Taylor asked, “Is there a reason the DEVCOM lab skirted basic security precautions present on the rest of the base?”
Spencer did not respond. He and Dixon shared a look. Then the captain said, “Clearly, we felt overly secure in how predictable and harmless the D-17s were. It turned out to be a fatal error.”
No kidding. Brodie glanced at the disembodied arm on the nearby table, and the stacks of titanium body plates, and the bins overflowing with parts and wiring. It was easy to see how this lab could engender a god complex. Colonel Howe had told them not to humanize the D-17s. They wereobjects, not beings. That advice might have seemed necessary in the Vault, which felt more like a sanctum for sleeping warriors than an equipment storage facility. But in the DEVCOM lab, the place where the robots’ mechanical innards and lines of code were probed, disassembled, and reconfigured by the military’s best and brightest, it might be easy to lose respect for the power of what you had called into being. God does not fear His own creations. But men are not gods, a fact that people have had to learn over and over throughout history.
Brodie looked at the spotless lab floor where Major Roger Ames’s broken body had lain two nights ago, at the feet of a seven-foot-tall titanium machine with hands covered in blood and brain matter. It was hard to imagine what that thing had done to the major. Time to see for themselves.
CHAPTER 9
A WINDOWLESS, REFRIGERATED TRAILER SERVEDas Camp Hayden’s morgue. Brodie and Taylor entered along with Colonel Howe and Sergeant Mendez. Major Klasky was dismissed, while the two scientists, Captain Ed Spencer and Caroline Dixon, waited for them outside the trailer.
The frigid trailer featured bright fluorescent lighting, metal work surfaces, and a long table in the center where a body lay beneath a sheet. They were greeted by the Armed Forces medical examiner, Dr. Keith Schiller, a tall and thin middle-aged man in a white lab coat. Colonel Howe made the introductions, explaining that Schiller had come in the day prior from nearby Fort Irwin to perform the autopsy. She said to Dr. Schiller, “Please show the agents the body.”
The doctor nodded, then took the top end of the sheet and folded it down to the chest.
Brodie observed the late Major Ames. Most of his head above the brow line was missing, exposing the lower portion of his cerebrum, which was a misshapen gray, spongy mass. Parts of his shattered skull were visible around the brain matter, and the skin below the break in the skull was covered in dark-purple bruises. His face was an ashen blue from livor mortis and his eyes were open, but they had become so dislocated from the trauma that only the white sclera were visible within his sockets.
Dr. Schiller said, “The victim, Major Roger Ames, was a thirty-six-year-old Caucasian male. Cause of death was massive cranial and cerebral destruction from applied force.”
Brodie and Taylor did not say anything for a moment as they looked at the body. Brodie had seen the aftermath of more than a few guys in Iraq who had taken a high-caliber round to the head, and this looked similar, if less messy.
Taylor asked, “Did you run toxicology?”
The doctor nodded. “Hair and blood. Nothing turned up in the blood, but we did find trace amounts of psilocybin in the hair samples.”
“Psilocybin?” asked Taylor. “Like mushrooms?”
“That’s correct.”
Taylor turned to Colonel Howe and Sergeant Mendez. “Were either of you aware of Major Ames’s drug use?”
Howe replied, “Not until the toxicology report. We have had issues here in the past with illicit drugs, primarily amphetamines. Psilocybin is a new one to me, and I was certainly not aware of any use among the DEVCOM staff.”
This could mean nothing. Brodie had never tried psilocybin mushrooms, but he imagined there were worse and more destructive ways to pass the time at this place than looking up at the desert night sky and blasting off to Jupiter. But it was odd, and unexpected.
Brodie asked, “Any sign of struggle?”
Schiller shook his head. “Nothing that was apparent. No bruises or abrasions anywhere else on his body. We checked for DNA under the victim’s fingernails, but in this instance that was fruitless.”
Brodie had a vision of Major Ames desperately grasping at Bucky’s titanium arms as the robot applied a two-handed vise grip to his skull. Soft flesh against smooth, cold metal. An impotent and pointless gesture. It occurred to him that this might have been one of the most terrifying ways to die—murdered by a thing with a face but no eyes, with hands but no skin, with a body but no soul.
Taylor asked, “How long will you be keeping him here?”
“Until tomorrow,” replied Schiller. “Then the body will be released to his next of kin in Maryland for burial.”
Brodie followed up: “Is there any chance that the cranial trauma was caused postmortem? That he could have died another way?”
Schiller shook his head. “The blood is clean. No toxins of any kind, and aside from the head injury the body is pristine. No bruises, scratches, or signs of asphyxiation. The major was killed by the D-17 unit that applied massive force to the cranium.”
Brodie looked again at the major’s decimated skull. There was something almost clinical about it, as if the robot needed to shut down Major Ames, and the best way to do that was to pulverize the guy’s CPU. The D-17s must have at least a rudimentary understanding of human anatomy, which would make sense in the context of their training exercises. A shot to the arm was only an injury. The head was the kill shot.
He said to Colonel Howe, “It’s time we meet Bucky.”
CHAPTER 10
BRODIE AND TAYLOR DEPARTED THEmorgue with Colonel Howe and Sergeant Mendez, rejoining Captain Spencer and Caroline Dixon. They all walked down an asphalt road that led toward the eastern end of the camp.
The sky was blue and cloudless, and the desert sun hung low over the northern hills. The temperature had dropped to something pleasant, and Brodie checked his watch: five-thirty. They should have called Dombroski by now. Not that they could report anything to him anyway.
