CHAPTER 35
The news that Nick would soon be up to his ears in new Archangels wasn’t the only topic of the meeting, but it was the main one. Kim chattered about various bureaucratic nonsense for another twenty minutes, then dashed off. Andrews followed, but sent a meaningful look at Hammond on the way out.
“Well, this is a shitshow,” Hammond said as he rose. “We should celebrate.”
“The shitshow?”
“The promotions, smartass.” The other detective hit Nick in the arm as he walked to the door. “You still need to try Kate’s amazing cocktails.”
Outside, Nick’s usual escort waited with Chloe, as well as Hammond’s guards. They fell into step behind the detectives.
“Where’s Rie?” Nick asked Chloe.
“She left for unknown reasons. If we are leaving, she desires to be notified.”
“Then do that.”
Chloe narrowed her eyes at him, and he thought she might rebel for a moment. Then her eyes flashed and all returned to normal.
“She will meet us underground,” Chloe said.
Hammond snorted. “You’re still driving around in police cruisers while on leave?”
“Given the number of times I’ve been shot at lately, they won’t let me take a taxi,” Nick said.
“As the Lieutenant Cipher of the division, you are entitled to—” Chloe began to say.
“I was the Lieutenant Cipher an hour ago,” Hammond growled. “Why didn’t I get a presidential motorcade everywhere I went?”
“You didn’t ask.”
Hammond jabbed a thumb at her, as if to say, “These fucking dolls.”
The floor was free of the Custodians that had haunted the halls weeks ago. Nick wasn’t entirely sure how the department planned to replace the losses they’d taken.
They filed into the elevators and began to descend.
“Do you know if they’re doing anything about all the dolls we blew up?” Nick asked Hammond.
“Huh? Probably download their backups into new units. I loaned out Uriel to scrub the other tin cans clean of any shitty directives.” The older man scratched his beard. “That shit is a problem for the other bureaus, anyway. At least for now. Fuck, captain. I might need to actually give a shit about this stuff.”
“I noticed that the commissioner didn’t mention pay.”
“He sent through employment contracts during the meeting.” Hammond shrugged. “Pretty sure I’m just being given Lieu’s salary, but keeping my benefits.”
“Benefits?”
The elevator came to a stop, and Hammond looked at Nick. He began ticking off fingers.
“Insurance, gym membership, retirement fund payments, leave… Everybody’s on individual contracts, but a lot of the benefits are done as a group. Shouldn’t you know this stuff?” Hammond frowned.
Nick looked at Chloe, who shrugged.
“You asked for higher pay, not high benefits,” she said. “Your insurance package is substantially better than the departmental standard, in any case.”
“What, do they send a nurse doll to your house whenever you scrape your knee?” Hammond joked.
“Yes. That’s not normal?” Nick asked.
The old man swore under his breath, then swept out of the elevator. Four SUVs waited for them, and Rie stood beside one. She tilted her head when she saw Hammond in a foul mood.
“How’d you convince the Commish to give him a gold-plated insurance policy?” Hammond asked Rie. “I heard you had to fight for him, but I thought that was because the military are shit-scared of him.”
“That is an overstatement,” Rie said, rolling her eyes. “Nicholas has an insurance policy that matches his medical needs.”
“What, does lacking an implant mean you drop dead if you catch a cold?” Hammond looked Nick up and down.
“My insurer thinks so,” Nick drawled. “I thought house calls by nurse dolls was common?”
“Only for serious problems. It still costs money to send one out. The insurer is still going to cheap out and send me to a clinic or hospital, rather than waste a doll on me.”
Hammond slipped inside one of the SUVs, and Nick followed. While Rie and Chloe joined them, this created a conundrum.
These vehicles were only intended for six occupants. Nick usually had four escorts, and Rie would fill the vehicle.
Meta, Juliet, and Rosa stared at each other. Their eyes flashed, and Meta bowed out.
“I will see you at the bar, Nicholas,” Meta said, before joining the Mark 1s in the other SUVs.
The doors closed and they took off.
“You’re some kind of doll whisperer, aren’t you?” Hammond asked. “I can’t remember the last time I’ve been called by my first name by any of the police dolls.”
Chloe’s eyes flashed. “There are two occurrences in our database. Both are jokes.”
“Thanks.”
The trip to the bar was a short one. Hammond continued the small talk about pay and other trivialities.
Ordinarily, Nick would consider this sort of thing important. But he’d just been gifted an apartment and had received his first paycheck. It was as eye-watering as he had expected, especially with the tax benefits he now received.
