Taking a few moments, Angel rummaged through her belongings, shoving her leather-bound book into an inside jacket pocket. She stuffed some spare clothes and odds and ends into a backpack and shrugged it on.
Charlotte-Rose tilted her head, as if listening. “Time to leave,” she said brightly. “This will be the second time I’ve saved your life.”
“Keeping score, are we?”
“Always. They are coming.”
Angel’s eyes flicked toward the door. “It’s not the first time I’ve been hunted. How long?”
“Maybe forty seconds.”
“More than one?”
Charlotte nodded. “Many more.”
The screen split in half, with the girl on one side and what looked like the view from Angel’s door camera on the other. The corridor was empty.
Above the service lift at the far end of the corridor, the light blinked on, indicating the door would open, which it did moments later, disgorging at least six Law Enforcement Proxies scuttling forward on their articulated legs. Behind the automatons were two combat-armored law enforcement officers carrying displacement cannons. All black jagged edges and sharp planes, these were not the type of proxies you saw on the streets to assist the general populace. Mostly used to combat criminal gangs, these were at the cutting edge of technology, military-grade automatons emblazoned with the logo of their manufacturer, Mercurial Logic. Lethal. And unstoppable with the weapons she had on her.
They stopped outside the door. Two peeled off and clung to the side walls, while one clambered to hang upside down from the plascrete ceiling.
Drawing her hand-cannon, Angel looked frantically around the room. “Can you lock the door, prevent them from opening it?”
“I can and have, but they will probably break it down.”
Without thinking, Angel raised her weapon and fired at the window. Glass splintered and crashed to the floor. Wind howled through the serrated opening. She shot out the window across from hers.
“Good luck!” shouted Charlotte-Rose over the wind. The wall faded to black.
Angel holstered her gun, took a few steps away from the window, then ran toward it, leaping across the gap. Wind tore at her clothes and hair, buffeting her body. She landed, slipping on broken glass. Hands outstretched, she fell. Pain erupted from her palms as they hit the floor. She grimaced, clenching her teeth, and pushed the pain to the back of her mind.
Luckily, the room was empty. Lurching to her feet, she stumbled to the control pad. She punched the door open, leaving a red smear on the panel.
There was a rasping noise, like a file on metal, then a bright flash, and the air boomed. Angel risked a glance behind her. Plasma fire cascaded around her suite as the LEPs rushed in, discharging a constant barrage without warning. Explosions scattered throughout the room and out into the gap between the buildings. Three stray bolts slammed into the wall next to her.
She leapt through the door. “Shit, shit, shit,” she breathed.
Outside the room, she ran toward the nearest emergency stairs. With any luck, they might think it was their fire that blew out the windows. Shouldering the door open, she paused on the landing. Her hands ached. Shards of glass stuck out of her palms. Blood dripped onto the floor. She must have left a trail.
She ran up to the next landing, rubbing bloody smears on the stair rail, laying a false trail. A command to her implants disabled the inbuilt positioning transponder. For good measure, she flicked her hand toward the floor, spraying drops of blood all over the steps. She held her bleeding hands above her head, and with a curse, she took a deep breath and ran as fast as she could down the stairs.
There was a clang as the door to the landing above her crashed open. Black metal legs emerged, like a spider crawling out of a hole. A proxy must have managed the jump between buildings and followed her.
Angel drew and started firing. Shrapnel tinkled inside the stairwell. Was it only one or…? It didn’t matter. One was more than enough to kill her. And with that thought, her options narrowed to one: flight.
She pelted headlong down the stairs, spiraling, swinging from the railing, her momentum enough she barely touched the steps. Ten floors down, she slammed into the wall and tumbled. Hands outstretched, she left smears of blood on another landing. She winced at the pain. An ominous scuttling of metal on plascrete sounded behind her.
