Othella (Arcadian Heights)

by Therin Knite

  I’m not sure I like the second possibility. But I don’t have the time to bitch about it now.

  Fully clothed, I locate the nearest and sharpest dinner knife. Then I find a source of material for a bandage. I poke Rocky until he stops staring at Porter’s headless corpse and help him pry his dirty jacket off his shoulders. The inside is clean enough. It’ll have to do.

  "Rocky, Cain, I need a favor."

  Cain stirs and gives me owl eyes. Like she’s forgotten where she is and doesn’t quite understand the situation. I snap my fingers next to her ear, and she starts. "What, McClain?"

  "I need you and Rocky to hold down Dupree. Don’t let him move."

  Rocky pats at the sticky waterfall of blood coating the entire left side of his face and neck. A bit of his ripped ear dangles when he turns his head. "Why?"

  "Because," I say, waving the knife, "I’m going to amputate his leg in the next couple of minutes. Then we’re getting the hell out of here. See, I’ve got a story to write, and the more eyewitness statements I have, the better. So grab him, hold him, and...someone might want to cover his mouth. I don’t have any anesthesia."

  They stare at me like I’m insane.

  Right. We get attacked by killer androids in a facility run by a guy who turns people into mindless robots in order to "save the future," a facility now controlled by an AI gone rogue.

  And I’m crazy for using battlefield medicine.

  I sigh. Some people.

  6

  Quentin

  Molten metal red glows dot the floor, and Clarissa Salt is vaulting through the air. The first patrolman, down with a broken faceplate, grips the burn rifle in its left hand and fires, fires, fires at the form soaring toward its newly arrived partner. One round skims Salt’s leg and explodes in midair, engaged by the brief impact. The fire cloud sets her lab coat alight, but she doesn’t falter.

  Her knee rams into the second patrolman’s helmet. Plastic cracks. It staggers back. Salt’s burst rifle appears under its neck and fires, destroying yet another priceless piece of technology. The useless robot body collapses. The other patrolman reroutes multiple command structures to compensate for its broken sensors and hops up, letting loose another barrage.

  Salt escapes from her coat inferno and tosses the ball of burning white fabric at her opponent. The patrolman dodges and keeps shooting. The ceiling tiles are on fire. The floor tiles are on fire. The wall is patched with black and filled with holes. Several sections spark from live wire damage.

  I force myself into a sitting position, running my tongue across my teeth. There’s a chip in a front tooth where Salt’s gun barrel scraped it on exit. My chest and abdomen protest at my rise. Running is out of the question, but as long as Salt is distracted, I can make a slow getaway. Using the damaged wall as a crutch, I shamble to the stairwell door.

  Five more patrolmen reach the door from the other side before I get there, and they crowd the threshold long enough for Salt to notice where I’m heading. She shrieks like a goddamn banshee and aims her rifle at me. Fires. Her burn-rifle-bearing combatant blocks the bullet’s path. Its chest plate shatters, and some crucial piece of internal hardware is damaged. It stumbles into the wall, legs malfunctioning.

  The other five fill the opponent gap. Two attempt to sneak around her, but she isn’t having it. One goes down with a swift neck shot, and the other retreats to the line. They’re all synched, four sets of standard protocols working to reach a solution. They don’t have the creativity of Howard’s true AI. Or Salt’s corrupted droid AI, which contains a generous helping of her original personality.

  Their advantage is their number. They use it.

  Three of them surge forward at the same moment, lunging for her from different angles. Salt shoots the first one, dodges the second, and grapples with the third. Meanwhile, the fourth removes another burn rifle from its back strap and takes aim. It waits for an opening in the struggle, a clear shot, while its teammate attempts to drag Salt into a vulnerable position. The second patrolman recovers from Salt’s evasion and jumps into the action again, grabbing for Salt’s legs to knock her off balance.

  Time to go.

