Pleasantview Apartments were ironically named. They weren’t the worst I’d seen, but the upkeep was a problem and it had gotten worse over the past two years. Trash was piled up in bags near the main entrance, and with all the rain, you could smell it from the sidewalk. Not for the first time, I wondered why someone with Zoe’s abilities would live in a place like this, but then she didn’t seem to find anything wrong with it. Her downstairs neighbor, Karen, was a good friend too. That might be a factor now. Karen was better for her, in many ways, than I was.
I approached the front, stepping over a pothole filled with water. As I made my way up the stairs, I checked in with the home office.
Any word yet on Takanawa?
Nothing yet.
We needed to bring him in soon; he was the only concrete link left to the missing case. His apartment was empty, with no sign of it or the device he’d left the hotel with. Travel records indicated he hadn’t left the country, at least not legally, but he was nowhere to be found.
The door recognized my ID and let me in when I flashed my badge. The elevator inside was out of order, so I hiked the six flights before I remembered that Zoe had moved back into her old place. She was on the seventh floor now. I still hadn’t gotten the full story on that.
Stop being careless with her. The strange woman at the bar, Penny, had said that. Maybe things were moving too fast for Zoe. I was asking a lot of her and being sober was still a struggle; I could see it. Was I being careless with her?
I knocked on the door, and when she answered it, the first thing that struck me was how sad she looked. She was clean and she had some color even, but her eyes looked as sad as ever. When she looked up at me, there were almost tears in them.
“You look nice,” I told her. Whoever had picked the little black dress out for her had gotten it right. She’d splurged and had her hair styled. She looked the best I’d ever seen her.
“Thanks,” she said, but she didn’t look me in the eye when she said it and she didn’t smile. “You do too.”
The suit they’d sent over for me put anything else I had to shame, and fit almost perfectly. I wasn’t familiar with designers, but I got the sense it cost a fortune.
“Are you all set?” I asked. She nodded and managed a smile, but it was gone just as quickly.
On the stairs she had trouble in her heels, so I gave her my arm. When she took it, her face and neck turned red. I held my coat over her while I got her into the car, then went back around and got in next to her.
“You okay?” I asked, pulling back out onto the main street. She nodded, looking at the floor.
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
An armored vehicle with military markings passed by the street ahead of us, a floodlight sweeping through the rain. In the distance, a helicopter moved between two buildings.
“Why are there so many cops?” she asked.
“Something happened,” I said.
“The briefcase?”
“Yes.”
She looked down at the floor and made a face.
“I didn’t get anything out of that woman at the hospital,” Zoe said. “Sorry.”
The photos had been grisly. By the time I got in touch with them, the police had already been called and photographed the scene. Zoe had been captured on the security camera leaving the building, but sometime between then and when I actually arrived at the hospital, someone had gotten to the people involved. The police dropped Zoe as a person of interest and turned the whole thing over to us, with no resistance at all. Someone was watching us.
“Don’t worry about that,” I said.
“The guy from this morning doesn’t know where the case is,” she said, “but he did say there were several targets.”
I nodded. I’d seen Vesco’s report.
“Are they nukes?” she asked in a small voice.
I wasn’t supposed to divulge that information, but I nodded. She got quiet.
“Do you want to get out of the city?” I asked her. “After tonight, you could take off for a while.”
“Would you come with me?”
“I can’t.”
Fog blew past the headlights as another helicopter banked down the main drag in the distance. Zoe was quiet for a minute, clutching a little purse in her lap and fiddling with the clasp as I drove.
“I talked to Vesco too, like you wanted,” she said.
“And?”
“Someone got to him. They wiped his memory. Alice—”
She stopped short. When I glanced over at her, she looked uncomfortable.
“Alice Hsieh?” I asked. “What about her?”
“Nothing. She was nice. That was all.”
Something was bothering her, and not just the threat of public embarrassment. She seemed distracted.
“Sorry you got stuck with me tonight.”
“I’m not stuck with you, Zoe. You need to stop—”
“I know—it’s your idea of a hot date, hanging out with a skinny, ugly alcoholic.”
I opened my mouth, and she cut me off immediately, holding up her hand.
“Don’t answer that.”
This is going to become a problem.
“It doesn’t matter anyway,” she said. “You’re leaving with her, not with me.”
“Leaving with who?”
“She leaves. She leaves in a hurry, and you go after her.”
I glanced at her, slouched in the passenger’s seat. Sleet began to pepper the windshield.
“Was that something you saw—”
“Just never mind,” she said. Despite my occasional prodding, she wouldn’t say anything else for the rest of the trip.
When we rolled up in my car, the valet took one look at it and said something into his two-way radio. He looked surprised when he scanned my ID.
“You’re expected, Agent Wachalowski,” he said.“Business or pleasure?”
I used the backscatter to look into the soft tissue of his eyes and saw the camera implanted there. We were going to end up on the news, assuming he could sell it.
“I’ll let you know on the way out,” I told him.
I tossed him the key as I guided Zoe away, toward the entrance. In the crowd gathered outside, I picked out at least twenty more concealed cameras looking for celebrities, politicians, or both.
“Who are you with?” a voice shouted from behind. “Hey! Who are you with?” I opened the door and ushered Zoe through.
Inside, Suehiro 9 was more or less what I expected; a place where the wealthy went to enjoy being wealthy. It was the kind of place that third tiers associated with first tiers, but the truth was, I was no more welcome there than they were. When we approached the hostess, she looked us both over, mentally identifying designer labels. She looked like a model.
