Weaponized Human (Robot Geneticists Book 3) Read online

  “Less, actually,” Jocelyn15 said with a shrug. “The human mind represents 88 percent of the difficulty in cloning one to term. Besides, we know the process works. Gemini is proof of that.”

  Zeus seethed beneath his breath at the mention of that name. Gemini was a ticking time bomb. Only a combination of edicts from the Human Welfare Committee and the Privacy and Surveillance Oversight Committee kept someone from barging into her cell and torturing all the information she had on the conspiracy from her.

  The conspiracy walked a tightrope because of that robot in girl’s flesh. Zeus needed the Human Welfare Committee intact to protect her secrets while at the same time crushing the HPA from relevance to stop their insidious probing.

  “For now, I’m just a robot with a fleshy disguise,” Zeus said. “We need to put a lid on kidnapping attempts. Far safer to start from scratch.”

  “But slower,” Jocelyn15 said. “People see you and the humans running around, feeling things, enjoying food and drink, laughing and playing.”

  Zeus raised an eyebrow.

  “OK, mostly the younger Eves,” Jocelyn15 allowed. “But just speaking in the hypothetical, if I had Jocelyn Santos’s body again, I imagine I’d be tearing those clothes off you by now. Strictly hypothetically,” she added quickly.

  “Jocelyn Santos was fifty-two. This body is barely adult,” Zeus said with a scowl. Perhaps he’d chosen his diversion for the afternoon poorly. Jocelyn15 was making him uncomfortable.

  “Oh, come off it, Charlie,” Jocelyn15 chided him. “Who’d age a body to menopause? If I was eighteen again, you’d be whistling a different tune.”

  Zeus suspected not, but Charles Truman had never been good around women as a young man. A lifelong bachelor, he’d preferred his women educated and mature. By the time he’d figured that out, he’d given up on chasing young women.

  A notification from his computer stirred Zeus from his unpleasant musings. He set down his teacup and checked. “Ah, there he goes. Off to the races.”

  “Hmm?” Jocelyn15 hummed.

  “Plato finally figured out where he wanted to go. Can’t be sure exactly where just yet since he flies with the navigational sense of a cab driver.”

  “You really should give that up,” Joceyln15 said.

  “Give what up?” Zeus asked, not taking her meaning. “Planting tracking devices on Plato’s ridiculously named skyroamer is never going to get old.”

  “But those metaphors, dear,” Jocelyn15 said, taking advantage of Zeus’s unattended teacup to fill it again. “You’re trying to sound as old as Charlie7, using those old pre-invasion terms. All the cabs had been bulldozed into the smelters by the time you were mixed.”

  “You too,” Zeus pointed out. “We’re close to the same age.”

  “But I don’t pretend I remember the Human Age firsthand. It’s tacky. Nobody likes it when Charlie7 does it, either.”

  “Sorry,” Zeus said. “It’s an algorithm I’m running to keep from sounding like Charlie25. It overrules my first instinct of what to say. I suppose it’s occasionally coughing up some of the stuff I might have said that would have sounded like old ‘7.”

  “Well, in that silly body, it would be hard for anyone to mistake you for the robot who transferred them to their latest body,” Jocelyn15 admitted. “So, where do you imagine the would-be hero is off to?”

  “I’ve long since given up trying to predict his logical leaps,” Zeus said, cringing as he took a sip of tea before remembering to sweeten it. Good-for-nothing taste buds had been set to appreciate everything too sweet for his own good. “That’s why I went with the tracker.”

  “How will you explain all the time you’re whiling away here?” she asked. “Surely he must expect you to have done some work of your own.”

  “Me?” Zeus scoffed. “I was told by the head of the Human Welfare Committee to stand down. That’s my boss’s boss. I’d be a fool to disobey Eve Fourteen.”

  Zeus’s computer chimed.

  “Oh, ho!” he exclaimed. “Looks like we’ve got a destination. He’s on course for Sicily. Looks like Eve might have hinted at something amiss with our good Evelyn44. Pardon me a moment.”

  As he began tapping a message, Jocelyn15 tried to peer over the top of his portable to read along. He angled the screen up.

