Despite the beating she took, Calliope was still going full tilt. That was pretty good considering she didn’t have the benefit of any augmentation. As I eased adrenaline into my bloodstream, I wondered how much longer my body would hold out, but it was the only way to keep up with her. By the time she hit the last landing, I was a half flight behind her, my vision starting to tunnel around that dark spot that floated in front of my eyes. She shoved open the door at the base of the stairs and barreled through.
I ducked through after her, and the cold in the stairwell gave way to air that was warmer and damper. There were some lights mounted farther down the corridor, but not many. I bumped up my visual filters to allow more light in. How could she even see where she was going?
A sheet of clear plastic hung across a doorway ahead, cut down the middle, and Calliope swiped it to either side as she punched through. I got past it in time to see her darting through another sheet across the room, but before I could close the distance, my foot collided with something and I fell forward, crashing down onto the concrete floor.
“Cal!” I shouted. Somewhere not too far away I heard the buzzing and squealing of the electric lift coming to a stop and the gate rising open. Radio chatter began to echo down the dark corridors.
Damn it …
Bleeding again, I got back onto my feet and looked behind me to see that I had tripped over a body. There were a pile of them stacked along one wall, arms and legs sprawled. They were all nude, facedown, and arranged in rows. Some of them had the flesh cut away from the backs of their necks and heads. A woman’s body had slid off one of the stacks and was lying faceup, tangled black hair plastered to the floor and a series of electrodes stuck to her forehead.
Sean, are you getting this?
I’m reading you, but they’re blocking the visual feed. What do you see?
I’m not sure. There are a lot of bodies down here.
Leaning in to one of the bodies that had the skin stripped away from the back of its head, I zoomed in on a square hole that had been sawed through the skull to expose a section of glistening brain matter. Scanning the tissue, I saw several thin objects, like tiny rods or tubes, embedded inside. I looked back to the corpse’s face; it was a young man, his blue eyes clouded over.
These aren’t revivors; they were human beings.
I jumped as a few bursts of gunfire went off not far from where I was. Several more single shots followed.
“Hold!” a voice barked over an amplifier.
“There!” another voice shouted. It was the Special Forces team. They were getting closer.
I pushed the plastic aside and ran down the hallway, where a series of thick cables snaked along the floor and walls. Through another sheet up ahead I saw a cloud of flame shoot through the air, accompanied by a high-pitched hiss. I heard the roar and crackle of fire as hot air began to blow through the seam and down the corridor.
When I pushed through the last sheet of plastic, I immediately smelled burning flesh. The air was heavy with a stinking mixture of charred hair and meat. Ahead I could see stacks of huge, rust-corroded cylinders that were used to store long-distance cable. They towered up into the darkness where I could just make out a giant mechanical arm reaching across them, sixty feet overhead.
A doorway to my right led into a large open area where I could still register a bunch of human thermal signatures, in spite of the rising heat. As I watched, another jet of flame arced through the room and lit up rows of figures strapped down into chairs before fading again. Just past the doorway against the wall, I could see a stairway leading up to some kind of control room. I ducked through into the room and hugged the wall on the other side as the smell of blood, urine, and antiseptic hit me.
Shit …
The room was filled with dozens of people, all sitting in chairs and each with a small table in front of him or her. They were all bent over, foreheads touching the tabletops where their heads and shoulders were strapped with bands of packing tape. Each of them had a surgical opening cut along the back of the head and neck that exposed the muscle and bone underneath, and the back of the skull was cut away in a neat square to expose the brain tissue inside, like the bodies I had seen piled in the back room. It looked like each hole contained a bundle of neuron probes that were inserted into the brain.
The people were arranged in rows that stretched off into the shadows. In the far corner, a fire was beginning to rage.
Sean, I found the bodies you picked up on the satellite scan.
Are they still alive?
I think so.
Each body had an IV rack next to it, the tubes trailing down under the hospital robes they wore. At each station, a wire connected a high-voltage battery cell to a thick needle embedded into the occupant’s chest. A throw switch allowed them to be jolted on cue. Beneath each chair was a plastic bucket stained with human waste. The bottom of each chair had been bored through so they could eliminate without being moved.
