Warden 2 Read online

  WARDEN 2

  CHRONICLES OF A CYBORG 2

  Isaac Hooke

  Contents

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  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  About the Author

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  For a limited time, Isaac Hooke is giving away Salvage, the prequel novella, here:

  https://bookhip.com/WBMXLC

  1

  Rhea strode across the pristine, asphalt-surfaced streets of Aradne. Behind her followed an angry mob of Rust Towners intent on gathering illegally, among other acts of civil disobedience.

  She was on her way to confront the mayor, who was currently in session with his counselors, if the leaks to the streaming sites were to be believed. Earlier, she had joined the Rust Towners rioting at the main gates; hackers had overridden the gate controls, opening them, and forcing the security robots to form a chain of bodies in front of the opening. In the ensuing violence, the rioters had broken through and stormed the city. Rhea had quickly taken charge of the situation, using her fame and her followers to gather the rioters before too much damage could be inflicted against the properties closest to the entrance. Aradne defense robots had arrested a few of the more disorderly among them, but for the most part the mechanical monstrosities remained on the sidelines and left them alone. Rhea wished she could take full credit for that, but she knew the defense force’s public image had a part to play: many citizens of Aradne would be watching live streams of the event, some transmitted from the rioters themselves, others from residents observing from the balconies of nearby towers.

  Rhea herself was live-streaming from her own point of view at that very moment. She had been famous for a short while: her actions in Rust Town against the bioweapons had netted her several million social media followers. However, she had been banned from broadcasting on most of the major platforms shortly thereafter, including VidTube, but that didn’t stop her from using alternatives such as SubverseTube. She didn’t have as many followers as before on these smaller platforms, but those she did have were a dedicated group: real fans who routinely disseminated her broadcasts to the larger platforms, risking bans themselves.

  Rhea kept expecting the Net to go down in the current neighborhood, blocking live streams entirely, but everything remained online. Still, Rhea had no doubt that any recordings of the event would be scrubbed from the major streaming sites by evening, and perhaps even SubverseTube, which made the defense robots that mirrored the path of her and those with her all the more menacing. She did her best to ignore them: the two-legged mechs equipped with electrolasers, missiles, and plasma turrets; the smaller infantry robots with the grenade launchers attached to their shoulders and the twin rifle muzzles protruding from their forearms; and lastly the octocopter drones hovering overhead, their wicked laser turrets tracking different members of the crowd, ready to fire on command.

  “Well, at least they’re giving us an escort fit for royalty,” Will grumbled above the chanting crowd from her right side.

  Rhea offered her friend a grim glance. He still wore his hair in long dreadlocks. He’d grown out his beard however and had begun to braid the tips of the chin area so as to form mini dreadlocks of their own. The thin visor of his AR goggles sat just above his eyes, below his brows. He wore a black and gray uniform with a utility belt, and other than his fists, had no weapons. None of the others with her were armed, either—all pistols, rifles and bladed implements had been confiscated at the entrance by the defense robots. Those who had not willingly surrendered their arms were among the arrested.

  Before she could answer Will, Horatio, who was standing on the other side of her, spoke up: “I wouldn’t precisely call this an escort fit for royalty. Fit for criminals, perhaps. If we were royalty, those guns would be tracking the buildings and streets beyond; instead, they’re pointed directly at us.”

  “I was being sarcastic,” Will clarified.

  “Oh,” Horatio said. The robot’s face was a black oval with a gray visor for eyes and a grill for a mouth. Two antennae on top completed the look. Below, its body was all servomotors and polycarbonate tubes—a motley of gray and yellow.

  Her own body was similar in design, but more metallic than gray or yellow. Of course, it was currently concealed by the clothing she wore—those dull gray fatigues with the hooded cloak layered on top. Her exposed face was the only part of her that was sheathed in artificial skin. She used to keep her features hidden within her raised hood to hide the fact she was a cyborg, but now she wore her synthetic skin openly in the slums, and here. Not even the unsavory residents would dare attack the Warden of Rust Town. That was what the slum denizens called her. They considered her a hero for the bravery she had shown against the invading bioweapons, a bravery that had not been forgotten despite all the videos of her actions being scrubbed from the Net. The residents of Rust Town were the ones who had been responsible for pooling their money and resources to upgrade her body after she had been sliced and diced into near oblivion by the bioweapons.

  Normally, she wore a retractable bladed weapon called the X2-59 on her right wrist, a weapon that, when deployed, sparked with electricity generated by electrolasers built into the hilt. But she’d left that behind when she departed to join the rioters—she didn’t want to risk losing it to Aradne’s defense forces. And seeing as she wasn’t quite ready to fight those forces…

  Rhea returned her attention to the street ahead, and the buildings that lined either side. Their surfaces glimmering beneath the mid-afternoon sun, the serene, crystalline towers of Aradne proved an odd counterpoint to the shouting residents of the slums behind her. The structures had windows that were cut from sapphires, a substance that lent itself extremely well to some of the more fantastically engineered skyscrapers, some of which took the form of exotic geometric shapes, occasionally piled one atop the other. For example, her eyes lingered on two pyramids stacked tip to tip as she marveled at its construction.

