by Scott Baron
“Wow, I totally understand, Habby. It must be difficult not being able to use all of your impressive talents for so long.”
“Yes, it’s true. But we make do. We make do.” The AI sighed. It was an odd affectation, given it didn’t actually breathe.
“You know, I can bring you more humans, if you like. There are tons of them, just waiting to join me. All I need is to call them.”
“There are? Really? Why, that would be wonderful!” Habby chirped. “But the global communications networks went out ages ago.”
“I can fix that,” she replied, baiting the hook. “I have a shuttle not too far from here. If you let me go there, I can use my comms array to call them. I’m sure they would all be so excited to have you design new wardrobes for all of them.”
I’ll call, all right… if the jury-rigged charging gear did its job.
“You can really do that? Oh, what are they like? Are they big? Are they small? No, wait, don’t tell me, it’ll be such a wonderful surprise!”
Daisy gingerly slid from the chair, casually shouldering her bag as she headed for the door, walking nonchalantly, as if she hadn’t a care in the world. Something that couldn’t have been farther from the truth.
“Wait!” Habby shouted.
Daisy froze in her tracks.
So close, she thought.
“It’s not safe out there. I’ll send some of my friends with, to protect you,” he offered.
“I really appreciate that, but it’s not necessary. I’m sure they have better things to do than go for a walk with little old me, after all.”
“Nonsense, I’ll have nothing of the sort. You must be kept safe so you can bring me more wonderful humans! I don’t know if you’ve seen them, but there are dangerous things in the city. One must be careful. Oh yes, very careful indeed. Stay out of sight, and don’t get careless.”
“Yeah, I nearly had a run-in with some wild dogs earlier,” she noted.
“Oh, the dogs I don’t worry about,” was his reply. “In any case, my friends would be thrilled to join you, wouldn’t you?”
All of the cyborgs nodded their heads eagerly.
“No, no,” Habby chided them, like metal-clad children. “Not all of you, just a handful. Enough to keep our new friend safe.”
For some reason, I think I’d feel safer on my own.
Daisy thought it wiser to keep that opinion to herself, and a few minutes later she was underway, heading out into the city with her own personal entourage of cyborg bodyguards. A group she knew would protect her, but who she also had a sneaking suspicion had no intention of letting her go.
“You’re not taking them to the shuttle, I see,” Sarah noted.
“Nope. I don’t exactly trust Mr. Crazy AI and his merry band of stylish cyborg henchmen. Do you?” she silently replied.
Daisy continued down the quiet thoroughfare, flanked by two suit-clad escorts on either side and two behind her, matching her pace as she picked her way through the abandoned vehicles and overgrown vegetation. The buildings in this sector were more industrial in nature. Fabrication facilities and high-tech companies resided there, and unlike the residential areas, the buildings had a distinctly deconstructed look to them, many stripped down to their framework, and some removed entirely.
That’s weird. I don’t think these guys are cut out for disassembly work, so what happened here?
She shrugged and kept moving, noting everything, cataloging it all with her increasingly photographic memory.
At least I’m getting some more recon done in the meantime. This should just about complete the next outward layer of the search pattern. Time to expand the grid, without leading these goons back to the ship, of course.
Daisy surveyed the path ahead and gradually changed course until she and her entourage arrived at a particularly thick-vined courtyard, overgrown with dense foliage.
“This is a problematic route. We must find a more suitable one,” the pinstripe suit wearing cyborg standing to her right said.
“Nonsense,” she replied. “This is the way to the ship. You heard Habby, you have to follow me.”
The AI hadn’t exactly said it in those terms, but Daisy hoped the less-clever mechanical men would hesitate long enough for her to make her move.
“Wait! Do not go through there!”
Too late.
Daisy charged through the leg-snaring vines, using her slender physique and months of honing her body awareness in the Narrows to slip through spaces far too tangled and close for her metal companions.
“Stop!” Mr. Cyborg was becoming increasingly upset.
Too bad for you. She laughed to herself as she lengthened the gap between her and her captors. Just a little farther until… there! She stepped free of the foliage a good twenty meters ahead of the cyborgs. If I can just get out of their line of sight, I might be able to shake them.
Daisy ran. She ran as if her life depended on it, which given the circumstances, it very well might have. The cries of her pursuers grew fainter as she used every second of their vine-induced delay to increase the gap between them. She turned, allowing herself the briefest of glances behind her. While she had managed to put nearly three hundred meters between them, the cyborgs were finally emerging from the obstacle and running after her in pursuit.
There were two real options: left or right. Seeing as she’d already surveyed the area to the right and knew full-well it was rather lacking in places to find cover and hide, Daisy opted for the unknown option in hopes of a better outcome. At the next intersection, she sprinted left, hoping desperately for somewhere to evade the pursuing machines.
She ran as far as she could before the likelihood of her pursuers rounding the corner and seeing her became too probable. Rather than bolting for the biggest building to hide in, as most would likely do, counting on sheer size to hide them, Daisy ran to its large doors and stopped short, kicking up a small cloud of dust as she did. Then, ever so carefully, she stepped to the side, careful to leave no trace on the ground. Once she was clear, she doubled back, navigating the perimeter sidewalk of the street she’d just run down before lying flat and sliding beneath a thicket of vines and shrubbery.
