The Unsung Frame, page 21
part #2 of The Synth Crisis Series
“Wish you could, man, but he got killed early this year. He left the group, lost his way, started messing with stims and got caught up.”
“Sorry to hear that,” Dhata said. “That’s all the questions that I have.”
He finished his zombie and shook Eddie’s hand, then paid for the drinks and left. He had come full circle and it was back to Natalya; she would be the only person to know who the Russian connect was. If they were the ones to program Jordan to blow up the shuttle port, it meant that there was a chance that they were behind Gemini as well.
He got back into the car to drive it home, and tried to put the pieces together. Gemini had the means to hack into a synth’s head and bypass the Arch Brain in order to control them. Gemini was an enhanced synth with bio-engineered human features. The similarities to Natalya were beyond uncanny, and it sent a chill down his spine.
A group of Russian spies, posing as sex workers seeking opportunity. They found a way in, through Eddie Kraus, who missed the fact that they were cyborg plants. One tried to get Tyler, but he got caught. The other, Natalya, married Jordan Crane. The FBI connection, however, he didn’t understand—unless Agent Underwood was not who he claimed he was.
0 1 0 1 0 1 0 1 0
Though Natalya had told Dhata that she would destroy his surveillance, the camera outside the Underwood home was still up and running. There was something about that woman that Lur didn't like, and she wasn't buying the unfortunate synth wife story. Instead of spending her Monday evening reading like she planned, she sat in front of the big screen watching the Underwood home.
The car was parked out front, but there was no movement visible through the open windows. On the street in front of the house a gang of teenagers stood around, arguing over something and then walked out of view of the camera.
Lur watched the house for 20 minutes before she decided to make herself busy. She got up from the couch and retrieved her rack, then sat back down with it on her lap. Though a full immersion was what she would have preferred, she gestured and a screen appeared. She began to look for news out of Cuba, particularly stories of organized crime.
Periodically as she went through her search, she'd pause to look up at the television. The house hadn't changed, and there was no sign of life, and Lur began to wonder if they had gone somewhere. She went back to her searching, looking for news on her father, or on his top man, Carlos Ruiz. There were stories detailing crimes, with no names to go with them, but all of it alluded to her father’s business.
“Good to see that you are still making money, Papa,” she whispered, then took her hands off the rack. She thought that she saw movement in the corner of the Underwood’s living room window, but it was so subtle that she wondered if it was just her imagination.
She paused the feed and wound it back, scanning frame for frame, and there in the window next to the door was the silhouette of a woman. The image set her heart racing and she couldn’t understand why. There was something sinister about it, the way it stood, and a solitary pixel glowing on the screen made it look like it was one of her eyes.
“If that is Natalya, then where are the Underwoods?” she said, reverting the feed to real time. The woman was back, staring out, and it was as if she in turn was watching Lur.
“Ay Dios mio, so creepy,” she said, as she sat waiting for her to move. After about five minutes the woman looked to the side and then walked away from the window. It was a synthetic flaw to stare into space, it was something that Dhata had taught her to look out for. No normal human could stand perfectly still, staring out that window the way this woman did.
It was Natalya, and she was alone, which was odd since the Underwood’s only vehicle was there. Lur reached up and touched the node by her ear, bringing up the augmented phone interface. She called Dhata, but he didn’t pick up, so she left him a message about the status of Natalya. She better not have touched a hair on that baby’s head, she thought, thinking of the Underwood’s daughter, or I will personally go over there and shoot her myself.
She was about to call Dhata again when a loud sound caused her to drop her rack. It was a siren that started low but then kept on rising until she thought her eardrums would explode. It was unbearable for about ten seconds, then the volume came down and then it rose again. Lur hopped off the couch and ran to the security panel, trying to see what was going on. The panel’s display was dark but the lights were flashing, and the overhead LEDs washed the zeppelin in red.
Running to the couch, she grabbed her rack and snatched up her trench coat from the floor. Within a minute she was out of the zeppelin and sprinting for the woods.
She was almost there when the first rocket hit, shaking the ground around her violently and throwing her off her feet. She looked back at the wreckage where her home used to be, and it reminded her of a downed shuttle during a war. She saw another rocket fly from the entrance of the clearing. It hit the zeppelin and she in turn was slammed into a tree.
Lur’s eyes were burning, and her ears were ringing, but she managed to scramble back into the trees, and called Dhata again. When he finally answered she sighed in relief. “Where the hell are you?” she said.
“I was on my way back home, but I thought I had a tail, so I was driving around trying to get rid of it,” he said. “Couldn’t answer your call since I needed the Buick’s dash, and—”
“They blew up the zeppelin,” she said, her patience worn thin.
“They did what? Who? You mean my zeppelin, our home? Who are ‘they’ Lur, and how the hell did they manage that?” he said.
“I don’t know, Dhata. The alarms came on, and if I hadn’t run out of there, we wouldn’t be talking right now. I saw what hit the zeppelin, and it was some sort of missile. It’s all gone, Dhata, everything that was inside the house.”
Dhata grew quiet, and Lur wondered what could possibly be going through his mind. He’d been about to come home, to rest and relax, and now there was no home to come back to. “Are you alright, Lur? Did you get hurt?” he said.
