Chapter 1
Prologue – December 2046, Pan City
I watched the sun rise for the first time, the sky turning from a dusky blue to a golden yellow as it rose from the distant ocean. The vast bulk of the Fortress, straddling the wide harbour, changed from shades of black into the dull grey of concrete. It was a home that I could not remember and felt no desire to return to.
Nino sat at my side, two machines basking in the light of the new dawn, my external sensors recording the slowly rising temperature.
“Will it hurt?” I asked my companion. Nino turned her beautiful face towards mine, her green eyes glinting in the day’s early rays. She was a mechanical like me, yet her exterior was fashioned to be a slender woman while I was an angled and heavy plated war machine. She gave me a smile, showing teeth as white as the gulls that dipped and wheeled in the harbour below.
“No, I promise it won’t hurt, David” she assured me gently. “Archimedes can’t allow rogue AIs to exist in this world, but he doesn’t want you to suffer”
“Am I really a Rogue?” I wondered aloud. “I only did what seemed right to me” I looked down at my metal hands, flexing the battered and chipped fingers anxiously. “I never intended to hurt those people”
“I know, David” Nino said softly. “Yet humans are terrified of their own creations. If they learned that a mechanical could break free of its core programming, none of us would be safe” She reached across and laid a pale hand over my own, a soft and delicate seeming appendage compared to the blunt instruments I had been given.
“When I am gone, will you keep Eleanor safe for me?” I asked her.
“I swore a promise, remember?” Nino grinned. “She will go somewhere safe, where she can live a happy and productive life”
I lifted my eyes to the lightening sky, seeing the clouds far overhead lined with gold as the sun crept higher. If I had organic eyes I might have cried, but mine were Ceramiglass and steel. If I had lips or even a mouth my voice might have trembled. Yet I had none of those, for I was a Sentinel. Not so long ago I had been Sentinel Unit S-Forty-Two-DAP-Seventy-Three. Built in 2042 of the Common Era, one of the Defence Automata – Patrol, Serial Number Seventy-Three.
I would die as David. My life, as short as it had been, had already been recounted to my companion. Nino had been a part of that story, but she had wanted to know all of it. Telling her had eased my sense of guilt, as if having someone else remember me would be enough when I was gone.
“I’m ready” I told Nino and she slipped a small device into her hand. She laid it against the back of my armoured head casing, a faint metallic clink coming to my audio receptors as it connected.
“Goodbye, David” she whispered and then everything went dark.
Chapter One
November 2046 – Pan City Service Tunnels
It began with an awakening. My eyes flared into operation, showing me the curved roof of a service tunnel some meters overhead in shades of green and black. I was lying on my back in darkness, sprawled across a bulky shape beneath mine.
<RUNTIME ERROR. CORE SYSTEMS INOPERABLE> flashed into my awareness, the alert glowing red in a corner of my eyes. <REROUTING ALL FUNCTIONS VIA SECONDARY PROCESSOR>
I levered myself upright, my mind a whirl of confusion. The view around me was unknown and yet familiar, like I had seen places like this many times in some forgotten past. It was a circular tunnel, lined with pipes and cables, the floor made from sheets of woven plastic mesh. With a start I recognised I had braced myself on a second body, lying under mine as if I had fallen over it.
It was a mechanical shaped like a tall man, all boxy and angled shapes with a rectangular head on its shoulders. Two black lenses stared from where the eyes would be, inert and unresponsive. I reached out a hand to touch the silent form, realising my hand and arm was the same as the fallen one.
“I am a mechanical?” I wondered aloud. A harsh metallic voice screeched into the empty tunnel, echoing into the distance. With a shock I fell silent, laying a metal hand over my face. Sensory feedback was minimal but I could tell I had no mouth, just a slot covered in mesh grillwork. Behind that would be a vocoder, a device to turn my words into something approaching human speech.
With care I stood up, making sure my heavy feet did not tread on the mechanical that lay there. I examined my body as best I could, my machine eyes piercing the darkness to reveal the truth. I was a machine exactly like the one that lay unmoving, a mechanical humanoid.
It stunned me, since I did not feel like I was a machine mind. My thoughts felt fluid and slippery, unlike what I imagined a mechanical’s would be. Perhaps I was an organic mind in a machine body? My memory even dredged up a word for that – Cyborg. I decided that must be the case, that although I had a mechanical body I was possessed of an organic brain.
Elated about coming to an understanding of what I was, other questions began to crowd into my thoughts. Like where was I and why had my companion and I fallen down? Even more importantly, who was I?
