James Knapp - Element Zero

I got a flash of streets full of surging bodies, eyes blank and staring, and deformed heads that shook at the end of crooked necks. They moved through the wreckage of an abandoned city, not understanding the things around them.

“The living are forced underground,” she said. “You are seeing the last remnants of humanity.”

My reflection worked the swollen halves of its black tongue as I tried to speak. Noelle stepped close to me and looked into my eyes.

She leaned in and put her arms around me. I felt her cold hand on the back of my vulture’s neck, and rested my chin on her bony shoulder. I felt her breath in my ear as she whispered one last time.

“Someone has to do it,” she said. “You know in your heart this is true. Destroy the city, and you can stop this. It’s the only thing that can stop this. You have to—”

The room warped in front of me. I staggered forward as Noelle disappeared. The green concrete walls faded and I was back at Alto Do Mundo, in the war room, where Penny stood shaking me.

“Zoe!”

I touched my face. It was normal. I ran my hands over the back of my neck. I was okay. It wasn’t real. None of it was real, but …

“What happened?” Penny asked. “What did you see?”

I turned and vomited onto the tiled floor. Even as I retched, I couldn’t shake the horrible feeling of being trapped in that deformed body.

“Zoe, come on. We’re leaving.”

I looked around and saw that men in black body armor had surrounded us. They all had automatic rifles and were standing at attention. Ai had approached us, her face pale as she stared into my eyes.

“What did you see?” she asked.

“I …”

“They’re swarming out there,” one of the guards said. “We’re not going to be able to get past them!”

“The blockades are to keep us in until he can destroy the towers,” Penny said. “Heinlein’s satellite is recharging to fire again right now. We don’t have a choice. We have to leave now.”

“What did you see?” Ai asked again.

“I know what I have to do,” I told them, trying to spit the puke taste out of my mouth.

“We don’t have time for this,” Penny said. “We’re going to the roof. Come on.” No one moved.

“Tell me what you saw,” Ai said.

“You were right,” I told her. “The city is going to burn …it will be gone in an hour.”

Ai didn’t answer. She didn’t push any further. She didn’t make me say the last part of what was going through my mind, the part I didn’t want to think about.

Penny put one of her arms around my waist. She pulled me along as we began to move again.

“Is that true?” she whispered in my ear. “Are we too late? Is this it?”

“Yeah,” I said. I saw the mistake we’d made, the same mistake made over and over, but I’d seen it way too late.

It was true.

I awoke into darkness, at the thin edge of the void. There was no light and no sound as I hung suspended over the abyss.

It’s time, Faye, it seemed to say.

I know.

Primary systems initializing.

The words floated in the dark as energy collected in my cold chest. My physical body was awakening, but I felt disconnected. The synthetic blood that had gelatinized in its web of veins warmed. It thinned and began to flow as the low vibration of my heart began.

Never mind that, the presence soothed. It’s time to sleep now.

Secondary systems initializing.

Distantly, I picked up sounds. I heard the whistle of wind and the low creak of metal. I was sitting on a hard, rough surface that was cold to the touch.

Tertiary systems initializing.

Faye …

Not yet, I thought. Soon. Not quite yet.

I opened my eyes and a dim light seeped in. I sat inside a small space with humid air and dirty metallic walls. Just ahead was the opening of a large steel duct. Thick frost had formed around its lip. It was quiet, except for the sound of breathing. There was someone behind me.

What happened? How did I get here?

I searched, and found my last coherent memories. I focused in on that section of the field until a bright point of light rose from out of the rest to present itself to me.

Faye, take him now.

I had been standing inside the hidden lab, its walls covered with data. MacReady lay on his back, still-warm blood pooling around his dead body. Fawkes had one hand on my throat, his lifeless eyes locked on mine. I was under the control of someone else.

Nico.

I wasn’t sure what he’d done. Somehow he’d managed to assert full control. He used me to target Fawkes’s spinal cord, and fired my bayonet….

The image flickered and the memory collapsed. It shrank to a point of light and receded into the sea of others. It was the last in the chain. After that there was nothing until I’d awoken here, inside the room.

I put one hand on the floor. Black blood had congealed there, and I felt it squish in between my fingers.

“Hold on,” a voice said. I recognized it as Dulari’s. Something probed at the back of my neck.

Calibrating …

“Okay,” she said. Her breath blew like smoke through the cold air.

Warmth tingled down my spine, and I turned my head. Dulari Shaddrah crawled across the floor from behind me, her right sleeve soaked through with blood. Her red fingers were curled around the grip of a pistol.

“Where are we?” I asked. My voice reverberated in the small space.

“One of the cooling ducts,” she said. “The inflow is from outside; the air here is safe for you.” She turned the dimmer on a small electric lamp she’d placed in one corner, and the room got brighter. I could see a film of sweat on her face and neck despite the fact that she shivered in the cold.

“How did I get here?”

“You walked,” she said. “I took you offline for a while. Any memories that hadn’t been committed to longer term got lost. Sorry.”

Breath blew from her nostrils as she winced. I checked the temperature in the room and realized it was just below freezing. She wouldn’t stop shaking.

“What about Fawkes?”

“He got away,” she said. “He made it outside the building and he’s heading for the transmitter. He’s going to try to destroy it.”

“Why?”

“Because he knows it’s over. He lost control of the nukes. The military is on its way. He set something in motion today, and he wants to make sure no one stops it, even after he’s destroyed.”

Tears brimmed in her eyes and her nose ran. She rapped out her words as she tried to keep her teeth from chattering. I wanted to offer her some kind of warmth, but I didn’t have any to give.

“What did he do?”

“It’s what we did,” she said. “Me and the others. I thought we could stop them, but what we created—what I created—wasn’t fully tested before Fawkes released it. It’s out there now, Faye. I don’t know what will happen, but it scares me…. ”

She reached behind me and dragged over a large metallic case. Her fingers could barely work the security latch, but she got it open. Inside, there was a small box and some kind of folded material.

“Fawkes destroyed any stores of the original Huma product,” she said. “He knows that if anyone gets access to the transmitter array, they can initiate another code change, but to do that they’ll need something to fall back on.”

She opened the small box. The inside was lined with foam, and two clear cylinders were nestled there. Each was filled with black fluid.