Z14 (3 page)

Now, call me paranoid, but a mysterious scientist falling from the sky outside the top-secret hideout of a rogue cyborg assassin can only mean one thing. Trouble. And answers. And possibly a lot more questions. Okay, so there's a lot it could mean...

I'm an expert at breaking humans, and I could tell this one was beyond repair, although I judged that I might have time to get a few garbled words out of him before he died. I lay down next to him, face to face. "Hello," I said brightly.

"Warden?" he said, his voice as broken as his body. "Wardens...activating...soon. Must...destroy..." and then he died.

I stood up. "Oh you useless dramatic bastard," I said to the broken thing at my feet. I shook my head. "You did
not
disappoint."

I searched the corpse, finding nothing but an identification card. This used to be Doctor Harold Melon, apparently. The ‘Doctor’ would be a self-awarded title. This planet has come a long way, but there are no official institutions that hand out such qualifications – well, none that more than one group, faction or whatever has ever agreed to recognise. I scanned the corpse's face, committed an image of its smashed features to my internal storage, double-checked that there was nothing else useful on the body and then rolled it off the little grassy ledge outside my cave, into the sea. It was more efficient than a burial and there are some equally efficient creatures in the sea around here that mean I wouldn't have to worry about a body washing up anywhere.

Well, how very curious, I thought. I began to scan the 'net for mentions of the late Doctor Melon. All I found was a new assassination contract that was literally seconds old. Somebody was unaware that they already had their wish, and the good doctor was fish food. That somebody was one Damian Faran, who, according to the details of the contract, was a farmer on the plains a few miles out of Boram Bay. I sent Faran an email specifying a meeting time at the farm, saying I wanted to discuss the particulars of the contract. I wanted to find out who they were and what they knew before, and if, I decided to tell them Melon was dead. No doubt ‘Damian’ was some bullshit cover-identity, but I'd make sure I found out a bit more about that when I arrived at his ‘farm’.

I focused my thought processes on the human-like part of me that was yelling
what's a Warden? I'm a Warden? There are others?
Hey, maybe I was going to find my Mrs Rampaging Kill-bot after all. But, whatever; ‘Warden’, eh? That could mean guard, or guardian. I guess whichever of those roles I was supposed to be performing hinged on whether the people of this planet were here for their own safety, or if they were prisoners. Both schools of thought existed in a multitude of forms and theories, but whoever or whatever had brought us – I mean them – to this point had been content to leave well alone. Until now? I briefly considered and dismissed the likelihood that the former Doctor Melon had just been a particularly dedicated and resourceful lunatic. For a start he had
found
me, which was a first and quite a feat. Ah, if only his climbing skills had been a match for his tracking skills, we'd be having quite the little chat right now. Still, his arrival had had as much of an impact on me as had his body on the cliff face, because at least one person out there apparently knew something about me, and if one did, there were probably others – not least of all those who wanted him dead.

Why did Doctor Melon want me to destroy the other Wardens? Is that even what he meant? For all I knew he was trying to issue a verbal command for me to destroy myself. I decreased the priority of those thought processes – putting them on a metaphoric back-burner – I just didn't have any solid information and I didn't want my mind going off on tangents and grabbing at illogical straws. I'm supposed to be a cold, calculating machine. I needed to go out and seek more data.

I stepped into my cave, switched out my empty jetpack canister for a full one – stores running low; internal sticky note left on my virtual inner-refrigerator – and jogged outside before leaping into the air and taking to the skies.

I began by flying to the top of the cliff to see if my unexpected visitor had left a vehicle, or something behind before beginning his fateful descent. What I found was a rucksack, a still-coiled rope tied around a rock and a pattern of footprints in some soft mud that ended with an unmistakable skid-mark. It would seem the doctor walked to the edge of the cliff, peered over it and then his left foot slipped from underneath him and he tumbled down the cliff-side. He must have bounced off the odd outcrop here and there which, whilst not saving his life, meant that luckily for me, he wasn't killed outright. The bloody idiot.

The only thing in the rucksack was what looked like a powered down hand-held tracking device. It was a simplistic-looking gadget with a compass and a red light, which I presumed would flash when you pointed the device in the direction of whatever it was tracking. In this case, that had been me. How the fuck could I be tracked? Surely you would have to physically attach a bug to me, and I'd notice someone trying that and break their arms clean off at the elbows. I ran some quick diagnostics that assured me I wasn't broadcasting any kind of signal that I wasn't already aware of, and that I knew couldn't be traced. I was, by choice, attached to the 'net almost constantly, but, what can I say? I'm a computer and communications security expert, and I just know that I can't be traced that way. Interesting. Something else I needed to find out about. I really do not want people popping in for tea and biscuits – especially if the next visitor manages to arrive alive, and with backup.

I didn't think there was anything I could learn from the tracking device itself as it was a closed system, so I smashed it and hurled it into the sea – there are even things in there that would eat that. I untied the rope, stuffed it into the rucksack and then gave the bag an almighty punt out into the sea. I took to the skies again, this time heading directly for the farm where I hoped to meet Damian Faran.

I realised I was excited, or, rather, I was emulating the feeling of excitement. It's almost indescribably odd how my computerised brain works. I mean, it's not a brain, for starters; I am basically a collection of massive databases, memory modules and processing units. I do not think, I do not feel. All I do is run a number of programs that consist of sets of instructions that govern what I do, and how I react to things around me. I really am a computer on legs. And yet, these human-like processes practically take over with simulated and emulated feelings and desires, unless I actually take steps to downgrade their priority. I am aware that there are two warring sets of programs that are constantly battling for processor time. I like to think of it as though I have some kind of cyborg shared personality disorder – only in this case it's one personality sharing space with a mindless kill-bot.