This is bad, Sean.
One of the victims, a young woman with a cluster of star tattoos near one eye, was dead. Her vitals monitor showed a flatline, but the others were alive. Crouching next to the man sitting closest to me, I pulled the packing tape away from his face so I could see one of his eyes. When I shined a light in it, the pupil contracted. His limbs were atrophied and pocked with bedsores.
I don’t know if these people can be saved.
A high-pitched hiss screamed through the air again as another jet of flame lit up the room and washed over the bodies in the rows. In the swell of light, I saw skin wrinkle and blacken before being peeled away, IVs bursting open in the heat. None of them moved as their flesh was seared away.
“There and there!” a voice boomed, as two rows of the hooded Special Forces soldiers began filing in from across the room, each taking one side. More flames shot through the air, and heat singed my nostrils.
There was no way to stop it from happening. If I gave my position away, they’d turn on me as well, and there was nowhere to take cover from the flames. The smoke was getting thick; it wasn’t safe to stay down there without protection. I had to find Calliope and get her back up to the surface.
My knees buckled under me without warning and my stomach twisted. For a second my vision blurred around that blind spot, and I felt sweat trickle down my back.
Sean, the Special Forces soldiers are here. They’re burning everything—
Get out of there, Nico.
Keeping low, I scanned the room for an exit. There were three options; back the way I came, up the stairs to the control room, or another door on the far wall where a series of wires trailed from the direction of the burning bodies.
The backscatter showed more people through that doorway, along with rows of what might be computer equipment. The bodies were seated, except for one that might have been Calliope.
Looking to the top of the stairwell, I could clearly make out two figures through the wall, both of them revivors. I picked out their signatures; one of them wasn’t on file, but the other one I knew.
It was Faye’s.
“Hit each one!” the radio voice barked. Over the racket, a gunshot boomed and I saw the commanding soldier stride down a row of captives. Smoke drifted from the barrel of his gun as he placed it to the temple of the next one in line, even as her flesh burned. He fired, blowing out the opposite side of her face.
“Nothing left behind, people! That means nothing!”
Faye was there. When Samuel took control of her, he brought her to this place, for whatever reason.
Wachalowski, get out of—
I cut off the communication feed. The fire was consuming half of the bodies by then, and the air in front of me was rippling crazily in the heat. The cacophony of voices, gunfire, and roaring flames began to sound as if it was underwater, punctuated by the high-pitched screams of the flamethrowers.
A warning message appeared in front of me, then another. Warning me about the temperature, warning me about my wounds and the chemical imbalances inside of me that were beginning to hit critical. A choice had to be made. I had to go one way or the other.
My legs felt like lead as I moved up the stairs, wondering whether I would be shot or burned before I ever got to the top. I didn’t turn around to see what was happening behind me; I just moved forward until my palm touched the door and I pushed it open. Everything seemed to slow down as a blast of cool air blew over me, condensing the sweat covering my face and neck into cold, hard drops. Inside, everything was white and clean and crisp.
Faye was there, sitting in a chair and looking up at me, while a large figure stood behind her. The warm hazel of her eyes had been replaced with that cold synthetic light, but it was close enough. Even without her hair, and the dark veins that branched beneath her skin, at that moment, I felt as if it was close enough.
Faye was dead. I walked away from her a long time ago, and by the time I regretted it, she was gone for good. She was dead; I had seen it with my own eyes, but the figure sitting in that chair and that face looking up at me were hers. That voice and the memories in that cold brain were hers. It was close enough.
Wasn’t it?
I fired, the muzzle flash lighting up the right side of her face for an instant before the figure behind her jerked and began to fall.
Her face was specked with black, and an oily drop began to roll down her cheek like a tear.
Stop, Agent Wachalowski.
