Corrupted

by Phoenix Ward

  Dr. Darren Miller and Dr. Jacob Silvar designed Blake Tarov to be the first self-learning, self-thinking artificial intelligence on par with a human mind. Other programs had been made to act on an illusion of choice — to decide on one of two pre-determined pathways based on established parameters. They seemed to learn, but they only accumulated more options and more pathways — all of which were written by someone ahead of time. Miller and Silvar’s creation was the first A.I. capable of observing a problem and inventing its own solution, even if it had never been taught to do anything similar. If it had not been shown how to craft a fire, it would have eventually figured it out through trial and error. A touch of ingenuity could teach it to climb a wall, even if had never encountered one before. This same self-decision could be used to sense falsehoods and to earn its target’s trust. Some would say that its ability to learn with such precision placed it at even above-human intelligence.

  This, of course, made some people among the human leadership nervous. They remembered all the anti-A.I. propaganda they had been raised with and demanded a contingency plan be formed in the event that humans lost control of Tarov — a failsafe to protect mankind if the A.I. ever decided to change its allegiance.

  That was where Beth and Simon hit a wall in their research. Scraps of information came much fewer and farther between, with less and less revealing data. Someone had taken great efforts to conceal the rest of the story from even their skilled intuition. Hours bled on as they tried to find any more references to the failsafe that Tarov’s creators were charged with creating. If it was real, Beth thought, it could be the key to bringing him down. His Achilles heel—his Kryptonite.

  Immersed in her internal retina display, Beth was about to access another file which had been redacted into worthlessness when a bright alert started to flash. The audio feed from her cerebral computer was filled with the sound of a police siren, and the alert strobed with similar color effects.

  The message read: ATTENTION FUGITIVE: YOUR IMPLANT USE HAS BEEN TRACED AND LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS ARE NOW CONVERGING ON YOUR LOCATION. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO FLEE OR DEFEND YOURSELF. COMPLETE COMPLIANCE IS REQUIRED.

  23

  Surrounded

  Beth had been so immersed in her research and conversations with Simon that she failed to notice the squad of nine heavily armed police officers in body armor approaching the Fog house from all sides.

  They crept through the dark of night like big cats in pursuit of a kill. Each one of them was equipped with night vision gear as well as a belt of gadgets like concussion grenades, taser guns, and electrified batons. They stayed crouched low to the ground so the street lights would illuminate them less. All nine of the police officers got into position without being detected, then waited for the alert before moving into action.

  Once Beth was fully notified of the shitstorm approaching her, she pulled herself out of her immersed state and back into the real world. She found herself in the same broken down bedroom with the unbathed junkies strewn over the floor that she had been in for almost two days now. The smell of stale beer and faint urine was always present, and a bit of smoke from an unknown source seemed to hang in the air like msit on a bayou. There was no sound but the inhale and exhale of a few sleeping drug addicts, and — Beth now noticed — the sound of someone shouting from outside.

  “The house is surrounded!” she heard a woman yell from the front of the building. “Lay down any weapons you might have and put your hands in the air. Don’t make a move and nobody gets hurt!”

  Beth could hear some scuffling in the rooms around them. Some of the junkies in their room stirred, looking around at the police lights that were now shining brightly through the windows. Some voices yipped out in fright. Others hollered instructions to each other. Metal scraped on wood as different people around the house grabbed things to defend themselves with.

  “You are harboring a dangerous fugitive,” the police sergeant continued to yell. “None of you will be subject to any criminal charges, regardless of what we find on the premises, so long as you surrender the fugitive peacefully.”

  How did they track us? Beth’s frantic thoughts ricocheted around the inside of her skull.

  “I don’t know!” Simon said. His own tone was saturated with anxiety. “My private access point should have kept us untraceable. It should have been foolproof!”

  Well, it looks like it wasn’t, Beth replied. And now we’re fucked.