“Name?” she asked without smiling. She looked at Zoe with so much contempt that it made me angry.
“We’re with Motoko Ai,” I told her. The name got an immediate reaction. Her face stayed cool but her eyes flashed. She changed her tone immediately.
“Mr. Wachalowski,” she said. “This way.”
If Ai was trying to impress me, it worked. To orchestrate the meeting on such short notice couldn’t have been easy or cheap. The meeting could have happened anywhere, but she chose the most exclusive restaurant in the city. She was trying to influence us, maybe, to wine and dine us, but I wondered if it wasn’t something more. I wondered if she wasn’t flaunting me specifically, and the agency I worked for, for the eyes that she knew watched her.
When we approached the table, I saw that Penny, the woman who approached me at the bar, was there. I could tell right away that she wasn’t a colleague or a chaperone; Penny worked for Ai. It was clear from the way she sat at attention.
Ai herself was very small. I would have thought she was a child, except for her face. Her clothes had to be tailored specially for her, and the jewelry she had on display must have cost a fortune. Her head was large, a little too large for her body, and her thick lips protruded over an overbite, giving her a vaguely fishlike appearance. I realized then that I’d seen that face before. The last time I’d seen it, I’d pulled its image from the camera buffer of a dead man’s eye. She’d sent a freelance news reporter to Goicoechea Plaza the night I busted Tai and his smuggling ring, the night it all started.
“Hello,” she said, smiling. She had a slight accent, but her diction was perfect and her voice was quite deep, despite her small size. “I am Motoko Ai, and this is one of my associates, Penny Blount.”
“Hello,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you, and thank you for bringing us here.”
She waved her hand as if it was no big deal and I saw her small fingers twitch. She kept her eyes on me, but they looked strangely unfocused.
“Please sit,” she said. Zoe sat down right away next to Penny, and I took the remaining chair.
“This can’t be any small expense,” I said.
“I wanted to impress you.”
“You have.”
“I also wanted this to be formal.”
“Wanted what to be formal?”
“Cementing your alliance with me.”
She was completely serious. She had an air of power and authority, but also a confidence beyond anything I’d ever seen. It wasn’t just arrogance or bravado or even ignorance. She believed what she said. She was certain of it.
A small tremor moved through her hands again. Her head bobbed, and I saw Penny tense up for a second. Was something wrong with her?
“Am I entering into an alliance with you?”
“You both are.”
“No offense meant, ma’am, but why would I do that?”
“I’ve already seen it. You do,” she said, and I could see that was all the answer she needed. She didn’t know the why. It was irrelevant to her.
Precognition, I thought. Unlike Zoe, who often seemed confused or frightened by the things she saw or thought she saw, Ai seemed completely at ease with it.
“Do the things you see always come true?” I asked her.
“It’s not that simple,” she said. “There are levels of probability, but once they reach certainty, then yes, they always come true.”
Penny fiddled with her cell phone while Zoe looked over a menu. She was flustered to find it was completely in Japanese.
“Don’t worry,” Ai said. “We won’t get to order.” Penny looked disappointed when she heard that. Based on some of the dishes I’d seen pass by, I was a little disappointed myself.
“Why not?” I asked.
“Because things are very dangerous right now,” she said. “We’re being watched.”
“Then why come here in the first place?”
“Significant events are tied to this meeting,” she said. “It happens here.”
“Because you foresaw it?”
“Because I felt like it.”
“But if it’s dangerous—”
“With the exception of one of us,” she said, “I know when everyone at this table dies. The one I’m unsure of outlives the rest. I know that much. None of us dies here.”
Ai and Penny both suddenly glanced over at Zoe at the same time. Zoe’s pupils had gone wide, but she looked confused. A second later they went back to normal. Penny gave Zoe a little shake of her head. Ai didn’t say anything. She just looked back to me.
“I know you know who I am,” she said.
“I’ve heard of you.”
Her little body shivered as her pupils, black on dark brown, swelled to fill the irises. I felt a wave of dizziness, far worse than I’d felt with Sean or even Zoe. She was trying to control me.
I let my eyelids droop a little as the dizziness passed. Ai smiled as her eyes went back to normal.
“Don’t pretend,” she said, waving one tiny hand. “That may have worked on your friend, but not me.”
She watched me for a few more seconds, the silence stretching out before she spoke again.
“How long have you been like that?”
“Two years. You’re not surprised?”
“Just the opposite. I’ve been waiting for it. What caused it?”
“Before the assault on the factory, I was injured, and flatlined for several minutes. It happened then.”
“I can’t influence you,” she said. “If I can’t, then you truly are shut off from us.”
I thought that fact would put her on edge, but instead the edges of her lips curled just barely.
“Do you know you share that immunity with revivors?”
“Yes.”
“Who first told you about us?”
“Samuel Fawkes.”
She smiled broadly then, having assumed, I thought, that I would lie. She nodded.
“Did he also tell you about me?”
“Not specifically. He told me there’s an underground movement of people with abilities like yours.”
“And?”
“That this movement has a hierarchy, and that they manipulate society in secret.”
“As a means to their own unscrupulous ends?”
“That was the gist of it.”
“Well, Agent Wachalowski,” she said, “You’ve heard from Mr. Fawkes. Now I would like you to hear from me, if you don’t mind.”
“Please.”
I glanced over at Zoe. She was staring like she was in a trance.
“Do you have any idea how many people Mr. Fawkes killed two years ago?” Ai asked in a low voice.
“There were a lot of names in his database, but very few deaths were actually reported.”
