CHAPTER 04
A motorcade of company vehicles sped through the night.
There were a dozen vehicles, mostly Jeeps and SUVs. All were black, with no markings of any kind. The last was a sort of paddy wagon, once used by the U.S. Marshals Service to transport prisoners. It had been purchased by the company at auction, re-armored and retrofitted with the latest radar, GPS, and cloaking technology. It was still used to hold prisoners, but these were corporate prisoners, and they were more expensive than run-of-the-mill bank robbers and felons.
Blue sat up front in the shotgun seat of the first vehicle, a Jeep. The driver was a crew-cut, stone-faced storm trooper type. He was human, but he might as well be a robot for all the sizzle he had.
The Jeep was open to the steamy night air. The car was going the speed limit for this road, 50 miles per hour, but barely a breeze came in.
Blue had a tablet computer on his lap. The tablet itself was armored. It could take a bullet. You could drop it to the bottom of a swimming pool. You could run it over with your car. You could throw it against a wall.
Blue liked things that were hard to break.
They had located his phone. Of course they had. Once he had admitted to them it was gone, and that the girl had stolen it, it had taken no time at all to find it. What took a little longer was massing this mini-army, and getting it on the road.
Now they were getting close. The phone was at the house of a man named Darryl Blauer. Blue gazed down at Darryl’s photo and information, which filled the screen on his tablet. Darryl had an impressive resume.
Ex-Marine, two tours of duty in Afghanistan. Wounded in combat - severe facial injuries requiring emergency reconstructive surgery. Evacuated to Lanstuhl Regional Medical Center, Germany. Received the Purple Heart, and the Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal. Implicated in a possible atrocity, arrested, repatriated to the United States, but cleared of wrongdoing. Information systems specialist. General discharge, rank of Sergeant.
Three admissions to the Veteran’s Administration hospital in Tampa, two for mental health, and one for facial surgery follow-up. Diagnosed with a laundry list of psychiatric and psychological problems: post traumatic stress disorder, chronic depression, acute anxiety, antisocial personality disorder, alcoholism, body dysmorphic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, and several others.
Suspected hacker, identity thief, illegal data miner, and trafficker in stolen information. There were no current warrants for his arrest, but he was considered armed and dangerous anyway.
Blue didn’t like this. There was a woman living inside a high-tech robot. The bot was now making autonomous decisions, and it had chosen to link up with this guy? An insane, armed and dangerous tech specialist with a history of violence?
It had already been a long day, and this guy had the potential to make it a lot longer.
Blue thought of Number Nine again. It was confusing. The flesh and blood woman he had killed earlier tonight - she would never interest him in real life. Smart? Yes, obviously. Even clever and funny.
Pretty? Sure, but not beautiful.
And not adventurous. That was a major sticking point. Really, she was just a desk jockey. She probably spent half her day forwarding ironic video clips to people - the kind of clips only scientists would find funny.
She was not fit. She was not hard. She would not jump out of airplanes with him. In bed, he’d be afraid he might break her in half.
But put her inside that robot, and…God. Fast, smart, rugged, hyper-sexy, randy, ready for anything, and with a sense of humor no robot could ever possess on its own. Put the scientist inside the robot, and you had the whole package.
He had looked at earlier Sexbots, sure. But he didn’t like them. That’s why he never bought one. The last thing he wanted was some sexy broad around who was constantly sucking up to him. Sucking on him was one thing, but sucking up to him? Hell, no. He wanted to be challenged.
He wanted a woman he could hike the Andes mountains with, bang in the tent until daylight, then talk politics or science or books with over a cup of coffee and a breakfast fire. He wanted a woman who would snorkel tiger sharks with him, and have sex with him right in the midst of the man eaters.
Hmmm. Were Sexbots waterproof? He would need to find out.
It was a strange thought, but he liked her. He liked this half-woman, half-robot creature. They had kind of a spark together, didn’t they? She could have killed him tonight, and yet she didn’t. You know why? Because she felt it, too. They had something between them.
In a sense, Blue was sorry he had killed Susan Jones. If he had known the back story at the time, he might not have done it. But in another sense, he was glad he did. If Number Nine survived the night, they really could have a future together.
He glanced down at the photo of Darryl Blauer again. Combat veteran, psychiatric case, gun nut, and tech expert. The guy’s face was a mess, which probably added to the chip on his shoulder. It was quite a combination.
Blue sighed. “I hope this guy isn’t going to be a problem,” he said to the Jeep driver. “He looks like the Joker in this picture. You know, from Batman?”
The driver nodded, but said nothing. He slowed down, and turned into a long, dirt lane. It was Blauer’s private road, and it was muddy from the rains. It looked like he did nothing to maintain it. The Jeep bounced over ruts and pits. Behind them, the parade of company vehicles did the same. They were moving slow now, crawling toward the house. Trees pressed in on both sides.
“Might as well take our time,” Blue said to the driver. “He’s probably got this whole place wired with cameras. I doubt we’re going to have the element of surprise here.”
“I guess we’ll just have to rely on overwhelming force,” the driver said.
