Perion Synthetics (54 page)

“Ram one,” said Sava, pointing to the AG on
the left. “If he gets too close or if he starts firing, run him over.”

“Just a little property damage, right?”
asked Cam.

Seconds dragged as the car’s suspension
absorbed every rock and hole it encountered, whining in high-pitched squeals and
sending vibrations racing through its passengers. Sava pulled her seatbelt
tighter and gripped the handle above her window.

Cam cut left and put the car on a collision
course with the AG. In turn, it skidded to a stop in the dirt and changed
direction. Now facing them, Sava could see what Gil had seen with his advanced
eyes: camo uniform, embedded sunglasses, and an M4 carbine slung over its back.

The Scorpio made no effort to avoid the car.
At the last possible moment, it leapt at them, sending a flying knee into the
windshield. It bumped along the roof, coming to a stop as metal fingers pierced
the cabin just above the rear window. The rest of the synny crashed against the
glass, shattering it and sending shards over Gil and Roberta. A gloved hand
reached in through the open window and grabbed ahold of Gil.

Outside, the metal pikes of the PNR flew by
without acknowledgement from the synthetics inside the car.

Sava turned in her seat, wanting to help
Gil, but he and the Scorpio were moving too quickly, fighting it out with teeth
and elbows, shredding the leather and busting out the side window.

Gil kicked at the back of the driver’s seat,
pushing Cam’s face into the steering wheel. He let out a curt hack and then
slumped over, remaining upright only by virtue of his seatbelt.

“Stop fucking around, Gil!” yelled Sava,
grabbing for the wheel. The car was losing speed, but she still struggled to
avoid the stray boulder or Joshua tree.

Gil let out a sudden grunt that faded into
the distance. When Sava looked back, she saw both synthetics sliding off the
trunk of the car. They landed in the dirt and rolled several times.

Sava threw the car into park and waited as it
ground to a halt. Blood ran from Cam’s nose, but the pounding vein in his neck
meant he was still alive. Voices from behind drew Sava’s attention, and she was
out of the car and running before realizing she had no weapon, no real way of
helping Gil.

“He is not worth your life,” said Anela.

In the construct, Perion’s army stumbled and
fell, leaving the demon to roam free in the arena.

“We need him,” said Sava. “The war needs
him.”

By the time she reached Gil, the Scorpio had
ceased its attack. It held its position a few feet away from Gil, one knee on
the ground, one hand reaching for the knife in its boot. Despite its aggressive
stance, its face was calm, almost as if it were listening intently.

“All must walk their own path to the dust,”
said Gil.

The AG relaxed and considered its
surroundings. Concern crept onto its face.

“We are past the PNR,” it said. Frantic
hands patted its chest to make sure it was still there.

“We are,” said Gil. “And we’re both still
alive.” He looked to Sava and forced a smile.

“Told you you’d be fine,” said Sava.

“This isn’t possible,” said the AG, standing
up. It looked back towards the PNR. “We… we can leave?”

The construct shimmered. Anela wiped away
the arena and the stands and the stars until it was only her glowing figure
standing in the null space. Her face grew dark.

The AG looked past Sava to the horizon.
Somewhere beyond the curve was I-10 and beyond that, any destination a
synthetic could dream of. It took its first voluntary step away from Perion
City.

“No,” said Gil, climbing to his feet. He
pointed to the PNR. “You have to go back. Your brothers are waiting for you. Go
tell them what I’ve told you. And then you show them and everyone like us that
you’re free to leave this place.”

Anela’s screams felt like hot needles in
Sava’s ears, but she couldn’t bring herself to open her mouth. For so long, she
had protected Perion Synthetics, putting herself between the company and
whoever might threaten its security. But now, she wanted nothing more than to
step aside, to let someone else take up the mantle for a while. And there was
no reason that person had to be human.

Perion engineers had given synthetics
everything they needed to pass for a real, live person.

Now it was time to give them a choice.

“Go protect your brothers,” said Sava.
“Vinestead will be coming for you. You need to prepare yourselves.”

The AG stared at Sava for several seconds
before touching the band around its throat. “Alpha Thirteen for Alpha Actual.”
He waited for a response, and then said, “Targets bugged out. Returning to
base. Out.”

