Industrial Strength Magic

Chapter 167: God Complex

***Stacy Watt-Powers***

Stacy peered out the windows of the apartment complex they’d been sardined into, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Something just didn’t sit right about the situation.

They gave everyone citizen I.D.s, demonstrating that they were willing to give them a place to stay. Tomorrow they were saying they’d meet with logistics officers to see if they could get them jobs and places to stay.

It was all…too convenient.

Stacy’s first life had taught her that nothing worth having came easily or without struggle. Why was there no pushback? Why weren’t there angry citizens throwing bricks through their windows?

Not that she wanted bricks thrown at her, but that would be vastly superior to this…ominous silence. It was hard to tell if Washington was protecting the android immigrants to keep them safe, or to keep them out of the public eye.

Well…I can’t learn anything by staying here, Stacy thought.

“I’m going out.” Stacy said, rising to her feet and jamming her sock-clad feet into her oversized boots.

Dad looked like he wanted to say something, catching Stacy’s gaze as she holstered the nine-millimeter pistol one of her constituents had ‘acquired’ for her. How they got it in the short time since they arrived, Stacy would never know. It was a bit too big for her hands, and she was sure the recoil would hurt like heck with her tiny wrists, but it was a case of ‘better uncomfortable than dead.’

“Um. Be careful okay?” he said. Mom was hiding from her in the bedroom, Stacy was fairly sure. Her dad wasn’t too much better. They hadn’t said anything, but it was plain for anyone who knew her that ‘Stacy Watt-Powers’ had been replaced by something significantly more powerful.

“Of course, dad,” Stacy said, double-checking the safety and concealing the firearm under a baggy leather jacket: her dad’s from high school.

She stepped outside and saw that Mick and Mike were standing guard outside her room. The two lugs were also armed with knives under their thick coats, that must have been sweltering inside the already-warm apartment complex.

“I told you guys I don’t need a bodyguard,” Stacy said.

“We were just loitering,” Mick said. “Yeah, Mick was telling me about his gramma’s pies.” Mike said.

“For the last three hours?” Stacy asked.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Stacy rolled her eyes and headed for the elevator.

Mick and Mike straightened from where they were leaning against the wall and started after her.

“Really?” Stacy asked, glaring up at the two six foot six skinheads towering over her.

“I just remembered I needed to get something from…wherever you’re going.”

“I told you I don’t need bodyguards,” Stacy said. “Do not follow me.”

Mick and Mike froze, struggling internally against her order for a moment before recovering.

“Sssorry, Stacy, can’t let the face of Android Rights go out and about without a certain amount of security.”

“Stupid free will,” Stacy muttered as the two massive men crowded the elevator, and by extension crowding her as they descended to the ground floor.

“You know you guys look like kidnappers, right?” Stacy asked as they headed out onto the street, Mick walking beside her and Mike following fifty feet back. “Child kidnappers.”

“I’m six foot six with scars, a mean mug, and a shaved head,” Mick said, casually fishing a cigarette box out of his vest pocket and lighting up as they walked. “I’ll never not look like a kidnapper. I’ve come to terms with it. Mike is still struggling though. He’s young.”

“Gimmie,” Stacy said, grabbing the box and lighting up her own, exhaling with an exaggerated groan of relief.

Stacy hadn’t had a smoke in nearly forty years.

“You’re too young to-“

“Android,” Stacy said, thumbing her chest.

Mick shrugged and let her be.

There was no cordon set up to prevent the Androids from escaping and mingling with the rest of the city. No curfew either.

Stacy wasn’t particularly relieved at that. To her it seemed like someone up high simply thought to themselves: ‘If we lock them in, of course they’re gonna try to escape. The numbers work out better if we simply don’t give them a reason.’

Stacy was the only android trying to sneak out, after all. Everyone else was exhausted from the trip and happy to have a bed to lay down in. So The logic was working. People were calm and hopeful, and the street was quiet.

“What are we looking for?” Mick asked.

“Some people with their ear to the ground,” Stacy said, keeping her head on a swivel.

There were upsides and downsides to having two massive bodyguards following her everywhere.

The upside: criminals faded away down the alleyways as she walked down the streets.

The downside: criminals were typically the ones who knew the score better than anyone else. Their job was knowing what was going on in the city, and the crime itself was kind of an addendum to that.

They were a bit too light on their feet, though, so Stacy had to settle for people a bit slower.

When they came across a homeless camp under a bridge, Stacy tossed aside the spent butt and squatted down in front of the nearest tent.

“Knock knock!” Stacy announced her presence, tapping on the side of the tent. A moment later the zipper on the tent opened, allowing a pair of eyes to study the visitors.

They narrowed in confusion at Stacy’s presence.

“Little girl, you shoul-“

The gruff voice choked off when the eyes spotted Mick, standing over her shoulder.

Stacy pulled out a chit with a thousand marked on it, presenting it to the peering eyes.

“How would you like to make a crisp thousand?”

“You’re not gonna hunt me, are you?”

There was a subtle shift of fabric from behind the zipper. What Stacy could only assume was a homemade weapon or a gun being leveled into position.

“Just need answers to some questions.”

“Pay me even if the answer’s ‘I don’t know,’” The voice said.

“You got it,” Stacy replied.

“Alright,”

ZZZZZIP

The tent’s entrance zipped open, revealing a sun-scorched, emaciated arm.

Stacy dropped the chit into the man’s palm.

A moment later, the entrance opened up all the way, revealing an older man with distressingly low body fat and a missing leg, about ten years Stacy’s junior….subjective time.

