Zero State

by Jameson Kowalczyk

  "This is war for me too."

  She listened to Logan breathe through the white noise. "Daniel was someone special for you?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm sorry."

  Eliza said nothing.

  "Do you have a name?" Logan asked.

  She hesitated, then answered. "Eliza."

  "What about the other people here, Eliza?" Logan asked.

  "My fight is not with them. They don't matter. They can live as long as they stay out of my way."

  Logan was silent for a moment. A long moment. Then he said, "Put your coats back on, go outside, walk away, go make a life somewhere. The people you worked for are dead. The people I worked for are dead. We don't have to die with them. This can end here, with all of us alive."

  Eliza stared up into the camera with her remaining eye, letting the hard expression on her face answer Logan's appeal.

  He heard her answer, loud and clear.

  A second later, the lights went out.

  Eliza reached for her rifle, inches away. Her hand never made it that far. The darkness around her began to scream, a sound that overloaded her nervous system and crushed her body into a massive knot of contracting muscle.

  CHAPTER 45

  Half a floor below, Logan listened to the banshee scream of the sound grenades. The sound grenades were wired directly into the room's speakers, a modification he'd made nearly a month ago as he'd thought long and hard about what he would do should the facility come under attack.

  He was in a stairwell, halfway between the second and first levels. He was seated on the floor, tucked into a corner, with a clear line of fire to the door on the landing above. The door was locked. The locks, the public address system, the security cameras, and the lights inside the staging area were all controlled from the laptop set on the ground next to him. So were the sound grenades, though he could deactivate those with a remote control in one of his pockets, in case his sound blockers were dislodged and he fell victim to his own trap.

  He pressed the laptop closed and leaned it against the wall. He removed the headset he'd been wearing and left it on the floor next to the laptop.

  Half a floor above, the scream of the sound grenades continued, muffled by the locked door.

  He dug into a pocket and found a pair of earbuds. They looked like hearing aids. Each had a soft switch at the center. He pressed the switch on one and then the switch on the other and felt the hum of current running through the small devices. He tucked one into his left ear, another into his right, and the world around him went silent.

  He stood, adjusting the strap on his submachine gun.

  When he'd met Sam for coffee, he'd been wearing boots, cargo pants, a long-sleeved thermal over a t-shirt, his typical outfit for the past month. He was wearing that same outfit now, along with a flak jacket that had six ammo mags strapped across the front, three for the submachine gun, three more for the handgun holstered at the small of his back. His hair was pulled up in a rubber band in the same style that Zoe and Sam had teased him about. A set of night-vision goggles rested on his forehead, held in place by a strap.

  At the top of the stairs, Logan flipped a light switch and the lights in the stairwell went dark. He didn't want light to spill into the room when the door swung open. Light would draw attention, eyes reacting naturally to any slight change in stimuli, to any change in pattern, the kind of involuntary reaction that had kept hunters and warriors alive for centuries.

  Even with his enemies crumpled on the ground under the sensory assault of the sound grenades, he wanted to slip into the room unnoticed. He remembered when this same weapon had been used on him—the nerve-scrambling noise, the feeling that every muscle in his body was contracting into a knotted cramp. As painful as it had been, he'd still been strong enough to crawl his way over to Zoe. And he knew the things waiting on the other side of the door were a lot stronger than he was.

  He lowered the night-vision goggles over his brow and let his eyes adjust to the incandescent green. He pushed the door open with his left hand and aimed the submachine gun with his right. Even with the earbuds in, he could feel the intensity of the sound as it chewed at the small devices, reminding him that there was only a tiny chip of technology keeping his head from being clamped inside a vice.

  A wall of lockers stretched out before him. His targets had been three rows into the room when he killed the lights and turned on the noise. As strong as they were, he knew they would not have made it far.

  He moved left, passing directly underneath one of the speakers that screamed from the walls. He moved toward the end of the first row of lockers, and then something very close to him exploded.

  CHAPTER 46

  Eliza fought.

  Against the hot pain in her nerves.

  Against the invisible hands that restrained her arms and legs.

  Against the weaponized sound being blasted through her skull from all directions. It was like having her head trapped in a metal box that was being scraped with dozens of forks and knives. It made her eyes vibrate and her teeth itch. A sound designed to incapacitate even the toughest human.

  But Eliza wasn't human.

  She'd been designed. With dull nerves and hard muscles. Designed to suffer, designed to fight.

  So she suffered.

  She fought.

  For several long seconds, the intensity of the sound increased. Then it plateaued. It didn't get better, it didn't get worse.

  Eliza spent the next seconds learning to manage it.

