by Greg Juhn
I swerved left and right, trying to get a feel for the wheel. ElloCars in both directions swung out of the way to give me wide berth.
“Should I run these guys over? I yelled, careening up on the sidewalk behind Dro and Chi.
“How should I know?” she yelled.
She was right, I couldn’t murder them.
“Horn!" I yelled. Nothing happened. I remembered we were in manual mode. I hit the horn symbol and the car honked meekly. Dro and Chi looked over their shoulder, eyes wide, and leaped out of the way, one into the street, the other into the grass. We sped past and I steered onto the park’s lawn, where there were fewer people.
A slicer cut through the car, hit the dashboard and ricocheted up through the roof, leaving a deep jagged gash in front of us.
Indira peeked out the back window. “They’re shooting at us.”
“Maybe that bought Josh a little time,” I said, speeding up a small hill. We cleared the top of it and sailed down the other side.
I pulled the wheel to the left and headed back across the park in Josh’s general direction. In the corner of my vision, I saw a menagerie of flashing lights.
A drone appeared outside the driver’s window. “Stop the car immediately!" It blasted. I heard another drone land on the roof.
Two driverless police cars were streaking across the grass, heading us off. They were going to take us out.
They separated and let us pass between. In the rearview mirror, I saw each slam to a stop, dirt and grass flying in the air, and spin like a top. Now they were pointed our way and in seconds were speeding past us again. I was no match for their maneuvers. They pulled in front at an angle from both sides and slammed on their brakes. Our car lurched and locked up. The driver override message disappeared, replaced with a new message: Police Custody.
“Open door!" I yelled. Nothing happened.
“Right here,” Indira said. She reached forward and yanked a decorative panel in the door. It fell to the side, revealing a long lever. We both grabbed it at the same time and pulled upward. The door popped.
We were out on the lawn and running as fast as we could. I glanced around us as we gained momentum down a hill. In the distance, I could see police bots running in our direction. “We’re done if those guys catch us!"
“Look!" she yelled.
Josh was running up to the entrance of the hospital. He disappeared inside.
As we passed the perimeter of the park and headed across the street, drones flew out of the trees to pursue us. Drones with tasers.
Moments later, we huffed up to the sliding doors and dodged the foot traffic streaming in and out. Thank God drones couldn’t enter a hospital. We were in the lobby of the emergency ward and it was mobbed. People moved in all directions with no apparent order; some stood still in the middle of the crowd, while others had found seats and looked forlorn or bored. The room was a beehive of injured and sick people accompanied by worried family and friends. Among them all, only the nurses and office staff hustled to and fro with any sense of purpose. The PA system yelled above the cacophony, instructing patients to come to the front desk.
My phone buzzed. I answered.
“Why are you chasing me?” Josh barked.
“Because you’re in trouble.”
“I am trying to lead those guys away from you,” he said. “You’re making it very difficult.”
“I’m not going to let them get you,” I said. “Let us catch up and we’ll deal with them together.”
“No-go,” Josh said. “These guys are dangerous. Stay away.”
“I’m not supposed to let you out of my sight.” I hung up before he could protest further.
“There he is,” Indira said, gripping my arm. She pointed beyond the main gate, toward the admitting area, where he was heading down a hallway. He had slipped on a pair of scrubs and was blending in. We ran to the gate and checked for anyone paying attention, then slipped through. There was effectively no security.
Josh glanced back and saw us, then grabbed the arm of a man passing by. “Are you Doctor Ueki?”
The man stopped. “Yes, I am.”
“I’m Dr. Jasinski from Wakefield Medical Center,” Josh lied. “I was called in for surgery because you’re low staffed. Are you heading out?”
“Yes.”
Josh pointed toward the front doors. “Please stay inside. We’ve heard reports of armed gunmen on the street. Could you notify the police to lock down the hospital? And we may need you if there are casualties.”
Without waiting for a response, Josh approached a nurse pushing a patient on a gurney. He spoke calmly, with authority. “This is Lydia Princess Alonzo, correct? Age 52, deep laceration on her right thigh from a die-cutting laser?”