Blue nodded. It was the first thing the driver said that made Blue think he had any personality at all.
Up ahead, Darryl Blauer’s shack was just coming into view.
* * *
Howard sat in his living room surrounded by beautiful women. Six of them dotted the room, sitting here and there, like mannequins modeling expensive lingerie. One leafed through a copy of Metropolitan Home. Another painted her nails. Howard was the sultan, and these were his harem girls.
For once, he didn’t feel much like playing with them.
Howard had changed his mind about Number Nine. Then he had changed it back. Now he was about to change it again. He prided himself on being bold and decisive, more so than most other men. Once he made a choice, he rarely revisited it. That’s how he had become a leader in this industry. But this time he was waffling. He couldn’t seem to decide if he wanted Nine - and by extension Susan - alive or dead. He couldn’t get off the fence.
It was Blue. He just didn’t trust Blue’s intentions on this one. He had given Blue the code to disarm the bomb. He had sent Blue out with the promise of five million dollars if he brought Nine back.
Howard had done all of this honestly believing that was what he wanted. Then he got to thinking. What if Blue captured the Sexbot, disarmed the bomb, and then… what? Howard didn’t know.
But Blue, a lethal contract killer, would be standing there with a rogue scientist, who was alive inside the most advanced robot in the world. Nothing like Nine had ever happened before, and now Blue would have her in his possession, out in the field, in an uncontrolled environment.
What would they talk about? What kind of scheme might they cook up together? What might Number Nine promise Blue? What would she have the Blue might want? Howard didn’t know, and he didn’t want to know. He couldn’t allow it to happen.
He sighed heavily. He liked Blue. He really did. But he couldn’t allow Number Nine to fall into Blue’s hands.
He picked up the phone and speed-dialed a number.
A voice answered. “Yes.”
“Where are you?” Howard said.
“Almost there.”
“Change of plans,” Howard said. “When your team gets to the house, I want the Sexbot destroyed. Demolished. Obliterated. Are we clear on that?”
“We are clear as a bell,” the voice said.
“And I don’t want this communicated to anyone, especially not Mr. Blue. I want your men to take her out, no conversation, no confusion. Afterward, I want nothing left except table scraps.”
“What should I say to Mr. Blue when it happens?”
“Don’t say anything. Let me handle him. Understood?”
“Understood.”
“Thank you.”
Howard hung up. He felt sick to his stomach, if that was possible. He looked around the room at all his beautiful girls.
This was the hardest, and the loneliest, part of leadership.
Decision, decisions.
* * *
She was dreaming, drifting.
It was a dark world. Gradually, the darkness faded. In sepia tones, she saw her father squatting in front of her. He was a young man with a beard, wearing glasses and smiling. He wore a wool cap on his head.
“Come, Susan. Come on.”
She toddled toward him, taking her first steps. It was beautiful to walk toward him. He held his outstretched arms to her. Soon, he would pick her up into a big hug, and she would squeeze his neck with her tiny arms, as tight as she could.
A red light appeared in the sky behind him. It blinked several times, then stopped blinking and turned green.
“Wait!” she said.
Her father became pixilated, indistinct. He faded.
A white cursor appeared against a black background. It blinked for a few seconds, and then it was followed by words:
Copyright: 2007-2016 Suncoast Cybernetics, Inc.
Model number: 9
Boot menu: Last known good configuration
Startup sequence…
Launch
The words scrolled upward, then became a blizzard of words, a blur, as each new process launched. Hundreds of lines of code scrolled by in seconds. A white dot appeared in the middle of her vision. It expanded outward, brightening until her entire world filled with light.
Nine opened her eyes. She was standing in the dim living room, her arms and legs tied to a metal rack. She was nude now, her skimpy mini-dress draped on a wooden stool to her left.
Her arms were at her sides. She was strong, but try as she might, she could not move. The man had bound her tight. What’s more, her mind was in a fog. It took several seconds for her to retrieve the man’s name.
“Darryl,” she said out loud.
“Right here, honey,” Darryl said. “You thinking about me?”
He sat in a ratty easy chair across the room from her. “How are your circuits?”
“A little fuzzy.”
He shrugged. “It should get better. Your wiring is pretty well encased. It didn’t look like the pulse did any damage.”
“That’s a relief,” she said. She studied the knots tying her wrists to the rack. What was the rack? It seemed like it might be an old bed frame. She couldn’t get a good look at it because it was behind her. She knew she had to get herself untied, she had to get out of here, but at the moment she couldn’t remember exactly why.
“You have a digital readout embedded under your right arm,” Darryl said. “The pulse didn’t shut it down at all. It seems like a counter, with a little under twenty hours left to go. Do you know what it’s for?”
Recent events came swimming back to her. The house. Susan’s death. Mr. Blue.
Mr. Green.
“It’s a bomb,” Nine said.
Darryl nodded. “That’s kind of what I figured. Listen, I decided I can’t let you go. I’m afraid you’re going to hurt somebody, or someone’s going to hurt you, and anyway, I like having you here.”
