Brain Games (Rich Weed Book 3) Page 16

  “Well, redirect us,” I shouted. “Now!”

  Our truck swerved. I slid across the cabin floor into the front right corner as we curled left, all as the side of the truck disintegrated into a shower of sparks and molten metal.

  The van alongside us barreled into us as we turned, sending up another cloud of sparks alongside a grinding metallic screech. Droids flew into the truck cabin, stumbling and falling from the collision. Carl and I unloaded our pistols, turning them into hunks of scrap before they had a chance to turn their weapons on us.

  Carl ran back, continuing to fire shots into the van. The vehicle, now battered and bruised, shuddered and slowed as a flurry of rounds penetrated its motor compartment.

  The other van trailing us swerved out of the way to avoid hitting it before speeding up to take its place. The side door rolled open, and I took cover behind the remainder of our truck’s side panel to avoid the subsequent shower of gunfire.

  “Kriggler,” I shouted. “Let’s pick it up!”

  “Trying,” he called back. The truck surged once more, and I almost lost my footing.

  The droid van kept pace, speeding up to match us. Suddenly I heard a screech of brakes, a number of blares, and a scream. I turned forward to see a half-dozen cabs in front of us.

  Finally we’d encountered traffic. Unfortunately for them, a forty thousand kilo truck traveling at a hundred kilometers per hour presented an unsolvable physics problem. Our truck crashed through the assembled cars, sending two flying and toppling me to the floor but barely slowing us down.

  The van swerved once again, but the droid operators were too quick. They somehow avoided crashing, losing only a bit of speed before catching back up with us. Through the semi-translucent truck wall, I saw the droids part to make space for another one equipped with a thermite sprayer.

  “Rich,” said Carl. “I don’t know how much more structural damage this thing can take.”

  “Got it.” I grabbed one of the EMP grenades from my vest and activated it. “For the record, this is your official warning.”

  I leaned over the side of the hole and chucked the grenade. Somehow my aim and timing were both true. The missile flew straight into the van and erupted nearly on contact. Blue light flashed, and I felt the same whoosh of compressed air as before, but this time a ferocious blast immediately followed it. The van exploded in a fireball, sending high velocity shrapnel and bits of flaming thermite spraying in all directions. The blast knocked me to the floor.

  Kriggler cried out. “Argh! Son of a...”

  I looked up. A patch of the thermite had burned through the wall, landing on Kriggler’s arm. Already it had disintegrated his shirt and left a vicious wound in its wake.

  “Dirk!” I said.

  Kriggler grimaced as he dug one of Dundu’s injectables out of a pocket and stabbed it into the affected area. Almost instantly, the blood flow lessened, and Dirk’s grimace eased. “It’s alright. I’ll be fine. We’ll take care of it later.”

  Pieces of car continued to rain down behind us as we flew along the street at high speed. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t heard the high-pitched wail of a police siren yet. If that hadn’t attracted them, what would? A tactical nuke?

  “Status report on location,” called Carl.

  “Almost there,” said Kriggler, glancing at his skimmer. “Reload your weapons. Keep them ready. Who knows what we’ll find at Sharp’s base.”

  Our truck slowed, swerving and turning as it carried us into seemingly darker and drearier streets. Within minutes the urban blight turned to slums and the slums to shanty towns. Not even shady pornographic holosigns filled the air anymore.

  “Hold tight,” said Kriggler. “We’re coming in hot.”

  The truck slammed on the brakes, skidding to a halt in front of a dilapidated tenement. Kriggler, oblivious to his gaping arm wound, jumped out light as a feather, skimmer in one hand and pulse pistol in the other.

  “Follow me! Go, go, go!”

  Kriggler smashed through the front door and into the apartment complex. Shadows loomed deep and thick within, intermittently banished by weak, flickering lights.

  Kriggler surged forward, and I followed. My heart beat like a drum, but my senses felt piqued, alert, superhuman. My gun had become an extension of my arm. Droids jumped at us from the shadows, and I downed them with perfectly timed, precise shots. Sweat rolled down my forehead and slicked my palms, but my grip didn’t loosen. My technique was flawless, my arms burning with lactic acid as much as satisfaction.

