By the time I could see Alto Do Mundo through the helicopter’s windshield, I’d thrown up everything there was to throw up. My stomach twisted into a knot, and my throat burned as sweat rolled down my face. I was concentrating, my jaw clenched, on the huge, lit spire at the top of the tower when I heard the pilot shout back at us.
“Hold on!”
I felt Penny’s hand on my back as I bit down and held on to the metal rail beside me. Something whipped through the air in front of us, and as it spun back around, the helicopter dropped underneath me.
Spit sprayed from between my teeth, hanging in a long strand. The lights outside spun by the window, and over the rotors I heard a high-pitched whine. There was another helicopter up ahead—no, two—and a huge muzzle flash flickered from underneath one of them. As the pilot spun us around and I slammed into the wall, I saw sparks and shattered glass explode in a trail across the side of a building. It rained down toward the street far below. A huge mob was forming down there around the building.
“They’re firing on us! We need support up here now!”
The bottom dropped out from underneath me again and bile crawled up my throat. I hit the wall again as the two helicopters disappeared for a minute behind the spire.
“We’re coming in now!”
The engine went up in pitch as the world tilted underneath us. Below, the roof of Alto Do Mundo was coming in very fast. Lights around a helipad began to flash, and I could make out soldiers as they ran past it to set up some kind of rig. One of them began to signal with a glowing baton.
“We’re going to return fire,” a voice crackled. “Hold your course!”
A flash went off on the rooftop and something hissed past the window next to me, trailing smoke behind it. A whistle sailed off into the distance, then was swallowed by the sound of the rotors.
“Was that a hit?” a voice asked.
“Negative. We missed them, but they’re moving off.”
I focused on Penny through my wet, tangled hair, and after a second she noticed me and met my eye. I reached out with one hand and groped; she moved closer and put her arm around me. As I shook, I felt her kiss me on top of the head.
A minute later we were on the ground, or the roof anyway. The soldiers flanked Penny and me as she helped me off the helicopter and across the helipad. The air was cold, but having solid ground under my feet and some fresh air made me feel better. I took a deep breath as more armed men arrived through a door about one hundred yards ahead and approached us. In no time, we were surrounded by men with guns.
Inside, the door thudded behind us and closed off the racket from the roof. The air was warm, and I rubbed my hands together, shivering as we followed the group of men to the elevator.
“Ai is waiting for you in the war room,” one of the men said. Penny nodded and took a minute to wipe my face as the car went down two floors. In the mirrored interior of the elevator car, I looked horrible; my skin was a pale, sickly gray, and there were dark circles under my eyes. My hair was a mess and caked with dried blood on one side. There was a gash on my forehead that was still wet, with a big knot underneath it.
“Get a doctor to meet us down there,” Penny told the man. “I want someone to look at that.” He nodded.
“I’m okay,” I said. She didn’t answer. She was in crisis mode and wouldn’t take no for an answer on anything, pretty much until she was out of it, so I just let it go.
The elevator doors opened and we followed the men down a long corridor, then through two doors with keypads to another hall where I could see a set of glass double doors up ahead. Through the glass I could see the room was dimly lit, and light from monitors flickered to make shadows. There was a crowd of people inside, sitting in leather chairs in a tight circle around a giant oval table in the middle of the room.
Ai was inside, I could sense her even though I hadn’t seen her yet. I could sense her whenever I was inside the building with her, but right then it was even more intense than usual. Unlike most people, her thoughts were almost fractured, with each shard clicking away, doing its own thing. They were all bound together in a master pattern, like bits of stained glass that formed a picture in a window. They said she was the next step in evolution, and maybe she was but sometimes I secretly thought she was more of an accident. No other mind was quite like hers, not even the other powerhouses that were in there humming around it.
I’d never actually been inside the war room before. Two guards stationed outside opened the doors so that Penny and I could go in. The armed men who’d escorted us down left us at the door, then turned and went back the way they came.
The inside was impressive. All of Ai’s top people were there, watching the far side of the room where a giant array of huge monitors were set up, each one displaying something different. In one, I saw General Osterhagen’s face looking back at me. Robin Raphael looked out from another one. A third, twice the size of the rest, showed the future model like a gas nebula floating in space.
Some of the other screens had faces I didn’t recognize, but most of them showed what I figured were live feeds from throughout the city. In one, I saw helicopters moving in between buildings, while people ran through the streets below. In another, I saw a vehicle on fire in the middle of a traffic jam, while soldiers tried to put it out. Everywhere I looked things were burning or smoking, and people were scared and hurt. It didn’t seem real. Less than five hours ago, everything had been normal.
“…the threat of the nukes is very real,” I heard Osterhagen say as we walked in.
“How did this happen?” someone else on one of the other screens snapped.
“Unlike the activation code, this security breach didn’t occur at the Stillwell compound. As best we can tell, he used contacts on the inside at Heinlein Industries to access the defense shield,” Osterhagen said.
“You’re saying this breach came from inside Heinlein Industries itself?”
“Heinlein Industries is connected to several other large military contractors, as well as the Department of Defense,” Osterhagen said. “In addition, they have their own defense satellite which is tied to the grid.”
“The Eye,” a woman said.
“They have the means for sophisticated satellite access from inside Heinlein,” Osterhagen said. “Somehow, someone on the inside was able to leverage that to find and exploit and tap into the main defense shield. We don’t know exactly how it was done yet, but it would have taken a detailed understanding of the satellite system, and a lot of time to figure out how to crack it. This didn’t happen overnight, and it didn’t come from Ang Chen. Fawkes had others inside Heinlein helping him. Defense system specialists, with high-level access.”
“How many have been compromised?”
“There’s no way to know,” Osterhagen said. “No one anticipated this move. It’s one of the most secure facilities in the UAC, and we weren’t watching Heinlein specifically.”
“Is this it?” the older man asked. “Is the satellite’s payload of ICBMs the catalyst for the event?”
“It’s the source of the destruction in the visions,” Mr. Raphael said. “It must be.”
“But do we know?” someone asked.
“General,” Ai said suddenly, and the rest of them stopped talking. “Can you regain control of the satellite?”
