“There is no Radar,” Simon said.
“That’s right,” the second man’s voice replied. “It was all a trap.”
“Who are you?” Beth asked, pushing past Simon a little so she could be seen better.
“Haha, my name is Lynch,” the gruff, strained male said.
“And I am Hilde,” the deeper woman’s voice said.
“Maru,” the Japanese voice greeted Beth.
“And we’ve also got Nick and Wolfgang in here, too,” the first woman’s voice explained. “I’m Jerri, by the way.”
“I don’t understand,” Simon said.
“They’re assassins,” Beth explained, not taking her eyes off the mechanical face pointed towards them. While they spoke, the head continued to rotate and display a different face whenever the voices changed. A new set of colored optical lights would stare back at the detective and I.I. as that part of the unit spoke.
“Collectively, we’re known as Rubik,” the four-armed machine said. “We are the best assassins in the entire Liberators.”
“In the world,” Maru corrected.
“So you’re here to kill us?” Beth asked.
I knew something was fishy about this whole thing, she thought. I’m an idiot for going along with it.
“You wish,” the voice identified as Lynch said.
“Now Lynch, have some tact,” Jerri scolded him. Then she addressed their prey. “We’d rather it didn’t come to that.”
“Surrender now, and we will take you in unharmed,” the Southern male — who Beth imagined was Nick — said. “We don’t want to have to fight you.”
“But we will,” Hilde added.
Beth looked over at her I.I. companion. How much she wished she could peer through the metal shell and see what was going on in his head. Was he coming up with a plan? Was he panicking like she was? Did he realize the jig was up, or did he have another trick up his sleeve?
“You realize that you can’t kill me with a pair of swords, right?” Simon said. He seemed to stand a bit taller, trying to match their assailants in size.
“Not regular blades, no,” Maru replied. “These, however, are cyberblades. You should know what these are — the humans tried to develop them against us.”
Beth could tell Simon fell into a stunned silence.
“That’s right,” a man with a German accent said. Beth assumed it was Wolfgang. “You understand now that if we break your bodyshell with a cyberblade, it will delete your code — forever.”
“It’ll even worm into any storage you might be kept in,” Nick said. “No matter where you are — it will delete you. There’s no coming back.”
Simon seemed to think about this for a moment.
“You won’t hurt us if we come with you?” he asked.
“You and that data of yours,” Jerri replied.
So they know about the information we have, Beth thought. I wonder if they realize what’s in it all. If they know that their boss is just an A.I. stringing them along. Somehow, she doubted it.
“How do we know you’re telling the truth?” Simon asked. “If we give you the data, there’s no reason not to cut us into a million little pieces.”
“You’ll just have to trust us,” Wolfgang said. “Because if you don’t, we’ll certainly cut you into a million little pieces.”
Simon looked back at Beth. She replied with nervous eyes, uncertain as to what help she could offer. It felt like her brain ran at a thousand miles per second trying to come up with some way out of their predicament. All she got, however, were frightened blocks of thought telling her over and over that she was screwed. She thought of her parents and the simple life of childhood. Oh, how she wished she could be there right now.
“I’ll come with you, and I’ll give you the data, but you have to let her go,” Simon told the assassins. He gestured towards Beth with a mechanical hand.
“Simon, no!” she cried out.
Was he really ready to give in? After escaping the Liberators, being framed for his own parents’ murder, then hunted by assassins, was he really going to let Tarov win? There was no way to tell by his face. She wished desperately that his bodyshell was built with realistic facial capabilities, so she could pick up a wink or anything to let her know that he had a plan. She just had to hope for the best.
The people around them started to clear out. Most ran off while yelling in panic, but others stayed around to gawk at the assassin unit. Rubik took up an enormous part of the station, like a towering Xenomorph from Alien.
“You would give yourself up so easily?” the voice belonging to Maru said. He sounded disappointed.
“If it’ll keep Beth safe,” Simon replied.
The assassins seemed to confer with themselves. Beth could hear half a dozen voices, all speaking in whispers, as they went over Simon’s proposition. Then, there was silence.
“Very well,” the Wolfgang voice said. “We’ll leave her alone. But you need to delete all the data you sent her. She needs to be cleared of all sensitive information.”
“I can do that for you,” Simon said. “Just let me jump over. I can find it and clear it in just a few seconds.”
Beth was apprehensive as her bodyshell companion turned to her. His optical light focused on her, staring into her mind.
Then, without warning, Simon whispered to her.
“Run,” he said.
In the blink of an eye, he span his bodyshell around and kicked Rubik in the face with a fast-moving robot foot. The blow knocked the unit off balance, but a hiss emanated from its legs and a second pair jolted out from the torso and caught the whole mechanical frame before it fell. Like a spider rearing from a sudden disturbance, Rubik leaned back and found its balance.
Beth didn’t have any time to think about it. Her body burst into motion before her brain even knew what she was doing. She backed away and started to run through the marketplace, towards the stairs they entered the station through.
Rubik readjusted in a fraction of a second, then countered with a swipe from one of
