He has the urge to walk down the tower stairs, step outside the gate, pull the driver out of the car and bash him until his face is a bloodied ruin, smeared all over the pavement. His heart rate picks up and he starts feeling lighter and lighter by the moment as adrenaline floods his system.
His eyes sink back and widen, his jaw clenches and his veins start pulsing and all he can hear apart from the console beeping is his heart pounding like a bass drum. Rennin looks to his sniper rifle. Not yet…
Rennin opens a channel to Caufmann again, “Sir, the truck isn’t moving.” The response is simple, he is ordered to take it out.
The watchman activates the courtyard turret systems and sends a message across the lab PA system telling all staff to remain indoors. A further warning is issued onto the street, sirens atop the guns themselves light up sending pedestrians into a panic as they try to get well away from the gates.
The two turrets on the outer wall target the truck’s cab and open fire without any further warning to the driver. Protocol dictates quite clearly that a blatant warning be given to anyone trespassing that they will be fired upon if they don’t comply.
The cab is torn apart in a single volley, tearing the driver and the passenger to pieces.
Rennin is down the stairs and out of the tower in record time with his sidearm in hand. It is a modified GX-03 HolinMech precision pistol that he’s renamed ‘Killjoy’. Killjoy has been customised specifically so the recoil won’t shatter his bones upon firing, since the gun was designed for an android wielder.
He opens the service grate in the left gate so he can slip into the street. Pedestrians are starting to gather, a seething crowd desperate to see what has happened. Rennin scans the group and can see many more cameras than he’d like.
The police are already arriving, making a perimeter around the wreckage of the truck. He really admires the accuracy of the gun systems, they didn’t puncture any fuel cells behind the cab but both the people in it are absolutely ruined beyond recognition.
Rennin opens an audio channel to the lower level delivery area, “Get up here with tow cables to bring this thing inside.”
“Is it safe?” answers a humourless female voice.
“Just get up here. If it’s not safe, you go back down. If it is safe, you take the truck down. Same as every other time, I know it’s hard to keep up with a method that never changes.”
Rennin takes a featureless rectangle box off his belt, and places it on the shipping container at the rear of the trailer and switches it on. A holographic display lights up as it begins its probe.
The scanner takes a few moments, before returning a verdict; the container is empty. Rennin doesn’t like that at all. He opens a channel to Caufmann.
“Sir? There’s nothing in it, but I don’t think we should bring it inside.”
“Bring it in.”
“But this could be the intention,” insists Rennin, a rush of suffocating paranoia enveloping him. His scanner can only pick up organic or inorganic material, not anything microscopic like a pathogen.
“I want to examine it myself. Out,” says Caufmann, severing the communication.
Resigned, he re-holsters his sidearm and looks to the courtyard. A trio of delivery level crew are already waiting, tow cables already anchored to the elevator plate’s built in winches. These people think of everything. He gestures for them to stay where they are.
Despite Rennin’s protests, the delivery levellers hauled the remainder of the truck and it’s container inside the compound. A portable Hazmat containment chamber of plastic now encases the ruined vehicle.
It’s a simple mobile design in relation to the lab’s resources but reliable nonetheless. Caufmann has been in there for nearly an hour with a circle cutter saw. He makes a four-inch incision along the side of the container.
Caufmann is wearing a full bio-suit. He sees it as a hindrance, rather than a help since the doctor can’t be infected by anything in the known world, but it wouldn’t do to let anyone know such a thing. Appearances must be kept.
A large gasp of air is drawn into the container.
So, vacuum sealed. Interesting.
Caufmann looks to his left but the scanner attached to the side remains blank. No known pathogens. Then again the scanner will only issue an alert to something hazardous. Caufmann puts the saw down, thinking hard.
The only thing inside the container now is air. He pulls his head cover off, and frowns at the container. What the hell is going on?
A thought does dawn on him. Whoever it is now knows how to get something undetectable inside the lab complex. This is probably just a test. Perhaps Rennin was right.
Caufmann steps out of the containment chamber still completely lost in thought, unaware of Jellan Roths’ approach and attempt at communication. Caufmann looks over in time to catch the last piece of whatever drivel she’s speaking, “—you think you’re doing? There could be anything in there and it could be loose now.”
“There’s nothing in there.”
Roths grits her teeth, “You think you know everything? Two men dead hauling nothing?”
Caufmann turns to her, so the soulless red lenses of his glasses reflect her face.
“I am in charge of this city’s welfare for a reason. September 17 will be the last vaccination shipment. Issue a citywide order that all schools will close after the Gorai Aurelia rally on the 23rd until further notice.”
“Why?”
“In April this year an infiltrator Progenitor-class android entered this city. Since then, our best attempts at apprehending it have been useless and inefficient. It’s obviously trying to get into the lab. So next time, let it.”
“What? Have you lost your mind?”
“I said allow it.”
“Why?”
“When it arrives, and it will, stay in the dormitory sector, it’s the only fully armoured place apart from the test labs,” he instructs, moving past her.
Roths grabs his arm, “What are you going to do?”
Caufmann completely ignores her and his momentum, though slow, tears his arm from her grasp as if his weight is solid stone.
Rennin is at home just after midnight watching the Horizon News. Always the same garbage every night, he doesn’t even know why he lets himself vegetate to it.
Because you’re shit at everything else.
“Oh well fuck you.”
Drawing, writing, singing, dancing, washing the dishes—
“Fuck you.”
No fuck you.
“Fuck you!”
Rennin turns the volume up.
His usual choice at this time of night would be a cult classic show: Black Colours, a comedy about a vampire, a zombie, a warlock, a crack head and a clone all living together under one roof getting themselves into all kinds of ridiculous situations.
In one episode they got drafted into the CryoZaiyon Wars. Rennin didn’t really get the themes generally but the characters really rip into each other, so it keeps him amused. But he’s seen the series hundreds of times.
Tonight, he is irretrievably drawn into the late night news report repeat from prime time and the striking blue-eyed, dark-haired news anchor, ‘There seems to be a growing number of back problems in the city and they’ve been becoming ever more widespread as the months have progressed.
Speculation is mounting that there is a virus of the nervous system loose in the city. Some believe it to have originated at the Godyssey Laboratory in Centre-city District but Doctor William Caufmann has issued a statement, again denying viral research being conducted.