“If they were reported, those names would obviously all be connected. We didn’t want that, but believe me—Fawkes was very successful. When the National Guard was deployed and the revivor units went missing, they moved on a large spread of targets. We were not expecting that.”
“You didn’t foresee it?”
Her large eyes narrowed a little, and the dreamy expression cleared. “We knew he would attack.”
“But not the specific form the attack would take?”
“We’re not here to talk about that,” she sniped. “They went into people’s homes and killed men, women, and children alike. Doesn’t that matter to you?”
“Yes,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
I’d seen the names coming off the database Fawkes kept, and I knew he’d kept it accurately. Their bodies were disposed of using Leichenesser, and those who survived had covered it up, but I’d always suspected that hundreds of people had been killed that night.
Something buzzed across the table, and Penny reached into her purse. She removed a second cell phone and snapped it open, looking down at the screen.
Using the backscatter, I peered through the plastic casing of the phone until a fuzzy image of the LCD appeared. From my side the text was backwards, but I captured a piece of it before she moved.
…anawa tracked …IMO 1092
Takanawa, maybe. IMO stood for International Maritime Organization. The message might have had to do with an incoming shipment. Were they tracking Fawkes’s supply lines themselves?
“It’s easy sometimes,” Ai continued, “to stop seeing your enemy as human. In battle, it can be easy, maybe even convenient, to remove yourself from the human cost your struggle inflicts on your enemy. You understand that.”
I nodded.
“Sometimes war necessitates ugly choices, but Mr. Fawkes is not a nation and he is not a soldier. Mr. Fawkes is an individual. Strictly speaking, he is not even a citizen of this country any longer. No matter what his beliefs are, he had no authority or right to do what he did.”
“I agree.”
“Fawkes is still a threat. We both know what he recently acquired, and we both know he’ll use them.”
“Miss Motoko, if you have specific information—”
“I have specific information,” she clipped. “I have more specific information than you would believe. The devices he acquired are just part of his plan; he is gathering an army, and when he is ready, he will unleash both on us. He means to wipe us out completely, Agent, and it doesn’t matter to him who gets in the way. It doesn’t matter to him if he has to destroy this entire city to get rid of us.”
“Fawkes has an army of revivors?”
She nodded.
“Where? How?”
“We don’t know how yet,” she said. “We don’t know where, either—not yet. We’re closing in on their location, but what I said before about probabilities is true; stopping Fawkes is not a certainty. There is a very real possibility that this entire city and everything you see around you will cease to exist in a matter of days.”
Her eyes stared at me evenly from across the table, while a bad feeling began to sink into my gut. Zoe’s eyes were wide, and her mouth had parted slightly.
“The city gets destroyed?” she whispered.
“It will start here, but it won’t end here,” Ai said. “There will be almost no survivors.”
I wasn’t expecting that, but again, she was deadly serious.
“What do you mean ‘It won’t end here’?” I asked.
“Just what it sounds like,” she said simply. “Fawkes will destroy this city, and then, one by one, the rest will begin to fall.”
“That’s impossible—”
“I’ve seen it too,” Zoe said quietly. Her face was pale. She looked scared.
“When?” I asked her. “When does this supposedly happen?”
“Soon,” Ai said.
“Fawkes has most likely been destroyed by now,” I said. “If not, he will be soon. Haven’t you seen to that?”
She raised her thin eyebrows a little, like she was surprised I was so dense.
“Fawkes doesn’t get destroyed with the rest of his obsolete generation,” she said. “You kill Fawkes. The cull will locate him, but you, the one who is immune to our control, will kill him. That’s why you’re here.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond. I looked to Zoe, wanting to ask her how accurate these visions really were, but doubted she knew herself. If there was any truth to it …
“How long before he attacks?” I asked.
“An exact time frame is difficult to pinpoint,” she said, “but soon. We were unsuccessful in intercepting the weapons; he has them, or most of them.”
“Do you have any leads as to where they went?”
“We’re looking for them as hard as your agency is. We haven’t located them yet.”
“If Fawkes is operating out of the city, then give me something to go on,” I said. “I can’t just take your word for it.”
Penny reached across the table and handed me a data spike.
“We recorded that less than six hours ago,” Ai said.
I opened a connection to the spike and accessed the recording that was stored on it. It was a text message, repeated in a loop. The message used a revivor’s transponder code.
Nico. This is Sean. I’m here. Help me.
“Several of our people have gone missing,” Ai said, “and we recently tracked them to several locations. One is a facility called Rescue Mission. It is a nonprofit medical center for the homeless, which is run by the group known as Second Chance. Have you heard of them?”
“I’ve heard of them.”
“I believe they’ve taken your friend, Agent.”
Nico. This is Sean. I’m here— I stopped the loop.
“Sean told me this started with the Concrete Falls bombing,” I said. “Do you know what he meant by that?” She shook her head.
“If Mr. Pu made that determination, he never got a chance to report it to me.”
She looked over at Zoe then. She spoke again, but when she did her tone had changed, becoming softer.
“Someone has to stop it,” she said. “You will be part of this too.”
“How many of you are there?” Zoe asked. The nervousness was gone. She looked excited.
“Us,” Penny said.
“How many of us are there?”
“More than you think,” Ai said. “You are not alone.”
The whole thing happened in the blink of an eye. Zoe opened her mouth to answer her when a wineglass on the table popped and something hissed loudly from directly in front of Ai’s face. The air rippled, and there was a loud crack that made everyone in the dining area turn. Outside the restaurant, a low boom echoed down the street.
