Android: Golem (The Identity Trilogy) Read Online Free

center of the floor, toward the elevator banks, the woman at my heels. When I reached the elevator banks, doors opened on one of the cages. I lifted my weapons and halted so suddenly the woman bumped into me.
    Four people stood within the cage. All of them looked frightened to see me. None of them wore the faceless black hoods or reached for weapons.
    I gestured with the pistols. “Out. Now.”
    They hurried out, hands wrapped protectively around their heads, like that would do something to stop a bullet. One older man shielded an older woman with his body and snarled curses at me.
    I ignored him and shoved a foot against the elevator door to keep it from closing. I glanced at the woman. “Inside. Come on.”
    She darted inside and I started to join her, but before I could enter, the elevator across the hall from us dinged its arrival and the doors opened to reveal a pair of the hooded men. They had their weapons at the ready.
    I didn’t know which of us started firing first, but the sudden roll of thunder filled the hallway. Bullets chopped through the elevator doors. My aim was better than theirs and I watched them driven backward as the bullets thudded into their armor.
    Something hit me in my left side and pain flashed through me. I paid no attention to it because the pain was just a warning, nothing more. The impact drove me back inside the elevator cage and I let it. I yanked my foot back and slapped the close door button with my elbow.
    I reloaded my weapons, which had blown back empty. Unexplained dizziness swept over me and I ran a diagnostic over the gyro stabilizers that controlled my equilibrium. I felt more stable. But the pain in my side didn’t fade as I’d expected it to.
    The elevator cage dropped toward the first floor.
    The woman stared at me. “You’re hurt.”
    I shook my head, but I looked down all the same and felt my side. My fingers came away covered in red blood. That made no sense at all. My body had no blood in it.

 
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
     
     
    “Hey, partner, are you asleep?”
    My vision returned to me in a rush. I looked at Shelly Nolan as she stared across our shared desk at me. My response was automatic. “Bioroids don’t sleep.”
    She smiled. “Well, you definitely weren’t here.”
    Around us, the New Angeles Police Department Detectives Division looked normal. I couldn’t get the image of the hotel and the firefight in the elevators out of my mind. I still smelled the burnt cordite of the spent pistol rounds and the woman’s lilac and salt scent.
    A few other detectives sat at their desks, engaged in filing reports on their PADs, or talking to perpetrators or witnesses. Many of the desks were empty, and the darkness outside the windows reminded me we were on the night shift this rotation.
    New Angeles, and crime, never slept.
    I liked the detectives division bullpen better than the efficiency flat I lived in. Although I seldom interacted with detectives other than Shelly, I liked having them around. I couldn’t explain why exactly, but I think it had to do with the stimulus they provided. The detectives were constantly in motion and constantly talking—whether enjoying each other’s company or arguing about a case.
    The stimulus there was much more involving than the stimulus I received at the flat. There was movement there, too, and conversations and arguments, but I was always on the outside of that, never involved. Plus, a homicide investigation was like a program in certain respects. A lot of the work was repetitive and I liked the predictability of it.
    “Come on.”
    I turned toward Shelly.
    She was standing behind her side of the desk and pulling her pistol from the locked desk drawer where she kept it. Seeing the gun, looking so much like the weapon I had used in the… programming glitch …I felt uneasy. That feeling was also in the palette of emotional responses I had, and it was used both as a moral compass and as a self-preservation technique.
    In this