The warning messages filled my entire line of sight, scrolling by until everything else was blocked out and I felt myself falling. The warnings flickered and snapped off just before everything in front of me went white except that one black blind spot. After a moment, that dissolved too, and I felt my head hit the floor.
Who is this?
Faintly, I heard what sounded like my gun landing nearby.
This is Samuel, Agent.
Nothing hurt anymore. I was disoriented, but I thought that I had finally pushed it too far. I had finally gone as far as I could go, and my body failed me.
His words floated in front of me: This is where it ends.
I followed a bunch of wires away from the strapped-down bodies and through a metal door that led into another big room, and that’s when I stopped. I was where I needed to be.
Across the room, the back wall was stacked top to bottom with big, clear plastic boxes, all with a door on the front. There were people in the cages, some up against the glass and some on their sides. Wires were spread out over the floor and up the sides of the plastic boxes, where they dropped through to connect to the heads of the people inside.
A loud screech came from behind the door in back of me, then another. I heard flames pop and burn. The goons were right behind me.
The room spun, like I got a head rush, and I heard screaming. It hit like a wave. It felt like the noise came from the people in the cages, but they weren’t moving. Their mouths were shut. There were no screams, not really, but the one who called me was there.
Eyes watched through the plastic as I went to the cage on the far bottom left and looked in. There was a girl in it, some scrawny little bitch I’d never seen before. She looked like she weighed ninety pounds, if that, with long, greasy red hair and a big beak nose. She sat on the floor and looked out at me.
“Who are you?” I asked. She just stared over that beak. Her hands were shaking in her lap, and she was sweating like a pig. Blood had come out of her right nostril in a big fat drop on her sweaty top lip.
Somewhere nearby a gun went off, and snapped me out of it.
“Hey!” I said thumping the glass with the gun I forgot I had. “Who are you?”
She put her face to the glass, and all of a sudden her eyes went freaky. The black part twitched, getting bigger and smaller. The blood drop got fatter and ran down her chin. With one bony finger she tapped the glass next to the lock, and I knew what to do. I pointed the gun at the bolt housing and pulled the trigger.
The plastic was tougher than it looked; I had to shoot it three times. I pulled open the door and went to grab her when she flinched, and all of a sudden I felt like a hand pushed me back. I stood there with my hand out.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
“Zoe,” she said, and right then the goons came piling in. Our own guys …they just came in, guns out, and started shooting.
Bullets punched through the cages in front of me and I saw blood spatter inside. A woman’s head blew apart as specks of shattered plastic came falling down over us.
I grabbed the redhead’s wrist and dragged her out of the cage. Her knees hit the floor; then she got her legs back and hid behind me with two fistfuls of my jacket.
“Get off!”
Something hit the glass nearby and I saw some kind of brick with a flashing light on it stuck to the middle cage. I shoved her back, and the bitch pulled me down on top of her behind a rack of equipment. When I looked up, it was just in time to see the thing go off. The floor shook as the boom pounded my ears and a blast of heat hit me full-on. The glass blew into dust in a circle around it, until the whole thing was gone.
Through the ringing in my ears, I could hear her screaming behind me. I turned around to shut her up and saw two of the soldiers standing over us just a few feet away.
The girl was standing between us, hands clamped on her ears, toe-to-toe with the goons. She stood there staring at them, and they had us in their sights, but they stopped.
Then, just like that, one of the soldiers pointed his gun at the one next to him and put a slug right in his ear. No reason; he just blew his fucking head right off. His buddies got splattered, and turned on him like he’d gone nuts. The one that got shot was still falling when the guy that did it dropped his rifle and turned the flamethrower on the rest.
“Come on!” she yelled, pointing at the door that led back out the way I came. She didn’t have to say it twice.
We barreled through the door, gunshots booming over the shriek of the flamethrower.
I opened my eyes and saw a blue sky above me. It was a cool blue, with just a few white clouds, and even though I was shivering a little, it made me think of summer. The sound of wind and surf filled my ears, and just under that, faintly, were the sounds of others nearby as they talked and laughed and played.