None too soon.
The cyborgs sprang into view, rounding the corner at a full run, the leather soles of their custom shoes slapping the pavement as the chased her tracks in the dusty street.
“I do not see her,” a gray-suited cyborg said.
“There are still some tracks. I’m fairly certain they belong to the human. Spread wide and verify, then converge and report your results,” the three-piece suit-clad machine replied.
It is super weird hearing human voices come from those metal things, she noted.
“Hey, it looks like they’re taking the bait,” Sarah said.
Sure enough, the six metal men converged at the entrance to the building and studied the marks on the ground.
Come on. Go inside, you tin bastards. Go on in!
They looked at one another, gesticulating as they spoke in hushed tones. One peered back, scanning the road from whence they’d come. It stared, looking long and hard, as if it suspected something but wasn’t quite sure what. Slowly, it pivoted on its heel, fully facing the street.
Shit, it knows.
“Keep it together.”
I am keeping it together, but look at it!
The other five cyborgs stepped forward, opening the doors of the building, entering the lobby and fanning out. The remaining one waited a moment longer, then abruptly turned and joined its cohorts as they began their search.
Daisy allowed herself the slightest sigh of relief, but couldn’t shake the feeling that she was being watched nevertheless.
Can’t let myself get too comfortable. They could figure out I tricked them and come back out any minute. She gave the empty street one last scan. No movement. Nothing at all. Gotta get moving.
She slid out from beneath her camouflage and began a hasty retreat from the area back in the general dir
ection of the shuttle.
Can’t be more than a couple of miles from here. I just need to keep out of sight and move quickly.
Daisy looked back at the tall building shrinking in the distance behind her. Good, they’re still inside. Hopefully it takes them a good long time before they—
A glint of metal shone out behind the fourth-floor windows as a metal face observed her fleeing. Another joined it. Then another. Daisy didn’t need to wait around to know the other three would be there soon.
Goddamn it, what kind of search party stops to sightsee out the windows?
She abandoned all pretense of stealth and began running once more. The distance was great, but now that they knew she wasn’t in the building, it wouldn’t take them more than a minute to make street level and continue their pursuit.
Daisy hung a sharp left, then a quick right onto the smaller street running parallel to the one she’d been on. Not a huge change, but the layout of the blocks in that part of town were staggered, meaning there was no clear line of sight to her escape once she took the alternative route. The road curved ahead, likely back to a roundabout connecting her previous path, but she’d deal with that when she got there. For now, a new hiding spot was her top priority.
She spied a lift to the lower level shopping area up ahead and headed toward it.
“But that’s where the rest of them are.”
“Yeah, but you heard what Habby said. No working surface comms, which means they don’t know what’s going on down there, and for the ones chasing me, that’s the last place they’d expect me to go.”
She reached the lift door and jabbed the call button. The entire console was dark. Looking around, she realized what she’d missed in the bright afternoon sun. No lights were on, not because of the daylight, but because this block had no power.
“Now what?”
“Keep moving, what else?” She settled back into a steady jog. “There has to be a stairway access around here somewhere. Do that “eyes-in-the-back-of-my-head” thing you do and keep a lookout, will ya?”
“You got it.”
Her legs burned as she ran, but stopping was simply not an option.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Daisy made quick time as she scanned for an access stairway. Unfortunately, she was striking out with every turn. Taking an alternate path, she kept up her quick pace on a new route.
Up ahead on the curving road, sounds of heavy pieces of metal being dragged whispered from around the bend. Daisy slowed her jog and cautiously hugged the wall of the office building beside her as she slowly inched forward to get a better look.
“I wonder what they’re…” She trailed off in shock before gathering enough of her wits enough to duck behind cover.
“Holy shit, Daze. Are those…?”
“Looks like it,” she replied. “Now we know why the buildings look the way they do.”
Fifty meters away, three tall, bipedal creatures stood beside an open cargo hauling ship of some sort. One of them was clinging to the side of the building, pulling free sections of its metal components with two of its hands, while the other pair clung to the structure with a sturdy grip.
“Four arms, Daisy. Do you see that? Four arms!”
Indeed she did.
“Look at their heads, too.” Daisy slowly eased back behind the building’s edge and pulled the binoculars from her bag. The sun was a little behind her, so there was no chance of lens-flare drawing attention. Additionally, it was still above her, so the risk of being silhouetted was minimal. She pressed the binocs to her eyes and took a good look. “You see them?” she asked the voice in her head.
“Uh-huh,” Sarah’s shocked voice replied. “Four eyes, too.”
While glasses jokes might have been applicable in other circumstances, Daisy felt the uneasy knot in her stomach grow tighter as she studied the tall aliens disassembling the building.
Two eyes on the front of their head, as one would expect, but also another pair on the back, just far enough to the sides to provide them a near-three-hundred-degree field of vision. The only way anyone would sneak up on one of them would be from directly behind.