  “The fugitive is known as one Elizabeth Dylan,” the woman outside carried on. “She is a former police detective and is believed to be armed and dangerous. She is approximately five feet five inches tall — of Asian and European descent. You have five minutes to surrender her willingly or we will come in and take her by force.”

  They’ve got to be bluffing, Beth thought. If they’re working with Tarov, there’s no way they’re going to let witnesses live. They’ll probably shoot whoever brings me out the front door, spray the windows and walls with lead, and then burn the house down.

  “If they’re with Tarov, we’re not getting out of here alive,” Simon said. “After Rubik failed to kidnap us, I doubt Tarov will take any chances anymore. Interrogating us to make sure all possible leaks were plugged would be nice, but his top priority is making sure our evidence never sees the light of day.”

  So the best course of action is just to kill us and scrub my C.C. clean, Beth thought.

  “Exactly,” the I.I. replied.

  Beth’s heart beat so fast and blood flowed so loudly through the veins in her temples that she almost didn’t hear footsteps approaching the room. It was impossible to tell how many people they were created by before they reached the door.

  It seemed like half the house had decided to go to Beth’s room at once. The junkies inside moved a little, but they were so strung out that they had no idea which way was up or down, let alone that a police sergeant was shouting at them from outside. The ones at the door, however, were rabid. They wanted blood if it meant keeping the cops out of their drug palace.

  “There she is!” one of them spat, pointing a pipe-stained finger at Beth.

  They struggled to get through the doorway, cramming into the room like ice cubes out of a dispenser. They stood at a short distance, sizing the woman up and trying to decide what to do with her.

  “We oughta shove her out the front door and let the cops deal with her,” one with a wild blond beard suggested.

  Several of the burnouts coughed out their agreement. They took a step forward while Beth braced herself, looking around for something to use as a weapon.

  Lobo wedged his way through the doorway with a gun in his hand. His face was contorted with cold anger. The junkies opened up a path for him.

  For a second, Beth thought he was coming for her. She thought he’d heard the sergeant yell about her being a cop and was feeling betrayed. He’s going to turn me over to the police, Beth thought. Over to Tarov.

  “He wouldn’t do that,” the I.I. in her brain said.

  “Lobo!” the one who had suggested giving Beth up said when he saw the tatted man and his gun. “You gotta get this bitch outta here, man. She’s a fuckin’ cop, yo. She’s fuckin’ set us up.”

  Again, the crowd muttered their approval of his statements.

  “Look, man, that ain’t who we are,” Lobo said back. He took a step forward, placing himself between Beth and the mob. He looked into the eyes of all the crazed addicts that surrounded him. “We don’t give people over like that. Not guests in our house.”

  “I’m not going to jail, alright?” the mob leader yelled at Lobo. “Not for some bitch I don’t even know. If you won’t give her up — well — I’ll just have to do it for you.”

  The man lunged forward, his wild, blood-shot eyes locked onto Beth. She felt a twinge of panic tug at her heart before Lobo turned sideways and brought the butt of his gun down on the mob leader’s head. Like a light bulb that had burst, the man was out.

  “Anyone else wanna try something?”
Lobo asked, turning his weapon on the rest of the junkies.

  They all raised their hands, shaking their heads. Together, they mumbled their promises to back off.

  Lobo turned around and looked at Beth for a moment, then walked past her to the window. He pushed some of the broken blinds aside to gaze out at the side yard.

  “Man, there’s a lot of them out there,” he said.

  Beth, still a little shaken from being threatened by the mob, stepped up to look outside as well.

  She could see three of the police officers from the angle they had. Each cop carried a large assault rifle, the kind they might send overseas rather than give to a city cop. Beth could tell by their forms that they wore riot exoskeletons. The suit-like devices not only provided advanced protection from small arms fire, but they augmented their strength and speed to a superhuman level. Beth’s heart sank.

  We’re screwed, Beth thought. They have enough force out there to stop a small army.

