Titanium

Los Angeles, 2070 October 5th

In a way, the city was peaceful; it was once one of the busiest cities in the world; now it’s only a smoking husk of its former self. Her streets lay abandoned; choked by cars and the remains of its once inhabitants. The constant clamor of people going about their daily business long silenced by a plague that threatened to silence the rest of the world along with it and leave Earth nothing more than one more silent rock gliding through the cosmos.

But all of this was lost on the Droid, his “eyes” taking only in the visual data needed for threat assessment and direction. His mind, as complex and intricate as it is, wasn’t built for philosophical or emotional contemplation. Instead, it set to examining the close-range radio traffic, analyzing the air toxicity, and making sure the levels of background radiation won’t harm his systems.

Only the near 40 million infected and by comparison only a meager few thousand survivors inhabited the city. It was the Droid’s task to evacuate the survivors. The long-range scanners equipped in the Droid’s backpack were of barely any use on this side of the city. The signals were being constantly overwhelmed with the background radiation from the bombs that had peppered the city like so much toxic rain. On the street he now stood there were signs of a recent struggle; bullet holes in the walls, fresh blood of both the infected and not staining the street and beginning to curdle in the Californian sun, which hardly let up despite it being the middle of autumn. Fresh fires burned along the street, releasing caustic black smoke into the air.

The Droid had no reason to stay except to record the number of dead survivors it witnessed and to kill all infected within reason.

But none of this was its real mission. They tasked it with finding survivors and either reporting their location to command for evac or escort them out of the city itself. Sometimes the survivors were hostile, but the promise of food, clean water, and a massive military force to keep them safe would pacify them… generally.

The Droid moved on.

Walking calmly and slowly through the burned and broken streets of the city. The infected only bothered once it. What jumped from the adjacent storefront window was probably what used to be a dog or wolf. It pounced on what it thought was a fresh meal, hoping to sate its seemingly unending appetite. It was disappointed to find that when it bit into the neck of the Droid that its teeth cracked with the force of the bite, rendering its already decayed mouth more useless than it already was. But no problem, it still had two perfectly functioning tentacles with which to tear the armor off of this human. Because it had to be a human wearing armor.

Those had stunningly little effect, leaving only a silver slash where it stripped away the matte black paint on the Droid’s chest. In return, the Droid drew its knife. No need to get out the assault rifle and attract more attention. The knife, a 7 inch, double-edged, matte black fang, connected via a detachable umbilical to the back of the Droid, feeding off the nuclear core that lay inside and allowing the knife to hum with almost 2 million volts of electricity.

The once-dog lunged at the Droid letting out a wet snarl as its tentacles whipped out with blinding speed… it was rewarded with two bleeding nubs when it drew them back. The dog didn’t even have time to let out its gargling howl because the Droid was already on it, knife raised high. It brought the knife down and straight into the skull of the infected. The resulting impact snapped the dog’s neck, eviscerated what was left of the brain, and set the body trembling and cramping up with electricity. The Droid withdrew the knife and watched as the blood drained from the dog’s head and through its mangy tufts of mottled brown fur.

With the knife back in its sheath, the Droid moved on, heading north. Reports of a dozen or so survivors had been sent to HQ via drone just before the Droid had left. So the main priority was District 6; where they had been spotted.

After almost an hour and a half of walking, the Droid found itself in the center of yet another abandoned road. No infected were in sight; the few bodies scattered around the road were too burned or too rotted to be infected. Once again the Droid activated its scanners, this time it sent out a long-distance pulse, which had two uses. Like a call from a whale, the pulse would flow over whatever it came in contact with, bounce back, and provide a 70% accurate 3D map of the surrounding area in a 30-foot radius. The secondary signal would then travel further in search of an identification chip, computer terminal or functional radio to ping off of.

Two I.D. chip signals detected and one radio. The first I.D. chip was only a few minutes away, the other was nearly another half hour deeper into the city, and the radio was fifteen minutes to the west. The Droid set off an even pace and made it to the nearest marker was unmolested the whole way there.

It stood in front of a pre-fab concrete house. The emergency shutters were down on all windows and doors, the place sealed tighter than a clam.

The house still had electricity, no doubt the occupant had a generator, or they got the solar panels on the roof to function again. The Droid walked to the front door which was covered by one of the corrugated steel shutters. When the Droid knocked, the shutter gave it a nasty shock with a high enough voltage and amperage to knock out its systems for almost 10 seconds. A long time to be standing stock still out in the middle of a heavily infected City.