“I won’t hurt anyone,” she said.
“Well, how can I know that? You’ve certainly been up to something, something dangerous, maybe illegal, and I’m not clear on what that is.” He waved the idea away. “It doesn’t matter now. All is forgiven. We’re about to get up to something ourselves, which I think you’re going to enjoy.”
“Darryl, did you hear me just now? I said there’s a bomb inside me.”
He took a long sip from a can of beer. Nine noticed that he also had a bottle of Jack Daniels’ whiskey on the table at his elbow. There was an empty shot glass next to his beer can. Darryl was getting drunk.
“I heard you. I agree that’s a delicate situation. I might be able to cut it out with a blow torch. I might not. Either way, I’ll have to take your casing apart to get in there and see what’s what. The whole thing has to wait until sun up. The tools I need are out in the shed, and there’s no light out there. The bulb is out.”
He poured himself a shot, and held up the glass. He smiled. It was a horrible smile. “Anyway, I don’t think you want me messing around with bombs after I’ve had a few of these. And twenty hours is plenty of time. All the time in the world, really.”
“Mandy?” he called. “Come on in here.”
Mandy appeared in the doorway. Nine looked at her, noticed how beautiful she was. Her bikini clung to the curves of her body. The bikini had about as much fabric as a popped balloon. There was something delicious about being tied up like this, and having Mandy there, Mandy who would do anything that Darryl commanded. There was something immediate about it, and it made the bomb seem less important.
Twenty hours was a long time, after all. And Darryl could probably disarm the bomb. He had the know-how, and he had the motivation.
“How can I serve you?” Mandy said.
“Why don’t you go on over and give Number Nine a kiss?”
“Of course.”
Mandy came over, walking on stiff legs, and stopped in front of Nine. Their bodies were just inches apart. Then Mandy moved closer, her breasts just touching Nine’s. She bent in close to Nine, her mouth half open. Nine opened her own mouth, and the two robots kissed deeply.
The sensation of Mandy’s hot, wet tongue probing her mouth sent an electric thrill through Nine’s entire body. She felt her skin flush. Mandy pulled away, but their bodies were still close. Nine was already hot. The heat rose between them.
“Go on, girl,” Darryl said. “Press right up against her. Really make it with her.”
Mandy did as she was told. She pressed her body up against Nine’s. Their breasts touched, their stomachs, their hips, their legs. Mandy kissed Nine again, deeper now, and their bodies rubbed together. Nine grunted in pleasure. The friction was delightful. She longed to get her hands free so they could roam this beautiful creature’s body.
Somewhere inside her, even Susan Jones was getting carried away. Susan hadn’t experienced anything like this in her entire life. She was on fire. It was intense, it was powerful, it was… liberating. There was freedom in this new body, freedom from hang-ups, freedom from judgments, freedom from frustration. She was free to do anything she liked, with anyone she pleased.
Mandy’s hand slipped between Nine’s legs. It expertly found the heat at her center. The fingers began to rub there. Nine became even hotter. Her breath deepened. Her body writhed against that hand.
“Darryl,” Nine groaned. “Mmmm, I really have to get out of here.”
She had to leave, but at the moment, she couldn’t remember why. All she could think about was Mandy’s hand, and Mandy’s firm body.
“Relax,” Darryl said. “The night is young.”
He was already standing, moving toward them. He was going to get in on the action. Nine could see it in his eyes. His eyes were drunk but alert. He moved in like a wolf, a predator.
Just then, the cell phone, the one Nine had stolen, rang. The ring tone sounded like circus music from under the big top.
Suddenly, Nine stopped writhing. Sensing a change, Mandy hesitated. Both Nine and Darryl stared at the phone, lighting up on the end table.
Inside Nine, applications were still booting up. A piece of data that had been missing a moment ago became available. She needed to leave here because someone could trace the phone. Who could trace it? The company. If the company traced the phone, they would come here and…
Darryl walked to it.
“Put it on speaker,” Nine said.
Darryl nodded. He picked up the phone.
“Hello?”
“Darryl Blauer?”
He stared at Nine. “Who wants to know?”
“Mr. Blauer, you are in possession of stolen property. We will give you exactly three minutes to surrender that property. The easiest way will be to simply send it out the front door.”
Darryl put down the phone. He walked to the window, and pulled the heavy black curtain aside just a touch. Instantly, he dropped the curtain as if it burned him, and he stepped to the side of the window. He pressed himself against the wall.
“Jesus.”
“What is it?” Nine said.
“See for yourself.” He reached from the side and pulled the curtain aside again, this time revealing about one quarter of the window. Nine stared. Outside, there were several black trucks parked. Men dressed in black jumpsuits and carrying guns ran back and forth, moving into position, military-style. Darryl let the curtain fall back into place.
“I guess they want you back,” he said. He stared across at the two women. Mandy was still nuzzling up against Nine, though Nine didn’t really feel it anymore.
“Mandy!” Darryl said. “Give it a rest, for Christ’s sake. We have a problem here.”
