Conduit

Ch. 4

Lyons' headquarters sat in the center of Chicago's prospering downtown; shadowing the crumbling corners ignored by the government. To the officials, especially those in the city, it didn't matter. If you couldn't see it, then it didn't exist. To see Chicago's history in ruin was blasphemy. The solution? Build a giant skyscraper to block the view.

And hide the company designated to "save the world."

The windows from Lyons' headquarters loomed over my head like a hundred sets of peering eyes. I stepped out of the car and looked up at them. A stare down with my future. Curtains moved in some of them. Lights powered on, too. Felt like blinking and passing glances, but I knew that was my mind playing tricks on me. Especially when I stood on the sidewalk with Victoria, and Frank stood beside us. He glanced at his phone before looking at the building, too. A smirk twitched at the corner of his lip. "Don't worry about the tenants upstairs—"

I blinked. Tenants? In an office-style building?

"—They're nosey, yeah, but harmless. We'll do our business several floors' downstairs," he said.

Downstairs? I had to look down at my feet, at the sidewalk beneath me. I knew Chicago had its secrets; pipes ran deep into the sewers. But to have several basements? The world was dying from the inside and the government's response was to dig more holes. Wonderful.

"Come on." As Frank pocketed his phone, he glanced back at his car parked on the street. A man in a red vest came from around the building. When he smiled, Frank nodded and tossed him the keys. "Take care of my baby."

The man nodded, holding the keys tightly in his hands. When he walked over to the car, Frank looked back at Victoria and me, motioning us to follow him. "This is Lyons!" he beamed as the large set of automatic doors opened for him. He spread his arms wide. "The place built for the world as you know it."

I followed him, but I couldn't share his enthusiasm. His voice rang with it as if it were ingrained in his personality. To love and praise Lyons. Loved them so much that he lied to them to give me information, to get me to follow him back here. That kind of devotion was poisonous. But I also saw that as a crack in his persona; couldn't care about a business enough to lie, right?

It didn't matter. I was only here out of the memory of my family and Victoria's wishes for the world.

There was a hop in Frank's step as he took us through the open lobby. Marble floors were brightened by white overhead lights; a black line of tiles guided us to the receptionist's desk. He leaned against it with a smirk, turning so he faced me. The woman behind the computer eyed him with wide curious eyes but didn't say a word.

"In this building, we do everything for the world," he said without missing a beat. "We build, compute, and transfer information."

I pulled my gaze away from him to look at the hanging screen over the desk. A government commercial played, depicting images from a world Lyons hoped to achieve. I watched the family on the screen happily move through pristine buildings of metal and silver until movement caught my attention on the left. An android walked back holding a tray of drinking glasses in its hands. It faithfully followed a woman until she stopped. It bumped into her, stepped back, and apologized.

I cocked a brow. "Do you test your prototypes here, too?" I asked Frank as I watched the woman turn around and smile at the android. She pressed both of her hands together and bowed, then waited for the android to do the same.

The tray fell and so did the glass.

"I'm sorry, ma'am," the android said as it immediately bent to clean the mess. The woman followed, but I couldn't help but feel it was all unnecessary. Why have the android copy movements if you know it'd fail?

"Oh yeah, it's how we teach them." Frank glanced at the prototype android before walking over to me. He placed an arm around my shoulder as he turned me away from the scene. He pointed ahead, in the opposite direction. "We build them and let them walk around to learn. It's how they develop their facility with human interaction."