  Not far overhead, delivery drones passed to and fro as if oblivious to the events taking place below. Gizmo followed along at the same height, along with a few other drones from Rust Town. Beyond them, flyers ferried citizens between buildings who seemed to be going about their business unperturbed.

  “You’d almost think the citizens don’t care,” Will said, his gaze upon those flyers.

  “It’s all fun and games until someone loses a life,” Renaldo quipped from behind her.

  Renaldo sported a crooked nose and blunt brow, with short-cropped hair combed over his forehead like a drape. His flesh was bronzed almost to the point of being dark-skinned. Renaldo was part of a group of people who called themselves Wardenites—her most loyal fans. He had watched her exploits online and flown in from another city to join her. He did so shortly after she had been banned from the major platforms for violating “content policies.” Her actual violation was never stated, other than the powers that be wanted to shut her up. It hardly seemed a coincidence that the ban hammer fell after she blamed the rulers of Aradne for sending the bioweapons to destroy Rust Town. Most online commentators dismissed her as a conspiracy theorist at that point, but to her loyal Wardenites—who had come with her to the alternate sites—the ban only proved she was right. It was after the ban
that Renaldo and other Wardenites flew out to join her cause.

  Renaldo had arrived first and considered himself chief among her most loyal followers. He had assigned himself to her personal guard, and often swore he would take a bullet for her. She wondered if he was truly here because he wanted to help Rust Town, or if he had come simply to “bask in her presence,” as Will liked to say. His behavior was often borderline hero worship. The other three Wardenites who had flown in to join her were little different: Brinks, Miles, and Chuck, who marched beside Renaldo at that very moment.

  There were also about ten other self-proclaimed Wardenites from Rust Town who were just as dedicated. Though they hadn’t flown in from other cities, they camped outside her house and joined her whenever she had to run an errand, no matter if that errand was helping to rebuild a neighborhood that had fallen to bioweapons or joining a riot. She didn’t always appreciate having them around, but it was especially reassuring at the moment because they helped her keep the rest of the demonstrators in check.

  “They’re all in love with you, you know,” Will had told her at one point. “It’s more than hero worship. They’re groupies. They want to get with you.”

  “No they don’t,” she insisted.

  “Really?” Will asked. “Did you ever think to ask yourself why so many of them are men?”

  “Well they’re going to be disappointed, then,” Rhea said. “Considering I don’t have the parts to ‘get with them,’ as you call it.”

  Will shrugged. “There are other orifices…”

  Rhea glared at him. “Thanks for that.”

  “Hey, you’ll only ever get the truth from me, dude,” Will told her. “I’m just saying, watch yourself around them.”

  The memory faded, and she found her eyes drifting to the intimidating barricade of steel formed by the mechs and robots lining the roadway. At the moment, she had more to worry about than fans who might want to sleep with her.

  The crowd had taken up some nonsensical chant by then. Rhea heard the words mayor and water, but the rest was gibberish, at least to her.

  “What are they saying?” she asked Will above the din.

  “Mayor Grandas, give us back our water,” Will replied.

  Soon, the skyscrapers receded, and ahead awaited a campus of sorts, housing several sprawling, low to medium rise buildings with lots of green space between them. In the center, a large, dome-shaped structure rose above the rest. That was the Parliament Building: Aradne served as the country’s capital, and this campus contained the buildings used by the elected officials to manage the nation. The president also had a residence somewhere within, known as the Bright House, though most people believed he ruled remotely. There was also a city hall on the campus, used for the local administration of Aradne: a pyramid-shaped structure next to the Parliament Building. That was Rhea’s destination.

  She had read several different opinions online questioning the wisdom of putting all those administrative buildings into one place. From a security standpoint, it was easier to defend. But the detractors argued all it would take was one nuke to get through, or one cyberattack, and the nation would be taken down. Those for the arrangement pointed out that most of the elected officials didn’t even live in Aradne and worked remotely. If the parliament fell, the business of ruling the nation would be rerouted through fail safes in other cities.

  The entire city block containing the campus was cordoned off by an impressive array of mechs and robots. The machines stood abreast, forming an impenetrable fence all along the perimeter. Their weapons were lowered, at least for the moment.

  The demonstrators began to fall silent in turn as they noticed these dealers of death arrayed before them.

  Rhea led her companions to that perimeter of steel and polycarbonate, and halted two meters from the closest mech, which towered over her.

