The Dyson File, page 33
“Long story short, Cephalie was able to transmit out of the LENS right before the crabs tore it to bits.”
“Is she okay?”
“She was . . . mostly coherent, last I saw her.”
A nervous lump formed in his throat.
“The jamming garbled her connectome. Parks performed something called an ‘emergency reconstruction,’ and she was able to tell us what happened to you. After that, I came straight here—already in stealth mode—found the entrance and managed to sneak in. Parks got in touch with Hoopler, who’s mustering the troopers for a raid. They’re scheduled to hit this place hard in about six minutes.”
“Good. This place needs a firm smack.”
“The Pyrates didn’t have any security at all. I literally just found the right spot and pushed the side of the column open.”
“Makes sense when you think about it. They’re still getting settled in.”
“Fortunately, this room was close enough to the entrance for me to hear your interrogation.”
“Lucky me.” Isaac massaged his aching jaw. “After that you scoped out the situation and decided to follow my lead?”
“Pretty much. I took your headshake as a signal to hang back until called.” Susan presented Riller’s vial of corrupt medibots and shook it back and forth. “Though I did take the liberty of snagging this when they weren’t looking. No one turns my partner into paste. No one.”
Isaac smiled at her.
“Which leaves me with only one question,” she added.
“That being?”
“You want me to get you out of here? Or can I . . . ” She bobbed the combat frame’s head toward the exit Riller had disappeared through. “You know?”
“Take out the rest of the trash?” Isaac finished.
“Someone’s got to do it.”
“Any idea how many gangsters are left or what they’re packing?”
“Not a clue.”
“You have a plan of attack?”
“Nope. Improvising all the way.”
“Hmm.” Isaac made a show of having to think things over, but then his expression softened, and he gave Susan a casual shrug. “Sure. Why not? I think you’ve earned a chance to cut loose.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The gunshots were Riller’s first indication something had gone very wrong. A trio of shots popped off somewhere below her room on the third floor, echoing up the metal stairwell carved out of the structural column. Sporadic weapons fire followed those initial pops, coming from a variety of weapons.
Riller slammed her footlocker closed and stood up. Most of her possessions were still stored from when she’d been living in the old Kamiya-Franklin Energy Plant, and the room itself remained unfinished; most of the walls had been smoothed out by the constructor crabs, but the back wall was an uneven jumble of cubical shapes. Eventually, she wanted them to carve out twice the space, but other priorities had demanded their attention.
More gunfire rattled away in the floors below her, followed by a loud . . . whoosh?
Riller snarled as she opened a comm window.
“Davies, what the hell is going on down there?” She waited, but no response came. “Davies?”
Nothing. Her signal was getting through, relayed across the hideout’s unfinished but serviceable infostructure, but her righthand man didn’t answer her.
Didn’t. Or couldn’t.
She tried someone else.
“Yong here! We’re in deep shit, boss!”
“Calm down and tell me what’s going on,” she snapped.
“We’re under attack, that’s what! There’s a— I don’t even know what it is, but it’s tearing through the place, and we can’t stop it! We can barely see it!”
“Some sort of police mech?”
“Gotta be, because our shots might as well be spitballs!”
“Then deploy the crabs,” Riller fumed. “They’ll tear that machine to ribbons.”
“We tried that already!” Yong cried. “They can’t lock on! They’re meant for construction, not combat! They just sat around like a bunch of dumb fucks until that thing melted them down with a flamethrower!”
“Nonsense! Police don’t use flamethrowers!”
“Well, my eyebrows beg to disagree! As in, I don’t have them anymore! I wasn’t even that close to the flames when . . . oh no! Oh fuck! Get away from me! Get awa-a-a-a-ay!”
The connection auto-forwarded to another member of her team.
“Grasso here, boss. First floor’s a lost cause. That thing must be some new type of SysPol mech; it’s been pinging out a police badge. We’ve barricaded the second floor, but it won’t hold for long.”
