Masked (9 page)

T
he sound
of blood dripping filled the room. For a second I forgot that it was mine. I shifted, trying to get comfortable, which forced a hacking cough in lieu of a laugh. The blood redoubled its efforts. More a torrent now than the occasional drop.

My shoulders and wrists strained, carrying the bulk of my weight. My legs screamed for mercy. For a while there, I’d not felt them. A blessed relief. But sensation had returned some ten minutes ago, bringing with it a fire that had started down in my broken toes and spread throughout my calves and shins. My thighs had just decided to remind me that a big bone rested behind all that muscle.

It scraped jagged edge against jagged edge as the two pieces of my femur slid together.

I coughed again, spitting out a wad of bloody phlegm, and blinked my eyes open.

A metal chain clanked off to the side, followed by the clunk of a mechanical cog locking into place.

I screamed. My vision blacking. At least my femur wasn’t scraping against itself anymore. I was certain I no longer had fucking legs.

“Why are you doing this?” I shouted.

Silence. Even the machine they’d been using had paused. All that broke the eerie quiet was my ragged breaths as they tore out of straining lungs.

“Why are you doing this?” I repeated, my words a mere whisper.

“You know how to end it,” a man said, his voice distorted, but reaching me through a kind of fog. “Tell us where it is and we’ll let you go.”

I laughed again, even managed it without coughing up half a lung. But then the chain shifted and the cog turned and I realised that hey! I did still have legs.

There was no more silence for a while.

T
he Cardinal came with us
. Neither my nor Alan’s protestations had any effect. Tan had been insistent. Besides, he’d said, Cardinals were the only ones authorised to carry a weapon.

Alan and I had exchanged loaded glances at that; there was no way Lee Tan had missed our knives and tasers. But we offered no further argument. And Tan had let us get away with the ruse.

He may have been the President, but in his heart he was still a rebel.

Wánměi met us, when we emerged from the tech-room, with a stillness that stole all breath. The streets deserted as if curfew had been ordered. As we no longer had curfew, the Citizens of our city-state were obviously clinging to the familiar.

I glanced up at a street-cam, its lens a blank portal going nowhere. Simon quiet in our ears. How could he direct if he couldn’t see? I knew he was working on cracking the hack that had stolen our vision, but so far, even with Calvin’s surreptitious assistance, he’d had no luck.

We were on our own and utterly blind while at it.

“You are sure they will be here?” the Cardinal asked quietly from my side as we arrived in the park across from my former home. The shrubbery provided an ideal hiding spot, one I had later found out Trent had used to spy on me. I’d missed his presence at that time, and could only hope those we hunted now were no better than me.

“Augustine was the concierge for this building,” I replied steadily. Only Alan knew where I’d garnered the intelligence. And even then we’d not had a chance to discuss the repercussions.

And there would be repercussions when Tan found out.

There could also be repercussions if my faith in my father was misplaced.

Calvin was not him, I knew this.

Tell me you know that, Lena.

But Calvin had been created by him.

I sucked in a slow breath of air to settle my nerves.

“And you think he’ll return here, where you knew him?” the Cardinal pressed.

I shrugged a shoulder in a very non-Elite-like fashion. The Cardinal stared down at me for a long moment. His face impassive. His eyes hard. He didn’t understand me. He didn’t trust what he didn’t understand. I could sympathise. I didn’t understand him either.

“Things are not always as they appear,” I said softly.

“No,” he agreed. “They are not.”

His gaze returned to surveilling the building, taking in the lush green palms that framed the sweeping entranceway, the marble tiles that invited you in, and the warm glow of lamp light beside the concierge’s desk. A man I didn’t recognise stood behind it, watching vid-screens and monitors and drinking his cappuccino in silence.

Sweat trickled down between my shoulder blades; if Augustine and his “knights” were indeed in this building, they’d blended in well enough not to catch the concierge’s eye.

“Your plan, Elite?” Alan asked in a low rumble to my other side.

I felt, more than saw, the Cardinal sweep his gaze across my head to Alan. He understood Alan better than he did me, but that didn’t mean the acting rebel leader didn’t surprise him.

“We’ll go in down the service alley,” I advised. “Go up through the emergency stairs.”

