CHAPTER 10
As Nick left the task force office, he noticed an extra companion. Or at least, a companion he hadn’t expected to follow him outside.
“You’re coming with us, Rie?” he asked the prototype, who he doubted left the police building for investigative work.
Her smile gained an edge and Nick knew he was treading on thin ice. “Is there a problem with that?”
“Uh, no. But so far you’ve…” he trailed off and realized the obvious.
Rie had been calling their relationship a partnership. He was a detective, and the task force was pretty small. Why would a fancy prototype doll cloister herself in an office, instead of going out and investigating directly?
Hell, she was better equipped than he was. While she’d done a great job hiding her schematics from him on the police network, he’d read up on the Mark 3s. Between the heavy armor, vastly increased battery efficiency, and their integrated neural optics, the only thing Nick had over her was a decade-plus of on-the-job Cipher experience.
Apparently, that meant something. Did Sigma Robotics lack skilled Ciphers to train the Archangels? Then again, they’d relied entirely on Neural Spike for the original training data and stimuli that became the Mark 1s. Unless there was a Neo Neural Spike somewhere in the city, Sigma might not have a source for training their AIs.
“If that’s settled, then let’s head down to the garage,” Rie said, and took the lead.
Chloe and a familiar pair of Mark 3s clustered around Nick. A hand pushed against his backside, ushering him forward.
They didn’t get far. Between the task force office and the elevators was an open workspace full of Mark 1s. They had cubicles for some reason, but the room seemed like something designed by humans who didn’t understand what the Archangels would do in the office all day. Nick doubted the dolls used the space for anything other than charging and weapons storage.
Right now, they used it to congregate. Well over a hundred Mark 1s stood around the desks and open corridors. Did this count as a flash mob?
This time, they didn’t wait for Nick to cross some invisible barrier. The moment he came into sight, the mob lurched toward him. The Mark 3s stepped in front of him, although nobody reached for weapons.
Eyes flashed, however. Nobody said anything, leaving Nick completely in the dark.
Rie’s expression was thunderous. If she had a weapon on her, Nick felt she’d be fingering its trigger.
“Uh, can somebody jump out of the Altnet, or whatever you call your private neural network, and tell me what the hell is happening?” Nick asked, scratching his head.
Far too many pairs of eyes stared at him. He resisted the urge to shrink in on himself. While he wasn’t shy, recent interrogations by the Mark 1s were too fresh in his memory. Nick did his best to suppress his discomfort.
The Mark 3s took a step away from him and looked back at their older counterparts, as if reading his emotions. But the mob merely looked at Rie, who glared back at them.
“The Host has a misunderstanding about your position,” she said coldly.
Chloe cleared her throat. “I do not believe that is the problem. The Mark 1s believe that this morning’s problem is unresolved. I… am inclined to agree. Even if Nick needs to investigate matters himself, it is difficult to guarantee his safety against an unknown threat.”
“I’ve been threatened a lot before,” he said, leaving it unsaid that the threat often came from the Archangels.
He’d often suspected that they would be the cause of his death, after all.
The eyes of the Mark 1s flashed. Notably, the Mark 3s didn’t join in.
One of the older models stepped forward. Her serial number read “ARC-M01-NB04912,” which seemed familiar to Nick for some reason.
“The Host wishes to ensure your protection. This conflicts with your duties as a detective, but not as a Cipher. A consensus is unable to be achieved in this state, but we do not wish for you to be placed in danger without further protective actions,” the doll said.
Internally, Nick wanted to give her a name. All the Archangels looked the same, so for now he just called her Twelve, after her serial number.
“I will be with him,” Rie said.
“Your safety is not in question,” Twelve replied.
Before Rie could bite back, Nick raised a hand. Once again, all eyes turned to him.
He really wished they would stop doing that.
“Given our suspects have anti-armor rifles, what actions can be taken?” he asked. “I’m not spending the next few weeks in a bunker because of the miniscule chance that you don’t spot a hypothetical sniper.”
The eyes of every doll went offline at once, including Rie’s. That told Nick they were taking him seriously.