  I push the door handle down with a shaking hand. I brace my feet against the floor and press my shoulder to the door and use my weight to create a me-sized gap between the frame and barrier. A complex task—because I don’t have the strength to open it any other way. Cool stairwell air washes over me, along with that industrial cleaner scent I never knew I could miss. But my nostrils have been tainted by the scents of blood and smoke and death, and that bitter orange tang smells wonderful.

  Salt screams at me again. "Q! Get back here, you fucking coward!"

  How about no? I have a community to save. And I don’t take second chances for granted. Anymore.

  I lean against the door and slide on through the gap, the corridor battle disappearing from view one inch at a time. I memorize it for later reference, the whole scene. Salt’s enraged face. The patrolmen gaining the advantage, two of them holding her in place, allowing the other to train a kill shot on her head. What a too-close war, a dirty fight.

  This can never be allowed to happen again. Not Salt. Not the other Salt. Not McClain. The community plan will need to be modified to reflect this scenario, to help us recoup the losses from this incident.

  A mess.

  I shuffle farther into the stairwell and begin to round the door, trying to remember the way to the storage room from this location. But before my tired brain can sift through a mound of worthless material, something happens.

  A hum vibrates through the walls, the ceiling, the floor, my bones. The hum of a powered-down system coming to life again.

  Immediately, the patrolmen securing Salt release her.

  And in an instant of horror, I realize the security feeds have been repaired and Howard has taken control of the patrolmen again. Ignorant of the battle-in-progress, that his override of the protect Q patrolman command has left me defenseless.

  Ignorant or apathetic.

  And in an instant of delight, the same revelation descends on Salt.

  She trains her gun on me and smiles with malice deeper than the sea.

  She fires.

  A burst bullet burrows into my abdomen. It explodes.

  And in an instant of hopelessness, there is nothing.

  ... [ Chapter Eleven ] ...

  1

  Marco

  Thick masks make it hard to breathe but easy to hide in the dark.

  I set up base in a looted department store, my hacked patrolman standing guard. It used its scanners to pinpoint the current locations and predicted scouting routes of every other killer robot in the immediate area. They’ve been marked on my paper map with red ink, and there are so many crisscrossing lines, it’s hard to see the terrain beneath. The community has ramped up its security thirteen times over since...my last visit.

  I tug the mask down and inhale musty air. Guns, grenades, pipe bombs, knives, and several types of armor are lined up on the floor. Everything I could gather in the time allotted.

  Any minute now, McClain could give the signal, so I have to be ready at a moment’s notice. Jailbreak operations are tricky with no direct line of communication to your ally, but we couldn’t risk tripping the grid defenses to sneak even a primitive radio by.

  I dress myself in as much practical armor as possible and gear up—with a rifle, a modified handgun, three knives, a couple grenades, and the remote for the jerry-rigged attachment I created to jumpstart the community’s auxiliary power system. Since I can’t do it from the inside—and McClain can’t risk blowing her cover to do it—I created a spare-part device and a simple virus.

  I hooked the device to a poorly concealed breaker box on my way to the hideout. When activated, the virus will cause an irregular power buildup in the auxiliary system. According to the blueprint, the community generates its own power—how remains a mystery because the plans didn’t specify—but it runs on a fairly standard
power system with a fairly standard set of failsafe measures. Once the power buildup reaches critical levels, the system should switch off several main power units in the Sims Center and dump the excess auxiliary power into the community until a repair team arrives at the breaker box to fix the "issue" manually.

  Given the scout patrolmen’s locations, I’ll have about forty-five seconds to get McClain out before a team reaches the breaker box and disables the attachment. I’ll also have to deal with any patrolmen active at the fence during the breakout attempt. No matter what, it’ll be a close call. If I time it wrong, we’re dead.

  I fold my map and stuff it into a vest pocket. Then I head for the stairs and shimmy up a narrow ladder to a hidden attic space that smells like animal droppings and sawdust. There’s a round window at the far end of the room, and I peek through it using high-powered binoculars. About ten minutes ago, I could have sworn I saw gunfire flashes through a number of Sims Center windows. I heard nothing, but the walls and windows of Arcadian Heights are likely soundproof.

