14.6

My mantisblade collides with Sloan's military-grade armour, and I'm flung backwards, sliding several feet across the floor. When I stop moving and look up, Sloan is standing there with her fists clenched and her back hunched as if prepping for another strike.

"Rhea Steele-szzzz," she says eerily. "Back from the grave – except Daddy's-szzzz not here to save you."

"Finally remember?" I groan, picking myself up off the ground. "I see you haven't changed one bit: still obsessed with tech, only now you think it makes you some sort of corporate god. Abusing employees? Threatening lives? Go and fuck yourself."

Sloan lets out a chuckle that sounds awfully confident. She straightens her posture and lets her fists fall to her sides, as if to reinforce that confidence. "I've heard stories-szzzz about you," she begins, putting her hands behind her back. "Legend calls you the Unkillable Girl: survived losing your arm, survived Priest-szzzz, survived Calyx Ward and everything this-szzzz world has to throw at you. I knew you seemed familiar. I knew there was a ghost-szzzz. And Calyx Ward sniffed you out, because ghosts in systems don't last long, especially not in my system."

I bear my mantisblade tighter, just in case she decides to make any sudden moves. I let out a scoff – albeit very slight. "You call this a system? This is a playground for a little girl who's too big for her boots, if you can call those horse hooves boots. You must really think you're somethin'. That Ward gives a shit about you."

Another chuckle. "And what was-szzzz your plan? To destroy the trucks-szzzz? You must have been behind the infiltration in Sector 12. You must have killed Carrow."

"I didn't kill no one," I yell.

"Spineless-szzzz," Sloan says. "So very human. So full of mistakes. And do you know what happens to humans that make mistakes-szzzz in my system?" Her eye turns blue, and I hear that sound: the sound of heavy metal sliding across the rafters, across the rails above. I look up, and in the distance I can see The Overseer, Big Eye in the Sky, barrelling over.

It stops directly over Sloan's head, and its limbs extend down across her, both claws snapping for a snatch. The iris shines a bright blue light over my body, and a deep voice rumbles out from its speakers:

"Deviation detected: unauthorised visor on work premises. Employee 8-1-5-8-5-1 write-up submitted for review. Awaiting response."

Sloan says: "Override safety protocol: imminent danger detected: kill Employee 8-1-5-8-5-1."

The Overseer doesn't say anything for a moment, just calculates, but after a moment the lights to the logistics station suddenly turn red, and a strident alarm throws an awful echo through the industrial shelves.

"Central loading bays are now being isolated," The Overseer says, its iris turning a deep, dark crimson right above me.

I run a quick-scan on it, thinking that I might be able to disable it temporarily while I make a run for it, but all the quick-hack options are greyed out due to the layered ICE protection.

It slides above me.

"Netrunning won't save you now, Rhea," says Sloan. "It only obeys-szzzz me."

The Overseer lets out another whir, and a second later it whips down with its claws ready to grab. I zip back unsteadily and it stops right before striking the floor. I book it deeper into the loading bay, hoping that the pallet racks might grant some cover to where I might be able to lose its track and head for the exit. But there are two problems: one is that the industrial shutters have already shut down from the emergency isolation, and two is that The Overseer is not letting up one bit. Every way I run, every way I turn, there's that big halo of blue light hanging over my body like the ring of a UFO ready to cast me up into its extraterrestrial cabin. And I have no weapons – nothing except this damn mantisblade – with no options to take it down except for… the heaters.

That's right: Sloan had brought up a weakness when talking to Calyx Ward: the eye relies on thermal gradients: shapes and motions painted in heat. Too many hot surfaces, and its vision falters. Steam vents, engine bays, a room full of running servers, which can all drown it in computerised fire.

I slide through an empty space, crawl forward a bit, then move out to the other side, looking at the ceilings. The commercial heaters are spread out evenly across the entire warehouse, some glowing a soft red, others dimmer, and others having no colour whatsoever (probably a byproduct of the ventilation/coolant problem that's been infecting this place). Wasting no time, I run a quick-scan on a dormant heater, turn it on, and use 'Manual Override' to turn the temperature all the way up. Even through the sound of The Overseer's rail-sliding I can hear the enormous overloaded thrum of its cores igniting. I repeat this for each one, and then The Overseer is back, sliding down along my lane once again. It stops for a moment, eye switching erratically between blue and red, frozen in place.