“Won’t they expect that?” the Cardinal asked.

“They’ll expect an assault from the utility room across from mine.”

“Why?”

I turned to look at him. He was genuinely interested to know my reasoning. This was a Cardinal who didn’t just follow commands. I wondered what he’d been like under General Chew-wen’s regime. I wondered if he’d answered back and queried his superiors then.

But I wasn’t his superior, was I? He’d made that perfectly clear.

“Because,” I said, holding his inscrutable gaze, “I used that method of entry last time I was here.”

He stared at me, I thought perhaps speechless. Then he erased that notion and murmured, “It is a miracle that you live.”

I was certain his shock was not from the potential thirty storey fall, but that I’d not been caught and wiped while doing it.

“Again,” he said in that deep voice that held little inflection, “I must ask, why would they be here?”

I turned my attention back to the building, and then lifted my gaze to look at the balcony that used to be mine. It was too high to see details, and the dawn that threatened to light the deep indigo sky made discerning illumination from within the apartment hard at this angle as well. But I knew he was there. Augustine Tengku had come home. To Wánměi, the city that had cast him out. To the place where his treachery had been greatest.

Not his family home, where love resided. But his place of employ, where he’d failed to do his job most spectacularly.

Please forgive me,
he’d said. Right before drones had stormed the building.

He’d paid for his betrayal. And now he was back. Like a ghost haunting a place of great meaning, the emotional pull for the old concierge would have been too great.

The only question was, was he able to convince his new friends that laying a trap here would be best?

“Come on,” I said, shifting to move and purposely not answering the Cardinal’s question. “Trent’s waiting.”

Alan made a sound that was indecipherable, but the Cardinal remained mute.

The service alley hadn’t changed one bit; clean, damp, and free of obstacles. This was a highly sought after apartment complex for those Elites who wished to live at the right address. It had standards that needed to be met.

But the eye-scanner and security lock were different. Upgraded after Shiloh had gone dark. Isolated but state of the art. Complex and multi-layered. Even with Calvin it would be a test to crack.

I flicked a glance towards Alan, who offered a small nod of his head.

“One of us should stand guard at the end of the alley,” he suggested, his eyes trained on the Cardinal.

“Then stand guard,” the Cardinal replied, watching me and nothing else.

“You’re the one with the weapons,” Alan replied evenly.

The Cardinal turned his attention to the rebel, his intelligent gaze taking in the casual way Alan stood, the non-threatening stance and open look. The obvious attempt to seem nonchalant. Dark eyes came down to my face.

“Would it be easier if I just turned my back?” he enquired, almost pleasantly. For a moment I was struck dumb. “Rebel secrets and all,” he offered as explanation.

I was beginning to wonder just how many secrets we did have left. But keeping Calvin one of them was imperative.

“It would make me feel better,” I finally replied.

The Cardinal nodded and gave me his back, his gaze looking down the alley towards the entrance, his proximity letting me know not much would get past him despite his act. This Cardinal had earned the twisted gold cord on his shoulder. And I could see how he’d also earned Tan’s trust.

I returned my attention to the security panel, exposing its innards in a much practiced move. The familiarity of the process helped to calm me. For a moment the reasons for being here weren’t as weighted, as the joy of breaking into a challenging security system rushed in. For a moment I could almost forget why we were here at all.

But only a moment.

I pulled out the decoder and attached it to the newly stripped wires, forcing myself to concentrate on the task at hand. To not let my mind wander to more nefarious things. The vid-screen lit up and Calvin took over. His processors so much faster than anything I had ever seen.

How had my father created this programme more than a decade ago? How had he designed something so advanced, that more than ten years later it was still clearly ahead of its time? I’d never know the answer to that, not even Calvin could tell me.

“Access acquired,” his voice announced in my ear. Isolated just for me.

I glanced towards the back of the Cardinal, but he showed no indication of hearing the Shiloh unit’s words over his own earpiece.

“Contain all internal security measures,” I instructed.

“Contained,” he replied a few seconds later.

“Schematics,” I ordered. Several floor plans appeared on my decoder’s screen. None of them had altered since I was last here. “Locate life signs.”

“Located.” Red dots appeared over the floor plans. I sorted through the blueprints until I had my own floor and the stairwell separated.

