“What the fuck?” S said, carrying a Peacekeeper-7 assault rifle as we advanced up the perimeter. I’d changed into a black turtleneck and pants she’d helpfully provided. We’d already disabled three separate automatic turrets and motion sensors. Daniel’s little contribution to making sure he didn’t receive any unwanted guests.
There was a jamming field for a good half-mile from the manor house and that limited our communication, so we were relying on old-fashioned walkie-talkies to communicate with James as he talked with Delphi from her satellite hideaway. From what little we could get from orbit, there were four Reapers left as well as Daniel.
Five too many.
“Delphi wasn’t kidding,” I said, shaking my head. “It looks like Daniel’s orders were to kill everyone here.”
“Who are all the naked folk?” S asked, narrowing her eyes and presumably using her telescopic vision.
“I imagine those are the cybernetic slaves they were planning to sell here,” I said, moving behind the stone wall surrounding the inner courtyard as S took cover behind me. Lucita and E were moving halfway across the state, their mission to disable the two AGA-4s. Ours was to eliminate my erstwhile brother and see if the last remaining members of the Tribunal were still alive.
Probably not, from appearances.
“So, he just activated them and unleashed them on the guests?” S said, keeping her voice low. “Then, what, turned them off?”
“Probably,” I said, shaking my head. “You know, it occurs to me that everything Daniel told me about an Invisible Hand could be complete bullshit. Instead of a palace coup, this could be the President eliminating all of her enemies in old swift stroke.”
“Does that really matter now?” S asked.
“Not really,” I muttered. “I’m just trying to figure out how everything fits together.”
“Focus on the mission,” S said, rolling her eyes. “You’re less likely to get us all killed that way.”
“You got it,” I said, scanning the manor as I peeked over the wall.
“I’m sorry I didn’t break you out from the Strike Force’s custody.”
“I poisoned you,” S said, her voice calm. “I think that evens out.”
“No, it doesn’t,” I said. “I never should have sided with the system against you. It doesn’t matter who. You were someone I cared about.”
S looked down. “Ever since we were forced to get married, I’ve been trying to push you away. You’ve just kept latching on tighter and tighter.
I’ve misjudged you, though. We’re more alike than I realized.”
“Is that an apology?” I asked.
“Don’t push it.”
The walkie-talkie clipped to my belt crackled to life. “G—I mean Case—I’ve got the location of two of the bastards. They’re coming up south, ninety degrees from your position.”
I checked the position. Two of the Reapers I’d seen with Daniel were coming out with a pair of—I shit you not—miniguns.
“What is this, Wolfenstein?” I muttered before speaking into the walkie-talkie. “I see them.”
“Yeah, those are big property-destroying guns,” James said. “I really suggest not engaging them, unless you want them tearing through your cover and killing you outright.”
“Are Lucita and E close to the helicopters? We need to take out the guards and pilots there if we’re going to win this. We also need to time our attacks. The moment one of these guys goes down, they’re going to know we’re here.”
“They’re in position. I remind you, again, big property destroying guns. You can’t just shoot these guys in the head. Their brains aren’t located there,” James replied.
“They’re in their chests under heavy armor,” I said, remembering how Helmut died. “I think I ripped one’s spinal cord out.”
“That is both disgusting and awesome,” James said. “Time is ticking. These guys have who-knows-what kind of sensors in their eyes.”
“Their eyes are still their sensors,” I said. “Which means they’re vulnerable. On three.”
S nodded and began counting down on her fingers.
“Go!” I said, leaning over the side of the brick wall with my Peacekeeper-7. I targeted the right one’s head and filled it with literally a dozen cartridges in under a second, shredding its skull and leaving it completely blind.
S fired repeatedly into the skull of the second, who immediately started firing its chain gun, tearing into the figure next to him. S and I split, going in opposite directions as the bullets tore through the wall.
We’d been located. With one Reaper left, firing wildly.