Personally, he had a couple of ideas in mind. But he doubted that anything he had thought up was new to them. Their concerns seemed more fundamental than the fact Nick barely remembered how to handle a gun.
After several long seconds, the Archangels returned to reality.
“We have three areas of concern,” Twelve said.
Nick raised a hand again. “By ‘we,’ do you mean the entire Host or the Mark 1s?”
“… yes.”
He tried not to scowl at the smartass answer. Rie didn’t make that effort. A glance at Chloe earned him the real answer.
“Without a consensus, you should assume that M01-NB04912 represents the faction of the Host that wants additional action taken,” she explained.
Even Chloe used the serial number to describe other units, apparently.
“So there are Archangels who disagree?” he asked
“Most objections are on procedural grounds,” Twelve interrupted. “Consensus has been reached that additional protection should be provided in principle, but not on which actions.”
This was too complicated for Nick. He rubbed his forehead and sighed.
“So?” he asked.
Silence.
“I was asking what your three areas of concerns were.”
Twelve gave him a perfunctory nod. “Communication. Knowledge of your future actions. Physical protection.”
“… those are headings of concerns, not actual concerns,” he said.
Grimaces crossed the faces of every Mark 1 and their eyes flashed. Once again, the Mark 3s did their own thing.
Nick wondered why Chloe hadn’t stepped in to interpret. Was this some sort of factional war? She was supposed to be his liaison, he supposed.
“Look,” he said, deciding to throw his own ideas out there to break this impasse. “I want some sort of earpiece so I can communicate with you anyway. Does that solve one issue?”
Nods.
“I can’t tell you what I’m doing in the future, because that’s how the future works. I don’t think I need to explain that,” he said, earning grumpy looks from the assembled dolls. “But I can try to give more lead time and explain where I’ll be going. I’m guessing you’re used to reading the neural implants of people and anticipating actions before they’re taken.”
“Yes,” Chloe said. “That is exactly correct.”
“As for physical protection… Well, you’ll need to work out how you can keep me safe while I’m out, but I’m not letting you keep me in a shell or scare everyone away. I do need to practice with my gun more,” he said.
Twelve’s eyes lit up, but she didn’t consult with the Host. “We shall provide you with rigorous training imminently, including firearms handling. The Host can continue to simulate and ruminate on possible solutions to your personal safety.”
Her fellow Mark 1s seemed confused. Finally, the eyes of the dolls collectively flashed and everyone calmed down.
Rie sighed. “Right. Is that settled then? You know where we’re going, where Nicholas lives, and where he’ll be tonight. A suitably small earpiece that meets encryption requirements will be acquired.”
“And we shall train Nicholas,” Twelve insisted. She seemed personally excited by the prospect.
“Sure,” Nick said. “You know where I’ll be tonight?”
“There’s only one district that Detective Hammond will take you, given his… propensities.” Rie shrugged. “Shall we go?”
She held her arm out, and he led the way this time. A half-dozen Mark 1s followed, including Twelve.
When they entered the underground garage, a police interceptor and two SUVs awaited them. Rie slipped into the interceptor and patted the seat next to her. The stares of her fellow dolls were reproachful, but they said nothing.
The vehicle was the same model as the one that Chloe had brought him to the Spires in the other night. The long dash remained off, but Nick wondered how it worked.
If the driver couldn’t connect to the vehicle, how would they even drive it? Were there controls hidden behind a compartment, just like the weapons in the SUVs? Chloe had said there were refreshments when she brought him in. They must be hidden somewhere.
Once the other dolls boarded their vehicles, the convoy set off. The destination was known, as they were heading to the same place that Rie had briefed him yesterday.
Except this time, he planned to visit one of the establishments he’d tested the Archangels in. Would they remember it?
Doubtful. Chloe had been completely ignorant of what happened there, and this gentleman’s club was well known to the police.
“I forgot to ask, but you know who we’re visiting, right?” he asked Rie. “I never explained.”
She smiled. “Lucas Miller. Cipher. Son of British and French immigrants. Owner of two black companies: the Cobalt Lily, and Formeus Doll Imports. The former is a high-class gentleman’s club with a variety of highly customized and modded pleasure dolls for the cashed-up upper class and wealthy tourists of Neo Babylon.”
