Android X: The Complete Series Page 15

  “I didn’t recognize Crenshaw’s androids,” X said. “Their chip patterns were unique. She must have built them.”

  “Crenshaw has found the forbidden technology,” the Councilman from North America said.

  “It’s the same technology that powered the singularity,” the Councilman from Asia said. “She has synthesized it with her father’s—the same technology that powers you, X.”

  “This is news to me,” Fahrens said. “So that’s why all of her androids were so funny looking. They looked like they had been tacked together. I’ve seen toys with better finishing touches.”

  “Don’t underestimate them,” the Councilman from North America said. “They’re more powerful than you can imagine.”

  “So what do we do now?” X asked. “We have no idea where Crenshaw went, and we’re no better off than when we started.”

  Fahrens, who was resting against a pillar and clutching a wound on his head, his blue uniform bloodied down the chest, pulled himself upright and gestured across the room, where android engineers were picking through the rubble. “Let’s not worry about Crenshaw now. Let’s focus on picking up the pieces.”

  “No,” the Councilman from North America said, pulling up a live video of the protests outside. “We have to address the world, first.”

  Nobu stepped forward. “Sirs, Madames, it’s time to go.”

  The Council stood and buttoned their suit jackets.

  The Councilman from Asia nodded to X. “X, we trust that you and Nobu will provide us adequate protection. We’ve got a few other agents on detail, but we’re light on security today.”

  X saluted.

  “It’s time to give the press conference of our lives,” the Councilman from North America said. “And if we escape this one without calls for our resignations, it’ll be a miracle.”

  Chapter 4

  Jazzlyn nursed her wounds in the sanitation facility. She was groggy, and she had no idea how long she had been asleep. She sat in the middle of hundreds of dead androids, cursing as she wrapped bandages around her tender arm. The room was silent, and all the dead androids stared up at the ceiling. The stink of trash and putrid refuse assaulted her nostrils.

  Blood pooled in her mouth and she spit it out. She took a swig of lemonade from her flask, trying to drown out her blood’s metallic aftertaste. Her rainbow-colored hair was matted and in desperate need of a brush.

  Smoochums, her silver, robotic cockroach, landed on her and kissed her neck. Then he chirruped and flew around the room, flying frantically around all the androids.

  “Thank you, my pretty little Smoochums,” she said. She pulled a nylon bag out of her pocket and flapped it several times. It inflated into a large sack. “That android messed me up pretty bad, but I still won.”

  She got up and started grabbing whatever would fit in her bag. Soon, the bag bustled with android parts.

  “I’ll sell all of these parts, make a ton of money, and get some upgrades. Then I’m going to find that stupid android X and dismantle him. When I sell off a Crenshaw, I’ll be rich.”

  She picked up an arm and studied it. Cut wires dangled from the elbow. She tested the wires with a voltage checker and they sparked. “Still good,” she said, putting it in her bag.

  She gathered bullets, legs, faces and circuit boards. She cut out all the black boxes with a box cutter and threw them into the bag.

  A rumbling sound came from outside. She heard voices and trucks. She remembered that the sanitation workers had been kicked out of the facility, and now they were probably returning to reclaim it.

  “Time to go, Smoochums!”

  She shouldered the sack on her arm and Smoochums landed on her shoulder. She made her way up to the catwalk, up a stairwell, and onto the roof where the red light district sprawled around her. The rain had stopped, the gray clouds had parted and the sun was shining. On the horizon, columns of smoke rose from the UEA headquarters, and several police planes circled the skies.

  “Wonder what happened,” Jazzlyn said. She lit an electronic cigarette and gazed out over the district. She breathed in and blew smoke from her nostrils, sighing with relaxation. She patted her bag. “I wonder what killed all these androids,” she said. “Come to think of it, they didn’t look like they had been killed at all. It looked like a mass suicide. But who cares. I’m going to make money. My job’s not to philosophize about stupid androids.”

  She heard more voices below, so she jumped onto a neighboring building and ran from the sanitation facility.

  “I hate this place,” she said. “But then again, I hate the badlands, too. Why can’t there be some glamorous country where we can live lavishly, Smoochums? You could have all the programming perks you wanted, and I could be pampered every day. Then I could go out at night to hunt androids and build my fortune. Oh well. I guess life ain’t fair, is it?”

  She climbed down into a dark alley and landed on a dumpster, sending a metal clang through the area.

  “Almost forgot,” she said, smiling. She pulled a black box out of her bra—it had belonged to X’s friend, Ballixter. She remembered how X had fought her for it and how she had pretended to destroy it. “I fooled that android, didn’t I? What was so important about this stupid black box that made X so upset?”

  Her lens lit up and a message scrolled across: MEET. NOW.

  “Crap,” she said.

  She had nowhere else to go nearby for privacy, so she climbed into the dumpster and closed the lid behind her. Luckily, it was empty—except for the lingering odors. It stunk like old pizza and a thousand other types of food that had caked on the walls throughout the years.

