by Lance Erlick
“Ready?” Synthia asked.
Maria nodded. “This place gives me the creeps,” she whispered. “Like a dungeon.”
Synthia used her club card to open a door to a short corridor that linked with an underground walkway under this part of Chicago’s Loop. As she entered the passage, out of camera range, Synthia changed her face to her previous appearance while her companion watched.
“I’m jealous,” Maria whispered.
Synthia nodded toward the underground walkway and headed out. As she did, she captured images of camera footage throughout the corridors and underground tunnels, and triggered an overload that caused an electrical shutdown through the local grid. Using her infrared cameras, she scanned the passage in both directions to verify what she was dealing with.
Taking Maria’s hand, she entered the underground walkway. “Keep up and stay close. There are twenty-three people between us and where we’re going. They’ll use their phones as lights but expect them to act skittish. I have a small light.” She turned it on. “Stick close to the right wall and to me. No talking.”
They caught up with three well-dressed women clustered around one lit phone as the others scrambled to get theirs out.
Smelling an excess of fear hormones, Synthia stopped. “Damned nuisance,” she said, shining her light to help them. She smiled in case they looked up and pulled Maria to the opposite wall as they moved on. Up a ways, she slowed her pace to keep her distance behind two men in business suits who made their way with dim phone lights they had to keep activating.
Sensing her partner’s agitation, Synthia pulled Maria closer. “Act natural,” she whispered. “Keep your hat tight around your face, and try not to draw attention.”
“You’re giving me lessons?” Maria asked.
“If it helps. You still want to stay around here?”
“I’m torn between my mission and making it through the day.”
“We need time to plan.”
The men up ahead slowed while two women were catching up from behind. Synthia picked up her pace to pass the two men as a group of three men headed the other way. They exhibited elevated blood pressure and anxiety hormones. None matched the extensive image file Synthia had of police and FBI agents in the Chicago area. One of the men noticed her. Avoiding eye contact, she hacked his phone in case he took her picture. He didn’t. Instead, he fumbled to keep his light on.
As they moved away from the phone lights, Maria held onto Synthia’s arm and struggled to keep up. Her breathing was heavy and she gave off the chemical signature of fear and fatigue—not a good combination. Synthia felt an empathic connection; she wanted to protect her companion from pending dangers. Despite Maria’s experience on the streets, Synthia would need to get her to a safe place soon.
A camera burst from Roosevelt-clone showed the streets above. Several police and FBI teams moved around the Transportation Center and the trains. The train was still Synthia’s best option out of the city. Drago’s drone swarm swept through the streets of downtown Chicago hunting for some version of Synthia, using what the clone identified as contrasting infrared and visible light images to ferret out anomalies.
Maria clutched Synthia’s arm as they passed three women dressed in sharp business attire heading the other way. “I’m sure they’ll get the lights on soon,” Synthia said and smiled.
One of the women smiled back. The others picked up their pace, moving away from someone who dared to speak to them in the dark. Synthia needed to further train her social-psychology module for these faux pas.
The underground walkway ended at the Riverwalk, not far from the construction site where they’d gotten out of the water. Compared to the bright rays of sun outside, the tunnel took on an even darker cast.
The train stations were on the other side of the river. Police patrolled the bridges. The alternative would be to swim across, get soaked, and draw attention when they climbed out on the other side.
Synthia pointed toward concrete steps leading up to street level and let two women pass. She used infrared to make sure there were no other humans around and whispered. “We need to cross the bridge to the train station.”
Maria spotted two police officers above and moved into the shadows of the dark tunnel. “This is a very bad idea. Don’t forget what happened to Luke.”
“It’s the best I have at this moment,” Synthia said. “We’re out of time. From this point forward, we need to separate for a while to be less conspicuous. If you choose not to come with me I’ll understand, but please don’t make things harder for me.”
“I’m coming. I said I would and…I can’t stay here. There’s nowhere else to hide.”
“These cops are looking for me, not you. They all have various images of me and some have scanners. So far, they aren’t circulating your picture. I’ll go first, up over the bridge to the station. If they take any notice of me, head back through the tunnel and find a place to hide. If not, wait until I’m across the bridge and then follow.”
“We can’t buy tickets or board the train,” Maria said.
“I have two tickets waiting for us, using your new ID. The train goes to Woodstock on the Northwest line.”
“Really?”
Synthia watched the police by the bridge to study their tactics. “Go to the platform area with the food vendors. We’ll brush past each other and I’ll pass you a ticket. We get on separately, platform seven. Ride the train to the end and I’ll meet you outside the station.”
