by James Knapp
Understood.
And thank you, Faye.
Another shape darted across the hallway in front of me as I picked up speed. Somewhere outside, I could make out the high-pitched whine of approaching jets.
Good luck, Nico.
Revivors don’t believe in luck.
No, I said, but you do.
When this is over, Faye, wait for me. I’ll find you.
And when you find me, what will you do then?
He didn’t answer. After enough seconds had passed, I answered for him.
I’ll wait for you, Nico.
You will?
Yes, I said.
It wasn’t the first lie I had ever told him, but I knew that it would at least be the last.
Zoe Ott—Alto Do Mundo
“Zoe, what are you doing?” Ai asked. As Vaggot struggled against me, I felt another mind intrude and break my connection.
“Let him go,” I said.
Ai’s tiny hands spread their fingers wide as her stare intensified. I felt the armed guards around us move all at the same time, and their attention turned to me.
“No, Zoe,” she said, and their guns began to take aim.
When the first gun was pointed at me, Penny reacted. I heard a sharp chirping sound over the wind and the rumbling from outside, then the guard screamed as she shattered his elbow with a collapsible metal baton. The gun slipped out of his hand and clattered to the floor as he clutched his arm and staggered back.
Some of the men turned, unsure for a second, before they all pricked up again and pointed their guns back at me.
“Penny, stop it,” Ai said. She stared up at me, and I could feel her reaching through my defenses, into my mind.
“Zoe, do as I say,” she said.
Penny looked confused, but she didn’t back off. She had a second baton in the other hand now, and was looking over the guards like she might spring at any second. I could feel her, and her fear, as I tried to push Ai back. It was one of the only times I’d ever felt such panic from her. She was scared right then, scared to death. She was scared those men were going to shoot me and that she wouldn’t be able to stop them.
“Get those guns off her,” Penny said to the guards, her voice stressed. There were five left, two of them between me and her. They looked at each other, then at Ai. No one moved.
I heard the chirp again, and this time the nose of the man next to me seemed to explode, spraying warm blood across my cheek. He stumbled back, then grunted as Penny struck him in the chest.
Her hand grabbed my arm, and before I knew what happened, she pulled me away and shoved me back behind her. She squared off against the remaining four men as the one with the broken nose slumped back against the wall. As he slowly slid down to the floor, I saw the hilt of a knife sticking out from over the edge of his body armor. His consciousness dimmed, then winked out. Penny had killed him.
“Penny!” Ai snapped.
“The blockade has tripled in size and closed in,” one of the men said to Ai. “It’s an all-out rush. They’re inside the building.”
“Hold Zoe under guard,” she said. But when they approached, Penny tensed again.
“Penny, let them take her,” Ai said, but Penny shook her head.
“You heard them,” Ai said, calmer. “Fawkes’s army has breached the perimeter and is inside the building. They are coming for us. We need to leave now.”
“Can we shut down the elevators?” someone asked.
“Not from here,” a voice answered over the radio. “We’d need to get to the maintenance—” The voice was cut off.
“We’ve got movement in all wings,” one of the guards said, shaking his head as he looked at a computer tablet in his palm.
“How long?” Ai asked.
“At their current rate? Not long. Five minutes.”
“Take them both under guard,” Ai said. “Right now.”
“Next one that moves—” Penny started to say, but Ai turned on her and she stopped short. To concentrate on Penny, though, she took some of her focus off me. I saw the cords in Penny’s neck stand out as she tried to hold her ground.
“How dare you resist me?” Ai asked.
A shot rang out, and Penny jerked back. Blood spattered across the floor. One of the men lunged past her and grabbed me.
“Penny!”
I could sense the consciousness of each of the soldiers as they surrounded me. I could feel them trying to gang up on me and push their will on me. I even felt my body start to relax.
Before they could worm their way in any further, I pushed them all back. I locked on to each of their patterns and found the hot, white band that fed them.
I severed them all, and the lights went out. A gun clunked onto the floor, then another, as their bodies crumpled and fell where they stood.
“Zoe, stop!” Ai snapped from behind me as I ran to Penny.
“Penny!”
I knelt down next to her. She lay there, beads of red scattered on the tile around her, but her mind was strong. I sensed pain and worry but not panic. I didn’t sense that slow euphoria and disconnect people got when they slipped away. She wasn’t dying, at least not yet.
“Penny …Penny, are you okay?”
She lifted her head, then propped herself up on one elbow.
“Hold on. Don’t try to move.”
“I’m okay. Don’t turn your back on her.”
I turned as the colors in the hallway washed out and the lights turned bright. As another blast of freezing wind whipped through my hair, I saw the pattern appear around Ai’s large head, bright orange, and red, like molten pieces of a broken planet.
“You have to let Vaggot go,” I said. “You were wrong about everything.” Ai shook her head.
“I have seen more clearly than you are capable of.”
