Element Zero (7 page)

“Just do it!” he yelled.

“Shut up,” I said.

Alice, we’re at Mother of Mercy. We’ve got human captives here—five men, five women. You getting this?

I see it.

I scanned the pockmarked man’s face and found him in the system. His name was Rafe Pena, arrested in the past for drug and weapons transport, and assault.

“Oh,” a woman whispered. “Oh, it’s the police. . . . Thank God. Thank God, it’s the police. . . . ”

Computer equipment hummed on the surfaces of a series of workbenches set up along the right wall. LEDs flashed in the shadows. On the other side of the room, a series of gurneys were set up with IV racks. I could make out blotches of dried blood on the bedding. Surgical tools lay in trays, and behind them, hanging on the concrete wall, were larger blades: bone saws, a machete, and even an ax.

“What is all this?” I asked. Rafe kept his eyes down and didn’t answer.

“Who are you working for, Rafe?” I asked.

“Fuck you.”

“You’re just a thug. Who set this up? Who’s paying you?”

“Get us out,” another voice said. Someone shook the wall of one of the cages. “Get us out of here!”

“Stay calm,” I said. “You’re safe now. We’re going to get you out.”

The rattle got more intense. It was a shirtless, skinny man with brown skin and a shaved head. Tattoos covered his shoulders and chest. His fingers were bloody as he gripped the wire, and his eyes were wild.

“Sir, calm down.” I looked around for a way to open the cages. Each one was fitted with an electronic lock. I followed the cables from the alligator clips and saw them merge with other bundles of cable that ran under the water.

“Check that out,” I told the officer. I shined a flashlight beam on the metal base of the nearest cage, where a young woman sat, hugging her knees and shivering in the filthy water.

The cables ran up the sides of each cage and into a breaker box on the wall behind them.

“Do it now!” Rafe screamed. He was talking to someone besides us, someone who could throw the electrical switch remotely.

“Kill that breaker!” I said. One of the officers moved toward it and pried it open as I scanned around the edges of the ceiling. There were cameras mounted there behind the foam paneling. Someone was watching us.

The man rattled the cage again and pounded his fist against the side.

“Get me out of here!” he screamed. “Get me the fuck out of here now!”

Van Offo sloshed through the water toward him, and I grabbed his arm.

“If those go live, we’ll all fry,” I told him. “Wait until we get the power—”

He shook free and continued toward the cage.

“Van Offo!”

“Calm down,” Van Offo said to the man.

“Fuck you! Get me out of here!”

“I said be calm. Sleep.”

“Fuck you!”

I looked over and caught a glimpse of Van Offo’s face, blank with surprise. The lights flickered, and a woman screamed.

“Get me out of here!”

“Someone shut him up!”

I crossed to the cages and checked the electrical box—a major current was running through it from a shielded cable.

“Here,” I said. The officer with the arc cutter used it to sever the connection, sending sparks down onto the surface of the water. The current to the cages went out.

“Get me out of here!”

“Van Offo, do something with him!”

“I can’t,” he said. There was disbelief and fear on his face.

A phone rang loudly in the small space, and for a minute even the man in the cage got quiet.

“Where’s that coming from?” I asked. After a few seconds, it rang again.

I swept the flashlight along the walls until I found a heavy black handset mounted there. It rang a third time.

As I waded through the water toward it, I started a trace on the clinic’s outgoing circuits. I grabbed the handset and pulled it free from the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Are you with the FBI?” a man’s voice asked.

“Who is this?”

“You don’t look like regular cops.”

“I’m Special Agent Wachalowski. Who is this?”

“I made a terrible mistake,” the man said.

“What kind of mistake?”

SWAT had begun cutting through the locks to free the prisoners. The bald man had been sedated and was being pulled out carefully. Some retreated to the backs of the cages, not sure what was happening. One didn’t move at all. When the officer shined a light in her face, she didn’t respond.

“You have to stop them,” the man said.

“Stop who? What is this place?” I asked him.

“I was supposed to put them down,” he said. “I thought I could do it. . . . What have I done?”

“Sir, tell me what this place is. Did you bring these people here?”

“It would be a mercy . . . but I can’t do it.”

“Sir—”

There was a loud bang from back upstairs. Someone screamed, and footsteps began to move across the floor above us.

“MacReady was right . . . we should have listened—” the man said; then the line cut out.

MacReady. I knew that name. A man named Bob MacReady worked at Heinlein Industries. He’d helped me in the past. Was that who he meant?

“Did you get a trace?” Van Offo asked. I shook my head. The call had been rerouted somewhere down the line. The ’bot couldn’t track it before the link failed.

“All right, get these people—”

Something heavy crashed across the floor overhead. There was another scream, and then shouting. The ceiling above us began to rumble with many heavy footsteps.