“Yes,” the nurse answered. “She was trying to remove a tattoo. The wound is 5 inches long above the right knee. Three inches deep. Severed the femoral artery. There was significant blood loss.”
Josh pulled back the blood-stained sheet. “Tourniquet reads 100 over 50 and dropping 2% every 5 minutes. Relatively stable for the moment.”
“I’m waiting for a ward assignment,” the nurse said.
“The OR on 5th West is open. I’ll get my Augment at the nurse’s station on five. Let’s go.”
The elevator opened and they both disappeared inside, the nurse wheeling the gurney in. The elevator closed.
I turned to Indira. “Apparently he is going into surgery on the fifth floor.”
“Where are you two supposed to be?” a voice asked. We turned and faced a stern woman.
“We’re, ah, heading up to five,” I said lamely.
I caught a glimpse of several robot police entering the lobby from outside. They were on to us. Maybe Josh had sent them. We only had seconds.
“We’re going up to the waiting room there,” Indira said. “We’re with Lydia Alonzo. She’s going into surgery.”
“I’m sorry. There’s no waiting room on five,” the nurse said. “There’s a large cantina on the second floor. Go back out to the lobby and take the elevator from there. You aren’t allowed onto five.”
We turned back to the lobby, toward the robot police who were scanning faces with ruthless efficiency. Behind them, I saw Dro and Chi enter. Doctor Ueki was talking to the nurses at the check-in station. As we reached the gate, I casually glanced back – the stern nurse had already moved on. I pulled Indira to the stairwell. “Let’s take the stairs, quick,” I said. We pushed the door open. As we entered, I saw Dro watching us.
We took the steps two at a time. As we reached the second-floor landing, the door below us opened.
The second-floor door was locked. We quietly padded up another level. We heard the footsteps of a single person following.
The third floor was locked, too. A sign on the door read: Authorized Access Only.
“The stairwell was a really bad idea,” I gasped, out of breath. My fear was growing; I tried to calm myself. The footsteps were closer, moving with more urgency. We climbed faster now, caring less about making sound – clearly, our pursuer knew we were here.
The fourth door was locked, and we barely paused, taking off in a full sprint up the steps. The man below us broke into fast pursuit.
By the time we reached the fifth floor, I was out of breath. The door was locked. “This is it,” I said. “Get ready to fight.”
Dro emerged around the stairwell corner, slicer gun drawn. He was breathing hard. “Where’s your friend?”
“I don’t know.”
“Bullshit. Where is he?” He reached the landing, drew up to me and pressed the wide nozzle of the slicer against my skull. I was about to get scalped.
“Tell me or I unlock your head.”
The door opened and Indira and I tumbled into the room. As I fell forward, I caught a glimpse of Josh, fully gowned for surgery. He grabbed us roughly and pulled us forward. He pushed Dro back into the stairwell and shut the door behind him. They were both in the stairwell.
Silence.
Indira and I looked at each other. My hands were shaking.
The door opened again and Josh emerged. His scrubs were covered in blood from top to bottom.
“Excuse me folks, I am needed in surgery,” he said, brushing past.
Indira watched him walk away. “How’d he get through the locked door?”
“There’s nothing we can do to help him,” I said, realizing what should have been obvious to me from the start. “Let’s get out of here. I’ll call NeoMechi and tell them everything.”
She readily agreed.
We rode the elevator down to the first floor lobby, where we found the entrance blocked by police. “You can’t leave,” one said. “We’re in lockdown. There is an evolving situation outside.”
We backed up and hustled down a hallway, then popped out an unguarded side door.
Police were waving people off the sidewalk, instructing them to go inside the shops. No one knew what was going on and dozens of people still mingled on the streets. We headed down an empty stretch of sidewalk, away from the police.
An ElloCar screeched to a stop beside us. Chi and the other two men jumped out with an arsenal of strange weapons. Conventional guns and bullets wouldn’t help them capture Josh.
“Okay,” I said, holding my arms up. “You win. We’ll cooperate.”
