“For what?”
“For caring about me, even a little bit.”
Something flashed from the darkness behind him just then. When I looked over, I saw a pair of eyes glowing softly back in the corner.
There was no one else there; I had checked before I went inside, so I had to be seeing things again. But then the eyes moved. Something got knocked over, and the eyes began to move closer.
“You …”
Breaking out of the trance, Nico jumped, looking disoriented. I pulled my hands back in surprise as a figure stepped out of the shadows, moving toward me. It was her, the dead woman from my dreams, naked except for a button-up shirt that was open at the top. She stepped forward again, then stopped short with the jingle of metal as she reached the end of the chain that was pad-locked to her ankle.
“You can’t be here,” I said, as Nico turned to look and saw her too. She was really there. For some reason, her hair was gone, even her eyebrows, but there was no mistaking her. She even had a thick, puckered pink gash closed up in the middle of her chest.
She stood there, following my eyes down to the wound.
“It got split,” she said.
“What are you doing here?” I said, taking a step back. Nico looked from her to me.
“Zoe, calm down.”
“Why is she here?”
“I need to know what she knows,” he said, gripping me by the shoulders. He held me hard enough so that it hurt a little.
“What?”
“She might be the only one that can tell me,” he said. “I need you to help me.”
It was a trick. He didn’t call me to him because he needed me; it was because he needed her. All he wanted me for was to do something for him. He wanted me to make his woman friend talk.
“Help you do what?” I asked, but he didn’t answer. His patterns were so chaotic right then that I doubt he even knew himself.
“Please,” he said.
“You want to know what’s in her head,” I said. “Fine.”
So I pushed, and I pushed hard. Maybe because I was drunk or maybe just because I was angry; it wasn’t fair that another woman was there, and it wasn’t fair that even though she was dead, he could only think about her and not me. It wasn’t fair that he only called me to do a trick for him. None of it was fair. Right at that moment I wanted to control her, to make her leave or back off, or maybe even hurt her if I could.
So, I was drunk, and I was mad, and I pushed hard. I pushed real hard.
The room got very bright, and everything went almost gray. I focused on the woman in front of me with more intensity than I think I’d ever turned on anyone. I reached out to the place where the light would bloom.
“Zoe?”
They didn’t appear. No lights, no colors …nothing. When I stared into her eyes, they didn’t change, they didn’t get dull and stupid. They just stared back.
My heart started beating faster. This had never happened before, not ever. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the patterns rippling around Nico’s head. It was working, just not on her.
I pushed harder, concentrating until the light got so bright she was all I could see; her face, her eyes, and the empty space where it should have been. Her thoughts, her consciousness, her self, her soul …whatever it was, it wasn’t there. The light blotted out everything else until the only thing that was dark was that empty spot, that empty hole where she should have been. It was like looking into an abyss or a black hole. When I pushed against it …
“Zoe!”
All at once, the lights dimmed back to normal. He was shaking my shoulder. The dead girl was still standing there, looking at me. I wiped my nose and there was blood.
“What happened? What did you see?”
She was just standing there, staring at me the way she did in my dreams. Those electric eyes watched me lifelessly as I backed away. I had to get out of there.
Nico reached out to me and I shrugged his hand off my shoulder. What was I doing there? What in the world ever compelled me to get involved in this whole thing? All I wanted was to get back to my apartment, lock the door, and forget about the whole thing—him, her …everything. It was a mistake. The whole thing was a mistake.
I stumbled to the door, and he followed me. I pushed on him again, making him stop before he could reach me.
“Your friend is gone,” I told him, and left. He didn’t come after me.
He didn’t even come after me.
Nico Wachalowski—Guardian Metro Storage Facility
After Zoe ran, I wasn’t sure what I should do. Faye had sat back down on the bedroll and hadn’t spoken in minutes.
“Who was that?” she asked finally.
“No one.”
I hadn’t wanted to risk poking around in her systems, because I knew she was seeded with Leichenesser, and the memory of the dock revivor melting away on that autopsy table was too fresh in my mind. That had been triggered when I started rifling through sections of memory I wasn’t supposed to be in.
“Where am I?” she asked.
As I looked down on her, she just stared up at me, her brown eyes replaced by moonlight silver. It was amazing how dehumanizing that one change alone was, but it was more than that. This was the first time I had ever seen a revivor that I had previously known so closely, and the change was subtle but startling at the same time. More than just the color of her eyes or her skin, it was her body language, her expression, the way she held herself; everything was different. It was as if her body had been inhabited by some completely different entity.
I sat down on the bedroll in front of her so that we were facing. Immediately, she reached out and took my hands in hers.
“Why did you do that?” I asked. Her palms and fingers were cold, with no pulse.
“I don’t know.”
“Hold still,” I said, “and stay quiet. I need to concentrate.”
Closing my eyes, I scanned the communications band until I found her signal. She was on an encrypted broadcast band.
“I can’t force my way in,” I told her. “I’m extending a connection; can you see it?”
She didn’t respond at first. I opened my eyes and saw her staring into space, slightly out of focus.
“Yes,” she said.
“Can you accept the con—”
In front of me, her lips curled very slightly, forming the ghost of a smile. Or was that wishful thinking?
“Yes,” she said.
