by E. R. Torre
With reluctance, the women exited the chapel. Rose approached Nox.
“I am unarmed and far from dangerous,” Rose said.
“Funny, that’s what most religious folk say, just before they stick their claws into your back,” Nox replied. Nevertheless, she put the gun away.
“That’s a most cynical thought.”
“It’s a most cynical world.”
“You have me at a great disadvantage, Ms...?”
“Nox.”
“You work for Octi?” Rose asked.
“No, but your women followed me from Octi Plaza. They thought I worked for him. At first I thought they did.”
“At first?”
“They’re too low rent for a high roller like Octi. I was curious to see who they were working for.”
“And now?”
“Now I know. Goodnight.”
Nox turned to leave.
“You talk of Octi as if they’re your enemy,” Rose said.
“Have a good day, Father,” Nox said and kept walking.
“Aren't you curious as to why a man of the cloth would hire Independents?” Rose called out.
Nox stopped for a moment and shrugged.
“Not really.”
Thomas Rose ran after her.
“Please, Miss Nox,” he said. “Stay for a few minutes. I have need of someone like you.”
“What you need are wealthier patrons and a good contractor. Not necessarily in that order.”
“I have money,” Rose insisted. “I can pay your rates.”
“You don’t know my rates.”
“This job will hurt Octi,” Thomas Rose said. “Bad.”
Nox paused. She walked to Rose’s side.
“Start talking.”
Thomas Rose led Nox behind the Altar and into his private chambers. The room was decorated with the bare minimum: A twin bed, a table, a pair of chairs, a nightstand, and a heater. In the corner of the room was a small, rusted refrigerator and beside it was a door leading to a cramped bathroom.
Nox examined the chair’s strength before sitting down. Thomas Rose sat in the remaining seat opposite Nox. He produced a small framed photograph and slid it on the table and to Nox. On it was a smiling young lady with dark hair.
“My sister,” Rose said. “She was part of an Octi survey team. She worked in the Desertlands, searching for Uranium and the remnants of hundreds of small cities eaten up during the global meltdown.”
Nox stifled a yawn and slid the framed photograph back to Rose.
“We were very close,” Rose continued. He pointed to the weathered box on the center of the table. It was an old style wireless transmitter. “We'd communicate over this wireless at least once a day without fail. A little over a month ago she stopped calling. Later that same week I received word from Octi Corp. that her party stumbled on the ruins of an old nuclear reactor.” Rose paused and took a deep breath. “They said the entire crew was exposed to a massive dose of radiation. They told me they all died. My sister’s discovery was sealed, and the survey crew’s bodies were taken away in lead lined boxes.”
“Tragic. So what?”
“Octi Corp. lied,” Rose said. “The day after hearing about the team –my sister’s– death, I returned to my study to mourn my loss. Out of habit I turned on the wireless. Its frequency was still set to that of my sister’s survey crew. I heard static and, after realizing just what I had automatically done, I reached over to turn the radio off. Just as my fingers brushed the knob, I heard it. Scrambled signals. The same signals the crew used to transmit their confidential reports to Octi Headquarters!”
A single tear ran down Rose’s face.
“Don’t you see?” he sobbed. “They were still alive after Octi said they were dead. They lied. Octi Corp. lied.”
Nox leaned back in her chair.
“Doesn’t mean a thing. Maybe their onboard computer equipment sent out an automated update.”
“A few hours later, there was another transmission. A different transmission. Several hours after that, yet another. All different. All unique. This was no automated call. Up to one full week after they were supposed to be dead, the survey crew, or at least one of them, was very much alive. I wanted to confront Octi Corp. with this information, but I knew they were hiding something big. Something that might prove dangerous to them if exposed. I kept quiet and made preparations to venture out to the Desertlands myself and retrieve my sister. In the end, I was too late. One week and one day after I discovered them, the signals abruptly stopped, never to be repeated again. Octi silenced them. Octi killed them.”
