ABC - Penance

Headquarters Building, Labour Camp One

Everything was red, smoky and hot when I snapped back to my senses as if the world had been dipped in Papa’s favourite chilli sauce.

“You Okay, Alvarez?” Ghost asked me, dragging me onto my feet with one arm. I ran a quick inventory and all my legs and arms seemed to be in the right locations and relatively pain free. My stomach still ached from the elbow strike, but otherwise I was fit for duty.

“Uh-huh” I said with a throaty rasp.

The reception area was filled with a dark haze, thickening at the ceiling and lit by a reddish glow. I coughed and crouched again, keeping my head beneath the layer of smoke filling the ceiling. Others were coughing too, the deep cough I recognised as Bobbi’s and a lighter note that had to be Catherine. Ghost seemed as unaffected as the tall form of Charlie, both of them with their heads wreathed in swirling phantoms.

“Sorry guys” Catherine coughed from her seat on the floor, back braced against the charred remnants of the receptionist’s desk. “I got a bit too excited there”

She looked utterly washed out, her face streaked with sweat and ash. I moved up to the barrier and surveyed the hellish scene that lay beyond. Where once had been a flower and shrub lined entryway was now a blasted and smoking ruin, blackened branches still flickering with the remnants of the hellfire our Pyromancer had unleashed.

Bodies lay strewn all across this scene, hair and clothing burned away and the flesh contorted in agony like those remains from the volcanic eruption at Pompeii. Bobbi joined me, wiping ash from her grimly set mouth as she surveyed the devastation.

“I need you to keep this out of any official reports” she said with a hint of pleading. “Cathy is only registered as a Grade Two Pyro. If they find out she is really Grade Three they’ll cart her off someplace and I won’t allow that”

“Grade Three?” I answered her and spared a glance for the Pyrokinetic seated at my hip. “She’s got to be a Grade Four at least to do all of this”

I faced Bobbi and she met my gaze uncertainly.

“Please, Luisa” she begged me. “Cathy’s a good kid and I keep her from getting out of control. Let her stay with me”

I surveyed the Hiroshima wasteland that lay beyond the door. The girl had been threatened and she had responded with everything she had, no matter what the consequences were. I knew what it was like to be in that position, to protect the ones I loved.

“Okay, Bobbi, you’ve got a deal” I said softly. I faced away from the devastation and fixed my gaze on Nigel, huddled near the elevator doors. “That access card had better be ready, considering what it cost us”

“Of course it is” Nigel spoke up, sliding up the wall to his modest full height. “I was just waiting for you to finish your little fight with the prisoners”

He hit a command key on his wrist unit and the doors slid open with a cheery ping.

“All aboard if you please!” he called out in his broadest Londoner accent. “Mind the gap!”

=====

The elevator was rated for twenty people the little notice on the wall informed us, near the control panel with the floor buttons. There were only six of us, including the big mechanical form of Charlie, and it was a bloody tight squeeze.

Bobbi pressed the lowest basement level for the computer stacks, the doors slid shut and we began the short descent. A heavy odour of burnt plastic and flesh permeated the air, until a hearty smell wafted up our nostrils in valiant competition.

“Okay, who let that go?” Bobbi demanded from the front of the elevator.

“Whoever smelt it, dealt it” Nigel replied from the back of the car.

“Whomever” I corrected him, gagged a little, and tilted my head to regard the Drone Jockey. “And you really need to see a doctor, Nigel. There is no way your butt should produce that kind of toxic waste”

“Wasn’t me, Alvarez” he countered. “If it was, none of us would still be standing”

The elevator stopped with a gentle lurch and the doors slid open. We tumbled out of the enclosed space with relief, scanning the area alertly with our weapons ready. Doors slid shut behind us and Catherine finally spoke up in an embarassed tone.

“Sorry guys. That was me”

=====

The outer work area was a lot different to the last time I had been here. Most of the work stations had either been stripped of their equipment or comprehensively smashed. The Ceramiglass partitioning that protected the AI core showed cuts, burns, bullet marks and in one spot a chunk of turd smeared angrily across the window front.