Angel pulled the door open and dashed through. She dropped her arms to her sides and let her blood drip. The corridor she found herself in was clear. She sprinted for the service elevators. One was open. She raced inside and pressed the button for the lower service floor. She held her palms together, clenching her teeth against the stabbing pain, to try and stop the bleeding. The shards of glass dug in deeper, but for the moment that couldn’t be helped. Her eyes watered, and a trickle of sweat ran down her cheek. Since the door she’d come through opened inward, the proxy would have a hard time opening it. Unless…
An explosion rumbled. The door broke from the frame and clanged against the corridor wall.
Angel stabbed at the button again, and the door closed.
She rode the elevator down and took stock. Fucking hells, her hands hurt. She squeezed her eyes shut for a few moments. “Come on,” she muttered at the elevator. The proxy would follow her down using another elevator. She didn’t have much time.
On the service floor, she glanced at the indicators. One of the elevators was descending. She estimated she had twenty seconds. The floor was open and cluttered. Not many rooms, mostly columns to support the building’s weight, leaving spaces for the service automatons to roam about on their tasks. She pushed past a number of the bots and looked frantically around for the chemical storage rooms.
There. Toxic and hazardous material warning signs adorned the wall. Hands aching, she kept low and swerved across the floor just in case. At the door, she ducked inside just as she estimated the service elevator would arrive.
She hunched over the automated dispenser controls. Scrub-bots would roll in and refill their supplies here. Punching in instructions, she forced the cleaning automatons offline and tasked them to gather outside the dispensary. They should delay the proxy long enough. She hoped.
A list of chemicals scrolled down the screen as Angel searched her mind for the right ingredients. It had been a long time ago, but she’d seen Pemenee make explosives out of the bare basics back in her mercenary days. The waiflike woman had had a genius for it. What was it she’d used on the Hydra system job they’d taken? A disinfectant? Potassium… chlorate? Yes. There it was.
A scrub-bot entered through the door, and she barely glanced at it. If it had been the proxy, she would be dead already. Sweat dripped from her nose onto the floor. She directed it to connect to the dispenser and continued looking for what she needed. Ingredient number two: a plasticizer. Unfamiliar names blurred in front of her. Angel shook her head to clear it.
“Keep it together,” she admonished herself.
What did she have to choose from? She set a filter and narrowed the list. Another liquid—they’d laughed about the name and joked about “explosions”… something phthalate.
A crash and the sound of tortured metal came from outside the dispensary.
“Oh sh…”
She punched in instructions to mix the two compounds and fill the scrub-bot. As it stood there gurgling, Angel cycled through her ammo and squeezed a few grenades onto it. They stuck fast, tiny red lights winking at her.
“One,” she breathed. “Please let there only be one.”
The dispenser gave a cheerful chirp to indicate its job was complete. The scrub-bot rolled from under it and stopped by the door. Angel tasked it to move toward the military-grade proxy outside and “clean it”. She ducked out of sight behind a crate.
The door opened, and the scrub-bot rolled out. There was a shattering crash of scrub-bots disintegrating as the proxy churned through them in an effort to reach the dispensary. Her implants still connected to the dispensary system, Angel mo
nitored her bot, her savior. Its signs were green, fully functional. Its spray nozzle and wipers activated as it tried to complete her order: clean the proxy. Which meant it had to be close.
Another shriek of metal and its life signs went red.
Angel remote-triggered her grenades—igniting the makeshift explosive composition she’d created.
The floor shook. A hundred claps of thunder cracked in the air. Angel felt herself start to scream as the doors blew inward. Roiling flames and a hot wind whooshed through. She curled herself into a ball on the floor.
Sprinklers came on, and water sprayed around and over her. She could smell burning. Orange emergency evacuation lights lit the room. She didn’t need to be told twice.
Outside on the service floor, the LEP was a twisted mass of smoking, jagged metal. One of its eyes still functioned, a violet light following her as she scurried past. She shot it and, with gritted teeth, slipped out through a disused exit.
