I Am Automaton 2: Kafka Rising Read online

  “And what if we pull this off?” asked Night Stalker. “Then what?”

  “Then we move on to the operation in Italy,” answered Belmont.

  “What about his father?” Night Stalker was picking his fingernails with a very long hunting knife.

  “What about him?” Yvette asked reproachfully.

  “We’re really not going to drag him around with us, are we? I’m not a babysitter, you know.”

  “He’ll be none of your concern,” Yvette snapped. “Just do your job.”

  “She’s right,” said Belmont. “We made a promise to Carl and we’re going to keep it. It’s none of your concern, Night Stalker.”

  “Okay, just asking,” snapped Night Stalker petulantly.

  “Just focus on getting the RGT. That is your concern,” said Belmont.

  “I’ll start making the preparations,” said Night Stalker. He eyed them both significantly before leaving the room. They heard the front door slam.

  “He gives me the creeps,” Yvette told Belmont.

  “Yes, well, he’s a necessary evil. All mercenaries have a rotten disposition. It comes with the territory, but he’s the best at what he does.”

  “I can’t wait to be done with him,” Yvette sneered.

  “Now, now. He’s part of our dysfunctional little family, mercenary or not,” Belmont said. “A man with his talents always comes in handy.”

  “Where did you find him anyway?”

  Belmont smiled. “Actually, he found me.”

  “You have an annoying habit of collecting strays,” said Yvette sardonically.

  “You, too, were once a stray, my dear.”

  Yvette blushed a little.

  “If it weren’t for my…intercession,” Belmont mused, “your life would be very different.”

  Yvette remembered it as if it was yesterday; only it was twelve years ago. The busy streets of Florence. The orange rooftops. The covered bridge over the Arno River. The Piazza della Signoria.

  “I remember,” she said…

  She and her sisters fanned out in the crowd, filthy and ragged, with eager fingers searching for unsuspecting pockets while her father waited on the outskirts of town. If they were unproductive, they would be beaten.

  She saw this one American tourist talking rather loudly to a local asking for directions, as if speaking louder would make him easier to understand. His wife stood apart from him, looking awkward, her large purse jutting off to one side.

  Yvette approached quickly, building enough momentum for a nice ‘accidental’ bump. She collided with the woman’s large purse, sending the distracted woman reeling around.

  “Oh, pardon me, young lady.” When she saw Yvette’s ragged appearance, her demeanor soured.

  Yvette had already tucked her hand with the wad of Euros into her shawl, but the woman was checking her bag.

  “Wait…come back.” The woman tugged on her husband’s sleeve. “That girl took my Euros.”

  The husband turned and saw Yvette already backing away. “Get over here!” The angry husband began to advance. Yvette turned to run, but someone grabbed her arm tight.

  It was a man in dark blue pants, a light blue shirt, and a dark blue cap. Polizia. The cop told her to give the Euros back, tugging on her arm with a tight grip.

  Yvette looked across the plaza and saw her one younger sister watching her from behind the statue of Neptune. There was nothing she could do. She was on her own.

  She reached into her shawl and produced the colorful wad of Euros. The cop snatched it from her hand and handed it back to the wife. The wife took it graciously and placed it back into her purse.

  As the cop pulled her away, the husband of the woman shot Yvette a reproachful look. His wife, however, looked rather uneasy watching Yvette being taken away. Was it pity? Guilt?

  Yvette prepared herself for the fallout that was to come. Her father was going to be displeased that she was caught, and she would be beaten. Her sisters would then be beaten for allowing Yvette to be caught, even though there was nothing they could’ve possibly done about it.

  Then there was Djordji, her father’s friend to whom she was promised. He, too, would be displeased. He was fifteen years her senior.

  The cop took her under the covered bridge, where she was passed off to someone else. The second man was not a cop. He was older, perhaps in his fifties, well dressed, but his grip was equally as strong on her arm.

  She found herself in a small town in Tuscany called Montecatini. She was placed in a small hotel across the street from the police station.

  “What is your name?” the older man asked her.

  She did not respond.

  He pulled a wedge of nougat covered in chocolate and almond slices. “What is your name?”

  She did not take it. “Dooriya.”

  “Romanian?”

  She nodded.

  “You will now be called Yvette.”

  She was taken by an older girl wearing too much makeup into a bath where she was scrubbed thoroughly. She sat sheepishly in the cast iron tub looking at the faded tile in the bathroom, avoiding eye contact with the older girl. She studied the square molding along the edge of the ceiling. By the time it was done, she had never been so clean in all her life. Her skin actually shined.

  The older girl then silently took her into a small bedroom and sat her in front of a large mirror. The room contained a small bed with a thick cream-colored spread. The wallpaper was old and yellowed, and the maroon carpet felt plush under her feet.

  The older girl began to open a container of foundation, but Yvette put her hand up. “No. No, thank you.”

  The older girl smiled warmly at her. Obviously not comprehending Yvette’s decline, she reached to apply some foundation on her face.

  Yvette stood up and backed away from the mirror. “I said no, thank you.”

  “No?” Asked the older girl.

  “No,” repeated Yvette.

