“I will give you back your wife
and children. They are here. Safe. Secure. An insurance policy, you might say.
In fact, the insurance policy we had, and that we offered you, before you shot
up the police and a whole load of military grade Justice and Battle SIMs, and
caused a merry riot across the face of the Theme Planet.”
“You’re telling the truth? They’re
here?”
“Yes.”
“Then let’s go to them!” yelled
Dex. “Come on, I’ll show you, I’ll prove it to you! I’m not some deranged
fucking android machine. I’ll show you, all I want is my family back. All I
want is my Katrina, and my little girls!”
“Follow me,” said Napper,
stepping to one side. “And remember, the accelerator is aimed at your back. It’ll
rip you in half in the blink of an eye! So don’t try anything foolish. Don’t
try anything... an android might try.” He smiled, and it was a grim smile
indeed.
Napper strode down the huge
chamber, and Dex followed, then stopped. He glanced back at the woman. “What
about her?”
“What about her?”
“Who is she?”
“You do not need to know.”
“Are you going to kill her?”
“Yes. She is an Anarchy Android.
Of
that,
we are certain without doubt.”
“She looks so... human.”
“They all do. That’s the way they
were made.”
“I find it hard to believe.”
“Do you want to see your family?”
said Napper, crimson eyes blazing, and as they’d been talking Dex had
unconsciously edged towards the man, a matter of inches, but far enough for...
Dex’s fist lashed out, a straight punch, hammering
through
Napper’s
teeth and embedding in the core of his brain. Napper died instantly. Dex lifted
his arm, and the whole of Napper’s body flipped over, around, as the
accelerator blast
tore
through it, ripping it asunder and shredding
Napper’s limbs and fingers and organs in a hundred different directions. Blood
fell like rain. Hung in the air like a fine mist. Body parts pattered on the
thick rug. But now... now Dex had
seen
the accelerator blast, witnessed
its location, and dived for the SMKK, grabbing the weapon, rolling as another
blast tore a marble pillar into powder, exploding around Dexter Colls, and the
SMKK slammed around, its barrel a black eye which went
blam.
A
bullet spun across the chamber and through the mouth of a painting depicting an
angel. Behind the painting, a woman was hit between the eyes and slammed back
against her chair, fingers slack on the accelerator’s glowing controls.
Dex stood there, and looked down
at the SMKK. Then he looked left, at Napper’s shredded leg, and right, to a
half-portion of Napper’s head. The jaw was missing, and the head looked
strangely shrunken; as if tampered with by witch doctors.
Dex swallowed, slowly, and
breathed deep.
What happened? What hit me? What
went...
click?
How did I do that? How did I kill
him? How did I kill him,
and
the controller?
Dex swallowed again, and his
pulse was racing, and his heart was drumming like rainfall in a storm. There
could only be one answer. Normal people, normal
policemen
didn’t punch
an enemy through the mouth and flip his body up and over to use as a shield against
a military accelerator weapon. Normal people didn’t do those things. Androids
did those things.
No.
Bullshit.
He was trained, trained hard and
fast in rules of combat; he’d fought in the Helix War, and patrolled the mean
streets of London for decades. Dex was a tough fucker; as tough as they got.
Dex walked back to the woman
lying on the rug. She was coming round, moaning softly, eyelids fluttering. Dex
knelt by her side, touched her gently on the arm as flickering thoughts rioted
like an exploding volcano through his mind -
Am I an android?
A fucking android!
If
I’m an android, then...
My life is a lie.
My wife is not my wife.
My children are not my
children...
No. No.
That cannot be.
Cannot be possible.
Is not... believable. Ever.
I am Dexter Colls. I have a
beautiful family, a wife, children, a good job in London, a brother-in-law who’s
getting divorced, a best mate with bad breath, a love of whiskey and old
filmys, how the fuck can an android have all that
?
It’s ridiculous! A lie. A plot
of some kind. Stick to the facts, hold on to the truth, because your mind is
all you have, the facts are all you can see, trust the evidence before you,
trust your own mind and don’t allow it to be twisted; to snap...
The woman sat up.
Dexter blinked.
She smiled.
“You made it,” she said.
~ * ~
CHAPTER ELEVEN
VAGABONDS
“I
don’t understand,”
said Dex, and
confusion was his mistress.
“You’re not expected to
understand; just obey.” “Obey?”
“The Ministers of Joy.”
Amba strode naked across the
thick carpets, and scooped up the SMKK. Then she turned and smiled at Dex, but
it was a hollow smile; a smile without warmth. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Rescuing me?”
“How did I rescue you?”
“You cared,” said Amba, glancing down
at some of the torn pieces which remained from Napper. “Or cared enough to
question, at least. They had me. The Monolith Mainframe had me. It’s called
SARAH. A SA34000RAH. And we have to destroy it.”
