Remote (14 page)

She was pleasantly buzzed but resisted the urge to have another shot, putting the tequila back in the cupboard she’d dug it out of.  Time to think about food—she couldn’t risk delivery, but she’d noticed a little Chinese/American café a few blocks away she could order takeout from.  Jack wouldn’t approve of her leaving her prisoners alone, but she didn’t think Parkins would give her any trouble—at this point, he had more invested in her help than any plans to escape. 

Goliath was another matter.

She didn’t want to give him something he could use as a weapon, which included eating utensils, hot food, or any object that massed more than a Brussels sprout.  Still, she couldn’t just starve him—

And then she heard it.

The pounding of a drum.  A steady, rhythmic thumping, just outside the back door.  The sound was more incongruous that threatening; it was well-past midnight in the middle of the week, and this sounded like an insomniac had abruptly decided to take up the tom-toms—

She suddenly understood.  She rushed out the back door, stopping only to grab the gun.

The thumping was much louder outside, the walls of the trailer not doing much to muffle it.  She undid the padlock sealing the door and stepped back, training her gun on the interior.

There was no light, of course.  The illumination from the porch light was only enough to dimly show the hunched-over form of Goliath, the overturned plastic bucket between his knees.  He’d stopped his pounding as soon as the door opened and now crouched, motionless and silent.

“You better cut that out,” Nikki said.  “Nobody’s going to hear you anyway, but you’re giving me a headache.”

Goliath said nothing.  She could hear his breathing, even and slow—but somehow changed from before.

“Give me the bucket.” 

No response.  She could feel his eyes on her, but couldn’t see them.  Thankfully, the tequila put a barrier between her and her fear.  “Give me the damn bucket!”

She realized why his breathing sounded different: he’d gotten the gag off.   His voice wasn’t what she expected--deep, yes, but softer than she thought it would be, and with just a bit of a Southern accent.  “Are you gonna shoot me if I don’t?”

“Damn
right.”

“Then I guess I better.”

He didn’t move.  Nikki knew what Remote had done to him; she wondered just how crazy he was.  Jack didn’t want her to kill him--not until the Closer had a chance to interrogate him—but the smartest thing to do might be to shoot the biker now.

But Nikki, hard as she was, wasn’t an executioner.  She couldn’t just gun down a man in chains as if he was a rabid dog—even if that was a pretty good description of Goliath. 

“Look, last chance,” she said.  “Give me the bucket or I’ll put a hole in you.”

“You’d kill a man over a bucket?  Man, you are one hardcore bitch.”  He gave a raspy chuckle.  “But
dyin
’ over a bucket would make me one fuck of an idiot, wouldn’t it?   And I ain’t no idiot.”

He still didn’t move. 
I’ve got the gun
, Nikki told herself
.  Just go in there and take the damn thing.  He’s chained up, he can’t hurt you.

She stepped inside.  Her eyes had adjusted to the darkness now, and she could make out her prisoner a little more clearly.  The bucket between his legs was directly over where the chains were bolted to the floor.

“Oh, fuck,” she said.

C
HAPTER
T
WELVE

Jack figured he had forty-five minutes of consciousness left at most.

The robot proved useless as a source of weaponry.  Everything was securely bolted together, and the shotgun was out of ammo anyway. 

“Don’t make me destroy you,” Remote said.  “I can, you know.  I don’t want to, but if you force my hand I will.”

“Yeah, I got that.”

“What are you afraid of?  I have no plans to turn you into a drone—my offer of a partnership was sincere.”

“I don’t think that would work out, Remote.  We have different approaches.”  Jack returned to the library.  He wanted a chance to look around, and he doubted if Remote had another robot to throw at him—not on this floor, anyway.  If he had, he would have sent it in already. 

His back throbbed with every step he took.  He stopped halfway down the hall, leaning against the wall for a moment.  Another sealed trophy case was set into the wall, this one holding an elaborate metal dragon on a stand, facing off against a knight in brass armor wielding a silver lance.

“Different but complementary.  You extract information, I extract obedience.  Software and hardware, don’t you see?  We could accomplish so much together . . .”

