Juliet led the way out of the lab, barely sparing a glance for the corpo-sec officer she’d shot, but still feeling a wave of relief when she saw her shotgun rounds had taken off his arm and hit his torso; Angel had said he had good nanites, so she hoped his brain would survive until he got treatment. The sentimental thoughts were distracting, and Juliet quashed them, growling as she stomped forward aggressively, gun held ready. When she saw her ammo readout reporting 18/24, she subvocalized, “Switch to semi-automatic, Angel.”
“Done.”
The hallway lights had shifted to a soft red, and a constant alarm had begun to sound, but Angel filtered it and enhanced her visual spectrum, so the lighting change barely affected her. Still, Juliet slowed and constantly scanned left to right as they advanced. “Were these labs empty when we came in?” They were still in the corridor that led to the room where they’d found Estes, and Juliet couldn’t remember if she’d seen people in the neighboring labs.
Angel immediately responded, “They were empty, but when you turn the corner, you’ll find three synths standing over the corpses of seven technicians or scientists. Two will be in the lab on the left and one on the right. They are standing still, staring into space. I’m unsure if they’ve shut down or are waiting for some other stimuli.”
“What the hell is going on in here, Frida?” Leo growled, apparently not content to silently follow Juliet’s lead.
“I think that doctor you were talking to triggered something. A failsafe or some other . . .”
“Purge protocol,” Juliet supplied.
“Huh?” Leo tugged on her shoulder. “Hold up, we need a plan.”
Juliet sighed and squatted low, training her barrel on the upcoming corner. She had to explain how she knew what Estes did, and, as usual, Angel fit the bill. “My PAI is in the network. I had her piggyback with Dora. She saw what Estes did; she sent a signal called a ‘purge protocol,’ and you can kind of guess what that means.”
“Is that why the corpo-sec’s responding to a ‘terrorist’ threat?” Leo asked.
Frida’s name lit up as her voice came through comms, “I don’t know. It seemed too fast, but maybe one of the other scientists hit an alarm. They tried to shut down outgoing comms, by the way, but Dora is in too deep; she overrode the command.”
“What about us?” Juliet growled, still hearing distant sounds of struggle. “How the hell do we get out of here?”
“Team Three will make a diversion and try to draw away some of the corporate commandos. You two are going to have to fight to the elevator and up to the garage. We have transport there.”
“The elevator’s gonna work?” Leo asked, crouching behind Juliet, the paralyzed doctor still on his shoulder.
“Dora’s working on it.”
“Just so you know,” Angel said softly, “I have access to the elevator already.”
Juliet frowned, realizing something. “How, Angel? How are you still in the cameras? I pulled my data cable a while ago, and this network was closed off.”
“Once I was in, I opened it up—turned on some wireless access ports.”
“Smart.” Juliet stood up and glanced at Leo. He had a pistol in his right hand. “Ready?”
“I guess.”
“Wait!” Angel said suddenly as Juliet was about to start clearing the corner.
Juliet held up her fist, signaling for Leo to stop. “What?”
“A corpo-sec response unit is in the elevator. They’re making stops, dropping teams off . . . oh, God, Juliet. This isn’t happening only on this floor. The synths are slaughtering personnel on all the sublevels! The receptionist on thirty-one just attacked the corpo-sec unit as they opened the elevator. There are at least a hundred other synths on that level, and they’ve killed all the humans!”
“How?” Juliet backed up, looking at Leo. “How are they getting synths to go murderous? That’s supposed to be impossible!”
“You should know better. You’ve seen what the pirates did by modifying factory settings,” Angel replied.
“Yeah, but these synths are . . . people! They work here and have homes they go to!”
“What the fuck is going on?” Leo hissed, picking up on the fact that Juliet was having a conversation with someone.
“My PAI’s in the network. She’s monitoring the cam feeds. The synths all the way up to the, uh, business office we stopped at are going berserk, killing everyone. I’m not sure the corpo-sec teams are going to have the bandwidth to mess with us.”
“Ain’t that just pretty.” Leo sighed and shifted his burden, eliciting a small grunt from her. “Is she starting to wake up? Be glad if I didn’t have to carry her all the way up.”
“It’ll be a few minutes before she can walk, probably more like half an hour. I hit her with two needles.”
