Warden 2

by Isaac Hooke

  Veil lowered his hand and exhaled, blowing air to one side. “After all those I sent after you, you go and deliver yourself to me directly. I should have saved myself the trouble. Though I suppose it was the very act of sending my minions that conveyed you to me.”

  “Let us ration the water,” Rhea tried again.

  “But I’m profiting too much from the sales of water on the black market to allow such a thing,” Veil interrupted.

  “Is that what this is about?” Rhea said. “Profits?”

  “It is now,” Veil replied. “Even originally it was, I admit. I pressed for the destruction of Rust Town, because I was the one who brokered the deal with the bioweapon company. I took a nice cut.”

  “Scourge of the North…” Rhea said.

  “That’s my name,” Veil agreed.

  “Scorpion is yours, isn’t he?” Rhea asked.

  “Very good,” Veil replied.

  “Who else have you sent?” she said. “Have you planted more spies among my Wardenites?”

  “I prefer to keep such information to myself,” Veil said. “Proprietary, you know.”

  “Why are you hunting me?” Rhea pressed.

  “It’s not personal,” Veil said. “It’s just that the bounty on your head is too high to ignore. When I bring you in, my accounts will balloon with credits.”

  “Who set this bounty?” she pressed. “What’s the price?”

  Veil seemed amused. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me,” she said.

  “Your former master set the bounty,” Veil told her.

  “And who is that?” she pressed.

  Veil thrummed his fingers, as if considering whether or not to tell her. He seemed to come to a decision after taking a puff from that invisible cigarette of his.

  “You’re wanted dead or alive,” Veil said. “I suppose I’ll deliver you alive, so you can find out. But I’ll need you much more malleable than you are. Yes. I’ll deliver you to your master chipped.”

  “No!” A sudden fear filled Rhea, the emotion coming on far stronger than she might have expected, and she struggled against her binds anew, but couldn’t break free. Her captors squeezed their merciless fingers tighter around her elbows until she ceased her efforts.

  “Please!” Rhea begged. “Anything but that. Please don’t chip me. I’ll do whatever you want.”

  “Indeed you will, very soon,” Veil taunted. “However, I can offer you one other option. And that is the delivery of your lifeless brain in a plastic bag. Is that what you prefer?”

  Rhea didn’t answer.

  “I thought not,” Veil said. “Mind jacked it is.”

  20

  Rhea was taken to the lower levels.

  Apparently Veil, or the mayor, had installed the necessary facilities for surgically implanting a mind-hijacking chip somewhere in the very basement of city hall.

  She was taken to a room and lowered face down on an operating table. Straps were secured over her ankles and her neck. A third strap was meant to be slid over her hips, but the robots didn’t apply it, as her hands remained secured behind her back, and apparently they felt that was good enough.

  Most of the security robots departed then, save for two that remained behind to stand guard.

  A medical robot approached. It looked nothing like a combat robot, and instead was more of a cart on treads, with a circular section at the top radiating three limbs. One of those appendages carried a gamma scalpel—a device vaguely reminiscent of a magnifying glass. She had heard of them once before, while reading about chipping: the flat, round rim was capable of producing two hundred beams of relatively low intensity gamma radiation, courtesy of several cobalt-60 sources; those beams could be focused down to a point as small as one millimeter, concentrating the radiation on the target without damaging the surrounding tissue. The beams penetrated bone and other intervening tissue, making them quite useful for operating on the brain. The gamma scalpel would probably be used to attach the chip to her neurons once it was installed.

  A second limb held a laser drill, which would be employed to open up her metal cranium in preparation for the insertion. How the robot planned to handle the fluid leakage that would result from opening her cyborg skull, she didn’t know. Then again, maybe it planned to rely on gravity for that—the incision was likely going to be on the back of her head, which would explain why she had been forced to lie face down.

  Her eyes alighted upon the third and final limb, which carried a tiny, thumbnail-sized microchip.

  She shivered uncontrollably when she saw that.

  Going to lose control of my body. Of everything!

  The drill moved out of view behind her head, and she felt a sharp pain as the laser activated. The sickly stench of burnt plastic filled the air as her artificial skin and hair melted beneath it. Her brain case just below the area was likely liquefying as well.

  Filled with despair, she strove to break her binds. Useless.

  She gave up. Just like that. For the first time in her life.

  It was liberating, somehow: surrendering.

  Maybe this was for the best. She wouldn’t have to worry about making decisions anymore. Someone else would live her life. Well, not always. The mayor seemed to have some control over his actions. Rhea would have some, too. Assuming she was allowed to live after being presented to whoever had set the bounty.

  And then, without warning, her binds opened.

  DragonHunter!

  Rhea slammed her arm upward, rotating the shoulder joint through an angle an ordinary human would have found impossible. Her hand struck the laser drill, and she grabbed it, tearing it from her head and breaking it away from the medical robot. The drill remained active, so she slid the tip through the strap at her neck, cutting it.

  One of the security robots rushed her.

