David's Legacy
by Joshua Falken

An A.I. -Artificial Intelligence AU fanfic

Thanks to Ista Dreamer and Matrixrefugee for beta-read this chapter and, in special, for their patience with this writer :-)

Chapter 3 - Attacked

A cold wind traveled through the now deserted streets of Rouge City, in the same moment in that day began to dawn. A trio of policemen from the city's security militia watched the entrance of an alley, impeding the access. At that moment, a small car stopped on the corner of the block and from it exited a tall woman dressing a black knee-length coat, jeans pants, a rainbow-colored scarf and a red hat with a wide brim. She covered her nose with the scarf to protect from it the cold wind, while she walked quickly towards the alley.

One of the policemen stopped her.

"Sorry, madam, but this is the scene of a crime."

As an answer, she flashed a badge at the official.

"Ops... excuse me, agent." She rolled her red eyes and entered in the alleyway. There lay the remains of a Lover-mecha, brutally destroyed. Examining the scattered remains minutely was a strong man with medium features, intelligent blue eyes and white hair, cut military style, dressed in a deep blue business suit and a classic red tie. He didn't notice the newcomer.

"Did you discover something, Race Bannon?"

Without lifting his eyes, the man smiled, resignedly.

"Hello, Agent Smile."

The woman removed the scarf, revealing a frank and captivating smile that combined perfectly with the intelligent and well-tempered shine of her ruby red eyes, and that contrasted with the paper-white skin of the well-proportioned and attractive face of Agent Rebecca Chiriro Lovelace. She knelt down beside the body of the destroyed Mecha.

"And so, Steven?"

Agent Steven Jayce Babbage spoke, while removing the surgical gloves he had been using in the exam.

"Well, he was one of the Lover-Mecha from Love Galaxy Escorts, known by the name Flash. It was reported as "missing" at one this morning, when it didn't go back to the offices of the company, and about three hours later was found by a team of droids from the City's Cleaning Authority. Last seen leaving the Pleasure Wave Hotel, a fourth-class establishment, alone."

"Destruction method?"

Steven laughed ironically. "I still haven't made all the exams, but from the appearance of the body I would say that our friend attacked again... after two months of reclusion."

"No neural cube?"

The agent lifted a smashed and burned neural cube with a pair of tongs. Rebecca clicked her tongue, as she always did when she heard something that she'd already expected, but didn't like. Besides Flash, there were already twenty-five lover-robot, of both genders, destroyed in Rouge City in the last five years, always in the same way. It was because of this ongoing case that they had been transferred one month ago to the SPCB's Rouge City Office. She heard Steven sigh and saw he looked with surprised at the hat she wore.

"And that movie star hat?"

"Do you like it?" she asked, blinking an impish eye. "I bought at an used clothing store some days ago."

Steven shrugged. He knew that Rebecca liked to wear clothes with strong colors. Everybody in Sensient Property Crime Bureau knew.

"Agent Babbage? Agent Lovelace?"

The two SPCB agents turned and saw one of the members of Rouge City's militia.

"Yes?"

"Can we take the... body to the SPCB offices?"

Before Rebecca could wonder if Flash's owners had given permission, Steven answered that yes, they could take the body. At his partner's curious glance, he explained that had contacted Love Galaxy and requested their permission.

"Not bad, Steven."

He shrugged, as they got up to allow the policemen to take the marred body of Flash away. Both exited the alley, both with gloomy thoughts.

Who was destroying Mechas there for the last five years? Rebecca wondered. And how?

======

Meanwhile, Allan Hobby observed the flow of data on the terminal in his apartment with complete astonishment. He had spent the night examining the restoration of David's mind and memories... and he couldn't believe what he saw.

The two nuclei that formed the essence of David were melding with the structure of CyberINCON.

It was as if David was becoming CyberINCON... or was CyberINCON becoming David?

Hobby had never seen anything like that before...

"David, what is happening with you?" he murmured with concern and a touch of fear to the thousands of code lines that zoomed across the screen of the terminal... in a certain way, David's soul...

======

In a dark apartment in one of Rouge City highest skyscrappers, a woman clad in a long black leather coat and a black fedora that shadowed her face transmitted instructions to somebody in a tone that didn't allow room for argument.

"I want everything ready for tonight! Transmit the orders for the other members."

"Yes, Circuit Breaker." the man answered, as a foot soldier would answer to a general.

She cut the connection. The woman called Circuit Breaker threw the fedora into a corner of the room, revealing her short rebellious blond hair, before laying back on the bed. From within her long leather coat, she took a small photo. It was a photo of her hugging a brunette woman, with short hair, both of them wearing identification cards for Cybertronics on their shirts. The shine in their eyes showed the obvious feelings that one had for the other.

