Element Zero (4 page)

Ice flaked down onto my back as I pushed open the door. The facility was dark and filled with metal boxes. Each box was the size of a human body, stacked and awaiting shipment. Each had a lot number and a shipping code, and was stamped with a certification:

PRODUCT OF HEINLEIN INDUSTRIES

I followed the map Fawkes had provided and crept down one of the rows all the way to the end of the shipping bay, where a single doorway stood. I stepped through, down a long, dark corridor, to an annex designated SST, for Series Seven Testing.

The magnetic strip got me through the door and into a refrigerated locker where wheeled metal racks were assembled in rows. Rows of revivors hung from hooks on each rack, their arms and legs dangling.

There were ten revivors to each of the racks, dormant, but ready for reanimation. Counting down by date and time, I found the rack that would be processed that morning. I lifted the first revivor off its metal hook and hoisted it down onto the concrete floor. I spit out the glass capsule and slipped it into the corpse’s open mouth, down between its rear molars. I struck him beneath the jaw and heard the capsule crunch.

Mist boiled from between the revivor’s lips, and a few seconds later his face melted like hot wax. Teeth and bone collapsed and oozed into the hole as I stood and stepped back to a safe distance. His chest sank in on itself, followed by the rest of him, as the substance consumed the necrotized flesh. When its job was done, it turned upon itself. All it left behind were revivor hardware and a cloud of thin white mist that was already being pulled through the vents. I took the tag that had been around his wrist. I slipped it around my own, then hid the bayonet and revivor nodes behind an equipment rack.

The bodies swayed on their hooks as I pulled myself into the empty slot. The hook pierced my skin and I eased myself down until it dug into the bone of my skull. Carefully, I released the bar above me and let myself hang. In another minute, the bodies were still.

Using the trigger Fawkes had given me, I made myself go dormant. The light from my eyes flickered and then went out. If our contacts there were right, I would reawaken in the next few hours.

Until that time, I would sleep.

Nico Wachalowski—Black Rock Train Yard

The morning sun had just begun to turn the sliver of sky above us to a dull gray, and in front of us, the train yard’s floodlights were blurred in the fog. The chain-link gate that led into it hung open, pressed into a bank of dirty snow. On the other side, derelict monorail cars were lined up in a long row, half-buried and covered in ice.

Agent Van Offo stood to my left, working the electronic manifest with a stylus. A yard worker leaned against the guard station’s metal siding and stared at the head of his cigarette.

We’re at the entrance,
I told the SWAT leader.

Roger that. Our teams are in position.

“I’ve got it,” Van Offo said. He held up the tablet to show the grid, with one of the cars called out. “Right there; that’s the source.”

The train car was stored with a block of others, abandoned along the brick-faced rear of the yard. I zoomed in and saw that the snow had been cleared away from the hitch and the door above it. I glanced back at Van Offo.

You see that?

I see it.

“Thanks,” he said to the yard worker, and handed the tablet back to him. The man took it without looking up. Van Offo stood in front of him and stared for a few seconds. In the gray light, I saw the brown of his eyes turn black.

“Go back inside,” he said in a low voice. “Sit at your desk and go to sleep.”

The man nodded. He flicked the cigarette, halfsmoked, into the snow and lumbered through the door, into the guard station.

“You look thoughtful,” Van Offo said. His eyes, always half-closed, peered over his large nose as snow collected on the shoulders of his coat. He couldn’t control my thoughts any longer, but he could still sense them. He didn’t know exactly what was going through my head, but he was good at filling in those blanks. It was easy to see, sometimes, why Fawkes hated them.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re moving in.”

Snow drifted down and had just begun to cover the boot tracks that branched off from the rusted metal gate. Several sets headed off between the rusting hulks. I followed them in.

Rail cars loomed on either side. The outsides were weathered, seams stained with rust. In the distance I saw oil drums, their rims scorched and covered with soot. Past that, beyond the perimeter, the huge shadow of the Central Media Communications Tower loomed over the city.

The tracks led down a frozen gray slick that ducked between two cars a few hundred feet away. I drew my gun and started down the path. Van Offo followed.

Wachalowski, this is SWAT leader. The area is secured. We’re waiting on your word to move in.

The satellite showed thermal activity in the yard. I could see the two teams as hot spots on the map. Van Offo and I were two orange points in a field of gray. All signatures converged on the far end of the yard, where a single car stood out from the rest, a pattern of shifting red and yellow among the cold, dark shapes around it.

There,
I said. Van Offo nodded.

