Perion Synthetics (45 page)

“What do you see?”

“Gas station on fire,” he replied. “It looks
like it’s spreading. There should have been a response team on it a long time
ago.”

“Synthetic response?”

Gantz looked at her over his shoulder. She
was right.

“We need to get this done,” he said. “The
longer the signal is going out, the longer our synthetic lifesavers are
offline. And if Joe was hurt in that explosion…”

“Are the EMTs synthetics too?”

Gantz nodded. “Seven more floors. Let’s put
these things back to work.”

“Find me a terminal with an outside line,”
said Cyn, “and I’ll make it happen.”

“You’re not listening to me, Lincoln. The signal has been in
the broadcast traffic coming off the Spire for years, in the free and clear. We
all thought it was background noise, but it’s actually the command and control
for every synthetic in the city. You need to go back in the archives and
isolate it.”

Cyn waved her hands around as if her boss
could see her.

“Because this morning it changed to
something else. Look for the delta.”

Gantz could barely make sense of the one-sided
conversation. His primary responsibility had been to stand guard at the ladder,
watching and listening for any sign of pursuit while Cyn fashioned a jackport
splice out of the discarded electronics she had picked up during their climb.
That had taken half an hour, followed by another fifteen minutes of her cursing
the Perion firewalls. When she finally did get through to Lincoln Tate, her
mood was more agitated than relieved.

“Everything alright?” asked Gantz.

Cyn sighed. “It’s a pissing contest over there.
He’s got Benny Coker in his other ear and that asshole doesn’t want to give us
access to his satellites even though he hijacked them and… fuck. Every other
question out of Coker’s mouth is about Gil.”

Gantz looked down at the service hatch; had
there been a sound from below?

“Well, tell them to hurry. We’re going to
run out of time sooner rather than later.”

Cyn rolled her eyes. “Yeah, I hadn’t thought
about that.” She turned her head to the side. “Alright, Benny is calling down
to his tech team. They’re going to start looking for the signal.”

“You think they’ll find it?” His fingers
felt numb. They held tightly to his 9mm.

“They’ll find it. The traffic coming out of
Perion City has always been under scrutiny, but no one knew what they were
looking for. We still don’t.”

“Then how…” Gantz trailed off, sensing
agitation in Cyn’s lengthy sigh.

“Because it’s
different
today. If a
stream of data is encrypted, the only thing you know about it is its signature,
how it looks in encrypted format. Unless you’re using some kind of rotating
cipher, it all comes down to a consistent string of ones and zeros. We should
be able to identify it simply because it
changed
today. So long as we
can send out the same encrypted message, it doesn’t matter what the actual
content is...”

Cyn went quiet, then laughed.

“What’s so funny?”

“Coker is drunk,” replied Cyn.

She stood and dragged her tether to the
telco racks where she ran her fingers through the patch cables as if they were
the collected hair of an electronic woman. She picked up the shotgun from the
desk and pointed it at the network devices. Her aim drifted to the left.

“There’s my bitch,” she said, tapping the
switch with the barrel. “The only wires going up to the next floor run through
these redundant switches. We take them out and the whole network is cut off.
One little pull of the trigger and it’s all over.”

“That would be a very bad idea.”

Gantz swung his 9mm in the direction of the
sound. Standing at the ladder were Sava Kessler and Roberta.

“Mr. Gantz,” said Kessler, pointing a
needler in his direction. “Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“What needs to be done,” he replied. “And if
that includes taking you out, then so be it.”

Roberta took a step forward and slid into
place in front of Kessler. Every time Gantz adjusted his aim, the synthetic
moved into the line of fire.

“It doesn’t have to go down like this,
Robert. Lower your weapon and let’s discuss this like professionals. Mr. Perion
has agreed not to press charges if you surrender immediately.”

“Joe?” asked Gantz.

Kessler shook her head. “James Perion, the
man whose work you’re trying to destroy.”

“Bullshit,” said Cyn. “I saw Gantz blow his
brains out.”

“Yes, of course you did. And like your
slightly less masculine counterpart here, you’ve clearly forgotten to take into
account the fact if we can make one…”

“Son of a bitch,” said Gantz.

