Chapter 20: Chapter 20 – Seventh Heaven (1)

Wave could already see from a distance what part of the city Fearless had sent her to. Seventh Heaven emitted that dim red light that irresistibly attracted some people and repelled everyone else. For Wave, it was one of those places she would never have voluntarily visited. Advertisements for sexual services of all kinds were projected on the walls. Every fantasy was to be satisfied here, however kinky it might be. Wave had too much respect for Lambert’s hover car, otherwise, she would have thrown up on the spot.

The XLARTN now drove towards her destination at walking speed. Thus it offered the ladies, gentlemen, persons of various affiliations, and aliens an opportunity to present their charms to Wave. They thought she was a rich old guy who was here to have a good time. Lambert’s hover car with its tinted windows didn’t suggest otherwise, after all.

Wave was tempted to just turn on the blue lights and count how long it would take for the street to empty. But she’d better not do anything that would make her stand out even more.

A girl with blonde braids, who was way too young for this area even upon looking closely, waved at her. She was wearing a school uniform and Wave was already getting to hate all the guys who would jump at this offer. This area was one of the things about the city she could understand the least. Even less than the bureaucracy.

'Take her with you,' appeared on the display of the hover car.

Oh great. What was this hacker thinking anyway? "Are you kidding me, Fearless?" Maybe he was also trying to pull one over on Lambert and frame him for illegal activity. By the fucking Citadel’s top, what was she supposed to say to the girl when she opened the door?

'Stop the car right now, or I’ll stop for you.'

"Uh, I’m gonna puke," said Wave, braking and lowering the window. The girl trundled up to the hover car. "It’s not what it looks like ...," Wave began, not even knowing about how to finish this sentence. She stopped abruptly. Something was wrong with this girl.

It was her face! Her skin was unnaturally pale, almost ivory, and her features stiff, like a doll. A genuinely realistic doll, flawlessly smiling and yet treacherously false. It was a robot.

"Will you take me for a ride?" the robot girl asked in a childlike voice. From a little further away, it would undoubtedly have passed as the innocent schoolgirl it claimed to be.

"At least I’m supposed to take you," Wave replied, with little enthusiasm in her voice, emphasizing the 'supposed'. "Get in."

Wave opened the passenger door and the robot girl climbed in. It climbed onto the seat, pulled the shoulder straps all the way out, and knotted them so the buckle wouldn’t hang directly in her face. Lambert’s hover car was clearly not designed to transport children.

A new route appeared on the display without any comment. Circles and zigzags kept going through Seventh Heaven.

"Crap, I thought I’d finally get out of here," Wave muttered. She had a suspicion about who had gotten on. "Are you F34RLESS INV3STIG4TR?"

"This girl is supposed to be the hacker?" asked Aki in amazement.

"Aki, that’s just a robot. He’s doing the same thing here that he did in Rosewater, just sending a messenger."

"I carry a jammer," the girl said, not answering the question. "This car and everyone in it are now invisible to the Secs' scanners. For cameras, we're just a cab driving by. Also, at this very moment, six drones are moving through different areas of the city, all carrying the bio-ID of Anna Nethuf. So we should be safe."

"Are you Fearless?" Wave repeated her question.

"If I told you, I’d have to kill you."

The robot girl giggled when she saw Wave's expressionless face. "I saw that once in a documentary about the gangsters of the ancient era. Sounds cool, doesn’t it?"

"I had a hunch you were young." Wave leaned her forehead against the steering wheel of the hover and took a deep breath. "But I didn’t expect this." She could still remember very well how Fearless had called her a little girl in Rosewater. What a troll. "Are you really a robot? Or a little girl?"

The robot turned its head toward Wave and its pupils grew smaller. Was Wave just imagining it? "Either take what you get or keep questioning everything, little Wave," the hacker’s familiar voice now croaked from the girl’s electronic throat.

"This is creepy," Aki commented on this scene.

He was right, though it was nothing compared to the first time Aki had spoken in her ear. But she didn’t tell him. "Yeah, I agree with my friend," Wave said instead. "Rather speak in a voice that matches your body."

"No problemo," the voice sounded as childlike as before. "If that’s what you prefer."

"Much better, Fearless. Can I call you that?"

"Sure." The girl smiled, and it looked just wrong. Yes, it was somehow recognizable as a smile but if a person smiled that way, you’d immediately get the feeling it wasn’t meant seriously. "I’ve been called worse names."

"Who or what are you really?" echoed Wave.

"I’m a robot, can’t you tell?" Fearless chuckled. This situation was clearly fun for him or her or whatever it ended up being. "But to get to the point, if you guys are going to that place, I'm definitely going there, too."

"You've found Aki’s position?"

"Sure, but it wasn’t easy. It helped immensely that you mentioned that Sergeant Lambert knew where Aki was. That way, all I had to do was look through his call logs."

"Aren’t they supposed to be somehow ... encrypted?"

"No shit. But not if you read them right at Sec's headquarters."

