Mask of Humanity

In the middle of the enemy there was a top-of-the-line mech which Threat Analysis identified as a customised Kleio X-17u, piloted by a human who Nicolai thought was likely the Primary Target.

Accompanying it were two more mechs, cheaper variants, alongside three light information-type bots and one heavier general purpose killbot. These seven units stood within a shimmering blue shield, the generator of which would be deep under the floor and connected to mains power. This shield presented more of a problem than any of the bots, as it would allow them to fire out but prevent Zero-Twelve from firing in or entering.

Spread out through the room outside the shield were a total of eight mid-weight combat bots, resembling heavy metal crabs each with a tank-like main gun.

Finally, there was a humming cloud of enemy drones above, mostly hunter-killer and tracking types.

Threat Analysis registered all the specifics regarding the makes and models and ranked them based on the relative levels of threat they represented. Nicolai didn’t pay too much attention to that, because in his opinion it wasn’t particularly important. He and the other Modules knew something the opposition clearly didn’t. That the shield the primary Target was safely behind was nothing like as solid a defence as they assumed.

Zero-Twelve was moments from bursting out of the main door and into the room containing the trap. It was sending a live feed of all that happened to the handlers, who were therefore aware of the trap. But they didn’t say to abort the hit, so Zero-Twelve didn’t.

But it didn’t go through the front door, either, not after having seen what awaited it. The drones it had released continued forward, a buzzing cloud which flowed out the door, cameras and microphones picking up the booms and bursts of sound and light as the waiting bots and mechs released the predictable wave of ordinance, the feeds the drones were sending to Zero-Twelve cutting off in chunks. They were only a third of its drone capacity, an acceptable loss.

While the drones and the doorway were being obliterated by massed fire, Zero-Twelve turned sideways and smashed bodily through a wall, using its jets to accelerate. It had analysed the blueprints as well as scanning everything around it and come to the conclusion that it could ignore these walls.

Like a wrecking ball unchained it went in a straight line through room after room, along the wall of the main room the Target and their allies were within.

This wall, unlike the much weaker ones Zero-Twelve ploughed through, was heavily reinforced with metal and concrete, half-a-metre thick. However, it also wasn’t all that much of a defence, and Zero-Twelve placed shaped charges capable of blowing a hole big enough for it to fit through in each room it burst through, leaving a line of these charges in its wake.

It had only taken a moment for Nicolai and the other Modules to come up with a workable plan that would see the Target dead in the next minute. This plan was only feasible because of the staggering amount of time and money GRECKON spent privately analysing and stress testing all recent technology, such as the shield the Target was behind.

Zero-Twelve released its full contingent of drones then backtracked, taking up position behind one of its shaped charges, its drones doing the same in other rooms.

With a tower-shaking thump all the charges went off at once and dozens of holes were blown through the main wall.

Zero-Twelve activated its jets and flung itself through the smoking hole before it while its drones squeezed out from the holes around it. A barrage of lasers, missiles and heavy machine gun fire poured into the holes as Zero-Twelve and its drones emerged, but as they couldn’t be sure which one it was emerging through, the fire was equally dispersed. It took some hits but it was built to take hits and corrected its course, jetting into the room and up above the projectiles. Meanwhile its drones, those that survived, spread out and initiated distraction protocols. Shimmering lights appeared all over the room, simulations that looked just like Zero-Twelve did when it moved at speed and its cloaking-technology allowed some hints of its presence through, while its own hunter-killer drones collided with enemy drones in snapping detonations and flashes of light.

As Zero-Twelve flew through the air the twin railcannons on its back activated, crackling with electricity and extending their forward poles to jut out in front of it. It was heading straight for the shield where the opposition and the Target waited, all of them spraying rounds wherever they thought Zero-Twelve might be. They were killbots and mechs, but they were confused and on the back foot. They had intended to force the attacker into a slow and difficult fight, leaving Zero-Twelve no choice but to try and dance around and take out the surrounding mid-weight bots, then attempt to destroy the shield, giving them ample opportunity to destroy the killbot. Instead, it had gone full offensive and was behaving as though the shield was a non-issue.