Chapter 5
Angel kept her head down, covering her face with her hair as best she could. She pushed her bloodied hands deep into her jacket pockets. She’d already pulled out the shards of glass and made makeshift bandages from strips of a passing tablecloth, but she needed stitches. Probably a lot of them.
As calmly as she could, Angel walked down the back street to the nearest metro station. One stop later, she got off and swapped to a different line. Another stop, and she repeated the procedure.
Twenty minutes of brisk walking, and she entered a shopping complex kilometers from her hotel. News streams she accessed via her implants showed pictures of her on the crime channels.
She bought strong painkillers along with tinted glasses and a tight woolen cap. A quick scan of the establishments, and she found what she was looking for: a medical center. It was dark and dingy inside, and the carpet threadbare. Just the thing.
The doctor was shady, wearing a stained lab coat and surrounded by yellowing paint and outdated equipment. She seemed half asleep and surprised to see someone walk in.
“Yes?” the doctor said querulously, as if not sure whether Angel was a customer or an inspector. A name tag pinned to her coat labeled her as Dr. Woodrow, and she was sixty if she was a day.
The medical center was obviously either a front for dishonest business or only saw the poorest of the poor. Angel pushed aside her Inquisitor’s instincts, forcing her attention to more urgent matters.
“My hands have been cut. They require stitching.” Angel held them out. Her bandages were starting to bleed red splotches.
“Looks nasty. Please, sit here.” Woodrow indicated a plastic chair next to a bright light.
Angel paused, slightly surprised by the doctor’s lack of curiosity as to how the injuries were sustained. After a beat, she sat, and the “doctor” took out a pair of scissors and snipped away the linen strips. Humming to herself, Woodrow made quick work of stitching the cuts and applied a layer of artificial skin with greater skill than some of the derma-surgeons Angel had seen at HQ.
“The stitches will dissolve in a week. You can peel the covering off then. Try not to use your hands.”
Angel snorted. “Hard not to. I’ll survive. It’s not the first time I’ve had to be patched up.”
“I can see that.”
Angel wondered how much more the doctor had noticed, although if Woodrow recognized her from the bulletins, she didn’t show it. Or she didn’t care. Angel transferred a large cash payment to Woodrow’s account, using her untraceable anonymous credit chit, the one she carried for emergencies.
She stood up, flexing her hands. They hurt, but they’d be useable. “You never saw me.”
Woodrow merely smiled. “That’s my specialty.”
Angel found a beauty salon and had her dark hair bleached white. Red urgent messages had been pouring into her inbox for the last half hour. She didn’t dare access any for fear they could trace her location.
She needed somewhere to go, to stop and think for a while.
It wasn’t long before she was walking down the streets of the entertainment district. Along a narrow but clean side alley she found what she was looking for: an exclusive club catering to the wealthy, the type of place where money could buy almost anything.
At the door, she flashed her credit chit. With a smile, the doorman, an actual human doorman, waved her inside.
She chose a booth at the back, ordered something alcoholic at random along with a rare steak, sat back and relaxed.
For the time being she was safe. An establishment such as this wouldn’t turn her in, even if they knew she was a wanted criminal. In fact, they would more likely have a surreptitious way out she could use in a pinch.
When her meal arrived, she tucked in with a will, slurped her drink, and thought furiously.
“Delivery for a Shining Knight.”
Angel started and looked up to see a courier automaton in front of her. She must have nodded off for a second. She sat up and widened her eyes in an effort to clear them of tiredness. “Pardon?” she said.
“Delivery for a Shining Knight. Please insert a credit chit.”
The automaton extended a small package in one articulated arm, while in the other it held a metallic box with a credit chit insert port.
Angel quickly surveyed the room for anything out of the ordinary. All looked normal.
She inserted her anonymous chit.
“Thank you. Your business is appreciated.”
Angel only nodded as the automaton deposited the package on her table: a hand-sized flat object wrapped in black plastic.
A voice emanated from it.
“Well, hurry up and open it. I went to a lot of trouble.”
Charlotte-Rose.