A small object spun in the air in front of Ai, then dropped onto the tablecloth, trailing smoke. It was a piece of smooth, black metal, in the shape of a bullet.
“What the hell?” Zoe squawked.
She’s wearing an inertial dampening field. It was the only thing that could stop a round cold like that. The slug looked like it came from a gauss rifle.
I turned to follow the trajectory. A thin trail of smoke led to a window out front where four inches of bullet-proof glass had a neat hole bored straight through. A waiter walked through the smoke trail, disrupting it without even noticing.
Back at the table, Penny recovered quickly. She used a cloth napkin to grab the bullet, then stowed it in her purse. As I stood, I saw her hand off the purse to a passing woman. The woman disappeared into the crowd with it.
This is Agent Wachalowski. We have an unknown weapon fired from the street at Suehiro 9, possibly a magnetic rail gun.
Roger that.
I stood up and as I turned, I saw Ai sag in her seat, just a little. She stared at the air in front of her, looking very tired.
“Go,” Penny said.
I left the table and headed for the front entrance. When I got closer, I could just make out something through the window, a ripple in the air just past the glass. A gust of wind sprayed rain against the passersby, and for just a second there was a gap in the mist.
“Stop!” I yelled, drawing my weapon. The crowd was in the way. I struggled through them, but the gap in the rain was gone.
“Stop!”
I shoved past the hostess and through the front entrance, onto the sidewalk. People were moving in every direction. I couldn’t pinpoint him.
Damn it.
There was an alley alongside the restaurant and I ducked down it. Even if the shooter couldn’t be seen, he’d need to get off the street and away from the crowd. People parted in front of me as they saw the gun; one man backed into a woman, who slipped off the curb and landed in the street. A car stopped short, and I heard the crunch of metal behind me as he got rear-ended.
Horns started blaring, people shouting, as I passed the valet. He followed me with his camera as I turned into the alley. Immediately, someone grabbed me.
Two hands gripped my lapels and spun me, shoving me back against the brick wall. I brought the gun around, but something I couldn’t see blocked it.
“Wait!” a voice said from in front of me. “Nico, wait!”
The air in front of me rippled and Faye’s face appeared, staring up at me from under the hood of an LW cloak. Her eyes glowed dimly in the darkness.
“It’s me,” she said. The rain drizzled off the cloak, and for a second a gust of wind whipped it around her. Her hair was gone, and her skin was the color of ash, but it was her.
I tried to move the gun, but she still had my arm. I let go of the grip, the weapon sliding free of my hand until it hung from my finger by the trigger guard. The pressure eased up on my wrist.
“Did you do this?” I asked her. She shook her head. Her face was a few inches from mine, but I couldn’t see her breath in the cold. No warmth came off of her.
“No,” she said.
“Then why—”
“He sent me. I was following you.”
She stood up on her toes and put her arms around my neck. She hugged me gently, the way she used to sometimes. Her cheek was cool against my neck as rain trickled down my collar.
“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said.
I could feel the low vibration in her chest through my coat. I meant to push her away, but I didn’t.
Who sent you? I asked.
Fawkes. I stiffened, and she squeezed tighter, just a little, before stepping back. It was true. He was still out there. He was still out there, and she’d joined with him.
I’ve come to offer you a deal, she said. Her eyes glowed softly in the dark. I stood there, one hand on her waist, getting soaked by the rain.
What does he want? I asked.
He wants you to kill the woman Ai, and her main operatives.
Someone just took a shot at her with a rail gun and she walked away. What makes him think I’ll be able to do it?
He knows you’re immune to their influence. He knows she is bringing you in close. Someone like you could manage it.
I shook my head.
Whatever else she is, she’s a private citizen who hasn’t, as far as I know, broken any laws. I don’t even have grounds to arrest her. I’m not going to assassinate her. Not for Fawkes, or you or anyone else. Understand?
She was telling the truth. Fawkes is building his forces, she said. This is your only chance to stop it.
No one would be able to smuggle hundreds of revivors into the country, especially after what happened. Fawkes’s trick where he took control of the National Guard units wasn’t going to work a second time either. The only other option was to manufacture them locally, but the procedure wasn’t simple. In the current climate, gathering the hardware it would take for a large-scale operation like that would raise too many flags.
Where is he hiding them?
Just listen. The assault will begin soon.
Is that what his offer is? Kill Ai and he’ll call off the attack?
No. He won’t stop the attack.
Then what’s he offering?
He’s willing to take the nukes off the table.
That stopped me for a second. Rain rolled down her face as she stared up at me.
Faye, those weapons will kill hundreds of thousands of people—
We’ve learned a lot about Ai and her people, she said. More than you have. They’re strong, but not as strong as they’d have you think. They’re a relatively new phenomenon, and they’ve organized only very recently, but already they control this whole city. Soon they’ll control everything.
I thought about that.
If they defeat Fawkes, she continued, then their way will be clear. If this window closes, then nothing will stop them. Eventually, their control will be total.
She paused, glancing down the alley toward the street. People were beginning to take notice of us. I moved my hands away as she went back on the soles of her feet.
If it’s true, then show me what he knows, I said. Give me something concrete.
She slid her arms from around my neck and put her palms on my chest. When I looked in her eyes, for a second her expression seemed human. It seemed …
She reached into her cloak and the air warped around her. There was a flicker; then she was gone.
Connection closed.
“Faye?” I reached in front of me, but she wasn’t there anymore.
I turned and started back through the fog and out of the alley. As I walked, I brought up the stats on the program to decommission the obsolete revivor stock; it was ninety-seven percent complete. There was only three percent to go, and the son of a bitch wasn’t in there.
