Neural Wraith, page 1
NEURAL WRAITH
K.D. ROBERTSON
Copyright © 2022 by K.D. Robertson
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and events are the product of imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Thanks for reading!
Also by K.D. Robertson
CHAPTER 1
A train shot across the city of Neo Babylon, packed with glassy-eyed and silent passengers. Nobody held phones or other distracting electronic devices. The only sounds were the rush of wind and a few coughs, as every passenger stared at nothing in near silence. Some passengers nodded their heads to music only they could hear, but most remained still.
One man was the exception, standing near the doors of a carriage and shifting his weight from foot to foot in a mixture of boredom and impatience. Like many others on the train, he wore a dark suit, ready for a busy day of work. Unlike the others, he seemed attentive to his surroundings.
His name was Nick Waite, and what separated him from every other person on the train was that he lacked a neural implant.
Nick’s dark blue eyes locked onto the glittering spires of Babylon’s Central Business District. He wondered if he might see the towers of the other cities in the nearby islands if his eyes were cybernetically enhanced.
The train passed behind a building, dropping the carriage into darkness, and Nick frowned inwardly. Even though he commuted to work every morning like this, he still found it frustratingly boring. He wanted to pull out his phone, but he hated the stares and judgment it brought.
Nobody used handheld electronics after childhood these days. Neural implants were typically installed when puberty began, so that the brain could adapt to the device now permanently implanted inside it. Once someone had a chip in his skull, he didn’t need a phone to listen to music, be fed curated news, or mindlessly browse social media.
Wednesdays were always the worst day to catch the train. On other days, enough people worked from home that Nick might be able to find some space to hide his phone. But most offices required workers to come in for at least a few days. Neural implants or not, office culture never died.
The mainframe security policies of most companies only exacerbated the issue. Most companies didn’t trust their peons with remote access to quantum computers worth more than every cent the average family had ever earned.
Eventually, the train pulled into an elevated station. Through the reinforced panels of the doors, Nick saw that today’s road traffic was heavier than usual. Self-driving trucks and buses plowed onward while a smattering of robot taxis weaved between them. Private vehicles were few and far between, given human driving was illegal in the Neo Westphalian isles.
Once the train stopped inside the station, the passengers came to life. Their eyes lit up as they returned to reality. Nick jumped out of the door before the crush consumed him, then made his way to the exit gates.
Central Station was as busy as ever, and a couple dozen lines snaked out both ways in the main atrium. Nick joined one, but wasn’t fussed about the size. The line moved swiftly, leaving him little chance to rest his feet.
The station itself was an open and arching mass of steel. Transparent dark sheets of glass hung from every corner and overhang, but showed nothing. To Nick’s eyes, they served no purpose.
In fact, the station lacked any visible signage. Or at least, visible to him. If he pulled out his phone, he had an augmented reality app that allowed him to see the same world that everyone else did. AR glasses had once worked as well, but their protocols had been deprecated decades ago.
Instead, Nick guided himself by memory.
Nearby, two suited men pointed at one of the overhanging sheets of glass. One looked to be in his late-twenties—roughly Nick’s age—and the other older, fatter, and balding.
“The ads are getting fucking obnoxious, aren’t they?” the younger one said. “I don’t need to see an Altnet streamer shoving soda down her virtual tits.”
“Personally, I found the gambling streamers worse. You should get an ad-blocker module for your implant. Mine stopped working last month, but I’m getting it fixed,” the fat one said.
“Are neural modules even legal?” The younger guy looked around, as if scared they’d be overheard.
“Sure they are. My implant, my business. I’ve heard that the new ads are using security bands to beam themselves into our implants, though. Can’t block those without getting zapped by the Archangels.” The fat one made a finger gun and “fired” it.
“I bet some asshole in the Spires got a new solar yacht last month for that.”
“You know it.”
Ah, corruption and the Spires. Nick couldn’t name a better duo for Babylon. Fortunately, his livelihood depended on its continuing existence, so he couldn’t complain too much. His job wouldn’t exist if everything was fantastic.
The fact that advertising firms now had access to Babylon’s security wavelengths concerned him, however. Despite his otherwise crippling lack of a neural implant, Ciphers like himself relied heavily on the city’s advanced communications technology. He’d need to investigate this once he got into the office.
His line approached the security gates. They weren’t much to look at. Each gate contained a woman sitting behind a desk, fancy scanners built into said desk, and the turnstile itself.
