by Samuel King
As the humans spilled out of the vans, Kate laid a hand on Doherty's shoulder and kissed his cheek. "Good luck, Jimmy boy. I'll be waitin'." She climbed into the back of her van and began to remove the field dampening equipment that would suppress calls from coming into or leaving the building.
"It's almost over, Katie," Doherty called into the van. "By this time tomorrow we'll all be celebratin'. Chock one more up for the cause, right?"
"Right, Jimmy."
He waved before gathering the twelve humans, the enforcer, the technician and the ten man-array extraction unit, around him, each of the latter carrying two array transport units.
"You all know your jobs," he said. "Let's get this done with a minimum of fuss and go home. All right?" After the men murmured their assent, he led them down a narrow but well lit stairwell. They came to a stop on the ground floor, where a door opened into a small vestibule. Doherty entered, followed by the technician and, after setting their burdens on the floor, the five members of the internal extraction team.
His throat went dry as he approached the doorman. "Hi. John O'Reilly and a party of six."
"Welcome back, Mr. O'Reilly," the doorman said after the security system had identified him. "Would you have your friends identify, please?"
One-by-one they did so, each giving an assumed name before stepping through the security gate. When all six had joined him on the other side, the enforcer walked briskly into the vestibule, removing a pulse pistol from beneath his jacket.
"This is set to kill," he informed the doorman. "Do anything but what I tell you and you'll be dead before you hit the floor."
"Please, Mister, I don't want any trouble," the doorman replied.
"Good. Then you won't get any… Now lock this place down. Every door except this entrance and the one on the roof. Understand?"
The doorman nodded.
"Do it."
The doorman complied, his fingers moving swiftly across the control panel. Afterward, he raised his hands and said, "It's done."
"No way in or out except here and the roof?"
"No, sir."
"Then get down on the floor… Go ahead," he said, waving the pistol. "Down on your face; stay still and you'll be fine."
The doorman lowered himself to the floor with a loud sigh that contained just the hint of a sob. "God, Mister, please."
"Shhh." The gunman removed a tiny vial from his jacket pocket and applied a drop of its contents to the back of the prostrate doorman's neck. "Sweet dreams."
He slid his weapon across the floor and around the security gate, then removed a second pistol from beneath his jacket and opened the door to the stairwell. The five members of the external extraction team, who had remained just outside of the vestibule, entered at his signal. They began to slide the transport units around the security gate: first the ten that they carried, then those that had been carried by the internal extraction team. Finally, one of them slid the technician's tool bag around the gate before they all returned to the roof to retrieve additional units.
Doherty breathed a sigh of relief and retrieved the enforcer's original weapon, placing it in the waiting holster under his own jacket. He was struck by the irony of being obliged to carry a weapon for the first time after a long career of petty crimes. Only his hatred of the club's patrons and proprietors kept him from regretting it. He patted the pistol through his jacket, wondering just how far that hatred would take him.
"Alright, boys," he said to the six men with him. "We're here for a good time. Let's look like it." After the technician retrieved his tool bag, they passed through the large, ornate doors before them, smiling and making small talk. "Spread out," he muttered. "But watch for my signal."
The "main floor", a large room approximately thirty-five meters to a side, lay before them. An elongated "U"-shaped bar occupied the middle of the floor, adjacent to the raised dancing platform—currently vacant. Several dozen tables dotted the floor, and three of the walls were lined with "privacy booths". Not far from them, sofas and easy chairs provided additional options for the amusement of the patrons.
Doherty grabbed the technician by the elbow and mumbled, "Let's go find that holo equipment."
Taking his own advice, he smiled broadly as they set off across the floor, gradually making their way to the back of the room. Along the way he searched for ‘Old Lolita', equally worried by the chance of seeing her as not. The former would serve only as a distraction, the latter… the possibility that his worse fears, and Dennehy's as well, had already been realized.
After reaching the rear wall, they walked alongside the privacy booths there, until reaching an inconspicuous door marked "STAFF ONLY", nestled between them. The technician placed a device hidden in the palm of his hand over the postage stamp-size thumb pad next to the door handle and waited for the tell tale click. When it came, Doherty took a last look around, before muttering, "Let's go."
They entered a small room crammed with electronic equipment and a monitoring station. Dominating one wall of the room, its display screens, dozens of them, overlooked a long desk complete with an attached chair that slid from one end to the other. The attendant manning the desk chuckled occasionally as he watched one of the screens, apparently unaware of their presence.
"Enjoyin' the show?"
The attendant started at the question and leapt from his seat when he saw the two of them and the drawn weapon pointed at his head. "What the hell!" he exclaimed.
"Ahhh, what the hell, indeed," Doherty replied. Waving the attendant away from the desk, he studied the monitoring system, the very embodiment of ‘Old Lolita's' warning: They are always watching.
As if to punctuate the point, he found her on one of the screens, dispensing favors to a pair of corpulent patrons. As they laughed and drank, they stood shamelessly, side-by-side, trousers around their ankles and appeared almost indifferent to her efforts.
