Broken Dragon (The Chronicles of Mara Lantern, Book 3) (12 page)

Mara caught Bohannon’s eye. “Maybe I should wait here.”

Jazz read her hesitance. “Don’t worry. There’s no blood or guts. Nothing to lose your lunch over.”

Bohannon waved for Mara to follow, and the nurse led them from the lobby into an alcove containing three sets of beige elevator doors. She pushed the Down button next to the middle doors. They all took on that strange silence that people do as they stepped into the empty elevator cab. Jazz pressed the P2 button. After the doors closed, Mara absently watched the lights above the door move from L to P1 and then to P2. In her not-too-distant past, taking an elevator ride into the ground to check out a “nonhuman” pedestrian might have raised her adrenaline levels to something between hyperfreaked-out and spastic. Now she was just curious. She must be getting jaded.

They disembarked in a parking garage and took a right. Jazz led them along the wall for about one hundred yards and then stopped in front of a pale blue door mounted into the concrete wall. Next to it was a keypad. She tapped in four numbers and yanked on the doorknob.

“The perimeter of the underground parking facility is lined with storage rooms that are only used intermittently for some reason, probably because we are all too lazy or busy to come all the way down here to get stuff,” Jazz said, as they stepped into the dark. A moment later the door closed behind them with a metallic clank. “Wait right here. I don’t want you to trip over something. The brilliant architects of this garage put the light switch on the far wall.”

They heard her shuffle around in the dark room. With a loud snap, a set of fluorescent tubes recessed in the ceiling ignited. The room looked like a concrete bunker with a metal counter and two sets of metal shelves mounted to the wall opposite the door. The room was empty, except for a sheet-covered gurney in the center of the floor. Jazz stood on the far side and waved a hand over the sheet, like a model on a game show.

“This, Lady and Gentleman, is our mystery pedestrian,” she said. “Would you like to take a look?”

Mara paled. “You said he was hit by a taxi? I’m not sure I want to see this.”

“I told you, honey. No blood or guts.” She pulled back the sheet.

Mara flinched.

Bohannon’s eyes widened. “Lord have mercy. What is it?”

On the gurney lay the faceless body of a young black man. Apart from the circuitry and filaments nested in the open skull, the body appeared to be that of a college-bound man. A series of rips and gouges wrapped around the left side of his torso, but the skin looked more like crumpled Mylar than human skin. There was no bruising, no blood or meaty puckering, just damage that looked antiseptic, inorganic. A broken machine after a fender bender. One particularly deep gouge beneath the left nipple exposed a metallic rib. His hips and legs lay at an unnatural angle, slightly off-kilter from the rest of his frame.

Jazz shrugged. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it was a robot of some kind.”

“Where’ s his face?” Mara asked without taking her eyes off the gurney.

“Oh, it’s down here.” Jazz reached under the sheet at the foot of the gurney and pulled out what looked like a mask.

Mara reached for it. “Is it all right if I look at it?”

“Be my guest.” Jazz walked around the gurney and handed it to her. She turned to Bohannon and said, “I have to get back to the ER. You guys are welcome to stay down here as long as you like. But I think what the front office guys really want you to do is roll this thing out of here, if that’s at all possible.”

“I understand that this is a very strange situation, but I’m not sure I understand the level of anxiety your administrators feel about this. Obviously this is some kind of mechanical device that got damaged in traffic. What’s the big deal?” Bohannon asked.

“Hospital administrators live in constant fear of lawsuits. Anything out of the ordinary sets off all kinds of alarm bells around here.” Jazz stopped next to the door and hit her head with the heel of her hand. “Oh, I almost forgot.” She reached into the front pocket of her scrubs and pulled out a wallet. “The robot was carrying this wallet. He has a driver’s license, several credit cards and a college ID in there. The photos look like that face Mara’s holding in her hands. His name was Cameron Lee.”

“So you’re saying this is a person?” Mara asked, while slowly turning the mask in her hands.

Jazz shook her head. “No, I didn’t say that. I said it was a robot with a wallet. For all I know, the cards and ID are as artificial as it is. If it were a person, it would be in the morgue right now.”

