The Silent Army

of metal behind me as he got rear-ended.

Horns started blaring, people shouting, as I passed the valet. He followed me with his camera as I turned into the alley. Immediately, someone grabbed me.

Two hands gripped my lapels and spun me, shoving me back against the brick wall. I brought the gun around, but something I couldn’t see blocked it.

“Wait!” a voice said from in front of me. “Nico, wait!”

The air in front of me rippled and Faye’s face appeared, staring up at me from under the hood of an LW cloak. Her eyes glowed dimly in the darkness.

“It’s me,” she said. The rain drizzled off the cloak, and for a second a gust of wind whipped it around her. Her hair was gone, and her skin was the color of ash, but it was her.

I tried to move the gun, but she still had my arm. I let go of the grip, the weapon sliding free of my hand until it hung from my finger by the trigger guard. The pressure eased up on my wrist.

“Did you do this?” I asked her. She shook her head. Her face was a few inches from mine, but I couldn’t see her breath in the cold. No warmth came off of her.

“No,” she said.

“Then why—”

“He sent me. I was following you.”

She stood up on her toes and put her arms around my neck. She hugged me gently, the way she used to sometimes. Her cheek was cool against my neck as rain trickled down my collar.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said.

I could feel the low vibration in her chest through my coat. I meant to push her away, but I didn’t.

Who sent you? I asked.

Fawkes. I stiffened, and she squeezed tighter, just a little, before stepping back. It was true. He was still out there. He was still out there, and she’d joined with him.

I’ve come to offer you a deal, she said. Her eyes glowed softly in the dark. I stood there, one hand on her waist, getting soaked by the rain.

What does he want? I asked.

He wants you to kill the woman Ai, and her main operatives.

Someone just took a shot at her with a rail gun and she walked away. What makes him think I’ll be able to do it?

He knows you’re immune to their influence. He knows she is bringing you in close. Someone like you could manage it.

I shook my head.

Whatever else she is, she’s a private citizen who hasn’t, as far as I know, broken any laws. I don’t even have grounds to arrest her. I’m not going to assassinate her. Not for Fawkes, or you or anyone else. Understand?

She was telling the truth. Fawkes is building his forces, she said. This is your only chance to stop it.

No one would be able to smuggle hundreds of revivors into the country, especially after what happened. Fawkes’s trick where he took control of the National Guard units wasn’t going to work a second time either. The only other option was to manufacture them locally, but the procedure wasn’t simple. In the current climate, gathering the hardware it would take for a large-scale operation like that would raise too many flags.

Where is he hiding them?

Just listen. The assault will begin soon.

Is that what his offer is? Kill Ai and he’ll call off the attack?

No. He won’t stop the attack.

Then what’s he offering?

He’s willing to take the nukes off the table.

That stopped me for a second. Rain rolled down her face as she stared up at me.

Faye, those weapons will kill hundreds of thousands of people—

We’ve learned a lot about Ai and her people, she said. More than you have. They’re strong, but not as strong as they’d have you think. They’re a relatively new phenomenon, and they’ve organized only very recently, but already they control this whole city. Soon they’ll control everything.

I thought about that.

If they defeat Fawkes, she continued, then their way will be clear. If this window closes, then nothing will stop them. Eventually, their control will be total.

She paused, glancing down the alley toward the street. People were beginning to take notice of us. I moved my hands away as she went back on the soles of her feet.

If it’s true, then show me what he knows, I said. Give me something concrete.

She slid her arms from around my neck and put her palms on my chest. When I looked in her eyes, for a second her expression seemed human. It seemed …

She reached into her cloak and the air warped around her. There was a flicker; then she was gone.

Connection closed.

“Faye?” I reached in front of me, but she wasn’t there anymore.

I turned and started back through the fog and out of the alley. As I walked, I brought up the stats on the program to decommission the obsolete revivor stock; it was ninety-seven percent complete. There was only three percent to go, and the son of a bitch wasn’t in there.

Somehow, he’d managed to avoid the ax. Fawkes was still out there, and he was coming.

Calliope Flax—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment #613

If the address was right, the stick lived in a shit hole called Pleasantview. There was trash piled on the curb, and someone had used bolt cutters on the chain-link fence around the lot. I parked my bike on the street and killed the engine. The rain tapped on my helmet while I sat for a minute, watching; then the reminder to check my hidden file popped up in the dark in front of me.

She had me paranoid. Any time I did anything I wanted to remember, I wrote it in the file and I checked it twice a day. I knew the stick could make me forget, and I wasn’t taking chances. A lot of people knew a JZI could record, but I kept the text file under my hat. No one could make me erase it if they didn’t know it was there. There were four messages there:

Back from TSP. Wachalowski bailed early, but might help.

Scored Zombie Maker from Eddie.

Called Buckster. He said he’d drop by sometime.

I remembered all those—meeting Wachalowski, Eddie hooking me up with the drugs, then roping in Buckster, who the drugs were for. People had a way of blabbing when they were on Z, and that went double when they didn’t know they were on it. If he had any inside intel Wachalowski could use, I’d get it out of him and he’d never be the wiser.

All that I remembered. The last message, though—that I didn’t remember:

Found a door behind the flag. Checking it out.

A door behind the flag? The only flag I could think of was the one back at my place. I’d brought it back with me from my tour, and I hung it up across from the door to the toilet. There wasn’t anything behind it but wall.

Checking it out.

Something made me write it. There was nothing after, and I had no memory of doing it. Someone fucked with my head. Keeping the list worked; I’d gotten my first hit.

“Son of a bitch.”

I armed the bike’s alarm and stowed my helmet, then went up to the front door and pulled. It didn’t