Android: Golem (The Identity Trilogy) (9 page)

“What’s going on?” Shelly closed in behind me. Her breath ghosted across my shoulder and I was suddenly reminded of the woman in the hotel. The memory was disconcerting and splintered my concentration for a moment—something that never happened.

Cartman Dawes’s face floated in front of me. He looked younger and more robust. In my “memory”—which couldn’t be an actual memory—he was angry and spoke in strident tones, though I oddly couldn’t remember the words he was saying.

For a moment, I was lost in my recollections as I searched for when this meeting might have taken place.

Shelly nudged my shoulder. “Drake?”

“Yes?”

“What’s the matter with you?”

I ran a quick diagnostic. “Nothing. I am performing at peak levels. Is there a particular facet of me that concerns you?”

“You’re being quiet.”

“I am often quiet.”

“Not when we’re looking for doers.”

“Doers” is cop slang for perpetrators that are definitely guilty. “I am often quiet when—”

Shelly interrupted me. “No. You’re distracted.”

“I am incapable of distraction.”

“You’re distracted now.”

I’d learned not to argue with her over indefinable subjects. The more esoteric a matter was, the more I merely listened.
 

“I apologize.”

I had also learned to apologize for things that were beyond my control. Shelly’s husband had taught me that. It was one of the best pieces of advice he had ever given me. He’d told me it would make my partnership with Shelly easier, and it had.

“Don’t apologize. Focus.”

I did. I looked at the ductwork. My infrared vision had picked up a trail that I felt certain the murderers had left.

“There is a trail.” I studied the faintly orange smudges that led through the ducts.

“What trail?”

“The doers were in contact with the carbosteel of the ductwork. Even that brief contact left heat signatures.” As I spoke, some of the orange smudges grew fainter. “We must hurry.” I plunged ahead at greater speed.

Chapter Seven

At the next juncture, the duct intersection had a six-way path. The intersection was a primary maintenance channel, so rungs stood out against the sides of the vertical ductwork.

The orange smudges marked the rungs, but they were fading fast.

“They went up.”

“The hopper pad is that way.” Shelly nudged in against my shoulder.

I put out a hand to stop her from toppling when she got too close to the edge. In the darkness, she couldn’t see the drop, and her hand reached out over empty space. She pulled back and balanced herself easily enough, but I was there.

“I guess there’s a drop?” Her voice sounded tight.

“Yes.”

“Great.”

I didn’t understand what was great about it. The fact that there were rungs leading below was only common sense. I saw no reason to comment on her assessment and chose not to.

“A long drop?”

“It goes to the bottom.”

She sipped her breath. “I guess the objective here is not to fall.”

“That would be optimum.” The saying was one of hers, and I had learned to use it sometimes when she was tense. I didn’t always use it appropriately.

“I think I liked you better when you didn’t have a sense of humor, Drake.”

I knew she wasn’t serious. But, I also knew I didn’t have a sense of humor. I was not an entertainment bioroid, nor did I have a positive reinforcement subroutine that included humor. I was programmed to put her at ease, but I often felt that programming was substandard when it came to Shelly.

“So let’s go up. And not fall.”

I reached out, caught one of the rungs, and pulled myself into the vertical shaft. Then I reached back, took Shelly’s hand, and guided her onto the rungs. Though she trusted me, I felt resistance in her and moved accordingly.

We went up.

Although Dawes’s room was housed on the top floor of the L’Engle, there was another floor above it. The top floor was reserved as space for emergency fire suppression equipment and water reservoirs. Tall buildings that used a lot of water, like a hotel, required the presence of water reservoirs to increase water pressure. Gravity was the greatest aid in creating a positive water pressure—at least on Earth.

The extra floor also provided an excellent hiding place for three fugitives.

The ductwork opening came to a landing. I eased up, able to see through the darkness with my infrared vision.

When I stepped out into the room, I freed my Synap pistol and flipped the safety off.

The weapon was powered for a ten meter distance, half the knockdown distance of the projectile weapons carried by the NAPD. Even though the weapon was non-lethal and only caused paralysis and unconsciousness, the department didn’t want to deal with liability suits.

Shelly came up behind me and stepped away from the duct opening. Both of us were quiet. We knew how to move and our footwear was specially cushioned.

But the three men were jacked up on adrenaline, fearful and uncertain because their operation hadn’t gone as smoothly as they’d hoped. They’d lain in wait, and they knew they had nothing left to lose.

A bright light flared to life in front of me and pinned me in the darkness. I shot out a hand to push Shelly away because I had already guessed what was coming. My fingertips barely brushed her jacket because she was already in motion, ducking low and going to the side.

A handful of bullets smashed against my chest and knocked me backward. If I hadn’t been off-balance reaching for Shelly, I might have been able to stand against them. But I wasn’t. I stepped backward, into the duct opening, and fell.

“Drake!” Shelly’s concern was evident.

I caught one of the rungs with my free hand and locked on. The bar bent under my sudden descent, but it held. I was a lot heavier than a human. I spoke softly over the comm, knowing that Shelly could hear me.

“I’m fine. I’m coming back up.” I pulled myself back up.

The light had shifted and I assumed the assassins were searching for Shelly. My programming flared to life, impelling me to prevent anyone from harming her.

“New Angeles Police!” Shelly sounded confident, but a little rushed, as she identified herself.

Off to my left, a man spoke. “How many are there?”

“Two. But one of them dropped back into the duct.” That man was also to the left. Having them bunched up was good.

“Doesn’t matter. She’s probably already called for reinforcements.”

