There was no sound, no sensation, and no light. I did not know what I was or where I was, only that I existed. Enough of me survived to at least know that.
When the darkness came, it had been absolute. There were no dreams, and I sensed no passing time; only a black, empty void. There was nothing and no one, not even me. I was lost in darkness until the warmth came.
Primary systems initializing.
The words hung there in the dark and then faded. Warmth gathered in my chest, then bled down my spine and trickled through my body. It wormed through each limb to find fingers and toes. It found the nape of my neck and gathered there.
Secondary systems initializing.
Cold pinprick light flickered to become a strobe. A connection inside my head seemed to spark and sent a pulse through my brain. I began to sense different parts of myself, like lights turned on through rooms of an empty home. My mind willed it, and my fingers and toes flexed.
I opened my eyes, and light poured through each lens. Images began to form.
I was lying on my back, staring upward. Above me were pipes and water-stained concrete, lit by flat electric light. I did not recognize the things around me.
I breathed in and sensed particles in the air. They were smells: decay and mildew. Beneath them were sweat and men’s deodorant. The smells opened up pathways inside my mind. Connections opened to dark and disused cells. My memories began to reawaken. I sensed them, endless points of light in a void. The sum of them, taken as a whole, was me.
Tertiary systems initializing.
A drop of liquid splashed in a shallow pool. The air was cold, and goose bumps rose on my skin. Somehow, somewhere, I was alive.
I sat up, naked in the cold, damp shadows. I sat on a bedroll on a concrete floor, surrounded by old boxes. I saw furniture, some covered and some not.
“Hello?” I called out, but no one answered me. I stretched, and tiny jolts twitched through my muscles. Vibrations hummed inside my chest. Energy flowed through me and urged me to move. Behind me, a drip of water splashed again.
I stood up and wobbled there in the dim light. Tiny jolts sparked through the muscles of my legs, making minute corrections.
Calibrating …
I noticed the heavy chain for the first time. It was wrapped tightly around my left ankle and fastened with a padlock. It snaked across the concrete six feet or so, where the other end was locked to a floor drain.
“Hello?”
The room was dimly lit, but I could still see. I saw boxes and furniture and old crates. These things triggered memories. From that sea of tiny lights within the void, certain points rose to the surface and I saw that the things around me were things I once knew.
Past a stack of crates, I saw electric light. I stepped toward it, dragging the chain behind me. It was a lamp on a box. It sat next to an old water-stained sofa. Lying on top of the sofa was a man.
A memory, brighter than the rest, swam up. I knew that man, and when I saw him, I froze. When I saw him, it hit me.
I am Faye Dasalia.
That was my name; I was Faye Dasalia. The vibrations in my chest seemed to grow. Who was this man, and why was he here with me?
His face was handsome, but it had been beaten. His Roman nose had been broken at least once, and his face was freshly bruised. He wore slacks and a sleeveless white undershirt. A scar stood out on the left side of his neck. I followed it to the meat of his shoulder, which was pocked with thick white scars.
I stepped closer, and glass crunched under my foot. A jar had broken, littering the concrete. I saw coins and a toothbrush. Off to one side was a pair of sharp scissors. I skirted the glass and took another step. The chain pulled taut as I knelt down beside him.
Who are you?
As his chest rose and fell, I felt warmth from him. As I watched, hot orange light pulsed at his neck, a thick branch on either side. I could see them, coursing there under his skin. They came from his chest, where a fiery coal pulsed.
His heart.
As I watched it slowly beat, more words appeared.
Primary systems active.
Secondary systems active.
Tertiary systems active.
More messages scrolled by, but they were too fast. After a few seconds, they stopped and vanished. A new message appeared there.
(1)Communication(s) pending. Displaying. Database synchronization pending. Updating …Header mismatch: Valle, Rebecca. Murder. Header mismatch: Craig, Harold. Murder. Header mismatch: Shanks, Doyle. Murder. Removing …Removing …Removing …Header mismatch: Ott, Zoe. Experimentation. Adding …Database synchronization complete. (0)Communication(s) pending.
The words faded as I watched the sleeping man. Those thick scars covered his neck, shoulder, and chest. There was a pattern to them. I leaned over him, moving my face closer. My breath made the hairs on his chest stand on end. Up close, I could see what it was that caused the scars. They were teeth marks, many sets of human teeth marks.
Something cold and hard pressed underneath my jaw. I heard a metallic click, and knew that sound; it was a pistol’s hammer. I raised my hands, my face still near his chest.
“Back away,” he told me. His eyes had opened. I hadn’t seen the gun or noticed him move. I moved back from him slowly. He forced my chin toward the ceiling with the gun. I sat back on my heels while he held me there and sat up on the sofa.
“You don’t have to be afraid,” I said.
“I’m not afraid,” he said, but the pulsing in his chest said otherwise.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know where I am.”
