A door to my right bashed open as they shoved their way into the hall behind me. I picked up speed and put some distance between us, but got stopped at the end of the hall by a metal door with panes of safety glass. I put two slugs into one of them and kicked out a hole, then squeezed through as they rushed in behind me. Palms slammed against the glass, and one grabbed at my boot as I started to run.
Vika, you ready?
Rdy.
It’s going to be close.
Behind me I heard them smash out the rest of the glass. Down the main hall I could see the back exit, with a guard station between walls of bulletproof glass. Past that was the back lot, and outside the bodies were already piling up. They’d mobbed the door, beating on it with their palms and fists.
I’m not getting out this way, kid.
They surged against the wall, and the metal frame squealed on its hinges. Back behind me, they were closing in. I aimed my pistol and put down the two in front, but it didn’t slow them down much.
Kid—
A crash came from the lot, and I turned to see an armored military truck plow into the crowd on its way to the back exit. It didn’t slow down as revivors were smashed against the grille and dragged underneath. Up in the cab, I saw the kid grip the wheel as she braced for the impact.
The glass caved in and the metal frame broke loose from the concrete as the truck smashed through the guard station and into the back lobby. Glass sprayed down the hall and cold air blew through the gap.
The kid revved the engine and waved me in. I fired a couple more rounds into the crowd behind me, then jumped through the wreckage toward the cab. A hand grabbed my boot as I pulled the passenger’s door, and I turned and shot a woman in the face between her black eyes. I threw myself in the seat and slammed the door behind me. There was a rifle propped against the dash inside.
“Can you shoot?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Switch places!”
She squirmed past me and grabbed the rifle as I got behind the wheel. They pulled her door open, and she fired three quick shots. An expended shell burned the back of my hand as bodies fell into the snow, and she pulled the door shut again and pounded the lock.
Gears ground as I slammed the truck into reverse and stomped on the gas. Bodies thumped against the rear of the truck as I cut the wheel and hit the brakes. Outside, one of them smashed a trash can against Vika’s window, but it held. She cracked it open and fired out the slit. Shells trailed smoke as they pinged off the dash and onto the floor.
“Hold on!”
The back lot led to a side street through a short connector, and I aimed for it. Tires spun in the snow, then we lurched forward. Faces flashed in the headlights before they got creamed against the grille and went under.
Metal and glass popped as we clipped a parked car and pushed out onto the street. There were more of them out there, maybe hundreds. They swarmed us, piling up as we smashed through. At the main road, I smashed the nose of a passing car, and bodies tumbled into the street as I hit the brakes.
They climbed over the grille and onto the hood. Vika fired the rifle again as I picked up speed and rolled over them. A few slipped off, but one hung on the driver’s-side mirror. I jerked the wheel, and it was scraped off as I swiped a parked car.
“Shit!”
Horns blared, and I felt the rifle’s muzzle flash on the side of my face. Tires squealed and the truck started to slide. We spun out, and metal and glass crunched as we hit something hard.
“Goddamn it!”
Something hit the driver’s-side window. Bodies slammed against the truck and hands tried to pull the doors open. Another one jumped on the hood and stomped down on the windshield. I punched the gas again and broke out of the snowbank. Bodies thumped under the tires as I gunned it down the street. Soldiers scrambled, firing into the crowd but there were too many of them.
Up ahead, way in the distance, I saw the smoke. The spot where the CMC Tower used to be was nothing but black smoke that rolled down the streets and swallowed up everything. Mobs of people ran to try to get out of the way of it, and more revivors were coming. The CMC was southwest of the Stillwell compound. I pulled up the GPS and plotted a route to the north gate.
“They’ll try and follow,” I said. “I’m going to lead them off the base!”
I cut the wheel again and took a side street toward the compound’s main strip. With the smoke in our rearview mirror I watched as the bodies fell off behind us, still running in our direction.
The revivor stood stone still, the metal canister clutched to its body. Wind sheared across the tarmac, whipping its clothes around it.
“Faye, what are you doing?” MacReady asked.
“It wasn’t me,” I said. Someone else was in my head. They’d shunted their way into my command node and put a hold on my communications.
“Faye—”
“I fucking knew it,” a voice said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ang Chen step through the doorway, a pistol clutched in one hand. His eyes moved from me to MacReady, then back.
MacReady held up his hands and stepped forward, but stopped when Ang pointed the gun at his chest.
“Ang—”
“You were overruled, Bob. You should have stayed out of it.”
“Chen, he destroyed the CMC Tower,” MacReady said. “He’s going to—”
“You don’t know what’s at stake,” Ang said. His voice was still calm, but his eyes had grown wide. The hot mass of his heart thudded in his chest.
“Ang, please,” MacReady said, as he took another step. “Think about—”
The gun boomed as Ang fired a single shot. MacReady staggered back and dropped the electronic pad to the floor. He stared down at his side, where blood had begun to spread through his shirt.