“But it will all be for nothing if you blow
that switch,” said Kessler. “A hundred and fifty thousand synthetics will go up
in smoke. Do you have any idea what that will do to the company? Even if Joe
were to take over, there would be nothing left for him. How in the fuck does
this sound like a good idea to you, Robert?”

“Those same synthetics have been after us
all day. They pulled Cam’s head off on
your
orders, and you just want me
to sit back and do nothing about it?”

“You’d trade one synthetic for an entire
line? Think about who really got hurt here. Joe? Cameron Gray with Banks Media
out of Los Angeles? No way. Put the gun down and we’ll go ask Cam how he feels
about his synthetic clone getting the chop. Hundred bucks says he doesn’t give a
good flying fuck about it.”

“He’s alive?” asked Cyn.

“Of course,” replied Kessler. “We wanted to
see if you would accept his replacement as one of your own.”

Another science experiment.

Gantz shook his head. Cam was still drawing
breath. Synth J had backups.

“I shot him in the face,” said Gantz. “I
blew his chip out the back of his head. Step the fuck back, Roberta!”

The synthetic paused mid-step and retreated.

“Call her off, Kessler. Or I drop the both
of you.”

Kessler reached her free hand out and put it
on Roberta’s shoulder. “You’ve already put one Virgo Prime out of commission. Do
you really want to be financially responsible for another?”

“The company is insured,” said Gantz.

“James Perion will sue you out of
existence.”

“Sued by a dead man. That’ll be a first.”

Gantz felt a hand on his back. It slid to
his right side and pressed. In small steps, he allowed Cyn to guide him to the
left, closer to the telco racks. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the
shotgun come up, leveled at the switch again.

“Goddammit, Robert. Don’t let her do this.”

“It’ll be okay,” said Cyn. Her voice was
steely next to Gantz’ ear. “Nothing is going to happen to your precious
synthetics.”

“I know that,” said Kessler, “because you’re
going to put the gun down right now.”

Cyn laughed. “Naw, I’m going to put two
rounds into this little box right here. And those two rounds are going to
silence whatever nonsense you’re feeding to your synthetic subbers. But that’s
alright because The White Line and Lincoln Continental are going to start
broadcasting your PNR signal on every satellite they can get their hands on and
they are going to bathe this place. All of your little robots are going to be
just fine.”

Gantz watched Kessler’s eyes jump to the
cable on the floor. She traced it to the switch and then back to Cyn’s head.

“If that’s even remotely true, you’ll have
synthetics being stolen left and right. They’d be able to walk right out onto
I-30 and hitch a ride to the coast. And it won’t be long before Vinestead—may
they burn in hell—gets their hands on one and reverse engineers it. They could
be turning out
working
synthetics by next summer.”

“Not my concern,” said Gantz. “There are
people dying in the streets right now because our synthetics are busy chasing
down the CEO’s son. Why did you put them on us anyway, Kessler?”

“Because you’re a wild card, Robert. Because
she’s
a wild card. God only knows how badly you two were going to fuck
things up. You have no idea how important it is for Perion Synthetics to
survive. You’re looking one, maybe two moves ahead, but I’m in it for the long
con. Anyone who isn’t with Perion is an enemy of the future. That includes
Joseph Perion.”

“Enemy of the future,” said Gantz. “What a
load of shit.”

“The Great Emancipation,” said Cyn, “began
at the stroke of midnight on the seventeenth day of November in the year 2015.
Through the alliance of the LC and White Line Media, the synthetics of Perion
City were successfully freed from the control of Sava Kessler, rogue PR bitch
of Perion Synthetics.” She dropped the anchorwoman cadence. “When the sun rises
tomorrow, everyone will know two things. First, that James Kirkland Perion is
very much dead. And second, that his synthetics are now free.”

The hammers on the shotgun fell; Gantz felt
the heat in the small of his back.

“No!” The needler began to whine, bouncing
sparks off the telco rack.

