James Knapp - Element Zero

Run Deatherage’s name. See if anything comes up.

I’m on it.

The SWAT leader appeared at the doorway behind us and leaned in.

“Agent, it looks like the techs picked up a transmission just before the explosion,” he said.

“What kind of transmission?”

“Some kind of large transfer. We think it was a core dump, to save the data before they blew the place.”

“They get a destination?”

He nodded.

“A copy?”

“No.”

Alice, it looks like they did some kind of backup or core dump before they blew the place. We’ve got a destination.

Where? I checked the SWAT channel. When I saw the name, I grit my teeth.

Mother of Mercy. It was a clinic downtown.

Isn’t that facility on our list? she asked.

Yes. We’d been there several times to pull records and hadn’t even marked the place as suspicious. I’d been there once myself. Things were slipping through the cracks.

Forensics will clean up the storage site. Take SWAT and get over there. Let me know what you find.

I looked at Van Offo. “You heard the woman.”

“Mother of Mercy,” he said. There was a strange look in his eye.

“Problem?”

“No.”

Back outside, the wind gusted. Grit and snow pelted the side of the train car. Van Offo looked out at the revivor’s remains, its shirt flapping in the breeze.

“Let’s go.”

You have one job now, he told me early on. Manpower, equipment, funds…anything you need, you’ll get.

He was right. I got everything I needed. As long as in the end I put Fawkes down for good, nothing else mattered. Obstacles disappeared. Any footage taken from any camera that put the investigation in a bad light disappeared. If it did air, it was pulled. They were willing to search anyplace and detain anyone. None of it got me any closer to Fawkes.

I climbed back through the wreckage, back out into the cold. Van Offo followed, staring out through the snow as he turned over in his mind whatever divination he’d just received that he wouldn’t, or maybe couldn’t, share.

It was warm in the car, and as Penny sped down the street, the snow that streaked past the windshield was almost hypnotic. Penny rode low in the driver’s seat, head bobbing in time with the beat as she whipped down the sharply curved ramp, apparently able to see even though I couldn’t. I hated Penny’s music at first, but it had grown on me, and as the bass beat in my chest, I caught my own head bobbing a little.

I offered her my flask as red dots of light appeared in the dark up ahead. She waved one hand no, so I nestled back into the big leather seat and I took a long pull off it myself while panels on the dashboard lit up. A holographic display blinked on an inch in front of the glass of the windshield, and the computer highlighted the red dots down the road in front of us. Penny’s fingers tapped at the dash console, and the words BLOCKING SCAN appeared there.

When they realized the scan was blocked, they’d call; this was the fifth time we’d been there, and they did it every time. The place had a ton of security, and no one got in without being checked out, but it didn’t have to be on the record. Not for us.

The video panel lit up and a good-looking guy with a crew cut and a Stillwell Corps uniform appeared. He looked at us, and Penny gave him a little wave while he verified our faces. He said something I couldn’t hear over the music, and a light next to the display turned green. He nodded at us, and the screen went dark.

The snow stopped abruptly as we blew into the tunnel, the tube lights fixed on top snaking off into the distance like three big, white worms. Text began scrolling across the bottom of the windshield, warning about stuff like security clearance, vehicle search and seizure, and other things that sounded even worse. We didn’t have to worry about any of that. The people who counted knew we were coming; in fact, they dreaded it. No one was going to search us or detain us—they wouldn’t dare. We were special messengers sent by Ai herself, and I was Element One, the grand savior of everyone who stood against Fawkes.

A jeep and an unmarked black car with tinted windows passed by us going the other way inside the tunnel, before we came out into the huge, underground lot. Penny made her way toward the side entrance they liked us to use. Two armed guards stood to either side of it as she pulled in and killed the music in time to hear the tires chirp. The two men stood like statues in the headlights while I took one last swig from the flask.

“All right,” Penny said. “Let’s do this; I need a real drink already.”

As soon as we pulled up I sensed something was missing. The buzz that came from the research lab’s busiest brain wasn’t there. I’d seen him only once in person, some scientist on permanent loan from Heinlein. He’d worked on Huma, so it made sense he’d be our best hope to sabotage it. He was an older, ugly Chinese man with thinning hair and spots on his skin. He had a cool aura, though. It was complex, with a million focused points, and in between it all his colors roiled like a storm. They reminded me of how Nico’s used to look, and thinking about that made me a little sad. Penny patted my arm.

“No Chen,” she said. She noticed it too.

I was about to get out when the door between the two guards opened and an older man in a suit stepped out. I immediately recognized the square face, and the gray military cut. I took an extra mouthful of ouzo and swallowed hard before stowing the flask in my suit-jacket pocket next to where the pistol was strapped.

“General Osterhagen,” Penny whistled. “That’s not good.”

“Why not?”

“He’s got bad news. He wants to make sure no one glosses over it.”

His face looked serious, like it always did, but Penny was right: there was something about the soft light of his consciousness that was grim and determined. Behind the thin white halo that surrounded it and behind the layers of his thought I saw worry, and that worried me.

Osterhagen didn’t look especially intimidating. In fact, if you didn’t know anything about him, you’d think he just looked like somebody’s grandfather. I knew plenty about him, though, and that included all the men he killed when he was in the service, and all the ones he killed once he was out. He’d actually killed men with his bare hands, but when you looked at those calm blue patterns that usually made up his aura, you’d never guess that any of it bothered him, ever. He didn’t scare or worry easily.

Penny killed the engine, and as we got out, I could see she’d noticed it too. We walked up to him and he held out his hand. First Penny shook it, then I did. His hand was hard, and he always squeezed a little too tight, but even though I hated touching people, I’d learned to give him my best shake. It was one of those things that mattered to him.

“General,” Penny said, throwing him a wink, “if I’d known you were going to be here, I’d have dressed up.”

Penny was dressed up; we both were whenever we visited the Stillwell Corps research facility. She flirted as a matter of course, with men and women, but there never seemed to be much interest behind it. Osterhagen, as usual, completely ignored it.

“I thought I’d give you a tour of the lab tonight,” he said. “There’s something I want you two to see.”

“Sounds great,” she said. “Let’s do it.”

In reality, she was actually really excited to see the lab, and so was I. Ai had sent us before to get what she called an unfiltered report, but so far they’d drawn the line at letting us walk around inside the work area and see what was going on. Ai never pushed it, so I assumed Osterhagen had let her view it remotely or walked her through himself, but I’d always been curious. The lab was where they took all the Huma-infected subjects they’d been able to find. I’d never actually seen one. Not that I knew of anyway.