“Good man,” said Gil.

Alpha Thirteen pulled his rifle from his
back and handed it to Gil.

“If they will be coming for me, they will be
coming for you,” he said.

Gil slung the rifle over his shoulder and nodded
to the AG, who then took off at a light jog towards the PNR.

“Alright, let’s go,” he said.

Sava turned and walked with Gil to the car.

“You’ll have to drive,” she said.

“Why?”

“You knocked out Cam.”

Gil huffed. “Just a little organic damage, right?”

“Right,” said Sava, glancing back over her
shoulder.

The PNR floated above a shimmering mirage.
Just beyond it stood Anela Zabora with her arms folded and her head slowly
shaking back and forth.

Le Soleil Rouge occupied the second floor of a dilapidated
building in Astoria’s Old District. The elevator on the first floor had a sign
on its doors directing customers to the stairs, as the decades-old cables could
no longer reliably carry the car from one floor to the other. The foyer of the
building had dust and occasional leaves collecting at the floorboards;
painter’s tape covered the far wall in random streaks, as if a renovation
project had been started and forgotten in the same day.

The only clean surfaces were the stairs; each
step had a veneer of polished, white marble with veins of some dark brown
mineral flowing through it. The flickering LED lights near the elevator made
the steps glimmer. The stairs snaked upwards in a spiral, clinging to the outer
wall to form an open well; a chandelier hung down from the second floor to
about six feet off the ground, its crystals throwing sparkling light on the
walls.

As Kaili Zabora climbed the stairs, she
noted the stark contrast between the first and second floors. Stepping onto the
landing, it was as if the foyer had never existed, nor had there been an Old
District or even Astoria. She felt completely transported, like stumbling upon
a rogue construct in virtuality, some self-contained bubble of Eden floating in
the ether. Through the glass walls of Le Soleil Rouge, she could see a young
woman in a black blazer sitting behind a reception desk, the rims of her dark
glasses framed by short, blonde hair. There was another woman seated in the
waiting area with a palette in her lap. She wore a wooly scarf over a leather
jacket—appropriate for an Oregon winter, if you didn’t count the bare skin
running from the lip of her skirt to the tops of her knee-high boots.

The doors slid apart at Kaili’s approach,
causing the receptionist to look up from her terminal. She smiled and rose to
greet her customer.

“Welcome to Le Soleil Rouge,” said the
woman. “How are you today?”

The reception area was warm; Kaili untied
the belt of her trench coat and slipped it off of her shoulders.

“I’m fine,” she replied, though she was
anything but. “Yourself?” she asked, though she cared little about the answer.
Kaili Zabora didn’t have the patience right now for inane niceties, but then at
that moment, she wasn’t Kaili Zabora.

“I’m doing great. How can I help you?”

“I have a reservation. Bonnie Diaz.”

“Absolutely, Ms. Diaz,” said the
receptionist, sitting down again. She banged away on her keyboard for a minute and
then pulled a palette from its dock. “Since this is your first time with us,
we’ll need you to fill out this registration form. Would you like a hot tea or
water while you wait?”

Kaili took the palette and scanned the
questions. “How about a coffee?”

The receptionist smiled. “I can make you a
decaf. We don’t recommend our guests have caffeine before their treatment.”

That was too bad; Bonnie Diaz loved her
coffee black and jittery.

“No, thank you,” said Kaili. She took a seat
in the waiting area, putting a low table between herself and the woman with the
self-insulating legs.

The registration form asked for standard
information like her name, address, and phone number. Kaili put bogus
information in each text box, but the second part of the form made her consider
her answers more carefully.

List your current injuries.

Kaili rolled her memory back to the week in
Perion City when her carefully constructed plan had come crashing down. She had
assumed an identity, gained the trust of hundreds of Perion Synthetics
executives, and helped steer the company towards its inevitable showdown with
Vinestead International. Then, a mistake, a rumbling of the foundation, and all
of the cards she had so meticulously placed flew into the air. If the old man
hadn’t died, none of this would have happened. She wouldn’t have had to kill
Robert Gantz—a crime for which she had paid no real penalty except for losing
her job.