Now's my chance. I look for a way to gain high-ground, find an aerial lift, hop onto it, and ride it up to the top shelf, directly across from the blinded eye. If I can jump across, I might be able to tear into its wires and circuits with my mantisblade, but right when I'm about to go for it, all the heaters suddenly turn off, and The Overseer's eye solidifies into red.

"You really are clever, aren't you?" Sloan's voice echoes across the warehouse through the wall speakers. "But I admit: not clever enough."

I head for the other side of the pallet rack and try to hop down, but something catches me mid-air: a claw.

Fuck!

Before I know it, I'm dangling above the logistics floor like a mouse caught by its tail, only I'm caught by my leg, and the force applied by The Overseer's grip is almost crushing. It turns me over and grabs my arm with its other claw, ready to rip me apart as it hauls me higher into the air.

"I admit," Sloan says, "until Ward brought you up in conversation, I forgot all about you, Rhea." I can hear her piston limbs slowly walking towards me, even though I can't see her directly. "You're simply-szzzz that irrelevant to this-szzzz world. Another obstacle crushed beneath her boot, another want-to-be. But I think after fifty years it's about time you joined Mommy and Daddy-szzzz." Then, as if growing impatient, "Kill her!"

The pressure of The Overseer increases, but before it can rip me in half, something loud crashes to the floor on the opposite side, and a voice yells out:

"Hey!"

Riven. I know that voice.

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The Overseer eases its grip and looks over at her, angling me in such a way that I see her too. She's on top of a pallet rack and knocking several drums of biofuel, causing them to burst and leak all across the floor.

The Overseer lets me go, dropping me on the pallet rack. It rails across the ceiling towards Riven, casting a blue light over her.

"What are you doing?" Sloan shouts.

"Deviation detected: imminent hazards. Employee 6-1-6-8-1-7 write-up submitted for review. Awaiting response."

"Kill her too," Sloan yells. "Override safety protocol: imminent danger: kill employee 6-1-6-8-1-7!"

Once again, the iris turns red directly above her.

But then I get an idea: I kick off a drum of biofuel, and it strikes the floor with an enormous clang that results in a wash of blue-green liquid.

The Overseer, as expected, turns towards me. It rails over, as if completely forgetting that it had been tasked with killing me, and says:

"Deviation detected: imminent hazards: unauthorised visor. Employee 8-1-5-8-5-1 write-up submitted for review. Awaiting response."

Before Sloan can say anything else, before she can order my death a second time, Riven kicks another drum onto the floor.

"Override safety protocols—" Sloan begins.

But The Overseer ignores her once again, sliding over towards Riven, as if caught in a vicious loop. I use this opportunity to start turning up each of the heaters, kicking a drum every now and again to rotate the robot's attention.

Before I can heat them all up, a heavy crash sounds out behind me. When I look back, Sloan is standing there, looming over me with her seven-foot stature.

She jumped that high?

"Fine," she says, releasing the pistons in her arms and getting ready to strike, "I'll do it myself!" She lunges forward, the sound of her hydraulics whirring out with an awful thud-thud-thud, as I scramble back. Her fist slams into a biofuel drum, and I instinctively seize another by the handle, swing it around, and smash it into her head. She goes rattling back but doesn't trip; her superhuman legs keep her firmly grounded in place. The pistons in her quads hiss, pull back, and she leaps several feet into the air before crashing down. I manage to slip back right before she can slam into me. I try to run another quick-hack on her, Black Iris, but her eye only goes black for a second before turning red.

"Your cheap hacks might work on everyone else in this rotten city," says Sloan, swinging for me again, "but they don't work on me!"

I duck, dig my mantisblade into the pallet rack, and run a swooping leg under Sloan's body, causing her to trip and hit her head off a biofuel drum. The impact is so loud and harsh that it echoes across the entire warehouse, and all I can think of is that old adage: 'the bigger they are, the harder they fall'. Something rectangular slips out from the side of her neural port, and when I scan it I can see that it's the logistics shard.

She must have gone back for it when I left the office.

But I scan for too long, because within seconds a fist shoots up and clocks me square in the jaw. I go helplessly sprawling and fall off the rack. When I hit the floor, hot pain roars through my body.

"Vitals low," my neural AI says. "Activating emergency protocols."

Electricity pulses through my body, spiking enough adrenaline to get me up on my feet. But I don't stand for long, because before I know it Sloan leaps up into the air again and comes slamming down.

CRASH!

The pain is awful now. Everywhere in my body. I can hardly move or breathe.

I let out a cough.

