CHAPTER 31
A Mark 1 slammed into Nick. As he toppled over, his feet flying off the ground, he barely had the time to feel his own weightlessness before Chloe grabbed him.
The railgun round blew a hole straight through the Mark 1. Nick’s eyes widened as he saw the Archangel begin to collapse, and he felt a spark of something that reminded him of the last time this happened. It wasn’t a bright spark.
Then all hell broke loose as dozens of anti-doll weapons were unleashed.
Chloe, Meta, and most of his escort backpedaled to the police SUVs. They unleashed round after round on the move, their motors and aiming protocols enabling them to blow away Custodians with ease. This was a hell of a feat in Nick’s mind, given they were running backward faster than Olympic sprinters ran forward.
Rie and the others near her moved backward at a slower pace. Many of the weaker anti-doll weapons glanced off the heavy armor of the Archangels. The bulky rifles and shotguns that turned security dolls into scrap were like BB guns here.
Except the shooter mattered. The Custodians aimed at the center of mass, and often needed a moment to balance themselves due to their bulky armor. By contrast, the Archangels focused on weak points—heads, hands, joints in armor—and opened fire without hesitation.
Custodian after Custodian collapsed under a hail of shells and railgun rounds, and only a few Archangels suffered the same fate.
By the time Nick had been dragged behind the police SUVs, dozens of the rogue dolls had already fallen.
“Stay,” Chloe said, trying to shield him from part of the loading bay.
As he had suspected, the vehicles couldn’t protect them from every angle. Several of the SUVs shifted as heavy rounds attempted to blow them apart. Nick heard several small explosions as reactive armor activated, no doubt deflecting railgun rounds that might seriously threaten the heavy vehicles.
His hand firmly gripped his Lawman. He remembered the lessons he’d received from Meta earlier today, but they seemed utterly useless right now. The room was filled with murder machines that could draw a bead on him and blow his head off before he even hefted his gun.
Even so, he still pulled his handgun free. It would be useless in its holster. Right now, it felt heavier than ever, but he pushed the thought out of his mind.
He looked around the Archangels blocking him in, and then his eyes widened.
“Shit,” he cursed, staring up at the rotating gun turrets. “Chloe—”
She looked at the turrets, then ignored them and blew the leg off a Custodian. Nick was about to raise his own gun. Then he saw what was going on.
The turrets didn’t point anywhere near them. Instead, the massive dual-barreled monstrosities fixed their sights on Custodians on the raised walkway.
The roars of the turrets overshadowed nearly anything else in the loading bay. Rogue dolls were blown apart by rounds intended to punch through armored cars, but they quickly responded. Railgun rounds took out several of the turrets.
It didn’t matter, though. This firefight was over. The numbers of the Custodians had dwindled, despite their initially overwhelming firepower. While injured Archangels continued to pour rounds into their enemies, Custodians went down permanently.
Nick saw several Custodians even turn on the others. He suspected that the Mark 3s were overriding whoever had taken control of them.
But just as he had tempted fate earlier, the same occurred now.
The door on the left burst open. If Nick recalled correctly, it led to the headquarters of these police dolls.
So, naturally, their reinforcements poured through the now-open door. Dozens more Liberators and Custodians clattered onto the concrete walkways, now flanking the Archangels.
Nick shifted, aware that he was now in the open. He raised his gun toward one of the Liberators.
She responded to his aggression. Her hand cannon was bigger than his, and her aim was also a lot better. This felt like a showdown, but one that Nick couldn’t possibly win.
Right as his finger squeezed the trigger, the Liberator spasmed. Pieces of her right arm flew through the air as Chloe blasted the rogue doll.
Then Nick fired. His first shot went wide. The kinetic dampeners in his handgun absorbed the recoil, and he fired again almost instantly. This time, he connected. His round blew a hole right through the Liberator’s chest, as if she were made of squishy human flesh instead of polymer.
The Liberator collapsed. Nick felt his blood pumping.
Despite his minor victory, more and more dolls took up firing positions. Chloe shifted in front of him. Somehow, he knew that even the superior specs of the Archangels wouldn’t be enough against these numbers.