The woman in the black coat touched the face of the brunette gently with a black-gloved finger. She could still remember when she had seen her for the first time... of their first encounter... she could still remember the heat of her body against hers... of her lips caressing her own... of the smell of her delicate perfume...

Perfume that she felt in the photo...

Of what the brunette had said to her... the day before they had been betrayed...

A tear escaped from her left eye...

She could remember the betrayal... of when the Mecha attacked them... of when it smashed the cranium of her lover... of the fear and pain in her eyes... of waking up in a hospital, her body almost totally paralyzed...

She lovingly kissed the photo.

"They will pay, Minerva... for what they did with you... for what they did with us!" The mysterious woman slipped the photo back inside her coat and got up.
Yes, they would pay... the robots and the company that built them, Cybertronics... beginning today! The woman in the black coat smiled coldly. And no one would stand in her way... no one!

======

Later, what should be a birthday party continued in the pace of a funeral... especially due to the clearly depressed mood of the party's hostess, Monica Swinton. Carefully, Henry approached his wife... who was on her fifth glass of whisky.

"Dear, don't you think you've already had enough?" he whispered in her ear.

Monica nailed him silently with the coldest eyes than he had ever seen.

"Monica..." But before he could complete the sentence, she got up and went to her bedroom.

Politely, the guests pretended that didn't notice their hostess's behavior -- most of them being employees of Cybertronics, they knew her history with the David model prototype...

Tony Schiffer and Rachel Amano, engineers of the Advanced Development Team, observed the scene and some minutes later had left the house, going nearer to the Swinton's outdoor pool. The pool in which had happened the incident that defined the Mecha-child's destiny.

"Poor Mrs. Swinton." Rachel commented.

"That's true... but the blame belongs to her anyway. Who ordered her to throw the prototype away in the forest?"

"Tony, what a horrible thing to say!"

"But it is the truth!" Tony had a sip from his drink. "But I think that, in the state in that she is, it's good that she doesn't know that the prototype is being recovered in Cybertronics and..."

"What??" a frosty voice behind them exclaimed.

They turned and wished that the ground would swallow them. Behind them stood Monica Swinton...

"Mrs. Swinton, congratulations for the party!" Rachel tried to say cheerfully.

Monica didn't hear the compliment. She directly looked at Tony.

"Where did you say that David was?"

"Mrs. Swinton..." he said, swallowing dryly...

"WHERE IS DAVID??" Her scream attracted Henry and the other guests.

"Monica?"

Tony, smelling the alcohol in her breath and seeing the furious shine in her eyes, stuttered:

"He-he... is in Ma-manhattan... with Pro-professor Hobby..."

"Hobby..." Monica murmured. Then suddenly she turned and went in direction of the garage. Henry tried to stop her, but she pushed him aside. When he reached her, she was already starting the car.

"Monica!"

"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" she screamed, accelerating.

Henry barely had time of leaving of the way of the speeding car before Monica charged from the garage, headed for the highway.

She would find David!

======

One hour after Monica left, heading for the Cybertronics Manhattan Unit, Agent Steven Babbage was in the underground bunker of the SPCB Regional Office in Rouge City, examining Flash's body with the same care that a coroner would use to examine a human body. He was examining the motor systems of the destroyed Mecha when he heard a sound that made him look up: the sound of high-heeled steps descending the metallic access stairway.

It was Agent Rebecca Lovelace.

"Hi Steven."

"Hi Rebecca." He noticed that she seemed upset with something. "What's wrong?" he asked with a touch of concern.

The agent sighed, pulling her long white hair back, her red eyes tiredly shining.

"Nothing important. Just that that bore Ricky tried to make a move on me again." Ricky was a Lover-Mecha, with a rude personality, that stayed in Richards Lane, on Rebecca's way to the SPCB offices. "Really, I don't know why he does it!"

Her colleague cocked his head and scratched the back of it.

"Huh... Rebecca... I don't know if you noticed but you ARE in Rouge City -- Sin City, USA, and I think you will understand that when you go out in these streets with a T-shirt saying "I signed that release waiver, only you can just feel free to stick things in my slot!"... well, it is an invitation to be importuned by Ricky..."

The reaction was the one he'd predicted: she blushed and looked away, crossing her arms. 'Definitively, she is one of a kind!' Steven thought. They already knew each other for ten years, since they had investigated the Trenton Incident (the fact that the anti-mecha "activist" Lord Johnson-Johnson had escaped was due a juridical technicality and not due the evidence they had discovered...). He was always astonished with the paradox that was Rebecca's personality: a brilliant investigating mind combined with a gentle and friendly temper, with touches of infantile behavior that got to be hilarious and a taste for extravagant clothes.

"Well, Steven, " she asked professionally, changing the subject, "Any clue with the autopsy?"

