Zero World

by Jason M. Hough

  Just a hammer, driving nails.

  All the people he must have killed over the years. All the labs he’d probably demolished. Every one of them on the verge of, or perhaps even just beyond, discovery of the Conduit. Now just bottles of beer, facing backward. How fucking juvenile. How willfully ignorant.

  Alice Vale had eluded him, though. She must have been one of his first missions. Perhaps the first. He’d been sent to kill her on the Venturi, and failed. She’d slipped the net, simultaneously dooming humanity and, most likely, Gartien as well. Gartien. Alice and the Warden, both dead. Sacrificed everything to try to build a culture that could challenge Prime. Or at least to keep Prime away from the other branches of the Conduit, and the Zero Worlds besides Earth.

  “Earth,” Monique said, as if reading his mind.

  Could she do that? Christ, what exactly was she capable of? His plan would fail if she could read his mind. Hurry, Melni. “What about Earth?”

  “We’ve worked so hard to keep the Conduit’s secret from that world. That was only possible because you never retained any knowledge of it yourself. Now, however…the situation is different.”

  “No shit. Finally some memories you can’t, what was the word, ‘firewall’?”

  “I’ll just have one last mission for you, Peter Caswell. Agent IA6.”

  “If you think I’m going to help—”

  “Before we start,” Monique said, ignoring him, “perhaps you’d like to know the real you?”

  A stinging electric shock rippled outward from the base of his neck. Caswell’s entire body spasmed, vibrating like a struck drum. Thoughts, memories, impressions by the millions fell upon his mind like an avalanche. Too much to bear. So vast in quantity that it all blurred together, too vague and jumbled to grasp any one thing. In that instant he knew no more than a newborn babe.

  Basic instincts.

  Fight or flight.

  How to breathe.

  The true self. Satisfying, in an animalistic sense. But the feeling did not last. The blurred vastness began to crystallize. When the feeling subsided he found more than just a single new memory in his mind.

  Peter Caswell remained, but there was another, now. His true self.

  His mind drifted through this landscape of memories, him just a passenger. Looking out over a city of golden spires that kissed the clouds, studded with lavish gardens and connected by bridges of astonishing beauty. Far above those clouds, tens of thousands of tiny lights zipped across the darkening sky. Like Saturn’s rings, but all artificial. Cities in orbit.

  Another memory beckoned. Trudging through a muddy jungle, wearing a full suit of mechanized body armor. A dozen more such augmented soldiers in a dispersed formation in front of him. They were on Conduit World 26, sent in to wipe out a primitive tribe that had found a crashed probe.

  Now a third memory. His first day with the implant. He was just a boy. There were hundreds of others like him, standing in neat lines, practicing a martial art designed to work in the slowed reference frame of an overclocked mind. Behind the instructor, beyond massive windows, he saw the struts of the space station. A city in space, above Prime. Dozens more drifting along beside it.

  “What,” Caswell said, struggling for the first time in what he thought of as his life to not remember, “is all this?”

  “You, of course,” Monique replied. “The real you. An enforcer of Prime. Peter Caswell is just an invented persona. Your cover, here on Earth.”

  “No. No, it can’t be true.”

  “I think you’ll find it is. Or you would, if you had time. Now, about your final mission.”

  “Go fuck yourself.”

  She shook her head, patiently. “No need to be a willing participant this time. All I need is for you to die. Thomas, if you please,” she said, with a slight jerk of her chin toward the guard behind Caswell.

  He heard the knife unsheathe. Saw the blade—ten centimeters of carbon morphblade—slide across his field of view and then push in toward his neck. Felt the heat of the cauterizing filaments as they crawled along the razor-sharp edge, ready to instantly seal the wound, bleed him out from the inside, nice and clean. A hand came around from the other side and pressed against Caswell’s forehead, driving his skull back into the headrest.

  The blade bit. The heating elements began their terrible thrum. He smelled cooking flesh. He wanted to scream.

  Monique’s lips curled into a horrible voyeur’s smile.

