The Unsung Frame, page 7
part #2 of The Synth Crisis Series
Those last words made Dhata realize how compromised he was. It was a rookie mistake. He had parked in the clearing, with open areas all around him. The people here could make him disappear and he’d never be found. Lur would be at the mercy of Aaron, and the case of Jordan Crane would never be solved.
Bad move, boss, he thought, then fixed his eyes on the house to see if anything was amiss. There was an old man in overalls coming down the steps, and Dhata’s enhanced ICLs picked up on several figures peering from the sides of the house. One had a rifle fixed on him, and he could hear footsteps coming up from behind.
He turned around slowly to see a group of four men. They were younger, dressed in camouflage, all armed with illegal firearms.
“You really a John?” one of them asked. He was tall with bad skin and matted blonde hair.
“Skiptracer,” Dhata replied, backing away a step. “I’m helping the Johns find out about these murderous synths.”
The men exchanged glances, and one stepped up to Dhata. “I’m the one that shot him,” he said, looking rather pained. “Boy flipped out one day and killed my brother. Shot him in the chest, right here.” He touched his heart. “But since he was a machine or whatever, the bullet didn’t kill him, just knocked him down, unconscious.”
There was something about this man that made him seem different from the rest. He looked younger, but stood tall and confident; everything about him was out of place. Even the way he held his rifle was different from the rest. It was something like seeing a lion cub trying to fit in with a litter of kittens.
Dhata said, “Sorry for your loss, brother. I cannot imagine your pain. If you don’t mind me asking, what branch of the military did you serve?”
“I’m a Marine, that’s how I knew Fort. Felt sorry for him after the war, so I brought him here to help out my dad,” he said.
“I’m Dhata Mays and I’m investigating some murders—”
“What does that have to do with us, sir?” the young man said.
“Two synths that were military-built are responsible for taking human lives. Tyler was the first, then up in Tampa, Jordan Crane became the second. People are in danger; I hope that you can understand. I’m trying to see if there’s a connection, particularly with the batch of synths deployed to fight that war.”
“You see, Pops, I told you that this was going to happen,” one of the other men said, glancing over Dhata’s shoulder at the old man who was now at the fence.
“He acted well enough, up until that day. Then he just went crazy and started shooting,” the old man said. Dhata turned around to regard him as he opened the gate and stepped out with a shotgun. “You wanna come inside?” he asked Dhata, but the skiptracer thought better of it.
“Thank you, but I don’t want to take up much of your time. I think that—excuse me, brother, what is your name?” he said to the Marine.
“William, but you can call me Will,” he said, and Dhata reached out and shook his hand.
“I think Will is the person I need to speak with, since he knew this Tyler Fort personally. What he can tell me will help me to decide if I’m on to something.”
“You all should just gather them up and shut them down, how about that?” the old man said. “Damn things been nothing but trouble since we integrated them into society. Men cheating on their wives with Marys, jobs hard to come by for the average human. How is this progress? Can you tell me that, John? How are we any better off than we were before the war?”
Dhata didn’t really know how to respond, especially since he disagreed with everything the man said. Synths were needed to rebuild society; without them the world would have been a wasteland. Was it a synth Mary’s fault if the human who paid her was married? No, humans being deviant and cruel brought them to this juncture, but he understood that the old man had lost a son.
“It wouldn’t be easy to do that, sir,” he said. “The synths are literally everywhere. Better we figure out how these soldiers broke past their programming than go after them and their manufacturer.”
The old man hissed through his teeth and beckoned the men inside. Will walked with them, then stopped at the gate. “I’ll come in in a few, Pops. I’m gonna have a talk with this gentleman.” The old man nodded and locked the gate.
The yellow sun peeked above the tree line, and the property lost its intimidating flair. “You fought the war with Tyler?” Dhata said, sitting on the hood of the Buick.
“Fought with him, yeah, even called him my friend. Back then, human and synth soldiers were still brothers, y’know? He was a funny dude, always had jokes. I thought that was strange for a robot. You expect them to be all stiff and always about their orders, but Tyler loved cracking jokes and trying to get us to sneak out of the camp for action.”
“Action? What sort of action?” Dhata said. He had his tablet out, recording their conversation and making notes on top of the transcript.
“Mary action, what else, bro? Why would they build a fighting synth, then make it horny like the rest of us?” he said.
“Fitting in is the point, at least that’s what I think. When I think about it, it makes sense. Even the way you talk about him now, you tend to humanize him. You all call them robots, and your dad wants them disassembled, but when you were out there, fighting for our freedoms, that ‘robot’ was a brother to you.”
“Yeah, you’re right, damn right about that. Then we all came home and he went nuts.”
“Will, when you shot him, did he say anything?”
“No, but I can remember the look in his eyes. Boy looked confused, like it wasn’t him in there. Made me realize just how dangerous these machines really are. Letting our guard down made me lose my brother. There ain’t a day that goes by that I don’t blame myself for that.”
“That’s tough, man,” Dhata said. “I can’t even imagine how that feels. But if it’s the manufacturer that’s behind all this, I want to bring them down hard. I want them arrested. This could be some justice for your brother.”
