Element Zero (25 page)

Nico Wachalowski—Stillwell Corps Base

I was almost out of time. In the confusion I couldn’t see what happened to MacReady, but his link had dropped. I still had a connection to Faye, but she’d lost her weapon. On her feed I could see Fawkes. He had leaned close and was staring into her eyes, at me.

You’re too late, Agent.

“He’s not waiting for a full charge,” I heard Vaggot say. “He’s preparing to fire.”

Fawkes, don’t do this.

Orange light began to flicker behind the soft glow of his eyes. There was only one way left to stop him from issuing the command.

I sent Faye’s override code over the command spoke and her system tree appeared in front of me. In seconds, direct control of everything was switched over to me.

Nico, what—

Her message was cut short as the override completed. All she could do now was watch. Her targeting system called out the carotid arteries on either side of Fawkes’s neck and the nodes clustered at the base of his skull. I triggered the attack, and her POV feed lurched as she swung.

Fawkes was just fast enough; he got his own blade in the path of the strike, and the two crashed together an inch from his neck. The feed jerked again as he shoved her back.

An alert flashed in my own display. The Eye was almost ready. In minutes, we’d lose our window to sever the connection to it.

Fawkes, stop, goddamn it—

The screen in front of me flickered and Osterhagen’s face appeared.

“Agent Wachalowski, what is our status?” he asked.

Fawkes, they’re going to destroy the transmitter if you try to fire,
I told him.
Don’t do it—

Is that supposed to be a threat?
Fawkes asked.
If they don’t destroy it then, before this is over, I will.

“Agent Wachalowski,” Osterhagen said again, “what is our status?”

I threw Faye at Fawkes again. Her second blade deployed as she closed in on him again and thrust it toward the middle of his chest. He managed to deflect the strike, and instead it thudded into his shoulder. Black blood came out in a glut as she jerked out the blade.

Two guard revivors closed in, and in the chaos of movement I began to lose track of where they all were. Faye’s POV spun around as warnings began to spill past indicating trauma to her torso and right leg. Muzzle flashes lit up the room, and I saw sparks fly from a console in front of her.

“Wachalowski, answer me!”

One of the revivors appeared to Faye’s right, and I sent the bayonet flying. I caught a glimpse of a gray, waxy face tilting off at an unnatural angle as the edge of the blade chopped deep into the flesh of its neck. Several more figures scrambled past; then the computer isolated Fawkes ahead in the fray. I sent her after him again. Another body stepped in front of him. On the feed, I saw Fawkes duck back out the way he’d come in as the remaining guards mobbed Faye. I couldn’t get her past them.

“Damn it!”

Faye, did he move into the dispersion area?

The sublevels aren’t completely saturated. He’s still active. I can’t tell where he went.

I’m too late,
I thought. Fawkes had escaped. Osterhagen was going to order the missile strike. We’d lost everything.

“General—” I started.

“Were you successful or not?” he asked.

On Faye’s feed, I saw a splash of black appear on the wall to her left. Through the struggling bodies in front of her, I saw someone appear in the doorway for just a second. A severe-looking, dark-skinned woman. It was Dulari Shaddrah. There was a gun in her hand.

I turned to answer the general, when the image on the screen warped. A second later, it went dark.

“Get him back on the line,” a voice said.

“There’s too much interference,” another voice answered. “Let me try—”

“Fire the missiles,” someone snapped.

“Not without authorization from the general,” Vaggot said.

“The general could be dead!”

“You don’t know that,” I said. The faces in the room turned to me. “Who here knows the name Motoko Ai?”

Most of them looked confused, including Vaggot. One woman on the team met my eye and signaled with one hand.

“Do whatever you have to do to contact her,” I told her. “Tell her Nico Wachalowski said not to fire those missiles. She’ll know who I am.”

She nodded.

“Don’t let anyone here initiate the launch until you’ve given her that message. Can you stop them from doing that?”

“I can.”

“Can you get me to Heinlein Industries?”

“Key monorail routes are being kept active to move military personnel only. The southern sector of the base is still secure. You can access the rail from there.”

“Do it. In the meantime, hold the base and wait.”

“And if Ai asks why we shouldn’t launch, what am I supposed to tell her?”

