James Knapp - Element Zero

“Penny …Penny, are you okay?”

She lifted her head, then propped herself up on one elbow.

“Hold on. Don’t try to move.”

“I’m okay. Don’t turn your back on her.”

I turned as the colors in the hallway washed out and the lights turned bright. As another blast of freezing wind whipped through my hair, I saw the pattern appear around Ai’s large head, bright orange, and red, like molten pieces of a broken planet.

“You have to let Vaggot go,” I said. “You were wrong about everything.” Ai shook her head.

“I have seen more clearly than you are capable of.”

“The end is coming,” I told her. “This has to happen. Fawkes doesn’t destroy the city, and he was never going to. It’s something else, something you didn’t see—”

“Thousands of visions from thousands of people have been catalogued over the course of years and studied by the best minds—”

“None of them live—”

“Don’t you dare interrupt me!”

“None of you survive,” I said. “You can’t see what’s really going on because none of you live. You see these …snippets of what happens beforehand, but it’s useless because you can’t see past it to what really happens. This is the only way to stop it—”

“Who do you think you are?”

I felt her punch through my defenses and grab hold of me. A jolt went down my spine and my whole body started to wind down. She’d found that stem of white light at the base of my consciousness and was trying to pinch it off. My heart skipped a beat and fluttered in my chest as I started to sag.

“We have control of the satellite back,” Ai said. “Heinlein Industries will be reoccupied, and Fawkes will be destroyed very soon. His army on the street will be shut down and then collected and destroyed. Fawkes has lost, and we’ve won. All we need to do is survive until they retake control of Heinlein’s transmitter; then it will be over.”

“It won’t be over,” I gasped. “It’s already too late…. ”

My vision blurred as I pushed back, trying to force her out of my head.

“Penny, kill her,” she said.

Penny got back up onto her feet, and turned toward me. Distantly, I could feel the conflict in her mind; she was my friend, but she’d belonged to Ai for a long time. At some point over the years, Penny had learned to kill without thinking about it, either before or afterwards. I looked into her eyes but it took everything I had to keep Ai from killing me herself, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.

“Don’t,” I whispered to her. “Please.”

“I said, ‘kill her.’”

Slowly, Penny turned away from me and faced Ai. Red dots appeared on the tile near her feet as she straightened her back.

“Penny, you know you can trust me,” Ai told her. “She is wrong. She dies here in this building; you know that. You both die here.”

“Then so do you,” I said, and as the light got so bright that it stung my eyes, I pushed her away and out of my head.

The four revivor signatures moved around the western face of the Pratsky Building, heading for the transmitter hub. The one in the lead was Fawkes. With his head start, it was going to be close.

I skirted past several more piles of clothing strewn on the floor. The toe of my boot hit a stray pistol and sent it spinning down the hall, where it struck an empty helmet. Somewhere else in the building, several shots went off.

Faye, I called. She didn’t respond.

The corridor opened into a large area with cubicles set up in the center. Offices ran the length of the wall to my right, and across the room, a huge window looked into a dark laboratory. The glass had been punched through with a long row of bullet holes, and through the web of fractures I could make out hulking machinery. According to the map, I could cut through there on my way to the dish.

The door was jammed. I kicked through the damaged glass and climbed over the edge, dropping to the floor. Back the way I’d come, I heard more gunfire.

Faye, are you receiving me? She didn’t answer, but someone else did.

You’re too late, Agent. It was Fawkes.

A large tank along one wall had ruptured, and the air in the lab had a chemical smell. Fog had formed over the wet floor, where several sets of clothing were bunched. The smell got worse as I headed down a row of equipment, my sleeve pressed over my nose and mouth.

Fawkes, you cannot destroy that transmitter. The variant is spreading out of control.

That’s the point.

Past the racks of dark equipment were three bodies lying facedown in the chemical spill. The lab must have been sectioned off from the main climate system, and Leichenesser had dissipated before it made it this far in. All three of them looked human, and were dressed in lab coats. One of them had been shot in the throat.

Something’s wrong, Fawkes. They’re going to nuke the city anyway.

You’re lying.

I’m not lying. The launch has been initialized.

If that’s true, then it doesn’t matter if I destroy the transmitter or not.

They’re trying to stop the spread. If it can’t be stopped using the transmitter, then those nukes are going to fall, Fawkes. I believe you; I don’t think you ever had any intention of destroying this city. Don’t let this happen—

Fawkes broke the connection.

A heavy, temperature-controlled vat sat in the wreckage ahead, and I saw that a gray hand had broken the surface. A series of glass jars connected with chrome tubes had been shattered, the sharp edges stained black. Inside one I saw the slick lump of a human liver trailing wires. Another had spilled out a long coil of intestine that hung from the glass edge down to the floor, where black blood had pooled. I stepped in something soft as I banked left around the equipment, toward the exit.

As I shoved open the door, something lunged out in front of me. I ran headlong into a large figure, almost bowling us both over as I grabbed a fistful of shirt collar and spun the man around. I slammed his back into the wall and pressed the barrel of my gun to his forehead.

“Don’t shoot!” he yelled. Pale-skinned, he was a man I didn’t recognize. He was wearing a long coat that was wrapped tightly around him. He brought his hands up where I could see them, his eyes wide. His face was covered in sweat. “I’m not armed! Don’t shoot!”

A high-pitched whine began to sound. It was coming from the man.

“Get this thing off me,” he said. His eyes were wild. “Get this thing off me…. ”

He grabbed my lapels and pulled me toward him. I stumbled, shoving him back.

The man’s coat fell open, and I saw a light flash underneath through a nest of wires.

“Help me!” he screamed. “I don’t want to die!”

Energy was building up fast in the device. There wasn’t time to stop it from detonating. I knocked his hands away from my jacket, and the material tore free from his fingers. He tried to grab me again, and I put one heel in his chest, kicking him back through the office doorway. He crashed against the desk behind him as smoke began to trail between the wires of the device strapped to his chest.

“I don’t want to—”

I spun to the left, around the corner, as the air thumped and the bomb went off. Overhead lights rained glass and sparks down over me as fire boiled down the corridor, throwing me to the floor as the wall in front of me flew into pieces.

I reeled, my ears ringing, and static flickered across my HUD as a message came through from the outside.