They weren’t able to work out any countermeasure to this in time, and were still uncertain as to Zero-Twelve’s precise position and intentions. Zero-Twelve reached the shield, its crackling railcannon rods touching the shimmering blue field first.

There was an intense surge of electricity as the powerful currents running through the rods interacted with the shield and it shorted out. The surge ended with a hum as the shield popped and died, though not before a burst of electricity ran over Zero-Twelve, ruining the sophisticated components of its camouflage coating.

Zero-Twelve extended vibro-blades from its primary arms and threw itself at the general purpose combat bot that moved to block it. The killbot took a heavy hit from a whirling cluster of vibro-blades, chopping off one of its gunlimbs and cracking all the right side of its chassis, but it carried on, cutting with vibro-blades and tearing with its limbs until it had carved straight through the bot which collapsed in smoking, sparking halves.

The two mechs rushed it next. Zero-Twelve spun between them, exchanging blows, vomiting heavy-calibre rounds from its gun-limbs into chassis’ where the humans controlling the mechs were. Drones descended on it and it twisted amidst them, point-defence systems eviscerating most, soaking the hits from those that got through.

It emerged damaged but still lethal to see the Target’s heavy cannon aimed right at it. There was a tremendous boom and though Zero-Twelve was already jetting sideways, one of its shoulders simply disappeared, transformed into shrapnel that was smashed across the room.

Spinning wildly from the force of the shot it curved through the air, orienting itself with its jets, and it smashed into the Targets mech, attaching itself with its remaining limbs.

At this moment everything changed. All the other bots in the room, all the drones, none of them could act. Because if they shot at Zero-Twelve they would also be shooting at the individual they were here to protect. They started to move towards Zero-Twelve but none of them would reach it in time. The mech tried to defend itself but it was piloted by a human assisted by a singular AI, while Zero-Twelve was a bleeding-edge militarised killbot with a full composite mind, plus, it had Nicolai. Despite all the damage Zero-Twelve had taken, it was still far from an even fight.

Nicolai didn’t take any particular joy in killing people, not nowadays, anyway. But even with the severe reduction of his emotions, he still enjoyed fighting and winning just as he always had, and centuries of doing just that had given him a degree of skill and innate, unthinking combat prowess such that if his thoughts were sped up to match, as they currently were, even cutting edge combat AI’s couldn’t handle him. That, plus what the engineers had referred to, disbelievingly, as his “sixth sense” were the reasons why his brain had been placed inside Zero-Twelve by GRECKON after they captured him. The mech seemed to move in slow motion as he and the others arrowed in on its weak points, carved its arms off, and took aim at the central chassis where the primary Target would be.

There was a dull, rising hum, then a blast of electricity exploded from the mech’s torso and washed over them.

An EMP.

Zero-Twelve froze up as all of its systems went haywire, as did the Target’s mech and surrounding bots, and then the Governor and all the other Modules shut down to protect themselves, followed by everything else. Mechs and combat bots collapsed in rigid lumps to the ground. Drones fell from the air. The lights flickered off. The mech Zero-Twelve was attached to slowly fell to land with a boom, Zero-Twelve remaining locked in place.

Nicolai was ripped from his connection with the others and experienced a sudden awful pounding. His brain had stopped receiving oxygen and would soon die. He floated in darkness, emptiness, nothing for company but his fading thoughts and the pain.

Then the slow reboot began, the basic systems already having recovered as they were designed to. Synthetic blood flowed once more through his brain. Then images, sounds, and more came online, visible to Nicolai. The room was now lit by dull red emergency lightning. Next came the sense of the body, the ability to move it. Slowly, waking up in stages, he was granted control of Zero-Twelve.

The other Modules would take quite a bit longer to recover. They were the most delicate and advanced pieces in Zero-Twelve and would have to wait until everything was ready and all remnants of the EMP had been tidied up before they could re-activate.