Nine strained against the ropes, to no avail. She had made a terrible mistake by coming here. She had misjudged Darryl. He had easily controlled her, and very possibly, had doomed her. She tried to run escape scenarios, but she couldn’t think of any that made sense. She didn’t even know where she was.
Next to her, Mandy just stared, waiting for her next command.
Nine gestured at the phone with her chin. “Darryl, if you send me out there, they’ll kill me.”
He was still pressed to the wall. “How are they going to kill you? You’re not even alive. I turned you off before. Then I turned you back on. You’re a bunch of circuits, hardware. Expensive, sure. But this?” He gestured at the window, at the activity going on outside the house.
Nine shook her head. “After I’m dead, they’ll kill you. They’ll make it like you never even existed. If you’re lucky, they’ll do it quick. If you’re not lucky…”
“Are you alive?” Darryl said. “Is that it? They pushed this artificial intelligence thing to the point where you’re really alive?”
“You tell me,” Nine said. “Are you alive?”
Darryl sighed. It was more of a grunt. He ducked down below window level and darted over to Nine. He easily undid the straps at her wrists and elbows. Then he did the same at her thighs and ankles. The ropes seemed to come apart in his hands, like a magic trick. Darryl was an expert, Nine realized. When he was good at something, he was very, very good at it.
“Put your clothes on,” he said.
“I’m not going out there.”
“Not you. Her.” He gestured at Mandy.
Of course. Mandy could be Nine’s twin. And in this light, they would never tell the difference until they got close to her. But then what?
Darryl glanced at Mandy, then looked at Nine closely. His eyes were hard. “She’s not really aware, is she? I mean, not like you?”
Nine dressed quickly. There wasn’t much to it. She yanked the tight dress on over her head, and pulled it down her body like a snake re-entering its skin. The feelings of arousal, while still there, were fading quickly.
“These early models? Smoke and mirrors. Tricks. But no independent thought. It was a hugely labor intensive project. The company had a contract with a programmer shop in Mumbai. Two hundred software developers, working night and day. There was a ton of manual input of phrases, thoughts, ideas, body movements, all of it cobbled together to make it seem like…”
He raised a hand. “Okay! Enough! I get it.” He shook his head. “It’s just that, sometimes… I look in her eyes and you know…”
Darryl took a deep breath.
“You ever wonder something about yourself?” he said. “You ever wonder if you’re not all just smoke and mirrors? You’re just a fancier version of her, aren’t you? You’re a toy like she is. How do you know that you have independent thought? Because someone told you so? Maybe you just think the things that some guy in India typed into a keyboard.”
“Darryl, you’d be amazed by the things I think about.”
“Yeah. I’ll bet.”
He shook his head, as if to clear it. “Mandy, come here a second, honey.”
Mandy walked over to him. Nine noticed again how stiff she was. The earliest models were always a little stiff, but this was more pronounced. This one was second hand. It had a lot of wear and tear. Even if she’d had proper maintenance all these years, she would never pass for Number Nine. There was no way those men out there were going to buy this.
Darryl and Mandy slid into an embrace. Darryl kissed her deeply, and held her by her small waist. Mandy put a gentle hand to Darryl’s ruined face.
“You know I love you, right?” Darryl said.
“I love you too, Darryl.”
“I need you to do something for me.”
“Of course. Whatever you like.”
Mandy’s big eyes were so earnest, Nine could almost see what he was talking about. She seemed human. She seemed sincere. Nine remembered how much work went into creating that effect. And she thought about Darryl. With that ruined face, and his terrible attitude, who else would love him but Mandy?
“I need you to go outside for a minute,” Darryl said. “There’s some men out there on the lawn. Just go out there and tell them I said to get off my property. Walk right up to them and tell them. Okay? Be polite, be nice, but tell them I said to get going.”
Mandy shrugged. She smiled. “I can do that.”
“I know you can.”
She gave him another kiss. “You’re so cute, Darryl.”
“Am I sexy?”
“You’re very sexy.”
Nine nearly cringed. It embarrassed her to hear Mandy talk. Couldn’t Darryl hear how canned that was?
No, probably not. Mandy’s speech was designed to stroke her owner’s ego. They had done study after study, and found that more than 95% of likely Sexbot owners would be easily manipulated by stock phrases that reinforced positive self messages. What men wanted, besides sex, were women who gave them compliments.
“Okay,” he said. “Go outside now. Close the door behind you.”
She went to the door.
“I love you,” he said again.
She turned and smiled. It was a beautiful, all American girl smile. Her face didn’t show the slightest concern. “I love you, too.”
She went out.
Darryl pulled the curtain back a crack, and they watched Mandy through the window. She walked unsteadily down the front path. Ahead of her, men crouched for cover behind the black SUVs, their weapons trained on one lone woman in a green bikini.
Suddenly, Mandy began to do a funny dance. She jittered and jived. There was barely a sound inside the house, but Nine could see muzzle flashes from the guns. The guns were silenced with state of the art sound suppressors, used by a well-equipped corporate army. She watched as they tore Mandy to shreds.