“You know, you were supposed to scream for help,” Kushiel said through his earpiece.
In that very second, a deafening roar ripped through the bay. The screech of a dozen dolls being instantly vaporized was indescribable, but Nick heard the constant metallic clatter of their parts rain down on the concrete.
Kushiel stood outside a police interceptor, halfway down the ramp. She had the same oversized guns from her last deployment, but no flight system. One of those guns glowed, while she raised the other.
The hail of gunfire she unleashed on the Custodians blew them apart just as easily as the G2s from yesterday. Doll after doll collapsed in pieces as Kushiel’s gun rattled off rounds heavy enough to blow through armor. It was as if she had an automatic railgun in her hand.
Within seconds, the firefight was over. Truly over. Kushiel raised her guns, as if posing, then holstered them behind her back. Without the heavy armor, they looked far too large on her.
Nick rose to his feet and looked around. Well over a hundred police dolls had been blown apart. He did his best to keep his cool, but he felt rattled.
Two times in as many days. He’d brushed with death before, but this was something else.
“You are unhurt,” Chloe said.
As she was running her hands over his body, Nick wasn’t sure if she’d intended to sound so confident in her assessment.
“I am,” he said. “Physically, anyway. I’m, uh, still getting used to firefights.”
The one couldn’t have lasted more than a minute or two. He saw a few Archangels on the ground near Rie, who had taken cover behind the front-most vehicles. Everywhere else was a mess of parts, scorched concrete, and unidentifiable fragments.
“You stirred up the fucking hive,” Kushiel said as she approached. “Did I just wipe out the entire Security Bureau?”
“Unlikely. They have significantly more ARMDs than this,” Rie said as she approached. “It seems you were correct, Nick. I would suggest that you consider baking in some of your own thinking into our directives during maintenance.”
His mind took a second to get into gear, as he still felt shellshocked from the fight. He shook his head in an attempt to clear it. Chloe took this as a sign of something else and placed her hands on the sides of his head.
“Uh, you want me to put myself out a job?” he said, trying to sound glib.
“It would be to your benefit if we had your foresight,” Rie said with a small smile. “I might have brought significantly more of the division. This was… a mistake on my part.”
Now he had Rie admitting to faults. The world was ending.
“Wow, did Hell freeze over?” Kushiel said, apparently reading Nick’s thoughts. “Here I thought your head was too big to possibly comprehend something as insignificant as a ‘mistake.’”
Rie glared at her older sister, but chose to say nothing.
Nick sighed. “Look, we should move quickly. If the culprit is sending police dolls against us, he’ll—”
The entire building shuddered. Nick felt the rumbling in his bones and immediately placed his hands on the nearby SUV. For a moment he thought they were experiencing an earthquake, but then heard the dull booms echoing out from the concrete.
One was less dull, and Nick winced as the entire room echoed with the sound.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Kim has activated a full security lockdown of the Spire,” she said. “That’s unprecedented, even for him.”
Nick’s mind tried to make sense of the words, but his eyes did some of the work. The source of the boom had been a heavy security door slamming into place over the entrance into the Spire. That prevented more rogue dolls from the Security Bureau attacking them, but also blocked them from entering the Spire.
“This could be an automated response to your firepower,” Rie said, eying the heavy weapons on Kushiel’s back.
“For a full lockdown of the Spire? Bullshit. Kim or whoever sent these dolls after us, then panicked when he realized I was here. Maybe he thought the Custodians could handle your little posse.”
They probably could have, Nick thought. Until Kushiel had arrived, he’d been certain he was about to die.
And Kushiel had effortlessly vaporized a small army of police dolls. Her automatic rifle blew them apart like they were made of paper mache, and he didn’t even know what the other gun did. Presumably, it had been the roar he’d heard.
“I take it there’s a difference between a Spire lockdown and… something else?” Nick asked.
“We’re not the only residents of the Delta Spire. Locking down the Spire suggests that the entire building or its residents are at risk. Especially as the uppermost floors house many important individuals. The other Spires will be in an uproar.”
One of the Mark 3s attempted to use a scanner next to the security door. It didn’t respond. In the distance, Nick swore he heard heavy clanking.
