James Knapp - The Silent Army

Big credit to my test readers, editor, and copyeditor, who help me be the best I can.

Also, to the mouse who lived in my wall and wouldn’t stop chewing the woodwork. You kept me awake and made me write. I’m sorry one of my cats ate you.

Some things you never forget. For me, the thing I couldn’t leave alone was the way Faye looked at me just before the panel slammed shut between us. I remembered the fire raging behind her when I took her by the arm. When she pushed me away, her hand was cold. The big revivor shoved me back, and when the panel started to close, she looked me in the eye. I was sure an automaton couldn’t have looked at me like that. It was the last time I ever saw her.

“Revivors aren’t people,” someone had once said to me. “Remember that.”

“I know what they are,” I had answered.

But I didn’t.

Everything should have been different. If I couldn’t save her, I should have at least put her to rest. I never should have done what I did. The Leichenesser would have destroyed her body, but I’d removed the capsule myself. The soldiers didn’t get her either. When I had my chance to put an end to it, I couldn’t. I put her right into the hands of Samuel Fawkes.

The rain was beating down, streaking diagonally across the glow of the one remaining streetlight. The hotel across the street was dark. It hadn’t been occupied in years and no one had come or gone for hours, but it wasn’t empty. The satellite confirmed it was tapping power off the grid, and had identified multiple heat signatures inside. Someone was there.

A message from the SWAT leader came in over my JZ implant. The words floated in front of the fogged windshield.

They’re inside. We’re just waiting on confirmation.

Things stayed quiet after the attacks, at first. For a week or two, revivors were news again, and images of their reanimated corpses stalking the streets alongside the National Guard circulated day and night. The questions the government didn’t want anyone asking got asked again as people looked at the images and wondered what signing up for revivor status really meant. The footage of the walking-dead soldiers so close up disturbed them, and for a while they wondered, Was avoiding third-tier status while keeping out of the grinder really worth becoming one of them? There were protests and debates and investigations, until public opinion tired of the whole thing and the buzz moved out to the fringe, where it was mostly forgotten. It wasn’t until two months ago that, out of nowhere, a bomb went off at the Concrete Falls recruitment center, where they did most of the city’s Posthumous Service signups. Despite the initial backlash against revivors, the facility was turning bigger numbers than ever. The economy tanked, and holdouts were lining up to trade their third-tier status for second. A spike in PS recruits put numbers at a five-year high. Concrete Falls had supplied the military with greater numbers of revivors than anywhere else in the country, but not anymore. No one claimed responsibility.

It had been a dead end until the group moved again. Information trolled off the communications networks suggested another high-profile strike was being organized, and this time we caught it early. No target had been confirmed, but both the seller and the buyer were involved in the previous bombing—I was sure of it. A shipment of heavy explosives had been smuggled into the country, to Royal Plaza, where it was about to change hands. There was a lot of pressure to put a name, any name, to the Concrete Falls attack, and to bring the people in.

My old friend and tech man, Sean Pu, was the one who tracked them down. The two of us went way back, having served together in the grind. He’d saved my life back then, and two times since. He had a big interest in the case, and for some reason he didn’t want me on it. Something had him nervous and although he never said anything, another agent, Mike Vesco, was brought in to take point. I was being edged out completely, until wire-taps uncovered illegal revivors at the site.

Sean had saved my life three times, but two years ago things had become more complicated; Sean turned out to be something other than what I thought he was, something he’d hidden very well. I always thought he was my right-hand man, but it turned out I was wrong, and it was the other way around. I was his right hand, and he used me as a fist that he sometimes struck hard with. The fact that he kept up that lie for so long didn’t jibe with what I knew about him. I hadn’t decided yet where we stood.

Whatever his reasons, he wanted me kept out of this one, but impounding revivors on UAC soil still fell into my jurisdiction. After Fawkes’s attack, no one wanted revivors in the city. If he decided to keep me involved, it was because he thought he could control me. I wondered how much longer that would last.

A helicopter floated between the buildings high overhead. The hotel was being monitored from the air, and the scanner had isolated twelve voices inside.

This is Vesco. We have confirmation. The shipment and the buyer are both on-site. At least six revivors are confirmed inside as well.

Roger that.

Move into position , I told them.

I pushed open the door and stepped out into the rain. Sticking to the shadows, I headed toward the building.

Wait for my signal.

The building’s layout was projected via my implant back onto my retinas so that it glowed softly against the dark alleyway. I pinpointed the revivor signatures, and placed them over the map. Most of them were on the first floor.

Up ahead, under a rusted fire escape, a fire exit led inside. I flashed my badge at the scanner there, issuing a federal override and suppressing any alarm they had rigged. A light on its plastic housing flickered and turned green. When the bolt snapped, I drew my gun and went inside.

I pulled the door shut, blocking the sound of the rain behind it. Inside it was dark. I adjusted my visual filter to let in more light and looked around.

I’m in.

There was a swinging door ahead of me, and I pushed it open into an old kitchen area. Thermal signatures from rats scattered when I stepped through, and disappeared into the walls. The short-order line was covered in grease and dust, with spiderwebs stretched between stray pots and pans that still hung over it. Brown water had collected in one corner near a crack in the wall.

They’re working out of the large, highlighted area, Sean said. I’m still trying to pinpoint the shipment.

Understood.

The area he referred to might have been a restaurant or bar at one time. Corridors headed off in four directions from there, three of them flanked by small hotel rooms. Five of those rooms had a revivor signature inside.

Opening the kitchen door a crack, I used a backscatter filter to peer into the walls on the other side. There were two cameras hidden behind the tiles there, one watching the kitchen and one watching a corridor to the left.

I’ve got some security here. Visuals will be offline for a minute.

Roger.

The baffle screen would disrupt the cameras, but also my internal recording buffer. They’d send someone to check out the disturbance, but I didn’t need long.

I slipped past the camera and headed down the corridor. There were a few rooms on the south side of the area. Two of the rooms had revivor signatures present.