Authors: James Knapp
One of the memories, the one that kept coming back, rose from the field. I was back in the interrogation room before my death, before I’d made detective. The street woman was with me.
“Name?”
I’d asked her.
“Noelle,”
she said.
“Noelle Hyde.”
“Look, if you want a lawyer—”
“I won’t need one,”
she said, not looking up from the table.
“I won’t go to jail.”
I remembered feeling pity for her then. She didn’t know how much trouble she was in. The man would live, but the stabbing was brutal.
“What you did was attempted murder, Noelle,”
I said.
“You’re going to jail.”
She shook her head.
“I wish I was. They might not be able to get to me there. That’s why I’ll never go.”
I sighed, not sure what to do. Could she be schizophrenic?
“Who is ‘they’?”
“I was supposed to stop him,”
she said,
“I just wanted to stop him.”
“Who told you to stop him?”
I asked, but she wouldn’t say. She just stared at the table.
“Samuel Fawkes is a dangerous man,”
she said.
“He’s some engineer at Heinlein Industries. The man is not dangerous.”
She looked up to meet my eye.
“Things change,”
she whispered.
The memory closed and fell back into the field. Had I just seen Samuel Fawkes’s killer?
I willed my fingers to move, and each of them responded. I was able to wiggle my toes as well. Whatever damage was done, they’d repaired the worst of it.
Removal of invasive bone splintering into soft tissue.
Two node power cells replaced and rewired.
Dermal patching (Four percent).
As the checklist drifted by, I thought about what I’d seen. I remembered that woman. Someone had posted her bail, and just like she insisted, she never saw the inside of a jail cell. We turned up pints of her blood, but no body.
“Faye?” The voice came from near my ear. I opened my eyes and saw his face near mine.
“Lev.”
“Can you move?” he asked.
“Yes.”
I sat up on the steel tray, where blood had pooled and thickened like black jelly. A dermal graft ran the length of my torso, from my sternum to my crotch. Two revivors in white coats stood beside me, aprons spattered and soiled. Chrome surgical tools lay in pans of water, turned inky gray from the blood. Other pans contained fragments of yellowed bone and chunks of preserved, gelatinized tissue.
“I thought maybe you were gone for good,” Lev said.
I looked around me to find out where I was. The metal tray was in some kind of large hold where flood lamps had been set up. Beyond them it was all shadows that danced within a soft, electric moonlight. It was sourced from thousands of tiny pinpricks that flickered all around the walls of the hold, where dark shapes stood motionless. I realized then what it was I was seeing: the points of light were the eyes of revivors. Thousands of them stood waiting inside the hold, their eyes jittering as if in some mass dream.
“I’m on the ship,” I said.
“Yes.”
Some were hairless; some were not. All of them were nude and desexed. Black veins bulged and squiggled under waxy skin; they had all been in stasis for a long time, and it had taken a toll.
They were of all different races and colors, male and female, young and old. They clutched pistols and rifles to their bare chests, eyes staring up at nothing. I’d never seen so many.
“Can you stand?” Lev asked.
My diagnostics hadn’t finished running, but my central nervous system was intact. Needle-prick jolts went through my muscle tissue as I moved to the edge of the metal tray. My arms were slow to respond, especially the left one, but I managed to climb down onto the floor. The deck was cold and wet under my bare feet. A limbless torso lay a foot from Lev’s feet, part of an old revivor. There was a cavity beneath the rib cage where parts had been harvested for my repair.
“Not all of them were fully functional,” Lev said. “They were only good for parts.”
“You could have stripped me and repaired them instead.”
“I didn’t.”
Even though I was long dead, the sight in the hold triggered a certain dread. It was really happening. The whispering from the dormant revivors had become soft and distant since I was so far from shore, but I could already feel them growing stronger. The ship was getting closer.
“You said something as you woke,” Lev said. “Did you remember something?” I nodded.
“I think I know who killed Fawkes,” I said.
“They ordered it. He knows that.”
“I don’t think they did,” I said. The flickering of their eyes was hypnotic. “I don’t think that they meant for this to happen.”
“. . . they might not be able to get to me there. It’s why I’ll never go.”
“You never heard the name Samuel Fawkes.”
I’d actually processed one of Ai’s people. With no idea who she was, I had actually arrested the woman. I’d arrested her for trying to kill Fawkes, but it didn’t sound like Ai had ordered it. It was just the opposite; she had actually been killed for what she’d done.
