Neural Wraith, page 30
“What, you want me to organize a boat for you?”
“I get the feeling you’re important to quite a few people. The NFL… fuck, the NLF wouldn’t shut the fuck up about you. Our client was insistent that we not shoot you if we found you in Tartarus. And you’ve somehow gotten a cushy job with the cops overnight. Something tells me that a deal would be beneficial to both of us.”
“Let me guess: I don’t die, you leave.”
“I can negotiate,” Dallas said. “But yeah. Think of it this way: it’s more like we both stay alive. Because the longer I stay here, the closer I get to death anyway. The soldiers have been sniffing around too much. So, to make this quick, I’ll be a nice guy. You come with us, no bullshit, and I’ll tell you all about our mystery client.”
Nick took a risk. A crazy one.
He stood up.
A dozen weapons focused on him the instant he appeared. Then most of them focused on Meta’s hiding place.
“Shoot her and we don’t have a deal,” Nick said.
Dallas raised a hand. He was close to Nick’s height, but had tanned skin, and wore a heavy see-through jacket. Underneath were thick shirts and baggy pants. He also waved around what looked like some sort of bulky sci-fi rifle—Nick hadn’t seen anything like it, but suspected it was military spec.
Everything about these guys screamed that they were the foreign mercenaries Travis had mentioned. If so, they were definitely military types. The cybernetics, heavy weaponry, and tactics suggested they were used to this sort of work.
But the fact they had gone up against the Archangels still remained absolute madness. There couldn’t be many of them, and a lot of them had died in the attack. Mercs worked for cash. They couldn’t spend it if they were dead.
“Huh. Wasn’t sure you’d actually play along,” Dallas said.
“You’re desperate. Something’s gone horribly wrong for you to attack the Archangels in the open. The Tartarus raid was clean, and now you’re panicking.” Nick narrowed his eyes. “Given the NLF knew nothing about you, that means the client is screwing you. He panicked after the raid on the factories.”
“Guess you aren’t stupid, after all. Nice to negotiate with somebody with brains. Can’t tell with the client most of the time. Plays dumb a lot.” Dallas chewed on the inside of his cheek. “Look, we just want to fucking leave. I don’t want some military kill squad taking us out because we don’t have the right chip in our skulls or some shit.”
“Where’s the mainframe you stole?”
“Client has her. An unmarked truck picked her up in a parking garage in the CBD. Like you said, it was clean. Right up until we needed exfiltration. The company that brought us here had already gone under, and the client kept stringing us along.”
Nick’s eyebrows shot up. “You didn’t keep insurance?”
“Oh, we did. We backed up the AI on the mainframe, in case it got damaged. The real goods are the personalities of these things, right? What we didn’t tell the client was how to deactivate the dead man’s switch. So the whole thing got wiped, and we’re the only ones who can restore her.” Dallas grinned. “We’re professionals, after all. Don’t fuck with professionals.”
Nick felt lightning race along his nerves.
Helena had been wiped, but these goons had her backed up somewhere. While he suspected that the client didn’t give a shit about Helena herself, and actually wanted the hardware, Nick was the opposite.
“New deal,” Nick said. “Because I doubt you know anything about your client.”
Dallas chuckled. “Well, that might be the case. Go on. Lay down your cards.”
“You leave. I get the backup of the mainframe.”
“Deal. But I won’t tell you where we’re storing her until you organize the transport.”
Damn. Nick sure as hell didn’t have the pull for that.
But he did know that these mercs knew where Helena was. It was definitely stored on their implants somewhere.
“Nicholas,” Meta said.
Several guns pointed right at her hiding location. Dallas raised his hand again.
“It’s fine, Meta,” Nick said.
Something bright flickered above him, beyond the warehouse skylights.
As a resident of Babylon, there was no mistaking the origin of that light. Nick felt all tension leave his muscles.
“I recommend you tell me where she is now. You might be able to negotiate an actual deal off this rock if you do,” Nick told Dallas.
