Warden 2

by Isaac Hooke

  The robots were approaching her.

  Had they seen her?

  Well, either way, there wasn’t time to retreat. Based on the pace of those footfalls, the robots would be here in seconds.

  She disabled her comm node. There was nothing DragonHunter could do for her now and hearing his voice in her head during the coming fight would only distract her.

  She retrieved two CommNixers from her sack.

  When she thought the robots were steps away from the bend, she vaulted around it. She tossed the two CommNixers in rapid succession, and the magnetic mounts attached to the heads of each robot, cutting off their communications.

  They raised the rifles built into their forearms, but Rhea was already lifting her leg in a spin kick. Her foot struck the closest robot in the chest—she targeted the region above the power cell. The machine went flying into the wall, leaving a big dent.

  But Rhea hardly noticed; she was already threading toward the next machine. She twisted her body as it opened fire: the shots missed, slamming into the wall instead. She wrapped her hands around the rifle barrels and turned the ends upward before her opponent could fire again, effectively disabling the weapons.

  Muscle memory guided her through a series of deadly martial art moves, but the robot countered them all perfectly. She tried the same spin kick, but it grabbed her by the leg and used her momentum to swing her around, ramming her into the wall. She left a big hole as she dropped to the floor.

  Before she could get up, the robot was on her. It slammed its fists into her torso, targeting the lower right of her torso—where cyborgs, like robots, usually carried their power cells. But what the machine didn’t know was that hers was in a nonstandard location.

  She pounded its head with her elbows and raised her knees, trying to shuck off her foe. The robot realized punching her torso was futile, so it shifted its body upward. She tried to slide out from underneath it, but the robot was quick and matched her movements. It pinned her chest with its knees, then wrapped its hands around her neck and squeezed.

  Smiling grimly, she slid her fists between its wrists and shoved outward. Didn’t work: the robot was too strong.

  Beside her, the second robot was starting to stir—while her kick had left a nice dent in its chest, the armor had apparently saved its power cell. She had caused a temporary spike of some kind, though, as evidenced by its sluggish recovery.

  She grabbed the second robot’s forearm and lifted the intact rifle barrel to her current opponent’s head. She threaded her other hand around the arms of the robot that choked her and wrapped her fingers around the barrel, holding it in place. Then, with the arm closest to the second machine freed up again, she slammed her fist down, smashing it into the power cell area of the still-recovering robot.

  The armor was already damaged from her kick, so she expected it to cave readily, but the area proved surprisingly resilient.

  An alert sounded on her HUD.

  Warning. Brain hypoxia imminent. Warning.

  She lifted her hand and brought her fist down again. Again. Still nothing.

  Warning.

  She felt dizzy, and knew she only had a few more moments of consciousness left.

  She released another three blows in rapid succession, and finally managed to collapse the area above the power cell. Sparks erupted from the second robot, and it spasmed.

  Come on, fire your weapon. Fire!

  She tugged on the rifle with her other hand, trying to spur a response.

  There—finally the convulsing robot fired. Plasma ripped into the first robot’s head, and it released her.

  She rolled away before the first robot realized it was merely blinded; she kept her grip on the second robot’s forearm the whole time. She landed on top of the second machine and slammed her fist into the power cell area one last time. A final burst of sparks erupted, and then the damaged robot ceased all movements.

  Rhea pulled herself off it. The first robot lunged at her but missed, landing on the second robot instead. She scrambled to her feet, stumbling away from the blinded robot, and turned toward the stairwell.

  She froze.

  Ahead of her, several more combat robots awaited outside the stairwell, apparently having arrived from upstairs. They all had their rifles pointed at her.

  It seemed her two opponents had managed to get off a signal before she attached the CommNixers.

  Too bad.

  She raised her hands in surrender.

  19

  The security robots escorted Rhea through the corridors of city hall. They had bound her wrists behind her back, and one robot followed along on either side, their polycarbonate hands threaded through the crook of her elbows and tightly gripping her arms.

