CHAPTER 30
“How the hell have we missed this?” Nick asked.
“Evidence storage is a secure section of the police department. To prevent tampering and ensure a sterile environment, none of our systems directly interface with it.”
“Then whose do? Somebody has to run it.” He stood up and began walking toward the exit, then stopped himself. “Can you have them put the security—I mean, the Paladins away?” He gestured at the laborer dolls.
Then he left the warehouse with the Archangels trailing behind.
“There is a parallel system that operates it. In case of emergencies, permission can be granted to allow us entry.” Chloe tilted her head. “We do, however, have access to the evidence logs so that we can process and analyze everything in storage.”
“So? Is Helena in there?”
The idea that the Archangels could have found Helena just by scanning the evidence vault boggled his mind. Could they genuinely be this stupid?
Nick stopped next to the SUVs and ran a hand through his hair.
“Unknown. We do not have access to the contents of all storage units.” She raised her hands, palms open, when he glared at her. “A lot of seized property from Tartarus was deemed to be of national security interest. Permission must be granted by Chief Andrews or Commissioner Kim to access the relevant logs.”
Andrews didn’t work weekends and Kim was a suspect. Asking for permission was right out.
The moment they did so, the suspect might move Helena’s physical unit. He’d somehow tampered with the police dolls manning evidence storage, after all.
“However,” Chloe added, “we do have access to the times that the storage unit was used. Only one unit matches the tracking device pattern, and it is designated of national security importance.”
Nick gulped and internally apologized to the Archangels for calling them stupid. While they’d missed this, they were able to isolate the storage unit within literal minutes of finding out about it.
“So… we go to evidence storage and ask to open it?” he asked, feeling stupid. “Who do we ask?”
“In this case, Commissioner Kim. He is the one who authorized this storage unit’s use and designation.”
Well, shit.
Nick hopped into the SUV, and his escort followed suit. The moment he did so, Rie’s voice entered his earpiece.
“Nicholas, I just processed the new report. I’m returning to the department. You should as well,” she said.
“Already on it.” Then he frowned. “Bring support, Rie. Our culprit might have noticed that Chloe probed the evidence database. If he’s a Cipher—”
“Dennis Kim is many things, but he is not a Cipher. Once we confirm that the police mainframes have been tampered with and that Helena’s physical unit is being held as evidence, this will be over.”
“Somebody working with him is a Cipher,” Nick warned. “Rie, bring backup. That’s an order.”
Silence.
“Well, you’ve settled into your role fast,” she said.
“A lot of things are settling into place.” He glanced out the window and noticed that his vehicle had already cleared the warehouses.
The Spires loomed in the distance. The afternoon sun beamed off the titanic amounts of glass that stood as a symbol of the wealth and power of Neo Babylon.
Nick worried he was about to go up against that power. Even with the Archangels, surely anybody overriding the security systems of the police had some last trick to use. Some way to stop Nick or to Houdini their way out this situation.
“Chloe said that you could open the evidence vault in an emergency,” Nick said, his mind racing.
“We need permission from a select group of individuals,” Rie said.
He groaned. “Let me guess, Andrews or Kim?”
“Effectively, yes. There is a separate bureau that manages all evidence, but its captain is presently on long-term leave in Amsterdam.”
Amsterdam… Even if the police network didn’t have physical presence requirements, the Altnet didn’t operate in Europe. That captain was a no go.
“What about his replacement?”
A long pause. “He lacks the necessary authorization. Due to an oversight, he was never granted access to emergency access protocols.”
Oversight, his ass. Nick gritted his teeth as he realized the entire department was being played.
How many technical errors in the police mainframes had been overlooked as “oversights” or “outdated hardware?” This was exactly the sort of thing that the Ciphers in his bureau should have been looking into. Why else give them responsibility for the mainframes?
“So it’s the same problem as the evidence logs,” he said. “Fine. We’ll go to evidence storage anyway. The Spire is a gigantic tower. If Kim won’t let us in when we contact him, we’ll confront him. If things get worse, that’s why you’ll have backup.”
“We’ll be in the most secure building in the entire city, Nicholas. If things get worse, it will be because we make them worse,” Rie said.
“I hope so.”
She made a humming noise, then fell silent.
There was no sound to indicate that she’d hung up on him. In fact, from what he understood, Rie could listen to everything he said. Had she been spying on him the entire time he’d been in the warehouse? Was that why she knew to speak up when he stepped into the SUV?
When he looked outside again, he confirmed they were already heading south, toward the Spires. A pair of interceptors had joined them.
But he wanted more. He pulled out his phone and messaged Kushiel. He kept it brief, as she could just check on the Host to find out everything.
She replied back instantly with a barrage of positive animations and emotes. Then she sent the following message, After this, tell your handlers to let me onto the special line. This is annoying as shit.
“You didn’t let Kushiel talk to me over the earpiece?” he asked aloud.
