Dax shrugged. “I’ve got no money, nowhere else to go. My mom is here, Soo-hyun too.” He looked pointedly at Enda. “Soo-hyun is still with Kali. They won’t answer their phone; the only response I get to my texts is the same message that Kali will forgive me if I come back to the commune.”
“Would they hurt Soo-hyun?”
“I don’t know,” Dax said. He breathed deep, exhaled a long and ragged breath. “After what they did to Khoder, I don’t know.” He stared into his empty cup. He wiped his eyes quickly, and huffed in amusement. “Khoder was a bit of an asshole, but he was my friend.”
Dax glanced up, and Enda smiled sympathetically. He responded with a wide, bright smile. It fell as he looked back to his cup.
“Does Soo-hyun know about this place?”
Dax shrugged, and idly turned the empty cup in his hand.
“They only ever visited once, months ago,” Troy said. “They might not remember where it was.”
Enda got up from the table and crossed to the front door, to check through the spyhole. Unconsciously she reached a hand inside her coat and rested her fingers on the grip of her pistol. “We shouldn’t have stayed here this long.”
Dax froze. “No. Soo-hyun wouldn’t.”
“Red beat Osman to death, so it’s not about what Soo-hyun would do.”
Dax buried his face in his hands.
“We need to get out of here,” Enda said. “Now.”
A digital klaxon wailed from Dax’s phone. He looked at the screen—flickering through a dozen photos of warning signs sourced from some public database. He looked to Enda and she nodded. He answered it, then immediately held the phone back from his ear as a siren screeched from its tiny speaker, crackling with the volume. He hung up and stared at the screen. “That was the AGI.”
“What?” Enda said.
“I know it sounds crazy, but trust me.”
Enda drew her pistol and Dax stared wide-eyed.
“What do you think it was trying to tell us?” Troy asked.
“You’re the AI-whisperer,” Enda said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Dax collected his rucksack from the floor while Troy crossed to the coatrack by the door. He put on a jacket and collected an umbrella before turning to Dax. “Do you need a coat?”
Dax shook his head. “Windbreaker’s waterproof.”
Enda opened the door a sliver, heard the thud and squeak of feet running up the stairwell. She shut the door. “Get down.”
Dax dropped to the floor, grabbed Troy’s hand, and pulled him down as well, the other man’s face a mask of fear and confusion. He stared from where he hid under the dining room table. Enda motioned for him to move aside, and they crawled to the far end of the apartment. Dax opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by the thunder of gunfire.
Bullets punched through the front door, splinters burst from wooden wounds. The distinctive roar of a Kalashnikov on full automatic filled the air and growled through the floor. Everything shook with the vibration of violence.
The air choked with smoke and debris. Bullets scored the walls, bursting through the framed movie posters, raining glass across the room. Finally the sound died.
“Stay here,” Enda told the others, enunciating clearly so they would be able to read her lips. She crouch-walked across the room and stood in the corner beside the front door.
The splintered remains of the door erupted inward, and chunks of wood littered the floor. A skinny figure stepped through the opening—dressed in tattered black, holding a gaudy yellow semiautomatic pistol. Enda fired a single shot into the meat of his thigh—her P320 sounding flat after the rumble of the AK-47. He howled and dropped his gun as he fell onto his hands and knees. Blood soaked through his black jeans and pooled around his leg. He reached for his pistol and Enda fired again. The bullet shattered his shoulder blade and brought a new sound from someplace deep within him, a place of bestial rage and pain he probably never knew existed.
Enda knew that place. She had lived there for so long it felt like home.
She turned back to the corner and took cover as another burst of Kalashnikov fire split the air and tore through the apartment. In the heavy silence that followed, Enda heard the shink of a magazine dropping from the weapon and the terrified babble of sounds that spewed from Dax’s mouth. Troy was silent, his eyes squeezed shut, hands over his ears.
Enda pivoted into the doorway. Another four targets stood on the landing, drenched by the rain. One was armed with the Kalashnikov, the others with pistols gripped white-knuckle tight in both hands.
Five seconds.
