CHAPTER 29
The warehouse looked almost identical to the previous time Nick was here. The green maintenance terminal that the NLF had compromised was missing, leaving just the newer black one that Nick had used.
A handful of bulky laborer dolls lined the Tartarus security dolls along the rear of the building’s interior. These laborer dolls looked more like humanoid robots and lacked many of the humanizing features of ordinary dolls. Rather than skin, they had exposed polymer plates and mechanisms.
A half-dozen Custodians stood guard inside, and teams of Liberators patrolled the exterior. Chloe hadn’t lied when she said she was guaranteeing his security.
“There’s something that’s been bothering me lately,” Nick said as he sat down in front of the maintenance terminal.
“I assume you will elaborate,” Chloe said.
In the background, Meta and the Mark 1s assessed the security of the huge, mostly empty warehouse. Juliet and Rosa stood nearby, their eyes vacant as they entertained themselves in the neural network.
“The mercs were with the NLF when they came here,” Nick said. “The sniper who took out one of them was the same one that attacked us the other day.”
“Attacked you,” Chloe corrected. “But you are correct.”
“But Travis said that the mercs left them high and dry.”
“Also correct.”
He sighed. “I assume the Host has a conclusion?”
“Two. One is that relations between the NLF and mercenaries broke down after the attack here. They were working together. The second is that the mercenaries intended to seize the information afterward, and eliminated anyone who might know what it is.”
“Do you know what it is?” Nick asked.
“There were no relevant memories in Simon’s implant.”
Damn. That could mean Nick was barking up the wrong tree, or that Simon had preemptively wiped information that could help the police.
But if he was right that the mercs wanted something off the security dolls, what the hell could it be? There was nothing in the error logs to suggest that anything of interest had happened. Travis’s terminal was untraceable and didn’t matter anyway.
Without anything to go on, Nick hooked up the first of the security dolls. Now that he knew they might be compromised, he ran through a rigorous check of everything. Every system, every log, every directive.
It took hours for a single doll. The good news is that once he did it, he’d be able to compare what he found on this doll with the rest of them. Then he could just focus on any aberrations, rather than combing through reams and reams of information.
Chloe kept a close eye on his activities. Sometimes she asked him what he was looking for, or why he focused on particular pieces of hardware. He tried to explain, but sometimes found himself giving insubstantial reasoning.
“You rely heavily on your instincts,” she said.
“I can’t process this much information.” He gestured at the wall of text on the terminal screen. “No human can. That’s why filtered error and maintenance logs are necessary, and some Ciphers use features in their implants to help. I’m actually pretty bad at this sort of detail work, because I don’t have many tricks to speed it up. I miss things. On the other hand, I find things that are missed by entirely AI-driven approaches. Ciphers can’t code for the unexpected, but they can recognize it by sight.”
Chloe nodded, but it was a tiny nod. She evidently didn’t agree with him.
“Anyway, I think she’s clean. I’m going to initialize her. Monitor for any strange neural or wireless activity,” Nick said.
The startup process went off without a hitch. The security doll twitched, then sprang to life. Nick watched as the logs filled up with tons of information—far more than he could process.
“Mr. Waite, it has been… several days since our last operational period,” the doll said.
“It has been. How are you feeling?” he said, turning to face her.
“All systems are operational. Errors are within limits and relate to expected environmental deviations.” She looked at the nearby Archangels. “Are you under arrest, sir?”
The stiffness in her posture suggested that his answer would be the difference between imminent violence and peace. He raised his hands, palms open.
“I’m a detective now,” he said. “They’re my subordinates.”
“Are we still your subordinates?” she asked.
Chloe stepped in and said, “You can be. Pending security evaluation and your effectiveness, it may be possible for the department to acquire you.”
“Without new directives, I consider that to be optimal. Then Mr. Waite can correct our directives and we can continue providing security for him.” The doll nodded happily. “I believe the others will agree.”
“Do they have names?” Chloe asked.
Nick winced. He’d never named the security dolls. They were just Security to him. IT and the other Ciphers at Tartarus would have staunchly opposed any humanization of the dolls, such as with names. And given they were a custom design, they didn’t even have a proper model designation. They were just heavily modified G5s.
The security doll looked askance at Nick.
He sighed and scratched his neck. “I’m not very good at coming up with names. Uh, I guess it should be something related to the Archangels.”
The stares of the nearby dolls were disconcerting. They expected too much from him.
“Sigma’s always liked to name their models after knights, unlike RTM Strategic. I think their style is better. And if I remember correctly, they had an experimental line of military dolls they ditched. They were called Paladins. So let’s go with that.”
