Zero State

by Jameson Kowalczyk

  He lifted a bow off the rack. It was heavy but lighter than a rifle. Drawing the bowstring required strength, but holding it at a draw required almost none, the tension transferred onto the cables and cams. He marveled how the bow's limbs were flexible even at the impossible temperature. In the days to come, he would learn that the bows had been brought here by a researcher on a previous rotation. A materials engineer who was an avid bow hunter. The blades and bowstrings were made from a composite material designed to withstand extreme cold and were designed for hunters in Alaska, Siberia, places like that.

  Logan eased the tension off the bowstring and placed the bow back on the rack. He chose a rifle and a sidearm, loaded both, and zipped additional ammo mags into pockets on his spacesuit.

  Armed, he stepped outside. He pulled the door shut behind him and tested the latch to make sure it was secure.

  The day was bright, windy, and cold. Visibility was good. He moved away from the shed, away from the ramp and the doors and the underground facility, and out onto the frozen landscape. He wore snowshoes and carried trekking poles. The rifle was strapped across his back, in a way that he could slip his arm through the strap and have the weapon shouldered in a fast, smooth motion. Tucked into a pocket inside his spacesuit was a handheld navigation device that he would use to find his way back if he got lost or disoriented. In the far distance he could see the cell towers atop the steep ridge. In the near distance, he could see the blue wound of the crevasse and the patch of snowfield that was rough with the aftermath of yesterday's battle.

  It seemed like he moved forward for hours, never getting any closer.

  Then all of the sudden he was circumventing the crevasse, keeping his distance from the edge, choosing his footing more carefully than he had up until now, avoiding burned scrap metal, craters from high-explosive rounds, discarded weapons, and all manner of frozen carnage—bodies and limbs and unidentifiable chunks, spattered with frozen blood and frosted over with ice.

  Earlier, when he'd crossed part of the battlefield on his way into the facility, Logan had felt the weight of all this death on his conscience, and he felt it again now. He reminded himself that, despite what the aftermath might look like, that it had been a battle and not a massacre. He reminded himself that he'd been vastly outnumbered. That he'd come very, very close to being killed. That even if he'd brought better guns, that the battle had finished with fists and boots and bludgeons.

  These thoughts kept the horror of it all from overwhelming him.

  He began to move, trying to piece together a timeline of the battle, trying to retrace his steps across the battlefield.

  He could have told himself that most of the bodies out here were not real people, that they were brainwashed killers that had been grown in a lab, but he had never believed in dehumanizing the enemy. He passed a hand that stuck upright from the snow, it's fingers ice-covered claws, like there was a body underneath trying to dig itself from the grave. He tripped on something that looked like a rock half-concealed in the snow, and realized it was a pile of organs, frozen solid. He saw a body whose mask and goggles had melted onto its face, creating an alchemized deathmask of flesh and plastic.

  He thought of the dead bodies of mountaineers that were scattered across Mt. Everest, where it was never warm enough for flesh to decompose, and he realized that this place was not so different. He thought of how he would feel if Zoe were to see this, or Holden, or any of the people inside, the scientists and researchers that he was now living with, and he was filled with a profound shame. He welcomed the snow and ice that would bury all of this from view.

  He moved on.

  Ninety-four minutes had passed since he'd stepped from the darkness of the tunnel and into the cold daylight. He was sweating inside his suit. His muscles burned. He was stopping every few minutes to let his heart rate settle. He needed a meal and hours of sleep. His energy levels and strength and endurance were wasted from the days before, strained by the injuries that nagged his body and the emotional stress of being surrounded by so much death.

  But then he spotted what he was looking for, on top of a hill that swelled from the ground at the battlefield's edge, a familiar pile of metal wreckage.

  He climbed, pushing with the trekking poles, using the big muscles of his legs and glutes. The ground was pitted from the thousands of rounds of ammunition that had rained down and littered with the blood and pieces of the bodies that had been caught underneath that rain. This is where the battle had truly begun and where it had almost ended. This was where he'd fired the first volleys at a distance, thinning the ranks of the army they'd sent for him. This was where they had sighted on him and let loose with their tanks and then moved in for the kill, changing the battle from a long-distance artillery engagement into a close-quarters maelstrom.

  At the top of the hill, he found the metal remains of a robotic mule that had been blown apart by a tank shell. And on the other side of the hill, the second mule, still intact but immobile, its hydraulic joints ruined and rigid after hour upon hour in the subzero temperature.

  Logan moved toward it. The cargo compartment was iced over and he used a chemtorch to cut through the locks. Inside were a variety of items that he'd packed and unpacked and packed again before parachuting onto the frozen continent: a patch kit for his suit that would have been useful at the bottom of the crevasse, four days worth of food, camping gear, spare ice axes and snowshoes, an extra rifle, a sled that could be used to drag all this gear if the mules became inoperable.

  And a black armored case.

  He fumbled the clasps with his gloved hands and opened the lid. The inside was thick with insulation. The weapon it contained was roughly the size and shape of an assault rifle, but it was both bulkier and lighter. There were two grips, one in front of the stock and one underneath the barrel, and two triggers, one for metal slugs and the other for high-explosive rounds. It was a marker, like the one he'd used to direct fire from the swarm drones the day before. Because when you went alone into one of the most remote and hostile environments on earth, you packed backups.