“What the hell’s going on up there?” one of the officers asked.

SWAT leader, what’s your situation?
There was no answer. The racket upstairs got louder until it sounded like they’d fall through on top of us. Back down the concrete tunnel, the metal door banged open.

SWAT, what’s your status?

A switch snapped from down the hall, and the lights in the tunnel went out. The shuffle of many footsteps began to echo toward us before splashing into the water.

“What the hell is that?” an officer asked.The laser sights began to drift around the now dark doorway.

I looked at Van Offo and he looked back, his eyes determined. He held his weapon in one fist, the knuckles white.

“Get back, away from the door!” I said; then a figure shambled into view there, with a gang of others close behind.

They were men and women, mobbed together. I saw filthy coats and greasy hair as they stumbled through the opening and sloshed through the water toward us. I recognized them. They’d been in the waiting room when we first came in.

The receptionist from the front desk squeezed through the pack and stumbled into the room, swinging a revolver in one fist.

“Gun!”

Her eyes were wide, and when the flashlight beam hit them, I could see black splotches that had formed in the whites. A light flashed from behind her pupils as she pointed the gun and fired. Van Offo clutched the side of his neck and went down into the water. A laser sight appeared on the woman’s forehead as a single shot blew out the back of her head.

By then, twenty more had crowded into the room with another twenty behind them, blocking the only way out. One of them flipped the breaker switch, and the lights inside the basement went out.

The room erupted into a racket of screams, splashes, and gunfire. Muzzle flashes lit up the dark as SWAT fired on the crowd, but there wasn’t enough time; they closed in and were on us.

Van Offo, are you okay? Do you read me?
He didn’t respond.

Someone went down in the water, then a body collided with me and I stumbled back into the dark. I crashed into a gurney and heard surgical equipment splash into the water.

Alice, we need backup.

On its way, Wachalowski. What’s your status?

Bodies moved all around me as I picked myself up out of the icy water. Adjusting the light filter on my optics, I saw the clash had filled the whole room. I couldn’t tell who was who.

We need backup now.

Wachalowski, Van Offo just dropped. What’s your status?

I looked around but couldn’t find him.

Al, are you still with me?

He didn’t respond. I flipped to the backscatter to try to ID him from the JZI in his head, and the whole place lit up. In and among the zippers and tooth fillings, I saw clusters of nodes and filaments coiled at the base of almost every skull.

They’re revivors.
All of them—the people from the waiting room, even the body of the receptionist—were revivors. The components stood out in sharp relief in the darkness, moving crazily through the room around me. My heart dropped as I realized what I’d seen.

Huma.

Alice, the—

Something struck my head hard, and everything flashed white for a second. When I tried to take a step, my leg gave out and I fell down into the cold water.

Wachalowski, goddamn it, what is your status?

I popped two stims and a surge of adrenaline pulsed through my body. I tried to push through the crowd, but there were too many of them. I popped another stim as they forced me back down. The back of my head hit the floor and I saw stars.

As they closed in, I managed to get my gun out in front of me. A figure loomed above with something gripped in both hands. It lifted the handle over its shoulder, and I made out the head of the ax I’d seen mounted on the wall.

I fired, but the shot went wild. The revivor behind it pitched back, and the one in front brought the ax down.

There was a hard impact at my right shoulder. Something hot spattered my face. I tried to pull the trigger again, but nothing happened. The cold water that lapped around my neck turned warm.

Alice ...

Wachalowski, local police and the military are scrambling. A team is on its way. Hang in there.

My heart pounded in my ears. I kicked with one leg and heard air huff as my heel struck something solid. Warning codes streamed by in the darkness in front of me. The impact came again. The pain in my arm, beyond my shoulder, disappeared.

I’m going to die. . . .

Blackness rushed in. The sounds of the struggle muted, then faded. The faces hanging over me were swallowed by the darkness.

Wachalowski, do you read me? Help is on the way.

The screams disappeared. The warning messages stopped, and everything got quiet.

“ . . . the end is nigh . . . ”

It was the last thing I remember thinking. The chaos around me seemed far away. It was happening somewhere else. In my mind, all I saw was Van Offo’s face as he said the words, and the look in his eye that told me it was true.

“When?”

Wachalowski, do you read—

“Soon . . . ”

3

HOT ZONE

Faye Dasalia—Heinlein Industries, Pratsky Building

The darkness was reluctant to let me go. With no need for sleep, it had been a long time since I’d been under. The last time had been almost two years ago, and I remembered I’d found it peaceful. This time, though, something felt wrong.

