CHAPTER 17
The NLF factory looked like a large beige box, nestled between numerous other beige boxes of extremely similar shape. This little area was like a miniature industrial zone within Alcatraz.
Babylon didn’t have restrictive zoning laws, so this was the work of the market. While commercial and industrial projects were kept out of specific districts, anything went within the district. That’s how the red light doll district had snuck into the city itself, while Alcatraz was firmly in the outer metro. Money shaped the city.
Dozens of police vehicles surrounded the factory. SUVs, interceptors, and bulky armored vans formed a physical blockade, which was only reinforced by the gun-toting Archangels in front of the vehicles. There wasn’t a Liberator or Custodian in sight.
A lot of railguns and heavy shotguns were, however.
Police drones maintained an aerial cordon, but the air was surprisingly free of press drones or amateur photographers.
Nick’s convoy drove up to the blockade. A crowd of gawkers watched on in eerie silence, no doubt chatting up a storm on the Altnet.
After a moment, the Archangels cleared the way and the convoy slipped through. The gap closed just as fast as it opened.
“Judging from the lack of wreckage, I’m guessing they didn’t put up much of a fight,” Nick said, peering out the window.
“The G2s appeared to be restricted to the building interior,” Chloe replied.
That would limit damaging footage of RTM dolls blown apart on the streets of Alcatraz. The convoy pulled up outside a series of open roller doors, which opened up to reveal empty concrete loading docks.
“Were they unloading everything by hand?” he asked.
“Perhaps. This building was used as an office and has significantly less inside it than the other one. They had simple cargo bots there.”
That made a lot more sense than what he’d been thinking.
Up until now, the Archangels had been patrolling and lurking around the exterior of the building in pairs. None of them clustered up. But the moment the convoy stopped, more than a dozen of them rushed over.
The door opened, but Nick didn’t even have a chance to put his foot on the ground before several Mark 1s formed a protective bubble in front of him. He stepped out, followed by the others.
The Mark 1s swiveled their heads rapidly, watching every angle. All of his new escorts carried anti-doll weaponry, and he spotted a ballistic shield strapped to the backs of a couple. The other convoy members left their vehicles with similar armaments.
When he looked back, he saw that Rie was still in the vehicle. The seats slipped back into a reclining position as she clicked the safety off an SMG and hopped outside.
“Things are finally serious enough that you’ll carry a firearm,” he noted.
“This is an active situation still. I would prefer not to be the reason that you get shot,” she said primly.
Nick nodded, then drew his Lawman. As before, it felt damn heavy. He sincerely hoped he wasn’t going to be shooting anyone with this. And especially not Travis.
Even if he had screwed over Tartarus, putting a bullet in a former co-worker wasn’t the sort of thing Nick felt he had in him. He liked being able to sleep at night.
They approached the roller doors inside this protective bubble of destruction. Nick looked further afield, aware of what had gone wrong last time.
Past the flying cordon of police drones were more Archangels. They walked on the rooftops of nearby buildings, carrying large rifles. All avenues seemed to be covered, save somebody flying a jet.
Nick wondered if the railguns and neural implants of the police dolls could handle even that.
Right before they entered the factory, he stopped and frowned at the logo emblazoned along the side of the building.
“It’s public knowledge who owns this building,” he said.
“It can be looked up in public databases,” Chloe said. “We are suppressing information about the connection between RTM Strategic’s CEO and the NLF for now. The financial transactions are being investigated. Once fraud is confirmed, then we will inform the commissioner and allow him to break the story to the press as he chooses.”
“You mean if it’s confirmed,” Nick said.
Chloe stared at him.
Rie smiled wanly. “If Jun Kim is directly involved with the NLF, it is safe to say that this will be a very… interesting investigation. While the Host is conducting simulations on this”—she shot a meaningful gaze at Chloe and Meta—“I believe we should cross that bridge if it comes.”
“It probably won’t,” he admitted, then tried to step forward.
Rie held him back by his arm. “While that is the more serious scenario, this is still quite grave. Whoever is responsible is directly targeting the Spires, a major company that owns and controls much of Neo Westphalia, and a highly respected individual. You will be asked to directly report on what happened today.”
Shit.
“Report about everything?”
“Our reports are comprehensive,” Chloe said.
“I’d prefer if you left Sung out.” Nick didn’t like the idea that this might paint a target on his back.
“Very well. He is a newer informant and could do with protection. I would still prefer for you to worry more about yourself,” Rie said, furrowing her brow. “I am serious. We haven’t found the evidence we need, but the stakes are higher than ever. We must—”
Nick held up a hand. “I get it. If I didn’t know this was your first ever real assignment, I’d know now. You remind me a little of when I was first doing real work for Welk, and I’d flip out over all the crazy deadlines he’d give me. Important people always want everything yesterday. But sometimes they just want to be told that it can wait until tomorrow.”
