The machine detective, p.26
The Machine Detective, page 26
part #4 of The Synth Crisis Series
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The window exploded, sending tiny glass missiles everywhere, bringing in the smell of burning chemicals and the sound of a city, still breathing despite its flawed landscape of technology amid the post-war rubble. On instinct, Dhata Mays dove to the side, crashing into the bedside table next to the still unmoving Hiroshi. Pain tore through every limb like bolts of fire bringing water to his eyes, made worse by enhanced ICLs that struggled to regain their focus.
It was all so sudden that for a second the old skiptracer assumed he’d been shot, but when his vision cleared, he could see the big variant on the floor, clutching at his face as he thrashed about. Within reach lay the Vulcan SP5, and Dhata grabbed it, charged it, and flipped the mode to LTL, for lethal, electromagnetic stopping rounds. He was still on his back, so he aimed between his knees, shooting the variant in the side and putting an end to his suffering.
Getting up to a knee, he kept the gun pointed to where Nyoko had been standing by the window. Wind and rain spilled in, but the synth woman was gone, and in her place shone a ray of neon light cascading down from a floating billboard. Getting to his feet now, with both hands on the Vulcan, Dhata climbed over the bed to stand on one side of the window. On the floor lay the body of Nyoko Ortho, bent and twisted in such a way he was sure she was gone.
Looking back at where Hiroshi remained unmoving, several thoughts went through Dhata’s mind. Where was Lur, and was she safe? What about Ariana? He wanted to believe that she had sent him the message earlier to keep Nyoko talking, and had taken the kill shot from an outside rooftop or flying transport. No, that wouldn’t make any sense. He had only been in the room at most thirty minutes before that shot went off, and Ariana would not have been able to move that fast.
I can’t be here, he thought. I have to get out and establish contact with my team and The Unsung.
He made to move but knew that whoever had shot Nyoko would still be watching the room. That message of warning had come from a hacked, anonymous source, so he had no identification, and there was a chance that it could be yet another trick. Sigma again, possibly killing this woman and Hiroshi to enact another part of its nefarious plan, of which Dhata didn’t want to stick around to find out.
Spurred into action by the unanswered questions, Dhata leaned over Hiroshi and placed one finger behind his ear and another below his chin. This, he had learned many years ago, was the only external method of coaxing to life a synth cyber-brain when their internal battery was drained. The cool touch of his flesh indicated that he was still alive, but in a dormant sleep-state, which could have come from an electroshock bolt.
The cypher stirred and opened his eyes, looking about wildly as if to assess the situation. “Where am I, Dhata?” he said.
“Same place. We need to move,” Dhata said, already marching over to the dead variant to reclaim his arsenal of small firearms. “Take this thing’s shotgun; you’re going to need it. Something tells me this building is about to get really hot, and we need to find Lur and Ari to get them out. How’s your communication? Is it working?”
“Can you hear me?” came Hiroshi’s voice through the forgotten ear bud still clipped onto Dhata’s ear. “There is so much blood here, and Lurita is still in our room under—wait,” he whispered. “When you killed Nyoko, was there any indication that the variants were freed? Did this man start behaving differently? We need to know if Nyoko Ortho was indeed the host, because if she wasn’t then I am afraid both Lurita and Ariana are in grave danger.”
Upon hearing those words, Dhata was already out the door. Hiroshi was still looking about aimlessly, and it made him wonder if something had been done to the cypher to damage his motor functions. “Hiro, can you walk? Yes? Alright … good. Get in contact with Robert and let him know we’re out. Tell him we have two of ours missing, and will need help getting them out. Just stay close to me and keep that shotgun hidden below your coat. Last thing we need is the attention of the hotel staff or Johns.”
The two men moved quickly to the elevator, selected the fifteenth floor and rode it down in silence until Hiroshi began speaking on the phone. Dhata, his nerves on end, hated being in the metal box they now rode down in, since it presented a disadvantage if the variants had an ambush waiting. Anticipating this, he stood to the left of the door and urged Hiroshi with a series of hand gestures to stand on the other side.