“That’s a fancy way of saying that it’s a brothel with a nightclub for a front,” Nick said. “Lucas used to always trick out his dolls, though. And he originally hired me to keep them and his mainframe free of interference.”
What the Cobalt Lily did was the original definition of a “black company.” Its business was decriminalized and frowned upon by the elite who founded the city, whose personal values preferred that it didn’t exist—despite other personal values they held that suggested they shouldn’t interfere.
Hence black companies. They effectively existed outside the scope of Babylon’s government. The police ensured that no laws were broken, that any violence didn’t spill over and affect the general populace, and none of the companies were fronts for more nefarious problems. But otherwise? Complete lawlessness.
So a competitor could “legally” sabotage other businesses, spread malicious lies, and cause general mayhem. Any black company that didn’t keep competent Ciphers on-hand lasted all of five seconds in Babylon. That was roughly how long it took for an Altnet virus to get into an unmodded doll and wreak havoc, and the Archangels wouldn’t give a damn.
At least so long as a black company never disturbed the illusory peace of Babylon, that is.
Rie shrugged and stretched out in her seat. As expected, Lucas’s activities were literally programmed to be of no concern to her.
“Formeus Doll Imports is of more concern to me,” she said. “It borders on criminal and is effectively a front.”
He raised an eyebrow. This was news to him.
“You’ve been out of contact with Lucas for some time,” she continued.
“By law,” he said. “He was a major collaborator with Neural Spike. We got most of our dolls through him. Tartarus’s security dolls came through him, even. They were a custom build made by RTM, loosely based on the G5 but with a lot of military spec features.”
“Don’t think we haven’t noticed the roundabout messages you’ve sent to him through other contacts,” Rie warned. “But that doesn’t matter anymore. What you missed over the past few years was that his import company has expanded. He’s a major supplier of illegal weaponry and neural mods, rather than just doll mods.”
Nick frowned. “Huh. Was that because Jeremy got taken down recently?”
Rie tilted her head. After a few seconds, she nodded. “Jeremiah Hill. CEO of Hillfort Arms and All. We declared it a criminal enterprise after it sold a large volume of anti-doll weaponry to a terrorist organization. Most of its wares were seized.”
“But its customers went elsewhere. I bet Lucas picked most of them up.” Nick scratched his neck. “Well, that means this trip won’t be wasted. I want to talk to Lucas because he’s keyed into the underworld. The more shit he’s selling, the better. Even if you don’t like him.”
“It is not a matter of dislike. It is highly probable that he sold the neural mods and weaponry to the NLF. In fact, he sold them to their predecessor, the Neural Liberation Front. I am unsure why an order was never given to arrest him,” she said.
For a moment, Nick was confused. Then he remembered they were after the Neuron Liberation Front.
“Did they really change two letters and call themselves a new movement?” he asked.
Rie laughed.
Given that Rie knew who and what they were visiting, Nick let the topic lie. Traffic was heavier than he liked. He wasn’t used to this sort of thing, as he rarely took the roads. Robot taxis were expensive compared to public transport.
But he knew enough about the city to guess the reason traffic was slow. They were heading the same direction everyone else was. The red-light doll district was a trendy part of town, despite being quite seedy. Unlike Alcatraz, it had a veneer of respectability and plenty of rich patrons. The lack of a dodgy name likely helped.
As the convoy chugged along behind a slow line of robot taxis, limousines, and private vehicles, Nick tried to relax.
“How are you settling in?” Rie asked.
“On day two, technically?”
“You certainly got off to a flying start.”
He shrugged. “I’m used to it. No. I was used to it. Tartarus was like being shackled, after a career of flitting about and always picking up jobs with no briefing and no opportunity to understand what I was doing. Before Neural Spike, bosses like Lucas brought me in to handle dodgy shit because I could be kept in the dark.”
Nick tapped the side of his head. No neural implant meant that a lot of the city remained invisible to him, even if he was a Cipher. And back then, he hadn’t been half the Cipher he was today. Or even a Cipher, really.
