Android X: The Complete Series Page 20

  “Oh, Big Papa! Why did you leave us?”

  X and Shortcut looked at each other. Quietly, they entered the room.

  “It’s not fair! It’s not right! I never got to know you. I wasn’t even born! And all Mama tells me is about how nice and kind and loving you were and now I’ll never get to know that. All I have is just a statue of you. But I know you’re up in heaven—if there is a heaven—and you’re smiling down on Mama because she’s doing good work. Just like you wanted her to. She never forgot your research, and she’s vindicating your name, Big Papa. And when that happens, we’re all going to live in a world where androids rule and no one can ever take away our sovereignty. And Mama will be able to create all the androids she wants, and we’ll have a photo of you and Big Mama on every wall and we’ll finish what our ancestors started in the singularity.”

  She wiped away a silicon tear, and X and Shortcut drew their weapons.

  “How about you tell us who you are?” X asked.

  The android didn’t turn around. “Well, that’s rather embarrassing.”

  “If I were Big Papa,” Shortcut said sarcastically, “I’d be throwing up in my mouth right now.”

  The android whipped around. She had Asian features, and she wore a fiery orange dress and a black skirt. She pointed her guns at them. “How dare you insult Big Papa? I, Xu, his granddaughter, will make you pay!”

  “How can you be the granddaughter of a human?” Shortcut asked. “Don’t tell me Big Papa was getting it on with an android.”

  X smacked Shortcut on the head. “Shut up, Shortcut.”

  “Stop, you stupid human!” Xu cried.

  “You know what makes me angry?” Shortcut asked. “How ridiculous you androids are. Jeanette Crenshaw basically programmed you to be as crazy as her.”

  “What are you looking for?” X asked.

  Xu smiled. “You weren’t supposed to be here, X. But now that you are here, I’ll rip out your black box and take it to Mama. She’ll be really happy once you join us.”

  “Never,” X said.

  Shortcut tapped his toes impatiently. “So, how about you just get down and put your hands up,” he said. “We’ve obliterated all the other androids on your team.”

  “You what?” Xu asked.

  Her shock took Shortcut by surprise. “T-That’s right!” he said, folding his arms. “We kicked the crikey out of them and we’re going to dump them on Crenshaw’s doorstep.”

  “No!”

  “It’s true,” X said, picking up the lie. “I dismantled them with my own hands.” He pulled out the chips from the android security guard and threw them at her feet.

  “You have no regard for android life,” Xu said. “You just destroy and destroy without thinking about the consequences.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re doing?” Shortcut asked.

  “Look around,” Xu said. “All I wanted to do was come and see Big Papa. I only killed the security guards. I was going to be peaceful. But not anymore.”

  Xu bolted past them and jumped high into the air, landing on the replica of the mastodon. She opened a door in the back of the beast’s spine and interfaced with an access panel. Soon, the beast came to life, roaring.

  “What the h—” Shortcut said, stepping back.

  “A robot replica,” X said.

  Xu pointed at X and Shortcut, and the mastodon charged toward them. X turned his hand into a knife and slashed one of the beast’s legs as it passed.

  Xu turned the mastodon around. She grabbed a long pipe from one of the displays and hurled it at Shortcut, but X shot it out of the air. Xu charged toward Shortcut but he rolled away and the mastodon crashed into the wall instead.

  X leaped onto the beast’s rump and climbed up, but Xu backflipped off and landed on him. They fell and crashed to the floor, wrestling. Shortcut shocked Xu with his rod, sending high voltage through her. She convulsed on the floor as Shortcut reached for her skull to access her black box, but before he could grab her, she kicked him away. The mastodon charged again and Xu climbed on top of it.

  “See how you like this!” she cried. The room went dark, revealing a simulated night sky above with bright stars. The whole room seemed to be on an axis, and the stars rotated above.

  “Look out!” Shortcut yelled.