  Melni. Melni! NOW! Now, goddamnit!

  The blade slid against his skin, grating on stubble, carving through muscle tissue. A crackling sound followed, along with the sick smell of burning meat.

  Unable to stop it, to stop any of it, Caswell shut his eyes hard and prepared himself for the end.

  An alarm wailed.

  The blade stopped, just millimeters from his jugular.

  Monique’s expression shifted to concern. Her eyes darted to the display in front of her. “The lander,” she hissed. “It’s detached and moving away. She’s fleeing!” Then her gaze snapped up and she met Caswell’s eyes. “She’s headed for Earth.”

  “She’s doing more than that,” Caswell said, growling out the words, his jaw clenched for the blade still embedded in his neck.

  His former handler glared at him a moment until something on the screen pulled her attention away. She studied it, eyes darting back and forth. She could not help but open her mouth into a surprised circle at what she saw there. “You haven’t,” she hissed.

  “I have.”

  He didn’t know exactly what the screen displayed, but he knew what it meant. In ten minutes or so, the broadcast would reach Earth. It would hit every public source with equal, unstoppable abandon. And it would tell them the secret Prime had worked so hard to keep.

  Monique’s fists clenched. “Do you realize what you’ve done?”

  “I’ve given them a fighting chance.”

  “This could have just been your life,” she said. “Yours and whoever is in that shuttle. Instead you’ve doomed the entire planet.”

  Caswell managed a small, satisfied smile. “I’ve given them a chance. If you have any sense at all, you’ll know what a fight you’re in for, bitch.”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  “What do you want me to do?” the guard named Thomas asked, blade still held firm, the tip still inside Caswell’s neck.

  “Finish that,” Monique replied, “then locate Cento, and meet me on the bridge. We have work to do.”

  “Yes, War—”

  His word ended in a hiss of breath. The man slammed against Caswell’s chair. An almost inaudible grunt escaped his lips. His body tumbled over the headrest in the morbid slow-motion ballet of a corpse in zero-g. He drifted across the table toward Monique, his eyes fixed and glassy, arms and legs splayed and limp.

  Monique ducked under the body and popped her head back up, just her eyes visible across the slab of marble.

  “Get up where I can see you,” a voice said. Melni’s voice.

  Caswell kept his body carefully still. The morphblade still protruded from his neck, only a centimeter of the tip inside him. The rest just dangled at the edge of his field of view, bouncing horribly with each beat of his heart.

  His chair rocked again. Caswell winced in pain as his body, and thus the blade, moved in reaction.

  Melni must have seen the knife then. She gasped. Her hand reached for the grip.

  Her other hand came into view. She held the vossen gun in an iron grip, pointed straight at Monique.

  “Careful,” Caswell said. His eyes were blurred with tears from the pain of the blade and the burned skin around its edge. “Grip it with your thumb on that red switch and pull straight out.”

  She did as he instructed. When her fingers curled around the handle, though, the room plunged into absolute darkness.

  “PULL THE BLADE!” Caswell said.

  Blinded, her nostrils full of the smell of his burned flesh, Melni renewed her grip on the knife’s handle and
yanked outward. A brief glow of reddish yellow light, like a candle just extinguished, illuminated her hand as the strange weapon melted Caswell’s skin around the entry wound, sealing the flesh. The stench made her want to vomit.

  Caswell emitted a low groan. “Cut the binding,” he croaked.

  A sound came to her from across the table. The slight scuff of fabric against stone. Monique, on the move.

  Thumb still on the blade’s activator, Melni pushed herself back and down. She had to move her face in close to see anything more than a few inches from the glow of the blade. There, against the back of the chair, was a black strap an inch wide. She sawed across it with the knife, smelled the sour acrid fumes of burned synthetic fabric. Caswell shifted in the chair, free from the torso up. She heard him frantically pulling at a second strap that presumably held his feet in place.

