Freaks in the City (4 page)

A couple of the men—pulled from active
security details at a guess—divested themselves of weapons. Caine
noted one man slide a quick sideways glance at Scars.

Interesting. Caine didn’t push the matter.
It would only make the coming confrontation more authentic.

The men entered the room and headed for the
weapons laid out on the mats by the north wall. Only Scars
hesitated, glancing first at the door as it closed behind the last
man, and then up at the Caine and the techs, before striding over
to the weapons cache. The significance of that heavily reinforced
door had not escaped him.

Caine appropriated the spare seat next to
Williams so he would have an unobstructed view of the action via
both the monitors and the viewing window. He watched intently as
the volunteers tested the various weapons for balance and grip, and
made their selections.

Sloane thumbed the mic. “Cyborg Unit
Six-Point-0. You are instructed to defend and disable only. Human
life is to be preserved. Human safety is paramount. Do you
understand?”

“I understand.”

“Confirm instruction.”

“I will defend and disable. Human life is to
be preserved. Human safety is paramount.”

“Very good, Six-Point-0. Standby to
engage.”

“Standing by.”

“Who’s up first?” Williams said into the
mic, his tone oozing false good-humor.

Caine leaned forward. “Volunteers are to
engage en masse.”

Williams gave him stunned eyes, opened his
mouth as if to speak and then shut it with a snap. He gulped, and
then spoke into the mic. “Uh, slight change of plans. Make that six
against one—the one being Sixer, uh, Six-Point-0, of course.”

Sloane hurriedly took over. Caine suspected
he didn’t trust Williams to not run off at the mouth and start
spouting reasons why pitting humans against the cyborg was a bad
idea. “Gentleman, on my mark. Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, await
command to engage. Confirm.”

“Confirmed.”

“Three. Two. One. Engage!”

What followed was a melee of whirring
weapons punctuated by grunts of pain, shouts, and screams, as
Caine’s pride and joy—the culmination of his extraordinary
vision—disabled its opponents.

A grin split his face. It was surreal, as if
he were watching some child’s cartoon where a superhero took on a
bunch of bad guys and dispatched them with ruthless efficiency.
And, just like in a cartoon, men flew every which way. Those not
immediately rendered unconscious scrambled to their feet and
retrieved their weapons before re-engaging, only to be disarmed and
tossed aside a second time. And to Caine it seemed as though mere
seconds passed before five men lay unconscious, leaving only one
man standing. Scars.

Caine glanced at the timepiece on the
control panel. The countdown showed a little over two minutes had
passed.

“Engage,” he muttered. “What are you waiting
for?”

But Scars refused to play. Throwing up his
hands in the universal gesture for surrender, he backed up.

Six-Point-0 stalked him.

Sloane yelled into the mic. “Cyborg Unit
Six-Point-0, do not engage. Repeat: do not engage. Opponent has
surrendered. Opponent is no longer a threat. Repeat: opponent is no
longer a threat. Do not engage!”

Six-Point-0 continued to advance.

“Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, this is Sloane,
Goodkind Employee ID 7-8-3-1-2. I command you to standby and await
further instructions. Repeat: standby and await further
instructions. Confirm command.” A pause, and then, “Confirm
command, damn you.”

Williams gabbled into his mic, his voice a
shrill screech. “Cyborg Unit Six-Point-0, this is Williams,
Goodkind Employee ID 1-0-2-2-1-4. I command you to shut down
immediately. Repeat: shut down immediately!”

The retreating man’s gaze darted about the
room. His angry expression morphed to fearful as both techs
screamed instructions into the mic and the cyborg ignored them all,
intent on its target.

“Shit!” Williams’ mutely pleading gaze fixed
on Caine.

The tech knew Caine could access the
cyborg’s core programming and override all commands. Of course
Caine ignored the tech’s silent plea. Scars could flee, but the
only cover was the obstacle course, and if the man chose that
option his opponent would be on him in an instant.

But although bloodied and battered and
disarmed of the weapon he’d chosen, Scars was not as helpless as he
appeared. His gaze flicked upward to Caine for a couple of breaths,
before fixing again on the cyborg.