Immediately I noted an error in my plan.

“Are you sure this is correct?” I asked.

“Positive,” Calvin replied. “There are no life signs in your former apartment.”

My hands shook.

“Is there a problem?” the Cardinal asked, not turning around. He wanted to, I could tell. So I removed the decoder, replaced the security lock’s façade and stepped back. His shadowed eyes swept down when I reached his side.

“There’s no one in the apartment,” I admitted, the words catching at the back of my throat.

“Then your assumption was incorrect.” He didn’t say it with an ounce of accusation; simply making a statement of a fact.

“They’re not here,” I whispered, my mind catching up with the evidence. “It’s their rerouteing address.”

“It would appear so,” Calvin offered over my earpiece.

“Can you trace it?” I asked, as the Cardinal watched on without saying a word. He’d only hear my side of the conversation, but he’d be well aware there was more going on here than met the eye.

“Now I am inside the building’s firewalls,” Calvin explained in my ear, “I can manipulate and interact with all internal networks.”

“Trace the IP rerouter,” I demanded, slipping my decoder back inside my jacket pocket and turning on my heel.

There was no need to enter the building. Augustine and the Masked weren’t here.

Only their calling card was.

"I'm disappointed,” I said softly, the words barely above a whisper.

"You shouldn't be,"
Trent replied inside my mind.
"You've done surprisingly well.”

"Surprisingly?"
my memory supplied.
"You left me bread crumbs the size of boulders. I hardly had to work for it at all.”

"But you still don't know my name,"
the echo of Trent’s oh-so-cocky voice, over a telephone line in Hillsborough from so long ago, flitted through my head.

"It's not your name I'm after,” I repeated aloud, as I reached the end of the alleyway.

Tears blurred my vision. My ears ringing with a memory so bittersweet it hurt.

That’s why I didn’t see it. Why the sound of its metallic feet on pavement failed to reach my ears.

The drone appeared out of nowhere. Its laser sight centred on my chest.

S
teel-like arms
wrapped around me and threw me to the ground. The laser fired. A flash of blindingly bright red light arcing through the air mere centimetres from where I’d just been standing.

The smell of burned flesh met my nose as the Cardinal slumped to the ground beside me.

Alan shouted out a warning much too late. But his knife was in his hand and then flying. The blade glanced off the drone’s metallic torso, clattering to the pavement in a sound that could have shattered silence.

For a second, it felt as if the rest of the world had ceased existing. Just this alleyway and a single drone and the laboured breathing of the Cardinal at my back. Distant traffic became a low hum in the background. Electronic adverts a white noise I couldn’t identify. My heart thundered inside my chest, my vision sharpening.

And then Alan jumped on the drone as its laser gun went off again.

A dust cloud erupted over my shoulder, showering the Cardinal and I in fragments of concrete from where the laser had hit the building’s wall. The drone’s metal feet clanked loudly on the footpath as it staggered under Alan’s assault. I didn’t have much time.

I spun to search for the Cardinal’s laser gun, aware our knives and tasers were useless against such a foe. Alan had used his as a diversion, the moment the blade left his hand he’d have known it would do no harm. Alan, like myself, had faced off against too many drones not to know they didn’t fall so easily.

The Cardinal was conscious, but in no fit state to lift the gun that rested next to his fingers. I glanced down at the blood that stained his white uniform, matching the red cape that splayed out around his shoulders on the ground. His fingers twitched as I reached for the weapon. His pain-filled eyes catching mine. A small nod of his head was all the encouragement I needed.

I hefted the weapon and spun back to face the drone, just as Alan was thrown across the alleyway and hit the brick wall with a sickening crunch.

I raised the gun, sighted down the barrel, and fired.

The drone staggered again, whorls of smoke rising from a small hole in the middle of his chest. His eyes, imitations of the real thing, blazed red. Shiloh red. Sending a chill down my spine and scattering my thoughts.

Fear is an immobiliser. Fear of Shiloh having been brought back was crippling.

I couldn’t breathe. My hands were slick with sweat. The laser gun felt foreign and heavy in my grip.

We stared at each other, the drone and I. It said nothing. Then a green light emitted from one arm and scanned my face before I could react. The spike of adrenaline as I was clearly iRec’d made my finger finally respond to my brain’s command.

