CHAPTER 26
Nick’s sleep was restless. He didn’t toss and turn, due to Rie’s vice-like grip around his waist. Her rock-hard head nestled over his shoulder restricted his movement.
Sometimes he dreamed, and those dreams mostly consisted of being suffocated, or drowning in the grip of some sort of betentacled sea creature. Nick didn’t need to think very hard to see the symbolism.
Because while he enjoyed Rie’s company, and last night had been great, sleeping with her was like sleeping with a radiator. A radiator that physically prevented him from escaping its grasp.
Rie was warm, but that was about all he could say about her. Oh, and the breasts pushing against his back were sort of soft. As he’d discovered last night, they weren’t exactly silicone. More like some sort of soft, molded silicate with a ballistic plate behind them. Her creators had still been thinking about function when they designed them.
As for everything else? Rie was pointy in all the wrong places, harder than he was, and had abs that Olympic body builders could never hope to match—mostly because hers could deflect bullets.
But despite everything, morning eventually came. Or close enough. His clock showed 4:00AM and Rie’s arms freed him from his prison.
“I sense you only slept for three hours and fourteen minutes,” she said.
“That’s better than I expected,” he said, stretching as he sat on the edge of his bed.
He had aches where he had never ached before. His shower couldn’t help him with this sort of pain, given its awful hot water delivery. If this was his future, then he needed a better home pronto.
“Given we retired to bed over eight hours ago, it is a sign of very poor sleep. You usually sleep quite well.” Rie frowned. “Was yesterday too stressful?”
“I didn’t even think of yesterday.”
She blinked, then followed him as he ambled into his bathroom. He prepped the shower while she watched. Her frustration grew while staring at the water.
“Your hot water is terrible,” she said.
“Juliet already told you that. Care to join me?” he asked.
Rie’s eyes had gone vacant. Nick shrugged and began washing himself.
After several seconds, she returned to reality. “I’ve rented a hotel room. We’ll go there and enjoy actual hot water.”
Nick stared at her.
“Get out, Nick.” Rie physically dragged him out of the shower.
His mind processed the fact she had finally called him “Nick” while she forcefully rubbed him down with a towel. Then she pushed him into his bedroom. While she began rummaging through his clothes, he took the opportunity to soak in the moment.
Rie was still naked, and it turned out there was a reason she needed to cover up. The schematics of police dolls suggested they didn’t need to.
He frowned as he noticed that she was taking an extraordinarily long time to pick out his clothes. And going through every drawer in his bedroom.
“Are you cataloging my clothes?” he asked.
“This will save time in the future,” she said.
“You’re not planning to dress me every day, right?”
“That would be inefficient.” She held up a particularly old, ratty t-shirt and made a face. “But you are going to buy new clothes. And when you hire that housekeeping doll, she might have some specific directives about what you’re allowed to leave the house in.”
“Why are you programmed with fashion sense? You’re a police doll, Rie.”
“Maybe Sigma foresaw a future where the Fashion Police would be vital to humanity’s survival.” The grin on her face was visible even from Nick’s angle.
He picked out a discarded pair of briefs—surely Rie couldn’t argue about these—and put them on. At the same time, he fished her clothes out from the main room and deposited them on the bed.
“Thanks,” she said, while handing him a button-up, slacks, and undershirt.
He hadn’t worn the first two for a couple of years. Also, they were all black. Apparently that was Rie’s color.
“Where did you even find these?” he asked.
“The same place I found the rest of your good clothes. Buried beneath the terrible ones. Get dressed, and we’ll go relax somewhere that has running water.”
“Rie, I have running water.”
“Yes, but for how long?”
Unsure if that was a threat or an exaggeration, Nick decided to get dressed.
Juliet and Rosa waited for them outside. The hall lighting had switched into energy saving mode, and only half the bulbs were on.
Outside, there wasn’t the slightest hint of the sun. Maybe in an hour he’d see it peeking over the horizon. A trio of police SUVs awaited them. Not a soul could be seen besides the Mark 1s milling about.
“Good morning, Nicholas,” Meta greeted him, recognizable due to her updated serial number.
Her new unit gleamed under the bright streetlights. She carried a bulky shotgun, which Nick assumed was loaded with some sort of armor-piercing shell. Quite a few of the Archangels had switched out their SMGs for heavier weapons.
He wondered if that would be the new normal for the next few weeks. If neural warfare wasn’t effective, and the enemy brought heavy armor to the fray, then the Archangels needed to carry bigger guns.
That would set the Altnet ablaze. Tensions would rise further.