Hiroshi gave him a quick update. Robert had heard from Lur, and sent a sniper—the agent he knew as Ernesto—into an adjacent building to make the shot. The other three agents were inside the hotel now, looking for Ariana as well as any other variants.
Dhata exhaled through his teeth, some of the edge on his anxiety smoothing out. “Well, that’s some good news,” he managed. “Tell me, Hiro, when they came for you earlier, were you with Lur?”
“I was,” he said. “Dhata, know that much of the fault is mine, but I would never do anything to hurt Lurita. My mind has remained my own from the beginning. Sigma’s scheming was more sophisticated, and I had no idea that this contract was a setup.”
The fifteenth floor arrived quickly with the chiming of the elevator’s alarm, warning them that the door was about to open. Dhata gave Hiroshi a measuring look, weighing his words and why he said them now when they were about to be reunited with Lur. He hadn’t considered Hiroshi to be involved with Sigma, but it did fit. How else would Nyoko know to expect him when she did, and also the locations of both Ariana and Lur?
The door slid open, and three people stepped inside: a young couple, dressed up for a night on the town, and an older gentleman in gym clothes, who shot them both an impatient glance. They all seemed so oblivious, and incredibly human that if any of them were variants, Dhata would be shocked. He stepped out quickly, concealing the Vulcan, but keeping an eye on all three until Hiroshi followed him out.
When they were gone, he gave his old friend a long, measuring look, wondering to what degree was his involvement, and whether or not he had made a mistake by powering him back on.
“There is a woman in Tokyo, a cypher I let into my world by the name of Ayame,” Hiroshi began, and then recounted his tale with the additional observations that Lur had made when she confronted him. While he spoke, Dhata listened, all while keeping his senses piqued for an ambush, even from Hiroshi himself, who he still wasn’t sure he could trust. By the time they found their hotel room, however, his anger had morphed into sympathy for his synthetic friend.
“We’ve all been played at some point, Hiro. You never get over it,” was all he could manage to say in response.
The door opened easily, accepting Dhata’s identification, and he nearly gasped at the carnage. What was once a neat and tidy room had been transformed into a slaughterhouse. On the floor lay the dead cyclops, one hand covering the hole in his chest, the other stretched out to one side clutching the comforter still hanging from the bed. Blood was everywhere, synthetic blood from the variant, but Dhata couldn’t know if it was only his, and he felt a twinge of panic for Lur.
“Mi vida?” came a cracked voice through his earbud, and Dhata fumbled for it hesitantly, not wanting to believe it was her.
“Lurita?” he whispered, his eyes shifting over to Hiro, who seemed stunned by the state of the room. “Lurita, where are you?”
“Oh, Dhata, it’s so good to hear your voice,” she said, sounding winded. “I am outside with Colin, mira. They say I need to be taken to a med pod.”
“Med pod? What happened? I’m in our room and all I see is blood and—” Dhata started before Lur quickly cut him off.
“I’ll explain later, okay?” she said. “I’m in a lot of pain, and we need to find Ari and get everyone out … I have to go, mi vida. Besos, grab my equipment if you can before you leave, alright?”
“You got it, jefa,” Dhata teased, and when she hung up instead of becoming upset, he knew it was serious. “Hiro,” he said after taking a minute to think things over. “I’m going after Ariana, and you’re not coming with me. You’re going downstairs to rejoin Lur and our friends from The Unsung. We’re all fucked up, but you more than most. I know you feel responsible, and for good reason, but you need to get repaired and recharged.”
Chapter 30
Resistance is Futile
Ariana was missing and not answering her phone, so Hiroshi, before taking Dhata’s advice to go get checked out, showed the old skiptracer how to track the detective using her implant. Since both Ariana and Dhata had been police at some point, they were still connected to the global network for law enforcement. It was a closed-off network that a cypher could access if he wasn’t afraid of being discovered and spending the rest of his life in prison.