 “I’ve seen what you’ve accomplished on your own.  I’m not impressed.”  Jack limped back to the study and eyed the bookshelves.  What someone read could tell you a great deal about who they were, how their mind worked.

“You’re trying to make me angry.  Anger makes people impulsive, which leads to mistakes.  I don’t make mistakes, Closer.”  Remote’s voice held more amusement than arrogance.

“No, you make
corpses
,” Jack snapped, and immediately regretted it.  He couldn’t afford to get angry either.

“Ah.  So that’s it.  I wondered if that might be a problem.”  Now Remote sounded almost regretful.  “There is a certain cost to what I do, I admit.  But above all, men in our position have to be pragmatic.  What we do is too important to be influenced by mere sentimentality.”

Jack was scanning titles now.  It looked as if they were arranged by category: one bookshelf was dedicated to works of philosophy, from Socrates to Nietzsche.  “I don’t consider sacrificing innocents to be an option.  Ever.”

“I respect your principles.  I’ve endeavored to follow similar ones, actually—only my early projects suffered collateral damage, as I’m sure you’re aware.  I do what I do for the same reason you do, Closer—I want to rid the world of monsters.”  Remote paused.  “I’ve improved since then.  And can you honestly say you’ve never made a mistake?”

Jack blinked.  There had been a young man—hardly more than a boy, really—that had attracted the Closer’s attention on the Stalking Ground.  Jack had captured him.  A brutal interrogation session had revealed he’d never murdered anyone, was just a wannabe testing the waters.  He could very well have matured into a serious killer—but Jack would never know for sure.  He’d been forced to kill the boy to protect himself.  He’d been . . .
pragmatic
.

“I can tell by your silence you have.  Another thing we share, and another reason we should collaborate.  If we were to work together, such mistakes wouldn’t occur in the future.  We could make each other
better
.”

“Suicide bombers never make anything better.”

“I apologize if that suggestion offended you.  But I wasn’t planning on sending our subjects into a crowd—I was thinking much more in terms of a surgical strike.  But we don’t have to go that route at all, not if you object to it.  Don’t you see, Closer?  If we combined our two methods,
you’d never have to kill anyone again.
”

“Because you’d do it for me, right?”

“If I had to.  But what I do isn’t about killing, any more than what you do is about torture.  It’s about results.  We’re forced to use extreme methods because we seek extreme change, but our ultimate goal isn’t murder.  We seek to stop pain in others, do we not?”

Jack hesitated, then surprised himself by saying, “Yes.”

“I seek to end those who hurt others, you seek to heal those who have already been hurt. I do so by taking control, you do so by getting answers.  But we both recognize the power of information--and if you have the right information, killing becomes unnecessary.  You can use your skills to get whatever information we need, and I can put that information to proper use.”

“Blackmail.”

“Yes.  No bombs, no physical coercion needed.  It’s how I control my knight; he’s a reprehensible human being, but he’s
mine
.  He does whatever I tell him to, with a minimum of supervision.  Can you imagine having the killers you catch in the same kind of harness?”

Jack’s eye fell on another bookshelf.  It held medical and anatomy textbooks.  “Yes.  I can.”

“Then you can see the possibilities—“

“What I see is a classic sociopath.  One with little or no connection to the humanity he professes to protect.  You don’t care about killers any more than you care about their victims.  This is all an elaborate game to you, an intellectual challenge you’ve rationalized into being some sort of crusade.  Turning fellow psychos into meat puppets you can force to do your dirty work doesn’t make you a saint; it makes you just as inhuman as they are.”

Jack reached out, pulled a book from a shelf.  It was a copy of Darwin’s
Origin of the Species
.  “I respect your goals, but not your methods.  If I could be sure you’d never kill another innocent, I’d be tempted to let you walk . . . but that’s just not going to happen.”

“I understand.  Then I suppose both of us will do what we have to.”

***

Goliath launched himself at Nikki like a lion springing at a gazelle.  He swung the bucket at her gun at the same time, batting it aside before she could fire.  It flew out of her hand, spinning out of the trailer and away into darkness.

