So I focused Icarus back on the entrance, more of the workshop materializing in my mind’s visual cortex as I took a step forward. And then another. The CNC machine appeared in the far right corner, followed by a metal printer. And then a polymer one, framing both the intruders.
In the foreground, about ten meters from me on one of the work tables, was an assault rifle—black and narrow with a large scope, reflecting light beaming down from the rows of fluorescence hanging above. After a quick spatial calculation using my point map, I knew I was nearer to it than they were. I could probably beat them to it, but the problem was it wasn’t just about beating them there, it was about beating the one who still had his gun slung over his shoulder to the draw.
But before I could stew on it further, the man turned around and I stepped back in sync, disappearing around the corner.
Had he seen me? Was he walking toward me? Footsteps were moving closer and I looked everywhere at once in the storage room. The best hiding place was mounted like a statue, half a meter off the wall where I’d been, but I couldn’t make it there in time. Definitely not quietly. I settled for a stack of some industrial-sized cartons instead, sliding into the space between two pallets. When I stopped and listened it was silent. Did he hear me and pause? Was he just outside the entrance?
But then the footsteps were back on the far side of the workroom, getting fainter. Before they disappeared completely, though, a shriller noise erupted, eclipsing both them and the low rumble of the digging, rippling through Icarus at a resonant frequency. They must’ve turned on one of the metal printers. Whether it was the displacement of my senses from my brain, the heat, or how terrified I was, it took me a moment to realize I didn’t have to worry about footsteps anymore. I could get lost in the compression and rarefaction of the printer’s sound waves, slipping inside them like a shadow.
Icarus took one step back around the corner. Two steps. Then when the remaining intruder turned farther toward the wall, his back entirely to me, I took five quick ones followed by a long stride, nearly bumping into a laser cutter sitting on one of the tables. Though just as I was starting to think about how I’d pick up the rifle and how Lena had said that it was best at things with football corollaries, and wondering what football maneuver corresponded to aiming and firing, the printer paused. And an instant later, so did I, Icarus’ big metal feet pinging on the floor.
There was a moment of nothingness as I ducked under a workbench, but the intruder didn’t seem to notice as he shifted, fully focused on the conversation he was now having, almost screaming into his bug. “Are you fucking kidding me? You’re digging a goddamn hole. You should be helping me.”
Helping him with what?
I replayed the footage of me looking at their work table, zoomed in, and saw wires and taped brown cases. Jesus Christ. It wasn’t an engine; they were tunneling out and blowing up the house. It might just be the one way they could get away with it and not be chased into oblivion. And judging by how assembled the explosive already looked, it wouldn’t be long now.
“No, it is that simple. You’re making it hard by playing games, trying to cover your ass.”
The intruder didn’t have the modulator on down here and even though Icarus didn’t have a large frequency uptake, I still recognized his voice as one of Jaden’s Counter Insurgency squad from the night I’d watched through Mr. Bosworth’s PetPerspective. He had been Jaden’s enforcer—just as snarky and mean, but with none of the vision. None of the dynamism and nuance required to be more than someone else’s instrument.
I wondered how much Jaden had let him Revise. Probably not to parity, but probably not that far under either. His steps were odd and fluid, the bipedal hybrid of some African savanna animal, striding just inches from the table I was hiding under before turning right at the main aisle and trotting out the door.
I waited for a few seconds, reeling, realizing I’d over-corrected and over-dampened my nerves. It’d made me too brazen, slicing into a margin of error that wasn’t there. But then again, what choice did I have? It’s not like I could dial them back again now when I had only hours or maybe even minutes left.
Slowly, I got up from under the table. The assault rifle was gone. The printer had resumed and the bomb sat next to it on a large metal work table. The thought of trying to use it on them—on Jaden—raced through my mind. But there were dozens of hostages still in the house and I didn’t know how to trim the payload, nor had the time to find out.
