James Knapp - Element Zero

“The team is still getting into position,” he said. “You mind if I smoke?”

“Knock yourself out.”

He pulled one of his black cigarillos from his pocket and lit it. The tobacco crackled as he took a long drag, and smoke drifted from his nostrils. He clenched the end between his teeth and fished a business card out of his wallet, then scribbled something on the back. He handed it over to me, under his palm.

“What’s this?” I flipped it over. He’d written a phone number there, and under it he’d written a name:

ZOE OTT

“That was not easy to get,” he said.

“Is she still in the city?” I asked him.

He nodded. “She is.”

I watched him smoke for a minute.

“Is she safe?”

He looked amused as he blew smoke through a crack in the window.

“You think you know something about that woman, Nico, but you don’t.”

“I know she needs help.”

“Not from you. She could kill you where you sit and not even mean to. She’s seen things almost no one else has seen. Trust me—she’s bigger than both of us.”

“Then why give me this? Why now?”

“Because the end is nigh,” he said, and he smiled, but eyes were serious.

Van Offo, and those like him, had alluded to something like that before, but the way he said it made me uneasy. It didn’t sound like theory or rhetoric just then.

“When?”

He blew smoke from his nose. “Soon.”

“Will the city be destroyed?”

“The city? This city is just a drop in the bucket, I’m afraid.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means Motoko doesn’t tell you everything.”

“Then you tell me.”

“Let’s just say that if what we’ve seen is true, I’ll be glad to not be around for it.”

“Around for what, Al? What did you see?”

“A point past which there is no more future to look into,” he said. “Once Fawkes pulls the trigger, that’s it. Somehow he triggers a global event. I don’t know how. Wiping out this city is just the beginning.”

I stared at him, and when he saw the look on my face he smiled weakly.

“Never mind,” he said. “Just do your job. Maybe all this is a lie, to get you to do what we want. Right?”

Motoko Ai was a liar, that much I knew, but I knew Van Offo too and he believed what he’d told me. I could see it in his eyes.

“Ai told me I kill Fawkes,” I said.

“Maybe that will stop this and maybe it won’t. Motoko thinks we can still fix things, but I wonder.”

“If killing him doesn’t stop it, then what will?”

He tapped the business card with Zoe’s name on it.

“How?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He looked toward the clinic entrance again with that odd expression on his face. “Something she said once. She suspects she will be involved, or that’s what she said.”

“Was she drunk when she said it?”

“Of course.”

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think anything can stop it.”

He spoke offhandedly, but he was serious. The bad feeling I had got worse. I stowed the card in my jacket pocket.

For the first time, I realized there might be more to Van Offo than I’d thought. I knew how his superiors operated. They didn’t want me contacting Zoe, and he’d gone against them by giving me that number. It put him at a big risk.

“You know,” he said. “You two have something in common.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“An obsession with what you’ll never have.”

He stubbed out the cigarillo and waved away the smoke.

“Get your affairs in order,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”

“What about you?”

“I just did.”

Wachalowski, the team is in position at the rear entrance. Local law is moving in to cordon the block.

Understood.

“I have to reestablish the connection now,” Van Offo said.

“Al—”

The orange light flickered back on behind his pupils, and he held up one hand. I stopped talking. He wouldn’t answer, and there wasn’t time anyway.

Stand by, I told SWAT. We’re going inside.

I opened the door and climbed out of the car. The air was bitter cold, and at street level, it was barely brighter than night. The clinic kept three lights on over a rusted sign that read MOTHER OF MERCY. As we approached, I saw a bullet scar in the brick and two more dimples in the metal doorframe.

I pushed open the clinic door and stepped through. The waiting room was even more crowded than it looked from the lot. Every chair was filled, and many stood to wait their turn. The receptionist sat behind a pane of bulletproof glass. She busied herself on a computer and didn’t look up when we came in.

“The end is nigh.”

He believed it. On some level I’d always thought it was a scare tactic, a way to manipulate me when the usual methods failed, but I looked at the people in front of me and I couldn’t help but wonder, Is this all for nothing ?

I closed the distance to the receptionist station, and faces began to turn toward us. Some showed concern, others fear. They were poor, and most were homeless. They didn’t need any more trouble than they already had.

The woman at the desk looked up as we approached the glass. She looked us both over.

“What is it this time?” she asked. Her voice came through a barely functioning speaker fixed in the glass pane. I held up my badge so she could see it.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but you know the drill.”

She frowned, but reached under the desktop. The door to the examination area buzzed and the bolt opened.

“Don’t you have anything better to do than hassle us?” she asked. But right at that second, I didn’t have a good answer for her.

“Get your affairs in order, before it’s too late.”

I opened the door and Van Offo followed me through. It bolted again behind us.

“I’m calling my supervisor…. ” she began, but her voice trailed off. Al reached across and switched off the speaker to the waiting area. He leaned in close to her and spoke in a low voice.

“That won’t be necessary. Just relax and wait here.”

I opened a connection to their computer system and began sifting through their logs as I looked down the short hallway that connected the reception area to the rest of the clinic. A man with a grizzled beard and a frostbitten face sat in a chair, a blood pressure cuff around his right arm. The nurse attending to him didn’t look up from the gauge as she pumped the rubber bladder. A doctor stood nearby, and he frowned when he saw us.

“Can I help you?” he asked, but stopped short as two SWAT officers crept in from a side hallway. His eyes widened.

“Calm down,” Van Offo said. The man’s eyes relaxed but remained wary. “Everyone stay calm and quiet.”

“Sir, we’ve tracked a suspicious data stream to this site,” I said to him. “We have reason to think—”

“What do you mean ‘suspicious data stream’?” the man asked. “Look at this place …”

His voice fizzled in midsentence as Van Offo approached him.

“Sleep.”

His eyelids fluttered and closed. He wobbled on his feet a little, and Van Offo steadied him.

“We know there is someone else here,” he said to the man. “Where are they?”

The man’s face changed then. The look of confusion had been an act, and when it fell away there was anger in his eyes.

“You’re too late,” he said in a low voice. Several staff members glanced nervously at us, not sure what to make of what they were seeing.

“What makes you say that?” Van Offo asked.

“They’re not coming back,” he said. “I heard them.”

“Answer me,” Van Offo said. “Where are they? Don’t lie.”