by Keith Thomas
That was when someone stabbed Rade in the back with a pair of scissors.
He felt them go in deep. Ripping through his hoodie, cutting through one of the vest’s straps, before it plunged through his left trapezius muscle. One of the blades chipped his spine. He didn’t need to see it to know it was one of those heavy-duty scissors, the metal ones with painted black handles. Rade turned to see a cowering scientist in a lab coat. The man was young, maybe late twenties, and he actually mouthed Sorry as he backed away, hands raised.
Rade shot him in the nose.
He continued on, inhaling too much smoke, feeling the sooty deposits building up in his lungs, and wondering if he should have brought a respirator.
No time for that now. No time for second-guessing.
Rade tossed his last grenades into two rooms thrumming with computers. He also threw in the Glocks before he stopped at Dr. Sykes’s office door. He had decided earlier in the evening that he wasn’t going to shoot her. He had other plans.
Dr. Sykes’s door was locked, so he casually knocked.
Dorothy opened the door with a Colt revolver.
She fired twice before Rade smacked the gun from her hand. One bullet hit the vest, and the vest did its job. The second hit him in the neck. He felt the instant warmth of an arterial gush as the blood burbled out and poured down his side, under the vest, and into his pants, where it was wicked up. Rade clamped his left hand down on his wound, but he knew he had only minutes before he bled out.
• • •
Dorothy considered herself a perceptive person.
She’d spent forty years in biomedical research, to the detriment of every other aspect of her life. Four years of medical school, a residency in surgery, another in neurology, then four years for the PhD in biochemistry—she was not a stupid person. But she’d also left behind two failed marriages, three children who hated her—children she hadn’t seen in nearly a decade—and lived in a small apartment with no artwork. As she backed away from Rade, his face paling by the second from blood loss, she couldn’t help but think of the fact that she used to love art.
In school, when life was simple and seemed so full of meaning and purpose, she would go to the Art Institute and stare at the Postimpressionist paintings, losing herself in their vivid colors. At the time, nearly thirty years ago, she imagined they perfectly captured the swirling complexity of the human brain’s neural network. Cheesy, yes, but on point. She hadn’t had time to look at art, or even think about it, since then. Funnily enough, Dorothy couldn’t help but see the contrast of Rade’s bright red arterial blood against his pale skin and think . . . It’s kind of pretty.
“You lied to me,” Rade gurgled.
“I never lied. The machine didn’t—”
“Not the machine.”
Dorothy moved behind her desk. Her eyes scanned across the papers and laptops, looking for anything sharp. She just needed to keep him at arm’s length for another minute and thirty seconds or so. He was bleeding out bad.
Goddamn, Dorothy thought. Going to the shooting range on weekends actually paid off. This fucker’s just failed.
“Then what, Rade? I never, ever lied. They left you behind, remember?”
“No.”
“I trained you. I showed you how to learn from the memories, how to mine them for skills. That ruthlessness, that cunning, I gave it to you. For twenty years, we’ve been a team. And I’ve never let you—”
Rade suddenly lurched forward with an unexpected burst of strength and kicked the desk, pinning Dorothy against the wall. Textbooks tumbled from a bookshelf, pages coming loose and floating about.
The door to the hallway still open, smoke poured into the room, clouding the ceiling. Dorothy could hear sirens outside.
This is almost over. Hang on.
“About what we are,” Rade clarified.
“I don’t understand. What—”
Rade spat a wad of phlegmy, clotted blood onto the desk, clearing his throat. “Null aren’t freaks. . . . The machine didn’t activate old nerves. . . . It plugged us in . . .”
• • •
Rade could feel his body slipping.
He kicked the desk again, crunching Dorothy harder against the wall.
The smoke spilled in faster.
“Plugged you into what?” Dorothy asked between gritted teeth.
“The rest of us,” Rade said, delirious now. “We are legion.”
Rade coughed, the blood spurting wildly from between his fingers. Dorothy saw her moment and pushed the desk back against him.
Rade stumbled backward but caught himself on her lab coat with his filthy, blood-coated right hand. Dorothy grabbed at his hand to wrench it off. In the corner of his vision, he saw fire trucks and cops pulling up outside.
He could feel her body tensing. He figured she was considering jumping. From the room’s height, she might break a leg, but it must have seemed worth the chance—it was only thirty feet, and there were bushes just below the window. People had certainly survived a hell of a lot worse.
Holding on to her lab coat as tight as he could, he freed his left hand and, stretching as far as he could, snagged Dorothy’s Aurora fountain pen from her breast pocket. She stared at him, befuddled, as he ripped the cap off with his teeth.