The possibility of Zero-Twelve being hit by an EMP had been foreseen by GRECKON and this was another reason for Nicolai’s inclusion in the killbot. As a biological brain he was unaffected and could look after the robotic body while the others came online. Zero-Twelve’s weaponry wasn’t available to him, as they didn’t trust him to do more than survive, but he could move the killbot freely.

Zero-Twelve remained frozen, clinging to the body of the mech, while Nicolai explored his newfound freedom within it. The pilot port of the mech opened with a hiss of air and Claire Del Brougnie climbed out, wearing a grey mech-suit covered in wires which popped off as she ripped at them. She appeared to be in her forties, with sculpted features and hair that would have been perfect were it not damp with sweat. She was almost a hundred and fifty years old so even for a corporate kingpin, she was doing a good job looking after herself.

The client, the handlers, GRECKON, and the Governor, all would want him to kill her.

That was the main reason why Nicolai had no intention of doing so. The Governor would be ordered to punish him severely, of course, but he had stopped caring about that long ago.

He flexed the metal claws of his remaining primary limb, and tried out his voice.

‘Here I am again,’ he spoke, and chuckled. The sound emerged warped and twisted from damaged speakers. This wasn’t the first time he’d been left the last man standing within Zero-Twelve’s composite mind, and he always enjoyed these moments. It was wonderful to be in complete control for once, to be able to choose what to do.

Claire twisted to look up at Zero-Twelve, eyes wide. ‘You’re alive?’ she yelped, stumbling backwards.

There was a metallic squeal as Nicolai turned Zero-Twelve to look at her. ‘Partly. I’m the Human Resources Module.’ He saw her realise what that meant, a frown overtaking her features.

‘A brain in a box.’ Her face was a stony, frozen wall. She looked like she was halfway through the worst day of her life. That attracted Nicolai’s attention, because from all accounts she was a strong and determined woman, a veteran of vicious boardrooms, and not the type to become unduly emotional over a simple assassination attempt.

The other Targets, which Nicolai and the other Modules had expected to be here, to be killing alongside her, weren’t present. Her four children. He recalled the four VTOL’s which had initially accompanied their own prior to approaching the tower, which had split off to go and complete missions of their own, and connected that to Claire’s expression.

Her children were dead.

He didn’t say anything. There wasn’t much point. He wondered what she would do, now.

‘Not going to kill me?’ Claire raised her hands to the sides, half an invite, half a challenge. Her voice was low and drained, and despite the cosmetic enhancements of her face something of her true age was visible in the shadows creasing her brow, thrown into stark relief by the red lighting.

Nicolai had been examining the room, considering where he’d go. He was quite interested in seeing the art piece he’d been briefed on, the one he’d been ordered to insure wasn’t harmed. He intended to utterly ruin it, and mentally grinned as he imagined the mess that would make for GRECKON. Petty and pointless, certainly, but such acts were amongst the few joys left to him. He glanced down at Claire.

‘Why would I?’ his speakers squealed in response to her question. ‘You’ve done nothing to me. Where’s that art piece, the one by Ernst Brogdaer?’

She stared up at him, a confused frown creasing her face. For a moment it seemed she didn’t know what he was talking about. ‘The picture?’ she managed. ‘That way, somewhere.’ She waved limply to a door on the other side of the room, Nicolai’s gaze following. ‘Why does it matter?’ She paused, putting a hand to her head. ‘The rest of…’ she waved at Zero-Twelve’s form, ‘all the AI’s in there, they’re rebooting right now, aren’t they?’ She didn’t wait for an answer, her expression turning distant then firming with resolve as she moved back to where she’d emerged from the mech. She reached in and he saw her pull out a gun, some kind of pulse rifle.

‘Sorry, but I need to kill you before they come back online,’ she said as she turned and raised the gun. Then, she flinched and tried to react, but had no time.

Nicolai had crossed the space between them and now loomed over her, the monstrous form of Zero-Twelve staring down. One of his remaining gun limbs slipped out to grip the rifle and her arms. ‘Careful,’ he said, speakers crackling.

