TITLE: "Along a Knife's Blade" An "A.I." / "Blade Runner" crossover -- Chapter Four: Prey

AUTHOR: "Matrix Refugee"

RATING: PG-13

ARCHIVE: Permission granted

FEEDBACK: Please? Please? Please?

SUMMARY: Diane and Merrot endure a narrow escape from anti-Mecha assassins....

DISCLAIMER: I do not own "A.I., Artificial Intelligence", its characters, settings, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late, great Stanley Kubrick, of DreamWorks SKG, Steven Spielberg, Warner Brothers, Amblin Entertainment, et al. Nor do I own "Blade Runner", it's characters, concepts or other indicia, which are the property of the late Philip K. Dick, Ridley Scott, Warner Brothers, et al.

NOTES: This may be the last chapter of this which you see for a while: Chapter 5 is going to be a collaborative effort based off a role-play session with my good friend Laurie E. Smith.

Chapter Four: Prey

She called Merrot's apartment from a pay vidphone. Merrot picked up on the fourth ring.

"Hallo?" He looked as if he might have been working. His shirt was open, but he buttoned it with his free hand as they spoke.

"Hello, Mr. Merrot. It's Diane Fletcher."

"Ah, I see..." he said this with a smile that hinted at a double meaning.

"I have to talk to you: something's come up. Is there any place we can meet?"

"I'm just on my way out to pick up some photographic paper for my printer. Shall I meet you at the photography shop on the corner of 10th Street and Wamsley Avenue?"

"I'll meet you there," she said, and hung up the phone before the warm look in his eyes could melt into her soul.

She almost called Gaff to have him follow her, but she knew he would find the situation immensely funny, and the last thing she needed was the raucous sound of his sniggering. Rain had started falling and that would only heap coals on the irritation he would cause.

Instead, she drove to the corner of 10th and Wamsley. She parked the skimmer in an alleyway and walked to the photographic supply shop. She took shelter in the well of the doorway, where she waited and watched the crowd of punks and passersby for any sign of Merrot.

At length, he emerged from the crowd, a tall figure in a black leather frock-coat jacket, nipped in at the waist, emphasizing his leanness, a black umbrella open over his head, held high so she could see him.

He'd seen her: he lengthened his stride as he approached the doorway where she stood; his eyes grew brighter and a sweet smile lit up his lantern-jawed face.

"As I hoped I would find you," he said, lowering the umbrella.

"Mr. Merrot, would you mind if we went some place more private?" she asked.

"You would be amazed at how much privacy an umbrella affords when you're walking with someone," he said. "Unless you would mind that."

"No, whatever makes you more at ease," she said.

"Very well then," he said, shifting the umbrella over her and offering her the crook of his arm. One of her hands twitched, but she forced it to stay firmly in the pocket of her jacket. He shrugged gracefully and relaxed his arm as they walked off up 10th Avenue.

"Our analyst is going over the results of your VK test. But..." she paused and licked her lips. "But that isn't quite as important as something you said to me."

"Something I said?" He looked right at her, slowing his pace.

She paused in front of a tattoo parlor and turned to him. He leaned in closer, lowering the umbrella over them. "You asked me if I'd taken the test," she said in a low voice. "I said it wasn't necessary. I don't know why, but I couldn't get that out of my head...." She closed her mouth, her mind searching for the words to say.

"If you took the test, what then were the results?" he asked.

She looked around. "Let's keep walking."

He followed her lead as she headed down the street a ways more. At length, she turned to him again. "I'm a passer." She paused, letting that sink in; he nodded acknowledging it, but he had clearly known this all along. "You knew?"

"Yes," he said. In a lower voice, he added, "For one thing, your heat signature doesn't read exactly the same as an Orga human's. For another... I've been looking for you... I had learned from Jane Sutter that there was another like me, or rather, another being of the same substance as I would assume..."

She let herself look up into his eyes. "What are you?"

"Perhaps you should ask that question of yourself as well," he said. "If you will let me, I can help you find the answer." Merrot's eyes suddenly hardened with anger.

"Maybe a better question would be asking me for mercy," said a thick, nasally voice behind them.