“I have a team on it,” he said. He nodded offscreen and a window popped up in the corner of the monitor along with him. In the window was the face of a pale, blond man with intense eyes and drawn cheeks.
“This is First Lieutenant Hans Vaggot.”
Eyes flashed when he said the name, and I sensed a kind of surge through the room, even from the group at the table who otherwise seemed to be in some kind of trance. The name Vaggot was tied to the very rare visions that took place inside the dark void, where most couldn’t see. I knew there were several possibilities who they thought might be the man in question, but it looked like this might be the one.
I watched his face, but it didn’t look familiar. In the vision, he was horribly deformed so it was impossible to know for sure if it was him. Those perfect, symmetrical features on the monitor didn’t seem like they could belong to the monster I’d seen, but …
This can’t be coincidence, I thought. This has to be it. The event they’ve been talking about is real. It’s happening.
“Regaining control of The Eye would be trickier,” Vaggot said calmly, “but we believe we can regain control of the nuclear satellite from here. We don’t have a time frame yet, but confidence is high that Fawkes will not be able to hold on to his nuclear option very long.”
“He doesn’t need very long,” someone said.
“Agreed,” Vaggot said. “But if he wanted to launch, he’d have launched by now so he’s waiting for something. If we can stay under his radar, he may lose this option before he has any kind of warning.”
“And if you don’t stay under his radar?”
“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it,” Osterhagen said. “We cannot leave those nukes under his control. We have to take them back despite the risk. A secondary defense satellite is standing by to take out The Eye once the nukes are off the table, and air teams are ready to scramble and knock out Heinlein’s ground defenses. After that, we’ll send troops in to mop up what’s left.”
As I watched Vaggot, I found myself drawn to him. I closed my eyes, and when I reached out, I found it was surprisingly easy to contact him. His presence was very strong to me, and like some I had run into in the past, he was extremely open to my will.
I cracked my eyelids and peered at his face on the screen while I concentrated on his distant little candle flame, the way Ai had helped me master. He wasn’t one of us; I could tell right away. He was sharp and intelligent, but not one of us. His mind hummed like an electronic machine, very compartmentalized and focused. He was worried, but he wasn’t scared. He believed what he said, that he could take control of the nuclear satellite back from Fawkes and back into our hands at the Stillwell camp.
On the screen, he paused for a second, confused. He sensed me.
“Leave him alone,” Ai said without looking at me. I eased off and let his consciousness fade away from me. “Mr. Vaggot, a lot rides on you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he said. “I understand.”
“I know you will not let us down.” The window with his face in it flashed and went out.
“Mr. Raphael,” Ai said, “how are efforts on the streets going?”
She sat at the head of the big table that faced the monitors, and unlike the rest, she sat cross-legged in the middle of a large, square pillow that was right up on the table itself. None of the others at the table looked at her or even seemed to know she was there. They stared down at the tabletop, eyelids half-closed. Her face had a slack, distant expression like it did when she was deep in a vision and flying on pentatrosin. She stared off at nothing, aware of the things around her but not seeing them. She didn’t see us come in, but she’d known we were coming and knew we were there. One of the many pieces of her aura turned its individual pattern toward me, green light spiking up from out of the blue. With one tiny hand, she waved us over.
“The National Guard is being utilized primarily for humanitarian efforts at this point,” Raphael said. His handsome face, young in contrast to Osterhagen’s, which scowled from the monitor next to it, looked tired. “They can handle the peacekeeping effort for now. They’re in the process of aiding the wounded and transferring them to local medical hubs, but the hospitals inside the hot zones are getting overrun. The streets are impassable along many major routes, though, and that’s making transfer to outlying facilities difficult without using air traffic.”
“Are the rescue teams encountering any resistance?” Ai asked, her soft, deep voice airy. “Are Fawkes’s revivors engaging them?”
“Only as targets of opportunity,” he said. “National Guard teams are blockading off areas, courtyards, and buildings to act as sanctuaries to people caught on the street or who can’t get home. But they’re filling up fast.”
“Have there been attempts to run those blockades?” Ai asked.
“Several,” Mr. Raphael said, “but not in any concentrated fashion. They haven’t found any pattern to it.”
“They are looking for us,” Ai said, her eyes dreamy. “But they won’t stop here, with this city. Before Fawkes destroys it, they will try to leave.”
“They’re clustered at the three towers,” Osterhagen said, “but overall movement suggests that might be the case. They’re spreading out to cover a wider area.”
“It won’t work,” someone else said. “All main routes in and out are being locked down. Some will leak through, but not enough to do any real damage.”
“They will leave,” Ai said, causing some to glance at each other nervously. “What about the virus?”
“We were unable to deploy it successfully,” Osterhagen said. “He noticed the breach, and cut off the subject we’d implanted; then, before we could try again, he cut off the lot of them. He must have identified them from the time stamp that keeps track of total reanimation time. He cut off every one of them that was active prior to his sending the code.”
“The virus is sent,” Ai said. Osterhagen frowned, but didn’t contradict her.
“We’ve tried on several captured revivors, but the initialization time is too long,” he said. “He knows what he’s looking for now; by the time the virus has gathered the network information from the mesh and is ready to execute, he’s already cut off the seed subject.”
“A door is open,” she said, staring into space. “Somewhere …someone he’s not expecting and cannot see. The virus is sent.”
“Do you know who?” Mr. Raphael asked. But Ai shook her head, just barely.
“I saw it,” I said, and all the faces on the screens turned to me. Penny looked at me too.
“What?” Osterhagen asked.
“I saw it,” I said. “After we crashed. I know who it is.” The room spun a little as I moved toward the screens, but in spite of everything else, I smiled.
“Who?” Penny asked.
“She’s one of your people,” I said to Osterhagen. “A soldier, the one with the weird name …Flax.”
“Calliope Flax?” Mr. Raphael offered.
I smiled again, feeling giddy. The night I first met Ai, Calliope went to my best friend’s apartment, looking for me. For some reason, she’d beaten the hell out of her piece-of-shit boyfriend, Ted. And for payback, or just because he was pissed, he beat up Karen when she came home. He beat her so bad that time that she died, right in front of me.