Notably, the women were identical. From their beige uniforms, to their cherub-like facial features, to every strand of shoulder-length black hair on their head. Self-driving vehicles weren’t the only robots running Babylon’s public transportation system. These women were autonomous robotic modular dolls, typically just called dolls or ARMDs. Every one of them came off a factory line.
The line continued to progress. Each person stepped up to the turnstile. They said nothing. After a moment, the doll spoke and the turnstile swung open, and the line continued moving. This continued until it was nearly Nick’s turn.
Grimacing, he fumbled in his jacket for his phone. Dread built up inside him.
Every single fucking day…
It was finally his turn.
He stepped up to the turnstile, unlocked his phone with his thumb, and held it out to the transportation doll.
She stared at him in confusion. Nothing happened for a moment. Behind him, murmuring started immediately. A few people seemed to recognize him.
“Again?” someone said, frustrated.
The doll tilted her head, continuing to ignore his phone even as he waved it in her face. After a moment, her eyes widened.
“Good morning, Mr. Waite. Please present your arm and pull up your sleeve for detailed biometric confirmation of identity,” the doll said in a bright but artificial tone.
“You just said my name,” Nick said, reaching for his sleeve anyway. “You know exactly who I am.”
“Your identity must be verified. Facial and body shape recognition do not meet requirements for biometric identification, according to protocol,” she chirped back.
Realizing he had pulled up his sleeve, the doll grabbed his wrist with one hand. She pressed a thumb into it and held his hand for a very long second. As always, she ignored his phone, even though it had the damn transport app that was supposed to trigger the scanners.
The turnstile swung open.
“Have a good day, Mr. Waite,” the doll said with a smile and let him go.
“You too,” he said sarcastically, putting his phone away and leaving.
Behind him, the next person in line stepped up. “Do I get a good morning?” he asked jokingly.
The doll ignored him. After a moment, the turnstile swung open again. “Proceed,” she said emotionlessly.
Well, at least the dolls were nicer to Nick for all the shit they gave him.
He ignored the stares of everyone else in the station with practiced ease, given this happened every single day since the city had raised security a few years back.
Unfortunately, Nick’s mood did not improve once in the exit hall of the station. He saw the stairs that led down and out of the station.
He also saw two young women with slim submachine guns standing next to them. They were dolls, just like
Unlike the transport dolls, these ones were downright dangerous. They wore armored black police vests and dark pants, but the armor plating beneath showed what little clothing they really wore. On their pauldrons were markings. One read “ARC-M01-NB04912” and the other one had a similar marking.
Nick knew what it meant, but recognized the dolls by sight. They were Archangels, members of Babylon’s elite police unit that managed crime in the city. Specifically, they were Mark 1 models.
Every Mark 1 Archangel looked identical. Five foot nothing, hauntingly beautiful, nearly flat-chested, fluffy white hair just below their jaw with a pair of fake pigtails that acted as antennae, purple eyes, and visible armor plating with pauldrons and greaves.
One of the pair saw Nick and met his gaze. She seemed to smile at him.
Hunching his shoulders, he looked away and began walking to the exit. He suspected he’d be late to work today. The two dolls watched him like a hawk as he approached, but they didn’t move.
Seconds before he got close, the Archangels suddenly turned away. They focused on another man, who wore a bulky duffel coat and strode away at speed.
“Jack Hartridge, halt, in the name of the Neo Babylon Police Department,” one Archangel snapped. She didn’t move, however.
The suspect, Jack, stumbled. He looked back, eyes wide. Then he broke out in a run, cursing loudly. He shoved others aside, knocking a few people down.
While the chaos erupted, Nick kept moving toward the stairs.
Before Jack reached the exit, he suddenly froze mid-step. He crashed to the ground like a statue. No noise escaped him, but his eyes were wide and terrified.
The Archangels walked up to him, holding their guns absently without a care in the world. The looks on their faces were of absolute condescension, but they stopped short of sneering at him. Those nearby jeered at Jack.
“What kind of idiot thinks he can run away from our Archangels?” one person shouted.
Nick kept moving. He’d seen this play out many times before.
Resisting the Archangels was futile. What made them dangerous wasn’t their armor, their powerful motors, or their near-perfect accuracy.
No, it was the fact they had supreme access to Babylon’s neural network. They could shut down a criminal instantly just by accessing his neural implant. And if someone was dumb enough to cut off access to the security bands, they’d probably just be shot.
Nick had yet to find out what the Archangels would do to him given he lacked an implant. So far, he hadn’t officially broken any laws. The corruption rife in Babylon meant he was in a gray area. All the Archangels could do was waste his time whenever they wanted to be annoying. Admittedly, for a bunch of police robots, they loved to be annoying.