Ang aimed to fire again, and MacReady lunged. Not toward Ang, but toward me. His fingers, warm with blood, touched my neck, and I felt the metal rod slide out of the back of my head. The control lock winked out, and impulses began to flow back down the length of my spine. My system tree reestablished. I could move again.
Ang fired. The bullet shattered through MacReady’s front teeth, then exploded out through the back of his neck. His body fell against the wall behind him, then collapsed onto the floor. Chen stood, still pointing the gun, as smoke drifted slowly out of the barrel.
“I know what’s at stake,” I told him.
Chen’s eyes flicked to me and stared. “Shut up,” he said.
“I know what they did to me—”
“So do I!” he barked. “They got to me too, and I know it now! I know everything! Every goddamned thing!”
The gun shook in his fist as he held it out. The network of veins stood out under his skin, like spiderwebs of warm light, and I knew he was very close to the edge. I realized then that when he said he knew, he meant he really did know; his memories had returned. Somehow, Fawkes had found a way to return them while still leaving him alive.
Whatever happened to him, whatever he’d done and been made to forget, he’d come face-to-face with it. Whatever it was, he couldn’t accept it. Without a revivor’s disconnectedness, he was losing control.
“Fawkes woke you,” I said, and I could see it was true. “How—”
“Shut up!” He stepped forward and stuck the gun in my face. He took two steps toward me, and the end of the barrel pushed into my cheek.
I fired the bayonet and struck Ang’s gun hand with it. The pistol went off near my ear, as blood spurted from the notch cut in his wrist. He staggered back, blood seeping through his shirt cuff. Blood dripped down onto the floor as he clutched his wounded arm. He raised the gun again, but he couldn’t hold it straight.
Suddenly, something forced him out of my head, and the communications block was released. The revivor connections came back online. When he realized what happened, Ang’s eyes widened.
“Who did that?” he whispered. “Who else is helping you?”
Faye? Faye, are you reading me? It was Nico.
I’m here. I checked the revivor feeds and saw the units perk up as the command spokes reformed. They found me.
Ang transferred the gun to his left hand and took aim. He followed me as I circled the table and fired a single shot that went wild. I could sense him digging into my systems, trying to reestablish the override. I pointed my own gun in his direction.
“Drop that connection,” he said.
The remote unit carried the canister across the Pratsky Building, where the last revivor in the chain waited down in a darkened stairwell. I watched them make eye contact with each other, meeting halfway on the stairs. The last unit accepted the canister, then turned and made its way down.
Both guns went off, and a bullet struck my chest. I grazed Ang’s shoulder as he fired again, punching through my right elbow. It triggered the mechanics in my forearm, causing it to split apart. The pistol flipped free from my hand and spun across the floor.
I ducked under the table as the final revivor picked up speed down a long corridor and into the main climate-control center. I swung the bayonet and slashed Ang’s hamstring. He screamed, and I heard his gun thump down onto the table above me.
I stood and saw him reel, hopping on one foot. He lunged for his weapon but stumbled and fell. I pulled the bayonet back, preparing to deliver the killing blow, when Samuel Fawkes appeared in the doorway.
Two soldiers followed him in. They aimed their rifles at me.
“Stop,” Fawkes said. His eyes glowed flatly in the dim light. Ang looked back, his face dark. A vein pulsed at his neck. Three more revivors filed in from behind Fawkes and took positions around him. They all had automatic rifles at the ready.
“Pick up your gun, Mr. Chen.”
He reached across the table, smearing blood, and recovered the weapon. He hopped back, and one of the revivors held him steady.
I felt Fawkes connect, and he began to scan my systems. He poked around, looking for a way in. His owl’s eyes didn’t change expression.
“Who is controlling you?” he asked.
“She’s running some kind of virtual command connections,” Ang said. “I tried to shut her down when someone blocked me, someone from inside. Someone besides MacReady is helping her.”
“Virtual command connections to where?”
“I wasn’t able to trace them before I got kicked off.”
In the feed, I saw a pair of hands place the tank on the concrete floor as the revivor scanned the room. A huge turbine of some kind took up most of the space there, surrounded by smaller blocks of machinery and rows of metal ductwork. The main pipe stood higher than a man. According to the building’s schematic, that was the main outflow pipe.
All nodes, report in. Fawkes’s eyes looked distant as the responses began to pour in. It would take time to process them all, but not much.
On the feed, the revivor grabbed the tank and approached the pipe. Using a cutter, it opened a hole large enough to squeeze through, leaving one corner attached. It peeled back the lid, and I could see its uniform begin to ripple madly as the air escaped. From far off, I heard a low whistle moan through the halls.
Fawkes looked back through the doorway.
“What is that?”
