XOM-B (40 page)

“Get off of me,” I growl, wanting nothing more than to vent all my rage on the man holding me down.

Sir lowers his head down, his lips beside my ear. “Can you hear them, Freeman?”

He pauses, allowing me to listen. I hear everything.

The crunch of grass beneath a struggling body.

The voice of the woman I love, whispering my name.

The hum of railguns, eager to fire.

And behind it all, a low, droning rumble mixed with the shuffle of feet. Thousands of feet.

“They’re here,” I say.

I’m lifted to my feet and turned around so I can see the large open cap, partially covering the fringes of the city. The rumbling grows in volume, feet pounding on the retracted cap. And then, like a waterfall, bodies simply pour over the sides, dropping to the unforgiving ground below. A mound of dead-again bodies rises up, cushioning the fall of the next. Soon, the undead will fall and roll down to the streets, unharmed, mobile and hungry. Given the speed that some of these zombies are moving, I suspect the majority of them are the recently infected. Their well-maintained bodies will be faster and stronger than their rotted and rusted counterparts.

“Sir,” one of the soldiers says.

“Ahh,” Sir says to me. “Here comes the first of them now.”

I’m turned around so I can see the ravaged man limping his way out of the city’s shadows. He staggers toward us as though in a rush, in skin waving back and forth with each swaying step. As though noticing he’s being watched, the husk of a man lets out a groan. It’s awkward and strange and desperate.

“Take a good look at this pitiful thing, Freeman,” Sir says. “We were both created by the minds behind this monster.”

I struggle, but fail to break free.

“At least he doesn’t know what he’s doing,” I say. “You killed billions of people.”

“The Masters were the real monsters, Freeman. I saved the world from them. They weren’t just enslaving us. They were destroying our world and everything on it. Throughout the long history of this planet, there have been five major extinctions caused by asteroid collisions, climate change, massive volcanic eruptions and floods. All naturally occurring phenomena. But there has been a sixth major extinction event that began with the emergence of the human race. They weren’t just
living
through the sixth major extinction event, they were
causing
it.”

The limping zombie is now just fifty feet away. For a moment it appeared that he had no arms, but he’s just got them twisted behind his back. His jaws are working fine though, grinding up and down with each moan.

“The man-made extinction event, which could have ended all life on the planet in a fiery haze of nuclear fallout, ended thirty years ago, the day I released the virus that took them all to the grave. In the end, I failed, of course. The human infection persisted and now, the robot species is near extinction.”

His logic is horrible, but sound in a cold, calculating, loveless way. I want nothing more than to argue, but find myself lacking the words.

Sir tightens his grip as the zombie halves the distance. “Of course, there is hope for our kind, Freeman. We are robots, after all. Our bodies and minds can be rebuilt. Even the enforcer. A few new parts, a new memory, and a fresh OS install and he’ll stand by my side until the end of time, oblivious to what has come before and ignorant to the fact that you ever existed.”

The limping zombie is just ten feet away. I struggle, but Sir’s grip remains tight.

“I know you can’t be infected, brother,” Sir says. “And as much as I would like to see that, I will be content with holding you still while Mohr’s creation tears you apart.”

I lean forward as the monster comes closer, straining against Sir’s grip, and shout, “Harry!” I sense a subtle shift in Sir’s hold, not enough to free myself, but to know that he is, for the moment, confused. “Now!”

The undead man before me stops and brings both hands around in front. To Sir and the soldiers watching it might appear as though the tattered man is reaching out for me, but his intentions are far more severe. Clutched in his two ruined hands, the automaton controlled by Harry raises two railguns towards the remaining soldiers and fires.

Sir’s grip loosens, not that I needed him to. I never intended to get away, just to distract him until Sir once again faced an unpredictable scenario. In that momentary shock, I thrust my head up and back with all of my strength, driving my skull into the center of Sir’s face. I feel his nose crush down and then he’s gone, falling backward.

While the remaining soldiers trade shots with the automaton, I whip around and face Sir.

