by James Knapp
How are you holding up? Fawkes asked.
Fine.
It had been one year since Samuel awoke, since he stopped being just a voice in the dark. He walked now, and talked here with form and presence. He’d been part of my life for a long time, but now he seemed real to me in a way he never had been before. Before the tanker sank into the ocean, he’d left stasis and stepped into the real world, where he was both more and less vulnerable. He had one more plan, one more chance to stop them. Whatever happened, it would be over soon.
A signal lit up at the edge of my sight. Sonar had picked up movement down the pipe in front of me.
Wait, I’ve got something.
A gray shape appeared from out of the blackness. Metallic ticks vibrated through the cold pipe as the shape changed position.
What is it? Fawkes asked.
It was dense, and maybe a third of my size. I scanned it and found electrical current.
It’s mechanical.
I tuned the sonar, creating an image. Up ahead was a layer of sediment, and just past that was some kind of small machine with many spindly legs. It used a sensor to probe ahead of it as it scuttled through the pipe.
There’s some kind of servo down here. Stand by.
The servo reached out with a wire-thin claw and poked through the sediment in front of it, kicking up small, fleshy cubes.
Faye. The word flashed in the dark in front of my face. Lev had picked up the circuit. He was still down here somewhere.
Lev, where are you?
Just ahead. Don’t approach the servo yet.
The robot scuttled forward, kicking up more of the soft, uniform cubes. I watched them float back down to the bottom.
It’s revivor flesh, I thought. The pieces were Lev’s remains.
What happened? I asked.
It’s some kind of maintenance ’bot, he said. It must be designed to carve up blockage. It came up behind me and severed my spine before I could stop it. I’ve kept it from the rest of me, but I can’t continue the mission.
I strained my eyes through the dark, and there, maybe twenty feet or so in the distance, I could just make out his eyes. They shifted in the darkness, staring, I thought, into his personal void.
How do I get past it? I asked.
Watch the claw, but your best bet is probably to just grab it. It’s not designed for combat, and it’s not heavily shielded; you should be able to penetrate its skin.
Understood.
The servo moved through the chunks, heading in my direction. When it locked on, it moved surprisingly fast; a claw brushed my face as I lunged and grabbed the leg at its base. Through the water I heard the whir of motors as it tried to pull away.
The cutter flashed in front of me a few times as its little legs scrambled, trying to make a retreat. I found a seam in the thing’s outer chassis and placed my free palm on it. I fired my bayonet and it punched through, into its electronics.
The robot jerked in my hand and my body seized as a jolt of electricity passed through it. The current arced from my back and down the pipe as I turned the bayonet. I heard a metallic crunch; then the servo stopped moving.
I retracted the blade and dropped the machine. Pushing through the chunks of flesh, I stirred up fingers and toes until the water cleared on the other side. I swam close to what was left of Lev Prutsko.
I’m here, Lev.
His eyes had dimmed in the dark. All he had left was his torso and one arm. His gaze stopped shifting around and he made eye contact with me.
I’m glad it was you who came, he said.
Glad?
I think so, he said. Yes.
Over the channel we shared, he began to stream something, a thin trickle of embers, over to me. It was one of his memories. When the stream ebbed out and died, he signaled for me to lean closer to him. I moved in until our faces nearly touched.
He never expected me to make it, he said. I knew that. Whoever goes down this pipe is expendable. Did he tell you?
I had suspected it, but I shook my head.
There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you, Lev said.
He doesn’t trust me?
You shouldn’t have told him about what you remembered.
We hadn’t spoken of that in a long time. After reanimation, memories that had been erased would return. It’s why Ai feared us. But long ago when I awoke on the tanker, one particular memory had returned—a piece of the puzzle that never quite fit. As a detective, I’d processed one of them, a woman named Noelle Hyde. Back then, she’d tried to kill Fawkes, but she wasn’t ordered to; it was just the opposite. They’d killed her for what she’d done.
They didn’t want Fawkes dead, I said to Lev.
They lie. He thinks you give too much consideration to their motives.
I know what I saw. At the time, I thought they feared something else, something besides Fawkes stripping them from power.
Lev’s eyes just watched me from the murky darkness.
I still think that, I said. Lev managed a nod.
Maybe they do.
“ …It will start here, but it won’t end here …” Ai had said once. “Fawkes will destroy this city, and then one by one, the rest will begin to fall…. ”
They need to be stopped, I said, but he should have listened.
There’s a lot he doesn’t tell you. Just remember that.
I will.
Do you want to continue your existence?
I think so.
You think?
The darkness that waits for me, I told him, it’s the only thing left that really scares me. I don’t want it to take me. I’m not ready for it to take me, not yet.
You may come to terms with that someday, he said.
Have you?
A long time ago. He will shut you down, you know. Someday soon.
I know.
I wish I could stop it, he said.
You do?
Yes.
I moved closer to him and hoped he could see my face. Using our private channel, I told him something I hadn’t told anyone else.
I found a way to sever his command spoke.
