Scott Medbury - Inga

Redfern rolled his eyes.

“I was delivering the robot to your boss; we got held up by two heavies. I don’t know who they were, but they made me insert a card into… Inga. It overrode all her security and legal programming and let us send her orders remotely. Orders to kill.”

Suddenly it all made sense to Ivan. Inga going crazy had been an assassination attempt, probably ordered by the Columbians, and instead of a gun, the weapon they were using was a robot that their intended victim had ordered.

His eyes suddenly narrowed, and he looked intently at Redfern.

“You helped them?”

“No! They forced me,” he said, his voice breaking as he became aware that again his life was on a knife’s edge. “They threatened to kill my wife and little girls.”

Ivan slowly relaxed. Molenski’s pursuit wasn’t as close as he had thought, but there was still little time to waste. He lowered his gun and gestured at the device Redfern was holding.

“Is this how you tracked us?”

“Yes, the card I was forced to install contains a GPS tracking chip.”

Ivan held out his hand. Redfern hesitated, then handed it to him reluctantly. Ivan threw it to the pavement and then smashed it to pieces with his heel.

“There will be no more tracking.”

Redfern flinched as the big man grabbed his shoulder and patted him down, locating the gun quickly and pulling it out. He looked questioningly at the technician.

“It’s not mine; I took it from the men after… after I shot them.”

Ivan stared at him a little longer and then slid the gun into the belt of his pants.

“You won’t need it anymore. Come.”

Ivan gave him a gentle shove, propelling him along the path towards Inga’s hiding spot.

“So, you’re a technician? You can help me with Inga…”

They rounded a bend, and pulled up in surprise. Inga was standing in the middle of the path staring up at the full moon.

“Inga! I told you to wait in the bushes.”

She looked around at them.

“Yes Myfriend, but I grew bored.”

Redfern’s eyes widened at this declaration. The machine was clearly faulty and probably a great danger to any humans it met in its current state.

How the fuck am I supposed to deactivate it with the big guy watching over me.

“Who is this man?”

“He is a technician from Genitix.”

Redfern watched the robot warily as they walked up to her. His guts churned nervously, he’d seen what the machine was capable of and knew she could flip at any second. Her disconcerting stare only added to his uneasiness.

“How do you want me to help her?” he asked.

“She keeps talking about how she needs to run a full diagnostic check, but I don’t want her… I don’t want her to change back.”

Relief flooded Redfern.

“Oh good! Yes, I know. We can’t risk her reverting to the new programming. I saw the damage she did. Look, the only way we can be sure she won’t go assassin again is to remove the card and deactivate her until the authorities…”

The gun was placed against his forehead so quickly that Redfern didn’t even have time to flinch. He put his hands up, his eyebrows raised.

“What? What did I say?”

“You will not fucking deactivate her. I just want you to make sure there is no long-term damage and that she doesn’t turn again. I want her to stay as she is now.”

Redfern nodded.

“Fine, I can’t do anything here, though. We need to get her to the Genitix lab, so I can remove the card and run her diagnostic check.”

Ivan looked at him suspiciously.

“If I remove the card, it will mean no one else can control her remotely.”

“Fine, but any tricks and I will shoot you through the head,” Ivan said, in a flat voice.

Redfern didn’t doubt his sincerity. He swallowed hard and gave Ivan a nod. He would have to play this by ear. Hopefully, an opportunity would arise once they were safely back at Genitix.

“Good, hurry, we have to go,” ordered Ivan.

Two minutes later they were in the SUV that Redfern had commandeered and heading out of the park. They were almost to the turn back onto West Congress Parkway when a black stretch Mercedes sped past them going in the opposite direction. Ivan recognized the license plate immediately but kept his speed steady as they merged into the traffic and headed into the city.

Molenski was close. But not close enough.

“Show me the way,” he said to Redfern, after a glance in the mirror to make sure the Mercedes hadn’t turned to follow them.

“Have them search the whole fucking park,” snapped Molenski, when Andre and the other three jogged back to inform him they had found no sign of Ivan or the robot.

“You heard him!” shouted Andre.

He thought it was stupid to waste any more time here, but given the mood Molenski was in, he wasn’t going to risk saying anything. He turned to follow his men.

“Nyet! Not you, idiot!” yelled Molenski.

Andre turned, his face red. Molenski kicked out at the ruined device on the pavement.

“I want you to get in touch with that FBI guy you were dealing with for the Obermeyer job. See if he can do something to resurrect this fucking GPS and find out what it was tracking. Whoever it was must have been in that SUV we passed.”

Andre swallowed a sarcastic reply. When they had passed the SUV on the way into the park, he had suggested it might be worth following and pulling them over just in case. Molenski had shut him down.

“You are probably right Boss,” he said, without a trace of irony. “I will call him now.”

He took out his cellphone and walked away from Molenski, searching his contact list for the FBI surveillance guy they had bribed into their service.

Ten minutes later they were in the Merc and headed back to the estate. The Russian wanted to have a bath and a cigar to think about things while Andre went to see Agent Hedley Whittaker.

The Genitix Factory was located in Massachusetts, but the company’s Chicago headquarters had a sophisticated smaller scale lab on the 10th and 11th floor of their office building. They entered through the basement parking lot and took the elevator up to the tenth floor.

Redfern was nervous. He didn’t see how he could deactivate the robot without getting himself killed and had started to think his best option would be to try and sneak away and make a phone call to 911.

“It’s right through here.”

He swiped his security card for the fourth time since they’d entered the building and led them through a final set of heavy glass sliding doors into the sterile confines of the 11th floor.

Both Inga and Ivan looked around in wonder. The ‘lab’ took up nearly the entire floor. An enormous space filled with desks and work pods that contained an assortment of computer equipment and mechanical devices.

This is not what caught their attention, though. Much more interesting were the many humanlike figures, in various stages of completion, around the room. Some bore skin but were absent of hair; others were nothing but a bare metal chassis.

“Follow me; we’ll go to my pod.”

Redfern took the lead. Ivan felt on edge, the silent building and the half-built robots were more disconcerting than he would have admitted. They passed what was clearly a feminine shaped robot chassis, its bulbous eyes staring starkly from its skinless, metal skull.

Ivan almost jumped when Inga’s hand grasped his. His senses zeroed in on the place their skin touched. Her hand was warm and soft, just as he would have expected the hand of a real person – a real girl – to feel, but here in this place, it suddenly seemed artificial. He tried not to look at her in case her face revealed something he didn’t want to see, but in the end, he couldn’t look away. Her touch called loudly to him.