James Knapp - The Silent Army

“If that’s true, then why didn’t you report it?”

“I only just became aware of it, and I’m reporting it now, to you,” he said. “It wasn’t reported previously because I assume the recipient of the communication doesn’t want anyone to know.”

“Who was he talking to?”

“I don’t know that either, I’m afraid. But I’m telling you—Samuel Fawkes is still out there and he’s still operating. The events of two years ago are not over.”

I nodded. I’d known Fawkes was never found, but he hadn’t tried to communicate with me since. I had been starting to hope he’d been uncrated and destroyed in the field, but never really believed it. He’d made his intentions clear the last time we’d spoken.

“How much do you know about his motivations back then?” I asked.

“Very little I could verify,” he said. “I know he infiltrated Heinlein’s systems, and used it to gain access to the information he’d amassed on Zhang’s Syndrome back when he’d been alive. I also know he used our systems to analyze huge amounts of recorded brain-wave data.”

“Did you study the Zhang’s Syndrome data?”

“That data has since been classified, and, I believe, destroyed.”

“Destroyed? Whatever else Fawkes might be, that information—”

“That information painted a picture no one inside Heinlein Industries is anxious to see come to light. A long-term study, with hard data, suggesting hidden memories that can only be accessed once a person has crossed over and become a revivor? A shadow government that is controlling the minds of the rest of us without anyone knowing? Can you imagine the media storm that would result if that ever came to light? No matter how crazy it is, it would spread like wildfire and would never go away.”

“So, you think Fawkes was insane?”

“Fawkes is clearly very intelligent, and he’s clearly very determined, but how would you frame it? From the information I have, I can deduce only that Fawkes coordinated the attacks as a means of fighting this shadow he obviously believes exists.”

“Is there any chance he’s right?” I asked. MacReady watched me evenly.

“His data appears very conclusive,” he said, “but there are other possible explanations. Fawkes didn’t pursue them. He followed his paranoia down the rabbit hole.”

“Could he still have been right?”

MacReady sighed. “You can always make a case for these things,” he said. “Not long after the events of two years ago, a new law was passed. It ensured that revivor consciousness would revert to pre-generation seven levels—basically removing some of the higher functions to make them more obedient but less self-sufficient. Now all revivor models of Fawkes’s generation or lower are being scrapped and replaced. One could look at those things and see how it might fit into Fawkes’s thinking.”

I couldn’t tell if he believed it or not. In the light of the monitor, his face was hard to read, and maybe he wasn’t even sure what he believed himself.

“Do you have concrete proof of Fawkes’s communication?” I asked.

“No. You’ll have to trust me on that, but it worries me, and that’s part of why I’m here. It was one thing to have Fawkes infiltrate Heinlein’s systems and access our data without anyone’s knowledge …it’s another for someone inside Heinlein to be willingly communicating with him. Before, he controlled revivors that he’d smuggled into the country to do what he needed done, but if he’s making allies inside the city who are human …”

He didn’t have to finish. That would mean Fawkes had managed to get people, regular flesh-and-blood legal citizens, to buy into his conspiracy theory and help him. That would give him a much, much wider reach. Maybe even wide enough to try to acquire weapons like the ones uncovered at Royal Plaza.

“Does Heinlein know you’re here?” I asked.

“No,” he said, “and they can’t. I don’t know who on the inside might be compromised. I won’t communicate with you over the wire for the time being, until I know, but I’ll try to help you if I learn more.”

“Thanks, MacReady. Looks like I owe you again. Be careful.”

“And you, Agent.”

He got up and headed for the door, stopping to turn back before he left. Silhouetted in the light from the hallway outside, he looked like a shadow himself.

“Even if he was right about Zhang’s Syndrome,” he said, “I would be very cautious of Samuel Fawkes.”

He left, and when he closed the door, the only light left was the soft glow from the vitals monitor. I began to fall back into sleep.

I could almost have dreamed him.

Outstanding message: Pu, Sean.

The words lit up in the dark behind my eyelids. I brought the time up next to them and saw it was morning.

Opening my eyes, I found myself looking at a foam-tiled ceiling. A fluorescent light flickered off to my left.

The hospital.

The vitals monitor wasn’t beeping anymore, and my strength had returned, for the most part. I stretched. My muscles felt stiff, but I could move.

Outstanding message: Pu, Sean.

The message had come in on the channel we used to use back in the service, during silent operations. He’d never used it since. None of us had.

The message was sent at a little past three in the morning. It was flagged as an emergency transmission. I opened it.

31 03 76 11 52 57 81 1

That was it—just a list of numbers, with no accompanying text or voice.

It could have been a glitch, but it didn’t look like it. Whatever the numbers were, he meant to send them to me. I put in a call to him on the JZI, but he was offline.

I closed my eyes again and brought up the footage from the night before. The data I pulled during the raid had been removed, but I still had the visual recording up to the point I’d entered the basement. I skipped through, marking off key sections.

In a window, I watched as I tailed Takanawa down the stairwell. The view moved slowly in the darkness, letting him stay well ahead. His thermal signature trailed across the floor, and I followed it. Smaller signatures scurried here and there as a group of rats were startled. The marks intermingled for a second, and something flickered.

I stopped the recording. I remembered the distortion, but at the time I thought it was a trick of the light; I didn’t expect to see it show up on the recording. Going back, I slowed it down for a better look. The patterns from his footsteps were steady; then the rats scattered. I saw the flicker again. The glow from the footsteps disappeared for a second, then came back.

I checked again to be sure. Something blocked them out temporarily, moving right to left. Something crossed in front of them. Something I couldn’t see had been sticking to the right wall. It startled the rats, and when it did, it crossed over to the left, causing a skip in the patterns.

The Light Warping field. It would bend visible light, but not the radiation signature from the case, and not thermal radiation either. Whoever took the case wasn’t already in the basement, waiting. I hadn’t been the only one following Takanawa.

I cut back to when SWAT first broke in on him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed. Unlike the others who’d been caught, he was alone. There was no revivor with him.

“Where’d the revivor go?” I asked him.

He shrugged. “I don’t see one here. Do you?”

Bringing up the SWAT report from the raid, I cycled down the inventory of revivors that had been impounded. There were twelve total: the eleven active ones, plus the defunct one I’d found under the bed.