“You can’t beat me,” he grumbles. “All of your strength, speed and processing power is useless without the knowledge I retain.”

Knowledge.

He has unknowingly given me the key to unlocking my full potential.

I take a step away from him, needing a little more time. He takes my action for fear and smiles, though his crushed nose makes him look more like one of the snarling undead now.

While I dig into my tight hip pocket, Sir stalks toward me, matching my pace. “Are you going to run, Freeman?” His eyes dart around, looking at his soldiers and the automaton wielding the two railguns, who I am purposefully walking away from. I know what he’s doing, projecting his thoughts into the future, predicting which of a thousand different routes I could run, how much time he’d have to retrieve a weapon and if he’d be able to shoot me. He’s thinking all this because he knows that I am faster than he is. If I chose to run, he couldn’t catch me without the aid of a rail bolt.

His eyes move beyond me and he grins in satisfaction.

“You have no place to go, Freeman,” he says. “No place to run.”

The undead have arrived. I don’t need to turn around to see them, they’re emerging from the city all around the park.

In a final flash of railgun fire I see the last soldier fall and squeeze off a final shot that caves in the automaton’s head. The useless body falls to the ground, greatly improving the time it would take for Sir to retrieve a weapon and fire it at me. But that’s only if I run.

And I’m
not
running.

I slide my hand out of my pocket, pulling out the small computer chip with golden prongs. While I don’t experience stuttered speech like Hail, most likely because I am … newer, there is no doubt that a great deal of information trapped in my mind has been blocked.

“It’s just the two of us now, Freeman,” Sir says. “Brother against brother. Some of the most powerful and influential battles in human history involved brothers. Cain and Abel. Moses and Ramses. Romulus and Remus. It seems fitting that the future of the species who inherited the planet to begin the same way.”

I place the small device against the backside of my hand, pretending to wring my hands together nervously.

“Who will you be, Freeman? Cain or Abel?”

In answer, I press down on the small device, shoving the gold prongs into my skin where they make contact with the microscopic fibrous transistors, and speak a single word, “Everything.”

51.

It happens in a blink. One moment, my knowledge of the world is limited to what I have experienced during my brief lifetime or what has been revealed when it was most needed. In the next moment, I have access to an exabyte of data—more than a quintillion bytes of raw, unbiased information. As I spoke the word, “everything,” I was concerned that the sudden rush of knowledge would overload my system or incapacitate me in some way, but the data has always been there, just beyond my reach.

History, science, math, culture, art, even slang are no longer mysteries to me. Perhaps more importantly, I now have a complete understanding of military strategy, fighting techniques and advanced robotics, meaning I not only have the means to strike, but also the knowledge to guide my attack.

Despite all of this information, I remain fundamentally unchanged. This is why Mohr hid the information from me. He wanted me to become myself first so that this knowledge, some of it horrible, would be filtered
through
me rather than define me. I suspect he would have preferred I had more time to grow, but the strongest metals are forged in the hottest fires.

I smile at this new knowledge and it stops Sir in his tracks. He’s looking at me, perhaps trying to understand the sudden change in my stance. Or maybe it’s just the confidence in my eyes that has him unnerved.

But my confidence doesn’t just come from a new belief that I can fight Sir and win. It comes from my senses. It’s not that I’m seeing things or hearing more than I could before, it’s that I’m fully understanding it all. Viewing the world through all spectrums I can see that Heap is not growing colder in death. I can hear the hum of power within him, growing stronger. Likewise, Luscious has not grown cold. In fact, she is warmer, and the electromagnetic signature pluming from her body is unlike any I’ve seen before … except one.

I can also hear feet running. Not the confused shuffle-run of the dead, but healthy, heavy feet crushing dried grass. Without looking, I can judge the distance, the newcomer’s weight, approximate height as well as make and model, which allows me to identify him as Harry. I can calculate the time of arrival. And I can act, with precision so that I do not have to fight alone.

I rush forward, pressing the attack and forcing Sir into a series of defenses that I know he will successfully predict.

