by Greg Prado
The door once echoed louder until it made a whining groan. It sounded like whoever was on the other side had resorted to pulling against the handles. The barrier didn’t budge.
“I jammed it to buy us a few minutes. We’ll get two on the topside,” Friedrich finally spoke. “You all need to get back into the cage at the rear of the store.”
“We aren’t going anywhere until you explain why the bloody hell—” William began.
“Just shut up and go, or we all fucking die!” Friedrich barked in a tizzy, momentarily taking a break from his search.
His eyes were crazed, but William noticed something else about his expression. He seemed—mournful. As the group begrudgingly moved toward the barred door at the rear of the store, Friedrich quietly caught Mieke by the wrist.
“I’m so sorry, my girl,” he whispered through tears. “I’ve killed you. It’s my fault. We should have left earlier.”
“Well, you had the refugees—” she paused in confusion. “My family only just met you, Mr. Schmidt.”
His head shook slowly as her sentence finished. Mieke began to feel a touch of the same trepidation that splashed over Friedrich’s sweat-drenched body.
A sound of metal snapping filled the room, which was immediately tailed by a loud fuck from outside the store.
“You bought yourself a minute you kraut bastard!” the voice screamed. Muttered obscenities seemed to follow the angered footsteps outside the store.
“Stop it!” Mieke replied in a muted panic as she stared at the man she now knew as Doctor Schmidt. “Who are you?”
She began to hyperventilate as she searched for the truth.
“Who are you, really?”
“Doctor Schmidt, release the girl now!” William ordered.
He was startled by a hand on his shoulder. Mieke’s father shook his head as he looked upon Doctor Schmidt and Mieke. William joined the girl in trying to determine what was happening.
“You, stay,” the mysterious, elderly man made a downward gesture with his finger at the polished back room floor.
“She’s your bloody daughter, sir!” he angrily called out.
A bright white light shot from the front of the room as a torch of some kind began to make its way down the right side of the jammed door. As William turned back to Mr. Fisher, he saw something even more disquieting. The quiet man was shaking his head slowly.
“No.”
The man frowned as he pointed forward at Friedrich and Mieke. Suddenly his apathy began to make sense.
“There’s no time, my sweet,” Friedrich sighed as the torch crawled down the door. “I love you very much. I’m so sorry it didn’t work out.”
“You love me?” Mieke asked, creeping backward from the man she thought she knew.
“I bring your death,” Friedrich paused only briefly as he began to walk to the rear of the store. The torch rapidly approached the halfway point as he stopped at the counter.
“Vogel, caballo, leaf, porca. . .”
“What are you saying?” Mieke screamed.
Tears began to run down Friedrich’s face as he continued. William looked on, dumbstruck.
“Helix, mortem, rosewood, Allah, beklager. . .”
“Why are you—” Mieke shook her head as she ran up to the man who was spouting nonsense.
Friedrich placed an unwelcomed hand on Mieke’s cheek as he paused. She shrank back from his touch as he opened his mouth to speak a final time.
“Edelweiss.”
He slammed a hand over his mouth as the girl’s expression morphed. His breath caught as he stepped backward behind the swinging counter door, leaving her standing in the center of the store.
William heard light sobs emanate from the man as he shouldered William back into the storage area. The taller doctor growled back as Friedrich shut the barred jail-like door and slammed the lock closed.
Friedrich turned around and was met by a streaking fist toward his jaw. Doctor Rutger connected with the man’s face and sent him falling to the floor. Doctor Schmidt held his jaw as he blinked rapidly to clear his head.
“You left her out there!” Doctor Rutger howled. “You left Mieke in a barred and locked room with whatever is about to burst through that door!”
“No, Doctor Rutger,” Friedrich answered, stretching his bleeding jaw. “It’s that poor girl who’s to be trapped with Mieke.”