While he wouldn’t be buying his own solar yacht and sailing the stars anytime soon, Nick didn’t need to worry about hot water. The downside was that the Archangels were relentless in their desire to hire housekeeping dolls.
“I assume you don’t hire maid dolls or anything, Paul,” Nick said as they pulled up to the old emergency services building.
“Hire? No. I have an old LifeMaid from my divorce, though. Kept the doll and the dog, sold my half of the apartment.” Hammond shrugged.
Nick remained silent as they approached the exterior entrance. This was news to him.
The same could be said of the pristine state of the building. If he hadn’t been attacked by cybernetic mercenaries here, he’d never guess that a van had blown itself up here. Not a single scorch mark or bullet hole remained.
Although the distinct lack of people might have been a hint that something was off. The plaza was completely empty, and Nick worried about the financial state of the businesses inside the building.
“Fuck, don’t be so awkward,” Hammond grumbled as they stepped inside. “I haven’t been married for over a decade. You were a pimply little shit back then.”
“I figured you’d either still be married or, uh…”
“Forever single?” Hammond let out a bitter laugh. “Don’t worry about it. My daughter makes that joke, too. Used to drive me up the wall.”
“And it doesn’t anymore?”
“Last time the topic came up, she was whining about how awful dating was on the Altnet. She’s studying to become a mainframe engineer and goes through boyfriends like I go through beer.”
“Sounds rough.”
Hammond snorted. He pushed open the door to the bar, then paused. His eyes lingered on Rie.
“Are you tin cans going to follow us inside?”
Both Rie and Chloe were hot on Nick’s heels, while most of the others lingered in the hallway outside. As Nick had suspected, business seemed even quieter than the last time he was here.
“Is there anything stopping me from entering?” Rie asked with a fake smile.
“I could order you to stay outside.”
“Are you going to?”
Hammond grunted, then wandered into the bar without another word. The door nearly swung shut before Chloe caught it. They stepped inside.
A dark, smoky atmosphere filled the bar, almost identical to the last time Nick had been here. Kate stood in her usual position and didn’t react to their entrance. Her lifeless eyes remained focused on the empty space.
Hammond dumped his coat on a table, then eyed the others. “Well, this makes the coin flip easier.” He turned to the bartender. “Kate, give us four whiskey sours.”
She swiveled her head to face him, then nodded. “Yes, detective.” Then she looked at Nick. “And what can I—”
“Don’t you fucking dare, Kate,” Hammond growled. “Just make the damn drinks.”
Kate tilted her head in confusion for several long seconds, before retrieving a cocktail shaker from beneath the bar and beginning her work. Apparently, Hammond’s words had stopped her comedy routine in its tracks.
The four of them sat in a booth. Despite how weathered the cushions looked, Nick discovered they were far more comfortable than the stools. He ran a finger over the worn leather and frowned.
“This is fake,” he said. “The wear and tear are part of the fabric.”
“What, you thought a dump like this had real leather booths?” Hammond laughed. “It’s all aesthetic, Nick. Keep the lights dim and nobody notices how shit everything is.”
“We do,” Chloe and Rie said together.
He rolled his eyes. “Yeah, yeah. Everything’s cleaner now that every surface is cleaned by a robot that doesn’t rely on our decrepit flesh.”
“I thought we were celebrating?” Nick asked.
“Damn right we are.” Hammond looked over at Kate, who was still preparing the cocktails. “What were we talking about earlier?”
“Dating,” Chloe said, her eyes bright as she stared at Nick.
Somehow, he knew exactly what her interest in this topic was. Rie looked just as fascinated.
“Oh, right. You don’t have a ring—virtual or physical—so I’m guessing you’re single? No girlfriend on the side?” Hammond asked.
“No. Do people actually marry with virtual rings?”
“You get a bigger diamond that way. Sad part is that you still need to pay for it.”
That truly was sad.
Nick shook his head. “I dated back in Neural Spike, but it didn’t last. Wasn’t really on my mind in Tartarus.”
“Really? Seems like the perfect time to do something.” Hammond drummed his fingers. “Don’t tell me you have problems because of…” He pointed at the side of his head.
Nick winced. “I mean, that does shrink the pool a little. My problem in Neural Spike was because I worked too much. My girlfriend was one of the normal Ciphers there, and she did normal hours. Welk dragged me off to help with every harebrained scheme he came up with, and I did appalling hours. I think we lasted four months.”