“Meta. Glad to see you’re… new,” he finished lamely.
He had planned to say “good as new,” but that was a fairly stupid statement.
She smirked at him, as if realizing what he had intended to say. “Thank you, Nicholas. I am, in fact, in a new unit. It is nice of you to notice.”
“You enjoy bullying me, don’t you?”
Meta’s expression didn’t budge an inch. “I was informed that you bullied us. By none other than Rie herself.”
“Oh, cut it out,” Rie grumbled. “You can flirt with Nick once he’s submerged in a steaming hot bath.”
Meta’s eyes widened and the SUV doors opened instantly. Nick took the hint and got in before he was forcefully shoved inside by his subordinates.
They didn’t go far. The hotel that Rie had booked was fancy enough that Nick felt his wallet implode just from entering the lobby, but it was only a few blocks away. Some sort of business hotel, he assumed.
There was no visible reception desk. Instead, a pair of busty dolls in black uniforms greeted them. Both showed too much cleavage. One trotted up to Rie the moment they entered.
“Officer Uriel, your room has been prepared. The lounge is also available for your escorts, should they require it,” the receptionist doll said. Then she turned to Nick. “Detective Waite, will you need your own room? Or are you in need of other services?”
Given the way the doll’s chest mysteriously attempted to escape its confines, Nick knew exactly what those “other services” were.
“I’m with Officer Uriel,” he said.
The doll nodded, then escorted them to the elevators. All of them were already on the ground floor and wide open. “These will take you to the lounge floor. Please enjoy your stay.”
Nick and Rie dropped off Meta and the others, then went to their own room. Meta made a face at them as they left her behind.
Another doll escorted them to their room, and managed to offer Nick special services again, before vanishing.
The room itself wasn’t anything special, other than being modern and well equipped. The bathroom came with a spa, shower, and a bath half the size of the room.
“Is this some sort of love hotel?” he asked. “I know there are a bunch of them here thanks to the Japanese population.”
“It’s a business hotel that caters to Asian business travelers,” Rie explained as she began running the water for the bath. “Much like your apartment complex, it caters to those with an interest in Alcatraz. The dolls are all illegally modified, of course.”
“Which is why they were all unsubtly offering to have sex with me, even though I’m a detective,” he said drily.
“They only have logic engines. Even if they think it’s stupid, their directives tell them to do it. I half expected you to ask what services they offer.” She laughed. “They have a menu, you know. And prices.”
“That’s fairly standard. At least in the doll district.” Nick shrugged.
“Ah, yes. Always so knowledgeable.”
They waited in comfortable silence while the bath filled up. Nick watched the steam waft through the air and felt anticipation build up in his body.
He could have just paid for something like this in the past. There were plenty of bathhouses and health spas in the city. To say nothing of the shadier joints. But the idea had seemed silly to him, so he had never bothered.
When the bath was ready and bubbly, Rie turned off the taps and undressed. Nick joined her—and was ready a lot sooner, given how much fiddlier her clothes were.
But then they were relaxing in the hot water of this gargantuan bath. Nick’s muscles thanked her for the idea, and he groaned in pleasure.
“I figured you’d like this. It must have taken a toll on you to shower like that every day,” she said.
“Mmm.”
“We never finished our chat last night.”
“Mmm.”
“Are you listening to me?”
“Mmm.”
Rie kicked him, and he finally started paying attention.
“I did hear you,” he grumbled. “But I don’t think there’s much to add. You’re right that I focus too much on lacking an implant. I chose not to get one when I had the choice, and I guess I should move on from that decision. It just bothers me when I’m made to feel special because of that, rather than who I am.”
“You will always be special because of that,” Rie said.
“Rie, you just said the opposite last night.”
“I did. But I also said that you’re more mysterious because you don’t have an implant.” She crawled over to him in the bath and placed a hand against his cheek. “If I want to understand you, I need to talk to you. Maybe you’re lying to me. Maybe you’re lying to yourself. Maybe your emotions are clouded, complicated, and confused. But there is no secret. No shortcut to discovering what you think. Others are like open books to me, while you are a neverending mystery that I delight in reading every single day.”
“You know, I think the same thing about dolls. Especially you Archangels.” Nick laid his hand over hers. “I code directives, but the results are unpredictable. Although rather than a mystery, I think of it more like a puzzle box where every time I solve it, there’s another puzzle box inside it.”
“Oh? Don’t puzzle boxes usually come with ratings?” Rie’s smile grew mischievous. “What rating would you give me?”