The revivor passed the tank through the hole, then climbed in after it. Inside the pipe it was dark, but its night vision allowed me to see the interior as it reached back through, grabbed the metal lid, and pulled it back. The whistle went up in pitch as the revivor held the metal in place, its fingers stuck through the seam.
Fawkes began issuing orders over the command spokes. In minutes, a squad of revivors would be down there, and he’d know.
Faye, I’m shutting down the circulation to T5. The message came not from Nico, but from Dulari. She’d been monitoring us. I tried to respond, to tell her that Fawkes was here with me, but the circuit was one-way, so it couldn’t be traced back.
A low thud came from somewhere in the building. The airflow to the room we were in stopped. Fawkes continued to watch me impassively as he ran a trace on the override circuit.
The revivor in the pipe gripped the tank between its legs, still holding the pipe lid shut with one hand. It used its free hand to open the tank, and icy mist began to drift from the mouth. It pushed the tank over with one foot and liquid gushed out, down the pipe. When it hit the air, it exploded in a cloud of gas. I caught a glimpse of the revivor’s arm and hand as they bubbled and dissolved away. I saw the mechanism that held the blade inside the forearm as the muscle and flesh melted; then the feed warped and went black.
It’s away, Dulari said. Critical saturation should occur within minutes.
Fawkes looked down at MacReady’s body, then back to me. “What did he tell you, Faye?”
“He said you’re going to destroy the city.”
“That’s bullshit,” Chen said. “She—”
“Take Mr. Chen to be treated, please.”
The revivor that was holding him up steered him toward the doorway and began half dragging him out. Over his shoulder, Chen glared at me, red-faced.
“What else did he say?” he asked.
“Just do it,” I said. “Kill me.” He stepped closer, and his soldiers crowded in behind him.
“Not until I’ve had a chance to look through your memory core,” he said. “Something’s going on here. What else did Mr. MacReady tell you?”
“He said you’d destroy the city no matter what anyone did.”
“If I wanted to destroy the city, then I’d do it. I have the capability to do it right now. I could issue one order and it would be done. I have no intention of destroying the entire city.”
Fawkes stopped short. Orange light glowed in the darks of his eyes.
“One of the gen-eight nodes just dropped off,” one of the soldiers said.
A message came in over the command network, instructing all revivors inside the missing unit’s patrol perimeter to report the location of the missing node. One by one the responses would be coming back.
“Faye, what did you do?”
Faye, Nico sent, get him out of there. He needs to be inside the dispersion area.
There wasn’t any other option. I opened a channel to Dulari and tried to warn her, even as Fawkes began tracing it.
Dulari, open the blowers to this room, I said, but she didn’t respond.
Fawkes came farther into the room. Through the open doorway I could see down the corridor to the other end, where two guards stood in the main corridor. He stepped past the body on the floor and stopped in front of me.
“You still belong to me.”
He finally broke through, then, and released the locks on my systems. He reestablished the command spoke and tapped into my nodes.
“Now tell me: what did you do?” Data spilled by in front of me as he accessed everything. He found the packages Nico had installed. He found the virtual command network hidden inside his own. He identified the end nodes, and his eyes widened just a fraction.
Something clattered in the hall outside the room, and he turned suddenly. Through the doorway, I saw the guards sway on their feet as white smoke began to stream from their flesh. A crackling sound filled the air, and both figures collapsed inside their uniforms. Their remains splashed to the floor, dissolving away to nothing.
The guard closest to the door slammed it shut. Fawkes turned back to me and stared. It was one of the few times I saw anything resembling emotion in his eyes. He tried to shut down the virtual links and found that they wouldn’t respond.
“Kill her!” he barked. One of his guards took a step, then all at once they seized and fell to the floor. The Leichenesser hadn’t made its way into the room; someone had hijacked them and shut them down remotely.
“Dulari,” Fawkes hissed.
Faye, Nico sent. Get him out into that corridor. It’s the last chance you’ll have.
Orange light flickered in Fawkes’s eyes, and a moment later a thud drummed through the floor as the air circulators shut down. The others must have reached the control center.
Fawkes issued a broadcast and pulled a node count. Already it had dropped to a third of his original forces. He slammed one fist down on the table.
Faye, take him now. Fawkes stepped closer and looked into my eyes, like he was staring through a window at something, or someone else.
Wachalowski, he sent.
He grabbed my throat with one hand and squeezed.
I was almost out of time. In the confusion I couldn’t see what happened to MacReady, but his link had dropped. I still had a connection to Faye, but she’d lost her weapon. On her feed I could see Fawkes. He had leaned close and was staring into her eyes, at me.
You’re too late, Agent.
“He’s not waiting for a full charge,” I heard Vaggot say. “He’s preparing to fire.”
Fawkes, don’t do this.
Orange light began to flicker behind the soft glow of his eyes. There was only one way left to stop him from issuing the command.