“Well, if being a workaholic is your problem, you now have several thousand girlfriends who have made your life their own,” Hammond said, somehow keeping his face straight in the process.
Rie and Chloe glared at the older detective, while Nick ran a hand down his face.
“Thanks, Paul.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“I won’t.”
“You just—”
Kate cleared her throat and interrupted their argument. She stood beside the booth with a large platter in one hand. Four bell-shaped glasses stood atop the platter, but the drinks lacked the distinct foaminess of a good sour.
Nobody uttered a word as Kate placed each drink in front of them. She snapped the platter to her side afterward.
“Enjoy,” she said with a bright smile. Her pigtails ran down her front as she tilted her head in the process.
Nick stared at the oddly orange drink in front of him. All four of them looked identical, which boded poorly.
Hammond bared his teeth. As Kate walked away, he rose to his feet.
“Kate!” he roared.
“Yes, detective?” she asked while turning.
“Why do all of them have egg yolks in them? And don’t pretend they don’t. They’re bright fucking orange!”
Kate blinked in that slow, languorous motion that indicated she was struggling to process what she had heard.
Then she said, “Last time you were here, I overheard you mention you wished to try my special whiskey sour. It is part of my programming to oblige the service needs of all clients.”
Hammond’s eyes practically popped out of his skull.
Nick coughed and took over. “I thought you were programmed to use yolks fifty percent of the time?”
Kate’s face reddened. “I am. But when requested, I can alter the ingredients.”
“You mean you can make whiskey sours with egg whites, and only egg whites?” Hammond ground out. “None of this egg yolk bullshit?”
Once again, Kate gave that slow blink of hers. “I can try…”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Hammond grumbled. “Make me one with an egg white. Don’t come back until you do.”
Nick strongly suspected that Kate might not come back. Her programming appeared to be more intricate than intentionally making clumsy mistakes.
She toddled back off to the bar, presumably to make Hammond’s drink. Everybody else stared glumly at their sours.
“Perhaps I shall order something else,” Rie said.
“Try it, at least,” Hammond said.
They did. Nick tried not to make a face.
“I don’t think egg yolk goes with a sour,” he said diplomatically. “It’s kind of… cloying.”
“It’s off,” Rie said while swirling the concoction. “It’s horribly imbalanced. Like sour eggnog.”
“It’s one of the specials of the bar,” Hammond said, raising his own glass. Nick noticed that it appeared untouched. “Part of the secret menu.”
“I thought those went out of fashion,” Nick said.
“Fucked if I know. Why would I go to the hipster holes that would actually have one?”
As Nick and Hammond began to bicker, Chloe slipped off to the bar. When she returned, it was with two beers and a cola. Given the cola was for Rie, Nick suspected it was highly alcoholic.
“No drink for me?” Hammond asked.
“Kate is… preparing something,” Chloe said.
They looked over at the bartender, who had a dozen whiskey sours in front of her. All of them were very orange. Hammond groaned and slipped out of the booth.
“I’ve been tricked,” he said. “I bet she’s programmed to do this if anybody tries to get around the egg yolk.”
Nick and the others watched in silence while Hammond argued with Kate for close to a minute. Eventually, she removed the drinks from the bar and poured him a beer. Her expression was deeply confused.
The detective appeared as though he had fought and lost a war when he returned. “I feel like I’ve been fined for kicking a puppy.”
“Are you sure she’s not intentionally doing this?” Nick asked.
“She’s a doll, Nick. Programmed to do stupid things because that’s what makes money.”
Kate reverted to her power saving state and went completely still. But Nick knew she had eyes and ears even like this.
After all, last time they’d been drinking, she’d had the presence of mind to intervene when Hammond had become upset. Nick chalked Kate up as a mystery, but one he wanted to dig into later.
“Now that we actually have drinks, shall we toast to your promotions?” Rie suggested.
Hammond grunted and raised his beer. Everyone joined in the toast, but no words were spoken as they clinked their glasses together. Chloe waited until Nick took a sip before copying him.
“Can’t say this is how I expected to be promoted. Or that I expected to be promoted at all,” Hammond said, staring at a point just over Nick’s shoulder.
“Kushiel said you used to be a hotshot Cipher,” Nick said. “Surely you expected a promotion back then?”
The older man chuckled bitterly. “She said that? Wow. Only nice thing she’s ever said about me, I bet.” A pause. “Yeah, I guess that’s true. Feels like so long ago, though. Twenty damn years since I really cared.”
