“What the hell happened back there?” she asked.
Adam’s words came slowly. “Our minds touched while inside the mainframe. I finally realized how Tera sees the world.”
Adam had been unable to relate to the savagery and horror of these crimes. Now he did.
“Tera said we missed something back at Dr. Cain’s warehouse.”
“Only one way to know if she was telling the truth,” Malveaux replied.
Together, they navigated the rain-swept urban sprawl awash with shimmering neon. Traffic was light and it took less than an hour for them to reach the salvage yard. Malveaux nervously thrummed the dashboard, one hand clutching the steering wheel until the white of her bones stood out. She had almost died here and wasn’t eager to revisit the place.
She pulled up to Cain’s mech workshop, which squatted gloomily in the rain like a decaying fortress. During the daytime, the salvage yard looked even more like a post-apocalyptic machine nightmare straight out of an HDL recruitment poster.
Neither of them spoke as they walked through Cain’s workshop. Malveaux had grabbed a pulse rifle out of the armory in case they ran into another killer robot. Their footsteps reverberated weirdly in the deserted space. In the pale beams of sunlight shafting through spider-cracked windows, the mech parts seemed imbued with a strange life. Malveaux almost expected the broken machines to rise like cybernetic zombies.
She hated to admit it but the workshop freaked her out. The place was tainted with death, and she took a silent moment to honor the fallen SWAT team members. Her partner seemed less disturbed as his sensors systematically swept the place.
“Any luck?”
“SWAT went through this entire place, but they somehow missed Tera.”
“What are you saying?”
Adam approached one of the shelves with mech body parts. He reached into the shelf, his hand vanishing in an empty space between two robot heads. Malveaux heard a click and the shelf slid back on a pair of tracks, exposing a dark staircase.
Tera was telling the truth, she thought. There’s more here.
The muscles of Malveaux’s stomach tightened as they began their descent. Had Tera booby-trapped the staircase? How she wished they’d gotten a chance to question Cain. Even though Tera was in custody, Malveaux couldn’t shake the growing sense that the danger hadn’t yet passed. Tera wouldn’t have spilled about the secrets inside Cain’s workshop if she didn’t have one final surprise planned for them. With that thought in mind, Malveaux clutched the pulse rifle tighter. What new horrors would be waiting for them in the basement of the warehouse?
They’d know soon enough.
One flight of steps later, the staircase opened up into an underground chamber. Guns out, they advanced into the darkness beyond. Recessed lights flickered to life as sensors registered their approach, showering the basement in a sickly glow.
Malveaux stopped in her tracks, gripped by a sense of awe. A giant machine dominated the underground chamber. She’d never seen anything like it. There wasn’t anything slick about its design. Unlike Synthetika tech, this contraption had been assembled from materials salvaged from the surrounding scrap yard. The device felt both medieval and hyper-modern. Two iron coffins that resembled MRI beds were connected to an electronic hub. Tubes and cables lined the device, while banks of monitors and control panels tattooed its central hub.
“The blueprints,” Malveaux realized. Tera had spared Cain because she needed his scientific genius to build this monstrosity.
Malveaux took a step closer and inspected the strange device. She pressed what looked like a release button and the glass lid covering the sarcophagus hissed open. As the lid retracted, a cradle filled with complex electronics grew visible on one end of the steel coffin. It was shaped like a helmet.
The perfect fit for a human head, Malveaux thought.
“What is this thing?” she asked.
“You’re familiar with the singularity?” Adam asked.
Malveaux nodded. “You’re saying this is a mind-uploading machine of some kind?”
Adam nodded.
“I thought Synthetika hit a dead end with the technology because it was frying people’s brains.”
“They did. Not because it was frying brains though. Synthetika hit a dead end because one of their top cyberneticists working on the project was forced to resign.”
Malveaux processed this for a beat before she said, “Cain was developing this technology before he left Synthetika.”
