by Ubukata, Tow
–So why did you make all this?
“You know, I really had convinced myself that I was contributing to human progress, even to world peace. Although my wife and relatives all just thought I was a nut job obsessed with my quest to restructure the human body…”
–But you’re going to save me.
Balot’s eyes were still shut.
The Doctor chuckled. “Let’s hope so. Now, on to the next step!”
Balot opened her eyes.
The numbers were no longer moving, not even slightly.
She could now see exactly how they did move, and what she needed to do with her body to make them move—or stay still.
She spread her legs apart.
Still the numbers stayed the same.
Balot felt confident now—if the scales were fifty meters long and she was told to run from one end to the other, she knew she’d be able to do so and the numbers would barely flicker.
“Are you right-handed?” Oeufcoque asked.
–I am now, although I was born left-handed.
And then, after answering, she snarced just to Oeufcoque:
–I was told I needed to make myself right-handed, as some customers might feel uncomfortable around a southpaw.
“So, is it safe to say you could be ambidextrous when it came to handling weapons?”
–I guess I could get used to it, after a little practice.
“Then let’s start with the left. Let’s get a gun in your hand.”
Balot snarced Oeufcoque via her left hand.
Even though she’d never handled a gun before, she could tell that Oeufcoque was turning into the ideal model for her, the one that suited her grip the best out of all the models he had programmed into him.
The fabric on her palm turned with a squelch and she felt cold steel—and gripped it.
It was heavier than she’d expected—but her body soon adjusted to the extra weight.
Oeufcoque gave her some tips. “Parts of this are made from vulcanized plastic and some electronics, but basically this is just an automatic pistol. You pull the trigger, the gunpowder explodes, and the bullet goes flying out the end at high velocity.”
Balot nodded and leveled the gun. The grip was fused into the palm of her suit.
She tried letting go, twiddling her fingers, and it still didn’t fall. It felt like it was almost a part of her.
“The target’s set up over on that wall.” The Doctor pointed at it. A black cardboard cutout, the shape of a man, about 170 centimeters in height.
“We have pressure sensors set up all around the target, so we’ll be able to tell immediately where your shots land. You watched the video on how to fire a gun? Well, go ahead and try it for yourself.”
The gun was empty of bullets. Balot snarced it. She felt a click, and she knew that the steel chamber was now loaded with a bullet. She could grasp the addition of the extra weight in the chamber, down to the last milligram.
Click, click, and one by one the magazine filled with bullets.
Eleven shots total—with an extra one in the chamber for good measure.
She thrust her left arm forward, used her right arm to steady it, and readied her gun.
She leaned in to compensate for the force, maneuvering herself into prime firing position, just as she had seen in the instructional video.
She brought her finger to rest on the trigger.
A little electronic gimmick on the trigger saw to it that all she needed to do was to grip gently rather than pull the trigger hard—she hardly needed to put any strength into it at all.
Bang, a hollow explosive sound.
A bullet flew out of the muzzle, and a spent casing flew sideways out of the chamber. A piercing sound could be heard on the other side of the wall. A metallic clang on the floor followed.
She fired more shots.
One shot, two shots, three shots.
She could have pushed the sound of the gunshots inside Oeufcoque, silencing them completely, but that would have dulled the visceral sensations of the whole experience.
Yes, for the real marksmanship experience, you really needed to have noise echoing all around you.
She fired six shots to gain her bearings. The next five she fired with her eyes completely closed. The car park reverberated with the sound of gunfire, and the empty cartridge shells played a merry jangling tune as they clattered across the ground.
She could even feel the sensation that the bullets themselves felt, that of being shot out of the barrel of the gun. Wrenched out of place, jumping out of the barrel, rotating with tremendous speed.
The numbers on the scales that Balot was standing on twitched slightly, but in a moment they settled and became virtually still.
Balot had finished firing her first load. The breechblock slid back and stopped in place.
“Don’t reload it right away—drop the magazine to release some of the heat that’s built up.”
Balot did as Oeufcoque said and snarced the grip of the gun into ejecting the magazine.
Balot relaxed as the magazine hit the scales. The subtlest of movements. The spent magazine hit the silver platform and rolled across it.
The numbers on the display didn’t change in the slightest.
Balot snarced the gun again.
A new magazine appeared inside the grip, a perfect fit.
The gun loaded with bullets as she moved herself back into position, and at the same time the breechblock snapped back into place.
She relaxed her shoulders and fired again. Settling into a regular rhythm. From the first to the last shot, like a pulse.
She felt the incandescent bullets piercing the air.
After she had fired all the bullets she ejected the magazine again and turned around to look at the Doctor.
The Doctor was glued to the monitor.
His fingers covered his mouth as if he were in deep thought, and then he suddenly exhaled, letting out the huge breath that he had been holding in.
“Perfect. You’ve really studied the videos closely, haven’t you?”
