Reez had rented the trailer platform, just as Sierra wanted. The little trip to Old Bunker #45 had been approved by Mr. Karl. He also had to rent a truck, as his own car wouldn't be able to pull the weight.
He stopped at the UM headquarters on the way. He figured Fredaris Baker might be able to give him some hints to the questions he and Sierra had been asking themselves.
Reez wasn't sure how much of the story he should tell. For one thing, his job was bound by an agreement of confidentiality. Two, he didn't want to run after trouble - getting caught while talking about one's doubts with a client wasn't the best thing to do in a Unionized Mercenary's carreer.
But, point number two was nothing if he didn't get caught. He trusted Fred just enough to keep things to himself.
In the end, he shortened the story: he told him he had been given the job of escorting an android for no particular reason and specified that he essentially was allowed to call the shots on where she could or could not go. For all the Department was concerned, he could lock her up in a cage if he wanted to. What he didn't understand was why he had been given an android to protect when it didn't seem to serve any purpose.
Fred just shrugged. "The Department's just weird that way. That's usually how they screen people they'd like to hire as guards in their facilities."
"Still," Reez said back, "I don't really trust 'em well enough. The Department's telling me some things... but not everything. For instance, just lately, some special properties of the droid started showing up. She didn't know about these before and neither did I. But when I phoned the office and told 'em about it, they told me they knew about it already. It's like I'm a playtoy in their hands, what gives?"
Fred shrugged again. "Honestly, Reez, there's nothing I can do. Not every client wants to spill the story of his live in gory details, so you'll just have to make with it."
The door opened behind Reez. He looked backwards and saw Sierra coming in and taking a seat next to him.
"I was eavesdropping," she explained. "This is leading us nowhere."
Fred sighed. "Is there something I should know?..." Sierra looked at him straight in the eyes.
"We didn't want to do that in our plan A, but if we really want help, we have no choice. Now listen to the real story."
She told him everything, from beginning to end. The desert, the meeting with Reez, her transformation; everything from birth up to now.
Fred's face progressively darkened as she spoke of the Department. By the time she was finished, he had taken a very pensive, closed-up stance.
"So what's the verdict?" Reez urged him.
Fred took a deep breath... "Reez, I'll be honest with you. I don't know. This isn't my call. You know what's best for your client and the one you are escorting. Even if you describe your situation as best as you can, nobody can decide better than you. I know you have the head to be able to do that."
Reez clenched his teeth. "Isn't there something you can do? I mean, you're in Kod's place now. You have the right to see things I don't."
Fred shook his head. "Not true. Kod was a nosy bastard. If he got in trouble, that's what caused it in the first place. I'll tell you something about him: when you were with him, it was his way or the highway. He had a vision of a world that worked according to his preferences, and it was to be a tight-assed law-bound world where everybody's perfect and nobody makes mistakes. So whenever he got word that something weird was up somewhere, he'd jump right on the occasion to deliver some justice. Now let me tell you how real life words: you see too much? You hide and you shut it. Justice is only as good as the evidence, and they don't give a shit if the evidence points to the wrong person. Kod didn't learn that. He brushed against the wrong person, he got into trouble. Now he's dead."
"You mean he got killed?"
"No. He really did suicide... but he was as good as dead at the end of the whole story. He had been fired from the UM, he had an arrest warrant against him, and a bunch of big heads from the government wanted to see him gone. He knew too much, and it was his intention to tell. The first part is dangerous at worst, but the second is what makes the shit hit the fan."
"So, Shrike..."
"A complete, lucky deux ex machina. She was a thing he'd bought back when we were in college. Kod wanted to cause a scare by programming a scary-looking droid to go and spook everyone in the neighborhood, and then shut down after a day. But he didn't program her well enough. There was an error in his shutdown code, so she just kept on going and going and then one day disappeared. When she surfaced again as a suspected black market trader and someone who had beef against the Governor, Kod's enemies realized he had never released his ownership of the droid. It was as stupid as this. Beaten because of a single piece of paper. All the Governor had to do was call the guy up, tell him to stop his android or else he'd be accused of intentionally letting a programmed killer on the loose. If she hadn't existed, or if Kod had done the programming correctly, we wouldn't be in the situation we are now. Think about the nastiest thing you did in your life, Reez. Keep in mind that if someone wants to get rid of you, he just has to seize that and use it against you."
Reez hesitated before answering. "...And you, in all this?" Fred put up his hands.
"This conversation never happened. I'm not Kod. I want to keep my job, I'm happy the way I am now, and I'm willing to let things slide. I don't want to run after trouble. You're on your own for this one."
"Bullshit!"