“The end is coming,” I told her. “This has to happen. Fawkes doesn’t destroy the city, and he was never going to. It’s something else, something you didn’t see—”
“Thousands of visions from thousands of people have been catalogued over the course of years and studied by the best minds—”
“None of them live—”
“Don’t you dare interrupt me!”
“None of you survive,” I said. “You can’t see what’s really going on because none of you live. You see these …snippets of what happens beforehand, but it’s useless because you can’t see past it to what really happens. This is the only way to stop it—”
“Who do you think you are?”
I felt her punch through my defenses and grab hold of me. A jolt went down my spine and my whole body started to wind down. She’d found that stem of white light at the base of my consciousness and was trying to pinch it off. My heart skipped a beat and fluttered in my chest as I started to sag.
“We have control of the satellite back,” Ai said. “Heinlein Industries will be reoccupied, and Fawkes will be destroyed very soon. His army on the street will be shut down and then collected and destroyed. Fawkes has lost, and we’ve won. All we need to do is survive until they retake control of Heinlein’s transmitter; then it will be over.”
“It won’t be over,” I gasped. “It’s already too late…. ”
My vision blurred as I pushed back, trying to force her out of my head.
“Penny, kill her,” she said.
Penny got back up onto her feet, and turned toward me. Distantly, I could feel the conflict in her mind; she was my friend, but she’d belonged to Ai for a long time. At some point over the years, Penny had learned to kill without thinking about it, either before or afterwards. I looked into her eyes but it took everything I had to keep Ai from killing me herself, and I couldn’t tell what she was thinking.
“Don’t,” I whispered to her. “Please.”
“I said, ‘kill her.’”
Slowly, Penny turned away from me and faced Ai. Red dots appeared on the tile near her feet as she straightened her back.
“Penny, you know you can trus
t me,” Ai told her. “She is wrong. She dies here in this building; you know that. You both die here.”
“Then so do you,” I said, and as the light got so bright that it stung my eyes, I pushed her away and out of my head.
11
SACRIFICE
Nico Wachalowski—Heinlein Industries
The four revivor signatures moved around the western face of the Pratsky Building, heading for the transmitter hub. The one in the lead was Fawkes. With his head start, it was going to be close.
I skirted past several more piles of clothing strewn on the floor. The toe of my boot hit a stray pistol and sent it spinning down the hall, where it struck an empty helmet. Somewhere else in the building, several shots went off.
Faye, I called. She didn’t respond.
The corridor opened into a large area with cubicles set up in the center. Offices ran the length of the wall to my right, and across the room, a huge window looked into a dark laboratory. The glass had been punched through with a long row of bullet holes, and through the web of fractures I could make out hulking machinery. According to the map, I could cut through there on my way to the dish.
The door was jammed. I kicked through the damaged glass and climbed over the edge, dropping to the floor. Back the way I’d come, I heard more gunfire.
Faye, are you receiving me? She didn’t answer, but someone else did.
You’re too late, Agent. It was Fawkes.
A large tank along one wall had ruptured, and the air in the lab had a chemical smell. Fog had formed over the wet floor, where several sets of clothing were bunched. The smell got worse as I headed down a row of equipment, my sleeve pressed over my nose and mouth.
Fawkes, you cannot destroy that transmitter. The variant is spreading out of control.
That’s the point.
Past the racks of dark equipment were three bodies lying facedown in the chemical spill. The lab must have been sectioned off from the main climate system, and Leichenesser had dissipated before it made it this far in. All three of them looked human, and were dressed in lab coats. One of them had been shot in the throat.
Something’s wrong, Fawkes. They’re going to nuke the city anyway.
You’re lying.
I’m not lying. The launch has been initialized.
If that’s true, then it doesn’t matter if I destroy the transmitter or not.
They’re trying to stop the spread. If it can’t be stopped using the transmitter, then those nukes are going to fall, Fawkes. I believe you; I don’t think you ever had any intention of destroying this city. Don’t let this happen—
Fawkes broke the connection.
A heavy, temperature-controlled vat sat in the wreckage ahead, and I saw that a gray hand had broken the surface. A series of glass jars connected with chrome tubes had been shattered, the sharp edges stained black. Inside one I saw the slick lump of a human liver trailing wires. Another had spilled out a long coil of intestine that hung from the glass edge down to the floor, where black blood had pooled. I stepped in something soft as I banked left around the equipment, toward the exit.
As I shoved open the door, something lunged out in front of me. I ran headlong into a large figure, almost bowling us both over as I grabbed a fistful of shirt collar and spun the man around. I slammed his back into the wall and pressed the barrel of my gun to his forehead.
“Don’t shoot!” he yelled. Pale-skinned, he was a man I didn’t recognize. He was wearing a long coat that was wrapped tightly around him. He brought his hands up where I could see them, his eyes wide. His face was covered in sweat. “I’m not armed! Don’t shoot!”
A high-pitched whine began to sound. It was coming from the man.
“Get this thing off me,” he said. His eyes were wild. “Get this thing off me…. ”
He grabbed my lapels and pulled me toward him. I stumbled, shoving him back.