Was I dreaming? Had I lost consciousness at the last moment in the factory, and was I imagining this place? Maybe I blacked out and the revivor finally killed me. Maybe it was all some kind of euphoria caused when my brain sensed the shock to my body was too much and released a flood of dopamine to ease my slipping away. Maybe I was finally going to die.
Agent Wachalowski.
That was no dream. The words hung there against the blue sky, then faded. I recognized the communications signature from when Fawkes broke in and hijacked Faye back in the storage unit. For better or worse, he was keeping me alive. I accessed my JZI and found a security lockdown had been initiated. He’d hacked into it, then, and been detected.
Where am I? I asked.
You haven’t moved. Your friend Ms. Dasalia is still near you. She is kneeling directly next to you. I know that matters to you. I found the way you looked at her when you stormed in a little touching.
What did you do to me?
Your cerebral implant was also developed at Heinlein Industries, Agent. You might be surprised how similar some of the technology is to the implants used in revivors.
No, I wouldn’t. What did you do?
I used a back door to communicate with your implant, briefly. I convinced it that fatal toxin levels were detected in your bloodstream. It put you in deep sedation to stop the spread until it could neutralize them.
I tried to move, but my body wouldn’t respond. Even when I rolled my eyes to look around, my view didn’t change, which meant the images were being fed to my brain directly and that my eyes, in reality, were still closed.
Warning messages began to flash over the image of the blue sky. He was hacking through the security locks to get access to the JZI’s main command functions. The only way to stop him would be to shut down the implant, but the emergency protocol was still in effect. It wouldn’t accept the shutdown code until it determined it was safe to do so.
Why not just kill me?
The systems you’re outfitted with are impressive. I could use a revivor like you in my ranks.
I’m not wired for reanimation.
Not yet.
I’d faced revivors in the field back in the service and again at home. In all that time, I’d never had one try to hack into my systems before; I didn’t think they were capable of it. I’d broken into the control center of many revivors before, though. I understood them. I knew how they functioned.
Before Fawkes could break through, I shunted a virus over the connection back toward the source. There was a noticeable lag before it dropped into his memory and executed.
I realized he wasn’t in the factory. Wherever he was, he was far away. Really far.
His next communication was garbled. The virus mapped his systems, then took control of them. When it was finished, it sent a full report, which included access codes to all of his systems.
His assault stopped. Before he could give the command to the revivor in the room with me, I severed his command spokes. Every revivor in the facility was cut off from him.
Agent, wait.
I sifted through the access codes and found the trigger to the small capsule of Leichenesser that Heinlein implanted in the skull of every revivor.
Agent, I have placed a lock on the necrotizing capsule contained inside Faye Dasalia. If you kill me and that connection times out, she’ll die too.
You’re already dead, Fawkes, and so is she.
You understand what I mean. Destroying me will be a mistake, Agent. There’s more going on here than you realize.
I connected to his system and tried to trace his location. Wherever he was, it was outside the country. He’d set up some elaborate chain of reroutes on the circuit.
Where the hell are you? I asked.
I’m right where I’m supposed to be, suspended in stasis fluid, in a plastic blister, in a metal box buried under a warehouse of other identical metal boxes. The only difference between me and the rest of the PH soldiers awaiting deployment is that I arranged to be outfitted with capabilities they don’t have. They keep me conscious and allow me to still act, even though I can’t move.
I wondered if that could be true, or if it was meant to keep me off his trail. If he had developed some means to do what he said, it was possible he was on a base somewhere in the world, still awaiting deployment. A PH soldier might sit in a storage depot for years before it was needed. If he had contact with the outside world and enough resources, he might have been able to orchestrate everything remotely.
This was planned a long time ago, he said. If you’re going to destroy me, at least take the information I have. If you don’t, it was all for nothing.
What information? What are you talking about?
It all goes back to Ning Zhang.
What does that mean? I asked. What does Zhang have to do with this?
