the dirt. I looked for something, anything to stop them with.
Hands grabbed me from behind and pulled. I tried to scream, but my throat burned with something salty and warm. I choked, and coughed up blood.
He pulled me away, away from the backs of the revivors crowded around the broken plank. He thought I was alone. I could just make out the boy’s face, terrified, as I was dragged from the room and back up the tunnel.
“Nico, stay with me,” he said. I tried to speak, but I was choking. Blood ran from my mouth.
Someone craned back my head, and I felt a tube slide down my throat. I could breathe again. I groped for Sean’s sleeve and pointed back down the tunnel.
I wanted to tell him about the boy, but when I tried, I couldn’t. The words wouldn’t form. He didn’t know. None of them knew. He was six feet underneath them, and none of them knew. Why couldn’t I respond? What had Sean done to me?
He leaned in until his lips were at my ear.
The medevac came. They airlifted me out. One of the revivors, its teeth stained red, came back up and watched the chopper. The gunner turned on it and cut it down as we left the boy who’d saved me to his fate, forgotten.
I opened my eyes. I was in a hospital, lying in bed while a doctor stood off to one side, turned away from me to examine an X-ray. I could still picture the boy’s face in my mind.
Was it real? Had it been a dream, or had that old memory finally worked its way back to the surface?
There were many other beds in the room, all occupied. Off to my left I saw a man with bandages wrapped around his face, and in the bed across from his, another man whose hand was wrapped. At least two of his fingers were missing. A woman on a gurney had been wheeled in and pushed along one wall to wait her turn. Her face was lacerated, and there was a tube down her throat.
The words flashed near the corner of my eye. I opened it.
I smiled, and felt a knot on the right side of my face. The time stamp on the message said it was two hours old. She was alive, or at least she had been two hours ago. I shook off the dream and accessed the Bureau’s system to find out what was happening out there.
FBI alerts had piled up, and they were still coming in. All across the city, thousands of people had dropped dead, only to get back up minutes later.
I put in a call to him over the JZI, but he didn’t pick up. His communications node was still active, though. Wherever he was, he was alive. I left the channel open and set it aside in case he responded.
Out in the hallway, another patient was trucked by while a man shouted instructions. The hospital was overrun. According to the reports, the revivors had initially shown violent aggression, and riots broke out. Vehicles were abandoned in streets that became gridlocked. Stillwell soldiers had scrambled to assist local police, but before they could get a handle on the situation, the damage had been done.
I closed my eyes and cycled through incident reports. A citizen tip site had been set up, and flooded almost as soon as it came online. The FBI was scrambling to process the incoming information, but phones, data, and even JZI links were getting jammed. The media storm had networks nearly at a standstill.
It was a disaster. The carriers were slipping past perimeters set up after the initial assault, and disappearing. No one could say for sure where they were going or if there was any organization to their movements. The entire city was in a panic.
“He’s awake,” I heard a voice say. “Call the Agency and get them off our backs.”
“Doctor Pellwynne, process him, then get him out of here,” another voice said under his breath. “We’ve had two hacks into our system, looking for info on him, already. And anyway, we need the bed.”
Most media reports agreed that the transmission that triggered the carriers had come from Heinlein Industries, and the FBI’s information backed that up. There were unconfirmed reports of a security breach over at Heinlein as well. An automated emergency call had gone out, then been cancelled. No one at the campus had called out since, and all incoming calls were being bounced to the messaging system. Even JZI traffic was blocked.
“Agent Wachalowski?” a woman’s voice said. A cold hand gently touched my forehead. I opened my eyes and saw a pretty woman with skin the color of chocolate and black hair grouped in short twists. She looked down at me with tired eyes. As the report scrolled by between us, she smiled.
“Welcome back,” she said. “I’m Doctor Pellwynne.”
“Where am I?”
“The VA Hospital.”
I looked around. It was crowded, but the facility was first tier. It was a far cry from Mother of Mercy.
“Why here?”
“You needed some special work done,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She approached the bed and sat down in a chair next to it. I saw an orange flicker inside her pupils.
“What do you remember about the attack?” she asked.
“You don’t have time for this,” I said, “and neither do I. I’m sorry.”
“We have time,” she said. “What do you remember?”
“They mobbed us,” I said. It was sketchy, but I remembered the room filling up with bodies. They were revivors. “How many of them are out there?”
She kept her face calm, but there was fear there, in her eyes.
“A lot. That’s all I know. I haven’t had time to think about it; we’re running at triple capacity. The hospital is secure—for now.”
“I need to get out of here.”
“I understand, but I need to speak with you first.”
“Why?” I didn’t understand.
“What do you remember about the attack?”
“I …”
I remembered falling down into the water. I’d been hit in the head. I was disoriented and went down on my back. I fired as one of them lurched toward me.
Under the blanket, I’d closed my right fist and felt no pain. I stretched the fingers and made the fist again.
I looked down and saw a crease near the joint of my right shoulder where some kind of major work had been done. It was deep, and the skin there was thick and white. The scar that had been there since my last tour ended abruptly at that crease. I heard the tempo on my vitals monitor pick up.
“Before you look,” she said, “I want to prepare you—”
I pulled the blanket away and held up the arm in front of me. It was gray. Under the skin, I could see a network
