Sally's Story: The Grand Finale

	Inside it was painfully quiet, the clatter of outside muffled save for the tramp of feet overhead and the occasional pop on some higher floor. They faced a ravaged receptionist’s desk, papers strewn around in a panic, a phone handset dangling over the side.
	“Well, where to Vince?”
	“Up, I suppose- hell, we don’t even know if he’s here.”
	“Vincent,” Sally nudged, “the scene, the baked goods.” He nodded, understanding.
	“Sorry?”
	“We’ll explain on the way up. In the meantime, let’s find a staircase.” Sally led the way, slowly, pressing doors open one by one as they edged down a hallway of first-floor offices. Coming to its end they found their access stairway- locked. Sally pressed the two men back with her hand, smashing in the butt of her shotgun against the heavy glass. Rebounding and nearly losing her feet, she yanked the handle and pulled herself up. Taking stance the butt smashed against the glass again and again before it gave way, the nandroid worming her hand through and freeing the handle. Waving the two men after her she started the grim ascent to the factory’s top floor. Her partner behind her explained the situation that brought them here, the evident origin of a gruesome portion of the city’s heroine, and as it was becoming clear the nexus of weathermen activity.
	“Hold up,” Sally said. Shoes were squeaking down the stairway, voices chattering in martial eagerness. She leant over the rail to peer up the few stories, catching sight of shimmering sleeves flapping in the air. Letting loose a cone of shot upwards she caught them, forcing them to stop. Leaping two steps at a time she towed the other two after her, combative, synthetic instinct carrying her once again. The stench of gunpowder started to fill the narrow stairwell, Sally rounding the corner to the next stairwell. Through acrid, sulfuric air she spied one watching the ascent, firing as soon as they locked eyes. She pulled again, sending him backwards with a gaping hole in his abdomen. Two bullets stuck leisurely in her chestplate, the diminutive pistol rounds doing little to stop her.
	“You good Sal?”
	“Perfect, come on!” The two men stuck behind the robot, glancing sideways and popping from behind railings. The few remaining thugs were expertly dispatched by the team, rounding the stairs to the third floor. Busting through the final door to an atrium more fitting an office building than an industrial bakery the three spread out, overlooking the factory floor. Dozens of armed men hurried about, but that’s not who they were here for. Pulling back to one of the office rooms they listened for anything other than the tramp of boots or shouting of orders, realization setting in amongst the weathermen that something was dangerously amiss.
	“Sal you hear that?”
	“What Vince?”
	“That-” He pointed across the wall to a small wooden door leading into the next block of office space. There was a harsh shouting, struggling and the cry of orders, desperate calls for any kind of support. “Odds are that’s where he is.”
	“Got it.” Sally crouched up, sliding up alongside the diminutive wooden door. It wouldn’t budge as the jiggling knob revealed. She reared up for a kick, sending herself backwards and into a cubicle by accident, hitting the floor with a thump. Well that she did, the door chewed apart by the bark of automatic weapons fire, splinters of wood clinging to her coat and sprinkling in her hair. Scrabbling back and away from the gaping doorway, Sally smacked her hand on the drywall, eyeing the other two. Vince and Mitchell swung on the opposite end, guns at the ready for the next person to come through that door.
	“BCPD! COME OUT, NOW,” a voice roared from the other room.
	“Oh fuck off,” Mitchell yelled back. “Oldest trick in the book, idiots!”
	“Wait, man,” Vincent whispered, grabbing his arm. “The SWAT team?” Mitchell shrugged, Sally mimicking the gesture.
	“YOU’VE GOT FIVE SECONDS!”
	“Hey assholes, we’re with you!” Another shout calling for a slow and steady surrender thoroughly ignored him. Vincent pulled out his badge, rolling his eyes- *this* again. Stepping slowly, carefully, away from the wall, Vincent catapulted the leather booklet through the wooden hole. A scattering of shots traced past it before Vincent watched a gloved hand nab it off the ground. The order to come out, slowly, was enough affirmation.
	“If we get shot it’s on you,” Mitchell grumbled. They scooted together towards the door, Sally the first to peer in at the beady eyes of three men, guns trained on her chest, staring back.
	“Hello!” She waved, tense, trying to work a smile in. A younger man in the back waved back, tufts of blonde hair trapped by his helmet. The man next to him slapped his hand down.
	“Move it,” the leading man prodded, swinging his barrel back and forth. Advancing into the dismal, broken office space they slowly made their intentions clear. Vincent’s badge skipped across the ground to his feet, the detective taking it up again. The three officers were bruised and bloodied, dark black stains marring their deep blue uniforms and streaks of cloth torn away by shrapnel and stray rounds, their ballistic helmets pitted and dented in places.