“She is only on loan from the military. Handling permissions may become complicated,” Meta said.
“Uh huh. It’s probably a lot safer to let her speak with me directly, then take away permission when she’s back with the military.”
What had things come to that he was willingly letting a military doll spy on him through the earpiece? Then again, if things went as badly as he worried they might, having Kushiel in his ear when he called for help would be greatly beneficial.
Nothing the police could deploy had a chance of matching her. Even the military warbots that deployed around the base of the Spires at night were target practice for her.
Speaking of which, Nick noticed it was approaching sunset. Those warbots would deploy soon.
But not yet.
They blew through the checkpoints and swiftly approached the police Spire. Nick frowned as he once again failed to recall its proper name.
“Chloe, this is the Delta Spire, but what’s its pompous name?” he asked.
“Avalon,” she said.
Nick scratched his head. The name sounded familiar, but also not.
“It is the mythical resting place of King Arthur and the forging site of Excalibur,” Chloe said. “There is considerable debate over the intended meaning and interpretation in regard to its myth.”
“… so the police Spire is named after the place that created a sword that crowned a legendary king,” Nick said flatly. “Yeah, that fits pretty well with the theme of the Spires.”
The elites of the Spires saw the police as an extension of their power. They’d automated the entire service and moved it into the Spires to maintain control. Avalon was, without a doubt, a fitting name.
The police were the sword that granted the Spires the power to control Babylon. The last time they’d lost control of it, they’d had to resort to the military and the entire country had nearly collapsed.
Ordinarily, Nick’s convoy would enter an open entrance that led deep underground to the police parking garage. This time, they drove around the base of the Spire. A handful of people moved along the gorgeously maintained roads and gardens, usually on electric scooters or similar devices. No police dolls were in sight.
They pulled into a separate underground entrance, but this one was far larger than the police one. Then they came to a stop.
A brightly illuminated blast door, formed from metal plates larger than the SUVs themselves, barred the way. Several orange strobe lights flashed along the walls. Automated gun turrets swiveled to face them, and they appeared to be packing guns large enough to menace the armored shells of the SUVs.
But, again, no police dolls were in sight.
After a few moments, the doors began to slide open with a series of loud clunks. Nick imagined how loud it must be outside if he could hear the doors inside his armored cocoon.
They descended once the blast doors opened enough to allow them through. Two more blast doors continued to open farther down the massive ramp they descended. Nick wondered how big some of the vehicles that came down here were.
Then again, the police might store some truly gargantuan evidence here. Helena was big, but what if they needed to store a tank? Or a plane?
Nick heard slams as the blast doors closed behind them. The convoy didn’t slow.
Eventually, they reached the loading bay for evidence storage. Nick knew this because of the huge red warning signs that said “Police Evidence Storage—Trespassing is a Capital Offense.”
“I’m not going to be shot for coming down here, right?” he asked, looking at the other signs screaming that humans weren’t supposed to even be here.
“Evidence storage is a controlled environment,” Chloe explained. “By law, human personnel are only permitted to conduct maintenance that is deemed impossible by dolls and bots. You are exempted under emergency provisions.”
“Good to know.”
Nick didn’t comment on the absurdity of maintenance that dolls and bots couldn’t do. An engineer or Cipher could remotely control a bot or doll if necessary.
Which meant that Nick might be the first human down here in many, many years.
The loading bay itself suggested that. Its size was well beyond human scale. A dozen black blast doors adorned the far side, and the dolls patrolling outside them looked tiny in comparison. This place had been built with robots in mind.
A dozen SUVs and interceptors had parked in the center of the huge, empty concrete space. While they had spread out in a way that provided cover in a firefight, the sheer size of the room made Nick question if they’d even be vaguely useful.
His convoy joined the other police vehicles, and he stepped out.
Strobe lights and sirens went off, and he reflexively gripped his gun. They were silenced a moment later.
“Automatic sensors,” Chloe said. “Rie is communicating with the dolls responsible for security.”
Nick nodded absently while looking around. Automated gun turrets sat idle along the side walls, with bright yellow and black paint surrounding their bases. Unlike the external ones, these didn’t react to their arrival.
Most of the patrolling dolls also ignored them. They were exclusively Custodians and carried their typical anti-doll weapons. A handful of them were docked beside an open charging station, with bulky cables running to openings in their hips. Cabled charging was a rarity for dolls these days, but remained far faster than wireless.
Rie stood below the loading bay doors and the concrete walkway in front of them. She had a dozen Archangels with her—mostly Mark 1s, but four Mark 3s were among their number.
“The dolls here are permanently stationed, aren’t they?” Nick asked while approaching Rie. His footsteps and voice echoed off the walls, reminding him how eerily silent the place was.
As if to punctuate that point, Chloe only spoke to him over the earpiece. His was the only voice that the other police dolls could hear.
“The dolls stationed here must be kept separate from those of other bureaus,” she explained.