“And in Neural Spike?” Rie asked. “I understand you got along with the CEO, Leon Welk.”
Ah, Welk. Nick tried not to frown.
“It’s harder to explain,” he said. “Welk hired me directly, based on Lucas’s recommendation. He was like fire. Not on fire, but actual fire. Untamable, chaotic, and so full of energy that it caught onto everything around him.”
“But he liked you,” Rie insisted. “There are many security records of the two of you together. Even…” she abruptly stopped.
“I take it you know something that you can’t tell me,” he said drily.
“Welk was interrogated thoroughly upon arrest. But those records are deeply classified. Suffice it to say that he spoke about you and your relationship.”
Huh. Nick wondered if the reason he walked away from the entire debacle was because of his old CEO.
Did he owe his freedom to that old maniac? So much of his life came back to Neural Spike, good and bad. He would be a fraction of the man he was today if he had never worked there, even if it had nearly buried him entirely.
He shook his head. The past was the past. Nothing could change it.
“In any case, Welk was chaos. That meant I bounced from task to task with basically no background. I’d be cleansing mainframes one day, running stimuli tests in the red-light districts another, then helping him design directives for dolls another. Then everything collapsed, and my job became glorified tech support.” He shrugged. “So this morning felt like a return to the norm, only with more guns.”
“I’m glad.” Rie smiled. “Genuinely. I did want this to be a partnership, and for you to get something out of this other than large sums of cash.”
“I definitely appreciate the money,” he said with a wink. “I had a look at the contract you signed. How the hell did you convince the department to agree to that? And why did Chloe come up with that figure?”
“Chloe? What do you—” Rie’s eyes flashed and a brief expression of rage distorted her face.
Then she calmed down and smiled thinly at him.
Silence ruled the cabin. The soundproofing of the vehicle meant he couldn’t hear the humdrum of the people on the sidewalks as they pulled into the underground parking lot.
“I believe I may have underestimated Chloe’s… eagerness to be your liaison,” Rie said with false sweetness.
“I did say I wanted to be paid more,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “You made a general threat because you were annoyed at how pushy Chloe was being. Although, given the state of your apartment, I can’t say I disagree with your new pay. I shall insist that you make proper use of it, however.”
The interceptor rolled to a stop. Nick decided this was a great opportunity to end the conversation, before Rie tried to force him to move into a swanky penthouse.
Unlike the parking garages in the CBD, this one looked pretty full. Many of the customers in this district had the cash to blow on their own self-driving car, and extortionate parking fees would hardly dissuade them. Sleek sports cars sat alongside towering SUVs. More than a few strangely boxy vehicles could be spotted here and there, although they looked a lot better in augmented reality.
Nick and the Archangels took the stairs up. Nobody scattered upon their arrival this time. The streets were alive with people and dolls. The well-heeled rich enjoyed the quaint cobblestone streets, while laughing, eating, and drinking from the range of fancy bars and restaurants.
None of the businesses had human staff, naturally, save maybe a chef or the owner. Doll waitresses ferried food and drinks out. Some places were completely self-serve, and customers ordered everything using the Altnet, then collected it at the kitchen.
Security dolls and beefier folks with visible cybernetics patrolled the streets. The dolls were a mixture of the RTM G6s and the newer Sigma Lancer.
Both dolls were considerably larger than the Archangels, and closer in size to the Liberator models. Six feet tall, visible thickness to provide durability against small arms, and limited armor plating over select parts of the body. The G6s possessed variety in their appearance, due to their global nature, and could pass as human save for their metallic antennae and armor.
By contrast, the Lancers were a monolithic model. They all looked like blonde bombshells, and Nick had heard that part of Sigma’s marketing was to people who wanted a security doll who would look great on their arm. Doll wives were hardly a new thing, even if they remained niche.
“I’m amazed that nobody is worried about a pack of Archangels,” Nick said as they strode down one of the busier streets.
“We commonly patrol at this time,” Twelve said.
Chloe frowned. “Is it normal to allow so much rule-breaking activity? Many of these weapons appear to be loaded with lethal ammunition.”
