James Knapp: State of Decay

I know.

My chest burning, I followed her down.

Draped in the blanket, I followed my killer down into the underground facility, while behind us the sounds of destruction raged. He didn’t look back as he led me deeper, into near-total darkness. An icon flashed at the corner of my eye.

Adjusting light levels …

We were walking through an office corridor. The walls and doors were covered in graffiti, and the whole area was littered with trash. Material for bedding was strewn about. People had taken shelter there at one time, but they had all been cleared out.

What is this place? I asked as I followed him. He led me through a large, rusted metal door, into the darkness beyond. The doors slammed shut behind us with a loud thud, and we moved down the dark hall. Farther on, we descended an old stairwell.

It used to be a factory.

Used to be?

No one has come here in a very long time. That’s why Samuel picked it.

You said his name before. Who is Samuel? I asked.

Samuel Fawkes. He organized all of this. He was the one who first realized what was happening, and he knew he would need someplace like this. Someplace no one would look.

Who is he?

He was an important figure at Heinlein Industries. He was the one who figured out Zhang’s Syndrome.

Zhang.

My memories sparked, and a point of light rose. It opened to reveal the face of a burned woman, a revivor. It moved its mouth, whispering that name to me.

Who is Zhang? I asked him. What does the name mean?

We didn’t realize the trafficker’s pleasure models were outfitted with surplus communications nodes , he said. They joined our network. It’s why they had to be destroyed before they could be questioned. You set a lot of things into motion when you passed that name on to the FBI.

From somewhere up above came muted gunfire. A few shots turned quickly to sustained fire, echoing down the hallway.

What is that? I asked.

The military has arrived to destroy this place.

So you’ve failed? I asked, but his face didn’t change.

They’ll never find Fawkes , he said.

A boom shook the floor and rumbled through the air. Grit sifted down on my head from the ceiling.

Come on, he said. Your partner was one of them. You were his puppet. You’ve been a puppet your whole life. I freed you.

He took me down into the lower levels, where huge cables ran down narrow corridors. They hung from the walls and tracks on the ceiling. The spaces were tight and cramped. There were few lights, just pinpricks in the distance, but he seemed to know the way, and I followed.

You were your partner’s puppet.

I remembered standing in the Valle home, looking down on the bodies of the family. Investigator Reece was talking to me.

A phone call would have been a neat trick, tied up like that. Do you believe his account?

Then I saw that small trace of interference; right around that time frame, something had been changed. Shanks leaned in, giving me an intense look. Then his eyes changed, the pupils growing wider.

A witness , he said. That’s promising.

The witness didn’t see anything.

Go and talk to him, and I will look around the apartment , he whispered, leaning closer. Do not disturb me for the next several minutes. Justify it any way you need to.

Got it.

You will remember this only as a product of your own intuition.

Right.

Someone is targeting us , Shanks said to himself. He looked worried. I’m sorry, but I’m on that disc. No one else can know about this. Not even you. I’m sorry.

He glanced past me then, and his eyes flashed hunger. He made sure none of the others could see us; then he slipped one of his hands into my coat. I felt the warmth of his palm on my left breast. He squeezed it, and rubbed the nipple with his thumb.

“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said, removing his hand. He stepped back, away from me. The memory resumed from the point of the splice. I straightened out my jacket. My face was flushed.

Shanks, check around. I want to talk to him , I said.

Yes ma’am.

I knew the memory was wrong. I used to talk to myself, that much was true, but Doyle Shanks never whispered in my ear. He never touched me; I would have remembered.

This way , the revivor said.

He pushed aside a large sheet of thick plastic, then passed through it to where the air was warmer. I could see rows of large, metal cylinders, stacked sixty feet to a rusted iron grid. Above it was a huge mechanical arm, where a length of thick, black cable still hung. He led me past, through another plastic sheet. Through a doorway, I spotted rows of people; they were all sitting in chairs. All of them were bent over. I made out IV racks and surgical tubes. We passed them and came to a flight of stairs. They led up to a small door.

Through here.

He opened it and pulled me along after him. Unlike the rest of the factory I’d seen, it was clean and brightly lit. Air whistled between my toes as I stepped through. It was some kind of clean room.

It was filled with lots of high-tech equipment. Screens displayed different parts of the factory. In some I could see different people’s faces, trailing electrodes. One showed the concrete ramp where I first entered. The vehicles there were twisted and burned black. A fire raged out of range of the camera. I stared at it while words formed in from of my eyes.

Database Synchronization Pending …Header mismatch: Auerbach, Lillian. Murder. Header mismatch: Fifield, David. Murder. Header mismatch: Tang, Hsu. Murder. Header mismatch: Ury, Kate. Murder. Header mismatch: Ng, Gillian. Murder. Header mismatch: Rios, Carlos. Murder. Removing …Removing …Removing …Removing …Removing …Removing …

More names streamed by, filling my field of vision. I counted dozens, then hundreds of them. They were all being removed.

“What is this?” I asked out loud. “What’s happening?”

“They’re too late,” the revivor said. “It’s already begun.”

Despite the beating she took, Calliope was still going full tilt. That was pretty good considering she didn’t have the benefit of any augmentation. As I eased adrenaline into my bloodstream, I wondered how much longer my body would hold out, but it was the only way to keep up with her. By the time she hit the last landing, I was a half flight behind her, my vision starting to tunnel around that dark spot that floated in front of my eyes. She shoved open the door at the base of the stairs and barreled through.

I ducked through after her, and the cold in the stairwell gave way to air that was warmer and damper. There were some lights mounted farther down the corridor, but not many. I bumped up my visual filters to allow more light in. How could she even see where she was going?

A sheet of clear plastic hung across a doorway ahead, cut down the middle, and Calliope swiped it to either side as she punched through. I got past it in time to see her darting through another sheet across the room, but before I could close the distance, my foot collided with something and I fell forward, crashing down onto the concrete floor.

“Cal!” I shouted. Somewhere not too far away I heard the buzzing and squealing of the electric lift coming to a stop and the gate rising open. Radio chatter began to echo down the dark corridors.