He’d torn the bolt out of the floor, but was still shackled at the wrists and ankles.  He didn’t have full range of movement, but he had enough to slam one massive shoulder into Nikki’s chest, knocking her backward and down, out of the back of the trailer with him on top.  Pinned beneath his bulk with the wind driven out of her, she was sure she was about to die.

“Mantis
bitch
,” he spat in her face.  “Don’t you know who I am? 
I am your God!
”

He was trying to bring his hands up to her throat, but the chains wouldn’t let him.  He reared back and snapped his head down, using his own skull as a hammer to smash her face.  She twisted to the side, avoiding a broken nose but still catching part of the blow with her temple.  Pain exploded through her brain.

“I will pass any test!” he howled.   “
I will eat your motherfuckin’ EYES!
”

Eyes
, she thought groggily. 
Good idea.

Nikki’s fingernails were long, currently black, and mostly fake; shaped acrylic glued to the real thing with a powerful resin, with the edges filed as sharp as she could get them.  She stuck the one on the end of her thumb into Goliath’s crazed stare.

He yanked his head back, roaring in pain and shock, and Nikki used every ounce of her strength to shove him off her.  He fell to the left, she rolled to the right; a second later she was on her feet and he’d only made it to his knees.  The gun was nowhere in sight.

“I’m going to send you to Hell,” Goliath growled.  “And then I’m gonna get
creative
.”

***

Jack made do with what he had.

The remains of the lounger proved to be the most useful.  He managed to rip an internal piece of wood free, enough to make an improvised club, then tore a wide swath of white leather from the upholstery to tie around his waist, making him feel a little less vulnerable.  He stalked back down the hall and into the foyer once again.

Remote had fallen silent, which disturbed him.  It was possible he’d fled, but Jack doubted that.  This was more than Remote’s home, it was his base of operations; he wouldn’t give that up. 

Jack had half an hour, more or less, to find Remote’s hideaway, break in, and incapacitate him. 

He prowled down the third hall, finding another inset wall display—this one empty--and a bathroom opposite that.  The room at the end was apparently for guests, devoid of everything but a bed, some bedding, and a closet without so much as a wire hanger.  He studied the clothes rod for a moment, but it was bolted firmly to the walls.  The single window was like the others, made of shatterproof plastic and barred.  The view looked out on snow-covered pines growing on a rocky slope, with a glint of water beyond them.

It was time to go upstairs.

***

Nikki studied the giant, her eyes narrowed.  Then she straightened up and laughed. 

Goliath glared at her—then joined in.  “Haw haw haw!” he brayed.  “Yeah, I get it!  Cosmic fucking
joke
!”

Nikki grinned and shook her head.  “No, asshole, you
don’t
get it.  You’re
done
.  You caught me by surprise and knocked me down, but you’re still shackled.  You can’t move faster than a shuffle—hell, you can’t even lift your arms above your head.”

She looked around, then spotted a rake leaning against the wall, an old rusting thing left behind by a previous tenant.  She walked over and grabbed it, then hefted it with both hands.  “Now, here’s how it works.  You’re going to get back in your damn cage, or I’m going to beat you over the head with this until you’re dead or unconscious, and then I’ll drag you back in there myself.  ‘Kay?”

He stared at her, his smile curdling into confusion. “But—but I’m your
God
.”

“Yeah?  What would
you
do if you had God in chains and a big motherfucking club in your hands?”

He scowled, then gave her a smile that was half-snarl.  “I guess I’d smash his brains in,” he said.  “You know, if I already hadn’t.”

He turned around and shuffled back to the trailer.  He couldn’t lift his feet high enough, so he crawled in on his hands and knees.  Nikki locked the trailer behind him, then searched the yard until she found the gun.

She didn’t feel drunk anymore.

***

Jack considered the stairs as carefully as a mountaineer planning an assault on Everest.

They were an obvious spot for a booby trap.  Rig a step—or two, for insurance—with a remotely-activated pressure switch, and
boom
. 

But there was more than one way up.  He went back to the robot, retrieved his wire snare.  He thought for a second, then went into the kitchen.   The microwave door was sturdy, but several minutes of wrenching with his full weight behind it and the door snapped free.