I sent Faye’s override code over the command spoke and her system tree appeared in front of me. In seconds, direct control of everything was switched over to me.
Nico, what—
Her message was cut short as the override completed. All she could do now was watch. Her targeting system called out the carotid arteries on either side of Fawkes’s neck and the nodes clustered at the base of his skull. I triggered the attack, and her POV feed lurched as she swung.
Fawkes was just fast enough; he got his own blade in the path of the strike, and the two crashed together an inch from his neck. The feed jerked again as he shoved her back.
An alert flashed in my own display. The Eye was almost ready. In minutes, we’d lose our window to sever the connection to it.
Fawkes, stop, goddamn it—
The screen in front of me flickered and Osterhagen’s face appeared.
“Agent Wachalowski, what is our status?” he asked.
Fawkes, they’re going to destroy the transmitter if you try to fire, I told him. Don’t do it—
Is that supposed to be a threat? Fawkes asked. If they don’t destroy it then, before this is over, I will.
“Agent Wachalowski,” Osterhagen said again, “what is our status?”
I threw Faye at Fawkes again. Her second blade deployed as she closed in on him again and thrust it toward the middle of his chest. He managed to deflect the strike, and instead it thudded into his shoulder. Black blood came out in a glut as she jerked out the blade.
Two guard revivors closed in, and in the chaos of movement I began to lose track of where they all were. Faye’s POV spun around as warnings began to spill past indicating trauma to her torso and right leg. Muzzle flashes lit up the room, and I saw sparks fly from a console in front of her.
“Wachalowski, answer me!”
One of the revivors appeared to Faye’s right, and I sent the bayonet flying. I caught a glimpse of a gray, waxy face tilting off at an unnatural angle as the edge of the blade chopped deep into the flesh of its neck. Several more figures scrambled past; then the computer isolated Fawkes ahead in the fray. I sent her after him again. Another body stepped in front of him. On the feed, I saw Fawkes duck back out the way he’d come in as the remaining guards mobbed Faye. I couldn’t get her past them.
“Damn it!”
Faye, did he move into the dispersion area?
The sublevels aren’t completely saturated. He’s still active. I can’t tell where he went.
I’m too late, I thought. Fawkes had escaped. Osterhagen was going to order the missile strike. We’d lost everything.
“General—” I started.
“Were you successful or not?” he asked.
On Faye’s feed, I saw a splash of black appear on the wall to her left. Through the struggling bodies in front of her, I saw someone appear in the doorway for just a second. A severe-looking, dark-skinned woman. It was Dulari Shaddrah. There was a gun in her hand.
I turned to answer the general, when the image on the screen warped. A second later, it went dark.
“Get him back on the line,” a voice said.
“There’s too much interference,” another voice answered. “Let me try—”
“Fire the missiles,” someone snapped.
“Not without authorization from the general,” Vaggot said.
“The general could be dead!”
“You don’t know that,” I said. The faces in the room turned to me. “Who here knows the name Motoko Ai?”
Most of them looked confused, including Vaggot. One woman on the team met my eye and signaled with one hand.
“Do whatever you have to do to contact her,” I told her. “Tell her Nico Wachalowski said not to fire those missiles. She’ll know who I am.”
She nodded.
“Don’t let anyone here initiate the launch until you’ve given her that message. Can you stop them from doing that?”
“I can.”
“Can you get me to Heinlein Industries?”
“Key monorail routes are being kept active to move military personnel only. The southern sector of the base is still secure. You can access the rail from there.”
“Do it. In the meantime, hold the base and wait.”
“And if Ai asks why we shouldn’t launch, what am I supposed to tell her?”
A route to the bases’ monorail platform appeared on my HUD as I pushed my way past the soldiers and toward the door.
“That her prediction was right,” I said. “Tell her I’m going to kill Fawkes.”
Helicopters swarmed around the base far behind us when I saw a small light appear up in the sky behind the clouds. The way ahead was blocked by cars stuck on the main drag, and there were too many people moving in between them to just bash my way through. The light disappeared behind a building as I ducked down a narrow side road.
Tires and hydraulics squealed as I punched the brakes and slowed down, and people turned and scrambled to get out of the way. I took us over the sidewalk and squeezed down the strip, blaring the horn. Hands pawed at the truck. Bloody fingers pulled at the door and left greasy smears along the jagged edge of the missing window. Alerts had begun to pour in over the JZI as the clouds overhead started to move.
“What the hell is that?” Vika asked. The light in the sky had come back into view, and it was getting brighter.
Cal, this is Nico. The satellite is going to fire again. The target is the UTTC. How close are you?
I couldn’t see the tower from where I was, but it wasn’t more than ten blocks away.
Closer than I want to be, but out of the blast zone, I said. Where are you?
I’m headed toward Heinlein. Find a metro stop. The military has control of the railways. They’re shut down to civilians, but they’re moving military personnel. You need to get off the street.