I killed him for that. He was the second person I ever killed, and the first one I killed on purpose. I killed Ted, but the bitch who started it never got what was coming to her.
“Calliope Flax,” I said, with a firm nod. “That’s her. She’s a Huma carrier.”
“They checked her,” Osterhagen said.
“Nico lied,” I said. “He covered it up, kept it quiet. He called in a favor, faked it somehow, so we wouldn’t find out.”
Ai had turned to look at me and I saw her smile, just a tiny bit, as her big, spacey eyes looked into my mind. Osterhagen was saying something offscreen to someone, and I saw people move suddenly behind him.
“If she was infected with the same version and she’s not dead yet,” Mr. Raphael said, “then that might just be our in.”
“Find her,” Ai said in her airy voice. It sounded like it came from far away.
Something warm ran down my cheek, and when I wiped it away, I saw blood on my hand. Ai was staring at me, and I felt sweat trickle down my back as she seemed to move away, down a long, dark tunnel.
“Get that doctor down here now,” I heard Penny snap at someone.
Good work, Zoe, Ai said, but her mouth hadn’t moved. Everyone was talking at once, but I could barely hear them, like they were underwater.
I tried to thank her, but my throat had dried up and nothing came out. At the end of the tunnel, everything began to fall away. I was passing out.
Don’t worry, Ai said in my mind, just before everything faded. We’ll find her….
…you’re going to get your wish, after all.
The attack had thrown the streets into complete panic. Not long after the first hit, another Chimera appeared and joined the first. They didn’t stage another assault, but they prowled above the streets, waiting for something. Reports flooded in from all over as I crept down a narrow lane the guardsmen had set up for emergency traffic. The Chimeras could easily take out the scattered forces on the ground, but so far they hadn’t done it. When the rescue choppers approached, they let them pass.
“Metro PD got hit too,” Van Offo said from the back. I cut the wheel and felt a jolt go up my dead arm all the way to the shoulder. Some scrambled output trickled by on my HUD off in the corner of my eye.
Van Offo watched me in the rearview mirror.
“Did you hear me?” he asked.
“I heard—”
Pain stabbed into my head, and the gray hand clamped down on the wheel. My foot stomped on the brake, and Calliope jerked in her seat as the car slid to a stop on the wet pavement.
“What the hell?” she snapped.
My head throbbed and light flashed in my eyes. The scene through the windshield flickered, and for a few seconds I was somewhere else; it was a memory, but it was extremely vivid, almost like a hallucination. I was inside the Pleasantview apartment complex for the first time, to visit Zoe. I’d made my way to the seventh floor and had just knocked on her door.
The door opened, and a woman that wasn’t Zoe answered. She was stocky and curvy, with a pretty, round face marred by a bad bruise. I didn’t know who she was at the time, but I recognized her now as Karen Goncalves, Zoe’s friend from downstairs. Behind her, the room was dark except for the flickering light of candles. I flashed my badge and told her who I was.
I remember this. That was the day I dropped off the case photos for Zoe to look at.
Before Karen could answer, another woman appeared. I thought it was Zoe at first, but it wasn’t. She was small and skinny like Zoe, but her hair was black and her eyes were blue. Like Karen, I didn’t recognize her back then, but I did now.
That’s Penny Blount, one of Ai’s operatives. Penny wasn’t there that day. Karen had gone back inside, and a minute later she left when Zoe came to the door….
“Go back in and tell her he’s here,” Penny said to Karen. “Then get lost.”
Karen nodded, eyes dull, and went back inside. Penny looked up at me.
“You’re a big one,” she said. The pupils of her eyes widened, and I got dizzy. “Why are you here?”
I held up the envelope of evidence I’d brought for Zoe to look at. Without thinking, the words came out of my mouth.
“I believe Zoe may have extrasensory abilities. I want her to look at these.” Penny smiled, genuinely amused.
“That’s rich,” she said. “Okay, sure. Why not?”
She walked away, down the hall. On the way past Zoe’s neighbor’s door, she pounded it twice with her fist.
“Stop in later and make sure nothing this guy drops off goes back to Ai,” she said through the door. “And pay more attention next time. She ODs, and you’re dead.”
The scene dissolved as more code trickled by and the arm twitched again. The dead hand released its grip on the wheel. Behind us, a horn blared.
“What the fuck was that?” Cal asked. The car behind us blared its horn again as I spun the tires and took us through the gap in traffic ahead.
“Are you all right?” Van Offo asked.
“I’m fine.” Sweat had beaded on my brow, and blood was pounding in my head. I clenched my jaw shut, resisting an urge to snap at Van Offo. My shoulder ached like hell. Acid burned in the back of my throat, and bitter saliva formed in my mouth. There was bleed-through, for sure, but I wondered if it wasn’t worse than I thought. I needed to get to Heinlein, or at least back to the FBI to have it checked out, but neither one was an option at the moment.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Calliope watching me. I sucked my teeth and swallowed as the sudden urge to hit something surged, then faded again.
“You looked like you came off the hook there,” she said in a low voice. “You need a tech.”
Not in front of Van Offo, I told her.
“I said I’m fine.” She looked back out the window.
You sure?
Shock, maybe, I said, but I wasn’t convinced. What I’d seen was an old memory that had been wiped, almost like a symptom of Zhang’s Syndrome but only revivors experienced that. Nanoblood contamination could cause a lot of problems, but it was rarely fatal, and even when it was, it didn’t turn people into revivors.
Did it? I watched the black vein bulge across the back of the dead hand as I gripped the wheel.
Van Offo was watching us. Cal looked back out the window.
I got those mods for you, she sent. The ones to run the stealth spokes. You still want them?
Yes. She sent them over. They had military certificates attached, which meant she shouldn’t have them, but I didn’t ask.
“Vesco is dead,” Van Offo said. “I just got confirmation. We lost Pell and Copely too. Noakes is still MIA; he may have been killed in the attack as well.”
A row of connection requests flashed in the bottom of my periphery. Three went out. That left seven unaccounted for. A reporter on the radio continued to rattle off details, his voice loud and stressed.
