Page 8 of Operation Iron Heart

“A taxi?” She looked sceptical, and he couldn’t blame her. She hadn’t exactly had the best of experiences with him so far. And the distrust was still in her eyes a few moments later when a van with blacked-out windows drew up alongside them and the doors automatically opened. Jack encouraged Marci to climb inside with her boys even though the driver wasn’t visible in their darkened cabin.

“Are you sure this is OK?” Marci asked fearfully, stepping hesitantly onto the sill of the van. “I mean, how do you know you can trust this company?”

“The driver has the same serial number as me and we share the same fate,” he explained, trying to make his voice sound trustworthy. “Please get in with the boys, it’s quite complicated manipulating all the surveillance cameras in this part of town and we can’t do it for hours.”

“Everything OK, man?” Silver, who had taken over the controls of the self-driving van, was in silent contact with Jack, imperceptible to others. Marci, sitting down with the boys and strapping them all in, didn’t notice anything. However, he didn’t want her to feel ignored, particularly as she didn’t seem to know about his ability to communicate silently, so he decided to keep his report to Silver about the events in the MacIntyre Villa brief as his robot friend steered the blacked-out van skilfully through the steep skyscraper ravines of Chicago. “I got the chip from Rochelle MacIntyre’s safe,” he said simply, confirming that the mission had been a success. Without that processor, it wouldn’t have been possible to paralyse CRU and establish a fictional company in the same industry. He wasn’t going to reveal to Marci that another unit in their rebel organisation had since blown up CRU’s labs. He didn’t know, either, what their boss was planning for her.

“What did you do to Rochelle MacIntyre?” asked Silver.

“I put her into a temporary sleep and wiped her memory, just like I did with Marci’s neighbour,” replied Jack silently. “Why do you ask?”

“Rochelle MacIntyre was found dead in her room an hour ago. Someone had broken her neck. The city’s swarming with police searching for her killer. I’m assuming it wasn’t you.”

“Shit!” That’s all Jack needed right now. If Marci found out, she’d think he’d killed Rochelle. “Were any more details released?”

“No, it’s not official yet,” said Silver casually. “I’ve tapped the relevant communication systems. There’s also uproar among the government police agents because of the explosion at CRU. All the labs were completely destroyed. I’m curious who has MacIntyre’s ex-wife on their conscience. If it wasn’t you, who else could have done it?”

“Maybe it was MacIntyre’s own people,” suggested Jack with a sigh. Marci may not have been aware of his communication with Silver, but she noticed his sigh and looked at him questioningly.

Silver grunted his agreement. “If you ask me, it all worked well. Now we just need to get the hell out of this chaos.” He’d bypassed the central control system for the twelve-lane highway through the city to avoid being spotted by the security services. This made him pretty much invisible to the other vehicles’ automatic navigation systems, so he had to manually swerve to avoid a collision. Silver was an R8 series robot like Jack and had some additional abilities such as the lightning-fast calculation of incoming missiles, which he now put to good use. However, what he and Jack hadn’t considered was that humans didn’t possess natural or chemical stabilisers that protected their nervous system from rapid lurching movements, so it wasn’t long before Willie Junior was violently sick next to Jack’s feet.

“Do you have to?” complained Marci, looking extremely pale, and she didn’t mean Willie’s misfortune, but rather Silver’s haphazard driving style. She rummaged hastily in one of her large bags for a towel to wipe up the mess.

“Leave that, I’ll do it.” Jack activated a hidden tool below the heel of his right hand that neutralised the acidic-smelling fluid immediately and vaporised it without leaving a trace.

Logan stared at Jack goggle-eyed. “He….he’s not human,” he declared almost triumphantly, giving his mother an indignant look. “He’s a robot!”

“Yes, Logan, now calm down,” scolded Marci, clutching Willie Junior tightly as they went round the next corner.

“Wow!” cried Logan and jumped up to go and sit down next to Jack, causing Marci to frown. “You need to buckle up, Logan, otherwise you’ll fly into the window,” she warned him.

Jack helped the little boy to buckle himself in.

“Show me what else you can do,” the boy asked, looking up at him expectantly. “Can you shoot with your fingers?”

“If I have a laser pistol in my hand, then yes,” replied Jack with an amused grin.

“Logan, stop that!” Marci ordered sharply. “Jack isn’t a toy.”

“Isn’t he?” asked Logan impatiently, looking Jack up and down. “What is he then?”

Marci didn’t respond immediately and didn’t seem to know what to say. Jack would have loved to know what she was thinking.

“He’s a soldier,” she said eventually. “As your father was recently, too,” she added quietly, forgetting that Logan didn’t know what had happened to Will.

“Was he?” Logan looked confused. “I thought Dad was a cop before he lost his job and left us?”

“You’re pretty cheeky for a six-year-old,” said Jack, trying to distract him so Marci didn’t have to answer the boy’s question. Not yet, anyway. Sooner or later she would have to talk to both boys about Will’s fate, if only to put their father back in a positive light, which Logan desperately needed.

“Well, you’re really quite stupid for a tin can,” Logan threw back at him. “Otherwise you’d not only know that my father doesn’t know the first thing about war but that my mother is gawping at you the whole time as if she’s just won a prize, and you’re not even a real man.”

“Logan!” Marci gulped and her previously sad eyes suddenly fizzed with anger. “What’s come over you? Neither your father nor I have ever allowed you to talk like that. Who did you hear that from?”

“From Louise,” he answered cheekily, and Jack could well believe it; the old woman really didn’t mince her words. “She always says women shouldn’t put up with any rubbish from guys.”

“And you didn’t consider the fact that you’re a guy, too?” Jack grinned at him.

Logan hesitated for a moment, clearly overwhelmed by the question. Did it mean that he was included in Louise’s warnings or that he was part of an elite group to which her harsh words didn’t apply?