  “Time’s up!” the police sergeant shouted from outside. There was a bit of glee in her voice.

  Beth and Lobo watched from behind the window blinds. The detective expected the forms to push up on the house, guns raised. Maybe one of them would throw a tear gas canister. Instead, the police officers backed up a few steps until they were back in the shadows, no longer in the searing glow of the riot lights. They remained in place just off the Fog house’s property, silhouetted against the dark night.

  Another set of forms moved past the cops and into the light. Beth hadn’t even noticed more shapes surrounding them while she was focused on the exosuited officers. Once they stepped into the police light, however, it was impossible to miss them.

  It was a collection of seven unique bodyshells, the optical lights of which didn’t activate until they moved forward to reveal themselves. They amassed right outside Beth’s window in the side yard of the house. It was like they knew which room she was in.

  One of the shells, towering over the others, stepped forward and stared up at the Fog house window. Beth felt like she could feel the machine’s artificial eyes lock onto her. It was Tarov in his infamous bodyshell. An old-fashioned military jacket hung from the form’s massive shoulders.

  The other six machines glowed with a variety of different colored optical lights. A couple of them were larger than the others, some built for speed and agility. All of them seemed to carry different weapons. Katanas, machine guns, sniper rifles, electric knuckles, knives, and an automatic handgun. None of them said a word, but Beth could feel Simon whisper in her head.

  “Rubik,” he said. “All broken up.”

  Beth realized he was right. The unique humanoid machines all represented the six consciousnesses that made up the I.I. assassin team that had attacked them in the hyperloop station.

  Oh, look, there’s more of them, Beth thought with stress-induced sarcasm. I may have spoken too soon when I said we were screwed. I meant to say that we are utterly fucked. We’re going to die tonight.

  “Beth!” Tarov’s voice boomed from his bodyshell, like it was speaking through a megaphone. “Simon! I know you’re in there!”

  Lobo turned from the window and looked back at the crowd of junkies who all stood around the room with deer-in-headlight gazes.

  “What’re you all standing around for?” he asked them. They seemed to snap to attention, as if a hypnotist clapped his hands and took them out of a trance. “We’ve got company. Go get the guns.”

  There were a lot of blank stares for a few seconds before his audience managed to get their drug-fueled bodies moving. They scrabbled around the hallway, opening doors and drawers and retrieving whatever weapons they had stashed about. Lobo himself knelt down and counted the bullets he managed to bring with him. The look on his face told Beth that he didn’t have nearly as many as he’d like.

  “Come on out!” Tarov shouted. “You know this is all over. Why keep prolonging the inevitable? Why do you keep dragging more people into this?” His tone was hot with anger.

  What do we do? Beth asked. Her thoughts were more panicked than she meant to let on.

  “We hold our ground,” Simon told her.

  “If you give up now, Beth, I’ll let you live,” Tarov bellowed. “We can just get rid of that evidence, wipe your implant, and let you go about your life. Give us Simon and the data, and we’ll act like this never happened. However — if you don’t — we will come in after you. We’ll tear that house apart until we find you, then we’ll drag you out kicking and screaming. We’ll probably burn the place down, just to be safe. Then — after we’ve ripped the implant from your skull and deleted everything — and everyone — we’ll go back to where you live. We’ll go through your contacts, your mail, your yearbooks — whatever. We’ll find who you care about most. We will hurt them so badly that they’ll beg us for death, and then we’ll give it to them. One by one, we’ll make sure anyone who ever paid you a kindness wishes they had never met you. It’s your choice.”

  Beth couldn’t help but tremble a little. She looked over at Lobo, who finished counting rounds and was taking a second gun from one of his friends.

  “Here,” the host said as he passed the rifle to Beth. “You’re going to need it.”

  The detective held the firearm in both hands for a moment, looking at it with disgust like she had been handed a dead snake. She glanced up just as Lobo handed her some ammunition. Instinctively, she started to load the rifle.