“Whaddya wanna know?” He asked, keeping a wary eye on Mick behind her.

“So what do you know about the androids who got moved into the apartment buildings three blocks that way?” Stacy asked.

“What androids?”

“Eh?” Stacy asked.

“Three block over? That’s a vacant lot over there, can’t go there because the dreams get real bad.” The homeless man twitched an itched himself at the thought.”

Stacy opened her mouth to speak, but the man wasn’t done.

“Only androids I know of are the robots in control of the world government. They’re using Minders to control the sheeple and introducing chemicals to sterilize our women!”

Stacy frowned. IT sounded like the rambling of a mentally ill person, but some of it…

“What about David Manchin?”

“David Manchin is the leader that Washington City needs. He’s a stand-up guy, a man of the people, and he’s got our best interests in mind.”

“Oookay.” Stacy said. “THAT…is not good.”

Her comp-gel brain was firing on all cylinders at this point, connecting the threads she hadn’t been aware of and developing a more cohesive understanding of what was going on, putting everything together in a bone-chilling moment of clarity.

Stacy’s inside man, Biomaster, had positioned the androids exactly where he’d wanted them to be: decision makers and policy setters for Washington City. The idea was it would make the transition to an Android society much easier.

Except that decision was about to bite her in the ass because of one overlooked detail:

This generation of androids had realized that they couldn’t be affected by Minders, and had used this herd immunity to place themselves above the common man.

If the population of Washington became Android-heavy, then Android immunity to Minders became common. If it became common, it could no longer be leveraged for wealth and power.

There it was.

In order to maintain their generational grasp on power, the ones currently in charge had strong incentive to enslave Minders and remove other androids from the voting block.

Exterminate them, even.

“Shit,” Stacy muttered as she stood, her skin cold.

Stupid free will.

Pop, pop, pop!

Mick was flung sideways, blood spattering the concrete outside the tent as bullets whizzed by her head, missing by fractions of an inch.

Stacy dropped to the ground and scrambled behind the tent to break line of sight before sprinting for the nearby concrete pillar holding up the bridge.

She spotted the residents of the homeless camp chatting with each other and going about their business, ignoring the suppressed gunfire, Stacy herself, and Mick bleeding out at the edge of the camp.

They should’ve been seeking cover, but someone was preventing it.

Minder with a gun. Or Android with a gun and a Minder.

More likely the second, Stacy thought, pulling out her pistol and dropping the magazine into her hand, tucking it into her waistband. With a deft hand, she pulled back the slide and caught the bullet, holding it between thumb and forefinger.

“I feel like a young forty-year-old man again,” Stacy remarked with a nostalgic smile as Mike joined her behind the concrete pillar, nearly hyperventilating.

She hadn’t had to use little tricks like this in years, not since she first went on the run from the entire world in the early seventies, but she’d never really forgotten them.

It’s funny that in fifty years, not much has really changed about a nine-millimeter pistol.

“Did you happen to get a look at who was shooting?” Stacy asked conversationally as Mike stared at her, eyes wide.

“Half a dozen G-men with assault rifles.”

“Androids?” Stacy asked.

Mike nodded.

“Suits?”

Mike nodded.

Stacy scowled as she held the bullet up to her line of sight and gave it a stern command, tapping into her understanding of The Tide.

“Wake up.”

The bullet did so, shifting a bit in her hand as it came alive.

“Seek.”

Stacy repeated this command five more times, holding the image of a smartly-dressed android agent with a silenced assault rifle. She loaded the doctored bullets back into the magazine, hearing the sound of government issued soles scrape against the concrete growing closer, subtly buried underneath the casual conversation of the homeless.

“Stacy, I’ll distract them, you lose them in the sewers.” He pointed at a sewer grate nearly hidden behind a nearby tent.

“I got a better idea,” Professor Replica said, engaging the first round.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

The nine-millimeter was nearly deafening compared to the subsonics of the G-men, and the Minder lost control of whatever narrative they’d been pushing, causing the homeless camp to break into screaming. Stacy risked a peek out from behind the pillar.

The homeless camp was a bustle of panicked civilians grabbing their most important possessions and seeking safety, darting over and around the splayed out corpses of five handsome men, each with a single hole between their eyebrows, their delicate comp-gel scattered on the ground behind them.

I hate having to kill my own people…but I’ve done it before. And I’d do it again to secure our future from short-sighted monsters.

“There were only five,” Stacy said. “Bring me the runner.”

“What run-“

A pale, sickly man in business casual darted out from behind a port-o-potty and sprinted for the street.

Mike leapt up like an attack dog and began running after the Minder at full speed, feet barely touching the ground.

Stacy approached Mick, kneeling down beside her bodyguard.

The massive man was clutching his side, giving tiny gasps of pain

“Let me see,” Stacy said, peeling his hand back, revealing massive trauma to his internal organs.

They were synthetic, but indistinguishable from human organs, even sporting most of the same weaknesses, all in order to make her people…people.

Stacy peered around the other side and spotted the exit wound: a gaping hole in the man’s side, where she could see a bit of mangled lung protruding.

Stacy took a deep breath, considering what she could do with her limited powers. This was not going to be a trick.

Stacy flexed every ounce of control she had over her powers, and by extension, Mick.

“You got lucky. The bullet missed your organs.”

The exit wound shrank to a little hole in the man’s side, and his breathing eased up a little.

Easier than removing the wound entirely, and it should keep him alive until she could get him to a doctor.

Mick peered down at his wound, heaving a pained sigh of relief.

“Oh, thank you, God.” He muttered feverishly.

“You’re welcome.”

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