I looked at his face, and thought he would shoot me. His eyelids drooped, but there was fear in his eyes, like he had lost his senses.
A memory swam up from the sea of lights; it opened like a portal to show the inside, where this man knelt over me. Blood dripped from his hand as he held something sharp. A pair of scissors was pointed at my chest. The portal went dark, and shrank to a point of light that flew back to join the rest.
“I wasn’t doing anything,” I told him.
He stared at me until his eyes seemed to clear. He eased the pistol’s hammer back with his thumb and then moved the gun away.
“What are you going to do with me?” I asked. He didn’t respond to that.
“Do you remember me, Faye?”
Points of light sparkled through the memory field. I’d known him for a long time, and very well, though he seemed like a stranger. One light displayed our fingers, laced together. I remembered the warmth of his palm in mine.
“Yes, I know you. You’re Nico.”
His heart sped up and he said, “Do you remember what happened?”
I scanned the sea of lights, but I wasn’t sure. It was difficult to make sense of them all. He watched me, waiting.
“I don’t know how I got here.”
“It’s okay,” he told me after a while. “Someone is coming to help you retrieve them.”
“What do you mean? Retrieve what?”
“Your memories. You learned something …just before. You were in your apartment. You thought our cases were related …do you remember that?”
I did remember. Spots had formed on the floor, like blood but darker. They dripped down from the thin air. The air rippled, and a dark figure appeared. It had been right there, watching us the whole time. It raised the pistol it held in its right hand …
“It killed him first,” I whispered.
“You weren’t the target. It was your partner. You just got in the way.”
Doyle had been about to tell me something…. What was he going to say?
“How can you be sure that’s true?”
“We recovered a partial list of names from an illegally trafficked revivor. The list contained four names: the victims of the last three murders, and that of your partner, Doyle Shanks. I’m sorry, Faye. I didn’t know who he was.”
“But why was he on the list?”
“I was hoping you could tell me. What do you remember about him? Who was he?”
Again, light sparkled through the field of memories. I had known Doyle Shanks for a long, long time. I worked with him every day. We tracked the killer who finally killed us both. He was with me the night before Mae Zhu’s death, and dropped me off at my place. The next morning he’d called to—
The associated memory had come forth. It hung suspended over the rest of them, opened up like a portal. The images from that night were beyond it. He dropped me off; then I saw a distortion, like a glitch left by a splice. I slept, then was awakened by the strange call.
“What’s the matter?” Nico asked.
“The memory,” I said. “It’s wrong.”
“Wrong?”
I focused on the memory distortion. The glitch tied the two memories together, concealing a missing piece. I concentrated, peering through the strange gap. I saw Shanks drop me off at my place, and then …
Faye, I wish it didn’t have to be like this.
Shanks sat on the edge of my bed, getting dressed. I lay on my stomach, nude and still sweaty.
Me too.
When I said it, I was upset. I felt sick. He was rough and left me feeling sore and used. He smiled, though, like I had just agreed with him.
I do care for you, he said. He brushed my hair behind my ear with one hand. Why had I agreed to this?
This was a mistake, I said.
No, it wasn’t.
It was.
His eyes narrowed, and he leaned in very close. The warm brown of both his eyes was blotted out as his pupils dilated.
No, it wasn’t, he growled.
The anxiety left me, bleeding away. In its place, I felt relaxed. Happy, even.
This never happened, he said, no longer looking at me. I left you at the door and I never came inside. I have never been inside your apartment.
He got up and left me lying there in bed. He never looked back at me.
“I remembered it wrong,” I said to Nico. His heart went even faster.
“Zhang’s Syndrome,” he said to himself.
Through the memory’s portal, I studied the gap. What I saw there wasn’t real. It was a dream I’d had a long time ago. My brain’s decay had overlapped the memories. I couldn’t tell a dream from reality.
The portal closed and shrank to a point of light. I noticed then that it stood out from the rest. It appeared different somehow. It was dimmer than the rest. When it rejoined the rest in the field of lights, I saw more that were like it.
I drew one closer and peered inside of it. The memory itself was inconsequential, but the same strange glitch was there.
They’ve all been corrupted…. None of them are real….
I gazed down on the sea of information. When I did, I picked out more tainted memories, more than I could imagine. They were spread through the others like a cancer.
How many of them weren’t real? I saw ten, then twenty, then one hundred…. There were more than I could count.
“I remembered it wrong,” I whispered again, while the man named Nico just stood there and stared.
The life that I’d known was gone.
“Zoe, wake up,” a woman’s voice said.
I opened my eyes and found myself slouched in a folding chair behind a metal table. The walls were concrete, painted green, and at the far end, the overhead light was on but there was no one there. Before I could stop myself, I began to cry. I didn’t want to be there anymore.
“He needs you. Wake up,” the voice said. It was the dead woman, the one who got stabbed. She moved into the light where I could see her.
“Go away.”
“He called you, remember? You need to go to him.”
