James Knapp - Element Zero

I found the door and stepped out into the snow. The lock clicked shut behind me, and a gust of freezing air whipped over me. I saw no guards or cameras. The security system on the tarmac keyed off heat signatures, which made me effectively invisible. I kept to the shadows and moved fast. At the depot’s back entrance I found a plain metal door with a scanner next to it. I pulled a small, tightly rolled magnetic strip out from under an incision in my scalp. Unrolling it, I held it to the scanner until it beeped and the LED turned green.

Ice flaked down onto my back as I pushed open the door. The facility was dark and filled with metal boxes. Each box was the size of a human body, stacked and awaiting shipment. Each had a lot number and a shipping code, and was stamped with a certification:

PRODUCT OF HEINLEIN INDUSTRIES

I followed the map Fawkes had provided and crept down one of the rows all the way to the end of the shipping bay, where a single doorway stood. I stepped through, down a long, dark corridor, to an annex designated SST, for Series Seven Testing.

The magnetic strip got me through the door and into a refrigerated locker where wheeled metal racks were assembled in rows. Rows of revivors hung from hooks on each rack, their arms and legs dangling.

There were ten revivors to each of the racks, dormant, but ready for reanimation. Counting down by date and time, I found the rack that would be processed that morning. I lifted the first revivor off its metal hook and hoisted it down onto the concrete floor. I spit out the glass capsule and slipped it into the corpse’s open mouth, down between its rear molars. I struck him beneath the jaw and heard the capsule crunch.

Mist boiled from between the revivor’s lips, and a few seconds later his face melted like hot wax. Teeth and bone collapsed and oozed into the hole as I stood and stepped back to a safe distance. His chest sank in on itself, followed by the rest of him, as the substance consumed the necrotized flesh. When its job was done, it turned upon itself. All it left behind were revivor hardware and a cloud of thin white mist that was already being pulled through the vents. I took the tag that had been around his wrist. I slipped it around my own, then hid the bayonet and revivor nodes behind an equipment rack.

The bodies swayed on their hooks as I pulled myself into the empty slot. The hook pierced my skin and I eased myself down until it dug into the bone of my skull. Carefully, I released the bar above me and let myself hang. In another minute, the bodies were still.

Using the trigger Fawkes had given me, I made myself go dormant. The light from my eyes flickered and then went out. If our contacts there were right, I would reawaken in the next few hours.

Until that time, I would sleep.

The morning sun had just begun to turn the sliver of sky above us to a dull gray, and in front of us, the train yard’s floodlights were blurred in the fog. The chain-link gate that led into it hung open, pressed into a bank of dirty snow. On the other side, derelict monorail cars were lined up in a long row, half-buried and covered in ice.

Agent Van Offo stood to my left, working the electronic manifest with a stylus. A yard worker leaned against the guard station’s metal siding and stared at the head of his cigarette.

We’re at the entrance, I told the SWAT leader.

Roger that. Our teams are in position.

“I’ve got it,” Van Offo said. He held up the tablet to show the grid, with one of the cars called out. “Right there; that’s the source.”

The train car was stored with a block of others, abandoned along the brick-faced rear of the yard. I zoomed in and saw that the snow had been cleared away from the hitch and the door above it. I glanced back at Van Offo.

You see that?

I see it.

“Thanks,” he said to the yard worker, and handed the tablet back to him. The man took it without looking up. Van Offo stood in front of him and stared for a few seconds. In the gray light, I saw the brown of his eyes turn black.

“Go back inside,” he said in a low voice. “Sit at your desk and go to sleep.”

The man nodded. He flicked the cigarette, halfsmoked, into the snow and lumbered through the door, into the guard station.

“You look thoughtful,” Van Offo said. His eyes, always half-closed, peered over his large nose as snow collected on the shoulders of his coat. He couldn’t control my thoughts any longer, but he could still sense them. He didn’t know exactly what was going through my head, but he was good at filling in those blanks. It was easy to see, sometimes, why Fawkes hated them.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re moving in.”

Snow drifted down and had just begun to cover the boot tracks that branched off from the rusted metal gate. Several sets headed off between the rusting hulks. I followed them in.

Rail cars loomed on either side. The outsides were weathered, seams stained with rust. In the distance I saw oil drums, their rims scorched and covered with soot. Past that, beyond the perimeter, the huge shadow of the Central Media Communications Tower loomed over the city.

The tracks led down a frozen gray slick that ducked between two cars a few hundred feet away. I drew my gun and started down the path. Van Offo followed.

Wachalowski, this is SWAT leader. The area is secured. We’re waiting on your word to move in.

The satellite showed thermal activity in the yard. I could see the two teams as hot spots on the map. Van Offo and I were two orange points in a field of gray. All signatures converged on the far end of the yard, where a single car stood out from the rest, a pattern of shifting red and yellow among the cold, dark shapes around it.

There, I said. Van Offo nodded.

On the visual feed, I watched SWAT creep down the rows of rusted metal. Their optics floated in the shadows as they made their way toward the target.

Wachalowski, Van Offo said. He pointed at the trail in the snow. Sets of animal tracks trailed alongside the others.

SWAT, we’ve got dog tracks here, I said. Computer counts at least four different sets.

Roger.

I broke from the trail and moved between the car and the weathered brick wall beside it. I stopped a hundred yards south of the target, then zoomed in for a better look. The snow had gotten heavier, making it harder to see.

Anything? Van Offo asked. My breath trailed in the cold as I swept over the area. The wall of the car was too thick and too far away for the backscatter to penetrate, but I could pick out several cameras mounted on the outside of it.

They’ve got security feeds set up, I said.

We see them, SWAT said. Ready to cut their power on your mark.

An LED on the rear door flipped from red to green, and the latch turned.

Wait.

The door slid open and someone stepped out. It was a man with thick black hair and a surgical mask tied over his face. Over his clothes, he wore a black rubber apron.

One of the suspects just came out. Hold position.

The man walked out into the snow and the apron left a trail of black drops. He moved to the side of the car and turned away from the camera. Steam drifted up from in front of him as he started to urinate. From inside, someone barked in Russian. The translator scrolled text at the bottom of my periphery.

Clean it all up! Set the charges, and let’s get the fuck out of here!

You get that, SWAT?

Roger that. Team, watch for explosives.

I turned to Van Offo.

Can you lure him away from there? He nodded.