–Yes, both the ones where you stand still and where you fire while moving. Also the ones with moving targets, as well as stationary ones.
“Great. Moving targets next, then. Some balls will start flying across randomly from beyond that pillar over there. A bit like a pitching machine, the sort kids use for baseball practice. Shoot those balls down. Same distance as before.”
–Got it.
Balot quickly—and smoothly—equipped herself with a new magazine and bullets and got into position.
The Doctor started tapping his keyboard.
Balot realized that these actions controlled the machine on the other side of the pillar.
Boing, and a rubber ball flew out.
Balot shot it.
In a little less than four seconds, that one ball had taken all twelve of the bullets.
The rubber ball performed a whirling dance in midair, and the fragments flew off every which way.
The scales barely flickered, and the golden cartridges gleamed as they scattered across the floor.
Again Balot dropped the magazine and turned to the Doctor. His eyes were like saucers as he watched the distant particles from the ball fragment further.
“Er…the idea was that you try to shoot down each ball—that’s to say shoot, singular, just the once.” Yet again the Doctor was dumfounded.
Just then another ball bounced out of the machine.
Balot’s attention was still half focused on the Doctor as she raised her hand. Just her left this time—her right hand dangling by her side.
She snarced Oeufcoque in an instant, re-equipping herself with a magazine and bullets.
She fired a single shot, just as she was told.
The ball bounced against the wall and came bounding back toward them, then rolled another twenty meters or so before stopping at the Doctor’s shoes.
There were eight balls total, including the one that Balot had oblite
rated earlier.
Before long seven of those balls rolled into position right at the Doctor’s feet. Balls that had been shot through their cores with deadly accuracy.
The Doctor picked one of them up and looked at it, jaws trembling. “We’re talking about spherical targets here. To pierce the cores with one hundred percent accuracy, and from this distance too…”
He sounded as if he were ready to raise the white flag of surrender, but then laughed and said at a high pitch, “How absolutely thrilling !”
He shut his mouth as soon as he opened it, very aware that he was getting carried away.
Balot frowned.
–I thought you didn’t like war?
“Yes, but this is something completely different,” Oeufcoque interjected.
The Doctor nodded. “I’ve never actually been at the front lines, you see. I might seem a little warlike, but in my heart I know I’m not about to go to war anytime soon.”
Balot pursed her lips. An expression that was somewhere between sympathy and disapproval.
“Right, let’s have you moving now. Try walking toward that target. There are some more pitching machines positioned behind those pillars. They’ll sense your movements and fire balls directly at you—shoot them down. Consider the balls to be an attack on your person.”
–Got it.
Balot stepped off the silver scale. Without missing a beat she walked toward the wall at the far end.
She perceived the machines operating to her left and right. Her concentration levels were rising. She looked inside herself to manipulate her internal workings—so that her pulse wouldn’t start racing—all the while keeping a close check on her surroundings.
The moment she sensed movement in the shadows Balot pointed her gun in that direction without looking. By the time the ball had left the machine Balot had already fired.
The ball hurtled toward the flight path of the bullet as if it were being sucked in and was skewered perfectly.
Balot felt the other machines firing up but walked on steadily. A volley of balls converged on her from all directions. She shot them all down, having found her target before the balls even left the pitching machines.
The Doctor cranked up the speed. Balot held her steady pace, unabated. She took her right hand off the gun and snarced that hand too.
Another gun appeared, just like the one in her left hand. She used this to fire at the balls too. Left and right. Whichever she could use to aim—and fire—the quicker.
She arrived at the far wall, turned around, and began her return.
The sound of gunfire echoed all around, balls and spent cartridges littered the floor, and the acrid smell of gunpowder filled the air. Her vision was clouded by the gun smoke.
Balot closed her eyes. She looked as if she were about to go into a trance. She fired her gun, playfully now, almost as if she were dancing.
Balot’s eyes were closed, and she never missed a shot.
The Doctor, on the other hand, grew paler and paler, the blood draining from his face.
“I know what ought to be done, I just don’t know what the right thing to do is… I never imagined in a million years that the girl would mesh so well with the abilities we gave her…” A shiver ran down his spine as he spoke, and his voice was drowned out by the echoing gunfire.
The Doctor gulped, and as he did so there was a ping—a message had arrived.
“We’ve just had a newsflash from the DA. I set him to gather information on Shell—anything on the net or from internal police reports,” the Doctor said.
Balot took a seat, listening. She had already detached both guns from her sleeves and handed them over to the Doctor, and when she did so his expression lifted ever so slightly in relief.
“He’s come up with something, has he?” Oeufcoque asked, sticking his torso out of one of Balot’s hands.
“The five neurosurgeons who were looking after Shell have all disappeared. Every single one of them, simultaneously. One of the surgeons had even just prepared dinner. No signs of a struggle. And no witnesses…” The Doctor’s eyes flicked over to Balot.
She understood the significance of this glance straightaway.
