Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV San Diego, California, USA, Earth
“Welcome back. How was the East coast?”
“Cold, wet and gray. “
Seventy-Two had made his position within the Hierarchy through exclusive use of biodrones. A signature technique was necessary—every Number needed a unique angle, something that made them more suitable for certain niches than were their fellows, and the biodrone angle had paid off beautifully in leading to the Earth assignment.
These human ones bothered him somewhat, though. Despite being entirely slaved to his will, they still retained an element of personality, and a tendency towards being talkative, or even garrulous.
Other Numbers may have seen this as a liability, but the humans seemed uniquely capable of spotting a fake in their midst. The first-generation biodrones, the ones that had been truly limited in faculties and personality, had provoked remarkably strong negative reactions among the few humans with whom they had interacted. The “uncanny valley” they called it—if it looked human but didn’t behave enough like one, then it stood out, which was the precise opposite of what a Biodrone was for. The successful newer models had much more mental flexibility, which wasn’t comfortable territory to be in.
That small hiccup aside, all it took to create a biodrone was one human and a little surgery which, thanks to their uniquely sturdy biology, the subject recovered from the operations far more swiftly—and was more likely to survive them—than any other sapient being that Seventy-Two had ever converted that way.. He would have to archive their DNA for future cloning programs.
Still. They weren’t cheap or easy to produce. Losing one to Boone’s ingenuity and paranoia had been painful, and no appropriate specimens for conversion had yet come his way. Being down to only two drones was making it harder and harder to keep pace with humanity’s developments.
It would be time to create a new one, soon.
The biodrone was behaving a little strangely, he noticed. It seemed to be drowsy. Even as he watched, it nodded off on its feet, waking up again after a second with a start.
“Are you malfunctioning?” he asked.
The drone smiled, a little peculiarly.
“Oh no,” it said, and there was a tone of voice there that didn’t belong. Something that was jarringly different to its established modes of behaviour. “I’m better than ever.”
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 3d AV
Today was, technically, the first of Gabriel’s two days off a week, but he’d never learned the secret to leaving his work at work, or at least not in the cases that really mattered.
After a breakfast of pancakes and a phone conversation with Mrs. Almodóvar, Adam had been granted leave to stay at Gabriel’s apartment for a few days. Given that it was a school day, however, Gabriel had the place to himself for several hours.
By the end of those hours, the table—and the wall around it—were covered in documents and photographs, with sharpied comments, observations, coloured lines, speculation and the fruits of his research and a few phone calls. None of it amounted to a breakthrough.
“Hey Dad! She said… woah.” Adam stopped mid-celebration when he caught sight of the vast spread of information that had sprawled all over the apartment.
“She said yes?” Gabriel finished.
“She did!” Adam looked like he couldn’t believe his luck. “Jeez, Dad, what’s all this?”
“Murder case.” Gabriel told him. Adam picked up a photo from the table—a still of Johnson’s face, from the security cam footage, mercifully not including the victim’s remains.
“This the suspect?” He asked.
“Give me that.” Gabriel snatched it back. “Come on man, you know this stuff’s confidential.”
“Sorry Dad. Seriously though, is that him?”
Gabriel relented. Despite his best efforts to persuade the boy towards a safer and more lucrative career, Adam seemed dead-set on following his old man into law enforcement. He had to admit, the kid had the brain for it. “That’s him.” he confirmed.
Adam glanced at the picture again. “Looks about as average-white-guy as they come.” he opined.
“Yep. Average height, brown hair, brown eyes, no distinguishing features. A face that can disappear in the crowd.” Gabriel agreed. <And into thin air> he added in the privacy of his own mind. The vanishing act Johnson had pulled mid-video was causing him more and more alarm the more he thought about it. Half his day had involved taking a crash course in spacetime distortion physics, and the possible applications of the same reality-folding technology that allowed Pandora and her sisters to fly to Jupiter and back. Some kind of reverse-stasis technology that massively accelerated the murderer’s personal time, allowing him to move so fast as to disappear between frames seemed the most likely explanation, but if he had something like that at his disposal…
Adam continued to stare at the picture, clearly committing it to memory. He had a good memory for faces alright, Gabriel had to give his son that. But Johnson’s was so… generic that unless the kid was memorizing every wrinkle and fleck of white in the beard—and there was no reason to assume that Johnson had retained his beard after a flagrant public murder caught on film—it was a hopeless cause.
