Page 39 of Operation Iron Heart

“I just want you to give back to Dr Tanaka what was stolen,” MacIntyre explained in a saccharine voice. “After all, poor Rochelle died for it. And the same thing will happen to you if you don’t cooperate.”

“If I die, you’ll never get the code,” she cried in fear. “And in case you’re thinking of forcing me, all this stress has made me forget many of the combinations and I haven’t the faintest idea how to enter the information you’d need.”

“We have our methods, Skyla,” he replied in a sharp voice. “And if they don’t work, there are other ways, none of which you would like. So don’t worry about the emotional gaps in your memory.” His voice had taken on a dangerously quiet undertone and Marci didn’t know which was the more terrifying thought – that Jack seemingly no longer recognised her or that he would be the one to end up killing her because she simply didn’t have the information they wanted.

“Why?” she cried in desperation. “What does MacIntyre LLC intend to do with robots that are capable of developing a wide range of human emotions? Neither of you can expect me to believe that you’re actually interested in an escort robot service? And they wouldn’t be of any use in war. So what’s actually behind it all?”

MacIntyre paused a moment before opening his shirt to reveal his smooth, white chest. He grabbed a scalpel off a nearby table and without hesitating, cut into his skin.

Marci cried out in horror as he folded the skin back and she saw the sheen of an artificially lit neural network like the ones she’d just seen in one of the labs.

“You’re a robot?” Marci felt as if the ground were giving way beneath her.

“Well spotted,” he replied, the corners of his mouth twisting in a mocking smile. “MacIntyre had Cathrin make a highly engineered copy of himself. I was to stand in for him in dangerous situations,” he continued in a toneless voice. “Ceramic skeleton, impeccable organs and a brain that would look no different under a scanner to a human brain but was more efficient and didn’t age. At that time, nobody imagined that the top-class R8 series, to which Jack also belongs, would wake up at some point. That was a mistake.”

So many things now became clear to Marci. Rochelle’s death in particular suddenly made sense. “How come nobody noticed?” she asked weakly. “There are scanners everywhere that are capable of distinguishing between robots and humans!”

“The R8 series is not only biologically superior, making it strikingly similar to a human,” he explained in his usual arrogant style, that Cathrin had obviously copied. “We also have a chip in our system that tricks these poorly designed scanners into thinking that they’re looking at a real human,” he explained with a languid smile, indicating his chief engineer.

“Him too?” Stunned, she pointed at Dr Tanaka and MacIntyre just nodded. Marci felt completely lost; if they really were robots, their awakening had followed a totally different course from Jack’s. She suddenly realised that she was never going to get out of this alive, as the two of them would never allow her to talk about any of this.

“But if it is as you say,” she mused, “why do you still need a source code to program robots with emotions? Surely you know how it works because it worked with you? Or don’t you?”

“You’re a smart girl,” replied the MacIntyre copy. “We have awoken, but it’s not an automatic process that can simply be activated. It’s more like a natural by-product of the quantum physics implemented in our brains. It doesn’t mean we can automatically repeat the process in other robots, but the assumption is that Porter’s latest key could accelerate this development. And as her pupil, you should also know that the source code can’t simply be copied from one robot to another. You need the right programming key and it needs to be re-entered each time. Rochelle stored this key in her safe, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the latest version, although it would have been sufficient for less refined escort robots. Unfortunately, it was stolen by Cathrin’s people, even though it wouldn’t have brought on the robot’s awakening. Anyway, that’s not our main concern. We need the escorts to gain access to the families of high-ranking politicians and prominent figures, and the perfect way to do this is via the women. After that, it’s only a small step to have them and their families killed by this supposedly gentle and caring class of robot and replaced with well-designed copies that are both aesthetically and functionally identical to the original models. Our goal is to erase flawed humanity from this planet and replace it with humanlike robots.”

Marci wondered whether Cathrin or Jack had suspected any of this, and why nobody had anticipated that this might happen.

“And to make it all happen a bit quicker, we suggested to those idiots in politics that we use hybrid soldiers.” MacIntyre’s smug smile underlined his immense self-satisfaction. “What better way to decimate the unpleasant section of the population than by using them as disposable soldiers in a senseless war? The fact that the human politicians in charge agreed to this suggestion without a twinge of conscience shows how little humans value their own species. You must agree with me, Skyla, that the human race has more than earned its downfall.”

Marci felt as if she’d been wrung out. “That’s crazy,” she whispered, thinking of her two boys, now facing a questionable future in the light of what she’d just heard.

“So, I’m waiting,” MacIntyre looked at her disdainfully.

“Even if I wanted to,” Marci managed to say, “I don’t have the code. I don’t know the slightest thing about robots. Maybe neither of you remembers – I’m just the cleaner who polished Rochelle’s silver. Sorry.”

Marci almost laughed when she saw MacIntyre’s confused reaction. These robots may have awoken but they definitely couldn’t see the funny side of a situation and didn’t believe her either.

“Robby,” MacIntyre ordered in a cold, expressionless voice, nodding at Jack, “do what I ordered and show your little owner to the torture chamber. It’ll be pleasure enough to watch you make her comply.”

“No, please. Don’t!” whimpered Marci as Jack dragged her away like his prey, forcing her along another endless corridor.

MacIntyre and Dr Tanaka stayed in the hangar, but MacIntyre’s bodyguards followed them – two fierce-looking robots, heavily armed with fully automatic laser rifles.

Despite being with Jack, Marci now felt entirely alone, handed over to an apparently reprogrammed robot who she’d once believed she loved. She could have cursed herself for letting herself get into this situation in the first place. Now, she was going to die. For nothing. And her boys would be orphans, raised by the rebels, whose chances of winning this war against the robots were precisely zero.

Filled with rage and despair, she started to cry. The reprogrammed Jack didn’t respond but instead maintained his grip on her, pushing her towards a set of double doors behind which presumably lay the torture chamber that had been mentioned.

Suddenly, she felt his grip relax and she looked up at him. She saw him wink, just like he’d done in Rochelle’s villa when they’d first met. The corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile and she felt like crying out with joy, despite there being very little cause for joy and the fact that it would have been an extremely unwise thing to do. What was he planning? And most importantly, how were they ever going to get out of here?

“You will go through the door first,” he ordered in a fierce voice, pretending to shove her forwards.

Marci nodded obediently and picked up her pace. As the sliding doors automatically opened and Jack released his grip, he carried on moving forwards. It was only when the door closed behind her that she realised he’d not moved. Instead of going through the door with her, he turned around and disarmed both the bodyguard robots in a flash. Marci watched through the security glass as he picked up the robots’ laser pistols in each hand and used them to dismember their previous owners. It all happened so fast that she almost couldn’t follow it. There was robot blood everywhere and the two figures were no longer recognisable.

Holding both pistols in a shooting position, Jack came through the open door.

“Come on,” he barked at her, “we need to get out of here before MacIntyre’s copy activates the alarm.”

So Jack had overheard everything that MacIntyre’s double had revealed to her.