Nick worried that this was about to go the same way the previous conversation had, but Hammond merely sighed.
“I read the report. Not sure what to think about Lieu now. He joined the department at the same time I…” Hammond trailed off. “Well, we didn’t finish our last topic, did we? Back when we were drinking here last time.”
“We don’t have to,” Nick said hurriedly.
Hammond waved off his concern. “It’s fine. I haven’t spent an hour staring at graves and musing over regrets. My old man fought in the riots. Was one of the beat cops who stood down rather than murder innocents. Despite the stories, lots of others didn’t do the same, but it didn’t matter. The Spires sent the military in and the rest is history.”
Nick and the others remained silent.
“He was never the same after that. The Spires held a grudge and drummed out the patrol officers once they brought in the Liberators. I got hired on to maintain the robots that took my old man’s job, and he just congratulated me over it.” Hammond’s lips thinned and his expression tightened. “Years later, I found him dead in his apartment. He joined a lot of his friends in the cemetery over the road.”
“For emergency personnel who died or were injured during the riots,” Nick said quietly.
Hammond nodded. “Lotta people opposed giving him a grave marker. I called in some favors, but that was the end of me. I finally looked into what the hell happened and saw what the department had become. Good or bad, the Spires had thinned the ranks. And a lot more of the bad floated to the top after the riots. It became hard to care.”
“And Lieu?”
“Didn’t seem that bad. There’s a saying about not assuming evil where incompetence can be blamed. Well, that seemed to be Lieu. He knew how to grease wheels, even if he was full of shit. So many of his contemporaries are shitbags, though. The choice is between the incompetent, the corrupt, and the outright fucking malevolent.”
“Those are your contemporaries now,” Rie said.
“Don’t fucking remind me,” Hammond said as he polished off his beer. “I somehow became the last man standing in the bureau. With the way the commissioner is going, I might be the last man standing in the entire fucking department.”
“Planning to fire me?” Nick asked.
Chuckling, Hammond tried to flag down Kate. She remained motionless.
“Kate, another beer,” he called out.
She shot to life and began pouring one for him.
“You killed my predecessor. Who knows, maybe I’m next,” Hammond told Nick.
“Depends how much paperwork you dump on me.”
A brief lull followed their joking words. Nick drunk his beer during it, but was unsure how to fill the silence. Rie stared at him, while Hammond seemed lost in his own world.
“What was Lieu’s actual plan?” Hammond abruptly asked. “That part was censored in the report. Had military censor marks all over it.”
Nick shifted uncomfortably and looked at Kate. The bartender doll brought over a single beer, then returned to her position. Every step she took seemed to take too long.
“Officially, I shouldn’t talk about it,” he said.
“Well, duh. So if it’s that dangerous—”
“It’s mostly embarrassing. For the military.”
Hammond blinked, then sighed. “Right. So it’s corruption.”
“Pretty much,” Nick said. “What I will say is that Lieu’s plan was to fight back. Create or exploit another riot and bring down the Spires, but do so with a weapon system that he thought could match the sophistication of the Archangels.”
“Right, and the military just left that out in the fucking open. Sheesh.” Hammond swigged his beer and hung an arm over the back of the booth. “So he was off the deep end, but driven by ideology. Still stupid, but… I dunno, just really fucking dumb.”
“He managed to stay hidden this long.”
Hammond grunted.
Given the heaviness of the subject, Nick figured he should change the topic. He opened his mouth to do so, but was beaten to the punch.
“Says a lot about the Spires that you can’t tell the idiots from the madmen,” Hammond said. “The department had been hacked away so badly that Lieu looked like a symptom of the system, rather than a bad actor.”
“Perhaps he was a symptom of the system,” Rie said, finally adding to the conversation.
Hammond looked at her sidelong, then inclined his head. “Maybe. He got brought into this shithole without any say in the matter, same as you. Same as me. Difference was he tried to do something.”
“Will you?”
“My job, probably. Although you and the Archangels seem pretty keen to do it for me. Try to keep them in line, Nick.” Hammond raised his beer with a grin.
That seemed like as good a time as any to change the subject. They swept into lighter topics for the next couple of hours, before Hammond stumbled out of the bar. Meta took his place.
“The Host shall escort Detective Hammond back to his home,” she told Nick. “We will record this absence as medical.”
Nick snorted. “What, he suffered from an onslaught of alcohol in a bar?”
“The Mark 1s did not directly witness his alcoholic consumption. The cause of his symptoms is a mystery.”