“They wanted to avoid this,” I said. This wasn’t just about Fawkes or Zhang’s Syndrome. There was something else that predated either. Something they were afraid of.
I thought back to the conversation I’d seen, watching from outside the restaurant that night.
“. . . it will start here, but it won’t end here . . . Fawkes will destroy this city and then, one by one, the rest will begin to fall. . . .”
“They think he’s going to end the world,” I said.
Lev didn’t say anything. He dismissed the other two, then touched my hand.
“He’s going to end their world.”
I looked out over the mass of revivors. Lev was right; he had to be. The forces in that hold, even with the nukes, couldn’t destroy a country, much less the world. The localized horror that would play out soon was a necessary drop in the bucket.
“Come on,” he said. “We’ll be reaching the shore soon.”
I looked down by the flood lamps, where hundreds of metal crates were stacked up high. Revivors moved in between the rows of them, guiding winches that moved the crates to the floor. The deck was wet with sticky, spent blisters and the thick residue of stasis fluid. They were waking up more of them, even now.
“Where did we get so many?” I asked.
“A military storage site overseas. They think these units have been decommissioned because of obsolescence.”
These were older models, then, from Fawkes’s generation. That policy had placed them in Fawkes’s hands.
“Don’t you think that’s ironic?” he asked.
“Maybe,” I said, but part of me wondered if it wasn’t more than that.
Another crate was lowered into the hold. I watched as they opened the front panel and mist began to seep out.
Calliope Flax—KM
Senopati Nusantara
I brought up the map and drew a path to the escape raft. It was a ways off, but if I was quick, I might make it. No one had tripped the alarm yet, but someone out there saw three M8s drop off their network. They knew something was up. I killed all the comms on each revivor so they couldn’t track them, then set up a POV stream for each over the command link.
“Up there,” a voice said from down in the hold, and I heard footsteps.
Go.
The three revivors made a run for the hatch at the far end of the walk. I stuck close as the first shot went off and a bullet sparked off the rail.
One opened the hatch and I sent two through while the last stayed to close it behind us. Gunshots boomed through the hold as the door clanged shut.
One, take point. Two and three, cover the rear.
The POV streams fixed along the top of my line of sight peeled off as they split up. The one in front picked up speed, giving me a view ahead. The other two kept pace, looking back and letting me see behind.
Those crates in the hold, are they full?
Most of them are still awaiting processing.
What was the node count on your network before I cut you off?
Two thousand three hundred and fifty-one.
Too many. Once they started moving they’d box me in for sure. If I got lucky, I could get to the launch bay before they found me. . . .
A sharp pain stabbed into my gut, and my leg buckled. I stumbled and slammed into the wall, trying not to fall as I ran. It felt like I got knifed. The revivor in front pulled away, and one of the two in the rear clipped me when it passed.
“Damnit!”
Keep me in the middle.
I saw myself whip by the frame of one POV as they adjusted.
Acid came up my throat, burning it. I swallowed, making a face. Buckster was right about one thing: that pain wasn’t nothing. Something was wrong. If I didn’t get to the boat, though, it wasn’t going to matter.
A hatch came up fast in one of the POV feeds, and the jack stomped to a stop up ahead. It grabbed the wheel and heaved, but it was stuck.
The door is secured.
I checked the map. The next-shortest path wasn’t short enough.
Use your charge to blow it. Two and three, follow me.
I tacked right down a side hall and hugged the wall. In the feed’s window, I watched the jack lock its arms through the wheel. It put its chest to the door and pushed the C4 bricks against it. I plugged my ears and hit the deck.
It set off the charge, and the floor bucked under me. The blast slammed down the hall, and I felt the shock in my bones. Fire lit up the dark, and I caught a blast of air hot enough to singe me. I smelled burned hair and smoke. My ears rang.
One in front, two behind. Go.
The one in front ran into the smoke, and I went in after it. I followed it, half blind, as it made it to the hatch. The door was warped, twisted on one hinge. It grabbed it, skin sizzling on the metal as it heaved it to one side and held it out of the way.
I jumped through, and they followed me in. Smoke burned my nose, and under it I smelled rot. One took point again as I ran through the room. Lying in the middle of the deck was a body on its back, bones sticking out. Four more lay near the wall, dead.
When I passed, the toe of my boot hit a jar with an inch of piss in the bottom, and it spun across the deck. The revivor on point gripped the wheel on the hatch across the room and turned. It squealed open.
The second hatch was open. Why didn’t they . . .