When the technician, watching over his shoulder began to chuckle, he admonished him. "Don't. It ain't what ya think." He glared at the attendant and added, "Is it, Peepshow?"
"Look, man, I don't know what's going on—"
"You shut the fuck up, ya twisted pervert." With the gunman's easy but hollow threat in mind, he added, "Or I'll kill ya where you stand." The attendant wilted before his eyes, and Doherty became enamored of the weapon and its power—the power, despite Cynthia's insistence to the contrary, to right all wrongs. "I oughta shoot ya' right in the balls," he muttered darkly. "See how funny it is, then."
"Let's go, Boss," the technician said, quietly. "We got a job to do."
"Righhht." Doherty pushed the attendant toward an unmarked door. "What's in there?"
"The holo equipment and the assembly area."
"Bingo."
The door opened into a much larger room, the object of their search. Two industrial holo-systems occupied one end of the room, bracketed on three of four sides by shelving for neural array containment units. Stacked four high in each of the three rows of six, each unit was numbered sequentially, from one to seventy-two. Upon closer inspection, they saw the final twelve slots were place-holders only.
The remainder of the room was empty. A holo-environment in its own right, it served many purposes, all at the manager's whim. ‘Old Lolita' had described it during their stilted conversation, and while his first thoughts had been of a break-room, his young friend had told him otherwise. More often than naught, the room was a place of terror, where the women were assembled and tormented.
"Let's get started," he said to the technician, who removed a remote link module and a five-by-seven inch circuit board from his tool bag.
He plugged the link module into an appropriately labeled slot on the side of the system control unit and the circuit board into a nearby slot labeled "AuxilIary I/O". After connecting a portable terminal into the circuit board, he returned to the front of the control unit. Once there, he responded to the simple prompt, a question mark, on the operator interface screen with a long series of com
mands. When the system administrator's menu appeared, he leaned back in his chair with a contented smile. "We're in. Consider this unhackable system, officially hacked."
Doherty slapped his back. "Good man. Now, let's get the artificials over here."
"Remember, one at a time," the technician said. "This link module will only handle one at a time."
"I remember, I remember. Just get ‘em over here."
The technician entered a long series of numerals and letters into the portable terminal, before pressing a small red button on his circuit board. They waited for several seconds before a green LED above the console began to blink on and off. The message "TRANSPORT IN PROGRESS" appeared on the console's display. Three seconds later, Joel appeared.
His face taut but otherwise expressionless, he ordered, "They're ready to go. Get them over here, one right after the other, twelve in all." He turned to Doherty. "Go get the manager, Jimmy. I'll take over here."
Marveling at Joel's easy assumption of command and authoritative presence, he answered, "I'm on it," then chuckled at the strange desire to terminate his response with a salute.
He bolted across the room and exited through the only other door emerging into a broad corridor. A sign on the wall to his right contained a rightward pointing arrow and the words: TO MAIN FLOOR. Five meters in front of him, a larger sign, suspended from the ceiling, read: "SPECIAL ENTERTAINMENT AREA – Members Only". The corridor terminated fifteen meters beyond the sign with a set of sturdy doors
Immediately to his left, a smaller, less imposing door bore the sign "Manager's Office". He braced himself and rapped on it with a note of authority. "Come in," a voice called out to him.
He entered the office only to confront an obese, yet well groomed, middle-aged man in an expensive suit. He was seated behind a large, mahogany desk. "You've gotta be kiddin' me," Doherty murmured.
"Can I help you, Sir?"
The manager's voice, polished and educated, unnerved him until he brought his hand from behind his back, brandishing the pistol. "Yeah, seems we got a problem back in the assembly area, Fella. I need your help."
The manager gave a short cry at the sight of the pistol, asking, "My God, what are you doing? There's nothing to steal here."
"You let me be the judge of that, Fatso. Now move, before I let the air outta ya."
Instinctively, the manager raised his hands before trudging the short distance from his office to the so-called assembly area. He gasped at the sight of Joel and his growing army of artificials. Six had already arrived; another one did so as they watched. "What on earth is going on?" he asked.
Ignoring him, Joel said to Doherty, "Take the guys who are already here and start your action on the main floor. I'll send the rest in as they arrive. Bring the women back single file, so Helen and I can keep count of them." Addressing the manager, he asked, "How many women out there, Big Man?"
"Thirty-nine… no, wait. It's thirty-eight."
Doherty spun him around, placing the pistol against his forehead. "Where's number thirty-nine, asshole? Did ya send her to the dungeon this mornin'?"
The manager shook his head, trembling uncontrollably. "It's okay, Mr. O'Reilly," Joel said, using Doherty's assumed name. "We'll take care of the big man, here."
Doherty flinched, as if waking from a bad dream. Damn gun's makin' me crazy. "Sorry," he mumbled to Joel and returned the pistol to its holster. "This place is startin' ta get ta me."
Joel surprised him with a smile. "It's a good thing you-know-who didn't see that. We'd have to scrub the operation."
Doherty chuckled and replied, "Please, don't remind me." He took a deep breath and confronted the manager once more. "How do we move the girls in here?"
"There's a holo path down the corridor leading from the main floor to that door," the manager said, pointing."
