by Phoenix Ward
Beth watched the fight from behind a cart, but ducked when Rubik rolled out of Simon’s reach. They rolled towards her, standing up a mere twenty feet away. The bodyshell assassins faced her, the face with green lights glowing in her direction. The breath caught in her throat as she secretly hoped it would turn around and continue its melee with Simon. It spotted her, however, and she could tell the assassins were recalculating.
“The girl,” Maru said. “She’s the top priority.”
With a creaking of mechanical gears, the four-armed, four-legged assassin unit moved towards her. In a state of terror, her muscles constricted and she started to sprint away. She ran forward faster than her torso could catch up, and she was in danger of tumbling face-first into the tile floor. She managed to balance herself and stand straight as she ran. She could hear the mechanical beast chasing after her.
She rounded a jewelry stand, trying to put it between Rubik and herself, but the mechanical monster simply tore through the wooden structure like a car slamming through a fence. Bits of wood and rings and necklaces and bracelets all went flying into the air, catching the station’s overhead lights and sparkling as they scattered. Beth didn’t have any time to marvel at the scene — Rubik was gaining on her.
“Beth!” she heard Simon cry from behind her. She could tell that he was right behind the whirring servos that chased her, but her C.C. didn’t reproduce sound for her well enough to discern how far back he was. Still, her mind was focused on the staircase that led up to the surface. She was only a hundred or so feet from escape.
While she sprinted, she couldn’t help but acknowledge how bold so public of an attack was. Tarov must have been desperate, or at least nervous enough to make a scene. His only priority must be getting rid of the evidence she and Simon had. He must be pissing his digital pants about his secret getting out, Beth thought. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have sent this mechanical monstrosity after us.
Her thoughts were cut short by a sudden impact on her ankle. It was just as she was stepping on that foot, so when her foot was swiped out from under her, she lost all balance and fell. Her forward momentum carried her across the tile floor, where she rolled and skipped like a deflated soccer ball.
Rubik was closing the gap on her after knocking her feet out with one of their four tentacles. In the blink of an eye, they were standing over her fallen form.
“Look at the fly, trying to break free of the web,” Lynch said. His voice almost seethed with blood lust, and for a second, Beth thought she could feel his breath on her face.
“She doesn’t even realize it’s over,” Jerri observed. “How precious.”
Beth kicked up at her attacker, but the bodyshell only budged a little before reassuming its dominant posture. She roared with frustration, unable to even move her arms as the assassins pinned her down.
“One last chance,” Jerri said. “Surrender and we’ll take you alive. Your friend, however — he will have to die.”
“No!” Beth screamed. She tried to thrash, but nothing could move under the intense pressure Rubik held onto her with.
Then she heard the sound of metal pounding on tile. The spinning of gears — the intense hum of fans blazing to work — came from behind her attacker. With a rip of air, Simon dived headfirst into Rubik. The force sent the assassins off the detective and out beside a hyperloop platform. They nearly fell into the tube, where hyperloop capsules continued to carry their passengers at a speed of over three hundred kilometers-per-hour. Rubik used their extra legs to keep from tumbling off the edge.
Beth’s eyes were wide as she watched the machine straighten out and face Simon. They didn’t seem phased. The unit was as undamaged as it had been at the start of the fight, but she and Simon were starting to feel some wear.
There’s no stopping them! Beth thought frantically. They’re faster than us, stronger than us, and they don’t even seem to break a sweat. They’re a terminator and we are going to die.
Something caught the corner of her eye. A shape laying on the floor, just within arm’s reach. It was a gun, one of the black market models she’d seen advertised before. One of the tunnel-dwellers must have pulled it to stop Rubik, then realized how much danger the robotic assassin posed and fled, abandoning the firearm on the station floor. She didn’t care how it got there, only that it was there. With nearly lightning-like reflexes, she scooped the weapon up and aimed it at Rubik.
