The Phoenix Code (27 page)

Raj swore under his breath. "We're in it now."

Ander watched Karl with an impassive stare made frightening by its utter lack of emotion. "Those two are mine. Understand? Don't touch them."

"It's a damn setup," the long-haired man said.

"If I were trying to set you up," Ander said, "I wouldn't have brought him here in plain view."

"Ander miscalculated," Raj said in a low voice. "He must have figured they wouldn't recognize me."

Megan prayed Ander could deal with the situation. He was nowhere near ready for this sort of operation; he needed more sophisticated reasoning algorithms, a wider range of patterns in his neural nets, and decision processes that sampled further into the future.

The man with the long hair stabbed his finger at Ander. "It doesn't matter who you think those two 'belong' to. We're done here." He turned to the guard. "Take them out into the desert and get rid of them."

"This is stupid," Ander said. Then he walked toward the man with the rifle. The guard aimed his weapon, Ander kept coming—

And the guard fired.

Shots exploded the muffled silence like rivets ramming metal. The bullets slammed into Ander's chest and ripped through his body, tearing a huge swath out of his back as they exited. He staggered with the force of the onslaught, taking several steps back.

Then he came forward again.

Color drained from the guard's face. The bullets had blown apart Ander's torso, yet he continued as if nothing had happened. The guard backed toward the door, firing again as Ander advanced, this time at Ander's knees.

The android lunged with mechanical precision. Although the guard countered, he couldn't match Ander's enhanced speed. Ander struck the rifle's muzzle, stepping forward so fast that his motion blurred. Bracing his foot against the guard's foot, he grabbed the rifle with both hands and wrenched, throwing the man off balance. The muzzle struck the guard against his head and then Ander twisted it out of his hands.

It happened so fast, Megan barely had time to catch her breath. Ander swung the guard around and shoved him, forcing him forward. The man stumbled toward the consoles where the hackers stood in frozen silence. Although Ander's arm spasmed and his head jerked, he kept his concentration on the three men and his grip on the rifle.

Karl was backing away now. He bumped into his console and stopped, his face as white as ice. The long-haired man watched Ander with almost comic disbelief. The guard had stumbled up against the console between the two hackers. He turned to Ander, obviously ready to fight but smart enough to stay put.

In a calm voice with no trace of strain, Ander said, "It's natural to aim for the heart." He demonstrated by aiming the rifle at Karl, whose face turned even paler, making his dark eyes look like bruises.

"But you see," Ander continued, "that assumes that what you shoot is human." His head jerked again, disrupted by whatever circuits he had lost. He moved the gun and fired at the guard's feet. The man jumped as bits of the floor exploded around him. Then Ander said, "But if it isn't human, you can't stop it, now, can you?"

They just stared at him, their gazes flicking from his face to his shattered torso and back to his face.

Ander spoke to Karl. "Are you going to do the job I hired you to do?"

Karl held up his hands. "Sure. Whatever you want."

"Good," Ander said.

The scene looked surreal to Megan, a man with his torso ripped apart holding a gun on five hostages. Shredded circuit filaments hung out of Ander's chest and lubricant soaked his shirt like silver-blue blood.

Ander made the guard lie facedown on the floor. He had Raj bind and gag both the guard and the long-haired man. Then Ander turned to Megan. She could guess his thought; with three more hostages to worry about, he could no longer risk leaving them free. He ordered Raj to tie her hands behind her back, then had Raj stay in an armchair while Megan moved across the room. She sat on the floor against the wall, her hands awkwardly behind her body.

As Ander turned back to Karl, the android's head twitched. "Now you can finish your work."

Karl nodded, still pale, and returned to his console.

Megan knew Ander well enough to decipher his "mood." He was agitated. No trace of it showed on his impassive face, but she recognized a pattern in the way his arms and head kept jerking. His physical problems had grown worse, not only from the damage caused by bullet holes, but also from the shock of high-speed projectiles tearing through him. The only reason the compression wave hadn't destroyed his insides was because he had nowhere near as much fluid in his body as a human.