William peeked out through the bars and saw the young woman’s head scanning the room rapidly. She took a step sideways and peered into the jewelry case but continued zipping her gaze from one thing to the next as the torch nearly touched the floor. Friedrich’s jacket caught fire as the sparking sun of heat passed close to the fabric. The moment the incursion tool touched the floor, the door groaned and seemed to slightly drop.
Quicker than a flash, Mieke had moved directly in front of it and braced herself before delivering a swift kick to the metal of the now-cracked doorway. The vault flew open and knocked back whoever had been opening it. Mieke moved out of sight briefly as she entered the mall in pursuit.
“She was planning the attack,” Friedrich explained. “She far outmatches the agent who was sent to pursue her, but she is unarmored—”
A burst of gunfire interrupted the man and William grasped the bars anxiously.
“Mieke!” he shouted out.
Just after his worried cry, the sleek black armored pursuer stumbled back into the store, seemingly propelled by some kind of impact to her torso. William saw the polished steel trash can that the Kübelwagen had crashed into roll past the open vault door.
“They sent thirteen?” Friedrich wondered. “This fight will be over soon.”
Thirteen was covered from head to toe in what appeared to be matte-finish titanium with some sort of meshing at the joints. She seemed to be built for speed and efficiency.
The crowbar from the side of the Kübelwagen came streaking in after Thirteen like an arrow. She deflected it with her wrist, but the black armor chipped and fell away at the thunderous impact. Mieke flew into the room next, ducking under a burst from the armored woman’s submachine gun. She grabbed the menorah on her way down and twisted to pummel the fingers of the assassin’s right hand that gripped the firearm. A few of the fingers seemed to twist under the impact, and the gun went flying behind the left-side display case.
The crumpled but weighty piece of Hebraic imagery fell to the floor as Thirteen cursed, repeatedly shaking her hand.
“You little bitch!” she screamed as she rushed forward at Mieke.
Friedrich began speaking as the two women continued brawling in the store.
“She’s the first,” he sighed. “A handmade prototype with all the finest care taken and best parts used in her construction. Her hand-woven synapses process information from her senses at almost double the speed of the admittedly quick Thirteen. Her muscle-density is unparalleled. She was a proof of concept.”
Mieke rolled over the right-side display as Thirteen stabbed a knife the size of a machete downward with a scream. Her frustration was evident as her armor continued to be torn from her body as the fight continued. William opened his mouth wide as the large brazen bell was thrown sidearm like a baseball pitch. The top side of the bell impacted Thirteen’s faceplate dead-on and sent the top crown of her helmet flying up toward the ceiling.
“Cuts had to be made in production for obvious reasons,” Friedrich continued. “Per-unit cost was too high. They said that the agents would be far superior to their human counterparts anyway, so I needed to cheapen the design.”
“You needed to—” William began.
“We all have our past that we run away from, Doctor Rutger. Mine is just deadlier than most.”
Realization washed over William.
“You’re—Minister Shandi wanted you,” he muttered. “And the medically fragile patient.”
Mieke screamed out as an armored elbow connected with her blocking forearm. The broken pieces shredded her skin and almost broke through her guar
d as blood began to flow from her left hand to the floor.
Thirteen saw her weakened state and acted in the time it took William to grasp what was happening. A blade extended from the heel of Thirteen’s boot and the warrior hooked the leg around Mieke’s, slicing open her left calf. The woman screeched and kicked Thirteen in her exposed groin, causing the warrior to momentarily double over. As she recoiled from the first kick, Mieke brought her right, profusely bleeding, leg upward and pulled the weakened helmet into her knee with both hands.
To William’s shock, the head protection cracked lengthwise and revealed a caramel-skinned woman underneath. She looked up, positively enraged at Mieke, but stunned by the crowbar she’d been hit with earlier as it hooked under her shattered protection. Mieke tore the entire thing off with all the strength she could mobilize and sent it careening into the drywall, where it stuck.
“We weren’t sure if she’d have to activate,” Friedrich explained. “Agents’ brains are built specifically to accept a type of programming, if you will. If there was a medical emergency or wounds to sew up, I wanted someone who could help.”
