Russell's Attic, Books 1 - 3

by SL Huang

  The sound was muffled and dull, buried by metal, and the bullet didn’t exit. Sloan didn’t collapse immediately—he stumbled for a minute like a malfunctioning doll, his hand still holding the gun frozen at his temple and his jaw working, strange sounds coming out of his mouth that only vaguely approximated speech. Then he twitched, stopped, and toppled over like a felled tree.

  I jumped down and pried the Glock out of his fingers. So that was how you killed them. As easy as with humans.

  “Grant,” I said, turning. “Call the paramedics—”

  Imogene Grant was slumped at the base of the wall, her chest soaked with red, bubbles of blood forming on her mouth.

  She’d been shot once already before I entered the room. I hadn’t noticed.

  I dashed over, dropping the pistols, pressing the heels of my hands down hard over the swamp of blood. The wound sucked against my palms. I got my jacket off and wadded it against her, my mind automatically calculating blood volume and loss—

  Fuck the math, I thought, and pawed at her clothes one-handed for a cell phone that hadn’t been crushed by bullet impacts. Medical science had come a long way; maybe they could put enough blood back in her body—

  Grant clutched at my wrist. “Our fault,” she whispered.

  “Shut up,” I said, twisting out of her weak grasp and pressing both hands back down on her chest as I scanned the room. Her mobile wasn’t in her pockets—a purse, maybe? Or did one of the scientists have a phone? My gaze raked across them; they were all far too still for the paramedics to help. Jesus…

  “No,” said Grant. “Listen…we started it. We stole from them first. I didn’t think…lead to this…”

  “Wait. Funaki?”

  Her eyes tried to focus, begging me to understand her last confession.

  Holy crap. The impossible NLP. It had to have come from Funaki Industries’ research—been one of their corporate secrets. An industrial espionage war that went back decades, Harrington had said. How much more had Arkacite stolen to built their ’bots? How many of the breakthroughs were really Funaki’s?

  “You aren’t responsible for this,” I said. “Funaki didn’t send this guy against you, all right? Someone else stole him from them.”

  “Stole…?” she breathed.

  She hadn’t even known he was one of the ’bots. She’d thought he was the guy on TV railing against AIs thanks to the ones Ally Eight had built, thought he had come to put his words into violent action.

  It was too much to try to explain. “I’m going to move for a minute and find a cell phone,” I said. “Hang on.”

  “Wait,” she said. “They…they took him…”

  “Yes, he’s a robot and someone stole him. Now stop talking.”

  I gingerly took my hands off her and scooted over to the nearest body—an Asian man, his glasses askew where he’d fallen face down and blood soaking the carpet around him. I pulled at his pockets—there, a phone, finally.

  I lurched back to Grant, pressing down again on her wound as I brought the smartphone to life with my other hand—

  She was still, her eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling.

  I stayed frozen for several long, long seconds. Then I released my blood-soaked jacket slowly, rocked back on my heels, and dropped the phone.

  This was my fault. If I hadn’t spent so long talking down Sloan, if I’d gotten to her sooner, Grant might still be alive. I’d known there were potentially injured people behind me. I should have shot Morrison Sloan in the head and been done with it.

  Mechanically, I stood up and took my blood-soaked jacket with me. I wiped off the cell phone and tossed it back to its owner, then picked up my gun and returned Sloan’s to his hand. The police would find some forensic anomalies here, but they’d probably be more concerned with the fact that they had a robot murderer.

  I pushed open the door of the conference room and made my way to the front of the building to look down out the window. The crowd outside was surging against the police line, the security forces breaking.

  The mob would get in to find their job already done for them.

  I took the stairs back down to the ground floor and got out the way I’d come in, stopping in a washroom to do a quick scrub job on my hands—it wouldn’t do to walk outside looking like someone who had just killed the seven people inside. My jacket was a lost cause, but I swathed it in paper towels to carry out with me. I’d look weird, but not like a murderer.

