Element Zero (3 page)

Faye Dasalia—Treatment Inflow Pipe

I swam through cold, black water at near-freezing temperatures, through the narrow pipe that seemed to have no end.

The only light came from my own eyes, and even my night vision could barely make out what lay ahead of me. The rumble of the treatment plant’s centrifuge had faded behind me a long time ago. The sounds of the street and underground metro were lost through the tons of concrete above me. The only sound that far down was the electric hum from inside my chest.

Three hours had passed since I entered the pipe, and my body temperature was far below normal, even for me. The void that yawned beneath my field of memories seemed very wide, very deep, and very close. With nowhere else to look, I stared into it while fear buzzed in some disused part of my brain.

Will this finally be the day?
I wondered as I felt my mind sink further, through the lights of my memories and toward the dark.
Will this be the day that I finally die?

Faye, you should be almost there. Do you see anything?

The words appeared in the dark and floated there, as I watched a seam in the pipe pass by me. It was Fawkes, contacting me from the surface. I scanned ahead for movement but didn’t spot anything.

No sign yet.

Lev had been three hours in when we lost him. Whatever he’d encountered, it had to be close. I left a circuit open, hoping he would pick it up, but so far there’d been nothing.

How are you holding up?
Fawkes asked.

Fine.

It had been one year since Samuel awoke, since he stopped being just a voice in the dark. He walked now, and talked here with form and presence. He’d been part of my life for a long time, but now he seemed real to me in a way he never had been before. Before the tanker sank into the ocean, he’d left stasis and stepped into the real world, where he was both more and less vulnerable. He had one more plan, one more chance to stop them. Whatever happened, it would be over soon.

A signal lit up at the edge of my sight. Sonar had picked up movement down the pipe in front of me.

Wait, I’ve got something.

A gray shape appeared from out of the blackness. Metallic ticks vibrated through the cold pipe as the shape changed position.

What is it?
Fawkes asked.

It was dense, and maybe a third of my size. I scanned it and found electrical current.

It’s mechanical.

I tuned the sonar, creating an image. Up ahead was a layer of sediment, and just past that was some kind of small machine with many spindly legs. It used a sensor to probe ahead of it as it scuttled through the pipe.

There’s some kind of servo down here. Stand by.

The servo reached out with a wire-thin claw and poked through the sediment in front of it, kicking up small, fleshy cubes.

Faye.
The word flashed in the dark in front of my face. Lev had picked up the circuit. He was still down here somewhere.

Lev, where are you?

Just ahead. Don’t approach the servo yet.

The robot scuttled forward, kicking up more of the soft, uniform cubes. I watched them float back down to the bottom.

It’s revivor flesh,
I thought. The pieces were Lev’s remains.

What happened?
I asked.

It’s some kind of maintenance ’bot,
he said.
It must be designed to carve up blockage. It came up behind me and severed my spine before I could stop it. I’ve kept it from the rest of me, but I can’t continue the mission.

I strained my eyes through the dark, and there, maybe twenty feet or so in the distance, I could just make out his eyes. They shifted in the darkness, staring, I thought, into his personal void.

How do I get past it?
I asked.

Watch the claw, but your best bet is probably to just grab it. It’s not designed for combat, and it’s not heavily shielded; you should be able to penetrate its skin.

Understood.

The servo moved through the chunks, heading in my direction. When it locked on, it moved surprisingly fast; a claw brushed my face as I lunged and grabbed the leg at its base. Through the water I heard the whir of motors as it tried to pull away.

The cutter flashed in front of me a few times as its little legs scrambled, trying to make a retreat. I found a seam in the thing’s outer chassis and placed my free palm on it. I fired my bayonet and it punched through, into its electronics.

The robot jerked in my hand and my body seized as a jolt of electricity passed through it. The current arced from my back and down the pipe as I turned the bayonet. I heard a metallic crunch; then the servo stopped moving.

I retracted the blade and dropped the machine. Pushing through the chunks of flesh, I stirred up fingers and toes until the water cleared on the other side. I swam close to what was left of Lev Prutsko.

I’m here, Lev.

His eyes had dimmed in the dark. All he had left was his torso and one arm. His gaze stopped shifting around and he made eye contact with me.

I’m glad it was you who came,
he said.

Glad?

I think so,
he said.
Yes.

Over the channel we shared, he began to stream something, a thin trickle of embers, over to me. It was one of his memories. When the stream ebbed out and died, he signaled for me to lean closer to him. I moved in until our faces nearly touched.

He never expected me to make it,
he said.
I knew that. Whoever goes down this pipe is expendable. Did he tell you?

I had suspected it, but I shook my head.

There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you,
Lev said.

He doesn’t trust me?

You shouldn’t have told him about what you remembered.

We hadn’t spoken of that in a long time. After reanimation, memories that had been erased would return. It’s why Ai feared us. But long ago when I awoke on the tanker, one particular memory had returned—a piece of the puzzle that never quite fit. As a detective, I’d processed one of them, a woman named Noelle Hyde. Back then, she’d tried to kill Fawkes, but she wasn’t ordered to; it was just the opposite. They’d killed her for what she’d done.

They didn’t want Fawkes dead,
I said to Lev.

They lie. He thinks you give too much consideration to their motives.

I know what I saw. At the time, I thought they feared something else, something besides Fawkes stripping them from power.

Lev’s eyes just watched me from the murky darkness.

I still think that,
I said. Lev managed a nod.

Maybe they do.

“ . . . It will start here, but it won’t end here . . . ”
Ai had said once.
“Fawkes will destroy this city, and then one by one, the rest will begin to fall. . . . ”

They need to be stopped,
I said,
but he should have listened.