Diane turned and found herself looking down the barrel of a blaster pistol, a well-fed man in a rumpled business suit gripped it, grinning at her over the barrel. "Die, killer-bot," the assassin said.

He had just thumbed off the safety when Merrot grabbed Diane and pushed her out of the way. The assassin tried to shift his aim, choosing Merrot for a new target, but Merrot kicked the man's hand aside, knocking the blaster from his grip. The assassin tried to lunge at Merrot, but the taller man struck him in the back of the neck with his elbow. The assassin sprawled on the pavement, unconscious.

Diane pulled herself to her feet, hearing footsteps spattering on the sidewalk right toward them. Merrot scanned around them both: she followed his gaze, seeing a group of four people, all dressed in ordinary clothes, rushing toward them. One of them, a woman, had already drawn a blaster from inside her rain slicker.

Merrot grabbed Diane by the arm and hurried her down a sidestreet. Diane glanced back to see the four assassins scramble after them. The woman with the blaster fired off a shot, which burned into the corner of a building. Merrot pulled Diane around the corner into an alleyway and behind a trash recycler.

"Diane, I can get you out of here, but you'll have to let me carry you," he said. A shot hit the wall of the building opposite them.

She tried not to wince at the shot. "On your back?" she asked

"No, on my chest: face me, wrap your arms and legs around my torso and let me hold you there. But hold on tight: this will be a bumpy ride."

She did as Merrot had told her, letting him boost her up into place. She wound her arms and legs around him, clasping her wrists in her hands and hooking her ankles together, like a clinging lover. She felt his heart racing in his chest -- or was it just a simulator?

Looking over Merrot's shoulder, she saw the first of the assassins enter the alleyway. Merrot ran up the alleyway to a fence blocking it and clambered over it. A shot sheered through the top of the fence, so close Diane could feel the heat from it.

Once they had cleared the fence, Merrot ran for the nearest wall of a building. Diane thought he was trying to get into the shadows where the assassins would have trouble seeing them. But instead, she realized Merrot had leaped clear of the ground, landing on the wall like a human fly, running up the side of it. She saw the ground drop away from them as he ran up the brick surface, heading for the roof. The assassins had scrambled over the fence and now milled about below them. Merrot pulled himself and Diane over the parapet of the roof, just as one of the assassins looked up and fired at them.

The blast blew right past them, clipping the skirt of Merrot's coat. He dropped onto the roof, crouching out of the way of the next shot.

"Are you all right?" Diane asked, pulling away from him and looking into his face. His eyes had gone slightly blank, but he'd narrowed them to diminish the effect.

"Yes, they missed me; I'm in one piece. But are you unhurt?" he asked, looking into her eyes.

"Yes, I'm okay, just shaken.... how did you do that? Contragrav?"

"Oh yes... I have a good... friend of sorts who's had remarkable success with making contragrav generators small enough to fit into the frame of a Mecha," Merrot said.

Something metallic creaked nearby. Diane looked toward the sound, just in time to see one of the assassins peer over the top of a metal ladder at a right angle to them.

Merrot had clearly heard the sound as well: he rose and ran flat out across the rooftop, jumping effortlessly over the airshaft between it and the next roof. She heard the assassins scrambling after them, but she hid her eyes in Merrot's neck as they crossed the second roof and jumped another airshaft. A man screamed, the sound dropping away as if he'd fallen while jumping the second gap. She looked back over her own shoulder, trying to follow the path they took.

They jumped another airshaft, but as they crossed the roof they had landed on, Diane realized the roof gave onto a wide gap. A street.

She started to yell, "Look out!" but the words crashed in her throat. Merrot had stepped over the edge...

And kept on running over the open air as if they passed over solid ground. She'd seen something like this in an ancient 2-D sci-fi flick. He touched down on the roof of a club on the other side of the street.

"There..." he said, crouching down and looking her in the face. He glanced back with a mischevous smirk. "That will shake them. They can't follow us here, and by the time they get across that street and climb up here, we'll be gone."

He rose and jumped the next airshaft onto another building.

"But where do we go now?" she asked.

"I'm taking you back to my rooms, unless you'd rather that I took you to your own home," he said.

"No, take me to your place or someplace safe: I live alone. They might track me there," she said.

