Page 110 of Ezra
Charlie makes an affirmative little beep-beep.
“Call me if there’s trouble.”
I close the door behind me and head out to my cruiser. I need to focus. When I’m on the job, my mind needs to be on that, and that alone. But it’s difficult. I’ve said I’ll find a way,and my processes are constantly whirring, trying to come up with a solution so I can keep true to my word. We nearly ended everything, and I nearly lost Katrina again. But I can’t continue ruminating over it. I need to be my best. For everyone.
I call Deion back once I’m in the car.
Deion’s voice plays over my car speakers as my cruiser glides over the roads. “I’m just getting dressed. I’ll be right there.”
“I’m already on my way.”
“You need backup, Ezra. Things aren’t safe for you right now.”
“I’m plenty equipped to handle this myself. It’ll take you too long to get there, and if this droid is in distress, that might be too late. I’ll call you and keep you informed. Okay?”
Deion sighs heavily, his tone filled with reluctance. “I don’t like this. But all right.”
I weave through quiet evening streets, the bridge illuminated by a soft golden glow in the distance. Two of the four lanes on the west side have been shut down for much-needed repairs, restricting passage over the bridge to only one lane. It’s something everyone in the precinct has been complaining about all summer. Now we’re well into autumn, and they’re still not finished.
Paying no mind to orange warning cones, I slow down and slip through a gap in the construction barricades, bringing my cruiser to a halt. It isn’t hard to spot the android, standing on the precipice and staring at the water below, synthetic hands gripping the steel cables so tight I can spot the white of their knuckles.
He’s wearing a BioNex uniform and a vest, his head down. If he were human, I’d be concerned about a suicide risk, but androids aren’t typically in the habit of harming themselves. Too many kids figured out they could command androids to step intotraffic. Needless to say, BioNex was quick to roll out an update barring such commands unless human lives were at stake.
The only exception? TerraPura.
“Hey,” I call. “Come down from there.”
I scan him. He’s a BN7979 ED-4, a common construction droid only made more popular when one such model won the first BFL championship match. I still remember that guy.
Dominic. What a pain in my ass.
The construction drone doesn’t respond or even acknowledge me.
“Hey!” I call again, sighing as I reach the railing. A little ding crosses my visuals.Upload complete.I quickly dismiss it. “Please comply. I’d rather not climb after you. If you don’t comply, I’ll be forced to treat you as hostile.”
The model whimpers, but his words are caught on a chill wind, muting them before they reach my audio receptors.
“What?” I pause, straightening. “What did you say?”
He turns to look right at me. “We must purify the world.”
A sharp electric discharger is thrust into my back between my shoulder blades like a knife.
Pain surges through my circuits to my central processing unit, overloading it. I shout at top volume, my voice turning mechanical, off-tone, like a computer frozen mid-error. My visual feeds are disabled, and I’m mere seconds away from being fried to a crisp.
The world around me turns black as I have no choice but to power down.
Reboot complete.
My visuals turn on with a snap. My head falls forward with a jolt. I groan. The pain in my joints is unmistakable. Every inch of my steel skeletal mainframe feels like it’s been scorched, easily tens of thousands of dollars of repair costs.
Cables are connected to the back of my neck. My limbs are too heavy to lift. I can’t even muster up the programming it takes to run an internal diagnostic scan. I’m completely blind to my own inner workings. I doubt there’s so much as a pint of ivory blood left in me, sacrificed to try to preserve my battery and hardware.
“Ezra.”
I tilt my head to the right, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Bloodied and bruised, Robert Carson squints at me through a shiny black eye and speaks with a busted lip. He’s bound by zip ties to a pillar, while I’m connected to a BioNex-grade activation platform, one that renders me helpless. I hear the dripping of old pipes. The room we’re being held in is made of metal and cement, screws painted with rust.
“Katrina—is she all right? Did they take her?” Carson asks. It’s the only time I’ve ever heard him sound near panicked.