The inside of the mask—the face of the young man who lay on the gurney—appeared scored with thousands, perhaps millions, of fine lines configured in an intricate web that covered its surface. Running a thumb over them, Mara could not detect any ridges; they were that fine. Not something easily manufactured, without the use of sophisticated lasers and software, or maybe something even more advanced. Turning it over, she looked at the face. The detail was amazing. The light brown skin had pores, follicles of fine hair on the upper cheeks, thicker dark stubble as it approached the jawline. Its eyelids were closed. She grazed the eyelashes with a finger. They felt real. So did the thick brows.

She flipped the faceplate over again and looked at the inside of its eyelids. Turning back toward the gurney, she peered into the jumble of exposed filaments and components in its head. “There doesn’t appear to be any obvious mechanism for the eyes, like a camera or a light sensor of some type that would align behind these eyelids,” she said.

Bohannon was examining the contents of Cameron Lee’s wallet and looked up. “Hold on a minute.” The detective grabbed his phone and scrolled on the screen with a thumb. “I want to check to see if this guy is on the passenger list.”

“He is. I remember the name.” Mara held up the mask and pointed to the faceless body. “There are no real eyes in his head. How can he see?”

“You are trying to figure out how it works?”

“Just curious. This technology is decades beyond anything we have, maybe even centuries ahead, especially if you consider that he is probably more than a mere robot. I mean, he might be a real person.”

“What are you talking about, a real person?”

“This robot had a counterpart in our realm, a real living human being named Cameron Lee. Clearly people from his realm are mechanical or cybernetic or
something
.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Bohannon said.

“Really? More ridiculous than an FBI agent turning into a lizard? More ridiculous than a bank robber turning into a giant fly, or a dead man infecting dozens of people with his spirit?”

“I get your point.”

Mara continued examining the face. It looked real. With a finger she pressed the side of the narrow nose. It bent slightly, giving as much under pressure as flesh supported by cartilage should, and it bounced back when she stopped. Almost imperceptible lines at the corners of the eyes and mouth hinted at the kind of wear and tear that comes with aging, comes with living. She poked at the full lips, pulled at one corner as if prompting him to smile.

The eyes snapped open.

“Oh, my God!” She fumbled the mask and struggled not to drop it on the floor. “Did you see that?” She got a grip on the sides of the face and turned it back toward her. The eyes stared back at her. The irises grew, and the pupils narrowed. They shifted left and right, then focused on Mara. “Are you seeing this, Detective?”

“Yeah, maybe you should put it down,” he said, pointing toward the gurney.

Mara held the face away from her, extending her arms as far as possible, and walked stiffly toward the gurney. The face blinked a couple times as she sat it down, propped up against the body’s hip, facing them. The nose wrinkled; the lips twitched. Mara slowly backed away. “Wow. Oh, wow,” she said. “What do we do now?”

“Hell if I know,” Bohannon said.

Mara’s phone vibrated in her jeans pocket. She didn’t make a move to answer it. After a moment it stopped.

“Well, we can’t just leave him here. What if he’s still alive?” she asked.

“Alive? We’re talking about a machine here. You probably just touched something by accident and activated whatever it is that’s animating that face.”

“I don’t know, Bo. Look at those eyes. It looks like they are actually watching us.”

Mara’s phone rang loudly from her pocket. Exasperated she pulled it out and asked no one in particular, “How did that happen? One minute it’s on Vibrate, and the next it just decides to ring on the highest volume setting?”

She glanced at the screen. It said
CAMERON LEE
.

“Holy crap.”

She held out the phone screen to Bohannon. His eyes widened, and he said, “You better answer it.”

Mara turned to the disembodied face on the gurney and said, “This can’t be …”

The corner of the face’s lips turned up, and the eyelids lowered, the closest thing a face without a head could get to a nod.

Mara tapped the Speakerphone icon. “Um, hello?”

“Mara Lantern,” the voice from the speakerphone stated.

“Who is this?”

“Cameron Lee.”

Mara looked at Bohannon aghast. After a few seconds he pointed to the phone, then made an open-and-close gesture with his fingers.
Talk
.