I sprayed the drone with laser fire, a continuous arc of vibrant red. The smell of melting metal met my nose, mixed with the choking smoke of an electrical fire. The alley became hazy. My ears rang from the high pitched whine of the gun. Sweat stung my eyes and my hands shook with the effort required to hold the gun aloft and keep firing.

The drone did not return fire.

“Bloody hell,” the Cardinal yelled behind me. “Why won’t it shoot?”

With one final high pitched scream from the gun it cut off. Before it could explode. A safety mechanism that Tan had had installed on all Cardinal laser guns. A safety mechanism that could ironically mean our death.

But once the smoke cleared and our ears stopping ringing it was obvious the drone had deactivated. Whether from the onslaught of laser fire or something else, I couldn’t say. But its eyes were blank, its head hanging low, while little sparks emitted from the newly formed crater in its chest.

“I’ve never seen a drone killed like that,” the Cardinal remarked.

Neither had I. They could overcome any number of insults and injuries to their metallic bodies. The most efficient way to disable a drone was to remove its command module from the side of its head.

I glanced over at the Cardinal, who had one hand over the wound in his arm, as the limb hung uselessly at his side. My eyes quickly sought out Alan, who was only now beginning to stir. A disgruntled look crossing his features before a series of low murmured swearwords slipped out. Neither were fit enough to approach the drone, so that left me.

I took a step closer, the still recharging laser gun in my hand aimed futilely at the dead drone. I’d club it, if I had to. My chest felt too tight, I could feel the rapid beat of my pulse at my neck. My fingers shook as they fished out my knife.

I’d thought their reign of tyranny was over. I’d thought we’d seen the last of Shiloh’s drones.

I looked more closely at it now, searching for clues to how it had appeared out of nowhere. A part of me refusing to believe this was one of our drones, come back to life, revenge forefront on its mind.

It looked the same. Same shining silver metallic casing. Same imitation of a human being. Same iRec eScanner on its arm. Same laser gun as I held in my hand.

And when I prised the casing off its command module, it looked exactly the same inside.

I pulled the electronic chip out, and cut the wires. The drone made no sound and didn’t shift so much as a millimetre. The breath I let out was far too loud.

“Where the fuck did that come from?” Alan said, his words a low rumble in the background.

This was a Wánměi drone. Manufactured in Remoh Ehrah at our now obsolete drone factory. The command module chip I stared at had been stamped with the Wánměi flag.

I turned and looked at Alan; his face was whiter than was strictly healthy for someone of Wáikěinese descent. He held himself stiffly, a grimace marring his normally impassive façade. Pain etched fine lines around his dark eyes, around his thinned lips. But he was standing, which was more than the Cardinal had managed so far.

The Cardinal still cradled his arm, but I couldn’t see any other injury to prevent him from standing. His gaze was target locked on the drone as if expecting it to rise again, even without a computer chip to command it.

Stranger things had happened.

I turned my head so I could keep the drone in my periphery, and then pocketed the chip in my vest.

“Where there’s one drone, there could be others,” I remarked.

“There shouldn’t even
be
one,” Alan insisted.

“Simon,” I called.

“I’m here, Lena,” he announced in my earpiece, and from the tilt of their heads both Alan and the Cardinal had also heard Si’s reply.

Which meant what I was about to say could be disastrous.

“Can you see us?” I started with instead.

“Still no luck with the street-cams, but I’ve hacked the security cameras at your old apartment complex.” Meaning Calvin had. “We saw everything.”

The Cardinal stirred, attempting to push himself up off the ground with only one hand. His mouth was parting, as if to query Simon’s last statement. He was too quick by far, this Cardinal. He would have known the apartment complex security cameras should have all been on an isolated server. Simon hacking them was an anomaly he didn’t understand.

I quickly rushed to talk over him; down that path lay only prickly thorns.

“Are we clear? Any other drones approaching?”

“You’re on your own. For now,” Simon added.

“What do you make of the drone?” I asked, knowing Simon would understand who - or what - I was asking. Calvin would be talking over Simon’s earpiece, isolated like he can isolate himself in mine.

“It’s one of ours,” Simon advised. “But its behaviour has been modified.”

