Page 2 of Operation Iron Heart

“I know,” whispered his friend with half-closed eyes, giving a pained smile. “And I will be forever grateful. I never thought that I would entrust my family to a damn tin can, of all things. But you, Jack, you’re the only one I would trust. So don’t disappoint me.” Exhausted, he closed his eyes, and a moment later a long humming could be heard and the display above the patient’s head showed a flat line.

As he looked at the dead man, Jack felt his highly-developed, lab-grown heart tense and his eyes slowly fill with tears. He cried. This, too, was completely new for him, another thing he would have to get used to.

Chapter 1 – Will’s Legacy

Chicago, October 2056

Marci dusted the eighteenth-century Venetian mirror as if Rochelle were paying her a bonus for it. Normally, her boss didn’t even notice if the showpiece of her luxuriously furnished entrance hall was free from dust and smears.

Marcella Martinez Finnegan, known to all as Marci, was little more than an invisible household spirit for Rochelle MacIntyre, reliably and unobtrusively polishing the silent witnesses to her unfathomable wealth every single day. Every single item cost more than Marci would earn in her entire life.

Will had always called the job little more than slavery, but Marci was just pleased to have work at all. Money had been incredibly tight even before Will’s disappearance, but since he’d been gone, Marci had no idea how she was going to support herself and her two boys.

Her eccentric millionaire employer didn’t even pay her minimum wage, despite clearly being able to afford it.

After her divorce from Montgomery “Monty” MacIntyre a few years ago, Rochelle had received this multi-million dollar villa as part of the settlement. He’d also given her his shares in “Copter Robot Unlimited”, CRU for short. The company made spare parts for a wide range of robots and kept Rochelle in the lap of luxury.

Her ex was also the sole ruler of an industrial empire primarily known for making high-quality combat robots. They were deliberately designed to look like human superheroes and were excellent publicity for the company, deployed to killing fields around the world in the war against enemy states. The bloody battles were regularly shown on all channels to entertain the masses, a bit like the Superbowl, if a lot less vicious. That was enough to make Marci uninterested in watching them, but she knew that Monty MacIntyre – whose company was continually producing new robots for the war to replace the ones that had been destroyed – had become immensely rich off the back of it. His factories also made less complex robots that were used as police officers and firefighters.

One of these tin cans, as Will liked to call the robots, had cost him his well-paid job as an officer with the Chicago Police. It was the main reason he’d not been pleased when Marci got a job as a cleaner for Rochelle MacIntyre, of all people, after he was made redundant.

“I don’t like the thought of you being exploited by that bloodsucker for a pitiful wage when it’s her fault we’re in this shit,” he’d exclaimed when Marci told him about the job offer.

“When you’re trying to get by in the Chicago slums with two kids and very little support, you have to grab any opportunity you can,” she’d retorted, but her response had only annoyed him more.

Marci had wondered, however, why Rochelle preferred to employ a human cleaner. Surely she had the connections to get the perfect household robot made for her, one that would carry out all her tasks flawlessly.

“Robots are more expensive to get hold of and have to be repaired more often than a person,” Rochelle had explained to her rich friends, who regularly came round for afternoon tea and stared at Marci as if she was a rare breed of dog that fetched on command and you only kept for the fun of it.

“When a person stops working properly, I can just swap it for another one,” Rochelle had explained flatly to the women in front of Marci, oddly casting doubt on her own robot business. She might also have added that there were plenty of people who were prepared to sell their soul in a dead-end job for a few credits.

That wasn’t the only reason that Marci had to watch out for her job. Knocking something over or dropping it would have led to her instant dismissal. Being ill wasn’t an option, either, no matter how bad she felt. One glance in the mirror was enough to reveal the extent of her exhaustion. She felt as if she were 100 years old, but she was only 28 – in the bloom of her youth, as her Mexican grandmother used to call it. She had worked tirelessly and enthusiastically at a fully automated checkout, helping customers to scan in their goods, until her death at the age of 93.

Marci knew she wouldn’t live that long. She didn’t eat properly, didn’t get enough sleep, and cried too much. The dark shadows under her eyes were permanent and unmistakable.

“You look like a panda,” her younger son Willie had told her a few days earlier, giggling.

Since she and the children had been forced to manage without Will, she’d not had a single minute to herself and had lost a considerable amount of weight, deliberately eating less so the children wouldn’t go hungry. Her tatty jeans and threadbare blue tunic top hung on her frame as if on a clothes rack. Only her breasts defied the odds, remaining stubbornly large for her body, even if they were no longer as firm and upright as they had been before her pregnancies. Not that she cared. No man could ever replace Will.

Things were so tough that she’d even considered selling her body so that she could buy fruit and vegetables for her children on the black market. Louise, her elderly neighbour, who knew about this type of work, having been an escort in her youth, had advised her strongly against it.

“You can’t possibly compete with the perfectly shaped female robots that spread their legs up to a hundred times a day for a few credits. For human women, that only leaves the weirdos who want to see and smell real blood in their sadistic games. It’s not only painful, it’s far too dangerous.”

No, sighed Marci, gathering her long, dark hair into a plait and fastening it with a rubber band. She’d just have to think of something else. She couldn’t go on like this.

Only a few weeks ago, the government had reduced additional food aid, but military spending had risen for the third time this year. According to Will, that automatically meant there was nothing left over to support the poor in the slums.

“Since the superpowers decided to conduct their wars on the killing fields using expensive robots,” he told her soberly, “there’s only one winner in this country, and his name is Monty MacIntyre! He makes megabucks with his tin cans while our children starve. Since the PanAsian Front won the last battle against us under Chinese leadership, the government has not only had to take on more debt to pay out the victory bounty; they’ve also had to dig deep for more of MacIntyre’s robot fighters. He’s bound to have supplies in stock so he can deliver them for the return match as quickly as possible. And I’ll give you three guesses who the government is borrowing the money from. Yup, also MacIntyre. If it carries on like this,” he pronounced darkly, “there’ll be a civil war soon. And we’ll send them and their damn tin can army to hell. I’d swear it on the Bible!”

Marci didn’t like it when Will talked like that. “That kind of talk is dangerous. Louise told me only yesterday that you get up to thirty years in prison if you’re caught protesting against the government. And if you’re charged and convicted as a terrorist, guilty of treason, you could even be condemned to death.”

“Louise!” Will had groaned, rolling his eyes. “What does that old crone know about laws? Anyway, it’s none of her business what I think of someone. I hope you don’t tell her about our conversations?”

“No,” lied Marci without batting an eyelid. The older woman had become like a mother figure to her and she confided in her about virtually everything. “But when she’s right, she’s right!”

“Forget that nonsense. Come here and let me spoil you a bit.” As usual, Will and his steadfast blue eyes had soon distracted her. “I’ll keep away from all that. I won’t do anything that could put our family in danger,” he had whispered, kissing her tenderly. It was the last time they’d slept together.

Two days later, he’d disappeared off the face of the Earth. He’d gone out looking for a job as usual and simply didn’t return home at his normal time in the evening. At first, Marci reassured herself that he’d maybe gone to a pub on the way back to the apartment. Even though they couldn’t afford it. But she understood if he wanted to wash his disappointment down with a glass of beer. When he still wasn’t in bed beside her the next morning, Marci became more than worried. She was terrified. The feeling that something could have happened to him sat like an icy fist around her heart. She was initially afraid that the State Police might have arrested him. Maybe, as Louise had feared, he’d got caught up in a raid and been locked up and was therefore unable to contact her. She hadn’t allowed herself to consider the possibility that he might have been killed. Her enquiries to the hospitals and police, however, turned up nothing.