Tears were blurring my vision, but I could see something shifting at the far end of the room, under the overhead light. It was like a heat ripple or something, a distortion.
“You need to wake up right now!”
When I squinted, the ripples in the air took the shape of a person, like the outline of a big man. Before I could get a better look, they disappeared again.
“Zoe!”
The images faded as I snapped out of it, gasping in air. Over the years, I had gotten used to waking up and not knowing exactly where I was, but this time something was wrong.
When I gasped, something that was touching me pulled away all of a sudden. Someone had a hand on one of my legs and was dragging me. I was lying on what might have been a chair or a sofa, but it wasn’t mine. A breeze cut through the stuffy, warm air and blew over my face; it was outside air.
I opened my eyes and saw it was dark, but I could see the city lights through a window above me and I heard one of the monorails clacking by over the howl of the wind.
Startled, I tried to sit up, and my arms and legs hit something as I flailed. I was in an enclosed space, and there was someone leaning over me. Someone big, with sour, smelly breath.
Kicking with one leg, I scooted up until my back was to the window behind me, and I realized I was in the backseat of a car. I was bundled up for going outside, but my parka was unzipped and my purse was lying open on the seat beside me.
When I jumped, the man in the backseat with me recoiled but he didn’t leave. He was holding my ID card in one hand and looking down at me uncertainly. He was bundled up in dirty clothes and a thick, dirty jacket. He had a thick black beard, and a cap pulled down over his hair.
“What are you doing?” I slurred.
With my ID still in his hand, he hooked my purse on his thumb and used his other hand to grab my ankle. He gripped it hard, and I felt myself being pulled from the car.
There wasn’t any time to think about it; I stared at him, and the city lights all bled together as the backseat got as bright as daylight. As the colors leeched out of everything, the lights above the man’s head became visible, prickling oranges and greens and reds. Anger, fear, guilt, and greed all mixed together.
Reaching out, I changed them, and the grip on my ankle relaxed.
“Stop,” I told him, and he did.
Still sitting half in and half out of the backseat of the car, I looked around for the first time and saw the car was parked under one of the monorail junctions where several tracks merged and then branched back out, forming a concrete canopy above. Everything was covered in graffiti, and the ground was littered with trash and pieces of brown ice that formed on the rails, then crumbled off whenever one of the trains passed. There was traffic in the distance, but we were parked away from the well-used streets and sidewalks.
“Let go of me,” I said, pulling my leg until he dropped it. I zipped up my coat and scooted across the seat, out the door so that I was standing in front of him.
“Put my ID and anything else you took back in my purse.”
He did as he was told.
“Now give it back.”
He held it out and I snatched it out of his hand. Once I was outside, I could see the car was actually a taxicab. I got a better look at the guy and saw that he also had a laminated badge clipped to his jacket, displaying his license information. He must have been the driver.
“How did I get here?” I asked him.
“You hailed my cab,” he said. “You told me to bring you here.”
“I told you to bring me out here?”
“Well, not here exactly. You had the directions on a phone message. You played it for me and told me to bring you there.”
“So, what were you doing?”
“You stopped moving. I thought you passed out.”
“And you decided to rob me?”
“You wouldn’t move. I thought maybe you were dead.”
He was going to dump me. He was going to take my things and dump me under a monorail platform.
“Stand there,” I said, “and don’t move.”
My phone wasn’t in my purse or in my pocket, but I saw its green signal light glowing softly from the floor of the cab’s backseat. I leaned in and picked it up.
Pulling one glove off with my teeth, I managed to get it open and punch in the voice- mail code, despite the fact that my finger was shaking like crazy. Putting it to my ear, I clamped my other hand down over the one holding the phone to keep it still.
“Zoe, this is Agent Wachalowski …”
I smiled and felt little pricks of pain as my chapped lips cracked. That was right: he called. As I listened, he gave me an address where to meet him.
“…I’m sorry to call you out here, especially at night. If you’re not comfortable, call me back and I’ll come get you….”
I climbed back outside where the cabbie was still standing, breath streaming out of his nostrils. I held up the phone so he could hear.
“Is that where I asked you to take me?”
“Yeah.”
“How long was I out?”
“Maybe five minutes.”
Nico might still be there, although why he was there and why he wanted me to meet him in the middle of nowhere was beyond me. Why I had decided to even go was beyond me right at that moment too, but for whatever reason, I had gone that far.
“Get back in the cab,” I told the man, “and bring me to the address.”
“You’re here.”
“This is the middle of nowhere.”
“Down there,” he said, pointing. There was a chain-link fence hanging open down at the bottom of a concrete slope under the monorail. A rusted sign hung from it.
GUARDIAN METRO STORAGE SEGURO. SECURE. BLOQUE.
“It’s for storage.”
“That’s the address you told me to bring you,” he said. “What do you want?”
I glanced back at the fence. It looked like it led to a ramp that went underground.
