The darkness was reluctant to let me go. With no need for sleep, it had been a long time since I’d been under. The last time had been almost two years ago, and I remembered I’d found it peaceful. This time, though, something felt wrong.
Reanimation occurred without a hitch; energy began to course through my body, and the blood thinned in my veins. My mind, however, awoke to a dark void. Usually I could sense all of my memories, assembled like a field of stars beneath me. And far below that, in the cold depths of space, that dark hole pulled gently at me and waited. This time my memories were gone, and I was face-to-face with oblivion.
My memories were still there, just far above me. My mind had sunk below them, to the bottom, where I’d one day disappear. Even so close, I could see no end to it, but its gentle tug was more insistent now. It held me with millions of tiny black threads, drawing me slowly inside. I had always feared that void, but I found myself unable to resist. It was almost hypnotic.
“What’s the problem?” a voice asked. It was a man’s voice, from somewhere close to me. Impulses began to fire through my brain as it processed the signals, breaking me out of my trance. I felt my mind float back up, until those black threads stretched taut, then finally broke. The void released me, but it seemed reluctant. As I floated back through the field of memories, it seemed to deliver a wordless promise.
Soon.
“What’s the problem?” the voice asked again. This time, another answered.
“The name on the tag doesn’t match the signature.”
Energy trickled down the length of my spine and bled through my arms and legs. It began to gather where my heart had been, pooling and growing stronger. Muscle tissue began to reactivate, and I curled my fingers closed.
“Let me see,” the first voice said.
“Jesus, this one took a beating,” a third voice said. “Looks like an old stab wound to the chest, and five, maybe six bullet holes. Look at the size of those entry wounds.”
“According to the tag—”
“The tag’s wrong. Run the signature.”
I became aware that I was lying prone, with several figures positioned around me, and I heard the white noise of electronics. Something sharp and cold probed the back of my neck.
“What’s the matter?” the woman asked.
“There’s something strange about these wounds.”
“Is it a gen seven?”
“Yes. According to the signature, her name was …Faye Dasalia.”
“She was a police detective,” one of them said. “Maybe she got shot in the line of duty.”
“I don’t think so. Look right there…. Were those grafts revivor flesh?”
No one spoke for a moment, but I could sense them crowding in around me.
“I think these wounds happened after reanimation.”
“Maybe it’s back from the field?”
“These haven’t gone out yet.”
“Get it hooked up and let’s pull the memory.”
“Cognizance variant is very narrow,” the woman said. “Look at the date. It must have been one of the last before the injunction.”
“MacReady’s team will want a look at this one. Dump its core and let’s get it to T-Five.”
One of the figures leaned over my body, and I felt the probe slip through into my spine. My body went rigid as the probe turned live and found the socket to my main control node. All of my systems lit up, and the probe began to take inventory.
“It’s definitely been in the field,” someone said. “We’ve got quite a few custom modules here.”
“Flush all that. Just take the memory buffers.”
The probe cycled through my different packages, schematics flashing by behind my eyelids. The custom software modules raised some eyebrows, but the extra hardware put them all on edge.
“The Leichenesser capsule’s been removed,” one of them said.
“It’s got some kind of custom hardware fitted in with the bayonet too.”
“I’ve got a second bayonet here, in the other arm.”
“Stop the scan.”
The probe tapped into my memory buffer and opened a connection. When it did, the virus there executed. It took control of the link and then flooded the circuit. The code quickly propagated through the lab, then pushed through onto the rest of the network. Address registers scrolled by as it isolated their security and began to shut it down. A Klaxon sounded but was quickly cut off as the first module went dark in my display.
“What the hell was that?”
“Stop the scan!”
Voices rose outside the room. The intrusion on the network was spotted as they lost their connections to the outside.
“The system’s not responding,” one of the men said. His fingers worked a console to my right.
“Then pull the probe!” the woman snapped.
Slowly, I opened my eyes. Three people stood around me: an older, gray-haired man with a thick beard; a broad-shouldered black man with a large belly; and a gaunt-looking woman who kept her long, thin hair in a ponytail. Probes stuck out of my chest like pins in a pincushion, and readouts streamed on a bank of monitors.
The old man had reached for the probe in my neck, but stopped when my hand and forearm split apart. The blade deployed with a loud bang, and he froze, the tip an inch from his throat. He raised his hands so I could see them.
“Deanimate it!” the woman snapped.
The tray creaked as I sat up. Wires connected to the probes in my chest pulled taut, then the needles clattered to the floor. The virus branched out, infecting all of their security protocols. It disabled the cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, everything. The lethal current running through the perimeter fence faded, then died. The gates unlocked and opened. I placed my bare feet on the cold tile floor as behind me the door to the lab opened, and the three technicians looked past me, toward it.
“Ang, Dulari,” the woman said. “Shut that thing down!”
As she spoke, her pupils dilated, and I fired the injector from my arm. The thin tube whipped through the air, and the needle lodged in the side of her neck. She slapped the spot with one hand, but the needle was already gone. As I watched, the orange glow in her rib cage that pulsed so frantically began to slow down. Her legs gave out, and as she started to fall, the bearded man caught her, his eyes wide with shock.
“She’s alive,” I told him.
“Ang, what are you doing?” the second man demanded.
Two of my three contacts had arrived. Ang Chen, a Chinese man with a dour face, and Dulari Shaddrah, a Pakistani woman whom I suspected might have been beautiful, stepped fully into the room. Dulari put one warm hand on my shoulder. Ang approached the men, a pistol in his hand.
