by Damien Boyes
“We need it,” Ankur says. “We can’t get into the Yuanfen without it. Even then—”
“We must unlock it first,” Xiao says to Ankur, his tone softer.
“But you’re leaving either way,” I say.
Xiao’s lips tighten. “We had planned another month, were supposed to have another month, a month we desperately needed—” He cuts himself off. “With added scrutiny due to recent events—our timetable has moved up. We leave tomorrow.”
“Is that why you had me restored?” I ask. This is still the one thing I can’t figure out: who brought me back? I don’t believe I arranged my own restoration, so who then? “To get at this key?”
“I assure you, Mr. Gage,” Xiao says, sliding his eyes to Ankur, “I had no hand in establishing your current incarnation.”
“It was you—?” I ask Ankur.
Ankur shakes his head slowly, his face screwed up like he’s trying to identify a taste in his mouth. “I’ll admit,” he says after a moment. “It didn’t even occur to me to try.”
I’m running out of options. I’ve been looking for ways out, ways that would mean anything other than I was responsible for my restoration. I’m just going to have to accept the person who brought me back was me.
But why? The idea that I’d lose myself in hunting down Eka, that I’d throw my life away to find him makes sense, but then why have myself restored under a new name. It doesn’t feel like something I’d do at all.
“Does that satisfy you?” Xiao asks, his voice tired. “Do you have Eka’s key?”
Whatever they have planned against Fate, they seem devoted to it. Xiao seems like the kind of person who’d throw his body against rocks until either they cracked or he did. He isn’t going to give up. If Fate’s true goal is harness humanity as a commodity, it needs to be stopped. And it’ll take someone like him to do it.
“I have it,” I say. “I think. Probably.”
“Where?” Ankur asks from beside me.
“Give me my tab and I’ll have it sent wherever you want it.”
Ankur’s shoulders slump. Now that he’s got what he wants, he doesn’t look excited about it. He hands me my tab and Xiao gives me coordinates to a drone drop north of the city.
I’ve got my tab open and starting on the message to Dora, asking her to drone the datakey to the address, when the snap of a stun gas canister exploding on the warehouse floor rattles the windows.
Orange-tinged smoke billows over the blue floor as Standards agents in see-ya suits burst through the plastic-sheeted door, guns raised, and start blasting the lights out the Cortexes of the unarmed girls scurrying to escape.
StatUS-ID
[a646:d17e:8670:511f::Finsbury/D//GAGE]
SysDate
[16:33:51. Sunday, May 5, 2058]
We’ve found Xiao.
SecNet hit on Lin Jia last night, barely a glimpse of her face through a car window. But it was enough. The car lead us to an industrial building north of the city, a place that used to grow algae but went out of business eighteen months ago.
We’ve had surveillance on it since, saw Xiao’s girl soldiers coming and going. At one point a hopper landed on the roof and more cyphers entered through a hatch.
The AMP gives us an 89% probability Xiao’s inside.
Whatever it is they’re doing, the building’s sucking enough wattage to power a subdivision. The spydrones circling read massive electromagnetic signatures in the former laboratory and reactor areas. Omondi figures some kind of server farm. We’ll find out soon enough.
Chaddah made the call a half-hour ago. We’re moving to take the place down.
We’re riding in a fast-moving convoy: all four TACvans, six Cruisers and the FIS Wagon with twenty-four drones, four lawbots and fifty heavily armed men and women. Sirens quiet but hauling ass.
ETA one hundred and twenty seconds.
I’m in the back of one of the vans, Revved, cuff fixed to my neck, sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with two TAC officers—Copeland and Pendleton. Two more officers and the lawbot sit across from me. There’s no chatter. Everyone’s armoured up, anticipation surging.
While the spydrones watched the building, the AMP filed a request on a full-bore no-knock warrant. It was signed immediately and we got our orders, brief and to the point: four teams, hitting simultaneously, each with a primary goal. We’re Team 3. We breach the south entrance with Olliver’s Team 2, secure and clear the offices through to the irregular heat signature in the lab, detaining anyone found inside, and neutralizing hostiles.
Secondary objectives are to identify and capture Lin Jia, any of her soldiers—or Xiao herself. Cortex intact, if possible. Each team has a TAC officer armed with a bot gun for use on high value targets.
As we bounce along the highway, I slip into my headspace and compose a message for Agent Sòng. After what we saw from the Cortex we captured, after what we learned about the Yuanfen, I can’t work with Fate. Xiao may be a criminal, but she’s not angling to play god with the human race.
I tell Sòng I’m done. Thanks for her help, but I won’t be contacting her again.
We’re twenty-seconds out. Way longer in my head.
I’ve run the route a thousand times now. Memorized the facility’s floor plan and stalked every cm in a low-poly virt.
All I can do now is wait, which gives my mind time to wander.
Less than a month ago, Xiao was a rumour.
Then Galvan’s cypher sweep tagged a Chinese girl, a cypher only I could see, and it lead us here, to Xiao’s doorstep.
But only because I’d been searching for the man who killed Connie and called him out. I forced Eka to expose Xiao.