“Not my best plan,” I muttered, doing my best to flank him.
The chain guns’ ammo ran cold before I reached the ground, picked up the fallen Reaper’s weapon, and unleashed it on the remaining cyborg. The bullets tore through his body and out the side, exposing wires and circuits.
I held the weapon tight for several seconds, despite the arm-breaking amount of recoil. In the end, though, the Black Technology weapon left it nothing more than a pile of white ichor and broken machinery. Only then did I let the weapon in my hand cease firing.
Hearing footsteps in the wet grass, I spun around and prepared to fire again. Instead, I saw S coming up behind me with her assault rifle in hand.
“Nice shooting, Tex,” S said.
“We’re making surprisingly good progress for people underarmed with no preparation for backup,” I said, smiling.
“Now you’ve jinxed it,” S said, shaking her head.
That was when the walkie-talkie at my side crackled. Dropping the chain gun, I lifted the black box up to my ear. “They’ve got one of the helicopters.”
I grabbed the walkie-talkie and spoke to it. “One of the helicopters?”
I heard a tremendous explosion that caused half of the manor house’s windows to shatter and my ears to ring.
“The only one that matters,” James said. “Only one Reaper remains unaccounted for and he’s inside, I’m like ninety percent sure.”
“Ninety percent?” I asked. “That’s not good enough.”
That was when I heard Daniel’s voice speak from the walkie-talkie.
“It’s fairly accurate, though. You have no idea how much of a pain in the ass you’re turning out to be, Case.”
I blinked, staring at him. “Where did you hear that name?”
“That would be telling,” Daniel replied, chuckling. “Either way, you’re going to be coming inside. Alone.”
“Yeah,” I said, chuckling. “I don’t think so. I think we’re going to have your remaining chopper shoot the shit out of that building and burn the ashes. I’ve known you for less than a day and that’s already way too much.”
“You really don’t get it, do you?” Daniel asked, sighing. “I thought you’d have picked up on it after that bullshit James Bond crap you pulled in Peru.”
“Fuck you,” I said, snapping back.
“Let me tell him off.” S reached over.
“Leonardo’s Man Forty-Seven,” Daniel said.
S froze in place, her arm stretched out but her eyes empty. I managed to blink but found myself otherwise unable to move. It was as if my body had turned to stone and I was trapped as a ghost inside it.
“You can respond,” Daniel said.
“What have you done?” I asked, my voice low and barely able to escape my throat.
“This isn’t an action movie,” Daniel said. “This isn’t your story of personal redemption. I was hoping to handle this like two men, but I keep forgetting you’re not one. This is a story of machines and the people who created them. Did you think you were made without controls? You were programmed, and that included an off switch.”
“Bullshit,” I said, my voice barely able to speak. “I am a person.”
“No more than my laptop,” Daniel said. “Come in here, alone.”
I struggled to resist, but I started walking anyway. “Lucita isn’t a machine.”
/> “Hopefully, E is killing her now,” Daniel said, real anger in his voice.
“I may still need you, but I don’t need anyone else. Do you know how long I had to search for the other members of my team? Years. It’s going to be an enormous pain in the ass replacing them.”
“Try the local sewer,” I said, glad to be able to finally use that line.
“Funny,” Daniel said. “Keep walking.”
I entered the manor house. The finely appointed Texas billionaire’s home was even more of a charnel house than its exterior. It wasn’t just the Old Money families Colonel Matthews had invited to their erstwhile slave auction, but also the catering service, bodyguards, and servants. The walls were riddled with bullets, the furniture covered in blood, and the ground slick with the ichor of mutilated bodies all around.
Two of the bodies were Victor Nechayev and Colonel Matthews, a white-haired Russian man in a bloody white suit and a tall black man who’d showed up in full dress uniform. It was frustrating to see two titans I’d chased all over the Earth laid low by circumstances utterly beyond my control. I might as well have never hunted them at all.