“Come on man, she said yes, don’t depress yourself with my work.” Gabriel chastised him, and started to clear it all away. He really should try to relax when he was off-duty anyway. “You’ve got a date!”
“Yeah!” Adam seemed happier than Gabriel had seen him in a long while. “We’re going to see the Derby Dolls on Saturday!”
“Sounds like a good date.” Gabriel told him. “You got anything to wear for it?”
“Not really…” Adam admitted. Gabriel nodded and stood.
“Come on then.” he said. “Let’s hit the mall.”
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 3d AV
Mr. Johnson raised his hands and looked at them as if he had never seen them before, and flexed them, balled them into fists and rolled his shoulder. “Strong…” He commented. There was something… off about his intonation. It was hard to describe. Previously the drone had projected an air of competent, contended ready-for-anything-ness. Now it was speaking with an air of… wonder, maybe. Or revelation.
Seventy-Two affected a frown, even though the Corti body wasn’t really equipped for that expression. “What are you doing?” he demanded, impatiently.
The drone grinned. “Your puppet’s been hijacked, Seventy-Two.” he said.
“Hijacked? …Who are you?”.
The grin broadened. “Six.”
”…And you chose a biodrone based on a Deathworlder to host you?” The thought was repugnant. He may control them, but the thought of ever using one as a Host was appalling.
“It was the only available host. Having tried it, however, I wholly recommend it: you should occupy one of these yourself, get out of that cage you’ve put yourself in.” Six replied. “Next to the Guvnurag I was wearing just a few minutes ago, this feels… oh! Liberating.”
He bent over backwards, planted his hands on the floor and kicked up until he was inverted, wobbling slightly, ignoring the way his body’s tie and jacket dangled, undignified, in his face. “So strong!” he exulted.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the input and assistance of a single-digit.” Seventy-two said, speaking with as much tartness as he could muster “but I was under the impression that this is my operation.”
“Oh, it is. As far as the Numbers know, the operation on this planet is still being overseen by Seventy-Two. I am here…unofficially.”
“Unofficially?!” Seventy-Two spat the word.
“Officially so.”
If there was one thing a Corti body was well designed for, it was looking nonplussed. If there was one thing that Six seemed to be adept at (besides causing irritation) it was not deigning to notice nonplussed expressions. “Amazing. There are whole trees of autonomic and instinctive functionality in here. The poor things aren’t so much controlling their bodies as prompting it to do something it already knows how to do.”
A memory—a potential behavioural tic that might cause the higher-ranking Hierarch to become a little less obtuse, tickled Seventy-Two’s attention.
“Six… I would appreciate a clearer explanation of what you’re doing here, please.” he asked, politely.
“Certainly!” the mercurial Number flipped right-side up again and sat down, cross-legged. “You only had to ask. I am here because Earth has become priority one, and rather than break with decorum and insult your competence, Two felt that a more… subtle approach was required.”
“Hence you.” Seventy-Two concealed his opinion that there were exploding stars less subtle than Six behind an inflection of polite understanding.
“Supposedly. Why they felt I was appropriately subtle is beyond me..” Six replied, candidly. “Possibly they felt that throwing me at a potential disaster would be a good excuse to finally decompile my identity.”
“We’re not doing that badly down here.” Seventy-two protested.
“The humans outwitted Twenty-Four.” Six corrected him. “They’re flinging themselves into space as fast as they can get the infrastructure in place to do it. They have introduced the galaxy to whole new paradigms of combat.”
He leaned forward, hands dangling loose across his knees. “What we have here, my dear sibling, is a first-degree emergency, and I would have hoped that you would have had the wit to see it, even from down here in the thick of the fighting.”
”…They’re investigating me. Tenaciously, too.” Seventy-Two admitted. “They have government organisations on several tiers, all behaving like that damnably powerful immune system of theirs. They seem willing to believe what must sound utterly incredible to them, and they seem to be completely paranoid.”
“Paranoid?”