They strode up to us quickly, holding their weapons close to their chest, and nodded toward the car. “Get in,” Chi said. “Crank, take her.”
I stalled. “How do you guys keep finding me?”
“Your medical monitor was super easy to hack,” Crank said. “All we need is your walking location.”
Chi moved behind me and pressed a slicer gun to my head. “Stop talking, asshole. Get in the car.”
Indira and I both nodded.
Josh approached. For once, I wasn’t annoyed by his uncanny ability to drop into a scene. He had ditched his scrubs.
“Let them go,” he demanded.
“No way. We just figured out that you are protecting them. We need them because it is the only way to control you.”
He held up his hands. “I’m giving myself up – let them go. I’m through running. I won’t resist.”
“That’s bullshit, robot.”
“You’re all coming with us,” Crank said.
“I have a self-destruct feature,” Josh warned, seemingly not that concerned about himself, but I sensed he was very worried about us.
“Sure you do. I’ll bet you can blow up the whole block,” Crank laughed derisively.
“Don’t laugh,” Josh said.
Crank grabbed Indira’s hair and began shoving her into the car.
“Let them go and I will go with you,” Josh said again.
Chi shook his head. “They’re coming too.”
“Careful,” Crank said sarcastically. “He has explosives inside him.”
“I didn’t say that,” Josh said. “But I’ll tell you one thing. I can control a massive number of devices.”
“Yeah?” Crank said. He pulled out a Whammy Stick and waved it at Josh as he approached. “Well, not after I fry you with this. And you won’t be able to deactivate it before I get to you – it’s not connected.” He held it up. “It’s off the grid. Untraceable. We don’t like law enforcement tracking us.”
I heard a buzzing, and at first I thought it was the Whammy Stick. Before I could even comprehend what was happening, a drone hit Crank in the neck, the propeller blades slicing into his fleshy throat and cutting his head almost clean off. Almost. The head wallowed off to the side and Crank slumped to his knees and then the sidewalk.
Chi was momentarily stunned, then aimed his slicer gun at Josh’s legs. Josh kicked and connected with Chi’s wrist. The gun fired upward as Chi’s hand snapped and flapped backwards. Josh kicked again, this time into Chi’s crotch. As our assailant buckled over, Josh smashed upward and downward on the man’s head with his fists, and Chi’s head caved in from both directions with a sickening crunch. Someone nearby shouted.
In the handful of seconds all this happened, I had done little but step backwards, while the remaining thug retreated behind their car in fear. He now leveled his weapon at Josh. I started to warn Josh, but instead followed Indira as she ducked behind the nearest car. We watched helplessly from our cover.
Josh jumped at least six feet and the man opened fire. Taser slugs tore through the wall and signs and windows and fire hydrant. People screamed and ran in all directions.
With a fierce squealing of wheels, an empty ElloCar careened out of nowhere and smashed into the gunman from behind, plowing into his car in an explosion of glass and metal. Both cars came to a rest several feet away from Indira and me. The last of the gunmen was somewhere in the wreckage.
The crowd on the street was in full-blown chaos. Dozens of bystanders ran from the carnage, a wave of people getting away as fast as possible. Most of the cars on the street were at a standstill. A dog with bright green hair ran by.
Across the street, a car screeched to a stop and three men leapt out, their bodies fully encased in plated armor. The backup team. They weren’t worried about stealth anymore. This was the all-out onslaught. Josh took off down the sidewalk.
The first assailant, a guy in a red rubberized suit, ran alongside Josh gripping a contraption with an enormous barrel. He wasn’t wearing a helmet, and I recognized him as the Take Charge Guy from the casino. He fired off a series of baseball-sized stun balls, but Josh adeptly jumped or dodged each as they flew past. The balls smashed into storefront walls. Take Charge fired a few more, failed to connect, and tossed the blaster aside.
The two others approached Josh from front and back, leveling weapons with sticking out the front. With a smoky blast, the first thug’s gun fired. The prongs shot forward, whipping a shiny net through the air. The net wrapped around an ElloCar charging post as Josh ran by.