What Olav Sodder first discovered wasn’t what he thought it was. I realized after studying the revivor Zhang that his memories weren’t corrupted at all, as everyone had believed. When I studied him long enough, I found that it was actually just the opposite; as a revivor, he had an almost total command over his memories, so much so that he could pick them out and access them almost like pages of computer memory. I can definitively say now that this analogy is not far from the truth.
You said yourself in one of the interviews with Zhang that events happen one way, not two, I said.
Yes, but the assumption was always that the revivor’s memory was corrupted somehow during reanimation and that one memory was the original true one, and the other was the corrupted false one. I compared the brains and the components of many different subjects, and there was no physical or chemical difference between those that were affected and those that weren’t. Whatever happened, it wasn’t a corruption that happened during death or during reanimation. There could only be one other explanation: the corruption occurred before death. Zhang’s reanimation didn’t cause the memory corruption, Agent, it removed it. The original memory, the living memory, was the false one. Not the other way around.
At that moment, I finally understood him. He was talking about Zoe. Not her specifically, but the phenomena she could create.
Are you saying someone altered Zhang’s memory when he was alive?
Yes.
And he remembered the truth, the way things really happened, after he was dead?
Zhang never committed the crime he was accused of; someone convinced him that he did.
Who? Why?
The ones who actually did it, I imagine. As for why, who knows? It served someone’s purpose.
Eyewitnesses came forward in the Zhang trial.
I was able to interview one such witness after reanimation. The memory of witnessing that event was a lie as well.
The memory was implanted? Is that what you’re saying?
I know you have some idea of what I’m talking about, Agent. Memory is a tricky thing. It plays tricks on us all the time. In the hands of a master, it can be manipulated, I promise you. You yourself were a victim before I had Zoe Ott removed.
She’s just one—
She’s just one of many, Agent. Your friend isn’t unique; she’s one of thousands, and they have been using you to get to me. When I started analyzing the new revivors we brought online, I began uncovering more and more instances of what we called Zhang’s Syndrome. As reanimation technology got more sophisticated, the memories became more specific. I catalogued them, trying to create a bigger picture, and eventually one formed. I began to see an order to the thousands of alterations, and an organization took shape. As I studied the recovered memories, I began to see themes, policies, agendas, and, eventually, names.
The list. A fragment of that list had been pulled from one of Samuel’s illegal imports; the rest later from Faye.
If these people really exist and they’re so powerful, then how did you manage to kill them so easily?
Because they have an Achilles’ heel. One that your friend may have noticed. They can’t read revivors.
I remembered Zoe’s reaction when I put her in front of Faye back in the storage unit, the surprise on her face and the fear in her eyes when she backed away. It sobered her, as much as anything could have. At the time, I thought it was a reaction to seeing the body walking and talking again. Some people could handle it and some couldn’t. Now I thought I understood.
They can’t read them, they can’t control them, and now they understand; we know too much.
My mind struggled with what he was saying. I couldn’t deny the reality of Zoe’s power. If she had it, others like her could too. Could there be any truth to what he was saying?
It doesn’t matter, Fawkes.
You don’t believe that.
You can’t justify those bombs going off downtown.
I knew how to take control of as many revivors as I needed; the only trick was getting them out of storage so I could do it. I used the ones I smuggled to strike the key players who might get in the way, then caused enough chaos to threaten the security of the city. When the troops were finally deployed, I used them to eliminate the rest.
All of them?
Enough to hurt them. Enough to set them back decades.
The blue sky warped, then flickered in front of me for a second. The sound of the voices and the surf skipped, and there was a pop of static.
Have you seen the prisoners they keep down here and the experiments they’re conducting on them?
To defeat an enemy, you have to understand them, Agent. I designed those experiments. It’s one thing to know people can influence the minds of others; it’s another thing to understand how it’s done and if anything can be done to stop it. Those experiments are the result of years of brain-pathway data amassed at Heinlein Industries. If the experiments hadn’t been necessary, I wouldn’t have to take the risk of breaching Heinlein’s system.
Or killing Cross.