Enda fired once, twice—each bullet struck a target, their shoulders wrecked by the passage of metal. Four. The two targets dropped with the force of impact and the sudden pain, and their pistols fell to the ground with a plastic clatter.
Three. Kalashnikov fumbled awkwardly with her spare magazine. The last gunner raised his pistol and Enda charged forward. A flash blinded her right eye and the gun’s report burst in Enda’s ear—she felt the muzzle heat on her cheek as the bullet passed over her shoulder.
Two. With her free hand, Enda stripped the pistol from the target’s hand, felt the snap of bone or tendon as the gun came away. One. She slammed the butt of her gun into his gut—his head came down with the force of the blow and Enda kneed him in the nose, feeling the cartilage break.
K-chnk. Zero.
At that sound, Enda stepped behind the man—boy, really—and pinned his body against hers, pressing the 3D-printed pistol under his chin until his neck craned back. Hostage or human shield. Maybe both. Blinking away the stark white muzzle flash afterimage that still obscured her vision, Enda stared into the barrel of the AK-47—the darkness like a black hole, inexorable.
“Drop the fucking gun,” Kalashnikov yelled, voice quavering, weapon shaking in her grip.
Enda rested her P320 against her hostage’s side, aimed right at Kalashnikov’s belly. “Drop yours, or you’re gut-shot.”
“Drop the fucking gun,” she yelled again, voice straining higher.
Enda fired. Kalashnikov jolted backward with the shot and pulled the trigger—by accident or design, Enda couldn’t tell. Flat peal and chank—the weapon exploded in her grip, the deconstructed pieces falling away in slow motion as she stared at her mangled hand. She dropped to her knees. Blood seeped steadily from her stomach, but she hadn’t noticed, eyes still stuck to the slivers of bone jutting from where her fingers used to be.
“Are you going to behave?” Enda asked her hostage. He nodded once, and quickly lifted his chin away from the plastic barrel of the gun. “Good.”
She pulled the gun away then prodded him forward with her own weapon.
“She would have shot you,” Enda said. He was too stunned to reply. “Put pressure on the wound if you want her to live. If.”
Enda dropped the 3D-printed pistol to the ground and shot a round into the plastic gun, which broke apart into the brightly colored fragments of a child’s toy. Enda stepped over the splayed limbs of the sobbing, groaning, bleeding attackers sprawled on the ground as she entered the apartment.
When they saw her, Dax and Troy emerged from the kitchen, shell-shocked faces oddly pale.
Enda holstered her gun. “We need to go now,” she barked, her voice sounding distorted through the high whine of her ringing ears.
Dax nodded; Troy stared at his bullet-riddled apartment with his mouth ajar. Dax took him by the arm and pulled him toward the exit.
Enda walked through the doorway and leaned over the railing along the landing, scanned the stairwell for more gunners, but found it empty. “It’s clear,” she said.
Enda led them out of the apartment, and the two men stalled in horror at the injured gunners and all the spilled blood. Enda didn’t spare them another glance. Dax and Troy caught up to her, and they took the stairs quickly, Dax wincing, Enda with her pistol aimed low. They reached the ground floor without seeing another soul—gunfire tending to clear hallways and stairwells of
foot traffic.
Enda pushed open the door to the street. The constant hiss of rainfall was cut with the distant cry of police sirens. “That’s my car,” Enda said, pointing across the street. “We might get a little wet.”
The rush of water in the gutters had breached the cement curbs, spilling over the sidewalk. Enda splashed out into the road and led the others across to her car.
“Back seat,” Enda said. She unlocked it with a flash of orange lights, and they clambered into the back while Enda took the driver’s seat.
The engine came to life with a low rumble. At the sound of ignition, her Augmented vision blazed red and the words flood warning in effect scrolled across her eyes in tall bold letters.
“Perfect fucking timing,” she whispered as she brushed the warning away. She checked the clip in her P320—half-empty. She took it out and stashed it in the car’s center console.
“Sorry about before, with the wrench,” Dax said, staring at the gun. “I wouldn’t have hit you.”