She kept hearing his words:
Those two are mine.
It rattled her. Had he begun to consider humans his property?

What will happen
, she thought,
if we humans can't take into ourselves the advances we are giving our creations—the speed, memory, and precision, physical advantages, reflexes, durability, and lack of a need for sleep?

More than ever before, this situation brought home the truth for Megan: unless humanity found a way to make those traits part of themselves, their creations would leave them behind, and the human race would become obsolete, surviving only on the sufferance of its machines.
 

With five hostages, Ander couldn't monitor Karl as closely as he had overseen Raj at the bungalow. The damage to Ander's chest had apparently impaired his ability to use wireless signals. He jacked into Karl's console with a line from his body, as he had done in the desert floater—except this time he pulled it out through a hole in his chest.

The sight disturbed Megan, as if she saw her own child pull out his insides. But the "child" had grown past where she could affect his behavior. The android they had protected had become their protector, perhaps even their owner.

Ander interacted with Karl through the computer. Sweat beaded on Karl's forehead. He had to know he was expendable; Ander had a hacker-in-reserve tied up on the floor.

Over the next two hours, Megan fought to stay alert. She wondered how long Ander thought he could hold five people captive. The long-haired man lay on his side, watching Ander with a blend of apprehension and covetous regard, like a man who had seen a nightmare come alive as his most sought-after fantasy.

Throughout all those long hours, Ander never faltered. A human captor would have fatigued or lost concentration. Megan suspected he had reallocated his resources to compensate for his injuries. His reactor had to be operating overtime. She just hoped its safeties worked as well as their tests had claimed.

The guard, however, disquieted her more than Ander. Lying bound and gagged on the floor, he watched Ander with an intensity that chilled. She had worried that these people underestimated Ander; now she wondered if they had underestimated the guard.

Karl pushed away from the console, his face drawn from so many hours of work. "I can't find any trail for the people you want."

"They've been on the run for a month," Ander said. "It could take days to dig out their hiding place."

Karl glanced at the other hostages. Both Raj and Megan were tied now, with the long-haired hacker free and rubbing his arms. Karl's thought was obvious: how would Ander control them for days? The same question bothered Megan. If Ander intended to keep them, he had to make sure they ate, slept, and took care of personal needs. Everyone knew the easiest solution to his dilemma. They stayed on their best behavior because they wanted to stay alive.

"Keep trying," Ander told Karl.

Karl rubbed his eyes, then went back to work. Ander stood like a ramrod in the same position he had held for hours, as focused now as at the start. If he felt any hardship from his injuries, he showed no sign of it. Megan thought of Grayton, the Phoenix android, hiding for weeks, kidnapping people one by one, until the authorities caught him—after he blew up the Phoenix labs. Had he started like this?

No, she thought. Ander had bypassed plenty of chances to show that side of himself, if it existed. Yes, he always acted in his own interest. At times he seemed obsessed or paranoid. But he was no sociopath. He consistently chose the path that, given his own objectives, made it as easy as possible on his hostages. As a covert agent, he showed only erratic skill, but with more training he could probably do the job. Whether or not he wanted that job was another question, one they would have to address if they escaped this mess alive.

Karl suddenly spoke. "I found something!"

"Download it to me," Ander said.

"What is it?" Raj asked.

Karl shot him an uneasy look and said nothing.

Ander answered. "Two hours after the Phoenix explosion, a man named Tom Morris bought a ticket at a small airport a few miles away. He flew to El Paso, and from there he flew to Washington, D.C."

"That's it?" Raj shifted in his chair, adjusting his bound hands behind his back. "It could be anyone."

"No one flies out of that first airport except crop dusters," Ander said. "Why go from there to D.C.?"

"Do you have a picture of Morris?" Megan asked. The Phoenix files had included descriptions of the four androids destroyed in the explosion. If no resemblance existed between any of the four and Morris, it might help push Ander out of his irrational hope that they still lived.

"No image," Karl said. "Just a record of air travel."

"How did he pay for his tickets?" Raj asked.

Karl worked at his console, then said, "Cash. I can't trace it."