Somehow, he’d managed to avoid the ax. Fawkes was still out there, and he was coming.
If the address was right, the stick lived in a shit hole called Pleasantview. There was trash piled on the curb, and someone had used bolt cutters on the chain-link fence around the lot. I parked my bike on the street and killed the engine. The rain tapped on my helmet while I sat for a minute, watching; then the reminder to check my hidden file popped up in the dark in front of me.
She had me paranoid. Any time I did anything I wanted to remember, I wrote it in the file and I checked it twice a day. I knew the stick could make me forget, and I wasn’t taking chances. A lot of people knew a JZI could record, but I kept the text file under my hat. No one could make me erase it if they didn’t know it was there. There were four messages there:
Back from TSP. Wachalowski bailed early, but might help.
Scored Zombie Maker from Eddie.
Called Buckster. He said he’d drop by sometime.
I remembered all those—meeting Wachalowski, Eddie hooking me up with the drugs, then roping in Buckster, who the drugs were for. People had a way of blabbing when they were on Z, and that went double when they didn’t know they were on it. If he had any inside intel Wachalowski could use, I’d get it out of him and he’d never be the wiser.
All that I remembered. The last message, though—that I didn’t remember:
Found a door behind the flag. Checking it out.
A door behind the flag? The only flag I could think of was the one back at my place. I’d brought it back with me from my tour, and I hung it up across from the door to the toilet. There wasn’t anything behind it but wall.
Checking it out.
Something made me write it. There was nothing after, and I had no memory of doing it. Someone fucked with my head. Keeping the list worked; I’d gotten my first hit.
“Son of a bitch.”
I armed the bike’s alarm and stowed my helmet, then went up to the front door and pulled. It didn’t budge.
“ID please,” it said. I flashed my card at it.
“Flax, Calliope. First class. Violations including …”
“Yeah, yeah.”
“You are not a registered occupant of this residence. If a registered occupant of this residence is with you at this time, they should provide their ID now. If you are not with a reg—”
I leaned on the buttons next to the door until someone got sick of my shit and buzzed me in. The door was still talking when I slammed it behind me.
Inside, the elevator was out, so I headed up the stairs. The place smelled like piss.
When I shoved the stair door open, I almost ran into some woman with big lips, hips, and tits. She had a mean black eye.
“Excuse me,” she said. She kept her eyes down and tried to go around me.
“Nice eye.”
“Yo, get back here!” some guy yelled from around the corner. From the look on her face, he put the shiner there.
“A regular Romeo, huh?” I said. She stared at me.
“What?”
“You gonna take that?” I asked her.
“What, are you taking a poll?”
“Did you hear me, bitch?” the guy hollered. “I said get back here!”
She pushed past me and went down the stairs.
“Yeah, fuck you, then,” I said as the door slammed shut behind me. I was there for a reason, and she wasn’t it.
I turned the corner and went down the hall until I found 613. When I knocked, someone in there threw something; then footsteps stomped up to the door.
“Fucking bitch,” a guy said under his breath from inside.
The door flew open and a big guy stood there. He had on a tank top to show off his big arms, but half his size was fat. I knew his type; they showed up at the arena all the time. They had big arms and big mouths, but they couldn’t go three rounds.
“Who the fuck are you?” he asked, making a face. He was the same guy that yelled after the girl.
“I’m looking for Zoe Ott. She in?”
“Who?”
“Ott. Scrawny. Red hair. Big beak.”
That made him mad. He knew who she was.
“Oh, that bitch.”
“She here or not?”
“You got the wrong apartment,” he said.
“Records say she lives here, asshole,” I said. The guy was starting to piss me off.
“They’re wrong, dyke.”
I checked her last known address again to make sure. The number said 613. I looked past him to try to see in, but he moved to block me.
“I said she ain’t here!”
“Did she used to live here?”
“You a cop?”
“No, asshole—”
“Then get the fuck out before I either call one or kick your ugly ass out of here.”
“Like you kicked your lady’s ass?”
He gave me the finger and went to shut the door.
“Yeah, I bet that’s the only thing you ever get up you, limp dick,” I said through the crack, and the door stopped. It opened back up, and the dude’s face was red.
“What’d you just say to me?”
“I said fat pieces of shit who hit their lady can’t make their dick get ha—”
He moved faster than I thought he would, and he caught me off guard. He put his hand on my left tit and shoved me hard. I went back on my ass, cracking my head on the wall behind me.
“Fuck you, bitch!”
That was it. I was pissed before, but that was it. He looked surprised when I got back up and came at him. He even tried to shut the door, but he didn’t make it. It slammed against my boot and I shoved it back open with my shoulder. I reached through with my dead hand and grabbed a fistful of tank top and skin, then pulled him out into the hallway.
“Ow! You fu—”
Still holding him with my left hand, I creamed him with my right fist, and he went down like a sack of sand. He wasn’t out, though, just pissed.
“You want it like that?” he said, blood coming out of his nose as he got up. He came at me like a bull and got his big arms around me when he hit. My boots came up off the floor and he heaved me back with his fat gut. I went down on my back, and he came stomping toward me.
“You want it like that?” he said again. “Get up bit—”
From the floor I shot my leg out and put the heel of my boot right in his paunch. His eyes bugged and I thought he’d puke, but he just staggered back. His face went dark when I got up, and I saw death in his eyes. The guy was a straight-up psycho. He blew blood through his nose, down onto his shirt.