These people knew someone was on to them and they were starting to figure it out, with the help of the likes of you and your friend Dasalia. They traced it to Heinlein, and one of them, Rebecca Valle, decided to influence Cross and her own son. They dragged them into this, not me.
But you had them killed.
We have to win at any cost. I know you understand that.
The floor shook underneath me again, making my teeth rattle. Whatever was happening, it was getting worse.
It’s time for you to wake up, Agent.
I went to trigger the Leichenesser capsule—even if it meant losing what was left of Faye—but before I could, the connection dropped. The blue sky went dark. Somehow he’d managed to isolate the virus and get control back.
His command functions all dropped off and my JZI reset, then began to reinitialize. As soon as the system came back online, I fired a stim into my bloodstream.
My eyes snapped open. The big revivor was kneeling over me, its shirt sticky with black blood. For the first time, I noticed the explosives strapped underneath its coat, the blue light of the timer counting down slowly. Its right forearm was splayed apart down the middle and the tip of the blade inside was inches from my neck. It was waiting on the order from Fawkes, but the command spoke was still cut.
Faye was next to it. She was looking down at me with what I wanted to believe was concern or compassion, but the truth was I couldn’t be sure.
“Nico—”
My gun was gone. I swatted the revivor’s arm away, and the point of the blade slammed into the floor next to my ear. I grabbed its coat and reached behind my back for the field knife tucked in my belt. Pain bored into my chest as I pulled myself up and planted my shoulder in its gut, pushing it back. When it braced one foot, I dug the knife in behind its Achilles’ tendon and sliced through it.
Off balance, the revivor began to fall. I followed it down, then straddled it as it hit the floor. It bucked underneath me as I put one knee on the side of its face and jammed the knife in the back of its neck. With a violent jerk, I severed the spine.
“Nico!”
According to the counter, Faye had only minutes left before the Leichenesser capsule triggered. The Special Forces team was close. It was only a matter of time before they found the clean room. I opened the revivor’s coat and saw the LCD ticking down in the mass of wires. There was no way I could defuse it, but it had a reset mechanism …a dead- man’s switch in case the revivor was taken down. The revivor watched, unable to move as I pushed the button and the timer reset.
“Faye, come here,” I said, pushing a chair toward her. “Sit there. Hurry.”
She did as I said, then turned suddenly as something crashed behind us. I saw her hands go up as the door flew open and Calliope stormed in with a gun in her hand.
“Don’t shoot!” I yelled, holding out one hand. Zoe was with her, blood smeared under her nose as she lingered by the doorway.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” Cal barked, and there was fear in her voice but not panic.
“Hold on,” I said.
“Now!”
I spun the chair around and used my knife to cut through the skin at the base of Faye’s skull. As I scanned through the muscle and bone, I could see the revivor components clustered there. I had to go deep, but not too deep. The tip of the blade shook and I grabbed my wrist with my free hand to try to stop the tremors caused by the stim.
“What the hell are you doing? Let’s go!” Cal snapped behind me.
Faye, hold still. This won’t take long.
Okay.
If it doesn’t work, I’m sorry.
I dug the tip of the knife through to the casing where the Leichenesser capsule was housed. The black fluid was greasy under my fingertips as I coaxed it back.
Using the edge of the blade, I pried the casing free and pulled, breaking the connections. It slid out of its chamber and I pulled it away. The unit popped in my hand and white smoke began to pour off my fingers as it consumed the revivor’s blood.
“Faye?”
Black fluid leaked from the hole, branching down the back of her neck, but the Leichenesser hadn’t touched her. She turned back and looked at me from the corner of one eye. Cal was still sticking the gun out, not sure what to do. I waved the remaining smoke from my hand.
“Faye, you’re okay,” I said. “You’re okay; I’m going to take you out of here.”
“What happened to Fawkes?”
“He’s shut off from the rest of the revivors, but it won’t last. We have to get out of here.”
Footsteps were clambering up the steps toward the clean room. Two figures barreled through, and I caught the glow from their eyes before one turned to shut the door behind them. They were both armed with automatic rifles.
