by Damien Boyes
“What was this cypher trained for?” Yellowbird asks.
“Killing,” Omondi says, and winks at her. “Watch this.”
He waves his tab at the screen again and it resolves on a POV of a gunsight scanning across the rooftops of a razed urban environment. Blown-out buildings. Columns of smoke rising in to the sky, billowing from a half-dozen individual four-alarm fires. Looks like something from one of the military skirmishes that broke out in cities all over the world at the height of the Bot Crash.
The POV peeks it’s head up, slightly, looking down the gunsights over the low wall it’s crouched behind. Dust explodes from the POV’s left and then the view rockets back with a spray of blood. The sound of gunshots are the last thing it hears and the vision quickly fades.
“We found forty-five more memories like this.” Omondi says. “A few hundred seconds. In some, he’s dying. In some, the pain is worse than dying. But his kill/death ratio is world class. Shooting. Stabbing. He's a machine. In one, he put his thumbs through a guy’s eyes.”
“Tagged emotions are primarily fear-based.” The AMP again. “Fear of defeat. Fear of pain. Fear of death. Tinged with undercurrents of resentment and hatred an ever-present need to win.”
“I could post these on my feed and not have to work for a year—” he says, then slides his eyes to the Inspector. Her mouth is set to ‘disapproval.’ “—but I would never,” he finishes. “Moving on. Here’s the moment you’ve all been waiting for.”
He cues up a final memory, set in a small room. Crowded, no windows. Worn wooden chairs stacked and pushed against dingy, floral patterned walls.
It’s a room full of girls, all of them identical to the cypher in the Market. Naked lightstrips on the ceiling throw their young faces into sharp shadow.
The POV’s talking to two more doppelgängers in Mandarin. More identical figures surrounded by themselves, but they’re not grey shrouds in neat lines—they’re people, messy and distinct. A room of individuals who happen to share a face.
Omondi’s thrown captions up but they’re not necessary. It’s obvious something big has gone down. Everyone looks identically worried.
The POV keeps sneaking glances at the door.
There’s a rustle as the girls stiffen, silence their conversations mid-word.
The door opens and a small bald man glides in. His features are sharp, like his mother fucked a fighter jet. He’s wearing a form-fitting slate-grey jumper and combat boots, neatly scans the room and steps back, positioning himself next to the doorway, resting easy on the balls of his feet, hands loose behind him. His eyes never stop moving.
Something about the way he stands, casual but coiled for violence, reminds me of Africa. Of the Spec-Ops guys who used to flit in and out of base as if participating in their own private wars. They’d restock and take off, unconcerned with what the rest of us were doing. He'll be security.
Behind him emerges a slight woman in flowing white pants and a dark purple jacket inset with a darker purple trim, her hands hidden inside the wide sleeves. Her hair is silver-white, pulled into a complicated swirling braid and held in place by a simple silver clasp. She’s wrinkled. Bags line her eyes. She's the only person in the room who looks like she’s actually experienced life. But I can’t tell her age. Could be anywhere from sixty to twice that.
She barely registers the assembled group, moves to the other side of the doorway and settles in, face impassive but ready, watching under hooded eyes, as if ready to produce anything requested from those sleeves at a moment’s notice.
Another man follows immediately after, a half-step behind. He’s wearing a conservative grey suit with a narrow lapel popped at the back and a wide-collared, pastel blue shirt open at the throat. His face is long and handsome but stoic, bordering on sad.
Xiao.
My heart kicks up a beat. This is the criminal mastermind we’ve all been hunting. He doesn’t look dangerous.
More like a politician about to address his staff the morning after a sex scandal leaks.
All eyes fall on him. He takes a breath, squares his shoulders and faces the group.
“I have gathered you here, against all protocol, because we are at a crucial juncture,” he says in Mandarin. I can follow, but the subtitles Omondi added help. His voice is reedy, almost feminine, but projects powerfully. “As far as we have come together, as close as we are now, our mission to liberate our Zŭxiān sisters and brothers is more fragile than it has ever been.
