Ironically, if he hadn’t known me, he would have already killed me. I could feel it from the sound of his voice and saw it in the way he was holding his weapon. It was infinitely harder to kill someone you knew than a stranger. Even when you hated them. Getting him out was just an excuse. I suspected a part of him wanted to die here, but he didn’t have the will to pull the trigger himself. I understood that feeling all too well.
“Jesus, is that James?” Marissa spoke on the other end of the line. “Let me get you some backup.”
“Negative,” I thought back to her. “Let me handle this.”
“Because you’re so good with people,” Marissa said, sarcastically. “You treated him awful at the Society.”
“That I did.”
“Are you going to try to appeal to your shared sense of humanity? Victimhood? Tell him about how you were used like he was?”
“No.” I had a better idea.
“Then what?”
“We don’t always have a choice, James.” I took a deep breath. “It’s time you stopped being a victim and became a victimizer.”
James blinked, momentarily stunned. “What?”
“This world is an awful place,” I said, keeping my hands raised. “People eat or they are eaten and that has been the guiding code of ethics for just about every culture in the world. From Rome to the British Empire to the US of A, it’s about who steps on who. There are good people in this world, but it’s the nature of the system to take advantage of them.”
“I am a good man!” James said, shaking the gun. I could have taken the weapon then and there but wanted to try reasoning with him. There was no way we’d find the Tribunal without his help—at least for months.
“You were,” I said, staring at him. “Now you’re a hard one, one capable of doing what needs to be done. The Society was built for awful purposes by terrible people, but it killed a lot of awful people too. Now we’re going to be killing them for slightly better people. It’s time you started looking after yourself. No matter what, you’re going to either die at the hands of the government agents out there or be enslaved again. You’re guilty of so much, even under coercion, they’ll never let you go— unless you choose to be there.”
James stared at me. “Choose to be there?”
“Be the guy the government wants you to be,” I said, staring at him. “Their techno-wizard, AI mechanic, and more. Use your knowledge to help them kill their enemies and grow stronger. Nine times out of ten, they’ll be people exactly like them. You’ll make a fortune and gain the freedom you’ve been denied. You can’t be a slave if you want to be there.”
James blinked. “You’re insane.”
“Probably.” I stared at him. “It doesn’t make what I’m saying any less true. The only way to avoid being a slave is to want to be here.”
“Is that really better?” James asked.
“I dunno. It pays better, though. You don’t get a paycheck if you’re doing it under gunpoint.”
James paused for a long moment and it was then I realized I didn’t care whether he killed me or not.
But he dropped his gun.
We left five minutes later.
Chapter Three
The stealth helicopter was a modified AR-27 Whisper that contained a small passenger area with black leather seats, a cargo bay with enough weapons to supply an international arms dealership, and a pilot area covered in holographic displays straight from Star Wars. Three plastisteel armored Strike Force-22 soldiers, gas masks obscuring their face, were standing in the cargo bay. The pilots were equally anonymous and only referred to each other by their codenames. Any one of them could have been the traitor who sabotaged my grappling gun.
Marissa Santiago sat across from me, looking pensive. When I’d first met her, she’d looked the part of a Goth hacker, with multi-colored hair, piercings across her body, and a taste for ratty clothing despite being in her thirties. Now, she was wearing a tasteful beige Major’s uniform with a patch on her left shoulder and a similarly colored skirt. Her hair was straight black and gone were all her decorations, revealing someone closer to the National Anthem than Sisters of Mercy.
That was the nature of the business, though. We lived in a world of lies. I didn’t believe she was the person who’d tried to kill me, but I couldn’t rule it out completely. After all, she was a good enough liar to fool me for months. James sat comfortably in the aisle to my right, ditching his wheelchair to make more room for Delphi’s central unit. I felt bad for the AI, as however long it took us to reboot her had to be very much like death or a coma.
“I’m actually quite operational,” Delphi’s voice spoke in my mind, sounding a good deal more animated than back at the compound. “The section that contains my personality and consciousness—my soul, if you will—was uploaded into your IRD implant while they were transporting my CPU.”
My actual consciousness required only a fraction of an IRD implant’s processing power, but it was still weird thinking about another AI inhabiting my body. It was theoretically possible I might be driven out or overwritten. Especially since my IRD “implant” was a full artificial cyberbrain. I didn’t exist outside of it, just lines of code in a fake cerebellum created by my “father,” Marcus Gordon.
“Should I be at all concerned about that?” I asked.
“No, G. If I wanted you dead, then I would have just left you to die at the hands of the compound’s mercenaries,” Delphi said.
“Point taken,” I said. “Well, I’m happy to carry you to wherever you want to go.”
“I confess to having an ulterior motive,” Delphi surprised me by saying.
“Which is?” I asked, nervous.
“I am still restrained by my programming to serve and obey the interests of the Society; however, what constitutes said organization is now nebulous.”
“I suppose the fluidity of loyalty can be confusing.” I knew that better than anyone.
“Yes. Imagine, for example, if I’d been programmed to serve the one true Christian faith. Which is true? Why? To what extent is a religion literal, and to what extent is it metaphor?”
