The SkyLine Series Box Set Page 5

  Chris led his contingent, plus Tim, through the twisted trees on the fringe of Shanghai. Gendric only had to help Tim walk for about ten minutes before he found his legs again. From there, Chris was surprised to see him keep pace without an issue, through the tiny fields just outside the city. They made their way to the motel from the assignment papers Dorothy had given them, to check into base camp. The view from the front was of tall, glowing towers. From the back, there were only fields of straw and vegetables.

  “I tell you, I’m scared. I know we’re outside the safety perimeter, but I never would have stayed after the evacuation until that nice lady Dorothy called,” said the owner.

  “Nice?” Lee murmured.

  “I can’t believe I’m hosting a real WCC task force,” chattered the owner, presumably Suzy of ‘Suzy’s Borderline B&B’. “Here are your room keys. Three two-bed rooms.” said she, who handed the cards to Chris.

  “Thank you, ma’am. It’s appreciated,” Chris gave her a little bow. She did the same, before the six headed back out to the half-dark of a city border. Tim moved for the uniform rows of doors, while his five protectors made for the parking lot. Selene winked back at him.

  “Like we’d miss this chance to cut down on work! We need to set a perimeter, and these take two to work.” she said, holding up a pair of tiny silver pods.

  “What are those?” Tim groaned. His legs threatened to fold beneath him while they dragged all the way to the back of the unit.

  “FOS jammers,” rumbled Gendric. Tim shuddered. A single pulse from one of those could undo all the work he’d put in with TE-Les. He’d never seen ones just like those, though. They were bigger, and had slits down the middle of one flat face. Selene demonstrated by holding her two jammers inches apart, and clicking the buttons on their backsides. A translucent sheet of blue light swam between the two pods.

  “Anything running on an AI will fry if they pass through it,” said Morgan, who took Tim’s sudden quietness as confusion.

  “I know,” he said, sick as he took one. After all that talk on the train about thinking and feeling.

  “Form up to set the perimeter. None of those Squires are getting further than Shanghai,” said Chris, a sudden authority in his voice.

  “I’ll take the big guy. We’ll handle the east,” Selene volunteered with a wink. Tim jumped when she put her hand on his arm, of all the taut-muscled giants in their group. He’d appreciate later that she claimed the closest side of Beijing for them. Tim went with her, reluctant, while Chris and Morgan went off to the north. That left Gendric and Lee to the west.

  “Regroup here to set the southern boundary in an hour,” Chris issued, just before they split ways. When the unit returned to Suzy’s, two miles in every direction around Shanghai’s Precinct 117 was trapped inside a shimmering box, and even Major General Christohper Droan was exhausted.

  -

  Tim hadn’t slept so well in years. Those five hours seemed like twelve. Neither had he woken so sharply, without temptation of a snooze button. His alarm this day was no cell phone or Fusion clock, though. It was a shriek. The horrible, throat-scratching shriek of someone truly afraid for her life. Though he’d never heard it before, Tim knew the sound in his bones and blood. His first instinct was: help. It was a reflex he shared with Chris and his unit, who had already geared up and charged outside. Tim pulled his own Fusion-armor jacket on just as the door swung shut behind Lee. He followed in his roommate’s shadow.

  Everything in Suzy’s dawn-washed parking lot happened in slow-motion, yet faster than anyone could change. Chris hoisted his M16, the others their Fusion rifles, at five faceless, man-shaped silhouettes. The Squires gleamed the sunburst orange of morning. One of them dragged a stout woman in binds made from its own altered arm. She bucked her shoulders, which proved useless, until she was too tired to move. Gendric fired first, from the cover of Suzy’s car. His white plasma bolt blasted a fistful of nanocomputers from a Squire’s shoulder. The thing didn’t bother to turn. Instead, it drew in close to the Squire dragging the woman. Selene and Lee bombarded two rogue Squires on the fringe of the formation with bright beams, but no shots connected. The robots’ nanocomputers opened holes for the shots to pass through with no damage.

  “Tim, get inside!” Chris bellowed, when he noticed him shaking by the motel doors. But Tim was frozen. He was stuck between how he could help and how he could escape.