“Great. So, we gotta get past murderous synths and the corpo-sec squads fighting ‘em, all of whom want to see us in the dirt.” He relaxed his hold on Estes, letting her balance on his shoulder, while he pulled the slide back on his gun, looking into the chamber. When he let it snick shut, he shrugged. “Let’s get out of here.”
“All right. On me.” Juliet started for the corner, subvocalizing, “Angel, use the cameras, use my terahertz imaging, use whatever you need, but highlight my targets before they see me, please. I need to be fast and accurate.”
“On it. I won’t let you down.”
Juliet rounded the corner, shotgun snug against her shoulder, and to the left and right were three humanoid silhouettes outlined in dayglow orange. She didn’t hesitate, using every ounce of her boosted reflexes to pump three rounds to the left and two to the right—one to break the glass, and one to utterly shred the skulls of the three synths lurking in the labs, standing over the corpses of the scientists they’d just been working with.
The reinforced glass didn’t shatter, but the first shot to either side deformed and perforated it, enough so that her follow-up shots were right on target. The polyblast shotgun was more powerful but had less recoil than other shotguns she’d used, and she hardly felt the need to pause as she kept steadily moving forward, alert for Angel’s next highlighted targets.
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Leo might have said something, might have quipped about her quick, decisive actions, but she was too focused to listen to him. Dimly, she was aware of the blood everywhere, of the ragged bodies of the scientists, some of which had been killed through the brutal removal of limbs and exsanguination. The gun, while powerful, wasn’t quiet, and Angel drew an overlay on her AUI, showing the movements of synths in further corridors, making their way toward her. They converged past the next junction, and Juliet could see at least five outlines clustered together. They’d be coming around the corner in seconds. She squatted, dropped to one knee, and lifted the gun, waiting.
She didn’t have to use sights—Angel’s connection to the smart weapon allowed her to make a crosshair that compensated for distance and other environmental factors, not that wind was an issue in the underground facility. Still, she stared downrange, holding the red dot at the end of her barrel at roughly a person’s head level. When the synths burst around the corner, Angel ramped up her synapses again, and it was almost like shooting stationary targets as Juliet smoothly squeezed the trigger. She nudged the crosshairs from one synth’s head to the next, and, in maybe two heartbeats, she’d pumped six rounds down the hallway. As her speed boost smoothed out, the corpses hit the floor and slid on bloody smears for several feet.
Juliet’s ammo counter said 7/24. While she contemplated swapping in her fresh mag, Leo said, “Jesus. You’re boosted to fuck, aren’t you?”
“You didn’t know that yet?” Juliet couldn’t help some Lacy Blake entering her tone as she stood and started marching over the field of dead, very human-like synths. Half of them were fully clad in synth-flesh, and the red blood, mingled with the white stuff their synthetic parts lived on, made a gross, foamy slurry. The truth was, if she didn’t channel Lacy, Juliet felt like she might look for a corner somewhere to freak out.
Leo never responded, but she could feel him following her. Angel filled the void as Juliet rounded the corner, “The synths are communicating, Juliet; they aren’t mindlessly rampaging. There are nineteen more on this level, and they're converging on the elevators.”
“Melt it!” Juliet paused and looked back at Leo. “Don’t have a grenade or a bomb stashed in that pretty suit, do you?”
“Afraid not. Why?”
“Got a crowd waiting for us at the elevators.” Juliet pulled her mag and swapped it for her spare. “Twenty synths. At least none of ‘em seem wired for combat.”
“Oh, God! Why’d you have to say that?” Leo groaned and then spoke into comms, “Frida, what’s the situation on the elevator? On the corpo-sec? On our GD exfil?”
“I told you, hon, you need to get up to the garage—sublevel five. The elevator’s still running, but Life-Ultra corpo-sec’s getting desperate on several upper levels. They might cut it.”
“Do we take it or go for the stairs?” He spoke aloud, and Juliet knew he was talking to her.
“You wanna try to fight our way up thirty or so flights?”
“Might be better than taking a ride down to hell in an exploding shoebox.”