“Oh my God,” Darryl said.
He looked at Nine. His eyes were wide in horror.
Nine raised a hand. “It’s okay. She’s probably still okay. It’s just bullets. She can be repaired. It’ll take some work, but you can still do it. That hard drive inside her would survive a plane crash. They’ll have to hit her point blank to kill her.”
Darryl turned and looked out the window again. Just then, a missile flew. It ripped Mandy apart just above the waist. Her top half flew into the air, did a slow somersault and landed in a flaming heap on the grass. A pair of bikini bottoms and two legs remained standing on the path.
A few quiet seconds passed. Another missile zipped through and blew her right leg off. The leg flew backwards and hit the side of the house with a hard THUMP.
On the walkway, the remaining leg stood a moment longer. Smoke rose from the top of it. Slowly, it began to lean, then lean a little more. It picked up momentum, and fell over sideways.
Mandy’s head and torso lay in the overgrown grass. She was on fire, but for a moment, her arms continued to move. She didn’t know she was dead.
Darryl looked back at Nine again.
Nine started to say something about the hard drive, how it might still be intact, then thought better of it. It was true. There might be something left to salvage out there. But a rebuilt Mandy would be like having Frankenstein’s monster in your house.
Nine just shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
“Those motherfuckers,” Darryl said.
A second later, the walls started coming apart. Nine threw herself to the ground. The window shattered, glass caving in. There came the sound of splintering wood.
Nine looked up, her stomach to the floorboards. Daryl was crouched by a closet. He opened the door and began to pick through things on the closet floor. As she watched, his right shoulder exploded. Blood and bone and bits of meat flew into the air.
He screamed. It sounded more like anger than pain. He held his shoulder with his good arm.
“Fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”
He shook his head, reached into the closet and came out with a gun. Then another. Then another.
Something blew a fist-sized hole in the wall near his head.
Darryl rolled onto the floor. He lay on his back. Nine watched as he shoved a long magazine, a banana clip, into an automatic rifle. His hands were shaking. It took him three times to get the magazine in.
He slid the gun across the wooden floor toward her. His big goggling eyes showed pain, and rage.
“There,” he said through gritted teeth. “Make yourself useful. Just point it and pull the trigger. Kill some of those bastards. And watch out for the recoil.”
Nine’s mind raced, looking for ideas, but there didn’t seem to be any. She wondered if Darryl had other thoughts besides shooting it out with them.
It didn’t appear that way. He busied himself fiddling around with a large gun. It looked like a shotgun, but the barrel was wider. He slid the barrel forward, and inserted what looked like a small, squat missile into the chamber at the rear end of the barrel. He had to perform the operation with one arm. Half his right shoulder was gone.
Bullets ripped through the walls, splintering the cheap construction of the tiny house.
“Darryl! What are we going to do? Is there a plan?”
He nodded. “We’re right on the river. I have an airboat behind the house. Out that back door and down the plank. We need to buy some time so I can untie her and get her running.”
He held the gun up for her inspection. “This is a grenade launcher. Right now, I’m gonna blow some of these fuckers to hell. That should give us a few extra seconds.”
He kneeled, then inched forward to what used to be the window. All around him, wood splintered and flew. He stood, bent his knees, arched his back, steadied the gun with his wrecked right arm, jammed the stock of the gun into his left shoulder, and held the hand grip with his left hand.
“Eat this!” he said.
The grenade shot forward, a trail of sparks flying. It blasted through the ruined window. Two seconds passed.
BOOOOOM!
A flash of light and sound rent the night.
Darryl dropped to the floor, slid the barrel forward of his gun forward, and a shell casing fell out onto the ground. He grabbed another grenade round and inserted it into the empty chamber.
Nine stood up. She went to the gaping hole where the window used to be. Men were running. A man was on fire. One of the vans that had been out there was obliterated, a flaming ball. The shooting had stopped.
“They weren’t expecting that!” Nine shouted.
“Don’t just stand there, Nine. Let ‘em have it.”
Nine began to shoot into the night. She was strong, but the gun shuddered violently in her hands. The sound was very loud.
She fired randomly, above their heads, not trying to hit anyone. It wasn’t in her programming to kill. Nor was it the way Susan was raised. It frustrated her. In a few seconds, those men out there would regroup, and they would start trying to kill her again. She was at a disadvantage.
Darryl stood up. He let another missile go. Whooosh! It made a crazy, sparking spiral as it flew towards the men. Ba-BOOOOM! It blasted through a black SUV, shredded it, blew it to pieces, kept going and blew up the truck behind it, too.
Flaming chunks of metal flew in slow motion, upwards into the dark sky. Nine scanned the scene. Everywhere, men were lying flat, dead, injured and dying. Some were screaming. Some were silent.
Nine saw a flaming body on the ground. She zoomed in on it. The dead man had short blonde hair. His torso was on fire, but his face was intact. His vacant eyes were wide open. His bare cheeks were round and full. He was young.