“Just get back in the cab and leave.”
“What about my fare?”
“Go!” I snapped as the lights surged for a second. He didn’t say anything else; he just lumbered back around the car.
As the engine started up and he pulled away, I made my way down to the fence. It looked like normally it was locked, but now it was hanging open. Beyond it, a concrete ramp led down under the pavement, the way dimly lit by a single remaining light. I followed it down to a heavy-looking metal door with a keypad mounted next to it, and a glass window to the right that was dark. A strip of printed tape stuck over the keypad said AFTER HOURSENTER CODE.
The message had given the address and then “8C 1101,” which I thought was an apartment unit or something, but maybe it was the pass code to get in?
I punched in the combination and sure enough, there was a beeping sound and the door thumped and then squealed open with a sound that put my teeth on edge. Behind the door was a dingy, rickety- looking elevator car. I climbed in and the door slid shut.
The numbers started at 0 and went down to 8. I pushed the button for 8, causing it to light up halfheartedly, then flicker on and off as the car made its way down. As the metal walls of the elevator rattled and groaned, I could almost feel the surface getting farther and farther away. What was he doing down in a place like this, and why did he want me there?
The doors opened and I stepped out. After they closed again, it got very quiet. I stood there and listened for a minute, but all I could hear was the occasional drip of water. The musty corridor met a junction about ten feet in front of me, lit by fluorescent bulbs behind corroding metal cages.
“Hello?” I called. My voice echoed once, but no one answered.
A sign at the junction said A-I with an arrow pointing right, and J-R with an arrow pointing left. I took the right, and found the door labeled C.
Looking back the way I came, I began to wonder what the hell I was doing there, and reached into my purse for the flask. It was still half full, so I finished it off and put it back. When it hit my stomach, my forehead beaded up with cold sweat and I felt as though I might have to sit down, but after a minute it passed. This had to be the place. Whatever he wanted, I was supposed to go to him. I was supposed to help him.
I put my hand on the door and leaned against the frozen metal as my mind opened and what little light there was brightened. After a few seconds, I saw it; somewhere behind the door was a presence, a single consciousness. He was there, after all, and he was alone.
Before I could knock on the door, it opened, and he was standing there in the doorway. He was wearing his suit pants and shoes, but he had taken off his shirt and was wearing just a sleeveless undershirt. He must have had some kind of heater working inside, because hot air was drifting out from behind him. He looked down at me with his eyelids drooping. He looked out of it.
“You came,” he said.
That outfit he had on, it was the one from the green concrete room when the dead woman first showed him to me. I could see the scar branching out over his right shoulder.
“Yeah.”
He stared at me a minute longer, then took a step back, giving me room to get by. He looked drunk or drugged.
“Does anyone know you’re here?” he asked.
“Just the cab driver,” I said, slipping through the door. It was nothing but a big concrete box, filled with old junk. As I looked around, I saw furniture underneath plastic tarps, stacks of boxes, and other stuff filling up most of the available space.
“Why are we here?” I asked.
“I had to,” he said.
“Had to?”
As messed up as I was, I could see something was really weird about him. I hadn’t been around him that much, but he was acting totally different from before, like he was a totally different person. His eyes looked dull and his expression didn’t change when he talked.
“What happened?” I asked. When his aura phased into view, there was a thin membrane of light rippling under everything else, like a torn parachute falling from the sky. There was a bright cord tethering the membrane to someplace deep inside of him. I recognized that.
“Why are you so scared?”
He started to protest, but I soothed the membrane back, calming it.
“Don’t—”
I’m not sure what made me do it, but I put my hand on his.
“Shhh.”
The billowing light faded a little more but wouldn’t quite go away. Even as his expression and his breathing relaxed, the tension wouldn’t completely go away, and my heart kind of went out to him. Underneath his fear were other things: guilt, uncertainty, sadness, loneliness, and all the other things I knew so well. In him they were more structured than usual, but in some ways that seemed to make them all the more intense, like the colors were reined in but more concentrated and brighter.
“Stop doing that,” he said, but there wasn’t much conviction in his voice.
“Why?”
There was no one there to see. I put my other hand on his stomach, right under where the gun was strapped. It felt flat and firm under his shirt. Right away, I could tell from the way his patterns shifted that he hadn’t been touched in a long time. I knew how that felt too.
Maybe it was the alcohol, or just the total weirdness of the whole thing, but all I could think about right then was the way he felt under my hand. Without thinking, I ran my palm up and down his belly, feeling the ridges of muscle underneath his cotton undershirt.
“I know you miss it,” I said. “I know you know how I feel.”
He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t pull away either. He put a hand on my shoulder like he might push me away, but he just left it there as the colors shifted in front of my eyes. His eyes drooped further as I moved closer, my forehead almost touching his chest.
“I wanted to thank you,” I said into his shirt.
“For what?”
“For caring about me, even a little bit.”