  Overhead, none of the drones accompanying the crowd were able to penetrate the virtual geofence surrounding the site: instead, they hovered along the perimeter, almost precisely in line with the machines below, about fifty meters in the air. None of the commercial delivery drones passed near that geofence either: only those intimidating octocopters controlled the airspace within.

  “Return to the slums, or we will open fire,” one of the large mechs announced.

  Rhea stood her ground. It was so quiet that a pin could have dropped in the next street and she would have heard. It helped that she had enhanced hearing, of course, but still.

  “We want to see the mayor,” she calmly told the towering mech.

  In the parks behind the line of machines, defense turrets emerged from hidden recesses in the ground. These rose well above the heads of the machines and swiveled to target the demonstrators.

  “Return to the slums,” the large mech repeated.

  Rhea raised her chin stubbornly and said: “Not until we see the mayor.”

  The large mech remained motionless, its featureless face unreadable. Rhea kept expecting its weapons to swivel toward her. But they did not. Still, an unnerving number of the tracking turrets behind the machine ranks had lined her up.

  “They’re not going to fire,” Will said under his breath. “It would be a public relations nightmare. Turn us all into martyrs. They might start arresting us, though.”

  The crowd resumed its chant.

  “Mayor Grandas, give us back our water!”

  Rhea waited a full minute, letting the demonstrators shout their words. She had come mostly for the spectacle. She knew the mayor would never agree to see them. But hopefully this would help put public pressure on city hall.

  Rhea turned around to face the demonstrators and raised her hands. “It will serve us no purpose to be locked in jail. Let’s go. We’ll come back again tomorrow, and the next day, and the day thereafter, until they turn on our water. This is not a defeat, but a victory! For every video of ours they scrub from the streaming sites, we’ll upload ten more! For every account they delete, we’ll create a hundred!”

  The crowd cheered.

  Someone took up her pseudonym, and the demonstrators repeated it.

  “Warden! Warden! Warden!”

  She waved at them and led them from the line of deadly machines.

  “Where did you learn to be so good at stirring up the emotions of crowds?” Will asked as they made their way back toward the city’s walls, where the slums of Rust Town awaited beyond.

  “I don’t know,” she replied. “Must be my past life.”

  She just wished she could remember it.

  2

  When Rhea neared the western exit of Aradne, which opened onto Rust Town, she slowed uncertainly. The gate sentries had formed a veritable chain of robots in front of the sealed doors, and a for a moment she thought they had been ordered to execute the demonstrators.

  She was about to call a halt when the robots stepped aside, clearing a path to the city wall. She quickened her pace as the pair of large metal doors behind the machines began to slide wide.

  “That was quick,” Will said. “Given the damage we did to those doors, I thought they’d be out of commission for at least the next day or so.”

  “Smelting Drones,” Horatio explained. “The ultimate 3D printers.”

  A line of protestors were waiting on the other side of the gate. Some of them rushed inside as the doors parted further, but when they saw Rhea they stopped in their tracks.

  “It’s the warden!” someone exclaimed.

  “What news?” one of them asked.

  “Nothing, as usual,” she replied. “The water remains cut off. The mayor refuses to see us.”

  “Then we will storm city hall!” a young man said. He made as if to race into the city, but Rhea caught him by the arm.

  “Don’t,” she told him. She turned her gaze toward the other newcomers. “They’ll only arrest you. All of you. We can’t penetrate the parliament area. Turn back. We’ll try again another day. Turn back. Trust me.”

  Those who had rushed inside hesitated,
but then one by one they began to turn around. Some of them glared at the watching robots, others gave the machines fearful glances, but they all turned back.

  Soon Rhea was leading the throng away from Aradne’s walls. The metal doors sealed with a loud clang behind them. There was a certain finality to the clang that bothered Rhea, but she ignored the feeling. Even if the Aradne security forces had reinforced those walls, Rhea and the others would find a way inside. She had told the citizens of Rust Town they would return every day until the water was turned back on, and she intended to do just that, even if it meant climbing the very walls that encircled the city.

  But while protesting certainly had a place, especially when it came to easing the collective angst that was felt among the population, it was obvious their cries were falling on deaf ears. Eventually the Aradne city council might give in to them—when waves of slum residents began to die from dehydration, turning public opinion against the mayor. The slum residents were rationing what little water had been left after the bioweapons were defeated—there were only two storage tanks still intact, and their contents would last for maybe a few more days. Rhea hoped to get the supply restored well before the tanks were exhausted, and at the moment that meant circumventing diplomatic routes: to that end, she had members of her inner circle and their network working on a plan to tap into the city’s water supply without anyone in Aradne knowing about it.

  The city’s official explanation for disconnecting the water was that the bioweapon attack had “destroyed critical infrastructure” and they had to sever the supply to prevent needless wastage from the broken pipes. However, the people of Rust Town had run their 3D-printing drones overtime and repaired every last one of those pipes on the first day.