James Knapp - Element Zero

I saw remorse for everything she had done—every person she had killed or allowed to die, every life she’d destroyed or allowed to be destroyed. She carried it all deep within, even a truth that Penny had known all along: she’d let Karen be taken away, because she knew that without her I would find solace in them. She knew. She knew everything and she did it anyway.

The only thing I hadn’t expected was the remorse, made all the worse by the one, childlike fear that she kept as a secret in her heart of hearts.

I don’t think I can stop it.

“You don’t kill me,” I heard her whisper as I reached for the white band from which all the other light sprang. “I die from—”

Something in her brain burst. The halo disappeared and she twitched in shock. One hand desperately reached out at nothing, and the tiny fingers closed around a fistful of air.

“Don’t …”

Her colors didn’t disappear, but they shifted suddenly. The stained glass of her mind melted and skewed. All the beauty went out of it. In an instant, it turned to something jumbled and meaningless.

One of her eyelids drooped. Her eyes rolled back, and then the colors faded and scattered.

She fell, and her large head struck the tile with a heavy thud.

I swayed on my feet, smearing something wet from under my nose and across my cheek. Ai’s little body lay on the floor, her clothes fluttering in the wind as it blew down the hall. A little speck of hot blue that reminded me of a pilot light fluttered above her head. I stared at it, pawing at the inside of my jacket until I found the flask there. I took off the cap and dropped it on the floor as I took a long swallow. The last splash ran down the side of my mouth; then it was empty.

I looked at the big Z monogram etched in the smoked glass and felt my throat burn. Ai had given that to me. Tears blurred in my eyes as that little pilot light went out, and Ai was gone.

I tossed the flask and heard it smash on the floor. It didn’t matter. There wouldn’t be any tomorrow. Not for me, or any of us.

Reaching back out into the night, I found Vaggot again as my last vision began to seep into my mind. For a minute I was in the dark, and a rolling field began to form: dark hills covered in wet grass and fog. Wind rushed over me, moaning through trees somewhere far away, where there were no buildings and you could see the stars and the moon. The ground began to move, and I saw that the field in front of me was crowded with figures. A mob of misshapen heads bobbed and swayed against the moonlit sky like boiling, black water, and thousands of eyes stared back at me.

Mr. Vaggot, how soon?

Less than five minutes.

Five minutes. In five minutes, it would all be over.

I don’t want to die. That was the last thing I sensed from him.

I’ve seen your future, I assured him. Believe me, you don’t want it.

At the penthouse, I’d followed the signal until I came to a glass door in a long hall where a bunch of bodies sprawled out on the floor. They were decked out in body armor, weapons scattered around them where they fell, along with big chunks of safety glass that had been blown out behind them. The glass panel was gone, and the hall opened right out into open air where shredded drapes flapped in the wind. Snow blew in on a rush of cold air.

Past the bodies, I saw her; I knew that beak nose and bony neck the second I saw them. Her long, red hair blew in the breeze as she stared at some other little twerp with her, some freaky-looking Asian chick with a big head. They didn’t even look like they heard me as I picked up the pace and started toward them.

Halfway there, I heard something behind me. I stopped and spun around in time to see a small figure lunge. It was a spooky-looking girl with black hair and blue eyes. She had a metal baton in each hand.

You …

The bitch was fast. The air chirped and one of the batons hit my gun hand hard. Black blood popped from the back of it as the skin split open. I fired two rounds, but they went wild.

Error.

The word flashed as warnings scrolled about the damage to the dead hand. A piece of yellow bone stuck through the skin where she hit it, but there was no pain. Pins and needles ticked down my arm as I squeezed the grip harder and tried to steady the gun. She moved in again.

“I know you,” I said. Her eyes were focused and intense, but there was pain there too. Her shirt was stained with blood, and when I scanned into the meat behind it, I saw a small, bright bullet lodged there. She was hurt.

“You should have done your job on the tanker,” she said. Her pupils opened up, and I felt a little dizzy. “This would all be over.”

It was her. That bitch who stopped me at the train station when I got back from my tour. The one who took my memories. She had me cut open right inside my own apartment and wired a bomb through my guts, then made sure I ended up on that boat so they could blow it up. She’d fixed it so I never knew. I remembered that dizziness now. It was the same as when Singh tried to tweak me back at the roadblock. It was the same every time one of them fucked with my head, but this time the feeling passed.

“What’s the matter?” I said. “Your little ace in the hole not working any—”

She moved fast. At the last second, I leaned back as the baton whipped past my face and I aimed the gun. Something hissed in front of me and I saw a puff of white mist as I squeezed the trigger. The gun boomed, but she’d ducked down again and was gone.

Warning. Warning. Warning.

Messages flew past as white mist began to boil from the back of my dead hand. Before I knew what happened, the skin melted away and I was looking at the meat and bone underneath.

Leichenesser. The bitch had a little key-chain canister hidden on her somewhere. She tossed it aside and picked up the baton she’d dropped on the floor as she closed in again.

The bone melted like wax as muscle sprang free and began to dissolve. I tried to fire again, but what was left of the hand wouldn’t respond. The gun fell to the ground, trailing smoke, and she stomped on it with one foot before kicking it back down the hall behind her.

“You fucking—”

She spun around again as the last of the hand sizzled away, leaving a clean stump where the filter and nerve interface was. Pain blasted through my ribs as the baton hit home.

“I won’t let you near her,” she said.

“She’s going to launch the nukes, you stupid bitch,” I gasped.

My right hand wasn’t half as good, but in a straight-up brawl, it wouldn’t matter. I reached back and pulled my field knife out of its sheath. She saw it and came around for another attack, but I closed the distance between us before she could strike.

“You’re dead,” I told her, and swung the knife.

Something crashed back out in the hallway, and the dark field scattered. I was back in the hallway with the bodies, and …

Penny. Penny was in trouble. She needed me.

Cold air rushed over me from the empty window. Snow blew against the back of my neck as I turned to see Penny and Flax fighting. Both of them were bleeding, and the floor around them was smeared with blood. Penny had one baton still clenched in her fist. Flax was missing one hand, but had a knife in the other one.

“Penny!”

“Go to the roof,” she grunted without looking back. “Get out of here.”

Flax lunged, but Penny ducked under the blade and darted in close, to strike again. Before she could land the blow, Flax grabbed her by the wrist and head-butted her in the face with a loud crack of bone. Blood gushed from Penny’s nostrils as she staggered back.