  She sat up, and swung the drill into the robot’s torso, targeting the region above the power cell. The laser-tipped weapon penetrated deep into the armor; sparks of electricity traveled across the robot’s surface, and the machine collapsed.

  The second robot came at her from the other side. This one had deployed the rifle barrels under its forearms, so Rhea twisted herself off the table, sliding her feet out of the straps that wrapped her lower legs.

  She landed on the floor, and rolled under the table, just as the robot leaped over it and fired downward.

  The robot landed, and Rhea slid her legs outward in a sweep kick, tripping the machine. She positioned the laser drill underneath the falling robot so that its torso smashed into the device when it hit the floor. Blue bolts sparked from the impact zone, and its body convulsed for several seconds before becoming still.

  She smiled as she withdrew her hand, and the drill. Power cells. What a great vulnerability.

  She got up, and tore the gamma scalpel from the medical robot’s second limb, figuring the device might prove useful at some point. She left behind the mind-hijacking chip. She didn’t want to touch the latter with a seven-meter pole.

  She pocketed the scalpel and backed away from the medical robot, well aware that it might try to ram her.

  “Stay back,” she warned the medical robot, waving the laser drill menacingly.

  The remaining limb lifted, as if in surrender, and the robot retreated a pace.

  She continued to back away; she glanced at the other instruments laid out on a table nearby, implements meant to be attached to the limbs of the medical robot, but none of them caught her eye.

  When she was sure the robot wasn’t going to follow her, she turned toward the door.

  She tried to connect to the Net again but as usual the closest access point denied her. She disabled augmented reality overlays to avoid AR spam: last thing she needed was a bunch of aberrant pixels filling her vision and blinding her at a critical moment.

  There was no handle on the door, and no obvious means of opening it.

  Frowning, she held the laser drill to the door. She shoved it forward, and ea
sily perforated the surface; while the material was relatively thin, it would take too long to cut through. But she had no plans of doing so.

  With her free hand she shoved a finger into the hole she’d made and curled the digit toward her in a come-hither gesture. Pulling hard, she ripped a section free. She continued peeling back sections until she could fit her entire hand through the door. Setting down the laser drill, she used both hands to rapidly tear a breach big enough to fit her entire body.

  She scooped up the drill and ducked, sliding one foot through the horizontal gap she’d made, then the other.

  When she was through, she stood up.

  More security robots rushed around the bend to her right.

  There was a T intersection almost immediately to her left. She took it.

  Plasma bolts tore into the wall behind her.

  She raced forward, taking another bend. She glanced at her overhead map. She was in an unmapped region of the basement, but it filled out as she went. She quickly reached the area she had mapped herself; ahead, the stairwell and elevators awaited.

  The inward-sloping elevator doors were closer than the stairwells. One of them opened, and two robots emerged.

  She seemed to catch them by surprise—apparently DragonHunter still had control of the security cameras. She slammed the drill into the torso of the first, and as electricity sparked across its chest, she shoved the spasming body at the second robot, knocking it down.

  She entered the now empty elevator and hit the button for the fifteenth floor. She ducked behind the doorframe as the second robot opened fire; plasma bolts tore into the glass far wall of the lift. The sloping doors closed; red hot circles appeared near the center of the metal as her opponent continued to attack. But those circles faded in color as the elevator ascended.

  The elevator emerged from the basement area, and the dark walls fell away around her as she entered the glass shaft that sloped up the sides of the pyramid. She glanced at the compound spread out behind her, worried that she was in the sights of robots, mechs, or enemy drones, but there were none that she could see, at least not yet.

  There was another glass shaft to the left, not far from her, which traveled up the sloping surface of the pyramid like this one. It was currently empty.

  DING. DING.

  She watched the digital display update as the lift continued upward floor by floor.

  She didn’t know what she was doing. She should be fleeing instead of heading to the fifteenth floor. But something impelled her upward. She wanted to continue her little talk with the mayor. Still, what did she hope to accomplish with a laser drill as a weapon?

  Well, whatever the case, she couldn’t use this lift. The central AI controlled the elevator, and most likely would be halting it any moment now, so that security robots could rush inside and grab her.

  She wasn’t going to allow it.

  She slammed her fist into the emergency stop button, hoping it would override any control the AI had, and was pleased when the lift stopped halfway between the fifth and sixth floor.

  She turned toward the far wall. The basement robot had done a good job of poking holes through the glass with its plasma bolts. A few well-placed kicks, and the brittle material surrounding it shattered. That left only the external glass shell she had to deal with.

  She deactivated the laser drill to pocket it, then she smashed her fists into the translucent material of the shaft. It quickly became obvious that the glass was a lot thicker than it looked. Even with the laser drill, it would take her a long time to cut through.

  Glancing at the ceiling, she saw the outline of what must have been a maintenance panel. She leaped up, and punched a fist into it, bending the metal far inward. Good. It was malleable.

  She jumped again, this time crunching her fingers into the material to form a handhold. She hung on, and with her other hand did the same thing, but this time she pulled downward. She kept repeating that until she had torn several small holes, which she promptly enlarged. She peeled the sections back, forming a crawlspace, then hauled herself through.