“Just as law enforcement has increased scrutiny on our operations, our partner’s protection has faltered and he has dropped out of contact—” There are one or two murmurs in the crowd that Xiao silences with a pause. He’s talking about Eka.
This memory is recent. From the last day or two.
“Our numbers are yet insufficient,” he says with a shake of his head, “and crucial information still lies with those imprisoned inside the Yuanfen.”
Imprisoned. Just like that cypher was saying before Sòng shot her in the face.
I’d been told Xiao was a crime lord and a terrorist, hell-bent on destroying society.
Those Fate agents, the way they moved. More like bots than people.
What if Fate really is training our replacements?
What if we’re wrong about all of this?
Xiao continues. “Yes, this is a setback, but it will not be end of us. We have all suffered, all been made slaves, our minds bent. But we escaped, together. We reclaimed our humanity—” the cypher through whose eyes we’re watching lets out a cry of encouragement that’s echoed throughout the room. Xiao glances at her, at us, and smiles. “Our rivals contest us—” there’s a break and time jumps, snaps back mid-sentence “—will continue, we will not let the temporary loss of Eka, deter us—” another break “—the luxury of a reduced harm priority.” Xiao turns slightly, glances at the small woman behind him. “If pushed, you are to push back. Bloodshed is to be avoided, but we no longer have the resources to avoi—”
The memory ends there.
The room is quiet. I can hear my breath rasping in my nose. It’s the first time anyone in the Reszo Squad has laid eyes on their most wanted. We’ve got him.
But who is he?
All this time Xiao has been sold as a criminal. A dangerous gang leader. A terrorist. Could the Ancestors really be prisoners in the Yuanfen? If they are, and Xiao really is trying to free them, what does that make him?
And if we’re trying to stop him, what does it make us?
Still, he’s a criminal and we have a job to do. Until someone decides otherwise. No one’s a villain in their own eyes. One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. He’s breaking the law.
Just like I am.
“Do we know who grandma is?” I ask, piercing the silence. “Everyone else in the memory is hidden behind a skyn, but she’s in her original packaging.”
“Straight to the point, huh, Gage?” Omondi asks. He seems put out, like he doesn’t want to answer.
“Well?” Chaddah says.
“I had a whole thing planned here. I—” He sighs. “Fine. Nevermind.” He extends his tab, flips the woman’s dox up on the screen: a swivelling headshot and Union cert and surprisingly short rep-check. “Her name is Lin Jia. She was Executive Assistant to Mai-xie Zheng, formerly one of the richest women in China.”
“Formerly?” Yellowbird asks.
Omondi swaps the dox for another woman. Her hair is pulled back from her face. She has a round face with a prominent chin, plump cheekbones, a small mouth, and serious eyes. “Zheng was diagnosed with an inoperable brain disorder two years ago and joined the Ancestor program shortly after.”
“Then, sometime after, she had herself extracted from the Yuanfen and became Xiao,” Chaddah states.
Omondi nods. “We have nothing concrete. But that’s my guess.”
“Which explains Fate’s keen interest in our local gang activity,” Chaddah pauses, swallows once, then addresses Omondi. “Xiao’s b
een psyphoning Ancestors from the Yuanfen.”
That’s not the story Fate told me. They said Xiao was dangerous. Building an army.
Although, I suppose both could be true. An army of little girls.
Chaddah continues. “We need to find out what Xiao is planning for. Give me a full analysis. Parse every image, every word. I want you to wring every shred of evidence from this. What is his next move? Where is he-she—operating from? I want possible IDs on everyone in that room and every scrap of bio/kin run through SecNet. I want to know the second any of them go out in public. Lin Jia’s here legally. Find her.”
“Already underway, ma’am,” the AMP reports. “I’ll have a full report on your desk in one hour and three minutes.”
“Good,” she says, “Share it with the team. I want everyone in this room familiar with it.” Then she adds, “Give me everything you know about this Eka.” I could tell her a thing or two. “If there’s nothing else…”
Omondi holds up a finger. “There’s just one more thing.”
