Zero State

by Jameson Kowalczyk

  His plan was to climb over the low barrier where the bridge ended. He'd take cover before something else exploded. Before someone else came after him.

  It almost worked.

  He swung his legs over the barrier and went rolling down the hill on the other side. He didn't even realize what had happened until he was at the bottom, looking up at the bridge and the blue sky and the rising column of smoke.

  He ejected the magazine on his gun and saw that he only had two rounds left. He tucked the magazine into a pocket and pulled a different magazine from a different pocket. This one had six bullets left in it. A full magazine held twelve. But six was better than two. Plus there was one already in the chamber.

  He stayed on the ground, in the tall grass and scraps of litter. He aimed the gun up the hill. The weapon felt like it weighed fifty pounds.

  He waited. He was expecting a dark shape to stagger into view, moving down the bridge. They would be wounded, like he was. He would shoot them.

  He waited, but no one came. Everyone up there was dead.

  Logan stood. Dirt and dried leaves stuck to the wet blood that soaked his clothing. He realized his comm unit was off and he switched it back on.

  "Zoe?"

  "Still here," said the voice in his earpiece. The voice wasn't familiar, but it wasn't unfamiliar. This was their second time working together.

  "Do you have it?" she asked.

  She was talking about the thing Logan had come here to acquire. The reason for the burning vehicles and the bodies and his blood-soaked clothing.

  He reached into a pocket and held the thing in his hand. "I have it," he said. His voice didn't sound like his. It didn't feel like his.

  He limped, favoring his right leg. He tightened his body armor—an attempt to apply pressure to the wounds underneath. He could feel the bits of shrapnel that had made it through the armor biting into him as he pulled the straps tight. Some hurt. Some were embedded too deeply to hurt, but he could still feel them, digging at him from the inside. He'd lost so much blood at this point that neither sensation really mattered.

  The bridge was a big thing, held up by massive concrete pillars that were covered in graffiti. Underneath, there was a dried-up river or canal, something that had carried water at some point in the past, now just mud and rocks and weeds, scattered with cigarette butts and crushed aluminum cans and other garbage.

  He walked underneath the bridge and leaned against a pillar, adding bloody handprints to the graffiti.

  "Logan, keep walking."

  She had a live video feed from two small cameras, one at his right temple and one at his right wrist. At least one of the cameras was still working, so even when the comm unit was switched off, she knew he was still alive, still mobile. His vital signs were also displayed on her monitor. Pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, other metrics. He wore sensors underneath his clothing and armor.

  Zoe said it again. "Keep walking, Logan."

  She was nervous. He could hear it in her voice. She was seeing something on her screen that made her nervous.

  He pushed away from the column and started moving.

  Neither of them said anything. The audio recording would be minute after minute of them breathing—Zoe steady and tense, himself shallow and gasping.

  He thought about this and started laughing. He coughed and spit blood.

  "What the fuck are you laughing at?" Her voice went from tense to pissed off.

  "If anyone ever listens to the audio from this, we're going to sound like two people having phone sex."

  She laughed. There was a hint of shyness to it. Like she might be blushing. Or maybe he'd imagined that.

  He continued forward, following the natural path of the dead river, heading west. There was an extraction vehicle waiting for him on another road, somewhere out there. He could have asked Zoe how far, but he didn't want to know. He didn't want to think about the distance as a whole; the next step was enough to deal with. His legs were weak, like the connection between his limbs and the rest of him had been knocked loose.

  "What would it be like?" he asked.

  "What would what be like?"

  "Phone sex."

  She laughed.

  "Ever done that?" He was smiling, drunk with blood loss.

  "Seriously?" she said.

  "Sure."

  There was a moment of silence as she held her breath. And then she started to breathe, and talk. Her voice was quiet at first, shy. Then her voice sounded deeper, smokier, as she grew a little more bold, as her descriptions became more blunt, more graphic. She described how she would undress, the things she would do with her hands and mouth, the things she wanted done to her.

  And then Logan's left lung collapsed.

  He landed facedown in the field.

  A few months later she would describe it to him, what it was like to watch it all on her monitor, thousands of miles away and alone in her dark apartment. How entire minutes ticked by as he searched his pockets for the first aid kit, sorted through the contents, loosened his body armor, uncapped the needle. Each step slower than the last.

  And finally, the horrific wheezing breath as his lung reinflated—a sound where she didn't know if he was dying or if he'd managed to save himself.

  Logan didn't remember any of this. One moment, Zoe had been whispering naughty words in his ear. The next, he was in a hospital bed, pulling thin plastic tubes away from his face. A nurse came in and helped him get situated. His mouth and throat felt impossibly dry. His body felt like half the tissues inside it were dead. The nurse brought him water, food, the few personal possessions he'd had with him—wallet, ID, phone.

  There had been a message on his phone.

  There was no contact info for the sender. The ID was a string of zeroes.

  The message read:

  Get well. We'll talk soon. -Z

  ***

  Logan opened his eyes.

