The convoy of armored vehicles rumbled through the streets, and men wielding semi-automatic rifles fired out, shattering the billboards advertising SiliCan products and shredding through any technology in sight with a vengeance. The people in the bustling evening streets screamed as self-driving cars swerved to avoid the convoy, adding the shrieks of rubber on pavement to the chaotic cacophony. As the convoy approached the SiliCan company headquarters towering over the city, a sleek, black electric car pulled into the parking lot, and three men in matching suits with SiliCan ID badges got out carrying matching black briefcases.
“Right on time,” Jack commented as he glanced down at the mechanical watch on his wrist.
“Stay sharp,” Crain replied as he led the trio towards a darkened side door.
Looking through the glass panes, Crain saw the gloomy hallway beyond, deserted at this late hour of the night and illuminated only by whatever light poured in from the lobby beyond. As they reached the door, Crain pulled out a small flashlight from his briefcase, illuminating the fingerprint reader next to the door in a harsh white light.
“Maxwell,” Crain barked in a short, staccato voice.
“Yes sir,” replied Maxwell as he lay his briefcase on the ground and flipped it open, removing a small laptop and a cylindrical device tipped with a rubber pad. After booting up the laptop and plugging the device in, Maxwell pressed its rubber tip onto the fingerprint reader before quickly removing it. His elevated heart rate betrayed his calm and confident expression as he watched the sensor return data on trace quantities of oil and chemical residues and construct them into a multicolored circular diagram. Once the neural network he programmed filtered the data and successfully reconstructed a model of the most recently used fingerprint, he clicked a button to export the model back to the device, at which point miniscule grooves formed into the rubber circle in a copy of the pattern. Maxwell stared intently as he pressed the device back onto the fingerprint scanner, watching the indicator LED for a response. After a tense moment, there was a beep and the light blinked green.
“We’re in,” Said Maxwell as he subconsciously released a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Good,” Crain said as he opened up the door. “Let’s get in position.”
While Crain, Maxwell, and Jack snuck into the corridor and hid in one of the empty offices, the armed convoy was bearing down on the building. Along the way, they had met minimal resistance, an expected outcume due to the pitiful size of Mechanica’s police force, so when they screeched to a halt in the front parking lot of the SiliCan headquarters, all forty-eight combatants were in peak condition as they disembarked. Hefting RPGs, they blew through the sleek glass doors, sending rubble and shards of glass streaking into the lobby. Though they had attacked in the evening when most were off work, the few receptionists and employees milling around the lobby as well as the unfortunate guards who had approached the entrance were thrown back by the blast and shredded by the debris. Once the crumbling entryway was clear, the attackers ran through, guns raised as they spread out throughout the first floor hiding bricks of explosives next to structural pillars and walls that supported the wide lobby. Then, they swiftly ascended the stairs to the next floor, gone as soon as they arrived, the storm of destruction the only trace they left behind as gunshots sounded on the second floor.
As the sounds faded, Crain peeked out of the small hallway into what remained of the right side of the lobby, focusing his gaze onto a nondescript door behind and to the right of the main reception desk at the back of the spacious room. He waited while the seconds dragged into minutes until finally the door opened and private security officers streamed out and rushed across the open space into the stairwell. Just when the last of the officers left, Crain reached into his briefcase, grabbed a grappling hook gun and fired it through the door just before it closed. Pulling back on the rope he just fired, Crain wedged the hook into the gap to prop the door open.
“Let’s go,” he said before the three infiltrators dodged through the door.
Once they were on the other side, Crain pressed a button and the grappling hook gun retracted before he placed it back into his briefcase. Then, he, Maxwell, and Jack rushed down the stairs and burst out a door at the bottom. Glancing around, Crain took in the hallway in front of him as it continued on and branched off, forming what looked like a grid. He led the way as they proceeded forward, stopping at each junction to listen for any approaching footsteps. However, the hallways remained silent, presumably a result of the diversion going on upstairs. After reaching a fair way into the monotonous grid of corridors, research labs and workshops began to replace office space.
“Jack, let’s start here,” said Crain
“Sure thing,” Jack replied as he cracked open his briefcase with a smile, pulling out one among a number of small disks with a blinking green light flashing. Carefully, Jack secured the device to the door of one the labs, a yellow and black radiation warning symbol facing into the hallway. As the three men proceeded further in, more and more of these ominous circles were set in the hallways of the SiliCan company’s top secret basement facility. Finally, they reached another stairwell leading even further down after crossing the entire floor.
