James Knapp - Element Zero

This city will be gone within the hour….

We walked as fast as Ai could manage. I watched the back of her large head as we went, and saw sweat roll down her thin neck. One of the guards should have just carried her, but even under the circumstances, no one dared suggest it.

“Is the roof secure?” one of the men said into his radio.

“The Chimeras are still active,” the reply came. “But we’ve got surface-to-air missile capability set up on all—”

Something flashed outside the window at the end of the hall, and something rumbled up above us, loud enough to shake the floor. The lights flickered as the sound of helicopter rotors got louder.

“Come back,” the guard said into the radio. “Is the roof secure?”

The rotors thumped louder, then something big flew past the window. A loud shriek rose over the drumming sound, and three bright lights whipped by after it. A shadow banked past one of the buildings below, and I saw three thin smoke trails spin toward it. They hit the building face and exploded, sending a big, bright cloud of fire into the night air.

“We’ll keep them off you, but—”

The rest of the reply got cut off by another crash from overhead. Chunks of metal and glass fell past the window, and I saw a flailing body tumble down along with it. Another loud shriek sounded, followed by a thud.

When we got to the stairwell, one of the guards opened it while another signaled for us to go through, but I was pretty sure I didn’t want to go up there. Penny didn’t seem too sure either.

“Come on!” the guard said. “We’re going up—”

Light flashed at the end of the hall, through the window. It tinted in response, but even so, it was so bright I had to shield my eyes. Through the glare, I saw the window glass warp and then blow out into the open air. The sky outside was filled with a cloud of pulverized glass as the other windows on the building face, and those of the buildings around it, all exploded with an earsplitting crash.

A wave of hot air blasted down the hallway, stinging my hands and face. Through my fingers, I saw a huge arc of light pass over the buildings below and hit the TransTech Center.

No…

People were screaming, but I couldn’t hear them over the sound of the beam sizzling through the air. Energy arced off and struck buildings nearby as it rippled over the city like a huge, electric worm. Shards of glass jumped and danced on the tiled floor as the building shook.

My clothes flapped around me as I gaped, unable to register what I was seeing. All I could do was stare out through the snow as a huge cloud of fire boiled up from the base of the tower. Fear pulsed outward from inside the building, like streams of raw, white adrenaline. They hit me like a truck, and before I could push them out I’d slipped and almost fallen to the floor. In front of me, Ai staggered, and Penny caught her. The rush left me feeling sick, pain burning in my chest.

One of the guards was barking into the radio, but I couldn’t hear him. The TransTech Center was crumbling, collapsing down in a cloud of smoke and fire. The threads of fear began to fall off and go dark. They were dying. I felt Osterhagen’s consciousness wink out, along with the rest of the thousands of others. They were dying. They were all dying.

“Get back!” one of the guards shouted into my ear as cold wind blew through the opening and peppered us with powdered glass. “Back away from the window!”

I couldn’t move. The light outside just kept getting brighter and brighter. It washed everything out, until it forced my eyes shut and I screamed. Distantly, I felt a hand grab my arm and pull me back….

The noise stopped.

Not just the racket outside, but the voices, the screaming, the wind, everything. In the quiet, my ears rang.

I opened my eyes. I was outside, on the street. There was no explosion and no falling debris. Snow fell gently through the night sky.

Where am I?

Neon lit up the dark. I was on a sidewalk, with my back to a parked car. There was snow piled up along the curb between the walkway and the street. The street was full of cars, and people streamed by all around me. None of them even seemed to notice I was there.

I stood up and brushed myself off. My breath trailed as I looked across the street and saw the towering face of Alto Do Mundo, all glass and neon. It was completely intact. The UTTC still stood in the distance, and far off, I could see the third needle of the CMC Tower.

Is this real?

I shook my head, and snow went down the back of my neck. No one looked at me, and no cars honked, even when I wandered out into the road.

They can’t see me. This isn’t real.

From the dark mouth of an alley I saw a pair of eyes flash, low to the ground. They stared up at me, and I heard a low growl.

I took a step back as a dog moved out onto the sidewalk to face me. It was big, with matted, mangy fur. A patch was shaved on one side and I could see an ugly, scabby bite mark on the bare skin there.

“You again,” I said. It stopped a few feet away and bared its teeth. Its gums were black, and its fangs were stained red.

“You were in my dream—”

The dog jumped. I slipped and fell back onto the sidewalk with it on top of me. I could feel its breath on my face as it snapped, and I crossed my arms between us.

Its jaws clamped down on my wrist and I screamed. Blood gushed out of the wound, and my hand went numb as the dog huffed out a breath through its cold nose. I tried to kick away, but it wouldn’t let go.

A warm feeling crept up my arm from the spot where it had me. The warmth moved up to my shoulder, into my chest, into my heart. My body began to feel relaxed and a little numb. It was a little like being drunk.

The dog let me go. It barked once, then turned and ran off.

“Son of a bitch …”

I rolled over and got on my knees. None of the people on the street even glanced at me. When I held up my forearm, I could see muscle through the tear in the skin. It looked like it should hurt, but it didn’t. It didn’t hurt at all.

The weird heat coursed through my whole body, and my body relaxed. I looked around, but the dog was gone.

The neon lights flickered. I felt sick for a second, and then out of nowhere, words appeared in the air in front of me. They were like words on a computer terminal, but they just hung there in the air, like they were floating in space a few inches from my face.

Control node initialized (103.9 seconds).

“What the hell?” someone next to me asked.

I turned and saw a man standing on the sidewalk. He was staring at the air in front of him with his brow scrunched, like he was reading something.

When I looked around, I saw the others, all around me, doing the same thing. Some rubbed their eyes. They all looked confused and afraid.

“They see the words too,” a voice said. I turned and saw a woman standing a few feet away from me, her stringy black hair whipping in the wind. She had a tattoo of a snake that swallowed its own tail around her neck, just like me and just like Penny.

“You’re Noelle,” I said. Her shirt was stained with blood around a slit in the fabric. Through the hole, I could see a deep stab wound.

“They all have it,” she said.

“Have what?”

She waved for me to follow, and I did as she limped down the sidewalk to a rusted metal door just inside a nearby alley. Men bundled under dirty blankets watched us from the shadows as she pulled the door open. She waved again and stepped through.

As soon as I was through the door, it slammed behind me and everything went black. As I turned back, though, a light came on from overhead and I saw Noelle standing near an electrical switchbox on one wall. The light flickered across concrete walls that were painted green. Three electric lights, all dark, hung near the far wall. There were no bodies, and this time the table and chair were missing. When I looked around, I saw a series of wire cages along the back wall. Inside each one was a dirty-looking bedroll.