The assassins didn’t stop at the platform edge for long. They used their momentum to leap back at Simon, pouncing the I.I. like they were a big panther and Simon were a witless boar. He tried to dive out of the way, but when he realized it was too late, he raised his arms to defend himself. The mechanical beast took him down and together they rolled over the floor and smashed through a few people’s suitcases.
“You’ve got some fight in you,” Maru said through Rubik’s voice speaker. “Good.”
It raised one of the dazzling blue blades and slashed at Simon. If he hadn’t been able to tug his head out of reach, it would have come tumbling across the floor, detached from the rest of his body. The swords left a burning gash in the floor as the unit missed its mark.
Simon managed to purchase some space after Rubik missed. He curled his legs up and pushed off on his attacker, launching the robotic spider through the air. They tumbled near Beth, scattering a few empty bottles someone had left behind.
Her hands shook as she tried to get a bead on the assassins. Just before they were able to stand back up, she squeezed the trigger and felt the gun explode in her fingers. The shot ripped through the air and ricocheted off the metal that covered Rubik’s shoulders. Sparks flew up, but Rubik remained unharmed.
Bulletproof, she realized, feeling defeated.
Rubik started to laugh in all six voices.
“This has been fun, but eventually, you’ll realize there is no hope,” Lynch said.
“You are defeated,” Maru commented.
“Even if you try to run, there’s nowhere you can hide,” Jerri said.
“And we’ll be right on your tail. Snapping our jaws the entire way,” Wolfgang told them.
“Give up,” Nick urged.
Beth tried to shoot again, but the gun didn’t respond. Something inside it jammed and it wasn’t letting her pull the trigger anymore. Perhaps the owner had installed an I.D. print on the weapon, preventing anyone else from firing it, but Beth doubted it. Such features were expensive, and it was much more likely that the gun was so poorly crafted that it couldn’t even handle two shots in quick succession. She cursed and threw the thing down.
“She realizes it,” Hilde said. “Look at her face. She knows she’s been beaten.”
“Is that so?” Simon said, stepping closer to the robotic assassins. “Then she must know something I don’t.”
“Ah, he has fire within him,” Maru observed.
“Must be why Tarov values him so much,” Wolfgang said. “He told us it would be a challenge.”
“I think he overestimated what challenges us,” Jerri said, her tone smug.
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Maru said.
There was more laughter from Rubik.
“What can they do now? Run?” Lynch said. “Look at them, trying to catch their breath. They’re powerless. There’s nothing they can do to stop us.”
“Did you hear that? Nothing!” Hilde shouted.
“Nothing?” Simon asked, his tone almost sarcastic. “What about deactivating the breaks?”
All components of Rubik seemed confused. Beth even looked over at her I.I. companion with skeptical eyes, unaware of what the fugitive could be planning.
“The brakes?” Nick asked through Rubik’s voice speaker.
“That’s right,” Simon said. Without any warning, he coiled up and jumped right into Rubik’s tall torso. The force was enough to overtake whatever balance they had purchased on the platform’s edge, sending them teetering over the edge.
As they were falling, all four arms reached out and cl
utched onto Simon. He couldn’t pull away as they both fell into the hyperloop tube with a loud clang.
Just as they hit the multi-layered plastic that made up the hyperloop tubes, Beth heard a whine from farther up the track. A capsule carrying a small group of commuters appeared in the mouth of the tube, shooting out at a speed faster than any of them could register. When it was normally supposed to slow down and brake, just as it reached the platform, the capsule instead maintained its velocity. Before either could move, crawl, or jump away, the vehicle smashed through both bodyshells.
The shriek of metal being scraped on plastic filled the entire station, reverberating off the walls and causing Beth’s teeth to chatter. She looked up in time to see Simon and Rubik torn apart by the hyperloop capsule. Robotic limbs and shards of metal scattered the platform like some sort of industrial confetti. Beth covered her head to protect it from the debris raining down upon her.
