Android Fiction
The Worlds of Android
Monster Slayer by Daniel Lovat Clark
Monitor by Leigh Alexander
Exodus by Lisa Farrell
For James, aka Sandwich.
Cover illustration by Mark Molnar.
This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
© 2016 Fantasy Flight Games. Fantasy Flight Games and the FFG logo are registered trademarks of Fantasy Flight Games. Android is a trademark of Fantasy Flight Games.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Fantasy Flight Games
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Find out more about Fantasy Flight Games and our many exciting worlds at www.FantasyFlightGames.com
v1.0
Chapter 1
It had to be perfect, which was why she’d insisted on clones. This was her last chance to shine, to thank the trillions of fans who adored her, to say goodbye. After this, everything would change—she would change. It had been a great tour, but she had to keep the performances fresh, stay ahead of the competition, be the best. She was Miranda Rhapsody.
She threw her arms up to the sky. The sun rose behind her as she sang the final verse atop the pyramid of clone backup dancers, her body shone gold, and she was goddess of the dawn. The Rutherford District stretched out beneath her—the most important place in the solar system, and she was at its center.
She belted out the last line, the enthusiasm more important than the actual sound: “It’s not too late, rise with me.” An empty promise for all the fans who believed they shared in her success. Many could experience how it felt right now, to be perfectly balanced at the top of the world, the neural feed to their brain letting them feel the wind cooling hot skin, the breeze prickling as it dried the sheen of sweat, the pump of adrenalin, thud of heart, strain of lungs, vibration of vocal chords. Her reality, their fantasy. She was living their dreams.
The roar of the crowd told her the new single, “Love Rises,” was going to be another major hit. She basked in the attention, holding that final pose before the feed cut and her holo disappeared. She waved to the die-hard fans in hoppers and hopperbikes on the tops of nearby buildings and those hovering just beyond the security circle, which was marked by a fleet of spherical camdrones. A simple gesture, but it would feed their obsession.
NBN was right as usual: the display was good publicity, and she could never have too much of that. She swung herself down from the pyramid of clones and sashayed her way across the roof to her waiting hopper. Her assistant, Miles, intercepted her as usual, throwing a fur coat around her.
“Fabulous, Miranda, absolutely stunning. Anyone who’s anyone was in the square this morning, and all the wannabes sat at home experiencing you live. I’ll ping you with the ratings as soon as they come through.”
“You’re not coming?”
“Got to wrap things up here. I’ll meet you up-Stalk, that okay?”
“Suits me. It’s not like you to give me time to myself though, Miles. Shouldn’t we be prepping for some interview or other?”
“Just catch up on some beauty sleep,” he joked as the hopper door rose to admit her.
“Yeah, right,” she said, forcing a laugh.
She ducked into the back of the hopper and pulled her PAD from under her miniskirt. She didn’t even trust Miles with that, and he was like her shadow, always around somewhere. As the door closed, giving her some privacy, the PAD’s surface became reflective and she held it up to her face. The gold in her skin was already fading away, revealing her own pale complexion underneath, the blank slate. Colored lines and dots appeared on the screen to draw her attention to problem areas, and she rummaged in the handbag waiting on the seat beside her.
Most of the contents were her own patented products, cosmetics designed for her and marketed in her trademark pink and purple packaging. First, the dark circles. A rollerball with microscopic needles injected moisture and tightened the skin, and then she treated the area with a brightening pocket laser. She popped one pill for the fatigue and another to suppress her hunger. There was no way she was consuming any food before she got on the Beanstalk. She could just imagine how the news-nosies would react if she got sick to her stomach, and private beanpod or not, the nosies would find out—they always did.
Her face back on track, she chose a new color on her PAD and shook her hair out in its light, making sure all the smartstrands reacted. Gold might have suited the show, but she preferred honey blond, and so did Larry.
Ah, Laramy Fisk. She sat back for a moment just to appreciate the sweet anticipation dating Larry afforded. He’d arranged a surprise meeting for her on the Beanstalk, Miles had discovered, and he was going to treat her to a night at the Honeymoon Hilton before she started prepping for her next sensie role. She’d been before, as had he, but never together. It was going to be a night to remember, and the shoutcasts would be full of it for weeks. She didn’t care when it was something like that—hey, even she wanted to shout about Laramy Fisk. Maybe she would.
The training was going to be intense for this one—she was going to play a zero-G sports star, and for her that meant being a zero-G sports star. She would train with the pros, become the best. That was how she worked. That way, the sensies would feel real, better than real.
She frowned as she looked out the window. It was getting dark out there, and as she peered through the one-way transplas, she realized why. Great hulks of buildings rose to blot out the sun as the hopper descended, factories or something equally disgusting, all steel girders and crumbling plascrete. Round metallic holes belched smoke, gas, or worse into the air. Smog that would wreak havoc on her skin. There was no way this was right.
She banged her fist on the transplas behind the driver, a Tenma clone from the look of the white-blond hair sticking out from under the chauffeur’s cap, clipped above the code on his neck.
“Hey, do you even know where you’re going? You’re supposed to take me to the Root, you jackass.”
