Boss King and the Blade

Monday, October 2046

Trixie Smith’s Private Residence, Central District, Spitfield

Trixie

Trixie approached the door to her apartment with her pistol drawn. Her calls to Abbie had gone unanswered since she got back to Port August, making her fret all through her high speed journey to this point.

The door unlocked to her palm print, clicking open to a cold and empty seeming apartment. She had traversed the narrow passageway on full alert, her pistol scanning each unoccupied room until she reached the kitchen. There were no signs of a struggle and all the young woman’s gear was still neatly stored in the living room.

Abbie’s phone sat on the small table, hooked to the charging point on the wall. Trixie picked up the phone and it sprang to life, showing a single image as the screen saver. It was Abbie, seated on one of the kitchen chairs, holding Sirius to her chest. From out of shot a suited and gloved arm reached across, holding a pistol to the side of the terrified woman’s head.

Trixie slowly and methodically laid the phone on the table surface, then drew out one of the chairs. She sat and faced the door, her pistol held in her lap. To anyone observing her right then, she would have appeared as cold and emotionless as one of the Sentinels that patrolled the city.

On the inside she was screaming.

=====

It was some time later the phone rang, bringing forth the only movement she had made since she sat down. Her left hand reached out and picked up the phone and laid it against her ear.

“Do you really want to do this?” she asked whomever was on the other end of the call. Her voice could have frozen the entire ocean if she had been on the shore.

“You have something I want” said Alex-Four. “Bring it to me and I’ll let the girl go”

“Melody-Six is far away now, in a place neither you nor I can reach her” Trixie spoke quietly but clearly.

“I know, Miss Smith” the Hive Father said. “It’s you I want”

He gave her a location and a time to be there. It left her barely enough time to reach the place, an old office block in the outskirts of the Washima District.

“Don’t delay, Miss Smith” he cautioned her. “And come alone. My Agents will be watching”

=====

Police Auxiliary Headquarters, Central District

Trixie barrelled into Jericho’s office like a runaway truck, pushing past a protesting Hi-Ling without a word. She slammed the inner door shut, barring it with her body as the secretary hammered on the outside with her bare fists.

“Welcome back, Trixie” Jericho-Three greeted her implacably from behind his desk. “Is there something you need?”

“Boss, I’m going to ask you to do something you will absolutely hate” she said hurriedly.

“It’s not a Poetry Recital is it?” he replied.

“Worse than that” she said and told him her plan.

=====

Abandoned Office Block, Washima District

The Auto-cab pulled over to the kerb and Trixie got out, thanking the Dumb AI that drove the vehicle as if it were a real person. It gave her a recorded Thank You in reply and hummed away, probably glad to be leaving such a run-down section of Spitfield.

It was well past the afternoon by now, the sun throwing long shadows down the empty street. There were no vehicles parked on the roadside, not unless you counted the burnt out wrecks of an Auto-cab and a solitary scooter, still connected by a chain to a rusted lamp-post. The office block in front of her was tagged by local gangs, with the few windows at ground level covered over with plastic sheeting.

She pushed open the front doors, entering a lobby littered with trash, used hypo-injectors and more graffiti. The elevator doors stood open, the cars within evidently out of use. A single door at the lobby rear promised Emergency Stairs so she headed to those. Her destination was the second floor so she ascended the stairs quickly, uncaring of the noise her boots made on the concrete steps.

When she got to the nominated floor, she pushed open the stairwell door. A lone man in a dark suit regarded her from behind sunglasses, his hands cradling a long barrelled pistol against his waist.

“You’re late” he said.

“You trying hailing an Auto-cab to this part of Washima” she answered. “It took me three companies until I found one willing to drive me here”

He did not reply, just stood aside and gestured for her to enter the doorway behind him. She did as he indicated, looking at him curiously as she walked past. Inside was once a large office space, the windows that faced the street letting in reddish-gold light that overwhelmed the feeble worklights placed on a pair of stands.

The room held a small folding table with a chair placed in front of it, also of the folding variety. On the table was a portable data terminal, one of the high capacity models used by Net Divers. A solidly built man of Asiatic ancestry watched her from one corner of the room, dressed in a suit of the same colour and cut as her escort. Her facial recognition software confirmed her suspicions, the same as it had done for the other man.