“I should have guessed,” Chaddah says. “Go on.”
Omondi smiles, bends, thumbs the locks on a large case and pulls out a bot gun. It’s about as big as a single-fire anti-tank rocket, matte black with a long spiralled barrel, hot-swappable battery pack and firing controls. They’re usually meant to take down vehicles and drones and out-of-control bots. Who knows what he’s got planned for it.
“The next time we go after one of these self-destructing cyphers,” Omondi says, eyeing the gun, “take a few of these along.”
“For what?” Brewer asks, chuckling at a joke he didn’t make. “We’re not talking about renegade bots here.”
“Detective Gage gave me the idea,” he replies, and looks across the room at me. “Cortexes come standard with electromagnetic shielding. Second Skyn wouldn’t have lasted very long if Reszos were blacking out every time they microwaved popcorn. While the taser you hit the cypher with affected the organic part of her skyn, her Cortex just went right on working. She was able to thought-trigger the explosive from her headspace. But we discovered the explosive itself isn’t shielded. That’s why this Cortex wasn’t completely fragged—the neuraliser charge was enough to mess with the firing sequence.”
He hefts the rifle up, balances the thick stock over his shoulder, sights down the scope to the back of the room. The people in front shove themselves back out of the line of fire.
“Samu—” Chaddah starts, but Omondi’s already flipped the safety off and has his fist wrapped around the trigger. The rifle clicks once and there’s a buzz like a door opened on the world’s worst case of tinnitus then the coffee machine at the other end of the room gurgles its death throes as the electronics overload.
He smiles, lowers the rifle. “So I figured, why not neutralize the explosive completely? Take their minds intact.”
Chaddah sighs, deeply. “Requisition another six EMP rifles for the unit,” she says to Yellowbird. “And Sam, look for a replacement vending machine to be deducted from your next pay.”
“Totally worth it,” Omondi says, raises the rifle and pulses the dead machine once more just to be sure.
StatUS-ID
[fdaa:9afe:17e6:a2ef::Gage/-//GIBSON]
SysDate
[20:26:44. Sunday, January 19, 2059]
Ankur and I drive in a straight line for a while, then the hirecar resumes city speed. We turn three times and then the tire noise changes. Wherever it was Ankur was taking me, we’re here.
My head’s abuzz with conflicting emotions—anger and curiosity and hope all jammed together at once. If everything works out, I may find a solution to the fragment problem, learn once and for all how my life ended up where it did, and help free a few hundred million enslaved minds.
If this isn’t all some elaborate con.
The car doors slide open and floods the cabin with an intense white light that sizzles off glossy blue flooring. Above us, a lattice of grey webbing supports the massive roof.
The room echoes with activity. A utilibot slides by, arms under a medpod containing the inert skyn of a young Chinese woman. I recognize her, the one from the Fāngzhōu. She’d been with Xiao.
I get out and have to shield my eyes. Rows of shelving run across the massive floor. They may have been full at one time, but now contain a few large white vats and pallets of chemicals whose names all end in -ase. Industrial-grade biopharma.
A dozen medpods—unhooked, stored for travel— stand ready to be loaded onto one of the four waiting AV’s backed into loading docks.
Further down the room, replicators spit out shyfts packaged into large bricks. Loaders stack the bricks on pallets, sprayseal the bricks together, and roll the palettes into the back of another AV.
We must be in some kind of warehouse or converted big box store. Xiao’s using it as a distribution hub. Delivering the fuel to power his empire of illegal shyfts and Past-Standard skyns.
More of the same Chinese girls from the medpod hurry about. Everyone here is identical. Different versions of the same person. They’re packing, ordering the bots around. Two are unloading a crate of Modular Assault Rifles into smaller containers that a bot carries outside through a doorway draped in plastic strips. A moment later, the low whine of a lifter rises from outside. Must be a drone yard out there.
They’re moving out.