  She sat down cross-legged, working by the light of her lens. She took a deep breath and relaxed. Exhaling, she blinked six times and a green wall of information appeared around her. A maze of dots appeared, and she used her eyes to negotiate a password. Then another maze appeared, and she entered another. And another. And another. And another. Her eyes moved almost automatically; she knew the string of passwords so well she didn’t hesitate. Finally, her vision surged forward into a red tunnel, twisting and twirling so much that if she hadn’t been used to it, she would have lost her bearings and forgotten which way was up.

  Her consciousness jolted backward and she appeared on a solitary cobblestone street. The pixel sky above was yellow and the sun was blood red. There were several old-fashioned storefronts with multiple stories along the street, and a road leading off to the side. On either side of the street, huge brick walls stood like sentries, blocking passage. She wondered if there was anything beyond them—probably not.

  A street sign wavered in the breeze, its metal creaking. It was blank.

  Jazzlyn looked down at herself and felt her face. She was a man now—lean, mustached, in a pumpkin-orange hoodie that covered her head and black pants with a bunch of zippers all down the legs.

  “Sexy,” she said, rolling her eyes. “These avatars are freaky.”

  She scanned the street and entered a shop called CLANDESTINE MEETINGS, INC.

  The store looked like a hotel lobby for an old-fashioned hotel. The carpet was a gaudy red, the room smelled old, and a chandelier hung from the ceiling. A receptionist sat at the front desk. He had long hair, wore a checkered shirt, and he was watching a screen with pornographic images. “About time,” the man said. “Your meeting is in Room C.”

  He pushed a button and a door in the wall opened. Jazzlyn entered and walked down a long hallway that smelled like mildew and rust. She passed several black doors and heard people inside whispering, but she couldn’t make out what they were saying.

  She entered Room C. The room was all black with a digital screen that took up an entire wall.

  A black man dressed in all black with a hood over his face turned in her direction. He was in a darkened background, so she couldn’t see exactly where he was. He was probably in a meeting center somewhere else exactly like this one.

  “You failed,” he said.

  “H
e got lucky,” Jazzlyn said. Her male avatar’s voice came out deep and gravelly, and it surprised her at first.

  “You have to keep searching,” the man said. “That UEA android is of importance to me.”

  “What do you need him for?” Jazzlyn asked.

  “I’m paying you a lot of money, but I’m not paying you to ask questions.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Stay close to the android. You’re bound to run into him again. I see you used the weapons I gave you to great effect. Go and meet my merchant—he’ll have more for you. If you complete this mission, you can keep whatever you use.”

  “I appreciate that, but what I really need is some food,” Jazzlyn said. Her stomach rumbled.

  “You hunt androids for a living; you can’t hunt down some food?”

  The man disconnected and the room went dark.

  “You called me all this way for a one minute meeting? Geez.”

  She left the room and started down the hallway again, thinking about where to find X.

  Chapter 5

  X and Nobu entered the lawn and looked out at the waves of protesters. Their chants were deafening. A team of UEA androids in suits and sunglasses formed a line to keep them back. A stage was set up in the back of the lawn with a podium and six seats, the entire structure covered by a strong wall of bulletproof glass that curved over the podium. Media androids were setting up their cameras and microphones for the press conference. News drones circled the area, and the lawn smelled fresh because the lawnmower drones had finished cutting the grass just a few hours before the protesters had gathered.

  X put on a pair of sunglasses and adjusted his cuff links. His arm heated up, and the nightstick inside his forearm was ready for action if he needed it.

  X and Nobu stood on either side of the podium. At the same time, they both said, “Clear.”

  “We’ll be there in two minutes,” Fahrens said via an audio link.

  X and Nobu stood at attention with their arms clasped in front of them and observed the crowd.

  “This is some crowd, eh?” Nobu asked.

  X nodded.

  “Remember our first mission, X?”

  “How could I forget?”

  “A gun duel in a speedboat in the middle of the ocean. Don’t know what the guy was running from, but you were the best shot of any android I’ve ever seen. You could hit a bullseye on an amoeba.”

  A hamburger splattered against the glass.

  “Hey!” a man cried, shaking his fist from the center of the crowd. “Why don’t you androids tell us what the Council is really up to? What plans for world domination do they have, and when will they achieve it?”

  X and Nobu ignored the man.

  “You’re ignoring me because you’re under orders, eh?” the man asked. “That’s a bunch of crap, dudes. Why don’t you just spill your secrets? Whoever that android engineer was that attacked the city, she’s going to use you to kill us, isn’t she? I’d much rather hear the UEA’s position from the Council and its robots directly than believe the tabloids for information. How can we trust anything anymore?”

  X and Nobu continued staring through him, so he charged the glass barrier. The man climbed onto a news drone, and it carried him over the stage. Then he landed on the top of the curved glass and tried to climb over.

  X and Nobu turned their hands into guns and fired rubber bullets at the man, but he kept climbing. He landed face-first on the platform between them. He reeked of marijuana. X grabbed the man by the soft, sweaty collar of his Hawaiian shirt and said “You get a freebie. The next person who climbs the glass is going to jail.”

