-Vos, through yellow glow.
“Why?” Chris dug.
“He is my partner.”
“The other Squires killed their partners,” said Chris. His unit sat up in their seats, brows curled in worry.
“He is my friend,” DA-Vos amended, his yellow light brightening.
“Bullshit. Men and machine aren’t friends. Why didn’t you kill him?” Chris smoldered.
“It’s wrong.”
“How do you know what wrong is?” said Chris.
“How do you?” DA-Vos murmured.
“Chris,” Morgan laid a hand on his shoulder, “Let it go.” His face showed no sign that he would, or even could, until Finch stepped in.
“He learned from watching me,” he said, eyes low in shame. “The Chief told me… he told me DA-Vos would learn from everything I did. I could have been a better role model, for sure, but… at least I taught him one thing,” he said. Chris slammed his hands on the table before heading over to sit with Lee. Finch put a hand on DA-Vos’ shoulder until his face returned to purple.
“Lee. Do we have drone footage? Let’s see where those Squires are taking that girl,” said Chris. Lee pulled out a pocket-sized computer cylinder. He pressed a button on the side to project a screen, where the video input from his drone should have played. The screen was blank.
“That’s… no…” Lee muttered. He flipped a second switch on the computer to project a keyboard on the surface of the table. He jabbed his fingers across the glimmering keys. “How can this…” there was no change.
“What?” said Chris.
“There’s no damage to the camera, or the drone, but I can’t switch the video on,” said Lee.
“Can
’t?”
“There are no issues, it just won’t turn on,” said Lee. His hands fell to rest on the table. Everyone drew closer to the computer when the keyboard shrunk back inside the cylinder on its own.
“What in the hell…” Selene mumbled, while a message appeared on the blank screen a letter at a time, as if being typed by invisible hands.
Y-O-U C-A-N N-O-T S-H-O-O-T -A- T-H-O-U-G-H-T
The message was lost when Chris crushed the monitor in a fist of white knuckles. An icy wind blew through the souls of the five that’d been there that day. It was not just Chris, but each of them that saw Grendal and the Squire in their minds’ eyes now.
“Was that Machaeus as well?” said Tim to DA-Vos.
“It must be. If it can control Squires both with and without a personality matrix, perhaps it can control other machines as well?” DA-Vos supposed.
“How… how could it know?” rumbled Gendric.
“How could it hack an entire Precinct?” countered Chris, “Who cares? The important thing is, Tim is going to fry it.”
“Right,” Tim gulped, staring at the crumpled computer. “What about the girl?”
“I can get us to her,” said DA-Vos. Chris turned to the machine, wild-eyed. “I can still hear Machaeus. I know where they are bringing her, though not why.” Chris and his unit looked to one another in silent council.
“It’s as good a lead as any,” Morgan supposed.
“Let’s start with where, DA-Vos,” said Chris, “We’ll leave the why until after we shut Machaeus up for good.” DA-Vos gave a lavender nod.
On the way, Tim had plenty of questions for the most conflicted, confused of all Squires. At every turn, he stretched the limits of DA-Vos’ developing emotions and logic. With each response, Chris’ brow darkened in suspicion.
“Hey,” Selene slapped the Major General’s back. “Let up, would you? The thing’s not going to bleed, no matter how much you cut into it.”
Chapter Seven: Survivors
“They’re bringing her to a warehouse?” said Lee, rifled up along with the rest of the unit.
“No. But we can flank them if we cut through it,” DA-Vos explained.
“Clever,” Chris whispered. He stared down the iron neck of his M16 through a massive garage door to a long hall of crates.
“He was a police model,” said Finch, with Chris’ dad’s revolver pointed forward. He had laughed the gun off as a joke, until he heard an abridged version of the time it saved all of their lives. Besides, it felt ludicrous to wander the vacant alleys of Shanghai unarmed, with homicidal Squires on the loose.
Chris and the others fell silent the moment they passed under the raised warehouse shutters. The soft echo of their rolling steps was sound enough. Even DA-Vos picked up on the tension. His feet morphed to sound absorbent arches. The eight spread to hug the walls, for the cover of countless steel crates, but froze midway. A clang cemented their boots to the ground. Chris wheeled just in time to see a glossy metal snake drop the massive safety pin it’d pulled from the shutters. The dark snake slithered back whence it came, behind the crates. The shutters dropped. A second clang called all eyes forward again- the drop of the shutters on the opposite end of the warehouse. They were sealed inside. Chris jerked at DA-Vos, rifle at his head.
“You led us here! To them!” he screamed. His finger inched back on his hot steel trigger. Yellow and blue rippled through DA-Vos’ face.
“I did not know! I sensed no other Squires in here!” DA-Vos insisted. He raised no defense, even with Chris’ bullets half an inch from impacting his face. Finch shoved Chris’ barrel away, but it was Tim that stopped him from bringing it back. He sent out a shaking, bandaged finger at something behind the others.
“That’s because there weren’t any Squires in here a minute ago,” said Tim, numb.
Chris, DA-Vos, Finch, and the rest turned to what looked like a black sheet of water spreading across the floor. By the time they realized what it was, it spread from wall to wall. The black tide fractured into eight masses and arose as man-shaped frames. They were Squires, their arms Fusion barrels, by the time Chris and his unit got their own weapons up.
“Fire!” Chris bellowed, yet he was the only one who did.
