The Machine Awakes (21 page)

“Her handler, you mean?” Kodiak nodded. “Let's run facial recog and see what comes back. We can confirm his ID once we get the body back to the Bureau. Aha!”

Braben leaned forward. “What you got?”

Kodiak stood, Braben joining him. Pried from the dead man's hand was a small silver square, the size of a thumbnail, no more.

“Is that…”

Kodiak nodded.

“It is. They dug it out of her brainstem.”

Inside Kodiak's HUD, the manifest tag shone a bright green in his hand, the floating label identifying it loud and clear.

Caitlin Smith.

Kodiak stared at the tag in his hand. Well, that answered that question.

Braben sighed loudly. “Which means she's dead.”

Kodiak nodded. Braben was right. The tag couldn't be removed without killing the owner. That the tag itself had been unreadable ever since Caitlin had left the Academy then had sprung back to life just a few hours ago was still a mystery, but one that Kodiak had no doubt would be answered once they got it back to the Bureau labs.

“Which means,” Braben continued, “we're back to fucking square one.”

Kodiak held the manifest tag delicately between finger and thumb. It took all his will not to toss it to the hard warehouse floor and crush it under his heel.

 

21

She tripped. She fell.
The street was wet from a rain shower she didn't remember, and when she pushed herself up from the hard surface on skinned hands, she found herself staring at her own rippling face in a large puddle. Water dripped from her face, and the world around her was black and orange, lit by the sickly glow of the underpowered streetlights of Salt City.

She wasn't sure where she was, or how far she had come, or how long it had been since she had escaped from the horrors of the warehouse and the insanity of the Morning Star. All she was sure about was that the back of her neck felt like it was on fire, and that she felt ill, and that if she didn't make it, she was going to die, here, in a gutter in a slum.

But make it … where? She pushed herself back onto her haunches, wiped her hands on her top, then pressed her fingers into her eyes. She'd escaped. That was good. She was in bad shape, she had no idea what had been done to her, but she was alive. Alive and moving … for the moment. How long she could keep going, she wasn't sure. She needed to rest, recover, at least a little. Then she could think of … something. A plan. What she had to do next.

She dropped her arms and looked down at her reflection in the puddle. She started, her breath caught in her throat, her heart thudding in her chest.

There was someone behind her. A man wearing glasses, wearing a pale coat.

Glass.

Cait spun around on her toes, but she was alone in the street. Besides which, Glass was dead. She'd killed him herself in her escape.

She turned back to the puddle, slowly, afraid of what she might see. But the only thing reflected was herself.

Cait let out a breath. A hallucination, a side effect of whatever the hell they'd dosed her with. Time was what she needed. Time to rest, to let her body clear the toxins so she could focus on her situation and what to do about it. She was afraid, on the verge of panic, and she knew it. She also knew this was exactly the wrong time to be making important decisions. She had no idea what to do next, but it was not something to be thinking about now, she told herself. No, she had to rest, to wait it out. Then she could come up with a new plan.

She looked down at the puddle again. It was deep, the surface oily. But survival was key. She knelt down, leaned over the water, scooped her hand into it and had a sharp, bitter mouthful.

I can assure you, Ms. Smith, that I am as real as you are.

Cait's hands fell from her face, and she stood, quickly. She looked at the rippling reflection in the water. There was nobody behind her. She was still alone. Alone and hallucinating, hearing Glass's voice in her head. Like it had been before, like her brother's had been. Her brother was supposed to be dead, but he wasn't. Glass was dead too. And yet here he was, talking to her in her mind. Just like her brother.

You need to keep moving, Ms. Smith. We might be alone now, but we won't be come sunrise. You might be dead by the time someone finds you, but you might be alive, which is most definitely the worst-case scenario.

Cait stared at her reflection. Glass was right. Maybe it wasn't him, wasn't his voice. Maybe it was her own mind telling her what to do, the drugs and the stress and her injuries combining, causing her own thoughts to manifest as the hallucination. She needed to rest. She needed to hide for a while.