“ …appear to have been a coordinated series of attacks. I repeat, an as-of-yet-unidentified group initiated a coordinated series of air attacks this morning on the six major police precincts, as well as the FBI Federal Building. From what we understand, these attacks were made by at least seven military Chimera assault helicopters. These helicopters are designed for tight maneuvering and urban combat, each one armed with a chain rail gun and a battery of spitfire missiles…. ”
Seven simultaneous strikes. Fawkes had broken the lines of communication between the local police hubs and the FBI. It would take hours just to pick up the pieces and figure out who was left.
“Those Chimeras are from Heinlein’s airfield,” I said.
A group of people on foot darted into the street between my vehicle and the one in front of it, trying to cross. The sidewalks on either side were full of people who spilled onto the shoulder. Off to the right, a utility vehicle was stuck while trying to merge onto the main road. The driver honked the horn at a group of people on the crosswalk. The girl, Vika, sat in the back, wedged next to Van Offo. She watched out the window, her eyes sleepy. Her full name was Vika Popik. She turned out to be a refugee of sorts. She served a couple years in the Ukrainian army before her father smuggled her out of the country and paid to have a freighter sneak her into the UAC. That was the last time she’d seen him. She had a surplus communications implant that was at least ten years old, and a rudimentary targeting system. The com system didn’t tap the language center, so she had to select letters from a simulated keypad in her HUD, but she was pretty quick at it.
Wachalowski, who’s with you? It was Alice.
Van Offo, Flax, and a civilian.
We lost Noakes. We’re trying to regroup now. I’ve got you on the GPS—there should be a roadblock up ahead of you. Can you see it?
I chirped the siren and flashed the blues, nosing out into the breakdown lane, where an officer in a plastic poncho was directing vehicles. I flashed my badge at him as we approached and he waved us through. I could see a roadblock in the distance off to my left.
Calliope snorted from the passenger’s seat. “This is fucked.”
I see it. Who’s left at the FBI building?
A jet whipped by overhead, causing people on the street to jump and look up as it disappeared behind a high-rise.
No one; they’re clearing out. It got chewed up pretty bad. Electricity, data, and water are all out. They managed to cut over all network and database connections to the backups, and we’re running from there. Just get to the roadblock. Flax’s Stillwell unit is there. They’re waiting for you.
Understood.
She cut the line.
“ …the MX901 50mm magnetic-rail chain gun is capable of firing more than one thousand rounds a minute,” the reporter barked over the radio. “Each round is capable of piercing the armor of most military vehicles, including tanks, which is their primary purpose. As witnessed today, these weapons are also capable of easily penetrating concrete and steel to devastating effect when turned on urban structures…. ”
People had crowded onto the sidewalks, moving like shadows through steam from sewer grates and car exhaust. The normal flow of foot traffic had stopped. Some were trying to see what was happening. Others wanted to pass but couldn’t. People were queued up outside stores. I saw a man squeeze through, carrying a case of bottled water, while another argued loudly with a street vendor in Chinese.
“They’re gonna pop,” Calliope said.
Every face looked scared. There was no violence yet, but panic simmered just below the surface out there. The military presence on the street helped, but with every media outlet broadcasting the carnage, they could see for themselves how bad it was. We’d been hit hard and were still reeling, and everyone knew it.
Something flickered in the corner of my eye, and it took me a second to realize it was the call request I’d left open to MacReady. He’d just picked up.
Use the new circuit. The message flashed in front of me as he cut the link. A new, encrypted connection appeared. I picked up and applied the provided key.
MacReady, where are you?
Inside the Pratsky Building of Heinlein Industries’ campus, he said. We need to be careful. Fawkes is monitoring communications.
What does he want?
I haven’t been able to determine that. To access the defense grid, and alter the existing revivors using the transmitter array, but I don’t know what his ultimate goal is.
What do you know about Harold Deatherage, Ang Chen, and Dulari Shaddrah? There was a brief pause.
I know who they are.
Harold Deatherage called me during a raid of an illegal test facility and he dropped your name.
He paused again, and I was afraid he might break the connection. Several people ran past the front of the car while a police officer shouted after them. One man stopped in front of us, and I honked the horn.
I know them, he said. The man outside changed direction and ran off.
What is their connection to Fawkes?
I don’t know.
Don’t bullshit me, MacReady. There isn’t time.
I’m not, he said. We worked as a team on a classified project—that’s how I know them. But if they’re helping Fawkes, then that happened without my knowledge.
What project?
The study of Zhang’s Syndrome.
It was my turn to pause. Years ago, MacReady had been the one who first told me about Zhang’s Syndrome. It was believed to be some kind of corruption of revivor memory during reanimation, but Fawkes had identified it for what it really was: erased or manipulated memories that returned to their original state after death. Supposedly, MacReady hadn’t believed that.
The four of you worked on Zhang’s Syndrome?
Among others.
For how long?
It doesn’t matter now, Agent. What matters is that at least part of that team has become convinced that Fawkes is right.
Footage of the attacks was playing across a bank of screens in the window of a nearby electronics store. People were queued up around it as the audio blared through a speaker that sat on the sidewalk outside.
“ …as of yet, no one has claimed responsibility for these attacks, and no demands have been issued,” the reporter said. “Several witnesses confirmed, however, that the helicopters that initiated the attacks were sporting the logo of the private military employed by Heinlein Industries…. ”
So far the FBI had kept Fawkes and the nuclear threat off the radar, but that wouldn’t last. Someone would dig it up. In an hour at the most, the media would be saturated with news of twelve ICBMs aimed down on our heads. Then we’d see real panic.
Fawkes has had men watching us from the inside, I said. I could use a similar advantage right now.
I’ll do what I can.
I need access to a revivor on Fawkes’s command network as well. Can you manage that?
What sort of access?
I’ll need a control spoke and the ability to install custom packages.
He might notice that.
Can you do it, MacReady?
He understands revivor technology very well, Agent. He’ll be scanning for intrusions, but I’ll see what I can do. He’s bringing online units that were being stored in the processing plant. That might be our best bet.
Good, I said. Actually, that’s perfect. The processing plant is where the Leichenesser stores are kept, right?