The man’s coat fell open, and I saw a light flash underneath through a nest of wires.
“Help me!” he screamed. “I don’t want to die!”
Energy was building up fast in the device. There wasn’t time to stop it from detonating. I knocked his hands away from my jacket, and the material tore free from his fingers. He tried to grab me again, and I put one heel in his chest, kicking him back through the office doorway. He crashed against the desk behind him as smoke began to trail between the wires of the device strapped to his chest.
“I don’t want to—”
I spun to the left, around the corner, as the air thumped and the bomb went off. Overhead lights rained glass and sparks down over me as fire boiled down the corridor, throwing me to the floor as the wall in front of me flew into pieces.
I reeled, my ears ringing, and static flickered across my HUD as a message came through from the outside.
Wachalowski, this is Alice. The first nuke is set to launch in six minutes. Where are you?
Inside Heinlein.
Stopping the launch from this end might not happen. If you stick to the lower levels over there, you stand a good chance of surviving any blast.
What about the control center at Stillwell?
They’re cutting their way in, but it’s going to take time.
You don’t think they’ll make it in before the launch?
I don’t know, Wachalowski.
What about Motoko? I asked. What did your team find at Alto Do Mundo?
The first team never made it. They got swarmed at the station, and we lost contact. No word back from teams two or three, either. Motoko isn’t responding, and neither is any of her personal guard.
If someone there is influencing Vaggot, I said, what happens if they die?
I can’t—
Alice, answer me. If I’m right and the one doing it is killed, will Vaggot stop the launch on his own?
I don’t know. Maybe.
Then you have to try to—
I know, Agent, believe me. Additional teams are moving in, and Chimeras are en route to the penthouse, but I can’t guarantee they’ll get there in time.
I checked Fawkes’s signature again. He was almost at the transmitter.
Stopping him was beginning to look like the only option left, and I was running out of time.
Faye Dasalia—Satellite-Dish Control Tower
The entrance to the transmitter’s control room required security clearance, but Heinlein’s systems were still offline and the scanner was dark. I pulled it open, and lights flickered on overhead as I stepped inside. The room was situated off the northern face of the building, with a huge, wide window that looked out onto the base of the transmitter itself. The outer rim of the main dish formed an arc across the sky far above.
There were many sets of clothes strewn throughout the room. Empty shirts lay against the backs of several chairs, still situated inside suit coats, neckties still in place. Pants legs dangled over empty shoes. Fawkes had forced them to initiate the first code transfer, then he’d had them killed at their workstations.
I’ve accessed the control room, I told Nico.
I pulled up the instructions that Dulari had given me, along with the sample. The dish should still be aligned with the geosynchronous satellite in orbit above from the previous transmission, but I had to make sure. I tapped into the system and began the verification as I scanned the room. There were arrays of panels covered in minute controls and readouts, none of which I recognized or understood.
Using the included map of the consoles, my computer was able to identify both the main control station and also the image reader that would analyze and queue the sample for transmission. After that, I had no choice but to take Dulari’s instructions on faith.
Queuing up the current version requires two keys, the instructions indicated. They may still be in place. If not, use the provided override code.
I found the console and checked it. She was right; each panel was fitted with a large metal key with a thin hanging chain. Each was turned to the ON position.
Fixed b
eneath them was a thin metal door with a turn latch. With a twist, I pulled it open, and cold mist drifted out.
Satellite alignment verified.
Reaching through the mist, my fingers found the edge of the sample container, and I pulled it out of the bay. Carefully, I removed the sample Dulari had given me from its case and slid it into the slot. I shut the door and when I turned the latch, several lights on the console lit up. Messages began to scroll across one of the screens there.
Sample inserted.
Verifying version stamp …
Verifying authentication code …
Verifying certificate …
Green lights pulsed in response to each, and something thumped in the floor. The hum of electricity filled the room.
Validating sample …
Another screen blinked on and began cascading messages faster than I could read. A percentage appeared in one corner and began to creep up from 0 toward 100.
The door crashed open behind me and I turned in time to see a figure in a suit step through. The man leaned heavily on a crutch and held a pistol out in one hand. When he limped into the light, I recognized him immediately.
“Ang—”
He fired, and the bullet struck me in the left shoulder. Air from inside the suit began to leak through the hole as I staggered and fell back onto my side. Two more shots went off and struck the floor near my head as I kicked away, pushing myself behind one of the consoles.
Blood began to run down my arm as air blew through the hole in the suit. As soon as the pressure let up, air from the outside would make its way in.
As I heard Ang limp toward the console to shut down the sequence, I turned my gun on the window that overlooked the dish and fired. The glass stopped some, but not all, of the rounds.
I grabbed the nearest chair and gripped it by one metal leg. Pushing myself up off the floor, I spun it around and struck the broken glass.
Two more bullets struck me from behind as a spiderweb of cracks gave way in the observatory window and the chair sailed out into the dark in a shower of glass. Wind and snow shrieked through the jagged opening as I turned and aimed the gun at Ang.