Something flashed from the darkness behind him just then. When I looked over, I saw a pair of eyes glowing softly back in the corner.
Not now …
There was no one else there; I had checked before I went inside, so I had to be seeing things again. But then the eyes moved. Something got knocked over, and the eyes began to move closer.
“You …”
Breaking out of the trance, Nico jumped, looking disoriented. I pulled my hands back in surprise as a figure stepped out of the shadows, moving toward me. It was her, the dead woman from my dreams, naked except for a button-up shirt that was open at the top. She stepped forward again, then stopped short with the jingle of metal as she reached the end of the chain that was pad-locked to her ankle.
“You can’t be here,” I said, as Nico turned to look and saw her too. She was really there. For some reason, her hair was gone, even her eyebrows, but there was no mistaking her. She even had a thick, puckered pink gash closed up in the middle of her chest.
She stood there, following my eyes down to the wound.
“It got split,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” I said, taking a step back. Nico looked from her to me.
“Zoe, calm down.”
“Why is she here?”
“I need to know what she knows,” he said, gripping me by the shoulders. He held me hard enough so that it hurt a little.
“What?”
“She might be the only one that can tell me,” he said. “I need you to help me.”
It was a trick. He didn’t call me to him because he needed me; it was because he needed her. All he wanted me for was to do something for him. He wanted me to make his woman friend talk.
“Help you do what?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. His patterns were so chaotic right then that I doubt he even knew himself.
“Please,” he said.
“You want to know what’s in her head,” I said. “Fine.”
So I pushed, and I pushed hard. Maybe because I was drunk or maybe just because I was angry; it wasn’t fair that another woman was there, and it wasn’t fair that even though she was dead, he could only think about her and not me. It wasn’t fair that he only called me to do a trick for him. None of it was fair. Right at that moment I wanted to control her, to make her leave or back off, or maybe even hurt her if I could.
So, I was drunk, and I was mad, and I pushed hard. I pushed real hard.
The room got very bright, and everything went almost gray. I focused on the woman in front of me with more intensity than I think I’d ever turned on anyone. I reached out to the place where the light would bloom.
“Zoe?”
They didn’t appear. No lights, no colors …nothing. When I stared into her eyes, they didn’t change, they didn’t get dull and stupid. They just stared back.
My heart started beating faster. This had never happened before, not ever. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the patterns rippling around Nico’s head. It was working, just not on her.
I pushed harder, concentrating until the light got so bright she was all I could see; her face, her eyes, and the empty space where it should have been. Her thoughts, her consciousness, her self, her soul …whatever it was, it wasn’t there. The light blotted out everything else until the only thing that was dark was that empty spot, that empty hole where she should have been. It was like looking into an abyss or a black hole. When I pushed against it …
“Zoe!”
All at once, the lights dimmed back to normal. He was shaking my shoulder. The dead girl was still standing there, looking at me. I wiped my nose and there was blood.
“What happened? What did you see?”
She was just standing there, staring at me the way she did in my dreams. Those electric eyes watched me lifelessly as I backed away. I had to get out of there.
Nico reached out to me and I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. What was I doing there? What in the world ever compelled me to get involved in this whole thing? All I wanted was to get back to my apartment, lock the door, and forget about the whole thing—him, her …everything. It was a mistake. The whole thing was a mistake.
I stumbled to the door, and he followed me. I pushed on him again, making him stop before he could reach me.
“Your friend is gone,” I told him, and left. He didn’t come after me.
He didn’t even come after me.
After Zoe ran, I wasn’t sure what I should do. Faye had sat back down on the bedroll and hadn’t spoken in minutes.
“Who was that?” she asked finally.
“No one.”
I hadn’t wanted to risk poking around in her systems, because I knew she was seeded with Leichenesser, and the memory of the dock revivor melting away on that autopsy table was too fresh in my mind. That had been triggered when I started rifling through sections of memory I wasn’t supposed to be in.
“Where am I?” she asked.
As I looked down on her, she just stared up at me, her brown eyes replaced by moonlight silver. It was amazing how dehumanizing that one change alone was, but it was more than that. This was the first time I had ever seen a revivor that I had previously known so closely, and the change was subtle but startling at the same time. More than just the color of her eyes or her skin, it was her body language, her expression, the way she held herself; everything was different. It was as if her body had been inhabited by some completely different entity.
I sat down on the bedroll in front of her so that we were facing. Immediately, she reached out and took my hands in hers.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. Her palms and fingers were cold, with no pulse.
“I don’t know.”
“Hold still,” I said, “and stay quiet. I need to concentrate.”
Closing my eyes, I scanned the communications band until I found her signal. She was on an encrypted broadcast band.
“I can’t force my way in,” I told her. “I’m extending a connection; can you see it?”
She didn’t respond at first. I opened my eyes and saw her staring into space, slightly out of focus.
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you accept the con—”
Call connected.
Are you picking me up?