“Okay,” she said aloud. “Okay, okay, okay.” She rolled her neck and then hissed in pain as the thick plastic bandage taped to the back of it was pulled. She took a deep breath of cool night air.

Then she leaned to one side and puked like a superhero. It was hot, dark liquid, splashing into the puddles around her, steaming in the night air. She spent the next minute spitting furiously, trying to clear her mouth, wiping it with the back of her good hand.

And, actually, she felt a lot better.

She looked around, getting her bearings. She had to get under cover, somewhere she could hide. On each side of the street, the flat sides of prefabricated buildings rose up, their walls a patchwork of graffiti so dense it almost looked like camouflage patterning in the murky orange light. She squinted ahead, wondering whether she remembered this part of Salt City's industrial quarter or not. Was that building the same one she had passed on her way to the rendezvous—to the
ambush,
she corrected herself—or was it near to …

She looked over her other shoulder. Behind her, the wide street vanished into a dark area where the pathetic street lighting had given up entirely, leaving the rest of the block cloaked in the deep shadow cast by the tall, jagged spire of a half-built skyscraper right at the end of the street. The structure was silhouetted by the bright glow of New Orem behind it, nothing but a broken black framework—part solid, part abandoned, skeletal superstructure.

The incomplete office block that she had called home for the past few weeks. It was right there. She'd burnt out her hide, but she knew the building well. She'd be able to find another spot to lay low.

Summoning all her strength, Cait pushed herself forward. But with each step it felt like she'd walked a mile, and as she looked up, trying to judge distance, direction, the broken spire of her old building seemed suddenly to be a distant point on the horizon.

She needed to rest. She needed to be safe. That building was suddenly her only hope, her entire reason for being, and reaching it her only goal.

She stumbled, slowly, onward.

 

22

The Bureau bullpen was
as busy at four in the morning as it was during the day, staff pulling multiple shifts to handle the situation. New Orem was still on full lockdown, the citizens uneasy and restless, which just gave the Bureau more to do.

But Kodiak didn't blame them. He glanced around the bullpen, noting the marines in full combat kit positioned at the exits. The whole complex was on alert, and the marines were there to protect the agents … but with their opaque helmet visors, Kodiak couldn't help but feel he and the other Bureau agents were being watched.

He stifled a yawn. No, simple paranoia, brought on by a chronic lack of sleep. Time for another caffeine boost.

As he stood and moved to the machine in a corner of the bullpen, dialing up a mug, he realized there was more to it than just tiredness. He was a Special Agent, used to dealing with pressure, but this investigation was unique. Not only that, what he'd thought was going to be a huge breakthrough had turned into something else entirely. The case was complex, its path winding. And now perhaps that pressure Kodiak felt was starting to bear down on him. Everyone wanted results, wanted him and Braben and the chief to get to the bottom of it.

Kodiak sipped his drink. It tasted terrible, but it was hot and strong. He walked back to his desk and continued taking small, searing sips as his gaze fixed on the small plastic bag sitting in the middle of his desk.

Caitlin Smith's manifest tracker.

Now, wasn't
that
a mystery?

The Bureau techs had examined it closely. The tag was genuine, Fleet issue. The serial number microetched onto the device matched the ID that the device was still broadcasting. Kodiak glanced at the holographic display floating on the left side of his desk. It showed the Academy record and photograph of Caitlin Smith, and a live feed of her manifest record.

Caitlin Smith who was, according to the tracker, sitting on Special Agent Von Kodiak's desk.

Kodiak sniffed and rolled his neck as he regarded the tracker. He frowned as he considered the situation—it felt like it
almost
made sense, that they were
almost
on the right path. If they could just fill in the blanks, find the last pieces of the puzzle, then it would all make sense.

Their prime suspect was Psi-Marine Tyler Smith, officially killed in action but with his manifest ID showing up at both assassinations—time
and
place—but somehow not before or after. Shielding IDs was, as far as Kodiak knew, impossible.

