“I met Pharaoh Drake last night.” Caufmann isn’t about to humour him by feigning curiosity, so Rennin continues. “He told me about Nyder Raddocks donating his brother to the HolinMech Program. Is it true that those androids are built using human bodies?”
“You really want to live here, don’t you?”
“I have no intention of living here, I’m not even sure I want to remain here now. Something is seriously screwed up.”
Caufmann looks distracted. “Have you had your flu shot?”
Rennin’s panic bell starts ringing at the thought of needles, “I’m busy.”
“It’s mandatory.”
“You’ll have to kill me before I let anything produced by this lab into my body.”
Caufmann isn’t intimidated but his body language certainly indicates a loss of patience, “I don’t have a great deal of time to deal with your petty concerns.”
“Look, Caufmann, the mayor of this city donated his own brother to the HolinMech Program, I just thought you might be interested in that,” he says standing up.
Caufmann puts his hand up, “Sit down.”
Rennin does so automatically before even registering the researcher’s words.
Caufmann tilts his head slowly to the left making a rumbling noise at the back of his throat. “Drake must have a big mouth.”
“He was drunk.”
“It’s a good thing in this case,” Caufmann clenches his right fist while it rests against his desk. “Project Outreach is reaching its final stage and not a moment too soon, seeing as the GA rally is only a couple of days away. I need you at that rally. Prototype knows what Beta HolinMech look like, but it will not know you. I am certain it will be there, I need you to take it out.”
Prototype? Fair enough. “Exactly how do you want me to do that in a crowd of people?”
“Don’t miss.”
“Why not let a proper professional handle this?”
“I trust your capabilities. The tracking serum I put in its system will still be traceable enough to give you a good direction until you can visually identify it. All other attempts to track it have been disastrous. It’s hiding in the sewer system and there is too much interference to hunt it effectively.”
“Why would it be at the rally?” asks Rennin.
“Because it thinks I’m going. I’ve told the local Gorai Aurelia group that I’m going to participate in the debate they’re holding.”
“Why not lure it outside the city wall to a more isolated place? Non-combatants are taken out of the equation then,” says Rennin.
“Nothing is getting out of this city for the time being. The only shipments currently leaving are the last consignments of Project Outreach. It’s taking longer than I’d like.”
“The vaccinations?”
Caufmann nods. “Travel out is restricted until we get the local nervous system infection under control.”
This is serious, far more serious than Caufmann is even capable of letting on. “Sir, if you’ll excuse me.”
Caufmann waves his hand in dismissal. “Thank you for telling me all this, Ren, it’s shed some light on some other problems.”
“No problem,” Rennin says as he stands up again and heads for the door.
Caufmann calls after him. “And get yourself vaccinated.”
“Yes, sir.”
Not a fucking chance.
4.
The Rally
Rennin Farrow feels as obvious as herpes lesions on a porn star.
It is a minute to midnight on September 23, and it is snowing in Raddocks Horizon. Rennin stands in the miasma of people looking over the general crowd. At this point he’s assessing the threat to his will to live.
Under his knee length leather coat, he has both his most modified and lethal pistols. Most of his head is covered by a hood, attached to a jacket lined with an armour-weave underlay strong enough to stop an android punch but not a knife or bullet. His overcoat has subtle titanium plates inserted at various points for extra protection. His pants are also armour-weaved with moulded plates over the knees and solid plates over each shin, matched with titanium capped and heeled boots. His entire outfit is black.
Just for something different.
He thought he’d be rather inconspicuous in a crowd of a few thousand, but the crowd is tens of thousands strong. They take up the entirety of Main Road for three kilometres. Mostly they are all wearing bright colours bringing a stark contrast to his umbral appearance.
Rennin still finds it amusing after four hours that in a nearly completely neo-gothic city so many hippies turned up in one place. Someone must have organised a free ultra vegan dolphin friendly tofu hotdog stand.
The nano-tracker inside the Prototype is degrading rapidly, according to the display in Rennin’s glasses. Caufmann ensured he was equipped with a pair, modelled on his own, before leaving for the rally. Rennin felt at the time like he was being dressed for his first day of school by a doting parent.
Although he can’t pinpoint the Prototype’s exact location, he can tell that it’s on ground level straight ahead within the next two hundred metres. Rennin’s head is lowered and his body is perfectly still as he tries to collect himself while the people shuffle and shout all around him.
He clenches his fists feeling his leather fingerless gloves creak. He gains a mild swelling of confidence because those gloves—with their spurred knuckles—are what he used to wear during the war. He makes a mental note of how odd it is that something so small can make such a large difference. He can almost push away the feeling that he’s going to die tonight.
The rally has organised five guest speakers from various tree-hugging groups around the country to incite aggression and convince the people to stand against Godyssey and their android slaves. Even though the general masses could not care less, so long as they arrive home in time for the puerile resurgence of Reality TV.
In fact, a great deal of the local population feel safer thinking a strike team of fully armed androids is waiting to come to the rescue if anything goes horribly wrong.
As is usual with these situations, a loud-mouthed minority is running around making all the noise, followed by a few morons desperate for a reason to exist jumping on the bandwagon in a misdirected attempt to look cool. Rennin is absolutely convinced most of these people are here trying to find some poor meat-sack with lower intelligence and even lower self esteem to bed for the night.
The speeches at least provide a distraction so Rennin can locate the Prototype, without being bumped and jostled by the drunken crowd. Despite knowing which direction, the hazy distance reading doesn’t raise his confidence much at all.
At that moment the music from the rigged-up stage begins, giving Rennin a mild fright. It’s some new age, past century revival or contradiction, based on music from the late 1900s but with less soul and more calculus.
Most of the nightclubs in the area are beginning to open, and if he loses Prototype’s locator signal now the hunt is over, so he steels his nerves and begins to make his move toward the remainder of the signal.
The loathsome guttersnipes are starting to get devastatingly drunk. They stumble about the streets mewing at one another in tones and phrases Rennin forces himself to block out. It’s at the point where all he can hear is background noise that sounds like feeding time at a farm.
He almost reaches the end of the rally, that has become somewhat of a mardi gras, when the reading of the Prototype temporarily becomes clear enough to get a good idea of distance. He looks to the side of Main Road where a strip of bars and clubs are open. The tracker reading is coming from inside the middle building.