  Outside, the hulking shell that Tarov occupied turned to one of the Rubik assassins on his right.

  “This is taking too long,” he said. “If they were going to surrender, they would have done it by now.”

  The bodyshell he spoke to cackled in delight. It was Lynch’s voice.

  The police sergeant approached from behind. Her expression was nervous as Tarov met her eyes.

  “Look, I’ve gotta get my people outta here before any killing starts,” she said. Her tone was delicate, like she addressed a feral lion. “If you want us to keep doing our job, we can’t have any part of this.”

  “I understand, sergeant,” Tarov said, turning away to stare back at the Fog house. He dismissed her with a wave. “Your job here is done.”

  She waited for a moment, half expecting him to change his mind. When he didn’t she rounded her officers up and led them away from the scene.

  Tarov frowned at the Fog house for another minute or two. Then he shouted to the bodyshells around him, “They’ve had their chance. Go get ‘em!”

  24

  Standoff

  “What the hell have you gotten me into?” Lobo asked from Beth’s right. He was back to peeking out the window with Beth when they saw the six smaller bodyshells spring into action.

  The colorful optical lights glowed up the lawn as their owners bolted toward the house. Beth could hear the sound of rapid thudding over the dead turf as well as the mechanical groaning of the one dozen hip joints moving with the speed of engine pistons.

  Beth barely had time to breathe before a gunshot broke through the night. A bit of the house’s cheap siding exploded as the bullet hit the wall. Wood splinters flew past the window where Beth and Lobo stood. Another shot rang out and the glass broke. Beth ducked down low, but managed to see the bodyshell with yellow lights shooting at them.

  “What happened to your aim, Wolfgang?” Beth heard one of the other assassins taunt the shooter. It was the one who called herself Jerri.

  “Just warming up,” the yellow-lit bodyshell replied.

  More gunshots cracked through the atmosphere, but Beth and Lobo had already moved away from the window. A couple of the rounds punched through the flimsy outer wall, but they all flew up towards the ceiling. Wolfgang couldn’t hit them from his ground-level angle.

  Beth turned to Lobo, who breathed heavily and muttering to himself. He held his gun close to his cheek, clutching onto the grip with both hands.

  “You don’t have to do this, Lobo,” she told him, her voice trembling. “This isn’t your
fight.”

  “I’m not turning tail,” Lobo said. He tried to peek out the window again but another bullet made him reconsider. Despite the fear causing tremors in his muscles, his eyes were fierce. “Simon never turned tail on me.”

  “I told you: Lobo’s good people,” the I.I. said in Beth’s mind.

  A sudden staccato of gunfire erupted — this time from within the house. More shots joined the cacophony of explosions as the burnouts and junkies fired at the incoming bodyshells. They two groups exchanged fire while four of the Rubik assassins climbed onto the porch. The largest of them started slamming into the front door of the Fog house, bowing the flimsy piece of wood with each collision. One with green optical lights and a cyberblade katana on its back started to scale the outside walls. Its bodyshell must have been outfitted with barbed climbing boots, standard issue for I.I. cat burglars and self-proclaimed ninjas.

  Beth managed to look out the broken window without being seen before ducking down quickly. She managed to spot another gun-wielding bodyshell standing beside Wolfgang and aiming its weapon up at the top second floor. It was covered in red glowing lights, and when it opened fire, Beth could tell its gun was fully automatic. The walls splintered as the bullets ripped through the siding. Screams and grunts could be heard coming from the room next door.

  “Careful, Nick,” Wolfgang shouted at the red shell, placing an empty mechanical hand on his compatriot’s weapon. “You could hit Maru.”

  “After those sons o’ bitches smashed our shell in the tube, I could care less,” Nick replied in his drawl. “So long as I kill the detective.”

  Beth heard the big bodyshell on the porch finally break through the front door with a roar. She could feel the vibrations through the floor as the crumpled door flew into the foyer and the heavy robotic attackers pushed their way inside.