Seeking escape, she ran to the middle of the street, passing the fat man in a pool of blood.
A voice came from the parked black and silver Bugatti. “Catherine Matthews, can you hear me?”
Catherine didn’t say anything. She was thinking about the approaching aircars. A net coming down around her.
“Cat, I know what you can do. These people are from the Institute for Ethics. They’re afraid of you, what you can do. They’re coming to arrest you, to experiment on you.”
Cat ignored the voice.
“If you don’t believe me, check the IDs of the two men in the aircar approaching from the northeast. I am on your side. I will shelter you from them. I am not afraid of you.”
Cat used her implant to scan the approaching aircar. It contained two people. Mike Williams and Leon Tsarev. Of course she knew who they were. She checked against their public keys. They appeared to be authentic. But that could be faked.
“You survived that attack, but now they are bringing more security bots. You barely bested one, can you beat sixteen?”
“Who are you?” she said.
“You can call me Adam.”
This was Tony’s boss, the AI that’d been following her. Tony was scared of him, so Adam must be dangerous. Cat glanced toward the bar. The bot inside was hardly beaten, merely blinded and starved of data. Given a minute, it would find some way to come after her. The other aircars, less than a thousand feet away now, all contained bots.
“I’m starting this car. I’m going to drive by you. If you jump in, I can get you away. But if you wait, they’ll be on top of you and escape will be impossible.” The aircar fired up engines and rose off landing gear.
Cat shook her head. She desperately wanted more time, to think. She shouldn’t trust this AI, but she was out of options. It was either an unknown and dangerous AI, or sixteen bots led by the Institute for Ethics. She glanced at the guns she held, the ruins of the bar, and the Institute vehicle touching down half a block away, weighing her options.
The black aircar approached, massive ductwork bulging out the corners of the car, the door opening by itself, the interior empty. The voice continued from a speaker. “Get in Catherine.”
Down the block, a huge bot flew out of the Institute car, articulated rifles pointed in her direction.
“Dammit.” She jumped in and the door swung closed. The engines went to full power, acceleration slamming her against the seat.
“Sorry, Catherine Mathews. Do your best to hold on, as the next few minutes will be tricky.”
The Bugatti accelerated hard, twisting and turning. Cat rolled across the cabin, slammed her shoulder into the wall, finally reached out and grabbed a seat leg, nearly getting her arm yanked off when the aircar veered again. She levered herself into a seat and buckled up as the engines screamed. Cat reached into the net, pulled up the locations of their pursuers.
“Please don’t do that, Cat. You have a digital signature that is … unique. When you arrive, I’ll teach you how to suppress it. In the meantime, stay off the net. I’ll put up an overview.”
A three dimensional hologram flickered to life in the cabin, showing the positions of the different aircars. They flew low to the ground, corkscrewing through the hills east of San Diego, the tortured screech of the engine echoing off canyon walls.
“Can you outrun them?” Cat asked.
“Yes, but they can always call in more help to track us. Better to lose them here and now with an impossible maneuver.” For two minutes the aircar screamed at near supersonic speeds, hurtling at high G-forces through mountains and valleys. Battered by the rapid turns, Cat feared she might pass out under the acceleration.
The car hurtled out of a canyon and over a hill, then dove straight toward a lake. Cat screamed at the last second, then they hit the water.
Seatbelt tensioners and airbags fired, stunning but protecting Cat. She clawed at the airbag as the car began to sink in the frothing and bubbling water.
“Relax, Catherine. The car is watertight. No one saw us go into the reservoir. We’re safe.”
“You can fly us out?” She surveyed the interior. She’d never heard of an aircar that was also a submarine.
“No, of course not. The vehicle is damaged beyond repair. I will send air transport and rescue bots. They will be at your location and retrieve you as soon as the Institute’s search has been called off.”
The hiss and crackle of cold water hitting the superheated engine sounded behind her.
“What the hell?” Cat got out of her seat and screamed. “I’m trapped down here. What if the windshield cracks? What if this thing springs a leak? What if you don’t get here in time and the air runs out?”
She lost her balance as the car sank into the water and it grew darker inside.
“I calculated probabilities and made the choice with the highest likelihood of successful evasion with minimal risk. Now please remain calm. Data transmission will cease in a few seconds. I assure you, I will retrieve you.”
Then the speaker was silent. The cabin turned black and the car started to creak alarmingly.
Cat fought panic. She forced herself to sit just in time, the car jolting into the mud bottom of the reservoir. She reached out one finger to touch the windshield, then changed her mind, and withdrew her hand. She sat back and gripped the armrests as the glass creaked and moaned.
Part Two
37
Leon gawked in surprise as Catherine Matthews climbed into the other car and left. When her car took off, an unexpected jealousy seized him.
The moment passed as their own engines throttled to take-off power on their own. The aircar turned ninety degrees and glided sideways down the street. At the same time Shizoko churned toward them, leaping into the air ten feet from the door. The two paths intersected, Shizoko flying through the doorway to slam into the opposite side. The engines shrieked as they veered to follow Catherine, throwing Mike and Leon into the wall.
“Some warning would help,” Mike said, picking himself up.
“What the hell just happened?” Leon said. “Where is she going?”
“Unknown, but I don’t think she’s in control.” Shizoko said. “Her car’s rate of acceleration is unsafe for humans.”
“She voluntarily got in,” Leon said, struggling to buckle as the aircar jigged back and forth in pursuit.
“Someone spoke to her before she boarded.” Shizoko replayed the transaction, a series of encrypted audio data packets to and from the vehicle in the moments before takeoff.
Mike, already buckled, started playing with the data as they accelerated in huge curves and stomach-raising lurches. “The other end is anonymous,” he yelled over the howl of the engines. “Can you backtrace to the source?”
The aircar banked right. Leon overlaid the locations of the hired security cars, also in pursuit, on the windshield. The Bugatti outdistanced them, but with sixteen vehicles sharing telemetry, they could track a long way out.
“I’ve traced the AI to an unregistered server in Atlanta,” Shizoko said, his voice machine calm, a stark contrast to the chaos of the frantic chase.
“Unregistered?” Mike said. “The point of the ethics framework is to ensure every computer is protected.”
“The CPU in question is registered to an AI out of Belgium. The AI self-terminated fourteen days ago, but its credentials haven’t expired yet. The server was a dumb packet forwarder on a nexus with a million other servers, which means I’ll have to backtrack through every other connection coming in and out. I’ll need at least a few hours.”