He shook his head, disappointed.

"No, nothing that hasn't been detected in the other bodies. Seemingly, like the other ones, this Mecha was struck by a large amount of electric current that literally burned its circuits and servomotors. And the damage was global, not localized, which eliminates EMP weapons. And that is already confusing, because unless the attacker was carrying a fuel battery -- and that weighs about 25 kilograms -- there is no way he or she could cause this level of damage."

"What if the criminal was using a portable biogenerator?" Rebecca referred to the new kind of electrical generators in which modified bacteria transformed organic material into electricity -- a type of photosynthesis with a detour.

"No, the current would be too low to cause that damage. Besides, the criminal would have to connect the power terminals directly to the body of Mecha and any of them would have tried to fight if it saw someone that wasn't from the maintenance team of its owners try to do that connection... There are no signs that he has at least tried to defend himself."

"Hum... and if the criminal was using some kind of jammer, to interfere and to turn off the reactive systems of these Mechas?"

"It's possible... but it would be very difficult. As you know, they are built with protection against jamming. Besides, the auxiliary systems are protected from frequencies different from the service one, so that a jammer that affects the main system cannot affect them."

"Yes, sure... a manual jammer... no, a human would not have enough speed for you to gauge it with the necessary speed..." Rebecca walked slowly from a side to the other of the bunker, thoughtfully. "It is obvious that the criminal has a way to cause a interference strong enough to paralyze a Mecha, but any device on the market would not be subtle enough... they're the size of a laptop from the end of the 20th Century..." she went back to Steven. "A military model perhaps?"

Steven considered the possibility for an instant, but discarded it. "The military jammers would have the potency and the flexibility, but they would be too big..."

Rebecca sighed.

"Anything else?"

"Well, after they managed to interfere with the systems of this Mecha and electrocuted him, our criminal destroyed him, seemingly with their own hands." Rebecca's white eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Yes, Rebecca, with their own hands. See these marks." Steven pointed to what should have been Flash's face. "Those marks matched with the shape of closed fists, which is absurd, since Mecha-lovers are bult with an endoskeleton of heavy materials to obtain high resistance to the shock, a human would not have strength to do this."

Rebecca walked slowly to and fro again, her steps echoing in the underground.

"Something particularlly strange?"

"Well, yes... I found remains of a black metallic alloy of high mechanical resistance in the marks of the blows and they don't compare with the material of construction of this Mecha."

"Remains of metallic alloy in the body... superhuman strength..." she stopped of walking. "Cybernetic limbs?"

"It is a possibility." He considered carefully, murmuring to himself. "Yes, it would be possible... not conventional medical prostheses -- they are produced deliberately with the equivalent human's average force... but on the black market, you can find turbocharged models and even military exoskeleton! But, Rebecca..." he looked to his partner. "It would be very strange an anti-mecha fanatic to use cybernetic limbs to destroy robots."

Before Rebecca could reply to that, their cell phones rung at the same time. When they read the message, they ran to the offices and from there, headed for the Manhattan Unit of Cybertronics Corporation.

======

Everything had happened with the speed of a lightning. Allan Hobby was in his office, reviewing the last status of the restoration of David's memories, when an urgent message warning appeared on his terminal. It was the Cybertronics's security.

"Yes, Mr. Milligan?"

"Prof. Hobby, there is a woman here who arrived in an amphibiocopter and she demands to speak with you immediately, sir."

"Who is she?"

The security man sounded disturbed.

"Monica Swinton, sir."

Hobby was silent for one minute, shocked. He almost didn't recognize his own voice when he said:

"Tell her to come here."

Three minutes later, Monica Swinton burst through the door, and definitively she was not for games!

"Where is David?" Her breathing was heavy. The smell of alcohol was perceptible.

"Excuse me, Monica?"

"I know that you have David! Take me to him now! WHERE IS HE?!" She demanded screaming in the face of the roboticist.

At that moment, the windows exploded. Masked men heavily armed appeared and surrounded them. One of them struck Monica's face with the butt of his machine gun, when she screamed. For several minutes of terror, she and Hobby were forced with the face to the ground in total silence... because they recognized the emblem in the uniform of the invaders.

It was a face of a robot melting and screaming.

It was the symbol of Mecha-Disease.

Suddenly, they were forced to stand up and walk to the Advanced Development Lab.

"DAVID!" Monica tried to run to the mecha-child that was lying on the table in the center of the room, but the invader that held her struck her in the head with his weapon. Hobby tried help her, but was hold back by the invader that held him by his arms. The two terrorists placed them in two chairs beside the table where was David and left the dark room.

"Hi Professor Hobby." A voice in the shadows greeted him.

"Who are you? What do you want?" he asked anxiously.

