Chapter 6

"I've got good news and bad news," the agent said.

"More good than bad I hope," Colonel Jerrik muttered. The two of them watched the labs techs sifting through what was left of the mainframe. There was a glass partition between them and the clean room. Everything was laid out neatly but still fit on a single table. Next to the computer were the remains of three assassin bots. There was some discussion about this; there might have been four of the expensive robots, but their self-destruction mechanisms were so thorough, no one could say for sure how many there were.

"They managed to fry the positronic matrix in the mainframe," Special Agent Jim Rendel said. "And then they blew most of it up."

"Is that the good news or the bad?"

"The bad," Agent Rendel said with a dry smirk. "The good news is that we managed to salvage around three percent of the data."

"That doesn't sound very good," Colonel Jerrik shot him an incredulous look.

"All in all, it's not," the other man conceded. "But we did learn a few things. We know for a fact that nineteen have been destroyed or self-destructed to avoid capture. We think there were thirty-seven assassin robots built. Most were sold to the Chinese Hegemony."

"You think?"

"Best guess," Agent Rendel shrugged. "Probably 80% accurate."

"So what happened to the other eighteen?"

The International Law Enforcement agent cleared his throat. "I talked with some of my contacts over at the World Parliament ... They led me to believe that eight are in the possession of MI5—"

"What the fuck?!?!?!" Agent Rendel thought Colonel Jerrik's head was going to explode.

"And the Chinese may have as many as five more." He paused to take a deep breath. "One slipped through the security cordon in New York ... We don't know about the other four."

Colonel Jerrik began pacing around the room. Her face was red with anger. She knew that all the governments in the world kept secrets. Each had black projects that were deniable. Even allies kept secrets from each other. Relations with the Chinese were touchy at best, but for someone in London to have eight of the most dangerous assassin robots in the world and not to tell her about it pissed her off to no end. Especially after her task force had been specifically set up to hunt down and eliminated these robots and the British had promised their complete cooperation.

"Is there anything else in the mainframe we can use?" She was livid, but snapping at Agent Rendel wasn't going to get her anywhere. After all, he was just the messenger.

"Not yet."

"What about the robots? Can we learn anything from them?

"Other than the fact that when they blow themselves up, what's left will fit into a dustbuster?" Rendel snorted. "Unless you can sweet-talk the Limeys or the Chinks into letting you look at one of theirs, we're going to have to find a way to get our hands on one. We know that they can alter their appearance at will. They're shielding is so good they're immune to anything less than a class 4 EMP. They can fall 20 stories and land on their feet. Their biorhythm projectors can get them into any facility except the White House Situation Room. And one of them probably costs more to build than a casino in Vegas."

Jerrik watched the techs work for a few moments. She was channeling her anger as she had always done. She found that it focused her. "Do we have any leads on the one that got away?"

"No," Agent Rendel let out a bitter sigh. "She got away clean. And she's had a four month head start. The trail's gone cold."

"Until she hits someone else."

"The gunship should have taken the shot," Colonel Jerrik said ruefully.

"And killed a park full of kids? Not bloody likely."

"No ... But if it got another one of those things off the street, it would have been worth it."

The sheer callousness of the colonel's words struck Agent Rendel as odd, but having seen the robot's capabilities firsthand, he wasn't sure she was wrong.