"I’m not going to keep asking how you did it." Wave drummed her fingers on the steering wheel of the hover car. "So where is he?"

"Am I in?" Fearless eyes grew wide. That was the way brontosaur babies looked when they wanted something really badly.

What was she supposed to answer? Depending on where Aki was, she wasn’t even sure if she was going there herself, at least not in person. "Maybe," she said hesitantly. "It all depends on where he is."

A section of a map appeared on the hover car’s display.

"This is an old Kanter Corporation lab, which should be shut down by now. They used to do experiments there. Experiments of a questionable nature, if you want to be polite. It’s apparently only officially shut down because there’s a classified file on the lab in the Security Corps that’s only recently been updated."

"Which you also happened to look into?"

"I wish I had. No, they went to the trouble of actually encrypting that one. Very fishy." Fearless batted her eyelids. "So, I kept my end of the bargain. What’s the deal with Kanter, Akimoto, and the Security Corps?"

"Well, I was with Lambert at the place where Aki died," Wave began at the point she deemed most relevant.

"CCR, yes I know." Fearless smiled at her. Wave caught herself adding the missing muscle movements to the face in her mind to make it a complete smile. Was she really that shallow? She would have gladly looked elsewhere but the alternative was to look at Seventh Heaven. Thanks, no.

"The whole place was cleared out," she said as she continued to study Fearless' face.

"Oh!" The robot girl’s hands moved through the air as if she were typing on one of those clacking typewriters of the old movies.

"Aki’s data has completely disappeared," Wave continued.

"Ah! But yes, I already knew that, too."

"And we ran into Aki’s assistant, who threw him out the window so he wouldn’t be captured by two Akimoto employees."

"Hmm? Two Akimoto employees? Really?" Fearless kept typing blithely, and in her mind Wave could almost hear the missing clatter.

"Lambert was intrigued by all this, as well. And I think he would have taken me as far as Aki's location. He seems to have extensive authority and freedom in his department. But when he learned where Aki exactly was, he did a 180-degree turn, saying that the case was too big for me to handle. He claimed that he had arrested me and now he had to take me to the department." Wave snorted theatrically.

"But you got away from him?" Fearless looked at her with wide eyes. "How?"

"Never underestimate the power of a kick to the right place."

"Oh!" Fearless continued to type. From the tone of her voice, this part of the story would take a prominent place. 'Innocent citizen escapes corrupt Sec by kicking his privates!' Well, Wave would just leave the hacker in his belief. The truth would only lead to more fear if the wrong people read this news. Going by her luck, the wrong people would read it for sure.

"So if there’s a whole file on this place, the Secs know about it. Are they covering for the Kanter Corporation?", Wave voiced one of her suspicions.

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"Wave, the Security Corps has nowhere near as much power over the city as citizens are led to believe."

"What do you mean?"

"The Council, the corporations, and the family clans share control of the city. The Council commands the Security Corps, the corporations pay mercenaries, and in the families, every member has a gun under their pillow. Thus, there is a certain balance between them. Of course, no major and public conflict occurs so that society continues to operate. Without satisfied consumers to earn from, they all lose their justification for being."

"You mean the Security Corps is keeping its hands off this lab because it would go so far as to upset the balance?"

"Maybe. We’d have to get the file to do that, or ..." Fearless stopped and smiled. Or get into the lab. Sure.

"So, Fearless, you want to accompany me when I go to this lab?"

"Well, sure."

"You’re not afraid of dying in the process?"

"Once I get there, I’m sure I#ll be afraid but, I’ll just hide behind you then. May I?"

Wave raised her eyebrows. Was she serious about this? "You have feelings?"

"Yes, I have feelings. And a soul, if that’s your next question."

"You, or the one controlling you."

"No comment." Fearless was still smiling. "As I said, trust me, or leave."

Even though Wave paid little attention to the world outside the hover car, she noticed it. They had passed the two muscular guys in bathing suits twice now, which staring grimly at the car’s windshield, quite as if they wanted to pierce it with their gazes. "Can we change the route? Those guys give me the creeps."

The route changed, now skirting this spot by a block.

"Why are we driving through this neighborhood all the time, anyway?"

"We have some safehouses here."

"You've got what here?"

"Safe retreats. Areas underground that no one but us knows about and which are shielded from scanning of all kinds."

"So if the Secs show up, we flee there?"

Fearless shook her head. "If the Secs do show up, I’ll flee there. You’re a risk, Wave." The fact that she was smiling even now, didn’t make that statement any better.

Wave pressed her lips together and took an audible breath. "But then you want me to take you to the lab, right?"

"I think you’ll need me and my skills if you want to get in unnoticed." The smile vanished. "Unless you just want to destroy the whole lab. Or maybe they’ll just surrender when they see who’s knocking on their door."

"What do you mean?"

"It’s simple," Fearless voice slipped back into that tinny raspy tone, "little Wave. To the normal world, the memory of who you are might be slowly fading. To them, all that’s left is the nasty aftertaste that you’re dangerous and better be avoided. But we remember. We remember everything."