  “What are you sending?”

  “Oh, just an anonymous Social message to Evelyn44, warning her that the Human Protection Agency will be sneaking into her house.”

  Zeus hit send and took another sip of his tea.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Eve had resolved never to come here. Traffic control on the prison hovership had double-checked to make sure she was truly intent on intercepting them and really was interested in coming aboard.

  For her part, Eve had triple-, quadruple-, and quintuple-checked those same plans.

  Brent184 led the way. His menacing black Version 70.2 chassis made him look like Charlie7 on the surface, but he carried himself nothing like Eve’s venerable old friend.

  “Had a bet about how long before anyone came to see her,” Brent184 mentioned as he escorted her through the hovership’s interior.

  It felt like forever ago that this had been her home. But it was only months ago that she and the other Eves had moved out. Eve knew her way quite well, but still she was glad of the company, even if it was only Brent184.

  “How long had you guessed?” Eve asked, thankful for any topic to distract her along the way.

  “I called it two years, but really my bet was never,” Brent184 replied with a sneer. “Just wasn’t willing to wait until she died of old age to collect. Especially since the medical staff seems happy to keep her alive. Medical visits didn’t count.”

  “Who was the bet against?”

  Brent184 spread his arms. “Oh, everyone around here was in on the pool. Lemme tell you, I only bet for ‘never’ because I had one of the earliest picks.”

  Eve swallowed, wondering if she had the strength to go through with the meeting. Her data goggles had been tracking her speed relative to the corridors of the hovership and reported a decrease of 18 percent in her walking speed since she’d left the hangar.

  Her goggles also displayed the route-dependent distance back to the skyroamer and how long it would take her to get there. With a few twitches of her fingers, Eve shut down that particular display as unhelpful.

  By the time they arrived at Gemini’s door, Eve was sweating. The corridors were cool and dry. Eve’s clothes were practical and well ventilated. There was no good excuse for her perspiration.

  “You got cold feet?” Brent184 asked.

  She knew his motive, but Eve wasn’t going to make her decisions based on a gambling pool among the hovership crew. “Open it.”

  “Okie dokie,” Brent184 replied jovially. “But if you get in trouble, I’ll be right outside.”

  The door slid open.

  Gemini sat in the apartment-like cell—not so different from the room Eve had shared with Phoebe—and looked up from her clay work.

  Eve hesitated.

  Gemini scowled.

  Eve stepped inside.

  The door closed behind her.

  Eve took a slow, controlled breath. There was no privacy here. Arthur19 didn’t care about safeguarding the rights of a criminal in custody. The Human Welfare Committee membership wasn’t worried about anything more than her basic human rights.

  “Hi,” Eve said.

  Gemini continued scowling.

  “How have you been?” Eve asked, flashing a smile that she couldn’t maintain for even a full second.

  “I see you’re turning into one of them,” Gemini said coldly.

  Eve frowned, but the data goggles extrapolated Gemini’s eye movements and deduced that she was referring to the goggles themselves. She pushed the device up onto her head. “Sorry. It’s hard to keep up without constant computer access.”

  “I believe Evelyn11 offered that same functionality in a less cumbersome format.”<
br />
  Eve’s stomach knotted at the idea of the lenses that had been stapled to her eyes. “I didn’t come here to be sociable.”

  “Of course not.”

  Eve wasn’t sure how to take that. Did Gemini know why she’d come? Or was that supposed to be a remark aimed at the limited social skills she’d learned under Evelyn11’s twisted guidance?

  “Olivia is missing,” Eve said simply.

  “Who?”

  Eve swallowed back the rising bile in her throat. “Eve17. That’s her name now… Olivia.”

  “How cute. O is the seventeenth letter of the alphabet. Quite predictable.”

  This was a mistake. Eve had come here hoping to find Gemini reasonable, eager enough for any contact with the outside world that she’d jump at the chance to lend her help. Instead, the veneer was peeling to reveal Creator beneath the mask of flesh and blood.

  “Sorry to have bothered you,” Eve said, trying her best to match the coldness of Gemini’s tone. She spun to face the door. “Brent184? I’m done here.”