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“Can you crack this?” Crain asked as he looked at the keypad, fingerprint reader, and RFID scanner that locked the door downward.
“Of course. Give me half an hour,” Maxwell replied coldly as he examined the myriad of locking mechanisms, though his imperceptibly furrowed brow gave away his tension.
“Ha, looks like we’re doing this the old fashioned way,” said Jack in turn as he hefted up his briefcase.
“As if any of your brute force methods are fit for this mission,” Maxwell sneered, “Do you want to bring a swarm of security personnel down on us?”
“Jack, get set up. We don’t have thirty minutes. From now on, we’ll just have to move fast.” said Crain.
“What? But there’s no way we avoid catching attention-”
“Maxwell,” rebuked Crain as Maxwell flinched, going silent.
“Done,” said Jack as he stood up from the blasting charge affixed to the door. “Stand back.”
The three quickly retreated around an intersection and covered their ears before Jack pushed the detonator. With an earthshaking bang, the heavy metal and reinforced glass door was blown through the door frame and into the stairwell, quickly followed by the three agents who sprinted down the flight of stairs. In less than a minute, they flew past the door to the second floor and they passed the door to the third floor not long after. However, on their way to the fourth and final floor which held the server room, they were stopped by the sound of many footfalls stomping up the stairs.
Quickly, Jack unpacked a grenade, pulled the pin, and threw it down. A boom echoed through the stairwell as the three resumed their descent, dodging through gore, debris, and twisted metal to come to the reinforced door of the fourth floor, which was still open from the security guards that rushed out of it. As Crain, Maxwell, and Jack burst into the fourth floor, they were met with another team of security guards who immediately opened fire from the lone corridor ahead, forcing them back through the door for cover. Jack pulled out another grenade, lobbing it towards the defenders before all three Naturalists charged into the hallway while the defenders hunkered down for cover from the grenade. Then the grenade exploded, releasing a cloud of smoke while Crain pulled two semi automatic rifles from under his suit and opened fire. At the same time, Maxwell and Jack both pulled out pistols and began shooting. As the smoke dissipated, it could be seen that the guards lay sprawled on the ground, torn apart as they lay in pools of blood. The three cautiously approached when suddenly, a grenade rolled towards them from the pile of bodies. In the split second that followed, Maxwell’s face showed a rare grimace, Crain’s expression stiffened, and Jack lunged forward.
“Oh ****!” Jack yelled as he dropped his briefcase and wrapped the grenade against his chest with his arms. There was a muffled whump as the grenade detonated and Jack was thrown back, his chest caved in as he coughed up blood before falling still.
Maxwell stood frozen as he watched Jack die in front of him, his calm facade cracking into a face of shock and disbelief.
“Let’s go,” Crain said, voice a few degrees colder as a frown creased his expression.
“But, Jack…” replied Maxwell weakly.
“You of all people should understand, Maxwell. The mission goes on.”
“But-”
Maxwell was ignored as Crain turned his back on him, striding down the corridor. “Just a little longer and it will all be worth it.” Crain muttered through gritted teeth, partly to Maxwell and partly to himself.
As they passed through the unlocked door at the end of the hallway, the two remaining men entered into a room of towers and towers of computers and wires with a terminal at the center. The fans whirred in the background, accompanied by the clicks of valves for the liquid nitrogen coolant that maintained the temperature of the quantum relays that connected this server room to the other supercomputers that processed SiliCan’s vast artificially intelligent algorithms.
Maxwell was still pale as he sat down at the console and plugged a small one terabyte solid state drive into one of the ports. Typing on the keyboard, he pulled up their goal, the production list of artificial humans, and copied it onto the drive. He paused as his cursor hovered over the file, a brief hesitation brought of excitement and expectation at the thought of opening their goal.
He clicked twice and the file appeared, a wall of text on the screen. Maxwell and Crain both read down the list.
Android Production Logs:
-Category 1 products: Special attention required
1. Crain - version 42.2; male, black hair, blue eyes, medium build, 5’11”
2. Jack - version 42.2; male, bald, black eyes, muscular build, 6’1”
3. Maxwell - version 42.2; male, brown hair, brown eyes, slim build, 5’9”
…..
Both Maxwell and Crain froze.