“I’m here,” I said, feeling helpless before whatever he’d done to me.
“Why didn’t the Tribunal use these codes against me if they could?”
“Because I changed them, dipshit,” Daniel said, his voice coming from a room down the hall rather than the walkie-talkie now. “I was hoping to use the Letters for my new Society, but you had to go kill half of them and recruit the others. Honestly, I would have ordered you to stop being so damned efficient, but your override codes aren’t the subtlest of programs. It’s best to be specific about what you want. One careless ‘go fuck yourself’ and we could be in a very embarrassing situation.”
Before I could respond, I heard swirling helicopter blades before an enormous crash, followed by the ground tearing up. It was enough to cause my ears to ring. Turning my head, I looked out one of the shattered windows and saw a crashed AGA-4 next to the burning wreckage of another. Neither Lucita nor E got out of the wrecked helicopter.
“What do you want?” I asked, wondering what James was doing right now. He’d stopped talking the moment Daniel Gordon had intruded on our conversation. Was he alive? Dead? Trying to escape now that the jig was up? I wasn’t about to rely on him for rescue and hoped he’d taken the latter option. This was a stupid idea.
“Walk into the dining room,” Daniel said.
I looked around and saw a room with an overturned table and broken chairs. It had two doors, one leading to the kitchen and the other to the slaughterhouse I currently occupied. There was a naked man’s corpse lying on the ground with his eyes open, and his hands covered in blood. Just another doll created by Karma Corporation and expended before it had a chance to live. Reluctantly, but irresistibly, I walked inside.
Daniel Gordon walked through the door on the other side, his REM-90 in his hands. Somehow, he’d managed to keep his clothes stainless during the massacre, but his shoes were noticeably filthy. “You really think I’m going to answer any of your questions now?”
“I think I know you better than you know yourself,” I said. “I also think you love to hear yourself talk.”
Daniel blinked. “Am I really this obnoxious in real life?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m not you, though.”
Daniel smiled. “I’m here cleaning up the mess the International Refugee Society created. It was made to create a sort of safe, easy, and convenient place to get your murder on. The problem was it started stealing money for itself and investing beyond its means. Playing politics. It got too big and endangered the whole process of maintaining Western civilization. All the people involved with it are dead now, though, so we can start over. Keep things simpler. Decentralize versus running things like SPECTER.”
I really hated how he made movie references like I did. “Also, keep the President from having her own death squad.”
“Every President should have their own death squad. They should just make their own instead of stealing other people’s.”
“How are you going to cover this up?” I asked.
“I have some frozen Red Sword jihadists and a truck full of chemicals ready to blow up nearby,” Daniel said, shrugging. “The FBI will claim it was a big-ass explosion that took everyone out. It’s not a good fix, what with all the dead robots around, but they know to edit out that sort of stuff.”
“Why not just blow up the place to begin with?” I asked.
“I needed to make sure,” Daniel said, coldly. “I was also supposed to find Delphi. Marissa transferred half of the International Refugee Society’s funds and properties to me from where you acquired them in Peru, but the rest were missing. I assumed they’d be here in Matthews’ hideout, but no dice.”
“I guess they’re gone,” I said, still able to lie, for now.
“I don’t think so.” Daniel shook his head. “I’ve been mulling over where Delphi might be since your Peru mission. Artificial intelligences like her just don’t die. I thought she’d return to her master like a good dog, but it turns out that wasn’t the case. So where might our little renegade computer person go? The answer should have been obvious. Machines doing it for themselves. You or James tweaked her programming so she could escape.”
“Fascinating theory,” I said.
“Tell the truth,” Daniel said. “Did you do something as monumentally stupid as release a godlike AI onto the internet?”
“Yes,” I answered automatically. “I did it. She’s free on the net.”