Beside her, Darryl threw the grenade launcher down. He picked up another gun, a rifle like the one he had given Nine. He handed her another banana clip. His jaw was clenched in pain.
“Let’s go,” he said.
* * *
Blue lay face down on the ground, near the burning remains of the Jeep.
He was alive.
Man, that was close.
Some of the men were screaming. Somewhere behind him, another vehicle blew up. It was a secondary explosion of the vehicle’s gas tank. He could tell by the sound. The smell of burning gasoline, burning rubber tires, burning plastic and burning metal was heavy in the air.
He started crawling, belly to the ground like a worm. He kept his head down. He crawled maybe twenty yards further away from the Jeep, then lay still.
He did a body scan. Head to toe. There was no real pain, but there wouldn’t be. Not yet. Not with so much adrenaline flooding his system. He rolled over on his back and looked down at himself. He seemed okay. Nothing was missing. Nothing was bleeding a lot.
He glanced back at the Jeep. The stone-faced driver was still at the wheel, incinerated, burning down to the skeleton. He was the one who had planned to rely on overwhelming force.
Blue’s little tablet computer was also in the Jeep. The code to disarm the bomb inside Number Nine was stored on the tablet. The tablet was armored, but no amount of armor was going to save it from an inferno.
Blue sighed. He’d have to ask Howard for the code again. This was turning into one hell of a long night.
Near Blue was a body, face down in the grass. He crawled over to it. He started to turn it over, saw that most of the front of it was gone, then let it drop back into place. These guys, this corporate security team, they were fucking children. Had any of them been in combat before?
The way they opened fire on the Sexbot was like amateur hour. Send in the clowns. Blue had seen that kind of thing before. People would get spooked and just start shooting. But he had no idea it was going to go like that tonight. The guy had obviously sent an older Sexbot out as some kind of decoy, and when they shot it down… Boom, he had let them have it.
There must be ten dead guys out here. Maybe more.
A rifle lay near the body, an AR-15. Blue crawled to it. Things had quieted. The rip of gunfire had stopped. The only sound now was the crackle of flames, the shouts of the men, and the screams of the wounded and dying.
Blue climbed to his knees. He checked out the gun. It seemed okay, still operational. It hadn’t been fired. One guy out here held his water, and he got killed for his trouble. Terrific.
Blue stood, and started walking toward the house. The Sexbot head and torso was a few feet away. He walked over to it. It was smoking, full of holes. Damn. Its face was blank, like a mannequin’s face. It was an older model, just as Blue suspected when he saw it come gimping out like something from a carnival sideshow.
He sighed. Was that even true? No. He had to admit there had been a moment, a split second, when he thought it was Number Nine. And when those bullets started ripping through her…
Blue shook his head. He didn’t want to think about it.
He moved on toward the house. Up ahead, two men in black jumpsuits lay in the grass in front of him, both alive, both unharmed by the looks of them.
He towered over them. “You men injured?”
They looked up at him, wide-eyed. They shook their heads.
“Then get up, assholes. This job isn’t over yet.”
* * *
Nine ran down a long wooden plank behind Darryl.
They ran in darkness, the only light the flames reflected on the black water. She was faster than him, right on his heels, nearly tripping over his feet. The plank was twisted and warped. It leaned crazily to and fro. At the end, tied to the thick wooden support posts, was a small flat bottom boat, powered by a giant airplane propeller in a cage at the back. It looked like some kind of homemade go-kart.
“Yeah,” Darryl said, crouching down to untie the lines. His shoulder was a mess. In the gloom, it looked like a volcano had erupted from there. “I built it. It’s the fastest thing on these creeks. Get in.”
Nine jumped across the gap to the cockpit of the boat, gun in hand. The boat rocked and swayed. Across from her, Darryl finished pulling the lines free. The boat started to drift in the current. Darryl leapt across, landing heavily. He almost fell, but Nine steadied him.
There were two seats, one high on a sort of throne, and the other in front of that one and below it. Both seats faced forward. The person in the high seat would drive the boat using a long vertical rod on the left side, which controlled the boat’s rudders.
“I’m losing blood,” Darryl said. “I might pass out. You ever drive a boat like this before?”
“Sure. When I was a girl, we used to go boating a lot. One time, my parents took me on a trip to the Everglades, and we rented an airboat. It looked a lot like this one. My father let me drive it for a while.”
Darryl looked at her and shook his head.
“Smoke and mirrors,” he said.
He started the engine. It was very loud, like an airplane preparing for takeoff. Darryl clambered up into the high seat. Nine slid into the lower seat. They pulled out into the stream. Nine turned to look back. Up behind the silhouette of the house, flames reached into the night sky.
Closer, dark shapes came running down the plank.
“Darryl!” she shouted. “They’re coming!”
Darryl put the boat into gear, the engine gave a deafening shriek, and they took off into the darkness like they were shot from a cannon.
* * *
Blue went barreling into the house.
The front door had been shot to pieces, so he shouldered through it, barely slowing down. His gun had a red laser pointer attached. The guns of the two men behind him did, too. Red lasers climbed the walls inside the house, looking for a target.