He didn’t respond right away. The shunt I’d fashioned over the years would work—I didn’t doubt that—but Fawkes’s reaction, if he knew, would be extreme. It would mean the end not just for me, but everyone on Fawkes’s network who knew of it.
Will you run, then? he asked.
Under my tongue, I felt the small glass capsule. Lev would have had one as well.
Do you still have the Leichenesser? I asked.
No. I swallowed it in the struggle.
I placed one hand on the side of his cold face and the other over his Adam’s apple. Peering through his flesh, I found his command nodes.
Good-bye, Lev.
Good-bye, Faye.
The blade pushed through his skin and into his spine. With a small twist, the command connections snapped. The circuit between us dropped as black blood bloomed out into the cold water, blotting out the light from his eyes even as they faded, and went dark.
Alone, I brought up the memory he gave me. With no pathways associated with it, it wouldn’t last very long. I wanted to see it before it decayed.
I looked into it and saw myself, alive. From the subtle distortion, I knew he’d been looking through a Light Warping field as he stood and watched me. I was in my apartment. My skin had color, and I still had hair. Real blood still pulsed through my veins, and I could almost sense sadness in my eyes.
This is the night I was killed.
The heat in my veins stood out as he’d watched me and monitored the steady beat of my heart. He kept tabs on a second heartbeat as well; my old partner, Doyle Shanks, was there with me.
Target Shanks is here. The words appeared in the air, and though I realized he’d been talking to Fawkes, his stare remained fixed on me and not on Doyle Shanks.
Kill them both, came the reply, but Lev had hesitated.
I can remove the target and leave the othe
r, he offered.
Kill them both, came the reply, and the memory scattered. The ember, Lev’s last thought, faded away, gone forever. I didn’t look back as I swam on ahead.
Fawkes, I’m through.
Good. The perimeter is roughly five hundred meters ahead.
From the security perimeter’s edge, it would be a half mile. Well past the point of no return, I swam on. Eventually, I saw a broadcast message from the surface far above:
You are entering a restricted area. No unauthorized communications are permitted in or out from this point forward. No unauthorized scans, visual, audio, or data recordings are permitted beyond this point. No unauthorized personnel, or authorized personnel with a security clearance of less than 3, are permitted beyond this point by order of the UAC Government….
The words scrolled by in the dark, but they didn’t concern me. It was a stock message, given to all visitors. They had no way to detect my presence, and if they did, I’d get more than a warning.
…by continuing, you forfeit your right to refuse any and all searches, including of your vehicle, its contents, and your person, up to and including full internal scanning. Any property including identification may be confiscated at the guard’s discretion and held for an indeterminate period of time. Failure to comply with security will result in action up to and including lethal force….
It took thirty minutes to close the distance. The pipe ended abruptly, and a connecting pipe led toward the surface. That muted pang of anxiety faded, and the dark void receded, just a little.
I’m at the junction.
I looked up into the dark. According to the blueprints, the pipe was a straight shot up to the surface. I pushed off the cold metal and began to swim upward. The water pressure eased the higher I went, until I came to a ninety-degree bend. The pipe was running across the tarmac now.
…entering a restricted area. No unauthorized communications are permitted in or out from this point forward. No unauthorized scans, visual, audio, or data recordings are permitted beyond this point….
The words warped and then winked out. As part of the security protocol, my communication node had been shut down.
I swam, measuring the distance, then stopped. I snapped open my left arm and took the handheld arc cutter from inside. When my hand rejoined, I placed it on the pipe, feeling the cold metal in front of my face.
The cutter hissed as I carved out a circle three feet in diameter. I lowered the plug down into the water, and dim light seeped through the hole. I turned off the night vision and looked up through the surface of the water at what looked like ceiling struts high above me. I reached up and gripped the edges of the hole, cold air chilling the skin of my exposed hands, then pulled down until my head broke the surface.
I slipped through and lowered myself to the floor. I was in a huge hangar where a fleet of large vehicles hunkered. Over on the opposite side of the room, a large glass window looked into an office, but the lights were out inside. I listened, but I didn’t hear anyone.
I stood, naked, and surveyed my location. I saw twenty or so large trucks parked inside. The pipe ran along the base of one wall. Crouching, I followed it to its exit point, and through a grimy window I saw it continue across the tarmac to a large water tower in the distance. Snow was falling, large flakes swirling in the wind.
The tower held four thousand gallons of water used as coolant down in the processing plant. Every six months it was flushed through the pipeline to the watertreatment plant, where I began my journey. The large silo stood several hundred meters out in back of the main plant, directly across from a storage depot. That depot was my target.
I found the door and stepped out into the snow. The lock clicked shut behind me, and a gust of freezing air whipped over me. I saw no guards or cameras. The security system on the tarmac keyed off heat signatures, which made me effectively invisible. I kept to the shadows and moved fast. At the depot’s back entrance I found a plain metal door with a scanner next to it. I pulled a small, tightly rolled magnetic strip out from under an incision in my scalp. Unrolling it, I held it to the scanner until it beeped and the LED turned green.
