Rune Zero: A Cyberpunk Thriller (Rune Universe)

by Hugo Huesca

  Charli’s reaction surprised him. She blinked, fast, three times in quick succession. “Kill Senator Morrow? Why the hell would I do that?”

  David Terrance wasn’t the best people-reader. Still, he could’ve sworn that Charli’s surprise was genuine. Indignant, even.

  “Why don’t you ask that to Wade Phillips?” he said.

  “The same Wade Phillips whose files I gave you?” she smiled but this time, David could tell it was a forced gesture. He had stumbled into something. “I wanted you to solve Morrow’s murder, remember? He was an integral part of the Accountability Act efforts. We put millions into it.

  “You sent us to Phillips and then he was hit by a bus.”

  “I didn’t expect him to crack about his work, those things weren’t supposed to be related…”

  Even when taken by surprise, she managed to avoid saying anything too compromising. Still, Charli shut up and looked around, like she half-expected a SWAT team to jump out of the shadows. Or something else.

  “They are related,” said David tentatively. “Morrow wasn’t going to help you, Charli. He was going to speak out against the Accountability Act.”

  She looked at her with incredulity. Then, her pale face went pale even more, like she had realized a terrible truth. If she was an actor, she was talented. “What in the hell are you talking about?”

  “The security feed!” he explained. “From Morrow’s apartment. The hacker deleted footage some days before the Senator’s murder, just a ten minutes bit.”

  “That proves nothing…”

  “You think that Phillips was the only one feeling guilty about his job? They were lovers, Charli. They talked among themselves. There’s a limit to what corporate secrecy can do to stop people from exchanging notes. Wade talked to Morrow, and they both realized your shit with the Accountability Act was related to using human brain cells as the basis for your drone brains.

  “That’s a loophole, isn’t it?” he was reaching now, talking at the same time the revelation came to him. He wasn’t talking to impress her with his deductions, he needed John to hear this over the phone, have his team check all of it for evidence. It was the motive the killer had lacked, right there. “Last year regulations stop you from using AI in the financial market. I bet you have a team of very expensive lawyers ready to argue that a meat-based AI isn’t really an AI at all. What were you planning on calling whatever abomination you’re cooking in your labs? A bodily-deficient adviser?”

  Charli didn’t look like a vampire anymore, but a ghost. She talked in a whisper, more to herself than to him. “I didn’t kill the Senator.”

  “The Senator, and Dugall Tull, and Vicente. The meeting had three people, at least two of them physically inside his apartment. Morrow was going to leak everything, Charli. He was going to use K-Sec to steal all the necessary documents, then Dugall Tull was going to leak it all.”

  It finally fit. Motive. Circumstance. Opportunity. Morrow was killed outside his apartment and later brought there via drone. Odin spied on its employees, Charli had proved that. So, the conspirators got found out. Someone followed them to a later reunion and killed the three of them.

  Then, that someone had spread the killings, revealing the bodies in different places and at different times to hide the fact they were all related. Finally, when the CIA started investigating Morrow’s murder, Charli had used Dugall Tull as a decoy, faked his suicide, and then pulled strings with John Derry’s boss to stop the investigation right there.

  Charli had a deer-in-the-headlights expression. Was she finally feeling guilt?

  David could’ve sworn that someone like Charli Dervaux wouldn’t feel something like guilt. He got worried, then. He realized he had missed an important piece of the puzzle.

  Charli stood up. “So, all this time, it was you…?” She was whispering to herself. Had she gone mad? “After all this time… You tried to protect me, didn’t you?”

  “Charli? What the hell are you talking about?”

  David’s voice seemed to bring her back to reality. She looked at him and her expression transformed in front of his eyes. She was back to her old, confident self. Her smile was pleasant and inviting.

  But her eyes glinted with murderous intent. “You got it all wrong, David. I wasn’t going to use biological material in the financial market. Meat decays faster than databytes do. It was too expensive to invest millions into a computer that died after a month, or could spontaneously develop brain cancer. So, we pushed our limitations. Phillips research has advanced far more than what those documents of yours imply, David. There’s no biological material in my little darlings, nor will ever be. We have been using imprints of neural pathways for their cybernetic brains. That means we are building our own mechanical neurons from the casting of the originals. The perfect integration of software and machine. All the good of the original, meaty design, without any of their weaknesses.”

  Fucking hell, I hope you’re listening to all this, John.

  She made a brief gesture with her fingers, something that could’ve passed as a tick in the middle of her speech. But the foliage around David shifted. Shadows stirred. A pack of metallic wolves appeared, having been summoned by their master’s will. Six of them, each heavier, faster, stronger than any man. They spread like a fan in a semi-circle with David in the middle.

  “Charli? I thought we had a deal. The information…”

  “I’m afraid circumstances have changed, mister hacker.”

  “If anything happens to me, my friends will leak the archives anyway. Morrow’s plan will succeed.”

  The wolves were frozen in place, awaiting the final command, their red eyes fixated upon David’s body.

  His body was so pumped with adrenaline he could barely stop himself from running into the house. Movement would trigger the wolves for sure.