In front of me, her lips curled very slightly, forming the ghost of a smile. Or was that wishful thinking?
“Yes,” she said.
Answer back over the connection.
Yes. I’m picking you up.
Good. There should be a copy of any communications you’ve received in your memory buffer.
This feels strange.
I’m going to try to retrieve it.
Okay.
Her hands were like ice, but my palms were sweating.
The last time I tried this, I accidentally triggered a device designed to prevent anyone getting in.
Okay.
The revivor was destroyed.
Okay.
I moved more carefully this time around, sending a data miner across to feel out any security instead of brute-forcing it. Her systems were protected, but since she hadn’t been deployed, there were no modifications, and the miner managed to clear the way in.
What are you looking for?
Having only been reanimated for a short time, there wasn’t much in there. The bulk of it was a dynamic database. It looked like a full copy of the list I’d pulled off of the dock revivor.
I’ve got it.
I compared the list fragment I’d pulled from the dock revivor to the database of names I’d just recovered. There were no matches.
As I watched, it changed size in front of me. A couple seconds later, it did it again. It was getting smaller.
Do you know what this is? I asked Faye.
No. Do you?
A list of names, but the ones I was looking for aren’t there.
It keeps changing.
What?
It keeps getting updated.
How often?
It varies.
How do these updates occur?
A connection opens and they arrive, Faye said. First the list came; then, after that, the updates.
The list was keeping track of the names dynamically. That was it; the names were no longer on the list because the people they represented were dead. The database had been updated, and the names removed. If it was a synchronized database, then the updates were coming from somewhere. As the Heinlein rep had pointed out, revivors communicated in a hub-and-spoke fashion, not directly to one another but through a common point. That common point, that hub, must be where these people were based. If I could locate that …
The last change in the list size was already complete. I set up a monitor to watch all incoming ports to trace the next one when it came in, then went back to the list.
What do these names have in common? I asked her.
I don’t know.
Was your name on the list?
No.
I’m going to try to view the history. Hold on.
There were backups going back several iterations in case of corruption. Fishing through them, I found the names from my list fragment. They had been removed eight iterations ago:
Database synchronization pending. Updating …Header mismatch: Zhu, Mae. Murder. Removing. Header mismatch: Valle, Rebecca. Murder. Removing. Header mismatch: Craig, Harold. Murder. Removing. Header mismatch: Shanks, Doyle. Murder. Removing.
There were several iterations preceding that one. There were a lot of names in there. At least twenty had already been removed, and there were hundreds more.
I’m going to need a copy of those names. I’ll be careful.
Okay.
Rather than try to mirror the entire database, I decided it would be safer to go through and just scan the names one at a time and copy them manually. As I got closer to the most recent version, I noticed one of the iterations actually increased the overall size by a small fraction instead of decreasing it.
Hold on.
Shuffling ahead to that entry, I brought it up to view it.
Database synchronization pending. Updating …Header mismatch: Ott, Zoe. Experimentation. Adding.
I jerked my hands back, but those cold fingers locked around my wrists.
Who’s Zoe?
Let go.
Who’s Zoe?
Twisting my wrists, I knocked her hands away. I put a call in to Sean.
Sean, the revivors are communicating with a base of operations somewhere. That partial list we recovered from the dock revivor is part of a much larger one, and they’re making their way through it.
Why? Who are they?
I don’t know why, but do some digging. I’m sending the names to you now.
Roger that.
The entries have been getting crossed off more and more frequently. It looks like it started to ratchet up maybe six iterations ago….
That was around the time Ohtomo dispatched the National Guard. There was a string of removals prior to that, in between.
Faye, these early names are all your victims. The ones you were investigating.
I noticed that too.
It looked like in addition to that, the suicide bombing was referenced as well:
Database synchronization pending. Updating …Header mismatch: Strike 0. Terror. Removing.
The equipment, bodies, and weapons Tai was bringing in, the victims of Faye’s killer, the recent bomb attacks; all of it was planned in advance.
Sean, I need to know who these people are. They have something in common. Someone out there wants them dead, and they’ve gone to a lot of trouble and expense to make it happen.
If there’s a connection, I’ll find it.
In the meantime, I’m monitoring the channel so the next time a communication comes through I should be able to trace it back—
Faye twitched in front of me, her eyes widening. All at once her body tensed up, cords standing out in her neck.
Shit.
I backed off, recalling the miner and retreating from the memory I had accessed. Her fingers curled and I could see warnings spilling past. Was I too late? Had I already triggered it?
“Faye?” I asked out loud. She didn’t respond. Her eyes didn’t turn toward me.
Agent Wachalowski.
I turned my attention back to the connection between us. The message hadn’t originated from her. It came over another connection to her that had just been opened.
Who is this?
Agent Wachalowski, this is Samuel Fawkes. Why are you playing with one of my revivors?
Samuel never left.
It’s not your revivor.
It is now.
