Element Zero

memory begin to separate from the field of lights and stream into the void. They trickled away, down the hanging wires, and away.

“ …and zero …”

Nico Wachalowski—The Shit Pit

I never understood what Cal saw in that bar, and I guess I never will. It was loud and full of smoke. The air reeked of sweat and too much perfume and cologne. Everyone there was covered in tattoos, and they all looked like trouble.

Maybe that’s what she liked about it. She never did feel completely at ease with first-tier status. She hated places like Bullrich, but even after she got out and moved on, it’s what she knew.

Whatever the reason, it was as good a place as any to go and get lost in. People drank, gambled, and argued, and no one paid any attention to two soldiers in the corner, or the flicker of orange light in their eyes as they sat and appeared to never speak.

She stared into her shot glass. It was half full, and surrounded by three empty ones. She was a woman of few words, and she never said much about what happened. Her occasional call and the odd night out were as close as either one of us got to saying it meant a lot that the other made it. Maybe it didn’t need to be said.

Before she did her run into Alto Do Mundo, she’d returned the message I’d left for her. By the time I read it the whole thing was over and I thought she might have said something she’d regret since she’d lived, but there was no epiphany or soul baring. Just three words: Back at you.

When I saw the words, I realized I hadn’t expected her to live through Fawkes’s attack. That fact cut me almost as deep as losing Faye. Calliope Flax had gotten under my skin at some point.

You had enough? I asked. She lifted one battered brow.

I’m just getting started.

The city wasn’t the same since the attacks a month back. We’d dealt with terrorist attacks before, but nothing on the scale of what happened that day. The loss of the CMC and TransTech towers was a blow that everyone felt, and would feel for years to come, but that wasn’t why it was different. People had learned who Samuel Fawkes was, and that he was behind the assault, and that he was gone. They got their closure, at least on that front, but the attack wasn’t the only shock they’d received.

Fawkes’s variants were shut down in due time. The revivors in the streets were rounded up on command spokes and filed back to Heinlein for study. The Huma blood was no longer contagious, and the spread had been stopped. Eventually, the nanos would be flushed from everyone’s systems, but those who were bitten had been changed. Like me and like Cal, the upgraded nanos had entered their brains and constructed the shunt that Fawkes had so carefully designed. It blocked any interference from psionic control, and unlocked any memories that had previously been buried. The true fallout of that day was just beginning to gain traction, and no one knew where it would lead.

A month ago, very few people had ever heard of Samuel Fawkes. They would have had no reason to know how or why he would orchestrate such a terrible assault on his own country. Everyone who was infected that day, though, woke up to a truth they could barely believe. Everyone who received the shunt also received a single, simple message that was encoded in the nanomachines and imprinted on the host’s brain:

I have awoken you.

It was like an itch you couldn’t reach. Even I felt it; Fawkes’s final vindication of himself, like a bad memory that you couldn’t forget.

Some even believed it.

I was still sorting through my own memories as they came back to me. They’d taken an interest in me a long time ago, back to the grinder, and even before that. I had never completely understood how Faye could turn on her own kind like she did until I began to experience those alien memories for myself. It was hard to know just how those violations felt, how complete they were, until you felt them firsthand.

There were times I could almost understand Fawkes’s drive to stop them, until I looked to the skyline.

They ever find your girl? Cal asked. Neither of us had brought up Faye in weeks.

No, they never found her.

And the stick? Ott?

When the cleanup crews finally made it up to the Alto Do Mundo penthouse, they found the place mostly cleared out. They recovered the bodies of several soldiers up there, along with Zoe’s friend, Penny Blount, and Motoko Ai, but Zoe was never found. A large patch of blood spatter was identified as hers, but according to the reports her body wasn’t up there.

Cal saw my look and nudged me under the table with her boot.

She was breathing when I left. I swear, she said.

I know. I didn’t want to talk about Zoe. You decided if you’re going to stay with Stillwell yet?

I’m staying.

Good. Despite what had happened, Stillwell had proven committed to serving in the aftermath of the attacks. Like everywhere else, they’d had a reckoning, but also like everywhere else, things were slowly returning to normal, if the word still applied.

I’m glad you didn’t listen to me. You saved a lot of lives that day, I told her. She nodded.

You too. It looks like your girl came through in the end, at least.

Maybe.

It was time to let that go anyway, she said. Find yourself a new girl. One that’s alive this time.

Maybe.

I finished my drink and signaled for another. The bartender nodded and sent one over, along with another shot for Cal.

How about you? she asked. What are you going to do now?

Maybe I’ll retire.

Yeah, right.

She pushed her shot glass to one side and grabbed the next. She held it up and smiled, showing the gap in her teeth.

To better days.

I clinked the glass.

Better days, I said, and that’s where it ended.

Well, more or less.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

James Knapp grew up in New England and currently lives in Massachusetts with his wife, Kim. He is at work on his next novel. Visit him at www.zombie0.com.