Simon, she thought, her heart sinking. She stared at the spot where his bodyshell had been locked in a grapple with Rubik. There was nothing there now except for a few gears and a wire or two. Both bodyshells had been utterly destroyed by the hyperloop capsule.
“Simon!” she cried aloud. Her voice tore a little with worry. Tears started to form in her eyes.
What am I going to do now? She thought. Rubik may be destroyed, but Tarov will certainly send more like them after me. And now I don’t even have Simon to help me!
She fell to her knees. Part of her wondered if this meant defeat. If it was pointless for her to continue to fight. Maybe she should just walk to the nearest police station and turn herself in. Submit herself to Tarov’s will and just give up. Then she wouldn’t have to struggle. She wouldn’t have to run. She wouldn’t have to be afraid.
Maybe they’d even let me see Marcus, she thought. Before they killed me.
“Hey, that’s some pretty morbid thinking,” a voice said from within her. “Giving up already?”
It was Simon.
She repeated his name aloud.
“It’s me,” he reassured her.
“How?” she asked. “Where are you?”
“In your head, Beth,” Simon replied. “I jumped just before the capsule crushed our bodies.”
She realized the voice was inside her thoughts. It was almost like she was thinking them, but it came from a source she couldn’t control. She was now engaged in a mindshare with Simon, whether she wanted to be or not. She was too relieved to find him alive to worry about her mental privacy, though.
So, Rubik? she thought.
“They’re still alive, yes,” Simon interrupted her. “But it’ll take them a while to catch up to us with their body destroyed. We have some time — but not much.”
So what do we do? Beth asked. We can’t run back to the camp; Tarov’s people are bound to catch up with us before we even leave the city.
“True,” Simon replied. “But I think I know a place we can hide out. It’s not far from here.”
21
Lobo
Beth eyed the house with uncertainty. She already didn’t like the neighborhood Simon led them into, but she liked the house even less. She looked over her shoulders to make sure she wasn’t followed before turning down the building’s walkway.
The windows — with two exceptions — were all broken out and boarded up with particle board. Some parts of the original white siding were chipped away. Other bits had been tagged with graffiti, all reading phrases and names that Beth couldn’t make out. The two shrubs that lined the house’s porch steps were both dead, scraggly husks of the plants they had once been. A bicycle was turned on its side, carelessly left on the house’s dying lawn.
Patches of dirt spotted the yard, though the dirt wasn’t much uglier than the yellowing blades of grass that tried to hold onto life around it. There were spots where it looked like someone had been digging with a shovel, likely fueled by one drug or another.
Are you sure this is the right place? Beth asked. Part of her begged that Simon would say no.
“Of course I am,” the I.I. in her head replied. “Why — you don’t like it?”
Let’s just say I won’t be looking at any local real estate listings, she thought.
A form scurried in the corner of her vision. She turned and saw a starving dog, its flesh pulled up against its ribs, sniffing the ground in the yard next door. The poor thing looked like it was looking for any scrap someone might have left behind while too high to realize they hadn’t finished their food.
The sidewalk was cracked everywhere she looked. It was like someone had taken a sledgehammer to each slab of concrete, trying to break the uniformity of it all. Now it rose and receded like still waves, making walking up the path even more difficult than Beth already found it.
So who is this guy anyway? Beth asked. Are you sure we can trust him?
“Lobo and I go way back,” Simon answered. “He was there when I got started in the whole Fog business. He’s a skeezball like all of us, but he’s a loyal skeezball. He’s stuck with me through my darkest hours, and he didn’t rat on me or anyone else when they came to question him. He’s a good friend to have watching your back and I’d trust him with my life.”
Your life? Beth thought. Which one?
Simon ignored her thoughts as they approached the porch. A bit of it was sunken in; the supports clearly gave way some time ago and no one had bothered to repair it.
I still don’t know how I feel trusting a Fog dealer, she said. Let alone staying in a Fog house — among all the junkies and burnouts.
The prospect did not excite her.