“You give me all the time you can, you hear me?” she ordered. “You hold that position no matter what. A police mech, huh? Well, I’ve got a little surprise for our guest, but I need time to prep it. You understand me, Grasso?”
“Perfectly, boss. Everyone, you hear that? The boss has a plan! We hold here until she gets one of her toys ready! Everyone got that?”
“Got it!”
“Pyrates for life!”
“Hell yeah! Bring it on!”
“We’ll hold the line for you, boss,” Grasso finished.
“Good man. I’ll be with you soon.”
Riller closed the call and opened her footlocker once more. She rummaged deep inside, past changes of clothes mixed with labeled vials, to a false bottom. She sent the keycode, and the hidden hatch unlocked and swung upward. She reached through the opening, grabbed hold of the heavy harness balled up inside, and pulled it out.
Everything had gone to shit after they took that job from the Ghost. On the surface, it had seemed simple enough. Copy the target, extract the information, get paid. And what a payday! Corporate codes galore! A brand-new base of operations! Their own army of unregistered replicators!
She should have known it was too good to be true.
The first sign of trouble had been the mess at JIT Deliveries. By itself, a loss like that wasn’t alarming. Sure, it was a setback, both in personnel and material, but it shouldn’t have compromised their operation. Nothing inside the container could be traced back to the KF reactor, and the two men she’d stationed there were unproven and expendable. They didn’t know enough to be dangerous to her or the gang.
Or so she’d thought.
How then did SysPol find their reactor base?
It didn’t matter. Not at this point. Not with a police mech tearing through the place.
Her gang needed her now more than ever. They looked to her for leadership. Sure, some of them possessed real talent. Intellectual sparks that could have landed them high-paying jobs in more legit lines of work.
But none of them were leaders.
They looked up to her, depended on her. And yes, even feared her.
Circumstances sometimes forced her to scare troublemakers back into line, but fear was always her last resort, even if she played up—even reveled in—the theatrics. But that was a sideshow. Their trust in her had been earned through consistent leadership and a long line of successes.
She’d guided them through tough spots before. Was this problem really so different, they might be asking themselves? No, it wasn’t. Her gang knew with absolute certainty she had their backs, and they’d do everything in their power to slow the attacker down.
Trust was a powerful tool in the right hands.
And it took a special kind of bastard to abandon those who trusted her in their greatest moment of need.
Riller slipped her arms into the flight harness and shook it out over her torso. Smart-fabric straps self-adjusted for a secure fit atop her vest, and an abstract control menu appeared to her side. She linked the harness directly to her wetware and felt the control options open within her mind’s eye.
The harness wasn’t a full-fledged graviton thruster, but the backpack did contain enough exotic matter to generate a modest stream of gravitons when energized. She tested it, floated up onto her tippy toes, then a little higher before settling back to the ground.
She grabbed the corner of the footlocker and levered it out, exposing a square shaft cut into the wall. She dropped down onto her belly, switched on a light hung from her shoulder, and crawled into the shaft.
“Boss!” Grasso called in. “Anytime soon would be great!”
“Don’t worry. I’m almost there. Just hang on a little bit more.”
“We’re doing our best! Shit, it’s busting through! Open fire! Open fire!”
Riller closed the connection and pressed on. The shaft opened to a small ledge with enough headspace for her to twist around. She pulled out her legs and hung them over the edge. Her paltry light shone across a thick, intertwined trunk of utility lines that spanned the hollow core of the support column.
She gazed up at the dark void above her, then down at the seemingly infinite chasm below. Under better circumstances, she would have preferred to escape with her gang and her equipment intact. Or at least some of it. But her own skin would do in a pinch.
“I hate heights,” she muttered to herself, then powered up the harness.
The straps tugged at her waist, shoulders, and on either side of her crotch, lifting her above the ledge. She kicked off the wall, then slowed herself with a hand on the utility trunk.