Reanimation occurred without a hitch; energy began to course through my body, and the blood thinned in my veins. My mind, however, awoke to a dark void. Usually I could sense all of my memories, assembled like a field of stars beneath me. And far below that, in the cold depths of space, that dark hole pulled gently at me and waited. This time my memories were gone, and I was face-to-face with oblivion.

My memories were still there, just far above me. My mind had sunk below them, to the bottom, where I’d one day disappear. Even so close, I could see no end to it, but its gentle tug was more insistent now. It held me with millions of tiny black threads, drawing me slowly inside. I had always feared that void, but I found myself unable to resist. It was almost hypnotic.

“What’s the problem?” a voice asked. It was a man’s voice, from somewhere close to me. Impulses began to fire through my brain as it processed the signals, breaking me out of my trance. I felt my mind float back up, until those black threads stretched taut, then finally broke. The void released me, but it seemed reluctant. As I floated back through the field of memories, it seemed to deliver a wordless promise.

Soon.

“What’s the problem?” the voice asked again. This time, another answered.

“The name on the tag doesn’t match the signature.”

Energy trickled down the length of my spine and bled through my arms and legs. It began to gather where my heart had been, pooling and growing stronger. Muscle tissue began to reactivate, and I curled my fingers closed.

“Let me see,” the first voice said.

“Jesus, this one took a beating,” a third voice said. “Looks like an old stab wound to the chest, and five, maybe six bullet holes. Look at the size of those entry wounds.”

“According to the tag—”

“The tag’s wrong. Run the signature.”

I became aware that I was lying prone, with several figures positioned around me, and I heard the white noise of electronics. Something sharp and cold probed the back of my neck.

“What’s the matter?” the woman asked.

“There’s something strange about these wounds.”

“Is it a gen seven?”

“Yes. According to the signature, her name was . . . Faye Dasalia.”

“She was a police detective,” one of them said. “Maybe she got shot in the line of duty.”

“I don’t think so. Look right there. . . . Were those grafts revivor flesh?”

No one spoke for a moment, but I could sense them crowding in around me.

“I think these wounds happened after reanimation.”

“Maybe it’s back from the field?”

“These haven’t gone out yet.”

“Get it hooked up and let’s pull the memory.”

“Cognizance variant is very narrow,” the woman said. “Look at the date. It must have been one of the last before the injunction.”

“MacReady’s team will want a look at this one. Dump its core and let’s get it to T-Five.”

One of the figures leaned over my body, and I felt the probe slip through into my spine. My body went rigid as the probe turned live and found the socket to my main control node. All of my systems lit up, and the probe began to take inventory.

“It’s definitely been in the field,” someone said. “We’ve got quite a few custom modules here.”

“Flush all that. Just take the memory buffers.”

The probe cycled through my different packages, schematics flashing by behind my eyelids. The custom software modules raised some eyebrows, but the extra hardware put them all on edge.

“The Leichenesser capsule’s been removed,” one of them said.

“It’s got some kind of custom hardware fitted in with the bayonet too.”

“I’ve got a second bayonet here, in the other arm.”

“Stop the scan.”

The probe tapped into my memory buffer and opened a connection. When it did, the virus there executed. It took control of the link and then flooded the circuit. The code quickly propagated through the lab, then pushed through onto the rest of the network. Address registers scrolled by as it isolated their security and began to shut it down. A Klaxon sounded but was quickly cut off as the first module went dark in my display.

“What the hell was that?”

“Stop the scan!”

Voices rose outside the room. The intrusion on the network was spotted as they lost their connections to the outside.

“The system’s not responding,” one of the men said. His fingers worked a console to my right.

“Then pull the probe!” the woman snapped.

Slowly, I opened my eyes. Three people stood around me: an older, gray-haired man with a thick beard; a broad-shouldered black man with a large belly; and a gaunt-looking woman who kept her long, thin hair in a ponytail. Probes stuck out of my chest like pins in a pincushion, and readouts streamed on a bank of monitors.

The old man had reached for the probe in my neck, but stopped when my hand and forearm split apart. The blade deployed with a loud bang, and he froze, the tip an inch from his throat. He raised his hands so I could see them.

“Deanimate it!” the woman snapped.

The tray creaked as I sat up. Wires connected to the probes in my chest pulled taut, then the needles clattered to the floor. The virus branched out, infecting all of their security protocols. It disabled the cameras, motion detectors, heat sensors, everything. The lethal current running through the perimeter fence faded, then died. The gates unlocked and opened. I placed my bare feet on the cold tile floor as behind me the door to the lab opened, and the three technicians looked past me, toward it.

“Ang, Dulari,” the woman said. “Shut that thing down!”

