Shutdown Syntax - Chapter 5
Voices
If you are new to Shutdown Syntax, start from the beginning.
Note: This chapter includes violence and strong language, as the entire story does. If you are new and starting this story, please be aware of the potential triggers in a dark story as this.
Brillos Docks remained one of the oldest sections of Vanguard City. Keeping the same hours as human workers, even with the shift to many warehouses using bots. Being on the waterfront, keeping all the salt air and spray from corroding the bots was tough. Hence, skeleton crews of workers were on hand for maintenance and human hours were kept by bots and humans alike.
This time of night, maintenance crews were long gone, at home with families or at the fights at High Tide or the underground bot fights dotted around the city.
Street lamps flickered, out of sync with the security lights flickering along the warehouses. Deep shifting shadows sprang to life all around Ali.
Amid the creaks and groans of aging machinery sitting outside the dock warehouses—like BulkCranes and Stackliner 1500 series settling after a strenuous day of work—came the faint scraping of metal on pavement. And the sound of footsteps. Not the sound of many people’s footsteps. A few at most. Close together. Slow and methodical.
Ali knew generally where Iron Pulse's warehouse was, buried in a memory long ago. She was close, but the memory remained faded back from a time when she’d fended for herself. It was the footsteps that concerned her. They were some distance away... but what if they were from Iron Pulse's grounds?
Thumper swung his head at the noise. She braced herself for a squeak. Standing on her shoulder, Thumper's metal on metal ground in her ear, but… no squeak.
She touched the IrisLink node at her temple, which had cooled considerably since the drone attack. "Overlay map of Brillos Docks and show my current location."
A transparent, 3-dimensional map of the docks appeared, blue with deeper outlines of each building and their names and holding companies etched into each.
Alright. Line of sight. That’s all Ali needed to find. Keeping herself enveloped in shadow, Ali reached out, manipulating the map that no one could see but her. Her arms, on the other hand, sticking out of shadows may get her caught.
"Where is this building? Can I get to it safely?" She selected a smaller building on Iron Pulse's grounds, perhaps an office or security building, that appeared to be the same height as the surrounding warehouses and had a decent line of sight.
A small blue dot marked Ali’s location, pulsing. Several routes highlighted, though most dimmed except for one. It was closer than she thought. Only a few buildings away. And, if she was right, closer to the voices.
Optimal path displayed. Fastest route with minimal exposure.
“Enhance detail. Is there a way onto the roof?”
Structure scan based on Vanguard City records. Rooftop access detected: service ladder on west side of building.
Ali turned, following the path, but the hushed voices carried on the wind as she neared grew louder. Damn. Pausing between two buildings, a degrading Iron Pulse sign hung over the door to a small office building. A tiny secondary security shed lay ten feet away. In the gap between them, Ali saw a nondescript white van blocking the entrance to one of the three large warehouses Iron Pulse owned.
The voices receded into the middle warehouse. Ali dashed to the side of the office. A retired maintenance ladder dangled overhead, likely not used often since drones took over most maintenance of air conditioning units.
She jumped, fingers barely grazing the bottom rung. When she jumped again, she grabbed hold.
She dangled when she should have slid down to the ground with the ladder, as it should have fallen to let people climb.
Heaving herself up, Ali grabbed it with her other hand, too.
The voices returned. Still muffled. Carried over the sound of something being dragged and something else squeaking.
The ladder wouldn't budge. Ali hung precariously as she debated falling back to the ground or climbing further.
“It’s been boring the last few weeks without you around,” a guy said.
Ali landed, keeping herself in the shadow again. Her heart raced, a bead of sweat rolling down her cheek.
“The recovery was longer than I expected.” That was a woman’s voice.
Neither was familiar to Ali.
“Yeah? I didn’t think the recovery time for new installs was supposed to be that long.”
Ali bit back a groan at the stupid, flirty way guys tried to talk. Ugh.
The pair heaved together, and whatever they tossed landed back on the ground with a heavy thunk.
Perfect.
Ali jumped again as soon as they started groaning and lifting whatever heavy thing they had. The ladder theoretically should have fallen to ground level, but this one had a thick layer of rust creeping all the way to the wheels. Ali prayed and heaved herself up, one rung at a time, until her boot touched the bottom rung. She made a silent climb until she reached the top.
A thin layer of gravel bur coated the rooftop.
Clunk!
The ladder below her shifted, even now that her weight was removed. It clunked, clattered, and fell the rest of the way. Diving forward, Ali bit her lips shut. Thumper practically strangled her as he held on for dear mechanical life. Each piece of gravel bit her skin. Many slicing deep gouges on any exposed skin.
“Did you hear that?” the woman asked.
Thumper, the damned bot, made to scramble to the edge and begin recording.
Fucking self-destructive programming! Who the hell programmed that dumbass robot?
Sure, she knew it was her own fault, but still! Ali jumped, landing on the boxy bot. Each protrusion jammed into her chest excruciatingly. But Ali dug her finger into his neck and found the power switch, shutting the little bot down.
"Yeah, what the hell was that?"
“You’re the man,” the woman’s voice fell back. “Go check it out!”
"What happened to equal opportunities? You got a link; have it figure out what happened."
"Damned thing ain't even commercial grade. Anytime I ask questions, I get the bare minimum of responses if it can even understand the question. Really hope that your alls upgrades work when you get to ‘em."
The two people moved, footsteps pounding ever closer.
Ali clutched Thumper to her, debating what she could do. Reaching for her weapon would make noise. So would running.
"Ha!" The women nervously laughed. "How long has that ladder been stuck up there?"
"Dunno. You always jump so easily?"
Well, if that guy thought he was getting laid tonight, he was dead wrong.
