The Bounty Hunter: Resurrection (8 page)

Rylan was still sitting at the
front of the ship. Cass was above her podium. Burke released the faceplate on
his helmet as he walked in, so that he could see with his own eyes instead of
the suit’s view.

“Did you lose them?” he asked.

“No,” she answered. “But I looked
over the other records I found in Spectrum Industries. I think you should see
this.”

He stepped around the podium. In
front of Rylan, the ship’s main screen showed the city outside. The rain fell
and streaked along the front of the ship and then was boiled away a moment
later, keeping the view clear. Cass took over the display and it changed to
show a video log. An empty, white room was on the screen instead, from the
perspective of a camera in one of the corners of the room’s high ceiling. Cass
jumped through the recording until he saw Lumen and another woman occupying the
room.

“How are you today?” the woman
asked.

“I’m good. But I’m cold,” Lumen
answered.

Burke narrowed his eyes. He knew
Cass would have a good reason to show the recording. He braced himself for
something that was going to make him angry.

“This is the final stage of the
preparation before you will be restricted to this facility,” the woman
continued. “This is the last chance to speak up if you’ve changed your mind
about participating in the study.”

“I’m certain,” Lumen said. “I want
to help.”

“Excellent. Now, you’ve been chosen
for multiple reasons. Chief among them are your extensive augmentations already
present. Your arms were lost in an accident and you chose to work for the
company after receiving the prosthetics we created. Is that correct?

“This isn’t a convict
volunteering,” Rylan said.

“No,” Burke agreed. “It isn’t.”

Cass changed the recording,
switching it to a similar conversation between Shaw and the same woman.

“How are you?” the woman asked.

“I’m okay,” Shaw answered.

Burke watched the recording
closely. The woman gave the same warning about being restricted to the
facility.

“I think I still want to
participate,” Shaw said, seemingly reluctant.

“I’m glad to hear that,” the woman
answered. “We asked you to take part in this study for many reasons. The most
important being the augmentations you already have. Your legs were lost in an
accident, is that correct?”

“Yes,” he answered. “I met my wife
in the hospital. We shared a room while we were in recovery. We helped each
other get through it. Then we helped each other get used to our new limbs. We
did so well together that we decided to share our lives from then on. To see
what else we could help each other get through.”

The woman smiled warmly at him.
Burke gritted his teeth together.

“I’m not happy about this,” he
muttered.

“I knew you wouldn’t be,” Cass
said. “Neither am I.”

“You care that they lied?” Rylan
asked, raising an eyebrow.

“Of course,” Burke and Cass spoke
together.

The pilot looked at them like he
was seeing them for the first time. Cass cycled further into the video records
before either of them could speak.

The screen showed a larger room
than before. The walls were white but the room looked warmer than the previous
ones: there was a large closet, a chest of drawers, and two single beds. Each
of the beds were pressed into opposite corners. Despite the size of each bed,
Lumen and Shaw were both laying together on just one of them. They wore barely
any clothing, covering only the main part of their torso’s. Their legs and arms
were exposed, including the newly grafted augments on their shoulders and hips.

“That’s what they did to them?”
Burke asked.

“I wish that was all,” Cass
answered.

She increased the speed of the
video. Burke watched as the two of them got up and raced around the room in
fast forward. Cass stopped when the woman from the earlier videos entered the
room. The video was slowed then, showing each of the limbs being removed and
then replaced with new ones. Lumen and Shaw would take turns walking around the
room and then jumping in place. When they were fitted with new arms, they were
asked to handle different objects, including fragile things like glass or an
egg without them breaking under the pressure of their metal fingers.

Cass skipped ahead to the next day.

“How are you today?” the woman
said.

“Good,” Lumen answered.

“I’m okay,” Shaw answered.

“I’ve come to speak to you today
about a new development. The two of you present a unique opportunity for the
company. If you are both willing, in addition to the advanced dermal replacement
procedure, we’d like to create a temporary neural link between the two of you.”

“I don’t know what that is,” Shaw
said.

“What does that mean?” Lumen asked.

“It’s perfectly safe,” the woman
explained with a smile. “Let me get that part out of the way first. We’ve done
it before, but never with two people that are so close.”

Burke narrowed his eyes as he
watched Lumen and Shaw look at each other. Their eyes locked together. He
watched each of them hold out a newly attached hand toward each other and weave
their fingers together to hold hands.

“We planned to install several
cranial implants already,” the woman continued. “We will only be adding one
more. There will be increased compensation, of course.”

“What does that mean?” Burke asked
as Cass paused the recording.

“It’s a feature that’s used for AIs
like me,” Cass began. “I’ve never heard of it used on people before. AIs can
leave temporary copies of themselves to operate independently of each other.
They then merge back together, like the link she’s describing, and mesh their
memories together back as one. I don’t like doing it, though. It feels
strange.”

“How could that work with people?”
Rylan asked.

“It doesn’t,” Cass said grimly.

The recording skipped ahead. Lumen
and Shaw were wheeled back into the room on a mobile bed each. Two men lifted
each of them back into the separate beds in the room. They were left alone.
Cass increased the speed on the video and displayed a time stamp on the bottom
of the display. The hours raced by in seconds, accumulating into days without
either of the two moving from their beds. People entered for a few moments each
day and then left. Four days passed on the timer before they were carted out of
the room once again.

“Things get worse from here,” Cass
said softly.

