“Your kids cannot see through this soup,” Victoria said. “And you were about to get a nice lipstick job on your throat, courtesy of your dear brother. But you want me here to strictly do my technician job? Very well. I guess I will not tell you about your sister making a phone call and some hostile-stance red shapes approaching from the parking lot. Seven of them. Two with energy weapons. You and your delicate babies can talk them down, right?”
“Get us to dad and out of here as fast as possible, and I’ll double your pay,” Kayla said.
“Roger.” Victoria led the group another few feet.
A recliner with its heater and massage pads active held Old Man Gibson, who was conscious but unable to move anything other than the fingers of his left hand. His eyes twitched and his gaping mouth struggled to form even the slightest fragment of a syllable at the approach of people. Tears welled up in his eyes when Kayla knelt over him and peeled off her filter mask to kiss his bald forehead.
“Looks like a stroke, but one he survived,” Victoria said. She knelt beside Kayla and summoned the mechanized stretcher with a hand signal. “Kids, grab his legs. Kayla, keep his head level. I will lift his body. Ready?”
The group moved the elderly man into the stretcher. His slippers fell off and a wine bottle rolled from under his arm along with the remote control for his television set. His arms dangled and he was nothing but dead weight in their arms, but his eyes locked onto Kayla’s every movement as she cradled her hands around his head.
One of the children, a girl in her twenties, sobbed. The other child, a boy in his late teens, lost his grip but recovered it before the entire lift was affected.
“Will he live?” The girl rushed to her mother’s side and hugged her once the move was finished.
“If your medical plan covers cybernetics, he will bounce back,” Victoria said. She put the stolen mask and visor from Simon onto the old man.
Sudden, rapid footfalls accompanied the approach of a red form from the main hallway behind the recliner.
“Everyone, get down!” Victoria’s order came a moment before a large man with a baseball bat came into view and swung it where Kayla had been.
“Robert, we’re taking dad to the hospital,” Kayla said as she put on her filter mask. “We don’t want any of the property.”
“He’s dead already,” Robert said, and took a swing at the stretcher’s computer box near the old man’s head. His swing knocked multiple buttons and a control display panel off the device.
“You do not want today’s funeral to be for you,” Victoria said with her pistol out. “Back off and let us go.”
“Too chicken to—” Robert never finished his words, but a crimson streak ran down his forehead and over his face before he slumped over next to Kayla.
“Carrier, out,” Victoria ordered.
She squatted next to the mechanized stretcher even before it spasmed rather than walk at her command. She examined the damage to the control panel and pulled numerous patch chips and wires from her pockets to repair the device.
“Did she just kill Uncle Robert?” The boy gasped and backed into the murky room.
“Would you rather Robert killed your mom, your grandpa, and you?” Victoria’s fingers were almost a blur as she poked makeshift circuit connections into place. “How much is the inheritance and estate worth? Three million? That is what your life is worth to your beloved uncles and aunts now.” She scanned the parking lot. “And your cousins, I suppose.”
Another rapid series of footsteps rushed forth, but this time without a heat signature other than some lines that looked like capacitors and electrical wires.
Victoria dropped a handful of wires and readied her weapon in the direction of the threat.
“Back off!” Victoria aimed at where a head would emerge from the smog.
A metal humanoid with a simple face plate smiled down at the group. It was made entirely of aluminum plates which had all lost their shine years earlier. The way it walked was submissive and gentle, and it came to a stop next to Gibson’s stretcher.
“I’m not a threat,” the android said. “I’m a Trician Industries Housekeeper. Where are you taking Mr. Gibson?”
“A Trician 105?” Victoria smiled. “Weare taking him to the hospital.” She turned to Kayla. “This is Kayla, Mr. Gibson’s youngest daughter. Do you recognize her as your owner’s de-facto executor?”
“As she’s the only one of the five siblings I’ve seen help my owner, yes, I recognize her as family executor,” the android said.
“I don’t need a pet robot,” Kayla said. “Can you please repair the stretcher?”
Shoes tapped on sidewalk and brick just outside the house.
“It will follow your orders,” Victoria said. “Order it to lead you out the back door to your car. I cannot protect you at the main choke point.”
“Android, please show us out the back door,” Kayla said.
“Please follow me,” the android said.
“Almost finished here, and, done!” Victoria slammed the last chip into place on a cracked board.
The family team moved out with a damaged but functional stretcher behind the android. They vanished in the soupy air and soon the clatter of their steps faded under the fury of stomps outside.
ns 15.158.61.48da2