A route to the bases’ monorail platform appeared on my HUD as I pushed my way past the soldiers and toward the door.

“That her prediction was right,” I said. “Tell her I’m going to kill Fawkes.”

Calliope Flax—Avenida De Luz

Helicopters swarmed around the base far behind us when I saw a small light appear up in the sky behind the clouds. The way ahead was blocked by cars stuck on the main drag, and there were too many people moving in between them to just bash my way through. The light disappeared behind a building as I ducked down a narrow side road.

Tires and hydraulics squealed as I punched the brakes and slowed down, and people turned and scrambled to get out of the way. I took us over the sidewalk and squeezed down the strip, blaring the horn. Hands pawed at the truck. Bloody fingers pulled at the door and left greasy smears along the jagged edge of the missing window. Alerts had begun to pour in over the JZI as the clouds overhead started to move.

“What the hell is that?” Vika asked. The light in the sky had come back into view, and it was getting brighter.

Cal, this is Nico. The satellite is going to fire again. The target is the UTTC. How close are you?

I couldn’t see the tower from where I was, but it wasn’t more than ten blocks away.

Closer than I want to be, but out of the blast zone,
I said.
Where are you?

I’m headed toward Heinlein. Find a metro stop. The military has control of the railways. They’re shut down to civilians, but they’re moving military personnel. You need to get off the street.

Something thumped into the door on my side and I jumped. Bodies were shoving their way between the stuck vehicles as people scattered. One had reached the truck and had its hands on the edge of the open window.

“Goddamn it!”

I took aim and pulled the trigger. The jack stumbled back and went down on the ground. Another one crunched under the front wheel as I lurched forward, and I heard one climb up on top of the truck. I hit a parked car and set the alarm off while the revivor fell down onto the hood.

Two military helicopters blew by overhead. A second later, something exploded on the sidewalk off to our right, and the pavement shook underneath us. Glass and debris blew over the street and banged off the side of the truck. Something bashed through the back windshield of a parked car. I checked the mirrors and saw the shadows of the revivors fade behind us.

“We need to get off the street. Hang on.”

Something whistled overhead then and creamed the building to our right about twenty stories up. Light flared through the smoke, and everyone around us stopped and turned. A wall of warm air huffed down through the swirling snow and dust as a twisted fire escape crashed down from above.

A chunk of concrete pounded the road next to us. Another one flattened the roof of a cab; then what looked like part of a fucking gargoyle whipped past and bowled through the crowd, spraying blood across the driver’s-side window.

People dove out of the way as I jerked the wheel and took us down a side street. In the rearview mirror I saw something big fall through the smoke, and the impact made the ground buck underneath us.

I blew through a pile of trash bags on the corner at the end of the street and caught air for a second as the road dipped. The undercarriage scraped a speed bump, and we fishtailed on a patch of ice. I spun the wheel and got us under control, then made a break for the subway stop at the end of the block as a cluster of broken bricks flew by in front of us, trailing smoke.

Other people had the same idea. A hundred yards away, the crowd got too thick to move the truck through. I killed the engine.

“Come on!” Vika held the rifle in a death grip as we opened the doors and got out. I shoved my way around the back and hauled the doors open.

The back of the truck was full of equipment. I climbed up the rear bumper and pulled the closest locker open; it was loaded with guns and ammo. I traded my pistol for a better one and grabbed a few clips and stuffed them in my pockets.

“What are you doing?” Vika called. I climbed out, then jumped back down onto the pavement.

“Stick close, no matter what!” I said. I dragged her toward the metro entrance and muscled our way into the flow. People pushed and shoved as we made our way down the stairs into the station.

Most people just wanted to get off the street and away from the worst of the crowd. I took us through, then down onto the nearest platform. The tracks were empty, but down the tunnel I saw the lights from a train that was parked there, not moving. In the other direction, the tunnel was clear. I sent our location back to Nico.

Back the way we came, there were screams. I looked back and saw that a group of revivors had come down after us. People tripped over each other as they tried to get away. Somebody got bitten and blood squirted from his neck. Another guy got dragged off the platform and into the dark.

Vika jerked her hand away and tried to run, but they’d reached us. I fired, and one of them fell, but the rest just went right over it.

