CHAPTER 22
“Nicholas, I believe we should return to the department,” Meta said, entering the bar.
Kate didn’t respond to the intrusion of the Archangel. Nick remained seated, his last empty glass in front of him. Fifteen minutes had passed since Hammond had left.
His mind ran over his conversation with the other detective. There was little doubt in his mind that the grizzled detective had little to do with the investigation.
On the other hand, he’d left Nick with a lot to think about. The deep loathing that Hammond felt toward his own colleagues in response to the actions of the department wasn’t something that could be solved. But it felt like a smaller piece in a larger puzzle.
Nick wondered what that puzzle might look like once completed.
He also wondered if he wanted to see it completed.
Despite that, the puzzle seemed to be forming itself in the back of his mind. His subconsciousness whittled away at the problem like it did a particularly nasty programming problem. Eventually, he’d realize what he was missing and it would all come together.
“Nicholas?”
He shook his head, then rose to his feet. “I thought I was working from home today.”
“You are not currently at home,” Meta said, a hint of spice in her voice. “I believe that the department is also superior for your protection, even if you are presently inebriated.”
“I only had a few beers.”
“That is the definition of inebriated.”
The Mark 1s had always seemed a little smug whenever they had interrogated Nick in the past. He could feel that smugness leaking through Meta right now.
Unlike the Mark 3s, who appeared to still be developing personalities, Nick suspected the Mark 1s were different. They seemed to be quite well-defined in how they acted. Instead, they struggled to express themselves as easily due to their greater integration with the Host and reliance on neural networking.
Was Meta going to turn out to be a big bully?
For now, Nick raised his hands in surrender. As he left the bar, Kate slipped over and cleared away his glass.
“I will see you again, detective,” she said.
“Call me Nick,” he said.
She tilted her head, then looked at Meta. The Archangel looked back.
“Until next time, Detective Waite,” Kate said, then returned to her post.
He looked at Meta, who stared back at him placidly.
“Yes?” she asked.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“I believe you have a question that you are not asking.”
“Then why don’t you answer it?” Nick folded his arms.
“That would be inefficient.”
And dodging the point wasn’t? He let out a breathy laugh, exasperated.
Yes, Meta was definitely opening up.
They left the bar. Juliet and Rosa fell into step as they did so. The hallways of the building were as hauntingly empty as when they arrived.
Outside, the sun continued to beam down. A handful of people shopped at some of the ground level floors, and some teenagers played hooky near the fountain. Actual crowds formed farther away, near the shopping mall and office towers.
A few more Mark 1s waited for Nick in the foyer of the building. There would likely be a few more near the SUVs.
Nick shielded his eyes from the sun. “What’s Rie up to right now? I know she mentioned paperwork, but I’m hoping that she’s finished it by now.”
“Her status is presently unknown. She has yet to update the Host on her activities,” Meta said. “I can—”
She suddenly seized up. The other Archangels reacted the same way, their bodies abruptly stiffening as if an electric pulse had run through their bodies.
But the reaction wasn’t limited to just them. Every person that Nick saw reacted in some way.
The teens suddenly started gesturing and shouting, deeply confused. Shoppers froze, some unsure what was happening, while others were frustrated. A few banged the side of their head.
Nick recognized the motions and reactions from the humans, and even the dolls.
This was a neural network shutdown.
“Meta—” he tried to say.
“Initiating escape and escort plan,” Meta said. “Complete neural network shutdown will limit our effectiveness and options. Nicholas, we must get you to an interceptor.”
The SUVs were right there, but he saw the Mark 1s beside them sprint toward him. Their speed was blisteringly fast. They cleared the couple hundred yards between the vehicle and them within seconds. People shouted in surprise.
“EM interference signals detected. ECCW capabilities are greatly hampered, We have poor coverage of nearby buildings,” one of the new Mark 1s detected. “Metatron, immediately retreat.”
Meta nodded. Juliet and Rosa raised their rifles, looking into the distance.
Nick was about to join them and grab his handgun, but never had the chance. The Mark 3s grabbed him by the arms and rushed him toward a different road. Only Meta followed, while the other Mark 1s spread out and began issuing orders to the civilians.
Then a familiar boom split the air, and Nick tasted the ground the next second. More gunfire crackled. Screams followed swiftly.
The arms that had pushed Nick to the ground left him immediately. He rose to his knees and looked around.
Juliet and Rosa crouched beside him, shielding him with their bodies while they fired into the distance. Meta stood nearby, taking occasional glances at her surroundings between shots.
Their targets consisted of several men in civilian clothes carrying a variety of weapons. But underneath those clothes were the true threat: a bewildering array of cybernetics. These men were more chrome than flesh. They bled oil.
Instantly, Nick knew these attackers were the foreign mercenaries that Travis had spoken of.
But what Nick didn’t understand was why they had so brazenly attacked in broad daylight, in the middle of Babylon, while Nick had nearly a dozen Archangels defending him.
SMG rounds pummeled the mercs, and Nick saw one go down. His face was a bloody mess of gore where the Archangels had replaced it with lead. Even if the mercs’ bodies were coated in bulletproof cybernetics, they still had weak points. The Archangels targeted them judiciously.
