CHAPTER 16
“I assume there’s a reason we’re responding so quickly,” Nick said as Chloe ushered him out of his bedroom.
He at least made sure to say “thanks” to Sung, before locking his computer. Then he let the dolls push him into the main room.
There, he saw Juliet and Rosa carrying his coat and gun over to him. He quickly prepared himself, although he received more assistance from them than necessary.
“I have provided the Host with the information Sung sent us,” Rie explained. “They are investigating the factories from afar and confirming with Lucas which he has already checked. Local patrols are deviating to monitor factories we deem notable.”
“Okay, that’s the sort of efficiency that Sigma sells in their marketing materials, but why do we need to get in the car right now?” Nick asked. “Because if we burst in guns blazing, that seems more likely to cause a problem than not. You held off for ages on Tartarus over operational concerns.”
“And we brought the operation forward within hours when ordered,” she said.
They left his apartment. He made sure to lock his own door, even if it was apparently unnecessary.
He’d get a physical door lock, like the chains they used in hotels, but he was pretty sure the Archangels could reach through the gap and crush one like nothing.
“The reason is that the Host knows, and that means Kushiel knows,” Rie finally said while waiting for the elevator. “If we delay, they may strike first.”
“Just like that?” Nick asked.
“The NLF are a terrorist operation. They won’t need approval to act.” She frowned. “This may seem rash to you, but this is almost slow for us. We have scenarios that require us to shut down major companies, or even a whole Spire, with less than an hour of operations planning. Minutes, in the case of major financial institutions going rogue.”
“Wait, you’d bust into a bank if it went rogue?”
“Neo Westphalia’s independence is deeply reliant on the stability of its financial, currency, and credit systems. If they were ever compromised, the military may not be able to act fast enough. As such, we would be expected to disconnect any institution from all networks and neutralize the entire company.”
That sounded a lot like “sacrifice a bank for the good of the city,” which was a surprising thing to hear from a place like Babylon. Then again, if someone’s wealth was at stake, they’d happily throw somebody else overboard to save it.
The elevator doors opened and a young woman with two young children stared out at them. Four Archangels stared back, SMGs dangling from all but one of their bodies.
“Wow, angels!” the young girl shouted. She couldn’t be older than seven.
“Archangels,” Juliet and Rosa automatically corrected.
“Can we get—” the girl started to say.
Her mother grabbed her children by the arm and dragged them away as fast as she could. Nick didn’t say anything. There wasn’t really anything he could say.
People might jeer as the Archangels stepped on somebody else from afar, but they didn’t want to be face-to-face with one themselves. They weren’t the friendly face of the department like the Liberators.
Rie and the others stepped inside the elevator as if nothing had happened. Nick followed after a moment.
“So we’re rushing in because the military might steal our prize,” Nick said. “Fair. How do we ensure we don’t mess it up?”
“Because we know how to do this, Nicholas,” Rie chided, giving him an upturned look.
Or at least, she tried to. The height difference made it look like she was trying to hide her face behind her braided bangs.
“We will narrow down the likely factories, then confirm which contain NLF members. There will be paper trails that will be perfectly obvious once we only have one or two targets, and possibly individuals we recognize entering the factory. Within an hour, we can deploy in force, establish a cordon, shut down the neural network, and hit the factory from all sides.”
Nick didn’t need to imagine it. There had been videos all over his feed from the raid on the Tartarus party, after they had been unsuppressed.
Dozens of black SUVs and vans had pulled up at once as though coordinating a music video. Then hundreds of Archangels had poured out into the building before anyone could react, and the street had filled with blinding red and blue lights.
The factory raid would involve far fewer arrests and far more railgun shots blowing holes through security bots, though. The commissioner probably wouldn’t be happy once the Altnet filled with the wreckage of G2s in the NLF plant.