She toggled the harness to a higher setting and found herself propelled upward, faster and faster. Her mind struggled to make sense of the speed without a frame of reference, even as wind whipped her hair back and dried her eyes.
She summoned a virtual grid over her vision which showed her altitude relative to Mattison’s Retreat in vivid green lines.
“Just about . . . ah. There we are.”
She slowed her approach and landed atop a second ledge almost identical to the first. Eight crabs waited alongside the square channel, watching her with their camera stalks. She’d tasked the crabs with cutting her emergency escape shaft, along with a matching partner that led into the Second Engine Block.
She powered down the harness and set it aside. She wouldn’t need it anymore, and this shaft was even narrower than the first. She dropped to her hands and knees and began to crawl her way through the long, dark shaft. If her review of the structural maps was correct, it would lead her to a utility maze underneath a Second Engine Block reactor.
Which would be a great place to lay low for a while.
It wasn’t ideal. But it would do, given the circumstances.
She could see light at the end of the shaft and chuckled.
It pays to have a Plan B, she thought, basking in her own brilliance. She could make out a jumble of pipes beyond the opening, which seemed about right for the city’s utility maze. She crawled out of the shaft—
—and froze at the sight of the Arete Division Red Knight hovering over her.
“Fuck!” she blurted without thinking.
The mech’s huge floating torso spun to face her, and its head angled down, cameras focusing. Its arms and shoulders were loaded with heavy weapons.
“Citizen,” the mech said in an emotionless voice, “you should not be here. Follow me, and I will guide you to safety.”
Riller’s mind raced with panicked thoughts. She spotted a utility tunnel behind and to the left of the mech. Wide enough for her to slip through, but too narrow for the bulky mech. Not unless it planned to bash its way through the pipes.
She scrambled to her feet, taking off like a runner leaving the blocks, and bolted past the Red Knight.
“Stop, citizen. That is not the right way.”
She turned sideways and slipped between two vertical reclamation lines. The tunnel widened after that initial squeeze, and she straightened out and ran down the metal corridor.
She wasn’t sure how long she ran, but her heart raced with a mix of exertion and adrenaline. She slowed to a jog as the maze began to open up, leading into a domed space ahead of her. She stole a quick glance over her shoulder, relieved to find nothing big or red in pursuit. She slowed to a walk and exited the tunnel—
—then skidded to a halt at the sight of two SysPol officers: a man and a woman in Themis Division uniforms. The man bore a face twisted by what must have been deep frustrations while he nursed a steaming mug. The small, mousy woman next to him seemed to be trying her best to cheer him up, a heavy bag marked as EVIDENCE in one hand. A pair of LENS drones floated behind them.
“Hey!” shouted the male officer, almost spilling his drink as he started toward Riller. “You there! You need to get out of here!”
“Ma’am, stop!” the woman shouted urgently.
Riller picked another tunnel and dashed for it.
“No!” shouted the man. “Not that way!”
She pumped her arms and legs and raced down the tunnel, afraid to turn around, half expecting one of their drones to ensnare her at any moment. She ran and ran and ran, for how long she wasn’t sure, but sweat drenched her armpits by the end of it.
She jogged to a halt and hunched over, gasping for air.
“Why?” she panted. “Are there cops? Everywhere?”
“Be my friend?”
Riller snapped her gaze up at the sound of the oddly high-pitched voice, but it took her a moment to find the source. What appeared to be a yellow teddy bear squeezed its way out between two pipes, then plopped onto the ground beside her.
“What?” she gasped. “The hell? Are you?”
“Won’t you be my friend?” The yellow teddy bear extended its stubby arms toward her, then began prancing forward on stubby legs.
“No.”
“Aww. Please?” It pitter-pattered up to her in an effort to hug her leg.
“I said no!”
She punted the toy bear down the tunnel. Its little, yellow body tumbled through the air, landed on its head with a crunch, then bounced several times before finally rolling to a stop, facedown.