“Vika, get behind me!”

I tried to block them, but an elbow thumped into my chest and I was knocked back as feet stomped the floor around my face.

“Vika!”

I flipped over, and a boot came down on my back. I slammed onto the concrete as two of them grabbed Vika by her shirt. She screamed and tried to get the rifle around, but she was pinned. I shot one in the knee and it fell, but more hands grabbed her. They pulled her away from me, down the tunnel.

Something hit my head hard. Spots swam in front of my eyes as one of them bit down on her arm and she screamed again. I tried to bring the gun around again, but my arm didn’t move. The platform started to tilt.

Vika . . .

A band of static flicked in front of me and the JZI puked out a stream of errors. I heard Vika yell something, but I couldn’t see her. Feet stomped down around me as more of them ran to join the fray.

My eyes rolled and another band of static rippled by before the lights went out. The last thing I heard was Vika’s high-pitched scream as it echoed from somewhere down the tunnel.

Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo

The tromping of boots echoed down the hall as we headed toward the stairwell at the far end. The hall ended in a giant pane of glass that looked out over the city, and through it I could see the TransTech Center, lit up and towering above the surrounding buildings. Osterhagen was still inside; I could sense him. I couldn’t make out what he was thinking, but something was very wrong.

This city will be gone within the hour. . . .

We walked as fast as Ai could manage. I watched the back of her large head as we went, and saw sweat roll down her thin neck. One of the guards should have just carried her, but even under the circumstances, no one dared suggest it.

“Is the roof secure?” one of the men said into his radio.

“The Chimeras are still active,” the reply came. “But we’ve got surface-to-air missile capability set up on all—”

Something flashed outside the window at the end of the hall, and something rumbled up above us, loud enough to shake the floor. The lights flickered as the sound of helicopter rotors got louder.

“Come back,” the guard said into the radio. “Is the roof secure?”

The rotors thumped louder, then something big flew past the window. A loud shriek rose over the drumming sound, and three bright lights whipped by after it. A shadow banked past one of the buildings below, and I saw three thin smoke trails spin toward it. They hit the building face and exploded, sending a big, bright cloud of fire into the night air.

“We’ll keep them off you, but—”

The rest of the reply got cut off by another crash from overhead. Chunks of metal and glass fell past the window, and I saw a flailing body tumble down along with it. Another loud shriek sounded, followed by a thud.

When we got to the stairwell, one of the guards opened it while another signaled for us to go through, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to go up there. Penny didn’t seem too sure either.

“Come on!” the guard said. “We’re going up—”

Light flashed at the end of the hall, through the window. It tinted in response, but even so, it was so bright I had to shield my eyes. Through the glare, I saw the window glass warp and then blow out into the open air. The sky outside was filled with a cloud of pulverized glass as the other windows on the building face, and those of the buildings around it, all exploded with an earsplitting crash.

A wave of hot air blasted down the hallway, stinging my hands and face. Through my fingers, I saw a huge arc of light pass over the buildings below and hit the TransTech Center.

No. . .

People were screaming, but I couldn’t hear them over the sound of the beam sizzling through the air. Energy arced off and struck buildings nearby as it rippled over the city like a huge, electric worm. Shards of glass jumped and danced on the tiled floor as the building shook.

My clothes flapped around me as I gaped, unable to register what I was seeing. All I could do was stare out through the snow as a huge cloud of fire boiled up from the base of the tower. Fear pulsed outward from inside the building, like streams of raw, white adrenaline. They hit me like a truck, and before I could push them out I’d slipped and almost fallen to the floor. In front of me, Ai staggered, and Penny caught her. The rush left me feeling sick, pain burning in my chest.

One of the guards was barking into the radio, but I couldn’t hear him. The TransTech Center was crumbling, collapsing down in a cloud of smoke and fire. The threads of fear began to fall off and go dark. They were dying. I felt Osterhagen’s consciousness wink out, along with the rest of the thousands of others. They were dying. They were all dying.

“Get back!” one of the guards shouted into my ear as cold wind blew through the opening and peppered us with powdered glass. “Back away from the window!”

I couldn’t move. The light outside just kept getting brighter and brighter. It washed everything out, until it forced my eyes shut and I screamed. Distantly, I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me back. . . .