There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you. Just remember that.

I will.

Do you want to continue your existence?

I think so.

You think?

The darkness that waits for me,
I told him,
it’s the only thing left that really scares me. I don’t want it to take me. I’m not ready for it to take me, not yet.

You may come to terms with that someday,
he said.

Have you?

A long time ago. He will shut you down, you know. Someday soon.

I know.

I wish I could stop it,
he said.

You do?

Yes.

I moved closer to him and hoped he could see my face. Using our private channel, I told him something I hadn’t told anyone else.

I found a way to sever his command spoke.

He didn’t respond right away. The shunt I’d fashioned over the years would work—I didn’t doubt that—but Fawkes’s reaction, if he knew, would be extreme. It would mean the end not just for me, but everyone on Fawkes’s network who knew of it.

Will you run, then?
he asked.

Under my tongue, I felt the small glass capsule. Lev would have had one as well.

Do you still have the Leichenesser?
I asked.

No. I swallowed it in the struggle.

I placed one hand on the side of his cold face and the other over his Adam’s apple. Peering through his flesh, I found his command nodes.

Good-bye, Lev.

Good-bye, Faye.

The blade pushed through his skin and into his spine. With a small twist, the command connections snapped. The circuit between us dropped as black blood bloomed out into the cold water, blotting out the light from his eyes even as they faded, and went dark.

Alone, I brought up the memory he gave me. With no pathways associated with it, it wouldn’t last very long. I wanted to see it before it decayed.

I looked into it and saw myself, alive. From the subtle distortion, I knew he’d been looking through a Light Warping field as he stood and watched me. I was in my apartment. My skin had color, and I still had hair. Real blood still pulsed through my veins, and I could almost sense sadness in my eyes.

This is the night I was killed.

The heat in my veins stood out as he’d watched me and monitored the steady beat of my heart. He kept tabs on a second heartbeat as well; my old partner, Doyle Shanks, was there with me.

Target Shanks is here.
The words appeared in the air, and though I realized he’d been talking to Fawkes, his stare remained fixed on me and not on Doyle Shanks.

Kill them both,
came the reply, but Lev had hesitated.

I can remove the target and leave the other,
he offered.

Kill them both,
came the reply, and the memory scattered. The ember, Lev’s last thought, faded away, gone forever. I didn’t look back as I swam on ahead.

Fawkes, I’m through.

Good. The perimeter is roughly five hundred meters ahead.

From the security perimeter’s edge, it would be a half mile. Well past the point of no return, I swam on. Eventually, I saw a broadcast message from the surface far above:

You are entering a restricted area. No unauthorized communications are permitted in or out from this point forward. No unauthorized scans, visual, audio, or data recordings are permitted beyond this point. No unauthorized personnel, or authorized personnel with a security clearance of less than 3, are permitted beyond this point by order of the UAC Government. . . .

The words scrolled by in the dark, but they didn’t concern me. It was a stock message, given to all visitors. They had no way to detect my presence, and if they did, I’d get more than a warning.

... by continuing, you forfeit your right to refuse any and all searches, including of your vehicle, its contents, and your person, up to and including full internal scanning. Any property including identification may be confiscated at the guard’s discretion and held for an indeterminate period of time. Failure to comply with security will result in action up to and including lethal force. . . .

It took thirty minutes to close the distance. The pipe ended abruptly, and a connecting pipe led toward the surface. That muted pang of anxiety faded, and the dark void receded, just a little.

I’m at the junction.

I looked up into the dark. According to the blueprints, the pipe was a straight shot up to the surface. I pushed off the cold metal and began to swim upward. The water pressure eased the higher I went, until I came to a ninety-degree bend. The pipe was running across the tarmac now.

. . . entering a restricted area. No unauthorized communications are permitted in or out from this point forward. No unauthorized scans, visual, audio, or data recordings are permitted beyond this point. . . .

The words warped and then winked out. As part of the security protocol, my communication node had been shut down.

I swam, measuring the distance, then stopped. I snapped open my left arm and took the handheld arc cutter from inside. When my hand rejoined, I placed it on the pipe, feeling the cold metal in front of my face.

The cutter hissed as I carved out a circle three feet in diameter. I lowered the plug down into the water, and dim light seeped through the hole. I turned off the night vision and looked up through the surface of the water at what looked like ceiling struts high above me. I reached up and gripped the edges of the hole, cold air chilling the skin of my exposed hands, then pulled down until my head broke the surface.

I slipped through and lowered myself to the floor. I was in a huge hangar where a fleet of large vehicles hunkered. Over on the opposite side of the room, a large glass window looked into an office, but the lights were out inside. I listened, but I didn’t hear anyone.

I stood, naked, and surveyed my location. I saw twenty or so large trucks parked inside. The pipe ran along the base of one wall. Crouching, I followed it to its exit point, and through a grimy window I saw it continue across the tarmac to a large water tower in the distance. Snow was falling, large flakes swirling in the wind.

The tower held four thousand gallons of water used as coolant down in the processing plant. Every six months it was flushed through the pipeline to the watertreatment plant, where I began my journey. The large silo stood several hundred meters out in back of the main plant, directly across from a storage depot. That depot was my target.

I found the door and stepped out into the snow. The lock clicked shut behind me, and a gust of freezing air whipped over me. I saw no guards or cameras. The security system on the tarmac keyed off heat signatures, which made me effectively invisible. I kept to the shadows and moved fast. At the depot’s back entrance I found a plain metal door with a scanner next to it. I pulled a small, tightly rolled magnetic strip out from under an incision in my scalp. Unrolling it, I held it to the scanner until it beeped and the LED turned green.