The jack went through. I saw the carnage on the feed just before I went through after it. The smell hit me, and I gagged. The deck was splattered with dried blood. Ripped pieces of clothes were stuck in it, mixed with bones. Up ahead, three sets of eyes glowed in the dark. They were sitting against the wall, waiting.
My foot came down on a shell casing and I slipped. I wheeled one arm then went down into a pile of remains. They were cold. When I tried to get up, I put my hand down on something spiny and sticky. Half a rib cage lay on the deck in front of me.
“Fuck!”
A cold hand grabbed my elbow as one of my jacks pulled me up, dragging me down the hall after it. Another cramp, like a sharp stick, twisted in my gut as I stumbled, kicking up bones.
Cal? Cal, are you there?
The words popped up as I ran, sweat beading on my face. One of the jacks kept ahead. The other still had my arm. Down the hall, the three revivors saw fresh meat and hauled themselves up. Past them, the light at the end of the hall was tilting.
Take them out.
The jack in front opened fire and ripped open the fat belly of the closest one. I heard shit spill out on the deck and then the stink hit me. My stomach turned. The pain dug in like a saw blade. Two more shots came, and the thing’s head blew apart.
Cal? Cal, respond.
My legs wanted to quit. The acid was burning my throat. I checked my comm link. It was Wachalowski. He got through.
I’m here.
Cal, I’m tracking you. Where are you headed?
Ship-to-shore vessel. In the docking bay.
The medical bay is on the way. Meet me there first.
Where the fuck are you?
I’m in a helicopter, approaching the tanker. I’m coming in. You need to go to the medical bay first.
Why?
Do you trust me?
Up ahead, I heard boots on the deck. There were a lot of them. Even getting to medical was looking dicey. Did I trust him?
I trust you.
My foot got snagged on a belt, and bones scattered across the deck as we ran toward the men up ahead.
11
Ship
Nico Wachalowski—KM
Senopati Nusantara
In the back of the helicopter, fifty miles offshore, the Coast Guard Maritime Safety and Security Team looked at ease in spite of the extreme turbulence. They stared straight ahead as their team leader addressed me.
We’ll be touching down shortly. The helipad will put you close to the entrance here:
A map of the ship appeared in my HUD, where the location was marked.
You know where you’re going after that?
My target came into communications range when we approached the ship. She’s located a ship-to-shore vessel; that’s how we’ll leave if we can. Right now she’s headed to the medical bay in case I need to physically remove the bomb.
Understood. The software package we provided should allow you to pull the specs from the device. The virus contained in the package will shut the device down once it has the specs.
Got it.
Connect to the device, pull the specs, drop the virus. You’ll know if it worked in less than a minute.
Understood.
If it doesn’t, you’ve got to leave her there. If you try and remove the bomb it could detonate.
The team leader stopped for a minute, orange light flickering in his pupils.
Satellite data confirms well over a thousand revivors active on board the ship, but they’re grouped down in the hold. You’re going to have to be fast. If you can’t disarm the bomb, we have to leave it to blow. If you do, we have orders to sink the ship. Either way, it never gets to shore. Understand?
I understand.
The helicopter dipped suddenly as the wind sheared. The pilot adjusted while rain streaked across the windshield. The team leader signaled, pointing down at the deck.
The helipad’s below us. We’re going in.
Understood.
He heaved open the door. Cold mist sprayed in as we descended. A bright floodlight aimed down through the rain, lighting up the helipad on the deck. Something moved down there.
Hostiles on deck. Computer’s picking up SAM targeting laser.
We banked sharply. A heavy grinding noise started, shaking the floor as a gun turret moved into view through the open door. It angled down toward the ship.
Hold on, Agent.
The chain gun let loose. The muzzle flared up as tracers spit down toward the deck of the ship.
“The laser’s down! I’m coming around!” the pilot yelled.
“Okay, we’re going down!” the team leader shouted, clapping my shoulder. “Don’t get out until I say you’re clear! Got it?”
“Got it!”
Another blast of wind hit, and my stomach flipped as we dropped down. I could barely see the deck until we were on top of it. A spray of foam crashed up along the side of the ship.
“Hold on!”
The radio crackled as we banked around. The chopper bucked hard enough to rattle my jaw.
Agent Wachalowski.
The message wasn’t from anyone on the team, and it wasn’t from Cal. It originated back on shore.
Who is this?
I’m contacting you on Ai’s behalf. Why are you approaching the tanker?