  The older girl looked nervously at the door to the bedroom. Yvette wheeled around to find the older Italian man standing in the doorway.

  He waved the older girl off casually. She nodded reverently and put the foundation back on the small table in front of the mirror. She shot Yvette a nervous glance and then excused herself from the room.

  The older man entered and said something in Italian that she didn’t understand. He closed the door behind him and locked it from the inside. Yvette didn’t need to speak Italian to know what was going to happen next.

  The older man slowly pulled off his shirt exposing a chest prolific with gray hair. He reached at his waist and unbuckled the belt of his pants.

  She backed nervously into the chair in front of the little table, banging the table against the wall. He tittered in delight that she was so frightened, as if it was going to heighten the experience for him.

  He doubled up the belt deliberately in his hands and pulled it taut, snapping the two parallel straps of leather. She had to do something fast because, by all appearances, he meant to beat her.

  The beating didn’t scare her in the least, as her father beat her and her sisters frequently. Her father beat her when she was unproductive or disobedient, but he was her father. It was his household.

  This old pervert was not her father and therefore had no right to beat her for being unproductive or disobedient. He had taken her and cleaned her up for her indentured servitude. Yvette was a traveler of Romany. She had been to many towns and seen houses such as this…from the outside.

  She stepped forward, pleading with her hands pressed together as if in prayer. The older man stopped and considered her for a moment. He smiled the smile of a favored uncle and she, for a moment, thought she had a chance.

  He swung wildly, clapping her on the side of her face with his belt. The blow sent her reeling backward, and her hand reached up to feel the sting of a welt forming on her tender face.

  The older man clenched his teeth and advanced, bringing down blow after blow onto her. All she co
uld do was crouch and cover her face, her arms taking the brunt of the leather strap, but she did not yelp or cry out. No, she wouldn’t give this son of a bitch the same courtesy she would her own father.

  As suddenly as the assault came on, the blows stopped. Yvette kept her hands up in case the old bastard was taking a breather, but the man was listening to something. She heard it, too. She put her hands down and stared at the door as she heard the screams of other girls and furniture thrashing about outside.

  The older man appeared equally confused as he was wondering what the hell was going on outside. There were heavy footsteps just outside the door, and then someone began to turn the doorknob from the other side.

  The older man looked frantically around the room. He decided to wait on the left side of the door. He put a finger up to his lips telling Yvette to hush, telling her that they were in this together.

  The door was kicked open with a heavy boot strike, sending it swinging inward. It covered the older man with the belt, and a young Simon Belmont came storming in clutching a rather large serrated knife in his right hand.

  He looked down at the young girl staring at him in an off-white terrycloth robe. There was a brief expression that Yvette had never seen prior to that day, except from the tourist wife that she tried to pickpocket. It looked like pity, no remorse, but what was it that this man had to be remorseful about? He was not responsible for her state in life or her grim situation.

  As this unspoken understanding passed between young Yvette and this man, the door was flung back shut and the older Italian reached over Belmont’s head with the belt. He quickly pulled back, tightening the belt around Belmont’s throat.

  Belmont lurched backward, stabbing wildly with the knife, but he never found his target. He gurgled and growled as his face began to turn from red to a shade of purple, a vein popping out of his forehead and the chords of his neck jutting out in shocking relief.

  Yvette stood there in her robe watching the scene unfold before her. She and this older Italian man had succeeded in their ruse. Soon it would all be over and things would go back the way they were before this interruption.

  She reached down and picked up the knife in her small hands. It appeared to be like a machete or small sword in her little hands, like she was a Roman soldier from ancient days. The Italian man shouted something in Italian at her, but she didn’t understand.

  She nodded.

  Belmont had dropped to the floor on his knees, now clawing at the strap around his neck, his eyes bloodshot and bulging out of his head. The Italian man wrapped the slack of the strap around his right wrist and flexed his biceps, tightening the strap around Belmont’s neck. The older Italian man reached out with his right hand, palm up and gesturing wildly.

  He wanted the knife.

  Yvette walked up to him, towards the beckoning right hand. She grabbed the large knife firmly by the handle and stared at it for a moment in her hands.

  Just like that, she drove it into Belmont with all her might. He leaned forward and clutched the handle tightly, his eyes wide with horror, and he began to go limp.

  Surprised, the Italian man dropped his hands and Belmont fell to the ground. He just stared at the girl in astonishment, and then a smile crept across his face. He stood there sweating, with his hair disheveled like a crow’s nest, looking proud. This girl was going to fit in after all.

  He stepped over the body of Belmont and reached out for Yvette, but she backed away. For a moment, the Italian man looked confused, but he stepped forward to hold her. Again, she retreated.

  Finally, he became irate, yelling at her in Italian, pounding his fist into his hand mightily. He was the king of his castle, and he demanded respect. At least that’s what she thought he was trying to say.

  Suddenly, the crumpled form of Belmont pushed itself up, and he sliced into the right Achilles tendon of the Italian man. The Italian dropped like a stone onto the lush red carpeting. He yelled, clutching his ankle, blood streaming between his fingers.