Instead of moving down the main aisle like he had, I crept along one of the smaller side ones so I could duck down again if he came back, only cutting over to the door when I got to the end of the room by the CNCs. The fractal robots that had been by them were gone, requisitioned no doubt for drills in the tunnel excavation. I stopped and listened. The sound of grinding clay and rock had stopped, but there was still the background hum of a motor, softer than before, probably idling while they figured out how to bypass whatever the obstacle was.
It hit me again how hot I was. I was sweating through the sheets on the bed back in Lena’s room. If the fiber on my wrists had been just slightly looser I might have been able to twist free. For a second, I thought maybe I was hallucinating or there was something wrong with Icarus’ cooling system, but it made sense when I peeked around the corner and saw dirt everywhere, overflowing out of rooms further down the main hallway, extending the walls out to a snaking, narrow passage. Despite whatever issue they were having with the tunnel, they’d made a lot of progress, and soon it would start spilling into the workroom.
I needed to turn sidewise to fit and struggled further when I reached the basement stairway, having to lift Icarus’ legs much more than I would my own to clear them. There were no steps in football. No reason for the tech team to design Icarus’ quadriceps and hamstrings for quite this arc of motion. But, nonetheless, I did what Lena had told me; I trusted the movement, and a few moments later I was at the top, feeling for vibrations and listening against the door. There was still the drill idling somewhere in the hollow behind me, but there was nothing coming from the other side.
Yet I hesitated. Jaden’s feet had been a blur during the firefight with the police outside or padding soft and predatorily across the ballroom. He could be down in the tunnel somewhere, helping to deal with whatever issue they were having, or he could be just behind the door, knowing I was coming.
Fortunately, like in the rest of the house, the door and floorboards didn’t creak, as if decay rate was a bug that could be fixed automatically in an update. The hallway beyond was soundless, empty. The kitchen was left, the ballroom was right, and I went toward the former, peeking around the corner to find it empty, too. It had the futuristic designer décor of an upscale residential model, but it was all industrial-sized, and sprawling enough that it took me a few moments to find the knife block. I selected a large fillet one, a third of the way down. Ideally it’d be bigger and sharper but I needed something a football-playing robo could use to do a delicate job.
As I was returning to a crouch, I saw my tractor beam on the opposite side of the kitchen by the microwave, just sitting there in the open. An oversight amidst the bustle. It wasn’t on the way out, but I crawled over to it anyway, reflexively trying to put it into a pocket before I realized Icarus didn’t have any.
Having both that and the knife gave me a little more confidence, but the idea of getting up to Lena’s room was still daunting. There was the grand staircase in the entryway next to the ballroom, though it was winding and exposed. Alternatively, I’d seen steps at the end of an off-shooting hallway when I’d been up in the Medpad, which meant there had to be a back staircase—I just didn’t want to go fumbling through the halls looking for it.
I thought I’d seen a string of hostages being led into the divan room adjacent to the ballroom, which meant there was probably someone guarding them who’d hear the footsteps on marble. So instead of the ballroom directly, I took the mostly carpeted hall that led around to its other side
—a route that also bypassed the inner dining room that Jaden had spotted me from the first time I’d come down, in case he was still there. For some reason I didn’t think he was, though. His AR touchpads could travel with him, so he was probably where the action was down in the tunnel, helping to sort through the issue there.
I sailed down the hallway growing more accustomed to Icarus’ legs with every stride. The interface was flawless. It had felt foreign in the beginning, but now it was becoming clear just how seamlessly the neurons firing in the robo brain were being transported over, molding us together, making me trust it even more. By the time I got to the marble section before the staircase, it felt like I wasn’t even hitting the floor. And then I was on the first landing, and the second, and the top, glancing to the side every few steps to make sure no one had come in.
Worried that Jaden would station one of his guys outside to guard me, I slunk low around the corner before getting to the hall I thought Lena’s room was down. But there wasn’t anyone there. He didn’t have that many guys left—four by my count—and he needed them prepping the escape and watching the more-Revised kids. I also worried that I’d have to try every door, since I only had a vague idea of where her room was in relation to the gunshot out front. Though fortunately Jaden had left a chair pressed up against one of the knobs to block it from the outside, giving it away. I quietly removed it, twisted the handle, and saw myself lying on the bed, hog-tied.