Burke forced himself to watch as
Shaw and Lumen’s skin was peeled back. The mystery of how bullets had bounced
from their bodies was solved as the surgery progressed on the screen. The
reinforced plates were small and fit snugly together. They weren’t as thick as
his armor but then that had been why Cass’s plan had worked: multiple shots in
the same area would eventually cause some damage.

He continued to stare at the screen
as they tested the new augmentations. Even the surgeons took part in loading
weapons and firing them at the human targets. He watched as Lumen finally woke
up, walked into the room, and then turned their weapons against them. She
released Shaw and then raided the different prosthetic limbs. He saw her choose
one that opened up into the blade that she had used against him down in the
city.

“That gets us to the present day
then,” Burke said.

“What do you want to do?” Cass
asked.

“I don’t know.”

“They’re innocent,” Rylan said
neutrally.

“Maybe. Everything I found in the
network stated that they thought Lumen and Shaw were brain dead. They didn’t
know they were experimenting on people who were still alive,” Cass said.

“How can you say maybe after what
we just watched?” Rylan asked, his voice still level.

“The experiment obviously made them
unstable,” Cass began. “However, that doesn’t mean they didn’t go on to kill
dozens of people in the city. Spectrum Industries is at fault, of course, but
there are still two killers out there that we need to stop.”

“We’ll try to talk to them first,”
Burke said. “Although I don’t know how much it will do. They barely acted human
when we saw them.”

“And if you can’t talk to them?”
Rylan stood up as he asked the question. He turned to face Cass on the podium.

“Then we stop them. If we’re forced
to kill them, then we’ll have to,” Cass said, frowning.

“You agree with her?” Rylan turned
to Burke.

“Yes,” he nodded.

“She’s a computer!” Rylan’s eyes
widened, and his voice finally raised. “She can’t possibly understand—”

Burke’s look was all it took to
stop the pilot mid-sentence. His eyes flashed with anger and, armor or not, he
tensed his arm to prepare to slam his fist into Rylan’s face. Cass stayed quiet
above the podium but her voice came through the interior of his helmet.

“It’s okay,” she said, barely loud
enough for him to hear her.

He gradually relaxed his arm but
maintained his glare. The pilot backed away and, Burke realized later, looked
more than just afraid. At the time, however, Burke could see nothing through
the flare of anger that rushed through him.

“Do you still have their location?”

“Yes,” Cass answered simply.

“Get us as close as you can and
then wait,” Burke growled. “We won’t be gone long.”

In the cargo hold, he sealed the
faceplate into the helmet of his aegis and closed his eyes. He felt the ship
move beneath his feet as it was lowered through the city.

“That’s him gone then,” he said.
“We’ll need a new pilot after this.”

“No,” Cass responded softly. “I
know it’s hard for you to trust again but we can’t get rid of someone after
their first mistake.”

“This isn’t about me. He insulted
you. He doesn’t even think you’re a person. This has nothing to do with my
issues.”

“Are you sure?” Cass answered
gently. “It seems like you’re more insulted than I am. I expected people to
react this way to me, Burke. There are scant few AIs that are unrestricted like
I am, and even fewer that are operational after a year. I’m sure others exist
and ACU simply hasn’t found them, but look how much they wanted me back.”

“That doesn’t excuse what he said.”

“No, but it explains it. Right now,
he doesn’t understand how I even exist. He’ll get used to me, just like you
did.”

“It didn’t take me long,” he said.

“No, it didn’t,” she said and he
could hear her smile. “You’re just as special as I am like that.”

Burke opened his eyes. The visor’s
display showed a faint overview of the ship’s movement. They were as close to
the planet’s surface as possible when the lower doors opened and air of the
city rushed into the ship. He looked down at the street below them—a higher
drop than the first but still something the suit could withstand. He hopped
forward and fell down into the city, landing in a crouch and standing quickly.
The ship remained hovering above them and he stared up at it.

“I’m telling him to find a rooftop
nearby to land,” Cass explained.

“Keep a tether to the ship in case
he doesn’t listen.”

“He’ll listen,” she said. “But I
will.”

The ship moved away from them.
Burke looked around at the lower city instead of watching the vessel leave. He
saw how wrong he had been in his prior assessment about the other part of the
city being like a sewer. As low as he was now, the upper parts looked warm and
welcoming.

The buildings around him looked
ancient. They resembled more of the old architecture on Earth than the newer
city above him. The new buildings had been constructed through many of the old
structures. Some looked to have been skewered through the middle of the old
walls, having not even bothered to demolish them. The concrete walls had an
artful care in how they were crafted that made the cold, clinical functionality
of the newer buildings pale in comparison. Above them, he knew that the
towering city could be beautiful. Down in the bowels of the city, no such
considerations had been made.

He looked over the side of the street
and saw the liquid foundation below them. He had no idea how high the water was
from the actual ground of the planet. He saw the stewing mess of trash and the
occasional dead body, bloated and bobbing on the surface of the water. A
fleeting thought came to him, and he wondered what the native population of
alien wildlife had been like on Liveria before the humans and vruans colonized
it. There was nothing left of it, as far as he could see. The planet resembled
Earth more than Earth itself.

The rifle was magnetized to the
back of his armor, well within reach if they were attacked. Cass displayed the
location of Lumen and Shaw. Burke looked away from the water and began walking
in their direction.

* * *