The Neo-Metropol Heist

47: Artem

Artem climbed one rung after another up the steel ladder of the maintenance shaft. The tube was cold and his hands were going numb, but he didn't slow down.
Behind him, Cad followed silently, his servos whirring with every rung, and Theo behind him. They had cut it close with the detective, and now they were close to the end.
He hadn't been completely dishonest with Jaeger - they didn't have any prior knowledge of what Castells was planning before that night - but they had had a chance to watch it twice through before the detective had caught up with them.
All he had had to do was play dumb whilst Cad played it remotely.
He hadn't lied, not really, and the plans themselves were real, which was why they were so terrifying.
It had been enough to convince her to let them go, and Artem didn't know if she would come after them again, in truth he didn't think the detective herself really knew what she wanted.
Besides, it didn't matter, they were inches from the finish line and almost clear. Almost.
Artem climbed out of the hatch and waited for Cad to clear it before reaching in and offering to help Theo out, only to receive a wave of her free hand.
She pulled herself out and they observed the corridor they were in now.
It was different to the rest of the building, one long empty half-room with one huge, threatening metal wall. The vault.
"Artem? Theo?" Aphelion came over the radio.
"Aphelion," Artem couldn't help but grin at the sound of her voice - he could feel waves of relief smashing against the floodgates in his mind, but he couldn't let the tide free yet - he wasn't done, "we're at the vault. How are things on your end?"
Aphelion went quiet for a moment.
"Edward went in to pull Zakarias out, they were interrogating him," she said.
Artem sighed and rubbed the back of his neck.
"Is he all right?" He asked.
"I'm here, Artem," Zakarias said over the radio, his voice tired and less confident than usual.
When Edward didn't report in, somehow Artem knew.
"Edward didn't make it," Zakarias said slowly.
There was silence for a minute and Artem didn't know what to say. 'Didn't make it' could mean different things in the game they played, but they knew it was always a possibility.
Edward had known that, and they couldn't do a thing now except finish what they had come to do.
"Cad, get on the door," Artem said, "Aphelion, we're going to break the door down this end, ready your end?"
"Born ready," she replied.
Set into the steel wall of the vault was a wide door, twenty-five inches thick with four different kinds of security layering, able to withstand most kinds of blast and almost any kind of thief.
Almost any kind of thief.
"Miss Aphelion," Cad said, "I am commencing local infiltration."
"I'm flooding the system with garbage data and deactivating the security walls as we speak. You're good to go."
As the two of them began the complicated process that must have been the greatest challenge of their lives, to Theo and Artem it simply looked as though Cad was staring intently at the security pad next to the door.
"Cad," Artem said quietly.
"Yes, Artem?" The robot replied.
Artem didn't know how to form the words - he didn't exactly know what he was worried about - the thing that they had seen in the R&D labs below, it had terrified him.
Somehow, Castells could control every CastellsTech robot that had ever been built, and he was planning to do it, for whatever reason.
Artem glanced at the CastellsTech logo embossed on his friend's chestplate and frowned.
"Could he do it?" Artem asked.
"Could you make a more specific enquiry?" The robot replied, and Artem couldn't help but grin.
"The 'control all robots' shtick," he specified, "can he actually do it? Can he control you?"
Cad cocked his head slightly but didn't break his gaze from the security pad, keeping his long, slender fingers pressed against it.
"I believe the scenario is possible, but as to whether it is likely, I do not have the data required to make an educated assumption, as you would say," Cad told him.
"I don't think I would say that, to be honest Cad," Artem smiled nervously, "what about you?"
"I no longer receive remote updates from CastellsTech servers and exist on separate cloud drives than other CT hardware," Cad said, his voice almost reassuring, "a remote broadcast rewrite code would not affect me in the way that it would affect other devices."
Artem was relieved. He knew that he took Cad for granted, and he occasionally forgot that for all his human mannerisms, he was just a machine.
"Your concern is appreciated, however," the robot said, still not looking from the screen.
Artem smiled and put his hand on Cad's shoulder, feeling the whirr of the hardware under the casing.
Then, the screen on the door went from red to green and the door began to rise with a heavy groan.
"I still can't believe that he had no guards here," Theo said as the door rose up past their faces.
"He did," Aphelion said, "I disabled them remotely when I disabled the security door. That's the problem with security mechs."
"And not being able to trust your human security enough to use them instead," Artem said, "doesn't hurt to have friends."
"How would you know?" Aphelion chuckled.