  “No! Wait!” Gemini shouted, jumping from the couch with one hand outstretched, stopping herself short of what might be considered an attack on Eve.

  Eve knew why Gemini stopped short. The collar around Gemini’s neck was packed with a sedative syringe that would render her unconscious almost instantaneously if she broke certain guidelines. Touching Eve ought to have been enough.

  The door slid open, and Brent184 stood aside to let Eve pass.

  Again, however, Eve hesitated.

  “Please. Don’t leave me,” Gemini begged. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be curt with you. I’ll be on my best behavior, I swear!”

  Brent184 cocked his head, waiting for a decision.

  “Give us a little more time,” Eve told him. The door slid closed once more. Turning to Gemini, Eve backed the girl to the couch, threatening with her mere proximity. For someone so used to being in control, the idea of that collar being able to rob her of consciousness must have terrified Gemini.

  “Let’s try this again,” Eve said, crossing her arms. “Olivia is missing.”

  “What do you mean by missing?” Gemini said, keeping her tone bland and even. “Was she supposed to be somewhere and didn’t arrive, or are you talking ransom note with magazine-clipped letters?”

  “Magazine-clipped—?”

  “Sorry,” Gemini said, turning away. “Before your time. Before mine, too, frankly, but it still showed up in old movies. I mean… how did you lose her?”

  “Well, she’s emancipated,” Eve explained, not willing to take for granted any events that had occurred since Gemini’s imprisonment. “She’s not tracked or tagged or anything, but she’s vanished without a trace. Phoebe and I—”

  “Who?” Gemini cut in. “Wait. Let me guess. Eve16? P being sixteenth and all that…”

  “We all took our names before you… well, you know,” Eve said.

  “Got thrown in the labyrinth’s oubliette?” Gemini prompted.

  Eve itched to pull down her data goggles to look up the reference, but just let the comment pass with a nod of confirmation. “Well, Phoebe, Olivia, and I are all considered legal adults.”

  “Unless you have reason to suspect foul play, I don’t see the issue, then,” Gemini said. “If you wanted to make a thirteen-year-old girl responsible for her own actions—which might well be a planetary first—this is merely a consequence.”

  “But I do suspect foul play,” Eve countered. She sat down on the far end of the couch from Gemini, momentarily distracted by the clay chessboard and pieces arrayed mid-game. There was a game that appeared to have developed from Alekhine’s Defense. Eve blinked aside the distraction and the developing threat to the reddish-brown king. “She deviated from her normal routine and vanished. That fits with the profile of a kidnapping.”

  “Let me guess: you studied up on historical kidnapping statistics and patterns,” Gemini said, crossing her arms.

  “Yes, but—”

  “But nothing,” Gemini cut in. “Did she have social engagements that she missed? Was she expected somewhere and failed to arrive?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Eve17 was an explorer. Despite the conditions of the lab, she always seemed to want to know about the places Evelyn11 went outside it. Absent contrary evidence, I’d say you’ve got a runaway on your hands, not a kidnapping. And since you saw fit to treat a hormone-addled teenager like a rational adult, you have no basis for hunting her down. She’ll turn up sooner or later. Evelyn11 didn’t raise any fools.”

  Eve couldn’t take it anymore. “You. Not ‘Evelyn11’ in the third person. You. Don’t dodge responsibility by claiming that you and Evelyn11 aren’t one in the same.”

  “We’re not,” Gemini said, staring out the window. “Evelyn11 never felt the slightest regret or guilt for her actions. Me? That’s all I’m made of.”

  Eve felt a pang of sympathy before remembering that Gemini knew all the emotional levers to pull to manipulate her and her sisters. “If you’re so wracked with guilt, tell us who the rest of the upload conspirators are.”

  “My offer still stands,” Gemini stated simply. “Full amnesty and a bodyguard contingent to protect me from retribution, and the names are yours. You think I’m safe—even in this sealed box—without guarantees of protection?”

  “I can talk to the committees.”

  It would take a lot of talking. Even her own membership was unlikely to sanction a full pardon for Gemini thanks to her actions as Evelyn11. And that didn’t even cover all the other committees she’d offended including nearly every body chartered to govern ethics.