  Once I got back to my hole in the wall and climbed out through the rubble, I circled around to the front, skirting the fringes of the crowd and looking for a car to steal. Pushing, protesting, shouting people shoved by me. I fought my way out to a side street, away from the crowd.

  I was walking in a daze, not paying attention, and by all rights I should have died in that moment.

  Instead, some small part of the back of my brain that was still alert heard the rifle report.

  Some small part of the back of my brain heard the rifle report and realized the bullet hadn’t beaten it.

  Some part of my brain that was way too good at what it did to be even close to normal heard the rifle report, realized the bullet hadn’t beaten it, thought “subsonic round,” and still had time to react.

  Before the rest of my brain had parsed what was going on, my body was twisting and dropping. Something kicked me in the arm as I went down, hard, knocking the wind out of me even though it was my arm, it wasn’t—

  And then the pain hit.

  Fortunately, I was moving before it had registered, and in a blind haze I continued my roll underneath the nearest car, putting the engine block between me and the direct line to where the muffled sound of a subsonic rifle round had emanated from.

  Oh God. Oh God.

  I struggled to breathe and not pass out, the acrid odor of engine oil clogging my senses, the pavement under my back digging into my spine. My entire right arm was an explosion of agony; the hyperawareness that usually helped me with injuries quailed away from it—I forced my senses through—

  The round had shattered my right humerus, bullet lodged against the bone, oh God, it hurt—

  Fuck, I hated being shot.

  I pawed around with my left hand and found my paper-towel-bundled jacket; I smashed the whole massive ball against the entry wound and black spots immediately danced in my vision. I managed to undo my belt one-handed and get it up around my chest, binding the arm to my side with the paper-towel-and-fabric blob smashed against it like a protruding tumor.

  The bundle was becoming heavy and wet, my blood adding to Grant’s.

  I couldn’t stay here. I scooted to the other end of the car, steadied my breathing, and did some math.

  Vectors. This was easy. I knew exactly where the sniper had been. I slipped out the other end of the car so that if he had stayed, waiting for me to pop up again, not a hint of my silhouette would inch into his line of sight. I crept to the next car, biting my lip against the pain and breathing deeply. If he’d stayed put, he wouldn’t see me. If he’d stayed put…

  I snuck all the way around, a laborious ten minutes of inching and crawling and scooting and running—maybe he thought he’d killed me; would he go down and check? Maybe he’d taken one shot and then rabbited, worried someone had heard him, or that I could come back and track him…

  Which is exactly what I was doing.

  The apartment building was a few doors away. I wondered what he’d done to the tenants in the flat he’d chosen for his nest. Killed them? Tied them up? Made sure they were out of the house?

  I was about to find out.

  I took the stairs, the pain in my arm dragging at me as I pounded up the flights. The bullet trajectory sped backward, upward, telling me exactly which apartment, which room. I stumbled to the right door and smashed my heel into it next to the jamb, splintering the lock, exploding the door open, my gun in my left hand. My right arm dangled uselessly below the elbow from where it was buckled to my side.

  A tall, gray-hair
ed man in black whipped around from where he’d been staring through his scope out the open window. A white guy, middle-aged—probably in his fifties, though he was handsome in a grizzled sort of way, and his build was still fit and athletic, hardened sinews standing out under his tanned skin.

  His hawk-like gaze took in the handgun I already had aimed at him, and he slowly raised his hands.

  “Hi,” I said, kicking the door shut behind me, where it banged against the broken jamb.

  The sniper said nothing.

  “I’m in a really bad mood,” I said. “And you just shot me.”

  His eyes strayed to the bloody mass of towels strapped to my arm.

  “I’m very hard to kill, as you can see,” I said. A shiver crawled down my spine as I said it. If he’d been using a standard rifle round, I’d be dead. He must have chosen subsonic out of a noise concern—his rifle sported a large, heavy suppressor as well.

  Fuck. He’d been so close.

  “Who sent you?” I said.

  He said nothing.

  “There are a bunch of people making my life difficult right now,” I said. “So I’d appreciate a little clarity. I’m in a lot of pain, and I’m not at all opposed to putting you in the same state. So answer. My. Fucking. Question. Who sent you?”