“I’d call you nuts, but that label doesn’t apply, does it?”
“We’ll see.”
Synthia turned off her light and climbed the concrete steps toward the bridge and a cluster of officers. Overhead, the sky cleared as the drone swarm headed east toward the lake. She had five minutes.
She headed toward two cops at the entrance to the bridge, holding her gaze and attention on the steps while her camera eyes focused on them. She linked with Roosevelt-clone to synchronize. The clone’s aerial camera download identified six police officers near the bridge. One held a large electromagnetic scanner which he waved over pedestrians and toward vehicles.
Synthia shut down all communications and internal functions that didn’t contribute to surviving the next few minutes. She sent out “noise-cancelling” signals to mask her remaining electromagnetic signature to fool the handheld devices. If that didn’t work, she needed other options.
Down several mind-streams Synthia ran through scenarios for fighting and for escape routes. The fight scripts showed 89 percent probability of handling the cops in the immediate area. However, she couldn’t predict what hundreds of pedestrians might do, including posting her picture for police to see. Also, she had only minutes before the drone swarm returned and clustered around her, preventing any escape. At that point, she could expect Drago’s teams to descend on her. Fighting her way to freedom would no longer be an option. Stick to the plan.
As Synthia approached the cop with the scanner, she hacked into its wireless connection and created static that fostered a feedback loop in which it identified a woman ahead of her as mechanical. Three cops swarmed around the annoyed human. The one with the scanner ran the unit over the woman’s body. The screen showed conflicting results.
“Which is it?” one cop yelled out in frustration.
Synthia walked to the left of the two policemen who shielded her from the scanner.
“Wait right there,” a policewoman said to Synthia and a man near her. The cop had her hand on her holstered revolver.
“I’ll miss my train,” the man said.
“She looks clean,” the cop with the sca
nner said. Another policewoman gave the scanned woman a pat down to be certain.
Two FBI agents approached from down the street. One held his service revolver. “Do we have a problem?” He motioned for the pedestrians trying to get past the scanner to wait, which lengthened the line.
Synthia stood behind the man near her as the scanning cop panned the device over the area. Synthia made sure the device scrambled his image and identified him as electromagnetically hot.
“Hands on the railing,” the cop with the gun said. “Now.”
With all eyes on him, Synthia put her head down and headed across the bridge. The man acted incensed, belligerent, arguing with them, which didn’t help his situation. As police focused on him, Synthia kept moving. When she reached the other side, she looked away from where Maria was hiding and observed through the camera in the back of her neck. Synthia could almost sense her companion’s biometrics off the chart. Is this what empathy feels like?
Keeping her head down, Synthia followed a cluster of men and women entering a narrow doorway beyond the bridge and inserted herself in their midst. Her social-psychology module pointed out that humans experienced claustrophobia in such tight situations, though not when motivated to reach their destination.
Roosevelt-clone transmitted an aerial view of the entire train station, a collage of drone images that covered from where she’d entered the building all the way to the train platforms. She identified eighteen FBI and police; most operated in pairs. Two groups of three stood against walls by the train platforms, eyeing all activity. The third member of each team held scanners. The others watched and waited.
Synthia adopted facial expressions that matched those around her, anxiety about making their trains and about the heavy police presence, no doubt accentuated by social media speculation about androids, aliens, and terrorists, with an overload of image-sharing of anyone the posting party thought looked out of place. Two young men streamed video of a guy with the latest tattoos who chanted about the end of the world. She could count on humans to create their own distractions.
She reached the ticket counter and altered her face to an ID for which she had a driver’s license. She held the license up to the tiny window and posed as the clerk took her picture. The camera in Synthia’s neck recorded police surrounding the tattooed chanter. One of the cops said they should take him in for disturbing the peace. His sergeant intervened. “We have bigger fish to fry. Stay focused.”
Tattoo-guy hurried away from them, gave them the finger, and passed through the doors to the train platform.
Synthia received two tickets, switched her face to what it has been before, and slipped around the corner through the double doors toward the platform, where the two groups of three cops formed a surveillance semicircle while two others walked the platforms.
Roosevelt-clone passed along an aerial view outside. The police were waving their electronic scanner over Maria. She acted nervous, but no more than others growing impatience in line behind her. The biggest risk was the cops taking Maria’s picture and comparing it to the FBI database of interested parties. After a pat-down, they let her cross.
Synthia saw no way around the two surveillance groups of cops by the platform and two FBI agents who joined them. She needed a distraction. Sorry, guy.