The driver ignored her, but before she could figure out the controls to the screen between them, the hopper landed with a clang, and she saw a monochrome hologram of a bonsai tree floating in the air outside: the Jinteki logo.
That explained it; Jinteki was going to present her with a gift before she headed Moon-ward. Maybe it was a replacement for the dead teacup giraffe, or a new aide, or some other strange creation she couldn’t guess.
The gull-wing hopper door rose and she stepped out onto a walkway made of crisscrossed carbosteel girders. Not easy to navigate in heels, so she reluctantly clicked her heels together to retract them. She looked around for the nosies, but there was no one here. What was the point of presenting her with a gift if no one would see it?
At the far end of the walkway, a metallic door slid open to reveal two suited clones.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she shouted to them. “I should be halfway up the Beanstalk by now. This had better be worth it.”
The clones, big and broad-shouldered, approached her, and she suddenly felt quite alone. She grabbed her PAD to ping Miles to see what was going on, but the PAD was blank.
That had never happened—it shouldn’t ever happen. She’d never been cut off from the world that way. She felt cold inside her big coat and very small beside those two clones.
“Please come with us, Ms. Rhapsody.”
One of the clo
nes put a heavy hand on her shoulder. She imagined she was back in the sensie Framed and Furious, when she was an unsuspecting cheerleader framed for murder, but that cheerleader had been helpless and afraid. She was Miranda Rhapsody.
“I’m not going anywhere until I talk to a human being,” she said. “So you just get your boss out here. I’m going to wait in my hopper.”
She tried to turn back to leave, but the hand on her shoulder did not budge.
Then the door at the far end of the walkway opened again, and a Tenma clone dressed in a blue courier jumpsuit and carrying a large package stepped out. Miranda eyed the package. If it was a gift for her, the presentation was inexcusable.
“There’s been a change of plan,” the Tenma said loudly, addressing the other clones. “Ms. Rhapsody is coming with me.”
The Omoi looked at each other from behind their mirrorshades. One raised his hand to an earpiece, ready to ask for confirmation, when the Tenma flung the package at him and knocked him on his back. His partner pulled a weapon. Miranda shrank away, pressing her back against the hopper, but the pistol pointed at the Tenma. With a shrill shriek, it fired one blue bolt after another, but the Tenma was too quick, ducking and dodging with startling speed as he careened up the walkway, looking as though he would barrel into the shooter and knock him down. Instead, he ran past the Omoi and into Miranda, grabbed her by the shoulder, and pushed her back into her hopper.
“Get off me!” she shouted, kicking him away and scrambling back into her seat.
He ignored her, pulling her driver out and taking his place. The driver threw himself to the ground, covering his head.
Miranda fell, sprawling as the hopper moved and the doors closed. She checked her PAD but it was still blank. The hopper lurched into the air and the PAD slipped from her hands and fell by her feet.
“I’m getting you out of here,” the Tenma called from the front, his voice loud through the rear audcasters. “Hold on!”
Speechless, she looked out of the window as three figures stood, watching them go. Two raised weapons. One gun was large, with a long barrel, definitely not a Synap. They let clones carry guns now? Both opened fire. Didn’t they know who she was?
The vehicle shook with the impact and the readouts on the windscreen flickered. She heard the Tenma curse as the hopper tilted, but somehow he kept it in the air, and they rose out of range. The hopper’s restraints finally sensed the danger and unfurled to catch her, holding her in place. She allowed herself a breath before she saw drones rise on either side of them. NAPD camdrones, she thought, relieved. She pressed her face against the window and yelled for help, but then the drones were firing too, and the hopper was spinning.
She thought the hopper was out of control, but it spiraled up, not down, and suddenly it was speeding along an emergency lane so fast the whole hopper was shuddering.
“What’s going on?” she screamed as her handbag bounced into her lap. Seizing the opportunity, she groped inside for a stim.
The only answer was another lurch of the vehicle as the Tenma shifted it into a busy lane of oncoming traffic. She managed to get one stimpatch on her arm, but lost the rest over the seat. A sudden drop in altitude made her nauseated, and then they were in yet another lane, going with the flow. She breathed, the stim making her sharper, giving her brain time to catch up. The transplas separating her from the new Tenma slid away.
“Come up front,” called back the Tenma, swerving to avoid a midair collision as he overtook other hoppers flying the regulation speed.
“What?” she asked, shocked by the order.
“Come up front,” he repeated. “It’s safer.”
She unfastened the restraints and clambered into the seat beside him, surprised at herself for taking orders from a clone. He certainly looked like a Tenma, but he spoke with such authority, it just added to the weirdness of her day. He still drove manually, weaving through the traffic at great speed. The drones seemed to be long gone, but she expected the siren of an NAPD vehicle at any moment.
“Watch out!” she shouted, and he sped up to pass between hoppers on the busy northbound traffic lane. “You’re going to get me killed!”
“I’m a Tenma; you’re statistically safer with me than any other driver in this city, maybe the whole damned universe.”
“I’ve had Tenma drivers before and they never did that!”