"Of what my parents did?", Wave glared at the robot girl. Why did everyone seem to have a talent for hitting her sore spot? "If you want to provoke me, just say so. We’re curving around this neighborhood and I’m sure you’ve noticed how uncomfortable it makes me feel, and now you’re even digging up stories from the past?" Wave straightened up in her seat to look taller and more threatening, though she wasn’t sure if that had any effect of a robot, or a hacker sitting in his chair at home, just watching her from a distance. "If that’s your goal, or you just haven’t bothered to check my background properly, then get out. Chances are I could make good use of your skills, but if you don’t show me any respect and don’t respect my boundaries, I won’t give a damn!"

In the outside world, you only worked with people you could trust. Of course, things were rough there, too, and you didn’t like everyone. But you respected each other. Thanks to Fearless' secrecy, Wave had already set the trust level lower, but you definitely couldn’t count on someone who used the weaknesses of their comrades against them.

Fearless remained unimpressed. "If you mean the butchers of Ring 219, we know they’re just your foster parents. We're not talking about them. Have you ever thought about who your real parents are?"

Wave looked at the robot girl, stunned, and the seconds passed wordlessly. No, she had never really thought about them. All she knew was that they were dead, and dead people should rest in peace. Aki was of course an exception to this rule. He was, as she knew in the meantime, fortunately not dead. But her biological parents were. Her foster parents had taken Wave in as a baby and always cared for her, and she couldn’t have asked for better parents. Until their transformation, at least.

"By your silence, I conclude that you don’t know anything about them. How about ..." Fearless paused as if he had yet to weigh his next words. "How about we add information about your real parents on top as a bonus when we get this mission done?"

Bonus? That sounded suspiciously like bait. Why did Fearless want to come along at any cost? Was this story that important? Or was there perhaps more to it than that?

"There’s something else you want out of this lab, isn’t there?", Wave told her thoughts. "That’s why you provoke and bait me." Fearless wanted to retort something, but Wave raised a finger admonishingly. "Be honest or I’ll really throw you out."

"You’re perceptive, I’ll give you that, little Wave." The robot voice chuckled. "I can tell you’re your parents' daughter, and I can tell you’ve been trained by your foster parents. All right. There’s something else we’re looking for in the lab, and if we find it ... or even if we don’t find it, there’s that info as a bonus."

"No," Wave said sharply. "I want it right now. I’m tired of being stalled. Somehow I feel like everyone knows but me. Give me the info or the deal is off."

"Just so you know ..." Fearless blinked in her unnatural way. "Your parents and foster parents weren’t exactly friends."

"What’s that supposed to tell me now?"

"Wave," Aki cut in. "Your foster parents were heroes. Well, I mean like real ones, like the superheroes in the documentaries. If they didn’t exactly get along with your biological parents, could they have been some kind of villains?"

Fearless smiled. "Well, sure they were villains." The robot girl now spoke in her normal voice again. " Kind of. We’ll tell you everything if you take us with you."

"I don’t even know if I want to know that now. My real parents were villains, my foster parents became monsters. So what does that make me? No wonder, what happened in the elevator .... hang on. Us? You’re not alone?" It didn’t really occur to her until now, but Fearless had been talking about herself in the third person for quite a while now.

"Oops." Fearless' fake smile was really getting on Wave’s nerves. "I’m alone, of course. A single, small, and above all, innocent-looking robot girl. But you’d be helping a few people with that, not just me."

"Some of you? Who do you mean, exactly? The hackers?"

"The robots."

Was this another bad joke now? Was the hacker, by any chance, a robot himself? Damn secrets!

"What’s in the lab?" Wave asked in a firm voice.

"The reason we’re having feelings in the first place."

"What?" What was Wave supposed to think about that? Fearless supposedly knew about her parents and knew the reason for the robots' feelings. What was next? Had they also hidden CCR or released the dinosaurs to the outside world? Wave sighed. "And what would that reason be? A virus, like everyone thinks?"

"No, no, no." She shook her head to each no. "A person. A robot, like me. The first robot, to be exact, to ever show emotion."

Wow, that ... was unexpected. But was it really true? What was she supposed to believe anymore, anyway? "That’s quite a coincidence, that this is supposed to be the same place that Aki can be found."

"Yeah, you’d almost think the whole thing was a conspiracy." Fearless winked. At least that seemed genuine. Then her expression turned serious again. "Just like Aki, he’s a prisoner of the Kanter Corporation."

Did Kanter collect curiosities? The first robot with emotions, the best radio host in town? Or was it all connected and part of something bigger? Wave slumped back in her seat and stared at the ceiling of the hover car. With all the confusion, turmoil, and intrigue that seemed to exist in this city, she couldn’t lose sight of her goal. The thing that mattered most was Aki. Whatever else was being played here, he was the one she wanted to save. She would swallow her anger at Fearless for the time being.

"All right, we’re going to that damn lab. But we need a really good plan."

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