Moving tenderly, so as not to injure her hands, Angel unwrapped the plastic to reveal a narrow, flat metallic rectangle, about fifteen centimeters long. It was rather gaudily colored a shiny gold, with the logo of Mercurial Logic Incorporated embossed on the bottom left. Etched swirly lines decorated its surface, and the hairlike pattern stirred and took on the semblance of Charlotte-Rose.
Angel couldn’t help but laugh at the childlike face beaming at her.
“Sorry for the Shining Knight reference,” chirped Charlotte-Rose, “but I couldn’t risk using your real name.”
Angel nodded agreement. “I understand. So… you’ve been following me?”
“When I can. It’s… hard for this program to move around. And the more active I am, the easier it is for them to trace me.”
Angel raised an eyebrow. “The more active you are?”
Charlotte-Rose gave a short laugh. “Yes. Sorry. I mean, the way the program works, of course.”
Listening to the girl talk, Angel became more and more wary. Something was off, something she couldn’t quite put her finger on. The program’s references to itself as an entity, as if it actually were Charlotte-Rose, were disconcerting. Maybe that was it.
“This device.” Angel’s finger ran over the etched lines. “I take it it’s a way for us to communicate.”
“Yes. It has enough processing capacity to store a version of the program. This way, I can assist you as well as be virtually untraceable.”
“Virtually?”
“Er… my actions will leave a footprint. A signature they can trace, if they are looking.”
“And we can assume they will be. Looking, I mean.” Angel frowned at the design of the device. For such an advanced piece of technology, it was thicker than she expected. “What else can this do, besides give us a means to communicate?” She hefted it in her hand. “It’s thicker and heavier than I expected.”
Charlotte brushed her hair away from her face, a mannerism Angel found endearing, and yet a peculiar way for a program to act. Why include such a gesture?
“Ah, yes,” said Charlotte. “I had it made to my design. Packed with the latest Mercurial Logic Incorporated has to offer.” She shrugged. “Their manufacturing plant is fully automated. As soon as it was made and shipped, I s
crubbed the records. Such a small amount of materials won’t be missed.”
Angel snorted and shook her head. “Mercurial are the ones holding you?”
“Yes. They’re too powerful. They own everyone on the planet, and I don’t know who to trust. Anyone who tries to help me ends up—”
“I’m not the first person you asked? Harry Smith? You asked him for help—”
“I don’t want the same thing to happen to you. But I can’t spend the rest of my life locked in here.”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. I need to work out what’s going on first.”
“They need to be sure you can’t contradict their story. They’re not going to capture you alive. I sometimes wonder how you can stand it.”
“Stand what?”
“Nothing. Well, I mean…” Charlotte hugged herself, arms across her chest. “I am not allowed outside. They… always forbid me, to keep me safe, they said. If I go out… will I be safe? What if I am hurt? What if I am made… not alive?”
“That’s part of life,” said Angel gently. “We do all we can ourselves to remain safe, and society, along with technology, has made it much easier to avoid and recover from any mishaps. But it still happens. Safety can be a hindrance. Some people…” Angel gave a short laugh. “I’ve known people who relished the thought of danger, the possibility they might die. It added a sense of excitement for them, as if nothing else could motivate them to be their best.”
“Ah… I think I see. The uninspiring existence of safety.”
She certainly has a comprehensive vocabulary, thought Angel. And she was definitely a smart girl for one so young, being able to put together a program like this. “That’s one way of putting it. For some, safety is stifling. But not for the majority.”
Charlotte-Rose’s green eyes bore into hers. “Do you think people can grow, I mean truly mature, if they are coddled?”
Angel shrugged. “Maybe not. I don’t think we would be the society we are today if everyone was afraid of taking risks. Evolution guided us to what we were, but we have guided ourselves since. There came a stage where our mind rose above the evolutionary cycle. Our intelligence did this; we learned how to alter our environment. Then we changed it to remove the very risks and dangers that made us who we are. We… almost stopped evolving.”
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