“My brother’s gone, detective. He’s in heaven now. He wasn’t a killer like me and you. He was a God-fearing man and he wouldn’t want revenge. Justice came when the trial was over, and Fort got disassembled. They pulled him apart, limb by limb, and shut off his brain when it was over. Justice for my brother happened, but I’d rather him be here, now, alive.”
“So he was here working for your father, then one day starts to shoot at you all randomly?” Dhata said. “Did someone say something? Can you remember what set him off, or did he just snap out of nowhere?”
“It came out of nowhere, sir, like a switch went off. We was joking around, working on the fence, and then I saw him grab a rifle and check to see if it was loaded. I was like, ‘come on dumbass, we can’t go hunting now. The fence need finishing or Pops will flip his wig.’ That’s when he shot at me, and I reached for my pistol. By that time, Cliff came out with his gun, but Tyler was shooting at the house. He didn’t have a chance, it happened so fast. By the time I shot Tyler, my brother was gone.”
“I appreciate you telling me, Will. Sorry to have you relive it again,” Dhata said.
The man nodded and inhaled the morning air. He shouldered his rifle and cocked his head. “You know, all of this is on record from the trial. What made you come out all this way just to drop in on my family?” he said.
“Because I needed to ask you questions that those lawyers wouldn’t know to ask. I’m hoping that you can help me find out who the rest of Tyler’s troop were. I know that they didn’t all get deployed to the same place, but I’m hoping that he told you about them, or you have some knowledge of their whereabouts.”
Will walked over to Dhata and pointed to his tablet. “You may want to write this down,” he said. “Tyler was part of a group of vets made up mostly of old robots like himself. They would meet once a month, but he wouldn’t tell me where. I have a box of his old stuff, if you think it will help.”
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Lur was bored out of her mind, logged into her rack, poking around the Virtual Village. She caught up with old friends, played some games, and did a bit of research on the case. After a few hours she was pacing the small apartment, wondering how long before Dhata would return.
She struggled against her feelings. It was silly on the surface, since she had only been there for several hours. But it didn’t seem to matter as panic took over, along with the thought of being stuck there for days. Eventually she marched upstairs and slipped into an all-black suit. She took out her pistol and examined it closely, then tucked it into one of the jacket’s pockets.
She didn’t know where she was headed, but her only thought was of escaping her cushy prison. When she opened the hatch leading to the tunnel, she could already hear noise coming from the bar. It was evening time and the joint was jumping. There was no way that she would be able to step out without some of the patrons noticing.
The sound of hard music was shaking the walls, and the tunnel seemed ready to collapse. She ran up the stairs and hesitated at the door, closing her eyes to think. What she was doing was foolish, a violation of trust, but she hoped that Dhata would understand.
She pushed the trapdoor open and climbed out into the room, then pulled back the mat to cover it up. When she stepped out towards the bar, a bouncer closed on her fast, grabbing her by the arm and asking her what she was doing back there. “Thought it was the restroom,” she lied to him, and he scanned her face as if he could read something.
“The restroom is right here, how the hell could you miss it? There’s a big glowing sign with the word ‘restroom.’”
“Let me go. You’re hurting me, you big ignorant ox. I can’t be the only one to make this mistake,” she said.
“You are, you dumb hume,” he said, then released her with a shove. Lur had never seen a synth with this much hate in her entire life. He frightened her, and she felt like a fool for leaving the sanctuary that Dhata had set up. All around her were synths partying hard. There were a few humans too, but they looked like outcasts, hardened criminals that sided with synths.
She didn’t belong here and it was quite obvious by the way everyone looked at her. The women stared at her in the same way that she imagined birds stared at worms or fish. The men were worse, and the bartender—who was one of Aaron’s hools—pretended not to see her.
Lur slipped through the crowd, found the exit, and was out on the streets as fast as she could. It bothered her that escaping her hideout did not come with the feeling of relief that she expected. What she felt instead was a strong feeling of fear.
The sky, a color like cobalt steel, held several zeppelins seemingly frozen. They were suspended in a semi-permanent state of hover, the only sign of life being the blinking lights on each one of their hulls.
She felt as if they were spying on her, the lost human girl with the big bad protector. She felt embarrassed. She was now a liability, a stumbling elephant in a room full of wineglasses. She had walked into a bar filled with synth hools, the easiest target for a cypher to hack. They had seen her emerge, watched her leave, and now she was outside in the open.
Why did I surrender to my stupid fears? she thought, and hurried to the opposite curb. Ybor City was safe, that’s what Dhata had said, and he would know, being that he had connections all over the city.
She placed her finger near her ear and touched the implanted node, closing her eyes in sync with the motion to bring up her computer’s interface. Finding the phone icon, she triggered the application, scrolling through the various headshots until she found the one she wanted.
The evening was warm, a humid hell, and she was tempted to remove the jacket. There was a bench by what used to be a restaurant, but something had caved the entrance in. She sat in front of it and crossed her legs, slipping her boot down to rub at her shins. The phone connected and a gruff voice answered, “Hey, Lurita,” and she sighed with relief.