"Do you know where he's talking about?" Joel asked.
Doherty nodded. "We'll be comin' in through the door Mr. Big and I just came through."
"Okay, we'll be waiting. Remember, single file. I want to make sure they're all here so we can put them under properly. I'd hate to have to slam any of them; the trip's going to be hard enough."
"Roger."
Joel studied the eight aritificials, members of the main floor team, who had already arrived. "You men follow Mr. O'Reilly to the main floor," he said to them "You know what to do when you get there. Don't worry about anyone trying to call out. We've got this place bottled up tight. Remember… use force only when it's absolutely necessary."
As they assembled by the door, he pulled the team leader aside. A hard faced young man brimming with confidence and determination, he'd been one of the "game cocks" who fought for Cynthia's owner's amusement. Joel had big plans for him. "Don't forget to knock over a couple of tables and chairs, Tom," he advised. "Just to show them what you can do."
The team leader extended his right index finger, pointing it like a pistol. "Just a little demo," he said, smiling grimly.
"Let's go then, boys," Doherty said. "Follow me."
He led them through the rear door, and after turning right, they marched along the outside of the assembly area. At the outside corner of the room, they turned right again, toward the main floor. As they proceeded along the corridor, he noted the omnipresent holo projectors and imagined the women being herded like animals, back and forth, from the assembly area to the main floor.
Once they reached the large double doors leading into the main floor he took a quick head count—eight. "Don't be bashful, Tommy boy," he said to the team leader. "But don't get carried away, either. You're not gonna like what ya see on the other side of these doors."
The team leader flexed his shoulders and turned his head from side to side, girding himself for the coming action. "We're ready," he said. "Let's just get it done."
The doors slid open at Doherty's touch, and they entered the main floor unnoticed. "Start clearing the booths," Tom ordered one of his men. He glanced at Doherty then added, "Don't take any shit from those bastards… Oh, and send the women back towards the door, here."
Doherty smiled and nodded, then watched as Tom and the remainder of his men moved quickly toward the front of the room, spreading out as they did. He eventually lost them in the crowd but knew when they had started their action, just a minute later, when a din arose from the vicinity of the main entrance. A brief commotion preceded a rush to the rear: customers, employees and the women alike.
He grabbed one of the latter after she backed into him. "Relax, darlin'. We're gonna take ya all out of here," he told her, but she gave no indication that she understood. He shook her. "Go stand next to those doors," he yelled, pointing to the double doors through which they had just entered. "Grab a couple of your friends on the way. Then just wait there. Understand? Don't move."
She nodded, as if in a trance, and after a gentle shove began to move away from him toward the doors. Afterwards, in spite of himself, he scoured the room, searching for ‘Old Lolita', then cursed his weakness and pulled the pistol from beneath his jacket. He brandished it at several retreating customers, shouting, "Back against the wall. Stay out of those booths and keep your hands up. I'll shoot any man who doesn't do what he's told."
He pushed his way through the throng, which melted away at the sight of his raised weapon. As he neared the main entrance, he found the five members of the internal extraction team. Now sporting white armbands, they waited as Tom's artificials drove the customers toward the rear wall while separating them from the women, many of whom were in shock, some weeping.
One of the customers attempted to hold a women hostage and struck her when she resisted. He was immediately struck himself with the force directed by one of Tom's men, who stood nearby, pointing and grinning. Howling in pain and shock, the man attempted to pick himself up, when he was struck again and sent sprawling, face first, onto the floor.
"Get him up!" the pointing artificial yelled to the man's companions. "Get him back there with the rest of them, and
if I see anyone else lay a hand on one of these women, I'll kill him where he stands."
A quick look at the artificial's face, told Doherty the man would have been as good as word, given the power. Fortunately, the system's programming limited the force he could employ. At that point, only he and his pistol had the power to kill. A power, as his encounter with the manager demonstrated, he might have been all too willing to exercise.
Wading into the growing group of women clustered in the middle of the main floor, he tried to calm them with little success until someone poked him in the side. He looked down to see ‘Old Lolita', for once, the only one smiling. Better still, her smile was genuine and laced with awe.
"You were serious," she said.
"I told you to have hope."
"This can't be happening."
"Believe it. We're takin' ya all outta here."
Her eyes filled with tears, and she buried her head in his chest. After several seconds, she looked up at him and said, "Your gun is scaring them."
"Oh." He looked around, saw that most of the customers and employees had already been moved to the rear of the room, and returned the weapon to its holster. "I need you to move to those doors over there," he said to the diminutive woman-child. "Take the others with you and wait there. We want to make sure everybody's accounted for, before we leave."
She moved away slowly, seeming hesitant to take her eyes off of him. Then she turned and began to explain the situation to her companions, and after a moment they all began to move toward the doors. Before long, most of the women had assembled there.
Pleased with his progress, Doherty joined the internal extraction team at the main entrance. At his direction, they moved into the vestibule, one at a time, each man picking up two of the transport units, before re-entering the main floor. When all five had done so, they followed him across the room to the double doors and waited there, staring wide-eyed at the scantily clad women just a few feet away.