“I’m sorry. I’m a little confused about how this is possible. I’m looking at what’s left of Cameron Lee, and he’s not in much condition to talk, much less find my phone number and dial it.”

“You’re correct about that. I don’t seem to be able to talk. However, I didn’t need to find your phone number, since you’ve got Wi-Fi enabled on your phone. I simply connected to it.”

Mara looked down at the mask. “Right. You’re a wireless robot. That’s convenient.”

“Tell me what is going on. My field of vision is limited. How long have I been unconscious?” the voice on the phone asked.

Mara looked to Bohannon.

He turned toward the face on the gurney, then back toward the phone, not sure to whom or what he should be talking. “The accident was on Saturday. Today is Thursday,” he said.

“How badly am I hurt?”

“Assuming you are what we are looking at on this gurney, your face, which appears to be looking at us, has been knocked off your head. There seems to be some damage to your torso, and your hips and legs look sort of bent out of alignment,” Mara said.

“How did you get my faceplate working? Are you familiar with synthetic human physiology?”

“Synthetic human, is that what you are?” Mara asked.

“My physiology is synthetic. I’m as human as you. I’m just not made of blood and guts anymore. How did you repair my faceplate?”

“Are you saying that you once had a body that was not artificial?”

“That will take some time to explain. Do we really need to go into that while I’m sitting here in pieces? How did you get my faceplate active? You must know something about nanotechnology and neural connectivity.”

Mara shook her head. “Yeah, not so much.”

“So, who got the faceplate going?”

“I suspect it might have been me, but I don’t know anything about nanoneural whatever.”

“Then how did you do it?”

“Well, that too will take some time to explain,” Mara said. “Let’s just say I have a knack for fixing mechanical devices.”

“If that’s the case, what’s keeping you from finishing the job?” the voice from the phone said.

Mara leaned into the phone. “I’m sorry? Finish what job?”

“Finish fixing me. I can’t spend the rest of my life being a bodiless face sending pulses to a cell phone via Wi-Fi.”

Mara raised a finger and said, “Hold that thought. I need to confer with the detective here.” She tapped the End icon on her phone screen and turned to Bohannon. He had an exasperated look on his face. Mara said, “What?”

“Just how are you going to reconnect with him? You don’t have his number or log-in rights to whatever Wi-Fi signal he’s beaming from his nose. Also, if you don’t understand how he can see out of those eyes, how do you know he can’t hear us?” Bohannon stared at the face on the gurney. Its eyes were moving back and forth between the two of them.

“Oh, you’re right. I guess I’m a little more flustered by all this than I thought. He’ll have to figure out how to reconnect.” She paused to take a deep breath. “Now I’m not sure it’s a good idea to be repairing a robot from another realm. For all we know, he’s going to run around injecting people with little nanoviruses and turning everyone else into robots. We could all end up going to Jiffy Lube for our annual checkups.”

“You’re just going to leave that face on the gurney? He’s eventually going to tap into someone else’s phone.”

“Yeah, but I don’t think anyone else will be able to fix him. The technology is just too far out there. To be honest with you, I’m not sure I can fix him, certainly not without some tools.”

Mara’s phone rang, and she answered it.

“First of all, I am not a robot. Stop calling me that. I’m as human as you. Second, you are not to touch me with any of those archaic doodads you people call tools. I’d rather have a monkey clean my ears with a stick. I can talk you through the procedures to enable my body to repair itself, assuming the structural damage is not too severe.”

“So you can hear,” she said, turning to look at the face. “How do you do that without being connected to your ears?”

“My skin gathers most of the sensory data I need to perceive the world around me, including sight, sound, smell and touch. My ears, eyes and nose are largely aesthetic, to make me look and feel more human.”

“How do I know you’re not some megalomaniac bent on enslaving the human race?”

“You must have had a very disturbing childhood.”

“No, just the last few months.”

“Look, your phone’s charge will run out in about five minutes. Has my head been damaged? Is it misshapen?”

Mara stepped up to the side of the gurney and leaned over the body. “I don’t think so.”

“Let me see.”

“How can you do that?”

“Pick up my face and turn it toward my head.”

Mara grimaced a little and handed her phone to Bohannon. “This is so weird.”