  Down the hallway. Around a corner. More darkness. More droids. More shots fired. My gun sang. My heart soared. I roared with power.

  “This is it!” shouted Kriggler.

  Another door imploded under the force of his shoulder, flying inward in a half-dozen pieces. Inside, a man sat before a bevy of panels. He shot to his feet and spun at the sound of our entrance. A pistol flashed in his hand.

  A shot rang out. The man fell, clutching his chest. I turned.

  Carl held the pistol, pointed straight at him.

  26

  The man crumpled, blood seeping onto the floor of the grimy, single room apartment. Carl stood there, pistol arm perfectly still and mouth agape.

  I couldn’t believe what I’d seen. “Carl. You…shot a man.”

  Carl’s jaw moved, but it was a moment before any sound came out. “I… I…thought he was a droid. We’d seen so many, had so many come out of the shadows at us. I reacted instinctually. Rich…I don’t know what happened. I never would’ve— Heck, I couldn’t have—”

  The man gurgled and coughed, and I ran to his side. In the heat of the moment, I hadn’t seen what sort of round Carl had fired, but upon approaching him, it was obvious a projectile had been involved. Blood pumped freely from a wound in his chest. His face had already paled, and his eyes had started to glaze.

  “Carl!” I called. “This man needs medical attention. CPR. Something. Quick!”

  Carl stood there staring into the distance, completely immobile. I’d never seen a droid in shock before, but then again I’d never seen one shoot a human either.

  I ripped one of Dundu’s stimpacks from my vest and injected it into the man’s chest. The injector puffed and clicked as it delivered its payload, producing a wheezy gasp from the man. Unlike Kriggler’s thermite toasted arm, the blood flow from the man’s wound slowed but didn’t stop. I wasn’t a master of anatomy, but the pistol round looked as if it might’ve pierced one of the man’s lungs, perhaps hitting a major artery.

  “Kriggler,” I said. “Help me out here!”

  “Me?” Dirk crossed over and knelt next to me. “What do you want me to do?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Help. Medically. You’ve got that skimmer.”

  “It’s a hacking tool, not a portable surgical bot.”

  “Well, do something,” I said. “Call the paramedics.”

  The man wheezed again, and his eyes started to roll back.

  I smacked him lightly on the cheek. “Hey. Stay with me. Guy? Guy Sharp? Can you hear me? You’re going to be okay.”

  The man’s eyes focused slightly, presumably at the mention of his name. He coughed, and a bloody foam sputtered over his lips, collecting at the corners. His chest contracted in pulses, and I thought he might be having a seizure—at least until I heard the grim resemblance of a laugh on his breath.

  “Hah. The…j—jokes on…you.”

  Kriggler pressed his skimmer to the man’s fingertip.

  “Hey,” I said. “What are you—”

  The man kept going, though his voice was fading quickly. “You’ll never c—c—catch him. He’s t—t—too smart. Too f—fast. Three…steps…ahead. Always.”

  “Catch him?” I said. “Who? What are you talking about?”

  “Just a…pawn,” said the man as his eyes closed. “Just…a pawn.”

  The man’s head rolled to the side, and his breathing stilled.
>
  I slapped him on the cheek again. Once. Twice. Three times. “Sharp? Sharp!”

  “Forget it,” said Kriggler. “He’s gone—or at least he will be by the time the medics arrive. There’s nothing more we can do.”

  “Nothing we can do?” I glanced at Carl, who still stood there, unflinching. His arm had only now started to lower. He blinked several times as if he wasn’t fully sure where he was. “How can you be so cavalier about this? A man is dead, and his blood is on our hands.”

  “Guy Sharp is dead,” said Kriggler as he moved to a small servenet cluster under the displays in the corner. “So forgive me for not shedding tears over a degenerate hacker and wannabe mercenary overlord.”

  I glanced at the dead man. “He’s Sharp? You’re sure?”

  “Ninety-nine percent,” said Kriggler. “I ran his prints. His face came up along with a number of aliases, one of them a Sharp variant. He’s a known hacker, with dozens of hacker associates on file. But…”

  Kriggler paused at the servenet cluster, skimmer in hand. He stood there for a moment, then swore loudly and slapped one of the displays with his free hand. “Damnit!”