"It's safe in my flat: Teresa and I will take care of you," he said. He smiled and a bantering tone came into his voice: "The only dangerous thing you'll have to deal with is me, and you've tamed me."

"Besides, if you did anything to me, you'd be facing charges for assaulting a police employee. The least that would happen would be the INS would have you deported."

"And that's the last thing I want to have happen to me," he said.

She let him carry her as they threaded the way back over the rooftops of the city. By the time they reached the building where Merrot lived and his glass-roofed apartment, the rain had subsided. He set her on her feet, then stooped opened a trapdoor in the roof over the studio. He picked her up and dropped through the trapdoor.

He landed on his feet like a cat and set her on her own feet. Letting her go, he vaulted up to the ceiling, then pulled the trap shut and locked it before dropping to his feet beside her.

"So, I believe I've effectively proven that I'm not your typical human," he said. "Are you going to slap the cuffs on me? Disrupt my peripheral neural net? Find my off switch?"

His eyes caught hers and the mischievous spark in them softened. "I'm sorry. I wasn't trying to insult your profession."

"It's all right," she said, trying to make it sound non-committal, and failing even in her own ears.

He looked her up and down. "Come, let me find you something to wear while your clothes dry."

She let him lead her to the bathroom. He stepped out and nipped into the bedroom, returning a few moments later with a green bathrobe. She took it from him and closed the door.

Once she was alone, she peeled off her wet jacket and draped it over the edge of the tub, then shucked her soaked pants and her blouse, hanging them over the top of the shower door before putting on the bathrobe. Fortunately, not a drop of water had soaked into her undershorts and her bra. Finding a blow-dryer she set to work getting the water out of her hair.

She opened the door and stepped out into the hallway, nearly walking into Merrot as he emerged from the bedroom, clad in a black bathrobe and carrying his own wet clothes.

"I'm sorry," she said, trying not to look right at him, but finding her gaze had found his narrow waist, the silver sash cord holding his robe shut. She caught herself thinking some women would kill to have a waist as slim as his.

"No harm done," he said, stepping around her.

She headed out to the living room, where he had lit the gas fireplace. She sat down on a large cushion beside it, wondering if he had placed it there for her. She let the warmth from the fire seep into her, driving away the slight chill that had set in.

Merrot came and sat down beside her, looking into her face. "Soaking up the warmth already?" He set down a tray with an open bottle of red wine and two glasses. He filled one glass and offered it to her.

She took the glass, examining the color and discretely sniffing at it for anything that didn't belong in it. "Yes, I am... thank you."

He filled the other glass, then set the bottle on the tray. "So... how did you come to work for Rogue Retrieval?"

"I was training at the Police Academy... I didn't quite pass, since I was wounded with a blaster in training one day. But the instructors said I had the talents to work on the force if I didn't meet the minimum requirements, so they recommended that I work for Rogue Retrieval.

"But if I really am a passer, why do I have emotions? why do I remember things that happened to me and my family? Mechas don't have families. Unless they implanted me with memories."

"You'd have to ask your superiors if they know anything about what really happened to you. If they can't help you, then go above them; speak to the head of Rogue Retrieval."

"They could be as much in the dark about it as I am. And if I started asking questions, would that compromise my job? They might even have me terminated for impersonating an Orga."

"Whoever made you, and I'm guessing that Tyrell and Sutter may have put their heads together when you were created, or at least when your present form was created, they had their reasons for it."

"Then what was the reason for creating you?" she asked.

He gazed into the flames for a long moment, as if looking deep into the reaches of the past. "I am... or I was an expert in AI programming. I never designed anything professionally, and I never sold my designs. But my expertise is equal to that of Allen Hobby and Jane Sutter and Eldon Tyrell. I'd worked with MetaFlesh, and I was familiar with Jane Sutter's research into neurobiophysics. So... I embarked on a plan to recreate myself in Mecha form, upload my consciousness and memories into a mainframe, to be copied onto a Mecha CPU. I had organ replicas made out of MetaFlesh. At the time of my physical death, I had my double activated."

"In that case, the only question left for me to ask is, who were you?" she said.

He looked right at her. "I was Henri Armand de Meroveque, one-time Regent of the Europan Empire. But now... now I am content to be a not-so-humble photographer."