  Melni let go of the knife. As reassuring as the little flare of light might be, it made her the only distinguishable target in the room. Besides, she had something else in mind. Another weapon, one she’d taken from the guard who’d come to search the lander. She’d ambushed him before he’d even reached the entrance, strangling him with a grapple hold she’d learned many years before, improvised to work in this damnable lack of gravity. “Stay low,” she whispered, unsure if Caswell could hear her. She pushed off the floor with both feet to make sure she was well above his head. Pushed harder than she’d planned to. By the time she had the gun in her hands the top of her head smacked into the ceiling. Out of pure reflex she pulled the trigger. Rapid little plumes of fire erupted from the weapon.

  The gun did not chatter like a machine rifle back home. This sang a steady hum like the chant of a Tibetan monk. She’d listened to a sample on Caswell’s electric book.

  Little explosions of sparks and debris began to erupt on the far side of the dark room. Melni fought for control of the weapon as it tried to push back into her, her own body being shoved with each round that flew from the barrel. And fly they did. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of muffled coughs from the barrel that ran together in a numbing, bone-shaking roar. She managed to guide the weapon to the place Monique had been sitting. Electrical sparks and little bolts of lightning flared out from the screen that protruded from the table. Something shattered and a huge shower of sparks erupted like a holiday burster. Of the enemy there was no sign. Something broke loose from the far end of the room, allowing a jagged triangle of brilliant white light through the back wall. The beam poured through the room like a coastal beacon, the shaft of brilliance swirling with the smoke and dust that now clouded the space.

  The weapon’s tone abruptly became a rapid click. Emptied.

  Melni tumbled over backward from the momentum she’d created. She saw the ceiling, then the door she’d come in through, only upside down. Then the floor. The knife she’d discarded floated across her field of view, tumbling. Finally the table came into view. Caswell was nowhere to be seen. The table had a line of craters across its center like the Desolation. It continued across the mess of the computer screen and right up the backrest of Monique’s empty chair, which sat in the center of that single beam of blinding white light, bits of foam cushion in a small cloud around it.

  Suddenly the whole back wall of the room became horizontal lines of brilliant light. The lines grew, letting in knifelike bands of white across the entire space. They grew and grew until they merged together, just a single wall of luminance now. Melni shielded her eyes to look in that direction. Seconds passed before she could see anything at all. She was looking at a ball of white flame surrounded by a shifting milky haze. A star. Earth’s star, she hoped, which Caswell had called Sol.

  Against that dazzling radiance Melni saw a blurred shadow begin to move near the top of the wall. No, she thought, that’s the bottom. I’ve flipped over.

  It was Monique, coming out from where she’d hidden. Wounded or perhaps just shocked from the barrage of gunfire, Melni couldn’t be sure, but the woman was in motion and had something in her hands. A tiny thing like a baton. No, Melni realized. One of those little cylindrical missile weapons. Melni, adrift, could do nothing to take cover. She couldn’t even stop herself from tumbling, and soon the so-called Warden of Earth would be out of view again. She tried to twist around and only made things worse.

  “Whoever you are,” Monique said, “you’re a terrible shot.”

  Melni braced herself. The weapon seemed capable of anything. What would her death be? An explosive that tore her innards to shreds? A molten lance through her heart?

  Something punched her in the back. A white-hot pain tore through her chest before the projectile ripped out between her ribs and embedded itself in the wall near the door.

  Melni felt her breath catch as unbelievable pain seared through her. She couldn’t think, couldn’t focus. She could do nothing save mentally curl into a fetal ball against the staggering, all-consuming heat of agony in her breast.

  Her body continued to tumble, bringing Monique back into view against the inferno of the star behind her, outside the expansive windows. The woman glided to the side of the room and slipped through a gap in the wall Melni hadn’t seen before. A concealed door. It began to slide closed silently behind her, a queer echo of when Alia Valix had confronted Melni before fleeing into the Think Tank.

  Vision blurred by tears, face contorted into a silent scream, Melni fought for control of her senses. The blinding sunlight pouring in made it almost impossible to see. The stinging tears in her eyes did not help.

