CHAPTER 23
The interceptor crashed into the wall of a nearby shop. The momentum nearly flipped it, but the van crashed into it again, attempting to crush the interceptor like scrap.
The few nearby pedestrians scattered. Nick braced himself, aware that the safest place to be right now was the armored police vehicle. Meta had been knocked around by the impact, and wasn’t moving. She slumped below the dash.
After a few long seconds, the van pulled back. The internal speakers of the interceptor relayed the voices from the outside.
“Get the asset!” another South African voice shouted, although it was different to the last one.
A pair of men in baggy civilian clothes approached them, both holding shotguns far too large for human use. They approached either side of the vehicle.
Nick gripped his Lawman, but was all too aware that using it would be his death.
Maybe he should have asked Meta for that firearms training sooner.
Both attackers stood outside Meta’s door, pointing their shotguns at her window. They tried to peer in, but the mirror tint prevented them. Cursing entered the cabin through the speakers.
Meta didn’t move an inch, and Nick worried that the impact had somehow damaged her. Or had she taken a bullet earlier and ran out of juice?
One of the men turned away and shouted something at the van.
In that moment, Meta suddenly snapped forward and hit a button. Her door snapped open and out. The men stumbled backward as they were struck in the face by the heavy door, a clear sign they weren’t as heavily enhanced as the giant had been.
Then Meta shot upright, her SMG in one hand and a Liberator handgun in the other. She blew apart each of the attackers with a separate gun. Her rounds struck their faces with perfect precision.
“Move,” she said, leaping out of the vehicle.
Nick didn’t waste any time. He crawled out Meta’s side of the car. Her hand pulled him to his feet.
Nobody had exited the van, but there had to be more in there. Meta didn’t waste time on it, though. She grabbed Nick and pushed him toward a nearby alleyway.
Before he made it, more gunfire broke out. Meta crashed into him and tried to pull him along. But she didn’t have the same strength as earlier.
“You’re damaged,” he said, noticing the gaping hole in her leg. Many more dents and marks covered her entire chassis, and her police uniform had been torn apart.
“You need to get to safety,” she said, hobbling along faster than he could move despite her damage. “More of them will converge on this location. I estimate that their jamming cannot be completely effective at this range.”
“Based on what?” he asked, looking behind him with his gun out.
They were ducking and weaving through the backstreets of a district he knew next to nothing about. Meta had a built-in navigation system, but he sure as hell didn’t.
Without her, he was utterly fucked.
“The signal interference is weakening. I expect that they are focusing on known frequencies. It is likely that devices operating on non-standard frequencies are already operational,” she said, her head constantly moving as she monitored their surroundings.
“So what does that mean?” he asked. “We just keep walking like this?”
“Yes. I have generated a randomized walk that will trade off speed with complexity, in an attempt to elude our pursuers. More Mark 1s are likely to enter our range soon, and we can escape,” she said. “Unless your phone is capable of frequencies we are incapable of.”
Nick pulled out his phone. It was completely useless.
The shadow of a smirk on Meta’s face suggested she had been teasing him. Despite the situation, she managed to be light-hearted.
Then again, he supposed that this wasn’t that dangerous to her. Nick still had difficulty processing what had happened, but reminded himself that all of those Archangels could be transferred into replacement bodies. The department kept a ton of them in storage.
They kept moving through the alleys for several more minutes. The area was very commercial, and full of shops, small warehouses, repair yards, and small tenements for the local workers. They crossed the street a few times.
Their only company were the malfunctioning dolls of the many businesses out here. Some of the older models didn’t need a neural connection, but basically any vaguely modern model expected to validate directives using a neural link.
Meta pulled Nick to a stop. Her eyes focused on a wall, and he knew that she could sense something he couldn’t. Her fingers hovered over his lips.
Slowly, voices approached. One was very familiar, due to the South African accent.
The alley they were in didn’t leave them anywhere to go, and their pursuers were rapidly approaching. Nick looked around for somewhere to go.
“There,” he whispered.
Meta stared at the tiny warehouse he was looking at. Then she ran toward it and shattered the lock, before gesturing Nick inside.
“Hey!” the South African shouted. “Found ‘em.”
Meta sprayed bullets from her SMG in his direction, while Nick ran around the side. He found an open loading bay, but the warehouse was far too small for his liking. A handful of G2s stood just inside, their mouths ajar and eyes vacant.
The entire building was filled with loaded pallets of paint cans, spray cans, bags of concrete mix, and similar supplies. Skylights illuminated the warehouse. The place looked like a dead end, in more ways than one.
“We can’t hide here,” Nick said.
Meta ignored him and pulled him inside. Her eyes darted back and forth, looking for an exit. Nick hoped they found one.
He didn’t miss that the G2s suddenly stiffened, before returning to their vacant state.
Gunfire blew apart a pallet of paint cans, spilling vibrant purple liquid all over the concrete floor. Nick looked back and saw a trio of cyborgs, accompanied by nearly a dozen G2s.
The cyborgs carried huge rifles, while the G2s had their familiar shotguns.
“You can stop running, you know. We’re not here to hurt you, Wraith,” the South African said, while pointing his rifle at Nick.
The warehouse G2s abruptly straightened. Their own shotguns focused on the closest cyborg, and they fired taser rounds into his face.
To no effect, other than eliciting a scream of pain. The enemy G2s viciously gunned down the others.
“Nice trick. This sort of shit is why we cut off your access to our dolls,” the South African said. “We should introduce ourselves. That’s what prospective business partners do, isn’t it? Call me Dallas.”
Nick ducked behind a pallet full of concreting supplies. Meta glared at him, but given there weren’t any exits, save for any they made themselves, there wasn’t anywhere else to go.
But if he was stuck here, his brain told him to let this idiot talk.
“Dallas? Something tells me you’re not American,” Nick shouted back. His hands felt clammy on his gun, but he refused to let it go.
“I certainly feel American waving all these guns around in a city that can’t stand them. I’ve heard this place was bad, but experience it is something else,” Dallas said. “Police in your mind, entire population jacked into some crazy metanet, and the criminals only shoot each other in designated zones. What kind of city has regulated crime? The fuck kind of oxymoron is that?”
Dallas sounded like a frustrated man. Nick told himself not to do anything too rash.
“Can’t help you with this shithole, I’m afraid,” Nick said. “I sure hope your business wasn’t anything like a revolution.”
“Oh, fuck no. We’re not interested in the dumb shit those NFL fuckers were. What kind of terrorist group names themselves after a sport, anyway?”
Nick paused, trying to process what he’d heard.
“They’re the NLF. Neural Liberation Front,” Nick said, enunciating each syllable clearing.
“The Neuron Liberation Front,” Meta corrected.
“Both names are fucking stupid,” Dallas said.
One of his partners said something in another language, and Dallas replied in the same language. Nick couldn’t make heads or tails of it, but he suspected Meta could.
Dallas sighed, loud enough that Nick heard him across the building. “Look, our business is simple. Our… original business partner is trying to renegotiate our contract. That’s predictable in the mercenary business, if a bit shit in this place. What I want is off this rock.”
“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?”