However, the return fire was even more damaging. A Mark 1 lay in ruins, her headless body sprawled across the tile floor of the plaza. Two more had sustained serious damage and were firing one-handed with gaping holes in their chassis.
Nick did a mental count. There were only five or six assailants, and one was already down. More would swiftly follow.
By contrast, there had been seven Mark 1s, and two Mark 3s. The sniper took out a Mark 1 immediately, and two more had sustained damage, but that still gave the Archangels the numerical advantage. But they were outgunned, despite their robotic accuracy.
The difference in weaponry was showing itself, at least in the short-term. But every cyborg that went down was a huge blow to the attackers.
Nick tried to reach for his handgun, but fumbled the handle. Juliet spotted his movement and grabbed his arm. Her head swiveled like a turret, searching for something he couldn’t see.
“There are only a few of them, we can—” he tried to say, ignoring how ridiculous he sounded.
A van burst into the plaza, emerging from beyond the wings of the emergency services building. It surged across the tiles. What few bystanders remained ran off, screaming, before they were run over. Self-driving cars didn’t go rogue like this every day.
“Illegally modified vehicle,” Juliet intoned. She pointed her rifle at the windscreen of the van, then immediately lowered it. “Get clear!”
Nick didn’t wait for her to grab him again, and sprinted to the side of the building. The Mark 1s scattered, but this left behind the damaged pair. The van roared toward them, and none of the dolls wasted bullets on it. Presumably, they had sensed it was armored.
Gunfire blew chunks off the masonry near him, and Rosa pulled him into cover. Juliet and Meta returned fire while darting toward him. A scream indicated they’d scored hits.
But Nick’s attention focused on the van. The damaged Mark 1s ignored the machine barreling toward them, instead firing at the cyborgs who were pursuing Nick.
Then the van was on top of them.
The Mark 1s dropped their SMGs and casually reached out to stop the errant vehicle. The entire front of the vehicle compressed inward like a tin can. Its rear wheels briefly lifted off the ground as inertia took hold, before kicking up a cloud of white dust when the van slammed back into the ground.
“Down!” Rosa screamed.
Nick almost got whiplash as he was launched into the ground by the doll.
Then an explosion shattered the air. The air itself seemed to crumple around him. Debris and dust rained down. Rosa’s grip weakened after an instant, and the gunfire had slowed down.
“Fuck,” he shouted, trying to get back up and moving. His legs felt weak.
He could see where the van had been. A blackened mess of scrap and burning parts had replaced it. Both Mark 1s had been thrown clear. The explosion had torn them apart, ripping their bodies in two around the damage they’d suffered earlier.
“Escape this way,” Rosa said, still next to Nick. She pointed along the side of the building.
But she wasn’t moving herself. Instead, she fired at the assailants. The other Mark 1s fired at a distant target that resolved into another van. G2s poured out of the back of the van, carrying heavy shotguns. The Mark 1s switched targets, but their SMGs weren’t intended to fight dolls.
One of the Mark 1s blew apart as the sniper let loose again, but the dolls didn’t even flinch. They took apart one of the cyborg attackers.
Nick heard screaming and cursing in foreign languages. French or German, maybe? The accents were hard to place.
“Now,” Rosa repeated.
For an instant, Nick’s body told him to fight. Blood pumped through his body like it hadn’t for years. He remembered some of the scuffles he’d gotten into as a teenager, and how many times he’d wanted to fight back. Of the firearms training he’d received in Alcatraz, while working with the thugs that kept the peace there.
Then his brain kicked in and told him that four of the city’s militarized police dolls had just been obliterated within seconds. The worst fight that Nick had been in had been when some juiced up asshole had tried to break a mainframe Nick had been working on. Just firing his pistol had been enough back then.
Today? These cyborgs were still charging them down with multiple dead, and the Archangels relentlessly pouring lead into them.
Nick ducked around the side of the building. Rosa and Juliet followed. Meta lingered behind them, providing covering fire.
They cleared the corner and saw a clean run to the street. A wall blocked off the neighboring property, and going the other way took them closer to the attackers.
The real problem was that they needed to run past the entire length of the emergency services building. Potentially while under gunfire.
Nick just started running. He heard Rosa’s and Juliet’s rifles discharge while he did so, but they remained close to him at all times.
A crash sounded behind him. He just kept running.
Then Juliet grabbed him, and he felt the world move. His legs didn’t touch the ground while she covered most of the distance to the street within seconds.
Only to be brought down by the crack of the sniper. Nick gasped as he slammed into the ground and rolled. Rosa’s hands closed onto him before he even had a chance to get up.
“Juliet—” he began to say.
“Escape is the priority,” Rosa said.
Nick raised his head. Then his hand snapped to his gun. He didn’t fumble it this time, but didn’t get the chance to draw it. Meta poured lead in their direction, attempting to take out the enemy that Nick was focused on.
“Behind!” he snapped.
Rosa pushed Nick back and spun faster than he blinked. A giant of a man slammed into her. His blue hoodie had been reduced to shreds, revealing an entirely chrome exoskeleton. His arms were entirely cybernetic, and he wore a bulky helmet reminiscent of the NLF—only this one was armored.