“Back against the wall,” he told them.
“Hold still,” Dulari said in my ear. She carefully removed the probe from my neck, and I felt the circuit cut. I pulled the remaining needles from my chest as she handed me a bag. It contained clothes that had been folded neatly.
“Why did the perimeter go down?” I asked. “You have control of the transmitter array now.”
Dulari smiled weakly. “Don’t worry about that.”
I looked around, but the third man I was supposed to meet was not with them.
“Where’s Deatherage?” I asked.
“We can’t find him,” she said.
“What do you mean, you can’t find him?”
“Security logs show he used his badge at the entrance,” Chen said, “but no one’s seen him.”
“Chen, this is insane,” the older man said. “What the hell is going on?”
“Put her down,” Chen said. The man lowered the unconscious woman to the floor.
“She’s not breathing,” he said.
“The neurotoxin is not lethal,” I said. I opened the bag and began to get dressed. The clothes were plain and a reasonable fit. I thought they might have belonged to Dulari.
“Why’d you dose her?” Chen asked me.
“She’s one of them. She was attempting to influence you.”
He nodded.
“Wait. Stop,” the black man said. He looked past Ang and Dulari at me. “Where did you come from?”
“Just stay here,” I said. “Stay here and don’t make trouble.”
“I know you’re one of ours,” he continued. “I also know that one bayonet is standard for the sevens, not two. Those injectors aren’t standard either. Where did you come from?”
“Listen to me: stay in here, and don’t make trouble.”
“Do as she says,” Chen said. The man stared at the pistol.
“What are you going to do?” he asked. “What is this all about?”
As he spoke, what might have been understanding dawned on the second man’s face. I saw his mouth part.
“You’re one of Samuel’s,” he said.
Before I could answer him, I saw an image of Heinlein’s satellite, the defense system that was known as The Eye, flicker onto the display in front of me. As I watched, its nodes were all called out and scanned. One by one, they began to go inactive. I turned back to Dulari.
“The virus,” I said. “It’s—”
“I know.”
Someone shouted from down the hallway outside, where I heard many footsteps tromping closer. The last of the nodes on my display went dark. The Eye had gone inactive. The tarmac surrounding Heinlein Industries was no longer protected.
“Someone’s taken control of the defense satellite!” a voice shouted. “We’re wide open; it’s some kind of attack!”
“Dulari, what is this?” She didn’t answer, and looked away.
“Chen …what have you done?” the black man asked. “What the hell have you two done?”
“Shaddrah, get them out of here,” Chen said.
The men stared as Dulari drew a pistol. She motioned toward the door.
Just then, it opened and another man stuck his head in. His eyes were wide.
“Guys, we have multiple vehicles approaching the complex,” he said. “We need to …”
He saw the guns and trailed off.
“What is going on out there?” the older man asked him.
“Sir, we have confirmation on a wide-scale broadcast of a Huma activation sequence.”
“An activation sequence? From where?”
“It looks like it might have been sourced from the Stillwell compound. Someone with high security clearance snuck in a stealth program that bounced it off a communications satellite maybe twenty minutes ago.”
“What?”
“It gets worse—someone’s inside our system, as well. Campus security has been totally compromised. We’re completely unprotected.”
“He did it,” the black man whispered. “That madman really did it.”
“Shaddrah, get them out of here,” Chen said.
“You heard him,” Dulari said. “Come on, let’s go.”
Dulari, I said over a private connection. Why are vehicles approaching? Is he coming here?
I’m sorry, Faye. I thought you knew.
Knew what?
She looked back and met my eye before she closed the door behind them.
Chen stood over the woman on the floor and watched the shallow rise and fall of her chest.
“Who is she?” I asked.
“Greta Creigh,” he said.
“Do you know her?”
“I do, yes,” he said. “I thought I did. You’re sure about what you saw? She’s one of them?”
“Yes.”
“One hundred percent sure?”
“Yes.”
He aimed the pistol and fired. The shot slammed through the lab as the bullet blew out the top of the woman’s head in a mess of blood, gristle, and hair.
He stared at the results for a moment, and then, without changing his expression, he fired again.
Initialize node 23948. Inception time 21720202091103.
Current version: 010000064013C.
Current instruction set(s) pending.
Outstanding message. Urgent. Please respond.
The words flickered in the dark when I came to. The ground was hard and cold under me, and I smelled blood. My dead hand tingled. It wasn’t supposed to do that anymore.
Urgent. Please respond.
I opened my eyes. I was facing a concrete wall with a bloodstain on it. There was a big splatter on the floor under that, with a broken tooth in it. Yavlinski was gone.
Urgent. Please—
I pulled up the message. It was from Singh.
Fawkes pulled the trigger. Call in. I sent a confirmation back, then tried to get Wachalowski on the JZI, but there was some kind of hold on his line.
Great. My muscles were stiff, but I could move. Nothing felt broken when I sat up. My brass knuckles were on the floor a few feet away. I grabbed them and stuffed them in my jacket pocket with the other set.
My hand still had pins and needles. I flexed the gray fingers and they worked, but they were stiff and slow. The static in my head had turned to a steady whine.
If my clock was right, I’d been down over an hour. I checked my pockets, and the bag of Zombie was still there. The brass knuckles, the gun …it was all still there. The room was empty.