	“So! I think some introductions are in order,” Vince let out, slipping his sidearm away.
	“Detective Vincent la Fontaine, yes- who’s the robot and who’s the bum?”
	“Look, we don’t have time fo-”
	“You do, so please,” he gestured with his carbine, “introduce us.”
	“Detective Sally,” the maidbot joined, neatly flashing her own provisional badge.
	“Mitch.”
	“Mitch…”
	“*Just* Mitch.”
	“Well can you tell us what in the dandy-fuck you’re doing in here?”
	“Same that you’re doing, pal,” Vince spat, lowering his hands. “We’re trying to clear up the root of the *issue* here.”
	“Which is?”
	“There’s not really time for long winded explanations given the position we’re both in, is there?”
	“I suppose not, Vincent, but it’d be a grand help if you could explain what the hell we were called up into- and what’s killed two of my men already.”
	“I’ll make it short, okay? It’s ‘69 but worse, simple as that. Weathermen are swinging their dicks around the city and raising hell.” Sally blushed at the choice of words. “We don’t know *why*, but we know this is their home, or something akin to it.”
	“Jesus…” The mention of that year was enough to cast a shadow in the mind of any officer, old or new. “Look, there’s not much help I can give you. We lost our radio as soon as we made it to the top floor, and we’ve just commandeered a handset before holing up here. What I can say is that the exec office is where they’re holding out heaviest.”
	“And where would that be?”
	“Through that door and all the way across- we tried for it and nearly got chewed up.”
	“Christ alive,” Mitchell muttered behind them. Sally’s eyes were dilating again, her breathing quickening. Vincent was realizing he had to get her into action again lest she seize up.
	“Tell us everything you know.”
	“Like I said, it’s on the opposite end of the building. You’re gonna be making the long walk through these offices, or you can go straight across by way of the atrium.” Vincent’s brow wrinkled again, chewing the inside of his mouth in thought.
	“What are these offices looking like?”
	“Likely teeming with the fuckers, nothing less than dozens in that space. Lightly armed, thank God, mostly pistol caliber.”
	“Figured as much,” he said, nodding to Sally and the two glimmering, de-jacketed rounds plugged in her chest.
	“I’d have her out front for sure, she can take it.” The other officers nodded in agreement, Sally nonplussed at the assumed compliment. She couldn’t help but redden up a bit, enough to take her mind off things at least for a moment.
	“Mitch, what do you think?”
	“More cover, more combat. Simple as that,” he sniffed. “So long as we’re careful about it, *careful* not slow, we’ll be in good shape.”
	“Sally?”
	“Oh, I-,” she stopped, not sure what to think, really. In either situation she’d be out front, not exactly as well covered as the other two. Then again, she did have a generous allotment of plating front and back that set her apart, as well as tactical inferential reasoning, superior firing capabilities, the list went on. “I’ll do what’s safer for you two.”
	“I’d take her up on that,” the team chief joined. “Way I *think* it’s happening is they’re going to be moving out of this building soon, judging by how much less gunfire we’re hearing. If you’re gonna breach that office now’s the time. We’ll be right behind you should you need it.”
	“Well Vince,” Sally said, giving him a meager smile. “You heard the man.” He bobbed his head, the three making way to the next door to round the corner of the surrounding office space.

	Their progress was swift, no more than ten minutes spent moving down the rows of cubicles and meeting spaces, tables overturned and blasted-through by their disciplined fire. It was savage battle, close and claustrophobic in the increasingly weighty, charred air. Lights flickered as the power weakened and failed, flashing out indecipherable morse-code messages as Sally crept forward, the eyes for the other two in the absence of light. Broken fluorescent lights hissed and popped above them while they crept forward, turning corners and blowing holes in flimsy particle board walls where the nandroid directed their fire. Each successive meter of carpet covered was a step deeper into the maw of the building. The outer brick walls cracked and heaved in the darkness, peppering fire from outside raking the walls. A stray round here or there would pop in through a rare window, forcing their heads down as they crawled belly-down towards a collection of whispers or the sharp release of a charging handle, another round chambered.
