Machines by Jason M. Green (iphone ebook reader TXT) 📕

back inside the hotel. He knew he had only precious seconds before the GSD reached the top floor, and he quickly tried to remember where the stairwell to the roof happened to be.
As a group of GSD officers came into view at the far end of the hallway, Jobe recalled where the stairwell was, and he took off running in that direction, which luckily took him away from the officers. He knew that their armor would slow the officers down long enough for him to reach the stairwell, but then he saw a pair of policemen in front of him trying to get someone to open their door, and he knew that they would recognize him if they caught a glimpse of him, so he veered off down another hallway rather than risk a confrontation.
Changing his plans once again, he kicked open the door of the first unoccupied room he came to and went inside. He knew that he would have maybe a minute before someone decided to investigate the sound, so he tried to figure out the best avenue of escape. There was one window he could see from his current position and it gave him a clear view of the next building. He could see a balcony from where he was standing, and he could tell it was anchored better than the fire escapes he had thought to use. So he grabbed a chair and tossed it through the window, and then he ran as fast as he deemed necessary towards the window. Without a second thought, he went out the window, stepped onto the chair and up onto the edge of the fire escape, jumping off just as the police officers burst in through the door. Within less than a second, he knew his speed was adequate for what he had planned, as he caught hold of the balcony and pulled himself up. Then he climbed onto the edge of the balcony and jumped straight up, grabbing hold of the edge of the roof and pulling himself up.
As soon as both feet were on the roof, he took off running, and then he heard the sound of something cutting through the air next to his ear, and he stopped moving. He turned around quickly and saw that there were three GSD officers on the roof of the hotel, and one of them was taking aim at him with a high-powered rifle. Quickly judging the distance, he pulled out his pistol and fired once at the steam pipe next to the officers. His bullet struck true once again, and the pipe ruptured, spraying a cloud of steam around the officers.
As the burst of steam effectively clouded his escape, Jobe ran across the roof and jumped across to the next building. He quickly found the door leading down from the roof and he picked the lock. Then he entered the building, but he stopped just inside the door and pulled off his jacket. He quickly turned his jacket inside out and removed a two-toned bandanna from inside one of his jacket pockets, which he wrapped around his head with the black side out to partially hide his hair. Then he calmly walked down the stairs, and headed towards the nearest stairwell that would take him to the street.
Once he was outside of the building, he calmly walked out into the streets and towards the comm-booth, making sure not to seem like he was in a hurry, though he was in a bit of one. He reached his destination just as one of the booths started emitting a beeping sound, and he picked up the receiver on the fourth beep.
“That took a bit longer than I had expected it to given what we’ve heard about
you," said a voice on the other end of the line, which had been heavily digitized to the point where it would be unrecognizable to traditional scanning equipment.
“It could not be helped. I had to deal with some overzealous officers," Jobe said, as he carefully scanned the area to see if anyone was watching him. He didn't notice anyone paying an unusual amount of attention to him, and so he turned back to face the digital screen on the comm-booth, which still showed only the name of the company that made the comm-booth, which in conjunction with the digitized voice, told him that the person on the other end of the line didn't want to take the risk of being identified. “Now, I have three questions for you before this goes any further. What do you want with me, why did you contact me, and are you the person who sent me the message to wait at the Last Stop Hotel for a package bearing my name?”
“Your questions are all valid and I will answer them to the best of my ability.” A small crackle of static from the owner of the voice clearing his or her throat came through the speaker. “I work for a group of people who’ve recently had relatives
abducted, and I would like to hire you to find them and deal with the people who have abducted them. I was the one who sent you a message that instructed you to wait at the Last Stop Hotel where a package bearing your name would be delivered. And as for why you are being contacted—Well, let’s just say we have a mutual acquaintance who has
used your unique abilities in the not-so-distant past.”
