James Knapp - Element Zero

I put my hands over my eyes and pressed. My head throbbed so bad it made me feel sick.

“I’m tired of this! All of this! Get out of my head and just leave me alone!”

I took my hands away and opened my eyes. Dark spots swam in front of me. I was still in the Green Room and the chair was still knocked over, but the dead woman was gone. It got quiet, and I could hear myself panting. I wiped my mouth and looked around. No one else was there.

My heart rate started to slow down as I took a deep breath, like Ai had shown me. There was no reason to get upset. The visions weren’t something to be afraid of; they were glimpses into a possible future. They provided valuable information, and visions that came from the place even Ai couldn’t see into were the most valuable of all. I had to try to calm down and pay attention.

I picked the chair back up and put it in front of the table. I could be pulled back at any time, and with things going the way they were, I might never be back in this place. This might be my last chance to learn something, anything, that could help us. I smoothed down my hair and leaned back against the cool concrete wall, breathing slowly.

“Okay,” I said. “Okay …pull it together …”

As I let my eyes lose focus, the hard lines at the corners of the room seemed to vibrate and hum, like a tuning fork. I forgot about what the dead woman had said and about what was happening back in the real world. I relaxed and let the light get brighter.

Show me …

Slowly, an outline, like a ghost, appeared in the room with me. Three more appeared around it, but I couldn’t tell who they were. As the color bled away, the outlines of the ghosts got sharper. There were three men….

I brought them into focus. They weren’t like my visions of the dead woman or Karen or the others who tried to pass me information…. These people had really been here, or would be here, someday. Prior to then, it had been just a location, a staging ground for psionic feedback that I couldn’t control. Now I saw the room as it really was and its true occupants. Somewhere, in someone’s future, this was happening.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. The ghosts flickered, and I was afraid I might lose them.

Not now …

The phone buzzed again. I took it from my pocket but stayed focused on the figures who had appeared in the room. Two of the men were part of a group. They were older, and wore some kind of uniform I didn’t recognize, with their names stitched over the front pocket. The first man was a big, blocky guy named Gein. The second guy had very pale skin and an angular face. He had a scar under one eye. He looked different from when I’d last seen him, skinnier and more tired, but I recognized him right away; it was Hans Vaggot. The expression in the men’s eyes scared me.

The two of them half dragged a third man to the back of the Green Room and shoved him against the wall.

“Don’t move,” Gein said. The man looked scared. He stood against the wall under the middle light with his hands held up in front of him.

“I’m okay,” he said. His voice was hoarse. “I’m telling you I’m—”

“Shut up,” Vaggot said, and right then a woman walked through the door. My eyes widened. The phone buzzed again in my pocket, then stopped, but I barely noticed.

The woman wore the same uniform as the men, with leather jackboots and a pistol that hung from one bony hip. Her red hair was cut short, and I saw the scar from a bite wound on one side of her neck. Her beaky nose had been broken at some point.

It’s me, I thought. I checked the name patch to be sure. It read OTT.

I stared, stunned, as she crossed the room to the table and dropped an electronic pad down in front of her. She turned it on and started opening programs with a stylus. Her face looked mean, and unlike me, she was stone cold sober. Her eyes were hard, and focused.

“Hit the lights,” she said. Gein went over to the switchbox and threw the switch.

The room got dark except for the single light over the man against the wall. It shone dimly, and made shadows under his brow.

“Starting the scan,” she said.

A bright red line flickered across the far wall, near the ceiling. I followed it back and saw a small lens mounted in the cinder block that I’d never noticed before. A light fixed on one side began to flash.

The line began to move down the wall, tracing contours over the man’s face and neck before traveling down the rest of his body.

“I have a kid,” the man wheezed, as the laser moved down his body. Next to him, I could see divots where bullets had punched into the concrete. I hadn’t noticed them before.

“Shut up,” she said.

I looked at the screen and saw an outline of the man displayed there. Information was being called out, but the text was too small for me to read. I moved closer and leaned in; then the screen turned red and flashed.

“You’ve made a mistake,” the man said. He looked terrified. The red laser went out. The other me tapped the screen in front of her, and it went dark too.

“I said shut up,” she said. She turned to the uniformed men. “Cover him.”

Their guns came out and they aimed at the man from halfway down the room. He held up his hands feebly.

“What are we looking at?” Gein asked.

“It changed again,” she said. “Goddamn it, it changed again.” She crossed to the silver panel on the wall and swiveled it around to reveal a handset. She picked it up and spoke into it.

“We need a containment team down here,” she said.

“You’ve made a mistake,” the man whimpered. “You’ve made a terrible mistake…. ”

“If he says another word, shoot him,” the other me said. Gein and Vaggot glanced at each other nervously.

“You can’t stop this,” the man said. The other me slammed down the handset.

“Gein, shoot—”

The man seized up all of a sudden, and the cords in his neck stood out. It happened really fast; in a second, the back of his skull melted away under his skin. His neck shriveled and his eye sockets sank until his eyes bugged out of shadows.

“Shit!” Vaggot shouted. He looked ready to piss himself, but stood his ground. The two men stood there, weapons aimed, but not shooting for some reason.

The man’s deformed head bobbed at the end of his chicken neck while his clothes draped over a body that wasted away beneath them. He looked around the room like he didn’t recognize anything he saw.

“You can’t stop this,” he gurgled. It looked like his tongue had split down the middle.

“Hold him,” the other me said. “The team is on their—”

“You can’t stop this!” the man shrieked, and shambled forward, toward the two men. He held out his hands and they were like spindly claws.

The man stumbled, and when the soldiers moved out of the way, he just kept going like they weren’t even there. They followed him with their guns as he reached the table and shoved it aside. It flipped and crashed into the wall as he kicked past the folding chair and came right toward me, the real me. It was like he could see me. I backed away, into the wall, and dropped my phone. It clattered to the floor, and I saw the screen light up as a voice came over its speaker.

“If anyone is receiving this message, listen carefully,” a woman shouted through the phone, as the thing stopped a few feet from me.

“Wh-what?” I asked. The men in the room were taking aim, ready to fire. When I looked down at the phone, I could just make out the caller’s name on the LCD.

“If any of this gets through, then listen. The nukes may be your last chance…. ”