“So you hired a couple of Amazon Independents to watch the Octi Plaza Building, hoping they'd find something?”
“What else could I do?”
“For one, you might consider not wasting your money,” Nox said. “You won’t find out anything about Octi’s operations, especially those taking place in the Desertlands, by watching what goes on outside their main office building.”
“I see,” Rose said. “Yes, it was a stupid, desperate act. But what else could I -can I– do?”
Nox got to her feet.
“I'll give you a call tomorrow,” she said.
Nox adjusted her sunglasses and turned to exit the room.
“Wait,” Rose said.
Nox paused.
“You were right about the survey vans having automated signals. They’re position markers. You send out a signal and the onboard computer automatically replies. Octi uses this to figure out where the vans are located in the event of catastrophe. My sister’s survey group’s primary signal is dead. But a long time ago she told me their van had another position marker, a spare, they kept hidden. That marker was, up until a couple of hours ago, still working. The frequency is 33412. Look it up. I know the crew is dead, but the van’s been in one place for the past few weeks. Who knows where it’ll be tomorrow.”
Nox nodded and exited the room. After a few seconds, Rose heard the sound of the Congregation’s outer door open and close. When it did, the door leading to his bathroom creaked opened.
A stunning blonde entered the room and walked to Rose’s side. She laid her arms around him and they kissed passionately.
“I think she bought it, Julie,” Thomas Rose said.
Julie’s blue eyes burned with an icy heat. It was the exact same passion she showed Robert Octi Sr. in his bed.
“You're so persuasive,” she said. She loosened the string around his waist and allowed his robe to slip down to the floor.
CHAPTER TEN
Izzy Greenfield sat in the driver’s seat of his Impact, one of the last of the old time V-8’s. As oil prices skyrocketed, the gas guzzlers faded into extinction, much like the dinosaurs before them. Izzy didn’t care.
Izzy also didn’t care when a group of kids threw small rocks at an apartment window and nearly shattered it. Izzy didn’t care when the mailman arrived at the apartment building and, thinking he was unobserved, leafed through one of the girly magazines he was tasked with delivering. Izzy didn’t even care about any of the cars, new and old and in between, that filtered in and out of the building’s parking garage.
But Izzy did sit up and take notice when he heard the rumbling of a chopper’s motor. Realizing he was exposed, Izzy bent down in the car seat and peeked over the steering wheel. The motor’s sound increased until he saw a woman with short, jet black hair, dark sunglasses, and three blue vertical stripes along the right side of her forehead ride her beat up chopper into the apartment complex’s covered parking lot.
“Subject has arrived,” Izzy whispered into a microphone. “I repeat, the subject has arrived.”
Nox eased the chopper into one of a dozen parking spaces available within the covered garage. The chopper gasped and wheezed as her engine died out. Nox lingered next to the chopper, rubbing dirt from the side of her gas tank. It was then she noticed the man in the Impact parked just outside the covered lot.
Nox eyed him for a few seconds, but
the man didn’t move or look her way. If anything, he seemed to be taking a nap. Nox frowned but let it go. She walked to the elevator within the covered garage, got in, and pressed the fifth floor button.
The elevator rose from the garage and stopped in the building’s lobby. A squat old lady carrying shopping bags on either arm stood waiting for her ride. When she saw Nox within the elevator, she hesitated.
“Good morning, Miss Abbott,” Nox said. She held the door open for the elderly lady.
Miss Abbott closed her mouth tight and stepped inside. The elevator doors closed.
“How are you doing today?”
“Go fuck yourself,” the old lady replied.
To that, Nox couldn’t help but smile.
The elevator doors opened on the fifth floor. The old lady faced Nox. There was a bloody rage in her eyes.
“And I warn you,” Ms. Abbott yelled. “You blast that god damned heavy metal music again and I will call the cops! Why don’t you get some culture? Why don’t you get yourself some headphones? Better yet, why don’t you just find yourself another home?”