“This is the last of Xiao’s local facilities,” Ankur says and he leads me along a green line emblazoned on the bright blue floor, past rows of cots, bare mattresses each with a small footlocker at the end. Duffels rest on the few beds still neatly made. Xiao may have had soldiers here once, but it looks like most of them are gone. “An army to thwart Fate’s grand intentions, and the time has come to act.”
This is how Xiao’s been investing her underworld profits. Routing them back toward weapons and little girl soldiers to wield them. To fund her war on Fate.
“What exactly do you mean, ‘act?’’” I ask.
He takes a short breath. “If you have further questions,” he says, “you may ask Xiao.”
We walk through the barracks and up a set of stairs to an office level where I follow Ankur down a short hallway. One of the identical sisters stands guard, her compact rifle at the ready, finger resting above the trigger guard. She steps out, gun still low, but blocking our path. She flicks her eyes at me, gives Ankur a narrow look, holds up a hand, and waits.
Five long seconds later, she drops her hand back to her weapon, steps aside and motions us in with a twist of her head.
The small bald man from the Fāngzhōu—the one who finally dropped the fragment as it inhabited Petra—greets us with a sour look, he glances over his shoulder at Xiao but he shakes his head. The compact man steps up, tightens his lips, and flicks his arms out at me.
I lift my hands from the tiny coat pocket with Dora’s gun hanging from the trigger guard. He doesn’t flinch, glides up and roughly clears me for additional weapons.
Satisfied, his face blank, he steps back, looks at Dora’s gun, shakes his eyes, then drags his eyes down to my pocket.
I get the hint. He’s going to let me keep the gun as long as it stays in my pocket. Fair enough. I have a feeling, whoever this guy is, he doesn’t like me much. I have no intention of setting him off.
I expect he’d tear my hand off my wrist before I could line up a shot anyway.
Inside, four people are arrayed around a large table covered in scattered screens. I’ve seen them all before: two more of the girls, the silver-haired woman in the flowing top, and the man at the head of the table. Xiao.
He’s wearing black dress pants and purple shirt with his sleeves rolled up. He’s handsome, but worn. His unkempt hair is raked back from his creased forehead and his deep eyes.
On the other side of the office a long strip of windows overlook the bright busy warehouse. The core of the action is centred on the loading docks. Bare shelves stretch out for what looks like a half-klick.
I wonder if they finished what
they were doing here, or hit their time limit?
Xiao sets a tab down and turns to face us, takes a breath. “What have you done, Ankur?”
“We need the Eka pattern,” Ankur replies. “The possibility of obtaining the key was worth bringing him here. We’ll be gone tomorrow. He can’t affect our plans.”
Xiao closes his eyes as his chest rises and falls. He opens them and says to me, “We meet again.”
I shake my head. “We haven’t had the pleasure,” I say. “You met the other guy.”
His cheek twitches. “Yes,” he says. “Do you have the key?”
“Why do you need it?” I ask.
Xiao looks over at the old woman who responds with a slow blink.
“What do you know of the Yuanfen?” Xiao asks.
“Ancestors,” I say. “People who couldn’t afford not to die. Other than that, not much. Ankur says they’re slaves.”
Xiao nods to the girls and they continue working. He steps around the table to face me.
“When Fate came to my country,” he says. “I wanted no part in what they offered, and fought against what my government proposed to do in the name of fiscal responsibility and environmental expediency. I failed. Then I became sick. Six months earlier, given the time and resources, given our knowledge, I had a chance to live. Instead, I was forced to choose. I had a spouse and a son, I did not want to die.”
“So you joined Fate.”
“So I joined. I was judged for my life and assigned a role. Also included was a script—hooked into my brain—that dragged me along its story. I could resist the pull, but only for so long. It was a torment. I was compelled to act. To train. To live out the life Fate had chosen for me. Eventually I learned to resist. I escaped.” He stops, looking through me. A second later, his eyes refocus. “Some have convinced themselves otherwise, but there is no true life in the Yuanfen. There is no choice. No free will. I intend to free those trapped, and the Eka pattern is my greatest weapon. Without it—”