It was hopeless. He was right on her tail, and before she could turn down the next flight, she felt a large hand grab her by the forearm. The fingers crushed against her skin and bone, bruising her as her assailant tugged her back. She nearly lost her footing and fell on her face, but instead tumbled into the assassin’s chest.
She could smell the sweat on him. She could feel the dampness of perspiration even through his shirt. It was clear that this bodyshell didn’t exercise very much. Mark took a moment to breathe as he pulled Beth close into a hug-like lock. She shrieked and kicked against him, but he was too large. There was no real room to reach out, thrash, kick, punch, bite, or do much of anything. She felt helpless as her attacker reached into his pocket.
With a flick, he extended a pocket knife. He pointed the blade of it towards Beth’s neck, who struggled to get as far from it as she could.
“Let’s just make this simple, shall we?” Mark said.
Before Beth could make another thought, the door above them burst open and fell off its hinges. A silver-and-black form leaped through the opening and jumped straight down the stairs to the level Beth was being held. With a whirring of gears, the form spun like a tornado and collided with the meat puppet assassin. Mark went tumbling backward, falling on his rear while Beth fell forward down the stairs. She rolled over a few of the concrete steps before grabbing the railing and stopping herself. She only managed to turn her head upwards in time to see Mark lunge from the ground at the form that had attacked him.
Now that it wasn’t in blurring motion, she could see her savior. It was a sleek humanoid form, but she could tell from a mess of insulated wires and plastic plates that it was, in fact, a robot of some sort. Or a bodyshell.
Its limbs all went into motion as it fought against the meat puppet. The robotic form was knocked off balance by the assassin, but managed to find its footing and return a blow to Mark’s chest.
The I.I.-possessed man grunted in pain, but immediately countered with a kick of his own.
Beth started rising to her feet as soon as she was able to. She winced as she leaped up the stairs after the two fighters, feeling her bruises and cuts pulse with each step.
She roared a little as she punched Mark square in the face. As if on cue, the meat puppet’s nose exploded with blood. She had broken the cartilage there, but he didn’t have much time to bleed before the robotic hero also punched him in the face.
“Back up,” the robot bodyshell said.
Beth’s eyes widened. Though the body was clearly an artificial construct, the same couldn’t be said about the voice. In fact, she knew that voice.
It was Simon Mendez.
“I wouldn’t watch this if I were you,” the robotic bodyshell said. Then, as if the power switch had been hit, the lights on his body turned off and the head hung limp.
Mark looked around the stairway with angry eyes.
“What the — ” he started to say. He was stopped, however, by a sudden and deafening shriek. It came from himself. His own voice tore as he continued to scream in pain. The meat puppet raised his hands to his temples, as if trying to silence some terrible sound from getting in.
And without warning, Mark became limp. Blood gushed out in torrents from his nose, mouth, and ears. He fell to the ground with a soft thud and continued to bleed on the concrete.
He was dead.
Beth watched the scene unfold with her mouth agape. She had seen a lot of strange things in her time, but never a man’s brain implode. She was certain that that’s what she had just witnessed: a mind shatter.
Suddenly — but gently — the lights on the robotic bodyshell glowed back to life. The gears started to whir again, and the mechanical head turned to face Beth.
“Simon?” she asked, uncertain about anything at this point.
The bodyshell nodded.
“You’re in great danger,” Simon said.
Danger
Beth was astonished.
“What’s going on?” she asked. She brushed her hair back with both hands, holding them on the sides of her head like it might implode too.
“You’re a wanted woman, Beth,” Simon said. His voice came through the bodyshell’s advanced speakers, which gave it a sort of buzzing ambiance.
“Wanted? By Tarov?”
“That’s right,” her savior answered. “He’s got a hit out on both of us. And believe me when I say that he’s gotten his people riled up. They want your head, even without the massive reward he’s offering. All they know is that you plan to take them down — to undermine everything they’ve built.”
“And I’m guessing they conveniently left out the fact that Tarov is a computer program pretending to be an I.I.,” she said.
The robotic bodyshell nodded, the strange almost bird-like face it possessed protruding towards Beth.
“He’s got them all under his thumb. They won’t find out anything he doesn’t want them to, including anything you say. They’re programmed to believe you’re a liar — a heretic who will say anything to destroy I.I.-kind.”
“Surely that kind of conditioning can be broken,” Beth suggested.
“Perhaps,” Simon replied, “but I imagine it would take some time to find out. Years, even.”
Beth groaned in frustration. The shock was starting to wear off and her numb calm had been replaced with a burning fury. Her groan erupted into a feral yell, and she kicked the dead man on the ground as if he was going to hop right back up and try to kill her again.
Simon reached out with a mechanical hand and touched Beth’s shoulder. She batted it away, then brought her hands