“She’s not nice.”
“Not nice.”
“Not nice?”
“Not nice at all.”
The voices came from behind her, and while the first few sounded as sickly sweet as the yellow toy’s, the last one could have been used as nightmare fuel to keep children awake at night. If her torture medibots had possessed a voice, that would have been it.
She turned around, slowly, unsure what she expected to find.
She almost wished she hadn’t.
Dozens of the fluffy, colorful toys slid, squeezed, and oozed out from every hole and crevice in the tunnel’s sides, floor, and ceiling. They came in a variety of colors: bright pinks, pastel blues, warm yellows and oranges, and more sedate colors like tan and black. The only exception was a toy that seemed entirely composed of scrap metal formed into a slapdash, quasi-bearlike shape.
They pranced happily toward her, and she began to back away, but soon discovered more of the toys emerging on the other side. Beyond those, even more of the creepy toys pushed their way into the open all up and down the tunnel. It didn’t matter which way she ran; they were everywhere!
“Should we take her?” asked one of the toys.
“Take her?”
“Take . . . her?”
“Her?”
“Let’s take her!”
The scrap-metal bear pointed at her with fingers like miniature scalpels, and the horde of toys surged forward. Riller kicked and punched and thrashed at the small robots, and while she was stronger than one or two or even ten of the toys, she wasn’t stronger than thirty of them.
“Get off! Get the fuck off me, you freaks!”
The rainbow-colored swarm dragged her down, and she landed on her back with an oof. The scrap-metal toy mounted her chest in triumph.
“Let me give you a kiss and make it all better.”
The toy reached toward her face with its jagged metal arms, and Riller screamed like a little girl.
* * *
“That doesn’t sound good,” Raviv said mournfully, staring down the tunnel as the young woman’s screams reached him.
“We did try to warn her,” Damphart reminded him.
“Didn’t seem to do much good.” Raviv took a sip from his CRIMINAL TEARS coffee mug.
“You think we should have sent the drones after her?”
“We can’t force people to evacuate.”
“Yes, I suppose you’re right. Being stupid isn’t a crime.”
“And we should all be thankful it’s not.” Raviv held out the mug, and his LENS retrieved a thermos from an internal compartment and refreshed it. “She was in an awful hurry. When’s Arete scheduled to sweep through this sector?”
“Not for another hour at least.”
“Oh well.” He shrugged. “She’ll have to tough it out until then.”
“Chief Inspector!”
Raviv turned around at the familiar voice, but then had to perform a double take.
“Agent Cantrell?” he asked.
“Yes, sir.” The blue-and-white humanoid snapped to attention.
“What are you doing here and in your combat frame?” Raviv glanced past her. “And where’s Isaac? Is he here, too?”
“No, sir. But don’t worry. He’s all right. I was able to rescue him before the Byte Pyrates liquefied his insides.”
“Excuse me!” Raviv’s eyes bugged. “Liquefy his insides?”
“Correct, sir.”
“But he’s fine now?” Raviv asked urgently. “You’re sure of that?”
“Except for a few cuts and bruises, perfectly fine.”
“Are those . . . bullet holes in your chest?” Damphart asked.
“I’ve had worse.”
Damphart and Raviv exchanged worried looks.
“The perpetrators resisted arrest,” she added.
“And are they all . . . ” Raviv paused to lick his lips. “Arrested now?”
“All except for one. I’m trying to rectify that omission.” Susan scanned their surroundings left, then right. “But I seem to have lost the trail.”
“You wouldn’t happen to be after a young woman?” Raviv asked. “Rather thin? Blonde hair except for a short, blue braid?”
“That’s the one, sir. She’s a real piece of work named Zalaya Riller. I found her bugout hatch and followed it up to . . . where am I exactly?”
“Second Engine Block,” Damphart answered. “Right beneath the Norman-MacCarthy reactor.”