  He still didn’t answer.

  I didn’t need him to. Despite what I’d said, I already knew who he worked for. The robot at Arkacite hadn’t given any sign of knowing who I was, and nobody else involved would have escalated to killing, especially not with a human sniper. (A robot would make an excellent sniper, I thought. The math…the patience…oh, fuck.)

  The muscles in my legs twitched and shook. I needed to get off my feet. I needed to take care of the bleeding hole in my arm. I needed to go somewhere I could sit down and swallow an entire bottle of prescription painkillers. “Tell Mama Lorenzo she’ll have to try a lot harder than that,” I said shortly. “Now step forward and put your hands on your head.”

  He blinked.

  “No, I’m not going to kill you.” I should, I thought. He’d done his damnedest to kill me, and how many expert snipers could Mama Lorenzo have on speed dial?

  But fucking Arthur had gotten into my fucking head, and I’d just let seven other people die on my watch, plus possibly Noah Warren, and the Japanese scientists and a whole mess of robots who weren’t technically alive but still…and for some reason the decision to take one more life…

  If I let him live, maybe it was all right if I didn’t reset my count. Maybe it was these choices that mattered. I didn’t fucking know.

  I searched him and pulled off his sidearm, a sleek little high-quality Browning, and made him tie himself up with a cord from the curtains before I put down my gun and reinforced his job one-handed with some duct tape I found in his sniper bag. Then I looked down at the street to make sure no one was walking underneath and tipped his rifle out the window.

  Gravity sucked it down and shattered it against the sidewalk. Satisfying. More satisfying if I’d been able to steal it—it was a nice rifle—but a girl can’t have everything.

  “Did you kill the people who live here?” I asked. I wondered how long he’d been waiting here, patiently. The Mob had clearly realized I kept returning to Arkacite, set up shop for when I inevitably came back…“If you didn’t kill them, maybe I just leave you,” I offered. “Maybe I don’t call the cops.”

  He didn’t say anything. It was becoming irritating.

  “Mama Lorenzo doesn’t like innocent people getting hurt,” I said. At least, I’d thought she didn’t. I thought of Tegan and Reese and Cheryl.

  My would-be killer still stayed silent, and I gave up. Someone had probably noticed the falling rifle by now anyway and called the police. Heck, the cops were all next door at Arkacite; it shouldn’t take them long.

  I picked up the landline, dialed 911, and left it off the hook. Then I let myself out of the apartment.

  I had to brace my hand against the wall as I made my way down the stairs. The blood loss was making me dizzy.

  Chapter 28

  I leaned back against the wall at Miri’s place and dug into my arm with a sterilized pair of tweezers from her medicine cabinet, biting down on a towel and trying not to pass out, and tuning out Arthur as he railed at me.

  “Goddammit, will you please stop and let me call you a doctor!”

  “Nnnn,” I said through the towel. The bullet outlined itself in my mind, nestled against the bone. HolyJesusChristfuck.

  “Russell, I’m telling you, you ain’t supposed to try to get it out. You gonna hurt yourself worse. You listening?”

  I eased the tweezers through my flesh and up against the slug. I anchored them, considered the lack of friction, and tightened my grip. With one quick tug the bullet was out—

  —a new wave of pain slammed into me as I yanked; my throat closed and bucked and I almost threw up into the towel.

  “Hey. Hey. Russell.” Arthur was crouched next to me, touching my face. “Hey.”

  I spat out the towel. My face was cold with sweat. “Find me something to splint this thing with.”

  “Russell, please. You might need surgery. And if it gets infected—”

  “I’ll see your doctor when all this is over,” I said. “Now find me something to splint it with, for fuck’s sake.” The words came out weaker than I wanted them to.

  When I’d practically fallen through Miri’s door covered in blood, Pilar had whisked Liliana—who’d been cheerfully conscious again—into the bedroom, covering her eyes. She’d popped back out to make sure I wasn’t dying and there wasn’t anything she could do, and then gone back to babysitting.