I saw the other attacker fire at Josh head on. As the net swirled down on him, Josh fell to the ground. The net landed on his head and back, but he yanked viciously and cast the net aside. At the same moment, several large black canisters landed on the sidewalk around him.
Josh jumped so fast I almost didn’t see him move, and with a guttural thump, the canisters blasted off in succession. Electromagnetic bombs. The lights in the window of the adjacent store and the nearby charging stations went out. I turned and saw Josh dive head-first into his assailant’s chest, his momentum knocking both of them to the ground.
Take Charge appeared with a slicer gun. “Use the slicers!" he yelled to his team. “Try to cut off his hands and feet!"
Josh was sprawling with the man he had tackled. He lifted his attacker into the air. A slicer whistled through the air and cut off the man’s arm. Blood sprayed out. The next slicer cut through the man’s head. Josh moved to avoid another disc as it sailed past. Behind us, I could hear the discs ricochetting off the ground with sharp pings. Blood was everywhere.
Josh hurled the man’s body at Take Charge, rolled and leapt to his feet, and headed in the opposite direction. Slicers pinged off the ground around him and sailed off. He glanced at us as he ran past. “What are you still doing here? Run!"
Indira and I were in shock, unable to do anything but stare and huddle in our hiding place.
Take Charge ran by, yelling orders to his surviving goon to coordinate their attack. They closed in around him. “Knock him out! Whatever the fuck it takes! Fry him!"
Josh plucked a slicer from the side of a car and whipped it at Take Charge, catching him in the chest. The slicer stuck harmlessly in the armor.
Take Charge threw his pack on the ground and bent down to yank out an enormous rifle. Another disc coming from Josh’s direction stuck in his back. A second later, a third stuck in his ass. No reaction – the armor was doing its job. The rifle hummed to life, Take Charge faced Josh, leaned back, and fired out a jet of angry blue fluid that crackled as it broke through the air. The stream splashed onto parked cars and trees and charging posts and erup
ted in a hive of crackling electricity.
Josh had disappeared.
Take Charge stepped forward slowly, sparks popping from the gun’s nozzle. He looked left and right. “Do you see him?”
The other remaining thug shook his head and twitched at any sign of movement.
Take Charge took several steps forward and sprayed a thicker blue stream over the entire area. Car alarms blared, then died.
The two men inched forward, ducking their heads to look under the nearby parked cars, which dripped with inert spray. They were converging on the last car.
“He’s under it!" Take Charge yelled.
That’s when I heard the much loader rumbling noise. A massive buzz that I recognized immediately.
A Swarm. The flock emerged from the far corner of the square, a thousand tiny machines flying through the air, focusing laser-like into a narrow spheroid as they approached. They shot past the handful of confused people who were still retreating from the chaos, moving fluidly around each person like a river around rocks, and within a second had plowed into Take Charge and his buddy. From what I could tell, not one of the machines missed. It appeared that at least 6 or 7 hit each man directly in the eyes. Hundreds of other SwarmBots hit them in the mouth and neck. The thugs never said a word, just bobbled on the sidewalk, dropped their guns, and collapsed.
The car they had arrived in peeled away, and I glimpsed an occupant in the back seat. Fedas.
Josh joined us. “I think that guy was the last of them,” he said, referring to the car speeding off down the road. “Let him go. They got the point.”
“You okay?” I said, running my hands on his arms to feel and look for damage.
“Fine, fine,” Josh said. “No problems. No hits.” He seemed a little dazed. But he was still thinking fast, and before Indira and I had even collected our thoughts, he had already hustled us into a nearby shop.
The street had largely cleared of people, but the police were descending in droves – both human and robot, all of them for miles around streaming inward to the same shot-riddled patch of sidewalk that we had been standing on.
Josh excused himself to head to the bathroom. He was covered in blood. Indira and I merged with a group of frightened shoppers, most of whom had ducked behind counters or flattened themselves on the floor during the carnage, but who were already poking their heads up to check things out. Everyone sensed the danger was over.