Day of the Predator - Alex Scarrow [28]
To take me down.
Howard smiled grimly. Not such a big price to pay to save the future of mankind, not really.
CHAPTER 16
2015, Texas
They landed with a wet splash on to a hard tiled floor.
‘Ouch!’ Liam whimpered.
The water sloshed noisily across the floor soaking cardboard boxes of domestic cleaning materials.
‘Jay-zus, why can’t we ever land on something soft … like a pillow?’ He grimaced as he let go of his nose and puffed out the breath he’d taken back in 2001.
‘Insufficient data to identify a soft landing loca–’
Liam raised a hand. ‘It’s all right … I wasn’t after an answer.’ He pulled a wet shock of dark hair out of his eyes and opened them, instantly wishing he hadn’t.
‘Oh-Mother-of-God!’ He clamped his eyes shut and turned away to look at the storeroom wall.
‘What is wrong?’
‘You could have warned me you were taking those wet things off!’
‘Why?’
‘Because … because …’ He bit his lip. This is so very not right.
‘Because you’re a, ah … you’re a girl now, Bob.’
Liam spotted some towels on the storeroom shelf and began to dry himself off.
‘You should assign a new ident. to this AI copy. I may be “Bob” now,’ she said, ‘but this AI will develop new sub-routines and characteristics that require a new identifying label.’
Liam nodded. ‘Yes.’ Self-consciously he found himself wrapping the towel round his waist as he hurriedly removed his wet boxers and pulled the clothes he’d brought with him out of the bag.
‘Four seconds before we were transmitted, you indicated you had a suitable ident. for me.’
‘Oh yes … so I did.’
She turned to look at him. ‘So, what will I be called?’
Liam could hear the rustle of clothes being quickly pulled on behind his back.
Good.
He really didn’t need to see that … again. He found a pair of neon green three-quarter-length baggy shorts and a navy blue sweatshirt with the word NIKE splayed across it. And, for some reason, a large tick beneath the word. He felt much better with some clothes on, even if they looked quite ridiculous.
‘I had a cousin called Rebecca,’ he said. ‘Used to call her Becks for short.’
‘Becks?’ replied the support unit, her voice rising at the end in a query.
‘That’s right – Becks.’
‘A moment … logging ident….’
‘So, are you decent now? Can I turn round?’
‘Decent?’
‘You know, got clothes on?’
‘Affirmative.’
Liam turned round and found his breath caught momentarily. ‘Blimey!’
Becks cocked her head and looked at him. ‘Are these garments incorrectly deployed?’
His eyes skittered awkwardly up from the combat boots to the black leggings, to the black lace mini-skirt to a black crop top that displayed a bare midriff, up to her … perfect … face framed by tumbling locks of flaming fox-red hair. Quite clearly Sal had decided their support unit needed to look like some sort of gothic valkyrie.
‘Uh. No, you are … you got it about … errrr … right, I suppose … I think.’
Liam felt his mouth go dry and a strange jittery, lurching sensation in his stomach.
Jay-zus … get a grip, Liam. That’s … that’s … that’s just Bob wearing a girl suit. All right?
‘Recommendation: you should refer to me as Becks from this point on,’ she said firmly. ‘It will avoid unnecessary confusion between AI versions.’
He nodded. ‘All right … uh, OK. So, you’re Becks, then. That’s that settled.’
‘Correct.’ Her smile was faltering and clumsy as always, just like Bob. But on those lips, strangely quite perfect.
Liam decided to shift his mind to other things. ‘I suppose we had better get a move on and find this Chan fella.’
Becks nodded and blinked, retrieving data from her hard drive. ‘We are located within the institute’s experimental reactor building. The reactor is very close to this location.’
Liam stepped towards the storeroom’s door and cracked it open a sliver. Outside he could see a narrow hallway and, opposite,