In this instance, however, it was an emergency, and the cypher was a Japanese synth who was already at odds with the law. Needless to say, Hiroshi did not hesitate to turn Ariana’s implant into a signal, which could be tracked on the tiny tablet or mini-rack as it was known, for Dhata to use to locate her. It turned out the feisty detective was no longer in the hotel lobby, but somewhere on one of the topmost floors, where she was either sedated or unconscious.
Angry to the point of bouncing, and with the variant-stopping Vulcan in hand, Dhata went back to the elevator and rode it up to the thirty-first floor. Anything higher was inaccessible to guests, and Ariana was right below what could be considered the roof. What was she doing there? He did not know, but had a mind to think that he was expected, and would have to fight to pull her out.
He could hear her in his head, screaming for him to summon The Unsung agents, but how could he tell her that trust was in short supply for him after hearing Hiroshi’s story? Racing up the stairs—which seemed unnecessarily fancy for a barely-used alternative access—he tried to reflect on the things Hiroshi had told him of Japan.
Where most hotels had dingy shafts, poorly illuminated, with the occasional cobweb hanging around in the corners, these stairs were wide, had wooden balustrades, and augmented paintings on the wall, showing other properties around the world built by the developer. At the top was an out-of-place lamp standing off center next to a line of bullet holes.
Ariana must’ve run up here, he thought, scanning the floor to see if anything else stood out. Several spent casings were on the third step, and he reached down to examine one. Nine-millimeter rounds from a semi-automatic. Was Ari doing the shooting or was this the variants? He recalled his kidnapper’s shotgun, which was an older ballistic model as well, not electroshock tech like most domestic weapons.
Near the lamp and to his immediate right was a reinforced, black glass wall with four doors leading into the penthouse proper. Adrenaline-charging limbs too seasoned to rigor with the fear of what could be, Dhata leaned into one of these doors with the Vulcan held close to his nose. Inside was a hallway leading to another glass wall, this one transparent and displaying a fantastic view of Seattle’s nightlife.
Near the end of the left wall was a closed door, the painting next to it glitching and popping loudly from damage it must have sustained from a second string of bullet holes. On the opposite side were five more images of famous people partying inside what he assumed was a room in this hotel. Below the third photograph was a splash of blood, and several dark spots that even the red carpeting couldn’t obscure.
Whoever was shooting had hit their mark. Was that mark Ariana Garcia? That was the terrible mystery Dhata had to steel himself to confirm. He urged open the door and was surprised to find another long hallway with doors on either side. But all were closed. The red carpeting ended, becoming a pattern of black and gold, which made the bloodstains virtually invisible, but Dhata chose not to slow down.
Leading with his Vulcan, he ignored the doors, knowing that if someone had been injured and tried to run, there would be a sign of forced entry somewhere, or something to hint at where they’d ended up. He turned a corner to even more doors and found the body of a dead man curled up on the floor. A quick examination revealed that he had been shot in the chest, and a slight glow behind his dead eyes signaled variant.
The door next to him was slightly open, and he strained to hear if anyone was inside, but all that came to his ears was a distinct humming. Something was familiar about the noise, and it brought with it a chill that he couldn’t quite qualify. Dhata stood up and checked the hallway to make sure that he hadn’t been followed, and then carefully pushed open the door.
Inside was a large room, dark, just barely illuminated by low lights embedded high up in the ceiling. It was big enough to house a convention like the fundraiser he and Ariana had crashed on the first floor, and would likely have been reserved for businesses desiring privacy and security. There were three long tables arranged in a column with chairs wrapped about them, though there were no dishes or silverware out, only racks.
Tall windows stretched from floor to ceiling in rows, bringing in the skyline through a set of reinforced one-way panes. Several androids, which gave the anxious Dhata a start, stood at attention near one wall, regimented like mannequins on display, their lifeless eyes staring forward into nothing.
