Cat-scratch man picked up the claymore and slammed it into Teddy’s head with the flat side, knocking him out.
Shannon pushed herself between them. “Enough. If Brad finds out you were messing with his new pet, then he’ll lock you in a cage and leave you worse off than him.” She pointed to Larry, bile rising in her throat.
“We didn’t know,” said cat-scratch man.
Shannon looked at him. “You — help me move Larry into the VIP room.” She pointed to Teddy. Rescuing him was out of the question. The least she could do was protect him from getting hurt now. “The rest of you, wheel this tin can back into the holding room.”
The men looked at each other hesitantly.
“Now!”
Two of the men shackled Teddy and wheeled him out. Cat-scratch man grumbled as he helped her bring Larry into the VIP room.
“A good man knows how to follow orders. I’ll make sure Evan hears about you.” After dismissing cat-scratch man, she stood over Larry’s body. Brad or Evan could be back any minute, especially when they found out Brutus hadn’t gone to the high school. A moment of joy rushed over her body as she realized their technological incompetence would leave them unable to operate Brutus. But, eventually, someone would.
Larry’s wounds were healing, but he was still unresponsive. There was nothing more she could do for him. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”
Evan turned to Brad. “Where the hell is Brutus?”
“He should be here any minute.”
The delay annoyed him to no end. This freak show should never have been permitted to carry on. “In ten more minutes, once the abomination goes back up on stage, I’m arresting it. I won’t permit the poison to spread any further.”
“I’ll make sure that whoever is responsible for the delay pays.”
“You be sure you do. This is war. We can’t have insubordination — that’s treason.”
Brad looked away. “What about Duncan?”
“Hiding scared at home,” said Evan, a delightful sensation filling his head. “The janitor’s on his way to clean up that trash.”
As Stanley’s program ran on the computer, he sat at the table and listened to Dan’s press release. Signing away a new signature every few seconds, his heart thumping and mixing in with the buzzing of the drones outside. A news alert played during a commercial in the press release, making allegations that Stanley was wanted for questioning by the police for the murder of Officer Michaels. Stanley nearly lost it. He could see what they were doing — destroying him as a way to destroy Dan and Machines with Dreams. But he was not going to let them do it.
Finally, an alert sounded from his computer. Stanley rushed over and saw the IP address that had spoofed the call and unleashed a suite of security tools scanning for vulnerabilities, finding one instantly in a third-party script. With a few commands, he could root and destroy the harasser’s computer. But first, Stanley wanted to see the face of the man who’d had the audacity to harass him.
The next thing Teddy realized was that they were dragging him back to the holding area, limbs barely responding to his commands. Tortured and driven to insanity, he was going to die here. But he wasn’t ready to let that happen. Not because he wanted to be alive but because he needed to kill Brad.
Looking around the room, he searched for something he could use as a weapon. There were spikes, blades, and hammers everywhere, but finding an object that he could retrofit onto his maimed body was the difficult part. Jamming a blade into his stub seemed like the only option.
Maple was here. Teddy recognized the stupid little pink dress she was wearing. “Maple? Can you hear me?”
No response.
It didn’t look like she had been physically modified, but they may have formatted her programming and put in some murderous software. If he turned her on, she may end up killing him. Better to wait until he found a weapon to defend himself with.
As he continued to inspect the room from where he was lying, he noticed a phone jack along the wall. There was no phone, but he had an idea.
Getting up off the ground was harder than he expected. He was completely enervated from the beating he had received. If they made him fight later, there would be no way he could defend himself. Walking up to an android with bladed hands, Teddy sliced up his right stub, peeling away his artificial flesh until one of his electrical wires was exposed. Taking it into his mouth, he pulled it out and opened the wiring. He could feel the current from it running through his mouth, modulating the strength with the Cerebral Stitch.
This was going to work.
Sticking the wire into the jack, Teddy could feel the energy running through him and knew the phone was live. Creating Morse Code through electric pulses, he sent out an SOS to Dan. If anyone came down now, they would be able to see what he was doing and stop him. But this was his best chance at survival and the only way he had left to get revenge.
Chapter 19
Stanley stared into the computer screen as he hit the “Return” button, ready to confront the man who had threatened him in his own home. He imagined a sinister-looking face similar to Evan’s, some horrible man hell-bent on hurting others, with a dagger in his hand, guffawing to horrendous snuff videos.
The live-feed from their webcam popped up — it was a young boy.
“No!” Thrusting his face toward the screen, Stanley couldn’t believe his eyes. This boy was not even a teenager. “Why would you do this to me?”
The boy couldn’t hear him. Nor did he know that his webcam had been compromised.
Stanley got to his feet. Dan had been right. The children needed their guidance. Looking outside, more reporters had arrived. Fear rose in his stomach, but Stanley refused to listen. He should never have let Dan do this alone. He threw on his coat and ordered a Fermi. When it arrived, he walked outside, scurrying through an army of android reporters armed with a barrage of questions and unforgiving lenses.
“— Are you going to the high school?”
“— How would you characterize your relationship with Dan?”
“— Is it true that you are programming androids to kill people?”
Stanley ignored the cacophony, beaming directly toward the Fermi, cursing himself for not leaving earlier.
“Duncan!” Holt bolted out in front of Stanley.
Stanley gasped. “You’re that nasty man who treated my Dan so awfully.”
“I’ve been a man of God all my life — more than fifty years.” Deep, wheezy breaths scraped through Holt’s throat. An unreadable tattoo peeped out of his left shirt cuff. A forest of graying chest hair threatened to escape through the gap in his shirt where a button had been undone.
“Great. Go do it somewhere else.” From a few feet away, Stanley could still smell the stench of alcohol on his breath.
Holt stepped toward him. “I grew up before the Internet was popular, well before the rise of intelligent machine life.”
“I don’t care,” said Stanley, moving toward the Fermi.
Holt stepped in front of him. “But God led me elsewhere,” he continued. “For fifteen years, I hauled freight across the USA. Fifteen great years, that is, until all the truckers were laid off and replaced by the self-driving systems we helped to teach.” His lip snarled, and his friendly look turned to hatred.
“And you think it’s Dan’s fault?” hissed Stanley. Shortly after the creation of the first cyborg, the Pope had given a press conference, calling it an “abomination.” It was his words Holt was echoing today. The Pope’s denigration had led to a revival in the practices of the Ku Klux Klan. Public burnings of androids and cyborgs became widespread. Stanley wondered how many times Holt had put on a white hood.