I got up and limped through the door, back the way I’d come in. My bike was still there, the alarm panel red. Someone tried to heist it but couldn’t get it started. They must have left in a hurry.
I walked it back toward the metal door that led outside. When I pushed it open I saw light but no people. The lot was empty. Wind blew snow across the blacktop, and a cardboard cup with blood spatter on it rolled past.
Wachalowski, pick up.
I ran diags and they came up clean, mostly. My body checked out okay, but my head hurt like a bitch. The ringing in my ears wouldn’t let up.
I looked around. Cinders glowed in the metal drums, but the people were all gone. I made my way over to one of the tarps they’d set up and pulled open the flap. Someone’s shit was in there, but he was long gone. I let the tarp go and the wind blew it shut. I listened, but didn’t hear any voices—just wind and the flap of plastic.
I straddled the bike and kick-started it. The engine turned over, and I headed back the way I’d come in. I didn’t pass anyone in the alleys. When I got to the main road, it was full of cars, but they all just sat there. None of them moved.
Nico, pick up, goddamn it.
Up ahead, a store window had been smashed, and the sidewalk was covered in broken glass. In the street to my left, a car’s doors hung open and the windshield was caved in. Shell casings lay on the sidewalk next to it, and the snowbank was stained red.
I looked down the street. A long strip of bloody cloth blew in the wind, snagged on a car antenna. A lot of car doors were open. I saw broken glass and trash where people had dropped their shit and run. There were footprints in the snow, between cars and up and down the sidewalks. A few car lengths down, a black armored truck had jumped the curb and crashed into the side of a building. Way down the street, a trail of smoke rose from somewhere I couldn’t see. In the street, between the cars, a few guys stood with their backs to me. They didn’t move as the wind whipped through their coats.
“Hey!” I called. They didn’t answer. Down the street I saw a few more. None of them moved.
Flax, this is Singh. You copy?
I copy.
Shit. I was starting to think you were dead.
What the hell happened?
Fawkes happened. He activated the carriers an hour ago. Where are you?
Still in the Pit.
That’s a hot zone. You want to get out of there right away.
No shit.
That area was hit hard. There are a lot of revivors still in there.
How many we looking at?
No numbers yet, but thousands. Can you get back to base?
The streets were blocked. Back the other way, I could barely make out the flash of blues and reds on the other side of an old, rusted bridge.
I’ll manage.
Good. You okay?
I’m fine.
“Hey, you!” I called to the guys in the street. They still didn’t move.
Wait, I told Singh. I might have some survivors.
Be careful.
I took the bike closer, in between the abandoned cars. I pulled up next to the three men.
“Hey, what are you, fucking deaf?” I asked, but by then I could see.
Shit.
The three guys had blood down the front of their shirts and pants. It was smeared around their mouths and beaded up on the ends of their fingers. Black spots bled through the whites of their eyes. They were Huma carriers, revivors, but the signal I usually picked up from them wasn’t there.
I looked down the street and saw more of them. Some leaned into cars; others were down on the ground. None of them moved.
Singh, I’ve got hostiles down here—
Cal, just get out of there.
No, listen. Something’s up. They’re not moving.
What are they doing?
Nothing. They’re just standing there. Hold on.
I scanned the closest of the three and picked up a lot of wireless traffic. It was the same for the rest.
They’re all getting some kind of major data dump, I said.
What kind of data dump?
Hold on. The eyes of the closest one were moving around, just barely. As I watched my hand twitched, and a string of garbage code rolled past one corner of my eye. I’d seen this all before.
I know what it is, I told Singh.
You want to share?
That steady screech in the back of my head was because code was coming in. The blood in my hand was picking up the change too; that’s why it was tingling again. I looked up and down the street at the frozen bodies. They were all stuck in standby; Heinlein was upgrading them.
Is Heinlein pushing something down from central? I asked.
Pushing what?
I don’t know. But the jacks used to do this in the field when a control-module update came down from the satellite.
The shutdown virus is based on the prototype, Cal. Heinlein wouldn’t go messing with that even if they could.
I’m telling you—someone’s sending something down because I’m getting it too—I can feel it.
I’ll look into it. You just get the hell out of there.
I watched them as the wind blew over them. None of them blinked while they were blasted with snow. The closest one’s eyes just kept up that slight jitter as the bloodstained shirt flapped around his bony, scabby body.
Roger that.
I took the bike past them and back to the sidewalk. There was more blood on the snow just ahead. A hand, short a little finger, poked out from under a car. There was a big bite mark in the meat of the thumb.
Nico was still offline. I hated talking to that asshole Van Offo, but he was my next-best bet. I tried his line, and he picked up.
Van Offo here.
It’s Flax.
Miss Flax. I was going to contact you.
I didn’t like the sound of that. I hated him, and he knew it. We had only one thing in common.
Where’s Nico?
He’s safe.
My fist tightened on the throttle. I wasn’t in the mood for that twerp’s bullshit runaround.
I didn’t ask if he was safe. I asked where he was.
He’s at the VA hospital—that’s what I was going to—
What happened?
Don’t worry. He’s alive.
I asked what the fuck happened to him.
I can’t give you any more details than that right now. I’m waiting to hear myself—
Where the hell were you during all this?
I was being shot. We were attacked while following a lead. He saved my life.
“Goddamn it!”
I kicked the car next to me and the taillight crunched under the heel of my boot.
I don’t care about your life, you motherfucker!
I know.
What hospital?
The streets are blocked. You won’t get there. Listen to me, Cal—
Fuck you.
