by Damien Boyes
That’s Cole? He doesn’t look so good.
The revelation that the asshole blackmailing me is slowly dying, distracts me, and I nearly miss the bullet slicing at my temple.
My only warning is a slight change in air pressure on my skin. The sound of the shot comes next but by then I’m already dropping, ducking my head just enough the bullet splinters bark where my head had been. The bot had been hiding, immobile. Maybe running some kind of heat sink to mask its temperature signature. But its armgun is still warm from the shot. Lit up like a false-colour sun in my spekz.
It’s hard, but in the fraction of a second it takes for me to reach the ground I’m able keep my arm still enough to put four out of five bullets into the bot. I hear one ping off the house’s corrugated sheetmetal and puff off somewhere into the dirt, but four is enough—two in the head and two in the unarmoured space under the arm.
It slams back against the house as I hit the ground and before the bot can straighten I’ve rolled, fixed my aim and emptied the clip up and down its head and torso. It staggers back, bounces off the metal siding, falls forward into the dirt, and doesn’t get up.
I stay low for a moment. Waiting. Listening. Trying not to think about the half-second difference between life and death I’d just slipped though.
There could be more bots—though four was more that I was expecting.
The house is quiet. The gunshots have silenced the woods.
Nothing moves.
I reload and rise to a crouch.
A bird chirps somewhere.
A small animal scurries.
Cottonwood leaves clap in the breeze.
The mountain air is fresh and cool in my lungs, soothes my throat as I inhale.
No more bots. Other than inside, where the medbots are attending to Cole more insistently now, like they’re preparing to move him.
Cole’s scared.
I raise the rifle to blow out the windows and as I fire a security curtain snaps down around the house, drops out from the rooftop overhang to lock into a concrete ring anchored in the dirt and encases the house in a wall of armour. I hear the bullets ricochet off into the woods.
Shit. I didn’t see that coming. Cole’s locked me out. Now what?
The house is in panic mode. He’ll be able to survive in there for weeks probably. Longer than I will out here.
“You dishonest fucker,” xY says, his voice a projected sneer in the darkness. “You dusted Eka’s drive, didn’t you? No other way you could find me.”
I don’t answer, work back around the house and check to make sure the bots stay down. None of them are moving but I empty another clip making sure.
“I see you out there,” xY says, his attitude slipping. “My security team is on its way. More than you can handle, even with the Revv—you’re running Eka’s new version, aren’t you? Stole it from Xiao’s courier? Yeah, I know about that. You must be hearing my voice like I’m a whale.” He howls his version of whalesong and I have to throttle back the Revv to near realtime to avoid the endless warbling hum of his voice. He keeps at it for a while, sings his way through a whole whale chorus before he gives up and returns to his yammering. “You think shutting down the link would protect you? You think that’s my only connection to the world? You’re an idiot. If you run now, maybe they don’t shoot to kill when they get here.”
No one’s coming. If there were, he wouldn’t be warning me. He spent a mint on those bots, enough to satisfy even his paranoia. He thought he was invincible up here. There’s no security on the way. We’re in gun country, the shots won’t be any cause for alarm.
I still need to figure a way in to him though. How am I going to get through that security curtain?
“You have like thirty seconds,” he warns. “Can you hear the sirens? I think I can hear them. Better get a move on, they can shoot you before they see you.”
Neither of us are going anywhere.
I came here with a job to do, and I’m just getting started.
***
[19:21:18. Friday, May 10, 2058]
First, I have to get through the security curtain. I still have a doorbuster left, plenty of ammo. My only obstacle is time. A utilibot will be on the way to repair the link relays. I need through that curtain before it gets the connection restored and Cole can call for help.
I figure the garage is the best place to find inspiration—it’s also the only place, unless I go find a hardware store. The garage door lock is on the cheap side and a burst of fire and a sharp kick later it’s open.
“Hey, that’s my garage,” Cole scolds over the speakers. “My private effects, you stay the fuck out.”
“Call a cop,” I mutter, and the lights rise as I enter.
“You’re pissed,” he says, his voice inside with me now. “I get that. I’m standing between you and your revenge, but think about it this way—without me, you’ve got nothing. Even if no help is coming yet, the link will be back up way before you get through my security. The second I’m up live, I’m sending a message to the world, telling everyone exactly who you are. I figure you have two hours before the repairs are finished. You want to waste that time trying to get at me, or you want to get your revenge on Eka before your Service buddies come for you?”
Now he’s given me no choice. It’s him or me.
“Let me in and we can figure all this out,” I say as I catalogue the contents of his garage. It’s a good size, five meters square with a long rolling door, a cargo AV parked on a wide pad and a raised storage loft above it all. A neat workbench stretches under the loft, well stocked with tools that don’t look like they’ve ever been used. A chainsaw. Axes. Nothing that’ll get through the security curtain in a hurry.
I walk past the AV’s bulbous black cab to a tall white cupboard at the far side of the garage and find what I’m looking for there. I grab a stack of folded rags and a bottle of paint-thinner, drop then on the workbench, find a hacksaw hanging in the wall and put it next to the rags. Around the back of the AV I grab a road flare from the emergency pack, gather up the rest of the materials and carry the pile out to the yard. I’m not getting through that security curtain without anything this side of a thermic lance, but I don’t need to get through it. I just need to get it open.