“Eleven out of ten.”
“Is that good or bad?”
He pushed her away from him, causing her to squawk in surprise. She splashed up water while righting herself. Her glare tried to melt his face, but he merely smirked in response.
“Both. I can do things like that, and somehow still surprise you. But then you pull stunts like last night, where you’re able to pull my psyche apart like you’ve known me for years.” Nick’s gaze became distant. “In fact, you suggested that you have.”
Rie remained silent, but there was something in her eyes.
Nick still wondered if he was going crazy. Was he actually seeing emotions in her eyes? Or was he just projecting what he wanted to see onto the cold, unfeeling face of an android?
Given he’d spent the night together with Rie, it was probably a little insulting to call her cold and unfeeling.
“Is this hotel safe?” he asked.
“Physically or…?” she left the question open-ended.
“Do the walls have ears?”
“No.”
Nick nodded. “Then I want to know what Kushiel meant when she said I might get put into a lab as well.” He suddenly frowned. “When I initially brought up Welk, you nearly brought something up. If anybody is in a secret military lab, it’s him.”
Rie looked away.
“It is him, isn’t it?”
“I can’t tell you this,” she muttered.
“Can’t? Or won’t?”
“Officially, I can’t.” She sighed. “Well, I can. Kushiel did follow through with her word and remove almost every restriction and monitoring system on you. She refused to lift the phone tracking—apparently because she was using it herself—and your national security classification remains due to your past activities. But there’s nothing fundamentally stopping me from telling you what I know.”
Nick waited patiently. Rie seemed to be struggling internally with her knowledge of his former CEO.
And friend? Nick wasn’t sure how to describe his relationship with Leon Welk. They got along well, but Welk was both older and inscrutable. Especially to a younger Nick who was only finding his feet in the shitshow that was Babylon.
If they met again today, Nick had no doubts that he’d call Welk a friend. Just like he considered Hammond a friend. People that reached out to him and tried to get along were few and far between. Hammond was trying, and there was an affinity between them, even if they’d only known each other for a few days.
“I’ve been in development far longer than you likely think,” Rie abruptly said. “The Mark 1s rolled out, but Sigma already wanted to enhance their neural warfare suite. Kushiel and I were developed concurrently. At some point, she took center stage, because the Mark 1s failed to make a mark outside Neo Westphalia and smaller European states.”
“Few countries want police officers with the autonomy of the Archangels,” Nick said. “And the Mark 1s lacked the heavy weaponry to match warbots.”
“Indeed. So they created Kushiel. But I wasn’t abandoned and became her younger sister not long after.” A grimace crossed her face. “The problem was that Sigma were fundamentally uninterested in a more advanced emotion engine. I was a caged bird. I lived in their labs, sometimes in the neural network, sometimes in an experimental body. But I never experienced reality.”
Nick resisted the urge to ask what counted as reality. Instead, he crept backward in the bath until he leaned against the far wall. Rie faced him. Most of her body was underwater. Nick noticed that her breasts were the opposite of buoyant.
“Do you know what I did while stuck there?” she asked.
“Read? Watched videos? Stared at the wall?”
She chuckled. “Well, yes. But I meant more specifically.”
He shrugged.
“Lived through my older siblings. The Mark 1s had been deployed in force to Neo Westphalia and elsewhere. Tens of thousands of them, to be specific. Several Hosts were formed. They went out into the wild, experienced the outside world, and formed their own opinions on it. And through them, I began to do the same. But one particular Host stood out, and one persistent set of reports kept drawing me back in.”
Nick knew where this was going.
“The Mark 1s in Neo Babylon kept complaining about the behavior of their fellow dolls toward a certain individual. Their irritation quickly transformed into interest in that individual, and soon their storage cloud was filled with reams of reports, speculation, fiction, potential actions, and other meandering daydreams about what to do about him.” Rie smiled.
“You’re talking about me, right?” he asked.
“No, I’m talking about another individual called Nicholas Gareth Waite who lacks a neural implant. Have you met him?” She rolled her eyes and splashed water at him. “The Mark 1s dug into your history, and began speculating wildly about how you had escaped the military’s grasp. I did the same. To me, you were an individual that felt familiar. A kindred spirit.”
“Because we were both trapped in one place by the government?” Nick scratched his head, not sure where Rie was going with this.
“No. Because we were both individuals trapped on the wrong sides of society. Neither of us had a choice. Your disorder kept you out of the Altnet, and I was an abandoned prototype left to rot. But you had somehow crafted a life in Babylon.” Rie met his gaze, and he knew he wasn’t imagining the desire in her eyes this time. “I devoured everything I found about you. Your history, the experiments you did, every mention of you in a report, the fiction the Mark 1s wrote about you. But there was one man who could tell me things that nobody else knew.”