“They back up everything, store their data, spread it far and wide so that even if I kill the person who collected it, somebody else is able to continue their work. Silencing the investigator who betrayed us has only served to risk galvanising the investigation. I’ve never heard of anything like it.”
“No? In that case you’re lacking the knowledge of a fundamental component of their psychology, my friend.” Six stood. “And if you don’t know your enemy then failure is inevitable.”
He turned towards the door.
“Where are you going?” Seventy-two demanded. “There’s work to be done!”
“I’m going to know our enemy.” Six replied.
Seventy-Two gritted his teeth, and sent a communication to his last remaining biodrone. He was really going to need those replacements now.
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 3d AV
“So, I’ve got a question.”
Gabriel glanced sideways at his son. “Shoot.”
“You said yesterday that you’re a cop, and how reading people is your job.”
“Yeah?”
“Can you teach me to do that?”
Gabriel laughed. “Why, so you can tell when a girl is interested in you?”
“Well… yeah!” Adam admitted, blushing. “But, it kinda seems like it’d be a cool thing to know anyway.”
Gabriel sighed internally. He was just furnishing the kid with more of the tools to grow up into a cop like his old man, he knew, but at the same time, knowing how to look at body language and movement was a useful skill for anybody. It could get a young man out of trouble if he could see trouble before it came gunning for him.
“Alright, let’s grab a snack and I’ll teach you a few things.” he said.
They selected coffee and donuts—prompting a predictable joke from Adam about those foodstuffs and Gabriel’s career—and settled in to a corner of the food court where they could see much of what was going on.
“Okay, so… body language.”
He looked around. The mall was fairly busy. Not heaving, but there was a fair density of humanity moving around. It was an excellent introduction. “How many people d’you think are here right now?”
Adam looked around then shrugged. “I dunno… a couple thousand?”
“Yeah, I’d say so.” Gabriel agreed. “How many d’you think are here looking to break the law?”
Adam thought about it then gave him a wide-eyed, head-shaking shrug.
“Damn near none of them.” Gabriel informed him. “Pretty much everybody here is just here to shop, buy stuff, go home, live their lives. Most people are decent human beings, okay? So what you’re looking out for is the handful who aren’t.”
“Okay. How?”
“Two things. The first part is profiling—what’s the crime that’s most likely to be committed where you are, and what type of person is most likely to commit it? That changes depending on where you are, and when. Here and now, the most likely crime is…?”
“Shoplifting.”
“Right! And that’s tricky because the profile for shoplifters is pretty vague. Men and women shoplift about equally, they do it on the spur of the moment… about the only thing you can look out for is groups of teenagers, kids about your age. Peer pressure makes them do stupid shit, you know?”
“Yeah…”
Gabriel guessed that his son knew a few kids at school who had admitted to, or even boasted about, the crime. There wasn’t much that could be done about it, and you had to let SOME stuff go or you’d never switch off.
“So you have to look out for the warning signs after the crime has been committed,” he continued, pretending not to have noticed the hesitation “and that means you have to look for anyone who’s moving strangely.”
“Like how?”
“You just have to… watch people. Get a feel for how they normally move in this environment. Are they relaxed, are they tense, are they bored, eager, happy? This is a shopping mall, so most of the people here are moving kinda slow, they’re looking around at the advertisements, they’re window-browsing. Yeah?”
Adam was looking around at the crowd, and nodded. “Okay, yeah.”
“Right. So now you’ve got an idea of how people should be moving around here, you can basically ignore all those people. They’re behaving how they should be, so they’re probably not up to anything. Look for the people who aren’t moving that way.”
Adam looked around then, pointed. “Him.”
“Yep. He’s walking fast, he’s not got any bags, he’s not looking around. So now you look at his face. What’s his expression?”
“He doesn’t really have one. I guess… bored?”
“Alright. No expression means he’s pretty comfortable, he’s not feeling tense or paranoid, or anything. So my guess is he knows exactly what he’s here for and he just wants to grab it and go and not waste time. He’s got better things to be doing. If I’m right then he’s not a problem.”
