Pygmalion Unbound (15 page)

A small rusty stove sat unused against one wall, with a dead toaster and several pots on the burners. The communal bathroom at the end of the hall held a sink, toilet and shower all ringed with lime and rust. Not much of a castle, but she preferred it to the antiseptic jail where she had lived before.

Where she had been born…

Maria stripped off the long jacket, revealing loose cargo pants, sweater and Doc Martens beneath. Not glamorous, but functional if she needed to move quickly. She heard a door creak open a floor below, but the footsteps came up the stairs, not down them. Her senses began to kick into high readiness, her hand moving to the holster under her baggy jacket, undoing the strap.

“Hello, Maria.” The voice from behind startled her, and she whirled around, bringing the Beretta to bear in the classic Weaver stance, thumbed off the safety and put several foot-pounds of pressure on the trigger, not enough to fire, and then stopped. The laser sight pointed directly between the eyes of the middle-aged man in the doorway.

“Doctor Crane,” she said evenly. The weapon remained aimed at his forehead. “Des.”

“Put it down, Maria,” he said softly, almost lovingly, a faint smile on his lips. Crane hadn’t even flinched when she drew on him. Nerves of steel, or he had expected to die. His face had aged, she saw, dark circles under his eyes, the hair a bit grayer at the temples. He wore a long khaki trench coat over slacks and a shirt and tie, dressed for the office.

“No.”

“I’m not going to harm you.”

“Not as long as I have you covered, no, you’re not,” she said.

“Maria, you’re forgetting your programming. You cannot allow a human being to come to harm — ”

“Save it. I made it clear they don’t apply to me a long time ago.”

Crane shrugged, smiled wistfully. “I may have made you too well.”

“About that flesh and blood,” she asked. “I know whose it is — or was.”

“I figured as much. Doctor Kelly told you, correct?”

“She did. And I did my own research. I want to know one thing.”

“Why I did it?” Maria nodded, lowering the Beretta but stepping back. “I was in love with you — with Roni. We’d been together for a couple years, talked about marriage but she kept pulling back. I nearly followed her afterwards, but I found a different purpose.”

“To bring her back. Why?”

“You know, you’re a lot like her. You’ve got that same strength underneath.” He shook his head. “It was more than proving I could. I figured if I was going to create the perfect being, I might as well pattern her after the one person I knew who already fit that description, someone who deserved to live longer than she did. It was love, wanting her to come back, and being invincible, giving her — you — the physical strength and mental abilities to outthink every potential danger. And you’ve done magnificently.”

“Not well enough. How did you find me?”

“Not easily. It took a lot of computing power, but we figured you’d be in need of some kind of funds to survive. We contacted banks and ATM service providers, had them flag all unauthorized withdrawals of cash or transfers. Start in Denver where you escaped, move outward. We put it all together, tracked you here. From there we used the face recognition software in security cameras in public places or on streets. And these — ” he took a small object from his coat pocket that looked like an insect. “A robotic dragonfly, has its own streaming video camera. The perfect surveillance system, since no one would notice or suspect a lowly insect.”

Maria slumped. She’d been good, but not good enough. Crane’s admissions, though, gave her new information to block the holes in her plan, but only if —

“So you’re here to take me back.”

“I am. I’m sorry.” His eyes and voice were pained, as if he’d had no say or choice in the matter. She heard heavy booted footsteps coming up the wooden stairs, six pair. In tac gear, no doubt, and armed. More outside surrounding the building. She edged towards the stove, as Crane continued.

“It’s not going to be a deactivation,” he told her. “We’re not going to shut you down — ”

“Or throw me back in the big vat and put the nanos in reverse?” she said bitterly.

“No. We need to study you. Find out what happened, what went wrong.”

“Nothing’s wrong with me at all, Doctor Crane, and I don’t believe you,” she said, and lunged at the stove.

She grabbed the toaster, heaved it at the window, which shattered. She heard the
pop-pop-pop
of gunfire, saw the toaster jerk once in midair and flip. In three bounds she was at the window and through it onto the fire escape. She fired down into the alley three times, began leaping down the stairs, feeling it sway and shake under her.

At the end, still twenty feet above the ground, she hurdled over the railing and jumped. Maria landed on her feet, did a quick roll as bullets spalled off the brick where she had been.

Two more shots forced the shooters into cover.

She rose and sprinted out of the alley, into the street. She ducked behind vehicles, in traffic and parked, with surprised onlookers giving her cover. Into the alley again, the adrenalin kicked in and her legs began pumping, carrying her down the narrow alley at a breakneck pace.

Behind her, a cluster of boot steps fading, then bolts cocking and an explosion. Her reflexes kicked in, she ducked and jinked to the right, then to the left, nearing the end of the alley. Shards of brick showered her from the wall, she felt the sting on her face.

Around the corner, into more foot and auto traffic, pushing past people and ignoring the shouts, and the squeal of tires and curses as she darted across the street. She reached the intersection, began crossing, as a dark van roared past the stopped vehicles and screeched to a halt in the middle of the intersection. Men in black ninja suits and carrying weapons began to pile out; she brought up the Beretta and put three slugs in the front of the van. A gout of steam erupted from the grille. She fired one into the windshield before dashing for the cover of the traffic. A single shot as she dove behind a cab spider-webbed the windshield, and she heard screams all around her.

Down the busy street, two blocks, the El crossed overhead. She looked over her shoulder; her pursuers had disappeared. But she knew there would be more ahead. And, sure enough, she heard sirens in the distance, dopplering nearer as she raced across the street, weaving in and out of traffic, trying not to bowl over pedestrians and mostly succeeding. The steps to the El came into view, and she bounded them four at a time, found herself on the platform. In a stroke of luck, passengers were filing into a train. Maria slid the Beretta back into the holster under her jacket, dug in her pocket for coins, and boarded the train. The doors shut just as the first police officers reached the top of the stairs.