Sticking with the theme of four, their double sets of powerful arms stood out from beneath the sleeveless coverall suits they wore. From what Daisy could see, their shoulders and elbows were protected by a layer of thick skin, possibly a natural armor of sorts, keeping the vital joints from damage. Their skin itself was a brownish gray, and resembled the tough hide of a rhinoceros, but it seemed to move easily over their muscular mass.
There was no body hair that she could see, though their lower extremities were covered by their clothing. Thick necks, slightly longer than human ones, supported their sturdy-looking heads, banded muscles taut beneath their rugged skin.
Daisy snapped out of her awestruck state when one of the creatures raised its arm, sending a long yellow-orange length of energy whipping out, snaking it around the large section of wall its counterpart had loosened. The beam tightened into a grabbing coil and pulled the segment, dragging it slowly to the open-backed transport ship waiting nearby.
The deceptively simple-looking device itself appeared to be a wrist-mounted bracelet, though how it worked or was controlled was beyond her knowledge.
The third alien, the one overseeing the loading of the ship from high above in the open cockpit area, pointed to the back of the vessel as it called out to the others in a guttural, screeching language.
No, of course not. Can’t overload the transport, Daisy thought, reacting to the strange sounds. She felt the world spin a little beneath her.
“How do you know what it’s saying?”
“I don’t,” she replied. “Just a guess.”
“You didn’t sound like you were guessing.”
A strange sense of memory tickling the edges of her mind very nearly made Daisy stumble off her feet. Something was going on. Something very, very wrong. She was just beginning to make out the faintest outline of a bird’s-eye view of the complex workings of her neuro-stim info dump, when a lone cyborg came barreling into sight.
They must’ve split up.
The aliens spun on the intruder, the one moving the piece of wall dropping his load and immediately lashing out at the metal man before he could turn and flee. The energy band crackled outward, looping around the cyborg and pulling it closer.
It works almost like some sort of power whip, she marveled. That’s at least a good thirty-foot reach. I wonder what its limit is.
Despite the danger, Daisy couldn’t help but be fascinated by the remarkable tool and its potential uses.
The cyborg didn’t hesitate, turning and wrapping its hand around the crackling loop, pulling back against the alien in a survival tug-of-war. It seemed to actually be holding its own when the first blast hit.
The creature in the transport ship had pulled a small, relatively weak weapon and was shooting the metal man repeatedly. It wasn’t causing much damage, but it slowed him enough for the alien clinging to the wall to drop down on top of it from above, beating it mercilessly with tools held in all four of its hands.
The cyborg didn’t stand a chance.
Only a few short moments later, its wingtip-clad feet rattled out a death staccato in the dust, then abruptly came to a rest. Not satisfied, the alien atop it yanked the unfortunate machine’s head to the side and proceeded to bash the AI processor compartment until it was one hundred percent sure there was absolutely no chance of recovery.
The strange creatures scanned the area. Their body language—easy to read, even for an alien life-form—said they were ready for a fight. The one handling the power beam device pulsed the energy whip back and forth, the crackling end etching the pavement, leaving fine lines scored in the ground.
Completely hands-free, Daisy noted. Must read the nerve impulses under the wearer’s skin. Despite the healthy level of fear flowing in her veins, she couldn’t help but find herself fascinated by the amazing new technology. If I could get
my hands on one of those… oh, the potential!
After another tense minute scanning the streets, the trio eased up a bit and stood to their full height. They were nearly a head taller than most men, even the larger ones, she noted.
After surveying the area one last time, they appeared to relax their guard. The other cyborgs who had been in pursuit, if they were nearby, apparently did not want anything to do with the dangerous creatures and stayed well out of sight.
Loading the last of their cargo into the transport, they chittered a few words to each other before moving to load up.
“Is it just me, or did that almost make sense?”
“Just you. Sounded like nothing more than a bunch of screechy nonsense to me. But if I’m in your head, why don’t I hear what you do?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” she replied to her dead friend’s disembodied voice. “I have a really bad feeling about all of this.”
“Seeing as how our hometown is empty, cyborgs have taken over the underground system, our own crew is trying to capture you, and aliens are apparently stripping the city bare, I’d say it’s entirely justified.”
The last alien looked the area over one last time, powered down its energy whip, and jumped into their craft, easily leaping several meters up into the open cockpit, then sliding it shut above it.
Damn, those suckers can jump! Their homeworld must have stronger gravity. Or maybe they’re just that much stronger than we are.
With just the slightest hum of the drive system powering up, the craft lifted into the air, flying off and leaving the wrecked mechanical man in their wake.
Daisy waited, motionless, scanning the area for any sign of—
“There. Far right, behind the sculpture in that building’s courtyard.”
She adjusted her eyes.
“I see it. Good catch.”
It was the one Daisy had taken to calling Mr. Pin Stripes. The dapper cyborg cautiously stepped out from behind its cover and approached its fallen counterpart. Moments later, two others joined it.
“A shame, that,” the mechanical man said, looking down on the dead machine. “No rebooting for Charlie.”