  Rayal was sitting in the corner, her face in her hands. She hadn’t taken the murder of her entire team well.

  Checker came back out of the kitchen with a bowl of warm water, more towels, and another first-aid kit. “Here—I’m going to go check the closets; she’s got to have something better than Neosporin—”

  I grunted. I didn’t know why I hadn’t gone back to one of my bolt holes. I had better medical supplies in all of them than Miri probably had in her whole apartment, but I’d jacked a car and driven here automatically, my mind in a fugue state. Probably from the blood loss.

  “Least let me help you,” begged Arthur.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Good. I have to set it.”

  “Set it?”

  “Yeah.” It was why I’d dug out the bullet—my physical hyperawareness had revealed how it sat exactly where I needed the stupid bone to go. I’d do a crappier job setting the break than a doctor would, probably, but math was useful for all sorts of things. “You want to help? Brace me.”

  “I ain’t think this is a good idea, Russell—”

  “Help me or fuck off.” I’m eloquent when I’m in pain.

  Arthur reluctantly did as I bid him, holding down my shoulders and anchoring my upper body against the wall. I grabbed above my right elbow with my left hand, did the calculations, closed my eyes, and braced myself. Two choices: slow and steady or fast and over with, and the math was the same either way.

  I yanked.

  I’d forgotten to bite down on something again. Checker and Pilar both rushed back into the room afraid I was dying.

  I slumped against the wall, waiting for the world to stop distorting itself, and waved them off with my good hand, though even those muscles didn’t seem to be working well. My whole body throbbed, as if my nervous system had given up containing the searing mangle to my right arm. Everything felt raw and red and horrible, and I’d already taken as many of Miri’s over-the-counter painkillers as I dared.

  Arthur moved against me, dressing the wound and splinting my arm. Checker had piled as many medical supplies as he could find next to us, which didn’t include much better options than gauze, ace bandages, a couple rudimentary first-aid kits, and some strong-smelling herbal balms Miri apparently swore by.

  “Are you going to tell us what happened now?” came Checker’s voice,
his worry pecking at my consciousness. I’d given them the basic rundown of events when I’d come in, but not the details. I hadn’t told them about the sniper.

  “I got shot,” I said.

  “Cas!” cried Checker.

  I got lucky, I didn’t say.

  I pushed my brain into working. “We have to find out who’s moving the chess pieces.” Chess. That was a pretty high-brow metaphor for me. I was proud of myself. “Ally Eight stole the tech, but then someone else stole the robots, and they’re using ’em as weapons. Who?” Robots as killing machines. I wondered if Liliana could be reprogrammed that way. I didn’t want to think about it.

  “This is bad,” said Checker. “This is really, really, really, really bad.”

  “I know it’s bad,” I said. “I’ve been shot.”

  “No, I mean—well, yes, of course it’s bad that you got shot, but I mean the whole someone-using-androids-as-weapons thing. This is really bad. The mob rioting we’ve seen so far is nothing; now people are going to flip out—the government will be shutting down all AI research everywhere, just you wait, and every roboticist alive is suddenly going to be suspect; it’ll be a witch hunt—”

  “I think we have bigger problems right now,” I said. The words were only a little slurred. I needed more pain meds.

  “Bigger problems?” exclaimed Checker. “Bigger problems? All of AI is going to be a scapegoat for this! It’ll set research back fifty years! People are going to think robotics is—is dangerous!”

  “Seems pretty dangerous to me,” said Arthur darkly.

  “Yes, an extremely limited anthropomorphic robot is any sort of threat when we have Predator drones—”

  “One thing being dangerous don’t mean they both ain’t,” said Arthur. He was threading a cutout piece of bed sheet around my arm to make a sling—gently, but every touch stabbed—and his tone was hooded.

  Checker didn’t seem to notice. “But you’re talking about a threat of computerized violence! My point is that we already have ridiculously deadly robots! The ones like Liliana are barely more than—barely more than toasters in comparison. In terms of violence, I mean; obviously the natural language processing’s better than a toaster—”