“This seems excessive. What if there’s a fire? Nobody is getting out through that.” He pointed at the blast door.
“The Spire doesn’t go into lockdown for a fire, Nicholas. This is intended to keep people contained, and attackers out.” Rie grimaced. “The internal doorways can be overridden or forced open, but the exterior doors are heavily reinforced. We’ll—”
“Reinforced or not, this security is ancient,” Kushiel said, unholstering her heavy cannon. “Tell everyone to stand back and I’ll blow the door.”
“That is a waste of…” Rie trailed off, then scowled.
“Did the calculations, did you?” Kushiel chuckled.
“Uh, I’m lost.” Nick scratched his head.
“The Spires were built like 60 years ago, Waite. While they’ve upgraded parts of them, a lot of the security systems have never been used. When was the last time anyone here felt in danger?”
“The riots.”
“Exactly. And both me and the gun I’m holding are a lot fucking newer than that stupid piece of history.” She grinned, then pointed her cannon at the door.
The Archangels stood well clear of the security door. Both Chloe and Meta formed a protective shield in front of Nick.
Once again, the bay filled with the roar of Kushiel’s cannon. This time, rather than blow apart a dozen dolls, it left a gaping hole in the reinforced security door. Nick stared at the twisted, glowing wreckage.
“Is that some sort of prototype railgun?” he asked.
“Nah, it’s just mil-spec,” she said. The gun glowed white-hot. “It’s still just an anti-doll weapon. Bounces off the latest and greatest warbots.”
If this was what the military considered anti-doll weaponry, Nick was worried about what they deployed to take out warbots. Then again, the military operated on an entirely different scale compared to police or criminal combatants. Kushiel needed guns that could tear through dolls as heavily armored as herself.
“What about the evidence blast doors?” He pointed at the huge black walls that impeded their ingress into the evidence vault.
Kushiel bit her lip. “Uh, not with this. I’d need something built for bunker-busting, like an energy weapon. By the time I get one of those, the military will have already swarmed the Spire. That’s bad.”
“I take it they know what we’re up to?” he asked.
“Officially, no. I’m on loan, remember?” She grinned at him. “Unofficially, of fucking course. They monitor me, and the Spire going into lockdown like this has them squawking in my ear. Thank fuck my directives prioritize hierarchy so much. Officially, you’re my boss.”
Nick felt a surge of supreme power in his body at the news that he was Kushiel’s boss. It must have showed on his face, because she crossed her arms over her chest.
“For now, Waite,” she said. “And unlike my baby sisters, I’m not smitten with you. We’re working together, and you’re my ticket to ignoring the military’s demand that I blow everything up.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Anyway, we need a plan. We know that our culprit has overridden the police dolls and put the Spire into lockdown. If we can’t get into evidence storage, then we need to go to them. No point wasting time…” he trailed off, as that clanking sounded in the distance again.
But it was much louder now. The Archangels turned toward the ramp in response to Nick’s gaze.
“Is somebody coming down the entryway?” he asked.
The Archangels turned and collectively stared at him. He thought he was going crazy, before Kushiel cursed. Rie’s eyes widened and she stared up the ramp.
“Shit. There’re a trio of warbots coming down here,” Kushiel said.
“To help…?” Nick asked.
“I didn’t ask for them, and they’re not responding,” she said. “These are the Chimera IIIs that patrol the Spires at night. They’re not immediately threatening—to me, anyway. But the military has been putting off patching security defects for years as they’re ancient. Leaving them out here with no human oversight was just begging for them be hacked.”
If Nick recalled correctly, the Chimeras were huge, tracked tanks that intimidated everyone with their autocannons and anti-drone weapons systems.
“I didn’t think they were that old,” he said, then looked pointedly at Kushiel’s railgun. “You can handle them with that?”
“Easily. These warbots are American hand-me-downs, from a time when everyone thought the future of warfare was in autonomous battle tanks.” She hefted her gun and grinned at him. “Now it’s in much smaller autonomous things, but with much bigger guns.”