Tyler Smith's twin sister Caitlin had vanished from the Academy—
her
tracker had been untraceable since her disappearance, with the assumption that she was dead, her tracker destroyed by whatever had happened to her.

And then her tag had shown up in the manifest. The tag was in perfect condition and functioning normally, according to the lab techs, which meant it hadn't failed or malfunctioned, it had been
shielded,
somehow.

Which was … not possible.

Neither was removing the tag from a living person. The lab examination of Caitlin's tag had found plenty of biological material on it. However the tag itself had been shielded, Caitlin had been alive and well, at least up until a few hours ago when the tag had been dug out from her brainstem. But if she'd been alive
then,
the fact that the tag was now on Kodiak's desk was proof enough that she was now dead.

Kodiak took another sip. That, he suspected, was another fallacy. The field medical unit found in the warehouse was advanced and set up for complex surgery. They had attempted, at least, to take the tag out, leaving both it and the subject intact.

Whether they had been successful or not, it was impossible to tell. But Kodiak figured there was more than a fair chance that Caitlin was alive.

But if they could take the tag out, why not do that with Tyler, assuming both he and his sister were in it together? His ID showing up at the crime scenes seemed like a gigantic oversight. Unless it was a deliberate attempt to throw them off? They—whoever
they
were—would have known the first thing the Bureau would check was the Fleet manifest. How much easier, cleaner would it have been for them to just have taken Tyler's tag out? Then the Bureau would still be completely in the dark.

Kodiak finished his coffee and turned his attention to Caitlin Smith's Academy picture. She looked young, bright-eyed, her chin held high. There was pride in that picture.

What the hell had the kid gotten herself into?

“Von!”

Kodiak blinked, the chief's call snapping him out of his thoughts. He turned and watched as Avalon marched across the bullpen, glancing sideways at him and nodding toward one of the planning rooms before disappearing into it.

Kodiak rushed to follow her into the room.

*   *   *

“Holy shit.”

Kodiak looked up from the table display to Avalon, back to the table, back to the chief. He licked his lips as he considered what to say next.

“Holy
shit,
” he said again.

Avalon nodded, her lips pursed, her arms folded as she stood by the wall. She hadn't bothered setting the planning room to private; behind her, through the wall, Kodiak's eyes moved over the buzzing crowd of agents working at their stations, the impassive, unmoving forms of the marines looking over them by their positions near the doors.

On the table display were images from the necropsy of the mystery man in the pale coat Braben had shot at the Salt City warehouse. Braben himself was now down at the labs, where the body had been moved from the morgue. Because what had started as a medical procedure had turned into something else, quickly.

The images showed the man's naked body lying on a wide laboratory bench. His head had been removed and sat at the top of the table. From the torso's neck sprouted tubes and wires and a silver, articulated piece of metal.

“He's artificial? A servitor?” Kodiak felt like he was stating the obvious, but he had to be sure this meeting with Avalon was real, not just some dream or nightmare, his body twitching restlessly as he slumped over his desk out in the bullpen, finally succumbing to the lack of sleep and adrenaline hangover.

The chief nodded. “A machine, yes. Biomechanical, well in advance of what the Fleet has developed. Certainly good enough to pass for human—alive
or
dead. It was only when the morgue technician went in with a laser scalpel that he realized it wasn't … well, human.”

Kodiak stroked his chin as he brought the events of the warehouse raid back in his mind's eye. The man in the coat had shown no fear, and had been apparently killed by a
stun
shot from Braben's staser. Kodiak's HUD—which, on the way back to the Bureau, had come back negative on facial recognition—had reported no life signs, and the man's skin had been cold, the pulse absent. He'd had to force the fingers open to retrieve the manifest tag—fingers stiff and cold because, Kodiak now realized, they were mechanical, not biological.

Avalon raised an eyebrow. “What are you thinking?”