The merc furrowed his brow. “The fuck? We’ve got all the guns, moron. You think a couple of Liberators are going to save your ass? Or four more of these over-engineered tin cans?”
“No, just one.”
A deafening blast ripped through the air. A hole appeared in the ceiling, followed by the vaporization of one of the merc’s heads. Dallas and the remaining merc leaped into cover as bullets rained down on them. The G2s fired wildly into the ceiling.
One by one, the G2s collapsed as gunfire raked them from above. They barely got off a round each before all of them had been reduced to scrap.
Then the entire building shook. Dust poured down from the ceiling, and a sizeable indent formed in one spot.
A white-hot blade shot through the steel roof. It spun around in a circle fast enough to leave afterimages, causing a huge disk of metal to clatter to the floor. The edges of the steel still glowed.
An armored doll in the black and blue paint scheme of the Neo Westphalian military descended through the hole. A portable flight system glowed on her back, as the miniature turbines shifted along the armored winglike structure. In her arms were a pair of gargantuan guns, and the glowing blade protruded from her wrist.
The mercs shouted obscenities and opened fire at her. A few bullets bounced off her heavy armor, before she used both guns to blow them away. Dallas flew backward, a dozen bullet wounds opening up in his chest. The other merc’s head vanished.
The doll unceremoniously dropped to the ground. Concrete cracked where she landed. The visor of her helmet slid back to reveal a face that matched supermodels—probably because it had been modeled after one. Strands of silver hair were visible, and Nick knew there was a dense mass tucked away inside her helmet.
“I overheard the final part of the conversation,” Kushiel said, pointing a gun at Dallas. “Do you have all the information you need from him?”
CHAPTER 24
Nick had seen Kushiel in videos and images before. Cipher circles relentlessly pored over her, comparing her appearance to Mark 2 schematics. She was a common sight above the city whenever the military moved in force, as she was the only modern doll Neo Westphalia had with a flight system.
In the ceramic, she looked even more imposing than in any of those crafted images. Her figure was covered in heavy armor from top-to-bottom and painted in sleek black and blue. If Nick stood next to her, she’d have a solid foot on him. While her chest was covered in a bulky armor plate, its bulge indicated that she also had a significant size advantage over Rie.
Her bright red eyes bore into him while she remained stationary. Both of her weapons were similarly oversized, although she only pointed one at Dallas.
“Nicholas,” Meta said from beside him.
He returned to his senses and shook his head. Kushiel had asked him a question, and Dallas was bleeding out in front of his eyes.
This was no time to be awestruck.
“He…” Nick paused. If he told Kushiel the truth, would the military seize the data? They wanted Helena as well, didn’t they?
Kushiel waited patiently. Her expression gave away nothing.
“He has information that the police need for our investigation. We’ll need to interrogate him and access his implant,” Nick said.
Seconds passed. Kushiel stared at him, and Nick felt as if she was trying to access his mind directly. As advanced as she might be, she didn’t have that ability. She was still just a doll.
“Is this connected to the recent NLF factory raids?” she asked.
“No. His evidence is entirely unconnected to tracking down the NLF safe houses or understanding their activities.”
Kushiel’s lip twitched upward. “Understood. I can cooperate in that case.”
She flipped both of her weapons behind her back. Nick sighed. Dallas tried to gurgle something, which was a reminder he’d need medical attention to survive.
Then Kushiel dropped to her knees and grabbed Dallas by the head.
“Kushiel—” Nick began to say.
A trio of strange, thin devices shot out of Kushiel’s arm, roughly where the blade had been. She rammed them into Dallas’ head.
He couldn’t even scream. His body twitched, then froze. His pupils shrunk. Nick watched, frozen in shock.
After several agonizing seconds, Kushiel ripped her arm free. Dallas collapsed to the ground. He didn’t move, and blood oozed out of the wounds in the side of his head.
