by Phoenix Ward
The bodyshell that once had been occupied by Wolfgang raised its gun, leveling the barrel towards Beth’s head. She stared up at the thing with wide eyes. Terror seized every muscle in her body.
Do something! she begged in her mind.
“I’m trying!” Simon replied in a frantic yell. “He’s too powerful to jump into. There’s nothing I can do.”
Beth closed her eyes and let a slow sigh escape her lips.
So this is it, she thought. This is how it ends.
While she squeezed her eyelids shut, a low noise grew steadily on the night air. It was a deep hum, like someone was shaking the ground from several miles away. Like thunder, but through the street. At least — that’s how the ambiance of it came across. As it grew louder and louder, however, it became clear it was a car motor. The sound was approaching them.
Before either Beth, Simon, or the seven Tarovs knew what was happening, the vehicle was upon them. An autovan with bright headlights whipped around one of the nearest corners at speeds unsafe for even highway travel and pulled up to the burning Fog house.
Tarov was taken aback by the sudden blinding lights and the rumbling motor. All seven mechanical heads turned to follow the source of the commotion just as its brakes squealed and skidded it to a stop beside them. Even Beth was too surprised to make a run for it now that her captor was distracted.
One of the van’s door slid open, thrown so hard that it rattled the whole vehicle. A high-pitched hum started tearing through the cold air. It was set at such a high frequency that it made the hairs along Beth’s spin stand on end, and her teeth felt itchy. She clasped her hands over her ears and tried to see over the blinding illumination of the van’s headlights.
At any moment, she expected the squadron of Tarov robots to spring into action, unleashing a barrage of deadly attacks upon the mysterious intruder. She braced for the gunshots and the sword slashes — waited for the thundering of metal feet on dirt. She listened for what seemed like an eternity before raising her head and looking around.
Nothing happened.
All seven instances of Tarov were frozen in place, like Medusa herself had turned them into statues. The colorful lights on their optical panels strobed a little, like the electrical signal that powered them was lagging out. None of the bodyshells could move, but they all seemed to be powered on.
The headlights on the van cut out and a form stepped out from the open doorway. The high-frequency hum followed the shape as it walked towards Beth. It belonged to a man, who knelt down in the dirt before Beth as two more forms came out from the back of the van. Another closed the driver door and walked around to where the seven machines stood petrified.
As Beth’s eyes adjusted to the sudden change of lighting, she saw the man’s face for the first time. He wore large glasses under a pair of bushy white eyebrows. He was smiling, his unshaven cheeks wrinkling as he did so. A beige boonie hat rested on the crown of his skull. In his hand was a small electronic device, no larger than a car key. It was this that the high-frequency hum came from.
“You alright, sweetheart?” the man asked her. He was much older than her, probably in his early 60’s by her guess.
Beth nodded, but was still too startled to speak.
The man turned to his colleagues — two other men and a woman. They were walking up to where Beth was still propped up on her elbows.
“Let’s get her outta here quick!” he ordered. “While he’s still stunned.” He indicated the small army of bodyshells.
“Turn the emitter up,” the woman who was driving the van suggested. “Fry their C.P.U.s.”
“Good idea,” the older man muttered. He fiddled with some button or knob on the tiny device that Beth couldn’t see. He looked up, frowned, then fiddled with the device some more. Suddenly, the bodyshells gave a quick twitch while a small spurt of sparks erupted from their metallic skulls. With seven solid thuds, they fell to the earth. This time, the optical lights were dead. The shells were deactivated.
Beth felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned and saw one of the other men trying to help her to her feet. The older man lent a hand as well, lifting her upright. She brushed the dirt and dead grass blades off the seat of her pants.
“Who are you?” she asked. “What’s going on?”
“There’ll be time for that,” the older man with the glasses replied. “Right now, though, we have to hurry. It’s only a matter of time before Tarov is able to load into a whole new set of shells and send them this way. We can’t dawdle.”
The younger man who had helped Beth to her feet now guided her to the open door of the van. Reluctantly, she stepped up and climbed into the vehicle. Her guide and the older man hopped in the back with her while the other man took the passenger seat. The driver slammed the van’s sliding door shut before she climbed into the cab and took them away from the smoldering pile of embers that had once been Lobo’s Fog house.
26
Resistance
The autovan’s engine was much quieter from within the vehicle than it was from outside. Everything beyond the plastic-and-titanium frame was a droning hum that washed out the silence like a steady rainstorm or the crashing of waves on a cliffside. Beth remained silent for a couple minutes while the van drove away from the scene of the burning Fog house and the deactivated bodyshells. She was too stunned by the sudden rescue and how close she had come to death to say anything anyway. The others seemed to respect that need and sat in silence.
No one needed to actually drive the autovan since it was capable of driving itself, but the vehicle had some manual override that the woman in the cab was using to bypass its automated navigation. Her abilities were what kept them from colliding into a house at a hundred twenty miles-per-hour, and the thought made Beth a little nervous. She saw the need, however — if they were going to remain undetected and untraced, they had to take paths the computerized system never would. Not to mention if they ended up taking any “shortcuts” through lawns or parks or a simple medium.
