Caiden sat on this information for a few seconds before he got ready to leave. “Thanks, I appreciate the help,” he said as he stood and began to walk out.
“Hey, kid!” Pierce called out to him. Caiden stopped and turned to him. “I dunno what it is, but I got this funny feeling that your crazy ass is gonna succeed with this rescue mission somehow. Either way, be careful man. When those androids are pissed, they are frightening to deal with,” Pierce said.
“Thank you,” Caiden said, before he took off.
He made his way past the creaky wooden door and through the bar to the front exit. He briefly looked back to nod at the barmaid who saw him out and she smiled in return. He walked out onto the busy streets of Merchant’s Rowe. The streets were crowded, even though it was late. Among the crowd appeared three tall cloaked and hooded individuals. Caiden paused and examined them. Their eyes glowed a dangerous red; they were androids. They approached Caiden, blocking his path.
“Come with us,” one of the androids said in a robotic voice.
The two androids either side of Caiden closed the distance. One stepped in front of him and the other went behind him. He felt the barrel of a gun press against his back as the android behind him nudged him to walk forward and follow the others. The androids somehow caught wind of Caiden's impending arrival and made sure they prepared the perfect execution grounds to slaughter him. They pushed through the many pedestrians and twisted and turned down dark backstreets until they reached a smaller alley with a dead end.
The alley smelled of drugs, stale piss, and alcohol. The walls were littered with graffiti. There was a small dumpster on their left by the dead-end wall and a large black duffle bag, industrial grade trash bags, duct tape and a pair of massive sharp machetes. Caiden’s heart began to beat violently. He was both terrified and furiously angry. His adrenaline began to skyrocket through the roof before he was able to quickly get a grasp of the situation. His heart rate began to slow as he thought through escape plans, attack strategies, and a variety of other scenarios.
“Where the fuck is my friend?” Caiden yelled.
“You are a threat to our plans.”
“Yes, a threat.”
“And we must eliminate our threats.”
“Yes, that is what our master ordered us to do.”
It was as if the three androids were speaking from one mind. It was one continued sentence, but spoken by three different people.
Caiden knew that trying to talk to them was useless. He had to think fast. There was a brief lull in time between the three, no more than a half a second. That was all he needed as he slipped his hand inside his jacket, grabbed his gun and fired a round through the back of his coat, into the android behind him. The shock round stunned the android and left it standing helpless as it flailed its arms in malfunction.
Caiden spun around and violently shoved the android into the other two and shot two more shock rounds from his gun. All three of them shorted out and crashed to the ground, spewing out robotic jargon indicating system failure. Caiden wedged open the skull casing of one of the androids and pulled out a small fiber optic cable from his pocket. He plugged it into the port of the android’s ICM and then to a small port in his holo-watch. He opened a command terminal on the holo-display menu and hacked the android’s ICM to check out its programming and see if there was some sort of issue. He issued a command to scan the memory of the android. The only response he got back from the android’s ICM was ‘Program terminated with signal 11, Segmentation fault. Access violation’.
“It’s definitely been tampered with.” Caiden spun around and saw the silhouette of a person running away.
He ran after the silhouette, gun loaded and ready. By the time he reached the corner, the person had already escaped. He heard the squeal of tires as a car drove off into the distance. Looking around the alleyway, he checked to see if anyone else was tailing him.
Caiden stopped what he was doing. He began to feel an intense migraine coming on, and he experienced painful high-pitched ringing in his ears. He dropped to his knees and gripped his head in response to the sudden burst of pain. After a few more seconds, the pain stopped completely. All that remained was a thought. More than that, it was a memory. A sequence of events were playing out in his mind as clear as day. He saw a woman with bluish-violet hair and entrancing golden eyes.
“Rez! Rez! Rez!” the voice from the woman kept calling to him.
Caiden snapped back to reality. He found himself on his knees mouthing the name ‘Rez’. He stood back up once he regained his bearings.
“I dunno what that was, but I’ve no time to find out right now. It’s too dangerous here. I gotta find Vantz before it’s too late!” He headed back to the garage to get his hypercycle and made his way toward West Andromeda District in a hurry.
CHAPTER 17
---usr/systems/server-x/SECRETS AND ALLIES---
“Destination; seven-four-six President’s Avenue, is one hundred feet ahead. Estimated arrival; one thirty a.m. Navigation will now cease,” the navigation unit inside his motorcycle helmet stated.
He came to a stop with the engine still running, getting a good look at the area. It was vast, with dozens of warehouses. It all looked rotted and abandoned. Not even squatters from Darkside would think of living here. This wasteland has to be where these damn androids are, Caiden thought to himself.
He drove his hypercycle behind a rundown building. Once he deemed the coast to be clear, he threw the chameleo-ware cloak over the bike, took his gun out his holster, checked the ammo, and unlocked the safety. Pierce better not
