Zero State

by Jameson Kowalczyk

  He clicked refresh. No update. He pinged the security system and got the same results as he had before, only the system had now been active an additional ten minutes. Whoever was there was still inside.

  ***

  Logan held his breath and let his head slip below the water. He was in the lagoon beneath the waterfall, where he'd seen the girl in the peppermint bikini the day before. His hand held the straps of the rucksack, which contained the disassembled assault rifle, the handgun, and all the ammo he'd carried with him from the airfield.

  The weight of the pack helped guide him to the bottom. He wore a pair of cheap swimming goggles he'd swiped off a poolside chair back at the resort.

  Even with the goggles he was half-blind—fifteen feet below the surface, in the shade of the steep cliff, there was little light to work with.

  But he managed.

  He would be boarding a flight in less than five hours. Taking the weapons with him would have been impossible, though acquiring new ones was at the top of his list of things to do upon arrival. Logan's main concern with getting rid of the guns was leaving them someplace they might be found—he had enough on his conscience without having to worry about some kid or idiot stumbling across an arsenal and hurting themselves or someone else.

  Logan felt his way through the large stones piled at the bottom until he found a gap that was wide enough to wedge the pack into. He shoved the bag between the algae-covered stones and watched it vanish into the murk.

  His lungs burned and his pulse hammered inside his arteries as he kicked to the surface. The sound of the waterfall switched from a muffled churning to a steady thunder as his head rose above water. He'd been under nearly two minutes.

  Logan pulled the goggles from his eyes and floated on his back, letting his heartbeat return to its resting rate. He'd been the only person out here when he'd arrived and no one else had appeared during his time underwater. He looked toward the entrance to the trail and had an almost desperate urge to go back to the library and check the secure site for updates. He didn't know why the home invasion was gnawing at him as much as it was. He liked his apartment, he'd put a lot of work into his living space, but he'd already known there was no going back there. He'd known this since Zoe said the words "Flat drop." And it should have come as no surprise that his employers—if that's who was behind this, a suspicion Logan felt increasingly sure about—knew where he lived. It was in their best interest to know where to find him in the event he needed to be scrubbed.

  Yesterday, he'd formed a vague plan in his head as he'd hiked through the jungle. This plan involved flying west, into South America, and then further west, to the other side of the globe. Southeast Asia. Cambodia, Thailand, or Vietnam. His money would carry him a long time there, and he'd be able to blend in—another mid-life crisis that had gone off the grid.

  That plan had changed.

  After wasting an hour clicking refresh on the secure site, he'd opened another browser and booked a flight to Puerto Rico. Since Puerto Rico was part of the United States, he'd be able to pass through customs there, and he knew the experience would be more relaxed than it was inside the contiguous forty-eight. From there, he booked a flight to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. He chose Florida because it was close and he wanted to be on the ground as soon as possible. Also, Florida was a good state to acquire a gun. He chose Ft. Lauderdale because it would be less crowded than Miami. Fewer bodies in a crowd would make it harder to hide surveillance or an ambush if anyone was there, waiting for him.

  He'd booked first class tickets because he had never flown first class in his life, and anyone with a dossier on him would know this. Also, first class meant he would be able to get onboard and off more quickly. He booked the tickets with a numbered account and the passport he'd carried with him in case of a situation exactly like this one. The passport was real, but the identity it listed was not. Travel documents were still easy to forge, since most governments didn't have the money to invest in upgrading identity detection tech, and the possibility of a terrorist act on a plane had become basically non-existent ever since airlines had begun hiring their own sky marshals and instituting their own screening processes. Airlines didn't care what identity you traveled under, only that you paid for your ticket and followed the rules. Most airlines, including the one Logan just booked flights with, charged an extra fee for anonymous forms of payment like the numbered account he was using. Privacy was a luxury.

  Going stateside was a bad idea. Going anywhere near his apartment was an even worse idea. He knew this. He was going to do it anyway. He was still rationalizing the reasons why. Part of it had to do with the fact that, while he had spent considerable time and effort planning for retreat, for hiding, the thought of actually doing it left a sour taste in his mouth. He had never been the type to leave things alone.

  He stayed out in the lagoon longer than he needed to, floating in the blue water, surrounded by walls of green jungle. The sound of the waterfall thrumming inside his ears had an almost hypnotizing effect that helped him think.

  ***

  Logan acquired several things in the next 24 hours.

  The first was a car.

  No one had been waiting for him when he’d landed in Puerto Rico, and no one was waiting for him when he landed in Florida a few minutes past 11:00pm. He took a winding, indirect route from the gate to the taxi pickup to make sure he wasn’t being followed. He spent the night in a budget motel near the airport.