  The whole thing took about sixty seconds.

  She proceeded up the shaft at a crouch. She had kept track of the spacing between each floor below, and she multiplied that by the remaining levels to fifteen, to estimate the distance she had to go.

  Another glass elevator descended inside the second translucent shaft beside her. Combat robots were crowded within. When that elevator reached her level, it changed course, mirroring her ascent, with the unspoken promise that the robots would unload when she did.

  She heard a thud come from ahead. A pistol had landed on the glass shaft ahead of her and was sliding down its sloping surface. Curious, she paused, and followed its descent with her eyes. When it was almost above her, a plasma drill tore a circular hole into the glass; the drill cut off, and the pistol slid through, falling into the shaft.

  She dashed forward and scooped it out of the air.

  She glanced up; narrowing her eyes, she saw a drone hovering overhead, so far away that it appeared only as a faint dot. The geofence was supposed to prevent drones from even flying over the parliament area, but apparently DragonHunter had a way to circumvent even that. He would have had to fly very high, however, to avoid being shot down immediately. No doubt security drones had been scrambled to intercept it.

  She fired a test shot to confirm the pistol still worked after the fall, then continued upward. It wasn’t an X2-59, but it would do.

  She gazed at the sprawling compound behind her. There was still nothing on the ground, but in the air, she saw several incoming craft. About half of them were headed skyward, toward the intruding drone. The rest seemed to be coming straight toward her.

  She wondered if the enemy drones would open fire and damage the glass shaft.

  Her question was answered a moment later as plasma bolts slammed into its surface. The glass offered some protection, reducing the intensity of the bolts that passed inside. She began randomly zigzagging as she advanced to decrease her chances of getting shot. So far, the robots mirroring her route in the shaft next to her own had yet to open fire. She wasn’t certain how long that would remain to be the case.

  She knew she couldn’t stay here: she was too exposed. She targeted the next elevator door in front of her and fired at it as she clambered up the slope. She continued to zigzag, adjusting her aim to compensate. The door was sloped itself, making it a smaller target, so repeatedly hitting the same spot wasn’t easy.

  Three floors past it, another elevator door opened. Security robots appeared; their weapons aimed down at her.

  She reached the door she was firing at. By then she’d formed a gaping hole in the center, its edges white hot. She immediately leaped through.

  Behind her, the air lit up as plasma bolts from the robots joined the attack from the drones.

  The elevator next to hers dinged to announce the arrival of the combat robots crowded within. The doors opened, and she caught a glimpse of metal and polycarbonate limbs.

  Rhea fired at the doorknob of the stairwell—just in case it was locked. She shoved her body into the door, breaking it open, and plunged inside as plasma fire broke out behind her. She raced up the stairs; the zig-zagging flights sloped diagonally, matching the exterior shape of the pyramid.

  She aimed behind her as she ran, and when one of the pursuing robots came into view, she fired, scoring a hit. Return fire came, and she ducked, continuing upward.

  The stairwell doors were labelled here, so she didn’t have to keep track of the number of floors remaining to the fifteenth anymore.

  When she reached it, she paused, uncertain what she would find on the other side. She was conscious of the robots still rapidly making their way up the stairs behind her. She could hear their footfalls, rising ever in volume.

  She tried the handle. Surprisingly, it was unlocked.

  She opened the door a crack. The narrow hallway beyond was empty.

  Strange.


  Was DragonHunter helping her in some way?

  No. It was a trap.

  She realized there was zero chance the mayor remained in his office. The security forces would have evacuated him to a bunker or other safe room the moment she escaped, or shortly thereafter, when it became clear what her destination was. They would have taken the stairs, or some service elevator that wasn’t exposed on the exterior.

  There were probably security robots hidden behind all the innocuous seeming doors of the hall ahead, with only more of the machines waiting for her inside the mayor’s office.

  What was I thinking? Why did I rush headlong into this? Recklessly, like some hotheaded young recruit.

  She wasn’t sure where that latter idea came from, but there was some truth to it.

  Yes, he’s in a bunker.

  A strange image filled her mind, accompanying that latter word. Padded walls. A triple locked steel door. Two robots guarding it.

  There was a bunker in the basement.

  How did I know that?

  She slammed the door shut and swung around. She leaped down the entire flight of stairs. Past the next bend, three robots were clambering up toward her.

  She dove at the feet of the first, knocking it over as it opened fire.

  The two of them slammed into the second and third robots, bringing them all down. She fired randomly into them as she descended; before hitting the floor of the next flight, she grabbed onto the handrail beside her, wrenching free of the tangled mess.

  She continued firing at them, targeting the power cell regions as best she could, and then switched her aim up to the door handle.

  She scrambled to her feet and took a running leap over the pile of robots. More of the machines were coming up the stairs, and fired at her, but she hit the door and passed through. She landed rolling on the ground.

  She got up, firing at the inward-sloping elevator doors beside her. She took a leap before she had melted through the white-hot metal, and when she struck, it collapsed. The hot steel wrapped around her feet, and she had to shuck off the pieces when she landed inside the sloped shaft beyond.