James Knapp: State of Decay

When the bus finally showed, it looked like it was going to blow by, but he saw me there and pumped the brakes. It rolled to a stop, front tire half in a puddle of slush when the door squealed open.

I hoisted my bag up on one shoulder and got on. It was warm in there and all the glass was fogged except the front. The driver looked like he came with the bus, and he’d get buried with it too.

“Pass,” he said.

I took out the little yellow chit they gave me when I signed up to serve. The driver gave it a look and I dropped it in the slot. It landed in the box with a few others.

“Just you?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

“Have a seat,” he said. “It’s a long trip.”

There were three other guys in the back. Two looked like they were passed out, and the last one looked like he wished he was. I sat down as far from them as I could and put my bag in the seat next to me. I wiped the fog off the window and watched with my head against the cold glass as we pulled out of Bullrich Heights.

I’m not sure what made me do it. Part of it was the G-man and something he said. He said he thought I was worth more than the arena. He said I impressed him down in that hellhole. He didn’t say “Go sign up”—that part was my idea—but I think I believed him.

That was part of it. The big thing, though, was that once it was all over, nothing felt right anymore. When I got back to my place, it was like it didn’t even look the same. As soon as I was through the door, I knew I’d leave. Anyplace had to be better than there, even the grinder.

The guys made some noise and we all went out for a big bash my last night, and I drank until I puked. I passed out facedown and said good-bye to my life, for what it was worth.

As the bus took me out of there, I thought about the G-Man, Nico. The training and the skills were just the start. The implant, the wiring, the strength, and the power …it could all be mine. I held his card in my hand as the bus took me where I was going, reading his message and his number.

For better or worse, things were going to change.

The first thing I saw when I finally woke up was the last of the diagnostic messages scrolling past the darkness behind my eyelids. The second thing I saw was the communication-pending message from Noakes marked URGENT.

Opening my eyes, I saw Sean sitting at the monitor on the bench in front of me as I lay in the maintenance chair. The rice paper underneath me crinkled as I cracked my back, and he glanced over, thin lips grinning. The dark shadow still floated in front of my eyes.

“Welcome back,” he said.

“How long was I down?”

“A long time.”

He got up, and I saw he hadn’t shaved. He looked tired as he stepped over to the chair and looked down at me, holding the scanner up to my right eye.

“How am I doing?”

“All things considered, pretty well,” he said. “I had to call in some help on this one. Your sternum was split, so it had to be replaced with an artificial one, and that plate you had behind it got dimpled, so it had to come out.”

“What about the rest of me?”

“You suffered a severe myocardial infarction and a lot of blood loss,” he said. “The chemicals released by the JZI kept you alive, but they take their own toll. It took almost a total transfusion to get you right, but you’ll be back on your feet.”

“I’ve got a blind spot in front of my right eye.”

“You had some oxygen starvation even despite the implant; you were down for a long time. I won’t lie; you had some pinprick necrosis in a section of your brain, but you got lucky.”

Wachalowski, it’s Noakes.

“Hang on,” I told Sean.

What do you want?

I want your report, Wachalowski.

I’ll file one when I get out of here.

Where is the revivor?

The last time I saw Faye, she was with one of the black-market revivors Fawkes had brought in. While I waited with Zoe and Calliope outside for the EMT to arrive, I’d searched for her signature, but I never picked it up again.

She—I mean it—was still down in the factory last I saw. No one found it?

Whoever was behind this rigged the place to do a very slow, very hot burn. Experts are saying the lower levels could smolder for months. Nothing past the parking garage can even be accessed by firefighters right now.

I thought the soldiers burned the place. Weren’t those their orders?

I don’t know what their orders were and neither do you, Wachalowski. The people responsible for this burned the place, along with the prisoners they were keeping there, to cover their tracks. End of story.

My memory of what happened down in the factory was a little fuzzy, but that didn’t sit with what I had seen. Still, I knew when something was a done deal. If I was going to pursue this further, it wasn’t going to be in front of Noakes.

So, we stopped them.

The ring of smuggled revivors and weapons was traced to a terrorist cell that was using the old factory as a base of operations, from which they organized a series of kidnappings, murders, and terror strikes. We’ve broken up the smuggling ring, found those responsible for the attacks, and, with the aid of the military, taken out them and their headquarters. Yes, we stopped them.

Noakes, this is Sean.

What is it?

I’m sorry, sir, but I need to finish the reinitialization of the JZI, and that will include the communications array. Can this wait until I’m finished?

Fine. Agent Wachalowski, good work. The governor is happy. The mayor is happy. I’m happy.

Yes, sir.

You are too, Wachalowski.

Yes, sir.

The communication broke; then the array went off-line, thanks to some internal tweak from Sean.

“Thanks.”

“No problem.”

“What happened to Zoe and Calliope?”

“They interviewed them, of course. Ott insisted she was unconscious the whole time and didn’t remember anything about her capture or her abductor.”

“They believed that?”

“I can’t explain it, but they just let her go.”

Maybe he couldn’t explain it, but I could.

“What about the other one?”

“Flax backed up the story you gave when you were brought in. They held her for a couple days, then cut her loose.”

“So that’s that?”

“Yeah.”

“No one cares about Cross, or the breach at Heinlein, or what was really going on down in that factory?”

Sean smiled faintly, then sat down next to the maintenance chair. He leaned in a little closer, putting his face near mine, like he was going to whisper something to me.

Instead, his stare became fixed, and a second later I watched as his pupils dilated almost all the way open. I felt a little wave of dizziness, but then it passed.

“Mark one three one,” he said. I was about to ask him what he was talking about when he spoke again, this time in a different tone of voice.

“Stop pursing the specifics of what was going on down in the factory,” he said, his voice authoritative and calm. “Any and all links to Heinlein Industries were opportunistic, to make use of their resources in order to maintain their smuggled revivor soldiers. There was no link between the murders investigated by Detective Dasalia and the events leading up to the strike on the factory. You never found the prisoners being kept in the underground facility, and as far as you know, they were burned along with everything else. Do you understand?”

His stare and his statements took me by such surprise that I thought I almost said something before I realized what was happening. As I watched him from the other side of that dark spot swimming in front of my eyes, I realized he was staring at me the same way Zoe had that time, the way I’d seen her stare at others when she was controlling them.