  A pair of green eyes appeared in the darkness and X dove out of the way. The floor shook and the mastodon barely missed him, turned around, and charged again.

  X aimed and held steady as the beast neared him. He analyzed the beast and noticed its black box just underneath its forehead. Calmly, he fired three shots, hitting the creature dead in the forehead. The mastodon roared and fell over on its knees just before reaching X.

  The jolt threw Xu off and X jumped up, caught her in midair and slammed her to the ground.

  Shortcut turned the lights back on, and Xu knelt in the middle of the room, clutching her head.

  “This isn’t over,” Xu said. “You might beat me, but when the Android Winter comes, you won’t be able to kill us all.”

  She turned her wrists into guns, but X shot a hanging planet just above her. It fell and cracked open on top of her head, stopping her. X jumped on top of Xu and opened the side of her skull. He reached for her black box, but Xu laughed.

  “I don’t have a black box, remember?”

  “Duly noted,” Shortcut said, sliding on his knees to her. He shocked the inside of her skull, frying her circuits. She screamed as she went limp.

  X inspected inside Xu’s skull. “She wasn’t kidding. No black box.”

  Shortcut looked around at the destroyed room. “It sounds like we surprised her. How did she not know we were coming?”

  “She was looking for something,” X said.

  They looked around at the replica of Dr. Crenshaw’s office, then moved to stand next to his bookcase. All of the books were thrown on the floor.

  “She thought this was Crenshaw’s office,” X said. He held up one of the empty books—its pages were blank. “She even thought these books were real.”

  “But she was an android,” Shortcut said. “Isn’t she smarter than that? Even a human would have known the difference. We’re in a museum, after all.”

  “I agree. This doesn’t make much sense.”

  X blinked several times. He photographed and took video footage of the destroyed office. “I’ve got the evidence, but I think it will be smarter to take her body back to the headquarters for evaluation. She’s not of UEA construct, so it may benefit us to figure out how she was built.”

  “Good idea,” Shortcut said.

  X grabbed Xu and slumped her over his shoulder. Shortcut followed behind him and they walked toward the elevator. As they passed the disabled mastodon, Xu’s eyes lit up and she touched the access panel. The beast lumbered up and gave a weak roar. It staggered toward Shortcut.

  Shortcut leaped out of the way, landing on the edge of a staircase and wobbling backwards. He tried to grab one of the railings for support, but he lost his balance and fell over.

  “Shortcut!” X cried. He threw Xu down and ripped off her head to make sure she was dead. The android’s dead face looked up at him with a mischievous grin. He ran to the edge of the staircase just as Shortcut crashed into the freshwater display two floors below.

  Chapter 11

  Jazzlyn sat in a dark hostel room and held up Ballixter’s black box to the light. The window shades were drawn, the room lit by the light of a single lamp on the nightstand. The walls were yellowing and cracked in places, in need of major repair. She sat cross-legged on a floral bedspread that looked like an African jungle.

  Smoochums and the rest of her mechanical cockroaches sat on the edge of the bed, watching a trashy reality television show about human-android relationships.

  Jazzlyn puffed an electronic cigarette, the smell of watermelon-blueberry tobacco filling the room. She blew a huge cloud of smoke at the black box and it stuck to the sides, dulling its shiny surfaces. She wiped one of the edges unt
il it was shiny again.

  “The indestructible black box. An android wants you, and so does a mysterious person. That means you’re valuable. I just need to know why.”

  She tried to crush the box with her hands but it just made her palms red. She threw the box at the wall but it didn’t break. She beat it with the butt of her gun but she didn’t even crack a corner.

  “This is definitely a UEA black box.”

  She squeezed the corners of the box, revealing two small prongs. She snapped her fingers, and Smoochums scurried into her hand. Seeing the black box, the cockroach transformed into a metal cube with two holes in the center. She stuck the prongs into Smoochums, and the cockroach cooed. The box hummed and glowed gold, illuminating lines that she hadn’t noticed before. A rotating, shimmering wall of information appeared around the box.