  “What?” I said. “What is it?”

  Kriggler sighed and turned to face me. “He’s not our guy.”

  I blinked and shook my head. “What do you mean he’s not our guy? You just said you confirmed he was Sharp. You tracked the rerouted signal here, didn’t you? How could he not be the guy?”

  “There’s another router here,” said Kriggler. “Looks like the Cetie funds, as well as additional Cetif funds, are being relayed back off planet again. I’m not sure where yet. Possibly outside the solar system if previous trends hold. There could be multiple relays, multiple endpoints. That’s what Sharp must’ve been getting at before he died. He’s not behind this. He was a pawn. There’s someone else at the helm. Someone one step further up the ladder.”

  I stood and pressed a hand against my brow. I couldn’t fully wrap my head around it. We’d broken into a bank, risked imprisonment by skipping bail, travelled half way across our solar system, fought off an army of custom-made, psychologically-hacked battle droids, and survived a high speed death race only to find out our Guy wasn’t the guy. How could it be? And where was all the money going? Hacked Cetie accounts routed off planet to fund illegal robotics programs and gun running, all before being rerouted off planet again? It was a tangled web of conspiracies wrapped in a plot and sprinkled with mystery.

  I glanced at Sharp, dead on the ground in a pool of his own blood. Carl still stood where he’d entered. He glanced at me with sorrowful eyes.

  I turned to Dirk. “So, what you’re trying to say is…the princess is in another castle.”

  “Pardon?” said Kriggler.

  “The princess is in another castle,” I said. “It’s an old gaming trope. It means the object of your desire isn’t where you expected it.”

  “Yeah,” said Kriggler. “I guess. Something like that. Look, Rich. This isn’t over. Whoever’s behind this? We’re going to get him. We’re going to track him down, whatever it takes, and—”

  I whipped my pistol from my side and leveled it at Dirk’s chest, checking the mode selector on the side with my thumb to make sure it was set in projectile mode.

  Kriggler threw his hands up. “Whoa! Pal! What are you doing? Put the gun down.”

  Carl suddenly found his voice. “Rich? Calm down. What’s going on?”

  “Who are you, Dirk?” I said. “What the hell’s going on here?”

  “What are you talking about?” said Kriggler. “I’m a PI. Now put the gun down. I’m on your side!”

  “Like hell you are,” I said. “Ever since you showed your face outside my apartment, things haven’t been as they should. A private eye from Cetif? Paige said it checked out, and I believed her, but everything else? You drew me along at every step. Laid out the groundwork for us to have one and only one path to follow. You were the one who pulled your gun at the bank, who shot that droid. You passed along data to Carl that pointed us toward Cetif, data you skimmed from those servenets. But it doesn’t end there. Once here we met your friend Daayan, who gave you a new skimmer. Then it was off to your friend the arms dealer. We followed your skimmer to the warehouse, and then once you decrypted the data, you sent us here.”

  “Because I’m the one from Cetif, and I know how to use the skimmer,” said Kriggler. “Look, Rich, I know it’s hard to accept, but that’s how it goes sometimes. Thieves are smart. Conspiracies can be big. You have to follow them to the end.”

  “No, you don’t,” I said, my pistol hand as steady as granite. “Not when everything you’ve gone along with makes zero sense. Battle droids? Really? As Carl pointed out, you don’t question reality when it’s trying to kill you, but I don’t care how good a hacker Sharp was, there’s no way he was able to program droids to attack humans. That’s the most fundamental, basic subroutine in android Brain architecture. He would’ve had to transform the way droids are created at the most elementary level. No one in the history of mankind has ever succeeded at that.

  “But that’s not it, is it? It’s not even half of it. Between the droid battle at the factory and the high speed van chase and the thermite sprayer explosion that covered half a city block in ash and slag, you seriously expect me to believe Cetif police wouldn’t come check to see what’s going on? That injectable did wonders on your arm yet somehow did little for Sharp. And what about myself? I’ve had firearms training, but not much. Not with tactical rifles, not in high pressure situations, and yet—screw modesty—I’ve turned into a legendary purveyor of droid death. As has Carl, who I should mention has never fired a weapon in his existence.”

