Element Zero

“I’ll draw them off,” I told him. He nodded.

Vika, which way?

Sth ext.

My shirt was folded next to the gurney. I slipped it back on and buttoned up as I ran after them. From the sound of it, they were headed for the main lot at the north side of the building. Before I lost the feed, it looked like the revivors were moving in from the south.

You’re about to get a shitload of company. Keep the engine running; this might be tight.

Rgr.

Down the hall, I saw the last of the suits peel off and head toward the main entrance. I got a fix on Vika and tracked her as she made a beeline for the back lot.

Wachalowski, pick up. It took him a few seconds, but he answered.

Cal, where are you?

Long story. What the fuck is going on out there?

Fawkes just took out the CMC building. Where are you?

I’m on the base. Look, never mind how, but I was just on Fawkes’s command spoke. Not for long, but long enough to dump his buffers. I’m sending them to you now.

I compressed everything I got and fired it over the JZI.

Got it. I’m coming in by air now. I’ll meet you—

Don’t come after me. Go to the command center. I’ll get back to you.

I cut the line as something crashed through a window down the hall. Back behind me, a couple shots went off.

As I passed an open door, I caught a flash of moonlit eyes and heard the crunch of feet as they shuffled through broken glass up ahead.

Faye Dasalia—Heinlein Industries, Test Facility Five

At the end of a remote corridor, I pushed open a heavy steel door and felt cold air pass over me. The other side was dark, but when I adjusted my optical filters I could make out a heavy sheet of plastic with a slit in the middle hanging from the ceiling ahead. The flaps rippled gently as fog swirled around my ankles, carrying a smell that seemed vaguely familiar. I slipped through as the door thumped shut behind me.

As I moved through the dark, an encrypted call came in from somewhere inside the building. Someone who wasn’t MacReady was attempting to contact me in secret. I accepted the key and opened the link.

Faye, you escaped. It was Dulari.

Yes.

Don’t tell me where you are. Fawkes got an approximate location on you during his last communication. He’s sent Ang to find you.

I stood at one end of a room whose other side I couldn’t see. It was lit from above by some kind of very dim, pale green glow. The room was a maze of tubes, pipes and wires. Wires trailed from somewhere overhead to connections in steel trays that were assembled in stacks. Slick, creviced gray membrane covered each one, and I sensed electric current humming through it.

I recognized the smell then. It was the greasy, bitter tar smell of heated revivor blood.

Faye, Dulari said. Fawkes dropped one of the nukes. He used The Eye to destroy the CMC Tower. I didn’t realize. I didn’t know how far he’d go.

The route that MacReady had laid out for me took me through the strange room, and as I began to make my way though, other details began to jump out at me: long needles and hairless flesh, miles of squiggling black veins pulsing under thin, wet sheets of gelatin. The low hum of air circulators and liquid coursing through pipes filled my ears, stirring memories from deep, deep inside.

Faye, he’s not finished. He’s going to destroy everything. I don’t think we can stop him.

We can’t, I told her. Be very careful around Fawkes.

Believe me, I am.

Thank you for the warning. Keep off this line, or he’ll catch you.

Faye—

I cut off the connection, and her words faded as I breathed in the smell of the room through my nose.

It was one of the few times that a physical place had affected me since my reanimation. For some reason, standing there in that strange place was comforting. I’d never been there, but it reminded me somehow of my return back into this world. The sound and the smells were imprinted on my brain, like I’d felt them before during my long sleep after my life was taken. In a way, I found difficult to explain that it felt safe and familiar, like being home.

Something was being born, there. I caught myself wishing Lev was with me so that we could compare that strange perception. I wondered what he would have made of it.

Follow the path, MacReady interrupted. Hurry.

What is this?

The future, he said. The next step. Revivors without human limitations, that don’t require second-tier benefits. No human can get through there without requisitioning a biohazard suit. It will buy you some extra time, but you have to move quickly.

I continued on, picking out organic shapes in the dark. I saw fat squiggles of tissue I didn’t recognize, bones that seemed almost but not quite human, and then eventually muscles, joints, fingers and toes. At the opposite end of the chamber was a door, and I pushed it open, leaving the web of disconnected pieces behind me.

It’s just up ahead, MacReady said. Ahead was a single, gray metal door.

I see it.

I turned the handle and pulled open the door. The room was in the shape of a large circle, the curves of its wall covered ceiling to floor with microthin display screens. The center of the circle was dominated by a large, round table, six workstations arranged around its circumference. Only one of the stations was occupied. A man in a suit sat there. He didn’t turn when I stepped into the room, and the door clicked shut behind me. He just stared at the screen closest to where he sat, while it displayed footage of a large explosion.

“Mr. MacReady?” He nodded.

The electronic screens that covered the wall displayed a dizzying amount of data. I scanned it, picking out code mixed with complex mathematical equations littered between more familiar items: media clips, handwritten notes, and photos. On the screen he was watching, a large structure was collapsing into flames.

“That’s the CMC Tower,” he said quietly. He rubbed at his brow, and I saw his hand shake. “That was the CMC Tower.”

I realized the feed was live. That hole was forming in the skyline right now. Over MacReady’s shoulder, I watched the last of the Central Media Communications Tower crumble into the cloud of smoke and fire.

Memories were rising out of the darkness, points of light expanding to display visions of that structure as it loomed in the distance. The morning it all started, as I rode the monorail on my way to the scene of Mae Zhu’s murder, I’d watched the tower’s shadow loom off in the distance through the haze of snow. I’d seen it nearly every day of my life.

I made this possible.

The blocks around the blast lost power, the buildings and neon lights going dark to form a black hole in the bright cityscape. A smaller building nearby began to fall. I’d always known this was part of Fawkes’ plan. I knew he would destroy the three towers, but it seemed that knowing it and seeing it with my own eyes were two different things, even now. For the first time in a long time, I wondered if I hadn’t placed my trust in the wrong man.

“You may not have much time, Mr. MacReady.”

He turned then, and looked at me. He was an older man with thick, wavy hair that had turned completely gray.