James Knapp - Element Zero

“Penny, I think I’m Element Zero,” I whispered. She tried to pull away, but I held on to her sleeve.

“Fawkes is Element Zero,” she whispered back. “Fawkes drops the nukes. You stop him.”

“She’s been trying to tell me something…. I think we’re wrong.”

“We’re not.”

“What if we are? She said the blast doesn’t cause the event; it stops it. I think Noelle knew that. I think she knew Ai was wrong and that she’d have to be the one to kill all these people, to stop something worse from happening. She knew—”

“It was one vision,” Penny said, raising her voice. “That’s not enough to—”

“But it’s the only one that matters,” I said. “It came from the void after the event …isn’t that why Ai tracked us down? Maybe she is some ‘next step in evolution’ but even if it’s true she can’t see past that point—she doesn’t survive whatever happens, she knows that. We ran out of time, and even with everything she did, she wasn’t able to figure it out.”

“Zoe—”

“I’m telling you I saw something, something important. Noelle tried to reach me there…. I think she’s alive.”

“She’s not alive.”

“The database says she’s dead, but how can we really—”

“Because I killed her, Zoe.”

I felt the vibe again, like a spike. Her face didn’t change, but I felt it, and I remembered something she’d said to me a long time ago:

“ This can be a good gig ,” she’d said, and her voice had been serious. “It can also be a bad one …”

“I thought they had her killed,” I said.

“They did.”

“Ai made you do it?”

She shook her head. “Osterhagen,” she said. “Things were different then. Noelle was …”

“Was what?”

“She was amazing,” she said. “She was better than I ever was. Ai sent her to go get me and bring me in. She took me under her wing. She took care of me and protected me.”

One of the screens flickered, but didn’t make it back on. Ai’s consciousness pulsed, but she stayed withdrawn.

“Like you did with me,” I said.

“Yeah.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“She had a bad vision one day,” she said, looking down. “Like the ones you’ve been having …the deformities and all that. She started talking dangerous talk.”

“Like what?”

“You’re right about one thing,” she said. “Noelle was afraid. She did think we had it all wrong. One day, she saw something she wouldn’t talk about, and she changed after that …she lost her appetite, stopped smiling. Something was really wrong, but she wouldn’t tell me what she’d seen.”

“She knew. She knew what she’d have to do.”

“Maybe,” Penny said. “She decided at the time that the only way out of this was for us, everyone like us, to be destroyed. Maybe that was the alternative …maybe it was one or the other. Either way, she believed it. She got this idea that we were wrong about everything. She sounded a lot like you, but she just …wouldn’t let it go.”

“How did Ai react?”

“How do you think she reacted? We’re the greatest human breakthrough the world’s ever known. Even if it was as simple as flipping a switch and getting rid of us, no one’s going to listen to that.”

“So what did she do?”

“Even back then, the model was crystal clear,” she said. “Whatever other factors might or might not be in play, Fawkes triggers the event. When she realized no one would listen to her, she pushed to take out Fawkes early, to kill him. He was just an engineer at Heinlein back then. He had no idea any of this was going to happen, but she didn’t want to wait. She wanted to cut the line there.”

“But why not? Why not do that?”

“Ai can see how all the pieces fit together in a way no one else can. She knew killing Fawkes was a mistake even if Noelle couldn’t see it. She knew he’d be more dangerous dead than alive, and she was right, but Noelle was off on her own by then, and she tried to kill him anyway. She jumped him on the street and stabbed him. He lived, but they all knew she’d done it. By that point they’d begun to think she was some kind of ‘rogue element’, and that she had the potential to cause the very outcome she’d seen …the one where the people with our abilities are wiped out. Osterhagen wanted her dead…. ”

“What about Ai?” I asked.

“She didn’t,” she said. “But Osterhagen was so sure she was going to end up causing the holocaust that even when Ai refused to authorize it, he came to me.”

“And you—”

“I was different then, Zoe,” she said. “Osterhagen convinced me it was the only way to stop things. He promised me the number-two slot if I did the right thing.”

She shook her head.

“And here I am, like he promised.”

She got quiet. The longer she talked, the deeper I could see the pain inside her went. I couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It was quick,” she said. “I watched her bleed out. But I stuck around too long, and someone saw me. I could have wiped his memory, but I gave him the knife and made him believe he’d done it. He copped to the murder and went down for it.”

“You just made some random guy do life in prison?”

“He didn’t do life. He got killed in jail before his first year was up. He ended up at Heinlein.”

She smiled a bitter smile.

“The guy heard our last conversation before I wiped his memory. We didn’t know about Zhang’s Syndrome at the time …in Fawkes’s lab, his revivor remembers everything. With what he must have heard, Fawkes finds out who tried to kill him and why. He learns Ai’s identity. For all I know, that’s what sent him down the path he chose. How’s that for irony?”

I focused on her …not too hard, not enough to get her attention. Just enough to let her colors fade into view so I could see them. Under her calm exterior, her thoughts buzzed like bees in a hive. There was almost more going on in there than I could make sense of. I saw fear, like a cold, white cloth that rippled in the wind…. You’d never know it to look at her face, but she was afraid. I saw concern, confusion, and uncertainty, but underneath it all, shifting slowly like a gray mist, was guilt. When I concentrated on it, I could see how deep it ran.

“I’m not a good person, Zoe,” she said.

“That’s not true.”

“You don’t have any idea.”

“Yes, I do.” I looked deeper …there were a lot of things she carried around, but one thing in particular was tucked away. Something she’d barely admit even to herself.

What is that? I couldn’t read her mind. I couldn’t know what caused it, just that it was there, but it was something I’d never known about her. She’d never let me look that far. I looked deeper and still didn’t find an end to it.

She put one arm around me and held me to her. I kind of tensed up at first, but she was gentler than she usually was. I rested my forehead on her bony chest, and she stroked my hair. It reminded me of how my father used to be, back when I was little. I let out a big sigh into her shirt.

“You’ll get through this,” she whispered.

She put her cheek against the top of my head and squeezed me a little tighter. It was the longest we’d ever touched. It was the longest I’d ever touched anyone in years and years.

“Do you remember when we first met?” she asked. She smoothed my hair with one hand.

I didn’t. I didn’t want to admit it, but it was lost along with so many other things over the years.

“It was in the subway,” she said. “Raphael sent me to make contact with you. I caught you near one of the sake stands. You looked like you really wanted one.”