Adam frowned. “What if you’re wrong?” he asked
“Then I’m wrong. But like we said, round here the most likely crime is shoplifting, so it’s not like somebody could die if I fuck up. I’ve got a lot of people to look at so I have to trust my judgement. I can’t be suspicious of everyone just because I could be wrong.”
Adam nodded his understanding. “Okay, so you look at how they move, then at their expression. What next?”
“That’s about it.” Gabriel said. His son’s expression turned dubious. “No, seriously, check the movement, check the expression. You have to learn to see the crowd as a bunch of moving abstract shapes and pick out the motion that’s wrong. Too fast, too slow, too jerky, aimed in the wrong direction… once you’ve done that, you look at the face, the shoulders and feet, trying to figure out if they’re feeling comfortable or not. If they’re moving wrong but look comfortable, then you ignore them. If they’re looking uncomfortable… well, that could still be a mom whose kid’s trying to swim in the fountain, so that’s why you observe them for a bit, try to figure out what’s going on with them.”
“That’s all there is to it, then?” Adam asked. “Sounds…”
“Unreliable as hell?” Gabriel finished for him. Adam looked like he wanted to agree, so he nodded. “Yep. it’s really only good for spotting the guys who really stand out, but those are the ones you most want to spot, so it works. Getting better at it is just practice.”
Adam nodded distractedly and frowned at the crowd, clearly trying to practice what he’d just been told. Gabriel suppressed an amused snort and drained his coffee. “Anyway, you wanna get that shirt now?”
“Sure”.
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 3d AV
Sights. Sounds. Smells. All so much more acute, all interlinking in fascinating ways. This was how a human viewed the world, a melange of sensory data all arriving at once, sending chemicals dancing and whirling through that intricate, dense neocortex. Six explored on foot, testing and analyzing the way his adopted body could just be aimed in a direction and set to travelling, how the very act of covering the distance one step at a time seemed to free and expand the mind.
Isolated as the core of his consciousness and sense of self were, running on the implants which riddled the alien body’s neural structure, he still felt it. Still felt the glow of endorphins even as the muscles of his new legs warmed and stretched: it was a surprisingly comfortable feeling, a kind of pleasant pain: the body revelled in motion even as that motion tested and taxed it.
There was so much to see. By day he wandered in the shade of the buildings of Downtown, occasionally venturing into the full glare of Sol’s ultraviolet-heavy radiance on the waterfront. He patiently explored the USS Midway museum, drank in the raw data of the antiquated vessel’s role and functionality, mentally noting to retain and use some of the innovative ideas that had gone into its construction. As dusk fell and the burning heat became a gentle ruddy warmness, he walked on the beach and indulged his hijacked flesh’s unaccountable instinct to remove its footwear.
It wasn’t like controlling the bodies of other lifeforms. Everything ran on instinct, everything was handled locally by independent systems that didn’t consult him at all, they just acted on a hair-trigger before finally bothering to inform him after the fact. He got some strange looks as he passed a series of females who wore practically nothing, lost in thought at the curious reaction they had—quite unbidden—inspired in his male body’s genitalia. Why should he have inherited human taboos and preferences?
As night fell, his feet carried him through Gaslamp, where he finally came to understand what the term “night-life” meant. Every shadow seemed to hum with some secret or another. Every single person he passed, even just as unconsidered blurs on the sidewalk, seemed to have a vital spark to them—they were going somewhere, they were doing things, for a reason.
His hijacked body’s instincts swung into gear—that group of males over there were large and boisterous, a potential threat: Avoid them. That alleyway was dark: Don’t go down it. That building over there was an oasis of warmth and light, from which issued smells and sounds that spoke to several parts of his body at once.
His stomach issued a strange noise, and he allowed his feet to carry him toward the bar and grill.
He was fortunate, he realised, to have done his research on how to pay for goods and services on this planet.
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV “I was expecting you to have a hangover.” Seventy-Two commented.
“You have a low opinion of me.” Six replied. He’d sampled intoxication—he hadn’t cared for it. Possibly that was a product of the inherent disconnect between his sense of identity, cloistered away in the cerebral implants, and the rest of the brain, but the experience had been frustrating—a loss of both agility and sensory acuity, for no apparent gain. The effects had dissipated after a few hours, leaving him resolved to not do it again.