Something thumped into the door on my side and I jumped. Bodies were shoving their way between the stuck vehicles as people scattered. One had reached the truck and had its hands on the edge of the open window.
“Goddamn it!”
I took aim and pulled the trigger. The jack stumbled back and went down on the ground. Another one crunched under the front wheel as I lurched forward, and I heard one climb up on top of the truck. I hit a parked car and set the alarm off while the revivor fell down onto the hood.
Two military helicopters blew by overhead. A second later, something exploded on the sidewalk off to our right, and the pavement shook underneath us. Glass and debris blew over the street and banged off the side of the truck. Something bashed through the back windshield of a parked car. I checked the mirrors and saw the shadows of the revivors fade behind us.
“We need to get off the street. Hang on.”
Something whistled overhead then and creamed the building to our right about twenty stories up. Light flared through the smoke, and everyone around us stopped and turned. A wall of warm air huffed down through the swirling snow and dust as a twisted fire escape crashed down from above.
A chunk of concrete pounded the road next to us. Another one flattened the roof of a cab; then what looked like part of a fucking gargoyle whipped past and bowled through the crowd, spraying blood across the driver’s-side window.
People dove out of the way as I jerked the wheel and took us down a side street. In the rearview mirror I saw something big fall through the smoke, and the impact made the ground buck underneath us.
I blew through a pile of trash bags on the corner at the end of the street and caught air for a second as the road dipped. The undercarriage scraped a speed bump, and we fishtailed on a patch of ice. I spun the wheel and got us under control, then made a break for the subway stop at the end of the block as a cluster of broken bricks flew by in front of us, trailing smoke.
Other people had the same idea. A hundred yards away, the crowd got too thick to move the truck through. I killed the engine.
“Come on!” Vika held the rifle in a death grip as we opened the doors and got out. I shoved my way around the back and hauled the doors open.
The back of the truck was full of equipment. I climbed up the rear bumper and pulled the closest locker open; it was loaded with guns and ammo. I traded my pistol for a better one and grabbed a few clips and stuffed them in my pockets.
“What are you doing?” Vika called. I climbed out, then jumped back down onto the pavement.
“Stick close, no matter what!” I said. I dragged her toward the metro entrance and muscled our way into the flow. People pushed and shoved as we made our way down the stairs into the station.
Most people just wanted to get off the street and away from the worst of the crowd. I took us through, then down onto the nearest platform. The tracks were empty, but down the tunnel I saw the lights from a train that was parked there, not moving. In the other direction, the tunnel was clear. I sent our location back to Nico.
Back the way we came, there were screams. I looked back and saw that a group of revivors had come down after us. People tripped over each other as they tried to get away. Somebody got bitten and blood squirted from his neck. Another guy got dragged off the platform and into the dark.
Vika jerked her hand away and tried to run, but they’d reached us. I fired, and one of them fell, but the rest just went right over it.
“Vika, get behind me!”
I tried to block them, but an elbow thumped into my chest and I was knocked back as feet stomped the floor around my face.
“Vika!”
I flipped over, and a boot came down on my back. I slammed onto the concrete as two of them grabbed Vika by her shirt. She screamed and tried to get the rifle around, but she was pinned. I shot one in the knee and it fell, but more hands grabbed her. They pulled her away from me, down the tunnel.
Something hit my head hard. Spots swam in front of my eyes as one of them bit down on her arm and she screamed again. I tried to bring the gun around again, but my arm didn’t move. The platform started to tilt.
Vika …
A band of static flicked in front of me and the JZI puked out a stream of errors. I heard Vika yell something, but I couldn’t see her. Feet stomped down around me as more of them ran to join the fray.
My eyes rolled and another band of static rippled by before the lights went out. The last thing I heard was Vika’s high-pitched scream as it echoed from somewhere down the tunnel.
The tromping of boots echoed down the hall as we headed toward the stairwell at the far end. The hall ended in a giant pane of glass that looked out over the city, and through it I could see the TransTech Center, lit up and towering above the surrounding buildings. Osterhagen was still inside; I could sense him. I couldn’t make out what he was thinking, but something was very wrong.
This city will be gone within the hour….
We walked as fast as Ai could manage. I watched the back of her large head as we went, and saw sweat roll down her thin neck. One of the guards should have just carried her, but even under the circumstances, no one dared suggest it.
“Is the roof secure?” one of the men said into his radio.
“The Chimeras are still active,” the reply came. “But we’ve got surface-to-air missile capability set up on all—”
Something flashed outside the window at the end of the hall, and something rumbled up above us, loud enough to shake the floor. The lights flickered as the sound of helicopter rotors got louder.
“Come back,” the guard said into the radio. “Is the roof secure?”
The rotors thumped louder, then something big flew past the window. A loud shriek rose over the drumming sound, and three bright lights whipped by after it. A shadow banked past one of the buildings below, and I saw three thin smoke trails spin toward it. They hit the building face and exploded, sending a big, bright cloud of fire into the night air.