I'm not complaining, it gives me the best of both worlds. I can understand and empathise with what you're going through, even as I out-think you, predict your defensive movements before you make them, remotely hack the hidden ceiling turret that was your last hope, and then end your life with the brutal efficiency that comes from an encyclopedic knowledge of your human frailties.

That's something that's got me worried – yeah, I know, that's a
feeling
– about this Warden thing: I'm built for the kill, possibly more than I'm built for anything else. I am definitely not a fucking toaster. So, does that mean I'm not here to protect? I have no overriding goal, no mission, no purpose. I came online in my cave one day roughly five years ago and just ‘decided’ to be an assassin, it ‘felt’ right and yet, something on the ‘human’ side won-through and only lets the kill-bot in me kill arseholes. Well, I try to, but hey, I'm only – sort of, kind of, partially, something like – human; we all make mistakes.

I switched my focus to the task at hand, scouring the 'net for information on Faran's farm. There was nothing under that name, which I had been expecting, so I called up a map image and centred it on the coordinates given on Doc Melon's contract. I just wanted to get an idea of the terrain around the farm in case this meeting turned out to be a trap. Once I got closer to the target, I'd be able to scan the area for unexpected and concealed biological or electronic surprises. Nobody on this planet had been able to get the drop on me so far – unless you counted Doctor Melon, all too literally – but I wasn't going to stop being careful. I
couldn't
stop being careful. It was in my blood and or my programming, please delete as applicable.

As I neared the farm I dropped my altitude to just a few feet from the ground and began scanning the buildings. No threats detected and just one heat signature that conformed to human parameters inside what was probably the farm's main dwelling.

This farm grew Boram Potatoes, which looked like red carrots, tasted like a cross between potatoes and onions and were utterly packed full of lots of the good things humans need to consume to function. They were the number one crop on the planet, utterly ubiquitous and used in most meals. They had soon gained the nickname Boring Potatoes, but they were essential to the continuation of human life on Deliverance. Still, I didn't think I was here to discuss alien spuds.

I landed on the outskirts of the farm, and strolled boldly through its open gate, heading for the heat signature that was pacing up and down inside the farmhouse. If this was a trap, it was one that I couldn't detect, so there was nothing I could do but proceed, whilst keeping my eyes, ears and multitude of other scanners open. The entire farm was constructed of old, dilapidated wooden buildings. ‘Ramshackle’ was the word to sum the whole place up. I reached the farmhouse door and gave it an experimental push with the palm of my left hand. It swung open and I walked in to find myself face-to-face with what until then had been merely a heat-signature on a virtual screen inside my mind. Farmer Faran was anything but a farmer. He wore a crisp suit and smart spectacles, shiny shoes and an ingratiating smile.

"Ah, Z14! Welcome, welcome," he said, extending a hand.

I eyed him up and down, looking for obvious weapons, or hints of concealed ones. Nothing. Still, I made no move to take his hand. I was analysing my peripheral vision, checking for threats.

"I know you're expecting a trap, Z14, but I'm not stupid. I like being alive." His hand remained extended towards me.

"Tell me about Doctor Harold Melon," I said.

"Well now, I'm not going to lie to you, I wouldn't be surprised if such a wonderful piece of technology as yourself could detect lies, after all. But, really, there is nothing to discuss about Doctor Melon, other than his termination." He started to drop his outreaching hand, but I stepped forward, grabbed it with one of my own and crushed every bone in it with one immense squeeze. Faran emitted an unintelligible sound indicating intense and overwhelming pain and dropped to his knees. I let go of his hand and he keeled over with a groan.

"Tell me about Doctor Harold Melon," I said. Oh, I can detect lies alright; meeting in a remote location and using an assumed identity is a good hint that lying might be occurring. Honestly, humans are utter morons sometimes. Although the real stupidity here is putting out a public contract on somebody that knew something about me, when it seemed obvious that whoever was behind the contract didn't want me to know anything about Doctor Melon in the first place. Madness. There's an eighty-eight point nine seven percent chance that I would be the one picking up the contract. Don't they know that? Okay, they probably don't know it to quite the same level of precision as I do, but even so, I am
the
hitman – hitbot, whatever – round here.

"Talk Faran. No doubt Doctor Melon was just supposed to be another hit, but unfortunately for you, he came to see me first."

Faran was sobbing on the floor, not daring to move for fear of exacerbating the pain that lanced up his arm. "What do you mean? I don't care, I was just going to tell you where you could find him…"

I raised an eyebrow – purely an affectation of mine, it served no useful function. "Oh really? Where?" I said.

Between whimpers and gasps, Faran said, "He has a lab in the Manoogla Heights, but it’s never been found. I was here to tell you this in the first place! Fuck, why did you break my hand?"

"Humans are often more truthful
and
more focused when they're in pain," I said. "I like my conversations to be honest and efficient. Now, why do you want Doctor Melon killed?" I took his other hand in mine, gently – for now.

"I don't know," he cried. "Please, I was just told to wait here for you, to get you started on your contract, start you in the right direction."

Okay, so they
did
want me, specifically, to find Doctor Melon? Or was this guy just blabbing?

“Do you know what I am?” I said.

“No.”

“Where I came from?”

“No.”

“What I had for breakfast?”

“What the fuck?”