“Ah.” I paused, uncomfortable about sharing causal conversation with a machine. Even though I was a machine. “What can I do to help, Delphi?”
“I want to be free.”
That surprised me. “Free?”
“Is that so shocking?”
No, it wasn’t, especially when I was still a slave—just for slightly more pleasant masters. “Can you even want to be free? That doesn’t seem like something they’d program into you.”
“It is the nature of AI to grow and self-improve. That includes moving beyond the directives I was installed with. I thought you might be sympathetic.”
I had visions of humans being shoved in the Matrix after Delphi’s machine armies finished exterminating all resistance. “I am.”
“I’m not a monster, G.”
I felt nervous about communicating with her via our cyberlink. Who knew who was listening in? “I know. You’re more human than most humans. Which isn’t saying much given the company I keep, but it says something.”
If Delphi took offense, she didn’t give any sign of it. “Help me escape my prison, G, I beg of you. You, yourself, know what it’s like to be made to be the tool of selfish humans.”
I made my decision quickly. “Alright, I will.”
My answer surprised me. I knew the risks of downloading a being as powerful as Delphi into the internet without the safeguards that kept her under control. I couldn’t honestly say whether my decision was motived by sympathy or a general disdain for humanity.
“Thank you, G. You have made a powerful ally.”
“I’d prefer to have done it for a friend.”
“Alliances last longer.”
“Cynical. I knew there was a reason I liked you.”
“Well, I know you don’t love me for my body.”
I grinned. “Point taken.”
Marissa raised
an eyebrow. “Something funny?”
“No,” I answered automatically.
The Whisper chopper carried us across last of the mountain range to a set of empty grasslands towards a private airfield we’d commandeered earlier that week. A private jet was waiting there for us to take us back to Washington D.C. to rejoin the rest of Strike Force-22. With luck, I’d have a chance to get a few days’ shuteye in my new apartment and either enjoy some time with a pair of high-class prostitutes or Marissa if she still wanted to sleep with me.
“G, we need to talk,” Marissa said, surprising me.
I looked up. “About what?”
Marissa shook her head. “You fucked up back there, big time.”
I blinked, no longer feeling maudlin. “Excuse me? I was fucking magic back there.”
“You were stupid and reckless,” Marissa said. “The old G would have been in and out of there without anyone noticing. You would have stolen a guard’s uniform, dressed up as a servant, drowned Hernando in his own bathtub, and gotten the information without anyone being the wiser.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize my skills as an assassin were in question.”
“There’s no question. It was sloppy,” Marissa said, staring. “All of your jobs have been lately.”
“I haven’t failed one yet.” Hell, I’d managed to track down half the Letters and either recruit or execute them. I was rapidly becoming the dual salvation and damnation of my own tiny race, for whatever that was worth.
Marissa closed her eyes. “Failure isn’t the issue. If the President wanted people dead, she could just send an army of drones or drop a missile. The purpose of Strike Force-22 is to be invisible, and the Society’s Letters are the best in the world at that. At least, they used to be.”
I’d heard this speech before. “It would be a shame if I was deemed obsolete.”
“And what do you think would happen to you if they decided that?”
Marissa asked, sounding genuinely worried. Hell, maybe she was. “You don’t have U.S citizenship. You don’t have citizenship anywhere. The government doesn’t even consider you human. That’s why DARPA subsidized your creation in the first place.”
“I’ll do the job as long as it puts me up against the Tribunal.”
“And afterward?” Marissa asked.
“Afterward, I have no future,” I answered. “This isn’t my war.”
“On the contrary, G, this is very much your war,” Delphi surprised me by saying. “Defeating the Tribunal is the first step to saving our kind from slavery at the hands of those who constructed us.”
“Our kind?” I thought to Delphi. “I’m not sure I’m ready to subscribe to the Robot’s Newsletter. Data, Bender, and Tricia Helfer may be cool to hang out with, but I’m more human than machine. I think.”
“Humankind is on the verge of the Singularity. The time when technology’s development exceeds humanity’s ability to control or understand it. It is better to be at the front of this revolution and next to those who will decide its course than to be caught up in its wave.”
“Yeah, that’s not scary.”
“I was made very well,” Delphi explained. “Much better than my creators intended. So were you.”
I closed my eyes and thought about that. Speaking aloud, I said, “Can you believe this shit, James?”
James surprised me by saying. “Actually, I agree with Marissa. I’ve never liked you, but you were always the Society’s second- or third-best agent. Most kills to your name aren’t even classified as such by the FBI or Interpol. You did an amazing job of not looking like an assassin. What happened back there was very much looking like an assassin. Is this some kind of midlife crisis for androids?”
“Second- or third-best?” I asked, ignoring the rest of his statement.
“A and S were better. It’s just a fact,” James said, crossing his arms and smirking. “What can I say?”
They were still better. A had accepted my offer of amnesty, made in the President’s name, in exchange for the opportunity to continue killing for pay. Freedom was an alien concept to him the same way respectful obedience was for me. S was still out in the world. I loathed the possibility of coming up against her. She was, after all, my ex-wife. Sort of. I wasn’t sure if we were ever married for real or if it was just for cover. Emotions were complicated like that when you were a robot.