“How?” Alan asked, seeming more alert and in control of his features now. The impassive mask had been lowered back into place at last.

“Initially,” Simon said, “it aimed the laser gun at Lena, without iRec-ing her first. But once it had iRec’d her, it didn’t fire back. In fact, it did nothing to protect itself, simply shut down.”

“And how is that different from normal?” the Cardinal asked. He’d managed to stand up, but he seemed a little lopsided somehow.

“A drone is a series of commands,” Simon explained. “Ours were controlled by Cardinals until Shiloh took over. This drone
could
be under control of someone, which would make you think it’s an older unit than those which were functioning still when Shiloh went dark. But I doubt that.”

“Why?” I asked, staring at the drone in question.

“Because our Cardinal controlled drones had a self-preservation programme. One the controlling Cardinal could not override.”

“An interesting assessment,” the Cardinal remarked. “But that still doesn’t explain the behavioural change you suggest. If it isn’t Cardinal controlled, then it is Shiloh controlled. And those drones would simply follow commands. Its command could have been to iRec and then shut down.”

“Shiloh doesn’t exist,” Simon said in reply. “Cardinals do.”

“You said yourself, you doubted this was an older drone, a Cardinal controlled one,” the Cardinal insisted. His sharp mind not affected by the injury he’d sustained, it seemed.

Simon was silent a little too long. No doubt listening to Calvin explain his theory. Or deciding how to word it so he didn’t sound like a computer himself.

“Shiloh controlled drones never shut down,” he finally said.

We all glanced uneasily at the inactive drone.

“I’ve seen them shut down,” I argued. And then realised what Simon was saying. “But that had been an act.”

I frowned at the drone and walked closer, my eyes scanning its humanoid face, the hole in the centre of its chest.

“It didn’t hum,” I said finally.

“Exactly,” Simon rushed to agree. Clearly Calvin knew more than Simon could safely impart over the earpieces. The hum was his lifeline for now.

“No it didn’t,” Alan agreed, perhaps aware that Simon needed the back-up.

“They always hummed,” I said turning back to the Cardinal, who was now leaning at an angle against the apartment building’s wall. “Even when appearing shutdown,” I finished, narrowing my eyes at the man.

His arm hung limply at his side, his face appeared asymmetrical. A droop had appeared on one side. He favoured the leg on his left. The same side as where the drone’s laser gun had struck.

I searched for the injury, but all I could see was the red of blood.

Then with two quick strides towards him, I reached up and ran a finger through the liquid that stained his uniform and brought it to my nose. It smelled metallic. Rather like the electrical smoke emitted from the drone.

And it wasn’t blood.

“You’re not bleeding,” I remarked.

The Cardinal shook his head, but the effort cost him. He slid partway down the wall, his legs crumbling beneath him.

“I…” he started, the word slurred. “I… can’t… feel…” But no more words came as his eyes closed and his head slumped forward onto his chest.

“Breathing?” Alan asked, moving alongside me.

“Yes. Just.”

“Where’s the injury? That
has
to be blood.”

“It’s not,” I said, staring down at my numbing fingertip. “It’s a paralytic,” I murmured, my eyes scanning the slumped features of the Cardinal.

Had he been struck in the chest, like I would have been struck in the chest if he hadn’t intervened, then he would have become completely paralysed much faster, I guessed.

The drone hadn’t been shooting to kill.

The drone had been shooting to capture.

And
then
he would have iRec’d.

But the iRec-ing had been academic. He’d already known who I was.

This wasn’t a Cardinal controlled drone. And it wasn’t a Shiloh controlled one either.

It was something else.

And it might have been made in Wánměi, but it was not ours.

I looked back at the drone, trying futilely to see an answer. But it looked like any other drone I’d ever seen. A metal man designed to oppress and kill at the flick of a switch.

“Shouldn't you be wearing a Mask?” I said to myself, just as Simon shouted over the earpieces, “Drones! More drones! And they’re coming in fast.”

I swung away from the drone to help Alan with the Cardinal.

But not before I kicked the Masked’s weapon in the head and made it tumble.

The sound of metal crashing against concrete followed us out of the alleyway.

But it was soon joined by the synchronised footsteps of others.