Freelancer (20 page)

“No! I’ve been working on the drones!” Kari pleaded.

“I find that unlikely,” Henderson said. Two of the enforcement officers pulled out shock sticks and flicked them to life. The electricity sparked at their ends, reminding Kari of how painful they were. She scrambled back against the wall as the guards closed in on her.

“No, no!” Kari said. She searched for anything that could continue the conversation a little longer. “Wait!”

The guards didn’t wait. They reached out and grabbed her arms and pinned them against the wall. A notification blinked in Kari’s mind as new devices came online for her to control.
The cheetahs!
Kari kicked out as hard as she could and landed a blow in the closest guard’s groin. She ordered the cheetahs to her position at full speed. The guard she’d kicked grunted heavily in pain and released her arm just as the other guard viciously swung his shock stick at her head. Kari ducked just in time. The blow missed her head, but she still got a little shock because of its proximity.

“Aahh!” Kari yelled out in pain as the electricity raced through her body. The guard pulled back his arm for another swing.
Change of plans.

Kari activated the panic code she had written late last night. She’d been planning on using it once she was outside the facility and well into her escape. Sirens immediately sounded, and warning lights flashed in the halls. The guard paused, confused by the sudden noise. Kari heard cheers and screams coming from the halls. Her script also happened to open every door in the facilities she had control over.

“It’s her!” Henderson yelled. He rushed forward, apparently intent on taking care of the problem with his own hands. Kari screamed again and rolled toward the guard who still had a grip on her arm with one hand. The guard she had kicked was rolling on the ground, whimpering. Henderson’s arms missed her as he lunged onto her bed. Kari screamed and kicked out again, trying desperately to free herself.

“Stop, you nightmare!” Henderson finally sounded as nasty and hateful as she’d always thought him to be. He grabbed her leg and pinned it down as he raised his other hand in a fist. The noise from the hallway suddenly grew louder.

“Engage!” Kari yelled as she gave the cheetahs the mental order. The cheetahs rounded the corner and burst into the room as their energy cannons flashed. The hand on Kari’s shoulder was ripped away as an energy blast sent the enforcement officer flying into the wall. Henderson took a blast in the back and was launched face first into the wall. His body slid down to the floor, revealing a small dent in the wall where his head had made contact.
Seeing that we’re not friends anymore, I refuse to feel bad about that.

The other guards in the room tried to seek shelter, but the cheetahs blasted them, too. The shots wouldn’t kill them, but they were powerful enough to cause them significant pain. Kari didn’t have time to order the cheetahs to not fire on Udarh; an energy blast sent him sprawling across the floor. Kari felt bad about that, but she could do nothing at this point. In the hall, prisoners rushed by in their white prison jumpsuits, running as fast as they could to get away from their cells.

I’ll be joining you soon, but I have one thing to do first.

The small camera disconnected from Kari’s processing unit behind her ear and floated in front of her. People used these cameras not only to make calls but also to record their own faces. Usually, Kari would do this to leave herself a brief message reminding her to do something or make a video-blog post. Today, however, the task was more important. She ordered the camera to start to recording.

“Mom, Dad, you said you trusted me, and I’m going to need you to trust me now. Everything that’s happening is because of me. I’ve been doing only what I felt like I needed to. I wish I had time to explain everything, but I don’t. Someday, I hope to have that chance. These cheetahs will lead you to where an auto-auto is waiting for you. Get in the car, and allow it to drive you down to Florida. From there, you’ll join a flight to London under some identities I set up. You’ll find all the information you need in the auto-auto. You’ll have plenty of money; I’ve set up accounts with enough for you to live comfortably. I love you guys.”

Kari uploaded the recording to the cheetah and instructed it to play it to her parents when it found them. She ordered it to lead them to where a hacked auto-auto would be waiting. She then flipped to the auto-auto that was sitting in a lonely corner of the facility. She connected to its computer and sent it the rest of the instructions and information her parents would need to complete the escape.