The tastes of the food he had sampled, however, were sharp and pleasant memories. He had eaten meat for the first time, sampling the flesh of once-animal life: unfamiliar textures had seduced his palate—rare steak, chicken caesar, frankfurter, cheese!
“So do you know our enemy yet?” Seventy-Two inquired, not bothering to conceal his disdain.
“More than I did.” Six allowed. “There are a few more things to see tonight before I begin my work.”
“And once you’ve learned it all? What then?”
“I have already learned that I cannot learn it all. This is just one city, a paltry million-and-a-half individuals. There is a whole planet out there filled by more than seven billion humans; I don’t have the time to sample everything on offer.”
He grinned again. “But I have learned a lot already. About how they think, about what drives them, about the way in which they experience the world. The weaknesses are revealing themselves.”
“And how do we exploit those weaknesses?”
“First, an experiment.”
“I see.” Seventy-two sounded dubious. “And what will this ‘experiment’ of yours entail?”
Six sat down. “I learned an expression of theirs last night. They say: ‘poking the hornet’s nest’.”
“I’m familiar with it. It’s an allegory for doing something very foolish.”
“All data points arrive from doing something ostensibly foolish.” Six replied. “We’ll need to sacrifice your last biodrone.”
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV
Adam had followed up his Dad’s insight into how to crowd-watch with some Internet research of his own, and felt he was starting to get the hang of the skill. He’d also done some research on how to have a good first date. Arriving early at Skateworld allowed him to accomplish both.
After a few minutes, he got into a rhythm, watching people come and go not as people but as shapes, moving. He got a feel for HOW they were moving, where and why. It was a pleasant surprise to him when he noticed one shape start to move differently, turning towards him and picking up speed and bounce…
“Hey!”
Adam jolted out of his thoughts, but smiled warmly as Ava trotted up to him, beaming from ear to ear. He felt his face warm as she kissed him hello.
“This was a great idea, I was going to say we should watch a movie or something.” she enthused.
Adam laughed slightly. “My Dad told me that’d just be two hours of sitting in the dark ignoring each other.” he confessed. “I’d rather see you and talk to you.”
After he’d said it, the fear struck him that the line was corny and over-the-top, but Ava seemed to take it very well—she blushed and bounced happily in her shoes, then took his hand and led him towards the entrance.
Adam allowed himself to be led, secretly amazed at how well things were going. <maybe this isn’t so difficult after all…>
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV
The Biodrone waited. The order would soon come.
In a lot of ways, it was still human. While it lacked anything resembling a sense of self-interest or an agenda of its own, it still had its emotional responses, and something which might be considered a personality.
It had, for lack of a better word, liked its counterparts. Both the one that was destroyed and the one which was now occupied by a Controller. It felt, to some limited degree, a sense of loss and grief over their destruction.
It felt similarly about its own imminent destruction. Had it been asked, it would have preferred not to do what it was about to do.
But it had not been asked. That was not its Role. It had been tasked, and it would do. And it would die.
But for now, it waited.
Most of it did not want to die. Part of it—the last imprisoned vestiges of this body’s former psyche—did. But even they did not want to escape into death’s clutches like this.
Not taking so many with them. Not murdering innocents.
But the biodrone waited. The order would soon come.
And it would do. And it would die.
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV
Ava had insisted that, because Adam had paid for the tickets, she would pay for the snacks and drinks, and in any case she needed the restroom, and had left him alone to guard their stuff and their seats while the pre-game was still going on. The teams were being announced in a flurry of girly-macho pseudonyms: “Kitty Crash”, “Victoria van Boom”, “EradiKate” and so on that he’d never remember anyway, so he fell back into playing his crowd-watching game.
That lady over there… worried for her kid standing on the rail. That guy over there… no, he was just after his cellphone. That lady over there was running, but… no, she just settled into her seat with a smile, sharing a lively greeting and a hug-and-double-cheek-kiss with her friend. That guy over there… was…
“Oh shit.” He swore.
Nobody else could be so… average, so bland. It was almost a defining trait in its own right. If he hadn’t been walking too slowly, looking around at the crowd rather than down at the players, if he hadn’t been jigging slowly as he moved, as if anticipating something, Adam’s eyes would have skipped straight over the guy. As it was, the anomalous movement and attitude drew his eye, and his memory did the rest.
