James Knapp - Element Zero

Mesh established. Synchronizing …

“The virus is embedded in the synchronization package,” Singh said. His voice was muddy, like I was underwater. “It’s going out …now.”

The last link lit up, and my node puked data over every one of them. Shit flew back and forth as we all synced up. In seconds, they knew who and where I was. A map of the network formed on the grid in front of me and formed a kind of shape.

“Did it work?” Ramirez asked.

“It’s converging,” a voice said. That was Singh. He was close by. “Hold on.”

The Huma node took all the data that came in and used it to make a picture; a map of the city blinked on and an electric inkblot spread over it. Blotches of light spread and bled together.

Synchronization complete. The pattern covered everything; they were all through the city. The light was brightest in shitholes like Pyt-Yahk, and they were clustered around the three towers, but they’d spread all over. They were moving through the whole city, heading out.

All units clear zone H1B. The message popped up again. With the connection to the rest, I saw an area outlined on the city map; the zone surrounded the CMC Tower.

“What’s that there?” a voice asked. Ramirez.

“Looks like he’s moving them away from Central Media Communications.” On the map, the cluster around the tower was thinning out.

“Why?”

I heard fingers tap at a keypad.

“I don’t like it. Contact them and let them know.”

All units clear zone H—

One signal whined from out of the static, coming through loud and strong.

Initializing command spoke …

The link lit up under the rest of them. I knew what that was. Usually I was on the other side of it, but I knew what it was. Whoever was on the other end started to pull data from me. I watched the data stream by; my heart rate and body temp had bottomed, but no revivor signature had formed. Not yet.

“The command spoke is active,” a voice said. I barely heard it.

“He’s going to cut her off. Did the virus go out?”

“Yes, sir.”

Node 5948. Report in. The message came over the command spoke. It was him; it was Fawkes.

“There.”

“Are you sure?”

“We’ve got activity from a remote source. It’s trying to assert control. He’s seen her.”

“Did the virus work?”

“No change in activity yet.”

“What about her?”

Commands dropped in. Fawkes had kicked off some kind of diag from the other end. It triggered my systems and code flicked by as my JZI came back online. He connected to it and started to dump its memory.

“He’s got her. If she drops off now, it will tip him. Let him have her.”

He was pulling data from me. Along with the rest of the shit he was pulling, I packaged up a little something else for him.

A handy ’bot we’d passed around the grinder got pulled back over the link with the rest of it and stuck itself in Fawkes’s memory. He might be a smart jack, but he was still a jack, and an old one too.

Respond, Fawkes said. I decided to try to bluff him.

Node 5948. Reporting in.

There was some corruption detected during the synchronization. Stand by.

Understood.

He went idle for a few seconds, then: You’re on the private military base.

Before I could think of a response, Fawkes tried to pull my signature and didn’t find one.

You’re not a revivor, he said. He’d started some kind of scan. Who are you?

The game was up.

The one who’s going to fuck your dead ass.

The goddamned spoke let him pry through into my JZI and before I could stop him, he’d tapped into my systems. In seconds he’d found my communication node and broke in, branching out over every connection he could find.

“He’s in our system!” I heard a voice shout. “Shit! He’s in our system!”

“How is that possible?”

“Cut the link!”

Whatever you’re attempting, Calliope T. Flax, it won’t work.

Don’t be so sure.

As you can see, my army is still online, so whatever you’re trying to do, it hasn’t worked. The people behind this are going to pay for that, and so will you. My next strike won’t be a warning.

Yeah, well none of my strikes are ever warnings. If Nico doesn’t get to you first, then you’re mine.

That shut him up for a second.

Who are you? he asked. The son of a bitch didn’t even remember me.

I set off the remote ’bot, and it started to dump everything in his memory buffers back to my JZI.

You never should have brought me on that boat, fucker.

I found his Leichenesser seed and popped it, but the link stayed up, so he must have had it taken out at some point. I tapped his visual feed, and a window popped up in the dark. Through it, I saw what he saw.

He was at a desk. He looked down at a console that showed a bunch of security feeds, while a figure off to his right reached in front of him and touched one window. It came to the front, and I saw a woman walk through the frame.

I’ve seen her…. It was that creepy revivor bitch, the one Nico locked lips with on the tanker that night.

The image went blank.

“Damn it!” Right behind the visuals, the command spoke went dark.

“He just killed the spoke.”

“The virus went out; he’s too late.”

“She’s still tied to the mesh. He still can’t trigger the kill switch with the inhibitor in place, but—”

Fawkes was inside Heinlein. I pulled up the stuff I’d grabbed from his buffers. I didn’t get it all, but I got enough. I couldn’t tell the assholes in the room with me what I had because I couldn’t fucking talk, but if Singh came through and got my JZI back online, I might be able to get it to Nico.

“Shit,” someone said.

Ramirez answered, “What?”

“We just got a surge of activity out there. A lot of it. Look.”

On the map, the large blotch changed shape while I watched. It was close to where we were. Slowly, part of the shape began to branch out and move.

It began to creep in our direction.

By the time Penny and I got back to the war room, it was the closest thing to chaos I’d ever seen in front of Ai. She sat there, calm, while voices on the video screens and in the room all tried to talk at the same time.

“ …confirmed, it was one of the ICBMs from the defense satellite,” a voice said.

“You get that?” Osterhagen asked.

Ai nodded. “Mr. Vaggot,” she asked, “how long until we regain control of those missiles?”

A window with the man’s face appeared in one corner of Osterhagen’s screen. He looked a little less collected than the last time he’d appeared, but his voice was still strong and confident.

“Not long,” he said. “It’s taking time for the ’bots to chisel through the defenses he set up, but once they do, control will be transferred here through the Stillwell Corps satellite-communications array. I think we can shunt him out in thirty or forty minutes, maybe less.”

“That was a warning shot,” Osterhagen said. “He’s telling us to stand down.”

“A warning shot?” a woman asked, her voice breaking.

“Initial data confirmed all twelve ICBMs were aimed across an even spread of twelve sectors through the city,” he said. “In order for him to drop one out in the bay like that, he’d have to have programmed it with a new target. He intentionally fired it outside the city, where it wouldn’t cause any structural damage, but where we’d see it. It was a warning shot.”