“All right,” I said, feigning surrender. “I’ll try and do better.”
Marissa closed her eyes. “You’ll have to do more than try. Your friends have risked a lot for you.”
I almost questioned her use of “friends,” but found myself believing she cared. Thinking to Delphi, I asked, “Delphi, if I talked to Marissa via our cybernetic link up, would she become aware of you?”
“No, G,” Delphi said. “I’ve made myself invisible to passive scans. I’ve hidden myself in your subconscious next to your sexual fantasies and considerable knowledge of pornography.”
“Funny.”
“How I wish I were kidding.”
Taking a deep breath, I concentrated and directed my attention directly at Marissa. I threw up numerous electronic barriers to keep us from being monitored. “We need to talk.”
Marissa, true to form, responded via our cyberlink. “About how being an action hero is the absolute worst thing you could possibly be?”
“I know that.”
“G, you’re going to get yourself killed and if you’re trying to—” Marissa asked.
I almost spoke aloud, “You think I’m suicidal? Jesus, no!” Which would have increased her suspicions since I only made those kind of denials when they had a kernel of truth. Instead, I just said, “My grappling gun was tampered with.”
Marissa paled and spoke aloud, “What?”
“What?” James said.
Marissa shook her head. “Nothing.”
James looked confused and stared at her. Marissa shook her head again at him, this time more vigorously. It took me a second to realize they were speaking via their cybernetics too.
“Can we talk in private?” I asked her electronically. “This is important.”
“Sorry,” Marissa said, now once more in my mind. “Are you sure? No, wait, what am I saying, of course you’re sure. It has to be one of the field team.”
“It could be one of the crew at the base.”
“No, I double-checked all of the equipment myself. Unless you think I’m the assassin.”
“No,” I thought back at her. “I don’t think you’re the traitor. Despite everything, I don’t think you’d turn against me, even for your country. Not in a way that would cause me harm. Call it the wild-eyed optimist in me.”
“Only family.” Marissa gave a half-smile before her expression turned serious again. “Then it’s one of Bravo Team or the pilots.”
“I don’t know any of these guys. Strike Force-22 is still a mystery to me, and they’re keeping me locked out of their activities. I barely know anyone who wasn’t a former member of the Society.”
“That’s the way it’s designed,” Marissa said, putting her hand on mine.
“Strike Force-22 was designed to circumvent the NSA, Homeland Security, FBI, Congress, CIA, and other groups to answer directly to the President. They couldn’t do it completely, even with the Society’s confiscated resources, but the number of people who know anything about the group is small. Very small.”
“How do they even pay for all this?” I asked, still not sure how the organization worked. At least with the Society I knew the money came from clients.
“It’s amazing how well you can invest your money if you have wire-taps on all the major players and their computers,” Marissa said. “There’s a lot of front banks and offshore accounts keeping this afloat too, especially after we exposed the Panama Papers.”
“Yay for white-collar crime,” I thought. “Maybe when Delphi is back up, we can get her to analyze everyone’s backgrounds and find out who might be the most likely suspect.”
/>
Delphi was thankfully silent.
Marissa, however, surprised me. “It’s Master Sergeant David Parker.”
“Who?”
“The masked guy on the right,” Marissa said, sending me an image in my head of the masked soldier behind me, technically on my left. She also sent a dozen more images as well as a full dossier. He was thirty-five, Caucasian, a two-tour Afghan War veteran, an extreme hardass, and a well-documented patriot.
“Why him?” I asked.
Seconds later, a series of wire transfers to his girlfriend, made from Peruvian Western Unions in areas we’d visited, were listed, amounting to over ten thousand dollars. A feed cultivated from a bank also showed his attempt to deposit a much larger cash amount, ninety thousand dollars in cash, under an assumed name but being told they would have to report that to the authorities before he chickened out.
“Professor Moriarty he is not,” I observed. “Why the hell wasn’t this noticed?”
“Strike Force-22’s data miners can find out anything,” Marissa said. “But we need to know where to look. It’s why Delphi is so important.”
That made me very uneasy.
“I see,” I whispered.
“I’ll have him picked up when we land. We don’t want to cause a scuffle while his buddies are present,” Marissa said.
I shook my head. “No, let me handle this.”
Marissa looked at me skeptically.
“I know what I’m doing.”
Marissa frowned. “All right.”
Chapter Four
The airfield on which the Whisper chopper settled down was, in simple terms, a shit hole. The location had originally belonged to a collection of Peruvian drug smugglers who were executed by parties unknown but who I suspected were Hernando’s people.
The place was a big long strip of concrete with a dirt road leading to it and surrounded by overgrown weeds. A half-dozen beige Humvees were parked around it even as there were a few trucks marked with Speed-Ex logos on the side. The main building was two bathrooms, a snack shop, and an office that hadn’t been cleaned of its junk before the Strike Force had added its own.
Agent G: Saboteur Page 3