  Belmont stood up, rubbing his neck and wiping the saliva from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. He walked around the Italian man squirming on the floor so that he could look into his face. The Italian man spit at him. “Tutsun.”

  Belmont took the knife and drove it through the top of the Italian man’s head. “Yeah, but I’m the one with the knife.” He pulled back and the large blade slid out of the man’s head, coated in his blood. The body dropped to the floor and blood began to pool, making the maroon carpet appear darker.

  Belmont reached out his hand to Yvette, who looked at it. She reached out hers and took it…

  “Your intervention did not come without a cost,” Yvette told Belmont, back in the here and now. “You weren’t just rescuing. You were recruiting.”

  “You were free to go at any time,” said Belmont softly. “We had interests in Montecatini. The local bosses didn’t like our presence in Italy. We were foreigners who didn’t pay them their tribute. We had to send a message. Besides, you were the only girl from that house who became a true believer.”

  “And here I am now,” said Yvette thoughtfully.

  “We have another rescued soul in our basement,” said Belmont. “He is no less vulnerable than you were. No less vulnerable than I was when I had been betrayed by my government. When I had realized I had been used.”

  Yvette understood what she had to do. “I’ll go talk to him.”

  Carl was shuddering on the floor in his cell when he heard someone fiddling with the digi-lock. It disengaged, and Yvette stood there in silhouette.

  “I thought you could use some company,” she said. He said nothing in reply.

  She stepped over him and sat on the bench. “Jesus,” she said. “It’s just like a prison cell.”

  “It’s…only temporary,” Carl croaked through the helmet.

  “You know, when Belmont found me as a young girl, my whole life was a prison. My name was Dooriya.”

  “Why…did you…change it?”

  “When he found me, I was reborn. I was supposed to be someone else, but then I realized I had a greater purpose than wandering from town to town pilfering money and bread from the pockets of the rich.”

  “And…what higher purpose…is that?”

  “To liberate others just as I was liberated. To free those who had been held down and used for the greed and ambition of others. I, too, was involved in all kinds of corruption. As a child of Romany—”

  “You…were a…gypsy?”

  “Why are you so shocked?”

  “You appear…too…”

  “What? Beautiful? Civilized? When Belmont found me, I was drafted into another type of corruption. I was to be a plaything, purchased by rich men at their whimsy while their wives tended to their children at home.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? I’m not. If my life hadn’t taken that ugly turn, Belmont wouldn’t have found me. I would be dressed in rags, married to some terrible man, sending my children out to beg and steal.”

  “I guess you dodged a bullet.” Carl’s breathing had become more regular.

  “You know, you, too, are being reborn, Carl.”

  “Into a monster.”

  “No. You are becoming something greater than yourself. Something beautiful.”

  “Beautiful. Look at me. I look like a walking horror. A monster who controls other monsters.”

  “You are meant for something extraordinary. You are no longer Carl Birdsall.”

  “I was thinking about this,” Carl said. “What if I am becoming what created the THV virus and RGT? I have these memories that aren’t mine, feelings that aren’t mine.”

  “They are yours now.”

  “And what if my new purpose is to destroy humanity?”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I have dreams that I am on other worlds leading attacks. I am the perfect killer leading legions of undead to either consume or convert all who stand against me. What if tha
t is my purpose?

  “You said so yourself. There have been others throughout history, others that have shared my experience, and each had been killed by their own people. Maybe their own people figured out the poor bastards’ purpose. Maybe I should be killed, not encouraged. I’m too dangerous, Yvette.”

  “Or,” she added, “maybe your purpose is to use your gifts to fight oppression in the world. Maybe you can use your undead drones to fight against the powerful so that countless lives of the innocent can be spared.”

  “You don’t get it, Yvette. Maybe I am to be an oppressor, working for distant would-be overlords.”

  “I hardly think so,” she said dismissively.

  He sat up with great pain. “Why not? It makes sense.”

  “The Outworlders have been an influence throughout the ages,” she said, “planting ideas and technologies along with superstition to keep us humble. Why would they now want to come and destroy humanity?”

  “Because modern society no longer subscribes to superstition. The world has lost faith in the great religions. Environmentalism, cloning, smaller and smaller computers, electric cars. These are our idols. There’s no fear of fire and brimstone guiding society. Religion is used as an excuse to commit atrocities.”

  “I’m hardly talking about religion,” Yvette said. “I do not think they are connected to Christianity, Buddhism, or Islam.”

  “No,” Carl said, “but vampires, devils, and boogiemen. What makes you think these ‘Outworlders’ are beneficent at all? You and Belmont talk about the oppressed and justice. Maybe there’s something bigger happening than politics or wars.”

  “And what is that?”

  “I don’t know. Armageddon. Extinction.”

  “We all choose our paths in life,” Yvette said. “Do you want to use your gifts to destroy humanity or help it?”

  “Yvette, from everything you’ve told me, we are shaped by circumstances. You wouldn’t be who you are today unless Belmont found you, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, maybe something found me and now my future circumstances will dictate what I will be.”

  “You’ve been exposed to something,” she said, “and you are now changing. But I believe your exposure was an accident.”