“Because clearly you’ve already brought the army,” William frowned, looking on as the once-innocent girl he knew disarmed the assassin with surgical precision.
She moved to bring the crowbar down over Thirteen’s head but dropped it as a tiny device was fired into her shoulder. The taser-like bolt caused both of her wrists to seize and hands to flex, but she didn’t go down. Mieke saw the back-kick flying at her stomach but was too stunned to stop it. She shattered the display case as her body flew through both sides of the glass and slammed into the drywall behind it. As her body dropped, it left a crater in the carefully painted black wall. Thirteen laughed as she withdrew her knife from the opposite case.
“You’re fast, I’ll give you that,” she crowed, her black hair cut short to her head. “But there’s nothing you could do about all this—”
Her speech was interrupted by a burst of gunfire from the man who had been purported to be Mieke’s father. His bullets plinked uselessly off Thirteen’s armor, even in its damaged state. The man had aimed for her head, but the agent’s blinding reaction speed enabled her to duck backward under a raised wrist.
He fired again, but the warrior’s concealed right hand flicked a throwing knife with deadly accuracy and pierced Mr. Fisher’s shoulder, forcing him to drop the rifle. She readied a second blade in her palm until she heard a clattering from underneath the display Mieke had been tossed into.
Thirteen stopped and took a battle stance as a hand reached up and clenched down on the shattered jewelry display that had been emptied years before. The agent tucked her larger machete backward and put up her guard, ensuring her face was covered. She approached cautiously, ready for Mieke to jump upward.
William saw the display case rise just as soon as Thirteen did. She tried to stop it, but Mieke was somehow able to push through, even with the extent of her injuries. She charged forward like a bull, using the case as a ram, and caught the agent behind the unavoidable four-foot wall of shattered capitalism.
Thirteen pushed back as she was sandwiched on the opposite side of the room but halted as she saw her own gun being wielded by Mieke.
“Wait, don’t shoot! I have something you need to—”
Mieke stared forward like a hawk fixated on its prey as she allowed the remainder of the clip to empty into the agent’s head. After a second and a half of firing, one thing was certain.
Thirteen had been snuffed out.
5
Disposable
“I don’t need your help!” Mieke cawed, swatting away Doctor Rutger’s hand as she tried to stand on the newly bandaged leg and gestured across the room. “He needs those stitches dressed!”
William looked over his shoulder at the damaged Mr. Fisher. He looked like a man without a purpose.
“So, I’ll be the first to ask. Do you remember what happened before you—changed?” William wondered.
“I remember everything,” Mieke lamented. “It’s a bit confusing to see that man as my father and simultaneously care about my creator as though he were as well. My mind is running two separate partitions that I can’t seem to fully mesh.”
“You know we decided on this,” Friedrich explained. “You wanted this.”
“I know that,” Mieke sighed, favoring her right leg as she stood. “But it’s my brain that is scrambled eggs right now and I’m pretty fucked in the head. I can distinctly remember being pushed on the swing by my—”
Mieke halted, her mind swimming.
“. . .being pushed by Mrs. Fisher. My mind is short-circuiting.”
“The memories I implanted will fade,” Friedrich sighed. “For better or for worse, you will view them as one might remember a pleasant book or movie soon enough. I designed you, and agents as a whole, so that you could easily bounce back from the process of reprogramming.”
Mieke looked forlorn as she leaned against the countertop.
“I’m going to forget my mother?”
Friedrich placed a palm over hers and frowned a bit as she quickly withdrew.
The four stood about in the stark white jewelry storage and appraisal area. The stark white tile floors were a sharp contrast to the elegant blacks and smooth display cases in the customer area. Of course, the grandeur had been marred by the addition of a corpse and streaks of blood. William glanced at the disintegrated head of Thirteen as he passed the barred doorway.
He put the pieces together as he began to sew up the wound on Mr. Fisher’s shoulder.
“The Crown is working on something like that monstrosity out there, aren’t they?”