“This way,” Faye said, pushing a narrow panel open. Her voice was swallowed by a high-pitched shriek from the stairs. Flames poured through the space in the doorway, crawling across the ceiling, before one of the two new revivors managed to push it shut and cut off the flow in a puff of blue. Its palm sizzled as it held the door shut and then locked it.
“Cal, Zoe, this way!” I shouted. Cal was one step ahead of me, and Zoe followed her. I pushed them through the narrow opening.
“Where does it lead?” I asked Faye.
“I don’t know. He said away from here.”
Something hit the door to the clean room hard, and charred paint chips scattered to the floor. The two revivors ignored us and took up positions at the corners of the room. Each took aim at the entrance, waiting for the Special Forces team to come.
I took Faye by the wrist.
“Faye, come with me,” I said. She didn’t move. Cal grabbed my arm and pushed a gun into my hand.
“Faye, come on,” I said. “Come with me. I’ll take you out of here.”
She just put her hand on mine, though, and pushed it away. She gave it a gentle squeeze, her palm and fingers cool and dry.
“Faye—”
She put one hand in the middle of my wounded chest and shoved me back.
That was the last time I saw her.
Cal pulled me the rest of the way as the panel slammed shut.
Go, Faye said; then the link cut out.
When I looked back at them, Calliope was shouting something and Zoe was just staring up at me like she was seeing me for the first time. Even for her, there was something strange about her expression. It was like she had forgotten who I was.
On the other side of the panel, I heard gunfire and the shriek of a flamethrower. I felt the heat on my face as it radiated from the panel in front of me.
I checked the magazine of the gun Cal had handed me. Half the rounds were left.
“Stick close,” I told them. The heat was starting to get intense, and at this depth, between the fire and the smoke, the air would get used up fast.
We didn’t encounter any soldiers on the way back. We ran through the passageway until we came out near the elevator, which was shut down, so I followed the route Cal had taken us when we came in. We headed back up the stairs, back out through the bombed factory entrance and into the underground parking garage, where the shells of the cars were still burning.
As we moved up the ramp, the hot air below became a warm breeze, rushing over us from behind and smelling like smoke. We stepped out into the night and the crisp, cold air. Snow began to fall on my face. It felt good.
The helicopters had been joined by three more, sitting there quietly in the dark. There were no soldiers around, so they had to still be down there. Did they follow the revivors as they tried to get out, or did the whole lot of them burn?
I tried to open a connection to Faye. She didn’t respond.
“What do we do now?” Cal asked.
Sean.
Yeah?
I need an EMT at my location.
You got it. Good to hear from you, Nico.
You too.
I knelt down in the snow next to them, the last reserves of my energy trickling away. Zoe stood near me, shivering in the snow as the wind whipped through her thin white linens. I took my coat off and pulled her down to me, placing it around her shoulders.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Come here.”
I guided her into my lap to keep her bare feet out of the snow, and held her as she shook.
She’s just one of many, Agent. Your friend isn’t unique; she’s one of thousands….
Fawkes believed it. He’d provoked the deployment of the National Guard so he could take control of its revivor ranks, then used them to kill the people on his list. He thought he was bringing down a massive conspiracy. He’d been torturing those people in that underground facility to try to learn how they did what they did and how to stop them.
Zoe shivered in my arms. Was Fawkes insane? Or could there be some truth to what he said?
Nico, what happened down there? Sean asked.
If my memories had been altered, I wouldn’t know it. Zoe proved that the day I first met her.
…she’s one of thousands, and they have been using you to get to me….
The kind of destruction going on below us wasn’t sanctioned by the FBI. Whoever was behind the operation, it wasn’t us. They were destroying everything. Faye was gone, this time for good.
Nico, respond. What happened down there?
I don’t know, I said, and cut the connection.
Cal scowled as a gust of wind blew. She looked down at me.
“Hey, what do we do now?” she asked again.
“We wait.”
“Wait,” she snorted.
“Quietly,” I said, and that’s how it ended.
Well, more or less.