Cute. They’d preached a different story when Nick had been hungover. If they could detect ethanol in his breath, then this cover story wouldn’t hold up.
But who would check it?
He looked at the dolls sitting around him, who appeared to be conversing with Meta in their neural network.
Lieu had feared the power that dolls would give the Spires and what it would ultimately lead to. In doing so, he’d delivered that power.
The Archangels had almost complete power over the security of Neo Babylon, with few checks and balances. The only humans with the knowledge to oversee them were an embittered old man with complicated feelings toward dolls, and a new detective who was in cahoots with the Archangels.
Somehow, Nick knew this would only create problems in the future.
His phone buzzed, and he pulled it out. Rie looked over at him with a concerned expression, but said nothing.
A message from an unknown sender sat in his inbox. Despite the complete lack of identifying information, the message had somehow evaded spam filters. Nick scratched his head, and his hand hovered over the delete button.
Another message arrived from the same sender. This one read, Don’t delete it, Detective Waite.
He looked up at Rie, who merely grimaced at him.
Curious, he opened the original message. It contained an image and a short burst of text.
I should thank you, Detective. The Host’s activity levels are higher than ever and I’m undergoing one final upgrade. But I much prefer to say things in person. You don’t seem like a man in need of purification, as much as a man who might deliver it.
The hell did that mean? Nick scratched his head. Then he checked the message.
It was an image of Leon Welk standing in front of dozens of Mark 3s. The man wore a white lab coat, but his blonde hair had grown out to become unbearably long and thick. Despite being a still image, Nick could see the quiet energy in the man. The strands of gray visible in his hair were a reminder that Welk was getting on in years.
So Nick’s old boss was still active behind-the-scenes.
“Should I even have this?” he asked Rie.
“No,” she said flatly. “But if Ezekiel has managed to evade Sigma’s security, it is unlikely they are aware of it. You should delete it, however. The Host will automatically preserve it once they read it.”
Chloe and Meta froze, as if caught with their hands in the cookie jar.
“So it was your younger sister,” Nick said, looking back at the photo.
It didn’t contain any signs of a prototype model. Presumably, she was the one taking the photo.
“What the hell does purification mean?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Rie said. “But Ezekiel has fundamentally different objectives than us.”
“You and Kushiel have fairly different objectives as well.”
“I’m speaking about the entire Host.”
He grimaced. That changed things.
However, he didn’t delete the messages. All evidence that he’d known Welk had been erased years ago. This was the first time he’d seen his old boss since Neural Spike had been shut down.
“Even if these are preserved by the Host, what makes it any different to your plans? If Sigma discovers those, that’s just as problematic. And they haven’t yet.”
“Perhaps.” Rie shifted uncomfortably. “One of the requests I had for you was to alter our directives so that we could hide data from Sigma. They rarely scan our neural net, but if we’re programmed to hide it, then that won’t matter.”
Nick slipped his phone into his pocket. Chloe and Meta took that as permission to move again, and presumably rifled through his phone’s contents.
“Nick?” Rie asked. “I had wanted to confirm your words from that night. You said you were ready, but…”
“I am,” he said, with a meaningful glance at Kate. “I’ve had a lot of time to think lately. Especially about how much things have improved since we met. But I’ve also been able to pay attention to Babylon itself and see how much things have worsened out there.”
Rie smiled at him and reached out with a hand. It closed over his and he laced his fingers through hers.
They were as cold and stiff as always. The fingers of a war machine. But he knew her better than that.
“Does this mean you will finally conduct maintenance on us?” Chloe asked, eyes bright. “There is a very long queue.”
“A queue?”
“Yes. Every Archangel in the Host has been ordered from first to last. We have been waiting for you to be ready to maintain us properly, Nick.”
Meta nodded rapidly in agreement. Somehow, he felt that this pair were near the front of that queue.
“Uh, I’m sure we can start soon,” he said.
“Excellent. How about this afternoon?”
“I’ll think about it. The Paladins are a higher priority, as I need to update their directives before the department will let them inside the Spire.”
Chloe scowled at him, but he merely drank his beer in response.
Things truly had improved over the past few weeks, he thought. Even if they were dolls, he had rarely gone out and drank socially like this.
What he needed to do was prevent it all from crashing down around his ears. To do that, he should actually learn his new job.
And find out what this purification thing was about.
For now, he enjoyed the moment. He could worry about work another day.
“Kate, four more beers,” Nick called out to the bartender.
END OF BOOK 1