‡Chapter 9‡
Ghosts in the Alley
When Lur told Dhata that she’d left the safe house he immediately knew that it was time to act. If he didn’t strike first, it was only a matter of time before they would catch up with her. Akiyama Koch wanted her because of something she saw and he had a feeling that it tied right in with Jordan and his suicide.
He was annoyed when she told him but he kept his patience and told her to wait till after hours and return to the safe house. It was late and he was tired, having driven for several hours, and the zeppelin was no longer safe enough for him to return to.
Typically when Dhata felt out of options he would dig in deep and think about a person or resource that he could tap to get information. Right now those options seemed minimal at best, so he called Hiroshi to see if the cypher had any good ideas.
“Dhata Mays, I was wondering when you would call me,” Hiro said when he answered.
“Really?” Dhata said. “Why? Is there something we need to talk about?”
“Lurita and I have been talking about the case and where you are in the investigation,” he said. “You are at a dead end, guessing at a deeper plot as the cause for the explosion in the shuttle port.”
“Did Lur tell you that a certain company is trying to kill her?” Dhata said.
“Yes, she did, actually, and I found the chatter on the grid—”
“Wait, you found them?” Dhata said, sitting up with excitement.
“It was a chance thing when I started to monitor the communication lines coming into the company that we shall not name. I was probing around their firewall, taking note of all the cracks that I could exploit later. My main hope was for a big enough backdoor that I could slip my program into, remove the call for Lur’s capture, and then cripple their infrastructure so badly that they would forget about her in the fallout.”
“No luck?”
“There was luck, but of a different kind. I can cripple them, hurt them badly in the financial area, but in terms of stopping their pursuit of Lur—I didn’t see anything in their grid.”
“That would be too easy,” Dhata said. “Fate demands that I blow up their building instead of leaning on your covert ops. This isn’t your problem, Hiro, and I know that you don’t hack for free. What would I owe you to keep doing your thing?”
“This is a synth manufacturer that produced a mass-murdering synth, Dhata. It also threatened the life of a beloved friend. I don’t think that you can get more personal than what they have, so this isn’t just another job, if you know what I mean. This is a chance for some righteous cypher justice.”
“Love it,” Dhata remarked, smiling despite himself. “Do you know anything about this hunt for Lur, or the troops they produce there? The man I was looking into was also a synth, manufactured at that place and served in the same unit as Jordan—the shuttle port bomber. His buddy said that he was part of a group, some sort of post-war synth soldier club.”
“On the global network synths are calling them The Unsung. They’re an organization of synth ex-military, helping one another to assimilate into society.”
“The Unsung? Never heard of them, but the name is appropriate for synth military. Tell me, do many people know about them? Have they done anything like this before? Why is this the first time I’m hearing about them?”
“Well,” Hiroshi said, sounding like a professor priming a student for a lecture. “They are deep-synth, need-to-know level. Basically they are known to us through the Arch Brain, but are so secretive that most of my kind wouldn’t commit them to thought. Synth soldiers know them, they have a great reputation, but outsiders are not allowed at their meetings and their members have a strict code of silence programmed into their brains. Simply put, my friend, they couldn’t discuss Unsung meetings even if they wanted to. I’m afraid you won’t be able to get any answers from a member of their organization.
“So, aside from giving veterans aid, what else do they do?” Dhata said.
“Recruit, provide bodies to conflicts that involve humans terrorizing synths. The other reason why you won’t get answers is because they are viewed as synth protectors. Even if they were behind that bombing at the shuttle port, you won’t find any synthetic willing to divulge information.”
“This blows my mind, Hiro. If only we knew how little we don’t know, we’d all be better for it. The Johns I used to work with thought that synths were merely machines emulating humanity. It is the main reason synth on synth crime is ignored for the most part. But, here you have a secret organization that is thriving—yet again—due to human negligence.”
“You have always been wise, Dhata,” Hiro said.
“Wise, and a bit frightened, Hiro. If this group has gone violent now, there will be little that any of us can do about it. They have soldiers that have fought wars, secrecy, a company with more money than God covering things up, and a government that is so blinded by its policies that it doesn’t see them coming.”
“You speak as if all is lost, Dhata, but there is a chance,” Hiro said.
“Chance? Really? You see a way out of this? Please share, Hiro, because I’m fresh out of ideas.”
“Give me some time to research The Unsung. In the meantime, I have something for the people threatening Lurita. A virus, similar to the one we used to shut down that murdering Gemini; all you have to do is slip it in behind their firewall.”
Dhata thought about how difficult it would be to slip a virus into Akiyama Koch Robotics. Hiro may as well have asked him to sprout wings and fly. The AKR building was locked down, and after Lur’s stunt they would be on high alert, checking for any would-be spies trying to probe for information. Still, he was short on time and desperate. He would have to find a way to upload the virus, even if it meant walking in through the front door with his pistols blazing.
“Send me the virus and the instructions, Hiro. I’m on my way to Atlanta. If you find out anything on The Unsung, please let me know as soon as possible.”