He feverishly dug in his jeans pocket for his own phone, just as Ava returned.
“Okay, I’m…what’s up?” she asked, sensing his urgency.
“I recognised somebody.” Adam said, quietly.
“Anyone I know?” she asked, looking out over the crowd. Her own eyes skipped straight over the guy.
“He’s the suspect in a murder case Dad’s working!” he hissed. “Sit down!”
She did so, paling. Adam retrieved his phone and stood, managing to snap a great picture of John Doe’s face under the pretense of taking a selfie.
He sat again, and tapped furiously at the screen—“this guy @ derby!”—and forwarded it to his Dad’s number.
“What do we do?” Ava asked. “Do we call the cops, or…?”
“I just did.” Adam said. “I really hope I’m wrong.”
She took his hand, manicured fingers intertwining with his own. It made him feel a little better, a little less afraid.
He knew he wasn’t wrong.
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV
+<Impatience; Derision> I really don’t see what this accomplishes.+
Six was gaining increased control over his human body, and managed to avoid allowing a tic of irritation to cross his face. Not that he felt it would blow his cover, but ideally he would prefer to go completely unnoticed, rather than be remembered as the strange man in the crowd making faces for no apparent reason.
+<Weary tolerance> Seventy-Two, I have been a single-digit Number since before you were compiled. I have played my part in the cleansing of five deathworlds before this one. The only reason I’m not ordering you to shut up and stop repeating your doubt is because I hate standing on rank. I just ask—please—that you trust that I know what I’m doing.+
There was no reply for a few minutes, buying him the time to show his ticket, enter the venue, find his assigned seat and look around with interest at the gathered crowd, most of whom were holding up their phones and cameras, getting snapshots to bleat at each other about where they were and what they were doing.
He sat down when 72 intruded on his thoughts again. +<resignation; frustration> Very well. I trust your judgment. I just ask that you please share some of your reasoning with me.+
+<Satisfaction> You only had to ask.+
He paused to gather his thoughts, thinking how best to explain it to the much junior Number.
+<Mentoring> Despite our late alert to just how far along the humans were, we still established our presence on this planet sufficiently early that the usual strategy of engineering a large-scale exchange of nuclear armaments should have worked. There was no reason for it not to.+
+<Skeptical> If you say so.+
Six smiled. Two groups of human females had assembled on the open floor below, wearing coloured clothing to indicate their team, plus some light impact-resistant armour to protect their joints and head, and curious wheeled shoes. He wondered idly what the rules of the game were.
+<Assertive> I do say so. The failure of the strategy implies that there is some self-correcting element in the human psyche which compensates for the usual aggression of the deathworlder mindset. They are capable of being presented with an existential threat and choosing NOT to attack it, out of longer-term self interest.+
The teams set up—a huddle of eight players, four from each team, blocking the path of the two in the back wearing a starred cover on their helmets.
Seventy-Two still wasn’t persuaded. +<Dismissive> So they’re not stupid. You’ve not explained what that has to do with wasting my last biodrone on this suicide mission.+
+<Explanatory> Their behaviour in a small crisis may shed light on their probable reaction to a larger one. By observing the former, I intend to gain insight into possible avenues of attack which we can exploit to eradicate them.+
A whistle blew, and the two players with stars on their helmets launched themselves forward, battling to get past the players in front. It was all remarkably physical, the players forcing one another off-balance and restraining one another with force that would have crippled or killed most life forms. Even as he watched, one of the starred players fell and slid some way on her back, her helmeted skull bouncing against the hard polished concrete floor. It was a serious blow, but she bounced back to her feet and threw herself into the fray again as if it was routine.
+<defeat> I can’t find fault with your reasoning. I just hope this pays off with useful intelligence.+
+<confidence> It will.+
There was no reply. The crowd emitted a delighted noise as one of the starred players broke free and accelerated around the oval track before diving straight back into the scrum she had so recently escaped. This time, with speed on her side she skipped through the pack and out the far side, at one point teetering on one wheeled foot on the very precipice of the track. The other starred player broke loose and gave chase, prompting the first one to dodge three more of the other team before patting her flanks three times, prompting a whistle to sound.