"Can you trace his actions in Washington?" Ander asked.

Karl studied the display. "The D.C. area is crawling with people named Morris. I have to sort them."

"It makes no sense," Raj said. "Why would he go to D.C.?"

"To lose himself in a central location," Ander suggested. "It's also international. He wouldn't stand out as much if he was unfamiliar with our customs."

"Is that what you would do?" Megan asked him.

He gave her his deadpan look, the one he used when he was about to make a joke. "I would kidnap my two creators and take them to California."

Ha, ha.
His sense of humor got weirder all the time.

"Okay," Karl said. "I've four possibilities."

Ander tilted his head as if he were listening to a voice only he could hear. "That's odd."

"What?" Megan asked.

Karl glanced at Ander. When the android nodded, Karl answered her. "Morris could have rented a car and dropped it off in Baltimore, stayed in the Hilton at the airport, taken a flight to Louisiana, or taken an overseas flight to England."

"Louisiana?" Raj sat up straighter. "Are you sure?"

Ander gave Raj an appraising stare. "Anyone unusual contact you last month? You would be a logical person to seek out if he had problems."

"People contact me all the time. I don't recall anything unusual."

"A lot of people go to Louisiana," Megan said.

"Follow up all four leads," Ander told Karl. "Give priority to Louisiana."

"Yeah. Okay." Focused on his work again, Karl almost seemed to forget he was a hostage.

So they sat, waiting.
 

It was late when Ander let the hacker free Raj. His next order was, not surprisingly, for Raj to tie up the hacker. He had earlier given Megan a short reprieve. At no time, however, did he show any inclination to free the guard. The man lay on his stomach, arms and legs bound, his mouth gagged, his posture tense, his gaze intent. Watching him, Megan shuddered.

She avoided looking at Ander's torso. Even knowing he felt no pain, seeing him torn apart hurt her at a visceral level. As the hours passed in monotonous succession, she dozed fitfully. Silence filled the basement, broken only by the murmur of Karl's voice commands, punctuated every now and then by a cussword. Raj sat slouched in his armchair, scrutinizing Ander.

The android finally frowned at Raj. "What is it?"

"The longer you go with that damage," Raj said, "the more it taxes your systems. We have to put you back together."

"We'll worry about it later," Ander said.

The long-haired man was lying on his stomach now. "What happens to us then?" he asked.

"If you do your job, you'll have your pay and no trouble," Ander said. "If you make problems, we'll send in the feds."

"We don't want trouble," the man told him.

Raj snorted. "Yeah. Right. You just wanted to take us into the desert and shoot us."

The long-haired man gave him a cold stare. "You made him." Malice tinged his voice. "Lost control, did you? Tough shit, big shot. How's it feel to be a machine's toy?"

Raj narrowed his gaze but said nothing. Ander made no attempt to disabuse the hacker of his conclusions.

"I have profiles on all four." Karl looked up at Ander. "The Tom Morris in England visited his daughter in London. The one in Louisiana went to the University of Louisiana, where he's a student. The third went to an optometrist's conference, then home to Oklahoma. The one in Baltimore lives there." He paused. "Did you get the downloads?"

"Yes." Ander made an impatient motion with his hand. "None of these help."

"Even if Morris is who you want to find," Megan said, "he could have disguised his trail."

"From most people, yes." Ander gave her a chilling smile. "I'm not most people." He indicated them all. "I also have the best working for me."

She had no answer for that. None of them had a choice about their "employment."

Finally she fell asleep. She woke when Raj was untying her wrists. She groaned from the pain that shot through her wrists and up her arms. After he freed her, he slid one arm under her legs and the other around her back. Then he lifted her off the floor. Comforted by his strength, she leaned her head on his shoulder. If Ander didn't like it, tough.

Raj settled into the armchair, holding her in his lap. With her eyes closed, she listened while Ander told her to get her act together and tie up Raj. She was just awake enough to wonder what he would do when he realized "her act" was going to remain fragmented. Eventually he gave up and let them stay that way, probably because both the guard and the long-haired hacker had fallen asleep.