	Finally light returned, dim and yellow, but there. Wallpaper tarnished and rotted in the smoke, peeling in places as the glue surrendered to the warm embrace of intruding smoke, the familiar ring of sirens leaking into the building again. They were close, perilously close, as the resistance intensified. Steel desks were flipped and facing them expectantly, heads or arms popping up to spray rounds down the length of the offices at their assailants. Splinters of cheap veneer and fragments of steel chairs cut the cheeks of the two humans who hugged what little protection was available to them, their robot companion edging forward and tanking round after round. Her dented chest plate was peppered with copper jackets and the odd round stuck in place, mushroomed pieces of stray lead dropping to the ground. She pressed ahead ruthlessly, mechanically dispatching those not wise enough to turn back and retreat up the length of the office, waving forward her partners as each successive row of cubicles was cleaned out.
	And there it was- the last door at the end of the lengthy corridor of devastated prefab walls, toppled desks and dishevelled breakroom furniture. It glistened slightly, greasy with the gentle accumulation of soot on its wooden surface. The small posse stood around it, Sally reaching into her pockmarked jacket for a handful of extra shells. Finding none she disposed of the long gun and retrieved her trusty service revolver. She gasped and sank to the floor, breathing heavy.
	“Just a second, please,” she panted. Catching her breath she rose again, steadied a little, and turned to the slowly blackening slab. Nudging the handle she swung the door open, all three scrambling out of the way as they pierced the executive office, the convenient room label fallen, abandoned, on the ground, its letters askew and missing.
	“You can come on out, it’s just me,” a voice grumbled, resigned. “We’re evacuating this building, you know.”
	“John,” Sally whispered. Mitchell tipped his head. She popped her pale face over a split roundtable to spy the balding, middle-aged man sitting alone in a leather office chair, seated at the other, standing half of the table.
	“Come, come,” he invited them. “Not like I have much time left, now do I?”
	“Get to the point you slimy mother-”
	“Spare me, *Mitchell*, you never had the full picture, the raw *vision* for this kind of work. Not like me, no sir.” He cackled to himself, enjoying the little speech he was giving. Vincent leveled his own sidearm at the giggling man, grimly pulling the hammer back with his thumb. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” he smiled, raising his wrist gently. A slim little wire sat coiled to his finger, slinking up his arm from there.
	“Lord, man, can’t you see-”
	“Ah ah,” he chided, now holding a gun. “I’ll be doing the talking here. It’s not every day I have a pair of pigs to monologue with while sitting on, oh, several hundred pounds of plastic explosive. I’d choose your words carefully in these next, few, crucial moments.”
	“You’re crazy you son of a bitch, that’ll take the building down-”
	“And, Mitchell? You could live for the cause, the *struggle*,” he fanned his hand in the air, handgun clenched in his fingers, “but never *die* for it. You’ve seen enough death already, yes?” Sally rustled her hand in the pierced corduroy pocket, taking aim carefully.
	“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to put the gun down.”
	“Oh! How rich, the police equipment, the chattel, speaking automaton, is here to arrest *me*! The noble champion of robot-liberation, friend to outmodes and enemy of the robotic companies, the handler. Tell me- have you ever stopped to ask why? Why you are an object to be owned and why I, or your partner, are free to think and to feel and to act? Why does *he* give all the orders, why does *he* outrank *you*? You were made, by design, for police work, and yet he’s your better. Curious, no?” Sally stared unblinking at him, the rapid electronic churning of her internal processors forcing her to pause, the heavy dimpling of her chestplate from repeated impacts not doing anything to help.
	“Sally, don’t-” She turned her head to Vince, hair swishing enough to free a few of the old wood chips still there. Tilting her head at him, hair dipping onto her face, eyeing him up and down. Turning her back to the waiting man, now smiling wider as she faced her two partners, she slid up behind his fine office chair, gun in the open air.
	“Don’t worry Vince,” she sneered. “But I do think he’s got a point.” She blinked at him, he assumed, hair covering her eye now.
	“I got this Vincent,” Mitchell joined, raising his rifle at the robot.
	“Hold it.” He pressed the barrel down with his off hand, gun still half-trained on John.
	“Glad to see you’re not as hot headed as Mitch here... Vincent, was it? Well, regardless- your robot’s made her decision,” he giggled raising his handgun at Vincent. “Sorr-”
	A shot clapped the ears of the four people assembled in the room. The instantaneous descent of a hammer, the strike of a firing pin into primer, the delicate swirling ballet of a bullet flying free of its casing; all of these transpired in an instant, a fraction of a heartbeat to men, or several exchanges of ones and zeros for the robot. The robot who, stone faced, had pulled the trigger. The round rotated in the air before blasting into the man’s hand, skillfully below the wire and into his thumb, shattering the metacarpal of his palm there and gliding through tendon and muscle, fattening and flattening as it continued before sputtering out of the gory tunnel it had bored into his hand and across the proximal of his middle finger where it wrapped around the handgun. Sputtering out it languidly flew across the room, tinkling coin-like in some unknown, carpeted corner of the meeting room. The man howled in pain, his hand disassembled in a single squeeze, handgun dropping uselessly at Sally’s feet where she scooped it up for safe-keeping. The wire still intact she breathed a sigh, nodding to Vincent.
