Zero World (25 page)

Her ancestors had lived in places like this. They’d lost everything, and become the beggars of this world. To live in such times, experience that loss and hopelessness, the constant agony and humiliation. It was a wonder anyone had survived, much less fought for a future.

There were farm houses—dead—and a fishing village where all the boats had decayed and sunk in a sad herd around the lone dock. There were crumbled roads and, every so often, the hideous black scars and craters of a rockfall event. How many bodies lay in those ashen, charred fields, their spirits never returned to the sea? How many had been pulverized when their homes were tossed sideways from the foundations as shock waves blistered out across the sky?

Millions, easily.

A long-ago-reclaimed camp or factory of some sort nestled between two steep hills caught her eye. It looked vaguely military, with what appeared to have been neat rows of barracks. Who knew what an army base of two centuries ago looked like, though. It could be a school, perhaps even a prison.

Near this facility, on the riverbank, a lone cottage caught Melni’s eye. The small home sat nestled in a deep cleft beside a tributary stream. Steep valley walls would have sheltered it from the nearby blasts, their curve hiding it from view of the river. There was nothing
remarkable about the place save for a thin white curling trail of smoke that spilled from the chimney on its roof. It was the only sign of life she’d seen in hundreds of photoprints, and this place was far from the network of scavenger trails that riddled the Desolation like veins.

Melni rubbed her aching eyes and glanced at the datemark. The image had been taken almost eleven years ago, roughly a year before the date Alia Valix first walked up to that Combran frontier post and pleaded for refuge.

She spent another fifty minutes scouring the area for other clues. There was a large boathouse by the river a few hundred feet away. The roof looked new, untainted by the relentless vegetation or weathering, and the trail between it and the little cottage was clear. A tingle spread across Melni’s scalp. New construction, chimney smoke, right where Caswell had said to look and right before Alia Valix wandered into Combran society and began to invent.

Something else caught her eye. On the trail, beside a lone green-cloud tree, were two patches of discolored dirt amid the tall weeds. The print was too grainy to make out details, but they were clearly not natural. Each was roughly six feet long and three wide. Rocks had been piled at one end of each. The sight tickled a memory: Boran, telling her of the murdered NRD officers in the rural North. Caswell had dragged the bodies away from the scene and buried them in dirt. He’d said this was per custom, though Melni had never heard of such a thing. And yet here, exactly where he said the woman named Alice Vale had landed, were similar landmarks alongside other signs of activity. It was not unheard of for loners, even the occasional small communal village, to exist in the Desolation. But here, exactly where he’d said? And with these burial mounds so alien to Gartien yet identical to what Caswell had done?

Melni sat back and closed her eyes. A battle raged within her: loyalty to the South on one side, the desire to know the truth about Valix on the other. In the middle of this imagined battlefield, a lone figure. Caswell.

Her thoughts turned to Clune and the Presidium. She pictured
them locked in some ornate mealhouse, negotiating the stranger’s return. Asking for resources or perhaps even technology. Valix, and the Northern Triumvirate she had wrapped around her hand, would likely give a lot. Caswell could expose Alia’s true nature. He could bring it all down.

“And so what if he does?” Melni whispered, the clear picture of things finally assembling itself in her mind. Neither side would care where Alia came from. She still represented the same thing: a technological advantage to whomever she worked for. Melni could not imagine either government accepting the logic of Caswell’s mission. The temptation for accelerated progress would trump any philosophical concerns over Gartien’s ownership of destiny. Both sides would be blinded by the prize she represented.

Unless…

Melni shivered. The summit. Valix had called the summit. She must know her role as the lever in the coming conflict, and so she alone could stop it. She’ll offer her reservoir of genius to both sides or neither. A brilliant gambit, really. Valix would force both sides to recognize her value, regardless of where she came from or why. She would become the most powerful person in the world, instantly. The truth of Caswell’s story wouldn’t matter then. Except to Melni. She still needed to know the truth. Then, and only then, could she decide what to do. Because regardless, there was only one decision to make: help Caswell complete his mission to kill Alia Valix, or prevent him from doing so.

The image, of that Cirdian valley, she folded up and stuffed inside her shirt.

“That is against the rules,” a flat voice said.

Melni froze. She had thought herself utterly alone. Slowly she turned in place. Behind her a black-clothed figure leaned against a tall bookshelf.

The Hollow Woman.

She had her arms folded across her chest, her mask still up to hide everything except narrow blue eyes.

Melni withered under that stare. She looked down at her shirt to hide the guilt she knew radiated from her face. “With everything going on,” she said, then paused. “Well, you know, who has time to wait for procedure? The summit is in four days. War could start at any moment.”

After a lengthy silence the Hollow agent made a slow, single inclination of her head. “You must have found something important to the situation, then.”