Beth scanned her rescuers. The older man sat across from her, scratching his beard as he peered out of the window. He sat beside a thin black man with the sides shaved off of his hairdo. He was watching out the opposite window, his hand gripped on a gun she hadn’t noticed at first. Another man sat in the passenger seat. He was white with blond hair and a short beard that covered the entirety of his lower jaw. The woman in the driver’s seat had medium-length blue hair, but that was all Beth could see from behind her.
“Who are you?” she managed to ask after five minutes of driving and swerving in silence.
The older man looked back at her, not too concerned with what he saw outside the window. He smiled as warmly as he could manage, but it was clear that adrenaline still ran strong through his veins.
“We’re friends,” he replied.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere safe.”
Beth didn’t ask for any elaboration. “Somewhere safe” was the only place she wanted to be, and she didn’t care too much about the particulars. After the scene at the Fog house, she wanted to crawl away anywhere dark and warm and cry herself to sleep. She wanted to vanish from the world while it carried on with its petty squabbles without her. Nothing felt safe anymore. She felt like every corner held another enemy, and every dark shadow concealed another struggle.
The older man read her face as they drove on.
“I promise we’ll tell you more when we get there,” he told the detective. “I’m sure you have all kinds of questions.”
Beth looked at the small key-sized device the older man still pinched onto. He saw where her eyes led and seemed a little surprised himself, like he forgot it was even there.
“How did you do that to Tarov?” Beth asked. She indicated the device with a raise of her eyebrows.
“This thing?” the older man said, like she asked about a casual knick-knack on his mantle place. “It’s a frequency-specific E.M.P. emitter. It’s tuned to Tarov and nothing else
, but is capable of stunning his processes — or, as you saw — shutting them down altogether. It’s been a useful device in our fight against him.”
“Did you kill him?” Beth said.
The older man seemed amused. “Oh, no. If only,” he answered. “We just overloaded the shells he was in and made them inoperable. His backups still all exist, and are probably on their way to the Fog house with new bodyshells this moment.”
Beth didn’t say anything in response. She was still under the slight impression that she was in a dream and she would wake up at one point, still on the dirty Fog house floor.
Do you trust them? Beth asked, remembering the digital passenger she carried along in her brain.
“They managed to save us from Tarov,” Simon replied. “I don’t know what they want, but I trust them further than I would anyone else at this point. Just be careful, okay?”
I’ll try.
The van fell silent again, so Beth took to watching out the window. The buildings they drove past were getting smaller and more spaced apart. She didn’t recognize the area, but she could tell that they were driving out of the city and into the ruinous wilds that made up most of the non-urban parts of the country. As they drove on, the buildings started falling into worse and worse disrepair. Bricks spilled out onto cracked and pitted streets while streetlamps that nearly fell out of their bases watched from above. The paint used on the outsides of houses or on the signs of small businesses was faded and chipped.
They drove through a few patches of undeveloped land between the empty shells of ghost towns. It had been years since Beth had seen a field of grass or a patch of forest, so she looked at the spectacles with the eyes of childhood wonder.
Eventually, they arrived in an abandoned town a few hours away from the city. The woman driving started decelerating as they made their way through the ruined streets, around sundered houses and those that had become overgrown with weeds and vines. Before long, the vehicle pulled into park and the engine turned off.
“We’re here,” the older man told Beth.
She looked out the window. They were in front of a somewhat large corner building that had a sun-faded sign declaring it as the Monarch Urgent Care. The whole front was made up of large glass windows and doors, but most of these were boarded up with some basic plywood and left to collect dust.
Beth followed the others out of the vehicle after they slid the door open. It felt almost like they were jumping from a helicopter in succession. She stared at the front of the building for a moment while the two younger men and the woman who drove the van walked up to its entrance.
“It’s pre-Universal Connectivity,” the older man said, the last out of the van. He noticed the detective studying the health clinic, scowling as if she didn’t trust the building itself. “Abandoned before it could even open for business. They didn’t see a single patient in here, but they built the place up like they were going to treat millions. We’ve found it to be a comfortable and secure place to lie low while out here in the boonies. Someplace with the comforts of home — at least, almost.”
Beth noticed how a couple of barricades were set up on the side streets that ran beside the health clinic. They were strategically placed to keep anyone from sneaking up on them, but made of such random junk and placed in such a haphazard manner that no one would think it to be a deliberate security measure to protect something of value. There was more reinforcement on the side windows that Beth could see, which she imagined let light into the numerous examination rooms. The place had been repurposed into a fortress.
“What are you doing here?” Beth asked. She still hadn’t taken a step towards the building yet.
“We’re preparing for war, Beth,” the older man replied. “A war against Tarov and the Liberators. A fight for the very fate of humanity.”
“What do you know about Tarov?”
The older man chuckled like he was trying to be modest. “I helped build the Tarov A.I.,” he said. “And I know how to stop him.”