I cut the connection.
Singh, I’m on my way but I need your help.
What do you need?
Work your mojo and find out what hospital Agent Nico Wachalowski is checked into. Find out his status. I want to know everything.
You got it, Cal.
I heard a voice shriek then, just over the idling engine. I looked around, but I didn’t see anyone. Wind blew snow across the street, and when it died down, I heard it again.
Thanks, Singh.
Whoever it was, they were close. I cut the engine and listened. It was hard to make anything out over the wind, but it was definitely a person.
“Hello?” I called. I looked around for any movement. “Hello? Is anyone here?”
A voice called back. I couldn’t make the words out, but it came from a girl.
I turned on a thermal filter and swept the area. Up ahead, in the middle of the cold, I saw a red-orange glow from the rear of the crashed armored truck.
I closed in and parked the bike ten feet away. The truck was unmarked and painted black. The front end had smashed through the brick face and the doors hung open. The rear plate was marked with the letters MIL.
Military vehicle. I climbed off the bike and stepped closer. There was an emblem in the corner of the back window.
STILLWELL CORPS. It was one of ours.
I looked around the side and saw a revivor up front, standing frozen. It still had the driver by the wrists, blood smeared down the front of its face. The driver hung there by his arms, limp. His head lolled, blood running down over his face. His throat had been torn open, and the snow at their feet was red.
“Hello?” a voice called from the back of the truck. It was female, with some kind of accent. “Who’s there?”
I grabbed the handle to the back door and pulled, but it was locked.
“I’m not here to hurt you. Come on, open up!” I said. I thumped the door with my fist.
“Who are you?” the voice asked from inside. The accent was Russian, maybe. I looked through the bulletproof glass and caught a glimpse of what looked like a kid.
“I’m not dead. How’s that? Open the damn door.”
I heard the bolt let go, and pulled the door open. When I did, a rank smell blew out.
There was a girl back there, some street teen with a dirty face and ratty hair. She wasn’t alone.
The back of the truck was filled with bodies. They were all naked, and stacked along the sides in metal trays. The crash had thrown them so that arms and legs hung over the sides. Blue fingers and toes stuck out in the air. A couple had spilled out onto the floor, and one’s neck had been slashed on a sharp edge of the rack, and blood covered the floor. The girl knelt on the floor, her knees and hands red.
“Get me out of here,” she said. Her hands shook.
The whole back smelled like BO and decomp. The bodies were scrawny and scabby. They had to be thirds, people they’d pulled off the streets.
“Please …get me out of here …”
All the way back, a window looked into the cab. The dash and the windshield were splashed with blood. On the seat was an electronic manifest, the screen spattered with red.
This is the retrieval team. They were here to pick up the carriers I’d tagged.
“What happened here?” I asked.
“I don’t know …everyone just …fell down. When they got back up …”
“How’d you get in here?”
“It was already crashed. Men with guns got out.”
“What men?”
“Men in uniform. They tried to hold them, the dead ones, off, but there were too many. They took them.”
There were some footprints in the snow behind the truck. Some blood, and shell casings too. Except for the driver, though, there were no bodies.
“Took them where?”
She shook her head.
“Okay, I get it.” Her eyes were wide and she shook, still kneeling down in the blood. “Come on, get out of there.”
“Are they …?”
“Those things in there with you could still get back up,” I said. “ Let’s go.”
She crawled out in a hurry and stuck near me.
“We’re getting out of here. What’s your name?”
“Vika.”
“You’ll be okay, Vika. Follow me.”
I took her back to the bike and she got on behind me. She put her arms around my waist and laced her fingers as I kick-started the engine.
“Hold on,” I said.
She squeezed tighter as the rear tire kicked up snow and I took us through the wreckage.
Back in the car, I saw Penny was rattled. She didn’t turn the music back on, and she didn’t call Ai, either. When I offered her the flask again, she grabbed it and took a big swallow. Then she drove to a bar.
Things got a little fuzzy after that. We didn’t talk about what the general said, or what we saw in the lab. We didn’t talk at all until maybe three drinks in, and even then we didn’t talk about anything serious. She didn’t flirt with the bartender or punch up any music. She just drank until she got to the point where she could laugh, but even then, her eyes looked worried.
At some point we stopped at a liquor store, because I spilled ouzo while trying to refill the flask, and Penny was drinking grappa straight out of a long-necked bottle while she sped down the street. Then she did turn the music back on, louder than before, like she was daring someone to pull her over and give us a hard time. By then I didn’t care. By then I was having fun, and I was glad to forget about the whole thing, at least for the night.
A cop on a motorcycle pulled up alongside us and matched our speed, the reflective faceplate of his helmet turned to look down at Penny. She took a long swallow from the bottle while he watched, then looked over at him as snow spit past the window. A few seconds later, he slowed down and peeled off.
The incoming-call light came up on the dash for the third time. The ID said it came from Stillwell Corps. Penny took one last swig from the bottle and stabbed the stereo button with her finger, cutting off the music. She answered the call, but they’d already disconnected.
“At least they got it working, right?” I offered.
Penny wasn’t biting. She shook her head. “The point of all this,” she said, “the only point of all this is to change that future. Literally nothing else matters.”
“I know.”
“An attack here and there, even by that many revivors, that all heals,” she said. “Not that big, empty nothing. We have to fix it.”
“I know.”