  Logan closed the case. He loaded the sled with the marker and any other gear he thought might come in handy, and then he headed back toward the lab, stopping at the shed to stow the rifle he'd taken earlier and some of the gear that he'd taken from the mule.

  He moved down the ramp and through the massive doors and into the tunnel, and realized that no one had tried to lock him out.

  ***

  Logan sat cross-legged on the bed, his back leaned against the wall, the laptop computer on the mattress in front of him. He'd chosen to sit on the bed instead of the desk because he could look at the door while he worked. Sitting at the desk would have meant putting his back to the door, and he didn't trust the people around him enough for that. Not yet.

  There was a knock at the door. Or more accurately, a knock on the door frame, because the door was propped open.

  He looked up from the computer screen to see Samantha. She was still wrapped up in the bulky sweater she'd been wearing earlier, but her hair was braided instead of tied into a messy bun.

  "Hi, Samantha," Logan said.

  "Call me Sam. Everyone does," she said. "Working on anything interesting?"

  Logan's first instinct was to lie, to say he was just clicking around, looking at the news, wasting time. But he reminded himself that he wanted the people here to trust him. And earning trust meant being honest, being transparent.

  "I was just checking on my apartment."

  She furrowed her brow in curiosity.

  "Here, have a look" Logan said.

  Samantha stepped over to the bed, pulling over the chair from the desk. He turned the computer so she could see the screen. A browser tab was opened to Logan's secure site, the one linked to the silent security system at his apartment.

  "It's set up so anytime someone opens a door or window, an update posts to the site. No updates have been posted, which means that no do
ors or windows have been opened since I locked the place up last month."

  Samantha nodded. "So no one has broken into your apartment, that's a good thing."

  "It is. But right now, I'm more concerned with someone breaking into here."

  "You think they'll try to retake control of this place?"

  "I don't think they have enough manpower to try something like that. But I want to be ready, in case they do."

  "What does being ready entail?"

  "A warning system. Weapons. A plan on how to defend this place, and how to escape if necessary."

  There was a change in Samantha's body language, like she was uncomfortable with this topic of conversation. She stood from the chair, pushed it back over to the desk. "How do you like your room?" she asked.

  "I'm not sure I'm thinking of it as my room just yet. But it's perfect." The room was one of the living quarters on Level 2. Its former occupant had been one of the CDC employees who'd been sent home when the facility was taken over a few weeks back. There was a bed, a desk, a closet, enough floorspace to pace back and forth or roll out a yoga mat.

  Samantha said, "Nicer rooms make it a more appealing place to work. That helps recruiters attract better talent to work here. Also, people tend to be more productive when they have some personal space to retreat into, especially when we're this isolated. I remember when I first got here, thinking the rooms were a lot nicer than I expected. You look at this place and you know that every inch down here cost gobs of money to engineer, and you expect your room to be like a cabin on a boat." She looked at his black-and-blue forearms. "More than half of us here went to medical school. You should have someone take a look at you, make sure none of your injuries are more serious than they look."

  Logan shook his head. "It's just a couple of bruises. I'll be fine."

  Sam said, "This has to a be a little awkward for you. You're probably wondering how much you can trust us. If anyone here will turn on you. But we had our own meeting, after the meeting with Holden. We're all very, very upset by what's happening in San Francisco. That virus… it came out of this lab. It's our fault that it got out. And for the past month, we've just been sitting here, held hostage, unable to do anything about it. And tomorrow, we start figuring out how to stop it before it gets worse. We're glad you're here. You can trust us."

  CHAPTER 37

  Before a single physical cell was put into place, her body was long strings of code inside a computer. A scroll of numbers, letters, and symbols that specified every tissue, organ, and system in her body. Heart, brain, lungs, muscles, nerves, blood. Her designers had tinkered with these numbers. Increasing her strength. Increasing her lung capacity. Increasing her threshold for pain.

  Her skeleton had been designed like a suit of armor. Her bones were thicker and denser than that of any natural-born human, and her skull was no exception. The bullet had struck her left eye at an angle, where it had destroyed the eyeball but ricocheted out from the eye socket, never entering her brain. The force had knocked her out cold, and the resulting wound was a gooey mess in one of the body's most delicate targets, enough to convince any witness the shot had been lethal.

  But it had not been lethal.

  ***

  "Do you have a name?"

  The man was not old and not young. He wore a white coat. There was a tablet computer in his hands.

  The walls of the room were a soft blue. There were windows covered by blinds. A TV was mounted on one of the walls, the screen turned off. Reflected in that dark screen, she could see a person in a bed, surrounded by machines. The person's face was hidden behind a mask of bandages. Her own reflection, she realized.

  The man sat in a chair at the foot of the bed. He was unshaven, his eyes were light gray and excited.