Dorothy clearly didn’t realize what he was doing until he did it.
“You end here,” Rade said.
With a final burst of vigor, the very last ounce he possessed, he dragged her down and slammed the tip of the Aurora pen into Dorothy’s right eye. It pierced deep. Cutting through the gelatinous vitreous body before cutting through the optic nerve and shredding the blood vessels. Dorothy fell backward against the wall, screaming, as Rade tumbled back in the opposite direction.
He hit the floor and found fire.
As the quickly spreading flames licked the clothing from his body, Rade realized that this was the moment he’d been preparing for—he was transforming.
Embrace it; embrace the conversion.
All the animal skin peeled away.
The heavy, burdensome bones fractured and the marrow steamed. His organs boiled, and then, as the last few pulses of bioelectrical energy crossed his synaptic junctions, Rade became a being of light.
And ash.
66
3:26 P.M.
FEBRUARY 15, 1912
KOBDO TERRITORY
INDEPENDENT OUTER MONGOLIA
AN OLD WOMAN makes her way up a winding path that coils across the face of a mountain.
The clouds eddy in the valleys below her. She is dressed in colorful woven fabrics and moves slowly, relying on walking sticks to help her over obstacles like tree roots and stones. She glances up at the top of the mountain where a monastery sits. The old woman has been walking for five days. She takes two breaks a day, once in midmorning when the sun casts short shadows and once in the early evening. She does not eat much, some dried meats and nuts, and her legs are strong. The old woman has been walking for most of her sixty-two years, she doesn’t believe in riding horses or sitting in the backs of wagons. Her feet will get her where she needs to go and, already, the world is moving far too fast.
The old woman reaches the monastery late in the day.
The sun sets over the mountains at her back, bathing them blood red. She pauses a moment to look out over the valley through which she’s walked. The old woman recalls the path—the muddy creek she forded, the antelope bounding in twitchy anxiety over stubbled hills.
As with all the journeys she’s taken, she sees the beauty in the process.
The old woman turns and opens the wooden door to the stone monastery and steps inside to see monks in supplication. They look like puddles of orange, still and silent on the stone floor. She makes her way down the aisle between them to the abbot at the front of the sanctuary. Seeing her approach, he rises and takes her hand.
“Mother,” he says. “It has been so long. I was worried you would never allow me to see you again.”
“Many cruel things were said,” the old woman whispers. “I have forgiven them.”
Together they walk carefully up a narrow flight of stairs to the roof.
“How are his pains?” the old woman asks.
“They come and go. There has been only mild pain today.”
“And it is in the stomach?”
“As well as the legs.”
The old woman is silent as she considers this.
“Does that worry you, Mother?”
“He is also my son. All of it worries me.”
They reach the roof and step out on the ceiling of heaven. The view from here is stunning; the whole of the world below is spread out at their feet.
The abbot escorts his mother to a monk lying on a platform. She sits down beside the monk as the abbot chants prayers. The old woman pulls several small cloth bags filled with cinnabar, mercury sulfide, and dried herbs from a satchel.
Unrolling several strips of “eating paper”—digestible rice paper with magical incantations handwritten on them—the old woman feeds them to the ill monk before she takes her sons’ hands—the monk’s and the abbot’s.
“It is so good to see you both again.”
“Yes, Mother. Anger has made us ill.”
“It is over now.”
The abbot and his medicine woman mother bow their heads in prayer as the ill monk opens his eyes to see the sweep of the sun overhead.
He grips his mother’s hand as tightly as he can and weeps. . . .
67
7:31 A.M.
FEBRUARY 29, 2019
JUST OUTSIDE OF STORY, WYOMING
ASHANIQUE’S EYES fluttered open.
For a second, she wasn’t sure where she was.
But she knew she was safe.
Ashanique sat up. She was in bed, a twin with a down blanket and a folded quilt on the end. Sunlight poured through the window opposite, illuminating a small bedroom with late-morning light. The closet door was open and she could see new clothes hanging inside. On the love seat was a backpack, also new.
Ashanique got out of bed, pulled on a sweater, and made her way to the kitchen. The smell of coffee and toast quickened her step.
The house was a two-story and barely decorated. Some leftover art, mostly landscapes owned by the previous tenants, dotted the walls. As Ashanique ran down the stairs, she caught sight of snow-peaked mountains through the windows. They were visible only briefly before towering pine trees blocked the view.
“Good morning.”
