John Krygelski - The Aegis Solution

At no point was Elias able to distinguish the attackers on the high-resolution monitor.

“My God!” Tillie echoed her sentiment from earlier. “The Zippers!”

“Let’s try this,” Elias said as he backed up the video to the moment the first man was walking across the room, then clicked on the playback menu, and selected the mode which allowed playback at a frame-by-frame speed. The man’s gait instantly froze until Elias, clicking with the pointer, began to advance the motion one frame per click. After approximately twenty frames, a figure suddenly appeared in the picture, sheathed entirely in a beige body suit which extended to cover his head, except for the eyes, nose, and mouth, his arms reaching toward the walking man. In the next frame, the figure’s hands were gripping the walker’s head on both sides. The following frame showed the walker’s head twisted at an angle normally impossible. In the next, the beige figure had already released the walker and was moving toward the next nearest victim.

“I can’t watch any more of this,” Tillie whispered, her voice raspy, and turned away.

Elias spent a few more minutes scanning rapidly through the remaining frames. He wanted a clear understanding of their techniques. He found that there had been only two of the Zippers, as Tillie called them. That was all it took to kill, by hand, an entire roomful of nine people.

Finishing his study of their actions, Elias quickly checked the live feeds from the balance of the cameras he had placed around the ZooCity area. Everywhere else he looked, he found more bodies and, apparently, no survivors.

“Elias, are you ready to go yet?”

“Thank you.”

“Thank you? For what?”

“For calling me Elias and dropping that whole ‘Mr. Death’ thing.”

He was rewarded with a sardonic half smile. “That doesn’t mean you get to learn the club handshake yet, mister.”

“I am just about ready. I need to do one thing.”

Changing programs on the laptop, he typed a report to Faulk, filling him in on what he had learned about Kreitzmann and the Zippers, the apparent status of Stone, and the demise of the Zooks. Without consciously knowing why, he left out any reference to Tillie or Wilson.

“What are you doing, a paper on how you spent your summer vacation?”

“I’m preparing my daily report.”

“How can you report? There’s no way.”

“Ah,” he began, glad to be giving her a revelation, “but there is.” He explained the comm system to Tillie while he finished the report and instructed the program to encrypt and compress it for transmission. That done, he transferred the compressed report to the phone with a USB cable, making certain the phone had a full charge and was still set to automatically upload and download the day’s transmissions.

As he placed the phone back in its location, Tillie asked, “Aren’t you bringing it with you? We might need it.”

“No reason to. It’s no good as a regular cell phone since it only works for about one second a day. It’s only good with the laptop.”

“Bring them both.”

Elias turned around to face her, a slight grin playing across his face. “Both? Tillie, are you asking me to move in with you?”

She punched him on the arm. It stung. “Creep. No, I’m not and you know it. But we might need to get a message out, and why should we have to come back here to do it?”

“True, but if I bring the laptop to your place, I won’t have my surveillance anymore. The video feeds are through these conduits,” he explained, pointing at the groups of pipes mounted to the walls, “and they don’t enter your mechanical area.”

She stared at him, her gaze drifting to the pipes and the wires dangling from the pipes down to the connections at the side of the laptop. “Okay. We’ll leave it here. Can we go now? I want to get back to my place.”

“I’m ready to go, but I’d like to check out ZooCity.”

“Why? They’re all dead.”

“Maybe not. One of them might need some help. Besides, there might be something we can learn. Come on, it won’t take long.”

Without waiting for an answer, he started walking down the raceway that led to the sector with ZooCity.

“Oh, all right.”

When they arrived at the access ladder into the ZooCity area, Elias went down first, followed quickly by Tillie. Duplicating her actions at the previous entrance to the public area, he cracked the door open slightly and listened first, then peeked out before exiting.

The silence was disconcerting as they entered the formerly occupied enclave.

He paused and said, “Wait here,” wanting to spare her the ghastly scene which would begin around the next corner.

“Nope,” she answered in a matter-of-fact tone.

Elias saw no point in arguing and continued forward. As he threaded his way through the first of the bodies, there was only one soft gasp from behind. After that, no sound or comments came from his companion.

He proceeded methodically, room by room, checking every closet and every cabinet which might be large enough to contain a person. Most of the way through the enclave, Elias was beginning to admit to himself that Tillie might have been right. Not only had they encountered no survivors, he had seen nothing which could be considered helpful in his search.

They came to the end of a long hallway and Tillie, who had passed him as he checked the previous room, reached for the doorknob — when Elias heard a distinctive click-clack from the other side of the door. In an instant, he wrapped his arm around her, pulling her forcefully to the side. They slammed into the side wall of the hallway at the same moment that a large chunk of the door Tillie had been about to open exploded outward.

Handing the rifle to her, Elias pulled the 9mm from his pocket and shouted, “Who’s in there?”

He heard the person inside pump the shotgun, loading another round in the chamber.

“We’re not here to hurt you. We’re here to help.”

A nervous voice shouted through the hole in the door, “Go ’way. I don’t need no help.”

Tillie spoke up. “Look, we saw what happened to your friends. We’re checking for survivors. Are you hurt?”

“No!” The voice from beyond the door sounded young and terrified.

Trying to make his voice sound gentle, Elias reassured the stranger, “We’re not with the ones who did this. They’re gone.”

“You sure?”

“We just checked the whole area,” Tillie answered. “This room is the last one. They’re not here.”

“They might be. You can’t even see them.”

“If they were here, we would be dead, not talking to you.”

There was a minute of silence from the stranger as he tried to figure out his next move. To help him decide, Elias said, “Look. We’re going to lay down our guns and step in front of the door. You can see both of us.”

“Are you crazy?” Tillie whispered.

Elias, instead of replying, tucked the 9mm into his waistband behind his back, making certain it was covered by his windbreaker, and stepped back from the door, walking to the center of the hallway so the stranger could partially see him through the hole in the door.

“You are crazy,” she muttered and carefully leaned the AK-47 against the side wall, moving to follow Elias.

Both of them stood about twenty feet from the splintered opening, both making their hands visible to the man behind the door.

Elias spoke slowly. “Okay, see, we’re unarmed and there is no one else out here.”

The barrel of the shotgun slowly protruded unsteadily from the hole, centered on the area between the two of them. Elias could feel his muscles tighten while he waited for the second blast from the shotgun. Moments later, the stranger’s face appeared next to the side of the gun, his eyes darting around as he checked the hallway for anyone who might be hidden.