“I’ve uploaded a complete copy of his implant to the Host,” Kushiel said matter-of-factly. “It’s encrypted, but I bypassed the self-destruct measures of his neural mod.”
“What—”
Meta grabbed Nick’s arm. “The Neo Babylon Police Department thanks you for your cooperation, Colonel Kushiel.”
He blinked. “Colonel? I thought you were a police officer?”
“I’m both, but I’m only on loan to the police when I’m on active duty. The rest of the time, I’m an active military asset.” Kushiel shrugged. “We shouldn’t talk too much yet. Until Uriel arrives, this is an active military operation and your… evidence might be used against you.”
Nick gulped as he remembered that Kim had told him that the military had their own plans for him.
“What about the jamming?” he asked. “Does Rie know where we are?” He emphasized Rie’s preferred name.
Kushiel rolled her eyes in response to his use of Rie’s name. “She does now, but is a little busy. The jamming sources have been isolated and should be shut down imminently by the police. I came here directly because it avoided pointless bureaucracy—speaking of which, I need to see your phone.”
She strode over to him, which caused him to involuntarily freeze up. A grin crossed her face in response to his reaction.
“I don’t bite,” she said. “Unless you plan to program that in.”
“I’m pretty sure I don’t have access permissions to you,” he said.
“Oh? And here I thought the infamous Wraith would find a way into my neural link.”
Nick’s entire body shuddered involuntarily at the awful nickname, and Kushiel laughed.
“That nickname never gets old,” she said.
“It is a perfectly serviceable name,” Meta protested.
“Tell him that.”
“I just did.” Meta glared at Nick.
What? Nick rubbed his temples as he tried to make heads or tails of the conversation.
“Phone, Waite,” Kushiel said, holding a hand out. She towered over him, with one hand on an armored hip, but her grin made her look far more approachable than she’d ever looked on the Altnet.
He fished out his phone and dropped it in her palm. Kushiel flipped it in her palm, but didn’t seem to do anything special. After a few seconds, she handed it back.
“There. I’ve given you hardware access to the tracking frequencies in case of an emergency. That should let you stay connected to the Host if something goes wrong,” she explained.
“Tracking frequencies?” He scowled. “So the alterations the military made to my phone were for tracking me. And the hardware alteration was a big one.”
“You didn’t think we’d let you slip away just by jamming the neural network, did we? And consider yourself lucky.” She pressed a finger against his chest, which took a bit of effort on her behalf. “If I didn’t know where you were at all times, you’d be in a bigger mess.”
“Couldn’t you have shown up earlier?” He thought of all the destroyed Archangels. Juliet and Rosa…
She crossed her arms and looked away. “I lost you initially, and it took a minute to get approval to assist you. If you say the wrong thing, those orders will change to hauling you in.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“I could haul you in right now, if you’d prefer. If Uriel can’t keep her toys safe, then maybe I should take care of them.” Kushiel glared at him.
Nick raised his hands in surrender and took a step backward. Kushiel matched his movement.
“This is unnecessary intimidation,” Meta protested, limping between them.
“He likes it. Don’t worry about it,” Kushiel said.
“I don’t—”
“I know your interests as well as any Archangel.” Her eyes locked onto Meta, who pouted at the younger doll.
“This is unnecessary intimidation,” Meta repeated, but this time she was clearly talking about herself, not Nick.
Kushiel opened her mouth to respond, but then suddenly seized up. Meta reacted the same way.
Both women then visibly calmed down. Nick watched as an almost invisible layer of tension left their bodies. Meta leaned against him, and an arm slid around his back.
“Neural networking restored,” she said. “Officers are en route. ETA thirty seconds.”
Kushiel didn’t respond, and her eyes were vacant.
Rather than wait inside, Nick decided to leave. Their attackers were dead, and this was a matter for the rest of the Archangels to deal with. Nick didn’t really know what to do when it came to evidence handling.