"Christ, you are hard to fucking kill!" Sloan says. She brings up her arm to finish me off, and something heavy strikes her from above. Riven, tossing biofuel drums down over her. Sloan lets out a fed-up groan, grabs a drum mid-fall, and hurls it back at Riven, striking her in the chest. She goes flying back.

"Riven!" I cry.

"You slimy-szzzz little worm," she says, then looks back at me. "Hope you enjoyed your run, Rhea – because it ends-szzzz here." She preps those arms one last time, each piston kicking back for a final blow.

The Overseer shines above us, the blue light blinding. "Deviation detected: immediate threat to harm an employee: managerial write-up submitted for review. Awaiting response."

Sloan looks up. "What are you doing? I'm in command." She presses a finger to her neural port. "Wait – my shard-szzzz?"

The logistics shard. Does it control The Overseer?

Wait, if that's the case, then that means…

I reach into my pocket, pull out the shard-copy, the same one I used to access the Lumina truck, and, without giving it a second thought, insert it into my neural port.

"Suspicious data identified," my neural AI says. "Are you sure you wish to allow this access to your primary neural system?"

I immediately select 'Yes' on the pop-up, creep back, and say:

"Override safety protocol: imminent danger: kill Sloan Harrow."

The Overseer's iris turns red.

"What-szzzz?" Sloan says. "That's-szzzz impossible. You don't have my shard-szzzz." She lunges for me, but The Overseer sweeps down and catches her by the leg. "WHAT-SZZZZ ARE YOU DOING-SZZZZ? LET ME GO! OVERRIDE SAFETY-SZZZZ PROTOCOLS-SZZZZ!"

"Request denied," The Overseer says. "The user lacks relevant authority."

"I AM THE AUTHORITY-SZZZZ!" Sloan says. "THIS IS MY SYSTEM-SZZZZ! I BUILT IT-SZZZZ!"

"That's the thing about bad systems," I say, talking through the pain. "One way or another, they end up defeating themselves-szzzz." I mimic her snakelisp.

"YOU BITCH-SZZZZ!" Sloan yells. "LET ME GOOOOOOO!" And she thrashes, kicks, does her best to escape, but The Overseer grips her tight and holds her limbs together. "I CAN'T DIE-SZZZZ! NOT NOW-SZZZZ! I WAS BUILT TO LAST-SZZZZ! STOP STOP STOP STOP STOP-SZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ—"

The Overseer spreads its claw-arms wide, tearing her limb from limb before coming together again and crushing her in a single squeeze. Sloan Harrow's screams peter into shouts, and from shouts into weeps, and from weeps into silence. Nothing happens for a moment – The Overseer just keeps her held there, a mangled mush of corporate parts and flesh fighting for relevancy, before letting her drop to the floor.

"Threat exterminated," The Overseer says. "Contacting janitor for clean-up on Bay 2." Its eye turns blue.

I let out a relieved sigh, gasping, shaking. That was way too close for comfort, as are many situations lately.

I pick myself up off the floor, still in pain. Just in case I need it, I walk past the biofuel spillage – and Sloan's guts – and look at the logistics shard, thinking about taking it with me. It's not the best idea. Given that Sloan needed the shard to override safety protocols – or any protocol, for that matter – it's likely the case Ward specifically designed it that way so she could see what was happening, to see if Sloan was using it appropriately and not for menace. If that's true, then Ward likely has it tracked – or at least has the entire audit log of its events – which I can't risk keeping hold of. So, thinking nothing else of it, I grab the shard and crush it in my hand.

That's when I hear movement on the other side of the rack, along with some recognisable groans.

I crawl through the pallet rack to the other side and see Riven lying there in a pool of blue-green liquid.

I hurry down next to her. "You alright?"

"I'm fine," she says, coughing. "Is Sloan dead?"

"Yeah," I say. "Big Eye in the Sky killed her."

"Good," she says with another cough. "I'm hurting like a motherfucker. You'll want to leave now, Rita. Ward will probably—" She sucks in pain. "—call the blues once she realises her executioner got her ass handed to her. Just a theory."

"My name's Rhea," I say, helping her to her feet. "Sorry I lied. And thanks for saving me."

"It's okay," she rasps. "I never liked that bitch anyway."

"There's a jeep around front," I say. "Come with me. I'll get you out of this hellhole."

Riven groans. "As much as I'd love to disagree with you, I could really use some help. I'll gladly take you up on that offer."

I put her arm over my shoulder and let her lean upon me. "Thanks again."

"What's that thing people like to say?" Riven says, moving in step with me. "Don't mention it? Yeah, don't mention it, Mono."

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