On the visual feed, I watched SWAT creep down the rows of rusted metal. Their optics floated in the shadows as they made their way toward the target.

Wachalowski,
Van Offo said. He pointed at the trail in the snow. Sets of animal tracks trailed alongside the others.

SWAT, we’ve got dog tracks here,
I said.
Computer counts at least four different sets.

Roger.

I broke from the trail and moved between the car and the weathered brick wall beside it. I stopped a hundred yards south of the target, then zoomed in for a better look. The snow had gotten heavier, making it harder to see.

Anything?
Van Offo asked. My breath trailed in the cold as I swept over the area. The wall of the car was too thick and too far away for the backscatter to penetrate, but I could pick out several cameras mounted on the outside of it.

They’ve got security feeds set up,
I said.

We see them,
SWAT said.
Ready to cut their power on your mark.

An LED on the rear door flipped from red to green, and the latch turned.

Wait.

The door slid open and someone stepped out. It was a man with thick black hair and a surgical mask tied over his face. Over his clothes, he wore a black rubber apron.

One of the suspects just came out. Hold position.

The man walked out into the snow and the apron left a trail of black drops. He moved to the side of the car and turned away from the camera. Steam drifted up from in front of him as he started to urinate. From inside, someone barked in Russian. The translator scrolled text at the bottom of my periphery.

Clean it all up! Set the charges, and let’s get the fuck out of here!

You get that, SWAT?

Roger that. Team, watch for explosives.

I turned to Van Offo.

Can you lure him away from there?
He nodded.

I turned back to the man, and watched as the stream of urine stopped suddenly. His head perked up, like he’d heard something.

They’ll see him on the camera,
Van Offo said.

That’s fine.

The man swayed on his feet for a moment. He zipped up, and stood there like he wasn’t sure what to do.

“Come on,” Van Offo whispered under his breath. I zoomed in on the man, and watched his eyelids droop. Van Offo had him.

The man in the apron took a single step back. He turned toward us, and I heard a soft pop as his body jerked suddenly. Blood jetted from one ear, and left a red scribble in the snow.

What was that?
The SWAT leader asked. It wasn’t a gunshot. One of Fawkes’s kill switches had detected Van Offo’s interference and gone off. If the others weren’t alerted, they would be soon.

Cut the power. Move in now.

The man’s body crumpled to the ground as the floodlights went out with a loud snap. The LEDs on the storage units went dark as boots tromped through the snow. I closed in on the body, Van Offo close behind me.

“Get that door open!” the SWAT leader shouted.

The magnetic lock had powered down with the bolt still in place. One of them slammed a metal crank into the key and released it manually. Snow drifted down as another officer moved in and heaved open the door.

It was halfway open when a bright flash filled the opening and the force from an explosion inside the car blew the door off its track. It struck the SWAT officer and hurled him back onto the ice. Through the ringing in my ears I could make out shouting, as firelight flickered behind the tinted glass of the train car’s windows.

Get that fire out,
the SWAT leader said. A team moved in and I followed close behind them. Flames raged behind thick black smoke inside the car, as one of the men slung a douser through the doorway and it thumped in the small space.

The flames died as a huff of hot air and smoke blew through the opening.

How many inside?
the SWAT leader asked. The smoke was still too thick to enter the car, but using the backscatter I could make out two male figures inside. They looked dead, but something in there was still moving. A shape slunk below the smoke level, close to the floor.

There’s something in—

A dark shape lunged out of the smoke. A male revivor collided with the closest officer, one arm trailing behind it on a cord of sinew. Half its face was obliterated, and one moonlit eye stared from the blackened mess.

“Revivor!”

The officer went down with the thing on top of him. Smoke drifted from the revivor as it clamped its gray, meaty fingers around the man’s throat.

I fired a burst into the back of its skull, and black fluid splashed across the fresh snow. A rifle shot slammed into its chest, and it let go. The officer shoved the body to one side and got back up.

Something heavy landed on my back. I slipped on the ice and fell as it came down on top of me. Coarse hair brushed my neck, and rank-smelling breath huffed over the side of my face.

I twisted onto my back and saw a dog baring sharp yellow teeth. I got one arm between us as it went for my throat, and clamped down instead on the body armor covering my forearm. Its paws dug into my chest as it thrashed its head and growled.

A shot went off near me as several shapes leapt, trailing smoke, out of the storage car. As I struggled I saw two more dogs, large huskies, hit the ground and scramble on the ice. Exposed ribs stuck out where the hide had been blown off of one, and another was missing a back leg. Growls, punctuated by loud barking, sent clouds of breath through the frigid air, and I saw moonlight yellow in one set of eyes.