“If an infinite number of times everything dies, then there have to be an infinite number of times we get out of it. We have to figure this out. The turn’s coming up fast.”
“I know,” I said, not really understanding her completely.
“Do you?” she asked. “Do you have any idea what I’ve …” She trailed off and took another drink from the bottle. I tipped back the flask and swallowed, past tasting it.
Like the map they used to chart it, I didn’t understand the future as well as some of us did. I knew what Ai believed, and that the visions weren’t so much looks into our actual future as they were bleed over from what she called alternate possibilities. I knew there were an infinite number of those possibilities, and that meant an infinite number were almost identical to ours. She thought we could see into them, and that their present was our future. They were all almost the same, and some pitched off the cliff into nothing, while others somehow avoided it.
At least that was what she thought. I don’t think she really knew. Not for sure. All I understood was that we wanted to be one of the ones that avoided it, whatever “it” was. The dark void that no one could see into meant we were on the wrong path. We were making mistakes, the same mistakes as the rest. Was the virus a dead end? Was that the mistake?
“Look at it this way,” I said. “Even if this plays out a million times and everyone is wiped out every time, we could still make it, right? We could be on the right path.”
“No one sees past the end of their own life. You know that.”
“But we don’t know that for sure. If what we see comes from somewhere else, couldn’t it just be that they all die, but we live?”
Penny opened her mouth to answer, then closed it again. She smiled, and for a second the worry left her eyes.
“You know, I think that might actually be deep,” she said.
“Hey, it could be true,” I said. “Admit it: you don’t really know.”
“Ai—”
“Ai is amazing, but come on, at the end of the day she’s just a person like you or me.”
“She’s not like you or me.”
“Penny, she isn’t a god or anything.”
“What is this insolence?” she asked. She was kind of kidding but kind of not.
“I’m just saying, she’s a person, she makes mistakes just like everybody else, and she doesn’t know everything.”
“Then you think she’s wrong about all this?”
“No, but—”
“Because if she’s wrong about this, then what the hell is it we’re trying to do here?”
“Fix it,” I said, getting annoyed. “Fix everything. That’s why we sneak around messing with everybody’s head, so we can fix everything, because we know everything, and everyone else is a bunch of stupid sheep—”
“Hey, you can’t make an omelet without breaking some eggs.”
“Yeah, well, just because you break a bunch of eggs doesn’t mean you get an omelet either.”
Her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel as she took another swig from the bottle. She was drinking more than usual, a lot more. If I hadn’t been so drunk myself, I’d have probably thought more about the fact that although she wasn’t any bigger than me, I’d seen Penny break men’s fingers. I’d seen her stab people and shoot people.
“I think you’re talking some dangerous talk,” she said.
“I think you’re drunk.”
“I think you’re drunk. I think you’re always drunk.”
“Screw you, Penny.” I growled. That was crossing a line. She wasn’t allowed to bring that up. “My drinking is not a problem.”
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” she snapped back. “Do you know how many times I’ve held your hair while you puked your guts out?”
There were actually tears in the corners of her eyes. That was something I’d never seen before, but I kept going.
“If you didn’t, they’d probably throw you out on the street,” I said. My face was hot and my hand had made a fist around the neck of the flask. “Just like they did with what’s-her-face—”
“She had a name!” Penny shouted. I didn’t think I’d ever heard her do that either. It actually stopped me cold for a second.
Before me and before Penny, Ai had pinned her hopes on some girl named Noelle Hyde as the one that was going to save the world. She didn’t work out so good, though, and so from what I could get, they had to kill her. Penny never talked about her. I never really thought much about if they knew each other or how much or for how long. I could tell by her face that this time it was me who crossed the line, and opened my mouth to maybe take it back or something, but it was too late.
“She had a name,” she said in a low voice. Every muscle in her body looked tense, like she wanted to break my neck or something.
She wouldn’t, though. Even if she tried, she wouldn’t be able to. I was no match for her physically, but if I had to, I could make her stop. If I wanted to, I could kill her.
“I know,” I said. I was breathing hard.
“Sometimes you keep talking when you really should just shut up,” she said.
Heat rushed up my neck, and I was just about to lay into her when the screen on the dash lit up again with an incoming call. This time it was from Ai.
Penny frowned, and we glared at each other, but when Ai called, you didn’t keep her waiting. Penny took a deep breath and answered.
Ai’s face appeared on the screen. Her eyelids were half-closed, like when she was concentrating, and her pupils were dilated. The prominent vein on the right side of her neck bulged, and every few seconds she twitched, just barely. She’d drugged herself like she sometimes did to enhance her abilities, and she looked like she was tripping hard this time.
“Where are you two? What is your exact location?” she asked. I closed my eyes for a second and when I concentrated, I could sense her. She was reaching out from the top of Alto Do Mundo to find us. Something was wrong.
“We left the Stillwell base,” Penny said. “We’re headed back now.”
“You left the Stillwell base nearly two hours ago,” Ai said, still staring into space. “Listen to me carefully: forget whatever you’re fighting about and—”
“She started it—” I said, and before the last word even got out of my mouth, I felt her reach into my head. She reached right through the anger and the drunkenness, and it was like a cold hand grabbed some primal part of me and made my body jump. Penny jumped in the seat next to me, her mouth stuck open.
“Don’t ever interrupt me,” Ai said. “Listen, and do what I say. You’re both in danger—”
Penny could still drive, but that didn’t change the fact that she was drunk and about as distracted as you could get. Her reflexes were good, but even she wasn’t fast enough to react when a man appeared in the headlights in front of us.