The noise stopped.

Not just the racket outside, but the voices, the screaming, the wind, everything. In the quiet, my ears rang.

I opened my eyes. I was outside, on the street. There was no explosion and no falling debris. Snow fell gently through the night sky.

Where am I?

Neon lit up the dark. I was on a sidewalk, with my back to a parked car. There was snow piled up along the curb between the walkway and the street. The street was full of cars, and people streamed by all around me. None of them even seemed to notice I was there.

I stood up and brushed myself off. My breath trailed as I looked across the street and saw the towering face of Alto Do Mundo, all glass and neon. It was completely intact. The UTTC still stood in the distance, and far off, I could see the third needle of the CMC Tower.

Is this real?

I shook my head, and snow went down the back of my neck. No one looked at me, and no cars honked, even when I wandered out into the road.

They can’t see me. This isn’t real.

From the dark mouth of an alley I saw a pair of eyes flash, low to the ground. They stared up at me, and I heard a low growl.

I took a step back as a dog moved out onto the sidewalk to face me. It was big, with matted, mangy fur. A patch was shaved on one side and I could see an ugly, scabby bite mark on the bare skin there.

“You again,” I said. It stopped a few feet away and bared its teeth. Its gums were black, and its fangs were stained red.

“You were in my dream—”

The dog jumped. I slipped and fell back onto the sidewalk with it on top of me. I could feel its breath on my face as it snapped, and I crossed my arms between us.

Its jaws clamped down on my wrist and I screamed. Blood gushed out of the wound, and my hand went numb as the dog huffed out a breath through its cold nose. I tried to kick away, but it wouldn’t let go.

A warm feeling crept up my arm from the spot where it had me. The warmth moved up to my shoulder, into my chest, into my heart. My body began to feel relaxed and a little numb. It was a little like being drunk.

The dog let me go. It barked once, then turned and ran off.

“Son of a bitch . . . ”

I rolled over and got on my knees. None of the people on the street even glanced at me. When I held up my forearm, I could see muscle through the tear in the skin. It looked like it should hurt, but it didn’t. It didn’t hurt at all.

The weird heat coursed through my whole body, and my body relaxed. I looked around, but the dog was gone.

The neon lights flickered. I felt sick for a second, and then out of nowhere, words appeared in the air in front of me. They were like words on a computer terminal, but they just hung there in the air, like they were floating in space a few inches from my face.

Control node initialized (103.9 seconds).

“What the hell?” someone next to me asked.

I turned and saw a man standing on the sidewalk. He was staring at the air in front of him with his brow scrunched, like he was reading something.

When I looked around, I saw the others, all around me, doing the same thing. Some rubbed their eyes. They all looked confused and afraid.

“They see the words too,” a voice said. I turned and saw a woman standing a few feet away from me, her stringy black hair whipping in the wind. She had a tattoo of a snake that swallowed its own tail around her neck, just like me and just like Penny.

“You’re Noelle,” I said. Her shirt was stained with blood around a slit in the fabric. Through the hole, I could see a deep stab wound.

“They all have it,” she said.

“Have what?”

She waved for me to follow, and I did as she limped down the sidewalk to a rusted metal door just inside a nearby alley. Men bundled under dirty blankets watched us from the shadows as she pulled the door open. She waved again and stepped through.

As soon as I was through the door, it slammed behind me and everything went black. As I turned back, though, a light came on from overhead and I saw Noelle standing near an electrical switchbox on one wall. The light flickered across concrete walls that were painted green. Three electric lights, all dark, hung near the far wall. There were no bodies, and this time the table and chair were missing. When I looked around, I saw a series of wire cages along the back wall. Inside each one was a dirty-looking bedroll.

The floor was littered with trash, and the air smelled like BO and piss. In with the empty food containers and cardboard cups were torn white wrappers marked STERILE. In one corner was a used syringe with a broken needle. Noelle looked at the mess sadly.

“It’s almost time,” she said.

“I don’t understand,” I said, but she didn’t seem to hear me.

“You see your mind’s interpretation of the quantum data streams it receives,” she said. “Information can only be sent back.”

“What information? What are you talking about?”