  He was in a cell. There were bright white walls next to him and bright white lights above. The bed under his back was stiff and uncomfortable. He thought of something he'd read somewhere, that sleeping on a hard surface was better for your spine. At least he had that going for him.

  He sat up. There was a toilet and a sink, both dull metal. The bed was bolted to the floor. The door was a heavy slab of steel, smooth except for a narrow window, like a mail slot, set around eye level. The room was clean enough to make him wonder if he was the first person they'd ever locked in here.

  He had a headache, muscle soreness, some bruises, but compared to other times he'd woken up after a fight, these injuries were too minor to even acknowledge.

  He was still wearing the clothes he'd put on before walking over to the warehouse, but his pockets had been emptied. His shoes and belt were missing.

  He drank water from the sink. He emptied his bladder. He looked around the room, wondering where the camera was hidden. He knew there was at least one, and probably more than one. He had the feeling of being watched.

  He lowered himself to the floor. He moved from one yoga pose into another, his movements slow, taking inventory of what hurt and what didn't.

  After a few minutes, the narrow window on the door slid open. A pair of eyes and part of a rough face stood behind it. When the guy spoke, Logan recognized the voice. It was Ramirez, Paradime's security coordinator.

  "Done fighting, Logan?"

  Logan thought about it. "Where's Zoe?"

  "A different room. A meeting room, not a cell. She went quietly."

  "I'm not going to fight."

  Ramirez continued to stare at him through the narrow space, maybe trying to decide if Logan was telling the truth.

  "We need your help with something, Logan. You're not going to be any use to anybody—yourself included—if we have to shoot you."

  "That won't be necessary. Need me to turn around and face the wall?"

  "Put these on first." Ramirez pushed two things throu
gh the window. A zipcuff and a piece of black fabric, a blindfold.

  ***

  The floor was cold under his bare feet. He was indoors for most of the walk. Outside for part of it. Then indoors again. The blindfold did its job. He had no idea where he was going or how many men were escorting him, or what kind of weapons those men were armed with. No one walked close to him. They steered him with some kind of pole they had hooked around his cuffs, like he was a blind feral dog.

  He traveled through a series of doors. He heard locks being unlocked, keycards being swiped, thumbprints being scanned.

  He was pushed forward into a narrow space. Another cell, he thought. Then the blindfold was pulled off and he saw he was inside an elevator. A squad of security guards stood outside, assault rifles raised. Then the doors closed.

  He rode the elevator alone. The security guards weren't taking any chances. Weapons, especially guns, could be unwieldy in an enclosed space. With no weapon in his hand to distract him, an unarmed combatant could have an advantage in that situation. Even with his wrists cinched together at his back, Logan had knees, shoulders, his forehead. Plenty of ways to inflict damage and injury.

  But they sent him up alone, and when the elevator doors opened, Logan stepped out into a single large room that stretched the width of the building. White lines were painted on the floor, dividing the room into sections. Each section contained a workshop. Benches and tables were crowded with laptops, computer parts, and tools. Transparent dry-erase boards were marked with diagrams and equations.

  It took him a second to realize where he was. This was the room he'd been sent to break into.

  There was only one other person there. A guy dressed pretty much the same as Logan was, in jeans and a t-shirt. But the guy had shoes, and his forearms weren't covered in bruises. He was thirty years old or around thirty years old, with a scruffy beard and messy hair that was a little bit gray on the sides. He looked lean and strong.

  It took Logan a moment to recognize who it was. Up until now, Logan had only seen him on a screen, or from far away. It was Holden Fynn. Paradime's founder and CEO.

  "Your name's Logan, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "Is that your real name? The one you were born with? Or some kind of alias?"

  "It's the name my parents gave me."

  "Interesting. I would have figured you'd have an alias."

  "I do, sometimes."

  "The information we've been able to gather on you is vague. Reads mostly the same as the information our HR department had on file."

  "That's usually how it works. We try to keep as blank a profile as possible. It's easier to fill in the details if there isn't much there to begin with. And the stuff that gets added is all dummy copy, which is easier to get rid of than actual history."

  Holden listened. His eyes showed interest, even fascination, but the rest of his face was stone.

  Logan continued. "So I get to use my real name most of the time. But undercover work isn't really my specialty."

  "What is your specialty?"

  Logan thought about it. "Improvisation."

  There was no reaction from Holden. A moment passed. "They're nervous about putting me alone in a room with you," Holden said. "The people in charge of security here. They're very nervous."

  "Why'd they let you do it, then?"

  Holden smiled. "I'm their boss."

  "Why'd you do it, then? You have to see where they're coming from."

  "I do. But you're not an assassin."

  "You really didn't find much history on me."

  "Oh, you're a killer. And a thief. No questions there. I saw the video from the park, your face wasn't visible, but I'm sure it was you. You killed a man named Barnes."

  Logan glanced away, breaking eye contact.

  "See that?" Holden said. "Your reaction when I mentioned Barnes. You looked away. Your gut reaction was something like shame. I'm unarmed and wouldn't last three seconds against you. It wouldn't be a fight, it would be an execution. Like killing a child."

