Chapter 31
Jason shouldn’t have cared about Norman’s opinion—after all, his own gullibility toward Sprite was dwarfed by her creator’s idiot trustingness—but it was still an effort to meet Norman’s eyes as the man stopped short in the middle of the bridge and asked with dangerous iciness, “What did you do?”
There was no way to dress it up to make it prettier, so Jason said simply, “I ordered her to launch a missile at her core.” A missile. He kicked himself now for the singular indefinite article. “Told her where to shoot.”
“You did what?” Norman exploded, then quieted as he drew wide-eyed looks from the people around them, scared people, people who couldn’t be allowed to know how thoroughly he’d lost control.
“There are a dozen Reveres guarding this city,” he hissed.
“There’s no way a missile could cross this airspace without being intercepted. You idiot.”
“Wait,” Dunne-Carr said, “why can’t we do what she did? Use a Revere to shoot her brain?”
“She could only do that because the Tower is—” Norman grimaced. “—was two thousand feet tall. She’s in a house. Reveres won’t hit anything that low.”
“Then tell all the Reveres to stand down so you can shoot a—”
“Tell them how?” Norman said witheringly.
Dunne-Carr fell silent.
“Damn you,” Norman said quietly to Jason. “You gave her location to her. Now she’ll have that house locked down and guarded.”
“She will?” Jason said. “What about you? Don’t you have the place protected?”
“My protection was secrecy.”
“Seriously?” Jason said. “You created the most dangerous invention in human history, and you have nothing there? No guards? No soldiers? Phreak, MorDread really could have stolen the core.”
“He could have stolen the core, but the brain inside would have been dead,” Norman said.
“Disconnecting her to move her is a process, and even then, she’s never completely disconnected from the support infrastructure that has to travel with her.
Cut all her wires abruptly and it’d be like someone on life support who’s never even breathed on her own suddenly losing all the machinery keeping her alive. She’d die.”
“Great,” Jason said bitterly. “If I’d given MorDread the address when he asked, none of this would have happened. But she convinced me not to.” But at least he knew how to kill her now: Just unplug her.
“I’ll get Agent Tavion,” Dunne-Carr said again, but again Norman stopped her.
“He can’t help,” he said, “against that.”
A creature leaped atop an empty cab at the far side of the bridge.
Its shape was canine, but wrong. Instead of fur and flesh, there was the dull sheen of matte black paint over a boxy body.
Visible actuators and joints stood out from its steel legs like exposed tendons and bone.
It paused, and its head swiveled slightly, as if listening, but even stationary it never stopped moving, its peg-like feet drumming constantly for balance with quick, precise motions that looked more spiderlike than doglike.
The long gun in its turret head gave it an elongated and predatory look like some science fiction alien.
Through the falling rain, Jason could see its gaping black muzzle like some insectile proboscis, and above it a faceted round sensor like a single eye.
Dunne-Carr said in a voice that was half sob, “Oh no, oh no.”
A voice boomed out from the dogbot, male and authoritative. “Where is Andrew Norman? Where is Andrew Norman?”
Heads turned toward Norman and feet shuffled away, leaving a lane directly from the dog to the man.
The long snout turned toward them.
Norman turned around and ran.
Jason did, too, shoving off with his legs after Norman. Dunne-Carre shouted in alarm behind him, and then there was a snap that didn’t sound like it came from behind but from some place over his right shoulder. A bullet, going by at supersonic speed.
Jason looked back then, even though it would slow his run, and saw the dogbot bounding along the bridge.
Though its movements were jerky and inorganic, it came with breathtaking speed, slaloming between empty cabs, legs pumping, body bouncing.
The head with its elongated barrel mouth seemed to float as its motion compensation system held it steady.
That barrel was half an inch across, some dull part of Jason’s brain knew, and fired a fifty-caliber round—and it was pointing directly at his head.
He folded his legs mid-stride. He didn’t even feel the impact as his knees hit the pavement, but he heard another whiplike snap above his head. He tumbled forward, rolling, and then was somehow on his feet again, lurching, off balance, each footfall stingingly heavy.
In front of him, Norman hunched and looked back over his shoulder.
He had slowed, and at first, Jason thought he was waiting for him and felt a rush of gratitude, but as Jason stumbled and swerved, Norman matched each swerve to stay in front of him, and he realized the bastard was just trying to keep Jason between himself and the dog.
He glanced back again. The dog’s turret was lowered now, but it was coming faster, its bulky body growing in his vision like a comet about to obliterate an unfortunate planet.
Between him and it ran Dunne-Carr, several steps behind even after Jason’s tumble, eyes huge and white and fixed on his. She was right in the thing’s path.
“Duck!” he shouted, and without hesitation she imitated his own awkward technique of a moment ago, pulling her legs in and letting her knees drive onto the hard street, sending her tumbling.
The shadow of the dog flashed across her as, without breaking stride, it leaped over her rolling body and bore down on Jason.
He threw himself sideways. There was a rush of wind and motion and a painful impact against the back of his foot that spun him around as he fell.
He skidded on the asphalt and rolled half under a cab.
Peering out from behind its tire, he saw the dogbot come to a stop, its barrel tracking Norman as he veered away from a pack of dogbots racing to intercept him from the Revere battery.
Norman was now running across the open grass of the Park toward the only safety not blocked by a dog: his smoking Tower, as if, in this impossible moment, he was trying to return to his old life, his old power.
Jason realized with a feeling of unreality that he was about to see Norman die.
Part of him wanted to look away. Another part wanted to see this thing he’d dreamed about for so long, even though it was happening in a way he’d never imagined, a way that wasn’t the victory he’d hoped for.
The dog set its feet and its turret stabilized.
It fired, once, and Jason flinched, but somehow Norman didn’t fall. He swerved but kept running.
There was a second loud pop, and the dog’s head jumped.
Several more pops came in quick succession, and the dog’s head jerked with each, not with recoil as Jason had first thought but with impact.
Pieces of plastic and glass flew off into the grass.
And then Jason saw Bruno stepping slowly toward the dog, his pistol in both hands, his face as impassive as usual.
He fired again, and the dog swung its head wildly, blindly, then went still. Its sensor eye was a shattered mess.
Norman hadn’t even looked back. He sprinted up the steps to the Tower entrance, taking them two at a time, and disappeared inside.
A few moments later, Dunne-Carr panted past Jason and followed Norman, a little hesitantly, giving the dog a wide berth. A moment after that, two of the dogbots from the Revere battery loped after her, their pace oddly slow, like dogs trotting after their master.
“Everyone off the street!” Bruno shouted, but another, much louder voice, then another and another, drowned him out.
“Get indoors. Anyone on the streets will be treated as an enemy combatant. Get indoors.”
Jason rolled all the way under the cab and held very still as the bridge emptied of people, until all that was left were the mechanical footfalls of three dogbots, pacing among the powerless cabs.