  “Good work, Smoochy,” Jazzlyn said. Her lens lit up and emitted a laser that connected with the shimmering wall.

  “Only one chance,” Jazzlyn said. “Wish me luck, Smoochy. Otherwise, I’m going to jail.”

  Smoochums buzzed sadly.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t be gone long.”

  She blinked hard as her lens interfaced with the black box. Her vision surged forward as if she were traveling through space at warp speed.

  She touched down on a dark floor in a cylindrical room. She stepped forward, but the room vibrated gently, stopping her. A message in blood-red letters appeared on the wall: VERIFY YOUR IDENTITY.

  “Crap,” she said. “This is a clearinghouse. I totally forgot.”

  This was the first of many UEA security mechanisms designed to spring up whenever an unauthorized user entered. If she wasn’t careful, she’d trip the alarms.

  An access panel with a numerical keypad sprouted from the ground. She entered a serial code she had purchased from a shady merchant in the badlands—it had a 200% money-back guarantee (‘If it doesn’t work, I’ll pay you’).

  After a few moments, the room chimed and lit up, vanquishing the darkness and exposing a clear blue room with glowing walls.

  “Welcome, madame,” a voice said.

  “Why, thank you,” Jazzlyn said, strutting across the room toward a golden door. “I wish more people called me that.”

  She entered a long tunnel where information flashed around her as it transmitted through the box. A gentle breeze of air flowed through the tube, though she didn’t know where it was coming from or why it felt so real. She smelled burning silicon and plastic, and the circuit board ground was uneven. She rounded a bend to a double door with the UEA logo on it: a golden Earth with wings behind it.

  “This place is pretty cool. Let’s hope the network is still down. Otherwise, I’m definitely going to jail. But if the reward is high, then it’s worth the risk.”

  She had been in black boxes before, but nothing quite as sophisticated as this one. Though she was in a virtual world made of pixels, it felt real, even the smell and touch. She wasn’t supposed to be here—hacking into a UEA android’s black box was illegal and punishable with life in prison. But she kept needing to get more information on X so she could capture him and sell him for a premium on the black market. The price his black box alone would command was worth the risk.

  But what did her client want with it? He had said that he wanted any and every black box she found, and he was willing to pay her handsomely for each one. She liked his price, but she preferred to know what she was handing over—some things weren’t worth the money no matter how much someone was willing to pay for them. She had learned to be careful over the years.

  She especially had to be careful now. Things were going on the city that had no logical explanation. The things she’d seen in the last few days were stranger than anything she’d experienced in the badlands, and that was hard for even a badlander like herself to admit. If she could figure out what was going on, maybe she could satisfy her curiosity, figure out a way to make some quick cash from the UEA’s misfortune, and get the hell out.

  Another access panel rested on the wall next to the door. This panel had a digital number pad on it. She reached down to enter a code, but the numbers disappeared and her finger bunched up against the glass.

  “Hey. What the hell.”

  A machine gun popped out of the wall and fired at her. She saw it just in time, ducked under it and destroyed it with a single shot. The gun smoked, the access panel sparked, and the door slid open.

  “That stupid merchant,” Jazzlyn said, breathing heavily. “My code was supposed to be guaranteed!”

  She turned around to leave, but a wall sprang up and blocked her path. She had no choice but to move forward. Ahead, an open pillory waited for her.

  A voice sounded. “Intruders are not welcome in UEA black boxes. You have committed a felony and will face life in prison. Android police have been dispatched to your location and they will be arriving to arrest you any minute. Gather your pride as you wait. Every step you take is monitored and will be used against you in a court of law …”

  She ran into the next room. The floor dropped out, exposing a single bridge of stone over a long pit of fire. She ran across the bridge, but on the other side, two angry, tall robots with big white teeth charged at her.