  Despite all her upgrades, and her enhanced strength, she couldn’t break through her binds. She had tried several times, but eventually had been forced to concede defeat.

  “Where are you taking me?” she asked.

  The robots didn’t reply.

  She activated her comm node, since there was no point in maintaining radio silence anymore. She tried to connect to the compromised access point but was already too far away and had to accept a closer one. She wasn’t sure she’d actually be allowed to log on to the Net through it, but a moment later she received the confirmation.

  She highlighted the names of Will and DragonHunter in her contact list and initiated a mental call. Both parties connected at almost the same time.

  How goes it? Will asked.

  Didn’t DragonHunter tell you yet? she sent over the encrypted mental channel. I’ve been captured.

  What? Will sent. No, he did not! Where are they taking you?

  I don’t know, she replied. I’m still in city hall, for now. We’ll see how long that lasts.

  It’s my fault, DragonHunter transmitted. I should have been able to protect you. Or at least given you an earlier warning about those robots. I wish I could have found a way to disable them.

  It’s not your fault, Rhea sent.

  I should have gone with you, Will sent.

  You can’t always protect me, Rhea sent. If you were with me, you would’ve only been captured too.

  Well, I’m coming to get you, Will said. Me and Horatio. And any other Wardenites that want to help. DragonHunter still has control of the cameras.

  She passed another group of armed robots on patrol. They were searching the different rooms, as if on the lookout for intruders.

  I wouldn’t advise it, she told him. They’ve heightened the patrols, as far as I can tell. They’ll be expecting a rescue attempt. You’ll be captured, too.

  I never was one to follow advice, he replied.

  Rhea knew she couldn’t stop him, so she didn’t say anything more. She could disable location sharing or turn off her comm node entirely, but that wouldn’t stop him. If Will did plan to rescue her, she might as well make his job as easy as possible.

  I probably won’t have control of the cameras for much longer, DragonHunter said. The central AI will be wondering why she didn’t show up on any of the feeds until after the attack. And why those two robots suddenly vanished from the cameras as they rounded the bend… that’s right, I did my best to hide you during the fight.

  That could explain why the second patrol found her. The CommNixers might have successfully blocked the communications of the first two robots after all, and the central AI had sent a patrol to investigate the malfunctioning cameras.

  There you go, Will, Rhea sent. Stay away. Without control of the cameras, there’s no way you’ll reach me.

  Come hell or high water, I’m going, Will replied.

  No, she sent. It won’t help anyone if you get captured, too. If you truly care about me, stay back. I’ll find a way to get out of here. Somehow.

  He didn’t answer.

  Will?

  At first, she thought he’d hung up on her, but then she glanced at the upper right of her HUD: she’d been disconnected from the network. The access point w
as blocking her.

  Convenient.

  Now that she’d turned her comm node back online, she took the opportunity to scan the IDs of every robot that passed by. None of them matched up with the ID DragonHunter had sent.

  The robots loaded her inside a glass-walled lift and the doors shut. Through the glass, she could see the compound spread out behind her.

  The lift traveled at a diagonal angle along the outer surface of the pyramid, following its slope. Each time the floor number incremented on the digital display, a soft ding sounded.

  When the display read fifteen, the lift halted. There was still a significant portion of the pyramid remaining above her, but the usable space available would diminish with each successive level, so she figured she was probably close to the top floor.

  The doors opened and the robots escorted Rhea into a narrow hallway. The doors on either side were unlabeled. She had augmented reality popups enabled on her HUD, but no overlays appeared, which told her she didn’t have the access rights necessary to view them. Then again, it was also possible there weren’t any overlays, and these doors remained unlabeled not just in the physical realm, but the virtual.

  Ahead, a pair of double doors opened.