"This isn't bullshit. This is called playing it safe. I know some things. But I already told the guys upstairs, this ain't my business and I don't intend to make it so. Do whatever the hell you want. I'm not saying I agree with what you do, but I'm not gonna make your life a living hell because of that. That's what I told 'em."
Reez stared at him with a look of disgust. "Well that's it, I sure as hell don't trust you anymore."
"Why?"
"There is something blatantly wrong going on, you tell me the Department's even worse than what I knew, and you don't want to give me a hand. In my book, that makes you part of 'em."
Fred rubbed his hands together and presented his palms. "I don't help them, and I don't help you either. I'm keeping my hands clean off this business. Do what you want, Reez, I don't care. But don't pull me along, 'cause if you do this, I'll say it only once: I will fuck you up. My job is to apply the code of conduct and the rules of the Unionized Mercenaries. That's it, that's all! If you don't have any questions pertaining to that, then get outta my office."
Reez stormed out the instant Fred finished his sentence. Sierra lingered for a few seconds longer, taking care to gracefully stand up and give Fred an interrogative look before leaving.
She didn't talk to Reez on the way to the bunker. He had turned on the radio and pumped up the volume loud enough to force her to yell if she wanted to tell him anything.
Reez had obviously crossed Fred out of his mind. Sierra expressed a little more reserve. She sensed Fred would've liked to help, but Reez's method of guilt-tripping the man hadn't been the right way to do it. At worst, it might have ruined his chances entirely.
The music abruptly went quiet. The bunker was directly in front of them, dead and motionless. For one of those rare times, there was no wind at all. The heat was scorching. Compared to that, the inside of the cave was almost inviting.
Sierra ran inside. She turned on the flashlight Reez has brought and gave each room a look.
The bunker wasn't as scary as the first time around. It was still morning, just before noon, so the line shone partly into the entrance on the east side.
She knew what to expect from the place. Back then, she had watched Shrike, thrashing around inside like a headless chicken, emitting the most disgusting gurgles and roars from her throat. If she had really had the mind of a child, she would have been thoroughly traumatized for life.
The only that saved her in the end was that she knew Shrike, and she knew how Shrike behave. Temper tantrums had become common - the ultimate tantrum, to pardon the expression, looked to her at the time like just some anger on steroids and nothing more.
But as she watched the substance littering the floor, she began to take notice of several strange things. The puke was not the problem - Shrike could eat small amounts of food as well and never had any trouble with it. The blood wasn't worth noting either, as Shrike did have organic parts as well, and like anything else, they could get broken or hurt. But the oil... There was too much oil. A quick look around revealed that Shrike had somehow coughed up more oil that what she could have reasonably had. There was hardly any oil in a normal android; just enough to allow the joints to move smoothly. But the amount on the floor corresponded to more... more blood than there was in the human body.
She was about to touch the mixture but remembered her hands had changed. Dirtying the simu-skin wasn't something she'd want to do.
Reez was noisily walking about outside, idly kicking some dust.
Sierra closed her eyes and let her mind drift into a state even she couldn't describe.
There were heat signatures inside the bunker, the very slight variations retracing her steps. A dimmer patch told of Reez's expedition. A yet even dimmer signature corresponded to Shrike.
There was a brief signature on the lightbulbs, the same age as when Reez visited the bunker. Every single one of them had blown.
There was another ray she couldn't identify. It was a line that zigzagged everywhere inside the bunker, following no pattern in particular. Its color was everything and nothing, as if it was going through every single one of them at a speed too high for the naked eye.
She went to where the lines were the densest - Shrike's room. This fear she had felt the first time around slowly came back.
She backed up into the room full of crates, where there were the least amount of those lines. The fear was gone.
That signature couldn't be one of emotion. It was something raw and unique... She had no word for it. It wasn't a temperature. It wasn't an ultraviolet. It wasn't an emotion. It wasn't any form of energy or radio or micro or other kind of wave. Her mind began to transform the zigzagging ray... Yes, it was unique, emphasized on unique, something that only Shrike could have emitted. It was like an infinitely long ribbon, with Shrike's handwriting "This is me!" over and over.
Yes, that was it. An identity. It went inside, zigzagged here and there, not even following Shrike's heat signature, then went outside again, turning left and fading away into the distance.
The visuals went away. She opened her eyes. Her mind couldn't really make out what to conclude from the scan. It just showed the obvious.
She went outside. The reason she had come here in the first place was right next to the entrance, under a tarp.
She violently pulled it away. Under it was a huge carcass of metal.
Reed had turned around. "What the hell?"
"That's my mother's car." Sierra explained. "Kasieri Wildsider TXR-7."