Each revivor that came off Heinlein’s line was implanted with a seed of the necrotized, flesh-eating substance in case of emergency. Even trace amounts of it would consume a revivor in seconds.
Yes. It’s kept in liquid form in cold storage within the plant itself.
Where is Fawkes based?
Here inside the Pratsky Building.
I want to move some of it from the processing plant to his location.
You’ll never get it close to him, Agent.
I won’t need to. If it hasn’t been gelatinized, it will turn to gas when it hits the air. If I can get it into the climate-control system, will that be enough?
MacReady thought about it for a minute.
That might work, he said.
An alert flashed on the HUD in front of me. The advance team was reporting trouble at Palos Verdes.
“Damn it …”
One last thing, MacReady: do you know anything at all about an effort to reanimate animals? Dogs, specifically?
Animals? No. Even for research purposes, we passed the need for animal trials decades ago. Why? What did you find?
More reports were spilling in from Palos Verdes. At least one revivor had been spotted and was being contained in the building.
“Wachalowski,” Van Offo warned from the back.
“I see it.”
MacReady, I have to go. Get me access to a revivor and at least five good candidates I can use it to spoke to.
I’ll try.
Get back to me as soon as you do.
I cut the connection, trying to find an opening in the lane ahead. Traffic was backed up as far as I could see. We were still blocks away from Palos Verdes.
I nosed into the intersection, where crowds had blocked traffic in both directions, and chirped the siren again. People moved out of the way, scowling and swearing as I inched past. The roadblock was up ahead. Two large military vehicles were wedged there, a gun turret mounted on each with a soldier manning it. A small chopper sat in the middle of a business plaza next to them.
I looked over at Calliope. She had one boot up on the dash and was glaring out the side window.
“You okay?” I asked. She didn’t answer.
“ …tally at each of the seven sites places the initial death toll somewhere around three hundred—”
Calliope stabbed the radio button with her finger, switching it off.
“Al,” I said over my shoulder. He didn’t answer. I checked the rearview mirror. He looked ashen.
“Al, how’s the neck?”
“Better than your arm.”
Someone nearby leaned on his horn, and a woman screamed back in Spanish. Al rubbed sweat from his face with one hand, and as he took a deep breath, his fingers shook.
Agent Wachalowski, over here.
A man waved from between two trucks off to the right, where the roadblock was set up. I edged the car down another side street and managed to creep along to where they were stationed. Two military vehicles sporting the Stillwell emblem sat in the street, while groups of soldiers kept the emergency lanes clear and watched for signs of trouble. Several soldiers approached as I pulled in and cut the engine. In front was their sergeant, a man named Ramirez.
I shouldered the door open and the others got out behind me. Rotors approached as I headed for the blockade. I held up my badge. Ramirez stepped forward to meet me.
“Agent Wachalowski,” he said, scanning my badge. His eyes flicked to the ashen fingers holding it. “We were told to expect you. I see you brought our soldier back.”
Calliope snapped a salute, and he returned it.
“Welcome back, Flax. We could sure use the help. Singh will fill you in.”
“Sergeant, I need to get to Palos Verdes Estates immediately,” I said. “Can that chopper take me there?”
“Stark Street’s inside a hot zone, Agent,” he said. “That whole area was overrun when the transmission went out.”
“I need to get inside that building.”
He nodded. Light flickered behind his eyes and the men near the helicopter began to scramble.
“Have you in the air in one minute,” he said. “Watch yourself out there.”
Snow, salt, and sand was kicked up, and Vika shielded her face. A soldier inside the chopper gestured for Van Offo and me to get in.
Van Offo, come on. He stood with his back to me.
“Al, we’ve got to go!” I called.
I can’t, Nico. Sorry.
He turned to look at me and swayed on his feet. Sweat was beaded on his forehead in spite of the cold, and dark circles had formed under his eyes.
“Al—”
A red spot appeared in the middle of the gauze patch on his neck and began to expand.
“Medic!” I shouted. Ramirez signaled, and two men sprinted toward us as Al lost his footing. I got an arm around him as he slumped and guided him down onto the cold blacktop.
Blood seeped through the gauze patch on his neck. As the medic knelt beside him, I used the backscatter filter and saw a big, dark pocket had formed under the skin where the patch was. He’d hemorrhaged, and was bleeding internally.
“Sir, step back,” the medic said as a second man joined him. I stood and backed away. Al opened a circuit as his eyelids fluttered and closed.
Get going, he said. There’s no time. I told you, I die today. I already knew that.
I nodded.
Zoe will stop him.
What?
He reached blindly with one hand as they tried to staunch the blood.
You will kill Fawkes—that’s what they think—but Zoe will stop him. That’s what she believes.
How? What does that mean?
I pity that girl, he said. All she ever seems to see is death and destruction, with her at its center. It’s too bad.
Al, how does she stop him? For just a second, his eyes got that amused look they sometimes got.
She’s got it bad, for y—
The connection dropped. The medics continued to work on him while the soldier in the chopper signaled to me again. There was nothing I could do. I headed toward them and climbed in.
Cal, I’m going off the grid for a while.
I got it.
Good luck.
You too.
The chopper lifted off, and she scowled up into the wind from the rotors. Off to the side, I saw the medic signal to Ramirez and shake his head. Van Offo had died.
His blank eyes still stared up at the chopper as we lifted off into the air.
When the chopper took Nico up, Van Offo bled out and kicked it. I helped wrap him up and get him in the back of the truck, then took the kid to Singh, to see what he wanted to do with her.
“Flax, good to see you in one piece.”
“Yeah, you too.”
“Sorry about your friend,” he said, and jabbed a thumb at the body.
“He wasn’t my friend. I hated that asshole.”
The wind blew and I smelled blood mixed with those shitty cigarettes he smoked.
“There is no door,” a voice said—a girl’s voice—right in my ear. I looked around, but no one was there.
Pain throbbed in the back of my head, and everything went blurry for a second. My mouth filled with sour spit. I squeezed my eyes shut and waited for it to pass. When it did, I got a flashback to my old apartment. It was so real, I could smell it.
I was standing in the hall across from the bathroom and I’d pushed aside the flag I took back from Juba. Behind it was a door, and I stood in the open doorway. The room on the other side had walls and floors covered in plastic. There was a gurney and a tray of surgical tools in the middle.