“Yeah, well, let’s just say I’m not a regular clone.”
“You’re not kidding!”
She screamed again as they tore through a holo-ad for her own fragrance, their world flashing pink and purple, filling with the scent of wild Japanese water lily and orchid, and they almost burst into the side of a building. The hopper tilted and they were streaking straight up the side of the thing. She didn’t know hoppers could do that.
“Just close your eyes or something,” the Tenma winced. “Please.”
As if she could—the stim had her even more on edge. The Tenma straightened out the hopper and landed it on the pad at the top of the building, pausing while it recharged. Had he gone through all the reserves already? She’d never needed her hopper for joyriding. She’d had it painted as a racer but it wasn’t one.
“You’re taking me to the Root, right?” she asked, suddenly hoping that maybe he was hurrying to catch her pod up-Stalk. “I’m supposed to be heading up the Beanstalk right about now.”
The hoverfoils kicked back on, the hopper rose into the air for the next leg of its journey, and the clone looked sidelong at her. Was he smirking?
“You can’t go back to your old life. I’m sorry. Time to move on.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
“Hang on, we’re getting out soon.”
The hopper dropped several floors, landing them with a clatter in a dark, narrow alley. The walkway was another crisscross of metal, and the harsh light of cheap holo-ads lit up their feet from below. Before she could get her bearings, the Tenma pulled her from the vehicle and dragged her down a busy street.
“Just keep your head down.” The Tenma gripped her hand, tried to pull her after him.
“Wait—my purse, my PAD!”
She pulled back, but he was stronger than she was. She fell reluctantly into step beside him.
“Leave them. You got anything else on you?” he asked, pulling her into an alley behind a row of takeaways. The dumpsters reeked of fermented soybeans.
“What? No,” she said, not sure what he meant. She had nothing.
“Good. Let’s move. They’re still coming.”
She glanced up. She could see a sliver of sky high above them, the distant shadows of passing hoppers, but nothing coming their way. It was like being at the bottom of a well. She didn’t belong down here.
“Are you sure they’re still after us?”
Almost on cue, two specks dropped toward them, growing larger until she could make out the shiny orbs of the drones and, behind them, another shape following their path. He dropped her hand.
She looked back to her rescuer. He hauled aside a long—
unemptied dumpster to reveal a red personal transport that shone conspicuously against the stained and neon-paint-sprayed wall of the alley. It was a large, sleek hopperbike of some kind, with three exhaust ports at the back. Not a model she recognized, or maybe he had just altered it beyond recognition. It looked fast and powerful, but she saw no obvious safety features. The seat was long; there was room for two riders if one sat behind the other.
“What’s that?” she asked. She enjoyed a fast ride on occasion, but not one that offered absolutely zero protection for her precious face.
“My ride,” replied the Tenma clone. “I’m getting you out of here. Get on!”
“Oh, no. Not on that you’re not.” She shook her head and tried to back away, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her to the bike, and suddenly she remembered that scene in Playing with Firebombs, when her spunky heroine twisted the villain’s arm, like this. She flipped the clone onto his back, brea
king his grip on her. Then she made a run for it, but something exploded against the wall in front of her. She screamed. Strong hands grabbed her by the waist and lifted her onto the seat. She squirmed forward to reach the controls, but he pushed her firmly back.
“No one but me drives this thing,” he said, and slid into position in front of her. The next shot was even closer; she felt the heat of the blast and debris landing in her hair. She had no choice but to trust the Tenma, for now. She tightened her arms around his lean waist and pressed her face into his back.
The engine started with an earsplitting whine and they were off, speeding along above the walkway, which rattled and creaked beneath the wash of the rotors. The world streaked past and Miranda wished she hadn’t taken that stim after all. The Tenma’s driving was illegally fast and incredibly dangerous. Why didn’t he take to the sky? The bike threw her one way, then the other. She slid forward and back in the seat even though she was holding on for dear life, gripping the unyielding metal of the bike between her knees.
Miranda squinted against the rush of gritty air. She could smell exhaust and something acrid, like burning hair. If it was her hair, she’d sue whoever owned the Tenma.
She couldn’t make out much beyond a dirty blur in the darkness of the alleys, but then they were out in the open, tearing through a market alive with fluorescent lights and ads that would have targeted her if she’d still had her PAD. People dove out of the way ahead of them, tiny toy robots skittered off across the pavement, and mannequins sporting fresh-grown skin samples toppled to the side. She couldn’t tell if their pursuers were still behind them. She tried to turn but her hair whipped into her eyes. She pressed her face into the Tenma’s back again as they skidded around a corner and lit off into the sky.
The bike fell away beneath her and she grasped at the Tenma, holding fistfuls of his clothing to keep herself in place. The engine stopped abruptly and they fell between walkways, through the rush of air, plummeting farther into the darkness of the undercity. She knew there were no safety measures there, no friendly NAPD officers, no good citizens alerting help. Miranda Rhapsody was going to end up a forgotten splat on the pavement far below, trodden on by criminals and bottom-feeders.
Exodus Page 1