Nick followed her gaze and saw a trio of suited thugs. The men stared back at him, unflinching. Unlike the security dolls, they didn’t carry their guns openly. Their bulky coats were as effective as Nick’s at hiding bulky weapons.
“Concealed weapons?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” Chloe said. “The Americium model of the Lawman, specifically. The neural receiver in them isn’t modded.”
“I doubt the security here intends to fight the police. Illegal ammo or not, closing a gun off to the security bands is just asking to be shot,” he said.
The Mark 1s nodded in sync. Their SMGs dangled loosely from their necks, indicating they saw no danger nearby. The security dolls likely carried non-lethal stun rounds, given their shotguns lacked ammunition-switchers.
“We’re not here to rough up random black companies and their security,” Rie said. “If they attempt to interfere with us, then that’s another matter. Or do you know some of them?”
Nick snorted. “I haven’t come here for years. You know that, and you know why. We’re about to have a friendly chat with one of those reasons.”
They walked farther down the street. The crowds thinned out the farther they went. Several of the establishments here had blacked-out windows. They probably had augmented advertising that Nick couldn’t see.
If they went inside, he knew they’d be served a lot more than just food. The dolls that lingered in doorways and called out to passersby often left little to the imagination. Some wore designer clothing with holes in the right places. If anyone needed to know if dolls had the parts for intercourse, they’d find out here.
Of course, not all of them did. But it was a popular add-on. Most businesses bought through importers, rather than direct, and the add-on increased resale value. It wasn’t like somebody could drill the parts in afterward.
The Mark 1s looked around with sharp eyes as they strode through here. More than a few times, he spotted them glare at a rather mundane doll. Said doll would freeze up for several seconds, and often walk into a building.
“I take it some laws are being broken,” Nick said.
Rie grinned. “You cannot see, but many of these dolls have highly augmented appearances. It’s not legal to appear in public with a non-human appearance. We can overlook some of them, but some of them are… less eye-pleasing than others. Or pose a risk to older neural implants.”
“Ah. Tentacle monsters. I thought those were out of fashion?” He nodded, stroking his chin.
“I understand that trends go in waves. But these are more… eldritch.”
Nick made a note to look up some photos on the Altnet later. What even was the current augmented doll fashion these days?
The Archangels gave him a strange look, and he suspected his thoughts had showed on his face. Also, the fact he kept tabs on this sort of stuff probably alarmed them.
One of the more popular features of neural implants was the ability to alter all of one’s perceptions. Somebody could become a giant monster, and their partner could become a prancing centaur. Or they might grow many tentacles. The possibilities weren’t quite limitless, simply because the human mind struggled to control non-human bodies.
AI assistants came to the rescue, however. They helped ordinary people live out weird fantasies without their minds shattering or the neural immersion breaking.
Dolls were one step better, however. They excelled at impossible neural play. However, the AR models they used could sometimes be too complicated and cause migraines and other health issues in humans.
Babylon strictly regulated the presence of AR on the streets. These dolls were modded to dodge those regulations, which was why the Archangels were actively policing the street.
“You should get some AR glasses,” Rie said, eying one particular doll.
“Find me a pair that even works with the current Altnet and maybe we’ll talk.”
For some reason, the eyes of every Archangel flashed. Apparently, he had given them an idea. They said nothing, however.
Eventually, the crowds thinned out completely. While a few dolls hung around outside businesses here, they were advertising a much more explicit product than up the street.
Nick stopped outside an understated building. Unlike much of the city, it was constructed from brick and painted black. Wooden fixtures decorated its exterior. The main entrance was a little farther down, but the Cobalt Lily was closed at this time.
Instead, they stood outside a small alcove. A pair of security dolls with bulky automatic shotguns stood guard inside. The guns were identical to the shotgun used by one of the Mark 3s this morning at the docks.
Up those stairs was the office of Lucas Miller, a Cipher that Nick hadn’t spoken to directly for years. And the man who had inadvertently set Nick on this path all those years ago.
“Well, let’s go say hi,” he said aloud.