Melni shrugged.

The woman stepped forward. Her clothing seemed to absorb the light from the reading lamp on the table, leaving only the thin view of her eyes hovering in shadow. “Cirdian maps? What is it, a forward base? A smuggling route?”

“Just…a possible path north. A new one, thanks to a crater wall collapse.”

“Interesting. May I?” She extended a black-gloved hand.

Melni rolled her chair back and away. She came to a stand and covered her torso with one hand, pressing the folded print to her stomach. “Forgive me, I’ve never seen a Hollow here before. I don’t know what sort of clearance you have.”

The woman’s eyes betrayed the broad smile hidden by her mask. “Oh, that is not an issue, Miss…I mean, Mr. Prian Hox?”

Melni blinked, unable to mask her confusion. A second passed before she remembered the borrowed card pinned to her blouse, displaying a man’s name and image.

The Hollow Woman took a silent step forward, farther into the light. She slid an access card from a pocket on her leg and held it casually out. The square laminated paper was as black as her clothes, with nothing but a single tiny red and black diamond in the center. Raised lettering across the bottom, unreadable from this distance but there, likely provided a method of verification should anyone unfamiliar be presented it. “I think you will find this allows me the run of the place.”

Melni inhaled a long, slow lungful of air through her nose. She
needed confidence, and soon. But more than anything she needed to get out from under this terrifying woman’s gaze.

The shadow in front of her stepped forward once again. She stood less than a foot from Melni now, her narrow eyes glittering in the lamplight. “The photoprint?”

Melni glanced down at the black ident card. “I’ve never seen one of those before,” she said, the words spilling out quickly, like the way Caswell spoke. And Valix.

“We are not in the habit of showing it. Or ourselves, for that matter.”

“Well, I will need it verified and approved before I can show you anything. I take my orders directly from Rasa Clune.” Melni wanted a reaction and got it. The slightest tug at the corners of the eyes. “She gave no permission to share my research with anyone at this time.”

“Did Clune give you permission to wear someone else’s ident? That is strictly against the rules.”

Melni managed a weak laugh. “Simple mistake. They were all piled on the desk and I grabbed the wrong one in my haste.” As she spoke she turned and piled the images of the Cirdian wastes into a hasty stack. Melni stuffed the whole mess back into the first open drawer she could reach and slid it shut. “Everyone is so busy preparing for the summit, you know?”

Melni turned back around.

The Hollow Woman was gone.

Expecting arrest at every turn, Melni nevertheless took the long way back.

She headed up to the top floor and across a skybridge to the adjacent building where Internal Security made their offices. The very people who would throw her in a cell for the rest of her life if it were discovered what she’d done in the last few hours. It would take nothing more than for that Hollow to report what she’d so obviously suspected.

A clerk sat at a tiny desk halfway across the twenty-foot-long suspended hallway. Narrow windows along the span showed a clear night sky, and moonlight reflecting off the river and the ocean beyond.

Seeing Melni empty-handed, the clerk waved her past without much interest and went back to reading a newsprint folded across the table before her. Through sheer force of will Melni kept a casual pace to the door on the opposite side and walked through.

Every instinct told her to rush straight back to Caswell, but her brush with the Hollow Woman had set Melni on edge. She took a meandering, complicated route through the halls and buildings of Riverswidth, stopping frequently to double back, looking in every corner and through every window for a sign the woman had followed. But there was nothing, and before long Melni could wait no more. She gritted her teeth and made her way to Caswell’s room.

THE ANALYST STILL SAT
at his recorder reels, the tape sighing softly as it emptied itself from one spool and accumulated on the other. He was awake now, a book folded across his lap, his chin resting on his chest as he read. At Melni’s entrance he jerked slightly and sat up, alert. His sudden stiffness faded when he saw who had entered.

“I am going to see if he is willing to talk sense now,” Melni said.

“Last chance, I guess,” the analyst said.

Melni had made it to the inner door, her toe under the foot latch. She stopped and glanced back at the man. “What did you say?”

He favored her with an apologetic smile. “Director Clune is on her way up. Apparently the Presidium gave approval to cut him open and take a look at that thing in his neck.”

“That could kill him,” Melni said.

The man shrugged and turned back to his book. “Put him out of his misery, if you ask me. Blixxing loon…”

Melni slipped into the room and closed the door behind her. She glanced around, her heart racing. In her mind’s eye she could see Clune ascending the stepwell through the prison, a team of surgeons and security personnel on her heels. Perhaps the Hollow Woman, too.

Caswell woke when the door clicked shut. “I thought you’d abandoned me,” he whispered.

“We are leaving,” she whispered back. “I do not know how yet, but if we do not go now…” She left the thought unfinished, allowing her face to tell him what was at stake. “Did they bring you your food?” she asked at a conversational volume.