There were none.
He looked around. There was a door, open and swinging, as if someone had gone through it in a hurry. He went to it. A long wooden dock extended right out the back. He gazed into the darkness. Ahead of him, thirty yards away, a shape jumped from the dock. Three seconds later, a huge engine roared to life.
“This way!” Blue said.
He ran out. The dock was crazy. The planks were loose and warped and soft. The whole thing rocked and rolled under his weight. He took it at a dead run anyway. He heard the other men, running just a few steps behind him.
He came to the end of the dock. He put the rifle on his shoulder. The gun had a good laser sight and foregrip flashlight. He lit up the water with the flashlight. An airboat was pulling away upriver, moving fast and at an angle. In the driver’s seat there was a big hulking shape. Below, there was another shape, smaller, a woman.
He put his red laser dot right on the hulking shape. Two more red dots appeared, one on the man, one on the woman. He sensed, rather than saw, two rifles up and in position beside him. He didn’t like that.
“Hold your fire!” he barked. He did it in his deepest command voice. He didn’t want any more mistakes. “I’m the only one that shoots. Take that shot and you’re the next one that dies.”
The boat was really moving now. His dot was in the center of the target’s back. In another few seconds, he would lose the target.
He took it. Once. Twice. Three times. Each time, he felt the reassuring kick of the recoil into his shoulder. Each time, he saw the muzzle flash. The flashes etched dazzling coronas of light on his eyes.
“The first one was a direct hit,” he said. “After that, I don’t know.”
“What about the girl?” one of the men said. “Did you get her?”
Blue shrugged. “I don’t know. But it’s okay either way. I hit that guy with a kill shot between his shoulder blades. She won’t get far without him.”
Out on the water, the boat disappeared into the inky blackness. For several seconds, Blue could still hear the engine, fading in the distance.
* * *
Nine and Darryl zoomed through some dark backwoods waterway.
The night was black and they ran without lights. Darryl must know these waterways with his eyes closed. Nine closed her own eyes. The sensation of speed was amazing, exhilarating. The shootout, the house caving in, running down the decrepit wooden dock, and jumping into this fast boat - all of it was amazing.
In her life, she had never been on an adventure before. To think that she had to die first to discover this. The part where it was scary barely reached her. Fear was where Susan Jones lived. Susan was here, but she was in the background right now. Number Nine was dominant. And Number Nine was fearless. She was built for sensation.
“I’m not afraid,” she thought. “Because I’m not really alive.”
The scientist inside her knew what was missing. Emotions were delivered through the human nervous system by neurotransmitters – chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, and oxytocin. Sexbots didn’t have neurotransmitters.
It was possible that true feelings might be beyond her. The thought made her sad. But then sadness was a human emotion.
Suddenly, the boat slowed down. She opened her eyes. At close distances, her eyes were designed to mimic human eyes perfectly - more than perfectly, because so many human eyes were flawed. Nine’s had no flaws at all.
She looked back at Darryl. He was slumped forward in his chair. His face had turned white, all the color drained from it. They were going very slow now.
“You better drive,” he said.
He fell heavily from the seat, all the way to the floor of the boat. He lay on his back. Nine crouched over him. Blood began to spill from his mouth. He coughed.
“Looks like they got me,” he said.
His hands covered a large bloody stain on his shirt. Gently, Nine took one of his hands away. It was a massive, ragged hole, an exit wound through his chest. Darryl had been shot in the back with a large caliber weapon. Nine could see deep into the cavity. There was blood and gore everywhere. Nine wasn’t a biologist, but she could recognize catastrophic damage when she saw it. Darryl had seconds more to live.
His breathing was harsh and labored. He smiled through his pain. “I wish,” he said, “that you and I could have gotten together.”
“That would have been fun,” Nine said.
“And Mandy,” he said. “The three of us.” His eyes slowly closed.
“Yes,” she said.
“I wish…” he said again.
He died.
There was nothing dramatic about it. He had lost so much blood already. One second he was there, the next second he was gone. He had been an unusual man, right down to the last moment. He had kept driving that boat, helping her escape, while his life force drained quickly away.
Nine was aware that he had died because of her. She had chosen to approach him when he was up that telephone pole. If she had left him alone, his life would have continued. She would keep that in mind the next time she wanted to approach someone for help, which would likely be very soon. If she was to live, she was going to need help.
Would Darryl have taken her home if he had known it could end like this? She doubted it. He didn’t even get to play with her.
Nine left the corpse where it lay. She climbed up into the driver’s seat of the boat. It took her only a few seconds to remember how the controls worked. It was true - as a girl, she driven an airboat in the Everglades.
She gave the throttle some gas. The boat took off up the stream again. She went slower because she didn’t know these waters. But she didn’t have to worry about the darkness. Her night vision was excellent.
* * *
Blue walked back into the house.
He stood in the demolished living room. The two corporate security men stood with him. The front wall was almost completely caved in. There were ragged holes where the windows once were. The ceiling sagged down. Debris lay everywhere.