For a second, everything seemed to slow down so much that it almost stopped. I could see Ai’s big lips move as she kept talking, but all I could hear was a sort of dull, white noise as Penny cut the wheel and the car tilted on its suspension. Through the windshield, big flakes of snow drifted toward us, past the man in the street. He was dirty and bundled in filthy clothes that hung from his scrawny frame. His cheeks were hollow, and through his parted lips I could see teeth that were yellow and brown.
He looked up from the headlights that bore down on him. He looked right through the glass, right at me, and I could see black spots that branched through the whites of his wide eyes. They followed me as the car began to veer, and he just stood there like he was completely unaware of what was happening.
You’re in terrible danger, I felt Ai’s presence say from where it sat in the back of my mind. She was calling us, calling us to come back home. She wanted us to come quickly, and I could feel the urgency building up inside me.
I didn’t think; I just reached out to the man in the street the same way Ai was reaching out to me. Certain minds were easier to control than others. If a mind was receptive enough, I could reach across the city and touch it, but from a few feet away I could push almost anyone. If I could snap him out of his trance and make him move, then he might have enough time.
The inside of the car got bright as my pupils opened all the way and the light from the dash and the headlights swallowed up almost everything except the man’s face and those strange, blotchy eyes. I concentrated on him, looking for the swirling colors of his consciousness and the bright electric bands underneath that controlled everything. I focused on him as hard as I could as we bore down on him, but instead of the aura that should have been there, I pushed through into nothing but a black void. It was like stepping off the side of a cliff into a huge, bottomless pit.
He’s dead, I thought. Where his thoughts should have been, there was just emptiness. He was dead. It was a revivor.
The car struck him above the knees, and the expression on his face never changed as muscle rippled under the impact and the bones inside snapped. His body pitched forward over the hood as his feet left the ground and one old boot flew off, the rubber heel flapping. His face struck the windshield, and half-rotted teeth shattered against the bulletproof glass.
The car was sliding, and Penny cut the wheel again to compensate as the man’s body tumbled past, tearing the side mirror free as he spun like a rag doll in the air. Only a few feet away, two more men stood in the path of our car, and as I heard the shriek of tires cut through the white noise, I screamed.
Past the two men, I saw three more, and then the road curved past a building face to join the main drag, where every car was stopped. Penny cut the wheel again, but it was too late. The car went into a skid, and I felt the two bodies slam against the door. A head struck the window and sprayed blood, but as everything streaked by, I saw nothing but darkness around them. They had no lives to lose. They were all already dead.
They’re all revivors, I said to Ai’s presence.
We hit the guardrail head-on. The street, the people, and all the cars whipped past the windshield as the rear wheels came up off the ground behind us, and then we were spinning, end over end through the air.
It was dark, and they were all around me. Their bellies were swollen, and the meat inside them had begun to rot. They’d dragged me underground into what used to be an old ammo dump, with decaying wooden walls and a ceiling that buckled under the soft earth above it. It was filled with bones and scraps of clothing. They’d used this place before.
Move. You have to move.
I’d relived that day more times than I could count. Every time I told myself to fight, and every time I didn’t until the first set of teeth bit down. No matter how many years passed, I couldn’t shake it; from the crooked teeth that punched through first, to the cold tongue that touched the mouthful of skin.
Pain bored into my shoulder as the thing’s wet, grimy hair tickled my neck and face. I heard the crunch and screamed. It raised its head with a chunk of my flesh clenched in its teeth, while another one crowded in and bit down where the blood was pumping out. They were eating me. They were eating me alive.
You have to move.
I pushed against them, but the space was too tight. They were too heavy. A knee bashed into my ear. I tried to twist my head, but they had me pinned. A thumb slipped into my eye socket and warmth gushed down my cheek, into my ear. With the eye I had left, I saw one of them pulling a big strip of skin away. In the dim light, I could make out the chest hairs sprouting from it.
I’m going to die, I thought.
I vomited. One of them shoved the eye it had popped free into its mouth. Cold fingers groped at me, holding me. All I saw were sets of teeth stained red. I slipped into shock, and my mind disconnected. The cold feeling turned warm, and something deep inside began to soothe me. It whispered for me to let go.
You’ve done enough, it said. It’s okay. Don’t struggle. Just rest now …
I’d relived this memory again and again, but a part of that day was gone. They told me it might never come back. The next thing I could ever remember was Sean’s voice calling my name.
Then there, in a gap between the bodies that crowded around me, I saw a face I couldn’t remember ever seeing before.
It was the face of a young boy with black skin and tangled black hair. He was a native; scrawny, dirty, and out of uniform. He couldn’t have been older than twelve. His pulse throbbed at his neck and his eyes were wide.
I wasn’t alone down there.
Someone else had been down in that tunnel with me. In the light of the single, swaying overhead bulb, I saw the flash of metal as the boy positioned the tip of the blade behind the closest revivor’s neck. How could I have forgotten that?
He pushed the knife into the flesh and twisted it. From the way the revivor dropped, I knew he’d severed the primary nodes at the brain stem. He moved to the next one, the blade shaking and dripping black.
“Wachalowski! Wachalowski, where are you?” A voice was shouting my name, muted, from somewhere up above. Sean’s voice. My squad had found me somehow.
I fought them then. My brain seized on the hope that I might still survive, and I fought.