27
Dr. Miller
Beth was led through a pair of reinforced doors after they entered the health clinic. She followed her rescuers inside and they held the doors open for her. The entrance lobby of the health clinic was still dilapidated and dirty, but the older man explained that it was to keep up the appearance of an abandoned urgent care facility. If anyone was able to peek past the wood reinforcements in the windows, all they would see is the same dusty interior they might find in any other abandoned building. Through the reinforced doors, however, signs of life were clear.
The first thing she noticed was the soft sound of classical music floating through the air, so lightly that Beth assumed she was hallucinating it for a moment. Then she felt the warm glow of a few soft-bulb lamps. It illuminated everything with the friendly aura of a campfire — dim, but not unwelcoming.
Desks with stacks of books covering a vast majority of their surfaces were scattered about the room. There were old computers built into a few of them, but they seemed to be unpowered or nonfunctional. Behind one of the desks — standing up and looking down at some document or another — was another woman Beth had not seen yet. Just a few feet from her, another man rested in one of the office chairs, kicking his feet back on the desk’s surface.
They looked up with listless eyes as the others funneled in. They didn’t seem particularly excited or worried, just curious. They wanted to see the strange detective they all risked their necks to save.
“Beth,” the older man said, a hint of Cuban in his accent, “I want to introduce you to everyone. First off, we have Lia.” He gestured towards the blue-haired woman who had driven the autovan. “She was our fearless pilot on this mission. Bash and Frank here helped get you out of that situation and offered to provide backup should anything happen on our ride back.”
The thin black man and the blond with the beard nodded as their names were said.
“Back here at home base, we have Beta,” the older man continued, waving his open-palmed hand to the woman who had been looking down at her desk. “And lounging in the corner is Seth. I am Dr. Darren Miller, and I guess you could say I’m the ringleader of our little group of outcasts. I’m also one of the original designers of the Tarov A.I.”
Beth needed a moment to take everything in. She panned to each face as they were introduced, but it felt like their names were going in one ear and out the other. Like she had filled up her memory banks and couldn’t take on any new information. A sensory overload.
The others must have sensed Beth’s overwhelmed feelings. Frank moved forward and pulled a chair up for her. He gently pushed her back into it and she sunk into the plush seat cushion.
“I know this is a lot to take in, but first you have to trust us,” Dr. Miller said, fetching a glass of water from Beta and offering it to the detective. “Otherwise, nothing I’m going to say is going to do any good. You have to keep an open mind, or were not going to get anywhere. You understand?”
Beth nodded. She could sense Simon in her C.C., alert and listening.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions, Beth, starting first with how we know who you are and where to find you,” the older man said. “Is that right?”
Again, she nodded.
“We’ve been watching you for a while. You piqued our interest when you met with Tarov in the Net, and he offered you his assistance in catching the rogue I.I.,” Dr. Miller started to explain. “You see, I am in the unique position of being able to track and even observe some of the Tarov A.I.’s movements. I can’t do anything about them — as I have no control over the A.I. itself — but I can watch. That’s how we knew you were in trouble — and that’s how we knew you’d be willing to help us.”
Beth looked around at each face. They were all watching her, trying to gauge her reactions. Maybe they were trying to see into her mind and sense her motivations.
“Why did you come to my rescue?” she asked. She did her best to not sound like she was making an
accusation, but the edge still came through in her tone.
“We need your help,” Dr. Miller said. “Aside from altruistic reasons, we knew you were better equipped than most to bring our plans of resistance to fruition.”
“Resistance?” Beth asked.
“Against Tarov, of course,” Dr. Miller replied. “He’s not a controlling power for the time being, of course, but that doesn’t mean he isn’t an oppressive force. Every day, he grows more powerful. His followers seem to multiply as relations between humans and I.I.s sink ever further. We are here to stop him before he gets too strong to stop. We’re the countermeasure, so to speak.”
“So why me?” Beth asked. “Why am I better equipped than anyone?”
Dr. Miller took off his glasses and tried to rub them clean on his shirt. The others stood as still as statues, listening to the exposition and watching their new guest.
“For a number of reasons, Detective Dylan,” the scientist replied. “Firstly, you were following a case of personal significance to the A.I. For some reason, his interest in Simon collided with your own, so you’ve already interacted with the terrorist leader more than most humans alive. Not only that, but you’ve incurred his wrath. I know — that doesn’t sound like a good thing — but it proves that he’s frightened of you. You make him nervous — and therefore — pushed him to play his hand sooner than he planned. You might even cause him to slip up, to make some catastrophic mistake that spells the end of his fake uprising. Lastly — perhaps most importantly — is that, on top of all this, you are unimplanted. In fact, you can’t even get an implant. You’re forced to use an outdated cerebral computer.”
Beth blushed a little and touched her head, as if she’d be able to feel the device within her skull.
“And that’s a good thing?” she asked. All her life, she’d always looked at it as a handicap. It made her deaf and blind and forced her to rely on an archaic device to interact with the world. Kids teased her about it. Cruel kids. She never thought of the tumor or the damage it caused as a “good thing”. Far from it.
