Element Zero

Approaching Heinlein’s perimeter.

Are you coming for Fawkes? I asked.

Yes.

I picked up the box containing the samples and snapped it shut before stowing it in one of the suit’s pockets. I picked up Dulari’s gun from the floor next to her body.

Then meet me at the transmitter.

Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo

We had reached the stairwell when Ai’s phone rang inside her jacket. She took out the phone and answered it, signaling for the guards to wait. She listened without speaking for a few seconds; then I saw her face change.

“Are you certain?” she asked. She nodded, then said, “I see. Thank you.”

She snapped the phone shut and put it back in her pocket.

“Mr. Vaggot has succeeded in regaining control of the nuclear satellite,” she said. My heart jumped in my chest.

“Are we sure?” Penny asked.

Ai nodded. She looked confused. “It has been confirmed,” she said. “A superorbital strike is being levied against The Eye now.”

“That’s good, right?” Penny asked, but Ai shook her head.

I took a long drink off the bottle and let the warmth seep down into my belly. Osterhagen would never have let the nukes launch once he got control of them back, but Osterhagen was dead now. He and all the rest of his men in the UTTC. They were all dead.

But Vaggot wasn’t. He wasn’t inside TransTech; he was off on the Stillwell base. If Vaggot had just retaken control of the nukes, then he’d still be inside the system. There was still time.

“Someone has to do it …it’s the only thing that can stop this …”

The visions had been telling me what had to be done all along. I just didn’t want to listen. Like Noelle, I didn’t want to believe it, I didn’t want to face it, but that was before everything else. That was before Nico and Karen, and all the people I’d killed and would probably end up killing later. The city was a pit, full of bad people. Was it really worth saving anyway?

Blocking out the chaos around me, I reached out for Vaggot. I found his consciousness and eased my way into it. The relief he was feeling washed over me and actually made me feel calmer.

Mr. Vaggot, I said, and I sensed him stiffen at the intrusion.

Who is this? he wondered, still doubting if what he was experiencing was real. I eased in further, through the cloud of his consciousness to the sharp, defined map of colors beneath. He stiffened again when I made contact, and then I felt him begin to give himself over to me without even knowing it.

Leave the satellite as it is, I told him. He resisted that, but he didn’t move.

What?

Can that satellite really destroy the entire city? I asked.

Easily. I felt fear. A cold, white membrane, like a sheet, began to ripple in an unseen wind beneath the rest of the colors of his mind.

All of it? He knew something was wrong. He sensed, I think, what might ride on his answer, and I could feel that he didn’t want to tell me, but he did.

Ten times over, he said.

The image of those collapsed faces staring back at me filled my mind. The feeling of my own skull as it melted away, and the feeling of my own tongue as it divided in my mouth had wormed their way into my brain. Even as the explosion across the city grew, I couldn’t shake the alien thoughts that took over in the vision as everything that was me slipped away. Whatever the nature of Noelle’s image when it came to me, I knew she was right. Ai had been wrong all this time: Fawkes wasn’t Element Zero at all. Element Zero was something else completely. It was the person Ai had been searching for, the person who was supposed to stop the disaster, what she first saw in Noelle and then Penny and then me. The one that would save the world from not only Fawkes but also from them, and with the same fire they’d been so desperate to avoid.

Are they disarmed? I asked him. Again he resisted me, but again, he answered.

Yes.

Rearm them.

All along we’d been waiting for some key event to make the star and the void disappear, but now I saw that we couldn’t have both. There was no way to stop both. Stopping one meant letting the other happen. To save the world, the city had to burn. To save the city, the world had to end. Someone had to choose.

Fear and anxiety began to course through Vaggot’s mind again as he did what I wanted.

“Wait,” I heard one of the men in the hallway say. “Wait. The launch sequence just initiated.”

“What?” someone else asked.

“The ICBMs just went active again.”

“Is it Fawkes?”

I felt Ai’s attention turn to me. “Zoe, what are you doing?”

When I opened my eyes, I saw her standing in front of me as the wind from outside whipped through her hair. The fragments of her consciousness were gathering focus, and turning that focus onto me. She knew, but she was too late.

Mr. Vaggot, I said. Launch the missiles.

Nico Wachalowski—Heinlein Industries’ Perimeter

Snow streaked past the window of the monorail car as it bulleted toward Heinlein’s main campus. Off in the distance, the last of the UTTC had crumbled into the angry glow lighting up the skyline. If they’d destroyed the transmitter like they’d wanted to, it might have been avoided.

My hands shook, and I felt sweat roll down the back of my neck in spite of the cold. The sickness was getting worse. I stared at the glow in the distance until it blurred, then closed my eyes.

Death tolls and damage assessments were all queuing up behind the block I’d put down. Carriers were being spotted closer and closer to the city limits. Time was running out. This had to work.

Wachalowski, pick up. It was Alice.

Tell me you have good news, I said.

Not exactly. Osterhagen’s team at Stillwell cracked the satellite. They took back control of the nukes just minutes ago.

And The Eye?

A superorbital EMP was standing by and has been launched. It won’t get a chance to fire again.

Then what’s the bad news?

The launch sequence was initiated on the nuclear satellite shortly after control was reestablished.

Alice, that doesn’t make sense. Who issued the code?

The only one that could have done it is Hans Vaggot, the engineer who retook control of the satellite in the first place.

Why would he do that? Is he alone in there?

Yes, she said. In fact, the security feeds inside the base show that as of a few minutes ago, Hans Vaggot inexplicably drew his weapon and shot to death the other engineers who were