Eight points were awarded, and Six leant forward, interested to figure out the rules of this bellicose game before it went extinct along with the species that invented it.
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV
Adam’s phone pinged after a tense two minutes.
The message from Dad read simply: “It’s him GTFO dont alert crowd: panic even more dngrs.”
Ava read the message, looked at his expression, and thank Christ, decided not to argue. She just stood with him and followed him out of the stands, down the stairs, and into the street, silent, pale and tense.
“What now?” Ava asked. “I mean, we just left all those people in there…”
“Dad said not to alarm them.” Adam said. “The cops’ll keep them safe.”
“I hope so.” she folded her arms low across her tummy, hunched and stressed. Adam didn’t even think twice—he drew her in for a hug.
He looked at his phone as it pinged again. The message just read: “Proud of you. Love you. Stay safe.”
Date Point 3y 8m 2w 4d AV
Seventy-two would have truly preferred to keep his last drone intact, but Six’s superior rank—even if the older Number preferred not to rely on it, carried all the weight it needed to.
Still, it was good that the arrogant Hierarch had shut up for the time being. It allowed Seventy-Two time to think and prepare some contingencies that <em>might</em>—with luck—mean they got to keep the biodrone after all.
His hopes of that were dashed when Six’s impatient mental tones cut into his planning. +<query> What is the biodrone’s ETA?+
+<Report> It has arrived. Retrieving the weapon from the vehicle’s cargo compartment now.+
This was, technically, a small lie—the drone had been sitting in the car park for a few minutes awaiting the go signal while 72 desperately tried to work a survival scenario that would allow him to retain his last precious drone. Annoyed and resigned, he wrote the thing off. Six would just have to acquire the raw material to create the replacements himself, being the last remaining ambulatory part of the operation.
+<Satisfaction> Good. Remember to instruct it not to shoot into the section where I’m sitting.+
72 couldn’t resist ironically echoing Six’s own words back at him. <Patient request> +I just ask—please—that you trust that I know what I’m doing.+
This was met with silence.
One of his watcher programs flashed up possibly relevant activity. He had snuck the virus into the San Diego PD dispatch system years ago: it was in its own way a little bit sapient, and could creatively interpret the flow of data inside the law enforcement information networks, looking for relevant or useful information.
He allowed the information to be injected into his consciousness as he worked at getting the drone into the building undetected so that it could “poke the hornet’s nest” as Six had ordered.
“Dispatch, Eight-one-niner, I have a tipoff on a suspect wanted for multiple violent felonies. He’s at Skateworld, Linda Vista and Comstock, please advise.”
Disbelief was the only conceivable response. There was no possible way that Six’s biodrone could have been recognised, it was designed to be utterly anonymous. The things vanished in crowded areas. Its social stealth should have been perfect.
He ordered the armed Biodrone to abort its assault on the building, and listened.
“Eight-one-niner, Dispatch, is the sighting confirmed?”
“Dispatch, Eight-one-niner, positive ID, this guy’s wanted for multiple homicide and domestic terrorism, could be a mass shooting about to start over there, request special tactics.”
Special tactics. What, exactly, that meant was not known to Seventy-Two, but there was no point sending in the biodrone now—it would surely be intercepted and destroyed without accomplishing anything more than they already had.
In fact, now he thought about it, this was exactly the kind of response that Six had intended to elicit. That it was arriving before anything even started was… very troubling, but…
“Eight-one-niner, Dispatch, be advised, special tactics is enroute, creating talk group with their captain.”
For the first time since he had arrived on Earth, Seventy-Two understood the urge to swear, and spoke aloud: “Feces!”
He followed that declaration with an urgent transmission to Six. +<Alarm; disbelief> Armed response units will be converging on your location imminently. Abort.+
+<Incredulity> That’s impossible, nothing’s happened yet.+
+<Firm assertion> I’m listening to their communications. Abort.+
+<Reluctant acknowledgment> Aborting.+
+<firm> I’ve withdrawn the assault unit, too. I think we have all the information you need.+
+<Worried> I think you’re right…+