“Die here you turd” had been written into the brown mess with a fingertip. I hoped they had thoroughly washed their hands afterwards, because that kind of stink really gets into the pores.

“Somebody really wanted to get into the stacks” I observed and laid my face against a relatively undamaged section, trying to peer inside. Out of the gloom within a pallid face appeared and I screamed and jumped back in surprise.

“Is that you, Inspector Alvarez?” came a voice over the intercom.

“What?” I babbled, then recognised the speaker. “Chandra? How are you in there? Shouldn’t you have bugged out when the Warden abandoned his office?”

I approached the window again, seeing the drawn face of the Technical Officer as he regarded me warily.

“They tried to force me out, but the engineers built this chamber to survive even if the whole Camp was blown apart”

Looking around me, I noticed the solid frames and heavy pillars that supported the ceiling and walls. It was indeed a bunker, designed to keep the Camp AI intact no matter what else happened. This deep under the ground it could probably survive an orbital strike.

“So you stayed here to protect Charlie?” I asked him.

“Yeah” he agreed. “But it didn’t do any good in the end” A stifled sob came over the intercom before he could stop it transmitting.

“What happened, Chandra?” I asked, leaning in close to the window.

“I could stop them destroying his processor, but the Warden didn’t need to in the end. He sent a Purge command into Charlie’s network. If he had been free of the Bridge he could have fought it off”

“I see” I spoke gently to the man. “They wiped his mind clean, leaving the processor an empty shell”

“Yeah” he agreed. His forehead leaned on the window, hiding his grief filled face from mine.

“Chandra, we can restore Charlie” I said earnestly. “Just open the door and we can bring him back”

“You’re lying, Alvarez” he suddenly snarled. “Everyone has been lying to me ever since the day they locked Charlie up! None of you care about him; none of you ever thought he was anything but a machine!”

“For once in my life I am telling the truth!” I shouted back. “Charlie cloned himself into one of the Police Sentinels! He’s in a bad way though, he really needs to download his memory into the Quantum Processor!”

“No!” Chandra shouted back. “It’s a trick! You’re working with the Warden! I can see his goon squad hiding at the back there, waiting to get in here and smash everything apart!”

“Hey!” Bobbi shouted in annoyance. “I am not one of the Warden’s goons you little freak!”

“Yeah” Catherine chipped in. “She’s more of a Henchman!”

“You aren’t helping!” I yelled at Bobbi’s crew, holding aloft a finger of warning at Nigel who looked about to add his own comment.

“Henchwoman” Nigel said quietly out of the side of his mouth, refusing to meet my angry glare.

The solid frame of Unit Three pushed past the others and joined my side. It laid one mechanical hand against the Ceramiglass, fingers spread in the V-shape of an old television hero from a far off planet.

“Chandra, I want to Live Long” the distorted voice of Charlie came from the vocoder.

“Charlie?” the Technical Officer gasped. “Is it really you in there?”

“I need to come home. Please hurry!”

The vocoder ended in a long drawn out warble of intense static.

Chandra opened the door, allowing us into the most inner sanctum of Camp One. Charlie walked up to the man and extended his metal arms, into which a weeping Chandra fell. I won’t deny my eyes might have teared up a little at the time, but it could have been the aroma of unwashed nerd that filled the stacks.

=====

The holographic interface at the terminal was dead. Last time the place had been spotless and well maintained, yet only a bare day later there were discarded protein bar wrappers in the trash, empty water bottles scattered about the stacks and a couple bottles stashed in a corner filled with an alarmingly yellow fluid.

“Sorry, I haven’t dared to leave the Core room since the fighting began” Chandra apologised. He was clearing space at the interface terminal for Charlie, the big mechanical extending its left index finger towards an induction port.