The steps lay before him, so Nick raced down them.
“Hey!” one of the dolls snapped from behind him.
He kept moving. His heart felt as if it would burst from his chest. Any second now, he worried that a bullet would pierce his skull.
Nothing happened. Nobody around him reacted as if an Archangel was aiming down her sights at him.
Once at the bottom of the stairs and in the morning sun, Nick turned and stared back at the station.
An Archangel stood up there. She stared down at him with her arms crossed, as if pouting at the fact he had gotten away. He met her gaze for several seconds, then awkwardly walked away.
Other police dolls raced toward Central Station, although they were the standard Liberator models rather than the advanced Archangels. They were easy to tell apart by virtue of being nearly six-foot tall, substantially bustier, and the fact they carried a hand cannon the size of Nick’s torso.
His office was only a couple of blocks away, so he walked. Vehicles had to give way to pedestrians inside the CBD itself, and traffic was fairly light. He still waited for other pedestrians to cross the street, then blended in.
He’d had a few close calls with self-driving vehicles before. Without an implant, he was like a ghost to them. They relied on their physical cameras and sometimes stopped a little abruptly for his liking.
Realizing he’d made swift time, Nick decided to duck into a café for some food. He watched as some cleaning robots gave way to other people on the street, then darted around them himself.
No staff greeted him inside the cafe. In fact, there was nobody to be seen at all. An empty counter sat at the end of a conveyor belt, which was fed from an opening in the wall. There weren’t any obvious ways to order.
Nick connected to the café’s ordering system on the Altnet using his phone and ordered an egg and bacon roll. Within a few minutes, a cardboard tray rolled out on the conveyor belt. He grabbed his breakfast and headed to the office.
Despite being in the CBD, his company’s office complex was far from the tallest. Instead, it stood out for being a walled complex of only two ten-story towers in the CBD. One of the towers was being rented out to a bevy of other companies, sure, but it was a sign of wealth and power.
A gargantuan black marble façade on the wall said “Tartarus,” which was the name of the company. As imposing as the name was, it was also meaningful.
Nick strode through the open front gates. Nobody stopped him or reacted, and there were no scanners for him to use his photo ID on.
However, the moment he crossed the property boundary, several armed security dolls appeared from behind the tall hedges that surrounded the building. Like every other doll in the city, they were female. They were armored and wore dark green security uniforms emblazoned with Tartarus’s logo. Automatic shotguns with bulky magazines hung from straps around their chests.
With a flick of a thumb, the dolls could switch from less-lethal taser rounds to very lethal slugs. Every firearm used by private security dolls in Babylon needed to have ammunition-switching, given using lethal rounds on humans was illegal except for law enforcement. Most police dolls used ammunition-switchers as well, for that matter.
“Good morning, Mr. Waite,” the dolls said in eerie unison.
One stepped up to him in expectation. Nick dutifully showed his wrist. Just like in the station, the security doll confirmed his identity. Once satisfied he was who she had just said he was, the doll let him go and stepped back.
“Have there been any problems this morning?” he asked.
“There are problems with the elevators in the main atrium. It is recommended to use the stairs until maintenance can be undertaken.”
“Got it. Thanks,” he said.
With a wave, he entered the atrium. The security dolls watched him as if transfixed, but he ignored them.
Unlike the behavior of the transport dolls and the Archangels, he at least understood the behavior of Tartarus’s security. As one of the company’s Ciphers, he helped program and debug them. If he wanted to, he could program them not to verify his identity when he entered.
He chose not to, because Tartarus was the sort of company that could be targeted by someone capable of building a doll in Nick’s exact likeness.
Like most of the city, the office atrium was a white, silver, and black mass of steel and glass. A crowd of people stood near the elevators on both sides. Taking heed of the warning, Nick slipped into a hallway and used the fire stairs.
His destination was on the sixth story, so it was a bit of a jaunt, but exercise had yet to kill him. The door to his office was secured with both ID and retinal scanners and lacked any windows. Nick entered without any hassles.
“You got here earlier than I expected,” said the only occupant of the room, Travis. He was a thin, balding fellow who got along with suits as well as they got along with him—which was poorly. “Half the IT department is stuck in the elevators, and there have been some bomb scares that have shut down several roads and train stations in the outer metro. No ETA on a fix for the elevators. Most of the execs are too busy planning tonight’s party to give a shit, either.”