It was like breaking into a nightmare, turning it lucid. I considered ripping the tape off my mouth, but decided that should probably be the last thing to go in case my hand slipped and I cried out. These weren’t surgeon’s hands like those in the Medpad directing a scalpel, but a robo’s. And even though they were flexible and limber enough to grip and guide a football, on the first approach the knife sliced past the fiber and sent a stream of blood traveling across my wrist. For a few moments the astral projection was over, and I was back on the bed, grimacing in pain, staring up at the lean, powerful machine bending over me. But I clamped my eyes back shut and willed myself back inside it, trying to sink into the connection.
The other arm went worse. I avoided the wrist this time, but in doing so I had to take a less attractive cutting angle on the backhand, costing me a slip and a deep slice going a quarter of the way up my forearm. And when I jerked in response, it added another few centimeters on top of that.
Breathing heavy, I exited Icarus, taking the knife from him and cutting my leg bounds so I could roll over and pull up my torn shirt. But then I was back in, dreading what was about to happen. The transponder felt like it had been pressure-injected into that impossible-to-reach spot, ever so slightly to the left of my spinal column, between two of my ribs. At least that’s where I thought it was. The problem was since it was under the skin and subcutaneous tissue, I’d have to turn my pain all the way back up to know for sure, and to know how close I was to hitting my spine.
Not wanting to dwell on it a second longer, I started cutting, chiseling through the pain as my skin was submerged in a pool of blood. I gritted my teeth harder and harder the further down I went, hoping to get it on a single approach, but such a strong wave of blackness came over me that I had to ease the knife back out. Come on, Dorian. You have to do this. You’ve got to make up for everything you’ve done. Save Lena. Save everyone. That’s the best you can do now.
As I slid the knife in a second time, I wished to myself that I’d gotten the transponder out while the ropes were locking my body in place. I was trying to be gentle but I still had to cut deep, and every now and again I’d flinch or writhe uncontrollably, making me think that I was about to feel the cold, game-over sensation of meeting spine or vertebrae. My back was raw, half flecked in blood. Even when I was completely focused on Icarus I was aware of how much it was hurting, like a phantom limb being torched. And when I was back outside trying to make myself still, it was the most excruciating pain I’d ever felt. Pressed right up against my soul. White hot. Every muscle and ligament in my upper back revolting. Burning down.
And then somehow the transponder was out, bouncing across the bed, and I had to awkwardly dive to keep it from rolling off, knowing that it might trigger some alarm if it did. Placing it above me on the mattress, I exited Icarus and staggered to my own feet. I did my best to open the door with care, but all I could think about was the chloredexine in the Medpad and the bandages to stop the bleeding on my back. I was already starting to get dizzy from blood loss and the vitals monitor in my BCI reported that I’d lost 28% of my nanobots.
Nonetheless, I crept out of Lena’s room and down the mini staircase to a landing, pausing every few steps to flip back to Icarus and bring it even with me like an inchworm. When I got to the main second-story hallway, my eyes were everywhere, snapping to and fro, focused on every door, every speck of wall where Jaden could have a small drone. My ears were piqued, too, hearing more now that I was using my own amplified cochlea, the sounds of tunneling faintly audible against the air conditioning.
I didn’t have much time. Jaden wasn’t going to take all the hostages with him before he blew up the house—the Revised ones most likely—but probably not the caterers, security, and the house staff, since the group would already be unwieldy emerging from the tunnel. I couldn’t let that happen. I couldn’t let anyone else die.
I flew down the hall, finding the Medpad just like I left it; Ethan—lying there unconscious, instruments and bloody gauze scattered about. I went around behind to the cabinet, at first not being able to open it because my hands were too slick with my own blood, but eventually pulled out the cholredexine and poured it down my back. Then I pulled off my shirt and wrapped a compression bandage a few times around my torso.