  “He’s an android,” said Kriggler. “He doesn’t need practice. And you should show some gratitude. He saved you from countless droids. Over and over again.”

  “Not just droids,” I said. “He shot a man. Carl. Carl, an android, shot a man. With lethal force.”

  “Rich, I told you,” said Carl. “I thought he was a droid. I don’t know what happened…”

  “Stop it, Carl,” I said, not taking my eyes of Kriggler or moving my gun. “Don’t you dare try to reason your way out of this. Your decision making is instantaneous. You don’t make mistakes, not without external stimuli, and you certainly don’t make them when a human life is on the line. You shot a man. And then what? You stood there. You did nothing. You know first aid. You know CPR. It’s a fundamental element of your programming. And yet you did nothing. Even if you had somehow made a mistake, if the gun had misfired, if a stiff breeze had pushed against your trigger finger—you would’ve helped Sharp. You would’ve tried to save him. The Carl I know would’ve. He wouldn’t have stood there, helpless and shocked.”

  “It was Sharp,” said Kriggler. “He hacked the droids, Rich. He must’ve hacked Carl, too. While we were at the factory. A remote program must’ve uploaded a worm into his subroutines.”

  “In real time?” I said. “Without him noticing? Give me a break. No. I think it’s something else entirely. Something more nefarious. I don’t know who’s behind it, but I intend to find out.”

  “More nefarious?” said Dirk. “What do you—”

  My pistol rang out. Kriggler gurgled and stumbled back as blood spurted from his neck. He flailed and spasmed before falling across the displays. Within a moment he’d gone still, blood flowing from his neck, across his vest, and dripping down onto the servenet cluster beneath.

  I stared at Kriggler’s body, slowly lowering my pistol. Nothing happened.

  “Rich?” said Carl. “Good heavens. What have you done?”

  I swallowed hard. “Not enough apparently. I’ll see you soon, pal… I hope.”

  Before Carl could do anything, I turned the gun on myself and pulled the trigger.

  27

  I squinted as I cracked my eyes. A white room swirled into focus around me, with bright lights shining down onto me and an arra
y of gleaming metal and plastic instruments lining the walls. A white sheet covered me to my chest, and an assortment of small white tabs had been pasted to my arms. I think I felt more on my chest and temples. A bag of intravenous fluids hung from a stand at my side, slowly dripping through a catheter into the vein at my arm, all while a digital readout cycled through a dozen different diagnostics.

  An unfamiliar woman sat at a desk to my left, surrounded by an array of holoscreens and focused on her work. The person on my right was much more attentive.

  “Rich?” Carl leaned forward in his chair and pressed his hand into my own. “Can you hear me?”

  “Carl.” My voice croaked as I spoke. “Good to see you, pal. Where am I? Cetie or Cetif? Hopefully the former.”

  “Ah…Cetie,” said Carl, a hint of confusion marring his look of otherwise complete relief. “Pylon Alpha General Hospital to be specific. My goodness, Rich, am I glad to see you awake. How are you feeling?”

  “Parched,” I said. “Could I get a glass of water?”

  “You bet. Flavia?”

  The woman gave a thumbs up. “Signals look good. Go for it.”

  Carl sprang to action, filling a cup from a sink on the side of the room and bringing it over. I lifted an arm to accept it, but my muscles felt creaky and weak. Function they did, though, so I took the cup and drained it.

  “Better,” I said as I brought it down. I nodded at the woman. “Who’s that?”

  “Flavia Applestone,” said Carl. “She’s a tech expert with the PAPD. She’s picked up some medical expertise over the past few days, too.”

  The woman waved idly at me without turning from her holoscreens.

  “Got it,” I said. “Carl? I think I have some idea of what you’re going to tell me, but perhaps you could fill me in on a few things? Namely, what the heck happened and how did I get here?”

  Carl nodded. “What’s the last thing you remember?”

  “The last thing I remember is shooting myself in the head, but I have a feeling that didn’t actually happen. So why don’t you tell me your side of the story.”