She hacked one of the scanners to present Tattoo-guy as an android. Then she borrowed some of Maria’s android posts, with pictures of the tattooed chanter and a female police officer waving her scanner over the guy. Using an anonymous alias, Synthia sent broadcasts of harassment with reports that they were both androids putting on a show.
Four officers surrounded Tattoo-guy. A cluster of three male students across the way stared at their phones and glanced around. They live-streamed the cops. The other team of three cops approached the students. “Move away,” one of the officers said. More people gathered around, holding out their camera-phones.
“You all need to move on,” a police sergeant said. “This is a potential crime scene.”
“I didn’t see anything posted,” the tallest of the students said. “What are we looking for? Maybe we can help.” He held up his phone to record the events.
The policewoman with the scanner ran the device over the students and then over the other men and women closing in around them. Synthia hacked the device to give false scans, showing everyone as emitting inhuman electromagnetic signals.
Seeing the scans, the sergeant raised his voice. “Everyone against the wall.”
More people came through the double doors heading toward their trains. Maria was one of them. She glanced at what was now eight cops along one side of the platform area, and headed the other way. Synthia bumped into her. “Ticket,” she said since Maria didn’t seem to be focusing well.
Maria looked up, a moment of recognition, grabbed the ticket and headed toward platform seven.
Synthia scanned the station’s security camera footage for any evidence the person whose face she’d borrowed was at the station. She wasn’t. When the two police officers who’d been patrolling the platforms joined the others to restore order, Synthia hurried down platform seven, climbed onto the train’s first car, and moved to the next compartment. She took a seat upstairs where she could watch the door. Maria took a seat in the train’s third compartment, displayed her ticket in the holder, and held her head down with the hat over her eyes as if sleeping.
More police and FBI agents poured into the transportation center to deal with the commotion. Synthia had her clone orchestrate an identical incident at Union Station and elsewhere, giving the police more to worry about.
As the train pulled out of the station, the clone’s aerial surveillance showed Special Ops teams dredging the river and others descending on the train stations. They were good and they had cameras and scanners on their side. While they didn’t yet have Synthia’s new identity, it was only a matter of time.
Chapter 16
Special Agent Victoria Thale entered the FBI mobile command van parked near the transportation center to find Fran Rogers seated at a keyboard before several screens.
“Tell me you have something,” Thale said, standing over Fran.
“Synthia is downtown.”
“You have her on camera?”
“Hard to say since she keeps changing appearance.” Fran scanned camera footage. “It’s a reasoned conclusion. The electricity and all of our cameras went out throughout most of the Loop and west for nineteen minutes.”
“Enough time to do what?”
“She could have caught any of a number of trains out of Union Station, the Northwestern line, even north.”
“Which is it?”
There was a thump at the door. Without waiting for a reply, Commander Kirk Drago squeezed his large frame into the van and had to bow his head beneath the ceiling. Rather than hunch over, he grabbed a seat, which groaned under his weight.
“Since we’re cooperating,” Drago said with a sneer. “I’ll tell you we found the swimming gear Synthia picked up in Evanston. She’s not alone.”
“Maria?” Thale asked.
“Find her and we’ll have Synthia.”
“I�
��ve tried to scan camera footage,” Fran said, “but systems keep blanking out. After they came back on, they show no facial matches at any of the stations. What about your aerial drones?”
Drago sighed. His face tightened into a frown. “Someone hacked the swarm. We lost seven minutes of coverage.”
“Synthia didn’t want us to see something,” Thale said, squeezing into the front of the van for more room.
“She either slipped onto a train while the cameras were out or this is a diversion.”
Before Fran could speak up, Thale squeezed her shoulder and stepped in. “We concur that Synthia was downtown. She played with the cameras. She also caused the handheld scanners we provided the police to malfunction.”
“How?” Drago asked.
“By making everyone appear electronic.”
“She’s hiding in plain sight. This proves the danger she presents. Do we know anything about her current appearance?”
Fran shook her head. “Our agents interrogated police who might have seen a woman matching Maria’s description. If we’re right, she headed across the river toward one of the train stations. But she was alone. As you said, all of this could be a diversion.”
“We’ll continue to focus on the trains,” Thale said, “but if this is a diversion, we also need to consider hiding places and other ways of leaving the downtown area.”
“Why come downtown unless to catch a train?” Drago asked.
“There are people downtown who don’t trust the police,” Fran said. “Or the FBI. Synthia might consider hiding among them until we let our collective guards down.”
“We have every available agent on this along with local police,” Thale said. “We’ll inform you the moment we find either Maria or Synthia. We ask that you give us an opportunity to interrogate them before we turn them over. They may be dangerous, but they could help us catch Vera and the others.”