Nox was aghast.
“You want me to move? If I did, I’d miss you something fierce, Ms. Abbott.”
They walked together to the end of the hallway. At that point, the corridor split off to the left and right.
“Oh, fuck off,” the old lady spat.
“I’ll take that into consideration,” Nox said. She walked down the left hallway while the old lady moved to the right.
The smile remained on Nox’s face as she passed a door labeled “Trash”. She didn’t notice it was ajar. She didn’t notice it silently open when she stepped past it.
A gleaming silver object that looked like an upright torpedo exited the room. It made no sounds as it moved on a pair of oversized treads fixed to either side of its body. Its arms were a pair of fearsome Gatling guns. Its body surface, for the most part, was shiny new. However, the robot had several burn scars on its back, the result of the warehouse fire it started two nights before.
Donovan’s robot slid into the hallway a few feet behind Nox.
The Mechanic stepped up to her door and was about to put the key into the lock.
As she did, Donovan’s robot locked on its target. The Gatling guns rose into place. They rotated slowly at first, then, with a barely audible click, the firing mechanism was engaged.
Nox spun around when she heard that soft sound. It took a fraction of a second to realize the danger she was in. Her reaction was instantaneous. Nox flattened herself against her recessed door just as a searing barrage of bullets tore down the hallway.
Hundreds of rounds chewed the wall and doorframe around her.
Nox kept her body in the recess as flat as possible. Though she didn’t get a good look at the robot in the warehouse, she knew this was the same creature because it fired the same type of high caliber bullets.
This time, however, Nox’s Kevlar vest was gone. Her handgun, she was more certain than ever, was useless against this creature’s thick metal skin. And because she was pressed in so tightly against her apartment door, Nox didn’t have the leverage to tear through the lock and burst into her home.
Horror filled Nox’s face. The robot moved in closer and closer, and Nox was trapped and there was nothing, nothing at all, that she could do.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Nox squeezed her body closer to the door’s edge. The metal frame surrounding the door, standard in all the building’s apartment units, for the moment protected her from the relentless barrage of bullets. But it was giving way. Worse, Nox spotted the edge of the robot’s slick body. The machine crawled closer and closer to Nox’s shallow hiding place. It kept the Mechanic trapped in place while positioning itself for a clear shot.
Nox bit her lower lip and swore. She pushed against her apartment door but still didn’t have enough leverage to force it open. Worse, just this past month she bought a stronger lock to prevent any break-ins.
Why did you have to get such a good lock?
Nox eased her handgun out of her jacket pocket and tried to point it at the lock but it was impossible to do this for the same reason she couldn’t force the door open: Nox was pressed too tight against the door’s edge and her body covered the lock. To shoot it off, she needed to take a step back. But to step back, whether it was to break the door in or shoot off the lock, meant exposing herself to the robot’s guns.
It meant certain death.
Once again Nox swore. There was no alternative. She had to chance it and take that step away from the lock. She was certain to take a bullet or fifty in the process, but if she was lucky, the bullets would only graze her.
Yeah, right.
Nox swore once again. There was no more time to think, there was no more time to worry. She’d either make it or not. Nox let out the air in her lungs and braced herself. She was about to move from her tiny sanctuary when she heard an angry voice rise above the barrage of gunfire.
“That's it you goddamned—”
It was Miss Abbott. The elderly lady heard the commotion coming from Nox’s hallway and, apparently, mistook it for Nox’s music. So eager was she to confront the Mechanic that she still carried the grocery bags in either hand. Her face abruptly changed from fury to horror when she saw Donovan’s security robot only a few feet away from her.
The robot, responding to her voice and movement, spun around to face her. It’s still smoking Gatling guns aimed directly at the woman. Internal mechanisms targeted her frail body.
Miss Abbott froze. She gasped and, as she did, dropped her shopping bags on the floor to either side of her body.