Ice flaked down onto my back as I pushed open the door. The facility was dark and filled with metal boxes. Each box was the size of a human body, stacked and awaiting shipment. Each had a lot number and a shipping code, and was stamped with a certification:
PRODUCT OF HEINLEIN INDUSTRIES
I followed the map Fawkes had provided and crept down one of the rows all the way to the end of the shipping bay, where a single doorway stood. I stepped through, down a long, dark corridor, to an annex designated SST, for Series Seven Testing.
The magnetic strip got me through the door and into a refrigerated locker where wheeled metal racks were assembled in rows. Rows of revivors hung from hooks on each rack, their arms and legs dangling.
There were ten revivors to each of the racks, dormant, but ready for reanimation. Counting down by date and time, I found the rack that would be processed that morning. I lifted the first revivor off its metal hook and hoisted it down onto the concrete floor. I spit out the glass capsule and slipped it into the corpse’s open mouth, down between its rear molars. I struck him beneath the jaw and heard the capsule crunch.
Mist boiled from between the revivor’s lips, and a few seconds later his face melted like hot wax. Teeth and bone collapsed and oozed into the hole as I stood and stepped back to a safe distance. His chest sank in on itself, followed by the rest of him, as the substance consumed the necrotized flesh. When its job was done, it turned upon itself. All it left behind were revivor hardware and a cloud of thin white mist that was already being pulled through the vents. I took the tag that had been around his wrist. I slipped it around my own, then hid the bayonet and revivor nodes behind an equipment rack.
The bodies swayed on their hooks as I pulled myself into the empty slot. The hook pierced my skin and I eased myself down until it dug into the bone of my skull. Carefully, I released the bar above me and let myself hang. In another minute, the bodies were still.
Using the trigger Fawkes had given me, I made myself go dormant. The light from my eyes flickered and then went out. If our contacts there were right, I would reawaken in the next few hours.
Until that time, I would sleep.
Nico Wachalowski—Black Rock Train Yard
The morning sun had just begun to turn the sliver of sky above us to a dull gray, and in front of us, the train yard’s floodlights were blurred in the fog. The chain-link gate that led into it hung open, pressed into a bank of dirty snow. On the other side, derelict monorail cars were lined up in a long row, half-buried and covered in ice.
Agent Van Offo stood to my left, working the electronic manifest with a stylus. A yard worker leaned against the guard station’s metal siding and stared at the head of his cigarette.
We’re at the entrance, I told the SWAT leader.
Roger that. Our teams are in position.
“I’ve got it,” Van Offo said. He held up the tablet to show the grid, with one of the cars called out. “Right there; that’s the source.”
The train car was stored with a block of others, abandoned along the brick-faced rear of the yard. I zoomed in and saw that the snow had been cleared away from the hitch and the door above it. I glanced back at Van Offo.
You see that?
I see it.
“Thanks,” he said to the yard worker, and handed the tablet back to him. The man took it without looking up. Van Offo stood in front of him and stared for a few seconds. In the gray light, I saw the brown of his eyes turn black.
“Go back inside,” he said in a low voice. “Sit at your desk and go to sleep.”
The man nodded. He flicked the cigarette, halfsmoked, into the snow and lumbered through the door, into the guard station.
“You look thoughtful,” Van Offo said. His eyes, always half-closed, peered over his large nose as snow collected on the shoulders of his coat. He couldn’t contro
l my thoughts any longer, but he could still sense them. He didn’t know exactly what was going through my head, but he was good at filling in those blanks. It was easy to see, sometimes, why Fawkes hated them.
“Come on,” I said. “We’re moving in.”
Snow drifted down and had just begun to cover the boot tracks that branched off from the rusted metal gate. Several sets headed off between the rusting hulks. I followed them in.
Rail cars loomed on either side. The outsides were weathered, seams stained with rust. In the distance I saw oil drums, their rims scorched and covered with soot. Past that, beyond the perimeter, the huge shadow of the Central Media Communications Tower loomed over the city.
The tracks led down a frozen gray slick that ducked between two cars a few hundred feet away. I drew my gun and started down the path. Van Offo followed.
Wachalowski, this is SWAT leader. The area is secured. We’re waiting on your word to move in.
The satellite showed thermal activity in the yard. I could see the two teams as hot spots on the map. Van Offo and I were two orange points in a field of gray. All signatures converged on the far end of the yard, where a single car stood out from the rest, a pattern of shifting red and yellow among the cold, dark shapes around it.
There, I said. Van Offo nodded.
On the visual feed, I watched SWAT creep down the rows of rusted metal. Their optics floated in the shadows as they made their way toward the target.
Wachalowski, Van Offo said. He pointed at the trail in the snow. Sets of animal tracks trailed alongside the others.
SWAT, we’ve got dog tracks here, I said. Computer counts at least four different sets.
Roger.
I broke from the trail and moved between the car and the weathered brick wall beside it. I stopped a hundred yards south of the target, then zoomed in for a better look. The snow had gotten heavier, making it harder to see.
Anything? Van Offo asked. My breath trailed in the cold as I swept over the area. The wall of the car was too thick and too far away for the backscatter to penetrate, but I could pick out several cameras mounted on the outside of it.