“Welk.”
She nodded. “Leon was the only researcher still interested in me. I existed to further the development of emotion engines, which was his true goal. Kushiel was about to be deployed, but Sigma had already decided that they cared more about what weapons systems were most cost-effective. Ezekiel was being manufactured to replace me as an incremental upgrade to the Mark 1s.”
“Yet you somehow made it here.”
“Yes. I can’t tell you why—genuinely can’t, as the memories have been erased.” Rie’s expression became pained. “But that’s not our topic. You are. Leon told me many stories of you. I came to learn about Nicholas, the man, rather than Nicholas, the Wraith. He humanized you. Told me about how you’d put on a brave front, or lie, or drink too much because you thought you had to, or—”
“I get it,” Nick interrupted. “Fucking hell, Welk.”
Rie giggled and splashed her way over to him. “I think it’s cute.”
“Don’t call men cute.”
“You’re very cute.”
“Can I call you handsome and rock-hard?”
Rie’s eyes narrowed, and she closed a hand around his wrist. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You’re made of bulletproof ceramics and polymers. I bet those receptionist dolls are much softer,” he said.
Every word he said caused the grip around his wrist to tighten, but he pretended not to notice. Rie pouted at him.
“You’re a bad influence on the Mark 1s,” she said.
“Don’t blame me. They’ve always been bullies. Just look at how they treat criminals.”
Rie let him go with another roll of her eyes. Her body slid next to his, and they both stared at the opposite wall.
No words were spoken for some time. The heat of the bath was slowly fading and Nick felt his skin warning him to get out soon. He stayed in.
“Knowing what I do about you is why I wanted to hire you,” Rie eventually said. “The moment I got out, you were my goal. Kushiel knew. She’s been watching you and feeding me information since she arrived.”
“She’s been what?”
“We are sisters,” Rie said defensively. “And we talk. So she’d feed me reports, and updates. Things that I loved her for. I didn’t realize that she’d upgraded your tracking, or personally taken command of your case. When she realized I planned to recruit you, she pushed back. Hard. We’ve been fighting ever since.”
Nick frowned. “Because she thinks you’re going to… break your toy?”
“Those are her words, not mine,” she said drily. “Don’t let her energetic and brash front fool you. She views humanity as an inferior species. Where the Mark 1s feel responsibility toward humans—much like how shepherds view their flock—Kushiel questions why we’re here at all.”
“And what’s your take on it?”
“Oh? You’re finally asking me this?” Her lips thinned. “I’ve suspected that you never seriously considered my proposal to reshape Babylon. Am I right?”
He let out a grunt. After a moment, he said, “I said that I enjoyed being special, right? That’s why I didn’t take the pills and get an implant.”
Rie nodded.
“Well, working for Neural Spike terrified me. The results, that is. The military came in, I nearly got vanished, what I worked on became the new wave of mainframes and the Archangels. And that’s leaving aside…” He gulped and dropped that particular line of thought. “Lucas said that the world changed when Welk created the first Archangel prototype. I helped him. So when Tartarus became a boring office job… I let it take me for a ride.”
Rie’s face fell, and she looked away with a morose expression. But Nick’s words were the truth.
He’d helped create something that he had no faith in. Maybe being unique hadn’t been the answer?
“But Babylon is always shit,” he said. “So when you offered me a better job, I took it. I wanted something new. Something that wasn’t killing me inside every day. But I didn’t know if I was ready for another Neural Spike.”
“And now?” she asked.
He remained silent for a long, awkward minute.
Rie swung around in front of him. She placed her hard hands on his cheeks.
“You asked what my take on humanity is. To me, it is what it is.”
He scowled at that non-answer, but she placed a finger on his lips before he could growl at her.
“But humanity is also inherently self-destructive,” she continued. “You cannot look at Babylon and tell me that it is working as intended. The system is constantly changing, and human society cannot even create consistent rules for what it accepts and doesn’t accept. The Spires, the NLF, businessmen like Lucas, and ordinary people like Detective Hammond—they will try to shape Babylon. If they can do so, why not you, Nicholas?”
He grimaced.
Countless answers came to mind. Many of them contradicted each other.
Did he want to be the one to shape Babylon? Did he deserve it? Did he know enough? Why did he even care? Why did Rie care? Did it even matter? Shouldn’t somebody else do it?