By the time he and Meta left, the sound of squealing tires greeted them. Kushiel’s footsteps approached from the rear while dozens of Archangels surged out of the interceptors piling up nearby.
Rie led the charge, and Chloe was only a hair’s breadth behind her. All the police dolls carried heavy weaponry.
“Nicholas!” Rie said.
Her eyes flickered to Kushiel, then Meta, but she nearly slammed into him. As if she could assess his health with a glance, Rie looked him up and down several times. Her expression grew more and more concerned with each passing second.
“I have contacted Vanessa,” Chloe said, aware of Rie’s growing distress.
“Good. Have her meet us at—”
Kushiel cleared her throat loudly. “Officer Uriel, I would like to confirm that you are satisfied with Detective Waite’s physical security and condition.”
Rie’s eyes practically popped out of her skull. Her fists clenched.
Nick stepped forward and placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m fine, Rie. Answer Kushiel.”
Like a balloon deflating, Rie’s body seemed to shrink in on itself. “I am, Kushiel.”
Kushiel nodded, and her eyes flashed. She turned and flexed her flight system.
In the next moment, Nick knew she’d fly away. This was probably the last time he’d see her for ages.
Instinct drove him to say what he did. “Colonel Kushiel, I’d like to requisition your support in my investigation. Although the NLF threat has been effectively neutralized, this latest attack proves that my task force needs your assistance.”
Kushiel froze. “But not the military’s?”
Nick winced as he realized that he’d missed that part. She’d thrown him a bone. “Definitely not.”
She chuckled, while Rie’s mouth opened and closed in shock. With a flash of her eyes, Kushiel confirmed… something.
“Done. My mission to protect you has been verified as complete and successful. There’s no evidence to justify hauling you in. I’ve instated myself as an officer for the length of your investigation and dropped off the military network.”
“Just like that?” Nick asked.
“If something comes up that threatens the security of the city, I’ll become a soldier again, but there is a reason why I’m also in the police department,” she said, a hand on her hip. “I figured you realized that.”
“You didn’t?” Rie asked him through gritted teeth.
Nick looked at the angry expressions of the Archangels around him and raised his hands. They’d gone from concerned to angry damn fast.
What happened to their worries over his health?
“I knew Kushiel was hinting at something,” he said. “And I figured the military knows something about this whole situation, while I’m only guessing at what our suspect plans to use Helena for.”
“It’s a good thing you’re saying that now, and not thirty seconds ago,” Kushiel said drily. “The military is convinced you don’t know what Helena can actually do.”
“Somebody hasn’t been checking our investigation files,” Chloe said.
“For good reason. The less I knew, the less likely I was to haul him in. That was the entire reason I opposed hiring in the first place.” The military doll crossed her arms and glared at Rie. “If you want to keep your toy safe, don’t put him squarely in the crosshairs of the military.”
“The agreements signed give him protection from—”
“Right, and those will hold up just as well as the agreements that the police just violated when raiding Tartarus.” Kushiel rolled her eyes. “Fuck’s sake, Rie, don’t be an idiot. This is Babylon. If the military realizes that Nick isn’t the naïve kid that Welk tricked them into thinking, they’ll shove him in a lab as well.”
“That’s not what you promised,” Rie ground out.
“As well?” Nick asked.
Silence.
All eyes turned to him, while he looked between Rie and Kushiel for answers.
“Oops. Wasn’t supposed to say that,” Kushiel said, while scratching her cheek.
“This is why I wanted to cut you off from investigation files,” Rie muttered. “You and your big mouth.”
“A more pressing concern,” Chloe interrupted. “As I said, I have contacted Vanessa. She wishes to know where to meet us. If we do not provide her with a meeting location, she may escalate the matter and jeopardize our operation.”
Kushiel and Rie both spoke at once, which didn’t improve matters. When they stopped, it was to glare at each other.
“My apartment,” Nick said. “After Meta gets repairs.”