–Don’t worry. I won’t be afraid. Carry on.
“Okay. Well, it’s strange. All five of them have these large sums of money deposited into their accounts by an unidentified source. But considering the salaries they’re on from the state, it’d hardly be worthwhile for any of them to abscond with the sorts of sums we’re talking about—not with all they have to lose.”
“The deposits are obviously a red herring, Doc. Boiled doesn’t do things by halves. Once his mind is set on an effective course of action, he carries it through to the bitter end. I imagine he hired professionals to do the job. Whenever we find something that looks like a lead, it’s safe to assume that it’s more likely to be a decoy, or a deliberate bluff,” said Oeufcoque.
“I think you’re right. Well, I’m going to use these mysterious disappearances to press our case further, try and crank up the Life Preservation Program to the highest level. We strike a blow inside the courtroom, they go on the offensive on the outside. We’ll need to shore up our escape routes—and we may need to start scouting for a new hideaway. I’d better go and negotiate with the Broilerhouse directly.”
Even as he spoke his fingers were tapping away at the keyboard furiously. He was evidently in communication with the DA.
There was another ping, and the Doctor’s expression brightened.
“Marvelous, our man at the Broilerhouse has given the go-ahead to open negotiations. I’d better head straight there…hope we don’t get attacked while I’m out. Mind you, even if I was here, I doubt I’d be much help in battle.”
“Well, we’ve vetted the police protection that we were assigned after the trial, and their histories all check out. We trawled through the files for all eight of them, spanning the last twenty years—spotless. They should be able to protect us for long enough for you to have your Life Preservation Program discussions, at least,” said Oeufcoque.
“Let’s hope so. Still, let’s not discount the possibility that the enemy will see my absence as a window of opportunity to attack. Be careful.” The Doctor flicked a switch on the machine, pulled the cord out, and headed over to the red convertible in giant, lanky strides.
“Right, I’m off. Make sure you lock all the doors. And listen to what Oeufcoque tells you.” He called out to Balot and the car left the parking lot, letting in the crimson light of the evening sun from beyond the shutters.
Balot snarced the shutters closed, and then made the pitching machines set themselves up to fire automatically. She was about to recommence her training.
“Best not tire yourself out,” Oeufcoque advised.
–Let me go on a little while longer, please? It takes the edge off my mood.
“Fine, but don’t overexert yourself.”
–Just a bit of stationary target practice, then.
Balot stepped back on top of the silver platform and gripped the gun with both hands. She fired in time with the balls as they flew toward her.
She fired with her right, she fired with her left.
As she did so, she snarced Oeufcoque to ask him some questions.
–Who’s going to attack us? Your former partner?
“I don’t know. And we don’t know for sure that anyone’s going to attack us.”
–Did Shell have those surgeons rubbed out? Why?
“Something to do with the business deal he’s involved in at the moment, no doubt. It’s probably safe for us to assume that Shell’s memories are being recorded and preserved in physical form somehow. That’s given us a useful clue, anyway.”
–Who do you think actually killed the surgeons?
“A gang of professionals, I imagine. The sort who work as a team, kidnappers-for-hire.”
–Do you think they’ll come and attack us?
“It’s highly probable.”
–And
if they do attack?
“Then our police protection should send them packing.”
–But what if the kidnappers get them too?
“Then it’ll be up to us to finish the job.”
–We kill them? Balot asked as she pulled the trigger.
–I should shoot the people who attack me, like this, is that what you want? Like I shoot that ball over there?
“If it becomes necessary then yes, you shoot your assailant in self-defense. But that’s not the same thing as shooting them in order to kill them.” Oeufcoque was in full-blown lecture mode now.
–Okay.
“Let’s take a rest now.”
–No, I’m still good. Just a little longer, please?
Balot was firing away on complete autopilot now, mind completely blank and free from obstructive thoughts.
Slowly, at the back of her mind, the question posed by the counsel for the defense re-emerged.
Why didn’t you resist?
That was what the attorney had asked her. Just as so many men had asked her before.
The answer was silence.
There had never been any answer other than silence.
Ever.
Except that now there was sound to rip apart that silence—the sound of gunfire.
Balot continued firing the gun.
06
The gasoline-powered van cruised around the neighborhood, the airline logo on the front and Meet and Greet plastered in large lettering on the window.
By and by it arrived at its destination. It parked, and two tall men emerged from it.
Both men wore sunglasses and thick coats.
“Five minutes, Medium. Let’s secure the area,” one said.
The other nodded. “Roger that, Welldone. Moving into position now.” As he spoke he walked directly toward the entrance of the residence.
Left hand in his jacket, he pressed the intercom buzzer with his right hand and whispered, “I’ll tidy up here as Well prepares the radar. You’ve finished hacking the telephone line?” Medium pressed his forehead with his hand, tilting his head, listening to a voice meant only for him.
A noise came from inside the house, and he smiled.