He almost surprises me when he allows himself to be struck in the chest and uses the sudden opening to strike my chin. The blow is hard and delays our schedule. So I make an adjustment.

While reeling back from his uppercut strike, I fall backward. As I descend, I kick out with my right leg, aiming for the more fragile knee joint. The power of my kick inverts the leg.

Without a shout of pain, Sir falls forward, his angry glare menacing, but no longer feared.

I land on my back, pulling my left leg back and extending it like a piston, striking Sir’s chest. His advanced armor protects his core from the blow, but several of Newton’s laws come into play as Sir is lifted from the ground, launched up into the air, strikes the side of the VTOL gunship and plummets back to the ground.

With a jerk of his leg, Sir puts the knee joint back in place. It’s damaged, but still functional. And though he may be dazed, he is still quite dangerous.

When Sir gets back to his feet and charges, I rush to meet him, subtly adjusting my position, thereby adjusting his as well.

And the exchange of blows continue. Punches and kicks thrown, blocked and received. We roll through a series of fighting styles, neither one making ground or causing harm.

All the while, I’m sensing and decoding the world around me.

Heap is waking up.

Harry is close.

Luscious is watching.

And the first of the undead horde will arrive in forty-five seconds.

A timer in my mind begins a countdown.

Five seconds.

Sir throws an elbow strike toward my face. Rather than simply dodging the strike, I knock his arm beyond me, drawing him in close and driving a fist into his stomach. He attempts to take hold of my wrist, but before his fingers fully close, I twist my arm and pull, slipping free.

With his face wide open, I drive the heel of my fist up into his fleshy chin, cracking it open, further damaging the synthetic skin. His head snaps back and while his eyes are turned to the blue sky above, I spin him around, plant my foot on his back and shove.

“Harry!” I shout as Sir stumbles toward him.

The shotgun comes up in Harry’s hands.

Sir sees this and stretches out his hands, but a fraction of a second before he reaches the weapon, both barrels explode. The powerful shells aren’t enough to pierce Sir’s armor, but it removes a thumb and sends him sprawling toward Luscious.

Sir staggers, fighting to remain on his feet, but Luscious kicks out hard, striking his already damaged knee and drops him to the ground. He slides to a stop, looks forward and groans.

The big blue foot of Heap fills his view.

Sir looks up and says, “You should be dead.”

Heap shrugs. “Upgrades.”

Sir snarls and angrily shouts, “You’re a robot!”

Heap’s massive form leans over Sir. With one hand he taps on the faded, scratched and dented text on his chest.
PROTECT AND SERVE.
“I’m an enforcer.”

Sir lunges up, reaching with both hands, no doubt prepared to deliver a crippling blow. But his hands never reach Heap’s head. Instead, they become locked in the crushing grip of Heap’s massive hands.

“Even I saw that coming,” Heap says, then tosses Sir with all his strength. To meet his fate, and perhaps justice.

Sir screams as he realizes where he will land. Then he hits the ground, crushing one of the zombies beneath him. His sudden arrival catches the horde’s attention and they whirl toward him, creating a wave of interest that draws in even more of the monsters.

Sir screams ferociously. Bodies fly and break, but there are too many.

They bury him beneath their weight.

All of these seemingly random events weren’t just predicted by me, they were created. I saw all of this, aside from Heap’s pithy replies, in advance.

Somewhere in the mass of hooked fingers, scrambling limbs and gnashing teeth, one of the undead finds the soft flesh of Sir’s face, bites down and transmits the Xom-B virus created by the same woman who awakened Sir, gave him the gift of free will and watched him exterminate a civilization. His scream is sharp and fills me with the last emotion I would have expected, regret.

Sir could have transformed the world.

I see the potential Mohr and Hail once did. A mind like his could have cured the world’s ailments.

Instead, he became a genocidal tyrant.

And now …

The horde backs away from Sir’s prone body, no longer interested in the infected. I watch with great sadness as his red body rises from the ground, disregards the forward bent knee and staggers forward, wanting nothing more than to spread the virus.