Enforcement would be able to track the auto-auto, but she hoped they would be too busy trying to track down her and all the other escapees until her parents had already left the country. Of all the pieces of her plan, she was the most confident about this one. Her parents should be fine.
But I won’t be if I don’t get moving.

Kari sent the pair of cheetahs off to find her parents and connected to the other twenty cheetahs in and around the room.
I should be able to make a little noise with twenty cheetahs and thirty hacking drones.
She ran out of her room and passed the cheetahs and drones in the hallway. Her small army of electronics trailed behind her as she headed for the exit and to the auto-auto waiting for her at the front of the building. She had ordered the auto-autos the night before to the locations she needed and was pleased to find them there in place.
Just don’t get lost or killed until I can find you, David. I’m going to see this thing through.

Outside the building was madness. Freed prisoners raced around, trying to escape from enforcement officers who were desperately attempting to subdue them. Convoys of auto-autos were waiting at the curbs with their doors open, waiting for prisoners to enter. Kari had spent most of the previous night hacking the auto-auto control system and ordering them all here anonymously. The work she had done to hack the auto-auto records after her fight with the mob at David’s house had paid nice dividends. As soon as she had deactivated all exterior security of the prison and internment camps, all the auto-autos in the area had come rushing to provide free transportation to anyone who wanted to leave.

It had been one of her better hacking jobs. Luckily, she had long ago figured out how to hack a single auto, so it hadn’t been too difficult to expand that code to the entire fleet once she was past the system’s security software. Kari hoped that hundreds of inmates fleeing in separate directions at high speeds would help create enough chaos so that the people she cared about could make a safe getaway.
Well, at least the chaos part of the plan is successful so far.

The prisoners who saw Kari surrounded by cheetahs and drones ran screaming at first; however, once they saw her white jumpsuit, they began cheering. Kari ordered the cheetahs to take low-powered shots at all enforcement officers who were close enough for them to hit without breaking stride. The escaping prisoners cheered even louder as enforcement officers were shot to the ground by their own weapons.

Kari reached her auto-auto and climbed inside. She ordered it to travel down the road and to the complex where David and his family were being kept. Auto-autos peeled out in front of her, each of them carrying someone to at least temporary freedom. She had mixed feelings; many of the people she was helping escape truly did belong here. Her car turned the opposite direction and accelerated down the road. Her cheetahs and drones easily kept pace.

Kari hacked into the PA system of the building where the Pratts were and tried her best to sound like a friendly voice from public transportation.

“Will the family of David Pratt please meet their friend Kari at the northwest corner of their hospitality suite. Again, will David Pratt and family please meet Kari at the northwest corner of their internment campus.”

Kari was pleased with the way she had sounded; she just hoped that David was in a state where he could hear her announcement. She guessed he was currently searching for his siblings.
I hope my announcement gives them all a meeting point they can trust.

Kari wanted to check the cameras to see if she could find the Pratts, but she had other things she needed to take care of first.
It’ll probably be only a minute or two until the government drops a communication bubble over the place, and I need to make sure they can’t reproduce the drones.
She reconnected to the printers and wiped their memories clean. She then ordered them to self-destruct. Most printers didn’t have that particular feature, but all military-grade printers came with that capability as a way to prevent potential enemies from using them. They had been able to print two rounds of her hacking drones. Kari prayed that would be enough.

Auto-autos whizzed by as Kari carefully destroyed every useful bit of equipment or data that was connected to the security system she controlled. All the research and monitoring of her would be backed up in the cloud, but Kari didn’t want to leave anything behind that might make the agents’ lives easier. She also destroyed their prisoner files. Perhaps that would cause enough of a problem to give her parents another small advantage in their escape.

The auto-auto notified her that her destination was only a few seconds away.
That’ll have to do. I’ve done everything I can to give my parents an edge.
She wished she had a few hours available to really clean out the system. She’d always been uncomfortable leaving a trail, but she couldn’t cover all her tracks this time.
I guess they can add a few counts of grand theft, assault, and helping a few thousand people escape from imprisonment to my record.
Oddly enough, the thought didn’t make her feel bad at all.