Reez examined the ruined vehicle. It had almost completely burned away. The windows were gone, the metal full of holes, burnt away. The engine block was split in half, unrecoverable. The only survivor was the black leather driver's seat, which had miraculously survived in perfect condition, as if it had been invulnerable to the blaze.
That was the reason the trailer had been brought out. The engine being a V-12, the two had to put their efforts together to lift the frame over it and to the side, in order to drag it over to the trailer. With the engine unattached, the piece was considerably lighter.
Reez placed the tarp over the frame and secured the cables. He was ready to go.
The next step was to find a place to put it. He knew a portion of the condominium building's inhabitants didn't have a car, since they worked within walking distance - or some lucky ones in one of the three surrounding skyscrapers. He hoped one of them would be kind enough to let his parking spot go for a while.
Sierra had expressed the intention to rebuild the Wildsider on the way back. It would give her something to do aside from browsing the net all the time. She thought it would also serve as some sort of payback for what Shrike had done to her, by keeping her favorite toy in working order.
Reez wouldn't spend any money on that endeavor though. She'd have to scour junkyards and fix the parts together by herself. That, or find a way to make money, which was inconceivable for someone like her. Not that androids couldn't get jobs, but he feared that sticking around the same people too much would eventually reveal her true nature to them. They were still discussing that when they got into the parking lot.
Reez stole a parking spot and placed the frame there. He'd go and talk to the spot's owner later today. He gave Sierra his key and drove the truck back to the dealership.
It was past noon. She grabbed a peanut from a bottle and munched on them more out of habit than hunger. She had taken on the practice of lunching and dining with Reez, accompanying him by eating a minimalist piece of food. If the meal wasn't ready in time, she went to the kitchen out of automatism and grabbed a snack. What she took as a form of polite impatience, Reez saw it as a hilariously funny scene: an android so hungry and so anxious to eat that... she went and ate one peanut.
The funny thing was that since she had started to eat, she felt better and better each day. Not necessarily stronger - but it felt like a sense of accomplishment, of progress. As if she had to eat a certain amount in her life and was working every day towards that goal. She tried to explain it to Reez, but he simply dismissed it as hunger. She repeatedly told him she never felt hungry.
She went to the living room, picked up a notepad and wrote her thoughts down. That was another habit: if she or Reez had a question about her nature, they'd write it down on the notepad. It was their way of keeping track of what kind of answers they were looking for.
The phone rang. There had been an accident on the highway, and Reez was stuck in a traffic jam. They'd be eating a half-hour late.
She figured that'd be enough time to relax.
She had prepared a warm bath. It was something she had read about on the net, mostly recalling its therapeutic effects when the water was mixed with a bit of oil or salt or some other substance. She had nothing on hand except a bar of soap. Plain water would do the trick.
She unlocked her midsection and hovered out of it. What was left was either waterproof, or organic - impossible to get a shock either way.
The feeling of the water on her skin was pleasant. The sound of the clasping water as she moved around was soothing. She lowered herself further and leaned against the wall, closing her eyes for a moment.
The water was like a sound eater. She didn't even hear the hum of the electrical appliances in the kitchen, even though it was but a few feet away. The result was better than she thought.
Eventually, she got out of her peaceful trance, grabbed a washcloth and the soap, and carefully cleaned herself. The desert had covered her with dust, and after a gentle wipe, she noticed her skin had taken on a healthier shade of black, sign that the dust had been washed away.
She got out and passed a towel around her body. She'd have to wait a while before getting back into her midsection. She wanted to make sure she was completely dry.
In the meantime, she sat on Reez' bed and watched a bit of TV.
Reez arrived just a minute later.
"I'm here!"
She gave him a wave and a hello. He headed straight for the dining room and unwrapped something.
"I bought sandwiches. Can't be assed to think up of a meal today..."
"Too bad! You were starting to get pretty good at it!" she shouted from the bedroom.
She got up from the bed and re-integrated her midsection. A quick look in the mirror: She looked good as new.
They resumed their discussion over the money trouble. No matter how they cut it, Reez would not give any money to her. His hammer argument was simple: her staying at his place was first and foremost a job, and he performed this job in order to make money. The only way to work on the car would be to find parts in junkyards and make with that.
"People throw away tons of stuff for no reason." Reez added. "I'm sure you'll find brand new parts in there and wonder why the hell they ended up on the junk pile."
She didn't appear convinced. A part in pristine condition in a junkyard pretty much defeated the purpose of a junkyard in the first place.
Reez shrugged as she expressed her doubts. "Things aren't black and white all the time. You'll have to look up the definition of 'paradox'."
"I know what a paradox is!"
Reez grinned at her. "You know the theory; you lack the practice!"