As she spoke, her pupils dilated, and I fired the injector from my arm. The thin tube whipped through the air, and the needle lodged in the side of her neck. She slapped the spot with one hand, but the needle was already gone. As I watched, the orange glow in her rib cage that pulsed so frantically began to slow down. Her legs gave out, and as she started to fall, the bearded man caught her, his eyes wide with shock.

“She’s alive,” I told him.

“Ang, what are you doing?” the second man demanded.

Two of my three contacts had arrived. Ang Chen, a Chinese man with a dour face, and Dulari Shaddrah, a Pakistani woman whom I suspected might have been beautiful, stepped fully into the room. Dulari put one warm hand on my shoulder. Ang approached the men, a pistol in his hand.

“Back against the wall,” he told them.

“Hold still,” Dulari said in my ear. She carefully removed the probe from my neck, and I felt the circuit cut. I pulled the remaining needles from my chest as she handed me a bag. It contained clothes that had been folded neatly.

“Why did the perimeter go down?” I asked. “You have control of the transmitter array now.”

Dulari smiled weakly. “Don’t worry about that.”

I looked around, but the third man I was supposed to meet was not with them.

“Where’s Deatherage?” I asked.

“We can’t find him,” she said.

“What do you mean, you can’t find him?”

“Security logs show he used his badge at the entrance,” Chen said, “but no one’s seen him.”

“Chen, this is insane,” the older man said. “What the hell is going on?”

“Put her down,” Chen said. The man lowered the unconscious woman to the floor.

“She’s not breathing,” he said.

“The neurotoxin is not lethal,” I said. I opened the bag and began to get dressed. The clothes were plain and a reasonable fit. I thought they might have belonged to Dulari.

“Why’d you dose her?” Chen asked me.

“She’s one of them. She was attempting to influence you.”

He nodded.

“Wait. Stop,” the black man said. He looked past Ang and Dulari at me. “Where did you come from?”

“Just stay here,” I said. “Stay here and don’t make trouble.”

“I know you’re one of ours,” he continued. “I also know that one bayonet is standard for the sevens, not two. Those injectors aren’t standard either. Where did you come from?”

“Listen to me: stay in here, and don’t make trouble.”

“Do as she says,” Chen said. The man stared at the pistol.

“What are you going to do?” he asked. “What is this all about?”

As he spoke, what might have been understanding dawned on the second man’s face. I saw his mouth part.

“You’re one of Samuel’s,” he said.

Before I could answer him, I saw an image of Heinlein’s satellite, the defense system that was known as The Eye, flicker onto the display in front of me. As I watched, its nodes were all called out and scanned. One by one, they began to go inactive. I turned back to Dulari.

“The virus,” I said. “It’s—”

“I know.”

Someone shouted from down the hallway outside, where I heard many footsteps tromping closer. The last of the nodes on my display went dark. The Eye had gone inactive. The tarmac surrounding Heinlein Industries was no longer protected.

“Someone’s taken control of the defense satellite!” a voice shouted. “We’re wide open; it’s some kind of attack!”

“Dulari, what is this?” She didn’t answer, and looked away.

“Chen . . . what have you done?” the black man asked. “What the hell have you two done?”

“Shaddrah, get them out of here,” Chen said.

The men stared as Dulari drew a pistol. She motioned toward the door.

Just then, it opened and another man stuck his head in. His eyes were wide.

“Guys, we have multiple vehicles approaching the complex,” he said. “We need to . . . ”

He saw the guns and trailed off.

“What is going on out there?” the older man asked him.

“Sir, we have confirmation on a wide-scale broadcast of a Huma activation sequence.”

“An activation sequence? From where?”

“It looks like it might have been sourced from the Stillwell compound. Someone with high security clearance snuck in a stealth program that bounced it off a communications satellite maybe twenty minutes ago.”

“What?”

“It gets worse—someone’s inside our system, as well. Campus security has been totally compromised. We’re completely unprotected.”

“He did it,” the black man whispered. “That madman really did it.”

“Shaddrah, get them out of here,” Chen said.

“You heard him,” Dulari said. “Come on, let’s go.”

Dulari,
I said over a private connection.
Why are vehicles approaching? Is he coming here?

I’m sorry, Faye. I thought you knew.

Knew what?

She looked back and met my eye before she closed the door behind them.

Chen stood over the woman on the floor and watched the shallow rise and fall of her chest.

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Greta Creigh,” he said.

“Do you know her?”

“I do, yes,” he said. “I thought I did. You’re sure about what you saw? She’s one of them?”

“Yes.”

“One hundred percent sure?”

“Yes.”

He aimed the pistol and fired. The shot slammed through the lab as the bullet blew out the top of the woman’s head in a mess of blood, gristle, and hair.

He stared at the results for a moment, and then, without changing his expression, he fired again.