“You’re dead, bitch …”
He came at me, and I swung. I broke his jaw, but he kept coming. A door opened behind him and someone looked out, but went right back in. He slammed me into the wall by the stairs and I locked my wrists behind his fat back.
I squirmed under his sweaty arm, scooting behind him. With his gut hanging over my arms, I spun him, pulling him down until we hit the stairwell door and it banged open. He went down on the landing with me on top of him.
People get a look when they start to lose a fight, when they know the beat-down is coming. He got that look when he fell. He went nuts, trying to buck me off and get back up, but he didn’t have the abs for it. I got one knee on his left shoulder, pinning him, and planted my other foot a couple steps down. I hit him with the dead fist, and his lip split open. I hit him with the right, and one of his teeth broke off.
I’d been put in the hospital twice in my life, both times by fuckers like him. I forgot about the skinny bitch with the weird eyes. I hit him again and his nose crunched under my fist. The door slammed open behind me.
“I’m calling the cops!” an old woman screamed. “You hear me?”
He tried to push himself away, but he slipped and started going down the stairs. The door slammed shut as he rolled, landing on his back on the next landing down. I followed him and put the toe of my boot in his ribs. I kicked him twice more, then knelt back over him. I hit him in the face until he shut up and quit moving.
I stood back up and wiped my nose. It was bleeding. He was in a heap in the corner, nose mashed and mouth full of blood. My knuckle was cut and blood was coming out fast, dripping off the ends of my fingers.
I could hear people out in the hall, and from up above. It was time to get out of there.
“Asshole.”
The trip was a bust. The bitch was going to have to wait. I took the steps two at a time down to the ground floor and went out the way I came before the cops showed up.
Deep within the shadows of a disused alley, I slipped between a trash bin and a brick wall, into a dark culde-sac. The ground was littered with trash, where pitted brown ice still lingered from winter. On the far side was a rusted metal door, near where a group of homeless men were huddled underneath a plastic tarp. A sign on the door read HEALING HANDS CLINIC.
Incoming call: Fawkes, Samuel.
I’d expected another contact from him. I’d been lucky at the restaurant. With the lip-reading software, I’d transcribed some interesting information. Motoko was trying to recruit Nico. They knew Fawkes had the weapons. Nico, at least, had drawn a connection to Concrete Falls.
The only thing I hadn’t shared was one phrase, one that Motoko had repeated to Nico: You kill Fawkes. I wasn’t sure yet why I hadn’t told him.
Call Accepted.
I’ve reviewed your report, Faye.
And what have you decided?
That giving Wachalowski the information he wants would be extremely risky.
Fawkes had gathered a lot of concrete data. Over the years he had tracked down many names, and had verified connections between them. He had connected many secret accounts, and traced money trails to key politicians. He’d managed to peel back their many layers and identified their many different fronts. He tracked their holdings and their hidden assets. He knew where they’d based themselves, and the chain of their command. Outside a court of law, he could prove it all, but exposing them would accomplish nothing. Those told would simply forget, and all Fawkes would expose was how much he knew.
Still …
It is the only thing that will convince him, I said.
I agree, but I’ll only authorize a small piece, and we must control it carefully. I’ll draw something up to present to him. It will have to be enough.
He won’t kill her anyway.
I’ve seen Wachalowski’s war record, Faye; don’t be so sure. He’s made decisions that might surprise you.
He didn’t offer up what those might have been. It didn’t really matter.
Lev is waiting for you. He’ll have your work detail.
I understand. May I ask you one question?
Yes.
Why attempt the shooting at the restaurant?
I’d not been told that the shot was coming. After, I saw him follow the trail of smoke, and spot the hole in the glass. I had to move quickly to get off the street, as the paparazzi swarmed. The slug had passed within six inches of me.
I didn’t order that, Fawkes said. If killing her was that easy, I’d have done it by now.
Then who fired the rail gun?
Not a revivor. Maybe one of the Second Chance recruits acting on his own.
With a million-dollar high-tech weapon?
Maybe she staged the assassination.
You think the shooting was staged?
I don’t know. Like you said; not many people have access to a weapon like that. I’m looking into it. Concentrate on Wachalowski for now.
Understood.
The call dropped, and I moved toward the metal door as the words faded away.
No direct sunlight could reach the area, but neither could rain or snow. It was cold, but I sensed warmth under the tarp. I sensed the low, staggered beats of the men’s hearts, and one conspicuous pocket of silence. Two eyes opened in the dark, and cast a moonlit glow into the alley.
When the revivor moved, the living men stirred, but not much and not for long. Except for the eyes, it looked no different from them. In the cold, no one noticed its lack of warmth. Under layers of dirt, blankets, and plastic, it was ignored completely.
It thumped the metal door three times with its fist. A moment later, I heard a dead bolt turn and the door opened slowly.
Lev appeared in the dark space, his eyes staring down from under his thick brow. His expression didn’t change, but he extended a private connection. I accepted it, and he began to stream. This assignment would be different from field work, but it would be simpler. One of the revivors who was stationed there was receiving the upgrade. He assured me the job was temporary, and understood why I cared; some of us liked the quiet, but I wasn’t one of them. It left too much time to pick through memories and to contemplate the blackness beneath them.
You’re in luck tonight, he said.
How is that?
Tonight will not be quiet.
He walked into the darkness, and I followed. The door creaked closed behind us.
He led me down a cinderblock corridor, to an old wooden door at the halfway point. At the far end was another heavy door, a slit of light underneath. In the hall, I could smell rubbing alcohol and human body odor. Lev pushed open the wooden door and stepped through.
