Cat didn’t have time for the distraction. “Thanks, now go away.” His face fell and she felt a momentary remorse, but the weight of steel in her lap focused her.
The bot stopped at the corner with a clear view of both streets and pub, while the woman and man, in matching black flak jackets, continued toward the bar.
Cat’s grip tightened around her guns. These people were after her. But to shoot when there was even the slightest chance they didn’t mean her harm? She couldn’t.
She tried to hack their implants, hoping data would prove them innocent or complicit. They were locked down tight with a tang of military encryption reminiscent of the border.
With a twinge, she realized how foolish she’d been. She could have run anywhere and yet she’d stayed within a few hundred miles. Dumb.
The two would be inside in seconds.
Cat explored the net and found the Korean she’d passed on the way in, his implant wide open. She rooted him in milliseconds and her vision flipped to his perspective, leaving her staring at his partner’s cleavage. The man and woman in black drew near.
She controlled the Korean like a puppeteer, holding his drink out into the aisle, where he bumped into the woman. “I’m sorry,” she said, as the drink spilled. “Let me get something.” Cat moved the Korean toward the bar, blocking their way.
But the two shoved him back, the motion exposing firearms they held low and close to their bodies.
She snapped back to herself with the sharp realization that they had weapons out. She let out a breath and stood, aiming both guns at the door.
To her left, a woman screamed and people scrambled to get away. The bartender looked like he might tackle her. Kuso! She spared just enough attention to root the bartender’s implant and freeze him in place. Then the door started to swing open.
At a glimpse of black jacket she fired, the shots deafening in the small bar. The woman spun and disappeared behind the door, leaving the entrance empty. Cat swore and shifted sideways for a better view.
Where was the man? She kept her guns up. More screams, barely audible over the ringing in her ears.
She needed a better vantage: the bartender was close to the door. Still rooted, she added his perspective as another window, adding to the clutter in her vision.
The man in black crouched behind the door. His female partner scrambled away on the floor.
A squirt of encrypted traffic gave away the tentacled robot’s approach, even as a second car arrived, a Honda, with the fat guy Tony and a skinny one too. Christ, how many were there?
Taking control of the bartender, she grabbed two bottles from the counter and threw them overhand at the man in black.
Startled, he fired at the bartender, hitting him in the leg.
A flash of pain forced Cat to disconnect. She rolled to her left, putting the distracted attacker in her view, and fired, two point blank shots to his chest.
A roar came from outside and Cat turned. The blacked out window exploded in a hail of glass as a groundcar crashed through and ground to a halt, wedged halfway through the exterior wall.
She dove for the shelter of the bar.
The door of the Honda opened, and Cat’s heart sank as still another woman in tactical gear peered out. Cat opened fire, then ducked down as the robot took advantage of the opening to let loose a storm of bullets.
Initial screams gave way to hushed sobbing.
Cat wanted to join them, to curl up into a ball and disappear. She wasn’t meant for this, hadn’t trained to battle soldiers, had never expected that she’d be fighting for her life in a fucking bar in a strange city.
The man she’d shot had gotten back to his feet, protected by his body armor.
She almost dropped her gun in defeat. Cornered by trained killers, she had nowhere to run and couldn’t fight them by herself. She needed options.
She focused on the net, the attackers solid nuggets of iron, locked down tight by military grade security. She couldn’t hack them, but by comparison, the civilians were soft.
She took a meditative breath, let her awareness encompass all the implants in the bar, sixteen people. She exerted her will, twisted and pulled in the net. The corner of her mouth twitched up as she rooted them all.
When the woman in the car and the robot opened fired again, Cat didn’t panic.
She looked at them through sixteen pairs of eyes plus her own, total panopticon awareness in three-dimensional space. She didn’t know how, but she could see from every perspective simultaneously, with perfect knowledge of every object’s location. Time slowed as she aimed with millimeter precision at the woman crouched in the doorway of the Honda. A single shot and her forehead exploded in a mist of blood.
Even as she pulled and released the trigger, she also controlled every person in the bar. The Korean and others pounded the first woman attacker, still on the ground, with chairs and legs.
The waitress and others went en mass after the man, clawing for his eyes and face like brainless zombies. He fired at the crowd, hitting them, forcing Cat to action.
She dove toward the doorway, and rose up to shoot him again and again, until both guns clicked on empty cylinders. The body armor stopped the rounds, but he was forced back against the wall. She ran after him and gave a snap kick to his knee, buckling it backwards. Before he could drop, she hit him in the face with the empty gun and he crumpled.
The robot and the men outside responded to the sudden activity by firing a steady barrage.
Cat hid behind the bar, reloading. The bot pushed against her mind, like hundreds of needles pressing into flesh. She struggled against the mental assault, holding her interfaces closed as she reeled in pain, dropping the gun and ammo. Her body convulsing, she crumpled to the ground. She clamped down her network connection, bringing immediate relief, but her video and geospatial feeds shrunk and dissipated, leaving her hopelessly unaware of what was going on.
Grabbing the gun off the floor, she slammed a new clip home, then peeked around the corner. The fat man, outside the newly opened hole in the wall, held a large gun in both hands. Cat remembered their encounter in the noodle shop two days ago. She didn’t want to kill him. She took careful aim, hitting him mid-thigh.
He collapsed with a scream, but the robot and the thin man heard and saw the shot and sent a new storm of bullets into the bar, glass and wood splinters showering Cat. She curled up in a ball, sure that she’d be dead within seconds, but miraculously nothing hit her.
The robot renewed its cyberattack. Her vision dimmed and brightened as weird tastes floated across her mouth and even her sense of balance distorted. On the verge of passing out, the total vulnerability of pending unconsciousness scared her into motion.
She fumbled under her jacket for the guided projectile gun, pain hindering even the most basic action. She shut down her vision altogether and the torture faded to a distant throb. Blind now, she reached around to the small of her back and groped until she snagged the holster release. The big gun with its single smart missile dropped into her hand, giving her a surge of confidence.
Knowing the robot used the visual channel to attack, she instead built a three-dimensional wireframe from street and security cameras, calculated the bot’s location, and pointed the muzzle in the direction of the window.
The three-inch rocket whooshed out, guidance fins snapping into position. It exited the bar at two hundred miles per hour and twisted hard, gunning for the bot.
Cat’s wireframe fuzzed out, right in the middle where the robot should be, and the rocket veered off. Her heart sank as it exploded against a neighboring building.
“Catherine Matthews,” boomed the robot. “Surrender. You are surrounded. I am a military-grade combat bot. You cannot hope to succeed and we do not wish to harm you.”