Element Zero

Fine.

It had been one year since Samuel awoke, since he stopped being just a voice in the dark. He walked now, and talked here with form and presence. He’d been part of my life for a long time, but now he seemed real to me in a way he never had been before. Before the tanker sank into the ocean, he’d left stasis and stepped into the real world, where he was both more and less vulnerable. He had one more plan, one more chance to stop them. Whatever happened, it would be over soon.

A signal lit up at the edge of my sight. Sonar had picked up movement down the pipe in front of me.

Wait, I’ve got something.

A gray shape appeared from out of the blackness. Metallic ticks vibrated through the cold pipe as the shape changed position.

What is it? Fawkes asked.

It was dense, and maybe a third of my size. I scanned it and found electrical current.

It’s mechanical.

I tuned the sonar, creating an image. Up ahead was a layer of sediment, and just past that was some kind of small machine with many spindly legs. It used a sensor to probe ahead of it as it scuttled through the pipe.

There’s some kind of servo down here. Stand by.

The servo reached out with a wire-thin claw and poked through the sediment in front of it, kicking up small, fleshy cubes.

Faye. The word flashed in the dark in front of my face. Lev had picked up the circuit. He was still down here somewhere.

Lev, where are you?

Just ahead. Don’t approach the servo yet.

The robot scuttled forward, kicking up more of the soft, uniform cubes. I watched them float back down to the bottom.

It’s revivor flesh, I thought. The pieces were Lev’s remains.

What happened? I asked.

It’s some kind of maintenance ’bot, he said. It must be designed to carve up blockage. It came up behind me and severed my spine before I could stop it. I’ve kept it from the rest of me, but I can’t continue the mission.

I strained my eyes through the dark, and there, maybe twenty feet or so in the distance, I could just make out his eyes. They shifted in the darkness, staring, I thought, into his personal void.

How do I get past it? I asked.

Watch the claw, but your best bet is probably to just grab it. It’s not designed for combat, and it’s not heavily shielded; you should be able to penetrate its skin.

Understood.

The servo moved through the chunks, heading in my direction. When it locked on, it moved surprisingly fast; a claw brushed my face as I lunged and grabbed the leg at its base. Through the water I heard the whir of motors as it tried to pull away.

The cutter flashed in front of me a few times as its little legs scrambled, trying to make a retreat. I found a seam in the thing’s outer chassis and placed my free palm on it. I fired my bayonet and it punched through, into its electronics.

The robot jerked in my hand and my body seized as a jolt of electricity passed through it. The current arced from my back and down the pipe as I turned the bayonet. I heard a metallic crunch; then the servo stopped moving.

I retracted the blade and dropped the machine. Pushing through the chunks of flesh, I stirred up fingers and toes until the water cleared on the other side. I swam close to what was left of Lev Prutsko.

I’m here, Lev.

His eyes had dimmed in the dark. All he had left was his torso and one arm. His gaze stopped shifting around and he made eye contact with me.

I’m glad it was you who came, he said.

Glad?

I think so, he said. Yes.

Over the channel we shared, he began to stream something, a thin trickle of embers, over to me. It was one of his memories. When the stream ebbed out and died, he signaled for me to lean closer to him. I moved in until our faces nearly touched.

He never expected me to make it, he said. I knew that. Whoever goes down this pipe is expendable. Did he tell you?

I had suspected it, but I shook my head.

There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you, Lev said.

He doesn’t trust me?

You shouldn’t have told him about what you remembered.

We hadn’t spoken of that in a long time. After reanimation, memories that had been erased would return. It’s why Ai feared us. But long ago when I awoke on the tanker, one particular memory had returned—a piece of the puzzle that never quite fit. As a detective, I’d processed one of them, a woman named Noelle Hyde. Back then, she’d tried to kill Fawkes, but she wasn’t ordered to; it was just the opposite. They’d killed her for what she’d done.

They didn’t want Fawkes dead, I said to Lev.

They lie. He thinks you give too much consideration to their motives.

I know what I saw. At the time, I thought they feared something else, something besides Fawkes stripping them from power.

Lev’s eyes just watched me from the murky darkness.

I still think that, I said. Lev managed a nod.

Maybe they do.

“ …It will start here, but it won’t end here …” Ai had said once. “Fawkes will destroy this city, and then one by one, the rest will begin to fall…. ”

They need to be stopped, I said, but he should have listened.

There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you. Just remember that.

I will.

Do you want to continue your existence?

I think so.

You think?

The darkness that waits for me, I told him, it’s the only thing left that really scares me. I don’t want it to take me. I’m not ready for it to take me, not yet.

You may come to terms with that someday, he said.

Have you?

A long time ago. He will shut you down, you know. Someday soon.

I know.

I wish I could stop it, he said.

You do?

Yes.

I moved closer to him and hoped he could see my face. Using our private channel, I told him something I hadn’t told anyone else.

I found a way to sever his command spoke.

He didn’t respond right away. The shunt I’d fashioned over the years would work—I didn’t doubt that—but Fawkes’s reaction, if he knew, would be extreme. It would mean the end not just for me, but everyone on Fawkes’s network who knew of it.

Will you run, then? he asked.

Under my tongue, I felt the small glass capsule. Lev would have had one as well.