Rie stared at him for several long seconds. Her gaze genuinely unnerved him.
“Is that how you normally approached executives in Tartarus?” she asked.
“It’s how Welk approached Sigma,” Nick said drily. “Every time the military breathed down their neck, they’d breathe down his. He firmly believed that deadlines exist to motivate people. That you probably weren’t behind if you didn’t meet one, but that you just needed to recalibrate.”
She sighed, then ran a hand through her hair. “I believe that might count as lying.”
“You live in a city that relies on a bunch of pseudo-legal companies. I think you can stretch the truth a little in the interest of your job, Rie.” He raised an eyebrow. “I thought you said lying wasn’t against your parameters.”
“To you? No. To our employer? Our directives make it significantly harder.”
“I’m a detective and I don’t count?”
Rie smiled sweetly at him. “Oh, Nicholas. You’re my partner. And don’t partners lie to protect each other all the time?”
Nick felt as though he’d put off maintenance on the Archangels a little too long, from how Rie described their directives. Would she even let him look at hers?
Part of him worried that he’d create several thousand Lumens and be stuck doing maintenance 8 hours a day, seven days a week.
Finally, they stepped inside the factory itself.
Wreckage was strewn across the expansive space. The factory was small compared to those near the docks, but large enough that the absence of heavy machinery was notable. An empty building felt terrifyingly large.
The remains of dozens of G2s had been clumped together in two large piles. Smaller pieces crunched beneath Nick’s boots as he slowly trudged toward the only signs of life here: a dozen handcuffed NLF members.
“We avoided neural warfare,” Chloe said. “Even if we did find an opening, all it would do is trigger the self-destruct function.”
Archangels stood watch, fingers on triggers. Two Mark 3s stood guard outside a door at the far end of the building.
Nick noticed there were more doors down that end. The offices Rie spoke of must be there, although there weren’t more than seven or eight small rooms.
A smattering of wooden pallets loaded down with boxes sat near the offices. Racks of spare parts lined one of the walls. This area seemed to be the only one in active use. Given the size of the factory, it seemed wasteful to use so little space inside it.
Numerous servers lay stacked atop each other, hard linked to each other. A single large tower, half Nick’s height, seemed to be where they all converged. A few terminals lay on a long wooden desk nearby.
No monitors, naturally. Accessibility wasn’t a concern for the revolution. They also didn’t use chairs.
The entire set-up was incredibly hodge-podge. No wonder Rie had been annoyed by it.
Yet Nick somehow found it familiar. He had to cast his mind back quite a few years to remember why.
He deliberately walked away from the NLF members and held up a hand. The others caught onto his intentions and ushered him a little farther away.
“Sound carries inside an empty space like this,” Chloe said. “We cannot rely on AR dampening fields, either.”
He shrugged. “All I wanted to say is that the server set-up is familiar. It’s a little outside my wheelhouse, though.”
“Really?” Rie asked.
“I’m a Cipher, not a systems or computer engineer.” He pointed at her. “I learn about mainframe and doll hardware because it’s integral to what I do. But neural networking? Or even just basic networking on a corporate level? That’s why IT departments still exist.”
The dolls nodded, then waited for him to continue.
“Anyway, it just reminds me a little of…” he trailed off, remembering something important about how the Archangels came to conclusions. “You know what, I’ll bring it up later. Do you know what they do?”
Rie narrowed her eyes at him, but Chloe spoke up anyway.
“We analyzed the network topology and activity before the raid. The neural network shutdown means we cannot assess its functionality in full, however,” she said. “We have not attempted to breach the network security, given the potential risk of self-destruct devices.”
“That doesn’t answer my question,” he said drily.
Chloe winced.
“You already have your own opinion,” Rie said coldly.
“I’m comparing notes. I’m pretty confident in my own theory—” he began to say.
Rie stomped on his foot. For a brief moment he thought he was going to be going to hospital for fracture treatment, but she didn’t put any force into the blow.
Well, not much. Nick hissed. “That does hurt, you know.”
“We’re on the clock. I’d rather you not throw my words back in my face,” she said.
Apparently Rie had noticed that he had used the exact same words she did back when she tested him on the investigation briefing. He tried not to laugh, as she seemed genuinely irritated.
The other Archangels looked confused, and Meta in particular seemed anxious after Rie’s violent reaction. Her fingers curled and uncurled while she looked between Nick and Rie.
Chloe shrugged. “It operates as both a signal masker, in order to obfuscate local devices from Altnet monitoring, but also a hub for the neural mods.”
“A hub?” he asked.
“We believe this to be one of the primary servers for the NLF’s encrypted neural network. On the surface, it mimics a simple corporate network like Tartarus’s,” she explained. “All NLF neural mods are connected to one of the factory servers at all times. This presumably allows them to communicate, issue updates, and monitor one another outside of the Altnet.”
