Interesting Places (Interesting Times #2) (3 page)

Oliver managed to get his gun out of
his ankle holster and fired two shots at the cyborg, missing him entirely. The
cyborg turned toward him. “I have no fight with you,” he said. “Stay out of
this.” Then he fired three times at the Lincoln. This time the energy appeared
to electrify the car.

“Get back!” Tyler shouted. He,
Oliver, and Jeffrey scurried away from the car as the metal began to smoke.

Sally had taken the brief interval
the cyborg had been distracted to pop open her Miata’s trunk. She came out of
it with an AR-15 assault rifle. Sally didn’t like to go anywhere without a
small arsenal to keep her company. She leveled the rifle at the cyborg and
fired six shots. Six 7.62 millimeter bullets tore through the cyborg’s chest
plate. He managed to get one more shot off but missed wildly, then dropped the
rifle and collapsed to his knees.

Sally advanced on the cyborg slowly,
the AR-15 pointed directly at his skull. After a moment’s hesitation, Oliver
and Tyler approached as well. Oliver kept his gun lowered at his side. Even if
Oliver had been better at shooting things, he doubted the cyborg had the
strength left to reach for his weapon.

Sally stopped three feet away from
the cyborg, just out of arm’s length, even though it seemed unlikely she was in
any danger of him trying to reach for her now. The cyborg took a slow breath
and coughed, flecks of blood appearing on his lips. Oliver was amazed the man
was still alive at all, but as he watched he could see that the cyborg’s armor
was slowly stitching itself back together, bits of metal elongating and joining
each other, but the process didn’t appear to be entirely working. Was he too
badly damaged, or was it due to the poor condition he’d seemed to be in when
he’d gotten out of the van? And if his armor could rebuild itself, did that
mean some similar process might have been working on his internal organs? Was
that why he was still breathing?

“I failed,” the cyborg said, shaking
his head slowly.

“You did,” Sally said. “How many of
there are you?”

“I was the last,” the cyborg said. As
Oliver watched, the cyborg’s armor slowly stopped repairing itself and he heard
a noise like a bank of fluorescent light bulbs being switched off.

“What is your designation?” Sally
asked.

“My name is Jonathan,” the cyborg
said.

“What is your designation?” Sally
repeated, louder this time.

“HK-1987-DT.”

Sally nodded. “You were a hunter. How
many families did you run down? How many people did you kill?”

“Too many,” the cyborg said sadly. “I
was a hunter, but that was a long time ago. My name is Jonathan.”

“Should we be getting a doctor?”
Oliver asked.

“No,” Sally said.

The cyborg looked up at her. “Why did
you kill us?” he asked. His illuminated left eye had gone dead, its power
source seemingly terminated. A tear ran down his cheek from the other. “It was
over
.
We were cured. We were people again. You didn’t have to kill us.”

Sally opened her mouth but closed it
again. Whatever she’d expected the cyborg to say to her, this clearly hadn’t
been it. “I couldn’t,” she finally said. “I just couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t?” the cyborg asked.

“Let you live,” she said. “After what
you’d done, I just couldn’t…we were never going to go back to normal after
that. I wanted to, but…” she looked away. “I’m sorry.” Then she pulled the
trigger on the AR-15, sending a bullet through the cyborg’s skull. Bits of
brain and tiny pieces of metal splattered onto the cement behind him.

“Jesus
Christ
!” Jeffrey cried.

Sally lowered the gun and sighed
heavily.

There was a long silence, and then a
familiar voice said, “Well, Sally. I suppose this means now you really
have
killed them all.”

Oliver looked up. Artemis had stepped
out of the elevator lobby, her arms crossed in front of her. Seven stood just
behind her, rubbing at a developing bruise on his temple.

“So…I guess this means we’re
not
going to Sausalito?” Tyler asked.

Chapter 4

Roughly half of The Araneae Group’s
office on the 41
^st
floor looked much like that of any other office
one might visit in the financial district. Glass doors led from the elevator
lobby into a finely-appointed reception area where framed portraits of major
cities hung on the walls. Four large chairs sat around a circular table next to
a water cooler. Nearby a two-foot tall snake plant grew out of a white pot. Two
orchids sat together on a long L-shaped reception desk.

On a weekday Bruce Caldwell, the
firm’s receptionist, would have been behind the desk. He normally sat with a
Bluetooth receiver in his ear and greeted any visitors who might happen by with
a cheerful smile. Bruce was nearly seven feet tall, built like an NFL
linebacker, and had a small arsenal tucked away in his desk. To the best of
Oliver’s knowledge he’d never had the need to use it, or the switch on his
phone that would lock the entire place down with steel doors like a bank vault.
Oliver found himself wishing Bruce worked weekends; they could have used
another pair of strong hands as he and Tyler dragged the dead cyborg’s body
inside.

