James Knapp - Element Zero

“We’re organizing the evacuation now—”

“Forget the rest,” she snapped. “Use the helipad.”

“Motoko, there are sixteen thousand people in this building,” he said. “Tell me what you saw…. ”

On Mr. Raphael’s screen, he turned toward a window behind him where something outside had started to glow in the sky above the electric city lights.

“What is that?” he muttered.

The screen flickered and went out. A second later, all of the screens went out and the room went dark.

From the helicopter, I could see fire in the streets below. A car burned in an intersection, flames spraying cinders as the wind howled through the street. Two blocks down, smoke was pouring from the broken window of a residential building.

Alice, we need to start tracking the bites that occurred since the activation code was sent.

We’ll coordinate with local hospitals. If this is true, though, Wachalowski, our best bet is going to be stemming it at its source, not chasing thousands of leads.

We need to contain the city. No one in or out.

We’re working on it.

The snow began to pick up as the helicopter took us back toward the Stillwell Corps base. Visibility was down and the ride was choppy. The windshield turned black, and a computerized view appeared in its place as the pilot passed between two buildings.

What about you? she asked. If this really is true, wouldn’t you be affected?

I’m okay.

But have you been affected?

A notification appeared in front of me as my internal diagnostic finished. My JZI called out my new arm on the system tree with a low-level warning. The necrotic bleed-through had been identified. It was true—the altered nanoblood was leaking into my bloodstream.

No, I lied.

The chopper hit a patch of turbulence and bucked underneath me. My stomach dropped. The vectors tilted in the windshield display, and through the side window I watched the buildings below as we banked left and veered over one of the main strips. From our position, I could see the Central Media Communications Tower in the distance, and beyond that, nearly lost in the snow, the UAC TransTech Center.

Keep me informed, she said. Let me know as soon as you have something we can use against Fawkes. She broke the connection.

I pulled my collar down to check my shoulder and saw what looked like bruising there. The bleed-through was getting worse. I wondered if the filter was no longer able to screen the altered nanotech at all. I could be running out of time.

I opened a new link over the channel MacReady had provided.

MacReady, this is happening fast. Do you have a revivor I can use?

It’s on its way. I will have it shortly.

Let me know the second you do.

Understood, Agent.

In the meantime, I have a question. Something revivor related.

I’ll help if I can.

You said you continued the Zhang’s Syndrome study?

Yes.

Was the condition ever recorded in a living person?

It’s a condition that occurs during reanimation. No, it does not affect living people.

What about a person experiencing necrotic bleed-through?

It doesn’t work that way, Agent. Even with the M10 series, the synthetic blood is something wholly separate from the revivor nodes that interface with the brain. Synthetic blood leaking into an organic system does not, and cannot, cause reanimation. If the traces of synthetic blood were to make their way into the brain, they would most likely kill the affected person.

Understood.

Do you know someone who is suffering from this condition? he fished.

What if the nanoblood were altered somehow? I asked. Could it be changed to that much of a degree?

You’re referring to Fawkes’s use of the transmitter earlier.

Is it possible?

I don’t know, he said. In theory …at the molecular level, many of the components are generic. They could be recoded to perform different functions, but not easily.

So it is possible?

I would say yes. Particularly if you had high-ranking scientists like the ones you named on your team. That kind of research would, of course, be highly illegal, but I would say possible, in theory.

Understood.

Are you saying that you’re—

Just get the revivors I asked for. And hurry. There isn’t much time.

I understand. I think you should know this before the time comes, though: you have a relationship to this revivor.

What—

It’s the revivor of Faye Dasalia, he said.

Even as the storm outside caused the chopper to buck, I felt a pang in my chest. For a minute, I forgot about the rest—Fawkes, the arm, everything.

Faye is part of this, I said. She’s with Fawkes now. She’s close to him; you can’t use her.

Trust with revivors doesn’t hold the same connotation as it does for humans. I believe she was the one who compromised Heinlein’s security and allowed Fawkes access, he said. But something has happened since then and she’s no longer part of his network.

If she’s not on his network, then—

Trust me, Agent. Fawkes is trying very hard to reconnect her, and I’ll see to it that he succeeds, but only once we’re ready.

She’ll tell him—

She can’t tell him what she doesn’t know, and anyway, at the end of the day, she is a revivor. It doesn’t matter what she did before or why she did it. When I’m finished with her, you’ll have the access you need.

It was still hard for me to swallow. Everything that had happened, all those people dead and dying in the streets, all of it had happened with Faye standing at Fawkes’s side.

Agent?

I’m here, I said. Set it up.

Stand by, he said. I should have access shortly—

His message clipped off as the helicopter started to descend toward the building tops. On several of them, I could see groups of people bundled in coats and scarves that whipped in the wind. They were looking down at the city, at the streets below.

MacReady?

Down on the street, pedestrians looked up as we approached. Police blues flashed against the white of snowbanks where a group of officers waited, keeping a crowd of people from entering a strip mall whose windows had been smashed in.

The pilot chattered over the radio and was pointing down toward the street, but I didn’t hear him. In the corner of my eye, an FBI alert popped up:

The pilot and copilot looked at each other, and the pilot shouted into the radio. Before I could pull up the details, Alice cut back in.

Wachalowski, get out of the area now.

I just got an alert about an orbital strike. Is it an ICBM?

No. The DoD just detected a massive energy buildup in Heinlein’s orbital-defense satellite, The Eye. It’s going to fire in the next minute.

Fire at what? What kind of buildup?

They’re not sure what the target is, but this charge is off the charts. A spy satellite observing it saw it go into targeting mode two minutes ago. It looks like it’s focusing every lens it’s got on a common target that is outside of Heinlein’s security perimeter.

I brought up the specs for the satellite. It had more than one hundred lenses for striking multiple targets such as missiles, aircraft, or ground forces. Any one of them could generate a beam capable of incinerating a large vehicle or even a tank at only half capacity.