“I’m okay, Dhata, just—just scared out of my mind,” she said.
“I’m coming to pick you up. Can you meet me on the main road near the entrance?” he said.
“Yes, I’m walking through the woods. I should be there in five minutes,” she said. “Dhata, I am shaking, we are not safe messing with these people. Who has missiles to shoot at us, and how do they know where to aim it?” she said.
“Rich, powerful, and evil men,” Dhata said. “Men with ties to the military, and military grade weapons. Is everything gone, is the zeppelin completely destroyed?” he said, and Lur could hear the pain in his voice and didn’t want to answer.
She couldn’t imagine the amount of work and effort it had taken for him to turn a disabled warship into the home they had. To hear that something you spent years of your life building had been destroyed in your absence … she couldn’t imagine the pain he felt, and all she wanted to do was hug him.
“I grabbed my rack, and the Beretta,” she said, “but all of your guns and … everything, it’s all gone.”
There was the silence again, and then he clicked off, which made her wonder if she’d offended him somehow. As she made to touch her ear to call him again, she saw the headlights of the Buick coming down the road. He pulled up next to her with the door open, and she jumped inside and locked the door.
Dhata was flipping through the Buick’s programs like a dealer with a deck of cards. “Guess we have no choice,” he said, touching an area of the map. “We have to keep on moving now. Look, I know that it’s been nuts, but whoever these people are, they can fire missiles and send out drones. We can’t afford to stay still until it’s over. I’m sorry that it got this far, Lurita.”
“Fine by me,” Lur said and settled into her seat. “But we need to go by the Underwood’s to check on them.”
“Why, what happened?”
“I think she killed the family. Their car is parked out front, but she’s the only one inside.”
“It’s a trap,” Dhata said.
“What? How do you know?”
“They left the camera up, knowing we’d be watching, and they moved the Underwood family out, so that we can think that Natalya is alone,” he said.
Lur thought about the way Natalya stood by the window, staring back at her as if she was seeing her watching. It sent a chill down her spine, and she wondered if somehow she was behind the zeppelin’s destruction. Her synthetic ICL could have been synced with the cameras receiver, and in a freakish reverse of surveillance, she could have been watching them this whole time.
The camera was fed to the main television, the same television in front of the couch where they made love. No, she thought, I’m being ridiculous. Could someone really reverse a camera to spy on the people spying? She thought about asking Dhata, but thought better of it. She wanted instead to hear his plan.
“How will we catch her then?” Lur said after another long period of silence.
“She’s a stim junkie with a habit,” he said. “We’ll get a room in one of Aaron’s holes and wait until she shows up again.”
‡Chapter 24‡
Have Gun, Will Travel
The roads of Ybor city were a slick, wet reminder of the chemical residue wreaking havoc on the Earth’s atmosphere. Dhata pulled his duster tighter against the chill of the night as he tried his best to be a part of the dark, insignificant ruins. The rain was cold, and he hadn’t changed since the night before when he and Lur drove into Ybor and purchased a hotel room.
He spent the night watching the door with his revolver in hand. Aaron couldn’t be reached, and they were renting out of the slummiest area of the city. He stood leaning against a wall near the burnt out building that Lur had narrowly escaped a few weeks before. It was a good spot for waiting, since it kept him hidden, especially now that he had a number on his head.
A call came in. It was Ariana, and he picked it up, hoping that she was okay. “Ariana, you good?” he said, looking around as he felt the heavy raindrops bearing down on his hat.
“I’m okay, thanks to you. I spoke to my boss, told him it was Cole. Now they are out there combing through my house. It’s all a mess. You were right about leaving; I don’t feel safe anywhere.”
“You’re getting out of Tampa, right? That was the plan,” he said, then locked in on a group of people that were walking towards the area where he stood.
“I have something to look into, there in Ybor,” Ariana was saying. He missed the first part, but the synths were moving towards him and he was on high alert.
“Ariana, I-I’ll call you in a few, alright? I have to go,” he said.
The group of synths eyed him curiously but they walked past and entered a building. Need to stop being paranoid, he thought, and then reached up and rubbed his eyes.
“She’s here,” said a familiar voice, coming through their synced communication. It was Micah, the stim dealer who Dhata hired to catch Natalya again. His voice had betrayed his impatience with Dhata, but the skiptracer understood. He was bad business for the stim dealer, and now he was about to remove a customer, but he’d agreed to do the job for 2,000 UCCs.
Dhata jogged across the street and when he turned the corner, he was stunned by the crowd that had come out to party despite the rain. He left the packed sidewalk and took to the streets, finding it easier to maneuver. Aaron kept the Ybor roads blocked off anyway, so an ignorant outsider driving down the street was the least of his concerns.
When he got to Micah’s area, he saw Natalya arguing with him, and he threw all caution to the wind and moved to close in on her. The cyborg saw him and spun on his approach, aiming at him with an electroshock tube and firing it as she moved. Dhata slipped on the asphalt while trying to dodge, and the water helped him avoid the dart, which missed his face by centimeters.