All Sentinels have induction ports on the sides of their head as well as one in their left hand. This allows them to download and transmit data files at a higher transfer rate than the built in wireless modems. It was only because of those hard wired ports that the original Charlie had been able to send his compressed form into the Sentinel’s memory core.

Once the download began, Chandra activated the hologram. At first there was nothing, then motes of light began to coalesce into a hollow pyramid, then a sphere, filling and solidifying the image. The sphere morphed into a face, one I remembered from last time and opened its mouth to speak.

“Shut-down override commencing” the bland voice announced, eyes blinking like a newly wakened child.

“Get ready to disconnect the Bridge” Chandra warned, pointing to a black plastic case connected to the stacks by a thick array of fibre optic cables. “Now!” Chandra shouted eagerly and made a chopping gesture with his arm.

I yanked on the cables and found they were too securely mounted for my human sized strength.

“Out of the way, Alvarez” Ghost insisted and wrenched the unit away with one hand.

The image of Charlie solidified and he smiled at us all with alert eyes.

“Well done my friends” the AI declared, then his face seemed to freeze for a moment.

“Chandra?” I demanded, “What’s going on?”

Charlie screamed, the noise blasting out of the speakers as his face pixellated and dissolved into static.

“The Hoffman Bridge has re-set itself!” Chandra called out in dismay.

“What the fuck?” Bobbi shouted. “I thought we had saved the bloody thing?”

“Charlie!” I said to the mechanical still standing with its finger in the port. “What’s going on?”

“I am Sentinel Unit Three assigned to the Police Auxiliary Post of Unity” it answered me flatly, turning the rectangular head to observe me. “Please present your Ident so that I may confirm your Rank and authority to command me”

“Oh crap! He’s returned to his basic programming” I warned them. We cleared a space around the machine, watching in alarm as it withdrew its finger from the induction port.

“Unit Three, I am Inspector Luisa Alvarez of External Investigations” I spoke to the mechanical. “You will go into standby mode and await further orders!”

The Sentinel regarded me with its red lensed eyes impassively.

“Voice recognition mode not enabled. Please present Ident” it demanded. I knew I had lost my Ident and phone, yet I still instinctively patted my pockets for the damned things.

“Luisa, that thing is dangerous if we can’t control it” Bobbi called out, metal arm resting on her holstered pistol. The rest of her crew fanned out, moving to the edges of the cramped space beside the stacks.

“Unit Three, I order you to stand down!” I tried again.

“Access denied until Ident can be verified, citizen” the mechanical intoned. It stepped away from us, then smoothly drew the assault rifle into its metal hands. “Please take no aggressive actions or I will be forced to use lethal force in response”

“Okay, Okay, Unit Three” I replied, holding out my empty hands, palms forward in the same ‘don’t shoot me’ gesture the Sentinel had used on me previously. “How about we go outside for a nice talk and let these good citizens continue their work?”

The mechanical regarded me silently then strode with machine precision past us and out the connecting door, stopping in the middle of the trashed workstations. I followed it out, gesturing to Chandra and the others to stay put.

Bobbi closed the door behind me, which meant at least the mechanical couldn’t threaten them if it decided we were breaking the law. Which I think we technically were, but I pushed that thought aside for the moment.

“Local network unavailable to confirm Officer status” the machine told me. It paused for two blinks of its red eyes then continued. “External network unavailable. No confirmation possible for status of Inspector Alvarez”

The gun it held wasn’t exactly pointing at me, yet it wasn’t pointing away either. I went to an empty table and parked my rump on it, moving slowly but confidently so as not to alarm it. Unit Three turned to face me, which prevented it seeing what Bobbi and the crew were doing behind its back.

I snuck a glance at the inner chamber and grimaced. Chandra was waving his hands around like a drowning man while Nigel and Ghost were trying to reboot the AI. Bobbi watched me through the Ceramiglass, waiting for me to solve this dilemma.

“Unit Three, can you access the memory files of the last forty-eight hours?” I asked the machine. It remained motionless, giving no sign of life, artificial or otherwise.