  He could see and hear like never before. His body realized he was in mortal danger better than himself. He heard his heartbeat, his breathing, the shifting of Charli’s white dress with every movement of hers, the roar of a machine’s engine in the distance, the buzzing of the farm drones tending to the grapes.

  But he couldn’t hear the wolves. No excited panting, no breathing, no shifting in place.

  “As I said,” Charli continued, “circumstances have shifted. I’ll handle the leaks later. For now, know that the court will hear how you came unannounced into my home, with god knows what intent. And my security detail took care of you. It will be open and shut. Our collaboration is over, David Terrance… It seems you made a mistake when you considered my priorities. You should have paid more attention last time we talked.”

  She took a step backward and pointed at him, whispering an inaudible command. The wolves heard it just fine, though.

  David could hear them now. Their mechanic articulations pumped with hydraulic power. They advanced.

  Chapter 11

  If the mechanic things had a facial expression, they’d be smiling murderously. No matter what Charli had said, they didn’t move like a drone did.

  A drone wasn’t anxious to kill.

  One of them stepped forward, looking to get a reaction out of David, to make him vulnerable to the flanking of the other wolves.

  David reacted the only way he knew how. If those monsters had actual software inside their brains, he could fuck with it. He made a feint forwards, like he planned to charge suicidally at them. The wolves reacted like the real animals would’ve: The one at the front jumped back and the ones at the sides of David sprang in action, fast as bullets.

  He was already sprinting at full speed towards the Dervaux home. He jumped over the table, sending porcelain flying everywhere, and then jumped again. Behind him, the table exploded under the weight of several wolves jumping on it, only a few feet away from David’s exposed back.

  They had covered two hundred meters in seconds. Outrunning them was impossible.

  David wasn’t trying to outrun them, though.

  When chased by a wild an
imal, you don’t have to run faster than them. You just have to run faster than the other guy.

  Charli realized what David was going to do when he was in front of her, reaching for her shoulders with a desperate pull. She screamed in rage and tried to scratch his eyes out, but David caught her hand and pushed her towards himself.

  At the same time, he felt his lower leg explode in agony. A force several times stronger than him dragged him to the floor like he was a little child in the paws of a grizzly bear. David lurched several feet backward, over the upturned table, over the scraps of porcelain, and out of the house.

  All the while dragging Charli Dervaux along with him, holding her for dear life. The woman screamed with brutal rage and tried to kick him, punch him, crush his throat. They were moving too fast for her to do any real damage, though. She couldn’t land a hit fast enough and then they were in the humid grass and the dragging stopped.

  A dozen paws pressed on David’s back. Each of them easily weighed as much as he did. Air escaped from his lungs. He was going to be torn apart.

  So he hugged tightly to Charli’s shape, ignoring the red streaks of pain as she raked her nails across his face, trying to reach his eyes. He protected his face under her shoulder and neck and fought away her hands with one arm.

  “Let go!” she bit him on his shoulder, right below the neck, hard enough to draw blood. David screamed in pain and then dragged her up with all his meager strength. The paws on his back drew away when Charli was too close to them. She was literally a human shield.

  “I’m going to have you drawn and quartered!” Her knee landed on his belly and her hands closed around his neck. David gulped and faltered for one second and she almost got away.

  If he let her go, the wolves would kill him. If he didn’t she would probably kill him anyway. He couldn’t talk, only guffaw like a dying gazelle as a lion pride tore him to shreds. He was blacking out from lack of oxygen already. His ears were ringing.

  He had to use his head.

  He pulled Charli towards himself and launched his forehead forward, as hard as he could. He smashed her right in the nose. He felt it break and shower him in red blood, but he also blacked out for a second. His arms went limp and Charli broke free with a shove that smacked his head on the hard ground. She rose up, spraying blood all over her dress. She roared some nasty order to the wolves.

  David tried to get up, but his knees trembled like they were made of butter. The shadow of a wolf against the moonlight appeared on his field of vision. They were toying with him, now. He closed his eyes.

  And a black car rushed out of the foliage at an unhealthy speed. Its lights were off. Only the reflection of the moon on its windows as it passed three feet away from David’s legs let the hacker know it was there.

  Also, the fact that it ran straight over the two wolfs in front of the pack, the ones that were getting ready to snack on him.

  According to Charli, the things were entirely machine. But David could’ve sworn he heard them yelp in surprise as they disappeared under the black chassis with a thunder of metal tearing itself.

  “No!” roared Charli. “Kill them! Kill them both!”

  John Derry jumped out of the car with his gun raised. The remaining wolves saw the weapon, then they looked at Charli. David could almost see their software processing the dilemma. Attack the man, risk him shooting their owner.

  They were fast. They would reach a conclusion sooner or later.

  “Terrance!” John exclaimed. He had a deep frown and his eyes were trained on the things. “You alright?”

  “Yes,” David lied. “Be careful with those drones, they can tear you apart in a second.”

  “Don’t worry about them. I’m handling them.”

  John trained his gun on one of the wolves, calmly, and pulled the trigger with the cool demeanor of someone taking a walk by the beach. A couple of sparks flew out of the wolf’s head and one of the front tires of John’s car suddenly exploded with a silent bang.