Natalya took off running down the same alleyway as before, but Dhata was up and he was fast, pushing past the hools to follow. She threw her heels at him in an attempt to distract, then picked up her pace on bare feet. But Dhata was too fast—despite his size—and he bore down on her like a hungry predator.
His chest felt as if it wanted to burst, and his head began to swim as if he was about to pass out. He hadn’t slept much, and when he did it seemed like an illusion, since he couldn’t keep his eyes closed for more than a half hour. As he ran he felt tempted to lift his revolver and blow out her leg. It would be enough to slow her down and it could always be repaired later on.
She broke from the alleyway onto 50th street, where she jumped the fence and took a right down the sidewalk. Dhata followed, but there were a lot of cars, and his private chase became a public spectacle. It was dark in Ybor and no Johns were in attendance, but here on 50th the streetlights made it as bright as daytime. He had to catch her fast, before someone called the police to report that a large man was chasing a poor, bare-footed lady.
Desperate and out of options, he pulled out the revolver and put a shot near her feet. Natalya panicked and dashed to the side, cutting through some bushes and heading back towards the slums. She had done exactly what he expected her to do, and he followed her in, hoping that she’d run into a dead end.
She hopped a stone wall, and Dhata did the same, hoping that there wasn’t anything to impale him on the other side. He landed on glass, and a trail of blood where Natalya had cut open her feet when she landed. She was limping now, and there were no buildings close, just the wide asphalt backyard of one of the bars.
“Natalya, stop,” he said, trying to catch his breath. “It’s over. Surrender, you cannot escape.”
There was a whistle behind him, and he spun with the revolver held high. Bearing down on him like shambling zombies were several hools with guns. “You come here to terrorize our women, hume?” said a tall synth. “You picked the wrong neighborhood for that shit.”
“I’m a skiptracer,” he said. “I’m on your side.” Then he opened his coat to show The Unsung’s badge.
“Where the hell you get that, hume?” the man said, unconvinced. “I don’t care why you’re after her. This is as far as you go.”
“Let me guess. You run for Cole, right?” Dhata said as he watched their eyes. “You don’t care about her or any other synth woman. All you care about is that reward money.”
He could see from their glances that what he said was true. He had fallen into a trap, and now they were going to murder him.
Dhata glanced back at Natalya, gauging his time. She was still hopping away so he gave himself fifteen seconds.
“Tell me, fellas. The bounty on my head. Does it say dead or alive, or does it just say alive?” he said.
“Twice the UCCs if we bring you in alive,” said one, laughing in the way all stim junkies laughed.
No wonder they’re letting me talk, Dhata thought, and he shot the ringleader in the heart. He fanned the hammer and dropped to a knee, putting two more rounds in another. Two shots rang out that weren’t his own, and another of the hools dropped. The remaining three scattered as a cloaked figure appeared, silhouetted under a streetlight.
“Don’t let her get away,” Lur shouted, as she ran past him in the direction of Natalya.
Dhata sprinted towards the end of the buildings, then Lur opened up a side door and stepped inside. By the time he made it in, the two women were gone, but he could hear Lur screaming for her to stop. The place was an abandoned business, but there was blood on the ground, which meant that Natalya had stumbled through.
As he exited on the other side, he saw that Lur had stopped the chase. She was looking down a side street as if Natalya disappeared. “Dammit!” she screamed, then walked back towards him, “She’s gone,” Lur said. “They picked her up again. I swear, if I ever catch her—” She groaned with frustration.
“It’s alright, we’ll get her,” Dhata said, and Lur gave him a frustrated look.
“You’re confident,” she said. “What if she leaves the state or goes with some other FBI person?”
“She can go anywhere she wants,” Dhata said. “As long as she has those stims, she’s being tracked.”
“Oh, that is smart,” Lur remarked. “Let’s go get her and end this thing.”
“As bad as I want to grab that woman and force her to tell me who blew up my zeppelin, we need to be patient and wait. She’s on high alert now, and she’s injured, so we need to let her think she got away. She’ll spend the night in a medical pod, then she’ll find a safe place to go get high on those stims. When she stops, I’ll be on her, and then she’ll regret ever hiring us for this mess. By the way, Lurita, what the hell are you wearing? You um … kinda look like her. Was that your plan?”
“Yeah, it’s on purpose, but you can’t be mad at me if I tell you where I was,” she said.
When she got near him he fell in beside her as they made their way back to the hotel. “You went to the Underwood house and snooped around,” he said. “Then you found the dead family and drove back here for justice.”
“You’re good,” she teased, “but nothing that exciting. I found paperwork and a lot of information. Natalya wasn’t built here. Someone flew her in, and the Underwoods are deeply involved.”
He slowed her down when they entered the old building, then poked his head out the door to see if it was clear. No one was out there, not even the men that he shot, but he wasn’t about to take any chances. They took their time slipping through the alleyways, avoiding groups of people. It took them an hour to make it back to the hotel, but they managed the trip without incident.
When they were finally inside, they removed their wet clothes and Lur shared what she found inside of the house. “Samuel and Mindy Underwood are test parents for a synth child. That kid we saw on the surveillance is the payment they took to sponsor Natalya.”