She snarled and struggled for a moment before realising it was pointless. ‘What? Do you want to live?’ she seethed at him. ‘Are you happy? You’re a slave!’

Nicolai carefully released her, wary of accidentally damaging something. Zero-Twelve was built for rending metal, not restraining fleshy humans. He kept the pulse rifle, glancing it over. A powerful and expensive model, not designed for use by a killbot but he’d find a way.

‘Don’t ask me why, but I don’t want to die,’ he said conversationally, enjoying the rare act of speaking to another human. ‘Never have. Some part of me struggles, always. It’s not much fun, being part of a killbot, but it’s better than being dead.’

She gaped at him. ‘You’re insane.’ She let out a sudden groan of frustration. ‘For fucks sake!’ she screamed, kicking at her downed mech. ‘Bastard, bastard!’

‘Ryan?’ Nicolai asked knowingly, referring to the man he was pretty sure had ordered the hit, a rival oligarch of hers.

Claire just threw an awful grimace of rage and grief at him then turned and stalked off, before starting into a run. Going to wherever she thought she could go, or to get whatever she thought she could get, before the Governor came back online.

‘You won’t get away,’ he felt compelled to say, then winced internally. That was a bit shitty of him, he reflected. She knew she wouldn’t get away, now it sounded like he was gloating. Not used to talking to people, he consoled himself. ‘Hey, where’s that picture at?’ he asked again, hopeful. She’d been unclear in her directions and he wasn’t sure where to go. He’d already wasted too much time. He could feel the Governor and the others stirring as the automated systems in Zero-Twelve finished setting everything up and began rebooting the Modules.

That was when something changed.

A frisson of energy in the air, something invisible, felt in a manner beyond the physical or sensory.

Zero-Twelve twitched with the confusion Nicolai felt. Thinking it likely to be some kind of attack—perhaps a weapon coming back online after the EMP—he moved quickly to use the fallen mech for cover.

But nothing physical attacked. Instead, words appeared. Floating boxes full of them, visible in every one of Zero-Twelve’s cameras. Out of one of his peripheral cameras he saw Claire let out a yelp and trip to the ground, where she then sat up with a blankly confused expression.

Nicolai felt much the same as the words written before him began to be narrated, a voice speaking in his mind.

This planet and the race of sentient beings calling themselves Humanity, alongside their biological subsidiaries, have been enrolled into the Great Game, iteration 322.

Participation in the Great Game is compulsory.

You may join immediately, or you may wait. If you wait, then at some point between now and one year from now, you will be transported into the Great Game.

By the time one year has passed, no member of the Human race will be left on this planet.

Dependent on time taken to join, place and circumstance, introduction to the Great Game may differ per individual, familial unit, group, city, or nation.

[Join Now] [Join Later]

The join now and join later were both highlighted, glowing, and Nicolai had the distinct impression they could be mentally “clicked”, allowing him to choose.

How very novel. It was clearly some strange cyberwarfare he’d never encountered before. He wasn’t sure what angle was being played.

‘Do you know what this is?’ he asked Claire, who he assumed to be seeing something similar from how she’d reacted. Most likely it was another killbot working for the client, targeting him along with her. Alternatively, it could be a killbot working for Claire, or even the Tower Central AI. The other Modules would have gone into overdrive, freaking out over whatever it was, but Nicolai was merely disappointed he wouldn’t be able to wreck the painting.

Claire didn’t reply, choosing instead to vanish with a pop.

Nicolai stared at the spot she’d occupied, flicking through different cameras to see in infrared, thermal, ultraviolet and more, then sending out sonar pings, looking for signs of cloaking technology. There was nothing, so he allowed himself to consider the impossible.

He let out a thoughtful grunt, which emerged as a garbled squeal, and then he felt the Governor stir as it began the final stages of its reboot.

Nicolai mentally clicked on [Join Now].

Zero-Twelve vanished from the room, just as Claire had, just as hundreds of thousands of humans across Earth were likewise vanishing at that moment. Those able to see the sky saw golden light spilling over the horizon, merging with the endless storms, wrapping the Earth.