Donovan’s robot sensed the movement and its Gatling guns locked on to the woman’s groceries. The robot fired a punishing barrage of bullets, ripping the shopping bags apart and shredding the contents into tiny little pieces.
Despite the fury around her, the stunned old lady remained completely still. As a result, the robot ignored her and focused on annihilating everything that still moved!
The old lady was completely untouched!
Taking advantage of the distraction, Nox ran out of her hiding place and jumped the metal beast. Bare hands grabbed the white hot barrels of the Gatling guns and pulled them up and away from Miss Abbott.
The old lady snapped out of her paralysis and ran down the corridor. The robot fired wildly, ripping the corridor walls to pieces. Nox kept the guns up and away from the retreating tenant. The smell of Nox’s burned flesh mixed with cordite. Despite the searing pain in her hands, Nox did not let go.
The robot continued spinning around, like a metallic Bronco trying to buck its rider. Still Nox held on. Bullets tore the plaster from the walls and blew out the lone window at the hallway’s end.
And, just as abruptly as the furious barrage began, it ended. Donovan’s security robot was out of bullets. The robot spun around one last time before coming to a complete stop. Its offensive weaponry finally exhausted, it quietly shut itself down.
Nox slowly stepped off the robot and onto the floor. She took a moment to examine her hands and, seeing the horribly burnt flesh, looked away.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered.
Around her, the other apartment dwellers cautiously opened their doors. They looked out into the hallway to see what just happened. A couple of brave and, for the moment, unsupervised children walked up to Donovan’s machine and marveled at it. Their parents hastily pulled them away.
No one noticed Nox.
She leaned against the wall and slid down until she sat on the debris strewed floor. She kept her hands in front of her while she caught her breath. When she looked up again, Miss Abbott stood before her.
The elderly woman carried a can of lotion and gauze and leaned down to apply the soothing cream to Nox’s burns. When she was done, she wrapped the gauze around the Mechanic’s wounds.
“Thank you,” Nox said.
“Thank you,” Miss Abbott replied and smiled.
Nox smiled
back.
“Doesn’t mean I forgive you for all that shitty music you’ve been torturing me with this past year,” she added.
“I’ll keep it down from now on.”
“Much appreciated.”
Nox nodded and painfully lifted herself to her feet. She walked past the apartment dwellers and made her way to the elevator. When it arrived, she entered and pressed the garage button.
There were people she needed to see.
Izzy Greenfield remained in his Impact even though the sound of gunfire had long since passed. He knew the cops and ambulances would arrive at any moment, yet still he waited. His orders were to verify the target’s death, and he was certain to do so in the next few minutes. Afterwards, he was to meet with the police as a representative of Octi Corp.
The story he was to give them was a thing of beauty:
Rogue Independent Nox, on a mission from the prototype security robot’s late designer, got greedy (as some of the more untrustworthy Independents are want to do) and stole this valuable Octi’s property. Said prototype security robot turned on the Independent and killed her (and however many innocent bystanders got in the way). Though Octi Corp. adamantly denies any responsibility for the actions of their stolen prototype, they regret the damages incurred and are willing to cover any repair costs to the building over and above those not already covered by the building’s insurance company.
Octi Corp. insists their stolen merchandise, Donovan’s prototype security robot, be returned right away.
Mission accomplished, just in time for happy hour.
So focused was Izzy on the entrance to the building that he didn’t see Nox walk out of the covered parking lot and approach his car from the other side. Izzy didn’t even notice her when she stood next to his prized V-8 and reached in through his open window. He did, however, notice when her hand grabbed him by his neck.
Izzy gasped. Nox’s grip was strong enough to choke off all his air. He desperately tried to free himself from the Mechanic’s hand but quickly realized he wasn’t strong enough. The bandaged hand turned ever so slightly. It pulled Izzy up and out of his seat and toward the open window. His eyes grew wide when he saw Nox standing next to his car.