Now we’ve got Xiao, but I still haven’t found him.
Instead, we’re about to take down a woman, masquerading as a man, driven by the fervent belief she’s a freedom fighter. She believes she’s doing right. May actually be right. And the reason we’re so keen on taking her down is the same reason we’re here. She’s not playing by the rules.
Rules I’m not sure I agree with anymore.
We didn’t get here by adhering to Standards. I’m Revved to outthink my opponents. I hired a Rithmist to write custom neural enhancements so I could peel back the layers of my brain and catch the killer in my head. Couldn’t have done it otherwise.
I’m as guilty as Xiao is.
How can I continue to call myself a cop if the only way to effectively do my job is by becoming a criminal?
The van lurches to a halt away from the streetlights, down the street from the target building, a red-brown brick one-storey office complex attached to the large rectangular lab. There’s a moment while the teams synchronize, a short countdown, then a sprint across the dark parking lot with the AMP in our team’s lawbot leading the way.
The other teams are doing the same. Brewer is on Team 2, right behind us. We’ll breach together, split and clear the offices from opposite sides then converge and move into the lab together. Simultaneously Teams 1 and 4, Douthat and Lawrence, will hit from the east.
Chaddah and Yellowbird coordinate from the Command Unit. Constables have traffic blocked on each end of the street, have already started evacuating the neighbouring buildings.
Omondi and his guys are watching from their wagon, broadcasting a jamming signal that should disrupt the building's internal networks.
I’ve got all five com channels open—the command channel and the four teams—and I’m listening to all of them at once. There’s no chatter. Just the whirr of nervous breathing.
My heart’s not racing like everyone else’s. They only found out about this operation sixty minutes ago. I’ve had hours to work through my nerves. I’m prepared.
Just to be sure I run through the floor plan once more in my headspace as the teams line up along the brick on either side of the front door. Brewer and I are at the back of each TAC team, we’ll go in last.
The bots place doorcharges on each of the large glass doors, then begin a countdown from the
screens on their backs.
3.
2.
1.
The doors implode in a flurry of shards and we follow the bots through the lobby, past blank wallscreens and around a scale model of a portable algae farm to the reception desk.
Brewer gives me a hip check as Team 2 splits off. I can’t tell if he’s being a prick or if that was his attempt at ‘good luck.’
I stay behind the TACs advancing through the darkened lobby, eyes fixed down their gunsights, covering every angle. We pause where the hallway makes a left turn and the AMP checks around the corner, signals an all clear with a flash of green from his hand. It turns and leads us past a large plastic rubber tree to a hallway with a long wall ending in a single door on our left, and a series of five closed office doors on the right.
Plan is to clear the five offices then swing into the lone door in the long wall, out into the containment ring around what used to be the sterile lab. Can’t imagine much is sterile in this place after eighteen months.
The bot swings into the first office. Nothing inside but empty desks and unused chairs. It flashes green and we move up.
The next office is empty too and the bot and clears it, then moves up and checks another and with a flash of green we’re two doors from the end.
Clear these last two, then through the door on the left, hook up with Team 2 and move on the lab.
The lawbot moves to open the second to last door, Pendleton and Copeland behind it, but before it can swing into the office the last door flies open and a cypher blows through the hall and shoulders through the door into the warehouse, a streak of movement to everyone else but the AMP and me.
I have my rifle up, but she’s so fast by the time the Revv gives me a bead on her, I’m blocked by the bot who’s swinging to target her too. I stay my shot, not wanting to risk a friendly fire incident, bot or not. Besides, she isn’t armed.
But that doesn’t stop Pendleton from spraying bullets in her wake, blasting the long wall into holes and spewing particleboard dust into the air.
On the com, Team 1 spots a cypher too. Someone opens fire.
Then Team 4 and Team 2 at the same time.
On the other side of the wall, there’s a muffled mechanical hiss, then another, then silence.
“Report,” Chaddah says, tension leaking through the forced calm in her voice.
The AMP answers. “Hostile contact, Inspector. The targets are cyphers, converging toward the lab. No casualties to report.”
Even with all these weapons and all this tech and all this training, we’re no match for Xiao’s cyphers. They’re too fast even for the AMP.
We’re outmatched.
We clear the last office. It looks like an observation post. They must have seen us coming.
The lawbot opens the door the cypher fled through, waits, signals green and we file into the containment ring, an L-shaped barrier separating the offices from the lab. The top half is curved windows, and the bottom white polysheeting fused with the floor. I get barely a glance through the dark windows before I duck and crouch along the poly to where we stop at one of the two closed airlocks. The lights are off inside the lab and I can’t see anything, just get the sense of something large in the centre, maybe another room.
We join up with Team 2, while the other teams meet further along the curving containment wall at the other airlock.
The airtight doors are both closed, powered down. No way through. We hadn’t planned for this, the containment ring wasn’t included in the floor plans. We huddle along the polysheet, keeping our heads below the window, and wait for orders.
“We’ve encountered an obstacle,” the AMP reports. “I recommend breaching the containment ring walls.”
“Probability?” Chaddah asks.