“We’ll keep them off you, but—”
The rest of the reply got cut off by another crash from overhead. Chunks of metal and glass fell past the window, and I saw a flailing body tumble down along with it. Another loud shriek sounded, followed by a thud.
When we got to the stairwell, one of the guards opened it while another signaled for us to go through, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to go up there. Penny didn’t seem too sure either.
“Come on!” the guard said. “We’re going up—”
Light flashed at the end of the hall, through the window. It tinted in response, but even so, it was so bright I had to shield my eyes. Through the glare, I saw the window glass warp and then blow out into the open air. The sky outside was filled with a cloud of pulverized glass as the other windows on the building face, and those of the buildings around it, all exploded with an earsplitting crash.
A wave of hot air blasted down the hallway, stinging my hands and face. Through my fingers, I saw a huge arc of light pass over the buildings below and hit the TransTech Center.
No…
People were screaming, but I couldn’t hear them over the sound of the beam sizzling through the air. Energy arced off and struck buildings nearby as it rippled over the city like a huge, electric worm. Shards of glass jumped and danced on the tiled floor as the building shook.
My clothes flapped around me as I gaped, unable to register what I was seeing. All I could do was stare out through the snow as a huge cloud of fire boiled up from the base of the tower. Fear pulsed outward from inside the building, like streams of raw, white adrenaline. They hit me like a truck, and before I could push them out I’d slipped and almost fallen to the floor. In front of me, Ai staggered, and Penny caught her. The rush left me feeling sick, pain burning in my chest.
One of the guards was barking into the radio, but I couldn’t hear him. The TransTech Center was crumbling, collapsing down in a cloud of smoke and fire. The threads of fear began to fall off and go dark. They were dying. I felt Osterhagen’s consciousness wink out, along with the rest of the thousands of others. They were dying. They were all dying.
“Get back!” one of the guards shouted into my ear as cold wind blew through the opening and peppered us with powdered glass. “Back away from the window!”
I couldn’t move. The light outside just kept getting brighter and brighter. It washed everything out, until it forced my eyes shut and I screamed. Distantly, I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me back….
The noise stopped.
Not just the racket outside, but the voices, the screaming, the wind, everything. In the quiet, my ears rang.
I opened my eyes. I was outside, on the street. There was no explosion and no falling debris. Snow fell gently through the night sky.
Where am I?
Neon lit up the dark. I was on a sidewalk, with my back to a parked car. There was snow piled up along the curb between the walkway and the street. The street was full of cars, and people streamed by all around me. None of them even seemed to notice I was there.
I stood up and brushed myself off. My breath trailed as I looked across the street and saw the towering face of Alto Do Mundo, all glass and neon. It was completely intact. The UTTC still stood in the distance, and far off, I could see the third needle of the CMC Tower.
Is this real?
I shook my head, and snow went down the back of my neck. No one looked at me, and no cars honked, even when I wandered out into the road.
They can’t see me. This isn’t real.
From the dark mouth of an alley I saw a pair of eyes flash, low to the ground. They stared up at me, and I heard a low growl.
I took a step back as a dog moved out onto the sidewalk to face me. It was big, with matted, mangy fur. A patch was shaved on one side and I could see an ugly, scabby bite mark on the bare skin there.
“You again,” I said. It stopped a few feet away and bared its teeth. Its gums were black, and its fangs were stained red.
“You were in my dream—”
The dog jumped. I slipped and fell back onto the sidewalk with it on top of me. I could feel its breath on my face as it snapped, and I crossed my arms between us.
Its jaws clamped down on my wrist and I screamed. Blood gushed out of the wound, and my hand went numb as the dog huffed out a breath through its cold nose. I tried to kick away, but it wouldn’t let go.
A warm feeling crept up my arm from the spot where it had me. The warmth moved up to my shoulder, into my chest, into my heart. My body began to feel relaxed and a little numb. It was a little like being drunk.
The dog let me go. It barked once, then turned and ran off.
“Son of a bitch …”
I rolled over and got on my knees. None of the people on the street even glanced at me. When I held up my forearm, I could see muscle through the tear in the skin. It looked like it should hurt, but it didn’t. It didn’t hurt at all.
The weird heat coursed through my whole body, and my body relaxed. I looked around, but the dog was gone.
The neon lights flickered. I felt sick for a second, and then out of nowhere, words appeared in the air in front of me. They were like words on a computer terminal, but they just hung there in the air, like they were floating in space a few inches from my face.
Control node initialized (103.9 seconds).
“What the hell?” someone next to me asked.
I turned and saw a man standing on the sidewalk. He was staring at the air in front of him with his brow scrunched, like he was reading something.
When I looked around, I saw the others, all around me, doing the same thing. Some rubbed their eyes. They all looked confused and afraid.