When the Droid’s eyes restarted, they registered a firearm pointing directly at its faceplate. “You military?” the man behind the gun asked.

“A-af-f-firmative.” the Droid replied, its voice skipping and pitching up and down. It’s speakers still recovering from the jolt.

The man lowered his shotgun and gestured the Droid to enter once it had; he drew the steel shutter back down and bolted the door closed. “It’s about time you showed up here. I’ve been holed up in this house for almost a month now.” The man stared the Droid in the face. He was rough, unshaven. Deep bags sat under his eyes and his skin was a worryingly pale. The Droid took a moment and reviewed the man’s I.D. chip. Which, it noted, was marked as Ex-military.

Normally, half of the information stored on an I.D. chip can only be seen by certain officials. But because of the Droid’s sensitive mission, its creators thought it best to have access to all information on whoever it was rescuing. This time though, not all the information on the chip was making itself available.

Name: Gordan Grey

Rank: Corporal

Birthdate: September 14, 2029

Nationality: United States of America

State and City of Birth: Dallas, Texas

Sex: Male

Age: 40

Height: 6′ 0″

Weight: 187lbs (84.82kg)

Eye color: Green

Hair color: Gray

Blood type: O-

Blood donor: Negative [Under no circumstances should blood be donated.]

Organ donor: Negative [Under no circumstances should organs be donated or harvested after death.]

Occupation(s): Vehicular Mechanic, (Ex) Marine, [ACCESS DENIED].

Criminal Record: [ACCESS DENIED]

Medical Record: [ACCESS DENIED]

Psychological profile: [ACCESS DENIED]

Now that was an interesting find. The Droid got curious. So, it pinged the internal military servers via a satellite Internet connection then found the service file named “Grey, Gordan 200004” and requested access. There would be a wait for either a human or an A.I. to approve access to the sealed information.

To the Droid that had taken almost a full minute, but in reality, only about a half-second had passed. “Corporal Grey, are you infected?” the robot’s voice was human; someone’s voice. And, at the same time… it wasn’t. It was one of those cobbled-together voice-prints that’s composed of one or more people saying random words and syllables into a microphone and then shunting the subsequent data into a computer algorithm to sew and knit it all into a cohesive voice.

Corporal Grey seemed surprised that the Droid knew his name, but a rock-solid poker face quickly washed away the look.

“No.”

The Droid didn’t believe him. It had been on enough of these missions to know just how desperate an infected human could be when the promise of rescue was at hand. It would keep monitoring for signs of the infection.

For now, the Droid nodded and opened up its broadcasting systems. It pinged the satellite once again and made it mark his location for immediate extraction, tagging the marker with the “Military Personnel” tag.

“Transport will be here shortly to take you to the nearest military outpost.” Said the Droid. The corporal nodded and walked to the kitchen area of the house. The Droid followed.

Gray leaned his shotgun against the kitchen island and reached into a battered and dented refrigerator. Amazing that the utility even functioned properly after all this time. Gray’s knees wobbled as he went to sit down, unusual but not a definite sign of infection. It could be equally likely that Gray was suffering from severe fatigue. As Gray reached to pop open a plastic container of medicine with his other hand, the Droid glimpsed what looked like a perfectly round scar on the palm of his hand. A line traced from the center of the scar all the way up the underside of his arm. The Droid quickly shifted its gaze and noticed an identical set of scars on the opposite arm.

The Droid received a ping from the server.

“The contents of this folder are restricted. Only those ranked GENERAL and above may view its contents. Anyone found viewing the contents of this document without explicit permission from a higher ranking officer will be found guilty of treason and subsequently have their rank, occupation, and benefits stripped before being incarcerated in a facility deemed appropriate by the highest-ranking officer that can be reached within 24 hours of the infraction. If no officer can be reached, the perpetrator will automatically be sent to the Rockwell high-security detention center off the coast of Maine and further sentencing.”

The internal server A.I. pinged the Droid for a credentials check.

The Droid granted access, “Processing information…” The server replied.

As said before, the Droid had a large amount of clearance with these things, so it was expecting to be viewing the file with no problem.

“Access denied. If access to this file is necessary, please contact your administrator and await access.”

The Droid was intrigued.