Element Zero

He was idle for a while. I headed down the stairs to the next landing.

There’s more, he said. I wasn’t supposed to live through that attack.

What?

Mother of Mercy. The dark, the water, and those people …I was supposed to die down there. Today was supposed to be the day I die. Fawkes was to destroy the city not long after.

You—

Tenth Avenue and Park, he said. Just get there. We’re off the script, Nico. Something’s gone very wrong.

Faye Dasalia—Heinlein Industries, Pratsky Building

A map of the park floated in front of me as the virus I’d planted transferred control of the main computer hub over to Fawkes. He gained access to the transmitter array and connected to the satellite network. Feeds from all over had begun to pour in, and I watched as his forces stormed the campus. Teams I knew nothing about had attacked from along the perimeter. They’d crossed the open tarmac, then struck the facilities at their center. Any remaining security forces were quickly torn to pieces as his soldiers occupied the main buildings.

“What the hell is going on?” someone whispered behind an equipment rack, but nobody answered. A loud thud shook the walls, and the lights flickered. It sparked a quick, hushed murmur that stopped when gunshots boomed through the halls outside. The people with me in the Pratsky Building began to realize the trouble they were in as their phones and computers, even their JZIs, had become useless. All data was rerouted through the transmitter array; everything else was suppressed. Everyone but us was completely cut off. Electricity coursed back through the main fence. The Eye resumed its watch over the tarmac, ready to incinerate anything that moved. No one could get in—or out.

I waited in the lab, not sure what to do as gunfire cracked outside. Heinlein’s security team resisted for roughly twenty-five minutes before they finally succumbed. They weren’t set up for an attack of that scale, and when they lost the airstrip, and their air support with it, they were quickly overwhelmed. The sounds of destruction from outside faded, until all that was left were quiet whispers and frightened sobs.

“You,” a voice whispered. I turned to see a young man crouched in shadow. His eyes were intense as he stared up at me. “Revivor …tell me what’s happening.”

A message from Fawkes appeared in front of me, glowing softly as I stared:

Faye, come here.

His location appeared on the building’s map. He was inside the Pratsky facility.

“Stay here,” I told the young man. “Whatever they tell you to do, do it.”

As I crossed the lab, I heard Dulari’s voice come over the intercom. I watched her on one of the feeds as she spoke into a handset:

“Employees of Heinlein Industries, this is Dulari Shaddrah. For those who do not know me, I am a senior engineer in the biotech division. I understand you are anxious about this turn of events, but I urge you to remain calm and at your stations. If the soldiers have not reached you yet, they will shortly. Do not resist them, and I can promise you will not be harmed. Certain employees will have received instructions to assemble in the main hub of the Pratsky Building; make your way there now. If you are—”

She jumped, dropping the handset to the floor, as gunfire erupted through the room. Three of the revivor soldiers lined up near the offices had begun to fire on the row of cubicles. On the feed I saw Dulari’s face lit with the flash of sustained gunfire. As I watched, her expression changed to what I thought might be shock, or fear, or both.

The shots covered the sounds of the screams. Bullets riddled flimsy walls and tore the people who cowered inside to shreds as they began to move down the rows. More gunfire echoed down the halls from throughout the building.

A woman ran out from one of the offices and stumbled into the wall. She made it two steps toward the door on the other side of the room before a bullet punched through her neck and her body pitched forward onto the floor. A soldier farther down dropped an expended clip onto the bloodstained carpet and reloaded. When I looked back to the feed, I saw the handset lying on the floor. Dulari was gone.

My job was to hijack Heinlein’s transmitter. The others were supposed to smuggle me out. Fawkes was supposed to initiate his code transfer from outside of the campus, but instead he and his men were here, and they were killing everyone.

There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you, Lev had said. Remember that. When I played back the memory, I felt sure Lev knew what the virus was for when he first entered the pipe. Fawkes needed a series-seven revivor to make the jump from the test facility, but something made him doubt me. The operation must have been in the works for several months at least. He had kept me in the dark.

Faye, come here. The message pulsed in the air.

I made my way down through rows of equipment, and saw the processing plant’s inventory get called out in a window. More than one thousand revivors were stored there, awaiting shipment abroad. Manifest numbers were being catalogued, as they got ready for reanimation. Fawkes was going to wake them up, all of them.

I pushed open the door and made my way back toward the main offices, where Fawkes was, as the gunfire continued. Debris littered the tarmac, and through one window I saw the fuselage of a downed helicopter as flames spit into the wind.

The processing plant is under our control, someone reported. Reanimation has begun.

What about the nuclear satellite? Fawkes asked.

The new targets are locked in.

Keep me informed.

I opened a metal door and stepped through it into a long corridor. Rows of glass panels looked out toward the tarmac where flames rippled off two twisted metal husks, and far off in the distance columns of black smoke rose into the gray sky. Between two of the buildings I saw where one of The Eye’s orbital beams had struck. The blacktop had been completely liquefied and blown out to form a wide, blistered crater. Steam drifted from the center while snow streamed down around it.

As I approached the end of the corridor, a brilliant flash from up above threw long shadows across the tarmac. The glass panels tinted darker in response; then the beam arced down like a bolt of lightning. The point of impact rose like a huge bubble, then popped in a cloud of flame as a loud crack, like thunder, split the air. The panels shook in their frames as snow pushed out from the expanding heat wave.

Last hostile Chimera has been destroyed, a report came in. We control the airstrip and the remaining ten aircraft.

Roger that.

Across the way, in the adjacent building, I saw figures standing inside and staring in shock. A jeep lay on its roll bar several hundred yards away, flames pouring from one tire. Underneath it, pinned by one leg, a soldier’s body lay twisted and broken. Blood ran across the blacktop.

I protected these people once.

I stepped through the door at the end of the hall and left the scene behind me. As the door closed, a man crossed in front of me, backing up with his hands held up as a burst of gunfire tore through his chest. He fell back and crashed to the floor. A moment later, the worst of the noise stopped. Sobs and moans and the occasional scream piped up, along with scattered shots.

Fawkes was close; I could sense him. A glass door led back to the R&D labs, and inside soldiers stood watch as workers were herded into offices. Up ahead of me, a man lay on the floor with blood pooled around his head. Past him, a woman’s leg stuck through a doorway, one high heel on its side a few feet away.

Fawkes was set up in the director’s office. As I approached, I saw him standing straight in front of a large,