Behind the reception desk was what
Oliver thought of as the executive area. Eight private offices were connected
by a hallway that ran from one end of the building to the other. Only four were
currently occupied. Their staff numbers could fluctuate and were hard to
predict from one day to another. It wasn’t as if they could put up a “help
wanted” advertisement. Employees at Araneae typically fell into their positions
through circumstances outside their control. Tyler had joined after he’d been
turned into a werewolf and found himself unwilling to return to his old job as
a police officer in Honolulu. Oliver had been offered a job after his incident
with the lizard people. Seven had been recruited from the government. Oliver
had assumed he’d worked for the NSA at one point, but Seven had laughed
uproariously when Oliver had asked and said something about not being in
kindergarten. And Sally…Oliver had never gotten the details on that one. Sally
didn’t talk much about her past, Artemis didn’t talk much at all, and while
Tyler knew the story, he’d told Oliver that it wasn’t his story to tell.

The executive half of the office also
had a large conference room with presentation equipment, a small kitchen area,
and a space Oliver called the “crash room.” It held two twin beds, a couch,
several bookshelves, and an entertainment center. Seven seemed to spend more
time staying there than he did at his own home, wherever that was. Oliver had
stayed there overnight once or twice when he’d found himself too tired to
manage the commute home. He’d brought in a litter box and set of food and water
bowls for Jeffrey some time ago, just in case the cat happened to be at the
office for some reason. Tonight he was glad he’d done so; it might stave off
the cat complaining until they got home.

The other half of the office,
accessible only through a set of heavy security doors in case someone managed
to get by Bruce, contained Seven’s lab. It was
one
of his labs, anyway.
He had at least two others that Oliver knew of in other cities. This one was
filled with computers, stacks of servers taller than Oliver, and a variety of
technical equipment. Oliver didn’t know what half of the things in there did,
and wasn’t entirely sure that all of them originated on Earth. He’d only been
at Araneae for six months, but found very little was capable of surprising him
anymore.

A side room contained a small operating
theater. It wasn’t used for medical purposes, but rather for examination and
occasionally disassembly of interesting things they found on their assignments.

“Get him on the table,” Artemis said,
nodding at the cyborg as they stopped for Seven to enter a security code
outside the lab. “Seven, take him apart. I want to know everything about how he
got here. The rest of you, when you’re done, my office.” With that she turned
and headed down the hall.

Oliver had never quite gotten used to
taking orders from Artemis. It had nothing to do with the fact that she was
female, or that Oliver had any interest in being the boss himself. It was
rather that Artemis appeared to be a ten-year-old girl. He knew that she
wasn’t, of course, at least not chronologically. Nobody on the team knew
exactly how old Artemis was, and the girl had never volunteered the
information, but a very old vampire he’d met once had told him that he’d first
met Artemis when he was still very young. Oliver had taken that to mean she
could be hundreds of years old, but once in a conversation Artemis had made
reference to having had difficulty understanding the intricacies of Roman tax
law. It had taken Oliver a moment to realize she wasn’t talking about a trip
she’d taken to Italy recently.

Oliver and Tyler helped Seven get the
cyborg onto the operating table and then walked back to the executive area with
Sally.

Artemis was waiting for them behind a
large oak desk when they reached her office, fingers steepled in front of her.
Four chairs sat in front of the desk. She didn’t need to motion for them to sit
down. Oliver felt a sense of dread, as if he were being called into the
principal’s office for a scolding. That seemed strange to him, given that he
hadn’t actually done anything
wrong
, and also that she was wearing a
t-shirt with a Mr. Snuffleupagus print on it, but Artemis tended to be stern on
a good day, and this was no longer a good day.

A china teapot sat on a silver tray in
front of them, with three small cups next to it. Artemis poured the tea
silently. Oliver and Tyler each took a cup. Sally didn’t touch hers. She hadn’t
said a word since putting a bullet in the cyborg’s head.

Jeffrey jumped onto Oliver’s lap. “I
don’t see a cup for me,” he noted, looking at the tray.

“Have you begun drinking tea?”
Artemis asked.

“No, but it’s nice to be offered.”

“I shall have to remember that.”
Artemis took a small sip from her cup. “First things first. Are any of you
injured?”

Oliver and Tyler shook their heads.
“He didn’t seem to want to hurt us,” Oliver said. “Well, not me and Tyler.”

“Or me,” said Jeffrey.

“Sally?” Artemis asked.

Sally stared off into space, her eyes
vacant. Oliver wasn’t sure she’d heard the question. On second thought, he
wasn’t entirely sure she even knew where she was.