“Sit, Miss Smith” asked the man in the corner, his voice low and flat.

“I’m not doing anything until you show me Abbie” Trixie countered, equally low yet with a promise of violence.

The corner man nodded to the other, who vanished to another room close by it seemed. He returned moments later with Abbie, the young woman clutching a wide-eyed Sirius to her chest. The pistol was pushed into her stomach as they entered, making her gasp. It was done so that Trixie was left in no doubt her friend would be killed if she made any wrong moves.

“I’ll do whatever you ask, just let the girl go” Trixie said coldly. “If you hurt her or the cat, you know I will hunt down and kill every last member of the Hive”

“Is that so?” came a new voice. Trixie turned to the data terminal, seeing a familiar face on the screen.

“You know I never give up, Alex-Four” she reminded the image. Slowly and carefully she drew her phone and Abbie’s out of a jacket pocket, showing it to the screen and the men. “Give her the phone” she said. “I’ve linked it to mine, so I can see once she is clear of the building. Then I’ll give you what you want”

Alex-Four laughed from the screen, his voice deep and rich like a professional actor or politician.

“We have you here already, Miss Smith” he grinned at her. “Why should we let her go?”

“Alpha-Bravo-Niner-Three....” she began and Alex-Four shouted at her to stop.

“Very well” the screen image relented. “Mister August, send the girl and her pet out of here. Do not interfere with the child, they are unimportant to our plans”

Trixie handed the phone to a confused Abbie, who took it one handed.

“What’s all this about, Trixie?” she stammered. “Why did you come here to rescue me?”

“I’ll explain later, if I can” she promised Abbie. “Just go now, holding your phone so I can see you and Sirius are safe” She held up her own phone, linked to show her what the camera on Abbie’s was seeing.

Abbie looked at the two men and at the smiling face on the data terminal.

“Are you going to be Okay?” Abbie demanded and Trixie could see past the brave front the young woman was projecting.

“Always” Trixie lied and willed the woman to believe her. “Please, just go. This won’t take long”

Abbie clutched a mewling Sirius to herself and walked uncertainly from the room. Trixie watched her progress from the phone screen, until at last the young woman stepped out onto the pavement.

A low black sedan hummed to a stop in front of her, the side door powering open.

“Get in please, Abbie” said Jimmy. Abbie looked confused and glanced left and right, wondering if it was a trap.

“He’s with me” Trixie spoke down the phone, so Abbie jumped without further hesitation into the car. She had an image from inside, showing the grinning face of her fellow ex-Guard clone, while the car raced them away to safety.

“Satisfied, Miss Smith?” asked Alex-Four. “Yes? Then please take a seat and we can begin”

Under the watchful eyes of the two men, Trixie sat in the folding chair. She saw there was a coiled induction lead connected to the terminal, with a magnetic coupler at one end. Alex-Four regarded her face to face from the screen, an eager expression on his features.

“Subverting me won’t do you any good now” she told the screen. “Jericho-Three knows you already tried it once. Archimedes and the Avatars will all be watching me, waiting for any sign of betrayal”

“You’ll never understand what it is I need from you, Miss Smith” Alex-Four assured her. “So stop wasting time and connect your Quantum Processor to the data terminal”

Behind her were the two men, August and the Hive Agent. She had no choice, but then she never really did. The only consolation was that this was her decision, her sacrifice. Trixie placed the magnetic coupler against her temple and opened her mind to Alex-Four.

He surged inside of her, a gleaming Avatar of pure code and malice, throwing open the doors of her inner being. Alex-Four was exultant, glowing in her machine mind like an Angel of the Lord.

At the core of her essence was a shining pillar of light, filling her completely and bringing Alex-Four to a shuddering stop.

“Hello, old friend” Archimedes welcomed the intruder. “It’s been a while since we spoke”

=====

Trixie awoke at last, finding herself slumped awkwardly in the folding chair. The data terminal was still running, but only static filled the screen. The presence of Archimedes was gone from her mind, the connection to the Network deactivated once again. Of August and the Agent there was no sign as she scanned the room, no evidence they had been there at all.