“No.” He winced as she unbound his wrists, careful to keep her body between him and the mirrored window.

Melni slid a hand under the bedsheet and unclasped the straps at his ankles. “Are you ready to talk sense now, prisoner?”

“Not until you bring my food,” he shot back, playing his part. Then he whispered, “What are you going to do?”

Melni held her hand perpendicular across her mouth, the gesture for silence she’d taught him. “Come through that door in twenty seconds,” she mouthed more than said.

He nodded, watching as she turned and strode back into the room beyond the mirror.

Caswell counted, only to fifteen since their seconds were a bit faster than his. Then he leapt from the bed and rushed the door, rubbing his temples the whole way. He wanted focus, clarity of mind. Lack of empathy and pain suppression. But the implant only complained. An empty feeling, like hunger, that told him the chemical reserves had all run dry. His implant could do nothing unless he found food.

Melni stood with her back angled toward him. She had one arm around the neck of a man who sat in front of a reel-to-reel recording
apparatus. Her other hand he couldn’t see, but from her posture he guessed she’d stabbed him, or was slitting his throat.
Jesus
.

The man spasmed, hands outstretched in sudden panic. A book fell to the floor. Melni grunted with effort, her feet scrabbling on the tiles for purchase. Caswell stepped toward the pair, ready to help, but then the victim melted back into his chair, slid down until his back was on the seat cushion, and fell off one side into a heap under the desk.

“You killed him?”

Melni half-turned, held up something that resembled a syringe. “He will be out for hours,” she said. She moved to the next door and leaned against it. “Get his outfit, and be quick. They come for you as we speak.”

Caswell knelt and set to work on removing the man’s clothes. “I thought you’d abandoned me,” he said again.

“We need to find this proof.”

He didn’t bother with the undergarments. The pants fit, the shirt as well, though once the clasps were fastened it stretched too tight across the chest. Still, it beat the patient gown. The shoes, though, were far too small. “Shoes don’t fit,” he said.

“We call them treadmellows.”

He sat on the floor, strained to get them on without success. Frustrated, he tossed them aside.

“Take the socks,” Melni offered. “They are black. Someone would have to look to notice. We must go.”

“Fine.” He took the socks. They reeked, but he pulled them on all the same. He stood and studied himself. “It’ll do, I guess.” He inspected the pant pockets. In one, a money clip held a surprisingly thick stack of teal notes. In the other was a set of keycards. Unsure of both, he tossed them to Melni.

“There are two guards outside the door,” she said. “I will go out first and try to distract them….”

She paused because he had stopped listening. A wheeled storage rack parked against one wall had caught his eye. Various medicines and other ancillary items were arrayed on the shelves. A standard set
of supplies, wheeled in to any infirmary room. “What is it?” she asked.

Caswell took slow steps over to the rack and reached to one shelf in particular, near the top. There, tucked between two boxes of syringes, was an oval-shaped metallic package. He pulled it out and grinned. “Calories,” he said, salivating.

Melni just watched him.

He twisted off the cap and sucked the contents down in a single, gulping swallow, crushing the package in his fist to get every last bit of nutrients into his mouth.

“Sweet potato mash,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of one hand. “With peas. Worst of the lot. Of course they’d pick this one, the monsters.”

“We could try to find your—”

He held up a hand to cut her off, then sank to his knees.

“Are you okay?”

He nodded, saying nothing, waiting for his body to process the food. “Give me five minutes,” Caswell whispered.

“You can have one,” Melni replied, and she meant it.

“Five,” he groaned. He massaged the back of his neck to get more blood flowing there. The seconds slid away. Then the minutes. Melni shifted impatiently but said nothing.

The phantom sensation of emptiness in his skull abated. He moved his fingers to his temples and asked the artificial organ for what he needed. This time it complied.

Everything slowed down a bit. Dreamlike, but crystal clear. Sights, sounds, even smells, all amplified. Every ache and lingering bit of fatigue in his body melted away. They were there, but only as data. Information that could be comprehended and summarily ignored.

“Right,” he said. “Guards outside?”

“Yes, two. I shall distract—”

“No. Wait here,” he said. Before Melni could stop him he was at the door, then through into the hallway.

They stood to either side, backs to the wall, batons holstered at
their hips. No firearms. Caswell coiled toward one, smashing his windpipe with a knife-hand punch. Then he uncoiled, twisting and extending his leg in a snap kick that took the other guard full in the face.

Melni emerged seconds later, and gasped. “You killed them.”

“That’s what I do.”

“I…This is not how—”

“Go back in there, Melni. Pretend I overcame you and fled. There’s no reason for you to take any blame for this.”

“No,” she said. Then with more conviction, “No. I am coming.”

