James Knapp - Element Zero

I’m going to try to head him off.

He’s destroyed the original Huma stores. You won’t be able to revert the units in the field to their original state without them, but a member of his team held on to a single sample without his knowing. I have it with me now.

Is anyone left there who knows how to set up the code transfer and issue it?

My foot kicked through a pile of revivor components bundled inside empty clothes. A bayonet clattered across the floor and struck another pile. As I began to run, I saw there were remains everywhere; boots, clothes, and wires all crumpled in the shapes of shriveled bodies. In the offices and cubicles I saw more remains, dissolved away so that even the blood was gone.

When he first arrived, Fawkes made sure there would be no one left who could operate the transmitter , I told him. Dulari Shaddrah and Robert MacReady are dead.

What about Ang Chen?

He can work the transmitter, but even if he’s alive and you can find him, he won’t. Dulari provided me with instructions when she gave me the sample.

Can you set it up?

I can try.

As I passed by one of the offices, I saw a woman inside. She sat, wearing a vest that was strapped with explosive bricks over a white silk blouse, behind the desk. She didn’t look up as I passed. Even when my movement caused the device to begin emitting a shrill beep, she stared at the desktop, mascara dried in lines down both cheeks.

I picked up speed and ran through a doorway at the end of the row. The device went off, and light flashed bright enough to cast a long shadow in front of me before I felt air rush over my back. I stumbled forward as something flew past me and crashed through a window to my left. Glass rained against the wall next to me.

Faye? Are you there?

A shape ran through the smoke. I couldn’t make out who it was. He struck me with his shoulder as he passed and spun me around.

Faye?

I’m here.

I ran past another series of cubicles. Down the row, I saw a man sitting in a swivel chair, staring sadly at the stump of his forearm. A prosthetic, maybe, that had been dissolved away. I could make out wires around a flashing LCD, but I seemed to be out of range of the motion detector. I kept my head down as I passed by him. One tear in the suit is all it would take. If enough of the Leichenesser got inside to begin the reaction, nothing would stop it.

The ones he left alive are dangerous, I told Nico. They’re rigged with explosives. The devices are motion sensitive.

Got it , Nico said. I’m going to head off Fawkes and his men. Get to the control room and get ready to send on my mark.

Understood.

And thank you, Faye.

Another shape darted across the hallway in front of me as I picked up speed. Somewhere outside, I could make out the high-pitched whine of approaching jets.

Good luck, Nico.

Revivors don’t believe in luck.

No, I said, but you do.

When this is over, Faye, wait for me. I’ll find you.

And when you find me, what will you do then?

He didn’t answer. After enough seconds had passed, I answered for him.

I’ll wait for you, Nico.

You will?

Yes, I said.

It wasn’t the first lie I had ever told him, but I knew that it would at least be the last.

“Zoe, what are you doing?” Ai asked. As Vaggot struggled against me, I felt another mind intrude and break my connection.

“Let him go,” I said.

Ai’s tiny hands spread their fingers wide as her stare intensified. I felt the armed guards around us move all at the same time, and their attention turned to me.

“No, Zoe,” she said, and their guns began to take aim.

When the first gun was pointed at me, Penny reacted. I heard a sharp chirping sound over the wind and the rumbling from outside, then the guard screamed as she shattered his elbow with a collapsible metal baton. The gun slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor as he clutched his arm and staggered back.

Some of the men turned, unsure for a second, before they all pricked up again and pointed their guns back at me.

“Penny, stop it,” Ai said. She stared up at me, and I could feel her reaching through my defenses, into my mind.

“Zoe, do as I say,” she said.

Penny looked confused, but she didn’t back off. She had a second baton in the other hand now, and was looking over the guards like she might spring at any second. I could feel her, and her fear, as I tried to push Ai back. It was one of the only times I’d ever felt such panic from her. She was scared right then, scared to death. She was scared those men were going to shoot me and that she wouldn’t be able to stop them.

“Get those guns off her,” Penny said to the guards, her voice stressed. There were five left, two of them between me and her. They looked at each other, then at Ai. No one moved.

I heard the chirp again, and this time the nose of the man next to me seemed to explode, spraying warm blood across my cheek. He stumbled back, then grunted as Penny struck him in the chest.

Her hand grabbed my arm, and before I knew what happened, she pulled me away and shoved me back behind her. She squared off against the remaining four men as the one with the broken nose slumped back against the wall. As he slowly slid down to the floor, I saw the hilt of a knife sticking out from over the edge of his body armor. His consciousness dimmed, then winked out. Penny had killed him.

“Penny!” Ai snapped.

“The blockade has tripled in size and closed in,” one of the men said to Ai. “It’s an all-out rush. They’re inside the building.”

“Hold Zoe under guard,” she said. But when they approached, Penny tensed again.

“Penny, let them take her,” Ai said, but Penny shook her head.

“You heard them,” Ai said, calmer. “Fawkes’s army has breached the perimeter and is inside the building. They are coming for us. We need to leave now.”

“Can we shut down the elevators?” someone asked.

“Not from here,” a voice answered over the radio. “We’d need to get to the maintenance—” The voice was cut off.

“We’ve got movement in all wings,” one of the guards said, shaking his head as he looked at a computer tablet in his palm.

“How long?” Ai asked.

“At their current rate? Not long. Five minutes.”

“Take them both under guard,” Ai said. “Right now.”

“Next one that moves—” Penny started to say, but Ai turned on her and she stopped short. To concentrate on Penny, though, she took some of her focus off me. I saw the cords in Penny’s neck stand out as she tried to hold her ground.

“How dare you resist me?” Ai asked.

A shot rang out, and Penny jerked back. Blood spattered across the floor. One of the men lunged past her and grabbed me.

“Penny!”

I could sense the consciousness of each of the soldiers as they surrounded me. I could feel them trying to gang up on me and push their will on me. I even felt my body start to relax.

Before they could worm their way in any further, I pushed them all back. I locked on to each of their patterns and found the hot, white band that fed them.

I severed them all, and the lights went out. A gun clunked onto the floor, then another, as their bodies crumpled and fell where they stood.

“Zoe, stop!” Ai snapped from behind me as I ran to Penny.

“Penny!”

I knelt down next to her. She lay there, beads of red scattered on the tile around her, but her mind was strong. I sensed pain and worry but not panic. I didn’t sense that slow euphoria and disconnect people got when they slipped away. She wasn’t dying, at least not yet.