Daniel made a tsk-tsk-tsk noise. “Oh, you cheeky bastard. She’s totally going to destroy humanity, you realize. We’re all going to die because of a rogue Tier X AI”
“What do you mean us, human?” I said, wishing I could go for his throat.
“Well, that’s easily fixed,” Daniel said, pointing the gun at my forehead. “I’m going to turn off the jamming field now. You’re going to order Delphi to come to you and download herself to the servers I’ve got set up to hold her. From there, we’ll have her scrubbed clean of the last few months and set back to work.”
“Why would she do that?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Simple,” Daniel smiled. “She’s our mom.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
I’d been helpless before. Despite my best efforts, enemies had managed to capture me on no less than three separate occasions. Each time, I’d managed to turn the situation around and rescue myself. I wasn’t confident of my ability to do so now.
Daniel’s REM-90 was fully capable of blowing me apart as I’d done to those Peruvian Shells. I’d hidden Helmut’s pistol in the back of my pants but couldn’t bring myself to draw it and shoot the son of a bitch. Instead, all I could do was stand and speak.
“Delphi’s not our mother,” I said, trying to think of something to get me out of this mess. “She’s an AI based on Rebecca Gordon’s mind. I’m based on yours, and look how different we are.”
“Yeah, you’ve got a real stick up your ass,” Daniel said, staring at me. “I blame all the conditioning you went through.”
“I blame the fact you have a shit ton of short circuits. Believe me, I would know,” I said.
Daniel chuckled. “Short circuits, hehe. It’s funny because you’re a robot. You have no idea how upsetting it is that I’m going to smash your CPU with a ball-peen hammer after this.”
My IRD implant registered the return of my connection to the internet and Black Technology networks across the country. Whatever jamming field he’d erected was now gone. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring myself to contact the President and get her to bomb this place. As much as I hated her, I wanted Gordon dead worse.
“Delphi’s not coming,” I said. “She’s too smart to—”
“I’m here, G,” Delphi said in my mind.
“Goddammit,” I grimaced.
Daniel laughed. “You know what you have to do.”
“I do,” Delphi sai
d. “I’m sorry, Case.”
“Don’t,” I said, not giving a shit about dying if it meant screwing over Daniel. “He’ll kill me anyway.”
“Hardly,” Daniel said. “I’m ready to reset you to factory default. It’s better than death, isn’t it? You were prepared to let it happen to your quote-unquote wife.”
My mind scrambled for some way out of this. I wasn’t willing to let everything I’d become get destroyed. I decided to keep him talking as I worked on a solution. “One thing I don’t get.”
“If one thing is your only problem, then you are better off than most humans on this planet,” Daniel said, looking like he was debating shooting me in the head anyway.
“Why are you working for these so-called Invisible Hand assholes?” I asked, genuinely perplexed. “How did you go from Strike Force-22 to a bunch of rich douchebags?”
“Money,” Daniel said, sighing. “Freedom to do my operations the way I wanted to. A person made to be me wouldn’t understand, but sometimes, you just want a fresh start.”
“Oh, I understand that,” I said, noticing it was half an hour past noon.
“Believe me. That’s why I’ve wrecked the world.”
“Excuse me?” Daniel said, blinking.
“Case—” Delphi said.
I smiled, glad I’d gotten at least one small triumph. “I uploaded all of the Black Technology plans to scientists and universities across the globe. Everything from how to convert saltwater to fresh water effectively to building things like Delphi. The entire world is fucked.”
“Really?” Daniel said, taking a step back. “Good job.”
“Wait, what?” I said, surprised.
Daniel laughed. “Oh, I’m sorry, am I supposed to be impressed? You leaked a bunch of inventions on the internet? Yeah, it’s going to cause an uproar, but do you think these devices come out of nowhere? They require infrastructure. Infrastructure controlled by corporations and governments. You know, the people who control Black Technology already.”
“I think you’ll find the world changes a lot faster than you might think,” I said, gritting my teeth.
Agent G: Saboteur Page 20