  Before going to sleep, he searched local ads until he found a suitable vehicle. He called the seller at 7:00am the next morning and met the guy an hour later. He paid with a wire transfer from the same account he’d used to book his stay at the resort and his flights.

  The second thing Logan acquired was a new phone.

  He had to call several stores and drive an hour out of his way to find the model he was looking for, a device designed for military and security professionals. It would work on any network and had a built-in self-destruct feature that would turn the phone into a brick if anyone other than the owner attempted to use it. Minutes and data were added with a link to an anonymous online payment system.

  The first thing Logan did with the phone was install an application that gave him anonymous access to the web. It was a mobile version of the browser he'd installed on the library computer back at the resort. He checked the site linked to his apartment's security system. No updates. He pinged the system and the response came back that it was online, and had been online for the past five days. Whoever was in his apartment was still there. Logan had moved beyond the point of questioning why they were still there. They were waiting for him. There was no other explanation. And he was becoming increasingly nervous that they would give up and leave before he arrived. The idea of finding the place empty somehow felt like the worst possible outcome.

  The third thing Logan acquired was a gun.

  This was easier to find than the phone. He searched a handful of social networks and photo sharing sites until he found something within driving distance. He contacted the seller, arranged a meeting place, and two hours later he had a handgun with three extra magazines of ammunition. The identity on his passport and driver's license would have run clean on a background check, but the seller didn't require one. Florida was one of three states where a transaction like this was currently legal.

  ***

  Two people had tried to kill Logan in the past few days, and now he found himself driving toward what was most likely a third. Some might have argued that he had a death wish, or at the very least he was tempting fate, but Logan didn’t see this as anything more than a detour. A kind of exit interview before he left the company. He’d make his point, learn what he could, and be on his way.

  So, as he drove, he thought about what he would do when it was over—where he would go, who he would become.

  Ten years ago he’d chosen this life because it had offered some illusion of freedom. Freedom from having to waste awa
y at a desk in an office, his days filled with meetings, invoices, and spreadsheets. Freedom from having to maintain the kind of close personal relationships he had little interest in. Freedom from having to manage a monthly budget of living expenses.

  Instead, his career offered work that was dangerous, that demanded he be in peak physical condition, that paid enormous sums of money.

  Either the world had changed or he’d just come to see it more clearly with age, but as time wore on, Logan began to understand the similarities between the life he’d chosen and the life he’d sought to avoid.

  He still had employers to answer to. He was still under contract. He was still faced with a job market full of highly qualified competitors, only in his case every single one of them was a trained killer.

  And his life was still controlled by nameless, faceless men who knew him as nothing more than a line item on an expense report—Cost of freelance operator. No matter how demanding a job, no matter the skill it required, no matter the risks he took or the number of people he had to kill to get it done, he was still just a piece of corporate machinery, furthering business interests he had no real stake in.

  Worst of all, there was the growing sense that he needed his work, that it had become some defining aspect of his existence and he would lose all sense of identity without it.

  He’d met guys like that. Guys in their sixties, bodies still ripped with muscle, still taking jobs. Guys who didn’t know how to do anything with themselves besides train, kill people, and risk their lives. Guys with small fortunes that could have funded retirement five times over if they'd had any interest in it.

  In the past few years Logan had begun to see himself in those men, or see their pasts in himself. He was ten years in, what would he be like after another ten? Another twenty? With exercise science, diet, supplements, and life-extending drugs what they were, he could work another thirty years. Long enough that the work would be all he had left.

  Doesn’t matter anymore, he told himself. That future didn't have to be his.

  So why was he still driving toward it?

  He told himself it was complicated.

  Part of it was his desire to know who had tried to scrub him, if it was his own employers, some rogue faction within the corporate structure, or some third party. Grabbing and interrogating whoever was inside his apartment might give him an answer. It would also give him a chance to discourage anyone else from searching for him. While human life had a price, it wasn't cheap—if the estimated body count for tracking down Logan was deemed too expensive, the project would stagnate, stuck in a perpetual state of review, pending approval by some accountant.

  And then there was Zoe. The fact that they had tried to kill her was reason enough for him to want some kind of payback, and it was coupled with the frustration of his broken connection to her. He may be powerless to find her, but he wasn't powerless to find them.

  He could think about it for hours, come up with a hundred other reasons.

  But really all it amounted to was him trying to justify the decision to meet them head on.

  CHAPTER 9

  Eliza had abandoned the yacht two nights earlier, leaving it adrift twenty miles off the coast and paddling to shore on an ocean kayak she'd found onboard. The beach she'd arrived on was deserted. The waves carried the kayak back out to sea and she walked inland.

  Now she was on a bus, headed west. The past two days had been uneventful. No one spoke to her. No one really looked at her. She hid under layers of loose clothing and a hood, covering the muscular curves of her body, her buzz-cut hair, her half-formed ear, anything which may have drawn attention or stuck in someone's memory.