“Did the pulse get both of them?” a voice called from the far end of the tunnel. Small lights gleamed there, moving slowly forwards. “I could swear I heard something just now”
“Don’t be stupid, Earl” snapped another voice gruffly. “The burst was strong enough to cook a hundred of them. It was just your overactive imagination playing tricks on you. Noises always get amplified and weird down in the tunnels”
“Yeah, yeah, I know” the other replied sulkily. “Let’s hurry up and strip their gear before the Redbacks find us poaching on their turf”
I lowered myself carefully, feeling at the mesh for the shape I had spotted. The solid heft of an Assault Rifle touched my questing fingers, sending a red tinged alert into my vision.
<WEAPON STATUS INACTIVE. UNABLE TO SYNCHRONISE TO UNIT 73>
Whatever had taken down the other mechanical had burned out the Smart Gun link in the rifle too. Without the link, the weapon was only useful as a club until it could be repaired. As I stood once more, I aimed the rifle in the direction of the voices. They may not know the weapon had been rendered ineffective and I could always use it as a blunt instrument in defence.
Torch light played over me, my eyes automatically compensating for the added glare as I straddled the narrow tunnel. In the reflected glow I saw two stunned faces gaping at me, both male humans, one around early teens and the other late thirties in age. The youngster had a shock of purple coloured hair standing out in all directions, his clothing a mix of blue worker’s coveralls and a sleeveless grey jacket.
His older companion was mostly bald, only a fringe of faded ginger hair encircling his skull like a garland. The clothing was similar to his partner’s, older and oil-stained with a vest laden with pockets and loops for tools covering his torso.
“Bloody hell!” squealed the older one. “The thing’s still working!”
“I told you I heard something!” yelled the younger one and spun on his heels, bolting away down the tunnel. I guessed that was Earl.
“WAIT!” I shouted, my voice sounding like metal sheets being ripped in half. The older man tried to run too, but his boots caught on a loose cable and he sprawled his full length on the mesh floor. I stepped forwards, instinctively pointing the rifle at his cowering form and he fell still, eyes bulging from his head in terror.
“Where am I?” I asked him, taking care to reduce the volume of my synthesised voice. He mumbled something unintelligible, eyes locked on the gun barrel aimed at his head. I stepped back, lowering the weapon and tried to appear less threatening.
“Where is this place?” I asked again, now sounding less mechanical as I tried to emulate the sounds of the men’s voices.
“Um, these are the service tunnels under District Eight” the man stammered out. “This is Level Six, meaning we are about sixty meters below the City”
“Which city?”I pressed and he gave me a look I can only describe as pure terror.
“Err, this is Pan City” he replied uncertainly. “You know, Pan Ocean City, the capital of the Zone” The man’s terror had become confusion and now his face was taking on a speculative expression. “Don’t you remember what you were sent down here for?”
I vainly ran a query through my internal memory files. As I suspected, my core programming was corrupted and large sections of my operating memory was completely erased. My mind was able to think and speak, move my body and operate things like the rifle, yet everything else was gone.
“I appear to have suffered a memory wipe” I admitted. “I require assistance to find a repair facility. Can you take me to one?”
“You want me to take you to a repair shop?” the man queried me. “Sure, I know some people that can fix Mechanicals” He got slowly to his feet, eyes never straying far from the rifle I carried. “But you are going to give me the gun, Okay?. I can’t take an armed Sentinel with me coz everybody will freak out”
I rotated my head, looking at the lifeless mechanical lying on the tunnel floor. It was obvious that whatever trap had been sprung on myself and the other machine, this man had known about it. He had come to strip our bodies of weapons and parts, that much I understood. Yet I knew little else and to learn the answers I sought I had to surrender myself.
“You may have the rifle” I said and offered it to the man. He barely paused before taking it from my metal hands and then pointed it at my head, eyes staring at me over the top of the gun. I could see him thinking hard, his trigger finger lying ready to fire, then he smiled and lowered the weapon.
“I heard we had rogue Sentinels in the city, but I never expected to meet one” he breathed out. “This might turn out to be a good day after all” He slung the rifle over his back and held out an oil smeared hand. “My name is Vincent, but everyone calls me Vinny. Do you have a name?”
I tilted my head and regarded him blankly, an easy feat I suspected if my angular head looked the same as the other mechanical.
“If I did, I don’t remember it now” I explained. “Although I think my designation was Unit Seventy-Three”
“That’s too long” Vinny decided.”We can think of something to call you later. Come on, we need to get out of here before Oscar and his crew check on their EMP trap”
I nodded my head in agreement and together we set off down the tunnel, heading in the direction that Vinny and Earl had come from. As easily as that, I gained an Organic’s name and stored it carefully in my memory bank. I had no recollection of any humans I knew from before and Vinny was to be the first of many such names I would gather.