Nick frowned. “Why the hell would the CEO of RTM Strategic house terrorists in his own factory? I don’t think much of the rich bastards in the Spires, but the man is CEO of the largest military robotics company in the world. There’s only so much stupidity I’ll accept.”
“He is likely a victim of fraud. The transactions involved have already been flagged for investigation, along with the associated accounts,” Chloe said. “Once the raid begins, they will be frozen and pursued.”
“This is like Tartarus. Shutting them down early will give us away, right?”
“Yes.”
But that also meant that somebody might be trying to frame RTM, or at least the commissioner’s brother.
That didn’t put Commissioner Kim in the clear, but Nick couldn’t use this as solid evidence. They could be using the factory for the NLF and relying on plausible deniability—after all, Nick had instantly dismissed the idea as incredibly stupid.
As they left the tenement, a pair of SUVs and interceptors waited outside the apartment. Six Mark 1s stood beside them. Nick spotted Twelve with them, then remembered he wanted to give her a new name.
“Wait,” he said before anyone could force him into an SUV or interceptor. “Uh…” he stumbled over his words, unsure how to call Twelve over without revealing he had named her “Twelve” or just calling her by her serial number.
Thankfully, she cottoned on and trotted over anyway. “Is something wrong, Nicholas?”
Rie and the Mark 3s looked at him. Their gazes were quite different to one another.
“Yes, actually. Yesterday, the Mark 1s said that I should assume that you represent them when there isn’t a Consensus. That makes you the voice of the Mark 1s, right?” he asked, drawing on what little biblical knowledge he actually had.
What he was about to do would probably be sacrilegious, but so was a lot of this city. They had a Spire called Axis Mundi, for fuck’s sake. Nick knew that was the name for the connection between Heaven and Earth.
Twelve nodded. “That is correct. Just as…” she hesitated, then continued, “Chloe, Juliet, and Rosa are permanently assigned to you, I hold the same position with the Mark 1s. Even if it doesn’t hold the same status outside the task force.”
“Then you get a name as well,” he said, eliciting gasps from the nearby Archangels. “If you’re the voice of the Mark 1s Archangels then that makes you Metatron. I, uh, don’t really have a shorter, cuter name like Rie’s. I’ll probably just call you Meta.”
For a moment, Nick thought Meta was going to faint. Then her eyes flashed, and the other Mark 1s flashed in response.
“The Host has… reservations,” she said.
Nick looked back at the Mark 3s behind him. Rie’s expression looked strained, but even the Mark 3s were openly annoyed.
“Why does she get a name like the prototypes?” Chloe asked snippily.
“Err, because I’m naming her in place of thousands of others. The entire task force works with me, and I strongly suspect Juliet and Rosa won’t be the last to get names,” Nick said. “Am I not allowed to call her that?”
Rie sighed. “If Sigma Robotics has a prototype planned with that name, they have yet to reveal it. They did shift to prophets with Ezekiel, in any case. If you’re borrowing from myth or religion, avoid kabbalah, however. I believe RTM use it for their prototypes, and Sigma would be disappointed if you named any of us after the sefirot.”
“Half the companies in the city use the sefirot for their mainframe names,” Nick said drily. “Ironically, giving you normal names probably makes you stand out more.”
Meta made a cute noise, and he turned back to her. “The Host has reached a consensus. My name is accepted following your explanation.”
“Great.” Now Nick felt better for calling her Twelve earlier. “Are we heading straight to the factory or…”
“We’ll discuss this on the way,” Rie said, eying the vehicles. “It may be easier to take the SUVs.”
Without a word, the interceptors closed their doors and rocketed off. The Mark 1s, save Meta, piled into their SUV. Everybody else slipped into the remaining one. Meta sat opposite Nick, while Chloe and Rie sandwiched him. He considered it good design that the vehicle still felt quite roomy.
The vehicle took off silently. The streets flew past. The trip to Alcatraz was fairly short from his home, but he suspected they’d take a roundabout route. Rie had said it would take an hour to confirm their target, after all.
