Code Jericho, Over And Out.
I found the No Shit Sherlock in pieces at the end of the alleyway, its semi-permeable covering looking even more like skin, ripped and torn by hand and blade, and internal fluids that looked so much like blood, glinting blue-black in the moonlight. The only thing that showed it was a synth were the fracture points on the end of the carbon plastic bones; clean breaks sheared straight over the cross section, not at all like the splintered ends of broken human bone.
It looked a horrible way to die, even for an analogue. They looked human and had sufficient intelligence to pass even sustained investigation, but open them up and there they were – plastics and vat-meat and chemical fluids and enough fibre optics and energy cores to bring this entire city kicking and screaming into the 20th century. Luckily, this was an outdated model; the newer designs had improved intellectual capacity, bordering on emotional simulacra – being cornered and hacked to death would be as bad for them as it would be for a human.
“All flesh is grass,” I muttered; even synthetic flesh. This No Shit Sherlock was shit out of luck. I felt bad thinking of it in such colloquial terms. I’d once had an entire enjoyable conservation with one of these things without for a second imagining that it wasn’t human.
I tongued the comm-tooth in my lower jaw for two seconds and then subvocalised. “This is Code Jericho. Read.”
There was a mildly painful sensation in my head as Operations replied, the receiver implanted in my skull bypassing sound altogether and passing vibration directly into the bones of my inner ear: “We acknowledge, Code Jericho. Report.”
“I’ve found the No Shi-, the Investigations Analogue we dropped into the city yesterday. Leastways, I’ve found most of it.”
“Received and understood. We’ve grid typed the city for your imminent evac, Jericho. Retrieve all the data you can and head out.”
“Current location?”
“We have you at West007, South963. Evac will be due south of current position, time and co-ords to follow.”
“Understood, Control. Out.”
The ache in my head vanished and I looked carefully around the alley. My optic cycled through the wavelengths until I caught the signal coming from the wall above me. Looked like the analogue managed a data drop before it was caught. I pulled some crates together and climbed up, feeling the heat of the long-departed day still present in the wall.
I picked the tiny chitin sliver from its resting place in the sun-baked brick. It was a nail from the NSS’s forefinger, ejected in emergency, gas propelled with enough force to lodge itself in the side of a building older than our entire nation, and containing the last 24 hours of its recorded mission. I slipped it into a belt pouch, dropped a mercury flare onto the body of the analogue and headed out.
I was long gone when I heard the flare go up, taking the evidence and fact of the analogue with it.
* * *
The next morning, stipples of sunlight streaming through the window screen played across my face, rousing me from my rest. My hiding place had kept me safe throughout the night, but I hadn’t heard back from Control.
I tongued the comm-tooth again, but there was no signal. I used the optic to scan and found the reason why: a tight-beam microwave jammer. Meant I couldn’t send or receive, cut off from my superiors and back-up and unable even to upload the files on the analogue’s nail-chip. More importantly, it meant I had been tracked. I moved back into the shadows, away from the source of the jamming beam, but the crack of a rifle shot gave me no warning as the silicon-jacketed bullet tore through the ligaments of my right leg and sent me sprawling into the dirt. By the time I had recovered enough to get upright, I was surrounded. Five of them, all with machetes, two with guns.
I looked down at my soon-to-be-useless leg, at how the blood looked black in the shadows. How the bone had been neatly broken in two by the sniper’s bullet, at how each separate nub of bone was cracked cleanly in half.
It would be horrible to die at the hands of these people, their lives so far away from the modern world and its incredible technologies. Perhaps to them this was not murder.
Increased intelligence, enough to feel superior to previous models, yet not enough to recognise myself.
Little wonder I was deemed expendable.
I looked around at the men surrounding me. Whatever was going to happen, whatever it was called, this would feel like death.
No shit, Sherlock…