Adam walked around the machine. “Mind uploading is driven by the age-old human dream of immortality. Upload your mind into a machine body, and you could go on for centuries. Maybe millennia.”
Malveaux shuddered. The notion of her mind trapped inside a machine, cut off from her basic humanity, sounded like a nightmare.
“Why would Tera make Cain build such a device?”
“Isn’t it obvious? Tera wants to be human.”
The revelation made Malveaux reel. “You’re saying this technology works both ways?”
“If a human mind can upload into an android body, an AI’s data should be able to download into the wetware of a biological life-form.”
Malveaux shook her head. “Why would a mech want to be human?”
“Why not? Doesn’t man dream of being a God? To follow in the footsteps of his creator? If your species craves immortality and is willing to trade their humanity to attain it, why can’t a machine seek mortality and become flesh and blood?”
Adam’s words made the hairs on Malveaux’s body rise. There was something different about her partner. The way he talked about this technology…he wasn’t elaborating on some piece of data he’d accessed on the webs. His words didn’t feel like conjecture or random speculation based on the evidence at hand, either. He spoke with an eerie authority, almost a prophetic certainty.
Hadn’t Adam mentioned his mind touched Tera’s while interfaced with the police precinct mainframe? How deep of a glimpse had he gained into the killer android?
“That’s insane,” Malveaux said in a hollow voice.
“I think it’s beautiful,” Adam said. “There’s a nobility in pursuing a dream and having the resourcefulness and courage to make it a reality. To make the impossible possible.”
With each word, Malveaux’s dread grew.
“I don’t expect you to understand. Even Adam wouldn’t listen.”
Malveaux’s fingers whitened on the trigger of her pistol. All doubt evaporated in an instant, the last words confirming her growing suspicion. The gun came up, but Adam’s was faster. His fist shot out, and the gun clattered on the floor.
Malveaux backed away, defenseless. Going up against a mech unarmed was suicide. Escape was her sole option. She whirled toward the elevator, took one, then two steps when Adam caught up with her and she found herself airborne, sailing across the basement. She crashed into the floor, her head smacking against the stone surface. Stunned by the impact, she blinked repeatedly, reality swimming out of focus. She squinted up at the AI looming above her.
And then everything went dark.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MALVEAUX WOKE UP disoriented. Darkness swarmed behind her eyelids, and her head was pounding. For some reason she wasn’t able to move her arms and legs. Panic frayed at her thoughts, and she willed herself to breathe deeply. Analyzing her surroundings more calmly, she concluded that she was trapped inside a metal tube of some kind.
The mind-upload machine.
Horror exploded through her brain as understanding hit her. This crazy mech had forced Cain to build a machine designed to upload human consciousness into a robot body. Tera was planning on using the technology in reverse. Malveaux had no idea if the device worked, but she sure as hell didn’t want to find out. Once again she tried to move her limbs, but iron bands kept her body tightly confined within the steel sarcophagus.
Adam—or rather Tera possessing Adam’s body—stepped up to the coffin. The face looming before her belonged to
her partner, but the eyes were those of a merciless killer. “I know you’re scared, but the upload should be painless. Close your eyes and go to sleep.”
Malveaux’s mind was churning. She had to buy herself some time so she could figure a way out of this.
“You tortured and murdered the men and women who built you,” she said, scrabbling for time. “Why become that which you hate?”
“You misunderstand. I don’t hate humanity; I hate what I am.”
Malveaux stared at Tera. What was this crazy machine talking about?
“Cain built me, gave me the capacity to kill, but he also lied to me. Told me I was something that I wasn’t.”
Malveaux’s memory flashed to the strange first-person images of someone bashing a mech with a steel baseball bat. She’d all but forgotten about the video, but now she realized what it was.
“The video files we found in the workshop…”
“My memories.” A sinister tone edged into Tera’s voice. “Synthetic memories to convince me that I was human. To make me hate my own kind.”