The worklights were still lit, the windows showing only dark night beyond. She got to her feet, feeling stiff and sore like she had been wrestling angry gorillas all evening. Without any memory of the past couple of hours, maybe she had?

She worked her way to the lobby, seeing no-one, glad that her Enhanced eye was still working. It was pitch black inside the building now, as if the whole place had never had the Hive agents hiding there.

On the street at last, she breathed in the hot and sultry stink of Washima. The odours of sewage, burnt plastic and ozone were like a nectar to her sense starved nostrils.

“Glad you made it, Trixie” Jericho-Three said from where he was leaning against the front wall.

She turned and looked at her boss, a small man who was the spitting image of Alex-Four, or at least one of his offspring. Idly she wondered if the Jericho clones thought about the man and woman who had created them, who had used their own genetic material to fashion the first of their kind.

“I can’t believe Archimedes let me go” she responded uncertainly. “He didn’t seem at all surprised that a supposedly defective processor was reactivated again. Why would he allow me to rejoin the Network, then once again take me out of it?”

Jericho-Three shrugged his shoulders, admitting he had no idea either.

“The Big Boss, he plays games with all of us. He keeps so many secrets I think he doesn’t even tell himself half of them”

Her boss began walking, pointing to a parked electric sedan at the end of the block.

“Come on, I’ll give you a ride home. There is a girl and a cat waiting for you and they are pretty anxious”

“Okay, Boss” she agreed and joined him, matching her longer pace to his short fast steps. Side by side they strode towards the waiting vehicle, more like partners than boss and employee.

“Hey Boss, do you think the Hive Father was really a clone of Alexander Hargreaves?” she asked. “I mean, he tried to make himself out to be one, but the Nests never got to meet him in person. It was always through video messages and virtual simulations”

“What do you think he was?” the Avatar asked her lightly.

“He was an Artificial Intelligence, like Archimedes” she decided, then stopped walking as she realised her boss had stopped, tilting his head to regard her.

“Never say that again, Trixie” he warned her. “There is only one AI in the Zone and that is Archimedes”

“Sure Boss” she acknowledged and he gave her a sly smile, winking one eye at her.

“Come on, stop dawdling. I don’t want that cat of yours clawing at my leather seats”

=====

Hive Van, en-route North from Spitfield

Mr August

The highway slipped past in the van’s headlights, Michael-Two at the wheel. August sat in quiet contemplation, as he had done since the evacuation from Washima District.

“Have all our remaining assets left the city?” he asked the Agent at last.

“Yes sir” Michael-Two answered. “The Port August facility has already been raided by the Guard, however we have successfully moved all the essential equipment offshore. They only found empty rooms and laboratories but we didn’t have time to cleanse them properly”

“No matter” August shrugged the failure aside. “Archimedes already knows what we were doing there. He will be happy enough that we were forced to flee”

“What of the Nests?” Michael-Two enquired hopefully. “Will they be evacuated as well?”

August spared a glance for the Agent and contemplated telling him a lie. It was what we was best at after all, then decided the young man had earned one truth for his loyalty.

“There is no need” he said flatly. “The last Nest fell to Archimedes already. That girl, Melody-Six, was the only one to escape”

“What?” Michael-Two cried out, the van swaying as his hands gripped the wheel too tightly. True to his training, he recovered his composure and got the van back under control. “Without the Nests, how will the new Blades be raised? How will they become Shadow Blades?”

“That phase of the Hive Father’s great plan has been completed, Michael-Two” August assured him. “The breeding program was ultimately intended to produce one result only; the creation of a Shadow Master. Now that this has been achieved, the remaining Blades and Agents will be redeployed to a new mission”

Michael-Two took the revelation better than August had expected, giving him some hope that the Agent would be useful for the new role he had in mind.

“Where is the Shadow Master now, Mister August?” the Agent asked him. “Who are they?”

“They are safe for now, far from the reach of Archimedes” August said lightly. “The time is not right to bring them back into the Hive, so they can live a normal life for the moment”

He gave Michael-Two a calculating look, pondering how much insight the young man possessed.

“It’s Melody-Six, isn’t it?”

August smiled, a rare expression on his hard face. He nodded once and faced to the front again, observing the road markers flash by at regular intervals.

“I have high hopes for you, Michael-Two” he said. “Don’t let me down”