James Knapp - Element Zero

Karen smiled and looked out over the field.

“We should probably get going,” she said. “It will be dark soon.”

“Just a little longer.”

We watched the sky turn dark blue, then shift to a mixture of orange and pink.

“Will it be okay?” she asked. “Being like the rest of us?”

“Yes.”

“Really?”

I felt like losing that part of me should scare me, but it didn’t—it felt like a terrible weight was lifted. The knowing had been awful, but trying to change those things had been much worse. I didn’t want to know those things anymore. They had never once helped me. The money and the power—none of it made anything any better. It was all gone now, but I think it was the first time I’d ever really known peace.

“Better than okay.”

“Good,” she said. “It’s all over, then.”

A nagging doubt crept in when she said that. I couldn’t know, not like I used to, but I did remember certain things from before.

“One thing still kind of bothers me,” I told her.

“What?”

“A woman used to come to me in my visions,” I said. “I only met her twice in real life.”

“So?”

“She said we’d meet three times.”

Karen shrugged in the growing dark. I scratched the side of my neck.

“Maybe she was wrong.”

“Maybe.”

I scratched the side of my neck again, and felt a ringshaped scar there. That’s where that woman, Flax, bit me. I could remember her lips on my neck, then terrible, blinding pain. I’d fallen as hot blood pumped out of the wound. It spread out across the floor, and I’d lain there in it as the puddle grew. She’d walked off and left me, and as she turned the corner the world faded to black.

“She was a carrier,” I said.

Karen raised her eyebrows. “A what?”

“She bit me,” I said, half to myself. “She was a carrier.”

Karen didn’t answer. When I turned to look at her, she was gone and I was alone. The wind picked up and blew across the field, making the grass and flowers ripple, almost like water.

“Karen?”

System initialization complete.

The words appeared in the dark. I rubbed my eyes, but they didn’t go away. They floated in front of me for a minute and then they faded away.

“Karen?”

Are you awake? The words appeared in front of me, then faded.

“What?”

Are you awake?

The air flickered in front of me and the field warped. The air turned cold for a second, and I felt it rush over bare skin.

Are you—

I opened my eyes. The field disappeared. I was staring down at my flat, bare chest, and my legs dangled beneath me. Wires or tubes were draped down the front and back of me, and I could feel other bodies close to mine. A large man’s hand with a vein that bulged across the back hung next to mine. Our fingers were touching.

Beginning system analysis … The words appeared, then blinked out as random characters started to flow top to bottom in the corner of each eye.

What’s happening? I tried to say the words, but nothing came out. Instead, they appeared in front of me, like the others.

You’re back.

I looked around to see who was sending the messages. I was hanging from somewhere near the ceiling of a large room, surrounded by other hanging bodies. Clusters of wires ran from the backs of their heads and down their spines. Many pairs of eyes stared into the darkness that surrounded us, casting a soft glow that created shadows. There must have been hundreds of us there. The wires trailed down like vines or webbing to the floor down below, which was covered with black splotches.

What is this place? I asked. I waited for the fear to come, but it didn’t.

Here. The message pulsed, then faded.

I looked between two of the hanging bodies and saw a nude woman maybe ten feet in front of me. Her body was scarred, and I could see the dark veins beneath her pale skin. Her hair and eyebrows were gone, and wires sprouted from her skull and spine, like the rest. Behind her, and between the bodies to her left, I could make out a sign mounted on the far wall:

SEMANTIC/EPISODIC MEMORY RECLAMATION FACILITY

Beginning memory analysis … a new message said.

The dead woman’s eyes stared back at me. I knew her face. I’d seen it years ago, down in the old storage facility where Nico had brought me. Years later, I shot her in an alley and hoped that she was gone for good. But now I was no longer afraid. I didn’t feel any fear or jealousy or hatred.

What’s happening to me? I asked her. The many eyes around us jittered, like they were all stuck in a dream. In the dim light they created, they seemed to sparkle.

As I watched them, I sensed another light. It was like a little star, or an ember that floated up from the dark. Below it was something like a field of lights, pinpricks in the dark that hung over a void. Instinctively, I knew they were my memories and that beneath them waited oblivion. It wasn’t like my visions. This was something different.

I focused on that single glowing ember, and when I did, it opened, like a portal. It showed me a memory, as crisp and clear as if it were on TV. Not a dream; not a vision. Just a memory.

I was sitting in a warm car with Nico. Snow was drifting down past the windshield outside. He was smiling at me from the driver’s seat, and the way he looked at me made me feel good. It seemed impossible that we were sitting there and he wanted to be there. He looked at me like I really was someone, not a weird curiosity or a joke. When he watched me, those pretty, iridescent lights shone from behind his eyes, like he was something out of one of my dreams.

“This is a lot,” I said. My heart raced, like it had then. The whole thing had been overwhelming to me, but that smile of his helped put me at ease.

“I know.”

“Half the time I’m not even sure how much of it’s real.”

“It’s real,” he said. “The information the suspect provided was accurate, and after going over everything, I believe it’s real. I believe in you.”

And when he said the words, they had made me cry. But not anymore.

“I believe in you.”

The dead woman continued to stare at me, and I felt a connection form between us. An energy, almost, began to flow back and forth, and the scene in front of me blurred as my eyes began to move in time with hers.

“ …we will meet three times, before this is all over …”

I remembered her words, and as I began to feel a strange sense of calm, the other shoe dropped.

“ …your chances of successfully navigating these encounters are, in percentages, respectively thirty, one hundred …”

My time had come. The end was here. I watched her through the maze of wires, and felt those embers of memory begin to separate from the field of lights and stream into the void. They trickled away, down the hanging wires, and away.

“ …and zero …”

I never understood what Cal saw in that bar, and I guess I never will. It was loud and full of smoke. The air reeked of sweat and too much perfume and cologne. Everyone there was covered in tattoos, and they all looked like trouble.

Maybe that’s what she liked about it. She never did feel completely at ease with first-tier status. She hated places like Bullrich, but even after she got out and moved on, it’s what she knew.

Whatever the reason, it was as good a place as any to go and get lost in. People drank, gambled, and argued, and no one paid any attention to two soldiers in the corner, or the flicker of orange light in their eyes as they sat and appeared to never speak.