A little, spooky-looking woman stood in front of me, blocking my way. She stared up at me, the middle of her eyes black.
“There is no door,” she said.
“You okay?” Singh asked, and when he touched my arm, I jumped. I shook my head to clear it and pushed him away.
“I’m fine, dickhead.” I spat on the ground.
“I don’t think you are,” he said. He leaned a little closer and tapped behind his ear with one finger, right in the spot where I had the scar from the inhibitor implant. “They know.”
As the medic slammed the doors to the back of the truck and Ramirez got on the radio, I started to put in a call to Wachalowski, but before I could open the channel, something stopped me and I let it drop.
“Don’t call him,” Singh said, and for a second, I felt dizzy. “Just relax. Everything is fine.”
Ramirez glanced back over his shoulder at me as he stepped toward the jeep. I could just make out his voice over the wind.
“Yeah, she’s here,” he said, then paused. “We took him out by chopper. Van Offo is down, so we haven’t got anyone with him…. Yes, he’s en route to Palos Verdes.”
He was talking about Nico.
We haven’t got anyone with him….
“Who the fuck is he talking to?” I asked. “What do you mean, ‘they know’?”
Singh acted like he hadn’t heard. He looked down at the kid.
“Who’s this?”
“My name is Vika,” she said.
“Where’d you find her?”
“A fucking stork dropped her off. In Pyt-Yahk, dipshit. Who is Ramirez talking to?”
“No one. Don’t worry about it.”
Fuck that. I went to call Nico again, but again I fumbled the connection and it dropped.
“I said don’t,” Singh said. He looked down at the kid and shook his head.
“You shouldn’t have brought her here.”
“Where the hell was I supposed to bring her?”
Singh leaned in to talk in my ear. I felt dizzy again for a second, as I felt his breath on my neck.
“I can help you,” he said.
“Personal space, asshole,” I said, but I could see the others looking at me and flags were going up. Singh meant the Huma injection. They knew about the injection.
“However you avoided the kill switch, you’re still affected,” he said, squeezing my arm. “We need you.”
“Fuck off, Singh.” I tried to push him away, but he held on.
“Listen. In about two seconds, Ramirez is going to come over here,” he said. “He’s got orders to take you out of here.”
I checked on Ramirez. He was over by the truck, still on the radio, but he kept looking back at me.
“Take me where?”
“The test facility, back at base.”
“What test facility?”
“Keep your voice down. You know the one I mean.”
“How the hell—” He squeezed my arm.
“I’ve known for a while,” he said. “I didn’t say anything. Maybe I should have, but I didn’t. I did what I could to keep you out of that place, but they know now. They’re taking you. Don’t resist them.”
I looked at the kid. She wasn’t sure what was up, but she knew it was something. She looked at me, not sure what to do.
“What about her?” I asked.
“I don’t know,” he said. “I can’t help her, but I can help—”
I grabbed a fistful of his shirt, and his eyes went weird. The pupils opened all at once. I swayed, and he steadied me. Then it passed.
“Cal, don’t resist,” he said. “If you do, they’ll—”
“Stop talking, Singh.” I looked at the kid.
“Cal, I—”
“Shut up.”
Vika, I sent. Green light flashed in her pupils.
Whts wrng?
When I say run, you run.
She didn’t ask why; she just nodded.
Singh put his face close enough to mine that I could smell his shitty cologne, and his eyes got that weird look again.
“Don’t resist,” he said, his voice low. “Just relax.”
“You relax,” I said, and shoved him. He stumbled back, but got his feet under him before he fell. The others looked over. Singh stared back at me, his eyes bugged.
“What the hell?” he said under his breath. Ramirez had put down the radio and was coming over.
“What’s the problem?” he asked.
“No problem, sir,” Singh said. Ramirez looked down at Vika, then back to me. He had that look on his face he always had when his cock was in a knot.
“Flax, we have orders to take you back to base,” he said.
“Why?”
“That’s need to know.” He held out one hand. “Hand over your weapon.”
Over his shoulder, I saw the rest of the squad step in like they were expecting trouble.
“Ramirez, what the hell?” He glared at me, and his eyes got that same weird look Singh’s had. I felt dizzy for a second, then it passed.
“I said, ‘Hand over your weapon,’ Flax,” he said. “Do it. Now.”
“Son of a bitch,” I said. He stared back with his fucked-up eyes.
“You’re with them,” I said. I looked to Singh, but his eyes were the same. “Both of you.”
They looked at each other, and I knew it was true. They were just like that red-haired bitch, and that other one that rigged me with a bomb and then mind-fucked me. Both of them were in on it. This whole time, they were all in on it.
“Just relax,” Ramirez said, and I felt the tension ease out of my body. “Just stand there. Don’t move. If you try to move, you will find you can’t.”
I tried to answer, but nothing came out. I tried to open my mouth, but I couldn’t. Ramirez spoke into his radio.
“We’ve got her,” he said. Then he nodded.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Vika. She stared straight ahead, still as a statue, like me.
“Everything is still set up and ready to go,” he said to Singh.
“Can they do it without killing her?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
Slowly, I reached down and took my weapon from its holster. Ramirez snapped his fingers.
“Hey! I told you not to move.”
All of a sudden, the wire lit up red and alerts started flashing on the HUD. From the reactions around me, everyone saw them.
“Sir?” someone asked, but Ramirez held up his hand, orange light flickering in his eyes. Something big had just gone down. Everyone was distracted. I handed the gun to the kid, and she took it.
“Holy shit,” Singh whispered. He was staring into space, reading something off his JZI, and he looked scared.
I skimmed the stream of alerts that were pouring in as I took a step back, away from the others. I saw a satellite map of the city that showed part of the coastline. Words jumped out at me: “point of impact” and “blast zone.” A red marker flashed on the map.
“Jesus, he launched,” Singh said. “The crazy son of a bitch launched…. ”
Something boomed overhead and everyone looked up. High above, against the gray blanket of clouds, a small, dark shape had appeared. A distant shriek swelled as it moved quickly across the sky, leaving a thin contrail behind it.