"Hurtful," Artem replied, stepping into the vault.
Aphelion was right about the security mechs - around the room, several dozen silver and white androids lay in awkward, slumped piles around the room.
The vault was empty, save for one single crate, the height of an average man and the width of a small jumpcar. It was made of ridged metal and some kind of tough, rubberised material.
Artem moved over to the crate and put a hand on it. Without having to be asked, Cad did the same, and with a shrill buzz, a slim tray opened between them, revealing a sample of some of the jewels contained within.
Artem smiled and glanced between Theo and Cad. Theo even allowed herself a smile, and Cad attempted to rearrange the pixels on his face to a cartoonish smirk.
"Ladies and gentleman," Artem said, "we have it."
"Well stop fucking around and grab it," Harry said over the commlink.
"Oh, Harry, I was wondering where you were," Artem japed.
"We're ready to drop when you give the signal," Harry replied.
Artem nodded to Theo and Cad, who took off the satchel he still carried and handed it to Artem.
Inside it, Artem found two circular steel discs, about an inch in width each. This was the risky part, the make or break moment, if they had misjudged the defensive capabilities that Sergei Castells had at his disposal, they were done for.
He handed one to Cad, and between them they placed each disc about fifteen feet apart on the furthest wall - the wall that lead out onto the nine-hundred and thirty-six feet drop through the night air to the ground.
They simply stuck to the wall with no effort, and remained dormant for the moment.
Then, from the bag, Artem pulled more metal coiling like they had used to scale the elevator earlier and Theo helped him tie it securely around and underneath the crate, three times each way in a cross motion.
Where the rope met and faced the far wall, Artem placed a round metal clamp with a socket like an electrical outlet, which melded perfectly with the rope.
"All set," Artem said, looking nervously between Theo and Cad, "stand back," he finished, and they each took a space either side of the crate.
With a final nervous gulp, Artem put his finger to his ear and said, "Harry, we're ready. Bring it."
What happened next was hard to keep track of in a linear fashion, as it all happened in the same moment.
On the far wall, the silver discs began to glow with a strange purple hue and a hum, and then a couple of seconds later detonated in a shock wave as the explosive inside was catalysed.
Through the smoke, Artem saw Detective Jaeger, disorientated by the blaze, shouting at him, only he realised he couldn't hear her through the ringing in his ears.
The first blast was only designed to weaken the integrity of the wall, and before the smoke and dust could fill the rip, there was an almighty roar as the wall was torn from the building by what could have been the hand of God, but was actually revealed to be the jumpship, hovering like a beautiful bird a dozen feet away from the edge.
The section of wall Harry had torn out dangled from a length of thick cable protruding from the open cargo back of the jumpship, but only for a second before it was released, falling to the the ground below.
The cable was reeled in, ready to be fired again.
"... Artem," Artem could hear the detective's faint cries.
He wondered if she was going to try and arrest him again, and was thoroughly confused when she dived for cover behind one of the raised metal walls surrounding the crate.
It took another split second for him to notice the squad of mercs flood into the vault, weapons raised.
As the rope launched forward again, this time into the vault, latching onto the clamp he had placed onto the ropes, he dove forward and took cover behind the walling next to Jaeger.
The ship lurched backwards and the crate was ripped from the floor of the vault and reeled into the waiting belly of the ship as the MetSec mercs fired a volley of assault rifle rounds at the ship.
Artem turned to Jaeger, who looked back at him with a concerned look, then put her finger to her ear. Over the gunfire, he heard her say a fragment of a sentence.
"Garistag," she yelled, "... had the situation in hand ... call off your dogs... Garistag... Garistag?"
Her face said it all - whoever she was trying to call wasn't responding, and the mercs kept firing.
"Kid," Harry yelled over the commlink, "we have it, let's go."
Then, the ground beneath him shook, and the entire floor dipped towards the missing wall.
"Oh, fantastic," Artem gasped.
Cad and Theo were the other side of where the crate had been, closer to the gaping hole that lead out to freedom. Cad could protect them both to get them to the ship in time. Artem couldn't say the same for himself, though. Flesh was a little less damage-resistant than blast-proof ceramic.
Harry turned the ship towards the mercs and over the commlink, Artem heard him snarl. He loosed a volley from the rail-gun that dropped two of them, but only really succeeded in damaging the integrity of the quickly disintegrating floor of the vault. It slanted another foot with a creak.