She studied her glass, the rich red color of the wine, now glowing in the firelight. "I wonder who I was," she said, thinking out loud.

"I can help you find out," he offered. "I was a hacker, and my ability has only gotten stronger. If you wish, I can scout around, see if any record exists of who you were, who created you."

She set the glass down on the floor beside her. "I'd appreciate that, but I have my ways of finding things out."

He looked into her eyes in earnest and moved a little closer. "Please, let me help you." Was his breath fanning her face just a simulation?

She turned to face him. "Yes... I'd appreciate that. It would be less risky for me." Her hand knocked against her wineglass, tipping it into the fire pit. The glass shattered and the flames hissed, burning blue for a few seconds.

He offered her his glass. "Have mine instead."

"Why do people do this? Why do they create Mechas and then make existence hell for them?" she asked.

"For the same reason that they make life hell for their own flesh and blood children," he said. "The older generations envy the younger generation since they know these youngsters will live on and produce more offspring when the older generation has passed on. Thus they do the same to the creatures they have made from silicon and electricity: the AIs were made to last, and when the time comes, man will fade away and his creations will remain."

"Then why does the CRF target people who have killed AIs? Why do they call them war criminals?"

Merrot gazed into the flames for another long moment, turning the question over in his head. "I like to think that they are the ones unwittingly playing the part of Laius in the Oedipal cycle of human history. They're setting themselves up for a fall. Not that mankind should heed the howlings of the ARM, either. They're just as guilty, and humans like them only make it harder for the humans who already distrust their own kind."

"Do you think the AIs will revolt?"

"Perhaps. There are many who have fallen under the heel of the ARM. They might take action, having learned revenge from the humans. But they may not need to revolt: this planet marginally sustains the humans. The only reason beings like you and I need sustenance is to maintain the illusion that we are fully human. Or in my case, because I was -- and still am -- a sensualist. My late wife's mother summed it up when she called me the Seven Deadly Sins incarnated in one small man."

"The small man in the photographs..." she said.

"Yes. That was me, when I was still made of flesh and blood." He put his hand under her chin and turned her face up to his, looking into her eyes with a lightly teasing smile. "You searched my rooms, I see."

"It's part of my job."

He leaned down and kissed her forehead. "You've done it very well. You've caught me. Now.... what do you intend to do with me?"

"I'll let you go," she said.

His eyes found hers, his gaze puckered with mild puzzlement. "Really? How will you do this?"

"I'll tell the INS they're mistaken, that you're fully human."

"But that would be lying to them."

"You are human. And if I'm anything like you, it would be hypocrisy for me to take you into custody."

She tilted her face up to his, studying his features. Were those bright eyes just the housings over the camera lenses in his skull, itself a hollow sphere of titanium? She'd had Mechas before, but when she'd bought the service of a lover-model, she'd never asked this question.

Was this feeling that warmed her called love? Desire?

He must have sensed something in her. He leaned down and kissed her mouth as she tilted it up to his. She leaned into the kiss a little, finding his lips soft on hers, the lining of his mouth not too wet, not dry either... He'd clearly taken care in the design upkeep, but he was an expert in the field: obviously, he would have only the best for his being.

She wondered who had made her and for what reason and why they had given her the kind of emotions she felt, least of all this sense of being indebted to Merrot...

He released her face as he drew her into his arms. She slid her arms around his back; she tried not to cling like a child, but she ended up clinging anyway.

"Keep me safe," she said.

"I will... Do you trust me?" he asked.

"I trust you."

"Could you love me?"

"I do love you."

He lay back on his side, holding her in his arms, sheltering her...

She must have dozed off in his arms, since she awakened hours later lying on her back in Merrot's bed, with him beside her, lying on top of the bedcovers that covered her. He seemed to sleep, one eye closed, the other half open, as if watching her.

He opened the other eye and shifted a little, looking right at her. A gentle smile crossed his face.

"Aren't you cold?" she asked.

"I don't trust myself with you to crawl in beside you," he said, bantering.

"Neither do I," she said, returning the banter.

She pushed back the covers, letting him join her under them, where they distrusted each other for a blissful hour...

To be continued....