Enda slammed a fresh magazine into the pistol and holstered it. She looked at Dax in the rearview mirror. “That’s the difference between you and me.”
Enda hit the accelerator and powered down the street with the windscreen wipers at full speed. Familiar roar of the boxer engine as the car reached sixty kilometers per hour, then seventy, then eighty, Enda working her way through the gears while wings of water spread out behind them.
Police cars raced toward the carnage, sparking flares of red and blue off every surface. The engine purred low as Enda dropped speed, braking gently in the wet. The sirens grew louder slowly, then the volume spiked and fell away as three police cars passed, chased by public and private ambulances.
Enda checked her mirrors again, turned east, and gunned the motor, blasting down three city blocks, heading for downtown. Brake lights shone bright ahead, traffic queued through an intersection guarded by flashing amber lights.
“Stop!” Dax yelled.
“Let her drive,” Troy said.
“It’s the AGI.”
Enda ignored him, pushed the accelerator further toward the floor, and veered left into the turning lane, shot past one car, two, three. An auto-car jolted into the lane and Enda slammed on the brakes, feeling the shudder of the anti-lock. She yanked the wheel left and they slid in the wet—all-wheel drive losing traction on the rain-drenched asphalt. The WRX stopped, inches from the auto-car, and the engine stalled. The intersection around them filled with traffic from all sides. Enda hammered the horn with her fist, joining the chorus of confused auto-cars failing to comprehend the chaos of flooded streets.
“Fuck,” Enda screamed. She glared into the rearview mirror, daring Dax to say “I told you so.” He didn’t. He wasn’t even looking at her; he and Troy stared out the side window.
“Dogs,” Dax said.
Enda saw a small pack of four-legged drones walking through gaps in the traffic.
“They’ve been hacked,” Dax said.
“How do you know?”
“Just trust me.”
Enda gritted her teeth and keyed the ignition. It whined, and the engine started with a rumble like a dinner bell to the dogs. They began to run, powerful legs throwing plumes of water with each bounding step.
Enda jammed her foot down and veered left into the empty oncoming lane. Revs spiked, quick step over the clutch and gas, climbing through the gears. Passengers stuck in law-abiding auto-cars watched them shoot past with a mix of irritation and jealousy.
“Stop!” Dax yelled again.
Enda hit the brake—the car shuddered, slowed, and a police dog bounded out of an alleyway with legs extended. The gold NSPD badge on its side had been scoured away—visible only as a darker shade of blue on the dog’s torso plate. It hit the ground and skidded, then turned to face them, headlights reflected in its wide black visual sensor.
It leaped onto the car with a clunk. The dog’s heavy steel paws dented the bonnet and the car rocked forward on its suspension with the weight of the machine.
“Fuck,” Enda yelled.
She stomped the accelerator, leaning left to see past the dog. The robot raised one paw and a small steel stud clicked out from between its claws. Its arm snapped forward and the windscreen cracked, but didn’t shatter.
“Fuck.” Enda fumbled the car into second. The dog pulled its arm back for another strike. Enda slammed the brake and the dog was catapulted off the bonnet by inertia.
It stood shakily, metal hip mangled in its collision with the road. Enda hit the accelerator again, winced at the crunch of her grill slamming into the dog, and grimaced as first the front wheels, then the rear rolled over the drone.
She checked her rearview mirror, saw the damaged mass of metal and silicon pick itself up from the asphalt, and cursed the machine for the guilt she felt at hitting it.
* * *
Soo-hyun’s palms itched, and a manic grin stretched across their mouth. Rain fell across the monitor like static, the dog’s-eye view distorted by the film of water over the lens.
They pushed the throttle forward and the dog began to run, the camera jolting with every stride of its mechanical legs. As it rushed past cars stopped and stalled in the rising floodwaters, tags appeared in the air, digital tails connected to the vehicles, dialogue boxes listing registration information for each vehicle and outstanding warrants for delinquent drivers.
On the other battle chair’s screen the pale yellow WRX rushed forward, water spraying from its wheels in wide arcs. It collided with the dog drone, and the screen froze, edges dancing with glitched squares of green and pink.