“So you are the Paladins.” Chloe smirked. “You say you’re not good at names, Nick, but my database suggests that it is a fitting name for them.”
The newly christened Paladin doll merely nodded. If the name meant something to her, it doesn’t show on her face.
Nick sighed and turned back to the terminal.
Then he frowned as he noticed something very odd.
“Mr. Waite?” the Paladin asked.
He ignored her, staring at the terminal. The Paladin was throwing some minor errors, but those were expected. The Tartarus dolls were linked together using a simple method, similar to the Archangels. Her neural link expected to see other dolls active.
No, what interested him was that she was throwing errors for both her neural and wireless links.
“Nick?” Chloe asked.
“Sorry, but I need you to stay offline a little longer,” he told the Paladin.
She nodded, then closed her eyes. Nick turned her off using the terminal.
“Nick?” Chloe repeated.
“Chloe, does the Host have an explanation for why the mercs turned the security dolls back on after the raid?” he asked.
Her eyes narrowed. “Doing so would minimize the possibility of detection.”
“Despite Helena being missing? And the fact that black company security doesn’t call the police?”
Chloe shrugged. “Given the Paladins appeared to be free of modification—”
“Travis used his backdoor for the shutdown codes. But the mercs also wiped every other device on Tartarus. The dolls were mysteriously exempt, even though we know the mercs had good Ciphers.” Nick swore, then pulled up the log for the wireless link. “We never even worked out how the NLF found this place so fast.”
The log showed multiple errors about a failed connection to a device Nick didn’t recognize.
While that device could be something from Tartarus that the dolls no longer could connect to, he doubted it. There hadn’t been any similar errors when he checked last time.
“The dolls were left on when you moved them to the warehouse?” he asked.
“That is correct. We tied them to the neural link in the warehouse for security reasons,” Chloe said.
Which meant they should have thrown an error at some point before he last analyzed them.
“This device they’re trying to connect to went offline between now and the last time we were here.” Nick pointed at the error. “The question is, what is it?”
The answer was… nothing.
The device merely pinged the Paladin. The only thing recorded was the sending and receiving time. No coordinates, no addresses, no indication of what the device even was. It had only started sending this information to the doll after it restarted on the night of the raid, however. So this was the work of the mercs.
“I don’t get it,” he said. “Wait, what are you doing?”
Chloe had walked around to the side of the terminal and opened the side panel. After several seconds, she emerged with a long cable. She plugged it into a port hidden beneath a flap on her hip.
“It is faster if I read the data directly,” she told him. “Connect the next doll.”
Nick shrugged, then asked the laborer dolls to drag one over. He plugged her in, did the basic maintenance checks, then pulled up the wireless log.
“This is frustrating,” Chloe said. “I can only read what you are looking at.”
“That’s called a security feature, Chloe. The idea is to limit automation when using these things. There are special terminals built for automation, but the manufacturers hold on to them with an iron fist and DRM.”
Despite her complaints, she processed the data. Nick had a hunch about what she was doing.
Each Paladin recorded their exact position at the time they received the signal from the device. This sort of positional data was stored for security purposes, in case the dolls did anything strange.
But if Chloe combined that positional data with the time it took the signal to reach each doll, she could map out the travel path of the device. She had forty slightly different sets of data to use to triangulate the position from, after all.
So, Nick, Chloe, and the laborer dolls worked through the Paladins one by one. By the 27th, Chloe’s expression was pained. But she kept going.
That suggested that the answer had been arrived at. An Archangel could handle this sort of processing easily. The problem might be in the answer itself.
Finally, the 40th doll was processed and Chloe slumped over.
“A detailed travel path of the device has been produced from the night of the raid,” she said. “Error correction for signal distortion has been undertaken.”
“And?”
“It is almost certainly a tracking device attached to a vehicle. The message is simplified to prevent jamming and enhance range. The starting location matches the parking lot depicted in Simon’s memories. We have matched the path to that of an unmarked truck that drove this route along many of the city’s cameras.” Chloe unplugged herself and stepped over to Nick.
He also noticed that the other Archangels were coming over. Something was going on.
“Where did it go, Chloe?” he asked.
“The truck deviated from its path after stopping at a park that suffered from surveillance issues,” she continued, ignoring him. “But the new vehicle that was tracked is an exact match for a police armored transport. Its final destination was the secure evidence vault in the Spires. No records of its arrival can be found in the mainframe or any of the assigned dolls.”
Nick stared at Chloe. Slowly, he processed what he had heard.
“So, Helena’s physical mainframe has been in the police department the entire time?”