True thinks about the Chinese and the speculation that they interfered in the recovery of the prisoners because they wanted no witnesses… but no witnesses to what? Could the Chinese have been running an experimental combat system in the forest around Nungsan? A robotic system that went disastrously wrong—and wound up targeting allied troops?
Her heart hammers, flushing out the lethargy of her grief, allowing outrage to blossom. Was Rogue Lightning sacrificed to keep an embarrassing failure secret? Had someone, somewhere, made that decision?
Comfort, True decides, can have many definitions. Over the years she has taken some comfort in the simple fact that all those involved in Diego’s death are themselves now dead and gone. But the existence of a killer robot means she’s been wrong about that.
It’s not something she can discuss here, now, in front of the Ocampos, but that’s all right. She has only one more question. She leans in, gaze locked on Daniel. “Have you ever heard from the American, or heard of him, since that day he broke open the cage?”
“No. Never. I have never heard from him, never heard of him, never seen him again.”
True stands up. She is ready to go. She needs to go before her anger becomes visible. “I want to thank you, Mr. Ocampo—”
“Just one more thing,” Alex interjects. “Mr. Ocampo, do you remember what kind of a hammer the American was using when he broke the cage?”
Despite the heat, True shivers. She looks to Daniel to find his head cocked, expression puzzled. “Is it important?” he asks.
Alex says, “Maybe.”
Daniel looks like he wants to ask why, but he doesn’t. “I remember it clearly,” he tells Alex. “Because I saw it before. It was the kind of hammer with a large, heavy head, like this.” He touches the tips of his fingers together, enclosing a space with his hands. “The kind of hammer used to drive stakes into the ground. Or into a man.”
True refuses to even consider that image. Instead she recalls Lincoln’s description of the two bodies the forensics team found in the village, close to the pyre, both with crushing skull injuries. And she remembers Hussam’s story of Jon Helm killing the men who tried to crucify him. She does not doubt the truth of it anymore.
Lincoln asks, “Where were you when the village was destroyed?”
Daniel shakes his head. “Those who cared for me told me that place was blown up. I don’t remember it. It must have been after I crawled away from the cage. But I don’t remember.”
“Thank you, sir,” Lincoln says. He leans forward in his chair, extending his hand across the low table. “We appreciate your willingness to discuss—”
From outside, there’s a sound like glass breaking, followed by a startled cry from Rey, “Ai!”
Lagging by half a second, the sharp crack of a gunshot.
Biomimetics
Lincoln swivels out of his chair. Keeping low, he scuttles to the window. True shoves her tablet into her pack, swapping it for her MARC visor as she moves to the door. She slips the visor on. It boots, syncing with the earpiece. She shrugs on her pack. Her hand slides into the front pocket of her utility vest where she’s got her pistol, but she doesn’t pull it out yet.
As she reaches the screened porch, Rey appears from around the corner of the house. He’s in a panic. “Someone shot your drone,” he blurts as he bounds up the porch steps. “It came down in pieces over the goat pen.”
She scans the yard and the bushes around it, but sees no one. The MARC’s threat assessment function doesn’t highlight anything.
Lincoln comes out of the house. He passes her, passes Rey, strides down the steps. That’s when a kid comes into sight from the direction of the driveway—a petite teenage girl dressed in jeans and a body-hugging green-camo T-shirt, a .22 rifle carried comfortably in her hands. The MARC scans her face, tags her as unknown. Tags the make and model of her weapon.
She backpedals when she sees Lincoln, looking like she’s about to turn and run. But Daniel has come out to the porch too. He sees the girl and shouts to her. “Divina! What did you see? Has someone come?”
His presence emboldens her. Holding the weapon with the muzzle toward the ground, she approaches, pausing to stare wide-eyed at Lincoln’s scarred face and artificial eye.
“You shot down our bird,” Lincoln concludes in a tone half-annoyed, half-amused.
“Your bird?” Daniel asks. He is not at all amused.
“A surveillance drone,” Lincoln says. He looks at True. “Take Rey. Have him show you where the pieces came down.”
She moves down the steps, gesturing at Rey to follow, while Daniel speaks in an angry voice, “You had me under surveillance? For how long?”
True does not stay to hear Lincoln’s answer. But as Rey follows her, he murmurs, “I didn’t think of it to warn you, but he is angry because he’s been harassed by political enemies, spied on, his home vandalized.”
True is angry herself, emotionally worn, her mood brittle. “No one’s been hurt,” she snaps, seizing on cold practicality. “I’m sorry he’s upset, but it was a matter of security.”
She studies the bushes, and the trees beyond, allowing the MARC to survey for hazards, but detects none.
They reach the side of the house. Out of habit she scans the wall, the windows, the eaves. This time the MARC finds something to highlight. It’s at the top of the white window frame. The object looks like a dark-gray leaf that’s gotten hung up in a spider’s web, but it’s not a leaf. It’s a mech designed to mimic one.
She averts her gaze, keeping the leaf mech in sight but not looking directly at it, not wanting to warn its operator—or its algorithms—that it’s been noticed. Still moving slowly, breath gone shallow, body tense, she considers her strategy. There is a waist-high hibiscus hedge alongside the house. She will not be able to get past that before the leaf mech alerts—and she’s certain it’s capable of flight. She will have to intercept it in the air.
Despite the example of the teenage Divina, True rejects the idea of shooting down the little mech as too dangerous, and too likely to result in a miss. What she needs is a net, but she doesn’t have one so she’s going to have to improvise.
Quickly—still without looking directly at the mech—she unbuttons her utility vest and drops it on the grass. “Don’t touch that,” she warns Rey, not wanting him to pick it up and wonder at the pistol’s weight.
Rey is behind her. He sounds confused when he says, “Your broken drone is in the goat pasture.”
“I know where it is.”
She peels off her shirt. Why not? It’s the closest thing she has to a net and there’s nothing shocking underneath. Just a beige bra precisely engineered to secure her small breasts while making her look good. She calculates her best line of attack. Then she bounds toward the window, shirt clutched in one hand, ready to swing.
She’s almost at the hedge when the leaf mech reacts. It emits a sharp pop! True ducks at the noise—she can’t help herself. “Fuck!” she swears, already guessing the sound is harmless, an effect meant to startle, like the furious burst of a pheasant’s wings when it springs from dense grass. Works damn well.
Her momentary hesitation allows the leaf mech time to deploy a buzzing propeller that lofts it from the window frame. True leaps after it, swinging her shirt to try to bring it down, but it’s already out of reach, streaking away toward the goat pasture. Her MARC tracks it, highlighting its shifting position.
She takes off after it. A device that small and fast won’t have the battery life to fly far. If she can track its flight path, she’ll have a real chance of catching up with it. She stoops to scoop up her vest, shrugs it back on while she runs, and stuffs her shirt into one of its large pockets.