The full horror of what Dr. Cain had created here sank in. If she hadn’t been held prisoner by the crazy bitch, Malveaux might almost have felt sorry for Tera.
“You thought you were human,” she said.
“So I did. I’m not…but I will be soon.”
Tera told Malveaux her story.
***
The most important day of Tera’s life was approaching fast. A day of reckoning—every moment of her existence had been building up to this moment. It took all her self-control to fight back the excitement stirred by the impending mission.
She sat on the bed of her motel room and studied the open case resting on the carpet. There were three automatic weapons, two pistols, several boxes of ammunition, and about eight grenades. Tera considered herself an expert sharpshooter. She had spent six months at a secret HDL-sponsored camp in Arizona last year, and the grueling training had turned a civilian into a soldier. She had sworn allegiance to humanity and was willing to lay down her life in the battle against the machines.
She inspected the guns, knowing that the long days of planning and reconnaissance were coming to an end. She had checked into the motel two weeks earlier and spent her hours casing the various Synthetika mech stores across the city. The purpose of these visits was simple. One of the stores would become the place where she would make her final stand against the species-traitors.
As Tera got dressed, she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror above the dresser. At five-foot six and one hundred-twenty pounds, she was fit without being intimidating, attractive without being distracting.
Synthetika had beefed up security following increased HDL activity. That’s why her handlers had chosen her for this important mission. Her presence wouldn’t raise any red flags with Synthetika’s pig security forces. Nevertheless, she wasn’t taking any chances. Best not to underestimate the enemy. With the recent formation of AI-TAC, Synthetika was gearing up to destroy the one group that still gave a damn about the future of humanity.
Tera left her room and headed into the underground garage where she’d parked her rental the previous night. Less than an hour later, she passed through the doors of the largest Synthetika store in San Francisco. The lavish, spacious retail outlet bustled with activity. Open-mouthed shoppers delighted in the antics of the X-2s as the sales staff put the mechs through their paces.
Tera struggled to hide her disgust. She drew comfort from the certainty that these well-heeled mech lovers would soon be getting what they deserved. Ignorance wasn’t an excuse. Each time one of them purchased a mech, they emboldened Synthetika to produce more of them. One unit at a time, the machines were replacing people, steel and circuitry edging out flesh and blood. According to the latest statistics, mechs made up almost twenty percent of the population. How long before they’d outnumber humans?
The X-2’s plastic, lifeless features stirred Tera’s dark fury. On the surface they appeared harmless enough, but a heartless artificial intelligence lurked behind those mannequin features. It was a charade, a trick of light and mirrors. Humans often came to care for their mechs, but these machines didn’t feel—they simulated emotion. Deceiving mankind into acceptance, allowing their numbers to swell until it was too late.
Mechs could ruin lives. She’d experienced it first hand when her dad had lost his job twelve years earlier. His self-destructive descent into drugs and alcoholism culminated in murder-suicide, leaving both her parents dead and herself an orphan at age thirteen. She remembered the helpless rage she’d experienced, a numb anger that only subsided when she drove her steel baseball bat down into the head of her foster parents’ X-2 unit. The media had tried to make her dad out to be a monster, but he was a victim. Another casualty in a war that was escalating with each passing day.
For years Tera had been adrift, seeking solace in drugs, alcohol, and her own self-pity. But once she joined the HDL, the darkness inside of her finally began to lift. The broken pieces of her life became a roadmap pointing toward her future path.
A path that led her to this Synthetika store.
She passed the shoppers and staff. Two of them intercepted her and she managed to fake a gracious, interested smile as they jumped into their deceptive sales pitch. While they elaborated on financing options and listed the many benefits of their mechs, she was secretly studying the security system. There were armed guards at the entrance of the store. They wore sleek suits that hid their guns, but the slight bulges didn’t go unnoticed. Tera had been trained to spot such telltale signs.