“My PAI’s in the network. She’ll warn us if the elevator’s compromised. Let’s clear this lobby.” Juliet squared her shoulders and started forward again. She had two more turns to make before she was face to face with the doors to the elevator lobby, and Angel was already starting to highlight humanoid outlines through the walls. In her comms, she said, “I’ll start shooting left to right. You start on the right. Hopefully, none of ‘em are wired-up.”
“Copy.” Leo shifted to the right, still behind her, but now with a clear shot. They rounded the penultimate corner, and she said, “They’re crowded behind the doorway; it’s propped open. Next corner.” He didn’t respond, so Juliet kept walking. Two steps from the corner, she lifted the gun to her shoulder. When Leo didn’t object or ask for more time to get ready, she stepped around it, leading with her weapon, trusting that Angel was right about the Synths’ positioning and that she wasn’t walking into their arms—they were a good ten meters away.
Even before her body cleared the corner, she was squeezing the trigger. As her visor edged past the wall, she felt the familiar adrenaline rush of her speed boost, and the scene at the end of the hall came into crystal focus. Just as Angel had told her, nearly twenty people—synths, she reminded herself—were crowded by the doors to the lobby. Many held cutting utensils, from old-school metal scalpels to tiny vibroblades to actual laser scalpels. Others held furniture legs like clubs, and one that Angel rapidly highlighted with red, flashing lights gripped a semi-automatic handgun.
Juliet’s first blind shot had taken one of the synths in the neck, sending her sprawling back into her comrades in a spray of red and white fluids. As the world slowed down and Juliet’s icy focus zeroed in on the various threats ahead of her, she smoothly shifted her gun to the synth with the handgun and pressed the trigger. The gun bucked, and she aimed back to the left, picking up where she left off, snapping off shots one after another. She was on her tenth shot when she heard Leo’s pistol start to bark. The synths weren’t panicking, and, despite being slower than her, some of them had high-end cybernetics, and they were beginning to move, spreading out, charging forward, and taking cover to the sides of the doorway.
Juliet began to have to shoot moving targets, unable to easily track through the cloud of red and white mist and smoke filling the corridor. The polyblast shells didn’t just put holes in things; they ripped great gouges through hard plasteel bones, blasted gouts of fluid out of golf-ball-sized holes, and turned prosthetic-grade plastics into shredded confetti. The movement, the debris, and the chaos meant Juliet wasn’t hitting a hundred percent on target. With that said, when her magazine ran dry, only eleven synth corpses were on the floor. She and Leo ducked back around the corner, and while she ejected her magazine and slammed her partially empty one back in, she growled, “Come on, Leo! Are you gonna hit any?”
“Screw you! I dumped my mag, and I don’t think I missed once!” He stuffed his pistol into its holster and drew his second gun.
“No backup mags?”
He groaned, breathing heavily, “I thought two guns was overkill if I’m honest.”
Angel interrupted, “Juliet! They’re charging!”
“Fall back to the corner!” Juliet yelled, shoving him. He staggered away, Estes limply flopping against his back. Then, she lifted the gun and slowly backpedaled until the first synth came around the corner. She blew the top third of its head off. The next three came around at the same time, and she rapidly pulled the trigger, blasting wide holes in torsos, arms, and legs until they’d all fallen. When two more came around, she killed one, and then her ammo counter flashed in bright red: 0/24. Juliet growled and yanked her needler out of its holster, thumbing the mag eject. She jammed her spare mag full of shredders into the grip and rapidly pressed the trigger, trying to hit something vital as three more synths joined the one still charging her.
There was something undeniably dissatisfying going from shooting a polyblast shotgun to a low-caliber needler, even with shredder rounds in the mag. The needles did their job, punching holes in whatever they hit, but they were so thin and small that the synths seemed able to shrug off all but a direct hit to the brain—something Juliet found challenging to pull off with four of them charging her at once, despite her boosted reflexes and synapses. Still, she managed to get enough hits to the first one’s face that it collapsed, tripping up one of the others. Then, two of them were on her, and she was grappling, punching, and kicking.
She felt repeated pressure against her ribs and realized one of them was stabbing something against her flex-plate armor, and that’s when she lost herself in the frenzy of combat, utilizing the enhanced strength afforded her by the armor and her cybernetic arm. She snatched the wrist of the stabber, twisted it, and smashed her into the other synth, who was madly trying to grab her around the throat despite her armored collar and the narrow gap provided by her helmet. As they crashed into the wall, Juliet stepped forward, using her height, strength, and weight to deliver a devastating headbutt with her armored helmet to the female synth’s temple, caving in whatever material made up her skull.