“That’s a pretty judgmental way of thinking,” Simon replied. “Good people come in all shades, and sometimes those shades are addicted to drugs. You don’t have anyone in your life who you love — even if their lifestyle is disappointing?”
Beth thought of her brother Nathan. She tried to repress the thought and hide it away from the I.I., but Simon sensed it anyway.
“I thought so,” he said. “You just have to open your mind. I know you already have an idea of what these people are like, but I promise, you cannot predict the depths of a stranger’s generosity.”
But they’re not strangers, she interjected. They’re drug dealer friends of yours.
“All the more reason to trust them,” Simon said. “That is — if you trust me.”
Beth blushed a little. She felt like she was called out for rude manners, but from within her own mind.
She took in a deep breath and pressed the doorbell. It made a dull buzz that she could hear through the door. She stood on the porch in silence for a few moments, then pressed the doorbell again. The door opened.
A middle-aged Latino man with a few tattoos on his shaved scalp peered out the opening, cracking the door just enough for his head to fit. He looked around in the air for a moment, then drew a confused gaze at Beth.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
This can’t be our only option, Beth thought.
“Tell me one better, then,” Simon replied.
She sighed. “Lobo?” she said.
“Who’s asking?” the man behind the door inquired.
“My name’s Beth,” she introduced herself. “I’m a friend of Simon’s.”
The man’s face lit up. One of the tattoos by his left eye moved as he raised his eyebrows. The man looked rather friendly when he was surprised, Beth thought.
“Simon?” he echoed. He opened the door a bit more and pushed open the screen so he could see her better. “Simon who?”
“Mendez,” Beth said. “You know who I’m talking about.”
The man looked to and fro across the porch with a cautious gaze. He seemed like he expected a swarm of police officers to pounce from the shadows at any moment.
He thinks this is a trap, Beth thought. He thinks I’m trying to set him up. He’s going to shoot me.
“Calm down,” Simon said, chuckling a little. “Give him a chance. He’s not a psycho, Beth.”
I don’t know that, she mused.
Lobo turned center and stared her down. “Prove it,” he said.
He doesn’t believe me, Beth thought.
“He will. Just tell him what I say next,” Simon said.
” ‘One way or another, I’ll be back,’ ” she repeated Simon’s words.
Lobo’s face softened. Every bit of suspicion seemed to leak away from his features, as well as a bit of his color. His mouth opened and hung agape slightly.
“It’s what he said to you last time you spoke,” Beth said, following through with what Simon told her to say.
“It is him, then,” Lobo said, almost too quiet for Beth to hear. “I thought the son of a bitch was dead.”
“He was,” Beth explained. “But he’s back. And we need your help. Both of us.”
“He’s back?” Lobo said. “Is he with you?”
“In a manner of speaking.”
The man opened the door fully and stood aside, granting Beth access. “Come in,” he said. “Any friend of Simon’s is a friend of mine.”
She walked past the man into the Fog house’s foyer. Despite being broken down to all hell, the place was enormous. At one point, it might have been a bed and breakfast. Now it served as a last refuge for drug burnouts. A safe place for people to get high without wandering the streets, where they were prey to all kinds of criminals — and that was if the police didn’t pick them up.
There was a staircase leading up to the second floor. It had fine wooden railings, but they had been carved at by countless junkies killing the time with their pocket knives. The wooden steps had a long rug that ran all the way up their length, most likely to conceal the many broken boards and depressions that plagued them.
There were some framed paintings in the hall that ran beside the staircase, as if some Victorian family had owned the home before abandoning it, leaving it at the mercy of a pack of Fogheads. Beside these paintings were posters, casually tacked up at whatever angle the designer pleased. They declared concerts for long-disbanded rock bands. There was one for an Iron Maiden tour in the 1980s. Another was from the early 2000s, but Beth hadn’t heard of the band. On the back wall — at the end of the corridor — was a movie poster for one of the Batman films.