Shelly had. So had I. Dispatch was already responding, letting us know that uniformed units were already on their way.

I came up the shaft in the darkness. My infrared vision was harder to maintain with the light bouncing around the room, but the light also provided me a target.

In a split-second, my targeting software came on-line and green crosshairs formed in my vision. I pointed the Synap at the man holding the light.

“New Angeles Police.” I spoke calmly; I had to issue the warning before I could fire my weapon. “Put down your weapons and—”

The man swung the light back toward me and opened fire. The muzzle flashes from the weapon threw highlights back over him, making it even easier to see him. The pistol was suppressed, so the actual noise from the shots was less than a vigorous cough and the sound was lost in the hum of machinery around us.

Two of the bullets struck me in the chest. Another hit me in the arm. I was set this time, turned sideways to present a smaller target, and they ricocheted off me. A direct hit would have staggered me back because the gun was powerful, at least a 12.7mm.

TARGET IS WITHIN EFFECTIVE RANGE.

I fired the Synap; it shrilled at a high decibel rate that Shelly called a “banshee scream,” and a blue bolt streaked across the 8.13 meters to strike the man. For 0.03 seconds, the man’s body turned virulent blue as the Synap burst cycled through the natural electromagnetic current of his flesh and blood.

Then he dropped bonelessly and the flashlight rolled across the floor, throwing shadows against the walls.

One of the men cursed. “It’s a golem!”

The term was a derogative one many anti-android humans used to refer to both bioroids and clones. The origin was a Jewish myth about a soulless monster that could be raised for protection in times of need. As far as epithets went, I thought it was particularly fitting. I had no personal feelings on the matter.

“I got something for golems.” The other man spoke more confidently than his partner.

I searched the darkness for the men. I tracked the reverberations of the voices. Angles and vertices showed on my crosshairs, estimating the point of origin.

In one massive eruption of sound and light, I knew where one of the men was. My vidware picked him up just as the muzzle flash of a compact rifle lit his face. I recognized the weapon as a 20mm anti-materiel rifle, something that was normally used to take out bulletproof vehicles and tanks. It was squat and wicked-looking, with a massive barrel.

The specifics of the Croatian-made weapon bounced through me at the same time I realized that I wouldn’t be able to evade the bullet. I turned as quickly as I could, which was very fast, but the bullet traveled at 850 meters per second.

I had no chance.

The bullet struck me in the lower left side and spun me around. Instantly, my programming recognized and assessed the damage. I had a large hole in my side and the articulation of my left hip was partially blocked with debris from my own body.

There was a slight warning pain within the operating parameters, but no more than necessary. The pain was only there to register that I had been damaged and would not continue if it interfered with my programming. The programming that dictated I protect Shelly from these men.

The man fired again and again. The only advantage I had was that the weapon was slow to cycle the next round. The bullets blew fist-sized holes in the wall behind me, chewing through the carbosteel as if it were tissue paper.

“Drake! Get out of there!”

I couldn’t run effectively. I had already weighed evasion against retaliation. Retaliation came out on top. I lifted the Synap and took aim.

TARGET IS BEYOND EFFECTIVE RANGE.

Having no choice, I went at the shooter, managing two lurching steps. The nanobots that worked within my body to rewire systems and maximize performance under less than optimal circumstances were already hard at work making repairs.

TARGET IS WITHIN EFFECTIVE RANGE.

I squeezed the trigger and the shrill pierced the room again. The shooter lit up in bright blue as the bolt struck him and his last round whistled by me only centimeters from my head. At the same time, though, Shelly took aim. A bright ruby dot formed on the man’s chest and Shelly fired.

My programming became conflicted. It was a problem with bioroids, and Shelly knew it. I went forward immediately to attempt resuscitation of the wounded man. Human life had to be preserved first and foremost. There was no way to write subroutines that allowed for different circumstances. Programmers had tried, but there had been too many problems. In the end, the government android licensing bureaus had insisted on the purity of the Three Directives.

I knelt beside the fallen man as the third man broke and ran. If I’d had a shot at him, I might have taken it. But I didn’t. He remained in the shadows and behind the equipment.

Instead, I concentrated on saving the life of the man Shelly had shot. She ran past me, knowing from experience that I couldn’t be swayed from my efforts.

And that set up another conflict within me. I knew Shelly was rushing into danger and needed me to cover her back, but I knew that the man in front of me was going to die if I didn’t help him.

I holstered my weapon and opened the jacket pocket where I carried a first-aid kit. I placed a hand against the wounded man’s neck. His pulse was weak and thready. He was unconscious from my Synap blast. I ripped his shirt open.

Shelly’s round had taken the man high over the heart. I didn’t have x-ray capabilities, but I thought perhaps the bullet had missed the aortic arch. If that was compromised, he was a dead man. I took out a compress and tried to press it against his chest to control the bleeding.

“Dispatch, this is Detective Drake.”

“Dispatch reads you, Drake.”

“I need EMTs on-site. One of the perpetrators has been grievously wounded. His life is threatened.”

“Drake, this is Lieutenant Ormond. Where is your partner?” Ormond didn’t like me, and he didn’t like the decision the NAPD had made to add bioroids to the police force, especially the homicide division. In particular,
his
homicide division.

“Detective Nolan is in pursuit of a third perpetrator.” I held the compress against the man’s chest and felt his life fading from him. His heartbeat slowed and his blood pressure dropped, but he wasn’t dead. I couldn’t leave him. The decision was clear and unalterable.