Cyber Dawn (A Ben Raine Novel) (24 page)

“You sure?” Jim asked.

“Yeah. If we call it in,” Scott replied. “We’ll be stuck in here for the next hour while the boss sends some guys to investigate.”

“Good point. You should go up there and check it out.”

I heard Scott grumble something. Then the ladder started to shake.

I turned my head and briefly considered climbing down the other side. But the metal shelving provided little in the way of grip and the containers were packed in so tight, footholds would be hard to come by. I decided it was better to be captured than dead.

A gloved hand appeared and gripped the top of the shelf.

A second hand followed.

Then a black helmet.

The guard peered over and spotted me instantly. My presence startled him. He jolted back and lost his grip on the shelf. Acting on instinct, I reached out and grabbed his wrist.

The guard, now breathing as hard as me, recovered quickly. He opened his mouth to shout something, then clamped it shut. He stared at me, eyes wide.

It took me a second to realize I recognized him.
The guard who let me through the rear gate on Monday morning.

His eyes flicked to the open container. He reached out and touched the white label with Megan’s name on it. For a moment his eyes lingered. I had seen and felt enough emotion over the previous week to recognize the shift in his eyes.

He and Megan were friends?

“You see anything, Scott?” called the guard from below.

Scott turned his attention back to me. “Yeah!” He yelled back.

I tensed.

“The box is up here. Looks like I was right. Lazy researcher.”

“Great,” the other guard grumbled.

“Just give me a second to put it back in place.”

“All right, but hurry,” Jim said. “I don’t want to be out and about when the sentries start rolling around.”

Scott lifted a leg over the top of the shelving and climbed up. I slid back, close to the far edge, still too stunned to speak or even breathe. I kept my eyes locked on him.

Without saying anything, he started putting Megan’s things back inside the container. I watched for a second, then tossed in a cup full of pens and pencils.

“What in the hell are you doing here, Ben?” Scott whispered.

“Trying to find out why Megan was killed,” I whispered back.

Scott stopped and stared again. “What makes you think you’ll find the answers here?”

“What did you say?” Jim called from below.

“Nothing,” Scott yelled.

“Want me to come up and help?”

“Nah, I’m good. Just give me a sec.”

He turned back to me, and said, “You’re crazy, Ben. I know you cared about Megan. Just let the police do their job.”

Scott picked up the picture I found earlier.

“CyberLife killed her,” I whispered.

He didn’t deny it or look at me like I was crazy. He just continued staring at the picture. After a pause, he slowly nodded his head and gently placed it back in the container.

He already knew,
I thought.

Another piece of the puzzle fell into place. It wasn’t a coincidence that Scott was stationed at a closed pedestrian gate on Monday morning. He was there to help Megan get me out.

“You can’t leave now, Ben,” he said. “Stay here and wait until morning. The automated sentries will be all over the place in a matter of minutes.”

“Automated sentries?” I asked.

“You seen the old Terminator movies?”

“Yeah.” I had watched just about every cyborg-themed movie ever made. When I was younger, I used to run around the research campus and pretend I was a T-800.

“We all joke that Merrick designed them after the ones in that movie. But it’s not really funny. They used some new experimental cybernetic programming. It doesn’t always work right. They’ve fired on guards a few times, which is why we all get pulled in when they are on patrol.”

I swallowed hard. Cameras, motion sensors, and human guards were one thing. Homicidal robots hadn’t been in my plans.

“Come on, Scott, hurry,” Jim called again. “We have less than ten minutes to get back.”

“Coming,” Scott called down.

I swallowed hard. “What should I do?”

“Like I said, wait until morning. As long as you stay here, you’ll be fine. They are pulled in at six.”

“I can’t wait.”

Scott finished loading the crate. He let out a deep sigh and lowered it over the edge. After sliding it in place, he turned and lowered his legs onto the ladder. “Megan said you were stubborn.”

I nodded. “Sorry.”

“Then be careful,” he said. “Stay in rocky areas and get to the perimeter fence as quickly as possible. The sentries generally stick to the walking paths. If you can get to rough ground, you should be able to outrun them.”

“Thanks,” I replied.

“Give us ten minutes to leave.”

Just before his head disappeared down the side, I mouthed, “Why?”

He didn’t reply.

38

Getting out of the building and through the sensor line had been easier than going in. I hadn’t spotted the automated sentries Scott warned me about. Now away from the building and the campus walking paths, I was confident the rugged terrain would make my escape easier.

After a minute, I pushed away from the rocks and stepped down the hill.

Thirty minutes and I’m home free
, I thought.

With the building lights behind me, I activated my night vision and scanned the forest ahead, looking for a clear path back to the fence.

Suddenly, the ground beneath me trembled. At the same time, I heard the loud, continuous crunching of pine needles. I dropped to one knee behind a fallen tree and swiveled my head around. It took me two seconds to find the source of the noise. Rolling through a grove of aspen trees, less than forty feet away, was a large metallic object.

Or, as Scott called it, a Terminator.

Nothing I saw at that moment made me think he was just being overly dramatic. The sentry was large, maybe eight feet tall, and rolled on a pair of triangular shaped tank treads. A central armored pylon held two Gatling guns and an array of sensors and cameras.

I flipped off my night vision just to be sure my system wasn’t playing a cruel trick on me. In the dark, the sentry was almost impossible to see. Its body was matte black and the only thing that gave away its position was a red light emitting from one of its sensors.

A box on my HUD zoomed in and focused on the sentry. After several seconds, it still didn’t display any information. The only text read:

Analyzing . . . analyzing . . .