I pushed myself to my knees as the dog on top of me continued to thrash. The weight of it pulled me down again, and claws raked my face. I pushed the barrel of my gun into its flank and pulled the trigger three times. It let go, but didn’t go down. It snapped its jaws as I pulled away, and saliva flecked my face.

I put a shot through one of its eyes, and it staggered and fell. I peered through the hide and saw components clustered along its spine.

They’re reanimated,
I broadcast.
Destroy those dogs.

One of the officers fired, and the dog nearest him jerked and went down. The third lunged and clamped its jaws down on the man’s calf, thrashing as the rifle went off three more times.

A bullet tore through the animal’s side and it went limp. The SWAT officer pried the jaws free and let it fall.

Hold your fire.

The last shot echoed off, and the yard got quiet. The remains of the revivor lay crumpled in the snow, along with the three dogs and the SWAT member who got caught in the blast. Nothing else moved from the direction of the car.

A few feet away, the body of the man in the black apron lay face down in the snow. I used the backscatter to scan into the bloody hole in his ear, and saw traces of shrapnel that had been pushed from the inside out.

“That’s Fawkes’s work,” Van Offo said.

I looked over the body. The only thing the man had on him was a drugstore cell phone. It was clean; no numbers were stored. I pulled the ID from it and fed it back to Alice Hsieh back at headquarters.

Alice, we’re at the site. I need a number run from a cell phone we recovered. Can you trace the last circuit?

Hang on.

The SWAT leader was calling in an EMT, his breath blowing plumes as he barked into the radio. I put in for a biohazard team to come impound the revivors.

Got it,
Alice said.
I was able to go back twenty-four hours. One call only; someone named Harold Deatherage.

Thanks.

“Last call went to a guy named Harold Deatherage,” I told Van Offo. He shook his head.

“Do you know that name?” he asked.

“No.”

“The car is clear!” a voice shouted. I looked through the thinning smoke and switched to a thermal filter. There was nothing living left inside, and no active revivor signatures.

I waved smoke away as I crossed to the entrance and through the doorway. The inside of the car was a mess of twisted metal and broken wire cages. There were remains scattered through the car, but it was hard to separate them all out. Some were canine; I could see singed fur and pointed teeth buried in the mess. A human leg and two misshapen arms were sprawled among other, unidentifiable pieces.

Near the back of the car were several scorched gurneys. I could make out frayed wire and a broken housing for electronics, along with an IV rack that was bent in half. Some kind of test had been run there, but there was no way to know for sure what they’d been doing without a forensic reconstruction. Van Offo crept through the debris behind me and surveyed the scene.

“Why dogs?” he asked.

“You got me.”

In theory, anything with a brain could be revived, but the bottom line was that a real dog was cheaper and easier to maintain. It didn’t make sense.

Out at the edge of the yard I saw the first group of camera eyes gathering, recording everything they could see. A van pulled up behind them while I watched. In twenty minutes the place was going to be mobbed.

Alice, this was definitely Fawkes. We’re going to need a forensics team down here. They were able to blow the inside of the unit, but I think we can salvage something from it. We need DNA identification on two bodies, and put a rush on that revivor impound; this is too public.

Understood.

I looked around the car. The broken shells of computer terminals were scattered in the wreckage, along with a second gurney. When I scanned the floor, I could make out surgical tools. The head of a dog lay a foot from its body, eyes staring up at me.

Run Deatherage’s name. See if anything comes up.

I’m on it.

The SWAT leader appeared at the doorway behind us and leaned in.

“Agent, it looks like the techs picked up a transmission just before the explosion,” he said.

“What kind of transmission?”

“Some kind of large transfer. We think it was a core dump, to save the data before they blew the place.”

“They get a destination?”

He nodded.

“A copy?”

“No.”

Alice, it looks like they did some kind of backup or core dump before they blew the place. We’ve got a destination.

Where?
I checked the SWAT channel. When I saw the name, I grit my teeth.

Mother of Mercy.
It was a clinic downtown.

Isn’t that facility on our list?
she asked.

Yes.
We’d been there several times to pull records and hadn’t even marked the place as suspicious. I’d been there once myself. Things were slipping through the cracks.

Forensics will clean up the storage site. Take SWAT and get over there. Let me know what you find.

I looked at Van Offo. “You heard the woman.”