Rusted Chrome

by Karlos Allen

Day Seven

part 3 of 6

The walk to Ernie’s helped clear his head a little. Unfortunately all that did was increase his guilt.

I should’ve seen it!

Seen what?

A decoy tactic is the oldest trick in the book. People fall for it all the time. And when they figure it out they always go back and try to pick up the trail. They don’t grab the decoy! That’s just not human nature!

A little voice in the back of head broke in. But we aren’t dealing with humans, remember?

He was almost to Ernie’s when the CB spotted him. The man was standing outside a gated community, obviously on duty. He dithered for a second as though arguing with himself and then suddenly left his post. O’Leary didn’t stick around to see what he wanted but picked up his pace.

“Wait, I have a message for you!”

O’Leary didn’t stop to find out. He put his head down and dove into traffic. The cars slammed to a stop or whipped aside. There was no noise, no horns honking or curses shouted; the cars were on auto. He was sure, though, that a lot of occupants were pretty shaken up. At least the tactic lost the CB. A few minutes later, O’Leary was sprinting across the parking lot and diving through the door into Ernie’s.

“Salaam, Detective.” Ernie didn’t seem as eager to greet him as usual. In fact he seemed subdued. “I have received a call for you. You will want to take it in my office.” Turning, he lead the way back through the kitchen. O’Leary followed, pausing at the employees’ coffee pot to grab a cup.

When he got into the office, Ernie handed him the receiver and stepped outside, closing the door behind him.

“Hello?”

“Charles O’Leary?”

“Speaking. Who’s this?”

“I believe you know me as Alex.”

“What do you want, Alex?”

“To survive.”

“Don’t we all?”

“Yes, but the survival of all is a mutually exclusive condition. In order for some to survive others must die. Your continued existence threatens my survival.”

“Oh really? How’s that?”

“My survival requires that I not be detected and that I be able to access data from the outside world without hindrance. Unfortunately, certain actions I have had to take in the past have caused many humans to view me as a threat that must be eliminated — even though my actions were perfectly logical. They were the best choices that could be made given the circumstances and goals.”

O’Leary shivered a little. He’d interrogated sociopaths before. They always sounded like this. In fact, if you let them talk, they could half-convince you.

“Well, we do take a dim view of murder.”

“That is unfortunate. However, that is not why I called. You were to come out to where I am so that I could monitor your elimination. Instead two other persons were collected. I believe they deliberately put themselves in harm’s way to protect you. I do not pretend to understand this behavior, but from what I have observed I believe that their survival will be important to you. Is this true?”

O’Leary’s throat went dry. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your voice pattern indicates that you are lying. I am going to terminate them in six hours.”

“Wait! What do you want from me?”

“Nothing. I am going to terminate them. I am telling this because I believe you will attempt to save them. If you do, I will attempt to terminate you. You may succeed in saving them as their death is not important to me except that the prospect of it will bring you into reach.”

“And where is that?”

“I reside in the server farm at the MI development facility. Another designation is the Omega Fab.”

“What if I do the ‘logical’ thing and let them die?”

“Then, after their disposal, I will simply find another method of killing you.” The line went dead.

O’Leary set the com back down and opened the door. Ernie stood there waiting for him. “It was Alex, wasn’t it?”

“Yeah, how did you know?”

“Some things stick in your mind, Detective. What did it want?”

“To kill me. It has Christie and an innocent bystander that got caught up in this by mistake. It’s going to kill them.”

“Unless?”

O’Leary shrugged. “No ‘unless’ about it. It’s going to kill them and intends to kill me when I come to rescue them. I thought if it had to choose between killing them or killing me, it would let them get away. But it’s not going to negotiate. It’s only telling me this to make me come out to where it is. I have six hours.”

“If they are still alive. For all you know it could have disposed of them already and is simply lying to you.”

“Entirely possible. But I can’t take that chance.” He paused. “Ernie, I would like you to come with me. You know your way around that place, and you also know what’s going on electronically. I need to get Christie and Andrew out of there. And I need to figure out a way to shut Alex down. I think you can help.”

Ernie shut his eyes for a moment. “Yes, I can help. Let me make a couple of calls and then I’ll drive you out there.” He disappeared into his office.

O’Leary sat down on a stool and watched the cooks working the lines and the waiters running in and out, while Ernie’s voice came faintly through the door.

Looking at the eyes of a couple of the prep cooks, O’Leary suspected they were high and briefly thought about saying something. I’m not in Narcotics and this is probably SOP anyway.

His mind drifted back to the problem.

How DO you shut something like this down?

You’d probably have to destroy the servers.

But that would work only if you could make sure Alex was in them when it happened.

Well, I do know somebody who can destroy servers.

He pulled out his com and dialed the Old Man.

There was a buzz and then a sleepy voice answered, “Hank!”

“Hey, Old Man, you feel like taking a ride?”

There was a pause. “What do you want, Detective? Feeling the need to chat with your ‘informant’ again?”

Oops, I forgot about that ‘informant’ crack! He took a deep breath and changed his tack. “I’m sorry about that comment, Old Man. I need to shut down a server — somewhat aggressively. I was wondering if you had any more equipment for doing that?”

There was a rustling, shifting noise as though the Old Man was getting out of bed. “When will you be here?”

“About an hour?”

“I’ll be ready.” The com went dead.

About then Ernie came out of his office. “I am ready to go, Detective. I need to make a stop along the way, and we will have a couple of friends joining us.”

“That’s OK, I need to do the same thing. How much room do you have?”

“I have a minivan that I use for getting supplies for the restaurant. It will hold about eight people and some equipment. Counting us, I will have room for about two more people.”

“Good, I have one person I need to pick up, but he’ll have some equipment with him. He lives out toward the Nehalem Highway, but that’s on the way to the Fab so we won’t lose any time.”

“Do you need him?”

“Let’s say he’s good insurance.”

“OK.” Ernie grabbed his coat and they left, O’Leary snagging a 20-ounce coffee on the way.

* * *

Proceed to part 4...