“Oh!” the crowd uttered in sympathy for the dead dog.
Then Red’s voice rose above the din: “It’s my turn.”
He took the other pilot by the shoulder, grabbed a handful of T-shirt, and pulled them from the seat. He sat down and stretched his back left then right, hands on the VR controls, fingers tapping buttons impatiently as the system connected to another dog in the nearby semiautonomous pack.
His screen came to life with a flash of static. The view through the dog’s camera was blurry in the wet, but Red drove the machine forward, chasing down the WRX with a wolfish grin and a gleam in his eye.
The workshop was thick with the smell of bodies, air damp with the torrential rain. Behind Soo-hyun voices chattered, people shifting and shuffling closer for a clear look at the screens.
The rain was a constant background hiss, coming both from the headphones that plugged Soo-hyun’s ears, and from outside. The water had swept across from the canal, washing away chairs, cooking pots, and other detritus, and shorting out solar batteries that sat on the ground beside light poles. Most of the commune’s residents had relocated to the school’s main structure, built on a slight elevation, but Kali’s inner circle and Red’s little army were packed tight into the workshop, risking the flood for a chance to play with the dogs.
The water continued to rise, creeping up the sides of the commune’s lower buildings, and climbing the steps to the workshop. They had half a step to go until the water flooded in beneath the door. Soo-hyun tried to put the power cables that crisscrossed the workshop out of their mind, and instead focus on the chase.
The WRX slid through the streets, the vehicle trapped within the square brackets of the dog’s targeting reticle but growing smaller.
Soo-hyun cursed under their breath and brought up the GPS-tagged map of the area. They selected two dogs three blocks ahead, and after a blur of pixels and the sharp spike of glitching audio, the battle chair made connection, the two machines slaved to one set of controls.
Their screen split down the middle, Soo-hyun charged the dogs forward at full throttle, glancing aside for the map of the streets, the WRX still tagged thanks to Red’s losing chase.
The two dogs were on opposite sides of the street, running in parallel on the empty sidewalks, racing past cars parked or abandoned.
The dogs’ views rocked wildly as they sprinted ahead, internals f
unctioning at the edge of potential, their two points on the map rushing for an intercept. They burst out of the side street. The left-most drone missed the car, rushed through its wake. The other dog slammed into the front quarter panel at full speed. The crunch of impact cracked through the headphones, and the connection cut as the robot died. Behind Soo-hyun the crowd cheered.
Soo-hyun wheeled the other dog around, watched the car slide sideways and slam into traffic, two wheels lifting out of the water before the vehicle crashed back down against the road, throwing a massive column of water into the air.
The white sphere of an exploded airbag filled the driver’s side window, and the woman at the wheel hit the airbag again and again to get it to deflate. Soo-hyun smiled and pushed the dog closer, skirting around to the other side of the car, climbing on a parked minivan for a better vantage.
The driver exited the vehicle and drew a pistol. Soo-hyun’s hands twitched at the controls, but they paused when the rear door opened. It was JD.
The noise of the crowd and the sound coming from the dog’s audio sensors faded as Soo-hyun stared. They dropped the controller into their lap.
“What is it, Soo-hyun?” Kali asked.
They hadn’t realized she was watching.
The controller clattered to the ground as Soo-hyun stood. They wandered away from the battle chair with Kali trailing, and went outside. They stood beneath the awning, hearing the hiss and splash from all around. They inhaled and smelled the sweet rot of garbage or sewer runoff somewhere in the rising waters.
“Soo-hyun,” Kali said.
“You never said we were chasing JD. I could have fucking killed him.”
Kali was silent for a moment. “I didn’t tell you because I thought you knew. This is more important than your brother, Soo-hyun. He has betrayed us. I won’t kill him, but I refuse to let him stand in the way of my plans.”
“I’m done,” Soo-hyun said.
“You don’t know what you’re saying.”
“I’m done.”
“I’ll give you time to think about this, but for now I have to go back inside. Why don’t you go to my building and wait?”
Repo Virtual Page 24