Whoever you are, I work for the FBI, not Motoko Ai.
It’s not safe to board the ship.
She made that clear before I left.
The deck was coming up fast. Down below, I saw it tilt as another wave crashed into the hull. The floodlight stayed on the helipad as we hovered sixty feet above it.
You’re going to get killed. We need you alive.
I cut the connection as the pilot signaled to me.
“We’re gonna go in fa—”
There was a huge explosion from the other side of the ship, and a cloud of fire lit up the water around it. Pieces of debris were silhouetted against the flames before spinning down into the water.
What the hell was that?
I asked.
There goes your ship-to-shore vessel
, the team leader said.
Looks like they don’t want anyone getting off. We’re sticking close in case we need to sink her. If you can find your civilian and make it back to the deck, we’ll extract you. Got it?
Got it.
The deck stabilized and the pilot brought us in. It was a rough landing, but he put us down on the pad. I felt the motion of the sea under me as the team leader signaled.
You’re clear.
Roger that. Thanks.
Good luck.
I jumped out, and as soon as my boots clanged down on the metal plating, I felt it move underneath me. Sea spray crashed up the far side of the ship. Behind me, the helicopter lifted off and ascended into the rain.
I made my way across the deck, debris sliding past as the ship rocked. My foot slipped and I went down on one knee just as the head and torso of a revivor rolled by.
Zooming in on the blueprint of the ship, I laid it over my main field of vision.
Cal, I’ve touched down. Where are you?
I’m on my way to the med ward like you said. Where are you?
On deck. I’m coming in now.
I’m telling you, I can get to the ship—
They just blew the ship-to-shore boat, Cal, and you’re rigged with a bomb. I can stop it and get you off the ship, but you have to do as I say.
The chain gun went off from up above. Off on the other side of the ship, it was chewing up the deck.
Cal?
She didn’t answer. Through the wind and the rain, I could see the metal hatch up ahead that led inside. I drew my gun and made a run for it.
Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo
The whole thing had scared me, at least at first. One minute everyone was just talking; then the next three guys came in, one of them grabbed Nico, and everything just exploded. I’d never seen him do anything like that before; it was like he was some kind of crazed animal or something. Some other guys had come and helped the security men away, but the floor was still covered in blood and broken glass.
“Don’t worry about the mess,” Penny said. “We’ll get the floor refinished.”
My heart had been beating really fast until Penny put her hand on one of my shoulders. Then a weird calm came over me, and the fear just kind of drifted away.
“He won’t make it,” she said. She’d found the gun in the water and held it up before putting it on a towel. “That was a pretty good fight, huh?”
I nodded.
“He’ll be fine,” she said. “He won’t get there in time.”
I nodded again, then drained the smoked-crystal glass and eased back, letting the hot water bubble around me. Being in that tub was the most relaxing thing I’d ever done. I couldn’t believe I’d waited half my life to try it. Penny sat on the other side of the tub with a bottle of something called grappa, which was clear, came in a tall bottle, and tasted horrible.
“I totally needed this,” Penny said, cracking her neck and leaning back. “I’ve been cooped up in that hellhole for days.”
“Hellhole?”
“Yeah, that man-girl they assigned me to,” she said. “That’s where I’ve been. I had to camp out there until we got her set up. I’ve been sleeping on a secondhand couch.”
“She let you stay there?” Penny laughed.
“Hell no. She didn’t know I was there. It was three days of babysitting and memory manipulation. It gets exhausting after a while.”
“Oh.” I wanted to ask her if she wasn’t afraid of getting beaten up or worse, but it was obvious that she wasn’t, and I was kind of embarrassed to admit that I would have been. I’d seen Calliope up close, and she scared me more than most guys.
“Fortunately, she’s as stupid as they come,” Penny said. “It’s like using a sledgehammer on a nail, with her. Anyway, that’s why I haven’t been around much.”
“It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t. You’ve been through some major stuff lately. I wanted to be here.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just didn’t say anything. The truth, though, was that I was really glad she showed up.
“That thing with Ted . . . is that what you meant to happen?” I asked.
“It was all you. Nothing was planned.”
“What did happen?”
“You shut him off.”
“Like a machine?”
“Kind of.”
She took another drink and looked me in the eye through the steam.
“You’ve got a particular little talent there,” she said.
“I killed him.”
“Are you sorry you did?”
“No.” In the back of my mind, I had this feeling that Karen would have been upset if she was alive to know what I’d done. But she wasn’t, thanks to him. “I should have done it sooner.”