  She was taken into a sprawling room. A carpet, intricately embroidered with an eagle, lay spread out in front of a large cherrywood desk. Its four legs were veritable pillars, and abstract patterns were carved into the wood. Curios rested on the desk, including a steel cube floating on one corner above a magnetic plate, the tri-pronged skull of a dinosaur or bioweapon, and finally a pair of rhinoceros beetles held in the same glass cage. A partition had been placed among the foliage in that cage, keeping the horned beetles separated.

  The mayor sat beside that desk, his hands held in front of his chest, the fingers splayed and touching, forming a steeple. He wore an expensive-looking black suit, which fit him perfectly. A collar bar gave his tie a perceptible lift at the top, making his chest seem more prominent. He had a well-trimmed black beard, and his hair was cropped short, though combed backward, which served only to emphasize his widow’s peak. His features were smooth—too smooth in fact to be anything other than a result of rejuvenetics: no eye bags, crow’s feet, not even smile lines.

  A poster on the wall behind him read: “To err is human. To really eff things up takes a cyborg.”

  Her gaze was drawn to the floor-to-ceiling windows to her right, which offered a view of a white sand beach, similar to the one she had in her own memories, except the sun sat in the middle of the afternoon sky, and the waves lapping against shore were minimal.

  The window was a dead giveaway that the room was augmented. Rhea momentarily disabled her augmented reality overlays and sure enough the room became a tiny, nondescript cubicle, with the mayor seated behind a small desk. The suit remained, but there was nothing on the desk, and the walls were windowless. Featureless.

  She reenabled overlays and the beach scene returned, along with the remaining virtual decorations. It was interesting that the mayor would share them publicly. Then again, he was a public figure, accustomed to sharing his life with strangers.

  “Where is that?” Rhea asked, staring at the beach that wasn’t really there.

  The mayor glanced at the floor-to-ceiling glass. “That was a place on Ganymede.”

  “What?” she said. “Impossible. I’ve seen pictures. The moon is nothing like that.”

  “Not anymore, perhaps,” Mayor Grandas said. “But in its heyday, Ganymede was quite the terraformed world. The Ganymedeans augmented the weak magnetosphere with a superconducting ring network in orbit, protecting it from Jupiter’s radiation belts. They built habitable domes across the surface, melting portions of the seas inside them. If you look closely at the horizon, you can see the outline of the dome. And the distant ice that hems in the ocean.”

  She gazed at the horizon, and indeed saw a strange dark line floating just above the surface. And barely visible below it was a white line—the ice, presumably.

  “All that is gone now, of course,” the mayor said. “The ring network was destroyed in the war. As were most of the domes. The Europans have been trying to construct a new network. Their progress has been slow, to say the least.”

  She returned her attention to him, and casually scanned the mayor’s ID.

  Her eyes widened. It was a match with what DragonHunter had sent her.

  “You’re Veil?” she said.

  He stared at her, seeming confused. Then he glanced at the robots. “Everyone leave, except you two.”

  Most of the robots departed, save for the two that held their hands firmly between the crooks of Rhea’s elbows. The door shut behind the others when they were gone.

  “For the next five minutes, I want your archival devices and memory storage nodes disabled,” Grandas told the two robots.

  “Yes, mayor,” the robots said in unison.

  That meant whatever happened in the next five minutes wouldn’t be recorded, either locally, or remotely, effectively wiping the coming moments from the memories of both machines. However, the fact Grandas didn’t ask Rhea to similarly disable her own recording device was troubling.

  “Well then,” the mayor said. “So that’s what you’ve been up to. I was wondering why you’d be stupid enough to sneak into city hall. Good job.”

  “So, you are Veil,” she pressed.

  “No,” the mayor replied.

  “Well, it doesn’t change anything,” she said. “Veil or her agent, you’re scum either way. You sent bioweapons to destroy Rust Town. You and your council.”