Nick’s gun felt heavy against his waist. He sincerely doubted he’d need to fire it. In fact, he doubted anyone in this vehicle would let him get close to firing it. They’d probably stage another intervention if that happened.
For a dark moment, he wondered if this SUV could stand up to that anti-materiel rifle he’d heard at the docks. Then he remembered that it could. The specs of the police vehicles got leaked a few years ago.
These things were basically tanks and had all the toys to prove it. The windows were made of a transparent ceramic, and the rest of the body was built from materials that would be top of the line save for the dolls sitting inside it. The Archangels were military dolls built for police duty, and Sigma had spared no expense.
Not to mention that these things even had reactive armor and built-in electronic countermeasures. Rumor had it that some newer models even had automated projectile countermeasures as well, in case somebody fired a missile or hurled a grenade at one.
“Have the SUVs ever used any of their heavier duty countermeasures?” he asked aloud.
That was probably the wrong question to ask out of the blue. The vacant eyes of the Archangels returned to reality and quickly shrouded with concern.
“Many times, but not often,” Rie said. “The concern is less our safety, but that of anyone we are escorting inside them. The interceptors can’t be built for that level of protection, and the personnel vans are too large to easily secure without becoming too large for many of the roads.”
“So you tricked out the SUVs.”
“We did. They are rated for safety against everything except energy weapons typically used by militaries. Given we heavily restrict civilian trade of those, they remain a low danger.”
He nodded. The number of times an energy weapon had been used was low enough that he struggled to remember. Somebody had gone nuts with a kitted-out civilian cutter in his teen years, but most of the casualties had been caused by his jury-rigged reactor exploding.
“Is the department importing any energy weapons now that the Mark 3s can use them?” he asked.
“Unlikely. Any threat that requires their use is something for the military to handle. Unless we expect the NLF, or future revolutionaries, to deploy warbots capable of deflecting railgun rounds in the future.” Rie smirked.
Another minute passed. “So, are we circling?” he finally asked. Another pair of SUVs had joined them. All their sirens were off.
“We have narrowed our targets down to just two. NLF members are present at both, but we suspect that only one is the factory,” Chloe explained.
“Why not raid both?”
“If they have two, they may have more. We are cross-referencing with all data we have on traffic patterns, neural activity data, shipments, financial information—”
“I get it. You’re virtually upending the city in order to find any other major bases they have, because if we hit them now, they’ll scatter,” Nick said.
Rie smiled. “You do make for a good detective.”
“This is just filling in the dots.” He narrowed his eyes. “By the time we arrive, it’ll all be over bar the screaming.”
“Maybe.”
“What if that’s too late? Couldn’t the military override you and seize the sites, and the evidence with them?” he asked. “What if you’re not able to find everything you need?”
Rie’s eyes narrowed, but she didn’t say anything. Nick took this as an opportunity to push further.
“There’s more to getting into a mainframe than just brute force or security bands. If they have Helena, I can override anything they’ve done. As for any other mainframes, I still might be able to help.” Might was the keyword.
Nick was stretching the truth a little here. Getting into mainframes was usually a matter of known backdoors or hardware workarounds. He had access to a catalog of the former, but none of the latter. And the Archangels theoretically had the former, if they paid enough attention to the right Cipher circles.
“Perhaps,” Rie said slowly.
“The Host disagrees with this,” Meta said. “Placing Nicholas in danger—”
“A compromise, then,” Rie said, looking between Meta and Nick. “If the initial strike force finds Helena or a mainframe they can’t secure, we’ll deploy early. And in force. Otherwise, you’re happy to wait until the screaming is done, Nicholas?”
He nodded. If Helena wasn’t there, he didn’t really care to hear a bunch of people be gunned down in the background fighting for a hopeless cause.