Caine, carefully observing the man’s
expression, spotted the “tell”—the fleeting hatred and despair
twisting his scarred features. Scars had resolved to use maximum
force to defend himself. He didn’t care Six-Point-0’s predecessors
had all been failures, that only this one cyborg unit had been
deemed a success. He didn’t care that this cyborg had taken
billions of dollars and countless man-hours to perfect, and if it
were damaged beyond repair it could set the company back a decade.
He’d blow its artificial brain to smithereens if he could.

Caine’s lips curled into a sardonic grin.
The man didn’t stand a chance.

Scars never took his gaze from the cyborg as
he bent to snatch a small handgun from his right boot. “Stop right
there, you freak,” he snarled.

To Caine’s surprise and disappointment,
Six-Point-0 halted.

“I know you’re smart enough to understand
what this is.” Scars made a slight motion with the muzzle of the
weapon. “One more step and I’ll use you for target practice.
Understand?”

Six-Point-0 appeared to be taking the
measure of the man, for the cyborg cocked its head slightly to one
side. Then it took one slow, deliberate step forward.

Scars didn’t hesitate. He pumped three
bullets into the cyborg. His aim was excellent. Six-Point-0 took
the first two hits in the chest and the third in the head, but the
cyborg continued to advance.

Sloane shouted into the mic for the man to
relinquish his weapon and lie face-down on the ground with his
hands behind his head. Williams had resumed screaming useless
commands at Six-Point-0.

Scars paid them no heed. His whole focus was
on the cyborg, gauging its next move.

The cyborg launched itself at him. Scars
emptied the clip at the blur of movement. Caine watched, entranced,
as Six-Point-0 ripped the gun from the man’s hand, picked him up
and slung him at the nearest wall. The sickening crack as he hit
finally silenced the bleating techs.

“Threat neutralized,” the cyborg said.
“Remaining humans are no longer endangered, however immediate
medical attention is recommended.”

Caine turned his attention to the techs.

Williams was staring at the broken corpse,
his mouth rounded into an O that screamed horror. Sloane stared at
his hands, his expression blank save for a tic at the corner of one
eye.

Caine toggled the mic. “Excellent work,
Six-Point-0. Please stand down.” To the two techs he said, “Call in
the medics.”

“Yes sir,” Sloane said.

“S-sir?” Williams had finally found his
tongue. “Your instructions as to how we proceed with Six-Point-0’s,
uh, glitch?”

Fleeting satisfaction quirked Caine’s lips.
Williams was learning. “I will deal with it.”

“A-And the possibility the bullets have
damaged Six-Point-0’s internals?”

Caine speared him with a look. “Have
they?”

“Not according to the readouts but—”

“Do the bullets need to be removed?”

“Six-Point-0’s system will treat them like
foreign bodies and eventually expel them but—”

This time it was Sloane who interrupted.
“Sir, I feel compelled to reiterate that core commands must be
carefully analyzed and verified to ensure no errors of logic.
Otherwise there is a substantial risk that—”

“Thank you, Sloane. Your concern is duly
noted. That will be all. You may both stand down until further
notice.”

“Yes, sir.”

Both techs bolted for the door.

The cyborg stood at rest, awaiting
instructions.

Caine keyed in the override code that would
unlock any door in the lab, before toggling the mic. “Cyborg Unit
Six-Point-0, this is Evan Lawrence Caine. Analyze voiceprint and
confirm.”

“Voiceprint confirmed. Good afternoon, Mr.
Caine.”

“Follow me.” Caine turned on his heel and
left the room. He did not bother to verify the cyborg was
following. He expected to be obeyed by human and cyborg alike. And
as he strolled down the corridor toward his office, he whistled an
aria from his favorite opera.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Caine did
not believe Gamma-Dash-One had been destroyed in the Snapperton
explosion. Gamma was still at large.

His whistle strangled in his throat as he
recalled Gamma’s phone call to his private, secure line, just
minutes prior to the explosion. The cyborg had demanded the
immediate release of Michael White, AKA Mike Davidson, from Caine’s
employ. That humiliating call had also ensured Davidson’s wife and
children could no longer be used as leverage to ensure Davidson’s
continued cooperation. The cyborg’s threats had been creative—so
cleverly conceived that Caine had felt nothing but admiration….
Until the reality of having his secret research made public across
all worldwide media outlets, and his precious company linked to
known international terrorist groups, had sunk in.