Tyler put a hand on her arm. “Sally?”
he asked gently. “Are you hit?”

Sally looked down at his hand as if
confused by the physical contact. “No,” she said. Her voice sounded slightly
groggy. If she hadn’t been in his presence the entire time since they’d encountered
the cyborg, Oliver might have thought she’d snuck off to a bar for a quick
drink or five.

“There is that much, then,” Artemis
said. “Someone should tell me what happened now.” She looked at them. “Begin
speaking.”

Sally didn’t look to be in any condition
to talk, so Oliver took the initiative. “We were just coming back from the
airport,” he began. It only took a few minutes to break down the encounter. The
whole thing had been over nearly as quickly as it had begun. Oliver paused for
a moment when he was finished. “I thought the cyborgs were gone,” he said to
Artemis.

“It would appear that one survived,”
Artemis noted. “Hopefully he was telling the truth when he said he was alone,
but I suppose he had no reason to lie.” She pressed a button on her phone to
activate the intercom. “Seven?”

“Here,” Seven’s voice came back.

“Report.”

“I’ve barely started with him!” Seven
protested. “Their armor doesn’t come off that easily. Half of it is grafted
into the skin.”

“First impressions.”

Seven sighed loudly over the speaker.
“He was already badly damaged before Sally shot him. I don’t think he’d have
lasted for more than a few more days.”

“How was he damaged?” Artemis asked.
“Had he been in combat?”

“Not recently. I’m running some of
his blood now, but I’d say most of his nanobots have been down for a while. I
think the virus got him but he managed to survive it.”

“How is that possible?”

“No idea. Interference at deployment,
maybe. Some kind of corruption. He was running on empty, though. I’m sure of
that much.”

“He had nowhere to go for repairs,”
Tyler said. “The rest of them were dead.”

“What about Overlord?” Artemis asked.

“Disabled. I doubt it’s been active
since the end of the war. I’ll try to confirm it, but as far as I can tell he
was a human, at least mentally.”

“Keep working.” Artemis ended the
call. “We may wind up calling this lucky,” she told the others. “One of them
was dangerous enough. If six cyborgs had survived, I suspect things would have
ended quite differently.”

“He said he didn’t want to fight me or
Tyler,” Oliver said. “Why not?”

Artemis watched Sally for a moment.
“He didn’t come here for a fight, Mr. Jones. He wanted justice, or what he
believed to be justice. I imagine it was all he felt he had. There was no place
left for him in his world.”

“Which makes me wonder how he got
here,” Tyler said. He glanced at Sally. “Our mirror was broken. Could there be
another one?”

“Perhaps, but I suspect he arrived
through other means. They had been working on teleportation for some time;
perhaps that work finally came to fruition.” Artemis ran a hand through her
blonde hair. “Seven may be able to tell us more at some point, but I suspect
that the electromagnetic storm we picked up in Sausalito and the similar
readings in the garage were related to his journey here.”

“It took him over a year,” Tyler said
quietly. “All that time, just to get here and…” he put a hand on Sally’s arm.
“Well, he didn’t get you. You’re fine.”

Sally was still staring at nothing.

“Sally?” Artemis asked. “Are you all
right?”

Sally shook her head. “He…he was a
person
.”

“Of course he was a person, Sally.
They were
all
people. I did try to tell you that once before, if you
remember. At the time you told me to…” Artemis trailed off. “It no longer
matters.”

“Why did he call you
Salera
?”
Oliver asked.

“Because that is her name,” Artemis
replied.

“It’s not my name anymore,” Sally
said. “Don’t say it again.”

“Why not?” Jeffrey asked. He looked
at Oliver. “Does this mean we can change our names whenever we want? I want everyone
to call me Big Jim Sla…”

“Enough,” Artemis cut him off.
“Tyler, take Sally home and keep an eye on her tonight. Oliver, stay a moment.”

Oliver expected Sally to protest that
she didn’t need to be taken care of, but she didn’t say a word as Tyler helped
her to her feet and led her out of the office. To Oliver she looked frail, as
if she’d aged fifty years in the last half hour. She moved like she wouldn’t
have been able to walk, or even stand up, without assistance.

Artemis sipped her tea as she watched
them go, then turned back to Oliver. “Well, Mr. Jones. You seem to be having a
bit of a day.”

“I kicked Dracula’s ass,” Jeffrey
said.

“Did you?” Artemis asked, eyebrows
raised. “I was almost certain you would come in handy sooner or later.”

“Really?”

“No, not really.”

“Meanie.”

A faint smile crossed Artemis’s lips,
and then her neutral expression returned. “Well, then. Where should I begin?”