  He hurled the man over the glass and sent him crashing into the crowd.

  “No one crosses the glass,” X said. “No exceptions.”

  The man cursed at them and shrank into the shadows, whimpering.

  X pointed to the media reporters nearby and said, “Disable your drones.”

  A journalist nodded and keyed a command into his digital screen; the drones dropped out of the air.

  “Funny how just a handful of androids can protect this entire vicinity,” Nobu said. “It used to be that in the early days, police forces would respond to these types of events with hundreds of officers to keep the peace. Now just a few androids can do the same job, and people normally respect our authority.”

  “Until they have a reason to question it.”

  That was the problem with riots. Most of the crowd kept their peace, but it was the handful of extremist people you couldn’t anticipate. Someone would throw a rock or a Molotov cocktail, or charge the barrier; then the chants would get louder and louder until the decibel rating rattled the androids’ circuits, and then all fragile balance would disappear as the androids had no choice but to use violence—peaceful violence, if there was such a thing—sometimes to control the crowd, other times simply to stop their own circuits from frying. The area would fill with tear gas so stringent it made the humans’ eyes water and burn. The androids would grab the humans, who coughed and flopped on the ground, and then throw them in the back of police vans without hurting them. When the humans were safely in jail, they would be given medicine to counteract the effects of the gas.

  But this time the protesters were insatiable. He wondered how this event wouldn’t end with violence.

  He didn’t have much time to think. Fahrens walked onto the platform just as the final news drone landed on the grass. His uniform was dusty from all the construction and he had his hands clasped behind his back. His grizzled face looked pensive, as if the weight of the UEA were bearing down on him and going to crack him at any moment. He looked out at the sea of angry people and shook his head. The Council followed behind him, accompanied by several android agents. They took their seats on the stage, and the Councilwoman from Europe stepped to the podium. The crowd went silent.

  “On behalf of the Council, I wish to express our gratitude for your understanding in these last few days. We also want to express our deepest sympathy for those who lost their lives in the attacks. The day of the attack is now an international holiday, and we will celebrate the lives of those who died in what has been the most devastating android attack since the singularity of 2199.”

  Murmurs spread through the crowd, but everyone remained enthralled by the Councilwoman.

  “I must preface this speech with the fact that this issue is a matter of international security, so I have to be careful what I say, as the UEA is still investigating. Releasing too much critical information will jeopardize our search for the criminal.”

  X expected the crowd to boo her, but they remained quiet.

  “Five days ago, an android agent was on patrol in his district when he experienced a malfunction in his programming. This malfunction caused him to go on a killing spree, murdering at least one hundred people before fleeing to the island of Aruba where he continued to terrorize the residents there. We sent one of our top android agents to apprehend him, and we thought at the time that this was an isolated incident. We did not want to scare the public without a factual basis to do so. For this reason, we withheld the events from the media until our agent’s mission was complete. He succeeded in killing this rogue android, and to date there have been no more instances of any androids going rogue within the walls of the UEA. I repeat: there have been no more instances of any androids going rogue. There is no reason to be concerned about any androids in your homes or jobs. They are not being targeted.”

  The crowd stirred and people cried out. “What about the airships? What about the attacks?”

  The Councilwoman held up her hand, but the crowd seemed beyond taming now. She pulled a metal rod out of her pocket and pressed a button. The rod glowed green and issued a high-pitched shriek throughout the area, making everyone clutch their ears and scream. Even X had to put his hands over his ears; the vibrations shook every circuit in his body.

  When the crowd quieted, the Councilwoman said, “I was not finished talking yet. W
e discovered that this rogue android was not in fact rogue—he was reprogrammed by a skilled android engineer. Our agent pursued this engineer and just when he was about to catch her, she revealed herself, entering the city with airships and a fleet of evil androids who launched the devastating attack on the UEA headquarters. I must tell you that these androids were not UEA androids. They were manufactured outside our jurisdiction. We were able to fight them off, and we are currently trying to locate them. Our intelligence reports indicate that the android engineer is none other than Jeanette Crenshaw, the daughter of the late and great Roosevelt Crenshaw.”

  Murmurs spread through the crowd like electricity.

  “We have no choice but to find her and bring her into custody so that she can answer for her crimes,” the Councilwoman said. “That is all I am authorized to tell you at this time. As I know you are understandably upset, I will now take your questions, but let me warn you: I’m not going to tolerate a shouting match.”

  She pointed to a line of journalist androids who had numbers on their shirts.

  “Madame,” the first journalist asked, “Are you sure that it’s Jeanette Crenshaw? Weren’t there rumors that she died a few years ago?”

  “Rumors, yes. She was marked missing since we never found her body.”

  The second journalist raised his hand.

  “How much are the estimated damages to the UEA headquarters? Will taxes go up as a result?”

  “At least half a million,” the Councilwoman said. “The Council has not conferred to discuss taxes right now. We have more important things to worry about. But remember, the United Earth Alliance was founded as a place where its residents can pursue their dreams and desires, and we have no intention of hampering that dream.”