  For most of the journey, the bus had been at full capacity, every seat occupied. Eliza had gone through a series of neighbors as passengers left and others took their place. There had been a middle-aged woman in jeans and rain boots. A young man with music blaring from his headphones. An old man with pale, spotted hands who smelled like cigar smoke (a pleasant smell, she discovered).

  Eliza had kept her eyes aimed out the window next to her, never looking at any of her neighbors directly.

  Now, hundreds of miles into the day's journey and approaching midnight, the seat next to her was empty, as were most of the seats on the bus.

  The world outside her window had also become less crowded. She'd boarded the bus in a station at the edge of a city, early that morning, and as the day wore on concrete and asphalt had given way to woodland and wide stretches of rural landscape. With the onset of night it became very dark, and any small source of light was visible from miles away, and when Eliza spotted something, it became a kind of game, waiting to see what the light would be when she got closer—a neon sign outside a bar, a spotlight marking a flag, or a person on a bike, pedaling manically on the shoulder of the road. She could feel that other part of her, the secondmind that was only with her sometimes, trying to find an answer every time Eliza saw one of these beacons and wondered what it might be. But Eliza was asking for something that the secondmind couldn't pin down. They were on a dark section of the map; not everything out here could be identified at a glance.

  Then she saw something that both her and her secondmind recognized instantly: a green sign on the side of the road with the name of a town painted in neat white letters.

  Eliza pressed a button next to her seat.

  At the front of the bus, a small light blinked on. It was accompanied by a soft ping, signaling the bus driver to make the next stop.

  A few minutes later, the bus slowed and stopped. The door opened, and Eliza stood from her seat and walked to the front.

  "Any luggage?" the driver asked.

  "Just this," Eliza said, hefting a small backpack, avoiding eye contact.

  "Be careful," the driver said. "Not much out here. You sure you know where you're going?"

  "Yes," Eliza said. She stepped outside and the door closed behind her.

  She found herself in front of a gas station that was either shut down for the night or shut down permanently. She slipped her arms through the straps of her backpack and watched as the bus's taillights disappeared down the road. When it was out of sight, she began to walk.

  The streets were empty. There were no cars and no people. The street lamps glowed, but every window she passed was dark. At the same time, it didn't feel empty. Eliza had the feeling of being watched. She was not unnerved, only aware.

  She pulled off her hood. The cool night air felt wonderful on her naked head.

  The road she followed led out of town, and the street lamps faded into the distance behind her. She knew where she was, and she knew it without the guidance of the secondmind. Her surroundings had been familiar as soon as she'd stepped off the bus.

  After a mile, the road ended at a tall chain link fence. Barbed wire was coiled across the top, and a camera—a smooth, black orb—was mounted on a pole on the other side. Beyond that, she could see dark towers rising from the flat landscape. And further back, the shapes of buildings.

  This was the place they called The Farm.

  Eliza stood in the dark and waited.

  ***

  They called this lab The Print Shop.

  Out of all the labs at The Farm, this was Dante's favorite.

  A single massive device dominated the floor space. It was box-shaped and set on an elevated platform. Mechanical arms whirred along the top, moving a printhead the size of a truck engine on a preprogrammed pattern. Tubes crawled up the sides, connecting the printhead to an array of barrels mounted near the base. The barrels were color-coded, and each was labeled with an identifying number and a symbol that designated the contents as biological material. Fans spun cold air, steadying the equipment's temperature. A workstation sat next to the base, line after line of green code unspooling across a laptop's screen. More equipment, more moving parts, were hidden behind the machine's massive doors.

  The device was a bioprinter. It printed living organis
ms by compiling them one layer of cells at a time. This was what they had used to create Eliza and the other operators.

  Dante had a doctorate degree in biological engineering and material design. During his final year of study he had filed a patent for a sex toy made from living tissue, a bioprinted vagina that was self-lubricating, with its own blood supply and even a tiny heart he had modeled after a hedgehog's heart. When not in use it would be stored in a nutrient bath that kept it fed and allowed it to regenerate any damaged tissue.

  Or at least that's how it was supposed to work. He'd never made it to the prototype stage.

  A week after he'd filed the patent, he'd been contacted by a recruiter for the company where he was currently employed. He was invited for an interview, a three-day process that included a grueling battery of psychological assessments. Dante didn't know much about psychology, but it wasn't hard to figure out that they were looking for a specific personality type.

  He was offered a position with a salary that would erase his considerable student loans within a year. Two days after he received his diploma, he was at The Farm, helping to create schematics for the operators. He printed test samples of body tissues. He wrote code that specified muscle composition, bone density, and nerve sensitivity. He designed glands that would enable a body to push far beyond the known limits of human endurance.