It was a complex fractal structure rendered in 3D against a backdrop of stars. “What am I looking at?” she asked.
“It made this. I’ve played a thousand hours of VOIDWAR and never seen anything like it. It interfaces with whatever systems it finds. My Augmented vision …” He tapped one temple, then shook his head. “It was like I was hallucinating, but it was real. Or not real, but it was connected to the real. It knew what it was doing to my vision; it changed things for a reason.”
“That fucking snake,” Enda said. She stood and paced the length of the table. “He had me chasing data, not a fucking AI.”
“AGI,” Troy said.
“Whatever,” Enda said.
“Who are you talking about?” Dax said.
David fucking Yeun. Enda shook her head. “It doesn’t matter.” Two million euro to track down technology that was probably priceless. The fucking snake.
“I was gonna give it to Kali eventually,” Dax said. “I just wanted to learn more about it first. And I wanted more money.” He added the last part quietly.
Me too, Enda thought. Me too.
“But we’ve been talking to it,” Dax said.
“Talking?”
“It listens to us, it prints text on the screen. I wanted to learn more about it, Troy wanted to teach it ethics.”
“I wanted to test it,” Troy said.
“Like it was one of his students.”
“Why haven’t you left the city?” Enda asked.
Dax shrugged. “I’ve got no money, nowhere else to go. My mom is here, Soo-hyun too.” He looked pointedly at Enda. “Soo-hyun is still with Kali. They won’t answer their phone; the only response I get to my texts is the same message that Kali will forgive me if I come back to the commune.”
“Would they hurt Soo-hyun?”
“I don’t know,” Dax said. He breathed deep, exhaled a long and ragged breath. “After what they did to Khoder, I don’t know.” He stared into his empty cup. He wiped his eyes quickly, and huffed in amusement. “Khoder was a bit of an asshole, but he was my friend.”
Dax glanced up, and Enda smiled sympathetically. He responded with a wide, bright smile. It fell as he looked back to his cup.
“Does Soo-hyun know about this place?”
Dax shrugged, and idly turned the empty cup in his hand.
“They only ever visited once, months ago,” Troy said. “They might not remember where it was.”
Enda got up from the table and crossed to the front door, to check through the spyhole. Unconsciously she reached a hand inside her coat and rested her fingers on the grip of her pistol. “We shouldn’t have stayed here this long.”
Dax froze. “No. Soo-hyun wouldn’t.”
“Red beat Osman to death, so it’s not about what Soo-hyun would do.”
Dax buried his face in his hands.
“We need to get out of here,” Enda said. “Now.”
A digital klaxon wailed from Dax’s phone. He looked at the screen—flickering through a dozen photos of warning signs sourced from some public database. He looked to Enda and she nodded. He answered it, then immediately held the phone back from his ear as a siren screeched from its tiny speaker, crackling with the volume. He hung up and stared at the screen. “That was the AGI.”
“What?” Enda said.
“I know it sounds crazy, but trust me.”
Enda drew her pistol and Dax stared wide-eyed.
“What do you think it was trying to tell us?” Troy asked.
“You’re the AI-whisperer,” Enda said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Dax collected his rucksack from the floor while Troy crossed to the coatrack by the door. He put on a jacket and collected an umbrella before turning to Dax. “Do you need a coat?”
Dax shook his head. “Windbreaker’s waterproof.”
Enda opened the door a sliver, heard the thud and squeak of feet running up the stairwell. She shut the door. “Get down.”
Dax dropped to the floor, grabbed Troy’s hand, and pulled him down as well, the other man’s face a mask of fear and confusion. He stared from where he hid under the dining room table. Enda motioned for him to move aside, and they crawled to the far end of the apartment. Dax opened his mouth to speak, but was silenced by the thunder of gunfire.
Bullets punched through the front door, splinters burst from wooden wounds. The distinctive roar of a Kalashnikov on full automatic filled the air and growled through the floor. Everything shook with the vibration of violence.
The air choked with smoke and debris. Bullets scored the walls, bursting through the framed movie posters, raining glass across the room. Finally the sound died.
“Stay here,” Enda told the others, enunciating clearly so they would be able to read her lips. She crouch-walked across the room and stood in the corner beside the front door.
The splintered remains of the door erupted inward, and chunks of wood littered the floor. A skinny figure stepped through the opening—dressed in tattered black, holding a gaudy yellow semiautomatic pistol. Enda fired a single shot into the meat of his thigh—her P320 sounding flat after the rumble of the AK-47. He howled and dropped his gun as he fell onto his hands and knees. Blood soaked through his black jeans and pooled around his leg. He reached for his pistol and Enda fired again. The bullet shattered his shoulder blade and brought a new sound from someplace deep within him, a place of bestial rage and pain he probably never knew existed.
Enda knew that place. She had lived there for so long it felt like home.
She turned back to the corner and took cover as another burst of Kalashnikov fire split the air and tore through the apartment. In the heavy silence that followed, Enda heard the shink of a magazine dropping from the weapon and the terrified babble of sounds that spewed from Dax’s mouth. Troy was silent, his eyes squeezed shut, hands over his ears.
Enda pivoted into the doorway. Another four targets stood on the landing, drenched by the rain. One was armed with the Kalashnikov, the others with