Kaili Zabora: fired from a job.

It was the kind of story Cam would die to
get his hands on.

She recalled her escape from Perion City,
when the car was idling at the curb in front of Cam’s house in Burbank. Cam had
been quiet for most of the ride, staring out the backseat window as the car
rolled along, occasionally sniffing away some pain. Kaili stood with him for
several minutes on the sidewalk, talking about the future.

“You’re going to feed this, aren’t you?” she
asked.

“It’s what I do,” he replied, his voice
lacking his usual enthusiasm.

“And you’ll mention my name?”

At that, he looked away from the darkened
door of his home and caught her eyes.

“Three months,” he told her. “Maybe four. I
can’t stop the truth from coming out, but maybe I can delay it for a while. You
can figure Benny Coker will be pushing Gil’s story down our throats for the
next several weeks, so I’ll have to hold off anyway.” He waited as she looked
away. “You have to understand, Kessler. The guilty have a way of getting what’s
coming to them. The Perions, Chuck Huber, my backstabbing cocksucker of a boss,
and yeah, even Sava Kessler. I’ll do what I can to paint it in the right light,
but you did kill someone.”

“Don’t worry about Sava Kessler,” said
Kaili, smiling. “She’s not even a real person.”

List all personal effects.

She had left Perion City with only the
clothes she was wearing and the money in her pocketbook. Going back to San
Diego had crossed her mind for a moment, maybe to see mom and dad before the
shit storm came ashore, but showing up with two synthetics in tow would have
raised too many questions. Instead, Kaili drove Gil and Roberta to a Calle
Cinco safe house in El Cajon. She rested there for most of December before
setting off alone on I-5, making the thousand mile trip to Astoria over the
course of a week. A hotel in the Old District provided a place to sleep between
the days spent walking the condemned piers of the city, watching the sun set in
one unique oil painting after another.

“Ms. Diaz? We’re ready for you now.”

Kaili handed over her palette and followed
the receptionist through a black door with a small porthole.

“This is our relaxation room. You can wait
for your specialist here after you’ve changed. We have beverages—water, juice,
and tea—but as I mentioned, no caffeinated or alcoholic drinks. Please help
yourself to anything you’d like.”

The woman led Kaili down a hallway to a door
marked with a large
W
.

“In here, we have the women’s locker room.
Showers and sauna are through here. If you’d like to remove your makeup, we
have vanities available as well.” She stopped in front of a wall of lockers and
opened one. “Robe and sandals. Please make sure you leave all of your personal
items in the locker, as you won’t be able to take them with you into the
treatment room. Hair ties, earrings, necklaces, rings…”

Kaili touched the silver band on her thumb.
She had only taken it off once since leaving Rick on the train, and then only
for a moment.

The woman noticed the involuntary move. “We
do
take responsibility for items left in the locker, so even if someone does
manage to swipe it, we’ll cover you for the loss. In the five years I’ve been
working here, we haven’t had a single theft.”

“I’d rather not leave it.”

“I’m sorry,” said the woman. “It would
interfere with the machines.”

Kaili nodded and slipped the ring into her
palm.

“We’re on your schedule for the rest of the
evening, so please, take your time. We’ll look for you in the relaxation room
once you’re ready.”

When the woman was gone, Kaili noticed the
tranquil music raining down from the ceiling. Water gurgled from a fountain
between two showers on the other side of the room, rushing over polished rocks
of tan and charcoal. Venetian doors hid four stalls across from a bank of
sinks. Behind her, a long wooden bench extended from the lockers to the sauna.
Kaili folded her trench coat into a small square and set it on the bench. She
sat down beside it.

In the quiet, she waited for a familiar
voice to speak up, to tell her she was doing the right thing and that
everything would be okay.

A tenor saxophone whined above the twinkling
of a piano.

Something caught in Kaili’s throat and it
took all of her concentration to fight bursting into tears. She felt the
compression in her nose and the narrowing of her eyes, as if either could stem
the sadness rising within her. It wouldn’t have been so bad to cry, to add her
own wailing to the saxophone and piano and violin and gurgling water and white
noise generators and the hiss of the sauna…