“Given the variables, ma’am, the probability of success is unknown, but I see no other alternative. Apart from holding a perimeter and awaiting reinforcements.”
“Breach,” Chaddah orders, and as a TAC officer from each team passes a charge up to their lawbots, black holes explode in the white poly. Bullets burst through to impact the arms and legs of officers taking cover behind the wall. The stopsuits do their jobs and prevent the bullets from rupturing skin and organs, but the projectiles still hit with enough power to fracture bones. Non-lethal, but all at once we’re looking at massive casualties.
The cyphers must be using teravision, reading us through the walls.
Beside me, Pendleton takes a shot in the humerus and it cracks with a loud snap. I jump back from poly and pull the people around me low while more shots ring out over the radio, echo through the facility.
The bullets cease, but a quarter of the officers are down, including Pendleton from our team. We’re pinned. Outgunned.
We should have brought the Army. Should have waited for Standards to send more troops.
We’re huddled back against the corridor wall, keeping our bodies away from the white poly. Hopefully far enough the cyphers out in the lab can’t see us anymore. The leads are on their coms, voices tight with pain, requesting orders.
“AMP, breach. Now,” Chaddah orders. “We don’t have time for the charges, go through the doors.”
“Yes, ma’am,” the AMP says, and the two lawbots grouped with us raise their armguns, switch to armour-piercing rounds and open up on the airlock doors as they charge through.
They don’t get far.
Cyphers hidden in the lab start shooting immediately, and this time they aren’t aiming to wound. The bots manage to make in through the airlock’s doors, but only last for seconds before they’re dissected by high-calibre rounds blazing from the darkness.
Just like that we’re down four lawbots and the AMP is out of the picture.
If the AMP can’t take these cyphers, what are a bunch of ordinary humans going to do against them?
We could hold tight. Just like before, at the drone yard, the cyphers are keeping us back, stalling. They won’t come out after us. They’ve planned for this. They’ll be destroying evidence. We won’t get anywhere near them until they’ve all triggered the bombs in their heads and we’re be left with nothing.
Again.
Except Lin Jia doesn’t have a bomb in her head. She’s really here. In the flesh. They’ll be figuring a way to extract her from the building. If we wait around, if we give them time, she’s going to escape.
I’m not going to let that happen.
“We don’t have time for this,” I say. “Cut power to the building.”
“Acknowledged,” Chaddah says over the com. If she’s surprised to hear my voice, she doesn’t sound like it.
Thirty agonizing seconds later the corridor around the lab goes black. The darkness erupts in a whine of artificial colour as I enable my helmet’s nightshades.
I point to the bot gun hanging from Pendleton’s shoulder. “Give me that,” I say.
“Negative, Gage,” he says, his voice loose. His armour has already administered pain blocks to counter his shattered arm.
“It’s no good to you now,” I tell him.
“I’m following orders,” Pendleton slurs. “I suggest you do the same.”
“I’m not going to sit here while they all pop their head charges. This is our one chance, we take it now or we give up forever.”
“The bot couldn’t make it two steps,” Copeland says from behind me. “What the hell makes you think you’ll do any better?”
Then Chaddah’s voice comes over the com. “Stand down, Detective Gage. You’re to hold and wait for reinforcements. We’ll contain the building. No one’s getting out of there.”
“I’m sorry, ma’am, I can’t do that,” I reply. “In five seconds, I’m going through that airlock. Either you tell Pendleton to relinquish his weapon or I go in without one.”
“This is a direct order, Finsbury,” Chaddah says, her voice hot. “You are not to engage on your own.”
I reach up and disengage the coms on my helmet.
“You want
Xiao?” I say to Pendleton. “Give me the gun.”
“Give it to him,” Brewer says, beside me now. “He wants to be a hero, I say let him.”
“This is stupid,” Copeland offers.
I can’t tell what Pendleton’s thinking behind the black veil of his helmet, but he huffs and pulls the bot gun off his shoulder, thrusts it into my chest and murmurs, “You’re crazy, Gage.”
Cyphers are out there in the warehouse, Revved, I’m sure. Watching the door. Waiting for us to poke our heads out so they can knock us back with precision aim. I don’t know if they can see in the dark, but I need something to distract them so I can make it out the door.
There’s four TAC officers with me. Each of them outfitted with three adjustable-fuse flashbang grenades. It worked once, why not try again?
I figure I’ll improvise from there.
I look at the TACs. “When I say ‘go’, I want all of you to toss your flash bangs through the door with each fuse a second apart. All of em, all at once, as hard as you can, off to the sides of the room. Then stay down,” I tell them. “Got it?” They all nod and set about configuring their grenades, even Pendleton, working with one hand.
I put the bot gun over my back, lift my rifle, take a breath, make sure the team is ready, and give the go.
The TACs throw twelve flashbang grenades out through the shattered airlock into the lab. They clatter across the concrete floor and I let two seconds of the minimum three-second fuse run out before I crank the Revv to it’s highest and follow into the darkness at a full-on sprint.
The second before the first grenades erupt takes forever. With nothing to see I can’t rely on the Revv to predict the future, but I catalogue what I can through the false-colour haze of the nightshades.