“Is this how you want it to end?” Cole says. “By smashing yourself against house until my team does come? You may be angry now—and I get it, I do. I’d react the same way if someone wanted to force their way into my head—but this gives us both what we want. It’s not ideal for either of us, but neither of us can kill Eka by ourselves. You never would have found him if it weren’t for me. You may not want to admit it, but we did this together.”
“The second I let you into my head,” I say as I cross his yard. “I’ll never get it back.”
He’s silent for a moment, probably wondering what I’m up to with the stuff from the garage, then says, “You’re fucking this up for both of us, you understand. I’m snuggled up inside here cozy as stink on shit. It’d take a team of engineers to cut their way through to me. I’m good for weeks. Did you even bring a bottle of water?”
He’s right, I can’t get in to him. But the one trouble with security systems tight enough to keep people out is they lock people in at the same time. Security designed to safeguard the lives of a building’s occupants isn’t much good if it traps them inside with no way out, especially if a fire were to start. That’s why most systems come with failsafes installed. If the system detects smoke, the shutters will retract to prevent against the acute threat of suffocation.
I don’t have to cut my way through. I can smoke Cole out.
The sides of the building are well-protected, but the roof’s easy enough to get to. The house is built into the incline of the hillside and one corner of the roof is almost flush with the mountainside. I climb up the rocks and toss the supplies across to the roof.
“What are you doing with all that?” Cole asks. I don’t answer him, wander back into the woods a bit, f
orage for timber. The ground is dry and there’s plenty of perfect kindling everywhere I look. Less than five minutes later, I’ve wrapped the tinder in a rag, tossed the bundle to the roof and climbed up after it.
“What the hell are you doing up there?” Cole whines. I’m out of view of the cameras and his paranoia’s in overdrive, blazing through his usual smartass attitude. “Get off the roof. Now, or I’ll—”
He can’t do anything. He’s built his house into a prison and locked himself inside.
Modern homes like this are designed to wring every scrap of efficiency from the energy they consume, which means they’re sealed up. Airtight. They need fresh air constantly circling through the vents or the moisture and stale air builds up inside and people get sick. Cole still needs air. Meaning he’s vulnerable.
The only truly secure building is one without anyone in it.
Cole’s still chattering away through the speaker, flopping back and forth between blustering and false nonchalance. I tune him out and get to work.
I set the bonfire ingredients next to the house’s fresh air intake pipe and think back to Boy Scouts. First, I shear the screen off the pipe with the hacksaw, then with the opening exposed I tear the rags into strips and soak them in the paint thinner, twist them into long ropes, and drop them down the opening, one by one, until I’ve built a nice flammable pool at the bottom of the pipe next to the house’s heat exchanger. I can feel the system sucking in air as I break up small branches and feed them in next. Then I pop a road flare and drop it down on top. A red glow emanates from the bottom that grows to bright yellow as the rags catch fire.
With the flare and the accelerant and the fuel and the constant stream of fresh air feeding it, the fire will burn for a while. The house will be filtered, sure, but even the best filters will fail eventually.
I drop the rest of the wood down the pipe and climb back down off the roof and wait next to the security curtain just as Cole starts yelling. “What the fuck, Gage? You sack of shit motherfuc—”
The locks release and the curtains snap up and I step inside the security ring just as Cole overrides the system and the curtains come sliding back down to lock me in with him.
Now to find the right window.
The opaques are up on the widows so I can’t see inside but I move around the house to one of the back bedrooms. I stick the doorknocker on the center of the window then crouch off to the side.
“Enough’s enough,” Cole says. “Just go now and we’ll call it even. You can keep the shyft and I promise I won’t use the override. You can’t blame me for trying, right. I want Amit Johari just as much as you. Your revenge is worth just as much as mine. I just did what I had to d—”
I answer him by triggering the detonator. The explosion is massive in the enclosed space and sets my ears ringing.
“Jesus, fuck, Gage!” Cole’s voice screeches through the buzz in my head as I climb up through the window and into a dark bathroom. There’s a lot of smoke, more than I thought there’d be. I can barely see.
The house lights are down and flickering emergency beacons pulse a bright white light at just the right frequency to spasm my Revved irises. I can feel them clenching and expanding in time to the photonic beat.
My throat starts to burn with the smoke and I grab a small white towel off a rack and douse it in the sink, fold it and hold it over my mouth and nose.
I can’t see far, but the house is small. It won’t take me long to find him.
The rifle’s on its strap over my back and I draw the Janus with my left hand, keep the towel over my mouth with the right, and poke my head out of the bathroom to the hallway. The living room’s to my right, all the way at the other end of the house. Thick smoke fills the space between us. I can hear flames from somewhere ahead.
I only wanted a little smoke, not to be cooked in firewood stove—but I’m not too worried. Cole will open the curtains. He doesn’t want to die in here either.