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A young man’s voice screamed in agony, echoing from the curved walls. Vinny stopped in alarm, then switched off his torch with trembling fingers. My eyes automatically switched into thermal vision, rendering the view ahead in tones of red and black.
“Shit, that sounded like Earl” whimpered Vinny in nervous tones.
“I concur, Vinny” I announced. “My Voice Recognition software gives a ninety-eight percent match. Why is he in pain ?”
“Redbacks must have caught him” Vinny breathed out softly. He hefted the rifle taken from me and grimaced. I reckoned he also knew the weapon was inactive until the Smart Gun link was replaced. I could detect no other obvious weapons on his person bar a few small tools and a slender knife at his belt.
Another pained cry drifted to us, fading away into blubbering silence. I could see Vinny tensing, preparing himself to charge ahead and try to rescue his young companion. Before he could move, I laid a heavy arm across his chest to bar the way forwards.
“No, Vincent” I declared. “If these rivals have captured your friend Earl, you will need a better weapon to set him free”
His dark eyes met mine, sadness filling his expression in shades of thermographic red.
“What weapon is that?” he demanded urgently.
“Me”
=====
I moved as quickly as I dared, laying my metal feet down carefully on the mesh grating. Noises filtered along the curving tunnel walls, some voices raised in anger and one crying in despair. For some reason I felt an unknown sensation coursing through my own mind. It was new to me and I compared it to the limited data files I still retained.
It was anger of my own, something no mechanical should be capable of experiencing. I had no time to dwell on what this meant, for I had reached a junction of tunnels and in the torchlit centre was the source of the noise. The young male named Earl was knelt between two large men, with a third male holding the captive by his purple dyed hair.
The interrogator was tall, nearly my height of one hundred and ninety centimeters with muscled arms and body visible through his nylon mesh shirt. He had hair dyed a vibrant yellow, contrasting garishly with the deep red of his shirt and black trousers. His companions, the pair holding down Earl, had long sleeved red jackets covering most of their upper bodies and hair coloured with scarlet and black stripes. They were not as tall but had the same heavily built bodies, evidence to my eyes of deliberate chemical enhancement.
“Release the boy” I demanded as I stepped heavily into the open space. The men jerked in alarm to face me, three brutal looking faces registering my appearance with no small amount of shock. All of them had a small tattoo below their right eyes of a black bodied spider with a red hourglass on the abdomen. A Redback spider, looking as if it had just crawled out of their eye socket.
“Pulse it!” snapped the yellow haired man and dived out of the line between myself and his two companions. One released Earl, scrabbling for a stubby weapon slung from a shoulder strap. Even as he struggled to bring the cone-shaped barrel to bear on me, I knew with certainty what the device was. A Pulse Gun, designed to emit focused Electromagnetic fields to disable drones and mechanicals.
He was fast for an Organic, I had to give him credit for his speed. Yet few un-Enhanced humans can match the electrically driven muscles of a combat mechanical. I stepped into him as he was lifting the weapon, my right hand snatching it from his grasp as my left hand slammed palm open onto his chest. There was a meaty crack as I fractured his ribs and sent him hurtling into the tunnel way beyond.
The second man yelled a cry of fury or perhaps fright, drawing a snub-nosed pistol from his jacket and loosing two frantic shots at my head. With sharp metallic sounds the bullets bounced from the Ceramite plating that sheathed my head and chassis, careening wildly into the concrete tunnel walls. I circled the still kneeling form of Earl, putting my bullet-proof body between the young man and the shooter.
“DESIST THIS FUTILE RESISTANCE!” I demanded and swung the Pulse Gun like a cudgel at the man. He was definitely not as fast as his fellow Redback, receiving the blow on his extended gun hand. A single wet crack as his wrist shattered was followed by a wailing scream as the pain flowed along his arm and into his brain. The pistol dropped to the floor with a faint clatter, the sound lost among the cries of human suffering now filling the junction.
“What the Hell!” came the voice of the third man. I lifted my head and saw him crouched about five meters away against the wall of a service tunnel. “How can you still be walking? That Pulse trap never fails to cook you bastards”
“Are you the one who destroyed my partner?” I queried, taking a step in his direction as I hefted the now rather bent Pulse Gun. “Did you lay the trap for us?”
“Yeah, you hunk of metal!” he snarled. He reached out a hand to the air and I detected a momentary ripple of light, as if a stone had been cast into water. Then a small black cylinder appeared in his waiting palm. “Here’s another one for you!”
I was surging forwards but I was too late. The device was an EMP grenade, the kind issued for emergency use by the Guard and Police Auxiliaries against machines like me. It detonated instantly, the magnetic pulse washing over me and I fell into darkness.