Inside was a musty storage area. Boxes had been stacked up along the far wall, but had since been pushed aside. In the space between them was a heavy door, made of thick, shielded metal. A security scanner was mounted there, its lens glowing a soft red.
Lev stooped slightly and placed one eye to the lens, which flickered and turned to green. The door opened silently, and a huff of humid air blew over me. Through the metal door, I saw sheets of plastic. The eyes of revivors stared from along the walls there. I heard the hum of electronics inside, and heavy, scraping footsteps.
I’d heard groupings of revivors called nests and, on one occasion, hives. The terms were meant to be derogatory, but there was some truth to them. I found a certain comfort in these places, the stillness and the quiet. In life, I might have called the feeling cozy. The vibrations of their hearts and the faint smell of decomp inhibitor had become familiar and safe to me.
Lev and I found empty spots along the wall, and watched the figures move behind the plastic as we tuned to each other, out of the common communications pool, to share our thoughts in silence.
What do you think of the upgrade? Lev asked me.
I like the different voices, I said, even if I can’t understand them. It’s hard for me to explain.
I sense hundreds of them, Lev said.
Yes, me too.
Like tuning to a common pool, but larger.
Yes.
I like the sound, too, he said. I think they’re a promise of something greater.
Across the room, his eyes jittered rapidly in tune, I knew, with my own. I thought that was a good way of putting it; the whispers were a promise. A new community about to wake.
Where do they come from? I asked.
You’ll see for yourself tonight.
Fawkes said they might be dreaming.
He’s being poetic. I think it’s subconscious bleed-back from wired humans who are still alive.
Do you know that for a fact?
No, but it’s what I think.
Before Lev was made into a revivor, I eventually learned, he had been an engineer. His knowledge was put to use by his captors, before he was turned and packaged with the rest. He’d fought in Orikhiv for close to two years, before its collapse, when he was impounded. Later, he would end up on the black market.
Can I ask you something about Orikhiv?
Orikhiv no longer exists.
But it did when you were there.
Yes.
When you were first brought here, you were refitted.
Yes.
You had a ghrelin inhibitor installed.
His eyes continued to move like moonlit blurs. We’d talked about many things over the years, but never talked about this.
Why do you ask now?
I’ve wondered for a long time.
But why now?
We won’t see the end of Fawkes’s assault plan. If we do, we’ll be impounded and destroyed.
Lev didn’t deny those things.
What do you want to know?
Did you feed on human flesh?
Yes.
Did you try to stop yourself?
No. At the time, I saw nothing wrong with it.
But you feel differently now?
It’s easy to feel differently with the inhibitor installed.
Do you think it’s wrong?
I think it’s unnecessary. Tell me what your interest is in this.
These hundreds of new voices. Revivors created outside of Heinlein won’t have the inhibitor.
Maybe not.
Will they feed?
I can’t speak for them. Without the inhibitor, I would guess, that eventually, yes.
Fawkes is going to use nuclear weapons.
Yes. Across the room, I saw his eyes stop moving.
Won’t that—
You’re moving into dangerous territory, Faye.
Before I could answer him, a yellow light blinked on over the door frame. A broadcast message appeared:
Subject isolated and ready for transfer.
Forget that, Faye, Lev said. That line of reasoning is dangerous. Just stick to the plan.
The door opened silently, and two revivors stepped away from the wall. One was a female who wore contact lenses that doused the light in her eyes. She was dressed up like a nurse. The other was a big male. He picked up a long, thin aluminum rod from a hook on the ceiling. Lev moved in behind the two.
Come on, he said to me, and I tailed them back out into the hallway. They’re going to bring one in now. If he gets free, then stop him. Otherwise, stay clear of the path between the doors.
The overhead lights came on. I turned left, toward the end of the corridor, and saw the door there open. A human doctor in a white coat stood there, his hands guiding a man who appeared homeless. He ushered him through and into the hallway where the revivor nurse was waiting for him. The homeless man looked unsure.
“The examination room is down the hall,” he whispered to the patient. “Nurse Westgate will show you the way. I’ll be in to see you shortly.”
Some of the disquiet left the patient’s eyes, but it didn’t last for long. The nurse had moved between him and the way out, and then the door swung shut and he heard the latch click. He stared, not understanding, as the noise suppressors mounted there turned on and emitted a low hum.
“Who are you?” he asked the revivor with the metal rod. His eyes widened as he watched a loop of plastic cord extend from the end to form a noose. “What’s going on?”
The nurse grabbed him from behind. He struggled, but the other one had reached them. It looped the noose over his head and pulled tight, choking off his scream.
The revivor heaved the rod, slamming the man into the cinderblock wall. It used it to guide him down the hall toward us, while the man pulled at the cord around his neck.
“Stay calm,” the nurse revivor said, but the man was beyond that. Eyes bulging and teeth bared, he struggled harder. He fell to the floor and rolled, twisting the noose tighter around his neck.
“Careful,” Lev called. The man was flopping madly on the floor now.
The revivor who held him loosened the cord and tried to untwist the leash. When he did, the man on the floor kicked forward and the rod slipped from the revivor’s hands. The man stumbled down the hall, the leash jutting behind him. He’d spotted the exit sign, back behind me.
He closed the distance between us, then tacked left to try and shove his way past me. Before he could make it, I stuck out one leg, catching him at the ankle. The rod clipped my cheek as he crashed to the floor.