  All is calm on this side of the building. Whether that means a fight has ended, I don’t know. McClain could be dead like...Clarissa. Q could have outsmarted us, and there could be a patrolman horde heading for my hideout right now. If that’s the case, then the time for panic has passed, and I might as well go down shooting as many of the bastards as I can. Destroying Q’s precious property. A weak finish but better than nothing.

  The minutes tick by with no signs of life from within the Sims Center. My legs cramp. The old bullet wound in my left leg starts throbbing again, and I pluck a high-dose aspirin out of a pouch on my belt and crush it with my molars. The bitterness that floods my mouth keeps me alert.

  A floorboard creaks behind me. I whirl around, one hand on my pistol. My hacked patrolman stands in front of the exit. It makes several quick hand signals I taught it earlier in the day. Scouts spotted nearby. Deviating from known paths. My patrolman advances to the window—I scoot out of its way—and points to the end of a street four blocks from the community fence.

  Eight patrolmen dash into view, take a hard right, and head for the nearest guard tower. My patrolman then points in the opposite direction, and from another street, twelve more of its former comrades rush toward the community. Briefly, the defense grid disengages, and the patrolmen collectively climb the fence, ascend to the same tower, and reemerge on the other side bearing an assortment of weaponry, including burn and burst rifles.

  The merged group hurries inside the Sims Center.

  "What’s going on?" I ask.

  My patrolman retrieves a pad of paper and a ballpoint pen I tucked into a gap in its armor earlier and writes: Community breach identified. Code 987 defense measures initiated. All nonessential scouting personnel recalled. Five active targets. Elimination order given. Warning: casualties incurred. Targets are armed.

  A sinking feeling drags my stomach into my bowel. War is on the march inside Arcadian Heights, and there’s not a damn thing I can do to stop it. Either McClain emerges the champion, and I help her over the fence, or she falls inside the Sims Center while I twiddle my thumbs.

  I gnaw at a knuckle and finger the safety on my gun.

  This is my fate, isn’t it? Time and time again. Me sitting on the sidelines while other people risk...and lose...their lives.

  Blood on my hands. I taste it.

  And more than anything, I want to taste Q’s.

  2

  Georgette

  Lost is my least favorite place to be.

  With Cain and Rocky carrying a moaning, one-legged Dupree down yet another maze-like hallway with no obvious exit, we’re sitting ducks. Somewhere in the distance, another gaggle of patrolmen is in pursuit. For an isolated community in the middle of a trash heap, Arcadian Heights has no shortage of combat-ready resources. If I can’t find my way out of here soon, I’m going to end up like Porter. And that would be a real pity.

  I like my head where it is. On my neck. In one piece.

  "McClain, do you have any idea where we are?" Cain shifts to shoulder Dupree with one arm and uses the other to pick a few gloopy brain fragments out of her hair.

  "Not anymore. Salt got us off track." My mental map of the Sims Center is useless without a point of reference, and I lost my place what feels like miles ago. "If I can find a landmark I recognize, I can reorient myself and get us out of here. But all these goddamn halls are identical. We’re in a lab section of the building. Line after line of straight white halls and the same number of rooms on every one."

  "You better think of something quick, then, because those bastards are gaining." She peeks over her shoulder as if she expects the patrolmen to appear on her cue.

  "I know that. I’m trying my best." I hock a glob of bloody spit on the bland-tiled floor. "Forgive me. I’m a dumbass, remember? Georgette stupid. Not genius like smarty-pants scientists."

  Cain rolls her eyes. "Do you have to be a bitch about everything?"

  "Yes, it’s called character."

  "Can we stop bickering, please?" Rocky’s red-painted face is downcast. This is the first time he’s spoken since he begged me to hurry and finish slicing Dupree’s leg off. There’s a bruise forming on the non-bloodied side of his head where the new amputee clocked him in the middle of my surgery. "I’m not in the mood for petty arguments, and personally, I think we’d be better off using all the brainpower we have to escape rather than wasting time acting like dipshit schoolchildren."