“And you didn’t notice that all NLF members had a neural link to the same factories?” he asked.
“Their connection is masked. It is non-trivial to trace the encrypted connections to the end-point, rather than to other nodes in Babylon.”
That made sense to Nick. Anyone who wanted to set-up their own illegal network in Babylon would need to hide the servers and encrypted neural networking protocols made that easy. The entire reason the Spires maintained control over the Altnet was so that they could monitor activity at the source.
The same reasoning applied to the Archangels. They needed power over the security bands—and the regulations that forced all electronics to include a backdoor—to get around the built-in encryption of any neural network.
Anything more complicated was Cipher work, and they’d already established that the Mark 3s were still novices at that.
“And what is your theory?” Rie asked, tapping her fingers against her SMG.
Nick eyed her carefully. That was just a sign of her impatience, right?
“This whole thing reminds me of the set-ups we used to collect training data using Helena and the other mainframes for…” He inclined his head toward the dolls in front of him.
Despite that, he noticed several NLF heads snap toward him the moment he said the name “Helena.” Nick forced himself to stay calm.
Because these bastards did know about her.
“How so?” Rie asked, either oblivious or uncaring about the NLF right now.
“We couldn’t move the mainframes into the field, obviously. But IT could whip something like this up inside a tiny office overnight. And rather than implants or mods, we used dolls. Helena could monitor or tweak their directives—usually because we asked her to—and it would look like ordinary communication. The doll would be effectively oblivious to what was going on under the hood.”
The eyes of all the Archangels flashed, save for Rie’s. She merely crossed her arms beneath her breasts.
“That would require a mainframe. They’re just connected to a dumb server,” she said.
“Are you sure?” he asked. “What if there’s a mainframe elsewhere? It seems pointless to maintain a constant connection here, given the risk it poses to being discovered. I imagine that’s how Lucas would have dug them up with his sweep. Too many people acting suspiciously, all with links back to a pair of RTM factories that aren’t shipping anything for RTM?”
Rie nodded. “We’ll need to investigate the server set-up in detail. That may explain why everything is so crude on the Cipher side. If this is a branch, and the root is elsewhere… Perhaps this wasn’t a waste of time. Even if this cell is a joke.”
Chloe turned toward Rie. “The Mark 3s and I shall begin intrusion. I believe that Nick’s time is better spent on the person of interest.”
“Agreed. We’ll take it from here,” Rie replied.
Chloe trotted off, and a number of Mark 3s rushed over from all corners of the building to join her. However, Juliet and Rosa remained by Nick’s side. Meta shot them a look, but said nothing.
It took Nick a moment to remember who they were talking about.
Then it struck him. Travis.
Rie led him to the guarded door he saw earlier. The room lacked a window.
“He’s in there?” Nick asked.
“Yes. Despite how shoddy everything else is, they installed soundproofed offices.” She rolled her eyes. “Definitely a case of too much money, and no sense of priority.”
For some reason, Nick didn’t think Rie should be the one criticizing others about that.
“I think I should talk to him first,” Nick said.
“Agreed. We—”
“Alone.”
She waited patiently for an explanation.
“You said he’s an idiot, right? But he’s someone I worked with for a few years. Travis was a pretty typical guy. Hated management, did as much work as required, decent Cipher, had as much of a bone to pick with the Spires as the next guy. Or so it seemed.” Nick leaned on the door. “But he might not see through me, much like I didn’t look closely at him.”
“He may be harmless, but I don’t believe he’ll provide much help,” Rie said.
“Then in the worst case, you can crack his head open and feast on his neural implant if I fail.”
“What exactly do you think we are, Nicholas?”
The other Archangels made concerned faces at his gruesome joke. Apparently it wasn’t to their taste.
“Look, let me have a chance. If anyone knows something about Helena, it’s him. He was the man on the inside. He’s my lead,” Nick said.
For a moment, he wondered if Rie might refuse him purely because he’d brought up Helena.
Then she sighed and held a hand out. “You shouldn’t wear your gun in if you’re playing innocent to Travis. We can intervene within an instant if he does anything stupid. For advice: be vague, non-threatening, and don’t bring us up. Let him fill in the blanks.”
Nick nodded, then unholstered his gun. A moment later, he also threw his coat to Rie, who nearly fumbled it as it practically buried her.
“I want to look as little like a detective as possible,” he said. “Wish me luck.”
“Luck,” the other Archangels echoed.
Rie rolled her eyes. “Good luck, Nick.”
He wondered whether the Archangels actually didn’t understand that saying or if they were intentionally acting obtuse.
Then he opened the door and saw his old colleague sitting in a crummy plastic chair. The room was otherwise empty, and Travis was zip cuffed.
The door clicked shut behind Nick.
“Been a few days, Travis. Here I thought you’d gotten away clean from the Tartarus mess.”