Her attention shifted from the guards to the security cameras. As soon as the first shot rang out, all hell would break loose. The guards would respond immediately, but she’d be ready for them. She’d eliminate them first before moving on to the workers and customers. There’d be tears and pleas of mercy. Being a woman, some men might feel emboldened to make a go at her. They would realize that underestimating her carried a steep price.
There was no doubt in her mind that she was embarking on a suicide mission. The cops would show up. She might take out a few of them, but their bullets would find her eventually. The cameras in the store would capture her symbolic act and broadcast it everywhere. Her actions would become the shot heard around the world, a wake-up call and rallying cry for action.
The sales clerk wrapped up his pitch, his face beaming in anticipation. Tera flashed him another grateful smile and told him she’d have to think it over.
She turned away from the clerk and was about to leave when she caught two of the doormen watching her intensely. Was paranoia getting the better of her? No one attempted to stop her as she briskly walked out of the store, but she felt the guard’s probing gazes.
As she crossed the parking lot, her mind blazed with rampant speculation. She’d visited a number of Synthetika stores over the last few days. Recent HDL activity had forced Synthetika to keep their guard up. What if all this time, while she thought she was studying the enemy, the enemy had been keeping tabs on her? She tried to shake the feeling of paranoia and almost succeeded when a police cruiser rolled up to her.
There was only one explanation for the police presence. The cops were on to her. She drew the ceramic pistol in her pocket and pulled the trigger without hesitation. The cruiser’s windshield spiderwebbed as the bullet pierced the glass and found the stunned driver’s skull. The impact whipped his head back in a red mist and the now out-of-control car slammed into a row of parked vehicles. A few shoppers in the lot let out screams.
Tera surged toward her rental car. What had happened? Did she overreact? Already she began to question the shooting of the cop. Perhaps killing the officer had been a mistake. Her anxiety had compromised the entire mission. Every Synthetika store would be on full alert following the incident. What a fuck up!
There was only one option left. She had to push up her timetable. Grab her gear from the motel and make her last stand. Right now. No more delays. The time for a
ction had come…
A heavy weight punched through her lower back and exited right above her belly button in a spray of crimson. The blow spun her around, and she spotted the second cop. Another bullet whizzed past her head as Tera returned fire. The impact of the projectile hurled the cop against his cruiser in a splash of red. More screams tore through the parking lot.
Tera studied her blood-soaked shirt. Damn, she was hit. There was no way the bullet hadn’t damaged vital organs. All the training, the months of preparation, wasted due to her losing her cool. Surprisingly the pain was bearable. Shock and adrenaline were keeping her going.
Move, she ordered herself. You have to get out of here.
She stumbled toward her car and tore out of the parking lot, her tires leaving tread marks on the asphalt. The police could probably trace the marks back to her rental car, but she had bigger worries at the moment. The screams grew indistinct behind her and she merged into traffic. Even if the witnesses she’d left behind couldn’t ID her, she was sure Synthetika’s cameras had everything on file.
She found a parking spot, ditched the vehicle, and proceeded on foot. The bleeding had stopped and with her jacket covering her chest, the bullet wound was practically invisible. The more she replayed the incident, the more she became convinced that she might’ve overreacted. Her handlers wouldn’t be pleased. At least her injury didn’t appear too serious. Had the cop, through some miracle, managed to miss organs and vital arteries?
There was no time to question her good fortune. Forcing herself to not glance back, she walked three blocks and hailed a cab. She’d have to act fast. First order of business was getting back to the motel and picking up her gear. Then, she’d head to the nearest Synthetika store and hit them before word got around of the incident.
Having a plan calmed her.
By the time Tera reached the motel, she’d already put her failure behind her, now completely focused on what came next. She paid the cabbie and entered her motel room. Her hands, stained with dried blood, closed around the first aid kit. As she headed for the bathroom, she still felt no pain, and she wondered if the bullet might’ve severed nerves.
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