I Am Automaton 2: Kafka Rising Page 30

  Conor stepped into the cloud of smoke and paused just long enough to make sure the rifle was loaded and the safety was off.

  SX-90, he thought. I’ll bet this son of a bitch can do some damage.

  Another explosion, this one from the vicinity of the Midwest Academy of Scientific Research.

  “Damn it,” he muttered.

  There were dozens of ghost shapes moving in the cloud, probably armed Kalak, but he ran toward them anyway. Toward the MASR Building.

  Toward Dorothy.

  Sprays of gunfire rattled out ahead, followed by a much smoother surge of…blaster bolts.

  Blaster bolts?

  That couldn’t be.

  The Kalak didn’t use blasters. They used their own brand of assault rifle. Powerful, yes. More powerful than the ordinary human weapon. More advanced, too. But not blasters.

  What the hell is happening?

  And then, he rounded the corner toward the riverfront and he saw it.

  “No…”

  The top two-thirds of the MASR Building were engulfed in flames.

  He had enough composure or incomprehension to recognize how strange it was for the explosions to trigger so high up rather than at the base where the whole building would have crumbled. Then he saw that the flames still began well below Dorothy’s floor.

  Please, no…

  Unless she’d found a way out before the blasts, she was trapped up there somewhere. Burning to death in her office because she’d wanted to wait for him to go down to her laboratory in the lower levels.

  Burning.

  A blaster bolt whizzed by his head and Conor ducked instinctively.

  Blasters? he thought again.

  He didn’t wait for another close call. Instead, he came up firing in the direction of the shot and the ghost-shapes moving through the city streets. It only took a few reports before

  (Dorothy)

  rage overwhelmed him and he charged toward the MASR Building, still firing. He took out four of the ghosts in his wild spray of rifle bursts before the clip ran out, and by then he’d drawn enough panicked attention that he knew he was going to have to either find another weapon or find cover in a hurry.

  Momentarily altering his course from the building, he crouched over the corpse of one of his victims and grabbed its blaster.

  What the hell? he thought as soon as he saw the creature’s face.

  It wasn’t a Kalak. That much was certain. This bastard was almost as white as the cloud of smoke billowing through the streets.

  Tsoul?

  Probably. But there wasn’t any time and it didn’t matter.

  Bringing the long, slender blaster up to bear, Conor yelled

  (Dorothy)

  and didn’t stop killing the ghosts until he’d reached the entrance to the MASR Building. By then, they were all either dead or gone.

  And so was Dorothy.

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