  Holden paused, letting the words sink in. He added, "Besides, I think you like working here."

  Logan asked, "Where's Zoe?"

  "You'll see her in a little bit. I want to show you something, first."

  ***

  Holden led Logan into a locked room, about the size of a two-car garage. There was a workbench with laptops and hard drives and tools, and a table where a monitor was docked into a computer. The computer was a black cylinder. It reminded Logan of a small-scale model for a building.

  He already knew what it was, but Holden told him anyway.

  "This is what they wanted you to steal."

  Logan stared at the thing.

  "How were you going to take it out of here?" Holden asked.

  "One of the sandbags in the gym. I was going to hide it inside the bag and wheel it out on a hand truck. It's the same way I got a chemtorch smuggled in. How do my employers know about this thing?"

  "Someone who used to work here sold them the information. This person resigned a few months back, said she was going to do some traveling. She wasn't the first employee to resign like that. No one thought anything of it. Do you know what this thing does?"

  Logan shook his head. "No idea."

  "Do you usually work that way?"

  "Most of the time. It doesn't matter what the thing is or what it does, just how difficult it is to move. Something hazardous, like a weapon or something radioactive, I get briefed on that. Not because anyone is concerned with my safety, but because telling me about it increases the likelihood of success."

  Holden looked interested.

  "So," Logan said. "What does it do?"

  "It tells us things."

  "What kind of things?"

  "Predictions. It told us you would be here, for example. Not you specifically, but someone like you. A thief, or whatever your title is. It knew you would be here, within these walls, not out in the city. The people you work for, do you have any idea what they intended to do with it?"

  "No. But they have a lot of enemies. Predictions are useful when you have enemies."

  "Who are you working for, Logan?"

  "I'm what's called a blind contractor. I never meet the people I work for. I just meet other contractors. Some of them know more than me, some of them know less. It doesn't matter because we never talk about what we know."

  "Who was Barnes?"

  "One of the guys who knew more than me."

  "Was Prospero virus one of the things that you were hired to steal?"

  "What's Prospero virus?"

  "The thing that's eating its way through the city."

  "Then yes, it was something that I was hired to steal." Logan offered what he knew. He told Holden what had happened on the island. What had happened that day with Barnes.

  Holden listened. Then he told Logan something.

  "The man you extracted from the island. It wasn't the contagion that your employers were after. It was the other thing in his blood. The thing someone gave him before he got on that plane."

  A light went on in Logan's mind. "He'd been cured."

  ***

  Cured was the wrong word, but the right idea.

  "An experimental treatment," Holden explained. "Administered without any prior testing, at least not on a human."

  It made sense, Logan thought. A disease wasn't profitable. Not unless there was a treatment to go along with it. A plague like the one eating the city was a terrible market—all demand, nonexistent supply.

  He and Holden were in a different building, in a large office with floor-to-ceiling windows. Zoe was there too. She'd been waiting for them, sipping a cup of coffee. She shook her head when she saw Logan's bruises. The only thing marring her appearance was bedhead.

  "But the treatment works," Zoe said.

  "He's still alive. His name is Smith. Your employer was keeping him at a lab in Arizona. Those things you met
on the island got the location of the lab from Barnes—that's how they got the infected blood they injected him with."

  "If Smith had been treated, if he was in remission, why would his blood infect Barnes? Wouldn't the virus be inactive?"

  "It doesn't work that way. And his body wasn't cleared of the virus, his immune system was just getting better at fighting it."

  "Where is he now?"

  "With his employers. The CDC."

  "You've been in contact with him?"

  "No, but he's been contacting people using his Paradime account."

  "You read people's messages? That's kinda shitty of you."

  Holden shrugged. "Everyone agrees to the privacy terms when they sign up. And we're not having this conversation to debate ethics in information gathering. Also, do you really want to have that debate with me? Given your profession, your work history, your former employers?"

  Logan laughed. "So why are we having this conversation?"

  Holden tapped a keyboard on his desk. The floor-to-ceiling window flickered and turned opaque. Then it filled with a satellite image of a barren white landscape.

  "Antarctica," Holden said. Logan had already figured that out.

  Holden tapped more keys. The image zoomed in. Buildings came into focus, along with vehicles and people.

  "A facility run by the Corporation for Disease Control. This is where Smith was infected, where the plane took off from, and where the experimental treatment is currently located."

  Logan could already see where this was going. So could Zoe.

  "Let the CDC deal with it," Logan said. "Why do you need to get involved?"

  "The CDC no longer has control over the facility."

  He tapped more keys. The image on the window changed to a photo. Logan guessed it had been taken from a distance with a far-reaching lens. There were a dozen people visible in the frame. Logan had never seen them before, but he recognized their blunt features, their square jaws and thick brows. Faces that look like they'd been genetically engineered to stop fists, boots, rifle butts.

  "This was taken at a shipyard in Chile, six hundred miles from Antarctica's coast," Holden said. "We have someone down there gathering intelligence for us."