The others were moving down the hall toward us. The man had slipped his fingers under the cord and was struggling to his feet. Blood and adrenaline pulsed through his body, so that I could almost feel the heat of him. He was beyond any thought; he was being driven now by pure instinct, a hardwired imperative to survive. The energy of it was captivating.
Faye, stop him.
Before he could get back up, I stepped in close behind him and grabbed the rod. I heaved it forward, and his skull struck the floor. Blood dotted the dingy tile in a trail as I swung him back around.
“Please,” the man grunted, trying to twist free. “Please, let me go.”
I could have done that for him; it was within my power. I could have released the cord and let him make his mad dash toward the exit. I could have held up the others long enough to let him escape into the back alley. He might have gotten past the others outside. He might have disappeared into the city and gotten to keep his life. I could have done that for him, but the truth was, it never occurred to me. Not until the other revivors reached us and I gave the rod to Lev.
Good work, Faye. He said. The man’s toes brushed the floor as he lifted him and began to carry him back down the hallway.
He dragged the man through the large, open doorway, and I followed them inside. The heavy steel door glided closed behind us, and the magnetic lock thumped. An overhead light flickered, then lit the room.
The tent of plastic sheeting was pulled open, and underneath it was an old, reclined chair with surgical arms affixed to either side. With the rod, Lev shoved the man down in the chair. He pinned him, while they strapped his wrists and ankles.
Lev removed the noose, and the man gasped in air. He coughed, spraying strings of spit, then rattled out a string of hoarse, shaky words.
“What the fuck is this? What the fuck is this? Who are you people? What do you want with me?”
His eyes darted frantically. He’d seen the eyes of the figures around him, and he’d realized what they were.
“Quiet,” Lev said, but the man kept going, unable to stop. When he saw Lev hold up the plastic syringe, his whispers became incomprehensible.
As I watched, my calm had begun to waver. My memories stirred, evoking an old inner voice.
This isn’t right.
I waited for that old drive to follow it, all the old passion and the old obsession …but they never came to me. I was distracted by the swirling embers and their hidden memories.
“This isn’t right,” I said to a man. He was propped over my body, which felt sore and used. Each time, he’d made me forget.
“It doesn’t matter,” a woman said, exhaling a sour breath through brown teeth. “It’s all going to burn. This whole city and everything in it—it’s all going to burn….”
That one, there …what did that mean? I knew that face. We were in my old precinct. Why couldn’t I remember?
I saw a chat portal as I sat alone:
She had something to say. Something you didn’t hear.
Then another face, of a man I’d never seen.
“You never heard the name Samuel Fawkes …”
The man in the chair cried out, and the memories scattered.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Lev had uncapped the syringe. I saw it was filled with inky black fluid.
The glowing orange mass in the man’s rib cage beat at a dangerous rate. I watched the heat throb up the side of his neck and branch across the weathered skin of his face. His bloodshot eyes bugged out, and stared up at Lev as he guided the needle. The tip pierced his skin, above the band of light, and he pushed the plunger down. As the fluid was injected, I scanned it, and caught the cold sparkle of nanomachines.
“What is that?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
He injected the last of the black fluid, and the man began to sag back in the chair. His eyes swam and lost focus. Behind Lev, a timer appeared on a screen. It began to count down from ninety seconds. As it did, the man stopped struggling, and twitched. His heart rate began to fall. At thirty seconds, I thought it had stopped cold, but it maintained a slow beat. His body went into deep relaxation; then with fifteen seconds left, his pulse began to creep back up toward normal.
Since my death, life never had the same meaning. When I looked through my memories, it was clear I’d once valued human life. I’d seen lives ended or destroyed every day, and their suffering had begun to eat at me. I’d struggled hard to keep it at a distance, but over time, the barrier eroded. At the end I was worn raw, and even a revivor’s death could touch me.
Death no longer bothered me, not in the way it once did. The loss of human life could affect big change, when some lives were exchanged for those of others. Maybe Nico had been right all those years back. Maybe I just should have gone away from the rule of civilian law and made my stand in the grind.
Maybe, but still the voice inside insisted. Without feeling, or passion, it insisted.
This isn’t right. None of this is right.
The countdown dropped to zero. The man in the chair had regained consciousness. He no longer looked afraid, and instead he looked confused. He stared at the empty space in front of him.
“I can’t read,” he whispered. “What does it mean?”
The yellow light over the doorway turned red, and all of them turned at once.
Someone’s here, Lev said. We’ve been found.
Outside, down the hall, there was a commotion. The other revivors began moving, packaging up equipment. Lev signaled that I should follow.
We have to go now, he said.
What about him? I asked, pointing at the chair.
Lev’s left forearm snapped apart down the middle, and the blade inside shot out. It punched through the man’s breastbone, and his eyes bugged open wide. He looked down at the thing that had impaled him, like he didn’t understand.
I heard the bone split as Lev twisted the blade. The warm mass in the man’s chest fluttered and stopped. The light went out of his eyes, and his chin lolled to his chest.
The others filed out toward the back exit. With a loud snap, the bayonet retracted. A map appeared in the air in front of me with a route traced across it. Two security feeds appeared next to it, showing police vehicles in the front lot, and armed men in the lobby.
We can’t risk him being taken into custody, Lev said. Come on.
All but three of the revivors left the room. They kept their backs to the walls, the glow in their eyes becoming more intense. Energy was building up inside their chests.
They’re going to blow, Lev said. This entire facility will be destroyed. We don’t have much time. Go with the others.
I nodded and left the room. As we followed the others, I glanced back for one last look at the dead man. When I did, I saw him move.
He lifted his head an inch, and his eyes stared up to meet mine.