As she crumpled, Juliet stiff-armed the male with her left hand, pinning him to the wall, and then punched her armored fist into his head once, twice, three times, until red and white fluid began to sluice and spray out of his earhole. She dropped him and turned in time to see Leo fire two rounds into the last moving attacker. He saw her looking and winked, “Saved you.”
“You son of a . . .”
“Juliet!” Angel cried. “I found information about the Genesis Program. I’ll explain later, but if you can get out of here, we can probably ruin Life-Ultra. By the way, great fight. You have seven needler rounds remaining, seven bullets in your Texan, and the twenty-one extras in your belt. Oh, and Leo has sixteen nine-millimeter rounds.”
“Frida,” Juliet said, “I’ve got the data on the Genesis Program. Sending it to you in . . . in case.”
“Ah, shit. Am I really going down like this?” Leo groaned.
“Come on.” Juliet stomped around the corner and into the charnel scene of dead synths, picking her way through the corpses toward the elevators. She pressed the call button and stared at the display. It said the elevator was parked on level B13.
Angel said, “I’m overriding the elevator controls. Life-Ultra corpo-sec was holding it in place while they make a push against a large group of synths.” As the display showed the elevator moving, Juliet wondered if she’d just condemned those corpos by taking away their exit plan. She looked at Leo and saw him walking among the corpses, nudging the few synths still alive but too injured to function with his shoe.
“What are you doing?”
“Making sure none of these are about to jump up and stab us.”
“By kicking them?”
“I’m not kicking them! I’m seeing if they’ll, I don’t know, react.” He blew out a deep breath and rubbed his hand through his hair. “Jesus, this is so messed up. What the hell are these people up to? Did you see all the dead scientists we walked past?”
Juliet nodded to the woman on Leo’s shoulder. “She did that. She’s a psychopath if I ever saw one. Don’t let her fool you—wish we had some shrink-cords.”
“You think she was acting alone? I mean, with the purge thing?”
“I don’t know, but the order came from her. Wonder what these guys were going to do next.” She nodded her head at the dead synths. “Start a fire? Blow the place up? Eh, maybe just erase all the drives.”
“Some synths on other floors are doing exactly that, Juliet,” Angel said. “They’re wiping department networks. Don’t worry; I got everything we’ll need to incriminate Life-Ultra.” When the elevator dinged, Juliet turned, startled, and yanked her Texan out of her holster, aiming it at the elevator. The doors opened, and it was empty. Juliet wasn’t surprised; Angel would have warned them if it was occupied. Still, the interior was a creepy sight, something out of a horror movie—bullet holes and blood spatters were everywhere.
“Man, look at that!” Leo whistled. “Looks like it got hot in there.”
“It’s hot all up and down these subfloors, Leo.” Juliet jerked her head at the open doors. “Come on, we need to get out.”
He nodded and carried his burden into the elevator, and Juliet followed.
As she closed the doors, Angel said, “Juliet, I should let you know—I’ve lost cameras on several of these sublevels. I can’t monitor everything the synths and corpo-sec are doing.” Juliet sighed and shrugged. What could they do about it? Hearing no argument, Angel started the elevator moving.
As soon as they began to surge upward, Leo took a deep, slow breath and blew it out his nose. “Are we really gonna get out of here that easily?” Juliet glared at him, wanting to chide him for the jinx, but she’d done it earlier, so she held her tongue. Out of habit, she twirled her pistol and slid it into her holster. Leo chuckled and asked, “Why didn’t you use that cannon instead of that little needler?”
“I don’t know. Saving it, I guess. Those synths were barely armed.” She watched the elevator display, hope rising in her chest with each floor they passed. When it said B11, she actually started to believe they were going to make it. Just six more levels, and they’d be at the garage. B10 passed, then B9, and then the elevator lurched to a very sudden stop, and Leo stumbled, dropping Estes with a thud. As the doctor twitched, groaning in pain, Juliet scowled at Leo. “You had to say it, didn’t you?”