Machine Man - Max Barry [67]
I SLOWED. I stopped. On the sidewalk ahead, an elderly Latino woman struggled along with bags of groceries. She saw my hooves and her eyes bulged. “Diablo.”
Lola was back there. She had who-knew-what in her chest cavity. Cassandra Cautery said they were taking care of her but that could be a lie. They had installed a device in Lola without her knowledge.
“Diablo!” cried the woman.
Maybe I should go to the police. Tell them there was a woman with a malfunctioning Better Heart she hadn’t asked for. That had to be some kind of crime. And guards had shot at me and that was wrong so the police should be on my side. I had metal legs but they would get over that. Although I had killed the Manager. Possibly from their point of view I was a violent criminal. Had Better Future already reported me?
“Diablo!”
“Quiet,” I said, because that was making it hard to think. My wounded biceps began transiting from comfortably numb to distractingly sore with hints of impending agony. I tried to concentrate. My legs shivered. That was weird. I hadn’t known they could do that. I wished Lola was here. She would know what to do. It was my weakness: I could not predict people. Lola could. Maybe there was a back entrance. A way into Better Future not protected by security guards with guns they weren’t shy about using. I mentally scanned floor plans. There wasn’t.
“Diablo!” the woman shrieked. She dropped her groceries and clapped her hands to her cheeks. “Diablo!”
“Then why am I going back?” I shouted. I wasn’t angry with her. I was just emotional about my own likely death. The Contours began to hammer the sidewalk, bearing me back toward Lola.
I WASN’T an idiot. I didn’t approach from the front. Adjacent to Better Future was a small industrial plant, and I positioned one hoof on its chain-link fence and pushed. The metal jangled and shrieked and tore from its frame. I ran between building-sized vats and emerged to discover not one but two fences between me and Better Future, because neither company trusted the other. The Better Future fence was higher, stronger, and more likely to automatically notify somebody upon being breached. I raised a hoof and tore down the first fence, crossed eight feet of no-man’s-land, and positioned a hoof against Better Future’s fence. Every muscle in my body contracted. My teeth gouged my tongue. “Farg!” I said. I backed up, my nerves trembling. I didn’t know why I hadn’t realized it would be electrified. It was lucky my electronics were insulated or this would have been a humiliating ending. I looked around for something helpful, like maybe a tall tree I could push over, but saw only struts and scaffolding and other excellent electrical conductors. I looked at the fence again. Maybe twelve feet high. I could possibly jump that. I had never gotten around to testing the Contours’ vertical leap capability under controlled conditions but that one time they had leaped sixty feet in the air. I looked at the Better Future building. I concentrated on a patch of perfect grass on the other side of the fence. I thought, Take me there.
The legs settled. I tensed, as if there were anything my muscles could do, and the legs sprang. My torso compressed like an accordion. I bit my tongue again. As I passed over the fence I let go of the seat and flailed my arms in the air, because my body still couldn’t come to grips with the fact that it was attached to two tons of titanium. The Contours thumped into soil. I rocked forward in the seat. I breathed. I was okay. That was actually not so bad. That was the least terrifying and physically damaging leap I had performed in the Contours so far. I thought, I’m getting the hang of this, and looked at the