His arms slammed into Rosa’s, knocking her weapon aside. She didn’t make a noise as she tore off his left hand.
The cyborg roared and threw a punch with his right. She caught it, only to realize that was a mistake. The shotgun blast turned her arm into spare parts.
Then she was hefted into the air. The cyborg gripped her with his remaining hand, which was large enough to wrap around half her torso. He screamed a foreign obscenity at her. Nick heard metal creak.
But he hadn’t been slacking. His hand gripped his Lawman tightly. The biometrics recognized him and let him draw it. Nick raised it.
The hand cannon felt like a ton of steel in his hand. Heavy and difficult to hold. Nick swore that time seemed to slow down as his muscles pounded and he struggled to aim the damn thing. Every lesson he had received about using this thing seemed impossible to remember.
But his target was also the size of a bus and only a few feet away. Nick leveled his handgun at the bastard, aiming for center of mass. He pulled the trigger.
The gun roared. Nick barely felt a thing as the kinetic dampeners in the firearm suppressed the recoil and kept the gun straight.
A hole appeared in the cyborg’s torso, where the anti-armor round had blown clean through his armor, body, and cybernetics in one shot. Rie had chosen the gun well.
Rosa fell to the ground only a moment before the huge cyborg.
Nick pulled himself to his feet after a couple of tries, his entire body shaking. “Rosa?”
“Escape,” she said. The center of her torso had been compressed so that she couldn’t move her legs. “Interceptors should be here soon.”
Was that why they were going down this way? Reinforcements were supposedly coming? But if the network was down, how did they know? Was that just wishful thinking? Nick turned the way they’d come, hand gripping his gun.
Meta was sprinting toward him, but two more cyborgs followed, pouring blood as they went.
Nick raised his gun.
That was a mistake. A cyborg spotted him and focused his rifle on Nick without even slowing.
Nick swore that his life flashed before his eyes.
Then Meta slammed into him. Cursing could be heard from the cyborgs.
“Don’t shoot the fucking asset!” one screamed in English. The accent sounded South African.
Behind Nick, more gunfire roared forth. Four Mark 1s charged toward him from police interceptors that hadn’t been there seconds earlier. They carried heavy rifles that split the air with every shot. The cyborgs ducked for cover. G2s emerged in the distance, ready to join the firefight.
“We are leaving,” Meta said.
“But Rosa—”
“Can be rebuilt. You cannot be.” Meta grabbed his arm and dragged him to the interceptors.
The Mark 1s charged past without saying a word. The bullets they spewed at their assailants were the only greeting. Nick had to admit they were a good one.
Right as they reached the interceptors, that terrifying crack split the air again. One interceptor visibly moved as a hole appeared in it. Nick didn’t know what the sniper had shot, but he didn’t want to find out.
“The other one,” Meta said, not missing a beat.
The doors of both cars were already open. Nick jumped into the closest seat. Meta leaped over the vehicle and slipped into the other seat in a single motion.
He wished he could be that cool.
Then he saw that the entire dash looked different. The display had lit up with countless images and numbers. A pair of strange devices had deployed from beneath the dash—Nick realized they looked like old video game controllers, but with more buttons and strange toggles.
Meta hit one of those buttons and the doors closed. Her hands closed around the handles of the controller.
Then the interceptor rocketed away from the scene. For the first time in his life, Nick was inside a manually driven vehicle.
If this counted as one. Somehow, an Archangel driving a car didn’t feel the same as a random human.
The streets were eerily empty. People stood on the streets, sometimes besides robot taxis flashing emergency signals. Arguments appeared to be breaking out. Nick spotted a few Liberators, but they were surrounded by furious crowds of people.
Meta’s eyes remained focused on the road, but she said, “The network attack appears to be broad-based. Our wireless and neural backup systems failed to make contact with fellow officers, other than those in the immediate vicinity.”
Nick almost hit his head out of annoyance at himself. “Of course. You can communicate with each other wirelessly, even if the network is down. That’s how you knew where the interceptors would appear.”
“Yes.”
“Then why were all the Mark 1s talking aloud earlier?” he asked.
“A consensus was reached that orders and decisions should be communicated verbally around you, in order to minimize confusion. This was decided upon reflection on your words today, and the incident at the warehouse,” she explained.
Well, he’d already changed police policy. Apparently coding new directive wasn’t always required.
“So where are we going?” he asked. “To get reinforcements?”
“It is assumed that the entire district is suffering an outage. There are likely jammers deployed which are affecting wireless transmissions as well, save for the shortest range ones. I am driving as fast and far as possible from the scene, so that we can renew neural contact ASAP.”
A chill ran down Nick’s spine. “Wait, you’re not driving down a predictable route, are you? The fastest route that covers as much ground as possible?”
Meta’s head spun to look at him, but only for an instant. Her mind seemed to pick up on the problem, as she immediately spun the controller and tried to change the direction she was driving.
But too late. Another of those huge, armored vans roared out from one of the empty streets.
Nick barely had a moment to brace before it slammed into the interceptor and sent them flying into a wall.