Her auto-auto came to a stop in front of David’s prison building. As the car door opened, she saw a scared family huddled together, trembling, surrounded by Kari’s cheetahs, which were actively engaged in combat with enforcement drones and crawlers from the retention building. The chaos outside her building was magnified here as thousands of detainees were trying to flee the scene. Kari ordered her drones to take over the opposing cheetahs. She then ordered her cheetahs to destroy any crawlers that were about to incapacitate escaping Middle Staters.

“Hey, David!” Kari called out.

“Kari!” David shouted as his family clutched each other tightly. His face lit up in way that she had never thought possible as he realized what was happening.

“You guys better get in quick. I’m afraid I might have attracted some attention.”

David’s family scurried into Kari’s hacked auto-auto, filling all the seats in the cramped escape vehicle. David, clutching one of his little sisters, sat down next to Kari. Outside, energy canons flashed as the cheetahs continued to shoot down enforcement drones. As soon as David and his family were seated, Kari gave the orders for the auto-auto to head to the border.

Between leaving her prison and picking David up, her hacking drones had plenty of opportunities to commandeer equipment. The twenty-five cheetahs she controlled raced alongside the auto-auto as it started to move, occasionally engaging with drones or other enforcement equipment as Kari and her company left the compound.

“Where are we going?” David’s father asked after he finally took in the situation.

“Away from here,” Kari said. Her body was in the auto-auto, but her focus was outside in one of the drones she had designated to be her eyes and ears. All the vehicles limited her visibility, which was concerning because she knew that an armed response or enforcement backup would arrive shortly.

“So, do you have a plan this time?” David’s father asked.

“Stop it, Dad!” David said.

“David, not now,” his father responded.

“No, Dad. She’s the only reason we’re together again. We have to trust her.”

Just ahead, Kari could see a dozen or so auto-autos begin to slow, which could only mean their path was blocked. She sent her drones and cheetahs ahead of her to clear the path.
The compound exit is the choke point; if they can stop us there, then they’ve ended this jailbreak.

“If not for her, we probably wouldn’t need to break out of jail in the first place!” Jim Pratt, David’s father, continued. Kari heard his voice but was too preoccupied to process what he was saying.

“They were going to arrest us, anyway. Kari gave us a chance at freedom,” David said. His staunch defense of her would have made her blush if she had been able to pay attention to it.

“We don’t know that. For all we know, the only reason we were being held was because she decided to assault enforcement officers with her bloody drones!” Jim’s voice was rising.

“Jim, please.” David’s mother was pleading, and her voice was stressed with a hint of embarrassment. “I asked her to help. I told you that.”

There!
A small regiment of SWAT vehicles and enforcement cars had blocked the gate. The officers were firing on vehicles, attempting to disable them.
If we don’t stop them soon, the road will be blocked by disabled auto-autos, and we’ll be stuck.

Kari ordered her cheetahs forward. They weaved through stopped auto-autos until they reached the front of the queue and opened fire. The firefight illuminated the scene enough for Kari to get a better understanding of what was going on. Energy blasts volleyed through the air, officers shouted orders, and people abandoned their vehicles and ran to escape the battle. It was like a scene from one of Kari’s favorite action movies, except this was real.

“I’m just asking to know the plan,” Jim said.

Kari sent her hacking drones toward the officers’ position. The officers apparently weren’t accompanied by any sort of standard heavy equipment, such as cheetahs, mechs, or combat drones. This limited her options of what she could commandeer.
I guess we’ll find out if the drones can hack enforcement vehicles.

“Trust her, Dad,” David said.

A few of the cheetahs Kari had been commanding went offline. A moment later, a couple of others blinked off as well. The SWAT teams were heavily armed and well trained, but Kari’s cheetahs had managed to subdue about half of them so far. She ordered the drones to leave their dead cheetah hosts and attempt to hack the vehicles.