“So do they only handle evidence or…?” Nick tried not to sound too stupid while asking this question.
Which was hard, as he had no clue how most of the department operated. He barely understood his own bureau and now regretted not spending more time researching it. He felt as though he’d been wearing blinders for the past week.
“The Autonomous Security Bureau is split into two divisions: one that maintains evidence storage, and another responsible for building security.” Chloe pointed at a double door to their left. “That leads to the headquarters of the bureau, including their armory. All dolls assigned to them are kept on a separate network.”
“To the rest of the police?”
She frowned. “Not entirely. All police dolls are reliant on the central police mainframes for directions, but they are sequestered. Only we, the Archangels, have an entirely autonomous network due to our distributed processing capability.”
To Nick, that sounded a lot like a soft separation. If these independent police dolls needed to be kept separate, they should have their own mainframe and internal network.
Anything else was just asking for trouble. Their culprit had already tampered with these dolls. Who was to say he couldn’t do it again?
In the distance, Nick heard a rumbling sound. Almost like the clunks of the blast doors that led down here. He looked back and only saw the ramp leading up and out. None of those doors were visible from here, but he continued to hear the noises.
Rie abruptly turned away from the Custodians she was arguing with and walked toward him. She carried a bulky shotgun, and Nick noticed that all the Archangels held anti-doll weapons. Including his own escorts. They’d switched out their rifles and SMGs before leaving the SUVs.
“We’re at an impasse,” Rie said, voice strained. “I don’t have authority over these dolls, so they’re being polite but that’s it.”
“They haven’t shot us yet, which is a plus,” Nick said. “But I guess that’s as far as their politeness goes?”
“They have used everything short of violence to tell me that I should leave and get permission from the executive.” She huffed. “And don’t say ‘Well, do that.’ I’ve tried.”
Chloe smirked and looked at him, and he raised his hands.
“I didn’t even get a chance to say something smart,” he protested. “And what do you mean by ‘tried?’”
“I can’t get through to the commissioner. I’ve checked the cameras and activity logs,” Rie said, suddenly switching to his earpiece. “Commissioner Kim is in his office. I should be able to contact him. The rest of the department is almost empty, as expected.”
“Doesn’t anybody work weekends here?” he asked.
“Unless they live here like the commissioner, no. Remote monitoring systems enable most officers to assess alerts from their implant. They only need to come here in person for serious affairs. As such, our bureau is completely empty. The other detectives rarely come here at all, and Detective Hammond and Captain Lieu only come on weekends when requested.”
Rie’s glare suggested she was judging him for his insistence on working the weekend. He shrugged her off.
“What’s the status of the department, sans humans?” he asked.
“Many floors are being patrolled by Liberators and Custodians. Their numbers are elevated. The commissioner’s floor is still full of Custodians. As are many adjacent floors. I’m beginning to think that their deployment wasn’t due to the NLF.”
Nick grunted. “That adds up with other behavior.”
“It does?”
“The Archangels have been spread thin. You’ve been tasked with chasing external suspects. The moment the mercs cropped up, you were suddenly busier than ever. If our mastermind has been hiding Helena here, then he needed attention everywhere else.”
“True.” Rie’s eyes flashed. “I’ve alerted all nearby Archangels to report here, as well as those on our floor. I sent a small detachment to find Commissioner Kim earlier, but I’m concerned that the situation will worsen.”
“What about the security systems?” Nick pointed at the turrets.
“We can override the security systems at short-range. It’s long-range systems and aggressive dolls that are the concern. That’s why these turrets aren’t a threat. We’ve superseded the mainframe’s security.”
Nick had forgotten about that ability of theirs.
Rie suddenly scowled. The clanks of the doors had changed in tone.
“You gave Kushiel access to your earpiece?” she asked. “And asked her to come here?”
“Yes. Where is she, anyway?”
“Right behind you. This place is too fucking big,” Kushiel said over the earpiece. “Don’t worry. I’m listening in. If you need help, just scream my name and I’ll charge to your rescue.”
“Thanks,” he said drily.
He rolled his shoulders, aware that this was a waiting game. If Kim was behind this, then he’d have some way to weasel out of it. Maybe Helena wasn’t even here anymore. The tracking device had stopped functioning at some point—although that might just be due to low batteries.
But Nick remained deeply suspicious of the idea that Kim was the suspect. Whatever the case, he could worry about that after confronting Kim and finding Helena’s physical unit. Nobody else was even here, after all. If the culprit was somebody else, they were in no position to stop them.
As if to punish him for those thoughts, the strobe lights went off again. Nick frowned at them, then looked at his escort. The Archangels’ eyes flashed, and they gripped their guns tightly.
In the distance, the Custodians had stiffened.
Nick initially suspected a neural network outage.
Then a Custodian raised her railgun and pointed it directly at him.
This wasn’t an outage, he realized, an instant before the police doll opened fire at him.