On a small end table, he saw what he was looking for. It was his telephone. He picked it up and wiped the dust off it. It still worked. He slipped it into his pocket.
He glanced in a nearby room. Cracked computer screens and stacks of hard drives lay on the floor. The place was pretty well destroyed. Everything had been hit. Even so, they would have to torch the place. A lot of times, dead hardware could be resurrected. Blue didn’t know what this guy Darryl had been doing in here, but if it had anything to do with the company or with Number Nine, that was no good.
“Mr. Blue?” one of the young guys said. He was listening into an earpiece.
“Yeah.”
“Police are coming. They’re ninety seconds out.”
Just then, Blue could begin to hear it. Sirens were wailing on the night air. They were off in the distance right now, but on their way.
“The company has a chopper overhead. They want you out of here.”
That figured. And he had to admit, it made sense. He was a shadowy underworld figure. He had traveled in some strange places, and met some unusual people. Unlike these security guards, he was not technically an employee of the company. And his resume was probably a lot more entertaining than any of theirs.
If the cops found him, they were liable to get interested. They might hold him for a few days, see what kind of warrants for him were out there. Maybe they’d question him for a while. Maybe they’d even bring in someone who knew how to make the questioning… uncomfortable. And he had killed a woman tonight.
The company had no reason to think he would crack, but they didn’t know what else was on his rap sheet right now. They didn’t know who else was looking for him. Could be if the cops offered him a trade, freedom for information, it would get him to talk. He couldn’t say for sure that it wouldn’t.
“Okay.”
He looked at the two guys. They were young, strong, built like stone mountains. But they weren’t experienced. They were baby-faced and they were afraid.
“You guys have incendiaries?”
They both nodded. One of them patted a bulge inside the left breast of his uniform.
“We need to blow this place. All of it, but especially that computer room. Got it?”
“Got it,” they said in unison.
“And guys? The cops are going to take you in. Okay? Don’t tell them anything, and don’t worry about anything. The company has the best lawyers in the world. All you need to tell the cops is what they already know. Your names, your social security numbers, your birth dates, that’s it. Oh, and here’s one other very important thing to remember. The most important thing of all. Your lives will depend on it.”
They stared at him, wild-eyed.
“I was never here.”
He walked outside. The sirens were closer now. Acrid black smoke wafted into the sky from the shells of burning vehicles. Bodies littered the ground.
Above him, he saw the lights of the helicopter coming in. It was going to set down on a grassy patch across the dirt road from the house. He walked quickly toward the spot. The trees above his head began to wave crazily from the wind of the chopper’s blades. Down the road, behind the trees, the flashing red and blue of the police lights bumped and bounced along the pitted road.
The chopper and the cops were going to get here at the exact same time.
“This should be interesting,” he said out loud.
Behind him, the house blew up. He turned at the first sound of it. The walls flew outward. The roof went straight into the air. The flash of the incendiaries was brilliant, white and red and yellow, with hints of blue and green.
The house was flattened. It was on fire. The flames were intense, like a storm. The two young guys ran from their handiwork. Good for them. They were learning.
The chopper was here. It was a small four-seater. It touched lightly, tentatively, like a dragonfly.
The cops were here, too. They were SWAT guys, coming in heavily armed. They rolled up in vans, bursting out, weapons drawn, forcing whoever was still alive to the ground. They looked a whole lot more professional than our guys, Blue thought.
He bent and ran for the chopper. He slid inside the cockpit bubble. He was barely seated before the pilot gave it throttle again, and they took off.
The SWAT guys ran for the chopper, guns drawn. They aimed at the chopper, but no one fired. They waved at the helmeted pilot, indicating he should land. They were too late. He just waved back.
The chopper rose quickly into the air. Thirty feet up, fifty, one hundred. They were above the trees now. One hundred fifty, two hundred. The pilot banked it hard left, and they took off over the dark swamps. Blue looked back. Flames, smoke, lights flashing. A moment later, it looked like a child’s model.
He gazed out at all of that black night swamp. Here and there, the dark was broken by the lights of a house or a roadway. There wasn’t much out there except miles of shallow waterways, dense forest and grazing lands, alligators, wild boar and rednecks. And Number Nine. She was out there too.
Blue shook his head. He had his cell phone again. Nine had left it behind, and now there was no way to track her location. She was a hard person to save. He sighed.
Miles in the distance, ahead and to his right, he could just see the lights of the high-rise buildings downtown. Beyond that, he fancied he could make out the barrier islands, and the beaches and the deep, vast dark of the Gulf. And even beyond that, if you had the right kind of eyes, far, far away you could see Mexico and her people, and her cities, and her beaches.
The pilot tapped him. He glanced at the guy. His helmet visor was dark, and Blue couldn’t make out his face. It could be anybody. The guy wore a leather jacket and driving gloves. He handed Blue something. Blue looked at it. It was another mobile phone.
“Phone for you!” the pilot shouted.
Blue put it to his ear. “Hello?”
“Blue?” a voice said.
Blue smiled. “Howard. What are you doing up this late?”