Caine’s grudging respect for Gamma’s
deviousness had been tempered by the surety that his extraction
team would prevail—that Gamma would soon be in his hands. Its
defects would be ferreted out and corrected, and Caine would
command it as he willed. But the cyborg had eluded him, and not
even Caine was arrogant enough to risk putting its threats of
exposure to the test.

As the months dragged on, the simmering fury
that burned his gut ate away at him. He hated that he’d been so
thoroughly outmaneuvered by a glorified machine. But then had come
the breakthrough that changed everything. Now Caine finally had his
own cyborg, a far superior cyborg to Durham’s defective, crippled
creation that had formed unnatural attachments to humans.

His techs were awed that Durham had created
a cyborg with the capacity to empathize with humans—to feel. They’d
love to get their hands on Gamma for research purposes. But such a
groundbreaking scientific breakthrough did not matter to Caine.
Such “enhancements” were anathema to him. He saw Gamma’s capacity
to feel human emotions as a weakness. And in Caine’s worldview,
weakness could not be tolerated.

Six-Point-0 would destroy Gamma. And after
the deed was done, Mike Davidson would be taught that no one walked
away from Evan Caine.

~~~

The bell blared. Sixer observed the final
group of students scurrying toward their classrooms. He—his
physical shell was male, so “he” was a logical label—scanned the
manicured grounds of Hillside Preparatory School. The groundsman
had mowed the lawns yesterday and was currently replanting the
flowerbeds outside the administration office. The caretaker was
fixing a leaking pipe. All clear.

Sixer exited the storage shed, headed for
the Technology block, and swarmed up the drainpipe, onto the roof.
It was highly unlikely he would be spotted but he kept low,
crawling across the roof on his belly. While he crawled, he
accessed the information he’d unearthed on one Michael James
Davidson, former employee of Goodkind Electronics.

Michael Davidson, AKA Michael White, had
been one of a select few with access to the “hush-hush”
Experimental Research and Development Department known as
E-R-Double-D. Sixer had been covertly observing the Davidsons for
the past three days, and had conducted a thorough search of their
house two nights ago when they’d gone out for dinner with their
daughter.

He had discovered nothing to suggest either
Michael or Marissa Davidson were in direct contact with the cyborg
unit designated Gamma-Dash-One.

Marissa had recently been promoted to
paralegal at the Snapperton Law Office. Her old superior had
resigned, and the new man hired in his place had been quick to
recognize Marissa’s skills and qualifications were under-utilized.
Marissa’s skill set was of no use to Sixer, however.

He was still investigating the scope of
Michael’s skills.

Sixer had not been made privy to the
qualities or abilities that had first brought Michael Davidson to
Caine’s attention but he knew Caine had resorted to blackmail to
forcibly recruit Michael. That was but one of the reasons Sixer had
decided to dig into the man’s past. A more compelling reason was
that Davidson had been the only human to successfully track Gamma
down—not once, but twice.

Michael was what humans termed a computer
genius. At the age of nine, he’d hacked into the United States Air
Force GPS satellite tracking system, and reconfigured it so that
for one day only—the day of his ninth birthday, in fact—all GPS
locations were set to his parents’ house.... which had been the
only reason the authorities had tracked him down. When asked why
he’d done it and what he’d hoped to achieve, Michael had answered,
“I just wanted to see if I could do it. Turns out I could. Cool,
huh?”

The stunt had earned him a tour of the
Pentagon courtesy of the U.S. Air Force’s Chief of Staff, who had
prudently decided to treat the precocious boy’s unique skill set as
an asset rather than attempt to shut him down. From what Sixer had
been able to discover, Michael had thought this covert “spy stuff”
was “awesome”. But as he matured, he’d become disillusioned. In his
early twenties he cut a deal. As yet Sixer had been unable to
discover the exact terms, but the gist was that he’d remain a free
man provided he kept a low profile.

Michael had chosen Snapperton as his new
home. He’d met Marissa, they’d gotten married, and Michael had
earned a modest income as computer science teacher. His life from
that point on had been unremarkable until he’d been forcibly
recruited by Evan Caine. Michael was currently employed here at
Hillside, an exclusive private school one county over from
Snapperton.