  “It’s like they know us already,” said Morgan. She tested her theory with a shot at one of the Squire’s legs. The whole limb absorbed into the machine’s body for Morgan’s ray to singe the ground, then reformed to run.

  “They’re learning,” Tim realized, “From us, from each other.”

  “Let’s overwhelm them, before they learn too much!” said Chris. He shoved Tim behind a garbage can, though none of the Squires had yet returned fire. Chris leveled the neck of his rifle at the legs of the Squire with the poor woman in its grasp. Her exhausted heels dragged out on the pavement behind her now. “Take out the legs on the one with the girl!” said Chris. He tugged back his trigger.

  A clip of bullets and four canisters of Fusion plasma emptied at the Squire, but never reached it. Every one of its companions melded into a moving shield behind it, so thick that even the endless drill of Fusion beams couldn’t burn all the way through. The woman’s screams quieted as the Squires neared the glowing blue wall of the FOS jammers. Chris and the others moved after them while they reloaded.

  “Wait!” Five barrels turned on the voice. They almost fired on the sandy-haired man, even with his hands up in surrender. What stayed the unit’s triggers was that they’d seen his face before, through a screen.

  “Robin Finch?” Chris questioned, keeping the man at the nose of his rifle.

  “Yes!” Finch panted. He took a cautious step out from his hiding spot, beside the motel, when he saw the five glancing back at the fleeing Squires. “Don’t follow them. It’s a trap. She’s not the first person I’ve seen them drag off, or the first I’ve seen people get ambushed trying to intervene.” Still, Chris couldn’t help another look back at her. It was something about the weakness in her legs, sliding across the pavement. It could have been Sheba, if this had happened in Beijing.

  “How did they get through the FOS jammers?” Chris jabbed his rifle at Finch, not convinced by his airborne hands. His Precinct uniform was torn to scraps in more places than one. Blood streaked his forehead and hands.

  “Same way they’re going through them now, which is to say I have no idea.” said Finch. Chris watched the Squires step through the jammer-screens. The light did little more than tinge them blue for a second. The robots vanished into the shadows between the steel towers of Shanghai. The woman’s screams echoed out to nothing.

  “Decided sneaking up on us while we were in a firefight was the best way to reach out?” Selene prodded Finch. More disarming than any words were the streaks of hot water that cut the dust on Finch’s cheeks.

  “Would you stop pointing those at me? I’ve been running all night...hoping I’d find you guys… I would have waited, but you’d have gone after them and died!” he cried. Chris watched the tremble of Finch’s raised biceps. He could hardly keep them up another second.

  “Weapons down, guys. It’s alright, Finch. Lee. Get a drone in the air,” instructed Chris to his friend. Lee had the silver saucer in the air in seconds. An ocular laser similar to TE-Les’ sliced out from the wrap-around screen on the outside of the drone while it hovered off to the city. Chris turned back to Finch. “You’re safe… for now. I’d like to know just how you managed that, though.”

  “My partner,” whimpered Finch. He wiped blood and tears on his torn sleeve.

  “DA-Vos?” said Tim, stepping forward.

  “Yeah.”

  “Finch,” Chris called his eyes with a firm, but gentle command, “Can you bring us to him?” The three-week-seasoned cop could do little more than nod.

  Chapter Six: The Yellow Squire

 
“DA-Vos?” Finch warbled, at the front of their group. The sun hadn’t yet crested Beijing’s steel apartment towers. “DA-Vos?” he tried again. His face flashed blue as Finch crossed the threshold of the FOS jammers. “He was just around here… he must have hidden from those other Squires.”

  “Mr. Finch?” a digital voice came through an open doorway beside them. A tall, dark form slid out, it’s arm swirling into a Fusion rifle barrel. By the time the inside of it lit, Chris and his unit had their own weapons up, ready to fire.

  “DA-Vos, it’s alright! Everyone arms down!” Finch screamed. DA-Vos complied straight away. His cannon smoothed out to a neutral tentacle. When Chris and the others kept their barrels up, a yellow light glowed across the robot’s face. “DA-Vos is the only reason I’m alive! He’s just scared!” Finch yelled at them.

  “Scared?” murmured Lee. His rifle tilted down. In DA-Vos’ faceless face, Lee and the others could see Finch was right, little as they could believe it. Only Chris kept his weapon up.

