James Knapp - Element Zero

The revivor stood stone still, the metal canister clutched to its body. Wind sheared across the tarmac, whipping its clothes around it.

“Faye, what are you doing?” MacReady asked.

“It wasn’t me,” I said. Someone else was in my head. They’d shunted their way into my command node and put a hold on my communications.

“Faye—”

“I fucking knew it,” a voice said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Ang Chen step through the doorway, a pistol clutched in one hand. His eyes moved from me to MacReady, then back.

MacReady held up his hands and stepped forward, but stopped when Ang pointed the gun at his chest.

“Ang—”

“You were overruled, Bob. You should have stayed out of it.”

“Chen, he destroyed the CMC Tower,” MacReady said. “He’s going to—”

“You don’t know what’s at stake,” Ang said. His voice was still calm, but his eyes had grown wide. The hot mass of his heart thudded in his chest.

“Ang, please,” MacReady said, as he took another step. “Think about—”

The gun boomed as Ang fired a single shot. MacReady staggered back and dropped the electronic pad to the floor. He stared down at his side, where blood had begun to spread through his shirt.

Ang aimed to fire again, and MacReady lunged. Not toward Ang, but toward me. His fingers, warm with blood, touched my neck, and I felt the metal rod slide out of the back of my head. The control lock winked out, and impulses began to flow back down the length of my spine. My system tree reestablished. I could move again.

Ang fired. The bullet shattered through MacReady’s front teeth, then exploded out through the back of his neck. His body fell against the wall behind him, then collapsed onto the floor. Chen stood, still pointing the gun, as smoke drifted slowly out of the barrel.

“I know what’s at stake,” I told him.

Chen’s eyes flicked to me and stared. “Shut up,” he said.

“I know what they did to me—”

“So do I!” he barked. “They got to me too, and I know it now! I know everything! Every goddamned thing!”

The gun shook in his fist as he held it out. The network of veins stood out under his skin, like spiderwebs of warm light, and I knew he was very close to the edge. I realized then that when he said he knew, he meant he really did know; his memories had returned. Somehow, Fawkes had found a way to return them while still leaving him alive.

Whatever happened to him, whatever he’d done and been made to forget, he’d come face-to-face with it. Whatever it was, he couldn’t accept it. Without a revivor’s disconnectedness, he was losing control.

“Fawkes woke you,” I said, and I could see it was true. “How—”

“Shut up!” He stepped forward and stuck the gun in my face. He took two steps toward me, and the end of the barrel pushed into my cheek.

I fired the bayonet and struck Ang’s gun hand with it. The pistol went off near my ear, as blood spurted from the notch cut in his wrist. He staggered back, blood seeping through his shirt cuff. Blood dripped down onto the floor as he clutched his wounded arm. He raised the gun again, but he couldn’t hold it straight.

Suddenly, something forced him out of my head, and the communications block was released. The revivor connections came back online. When he realized what happened, Ang’s eyes widened.

“Who did that?” he whispered. “Who else is helping you?”

Faye? Faye, are you reading me? It was Nico.

I’m here. I checked the revivor feeds and saw the units perk up as the command spokes reformed. They found me.

Ang transferred the gun to his left hand and took aim. He followed me as I circled the table and fired a single shot that went wild. I could sense him digging into my systems, trying to reestablish the override. I pointed my own gun in his direction.

“Drop that connection,” he said.

The remote unit carried the canister across the Pratsky Building, where the last revivor in the chain waited down in a darkened stairwell. I watched them make eye contact with each other, meeting halfway on the stairs. The last unit accepted the canister, then turned and made its way down.

Both guns went off, and a bullet struck my chest. I grazed Ang’s shoulder as he fired again, punching through my right elbow. It triggered the mechanics in my forearm, causing it to split apart. The pistol flipped free from my hand and spun across the floor.

I ducked under the table as the final revivor picked up speed down a long corridor and into the main climate-control center. I swung the bayonet and slashed Ang’s hamstring. He screamed, and I heard his gun thump down onto the table above me.

I stood and saw him reel, hopping on one foot. He lunged for his weapon but stumbled and fell. I pulled the bayonet back, preparing to deliver the killing blow, when Samuel Fawkes appeared in the doorway.

Two soldiers followed him in. They aimed their rifles at me.

“Stop,” Fawkes said. His eyes glowed flatly in the dim light. Ang looked back, his face dark. A vein pulsed at his neck. Three more revivors filed in from behind Fawkes and took positions around him. They all had automatic rifles at the ready.

“Pick up your gun, Mr. Chen.”

He reached across the table, smearing blood, and recovered the weapon. He hopped back, and one of the revivors held him steady.

I felt Fawkes connect, and he began to scan my systems. He poked around, looking for a way in. His owl’s eyes didn’t change expression.

“Who is controlling you?” he asked.

“She’s running some kind of virtual command connections,” Ang said. “I tried to shut her down when someone blocked me, someone from inside. Someone besides MacReady is helping her.”

“Virtual command connections to where?”

“I wasn’t able to trace them before I got kicked off.”

In the feed, I saw a pair of hands place the tank on the concrete floor as the revivor scanned the room. A huge turbine of some kind took up most of the space there, surrounded by smaller blocks of machinery and rows of metal ductwork. The main pipe stood higher than a man. According to the building’s schematic, that was the main outflow pipe.

All nodes, report in. Fawkes’s eyes looked distant as the responses began to pour in. It would take time to process them all, but not much.

On the feed, the revivor grabbed the tank and approached the pipe. Using a cutter, it opened a hole large enough to squeeze through, leaving one corner attached. It peeled back the lid, and I could see its uniform begin to ripple madly as the air escaped. From far off, I heard a low whistle moan through the halls.

Fawkes looked back through the doorway.

“What is that?”

The revivor passed the tank through the hole, then climbed in after it. Inside the pipe it was dark, but its night vision allowed me to see the interior as it reached back through, grabbed the metal lid, and pulled it back. The whistle went up in pitch as the revivor held the metal in place, its fingers stuck through the seam.

Fawkes began issuing orders over the command spokes. In minutes, a squad of revivors would be down there, and he’d know.

Faye, I’m shutting down the circulation to T5. The message came not from Nico, but from Dulari. She’d been monitoring us. I tried to respond, to tell her that Fawkes was here with me, but the circuit was one-way, so it couldn’t be traced back.

A low thud came from somewhere in the building. The airflow to the room we were in stopped. Fawkes continued to watch me impassively as he ran a trace on the override circuit.

The revivor in the pipe gripped the tank between its legs, still holding the pipe lid shut with one hand. It used its free hand to open the tank, and icy mist began to drift from the mouth. It pushed the tank over with one foot and liquid gushed out, down the pipe. When it hit the air, it exploded in a cloud of gas. I caught a glimpse of the revivor’s arm and hand as they bubbled and dissolved away. I saw the mechanism that held the blade inside the forearm as the muscle and flesh melted; then the feed warped and went black.