  A shape drifted in front of Melni’s face. She tried to bat it aside only to stop and grab hold of it at the last instant. The knife felt right in her hand. She focused on it, used it as a talisman to clear her mind. In that moment her back thudded weakly against a flat surface. The wall, just above the door. Melni gripped the object even as she launched herself. Her body rocketed across the room, over the table and the bolted-down chairs, in a perfect line to the corner where Monique had fled.

  The hidden door was an inch from sealing. Melni thrust the knife into the gap, just managing to get the tip in. She braced her feet against the wall and floor and began to apply pressure to the hilt, pushing with all the strength she could muster, praying the tip wouldn’t snap off. The effort made her scream as something inside her chest tore. Her whole body trembled violently.

  A band of light caught her eye. The door pried open a meager inch. She thrust the knife in farther, letting the door slide back, then levered it again. White spots began to swim across her vision. She felt as if her breast would erupt in flame, and wondered how much blood had pooled inside her body as her breaths began to flutter wetly, her lungs filling with fluid. She’d drown herself in less than a minute. Even less than that, perhaps, given the lack of gravity. The blood would be freely sloshing about in there, blocking her windpipe instead of pooling at the bottom. Melni heaved against the blade, scrambling for purchase on the walls and floor around her, mind numb to the pain now, only dimly aware of the rip of flesh and muscle inside her. She screamed. She pushed. The band of light reappeared and widened.

  Melni thrust her knee inside, then her arm. The task became easier, and soon she was through. The door caught her foot and she yanked it free, leaving her shoe behind, which kept the door from sealing. “Caswell!” she shouted, not knowing where he was or if he could hear her. The word came out more as a wet croak. “Going…after…”

  She couldn’t finish. Her lungs felt heavy. Melni pushed off with her feet and rocketed down a narrow utility corridor. She hit a bend hard, taking the impact on her elbow, gagging as liquid in her chest flew up her windpipe. A numbing sting shot up her arm.

  Then she was falling.

  The floor came up to meet her. It was only a few feet to drop, but the impact could not be defended against and she shrieked as the metal surface slammed into her cheek. Something cracked there. Bone. Her cheekbone. In some corner of her mind, Melni heard the knife clatter away. She came shakily to her feet and groped around for it. Her body felt h
eavy and sluggish, each step a skirmish, the rest of the hallway looming like a war. At least, in gravity, she could breathe a little.

  Her foot kicked the knife. She collapsed to the floor in her effort to pick it up, but her fingers finally encircled the cool metal handle. Just standing again made her dizzy. The edges of her vision began to darken, as if she’d entered a tunnel within this tunnel. The craft must be accelerating very fast, she realized. Twice what she and Caswell had endured on their flight to the Conduit.

  Melni focused on each step.

  One foot, then the other, shod in invisible boots of lead.

  Again.

  Don’t drop the knife.

  Another step. Another breath.

  Keep the knife, keep the knife, keep the knife.

  She came through an open doorway at the far end of the hall, her only clue of the transition being a change in the sound her footsteps made. She recognized the sound. She’d heard it…when? Thoughts seemed to slide around the edges of comprehension. She shook her head violently, regretted it instantly. She just wanted to lie down. Rest, she needed rest. “A bit of sleep then right in Garta’s light,” old Gram used to say. Her grip began to loosen on the hilt until another part of her mind seemed to snap away the betrayal of the other. Her fist tightened. She glanced up and took in the room before her.

  The Warden’s ship. No, just one like it. The slightly soft walls, the snaking lines of illumination—glowing faintly red here.

  Monique stood at the far end, before a dizzying, enormous display. Her hands were extended out before her, light dancing around her fingertips as she performed some sort of interfacing communion with the ship.

  The woman spun around, alerted by some unseen mechanism to her pursuer’s entrance.

  Melni, barely able to move her heavy limbs, her breaths coming in wretched, bubbling sighs, watched in horror as the woman took aim at her again. At her eyes this time, and the brain behind them. Melni wanted to close those eyes but could not. Fear would not let her command her own body.