“They see the words too,” a voice said. I turned and saw a woman standing a few feet away from me, her stringy black hair whipping in the wind. She had a tattoo of a snake that swallowed its own tail around her neck, just like me and just like Penny.
“You’re Noelle,” I said. Her shirt was stained with blood around a slit in the fabric. Through the hole, I could see a deep stab wound.
“They all have it,” she said.
“Have what?”
She waved for me to follow, and I did as she limped down the sidewalk to a rusted metal door just inside a nearby alley. Men bundled under dirty blankets watched us from the shadows as she pulled the door open. She waved again and stepped through.
As soon as I was through the door, it slammed behind me and everything went black. As I turned back, though, a light came on from overhead and I saw Noelle standing near an electrical switchbox on one wall. The light flickered across concrete walls that were painted green. Three electric lights, all dark, hung near the far wall. There were no bodies, and this time the table and chair were missing. When I looked around, I saw a series of wire cages along the back wall. Inside each one was a dirty-looking bedroll.
The floor was littered with trash, and the air smelled like BO and piss. In with the empty food containers and cardboard cups were torn white wrappers marked STERILE. In one corner was a used syringe with a broken needle. Noelle looked at the mess sadly.
“It’s almost time,” she said.
“I don’t understand,” I said, but she didn’t seem to hear me.
“You see your mind’s interpretation of the quantum data streams it receives,” she said. “Information can only be sent back.”
“What information? What are you talking about?”
“By now, Fawkes has released the nanovirus,” she said. “He does this in an attempt to end our influence over the rest of them.”
“Maybe he should,” I said.
“His plan will fail,” she said. “It was only supposed to replicate a set number of times. Enough to spread throughout the world, and then degenerate of its own accord. The violence of the spread would stop, leaving the world free from us, but something went wrong. Something alters the virus. The replication never stops. It can’t be allowed to spread beyond the city.”
“The bombs,” I said.
“The city’s destruction overshadowed and hid the real disaster. We couldn’t see past it. Fawkes never intended to destroy the city, but because of him, because of us, someone will have to. It will come down to the city, or the world.”
My throat burned, and I felt tears in my eyes as I leaned back against the cold concrete wall. I wanted to cry, but I didn’t have the strength. Was what she was saying true? Was any of this even real at all?
“What is this place?” I asked. “Why do I keep coming here?”
“The green zones are all that is left.”
Green zones. It was true, then; there was more than one. The Green Room changed from vision to vision because at some point in the future, there would be more than one of them.
“What are they for?”
“Refugees are brought here to see if they can be saved. This is all that’s left of humanity.”
My forearm itched. When I scratched at it, I saw the scab from the dog bite there.
“That’s how it spreads,” Noelle said, “at least at first. People without our abilities will begin to realize that we’re among them. They’ll wake up and regain their memories, but the mechanism to wake them up was fashioned on revivor technology. We didn’t know what we were dealing with until it was too late. We now believe the countervirus we developed corrupted the original variant somehow and caused the mutation. Pushed past the limits of its design, Fawkes’s variant eventually remembers its original purpose.”
“And what’s that?”
“To make revivors,” she said. “And that is what it tries to do.”
The ceiling spun over my head and a high-pitched whine filled both my ears. Pressure built up in my head and behind my eyes until every time my heart beat, pain throbbed through my skull. I felt like I was going to be sick.
What’s happening? The whine got louder, until it was all I could hear.
“Noelle, help me …I can’t do this…. ”
I couldn’t hear my own words. The whine got louder and louder, and the room spun faster and faster.
The lights went out, and it all stopped. The tone in my ears was gone and I could hear the hum of the air system again. I opened my eyes, and the ceiling had stopped moving, for the most part.
Huma variant 34000174T initialization complete.
The words appeared and floated in front of me.
Initialization successful.
The headache was gone. The tremors were gone. I looked around. Noelle still stood there watching me.
“What happened?” I asked. She didn’t answer.
“Hello?” My voice echoed in the room.
I didn’t feel drunk anymore, which was weird. I didn’t have the shakes anymore either. Instead I felt clear, clearer than I had in a long time, and maybe even ever.
It was so quiet, a quiet like I’d never known before, and after a minute, I realized why. That constant stream of sensation that always lingered in the back of my mind was gone. Noelle was standing a few feet away, but I couldn’t sense her. I couldn’t sense any of the stray thoughts that were always there, like white noise in the background. The sensation was gone altogether. It was as if I’d suddenly woken up blind and deaf.
For a second I felt panic, but then, just like that, it vanished and instead I felt something else: relief. I felt profound relief.
It’s gone. The thing people called my gift, the ability I never asked for and that had haunted me my entire life was gone. It was gone, and it took the visions and the nightmares and that horrible, crushing weight of responsibility away with it.