  I blow a matted clump of hair out of my face and flip off Cain. "Have it your way." I speed up to power walk levels, and the pair of them groan at the added stress of carrying Dupree that much faster. I’d offer to take turns with them, but I don’t want to. That and I’m mildly concerned my torso might fall apart if I add any excess pressure. A few of the incision marks where Salt removed the burst bullet shrapnel are showing signs of wear.

  I take a required left at the next intersection, expecting to see the same line of eighteen rooms on either side of the hall again. But the end of this corridor is dead: it’s blocked by a large steel door with a WARNING: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY message stamped in the middle.

  "Oh, great," says Cain. "Now we’re trapped."

  "Works for me."

  I wheel around to find a battle-scarred Clarissa Salt standing behind us. Half her false face is missing, revealing the skeletal robotic structure beneath. She’s lost her coat, and most of her clothing is singed. Two rifles, a burn and a burst, hang from her shoulders by frayed straps. Her shoes must have gone the way of her coat at some point because she pads across the floor with bare feet. She rounds a shocked Cain and a trembling Rocky—Dupree is still out of it—and passes by me to reach the steel door. A passcode box is attached to the wall next to it.

  "Where are we? What’s behind the door?" I rake a nail down the barrel of my own rifle, salvaged from the battle in the hall. "And where’s Q? Didn’t you chase him?"

  Salt wags a finger at me. "Q’s dead. Not the way I wanted him, but it’ll have to do."

  She enters a ten-digit code into the box, and eight massive bolt locks disengage, the clanks vibrating through the floor, thumping against my chest. The enormous door swings open to reveal a room filled with equipment. Machines with mysterious purposes. Workstation screens displaying data feeds I can’t interpret. And in the center, a row of metal tables I recognize from a folder full of corpse pictures.

  "This is the transfer room," Salt says. "I’d say we have about two minutes to get this done before the goons catch up to us."

  I tug the gun from my shoulder and level it at her mangled body. "Get what done?"

  The missing half of her face contorts her expression of amusement, but she gets the point across well enough. "A modified transfer. I can’t leave here in this body. It has an auto-shutdown trigger in the hardware I can’t reprogram or remove. So I need another body to escape with." She backs into the room and pats one of the metal tables with her damaged hands. "That would be yours, McClain. My min
d and your mind in your body. A quick head jump, if you will, and we can get the hell out of here."

  I swear to God, the nerve of this woman. "And what makes you think I’ll agree to that?"

  Salt’s one remaining eyebrow arches. "Funny. It sounds like you think I’m giving you a choice." She shakes her head, chuckling, and bangs her fist against the metal slab. "Get on the fucking table, McClain. Or I’ll make you, and it won’t be pleasant."

  3

  Quentin

  The fact I’m alive is astounding.

  Burst bullets were designed to inflict maximum damage when shooting at a group of enemies. You hit one dead on, and others are caught in the shrapnel blast. Since their first implementation during the last Middle Eastern War in ’92, burst bullets have had a consistent kill rate for primary targets—those shot in the torso—of ninety-three-point-six percent. So when Salt shot me ten minutes ago, there was a six-point-four percent chance of initial survival.

  Yet here I am, on the landing floor, bleeding out but breathing. Sort of. One of my lungs caught a chunk of metal, and with every breath, it threatens to collapse. But my toes wiggle, so I’m not paralyzed, and my heart is pumping hard, so I’m not in my final moments. Above the odds, I survived an attack that should have ended me instantly.

  Some force beyond my understanding has given me a short reprieve.

  Because I will be dead by the end of the day. I unbuttoned my shirt when the shock wore off to find my chest and abdomen shredded. There are jagged metal shards sticking out of my skin. Pressurized blood spurts out around a few of them. The others are stained red but have blocked external blood flow. No doubt I’m bleeding internally. How long I have before the blood loss overwhelms me is a mystery. And I’ll only die of blood loss if my damaged organs don’t shut down first.