  David could see Charli screaming at the monsters, but he couldn’t hear anything. John looked at the wolf (it had a small dent a centimeter over his eye), then at the flat tire, then at his gun. He looked at David and shrugged, like saying: “Yeah, I’m not handling those things after all.”

  David clenched his teeth, took a deep breath, and got up. Pain erupted from his lower leg. It felt like it had been torn off. His foot refused to support his weight and he fell to his knees, screaming in pain.

  His head was spinning. A hand grabbed him by the neck of his shirt and propped him up. David caught a glimpse of John’s silhouette half-carrying him with an arm under his shoulders. The agent’s other hand had his gun pointed at Charli.

  Charli Dervaux had a winning hand. If John shot at her, the wolves would tear them to shreds. If he couldn’t shoot at her, she could attack them herself, putting herself in danger and forcing the wolves to protect her. David’s stunned mind pieced it together with perfect clarity. They needed to run away from Charli Dervaux.

  It was a stalemate that couldn’t last. Slowly, painfully, the agent and the hacker limped backward, towards the house.

  All the while, the wolves followed them, with Charli walking close behind. The woman was limping, too, and was holding a bloody hand over her face. Her white dress was sparkled with crimson drops and stains and her red hair was a mess of dirt and twigs. And her eyes were bright with murderous intent.

  David and John reached the stairs of the porch, almost tripped over a broken chair, and slowly climbed it. David bent his leg and hopped step by step on his good one.

  The wolves converged on the house, looking for an opening. Waiting for the gun to break line-of-sight with their master. They were enjoying the hunt. Something primal stirred inside them.

  David reached back and felt the mansion’s door. It was reinforced wood, hopefully with a bulletproof plating underneath the expensive exterior. If it was just wood, John and he were as good as dead.

  They walked inside. John closed the heavy door behind them. Not a second after, the wood shook and cracked with a successive row of impacts. The door held.

  “Reinforced,” mouthed John.

  David nodded tiredly. They both slid to the floor, trying to catch their breaths. John’s white shirt was covered in sweat, dirt, and bits of blood. David’s gaze wandered down and caught a glimpse of his leg. He looked up and pretended not to have seen that bloody mess.

  At least I’m not going into shock this time, he thought. Perhaps he was getting used to the abuse. Another day or two and he would be as good an agent as John.

  If the murderous cyberwolves didn’t eat them both, of course. The pounding against the door continued, rhythmically, over and over.

  “Jesus, Terrance, what did you tell that woman? She went ballistic,” John panted. David was beginning to regain his hearing, but it was still mostly lip-reading.

  “She didn’t kill Senator Morrow or Vicente Duran,” he told the agent, “she only killed Phillips.”

  “I heard about Phillips. The phone, remember? I have her on record. Won’t be enough to put her in jail for long, though.”

  Outside, the banging against the door stopped.

  “She knows who killed Morrow, that’s why she’s reacting this way.”

  “You think?”

  David nodded. The wolves. The wolves made it all make sense.

  To him, it was like watching a movie he had already seen a thousand different times and knew by heart.

  The wolves. Could they cry at the moon, if they had mouths?

  “Well, to find the killer we need to disable those drones,” said John, “or we’ll be too dead to capture him.”

  “They’re connected to a central network,” said David. “Remember the quadcopter and the car? When we shut their network down, they became useless.”

  “Don’t know, they seem more advanced than a car. We need to call for backup.”

  John took out his phone and began to dial. David shook his
head. He knew backup wouldn’t arrive until after it was all over. He knew shutting down the network would take care of the drones. He knew the script of this movie.

  I have been here before, he thought. How was it possible?

  John froze, phone in hand, and his eyes unfocused. He was listening. “It’s too quiet,” he said.

  The agent and David exchanged panicked looks. “The house has other entrances?” whispered David.

  “It must have.”

  They got up. David ignored the pain of his body, hopped on one leg towards John, and grabbed his shoulder. “Quick, get me to their router.”

  “How the fuck should I know where this place has their router? It’s huge!”

  “Your phone. Follow the WiFi signal,” David muttered.

  “What if they have a repeater? It will boost the range—”

  “You’ll have to shoot it! Let’s go, Derry!”

  David knew the mansion didn’t have a repeater. He knew shutting down the WiFi wouldn’t shut down the drones, either. But, somehow, if they reached the security chamber…

  But they better hurry. Far away, past the green Persian carpet, past the oak stairs, down the corridors that ran deep into the Dervaux’s home, a pack of wolves was tearing apart the home in their desperation to get them.

  “Upstairs,” David whispered. “Quick.”

  It wasn’t the usual place for a security chamber. But if David’s suspicions about who Charli Dervaux was protecting were right, it was their best shot at survival.

  They were halfway through the stairs when the first wolf appeared in the corridor’s entrance. It stopped to take a good look at them. David could almost see the neural pathways in its brain cranking an image-recognition software and then sending the image to the rest of the pack.

  Then it charged at them.

  “Shit!” John jumped the last couple of steps and tossed David forward into the nearest open room. David fell face-first into the expensive rug, tried to cover his fall with his broken hand, and screamed in agony as he rolled across the floor.