He stared at her a long moment, trying to process what the implication would be for her career, not to mention her safety.

“Then help me with the bodies,” he said. He grabbed one by the legs and jerked his head toward the door for Melni to hold it open. She complied, still shocked at the violence.

A door at the far end of the hall, ten meters away, creaked open. He heard this easily, despite being in the room with the recorder. Out in the hall Melni stood frozen in place, holding the door, staring in the direction of the sound.

“What is the meaning of this, Agent Sonbo?” someone said. A sour, emotionless voice, like a stern grandmother.

He could hear others, too. Breathing, footsteps. Six, or maybe eight. Guards? He assumed yes. And right about now they’d be readying their weapons. Caswell grabbed the police-style baton from the guard’s belt.

“Director, I—” Melni stopped when Caswell pushed by her at a full sprint. Not toward the newcomers, nor even away from them, but straight across the narrow hall. Two steps and he leapt, planting a foot on the wall and pivoting his body toward the “director” and her party. In the same motion he threw the baton.

The woman ducked on instinct. Caswell knew she would; everyone ducked in such a scenario. So he had leapt high, aimed low. The black nightstick slammed right into the woman’s face with a sickening, meaty thud.

The group behind her erupted into chaos. Most were doctors, Caswell belatedly realized. Some guards at the rear were trying to move forward, shoving the medical staff aside. Everyone was shouting. The woman on the floor rolled over and came to her knees, hands pressed to her bleeding face, a horrible moan spilling out from between the fingers.

Caswell grabbed Melni’s arm. “Which way?”

“That—” she managed before he yanked her away from the fallen director.

She’d pointed to a door in the opposite direction. He raced to it, yanking her behind him. Pulled it open, shoved her beyond, and then closed it at his back with a click.

Ancient stone walls surrounded them. An old prison, he thought. “Where now?”

His words didn’t seem to register.

“Where?” he shouted, squeezing her arm.

“Go down,” Melni managed. “All the way down.”

“Where’s the stairs?”

“Director Clune,” she stammered. “You just—”

“Melni, get ahold of yourself. For all they know, you’re my hostage.”

Her eyes came up, met his. Those purple pools, normally so full of intelligence, now full of fear.

“Stairs?” he repeated.

“Stepwell. The second left, then the last door on the left.”

He rushed ahead. Melni struggled to keep up at first, but with each step the shock seemed to bleed out of her. Distance from the carnage. Soon enough she was only a few steps behind him.

Overhead, the lights dimmed, shining red when their brightness returned. Somewhere an alarm began to wail.

“Garta’s light, no,” Melni whispered.

A guard burst through a door ahead of them, looking the wrong way. Caswell dove high and flew over the man’s shoulders, grabbing the neck as he flew, twisting him around and pulling him down. Caswell landed and continued to fall, an iron grip around the neck. The
motion pulled the man off his feet and brought him crashing down on top of Caswell. Or would have, only the assassin had rolled out of the way. He was up on his hands and feet already. The guard tried to stand, bewildered. Caswell kicked a side of the man’s skull with flawless precision. The guard collapsed. All before Melni had had time to catch up.

“Come on, come on,” he rasped.

Melni stammered some reply. He could hear her footfalls on the stone steps, falling back. But still coming, still following. He pressed ahead, taking the steps three at a time.

By the time she found him at the bottom, three more bodies lay at his feet.

The black waters of Riv Dimont gurgled by. Three bodies drifted away on the languid current toward the sea. Caswell stood with his back to her, watching them go.

“The raft,” Melni said, numb. She could think of nothing else to say. Her plan to sneak Caswell away from here under the cover of night, find her proof, and report back, triumphant, had shattered like glass when that trunch had smacked Rasa Clune right in her nose. She’d only just come to grips with the bodies they’d left behind in Combra, but this…this was something else entirely. These were Southerners. Her allies. Caswell had torn through them like a bhar through weeds. “The raft,” she said again.

The assassin did not react. He just watched the bodies float off. His shoulders heaved as he gulped air. Finally he turned, and she saw what the flurry of activity had cost him. His face was bone white, what little color he’d had above now drained save for little flecks of blood. He opened his mouth to say something, his lower lip quivering. No words came. He stumbled, one knee giving out to exhaustion.

“What have you done to yourself?” she asked, catching him mid-fall.

“What I had to,” he replied, eyelids fluttering.

She hauled him to the raft and laid him on the wood slats, then took to the oars. The current did most of the work. Within ten minutes they reached the swirling waters where the river met the sea. Caswell had come to a sitting position by then, his color returning. He kept his gaze carefully behind them, wary of pursuit, but perhaps because of the hasty nature of their escape no one had thought to check the raft docks below the bridge. Sirens still wailed above, growing quieter as Riverswidth receded into the distance.