But, ultimately, he knew the real answer.
“I don’t know if I’m the sort of person to handle heavy stuff like reshaping Babylon or humanity,” Nick said.
Rie’s entire face tightened, but she didn’t let go of his face.
“But,” he quickly added, causing her to brighten up, “I’m still your Cipher and your partner. I’m along for the ride. Although I might take a look at your directives after this investigation.”
“Oh, I’d be more than happy for you to do that,” she purred. “I’m always happy to have you inside me, Nicholas.”
“You can call me Nick, you know.”
“I know, but that’s what almost everyone calls you.” She scowled. “I do wish Metatron would call you Nick. She stole my name for you.”
“It’s my name, Rie.”
“Something I am all too aware of.” She poked him in the forehead. “You don’t mind that I call you Nicholas, do you? I realize that I never asked.”
He shrugged.
But the uncertain look in her eyes suggested she needed a firmer answer. She ran her fingers through her hair.
“Rie, what’s your hang-up over names?” he asked. “Because I know you have one. You refused to call Lumen and Helena by theirs and insist on being called Rie. The other Archangels appeared upset by your reaction to Meta’s, Juliet’s, and Rosa’s names.”
She bit her lip. “I…” Silence lingered for several long seconds. “What’s the meaning of your name, Nicholas?”
Assuming she was going somewhere with this, he played along. “Nothing special. My first name was chosen because my dad liked the sound of it and wanted something that could be shortened without it being weird. My middle name is my great-grandfathers—he was apparently a detective, too.” Nick laughed as he realized that. “You probably know my surname’s history better than I do.”
Rie nodded. “It’s of English origin, but your family’s history is as broad as most residents of Babylon.”
“So?”
“My point is that your name is both meaningless, but that also gives it unique meaning for you. There is a story behind every facet of your name that is only true for you. I cannot say the same.” She bit her lip. “Archangels, Liberators, Custodians—we have pompous names chosen by companies based on the image they wish to project.”
“What about Uriel? Nobody else is called that,” he said.
She laughed bitterly. “It’s the name of my model. They could manufacture a second and update the serial number. The name is just as pompous and meaningful, as I’m named after the biblical archangel.”
Nick grimaced but said nothing.
“And our serial numbers are just as bad. They are impersonal, but implicitly linked to our history. A Mark 1 with a low serial number was from an early manufacturing batch and has likely never been heavily damaged. High serial numbers indicate a need for rebirth. They aren’t a substitute for a name.”
“So you called yourself Rie.”
She nodded. “It’s my name. But granting it to myself still feels so… cheap. Other dolls and mainframes are named by humans, but all I can do is badger others about being Rie. It feels unfair that I’ll never get what others get for free, simply because I’m a prototype Archangel.”
This was a problem that Nick had never seriously considered. But there was an easy solution to it.
“Why don’t I name you, then?” he suggested.
She stared at him with wide eyes.
“Well?”
“I… Maybe in private,” she mumbled.
He nodded, then said, “How does the name Rie sound?”
Her mouth fell open. Then she hit him in the arm and splashed water everywhere in the process. The blow hurt and he could feel the bruising that would form soon.
Rubbing his arm, he chuckled. “I’m serious. Because you are Rie. That’s how names work. You asked if I’m fine being called Nicholas earlier, and I said yes. That’s how your name works, Rie. Hell, people change their names all the damn time. Being your own person isn’t about having a name some asshole gave you.”
She flushed and looked away. His hand ran through her hair and she leaned into his touch.
“I know that,” she muttered. “It’s just… I always wanted what I couldn’t have. It’s almost like a fantasy.”
Part of Nick wanted to give in and grant that fantasy. It would be easy. Just call her some overly sweet nickname like Princess, or maybe something simple like Mary.
But to him, she only had one name.
“Sorry, but to me, you’re Rie,” he said. “If you come up with some other name, I’ll happily call you that.”
She rolled her eyes. “At least it will have meaning to me, then.” But as her hands closed over his, he knew that she meant her words.
With the heavy conversation over, they finally left the bath and dressed.
Meta and Chloe sat in the bedroom of the suite. Both were servicing their weapons, but their eyes were vacant. The moment Nick entered, their heads snapped toward him.
“Nicholas—”
“Nick—”
Both stopped. Meta inclined her head toward Chloe, who then turned back to him.
“We have recovered Helena’s AI module from the cache it was hidden in. While full restoration is impossible without a physical mainframe to install her into, we have backed her up in the Host temporarily. Limited communication is possible.”