The thunderous hammer of his M16 chipped away at the nanocomputers of one Squire’s crimson face. He held back the trigger until the hanging lights overhead glinted off the blackbox inside. No Fusion rays came from his allies. Chris glanced to Gendric at his side, whose finger fluttered across his trigger. His gun wouldn’t fire. A single Fusion bolt from the red Squires seared through Gendric’s skull like butter. Hs body collapsed in a lifeless heap. The next shot was from DA-Vos, whose Fusion arm was still functional. He melted the blackbox of the Squire offender. Its body dissolved to an anthill of nanocomputers.
“Gendric…” Morgan knelt by him, fingers trembling at the cauterized window through his forehead. She tried her own trigger again, to yet another useless click. A Fusion bolt jumped right through the shoulder of her armored jacket, flesh, and the floor behind her. She fell on her back, and shuffled behind a crate. Her dragon-covered arm hung by a ligament thread. There was more steam than blood from the wound. Chris yanked Tim behind the same crate with him, while the others took cover on the other side of the warehouse.
“Machaeus is blocking your Fusion-tech!” DA-Vos shouted. Chris wasn’t convinced it wasn’t DA-Vos himself, especially with his own continued ability to fire. Even if it was a sham, though, he couldn’t afford to lose another gun.
“Finch. Focus on breaking down the outer shell around their blackboxes. DA-Vos, finish the job. Everyone else, wait back here until they close in. Your rifles make good clubs. Swing hard,” Chris issued, the mission taking over. When he peeked around the crates to fire, he caught a glimpse of Gendric. His pupils shrunk inside a blazing white halo. “They’ve taken too much already.”
But, when everyone carried out the formation, nothing was so coordinated as it sounded. Tim’s sweaty back slid down the steel crate behind him. The metal stung cold through his shirt. He clung to that sharp feeling to keep from screaming, while blood, light, smoke, and death spiraled around him. Chris unloaded his rifle to open a path for DA-Vos’ Fusion ray. Finch nailed the same red Squire six times before a bolt from DA-Vos’ arm-rifle finished it. Fusion beams seared through the crate around Tim, some close enough to scald his sleeve.
Across the warehouse, Selene buckled at the waist when a bolt smoldered a hole through her. She fell on her knees just before a black wave rolled behind her. It rose to the form of a body. Selene couldn’t manage so much as a scream before her head atomized at the end of the red Squire’s Fusion barrel. Lee swung out his rifle at its head with a mourning war cry. The Squire caught the strike with its dark arm. DA-Vos struggled to get a clear shot at it, until its glossy spear ripped through Lee’s back. DA-Vos unleashed burning hell from both arm-rifles. The killer’s blackbox singed to nothing.
Even the stabbing cold against Tim’s back, could only ground him for so long. His sight left him, for just a second. Then he saw a metal pike poke through the front of Morgan’s throat, just inches from him. Tim blacked out again. This time, when he came to, it was to watch DA-Vos wrench Chris from the path of a Fusion bolt. A spray of nanocomputers burst from his shoulder. Another red Squire slunk out from the space between two crates, to finish DA-Vos with a shot to the blackbox.
“MR. FINCH!” DA-Vos’ face burned ruby for the first time when his human partner leaped to take the shot. Finch’s holey body hadn’t yet hit the floor when DA-Vos raised two Fusion rifles to their remaining foes. In his blind fury, he focused the form of his chest into four more barrels. DA-Vos unleashed a storm counterpart to Chris’ gunfire. Despite the thunder and screams, the last ounces of will keeping Tim’s head upright slipped away.
When the shadows finally receded from his vision, the first thing Tim saw were his shoes. He watched a few tiny black particles float in a red pool between them. It took his
brain a moment to register that he wasn’t in his bed, in his apartment. In another, he realized what it was by his shoes. The nanocomputers of a slain Squire floated past him in blood. He swung his head around to Morgan sitting almost right against his shoulder, a red stain cascading from the hole in her uniform.
“You’re up,” said Chris. Tim’s face shot to him. A deep sear across his arm was the only sign of damage on the Major General. That, and his face. Chris’s skin had lost all pallor. His eyes were dull. He stood rigid, numb, amongst the mangled bodies of his friends. Tim tried to fix his eyes on Chris, but they wandered to the nearest sound.
“Mr. Finch…” DA-Vos murmured, azure face turned down on what was left of Robin Finch. Every last human officer of Precinct 117 was confirmed dead now. His remains were not much more than a half-cooked torso.
“Hey,” Chris called Tim’s eyes back to him. He knelt to grasp Tim’s shirt with hands caked in soot and blood. “Don’t look. Not at them. Only forward. You’re alive, so…” Chris’ voice quivered with his bottom lip, at the first wave of feeling, “So we both have a mission… that’s all we have now. Understand?” Tim’s dry lips peeled apart.
“Yes sir,” the sound that came out was hardly more than a squeal. Chris put him on his feet, and turned for the dark body of the last Squire in the warehouse.
“DA-Vos,” he said.
“I was worth… this? To you?” DA-Vos whispered to Finch’s remains.
“Hey,” Chris yanked DA-Vos around by the shoulder, “The same goes for you. Finch died for you. You owe it to him to stop this from happening to someone else. The mission. Understand?” Chris stared into DA-Vos’ blue face, waiting for a reaction. It was Tim, though, who woke from the trance first, with the realization,
“DA-Vos… your personality matrix. You have a choice. If I could link you to the other Squires through the FOS link station in the Precinct office…” A hint of light returned to Chris’ eyes.
The Dragon Commander Page 5