“It’s gone,” I whispered. Noelle smiled a little, but she didn’t look happy.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. It felt good. I remembered once, years ago, the first time I’d come face-to-face with a revivor and I realized I couldn’t sense or control it. I remembered how scared it had made me feel, how lost I felt without that ability. It was different now. Now it felt liberating. If I didn’t know the future, then I was under no obligation to try to change it. I didn’t have to feel any guilt for not being able to change the things that couldn’t be changed. I didn’t have to live in fear.
“It’s gone,” I whispered again; then something moved under the skin in back of my neck. Phantom fingers wormed into the muscle and sent a shiver down my spine.
Error. The word appeared in front of me and flashed.
Error.
Something shocked me. My whole body jerked, and I almost fell to the floor. Before I could wonder what happened, the skin on my face felt tight all of a sudden. My lips peeled back and pain pricked at my gums.
What’s happening?
Something was wrong. Inside me, something was very wrong. The scratching in the back of my neck started to burn. I reached back, and when my hands touched the back of my head, I felt the skull melt away under the skin and hair there. Heat trickled down into my stomach, and under my fingers the skin pulled tight across the knobs of my spine.
Error.
Pain pricked my gums like needles and I felt my tongue peel down the middle into two pieces. My cheeks collapsed as the skin pulled taut around my neck, and the walls around me shifted from green to a colorless gray.
The word flashed more urgently, then winked out. The crawling under my skin stopped.
Primary node network construction failed. The new words floated under the first ones. A few seconds later, they both faded.
My head felt big and heavy. It wobbled as I turned, and when I did, I noticed a strand of drool had oozed down from my lower lip. When I wiped it with my hand, I saw something black in it.
I turned again and caught my reflection in the steel of the headset panel. I tried to scream, but nothing came out.
“This is how it begins,” Noelle said.
I stared at my face, distorted in the polished metal of the switchbox. My neck was shriveled to a bent stick, and my head bobbed at the end. I could barely support it. The back of my skull had melted away under the skin. My lips were pulled back to show my teeth. The gums pulled away and there was blood there, and saliva that drooled from the end of my chin. It was what Ai and the others had termed the Vaggot Deformation.
My eyes stared out of sunken sockets, the whites spotted with broken black veins. I turned back to Noelle and tried to speak, but I couldn’t form the sounds. All that came out was a guttural wheeze.
“Without the building blocks it requires, it tries to use the tissue around it,” she said. “It fails, but drags its victims into a state between life and death, and the spread never stops.”
I got a flash of streets full of surging bodies, eyes blank and staring, and deformed heads that shook at the end of crooked necks. They moved through the wreckage of an abandoned city, not understanding the things around them.
“The living are forced underground,” she said. “You are seeing the last remnants of humanity.”
My reflection worked the swollen halves of its black tongue as I tried to speak. Noelle stepped close to me and looked into my eyes.
She leaned in and put her arms around me. I felt her cold hand on the back of my vulture’s neck, and rested my chin on her bony shoulder. I felt her breath in my ear as she whispered one last time.
“Someone has to do it,” she said. “You know in your heart this is true. Destroy the city, and you can stop this. It’s the only thing that can stop this. You have to—”
The room warped in front of me. I staggered forward as Noelle disappeared. The green concrete walls faded and I was back at Alto Do Mundo, in the war room, where Penny stood shaking me.
“Zoe!”
I touched my face. It was normal. I ran my hands over the back of my neck. I was okay. It wasn’t real. None of it was real, but …
“What happened?” Penny asked. “What did you see?”
I turned and vomited onto the tiled floor. Even as I retched, I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling of being trapped in that deformed body.
“Zoe, come on. We’re leaving.”
I looked around and saw that men in black body armor had surrounded us. They all had automatic rifles and were standing at attention. Ai had approached us, her face pale as she stared into my eyes.
“What did you see?” she asked.
“I …”
“They’re swarming out there,” one of the guards said. “We’re not going to be able to get past them!”
“The blockades are to keep us in until he can destroy the towers,” Penny said. “Heinlein’s satellite is recharging to fire again right now. We don’t have a choice. We have to leave now.”
“What did you see?” Ai asked again.
“I know what I have to do,” I told them, trying to spit the puke taste out of my mouth.
“We don’t have time for this,” Penny said. “We’re going to the roof. Come on.” No one moved.
“Tell me what you saw,” Ai said.
“You were right,” I told her. “The city is going to burn …it will be gone in an hour.”
Ai didn’t answer. She didn’t push any further. She didn’t make me say the last part of what was going through my mind, the part I didn’t want to think about.
Penny put one of her arms around my waist. She pulled me along as we began to move again.
“Is that true?” she whispered in my ear. “Are we too late? Is this it?”
“Yeah,” I said. I saw the mistake we’d made, the same mistake made over and over, but I’d seen it way too late.
It was true.