One of the mercs lost his footing and slipped, rolling to the edge of the building and firing off a spray of gunfire at the jumpship before he went over the edge with a scream.
The bullets tore through the weakened shielding of the cockpit and Artem heard Harry cry out.
"Harry," Artem shouted.
"Bastard got me in the arm," Harry snarled, and Artem didn't doubt that he would've fired another salvo if it didn't mean the floor caving in.
"Harry, you need to go," Artem said, knowing that if another shot penetrated the shielding, the old man might not be so lucky.
"Not without you, kid," he said stubbornly.
Harry wouldn't budge first, Artem knew, so he changed tact.
"Cad," Artem said, breathing slowly and carefully wording the words, "you need to take Theo and get her out of here."
There was silence for a moment and Artem looked towards Jaeger, who must have heard what he had said. She had her gun drawn now, for him or for the MetSec guys, he didn't know.
"Artem, I may still be able to reach you, the chance of casing penetration from the gunfire is fifty percent," Cad said, as calm and collected as ever.
"Too high, they'll tear you apart," Artem argued.
Cad disagreed, and stood up from his cover, drawing a hail of gunfire that punched him backwards forcefully. He'd never defied Artem before, and it had taken the prospect of having to leave him behind before he did.
The bullets ripped a dark line into his chestplate and he dropped back down as Artem cried out in anger.
"Cad, go," Artem urged, then realised that the robot would never leave... unless he ordered him to. So, he did, "Cad. Take Theo and go. That's an order."
The robot was quiet for a moment and then simply said, "yes, Artem."
Leaning out from his cover as far as he could manage, Artem saw Cad grip Theo tightly and jump out of cover. The mercs could barely hit him as he bounced across the floor, lighter than air, and vaulted across the gap into the jumpship.
He saw a last glimpse of Cad looking back as the belly of the jumpship closed.
"Harry," Artem said.
"Screw you, kid, you can't order me around like you can with the robot," he growled, "I'm coming in for you."
"Don't be stupid Harry, they'll shoot you out of the sky," Artem said.
"Let 'em," Harry retorted, "I'm not leaving you here."
"Even you're not that thick-headed, Uncle Harry, don't get yourself killed," Artem told him.
"I made a promise..." the man croaked.
"And you kept it," Artem said, firmly, "you've been the best father any kid could hope for, and you know that. But right now, you need to be as far away from here as possible. You know I'm right."
"You sound just like your dad," Harry scoffed, "he always thought he was right too."
There was nothing but static over the commlink as another spray of gunfire rocked the jumpship.
"I'll be fine," Artem said. There were words in that, unspoken, and Artem couldn't tell if the detective had picked up on it.
There was nothing left to be said, then, as Harry realised he was right. The ship turned on a pivot under the hail of shrapnel, showing the vault its rear engines, before they flickered into life with a red glow and the ship blasted away into the night.
Artem turned to Jaeger as the gunfire stopped, and the two poked their head over the walling they had used for cover. Jaeger gave him an unsure look and then holstered her gun, standing and raising her hands to the mercs.
"My name is Detective Yasmin Jaeger, I'm under orders from Captain Garistag to..." she didn't have chance to finish the sentence before the floor beneath them creaked and without warning, tipped into a slope, as though it had split in half.
The mercs were the first to go, all five of them following their less steady brother out into freefall with nothing to grab onto.
They weren't even over the edge before Artem joined them, losing his footing and sliding across the almost vertical, smooth metal floor.
"Shit, shit, shit," Artem gasped as the city lights below reached out to swallow him whole.
As the edge grew to meet him, he clenched his eyes shut and prepared to be spat out by the Neo-Metropol to fall to his death like the luckless MetSec agents.
He lived on the edge of a very sharp knife, and he had finally slipped.
As he went over the edge, time slowed as he fell feet-first into the abyss, crying out... only for a hand to reach out and grasp him as though from heaven.
The hand grasped his wrist tightly, and pulled him with incredible strength.
"I told you I couldn't just let you go," Yasmin Jaeger said.
Artem gasped with relief and choked back the fear - he was lucky she'd grabbed him by the wrist and not the palms, because they would be much too sweaty to grip properly.
He looked up at her and noticed her other arm was wrapped up in a thick length of various corded wires that had been torn out in the explosion. The detective couldn't have known that they would take her weight. Was she really so determined, or just suicidal? At that moment, Artem was thankful for either.
"Detective Jaeger," he said, "if it's all right with you, I'll take you up on that offer of surrender now."