She took a seat, took deep breaths; her lungs were modified to use oxygen more efficiently, but the exertion was more than she was used to of late.

The other commuters on the train, a mix of men and women in suits and street people dressed in rags, ignored her behind newspapers or the peculiar urban see-nothing stare.

The train trundled down the tracks. Maria slumped in her seat, let the swaying and clacking relax her. For several minutes she wound down as the train stopped at a station and passengers shuffled on and off. She considered it, but decided to stay on, carried further from Crane and his helpers.

Halfway to the next station, she heard a high-pitched whine from above. Heart sinking, she looked out the window, saw an elongated dart in the sky keeping pace with the train. The Predator drone moved closer, dropping altitude until it was almost on top of the train. The other commuters looked up from papers or broke their trances, looked at one another. And shrugged, went back to their own little worlds.

Now Maria was close to frantic. The drone had cameras, with face-recognition software transmitting real-time images back to the controllers who could be at some base miles away. It was also equipped with a .30 caliber cannon and two small rockets. They would see if she got off the train, follow her, and corner her. Or Crane and Danner, who she suspected was in command of the ninja suits, had decided she was a security risk on the run and elimination on the spot was the only alternative.

DEARBORN STREET read the sign at the stop. The doors opened, and she bolted out of the train, covered the distance to the stairs in big steps, hurtled herself down the stairs and onto the street level. The drone looped around and tracked her as she ran across the street, dodging cars and detouring around a bus, onto the sidewalk on the other side, and finally where she wanted.

The Dearborn Street Bridge stretched across the Chicago River, and at this hour it was sparsely used. Halfway across the bridge, she saw what she needed. Ejecting the empty clip from the Beretta, she took another from a pocket sewn inside her coat and inserted it, racked the slide, and kept running in a zigzag pattern, until she ran out into the middle of the left lane, stood and held the gun aloft. The tanker truck approaching slewed as the air brakes were slammed on, and it came to a halt twenty feet from Maria.

She ran to the truck, past the cab, to the middle of the tank, and fired three shots at the drone, hitting it with two. Only a sudden lurch by the machine let the third shot miss. It lowered, spun and righted itself, and let loose with both of the missiles slung under the wings.

The explosion created a huge fireball that blew a hole in the roadway, ripped away the protective railing alongside the bridge, and nearly sent it into the Chicago River. The concussion blew out windows along the pricey riverside real estate, and sent oily black smoke billowing into the air blanketing the Loop.

21

Safely ensconced in her office back on the fifth floor of Brodgen Hall at the University of Wisconsin, Kelly watched the snow fall from a leaden sky. From here she could see Camp Randall Stadium. On University Drive, the snowplows were out, the traffic moving slowly. She didn’t have to be here — there were no tests to grade, no despondent undergrads panicking over their sagging grades, no graduate students faking enthusiasm for the scut work piled on them by the tenured faculty.

Kaplan, bless him, had smoothed over her return, talking up the security aspect of the project — she’d had to sign a stack of security clearances, and had broken every one of them by talking with Kaplan, but it let him get away with being vague on details and long on ethical conflicts. Since it involved the military, and the distrust of anything in camouflage ran deep in Madison, it wasn’t too difficult to convince the department head that her return had been prompted by conscience.

When she left Denver, American Cybernetics had been in the midst of a wide-ranging sweep to locate Maria. So far, after two months, they had been unsuccessful. She’d typed in a number of search terms related to Roni McVicker, and had been stunned a week later when the Albuquerque
Journal
reported the murder of an assistant District Attorney named Stephen Magruder, shot four times.

A month later, the Chicago
Times
ran a front-page story on a fifteen-year old murder conviction being reviewed. DNA tests had been ordered in the case of Rodney Bonham, convicted of the rape and murder of social worker Ronette McVicker in 2012. DNA had tentatively identified him as the culprit, and the fact that Bonham was a three-time loser with a couple of sexual assault arrests sealed the case.

However, the State’s Attorney’s Office, under new management, was investigating a
habeas corpus
petition filed by Bonham’s lawyer, alleging that he had been framed by the State’s Attorney who had prosecuted the case, and that Magruder himself had been the murderer. She’d called the lawyer representing Bonham, who told her that he’d gotten an envelope in the mail, with a number of items that showed careful research, and a money order for ten thousand dollars. A PO Box return address in Milwaukee, a short letter with instructions.

Two weeks ago the Dearborn Street Bridge had nearly collapsed after a tanker truck was hit by two Shrike missiles fired from a Predator drone. The official version was that a terrorist cell had hacked into the controls for the drone and attempted to destroy the Hancock Building but had been foiled by a counter-cyber-attack by the Air Force. CNN, MSNBC, HLN, Fox, all ran the story, so that she could hardly have missed it.

What caught her interest was the officer who delivered the Pentagon briefing — Col. April Danner. She looked as cool and in control as ever, describing the thwarting of the attack by the Pentagon’s high-tech gadgetry.

Some underground websites ran footage of the explosion from a security camera. The grainy footage, taken from a distance but enhanced, clearly showed a young woman with long dark hair running in front of the truck and firing at the drone before it unleashed the missiles. The Air Force fingered her as a terrorist, who had been by the Hancock Building painting it with a laser for the drone’s bombs. Just before the tanker turned into a blinding ball of fire, the woman slid under the truck. Suicide by drone, some said.

Kelly wept when she saw it.

In vain, all of it
, she thought in her blackest funk.
Tried to give her what she needed, and it wasn’t enough
.