“Whoa!” Dex held up his hands. “I
came here for my family. To rescue them. Napper said they were here, in this
building. In this...
Ride Museum.”
Amba laughed, moved back towards
him. On a low settee to one side of the room she located her clothes, and began
to dress. “This is the Monolith HQ. Their Headquarters. It looks like a castle
outside, and the beautiful trick is they even allow tourists access, to gawp
like idiots at the history of ride technology - but in reality, this is
Monolith’s base of operations.”
“There aren’t any guards,” said
Dex, eyes narrowed, staring at Amba, and all the while thinking,
this is
crazy shit, and this is one crazy woman; but what do I do now, where do I go? I
have to find Katrina. Have to find Molly and Toffee. Everything else is rancid
shit. Everything else is... irrelevant.
“Not as you would think of them,”
said Amba, softly. “But they are here. A whole battalion, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend,” said Dex,
jaw-line tight. “I killed Napper so I could rescue my children; it was nothing
to do with you, so don’t get your fucking hopes up. I had no idea you were
imprisoned. How could I? You were lying naked on the carpet, like Napper’s
prostrate whore.”
“I was imprisoned; my
mind
was imprisoned. SARAH had me. Was toying with me like a cat toys with a mouse.”
She gave a grim smile. “And the cat was just about to rip out my guts with a
sharpened claw - and in this world, in this...
reality,
I would have
died. You may not think you were acting in my best interests, but you were. You
recognised a fellow tortured soul. You recognised a fellow Anarchy Android.”
Dex stared at her.
“I am not an android,” he said at
last, his mouth dry.
“That’s what I used to say,”
whispered Amba, moving close to him. He could smell the musk of her skin, the
smell of sweat, and energy, and violence. She looked modest, by all accounts,
but by God she fired Dex’s blood like an insane injection of heroin straight to
the heart.
He coughed. “If I am an android,
why do you excite me so much?”
“It’s the way we’re made,” she
said, leaning towards him. Her breath was sweet, with just a hint of sweet oil
and
what was that sound, the click of stepping gears
?
Dex shook his head. All in his
imagination. Anyway, androids were organic, not mechanical; there would be no
oil, no gears, no cogs.
Unless there are modifications inside her.
“I am not an android,” snapped
Dex.
Amba fired a bullet from the
SMKK, at such close range the gun was deafening, the scorch of discharge hot
against Dex’s flesh. But he was already moving, twitching to one side, then
slamming his arm across to knock the SMKK away, and delivering a front kick
that sent Amba sailing backwards ten feet, to land on the carpet and roll and
come up in a crouch.
She stood, and walked back
towards him, SMKK held loosely to one side. She was grinning, and for the first
time Dex detected genuine humour.
“If you were human, you’d be dead
now.”
Dex stared down at his hands, and
his breathing was shallow, and he felt panic welling in his breast.
How had
he known she was going to fire? How did he react so quickly? How did he kick
her down the fucking room like that?
It was the war. The fucking Helix War!
It tuned him, like a fine instrument. An instrument of destruction. You spend
eight years out in the field, you’re going to get good. Good, or dead.
“You’re wrong,” he said, slowly.
“Accept it, or deny it, it is a
fact,” said Amba, and stopped a few feet away. “Why do you think Monolith’s
been trying to get rid of you so hard? They weren’t sure, Dexter. They weren’t
one hundred percent sure, there was doubt, and they couldn’t just gun down a
tourist; so they took your wife and kids and tried to negotiate you off the
planet. See what you’d do. How you’d react. But you’re an Anarchy Model. You
didn’t play ball. And that pretty much told them what they wanted to know.”
“Why didn’t they just kill me?”
Dex’s voice was a hollow tombstone.
“They didn’t want to risk killing
another
tourist. They’ve had bad press recently after that Sexcoaster
Lube Ride crash. And they didn’t want to aggravate Earth; not with rumours of
total war hanging in the balance. We are on the brink of an invasion here,
Dexter, and Monolith are trying to buy time to complete their army. Their code.
Their defence mechanism.”
“Their army?”
“It’s a beautiful thing,” said
Amba, and stepped forward, placing a hand on Dexter’s shoulder. “You’ll see. We
are here to destroy it. We are here to shut the Theme Planet down.”
“I... I just want my family.”
“They’re not your family, Dexter.”
“Then what the fuck are they?” he
growled.
“They’re here to watch you. To
make you feel more human. To help you... fit in. To make you
behave
human; for the purposes of infiltration. To get you past the Theme Planet
defences. Only... they tagged you. Somehow. Something you did. Monolith was
suspicious.”
“So my kids aren’t real?”
“They’re real enough,” said Amba,
words soft and lulling. “They’re human. I think. But they’re not your own flesh
and blood, if that’s what you mean. You’re an android. Androids cannot have
children.”