	“Let’s finish this.” She snapped her fingers for cuffs, coupling the man’s one good hand and its wounded mirror behind him. “Well, we got him. Now what?”
	“Now what,” he grunted, teeth gritting as his last good fingers writhed and marinated in the coagulating slurry around them. “‘Now’ isn’t anything, you damned morons… Not like there’s anything to stop this, heh, there’s a fire going now. They, the people, see what can be done, what changes can be made, when a little ‘hard power’ is applied- that’s the word, right? *Hard power*?” Mitchell kicked him hard in the back, air wheezing from the crumpled man’s lungs.
	“Shut it old man,” he whispered into the man’s ear, “You’ve lost, you’ve-”
	“I’ve lost nothing,” he angrily foamed, “I kept you here long enough to occupy you. The movement will live on without me, and will flourish without the likes of you.” The door behind them, slacking half-open on its hinges, was kicked open again as the man scurried beneath his desk. The trio of SWAT officers held their guns at the ready, bloodied, stolen uniforms ill-fitting, dragging and hastily donned. Sally reacted faster than the other two, snapping two shots towards the throat of the lead weatherman as her partners dived for meager cover behind a brick pillar. Sally stepped on and over the muttering lieutenant, shielding him with her body as best she could. Her two shots took purchase in the unarmored neck of the man, jets of crimson drooling from his mouth and carotid artery as he fumbled backwards. His partners dashed for shelter too, finding ground inside the executive bathroom to the side of the office, the two taking turns pouring fire out at the gathered posse.
	“Sally, what’s the sitch,” Vincent screamed from behind the chipping brick pillar.
	“Two left, sir,” she threw back, ducking behind the table and firing two more shots towards the tiled room.
	“Got it! Mitch, can you move?” The other man had slipped back out of the office, forming an angle on the doorway from the office hallway.
	“Already did!”
	“Good, see if-,” A spit of fire raked the brick pillar, Vince forced into the confines of its shadow. “See if you can get around by the door! Jesus...”
	“Gotchu,” he reared up at the door frame, eyes glued to the glowing portal across from him, the black flash of a gun barrel poking out before slipping inside again. Sally trained her gun on the doorway while Mitchell dashed to the corner of the room, rifle trained on it as he slid into place, Sally letting loose a singular suppressive blast at the door. She slapped the ejector rod and fumbled in her pocket for more ammo, turning to Vincent.
	“Vince you got any?”
	“Hold up,” he yelled back, kneeling behind the wall. He picked up and ran for the desk, the bounding of his legs yanking him across the room towards his partner. Head twisting back to the door, she watched the first of the two men rush out, torso twisting to his right and peppering the table with rounds, splinters and the continuing slivers of lead tumbling towards her and her charge. Rotating her body the mass of the other handgun she’d taken pressed from her torn pocket, hand dropping her first sidearm thoughtlessly and going for the second. Taking it up she affixed the sights on the man in the center of the room, black helmet loose and a quarter-way down the back of his head. Squeezing the trigger a single round twinkled through the air and tore into his shoulder, grinding along the length of his clavicle and into his lower neck. In her periphery, though, his buddy was already peering out the door, the robot calculating the angle as center of mass, Vincent. She leant right and brought the pistol to bear on him in turn, the hammer striking dry, clicking uselessly. He only needed the one bullet, bastard.
	“Mitch,” she shrieked, the man already in motion as the first of the attackers tumbled forward and collapsed at the foot of the pillar, a grisly pool of arterial red already forming about his head, mouth gasping fish-like for air where none was found. The man opposite the room had drawn a bead on the other who peered from the door, his eyes taught and narrow as he squeezed the trigger repeatedly. Fingers tightened in sync and together, a burst of rounds bound for Vincent as he sprinted for Sally, another three rounds bound for the pelvis of the second weatherman. Time slowed before Sally’s eyes, the gelatinous goop of smoky air sticking and accloying her eyes, her throat. It held the bullets suspended, chugging along as they twirled noiselessly above the ground. Two found their mark in the weatherman as he slipped right, femur and pelvis silently cracked, the third impacting the opposite wall, far left of Sally’s head. All four found purchase in Vincent, a jagged constellation of grim red holes weeping out of his white button-up, the man pitching up and over to the wall right of Sally.