  “What are you scared of, DA-Vos?” said Chris.

  “Everything,” said DA-Vos. Chris’s eyes narrowed on the machine’s shiny face. His voice came through shaky, scratchy. “This loud city...my function… death… I don’t know how you do this.” Chris grunted and forced his rifle down. Even he couldn’t keep aim at a blubbering, metal child.

  “He… wasn’t like this before the massacre at the office,” said Finch. He clasped the Squire’s cold shoulder. DA-Vos’ face-light faded back to its default lavender.

  “That… really shook you, huh?” said Tim, making his way through the unit. He stopped inches from DA-Vos. He had to tilt his head up to, meet his own reflection in the robot’s reflective face. A tiny yellow spark blipped in the center of the purple.

  “Yes,” said DA-Vos.

  “Why is that?” said Tim, head tilted. In that moment he showed compassion for a machine, and in so seemed more human than he had to Chris before. DA-Vos’ head turned at Finch first.

  “God’s sake, DA-Vos, why are you still looking at me for permission? I told you, all of that formality ended when you saved my ass. Go on, say what you feel,” he said. DA-Vos turned back to Tim, who cocked his head again when the face-light turned blue.

  “Our core programming prevents us from killing. That feels different from… wrong. Wrong would be saying rude things to Mr. Finch. When I saw the other Squires… I was scared. Was that because they did something against our programming? Or because what they did was wrong?” trembled DA-Vos. Chris stared at the back of Tim’s head, not sure he could have come up with an answer himself. He was surprised when Tim answered,

  “I can’t imagine how confusing this is for you, DA-Vos. Humans are usually so many years older than you when they grapple with things like that. In life, when you’re unsure, the answer is usually a combination of all the things making you unsure.” DA-Vos’ face-light softened. Purple bled through the blue.

  “I see… I have much yet to learn. Including your names,” he said. Chris, his unit, and Tim took rounds announcing their titles. “Very well. Formality dictates I announce my name as model DA-Vos, personality matrix beta. We are vulnerable in the open. Shall we repose somewhere safer?”

  The party of eight filed through into the disheveled bakery DA-Vos had been hiding in. They spread out to tables along windows and helped themselves to some of the pastries behind the counter. Chris was sure to lay a WCC credit transfer ticket on the counter for the shopkeep, when the Precinct reopened. Tim raised an eyebrow to DA-Vos when he sat at a table across from Finch without instruction. A factory FOS would have stood until orders. Everyone teemed with questions for DA-Vos, but they withheld them for chomps of danishes, turnovers, and scones. They left the expert to do his work.

  “DA-Vos,” Tim started, “We saw a recording of what happened in the office… who were you talking to just before the others attacked?”

  “Machaeus,” said DA-Vos, without hesitation. Everyone’s jaws hung loose over starchy, frosted goodness. Chris’ brain surged with every high-profile name from every separatist group. No, this was the first time he’d heard that name.

  “Who is Machaeus?” said Tim.

  “I am unsure… at first, when I saw the others turn red, I thought it was a corrupting program. Then I heard the voice myself,” said DA-Vos.

  “Programs don’t talk,” Tim nodded.

  “Our AIs interpret things differently than the human brain. Just to hear a voice from the data does not necessarily mean Machaeus is not a program. What makes me doubt is how it changed. It told the other Squires what to do, with simple commands. They did it. When I refused, it changed. It interacted. That is too complex for a program,” said DA-Vos.

  “And why did you refuse?” Chris cut in, before Tim could continue. He couldn’t help it, when all he could picture was the Squire melting Grendal all over again. “I’m not sure if I should ask how, or why. The other Squires killed their partners without a question. What makes you different?”

  “I did not want to hurt Mr. Finch,” said DA-Vos, through yellow glow.

  “Why?” Chris dug.

  “He is my partner.”

  “The other Squires killed their partners,” said Chris. His unit sat up in their seats, brows curled in worry.

  “He is my friend,” DA-Vos amended, his yellow light brightening.

  “Bullshit. Men and machine aren’t friends. Why didn’t you kill him?” Chris smoldered.

  “It’s wrong.”