Penny nodded and smiled. She took a swig off of her long-necked bottle.
“I’m really sorry it happened,” she said, “but at least you get it. Not everyone does, but you get it.”
“Get what?”
“That there are people like Karen and people like Ted. People like your friend; they want to make things better. It’s good that they do, but the problem is that people like Ted won’t ever change on their own. You saw it when you looked inside him. People like him get in the way. Someone’s got to make the hard decisions. You get that.”
“If I’d done it sooner . . .”
“You can’t change it now. Next time you won’t wait. You can honor her that way. I’m sorry, but it’s the best you can do.”
I was starting to like Penny a lot. I worried at first about hanging out with someone like me, but it turned out to be really great. I could actually talk about the things I did and saw, and she understood. She’d been through it too.
More than that, though, she made me feel included. I’d been on the outside my whole life. It was nice to be on the inside, for once.
“Nicely done with that revivor in the alley, by the way.”
“Thanks.” I was so drunk that the thing in the alley felt like a dream. Had I told her about that?
“Gun work out okay for you?”
“Yeah.” I thought it would have a big kick, but it didn’t. It was light and easy to use.
“I picked it myself. Top-of-the-line.”
I thought it might be too small to do much good, but it stopped the dead woman cold. It made me think back to that time the revivor got into my apartment and grabbed me. It was so strong, I couldn’t do anything to stop it. It killed my neighbor, almost killed Karen, and took me away. I was totally helpless. There was nothing I could do. It was different in the alley. It didn’t matter that I couldn’t control the revivor. The gun changed everything.
“Is it really okay to just kill that woman?”
“Who, Calliope?”
“Yeah.”
“Let me tell you something about her,” Penny said. “We looked into her background, and you know what we found? She was raised in a state-run orphanage, but her mother didn’t drop her off there; she sold the fetus off to one of those church-run facilities, where they grew her to term in a jar. That name of hers was randomly generated by a computer. How do you like that?”
“Really?”
“Those places don’t have the room for all the ones that come in. The computer runs a lotto to weed them out when space gets tight. It’s all based on genetic profiles and all automatic, so no one has to feel guilty. You know how many times she got passed over while she was there?”
“No.”
“Thirteen times. Thirteen! That’s beyond luck. She shouldn’t even be alive. She was born to do this.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t sure.
“Look, if it bothers you, think of it this way—she’s going to save a lot of people. Doesn’t that make it worth it?”
“Is she really going to stop it from happening?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Will it work?”
“There’s a chance that it will.”
“So it might not.”
“It beats doing nothing,” she said. “Anyway, it’s not even just about this one incident. Even if the city survives, look around it. It’s rotting from the inside. The people who live in it are sheep who sell themselves to their government, literally. Their votes haven’t meant anything for years. We didn’t make it that way; they were living under the illusion they had any say in what went on for as far back as anyone can remember. Things were never going to change, not until we came along, not until we got organized. All Fawkes and his people can think about is their precious freedom. It’s ridiculous. They’re not free. They never were.”
“I guess.”
“People like Fawkes, they need to be removed. With them out of the way, things will start to get better. We won’t get credit for it and we’ll never get thanked, but things will get better.”
The bubbles and the heat had me sleepy and kind of giddy.
“Anyway, you’d be crazy not to love the perks,” Penny said. “The living arrangements, the clothes, the cars, the food, booze—everything. It beats scraping by.”
“. . . and you really think I might be this person?” I asked. “You really think I might be the one Ai is looking for?”
“I really think so.”
She grinned, nudging me with her foot under the water.
“You’re like me,” she said. “We’re not just one of them. We’ve got something even a lot of our own kind doesn’t have.”
“We do?”
“It’s like anything else; some people are better at things than others. Not everyone can do what you did to Ted. We’re a cut above, you and me. We’re elite.”
Elite.
It sank in for the first time then. I wasn’t sure if it was the heat or the booze, or if I was just finally coming to terms with it, but right then at that moment, I felt it. I could see it. That woman I saw in the green room all those years ago, the one that looked rich and strong and together . . . that woman was me. I could see it. It could be my life. I didn’t have to be a pathetic shut-in, and I didn’t have to be a lackey either, getting used while I waited and hoped for a scrap of approval. I could be something bigger.
. . . but what about the first one?
A nagging voice said.
What about Noelle? What made her betray them? If Penny’s right about everything, what made her leave?