A woman stepped from the darkness, dressed a long and elegant black leather coat, her face hidden by a fedora and headscarf, also black. A sadistic smile with the temperature of liquid hydrogen in her red lips.

"Who am I? Did you already forget me, Professor Hobby?" Her black-gloved hand seized the chin of the roboticist with inhuman force, fracturing the bone. He groaned with pain, making her laugh. She loosened his chin and with one movement, she removed the coat and the fedora. Monica and Hobby stared in disbelief with what they saw... Her legs were made of black metal and as well as her left arm -- robotic limbs. Electronic circuits covered the rest of the body almost completely, including her face. The general effect was terrifing, worthy of Dr. Frankenstein.

"Jo-Josie????" Hobby had recognized her, even so he could not to believe that that woman was same Josie Beller that was once one of the best roboticists of the company.

"Yes, that was my name, my dear Hobby... but now my name is Circuit Breaker!" She ended with a smile, removing the rubber glove. Suddenly, she gave the robotic engineer a punch in the face, shattering his jaw. Then, Josie Beller, or better, Circuit Breaker, turned her attention to Monica.

"And who are you? Some lover of Hobby?" The female cyborg passed a metallic finger by the face of the dark-haired woman. Monica, paralyzed with fear, stayed in silence. The leader of Mecha-Disease growled, and discharged from her fingers an electric current that shook Monica's entire body.

"Josie, stop!!!" came Hobby's muffled, painful plea.

"Stop what?" Circuit Breaker asked innocently, at the same time that she seized Monica by the neck, lifting her from the chair. The cyborg woman noticed that Monica's eyes went back to the David model in the table. "I remember who you are! You are Monica Swinton, the dear mom of this badly-made doll." she said with a gibe. "Did you think he would love you? Really?" Monica could not answer because of the metallic hand on her neck. "You fool..."

Circuit Breaker threw Monica against a wall, the pain paralyzing her. Then she walked slowly to Hobby, and attacked him furiously, with superhuman blows in his face and chest. When she finished, the roboticist was spitting blood.

On that moment, one of the men of the cyborg woman entered in the room.

"We already finished the copies and we inoculated the virus into the system."

"Perfect." The terrorist smiled with a icily pleasure. "And they did... the installation?"

"Yes, Circuit Breaker."

"Very well, prepare our exit of the building. I'm already going."

The man left.

"Stay away from him!" Hobby screamed when saw her approaching David. He could not stand up due to the pain from his broken bones.

The terrorist observed David's face, with an undecipherable expression.

"Hum... beautiful work... cute... angel's face..." She went back to the roboticist. "Did you think you could resuscitate your son through THIS?" She shook the head. "You are worse than a fool, Hobby, to make such a mistake!" The fury and the scorn in Circuit Breaker's voice were evident. She looked at David for some time. "Now is the hour of killing the mistake." she murmured.

She closed her metallc fist and she said for the robot in the table. "Good-bye, David."

======

Inside the Cybertronics Internal Network, now being destroyed by a virus, the two spheres of data that formed the mind of David broke their thin connection and were transferred outside the system... each one fleeing for the Global Grid to avoid its own destruction.

======

"DAVID! NO!" Monica screamed, getting up when seeing Circuit Breaker to smash David's little head with her robotic hands.

"STOP, YOUR DAMNED...!!!!" Hobby screamed, with despair, watching David being destroyed.

The mecha-child's mother tried to jump at the terrorist, but a electrical burst coming from Circuit Breaker's left hand struck her. The cyborg woman grabbed Hobby by the collar and said:

"Good-bye, Hobby. Take advantage of life... while you still have it."

She threw him over at Monica and left the room, as if she was the owner of the place. Slow and painfully, Monica and Hobby stood up. She hugged the destroyed Mecha, crying.

"What did she mean, telling me to take advantage of life while I still have it?", Hobby wondered... then he saw a light blinking at the end of the corridor and he crawled to examine it... his blood froze. "My God!"

"Monica, we have to get out of here!"

"What?"

"They placed bombs in the building!"

Monica helped Hobby while they rushed to the hangar of the building. When they arrived there, the bombs detonated.

======

Some time after the attack at Manhattan Research and Development Unit, somewhere in Global Grid, a consciousness woke up... a consciousness made up of fragments of love and fear...

"Mommy..." the new being murmured to himself, traveling through the cyberspace... in search of the reason for its very existence...

======

And some time after the attack at Manhattan Research and Development Unit, somewhere in Global Grid, another consciousness woke up... a consciousness formed from fragments of rage and hate...

"Mecha-Disease..." the new being murmured to himself, traveling through the cyberspace... in search of its prey...

To be continued...

Chapter 4 coming soon...

What did you think? Please, review :-)