“By now, Fawkes has released the nanovirus,” she said. “He does this in an attempt to end our influence over the rest of them.”

“Maybe he should,” I said.

“His plan will fail,” she said. “It was only supposed to replicate a set number of times. Enough to spread throughout the world, and then degenerate of its own accord. The violence of the spread would stop, leaving the world free from us, but something went wrong. Something alters the virus. The replication never stops. It can’t be allowed to spread beyond the city.”

“The bombs,” I said.

“The city’s destruction overshadowed and hid the real disaster. We couldn’t see past it. Fawkes never intended to destroy the city, but because of him, because of us, someone will have to. It will come down to the city, or the world.”

My throat burned, and I felt tears in my eyes as I leaned back against the cold concrete wall. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t have the strength. Was what she was saying true? Was any of this even real at all?

“What is this place?” I asked. “Why do I keep coming here?”

“The green zones are all that is left.”

Green zones. It was true, then; there was more than one. The Green Room changed from vision to vision because at some point in the future, there would be more than one of them.

“What are they for?”

“Refugees are brought here to see if they can be saved. This is all that’s left of humanity.”

My forearm itched. When I scratched at it, I saw the scab from the dog bite there.

“That’s how it spreads,” Noelle said, “at least at first. People without our abilities will begin to realize that we’re among them. They’ll wake up and regain their memories, but the mechanism to wake them up was fashioned on revivor technology. We didn’t know what we were dealing with until it was too late. We now believe the countervirus we developed corrupted the original variant somehow and caused the mutation. Pushed past the limits of its design, Fawkes’s variant eventually remembers its original purpose.”

“And what’s that?”

“To make revivors,” she said. “And that is what it tries to do.”

The ceiling spun over my head and a high-pitched whine filled both my ears. Pressure built up in my head and behind my eyes until every time my heart beat, pain throbbed through my skull. I felt like I was going to be sick.

What’s happening?
The whine got louder, until it was all I could hear.

“Noelle, help me . . . I can’t do this. . . . ”

I couldn’t hear my own words. The whine got louder and louder, and the room spun faster and faster.

The lights went out, and it all stopped. The tone in my ears was gone and I could hear the hum of the air system again. I opened my eyes, and the ceiling had stopped moving, for the most part.

Huma variant 34000174T initialization complete.

The words appeared and floated in front of me.

Initialization successful.

The headache was gone. The tremors were gone. I looked around. Noelle still stood there watching me.

“What happened?” I asked. She didn’t answer.

“Hello?” My voice echoed in the room.

I didn’t feel drunk anymore, which was weird. I didn’t have the shakes anymore either. Instead I felt clear, clearer than I had in a long time, and maybe even ever.

It was so quiet, a quiet like I’d never known before, and after a minute, I realized why. That constant stream of sensation that always lingered in the back of my mind was gone. Noelle was standing a few feet away, but I couldn’t sense her. I couldn’t sense any of the stray thoughts that were always there, like white noise in the background. The sensation was gone altogether. It was as if I’d suddenly woken up blind and deaf.

For a second I felt panic, but then, just like that, it vanished and instead I felt something else: relief. I felt profound relief.

It’s gone.
The thing people called my gift, the ability I never asked for and that had haunted me my entire life was gone. It was gone, and it took the visions and the nightmares and that horrible, crushing weight of responsibility away with it.

“It’s gone,” I whispered. Noelle smiled a little, but she didn’t look happy.

I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It felt good. I remembered once, years ago, the first time I’d come face-to-face with a revivor and I realized I couldn’t sense or control it. I remembered how scared it had made me feel, how lost I felt without that ability. It was different now. Now it felt liberating. If I didn’t know the future, then I was under no obligation to try to change it. I didn’t have to feel any guilt for not being able to change the things that couldn’t be changed. I didn’t have to live in fear.

“It’s gone,” I whispered again; then something moved under the skin in back of my neck. Phantom fingers wormed into the muscle and sent a shiver down my spine.

Error.
The word appeared in front of me and flashed.

Error.

Something shocked me. My whole body jerked, and I almost fell to the floor. Before I could wonder what happened, the skin on my face felt tight all of a sudden. My lips peeled back and pain pricked at my gums.