They saw the boy. One of them swung, but he got out of the way as the bayonet tugged at his filthy shirt. With most of my strength gone, the others turned their backs to me and closed on their fresh victim.
He tried for the side tunnel he’d come through, but another one had come in behind him. He was cut off. He scrambled back until he hit one of the makeshift walls. One of the planks was broken, and behind it was a small space that someone had dug out to hide food or munitions.
The boy squeezed through just as they reached him. He retreated back into the cubby as grimy fingers clawed an inch from his face. I pushed myself up and got on my hands and knees next to the revivor that lay facedown in the dirt. I looked for something, anything to stop them with.
“Wachalowski!”
Hands grabbed me from behind and pulled. I tried to scream, but my throat burned with something salty and warm. I choked, and coughed up blood.
Sean, wait …
He pulled me away, away from the backs of the revivors crowded around the broken plank. He thought I was alone. I could just make out the boy’s face, terrified, as I was dragged from the room and back up the tunnel.
“Shit! Set up a perimeter!” Sean yelled. I heard gunfire. The trees spun above me as Sean leaned over and shined a light in my one eye.
“Nico, stay with me,” he said. I tried to speak, but I was choking. Blood ran from my mouth.
Someone craned back my head, and I felt a tube slide down my throat. I could breathe again. I groped for Sean’s sleeve and pointed back down the tunnel.
Sean, wait, I said over the JZI, but I never finished. He leaned in close and stared into my eye. I felt dizzy as his pupils got wider, and as he stared, I felt the pain and the fear ease back. My heart rate went down.
“Sleep, Nico,” he said. I felt myself relax. “It’s over now. Don’t try to talk. Just sleep.”
I wanted to tell him about the boy, but when I tried, I couldn’t. The words wouldn’t form. He didn’t know. None of them knew. He was six feet underneath them, and none of them knew. Why couldn’t I respond? What had Sean done to me?
He leaned in until his lips were at my ear.
“You will forget this,” he said. “I can’t do anything about the physical scars, but I can do this. I don’t know if I can take it away completely, but I’ll try. Just forget …”
Forget …
“ …forget what happened down there.”
The medevac came. They airlifted me out. One of the revivors, its teeth stained red, came back up and watched the chopper. The gunner turned on it and cut it down as we left the boy who’d saved me to his fate, forgotten.
I opened my eyes. I was in a hospital, lying in bed while a doctor stood off to one side, turned away from me to examine an X-ray. I could still picture the boy’s face in my mind.
Was it real? Had it been a dream, or had that old memory finally worked its way back to the surface?
Outstanding message: Flax, Calliope.
There were many other beds in the room, all occupied. Off to my left I saw a man with bandages wrapped around his face, and in the bed across from his, another man whose hand was wrapped. At least two of his fingers were missing. A woman on a gurney had been wheeled in and pushed along one wall to wait her turn. Her face was lacerated, and there was a tube down her throat.
Outstanding message: Flax, Calliope.
The words flashed near the corner of my eye. I opened it.
Where the fuck are you?
I smiled, and felt a knot on the right side of my face. The time stamp on the message said it was two hours old. She was alive, or at least she had been two hours ago. I shook off the dream and accessed the Bureau’s system to find out what was happening out there.
FBI alerts had piled up, and they were still coming in. All across the city, thousands of people had dropped dead, only to get back up minutes later.
“MacReady was right…. We should have listened….” I remembered. The basement caller, maybe Deatherage, had said that. Did he mean Bob MacReady, the same man I knew from Heinlein Industries?
I put in a call to him over the JZI, but he didn’t pick up. His communications node was still active, though. Wherever he was, he was alive. I left the channel open and set it aside in case he responded.
Out in the hallway, another patient was trucked by while a man shouted instructions. The hospital was overrun. According to the reports, the revivors had initially shown violent aggression, and riots broke out. Vehicles were abandoned in streets that became gridlocked. Stillwell soldiers had scrambled to assist local police, but before they could get a handle on the situation, the damage had been done.
I closed my eyes and cycled through incident reports. A citizen tip site had been set up, and flooded almost as soon as it came online. The FBI was scrambling to process the incoming information, but phones, data, and even JZI links were getting jammed. The media storm had networks nearly at a standstill.
It was a disaster. The carriers were slipping past perimeters set up after the initial assault, and disappearing. No one could say for sure where they were going or if there was any organization to their movements. The entire city was in a panic.
“He’s awake,” I heard a voice say. “Call the Agency and get them off our backs.”
“Doctor Pellwynne, process him, then get him out of here,” another voice said under his breath. “We’ve had two hacks into our system, looking for info on him, already. And anyway, we need the bed.”
Most media reports agreed that the transmission that triggered the carriers had come from Heinlein Industries, and the FBI’s information backed that up. There were unconfirmed reports of a security breach over at Heinlein as well. An automated emergency call had gone out, then been cancelled. No one at the campus had called out since, and all incoming calls were being bounced to the messaging system. Even JZI traffic was blocked.
“Agent Wachalowski?” a woman’s voice said. A cold hand gently touched my forehead. I opened my eyes and saw a pretty woman with skin the color of chocolate and black hair grouped in short twists. She looked down at me with tired eyes. As the report scrolled by between us, she smiled.
“Welcome back,” she said. “I’m Doctor Pellwynne.”
“Where am I?”
“The VA Hospital.”
I looked around. It was crowded, but the facility was first tier. It was a far cry from Mother of Mercy.