The woman responded flatly, "I work these docks during the day. Have you been around when one of those Strider-Lifts pops off and blows? Salt air does bad things to the machines around here. Even when they cool for the night, things blow off."
It was as if he could get back into her good graces with all the charm of Hauler Mech on ice. "That ain't no machine, though. It's a ladder..."
All he had to do was call her ‘girly’ and Ali would smack him herself. Cover be damned.
"It ain't the first time a railing walkway or ladder busted out of nowhere. Especially with how little they are used."
From his voice, Ali couldn't tell if the guy finally took the hint. But he continued, grotesquely underwhelming with his charm, "Bots ever use them?" The man and woman's voices seemed to return to the van. Ali breathed deeply. Then, as slowly as possible, Ali raised herself on her hands and feet and crawled to the edge.
One gut-wrenchingly nerve-wracking peak over the ledge later, she saw a van. The man and woman were close enough to the van that she couldn't get a good look at their faces. The warehouse they'd been emptying had a bay of rolling doors, only one of which was open.
She couldn’t well stand up. There were enough cameras and lights they’d see her. She needed… access to something or seeing through the eyes of…!
Ali opened her bag, keeping the drone inside but prying pieces of the case off, and found the optical lens. Most of these pieces were plug-and-play, standardized ports and connectors. With the case off, she held the lens unit, following the cable to the back, where she yanked the micro cable plug.
Feeling her own port, Ali blindly dragged the micro cable along until it hit a port, and she plugged the camera in.
New Display Option Available: External lens detected.
"Is there sufficient power to utilize the external lens?" Ali whispered and said a silent prayer. Who knew when she'd be able to charge her IrisLink next.
IrisLink reserves are at 78%. Based on the current reserve levels, the projected operational time for external lens support is 63 minutes.
It better not take that long. “Use external lens.”
Configuring visual feed …
Live feed linked from [Device ID/External Source]. Optimizing for enhanced image clarity and range.
"Overlay image, 70% opacity. Can you auto-lock targets, snap images, and store them for later facial recognition?"
Auto-lock, capture, and image storage functions enabled. Target acquisition in progress. Images queued for later facial recognition processing. Confirm save parameters if adjustments are required.
"Save parameters confirmed. Also, tag and ID visible items."
Initiating tag and ID protocol. Visible items tagged; identification in progress.
"Continue during the duration of the recording."
Adjusting the camera angle, Ali caught the two people on their way back into the warehouse. The woman was taller than the man and built a bit larger, too. She had a pretty bob, though it was impossible to tell what color her hair really was in the dim light. The man, slender and curly-haired, Ali pegged for an office worker. He wasn't the type of guy Ali usually saw in this district, not at night or often at all. But people had their weird quirks, after all.
Images froze on the overlay, highlighting various facial features that IrisLink marked for later cataloging.
The woman laughed at something the man said. Maybe she’d misjudged how the woman felt about the man. There was a certain vibe between them. Batting eyes and even a slight flush of their cheeks.
But it was the man's eyes. Every time IrisLink flashed a freeze frame, the look in the man's eyes didn't match his smile. A cold calculation... but that could be bias. Plenty of superiors and partners accused her of bias.
The pair returned with smaller, relatively unmarked metal cases except for the biohazard stickers on all sides and 'Handle with care.' The same as seen in the hospital for her IrisLink installation, though those had manufacturer names engraved and additional notations like 'Secure Case'. Even IrisLink tagged them as likely Secure Transport Cases with sterile implants.
“IrisLink, what additional capabilities are onboard to identify what is inside the van?”
Multiple cameras detected within operational range. Compatibility confirmed with Ghosthand protocol.
"Locations of the cameras?" Ali whispered and swallowed a lump stuck in her throat.
“I never asked, where do you work during the day?” the woman’s question snatched Ali’s attention. She batted her eyes at the man, a shy smile on her lips.
"I never said? Huh." He, whoever he was, seemed distracted. Something pinged, and he pulled out his phone. A model Ali relied on IrisLink to identify as custom-built.
When the woman didn't get the response she'd expected, she tried to say goodbye. Were they already finished taking whatever was in the warehouse they needed? Did she have enough footage to figure out what was in the van?
"Yes, well, there's one last thing," the man's demure smile returned, along with the frigid glint in his eye.
“Oh?” she said hopefully.
His smile widened. Ali’s knuckles ached as she squeezed the camera. No. Mr. G always said the gut knew when something was off.
“Did they give you the bio bomb?”
“Ah,” the man, distracted, scrolled. “Something like that.” He gave the woman the same toothy grin. Too many teeth, and too white.
The man pushed a button on the phone, and the woman's eyes just turned off. As if the light within them died suddenly, though her eyes remained open as she collapsed to the ground.
Ali squeezed her eyes shut.
The man walked over to the woman's body and removed an envelope from his coat pocket. He opened the paper and squeezed it so that whatever was inside fell onto her. Then he took out his phone and selected a number.
The man walked to the driver's side door nonchalantly and settled behind the wheel. Someone must have picked up as he started talking.
Alert: Elevated and prolonged heart rate detected
No shit? There was something so infuriating with AI that even with the current advancements, it just… triggered her. “IrisLink, is health diagnostics available for non-users?”
Biometric data of non-registered individuals is restricted by privacy protocols. Limited environmental readings may detect observable indicators such as heart rate, if visible or audible, through available sensors.
"Select the female target in the video. Show current vitals."
No observable heart rate detected.
She didn’t need the information. It was only confirmation. Ali breathed. Waiting for the damn van to leave.
Alert: Unauthorized access attempt detected.
Warning: Active targeting system detected.
The van rumbled to life, rolling away when a different message scrolled into Ali’s field of vision:
Good luck.
Well, shit.
Chapter 6 comes in April! We’ll reconnect with Tim!