There’s still two medbots to deal with. They’ll be poking around somewhere, but they’re nowhere near as scary as the lawbots. I put my shoulder against the long hallway window and side toward the other end of the house.
“Okay! I’m sorry I went back on our deal,” Cole yells over the house speakers, pleading now, “but you don’t understand—Amit took everything from me. You were going to steal my revenge—”
The security curtain retracts again and the noise of the metal zipping back up distracts me, just long enough that Cole’s last surprise—a fifth lawbot—strobes out of the smoky bedroom next to me at a sprint, charging to slam me against the window—or straight through it, at the rate its coming.
I twist the Revv to max and the world grinds to a halt.
Even with the Revv as high as it will go, my options all suck. The bot is too close, moving too fast. I can’t spin to get my gun on it. Can’t move fast enough to avoid it. No matter how I move, no matter which way I jump, it’ll be on me before I get out of the way.
I’ve got nowhere to go.
I’m fucked.
Not enough time, even for me.
***
[19:44:45. Friday, May 10, 2058]
With no other option, I react instinctively, throw myself backward, but like the projections said, I’m not fast enough. The bot’s too close, can’t miss at this range. It’s coming at me with its claws open, one at my head, the other reaching for the gun.
It must not be armed or it would have shot me. Cole’s worried about a stray hitting him in a firefight.
Or he wants me alive.
As I fall, I run the Revv through the next set of probabilities, me flying backward with the bot a half second away—and my options are limited. My body’s just too damned slow. If only I could move as fast as I can react...
Doesn’t matter now, the bot’s going to have me disarmed, probably crush my hand. So I do the unexpected, flick my wrist and toss the pistol away.
I watch the bot react. It twitches as if undecided about whether to chase me or the gun. Finally, it alters its trajectory to snatch the weapon from the air—but the way this bot moves, it’s different than the ones outside. This one has a lag, a reaction time slow enough to track.
Then I notice the small, circular, black matte transmitter on the bot’s back.
Cole. What an idiot.
It’s a lawbot on the outside, but inside it’s only human.
Cole cast himself into the bot and came to get me himself. Arrogant bastard thinks he can do a better job at killing me with his tired organic brain than the neural network specially designed for combat the bot came with.
The funny thing is, if he’d just let the bot do its job, he’d have had me.
The probabilities blossom and I take my pick of exactly how I’ll disable the bot. As I fall, I pull the rifle around so it’ll land on my chest when I hit the ground. Cole will have snatched the pistol out of the air by then, but the bot will be pointed in the wrong direction, facing away from me.
I land on my back, knees up, rifle pointed between my thighs. The house hazard lights are still pulsing, and I time my shots to the flashes and pull the trigger when the lights wink on. My first burst hits the bot in the shoulder and twists it forward. Before Cole can stop to correct it I lower the barrel and blow out the bot’s right knee and send it careening, out of control. The next shot knocks the left foot out from under it and drops the bot on its chest.
I get to my knees as Cole fights to roll. He knows what’s coming.
Flash. I aim. Flash, then bullseye, the transmitter on the bot’s back. Just like in the arKade.
The bot stops moving and Cole starts babbling.
“No, no, no. You can’t do this to me, you fucking cheat,” Cole yells through the speakers. “You’re just like the rest of them--a goddamn fucking hypocrite!”
My heart’s racing, the brush with death left me exhilarated. I may be a hypocrite, but I’m still standing. Now it’s time to end this.
The air is stifling. Orange li
ght flickers in the smoke ahead as I duck as low as I can and move deeper into the house. The wet towel over my mouth is doing nothing to protect my stinging eyes and I blink away tears as I step into the open living area where the orange light is brighter, all this locally-sourced wood construction feeding the blaze.
I could leave now and let the fire take him, but I need to be sure. I close on Cole’s bed and the two medbots try to stop me. They feint attacks and both dart at me simultaneously from opposite directions, but they’re built for precision and fine motor control, not speed or power, and I drop them with two quick shots from the rifle.
“No, stop,” Cole says through crackling speakers. “I’ll do whatever you want—just get me out of here—”
I reach the bed and look down at him. He’s prone, protected by the sterile tube, his brain still functional but his body withered. He’s supposed to be in his forties, but his skeletal body wrapped in loose pyjamas makes him look more like an ancient mummy in a state of preservation. The only clear air in the room is in that medtube with him. I wonder how long the filters on the bed will hold up against the smoke? Not long, judging by the creeping wisps curling around him.
Cole’s hooked directly into the link by neurotrodes, direct-brain connections that sprout as small silver dots from each temple. As costly as my recovery and restoration was, good neural interfaces are even more expensive. Cole’s done everything he can to extend a life trapped in a failing body. Why hasn’t he just had himself restored?
“Please, Finsbury,” Cole says without moving his lips. His voice through the speakers is strained but his breathing doesn’t vary at all. “I don’t want to die, not like this. I’ll give you anything.”
“You don’t have anything I want,” I tell him.
“I do,” he says, “you just don’t know it. I have information. Those psyphoning cases from the arKade—Rene fucking whatshisname—I know who was responsible.”