Run, I told Vika.
“Hey!”
A gun went off near my face and I heard glass explode behind me. I chanced a look back in time to see the kid scoot into an alley. The guy that fired had moved in next to Singh. I grabbed his wrist and twisted hard enough to bring him to his knees. He grunted as I peeled his fingers off the pistol and took it before kicking him down onto the pavement.
“She’s not under!” Singh yelled. Ramirez grabbed my collar, his eyes black. The dizzy feeling hit me again.
“Go to sleep,” he said. “Now.”
Before he could do anything else, I landed a punch right on his ear. He staggered off to one side, drawing his weapon.
“Goddamn it, grab her!”
“How long until impact?”
“Less than ninety seconds!”
“Where? Where?”
I stuck the gun in the face of the soldier closest to me.
“Next one that moves gets his fucking head blown off!” I barked, as two more took aim at me. “Get those guns off me or I will fucking shoot him!”
“Stand down!” Ramirez ordered. “We need her alive!”
They lowered their guns. The guy I had covered glared back at me as the whistle from overhead dropped lower and lower in pitch. It was one of the ICBMs. Fawkes had just dropped one of the twelve nukes.
“We’ve got to get out of here!” someone yelled, and Ramirez turned on them.
“Get it together, people!” he barked. “We’re fine where we are! We have our orders, and I expect you to follow them!”
“You’re not taking me,” I told him.
“You’re making a big mistake, Flax. Singh, get her under control. Now.”
“What the hell is this?” Singh whispered. He looked twitchy. “It’s not working…. Why isn’t she under?”
The rest of the squad stood there, guns out, not sure what to do. Ramirez looked pissed.
“You’re not getting out of here,” he said. He took a step toward me, and I went to hit him again, but when I moved the gun away, a pair of beefy arms grabbed me from behind. They pinned me and squeezed.
“Hold her!”
“You motherfuckers!” I yelled. I stomped Ramirez on the shin with one boot. His face went dark and he grunted.
“Hold her still, goddamn it!”
I got one foot behind the guy who’d grabbed me, then hooked his leg and flipped him. He let go when he started to fall, and I spun around. When he hit the blacktop, I put the heel of my boot down on his face.
Blood squirted from his squashed nose and he stayed down, but two more were right behind him and every time my heart beat, the pressure in my skull got worse. They were all around me and I should have turned on the next-closest one, but I didn’t. I dropped to my knees over the guy I just took out and bashed his head into the pavement. Before I knew what I was doing, I felt my mouth open wide and warm spit leaked out.
Do it …
His skin was hot under my hand. I could feel the blood pumping under my palm, and something in me wanted to feel that meat between my teeth, even when the gun pressed against the back of my head.
Do it …
What the fuck? What the fuck is happening to me?
“Don’t shoot! We need her!” Singh yelled. I turned around in time for something to cream me right in the forehead. I saw stars, and my legs went out from under me.
“Watch the head, goddamn it!”
My knees hit the blacktop. I tried to get back up, but my legs wouldn’t do it. Everything spun around me, and I felt blood run out of my nose.
Before I went down, someone caught me. Arms held me and lowered me onto my back.
“You’re okay,” I heard Singh say in my ear as the lights went out. “Don’t worry.”
“I’ll take care of you.”
The last thing I heard was the faint roar of the missile, turning from a shriek to a low rumble as it fell down toward the earth.
The sounds of gunfire and screams faded behind me. I spotted a stairwell door at the end of the hall and headed for it. To my left, windows looked over the tarmac, off to the distant skyline. As I moved down the corridor, I saw a door slam open outside and a group of men and women came running out. They made a break for the far-off perimeter, but before they made it a hundred yards, there was a bright flash from the sky. A beam of energy rippled down through the clouds and washed over them. In an instant, the tarmac melted underneath them and they were gone in a cloud of smoke. The thick glass buckled in the heat and cracked down the center with a thud as wet ash and tar rained against it. Wind whistled through as I turned the corner and headed away. I needed to get out of sight, and soon.
There was no way for me to know where Fawkes was. I could no longer locate any of them, and it surprised me how lost that made me feel. I’d come to rely on that command network, and without it I felt a little bit blind. I had to watch and listen more carefully. By now Fawkes was rallying them against me. My former allies were now my enemies, and that sense of connection I’d felt to them was gone, leaving a void behind it.
I should have let him kill me, I thought as I ran. In another second, it would have been done. Now—
As I came to a T in the corridor, I almost ran headlong into a soldier who stepped out in front of me. Its gun, held in one gray hand, hung by its side. It saw me, but took a second to react.
I rushed it, closing the distance in three strides. My forearms split apart and I triggered both the bayonets at once. As it raised its weapon, I knocked it back onto the floor then thrust both blades down, deep into its neck. They crossed just in front of its spinal column, and two spastic jets of black blood painted the walls to either side of us. I jerked and scissored the two blades together. Its head nearly severed, the soldier fell back and crashed down onto the floor.
Faye. It was Fawkes. I could sense him trying to reestablish the command spoke to retake control of me, trying to locate exactly where I was. I stepped through the oily pool growing across the tiles and picked up the soldier’s gun.
Faye, answer me, he said. And that’s when I saw a second flash out the window, much, much brighter than the first.
It came from somewhere far off, out between Heinlein and the city proper. The source was beyond the mouth of Palm Harbor, maybe ten miles or so from the coastline. The light was so intense, the window tinted and a large, dark spot danced in front of my eyes. A huge dome of flame had begun to expand over the water’s surface.
What was that?
The overhead lights flickered and then went out. I heard a collective gasp from back down the way I’d come; then, just as suddenly, the lights came back on. A chest-thumping boom followed, then a low, steady rumbling sound. The wind began to pick up, and snow streaked past the window.
Fawkes, what was that? The ball of light grew larger by the second. There had been a detonation of some kind. Whatever it was, it was huge….
I realized then what I was seeing. A dark cloud began to emerge from the blast and rise into the sky on a column. My heart hadn’t beat for years, but still, the cloud’s mushroom shape inspired dread.
What did you do? I asked. The words floated in front of the growing cloud, as a huge electrical arc flashed through it.