I glanced down at the tracking sphere, but it was completely clear. The sentry emitted no network or GPS signal for my system to triangulate.

“Son of a bitch,” I muttered. “Made it this far, only to be cornered by a frickin’ robot.”

I peeked around a tree and watched the sentry. It rolled slowly up the hill at a diagonal from my position. It effectively cut off any chance I had of making it to the fence.

Deciding I needed better cover, I crab-crawled back to the rock outcropping. A second before I arrived, the entire forest exploded.

Bullets tore into the trees and rocks all around me. I flattened myself on the ground and crawled the final five feet on my stomach. Bullets smashed into the rocks just inches above my head. Shredded tree parts and rock chips rained down.

I screamed, although I couldn’t hear it over the whine of the twin Gatling guns and impacting bullets. Unsure of what to do, I curled up into a ball, hoping to present as small a target as possible.

I briefly considered surrendering, but didn’t know if the robot even understood the concept. Based on what Scott told me in the archive, more than likely, surrendering would just get me shot.

A round ricocheted off the rock above me. An instant later, something heavy slammed into my lower body. It hit me so hard, I wasn’t even sure where. It reminded me of being creamed by Danny Brewer in football practice.

With one hand, I reached down and felt around my legs. When I pulled it back, I sighed with relief. No blood. My pants were torn and inside I could feel a large gash in my synthetic liner. I reached into the gash and felt around. The metal was dented and scraped, but I didn’t think the bullet penetrated the shell.

Suddenly, the gunfire ceased. The whirring sound of the guns gradually slowed, then stopped with a loud click.

In the distance, alarms roared.

The sentry rolled up the hill directly toward me. Smoke poured out its barrels. The unmistakable smell of gunpowder was overwhelming. The air was thick with the remains of shredded trees, shrub and powdered rock.

When it was twenty feet away, it stopped, guns pointed directly at me.

I still didn’t know if the concept of surrender was something it understood, but I didn’t have a lot of options. So far, my system was unable to hack in. And my only cover—the forest—was gone, mowed down by bullets.

Knowing the odds of surviving another volley were zero, I slowly lifted my hands and pushed up on one knee. The sentry’s guns trained upward as I stood.

I picked up the sound of an approaching helicopter. Its blades thumped and echoed through the valley, making it hard to pinpoint exactly where it was. Between the helicopter, the alarm klaxons, and caustic smell of gunpowder, I was certain I had stepped into a war zone.

A minute later, the helicopter swooped down, low over the valley. Keeping my head still, I trained my eyes up. Through my night vision, I found it and caught the faint outline of the CyberLife logo on its side. My HUD flashed as my system detected and plotted its location on my tracking sphere. I watched as the helicopter circled the valley and then, to my surprise, lowered itself onto the landing pad near the main administration building.

A mile away.

My eyes flashed back to the sentry. As I stood there, realizing the human guards weren’t coming to my rescue, a second sentry appeared off to my left. With the noise from the gunfire and the helicopter, I hadn’t even heard it approach.

It stopped less than ten feet away and turned its turret toward the first robot. Keeping my head still, my eyes shot back and forth between them.
Are they communicating? Deciding whether or not to shoot first and ask questions later? Trying to figure out who gets the kill?

Suddenly, the second robot opened fire

Its muzzle flashes overloaded my night vision and temporarily caused me to go blind. I instinctively dropped to the ground.

With its guns so close, the sound was deafening. I covered my head again in a pointless attempt to protect myself from falling debris. And bullets.

Plink. Plink. Plink, plink, plink.

It took another several seconds to realize what I was hearing. Not bullets tearing apart rock and trees, but bullets ripping into metal. I opened one eye, then both, and stared in disbelief.

The two robots were shooting at
each other
.

Just then a new message appeared on my HUD.

Run.

I was still staring at the message, wondering who or what sent it, when a second one followed.

RUN!

I decided not to hang around and find out. Or to wait and see which Terminator won the giant robot death match.

For the record, I was rooting for Terminator number two.

I stood and bolted down the hill.

39

“Hello, Benjamin,” Detective Frost replied. He was silent for a moment, then added, “Yes, Ben, she’s here. We’ve had . . . an interesting evening. I’m hoping I can talk to you as well.”

I smiled to myself as I pictured Sarah spinning her tale of hackers, cyborgs and evil corporations.
Wait until he hears about the robots with Gatling guns,
I thought.
Probably cause a few blood vessels to pop in Frost’s old-fashioned brain.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I’m on my way there now.”

A pause. “Actually, Ben, I’m thinking maybe we should meet somewhere else. Neutral ground if you will.”

I frowned and tried to concentrate on the winding canyon road.

Neutral ground?

My mind tried to process what that meant, but I couldn’t come up with a good reason. However, getting shot at and almost killed was enough excitement for one night. I would cooperate.

For now.

“Okay,” I answered. “Guess that’s all right. You’ll bring Sarah?”

“Sure, I can do that. Why don’t we meet in the parking lot of the Foothills Mall,” he suggested. “I assume you know where that is?”

“Sure.”

“When can you get there?”

“About thirty minutes,” I replied.

“Sounds good. Be sure to bring this proof Sarah told me about.”

“I have it with me.”

The call ended and I concentrated on driving.

Does he believe Sarah’s story? Is he worried about CyberLife as well?

Then a scary thought hit me. I flashed back to my meeting with Frost and Dr. Merrick at the school.

What if he’s in on it?