Dhata felt suddenly exposed inside this expansive room of horrors, as he aimed his Vulcan at one after the other, ready to fire off bolts. He saw a bloody footprint on the pale marble floor, illuminated by a spotlight spilling in from a window. High-heeled pumps was the mark, leading him to think it was Ariana’s, and he quickened his pace past the androids to gain the back, where there stood yet another door.
As he neared the door, Dhata slowed his pace, observing a man laying facedown with a tri-pronged bolt still wedged inside his back. He recognized the bolt, which was the same kind used by his Vulcan.
The dead variant told him two things: Ariana wasn’t the one being pursued; she was the one doing the pursuing. Those nine-millimeter shots in the wall would have come from her personal handgun, and when the clip was spent, she’d resorted to the Japanese gun, shooting her victim before he could make it to the door.
Now he was really curious as to what awaited him inside that room. What could have spooked the variants into running from the detective? In all his experience with assassins, they had a singular focus, which was to kill. He had counted three bodies since stepping off the elevator, and this man with the bolt looked familiar.
It was Nyoko’s lover, the so-called executive with Onyx Elaborative, who was supposed to have their tickets to board the zeppelin where Sigma allegedly lived. Dhata knew now that it was all a lie to get them here for whatever this was, but what bothered him now was Ariana’s fate. Why hadn’t she called Robert or Lur to let them know where she was?
He took a final glance behind him to make sure that none of the androids had moved, chanced a peek into the room, and immediately dashed in when he saw two people struggling on the floor. A man in all black was on top of Ariana, with a knife leveled at her throat, but the detective had her knee up in his abdomen and her hands holding him off by his wrists.
By the time the attacker heard Dhata approaching, he was already delivering a kick that knocked him off Ariana, though he immediately regained his footing. Without thinking better of it, Dhata tried to shoot him with the Vulcan but the man shot forward so suddenly his first shot missed. Fearing the incoming tackle to the floor, Dhata hopped backwards and fired again, but it went wide, striking a monitor instead.
Ariana was back up, aiming her own weapon, but hesitated to fire with her partner now entangled with the assassin. The Vulcan struck the floor, and Dhata swung a hook punch into the man’s ribs. He didn’t know if this too was a variant, since his mask and clothing were so different from any he’d encountered inside the building.
Dhata blocked the knife by throwing his forearm up and striking the wrist below his grip. His other hand found the man’s throat, but the assassin wriggled out to jump and spin acrobatically, striking Ariana in the face when she came up behind him. The fancy kick should have stopped her, but she kept on coming, growling savagely as she wrapped her arms about his waist in a desperate attempt to pin him down.
Seizing the advantage, Dhata bounced back and spun into a back fist, but when his knuckles struck, he knew immediately that it wasn’t a human skull. The blow knocked the variant loose from Ariana’s bear hug, and Dhata scooped up the Vulcan, aimed carefully, and put three lethal bolts into his body.
He gasped for air and winced at a cut in his leg that he had somehow missed. “You alright, Ari?” he managed, reaching down to help her back to her feet.
“I was alright until ninja boy, but that was good timing,” she said. “I don’t know if I would have had it, Dhata; it was really close there. I tried calling you so many times, but they have some sort of damper on this place.”
“It’s a situational firewall, accessible by synthetics only,” Dhata informed her. “Ran into the same thing with The Unsung back in Miami. Thought Lurita was toast, but it was the firewall, blocking her implant from outside communication. I tell you, if we make it out of here, we’re going to have to look into an alternative means of communicating.”
He surveyed the room and recognized the equipment as large-scale racks that powered a grid strong enough to cover every floor inside the building. One wall held the mainframe, an impressive honeycomb of racks and flashing lights, and another had several androids posed just like in the adjoining room.
Aside from the equipment and androids, there was a table in the corner with a solitary chair. Several monitors were mounted above it, showing some of the hallways and rooms in the hotel. On the desk was a newer rack with the handles wired to another charred-up box which appeared to have been a rack rescued from flames. Dhata reasoned that this setup was not normal and was more like a cypher’s hive than the server room of a large hotel.