  He spoke:

  "The paramedics thought you were the victim of a violent crime. You were found by a roadside, left in the weeds. You'd been shot in the face. You had no identification on you, no phone. You were wearing shorts and a sports bra, but no shoes. You had some cuts and bruises, but no signs of sexual assault. The likely scenario was that you had been out running, were attacked by one or more people, and fought back. We thought one of your attackers had shot you in the head and left you there, taking your ID, phone, shoes, and other belongings."

  No. She thought the word but didn't speak it.

  Memory came rushing up at her:

  Heat and the smell of burning fuel, burning rubber, burning metal. Bodies in bloodstained hazmat suits sprawled on the pavement. Flashing lights and approaching sirens. Running. Over a fence. Crashing onto dirt and gravel on the other side. Tearing off the boots and the cumbersome pants of her own hazmat suit. Running. Throbbing pain in her skull. Loose skin flapping around her ruined eye.

  The memory was jarring, nausea-inducing.

  The man in the white coat opened his folder and removed a plastic sheet, about the size of a piece of paper.

  "At the hospital, they took an x-ray of your skull."

  He held up the transparent sheet. It was dark at the edges, ghostly white at the center. She stared at the black and gray image, at the bare bone structure of her face. Within the white dome of her brainpan were four dark nodules, each the size of a dime.

  "The technician thought they were bullet fragments, but when the surgeon opened your skull, he saw that these were something else. Some kind of implant."

  She noticed more details about the man. His nose had been broken at some point. He had thick hands and scarred knuckles.

  "Do you have a name?" the man asked.

  She thought about it and answered. "Eliza."

  "Where did you come from, Eliza?"

  "Is this a hospital?" she asked.

  "It's a medical center. Privately owned."

  "How did I get here?"

  "Doctors have a protocol for when they see something like the implants inside your skull. Enhancements or biomedical technology that's outside the boundaries of the current market. This protocol is in place to protect people. From black market surgery. From human experimentation. When a doctor sees something like this, there is a number they are required to call by law, an agency that handles these investigations. A government agency. Because despite what everyone believes, the government of this country still writes the law. So your doctors did what they are under oath to do. A phone call was made. You were handed off to us."

  "How long have I been here?"

  He ignored her question. "We've kept you in a comatose state. There was swelling in your brain, but that has subsided."

  Underneath the bed sheets, Eliza flexed her legs, forcing blood to the muscles.

  "Your brain has been networked, is that correct?" the man asked. "You're a part of some kind of network?"

  Eliza said nothing.

  "We understand that your memory might be fuzzy. But we need to know who you are. We need to know who put these implants inside your head. Did you have the procedure done overseas? Were you being experimented on? Did you escape? We need to know who did this."

  Eliza flashed on an image: Her body on an operating table, her scalp peeled back, her skull open and her brain exposed, being scrutinized by men in surgical masks and bloody gloves.

  She stared down at the bedclothes.

  "My brain was printed with the nodules already in place."

  "Printed?"

  "I was made in a biologic printer. My cells put in place one at a time."

  Everything about the man's eyes and facial expression and body language changed. He seemed to vibrate with interest.

  "Tell me about this machine, this printer."

  Eliza thought how to describe it. "It's big, the size of an elevator. It sits on a wooden platform. The materials are kept in barrels..."

  "No," the man interrupted. "Tell me how it works."

  "They never told us any of that."

  "Us? There are more of you?"

  "Yes."

  "Can yo
u take us to them?"

  Eliza thought of The Farm.

  "Yes," she answered. Then, "May I have some water?"

  The man nodded, "Of course." He stood. The feet of his chair scraped the floor, making a shrill sound. He left his folder with the x-rays on the chair. There was an eagerness about him now. She was cooperating. She would take him to the place where she was made, the place where he would find others like her.

  There was a cart against the wall, near the door. He stepped over to it and picked up a bottle of water. He twisted the cap, breaking the seal, and held it out for her.

  Eliza's arm shot from the sheets, driving a fist into the man's solar plexus. She felt the muscles of his abdomen deform under the impact of the punch. A single huff escaped his throat as his diaphragm seized.

  The man stumbled back, falling against the wall and then onto the floor, his breath strained and wheezing, his hand reaching inside his coat for a weapon or a panic button.

  But Eliza was already out of the bed, her numb feet smacking the floor. Her legs buckled the instant she put weight on them, but her momentum carried her forward. She landed on top of the man, catching his hand as it was drawn from the coat—he had a pistol—and shoving her forearm against his throat. She was tethered to the bank of machines next to the bed by wires and tubes and a catheter. Her legs felt like they were on fire, a painful pins and needles sensation she felt down to the bone.

  With his free arm, the man slammed a fist against her ribs. He drew back and hit her again, this time in the kidney.

  She pulled her forearm off his throat and jabbed the tip of his jaw with her elbow. His eyes swam inside his skull, like two fish darting away from the glass wall of an aquarium. His body went limp, unconscious.

  Eliza pried the pistol from the man's hand. She pulled the tubes and wires from her arms. Her vision blurred with tears as she eased the catheter out from between her legs.

  She sat with her back leaned against the wall, waiting for the burning in her muscles to subside, her hand clamped over the man's mouth and nose, smothering him as he lay unconscious.