Their SUVs entered Alcatraz soon enough. Despite the name, it was a fairly neat looking place. It was a mixed industrial and commercial district, with a smattering of hotels on the fringes. As it was still morning, half the businesses remained closed. A lot of suits walked the streets, popping in and out of tiny shops run by dolls.
If they noticed the police vehicles, they ignored them. Police raids and patrols were a fact of life here. They blended into the background, just like the bullet holes in the wall of your favorite coffee shop. Far too many people openly carried weapons. Security dolls kept watch on street corners and from loading docks, and they were often painted in garish colors.
Alcatraz was the chaotic underbelly of Neo Babylon. Some would call it seedy, but Nick considered the whole city seedy. Alcatraz represented a slice of the city where the veneer of civility had been peeled back, and the utter chaos that tied everything together seeped through.
Before the Archangels, it had also seeped into neighboring districts a lot more often. These days, Alcatraz mostly kept to itself. Firing a gun on the wrong side of a street could get one’s nervous system shutdown and life ruined in a single, deafening moment.
Nick didn’t see any sign of a factory. But he supposed they were keeping their distance for now.
Minutes passed in silence. He tried to pass the time on his phone, but found that his nerves made it impossible. Instead, he simply stared out the window.
“We’re starting,” Chloe suddenly said. “We will be temporarily suppressing this on the Altnet.”
Just like that, police SUVs, vans, and interceptors roared to life near them. The previously quiet streets filled with the rush of dozens of vehicles flying through them faster than humans could safely navigate. Blue and red lights flashed off the towering skyscrapers and glossy paintwork.
The sirens were eerily silent, as Nick lacked the neural implant to hear them.
But he knew everyone on the streets heard them. Office workers dropped coffees in shock, security dolls froze on the spot, and the general populace stared in shock as a second massive police raid barreled into Alcatraz in under a week.
A message popped up on Nick’s phone, and he didn’t need to look to know it was from Lucas.
“I think your suppression isn’t working as well this time,” he said.
The dolls frowned.
“There are no videos or discussions about the raid taking place,” Chloe said.
“Lucas knows about it. That means Cipher circles know.”
Chloe paused, then rolled her eyes. “Suppressed. It is annoying that trivial wordplay like you used in your text chat earlier can avoid our suppression systems.”
Nick snorted. “So some of the Ciphers working with Lucas were waiting for something to happen. Do you think the NLF know?”
“Almost certainly,” Rie said. “If they have neural mods as complicated as theirs, they must surely have a dead man’s switch that alerts other cells when the neural network goes down. It is unfortunate we were unable to locate any other major operations.”
Within a minute, the police sirens faded away. The locals returned to their business as if nothing had happened, although they looked far more animated. Suspicious looks were thrown at the convoy Nick was in.
“So, what’s resistance like?” Nick asked a little while later.
“Light. Your suspicion is certainly correct that they did not raid Tartarus,” Rie said, drumming her fingers on his thigh as if it were the door. “Fanatics are dangerous, but beliefs tend to wilt against the power of a bullet. What I expected were customized G2s, improvised anti-armor munitions, anti-doll weaponry. Not, not…” She gestured at the air angrily.
The frustration in Rie’s expression and tone was practically palpable.
“I can’t see what you’re seeing, Rie. You need to use your words,” Nick said.
“A pathetic collection of explosives, fewer security bots than most black companies use in the average war, and nothing capable of even scratching our paint, much less penetrating our armor,” Chloe summarized. “They’re not even using a mainframe. Which might explain why it was so hard to find them.”
“In either factory?”
“One wasn’t a factory.” Rie ground her knuckles into her temples. “The other building had been converted into offices. They were playing with terminals there, but the Cipher work there was… primitive. I don’t know how to describe it.”
“It might be better if I see it for myself,” he said.
“Oh, you will,” Rie said darkly. “Because we found Travis there. We can soundly answer that question of yours, and not the way I hoped. He’s NLF, and likely dumber than I thought.”