Jobe thought back over the people he had helped recently. The first one that came to mind was a man who wanted him to retrieve some stolen documents that contained some rather sensitive material that would have ruined him and his family. Then he remembered how he ended up getting that job thanks to a chance meeting around five
years ago at a research lab, where he assisted a scientist in smuggling out something that certain people in the military would have used for their own purposes. He thought for nearly a minute about a few other jobs he had taken in recent years, and then he finally said, “Okay. I will accept the job. Since you are were the one who contacted me I am assuming you know how I do business."
The voice on the line quickly said, “I do. Now plug into the port beside the phone and I’ll transmit all of the information you should require for this particular task.”
Jobe pulled the HPD out of his pocket and disconnected the cord, which he then plugged into the appropriate port on the back of his neck. Then he plugged the other end into the port beside the phone and told his new employer that he was ready. As he waited for the transfer to begin, he returned the HPD to his pocket in case he would have a need for it later, and then he shuddered as information was downloaded into his brain at a high rate of speed. The picture on the digital screen changed to one with a bar showing the progress of the download, and the bar began to slowly move to the right.
As the files were being transferred, Jobe looked around some more just in case he was being watched or followed. To his right there was a young man with many colors in his hair, who was downloading financial information onto the hard drive of a small portable computer using some tools for breaking into computer systems. Off to the left there was an elderly man begging for change, but finding few generous enough to give him money. Directly behind him there was a group of people protesting job losses and the government’s refusal to help out the unemployed. Many more people walked past where Jobe was standing, but few even noticed he was standing in front of them, so he turned back towards the digital screen to check the progress on the file transfer.
After seeing that the transfer was still proceeding smoothly, he casually pulled the HPD back out of his front pocket and hooked it up to the terminal using the remaining cord. With the press of a few buttons, he accessed one of the files he had downloaded onto the device, and began tracing the person he had been talking to so that he could confirm their identity at a later time, just in case it might be a trap. Once he had the trace program running smoothly, he returned to watching the progress bar.
Less than a minute after beginning the transfer, the download was finished and Jobe quickly disconnected from the port and hid the cords in his jacket. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the elderly man being arrested for begging, and the protestors being forcibly driven off by police officers wielding batons, while the young man with the many colors in his hair casually left the comm-booth he was using to steal people’s financial information without anyone even trying to stop him.
The digitized voice returned after a few seconds of distortion. “Everything we have that you will require on this job has been sent to you. Mixed in with the data is a code that will allow you to access an account set up for your personal use while on this job. There is also an encrypted code that can be used if you need to contact me again. Good luck, Joaquim Nacalis.”
As soon as the other end of the line went dead, Jobe hung up the receiver, unhooked his HPD, and joined a group of unkempt people who were being herded away from the area by some police officers. Keeping his head down and being careful not to make eye contact, he followed the group onto a bus that the officers had waiting to take those people away. Once he was on the bus, he took a seat in the back and silently kept his head low so as not to draw any more attention than the people he followed onto the bus.
Less than a minute later, the driver shouted that they were leaving, and the bus
jerked, as he pushed down the accelerator. As the bus pulled away, Jobe spared a glance out the back window and saw two of the police officers watching the bus leave. With a sigh, Jobe leaned back and closed his eyes part of the way in an attempt to make it appear that he was sleeping. Then he pulled a small case of tools out of one of his pockets and used them to carefully disassemble the HPD so that he could find the tracking device that he knew had to have been installed for his new employer to be able to track him to the comm-booth.

Twenty minutes later, the bus made its first stop and Jobe slipped out through the doors in the back of the bus, making sure to leave the tracking device beneath his seat, and he had the door closed before anyone realized what he had just done. Then he made his way down the street to where he knew an old library was located. Twice, he saw armored police vehicles drive past, but he stayed calm and kept walking towards the library located around the corner. He reached it in a few minutes and slipped between the closing doors as someone left the building.
“At least they do not have any cameras or metal detectors," Jobe muttered as he scanned the hallway leading to the main part of the library. He passed a couple of young people looking at old magazines, but he spared them only a brief glance as he made his
way through a veritable labyrinth of towering shelves filled with well-worn books that were still in better shape than the neighborhood the library was in. After many turns that only