“Then we should go,” Rie said. “I’ll leave behind those Archangels too damaged to join Nick and I, but my reinforcements will be delayed.”
“Yeah, yeah. Just make sure they don’t get blown apart by the warbots outside. I’d be ashamed to be sisters with dolls who can’t handle these outdated tin cans.”
Nick found it interesting that Kushiel called the warbots tin cans with the same condescension that Hammond used for dolls.
Rie and the others trooped through the ruined security door. Nick followed, but remembered to thank Kushiel before leaving.
“Yeah, sure. At least you remembered to call me to the party.” She pointedly refused to look at him, instead focusing on the entrance ramp.
Nothing seemed that different inside the Security Bureau. A few minor firefights broke out, but Rie and the Mark 3s focused on taking control of the police dolls remaining here. Nick’s escort remained close to him, as if cocooning him from any potential gunfire.
He belatedly realized he’d never put a bulletproof vest on. Then he also realized how useless it would be. His own hand cannon blew through dolls, and every weapon used by the police was bigger. The vest would just get in the way.
Eventually, they stopped in front of the elevators with their growing team.
“We’re not using these,” Nick said flatly.
“We can take control of the elevator security system. It will be safe.”
“Uh huh. And what happens when our culprit blows the cables? He controls an entire tower full of heavily armed dolls.” He crossed his arms.
Rie frowned, then turned away from the elevators. “We’ll use the stairs. You may regret this.”
The Archangels and Nick entered a nearby emergency stairwell.
Staring up the endless flights of stairs, he felt his legs explode in anticipation of the climb. Rie had known about this in advance.
“I’m open to being carried,” he said.
Rie rolled her eyes and vaulted up several flights of stairs at once, ignoring the safety railings.
“Preferably not while you’re doing acrobatics,” he added.
The other Archangels were busy arguing with each other, as their eyes had dimmed. After several long seconds, Meta stepped forward and held her arms out awkwardly. Juliet took her weapon from her.
“Your preferred position is unknown,” she said.
The position of her arms suggested she wanted him to leap into her arms. Despite the glint of anticipation in her eyes, he deliberately walked around her and placed his arms on her back.
Meta sighed, while the others appeared somewhere between disappointed and smug. She hefted his legs, and he went for a piggyback ride. Although the sight was doubtlessly ridiculous, given the size difference between them.
But then she began ascending the stairs an entire flight at a time, and Nick felt wind blow past his face in an isolated concrete cylinder. His grip tightened on Meta as he was taken for the ride of a lifetime.
The numbers on the walls allowed him to keep track of how high they went. Every door had a biometric scanner attached to it, with a red status light. They needed to go up over 100 floors to reach Kim.
That seemed no trouble for the Archangels. They didn’t tire or slow down. Even the Custodians and Liberators were untroubled, if somewhat slower.
But as they approached floor 77, Nick felt his mind warning him to stop.
So he obeyed it.
“Stop,” he called out.
Meta and his escort immediately stopped. The others didn’t, but swiftly realized he wasn’t following.
While they came back down, he dropped off Meta’s back. Her face dropped for an instant. But he had something to do, and Meta’s feelings came second right now.
“I should have asked this earlier,” he grumbled, fiddling with his phone. “This is our floor, right? Doesn’t this mean our bureau is located here?”
Chloe shook her head. “This floor is dedicated to the Archangel Division. The rest of the bureau is located below us.”
“Where?”
“Floor 71.”
Rie stepped up to him. “Aren’t we going to Kim’s office? The other Mark 1s have already engaged with the Custodians up there. I’ll need to help them breach security around the inner sanctum.”
He frowned, aware that he was going out on a limb here. If he was wrong…
“Rie, go up to Kim’s office with the Mark 3s,” he said. “Can you breach these security doors with your railguns?”
“No. But we won’t need to. With the Mark 1s on the inside, they can open it anyway.” Rie stared at him. “I’m coming with you. And you’re explaining your theory. Because I’m certain I know what you’re doing, and I’m just as certain you’re wrong.”
He shrugged. “That’s why I’m covering both bases. No matter how well he’s covered his tracks, I’m certain that Lieu is the culprit.”