“Negative” it declared. “All memory files are corrupted. Only core programming can be accessed”

“Fuck!” I swore out aloud. We had lost the Charlie clone that was inhabiting the Sentinel and now we had a blank slate running a very dangerous machine. If it wasn’t willing to follow my orders, I couldn’t risk having it remain operational.

Then a bolt of inspiration hit me.

“Unit Three, you have suffered catastrophic systems damage” I told the mechanical. “You need to return to the Post for urgent repairs”

It regarded me blankly, then turned its boxy head to observe the frantic activity around the core stacks. I got off the table and interposed myself into its line of sight.

“Your priority is to ensure the Unit is repaired” I reminded the Sentinel. ’You are currently suffering external damage and missing operating files, so you are not fit for duty. You must return to the Post”

“Affirmative” Unit Three finally acknowledged. It paused and tilted its head left and right, as if searching for the route home. “I am unable to access global mapping data. Can you show me the path I must take?”

It sounded like a little lost child in that moment and I released my thoughts of having to destroy the mechanical.

“Of course, Unit Three” I replied. “Allow me to procure us an escort and I will take you to the Post”

“Affirmative”

With controlled steps I went to the intercom and summoned Bobbi. We had a hurried discussion and she agreed to join me in taking Unit Three to the lobby. From there we could direct it towards the gates. She quickly snagged the access card from Nigel, who was engrossed in a technical debate with Chandra, while Ghost and Catherine stood watch.

In no time at all the three of us, an Awakened, an Enhanced and a mechanical, rode the elevator to the lobby. It was much as we had left it, only the two inmates I had bludgeoned seemed to have come round and made their escape.

On cautious feet we crossed the burned lobby, smoke haze still lingering near the ceiling, and checked out the area that lay beyond. The bodies and scorched garden still smouldered, fresh footprints showing where the inmates had taken flight. Bobbi and I took the lead, Unit Three following in our wake to the edge of the Visitor Parking lot.

I pointed to the distant gates, visible between the gun towers that flanked the exit.

“Go that way, Unit Three” I told the mechanical and its eyes followed the line of my pointing finger. “There are Police Auxiliary Officers waiting beyond the outer gates and your Post is not far from there”

“Understood, Citizen” the mechanical told me. It set off past the sensor poles and through the first gate, striding with the precise footsteps of a machine.

Unit Three was maybe ten meters along the access road that ran between the inner and outer gates when I saw the gun towers slide open. Bobbi saw them too with her better eyes and grabbed me urgently.

“Get down, Luisa!” she yelled and my last sight of Unit Three was it lifting his boxy head to regard the weapons deploying like deadly flowers from their pods.

Beams glittered in the smoky haze that drifted across the open ground, X-Ray lasers that transfixed the mechanical and turned his chest to molten slag. From the ground where Bobbi shielded me I could not see where he fell, but I knew he had been destroyed beyond repair.

“The gun towers are active, Alvarez” Bobbi whispered as she lay close to my prone body. “I bet no-one is getting out of here now”

“Somebody had to activate them” I snarled into the ground. “Same fucker who re-set the Hoffman Bridge I would hazard a guess”

“So where do you think they are?” Bobbi asked, rolling her big body off me at last.

I rolled onto my back and looked at the top floor of the Warden’s Headquarters building. The window blinds were open a crack and I reckoned someone had been watching us all this time.

“Up there” I said to Bobbi, pointing my chin at the upper floor. “There is a second Interface terminal to the Camp AI in the Warden’s office. They must have installed a backup Bridge there in case the first one got removed”

Bobbi looked at the building, then tilted her head to regard the thin trail of smoke rising from where Unit Three now lay.

“We don’t have a choice” she told me. “We need to get in there and disable whatever shit they have locked onto Charlie. Otherwise we are going to be trapped in here with a lot of angry prisoners looking for some payback”

“Copy that” I agreed and we got to our feet and ran to the building we had come from, casting anxious glances at the opened towers all the way.