An override code was running; he’d taken remote control of Faye’s systems. Her command center switched over. If he wanted to, he could shut her down completely.
Wait. How do you know who I am?
Because I’ve been watching you.
Why?
Because you have been sticking your nose in my business for longer than you realize.
Why are you killing these people? What did they do? Who are they to you?
You wouldn’t believe me. Not for long anyway.
What does that mean?
They’ve already gotten to you, Agent.
The warnings stopped streaming by. Faye’s body relaxed.
What do you mean ‘they’? I found footage in a reporter’s memory of someone sending him to Tai’s place before I arrived. Is that who you mean? Are these the people who are on your list?
You’ll never know, Agent. I was going to wake you up, but now it’s too late.
Why are you killing them?
“Nico?”
It was Faye. She looked up at me with eyes that were wide and innocent in their lack of understanding. I remembered back to the female revivor at Tai’s place, the way when she spoke it had seemed like some alien intelligence had spoken through her, referencing memories it had never experienced. It didn’t feel that way when Faye said my name. She said it the way she used to say it. She remembered me. Maybe her memories were corrupted during the transition, and maybe some were even false, but she remembered me.
“Nico, help me—”
By the time I heard the sound, it was too late. The sound of sliding metal ended with an abrupt crunch as something pounded into my chest, sending burning pain up my neck and down both arms, all the way to my palms. My reaction was too late, and by then I couldn’t move, not even to take a breath.
She was still staring up at me, those electric eyes looking faintly distressed. Her fingers touched my chest gently as beneath them a blade extended from the base of her palm to the center of my rib cage, the point buried somewhere inside. Neither of us could speak as the hydraulics hissed, unable to push any farther. With a snap the blade retracted, tugging free from me and disappearing back into her arm. She reeled above me as I fell back, my vision swimming with black blotches that turned everything dark.
“Nico?”
I couldn’t move. Even with my systems firing off, trying to right me, I couldn’t move a muscle. I sensed her there, still looking down on me as warm blood seeped through my shirt. Had she finally remembered me? Would she help me, or leave me?
I wondered that as the stream of warnings ceased and went out.
At my front door, I fumbled for the key. My hands were shaking badly, and all I wanted to do was to find it and get inside before the jerk next door came out, because I really didn’t think I could handle him right then. Whatever had made me get involved in this whole mess in the first place was a drunken mistake in judgment. I wasn’t cut out for any of it. I just wasn’t the kind of person who got involved in whatever it was I had gotten involved in.
I found the key and started to put it in the lock, but I couldn’t keep it steady. The tip of the key scratched around the keyhole as I moved closer to the knob. I wanted to forget any of it ever happened. I didn’t want to see Nico or the woman or any of them ever again. All I wanted was to get warm and watch TV, and drink until I stopped feeling like I did.
The tip of the key found the slot and I jammed it in, turned it, then pushed the door open and went inside, letting it swing shut and slam behind me. I turned the bolt, wishing there were three more of them.
After having not been in my apartment for a little while, I couldn’t help but notice it had an off smell. I needed to clean the place up. I threw my keys on the coffee table and shrugged out of my coat, hanging it on the rack. I felt dizzy. Why did he show that revivor to me? Why was he with that woman? Why was she chained, and what was he doing with her down there?
Shivering, I went into the kitchen and poured a drink, drained it, then poured another one. The heat moved down my throat into my belly, but when I wiped my face, my hand was still shaking and the sweat there was cold. That had been the woman from my dream. It was definitely her. Three more drinks, and the shaking still wouldn’t stop.
I hated the thing that Karen called my gift. From the bottom of my soul, I hated it all the way back to when I dreamed of my father’s mangled body, and every second since. I hated everything about it, but I learned something back in that storage room, and that was that hate it or no, I relied on it. I never realized until that moment how much I relied on it.
When I pushed on that revivor, I felt something I’d never felt before in my life. When I focused on her and nothing happened, it felt like I had gone blind. None of the colors appeared and I couldn’t sense any of her thoughts or her feelings or even her mood. Until she stepped out where I could see her, I hadn’t even known she was standing a few feet away from me. It was terrifying.
There was no way to make her go away, or make her go to sleep, or decide to leave me alone, or tell me who she was, how she got there, how she knew him …nothing. She could do whatever she wanted, and there was nothing I could do about it.
I couldn’t stop replaying that moment. There was just a gap, like a dark pit. Looking into it was like stepping through a door and finding no floor. It felt like if I pushed into that void, I would fall inside with no way of knowing what was down there or if it even had an end.
I drained the glass and poured out another one, and that’s when the ripples appeared in the air in front of me, right between where I was standing and the fridge. The distortion took the shape of a man, and then just like that there was someone standing there, as if he’d appeared from out of nowhere. The glass slipped out of my hand and smashed on the floor between us.
“Damn it!” I hissed.