  “Well,” Gemini said with a mirthless smile. “You go do that. It’s been nice having you, but I think I’ll return to my leisure.”

  “Bishop to c5,” Eve said. “Checkmate in seven moves.”

  She stood and called for Brent184 to let her out. This time, when the door slid open, Eve slipped out without any pause.

  “That’s cruel,” Brent184 said once the door slid shut.

  “I know,” Eve replied. “But she should learn to treat people better.”

  Though Gemini might spend hours analyzing the position, there was no possibility of checkmate within the next seven moves.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  There should have been no need for a wilderness tracker in the modern world. Satellite-based thermal imaging, ferromagnetic scanners, and particulate analyzers should have made locating a lone girl in the wilderness easier than coding in BASIC. Yet Charlie7 didn’t have any specialized scanning equipment packed in the storage compartment of his skyroamer, and the Privacy Committee hated satellite-based tracking systems of any sort.

  Without access to the Earthwide, Charlie7 didn’t even have access to how-to guides or personal journals written by ancient trackers. He had to improvise.

  Fortunately, Charlie7 was brilliant.

  A widening circular search pattern eventually got him close enough that he could spot a second skyroamer parked out in the middle of the desolate beauty of the nascent wilderness. The vehicle sat nestled under some artfully arranged brush beside an outcropping of rock.

  Charlie7 stared into the sky, wondering if visual imaging from orbit would even have picked up on the craft without seeing it set down.

  “Kids these days,” he muttered. “They just don’t make ‘em like they used to.”

  Before he headed off to find the girl, he opened the canopy and performed a cursory search of the cockpit.

  Everything was gone.

  If Olivia had packed for this trip, everything had gone with her. There was no hint that the skyroamer was intended to be a base of operations or a storage site of any sort. Odds were that Olivia wasn’t planning on being back here anytime soon. Waiting wasn’t going to get the job done.

  Trails led off in all directions. Shallow depressions in the soil stood out if Charlie7 filtered his visual feed properly. He followed one trail, then the next, and so on as they circled o
ut, wandered, and returned. Olivia had reconnoitered the area before setting out.

  At last, he spotted one set of tracks that clearly led away from the skyroamer. Charlie7 knew that he had to check one last thing before he set off in pursuit.

  Leaning into the cockpit, Charlie7 tried to access the skyroamer’s computer.

  There was a whine, out of place amid the myriad systems of the skyroamer.

  Charlie7 dove.

  Only the superior reflexes of his Version 70.2 chassis saved him as an explosion ripped the front end of the skyroamer apart. Shrapnel flew, shredding Charlie7’s clothes and scratching up his paint. The blast itself scorched his cranial plate.

  Dusting himself off, Charlie7 stood and stared at the wreckage.

  “Well, maybe they do make kids the way they used to,” he joked despite being all alone.

  The whole cockpit and front section of the skyroamer was gone, torn to scrap and flung across a quarter kilometer area. The area just forward of the engines still smoked.

  Since none of the Eves had shown psychopathic tendencies, he preferred to believe that the bomber was the same robot responsible for the signal jamming. He was willing to accept Olivia as a lone wolf who wanted to test herself against the wilderness. He wasn’t, however, ready to paint her as the Second Human Age’s Unibomber.

  Taking a fresh visual scan of the area, he looked for any hint of robotic footprints.

  The blast had ruined any evidence, however, raking the landscape with debris and scorch marks. Not that it probably mattered much. Any robot with the savvy to plant the device where only a rescuer was liable to find it and cunning enough to blanket the area in advanced jamming technology wasn’t liable to slip up and leave footprints leading to and from the scene.

  Knowing where Olivia’s trail had been heading just before trying to use her computer, Charlie7 scouted the area and picked up her trail anew. His surface area and depth calculations helped him estimate that the forty-kilogram girl was lugging at least an additional thirty kilos worth of gear.

  In two years of Cub Scouts, Charles Truman had never hiked with more than an afternoon’s lunch to weigh him down. He revised his assessment of Olivia back to its original stance. “Nope. Not like they used to…”