Ashanique found Matilda in the kitchen. She’d cut her hair short and dyed it red. She sat at the kitchen table—another leftover—sipping coffee, a laptop open in front of her. Ashanique saw Matilda was talking to Kojo on a secure video call. He was sitting in his living room. Brandon was in the background singing. The boy walked into view and waved when he noticed Ashanique. She leaned in and blew a kiss.
“How’re you, Ash?” Kojo asked.
“Good. Slept in, though. Makes me kind of wonky.”
“You enjoying school?”
Ashanique shrugged. “It’s school.”
She waved goodbye and walked across the small kitchen to pour herself a cup of coffee. Matilda watched her, then looked back at Kojo.
“So two new Null kids will be coming by next week,” she said. “They’re twins, thirteen years old, mom is number Twenty-Seven. She died two years back and they’ve been in foster care ever since. We’ll see what we can learn.”
“How the hell did you find them?”
“With the HED broken and Congress investigating, a lot of paperwork has made its way online. Dr. Song’s been coordinating some of those releases. Most via offshore leak sites but at least it’s out there. He was contacted by other survivors. People like Janice, people who’ve spent the last forty-some years in hiding. They feel safe enough to reach out. The network is still active. Dr. Song’s busier than ever, trying to get people where they need to be.”
“To the LINAC machines?”
“Some of them,” Matilda said. “The original subjects who are still around.”
“And their kids?”
Matilda smiled. “They’re mostly like Ash. They don’t want to forget.”
“By the way, you look at the link I sent?”
“Yeah. It’s all anonymized. Hard to say if it’s real.”
Kojo leaned in, face closer to the camera.
“Excited for our visit?”
“Of course.”
Matilda sipped her coffee. As she did, her bathrobe slipped off her shoulder, revealing a hint of pale skin and a curve of cleavage.
“Hang on,” Kojo said as she straightened her bathrobe. “Got to let me at least enjoy the peek.”
“Stop it, you two,” Ashanique said as she sat at the table. “I need Matilda.”
“Fine,” Kojo said. “I’ll call you two this afternoon.”
Matilda smiled, puckered. Then: “Don’t forget.”
“I wouldn’t.”
“And say ’bye to Brandon for me. Excited to see him.”
“He loves it up there. ’Bye, babe.”
Kojo logged out, and Matilda turned her attention to Ashanique. “Okay,” she said. “You’ve got another one, right?”
“You’re going to love it.”
“This is, what? The—”
“Eightieth.”
Matilda smiled as she opened a program on the laptop and began recording.
“So,” she said, “tell me about this life.”
Ashanique began with the old woman’s journey across the desert.
She went into great detail, mostly about the feel of the dry air and the smells of the high mountain desert, painting a vivid picture, before she described the touching reunion between the medicine mother and her sons.
As she listened, Matilda glanced over Ashanique’s shoulder to the window just above the kitchen sink. There, she could see the back of Lucy’s head as the old woman slowly rocked back and forth on the porch glider.
Lucy’s eyes were turned to the mountains and the bright sky beyond.
POSTSCRIPT
68
13:09:23 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: There were more. You on?
Changed status to Away (13:11:34 PM)
Changed status to Online (13:15:09 PM)
13:15:16 PM NULLHYPE: yes
13:15:17 PM NULLHYPE: who is this?
13:15:21 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Alaska was the fifth site. I have a list, hacked it after the fire. All systems down.
13:15:32 PM NULLHYPE: what sites?
13:15:37 PM NULLHYPE: where is the list from?
13:15:42 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Don’t believe me?
13:15:45 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Project CLARITY
13:15:48 PM NULLHYPE: hacked HED?
13:15:51 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Yes. Ten sites total. I got files go back to 1960s and more. Things you don’t know, things you would never believe. Examples:
13:15:53 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Taos
13:15:55 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Chattanooga
13:15:56 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Miami
13:15:58 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: And project MINISTRY
13:15:59 PM NULLHYPE: who is this?
13:16:02 PM NULLHYPE: ?
13:16:05 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Rade wasn’t alone
13:16:06 PM INTENZE_DEVICE: Lock your door. I’m coming.
Changed status to Away (13:16:08 PM)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
KEITH THOMAS worked as a lead clinical researcher at the University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine and National Jewish Health before writing for film and television. He has developed projects for studios and production companies and has collaborated with writers like James Patterson and filmmakers like Paul Haggis. He lives in Denver and works in Los Angeles.
MEET THE AUTHORS, WATCH VIDEOS AND MORE AT
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Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Keith-Thomas
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