  “It was necessary, I’m afraid,” the mayor said. “We were doing it for your own good. We wanted to end your lives quickly, mercifully, rather than forcing you to suffer, like you will now. You have to understand, we don’t have the water to share. The oceans are running dry. At the current rate, the supply will last for maybe three years. But if we share with you, with Rust Town, we have only another year left. You slum residents are notorious for the amount of water you waste. You use antiquated reclaimers, and your recycling systems are so out-of-date that when one breaks down, there’s nobody alive around who knows how to fix it.”

  “Then ration our water,” she said. “Give us at least a limited supply. Or help us upgrade the reclaimers. Don’t cut us off entirely.”

  “It will take a year to finish any such upgrades,” the mayor said. “By then the reclaimers won’t be of any use.” He shook his head. “You don’t understand, we didn’t want to do this. But we had no choice.” He lowered his hands. “Do you know why we used designer bioweapons rather than gassing the residents?”

  “Because gassing would be too obvious?” Rhea said. “This way, you can say it was a terrible tragedy. A random act of nature.”

  “Wrong,” the mayor said. “We wanted a selective weapon. You see, we planned to spare everyone under the age of five. We would have invited these children to live in Aradne with us in the aftermath of the attack. We are not so cruel as you make us out to be.”

  “How generous of you…” Rhea said. “Except, I saw those bioweapons crush lean-tos indiscriminately out there. Children under five were probably under more than a few of those rooftops.”

  The mayor crossed his arms. “It wasn’t a foolproof system. But anyway, that plan is ruined, thanks to your interference. We have to deal with these riots of yours. And the resulting drop in public opinion among city residents.”

  “The riots will stop when you restore our water, and your approval ratings will jump back to normal,” Rhea said. “The slums and the city will work together in the year remaining to us. We’ll find a way to endure. And while you’re at it, let the population know how dire the situation is. Stop shadow-banning videos on the streaming sites whenever someone mentions how low the ocean levels are. The urgency might help spur innovation.”

  The mayor didn’t answer.

  “You’re not going to restore the water supply, are you?” Rhea said. “Not until we’re dying
in the streets.”

  “You don’t understand,” Grandas told her. “We want you to die in the streets.”

  “You’re a sick individual,” she said.

  The mayor sighed. “I do what needs to be done. The public won’t elect me to another term in office, but it doesn’t matter. At the rate things are going, this is my last term anyway. There will be no Aradne in three years.”

  “Work with us,” Rhea tried again. “Together we can find a way.”

  He shook his head. “I’m sorry. If you want to save the people of the slums, the best you can do for them is organize caravans to other cities and settlements.”

  “If Aradne won’t take them in, what makes you think other cities will?” she asked.

  “There are still cities to the north that welcome people,” Grandas replied. “Relocate the residents of Rust Town now, while you still can.”

  “And risk attacks by bandits?” she said. “Or bioweapons?” She gave him a grim smile. “You mentioned ‘north’ on purpose, so we’d pass through the territory of Veil’s Black Hands. Nicely done.”

  The mayor merely stared at her.

  Rhea closed her eyes. He really wasn’t going to help them. He wanted the people of Rust Town to leave. Or die.

  She decided she might as well ask him another question while she had his attention. “Why is Veil hunting me?”

  Grandas smiled. “Well. That’s something you should ask Veil yourself.”

  “All right, open up a channel, and I will,” Rhea said.

  She was expecting either to receive a holographic share request, or to be refused, but then the mayor’s aspect changed entirely. He leaned to the side slightly, casually, and his thumb and index fingers closed together, as if he was holding something between them. One of his eyes drooped.

  When he spoke, it was with an odd accent. “So, you’ve come to me at last.”

  Rhea stiffened. “Veil. You’ve chipped him.”

  Veil shrugged. He lifted the empty thumb and forefinger to his mouth, then puckered and inhaled.

  “If you’re pulling the strings, then get him to restore water to Rust Town,” Rhea said. “Let us ration it, like I mentioned a moment ago.”