This is bigger than either one of us, Faye. Come back.
The rumble went on and on, even after the light was gone and the windows cleared. The mushroom cloud continued to grow high into the sky.
This is what we’ve worked toward, Faye. Your existence no longer matters. I know you believe—
I cut the connection and put a block on his ID. I saw him try to reestablish the link, but I didn’t pick up. I checked the pistol’s magazine; it was full. For a moment, I stood over the body, not sure what to do next.
Find Robert MacReady, Dulari had said. I wasn’t sure who he was, but I scanned the JZI nodes inside the building and found a match for his name. He was inside, then.
I put in a call request, then sprinted to the stairwell door and pushed it open. At the rail, I looked down and saw that it descended several stories. Until then I hadn’t realized how deep the structure really went.
I started down. If the revivor I’d just destroyed had a chance to report my location, then there were already more on their way. My best bet was to head down and try to disappear until I could decide what to do next.
I’d descended five flights when my call request was picked up. MacReady was alive.
Faye Dasalia, what do you want? He’d responded, but the circuit hadn’t come through the transmitter; Fawkes couldn’t monitor the conversation.
Dulari Shaddrah gave me your name, I told him.
Something pricked at my control nodes remotely, some kind of low-level scan. Before I could cut it off, a stream of data went out on the wire.
Your command spoke is locked, he said.
Yes.
That’s interesting. Why?
Fawkes meant to kill me. I am no longer part of his network. He paused for a minute, considering or perhaps verifying that, then:
I can help you. Come to the lab.
Help me do what?
Come to the lab, he said. If you’re on the run as you say, you need to get off of Fawkes’s radar.
I took a step down the stairs and then stopped there, uncertain. Fawkes hadn’t told me everything, but I’d worked for years to make sure these events could unfold. I still did believe in his ultimate goal. Everything was moving so fast, I hadn’t had time to think. Why had I even run from Fawkes? Was the human survival mechanism so ingrained? I had no life to lose. Why did I run? What did I want?
You were a slave for the last part of your life, Faye, I know that, MacReady said. But ask yourself if what Fawkes offered you was any better. The control that command spoke provided was more absolute than anything you experienced in life. But you’re free now. Come to the lab.
He’s luring me, I thought. Some old intuition was bubbling up. There was something too silky about his words.
Is Dulari alive? he asked.
The last time I saw her, she was alive.
And Mr. Chen?
Alive, but they’re killing the rest.
I know, he said. And I know what you are. I know better than you do. I know there are still residual ties to your old identity. Fawkes knows too. It’s why even though he needed a seventh-generation to gain access to our systems, he considers you a liability now.
What he said made sense, but I wasn’t sure if he was right about me or not. Some people would die; I’d always known that. But people died all the time.
I need you. Nico’s message still floated near the corner of my eye. He’d understood. Not letting anyone get hurt was my ideal in life, but it was unrealistic. He’d known that, believed it. Was he right? I stood on the stairs, not knowing what to do.
Where are you? I asked MacReady. A map of the underground levels appeared in the air in front of me.
I’ll direct you. What floor are you on now? I looked up at the placard tab on the wall next to the gray stairwell door.
Sublevel five, stairwell E3.
Continue down to level eight. I looked over the railing; the stairs wound down into shadows far below. I had no reason to trust this man MacReady, but I didn’t have too many options left.
I took another step down and then continued for three flights. Following the path traced on MacReady’s map, I opened the stairwell door and into a long, dimly lit corridor.
Follow it to the end, and then through the lab on the other side. Security is down; you’ll be able to walk right in.
The hall was strangely quiet, with only the hum from the overhead lights and another, more subtle source of white noise. My footsteps echoed quietly behind me as I approached the heavy metal lab door and gripped its cold steel handle. The scanner mounted there on the wall was dark and inactive.
I pushed, and the door opened with a low thud that turned my skin to gooseflesh. My dead skin never did that unless it was near an electrical field. I traced the thud and the hum that followed it to somewhere over my head, where I saw large coils of thin, shiny wire. Beyond that, the room was dark.
Noise suppressors.
I took a step, and lights snapped on overhead. I was standing on one side of a huge room where rows and rows of figures hung from above, each one covered in thick, clear plastic sheeting. Silhouetted by the light, their feet and toes dangled around head level, where bundles of wires hung down to the floor, then snaked across the tile. Dim light from overhead flickered eerily.
To the other side, MacReady said. Quickly.
What is this place? I asked.
It’s the culmination of an old experiment, he said. One your leader started a long time ago.
I took a step, and something wet touched my cheek. When I wiped it, my fingers came away black. I looked up and saw three small children’s corpses tented underneath a single plastic sheet. Two black-skinned boys looked dormant, but the girl’s large, glowing eyes stared down at me. On the map MacReady had provided, the chamber I was in was marked as SEMANTIC/EPISODIC MEMORY RECLAMATION FACILITY.
Are you taking their memories?
As I’m sure you know, Faye, revivor memories are much simpler to package and transfer than human memories. They’ve been known to even share them in the field during long deployments.
Yes.
The light coming from overhead was from them. When I stepped past the door, they’d opened their eyes. Hundreds of them, all staring down to see me. The wires that trailed from them were connected to plugs under the skin. Another black drop dripped down from the end of the girl’s toe. More of the eyes looked my way, causing the eerie electric light to shift. The little girl’s legs hung still. She stared, conscious, but didn’t answer when I tried to contact her.
None of them can respond. Leave them, Faye.
I looked into her eyes a minute longer, then turned back toward the exit MacReady had called out for me. I sprinted between rows of bundled cable, the soft light shifting as their eyes followed me. As I passed between their dangling bodies, I sensed that their signatures were active, but they were cut off from me and each other. Many of their eyes moved around spastically, the way they sometimes did when streaming data.
What do you do with the memories, once you’ve taken them? I asked.
Come to the lab, he said, and I’ll show you.
Up ahead of me, several sets of toes twitched as I slipped through a second hanging plastic sheet, down past rows of metal hatches that were covered with thin layers of frost. Light seeped from under a door at the far end.
Without looking back, I opened it and moved on.