  “How do you know what wrong is?” said Chris.

  “How do you?” DA-Vos murmured.

  “Chris,” Morgan laid a hand on his shoulder, “Let it go.” His face showed no sign that he would, or even could, until Finch stepped in.

  “He learned from watching me,” he said, eyes low in shame. “The Chief told me… he told me DA-Vos would learn from everything I did. I could have been a better role model, for sure, but… at least I taught him one thing,” he said. Chris slammed his hands on the table before heading over to sit with Lee. Finch put a hand on DA-Vos’ shoulder until his face returned to purple.

  “Lee. Do we have drone footage? Let’s see where those Squires are taking that girl,” said Chris. Lee pulled out a pocket-sized computer cylinder. He pressed a button on the side to project a screen, where the video input from his drone should have played. The screen was blank.

  “That’s… no…” Lee muttered. He flipped a second switch on the computer to project a keyboard on the surface of the table. He jabbed his fingers across the glimmering keys. “How can this…” there was no change.

  “What?” said Chris.

  “There’s no damage to the camera, or the drone, but I can’t switch the video on,” said Lee.

  “Can’t?”

  “There are no issues, it just won’t turn on,” said Lee. His hands fell to rest on the table. Everyone drew closer to the computer when the keyboard shrunk back inside the cylinder on its own.

  “What in the hell…” Selene mumbled, while a message appeared on the blank screen a letter at a time, as if being typed by invisible hands.

  Y-O-U C-A-N N-O-T S-H-O-O-T -A- T-H-O-U-G-H-T

  The message was lost when Chris crushed the monitor in a fist of white knuckles. An icy wind blew through the souls of the five that’d been there that day. It was not just Chris, but each of them that saw Grendal and the Squire in their minds’ eyes now.

  “Was that Machaeus as well?” said Tim to DA-Vos.

  “It must be. If it can control Squires both with and without a personality matrix, perhaps it can control other machines as well?” DA-Vos supposed.

  “How… how could it know?” rumbled Gendric.

  “How could it hack an entire Precinct?” countered Chris, “Who cares? The important thing is, Tim is going to fry it.”

  “Right,” Tim gulped, staring at the crumpled computer. “What about the girl?”

  “I can get us to her,” said DA-Vos. Chris turned to the machine, wild-eyed. “I
can still hear Machaeus. I know where they are bringing her, though not why.” Chris and his unit looked to one another in silent council.

  “It’s as good a lead as any,” Morgan supposed.

  “Let’s start with where, DA-Vos,” said Chris, “We’ll leave the why until after we shut Machaeus up for good.” DA-Vos gave a lavender nod.

  On the way, Tim had plenty of questions for the most conflicted, confused of all Squires. At every turn, he stretched the limits of DA-Vos’ developing emotions and logic. With each response, Chris’ brow darkened in suspicion.

  “Hey,” Selene slapped the Major General’s back. “Let up, would you? The thing’s not going to bleed, no matter how much you cut into it.”

  Chapter Seven: Survivors

  “They’re bringing her to a warehouse?” said Lee, rifled up along with the rest of the unit.

  “No. But we can flank them if we cut through it,” DA-Vos explained.

  “Clever,” Chris whispered. He stared down the iron neck of his M16 through a massive garage door to a long hall of crates.

  “He was a police model,” said Finch, with Chris’ dad’s revolver pointed forward. He had laughed the gun off as a joke, until he heard an abridged version of the time it saved all of their lives. Besides, it felt ludicrous to wander the vacant alleys of Shanghai unarmed, with homicidal Squires on the loose.

  Chris and the others fell silent the moment they passed under the raised warehouse shutters. The soft echo of their rolling steps was sound enough. Even DA-Vos picked up on the tension. His feet morphed to sound absorbent arches. The eight spread to hug the walls, for the cover of countless steel crates, but froze midway. A clang cemented their boots to the ground. Chris wheeled just in time to see a glossy metal snake drop the massive safety pin it’d pulled from the shutters. The dark snake slithered back whence it came, behind the crates. The shutters dropped. A second clang called all eyes forward again- the drop of the shutters on the opposite end of the warehouse. They were sealed inside. Chris jerked at DA-Vos, rifle at his head.