The Hunt [2]

Jack turned back to Austin "Code-Red." Austin nodded grimly and went over to a certain drawer in their room, inside were two oversized backpacks, heavy jackets, and bulletproof vests respectively.

Austin took everything out of the drawer and inserted a key into the back of the dark room, a small panel slid away revealing two unmarked handguns and four dozen magazines.

Meanwhile, Jack moved to a tiny storage room near their apartment's main entrance and opened the door with a key similar to the one Austin used a second ago.

Inside were multiple red canisters, above them on a separate shelf multiple credit and debit cards were positioned.

Jack shoved the plastic cards into his pockets and began spilling the colorful but black liquid inside the red canisters around the apartment, making sure to spill as much of it as possible on all the computers.

"What about the Land Lord?" Austin asked from another room. Jack continued emptying the red canisters and answered. "What about her?"

"She was really nice. Shouldn't we like... give her money as compensation for burning her property down?"

"All the money I can give her would only get her into more trouble. All the money you could give her would risk us getting found out."

"Okay then. At least leave a message that we're sorry." Jack nodded and entered the main room, he had already done his job and the whole apartment would successfully burn down if introduced to a flame.

Austin stuffed the prototype's arm inside the already jammed backpack. "Just leave it be, I can't reverse engineer it anyway." Jack said watching his roommate struggling.

"I thought you had fairy big success?"

"Well yes, with the mechanical part of it at least. But sadly it's more homunculus than android, more golem than robot, more cyborg than terminator."

"Care to explain?" Austin pulled out other parts he already stuffed into the backpack a few seconds ago and threw them into the other room to let incinerate later.

"You know how that thing just walked around only aiming to kill us? It basically had no AI, except its orders to go up to living things and shot them to ensure its safety. The reason being that the slot where the 'driver' should be was empty.

This slot was supposed to be filled with, I quote, three human souls, one to plan a course of action and learn from previous mistakes, one to control the body, and one to control the shaped flesh."

Austin asked, still somewhat stunned gazing at the arm in his hands frowning "Flesh?"

"The patches of skin are actual human skin." Austin shrieked and threw the arm into the other room, 'So shapeshifting is out of the picture then, guess I need to find another way to avoid the foundation's eyes, after all, they know my face and my abilities since I was really stupid when I first found out what I am.'

"Bastard! Couldn't have told me that earlier?!"

"But then I couldn't see your fantastic expression and that would be just sad." Jack said faking a smile.

Austin shook his arms in disgust and pointed at Kenny, the small metal ball rolling around Austin's leg "Then what about 'it' does 'it' have a soul?"

"I didn't look but I guess he doesn't have one. If there's a soul inside of him he should show higher levels of intelligence and he should try to communicate with us."

Austin looked back to Jack and nodded "Then let's go, shall we? I've already secured the guns."

...

The streets were desolate and empty, silence enveloped the city and a veil of sadness and depression lay upon the metropolis.

Jack and Austin booked a room in a rundown hotel only two streets away from military personnel blocking off those wishing to leave the city.

They traveled through the many backstreets and backways the city has to offer, avoiding all those serving the government. Thankfully they were not discovered, due to the combined intel of hacked cameras and Austin's ability.

The hotel owner was suspicious of them when they first arrived, with their huge backpacks, thick clothing under which bulletproof vests were, and their covered up faces but a little tip made him turn the other way.

Austin and Jack were currently inside the shadowy hotel room, dark patches of what seems to be mold on the bathroom wall and filth enveloping the room.

"So from what we already know we can assume that Anderson has sent at least one of their sentient robots to track us down, if not more.

And the foundation sent that blond guy, and a few of their field agents, have I missed anything?" Jack shook his head, "That's probably it but we should check that team, what was it called again? Sigma 3?"

"But it could be a trap." Austin replied "Sure that blond guy could've simply been loose lipped, he's human just like us after all, but I don't think we should play with our luck like this and assume stuff just because we feel like it."

Jack seemed to think about Austin's proposal for a second "You're right, better be safe than sorry. How about this then, I'll use the backdoor I made in the foundation servers and enter it through the computers back home, they may be covered in gasoline but most of them should still work for as long as nobody triggers the explosion.

Best case scenario, we'll get the data about Sigma-3, and if it fails the foundation will only find the surprise we left at our apartment, thinking we were still there. They would've found it anyways after a while, they only really needed time for that, so we would only speed things up."

"Sure let's do it then." Jack took out his laptop, stored in his backpack, and began tapping on it, Austin petted Kenny, the small metal drone, meanwhile.