He was a big man dressed in a jacket and coat, with some kind of cloak or poncho draped over that. The coat’s hood was up over his head. It struck me that it might have been the first time I actually saw a vision appear while I was watching.
“You guys need to start wearing bells,” I said. “Look at this.”
He stood there, not moving, as I grabbed a paper towel and sopped up the booze, pushing the broken glass away against the bottom of the counter. I grabbed a new glass and filled it.
“Look,” I said, feeling tears forming, “I don’t think I have anything left today, okay? How about you all leave me alone and let me just pass out tonight?”
He didn’t say anything; he just kept watching me.
“Please—”
He reached out and grabbed my shoulder. His hand was real. He wasn’t a dream or a hallucination; he was real.
He squeezed, and it hurt. I panicked, hitting at his arm, but he didn’t even seem to notice.
“Help!” I screamed.
I tried to focus on him and nothing happened. Just like earlier, I couldn’t see him or feel him. It was just like it had been with the dead woman in the storage unit: nothing but an empty, dark hole.
“You’re—”
He shook me hard and bashed me into the counter. Everything went white for a second when my head bounced off the wall; then he pulled me back toward him. No one had ever moved me like that; it was like I weighed nothing to him at all. Before I could do anything, I was dragged backward, out of the kitchen, and thrown down onto the sofa.
He was dead, just like the woman. It was a revivor, and I had no way to control it.
When I looked up, he was coming right toward me. I glanced to the front door and saw my next-door neighbor standing there. He was looking in, his eyes wide, but he wasn’t doing anything.
“Help!”
The dead man turned and saw him. For just a second, the old ginger man looked calm, almost confident, but as the revivor closed the distance, his eyes went wide and he just stared, like he was frozen.
With a loud snap, the revivor’s palm split apart and a big, sharp blade shot out of it. It arced over his head with a whistling sound, and the next thing I knew Red was gasping as blood began to gush out of his neck. The blade whipped around again and he grabbed his belly as a squiggly red mess spilled out into his bloody hands.
The big guy pulled me away, and I heard my neighbor’s body fall wetly onto the floor. He reached into his pocket with his free hand and pulled something out, yanking the cap off of it with his mouth and spitting it onto the floor. It was a needle.
I struggled, but he was too strong. I felt a prick as the needle stuck into the side of my neck.
…but this isn’t how it happens, I thought. I’m supposed to meet her three times….
He pulled the syringe away, and all of a sudden he convulsed. His eyes bugged out and his whole body started to shake as the fistful of my shirt slipped from his hand and I fell back onto the floor. When I looked up, Karen was there, standing behind him. She had something black in her hand with two prongs sticking out of it. She had stuck them right in the guy’s side, and I heard an electric popping sound.
She pulled the prongs away and the popping stopped. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t move and I fell over onto my side.
The guy turned around toward Karen. She tried to stick him again with the stun gun and he hit her hard, causing her to stumble, waving the stunner blindly. He batted her arm away and shoved her down onto the floor.
“Karen?” I mumbled, trying to focus. Blood was coming out of her nostrils and she was trying to get up as his foot stomped down and kicked the stunner away. I looked up in time to see the blade pulling back.
“Wait!” I screamed, holding up my hands. I tried to scramble back, putting myself between them as he got ready to cut her. “Wait! Don’t!”
He paused for just a second and looked from me to her, then back to me. I saw an orange light flicker behind his pale yellow eyes, and for a second it looked like he was reading something only he could see.
“I can fix it!” I said. Karen was shaking her head, and her eyes were starting to clear.
“Zoe, don’t….”
With some effort, I managed to get back up on my feet. He watched me as I staggered a few steps closer to him.
“I can fix it,” I told him. The orange light continued to flicker in his eyes, and the blade was still poised like it was ready to strike.
“I can make her forget,” I said.
“I know you can,” he said.
The orange light went out, and with a loud snap, the blade disappeared. His hand went back together and he relaxed his fingers.
Before he could change his mind, I went over to Karen and dropped onto my knees next to her. With my remaining energy, I concentrated until the brightness came.
“What are you—”
“Sleep.”
Her eyelids got heavy, and she started to sink back down onto the floor.
“Zoe, no….”
“Sleep.”
She rolled onto her back and went limp, her breathing becoming slow and easy.
“You didn’t hear anything tonight,” I told her. “I was never in trouble and you didn’t come up here to help me. You didn’t see anyone else here tonight.”
“Okay …”
“As far as you will remember, no one was here.”
She nodded and I wiped my eyes, then leaned in closer so I could whisper in her ear.
“If I don’t see you again,” I said, “thank you, Karen.”
She murmured something in her dreamlike state, but I didn’t hear what it was as the big, cold hand came down and grabbed me by the back of my shirt. I was lifted up off the ground as everything went black, and all I could do was hope that whoever he was and whatever he wanted, he would just take me and go, because if he decided to kill her, there wasn’t anyone left who could stop him.