Element Zero

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