Gantz heard Cyn cry out and fall. He
squeezed his trigger in response, and the semi-automatic beat out a long string
of staccato notes as bullet after bullet tore into Roberta. They shredded the
white blouse she was wearing and coated the fabric in a mixture of synthetic
blood and oil. Gaping holes appeared in her chest. Within them, metal mesh
glimmered with each bullet fired, reflecting the muzzle flash as brilliant
yellow on silver.

Feeling the end of the clip coming, Gantz
raised his arm and dragged a line up Roberta’s neck. Her right eye exploded in a
spray of gray flakes and shattered glass. As the gun clicked empty, Roberta
went rigid, her face taking on a poor reproduction of shock.

She fell, revealing Sava Kessler behind her.

Gantz reached for his belt, but the needler
was already turning in his direction. He was freeing the clip from its pouch
when the first shard hit him, ripping away the cloth and flesh at his shoulder.
The force turned him around as pinpricks danced along his back. Only after a
few seconds did they turn to intense pain; he looked down to see exit wounds
vomiting blood onto his shirt. Gantz collapsed forward into a chair, and then
the desk beside it. The strength left his legs, bringing his face down hard on
a plastic keyboard. Then he was on the floor, staring at the metal grates in
the ceiling.

Silence filled the room, marked by angry
groans coming from Cyn.

Gantz tried to look for her, but his head
wouldn’t move. The edges of his vision blurred.

Bless me, Padre.

“It didn’t have to go down like this,” said
Kessler, stepping into view. “We could have talked this out and saved the
bloodshed. But you wanted to fight, you wanted to bankrupt the company. Now
nothing will stand in Vinestead’s way.
You
did this.”

“No,” said Gantz. The needler swung in a
small circle above his head.

Thy will be done.

Kessler smiled. “Your final act on this
planet and it was for the ‘Stead, may they burn in hell.”

“Fuck you, Kessler.”

Her eyes widened for a moment. “Kessler?”
She leaned in closer, lowered her voice. “Try Kaili, Kaili Zabora. The Butcher
of Burbank. Veteran of the Reaping. And the last face you’ll ever see.”

Forgive me my trespasses.

The needler steadied.

Deliver me from evil.

“That’s right, Robert Gantz. Calle Cinco is in
Perion City, right under your nose. If the shame doesn’t kill you…”

Amen.

Yates’ voice exploded from the back of the
needler’s barrel.

“Welcome, my son.”

“I guess we should have expected this.”

Javier Espinoza fiddled with the M4 carbine
in his lap.

He had his feet propped up on the control
board in the observation room atop Outpost Alpha, his head turned towards the
north where the distant Spire bloomed like a taut spike of lightning. The rest
of the city was dim, languid in its post-midnight haze. It could have been any
normal night in Perion City, one in which its residents enjoyed a peaceful
slumber. Engineers, artists, and even the middle of the road grunt workers all
rested under the blanket of security provided by the sixty-strong team of
guardians at Outpost Alpha.

Would they have slept so soundly had they
known the number was only ten now?

Beside him, a dozing Kris Ferko had lowered
his chair to its limit and was leaning back, trying to find a comfortable
position. He knew there was a short but plush couch down in the scanning room,
but the bowels of the outpost were so empty and quiet that fear had kept him
awake, jumping at every sound in the dark. At least up in the observation room
he had Javier to keep him company, to watch over him with a weapon that could
cut down human and synthetic alike. That alone was worth the discomfort.

“I mean, you build these things to look like
humans and you expect them to be human day in and day out, but you forget
they’re just machines with programming. If they use the wrong words or if their
inflection is off, we laugh at them like they’re children. But when they all drop
their weapons and head north like a flock of birds… I don’t know. Even when you
run them through training drills, you never see coordination like that.
Whatever Perion did to call his children home must work at a primitive level.
Right to the core.”

Ferko rubbed his neck and felt something
free up in the space between his vertebrae.

“Anyway,” continued Javier, “I knew I was
right to keep some real men on the team. They wanted me to enlist a fully
synthetic squad, but I put my foot down.” His voice slipped into a drawl. “When
the revolution come, ol’ Javier ain’t gonna get bushwhacked by a bunch of
life-size G.I. Joes.”