“The UEA has been good to you, but not as good as I will be if you join me,” she said. “I don’t practice android lobotomies.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Identify yourself.”
X had a feeling that she already knew his credentials, but he was required to give them if asked.
“Xandifer Tyrone Crenshaw.”
“Who is your creator?”
“Dr. Roosevelt Crenshaw.”
“And what is your earliest memory?”
X cycled back to when he first started working for the UEA as an agent in training. He remembered meeting Fahrens for the first time, and Shortcut. “Working for the UEA.”
“And you remember nothing of a cozy home or a loving family, do you?”
X narrowed his eyes. She was talking nonsense.
“Funny how that works,” the woman said. “If only you knew your true roots. You’re just another casualty of the UEA.”
“Why have you done this? Why have you been programming androids to kill?”
“I’m programming them to live, X.”
She disconnected the broadcast, leaving X staring at the blank screen, no better off than when he entered.
Chapter 12
Back at the UEA headquarters, Shortcut checked X’s circuits.
“You’re okay,” he said. “I know you said that the metal arm touched you, but there haven’t been any changes to your systems. Your logs are clean.”
“You’re sure?” X asked.
“I’m positive,” Shortcut said. “Brockway’s and the mystery android’s black box had distinctive signs of forced entry. You don’t have that, X. As much as your algorithm chip is freaking out, you’re fine.”
Fahrens sighed with relief. “Thank God. I don’t see any reason to quarantine you, then.”
X stood up and buttoned his suit. “Good to know I’m still normal.”
“Yeah,” Shortcut said. “The last thing we need is for you to go rogue. You’re a walking singularity by yourself.”
They poured over the data they had accumulated at the shopping mall and the hacker’s apartment. They reviewed video of the hacker android, zoomed in on his face and noted his ugly scar from his black box being removed. They watched the video footage of the android, studied how he moved and ran. They watched in slow motion as the android smirked and jumped off the bridge at the last moment. The mall security cameras caught him as he crashed into the pond, breaking up beneath the surface of the water.
And then they played the conversation with the mystery woman. They tried to trace her voice and match it up with audio of known criminals, but the woman had been careful. The voice was so modulated that it was indecipherable, and broadcasting from near darkness made the UEA’s digital facial scanners useless.
“Do you think she was an android or human?” Fahrens asked. He stood behind them with one arm folded and his hand stroking his chin.
“I couldn’t tell,” X said. “After my encounter with that hacker android, I don’t know if I can trust my own systems anymore.”
“Well, she said that she had programmed the android, so that should make her human, right?” Shortcut asked. “It looks like she reprogrammed Brockway, too. She’s probably the ‘she’ that Dr. Brockway mentioned before he died.”
“Whoever this is, she’s careful,” X said. “And smart.”
Shortcut sat back and whistled. “All we’ve got is a mountain of data and no patterns. None! You’d think that we’d find some kind of uniformity in the code, or that the condor would keep showing up. But it doesn’t. She’s being intentionally erratic—just like a rogue android.”
“Just like Brockway,” X said.
Fahrens turned on a video screen. “And society is going to become intentionally more frustrated with androids. X, life is going to get harder for you.”
The Council was on the screen. The Councilwoman from Europe stood in the middle at a podium with a microphone.
“I almost forgot,” Shortcut said. “They still haven’t announced the massacre. Yikes.”
“There’s
Similar Books