“Why here?”
“You needed some special work done,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She approached the bed and sat down in a chair next to it. I saw an orange flicker inside her pupils.
“What do you remember about the attack?” she asked.
“You don’t have time for this,” I said, “and neither do I. I’m sorry.”
“We have time,” she said. “What do you remember?”
“They mobbed us,” I said. It was sketchy, but I remembered the room filling up with bodies. They were revivors. “How many of them are out there?”
She kept her face calm, but there was fear there, in her eyes.
“A lot. That’s all I know. I haven’t had time to think about it; we’re running at triple capacity. The hospital is secure—for now.”
“I need to get out of here.”
“I understand, but I need to speak with you first.”
“Why?” I didn’t understand.
“What do you remember about the attack?”
“I …”
I remembered falling down into the water. I’d been hit in the head. I was disoriented and went down on my back. I fired as one of them lurched toward me.
The ax. It had taken the ax from the wall.
Under the blanket, I’d closed my right fist and felt no pain. I stretched the fingers and made the fist again.
I looked down and saw a crease near the joint of my right shoulder where some kind of major work had been done. It was deep, and the skin there was thick and white. The scar that had been there since my last tour ended abruptly at that crease. I heard the tempo on my vitals monitor pick up.
“Before you look,” she said, “I want to prepare you—”
I pulled the blanket away and held up the arm in front of me. It was gray. Under the skin, I could see a network of black veins.
A cold feeling sank in the pit of my stomach. The sound of the heart monitor sounded faraway as it began to blip faster.
“Calm down,” Pellwynne said.
I flexed the fingers again. The muscles worked under the skin, but the hand wasn’t mine. The arm wasn’t mine. My tattoo from the service was gone. The scars, the calluses, even the body hair …they were gone. In their place was the smooth, gray limb of a dead man.
“Calm down,” she said again. She reached out and took the gray hand in hers, then placed her other over the back of it.
“Feel that,” she said. Her hands felt hot, like warm wax.
“They’re warm,” I said, but it wasn’t true. The fingers she had touched my forehead with were cold.
“You’ll get used to the temperature difference.”
“Who authorized this?” I asked. It was all I could think to say.
“It was at the Agency’s discretion,” she said.
“Who, specifically, authorized it?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry.”
She gave my hand one last squeeze and then let go of it.
“You will get used to it, Agent. I promise.”
I checked my JZI, and it had detected the new system. Information regarding the nerve interface and the paper-thin filter that separated the living tissue from the dead popped up and scrolled by. System vitals appeared and provided feedback on the arm’s condition, right down to the nanoblood version.
“Where is …” I started to ask.
“By the time anyone got there, it was gone,” she said. The revivors had taken it.
“You’ll have full use of the new arm in two weeks, and it will be stronger than the original,” she said. “Until then, you’re running at near ninety percent. You can go back in the field, but be careful.”
I nodded. I’d seen replacements fitted in the field before. I’d told myself it was the next best thing. The reality of what had happened hadn’t hit home yet. It buzzed at the edge of my mind, like a fly at a window that couldn’t get in. I felt weirdly distant and calm.
“How long was I out?”
“You’ve been in surgery for four hours.”
Four hours. Fawkes had issued the code four hours ago, and we were still at a standstill. I had to get out of there.
Van Offo was offline. I tapped into the hospital records and checked the inpatient list; he’d been brought in to have the bullet removed from his neck, and was discharged two hours ago.
The man arrested at the site, Rafe Pena, hadn’t fared as well; he was still checked in. He’d suffered broken bones, internal injuries, and multiple bite wounds. He was listed as being in serious but stable condition.
I found the FBI records for the lockdown at Mother of Mercy and brought them up. According to them, Van Offo and one SWAT team member were taken out, along with me, by the EMTs. The SWAT officer died in transit. There were no other survivors from the basement.
“Where’s Pena?” I asked. Pellwynne frowned.
“He’s not ready for transport yet,” she said. “His injuries were fairly traumatic. Don’t worry about him right now.”
I watched one black vein bulge in that gray arm. I tried, but I couldn’t look away from it.
“You know, it may not seem that way now,” Pellwynne said, “but you’re very lucky, Agent Wachalowski.”
I cycled through the footage. Bodies lay in a foot of water that had turned red with blood. The cages had been torn open and the captives inside ripped apart. There was blood spatter painted across the walls, punctuated by bullet marks. It had been a slaughter.
“I found you a good match,” she said. “The nerve interface …it’s some of my best work. I know that doesn’t make this any easier to swallow. There was enough residual tissue to use with the growth accelerators. The join is solid. The blood is the latest version. It’s field upgradable, so you won’t have to report to Heinlein for transfusions. You shouldn’t experience any of the tingling or phantom muscle ticking usually associated with the older variants, and you’ll have full—”
“When can I leave?”
“As soon as you want. I’ll be honest, Agent—we could use the room.”
I sat up and put a call into the Bureau to let them know I was back on my feet. Fawkes could have played this card at any time—he didn’t choose today at random. I had to find out what the reason was.
“You can sign for your weapon when you check out,” she said. “I’ve left my contact information on your JZI, should you have any questions or need anything.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I barely heard her. She lingered for another minute; then I was vaguely aware of her leaving the room. The fly continued to bounce at the window as I stared at the black vein, following it as it branched out beneath the stranger’s cold, dead skin. Though terror was brewing somewhere inside me, I couldn’t look away.