  She fired at the first robot, striking it in the chest and blowing it up. She slid under the second robot and kicked it off the bridge into the abyss. The robot shot the bridge with a laser as it fell, and Jazzlyn leaped into the next room just before the bridge collapsed.

  Now she was in a long, black room with torches on the walls. The flames from the torches crackled, and the area smelled like a campfire. The stones in the floor shifted, making the floor unsteady, but she kept her balance as she made her way through.

  “Who are you?” a computerized voice asked.

  She didn’t bother to respond.

  “Who are you?” the voice asked again. Then it took a demonic tone and screamed, “You’re going to die here, girl!”

  “This is just virtual reality,” Jazzlyn said to herself as she ran. “This is just really freaking good virtual reality.”

  The corridor expanded and the next door appeared fifty feet away. Then, just when she had made up for the lost distance, the room expanded again, making the door farther away again.

  “This sucks!” she said.

  The room turned on its side and she landed on the wall. She rolled and didn’t miss a step, running around the torches on the walls. Then the room shifted again, throwing her on the ceiling. Then it expanded once more, and the door seemed impossibly far away.

  With a frantic lunge forward, she shot through the shifting room and grabbed the door handle. The room rotated again until she was hanging by one hand.

  “I’m not going to lose this fight,” she said.

  “You’re going to be sorry you came here,” the computer said. Jazzlyn pulled herself up and through the door. The entire box shifted back to normal and she landed in a white room with an altar where a replica of Ballixter’s black box rested.

  “Made it,” she said. “That was fierce.”

  She approached the black box on her tiptoes.

  The computer voice sounded again. “You’re making a mistake,” it said. “I repeat: you’re making a mistake.”

  Jazzlyn grinned. “Wait a second. I’m so stupid. This is virtual reality. You can’t hurt me. Ha ha! You can’t hurt me! You lost!”

  The computer repeated itself like a glitch: “You are making a mistake. You are making a mistake. You are making a mistake …”

  “You’re the mistake,” Jazzlyn said, grabbing the black box. She touched it, then flinched slightly as the very act of touching the box opened a connection with it. Her lens lit up as the black box transferred information to it, and her eyes widened with excitement as the information streamed across her vision.

  “You have to be kidding me,” she said, pouring through useless information about Ballixter’s framework. “I don’t care about any of this stuff.”

 
She scoured the black box’s innards for over an hour and found nothing of value.

  “That’s it?” she asked. “I wasted my time for all of THIS? This is what that stupid android wanted? There has to be more.”

  She tried to decode the box. There were many video memories, and she watched a few at four-times speed; but even at that rate it would have taken her decades to review all of them. She saw Dr. Crenshaw speaking to Ballixter, X, flames, Jeanette Crenshaw’s smiling face, the red light district and the faces of many murder victims as Ballixter reported for duty at horrific crime scenes.

  “Stupid androids,” she said. “I risked my life all because of memories? When I find X, I’m going to make him pay. I could have been out of the UEA by now! Now I could be in jail.”

  Her stomach sank. Her gamble hadn’t paid off, and now she had to think of a way to outsmart the police. She didn’t feel confident about her odds.

  She disconnected from the box; her vision surged forward and she fell back onto the bed in the hostel room, her eyes tired. She looked around, expecting android police officers, but there was no one. She ran to the window and peeked outside, but the red light district was just as gray and bleary as it always was.

  The network was still down. No one would be coming for her.

  She collapsed onto the bed with her arms spread wide, her heart beating fast. She stared up at the ceiling with a look of pure fear. But as she lay there, that fear turned to anger as she thought about X and how much she wanted to annihilate him.

  Chapter 12

  Shortcut woke up to a group of blurry faces hovering around him. Their voices sounded large and booming, calling his name.

  One by one, they came into focus: X was standing next to him and Brielle was sitting on the side of the bed with her hand on his. A doctor with spiky, black hair stood at the foot of the bed with his arms crossed.