Friedrich shrugged as he reloaded the rifle that was laid across a steel work table. He fiddled with the slide as he slipped the magazine into the base.
“I know as much as you do, Doctor Rutger,” Friedrich responded. “I only know that I wanted to give Mieke a normal life apart from all of this—”
Mieke held up a hand as her ears heard something that no one else could pick up. She looked at William and held a hand at chest level while gesturing downward. He paused mid-suture and looked up. Mieke looked worriedly at Friedrich as she pointed toward the entrance they had emerged from.
William stared at her face as she brought a finger to her mouth.
Peacekeeper, she mouthed.
Without informing the group or asking permission, she waved them forward and out of the store. Her pace was rapid, even with the bandaged leg. Slit from knee to ankle, William was sure her advanced body had some kind of pain management system. He began to wonder if it was adrenaline based, or something more. Speculation was pointless. She was a fleshy machine, masquerading as a human.
As they rounded the corner at the intersection of two mall hallways, the peacekeeper began to press through the already broken glass at the front of the mall. New cascading echoes of glass shattering bounced about the cavernous hall as Mieke pondered the level of their exposure. She processed the sensory input differently than her natural human counterparts. She just knew that the monstrosity was approximately 150 meters from their position. She didn’t know the particulars of her talent, but it was genetic engineering augmented by mechanics at the cellular level. She could picture the towering robot marching through the glass as though it were hardly there.
Mieke imagined the upcoming situation in her mind.
She waved the group slowly down the hall at the T junction. They crept backward as the thundering legs pounded into the polished blue tile floor, crushing it with each step. The mech made a particular high-low whine as each of the six appendages continued to ferry the death platform along its path. As the leg raised, the motors pitch would slightly rise, before crashing in modulation downward along with the dozens of tons of weight it accompanied.
“Should we—” William whispered almost silently.
Mieke held a finger to her mouth and quickly shook her head back and forth. She knew that the machine had hearing j
ust as finely attuned as hers. Worse, the peacekeeper had dozens of sensors that could easily pinpoint even the faintest of noises. The peacekeeper had infrared thermal vision. It was a cold day. She knew their thermal footprints would not be visible through shoes, but their exhalations would.
William checked his navigation. They’d made impressive progress. They were only 1400 meters from their destination. They were, however, early. He could activate the emergency beacon, but the transport would likely take another few hours after its deployment. He only hoped that the jamming signal was weaker outside of the city proper. Either way, he navigated the device menu until he reached a red button labeled with an exclamation mark. He touched it and quickly entered a line of text.
1 km from extraction. Peacekeeper in pursuit. Hot LZ. Air support needed.
He pressed send as he continued backpedaling deeper into the shopping plaza. He was startled by Mieke’s quick movement to grab a potted plant. They were rapidly approaching the end of the line and stood at the edge of a decorative outdoor food court with glass doors. One locked door was all that stood between them and freedom, relatively speaking.
Friedrich jumped as a column of bright white plasma shot from close to where they had been a few minutes prior. A metallic whining filled the hall and was accompanied by heat so intense that William could feel it against his front side from over fifty meters away. The loud clattering that followed brought with it a smell of burning diesel. Friedrich grunted. The Kübelwagen had unquestionably been destroyed.
“The noise of the fire lets us whisper very quietly,” Mieke breathed. “You all go immediately to the right in the food court as soon as I breach the lock. I will branch left and draw fire. Stay behind cover that is two meters high at minimum. Otherwise, your breath will give you away.”
William whispered an objection, but Mieke was already moving as the peacekeeper’s massive leg stomped into view. She breathed in and cocked her arm back behind her head. She propelled the plant upward like a professional shot-putter, following through with her hips. As the peacekeeper’s enormous gatling cannon came into view, the pot soared through the atrium above its visual sensors, obscured by the awning that hung low enough to catch the robot’s topside. It flew over a hundred meters and past the robot at the T junction they’d come from. As though tossed by a perfect blend of quarterback and sniper, the plant flew with impressive accuracy into the hallway before them.