“Ethan. Ethan,” I said, shaking him gently. “Ethan.”
After shaking him harder, I went back to the cabinet, filled a jet injector with Teperizol and shot it into his neck. His eyes burst open and he tried to get up, but I put my arm over his chest, holding him in place. “Easy there, buddy. Easy there.”
“Where am I? What’s going on?”
“Shhh, shhhhhhh. We’re still at Lena’s. You were shot, remember? But you gotta stay quiet. Jaden doesn’t know I’m here.”
“It fucking hurts, man.”
“I know it does, but you’re going to be alright. The bleeding’s stopped.”
Ethan settled back into the bed, his eyes rolling over me as I put my shirt back on, now bright red from the wound on my back. “You got shot, too?”
“Not yet,” I said, and then more urgently, “Listen, Eth. Jaden’s going to blow up the house any time now, so we’ve got to get the hostages out. And I’m going to need your help.”
“I can’t even get up.”
“You won’t have to.”
He started to say something else, but I talked over him. “Lena had Lawrence’s QB robo in her mom’s workshop, and I brought it up here. You’re going to drive it now, okay?”
“I can’t move my—”
“You don’t have to either. It’s all in your head like a VR game. Just take a few minutes to practice.”
“And then?” he asked weakly.
“Then we free the hostages. They’re printing a bomb downstairs and digging a tunnel out to escape before they blow the house up.”
“But Dorian, he can—”
“He wasn’t helping us, Ethan! He was using you just like he’s using those four misfits down there! If you can’t see that by now, then . . .”
“I can see it.” He looked down at his stomach. “I can see it.”
I didn’t want to trust Ethan again, but my BCI was saying that he’d double my odds. Or at least I thought it was saying that because I was thinking it. And that was good enough. It was the only option I had. “Alright then, go into Lena’s Private LAN, and enter Doyle7a5a21dkrx3h. But hurry. That tunnel’s going to be done any minute.”
“Is that it?” asked Ethan, looking past me to Icarus sitting on the adjacent bed.
�
�Yeah.”
“And it’s just like Wolftac R8? Or NCAA Blitz?”
“Kind of. But of instead of it capturing your motion, your moving something else with electrodes connected through your nanobots. It’s the same impulse, though.”
“I knew there was a reason you kept me alive.”
“We don’t have time, Ethan. Just get in and spend a few minutes getting used to it.”
“But . . .” He looked like he was going to say something else, but stopped. After a long silence, Ethan closed his eyes and Icarus opened his, flicking them around the room.
“Now move your limbs just like you would in your own body. You played sports. You’ve got good balance. You’ll be a natural.”
“We’ll see,” he said, wiggling his fingers and swinging his leg like a pendulum.
I opened up the cabinet again and pulled out some C19 sedatives and a bottle of acetylcholine inhibitor, the same thing they gave me at Sunlight 24. The same thing I’d stabbed Jaden with back in his room. “Hey Eth?”
“Yeah?”
“You remember how to throw a football, right?”
Chapter 49
“Why would I let you go to the bathroom?”
“Because it’s going to start smelling like shit in about ten seconds,” said one of the Revised kids after the guard had removed the wrapping over his mouth.
“I’ll just turn my smell off. It’ll be your prob—”
The ball slammed into his head going one hundred twenty miles per hour and three seconds later I was on him, plunging the syringe into his carotid artery. Then I plunged another one into his chest before lifting him up and sliding the assault rifle he’d fallen on out from under his shoulder and draping it around mine. I handed the pistol from his side holster to Ethan in Icarus as he trundled up beside me, and we both went to work unwrapping the hostages.
The first ones I recognized were Abigail and then Martin, who must’ve survived whatever Jaden had stung him with. Their eyes were expectant, grateful, and incredulous all mashed together as they looked successively at me, Icarus, and the intruder knocked out on the floor. Martin didn’t try to grab my gun as soon as his arms were free like I thought he might, instead helping me with Magus, who in turn helped me with someone else.
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