  She oriented herself, reconstructing the pitch-black room she could not have seen even if she'd been able to raise her remaining eyelid. She'd been looking directly at one of the wall speakers when the lights went out. She'd dropped to her knees before the rest of her landed on the floor; she hadn't collapsed so much as she'd been crushed.

  She pictured it in her head. The room. Her body between two rows of lockers. The location of the wall speakers. A trajectory that would connect the two.

  She forced the fingers of one hand to close around an egg-shaped metal object on her vest. Forced the fingers of another hand to unsnap a button. Forced those same fingers to hook through a metal ring. Forced both hands away from her chest.

  She clenched her teeth and swung her arm, up and across her body. A big, wild motion, like a brawler's punch. At the top of the swing, the metal egg disappeared from her hand. She imagined it sailing through the dark room. She thought hard on that image, as if she could guide the projectile through concentration and force of will.

  She imagined the clunk of metal bouncing off the wall, onto the floor.

  She didn't need to imagine the hot whumpf of the detonation.

  CHAPTER 47

  A grenade, Logan realized. Not a sound grenade. The kind that was a fuse and explosive wrapped inside metal. The kind that broke apart and threw shrapnel on detonation. The kind that knocked the air out of a fifteen-foot radius with an undramatic BANG.

  The grenade had detonated a few yards behind him. Without the sonic scream shrieking from the speakers, without the noise blockers wedged into his ears, Logan might have heard a dull metal clank as the grenade bounced on the floor, might have had time to dive for cover inside one of the lockers.

  Instead, the detonation happened without any kind of warning. A wave of invisible force hit him in the back, knocking him forward. Within the span of a single second he'd gone from stalking through the dark, a hunter in complete control of his environment, to being sprawled on the floor, unable to breathe, his left arm on fire with pain, blood soaking through the legs of his pants.

  Panic spilled from the primal stem of his brain, a worst case scenario: his arm had been blown off, his lungs punctured, the arteries of his legs slashed.

  But then he pulled in a breath and felt his diaphragm unclench. His lungs were undamaged, protected by the armor plates in the back of his flak jacket.

  He found his left arm was still attached. He ran hi
s right hand over the limb and then jerked it away as his fingertips brushed a hot piece of metal jutting from his tricep. A wedge-shaped piece of shrapnel, still heated from the detonation, like the tip of a crude knife had broken off inside him. He touched it again with the blistered tips of his right hand. More like the tip of a crude sword. There wasn't much blood, the wound had cauterized itself. And it hadn't hit anything vital. Internal bleeding from a cut artery would have caused his arm to swell up like a water balloon, as blood pooled into places where it didn't belong. But the area around the wound was all hard muscle, flexed with pain.

  He gave the piece of shrapnel a tug and decided to leave it in place.

  He tried moving his left arm. It mostly worked.

  He felt his legs. Shallow wounds, little more than scratches caused by flakes of metal that had blown past him. His legs were thickly muscled, but they still made narrow targets.

  One of his noise blockers had been knocked out, but his ear was ringing from the pointblank detonation and none of the incapacitating sound was getting through.

  Logan heard another grenade explode in another part of the room, and he understood what had happened.

  The grenade wasn't aimed at him. It had been aimed at the speaker in the wall behind him. His opponents had used the same philosophy he had used: force your enemy to fight on your terms.

  His terms had been a pitch-black room filled with nerve-frying noise, where he had night vision and sound blockers and they didn't. Not a fair fight, but Logan had never cared much for bravado. He was the type to shoot first, to open up with the most powerful weapon in his arsenal the moment the fight began. Whatever he had to do to end a battle quickly with minimal damage to himself and maximum damage to his enemies.

  There was another explosion, in another part of the room. The violent noise of the sound grenades ceased, replaced by fire alarms. Red emergency lights came on.

  Force your enemy to fight on your terms. Sometimes that meant a carefully laid trap. Sometimes that meant bombing your enemy's carefully laid trap to pieces.

  Logan checked the chamber of his submachine gun, making sure it hadn't jammed or been damaged by the explosion. He tore off his night-vision goggles, threw away the remaining earbud. The cuts on his legs stung. The chunk of metal in his left arm ached. His skull felt rattled from the force of the explosion.

  If he moved quickly, he could be on them before they had their bearings. He could gun them down before they had a chance to turn this into a real fight.

  He moved quickly.

  Not quickly enough.

  He rounded the first row of lockers, moved past the second, rounded the third, aiming for the spot where he'd last seen the two intruders. They weren't there.

  Motion rushed from the locker to his right. A hand clamped onto the barrel of the submachine gun. A fist hammered his ribs then hacked his forearm. He was basically holding the weapon one-handed, his left arm numb and almost useless.

  He felt the submachine gun leave his hands, the strap nearly ripping his arm from its socket in the process.

  A hard shove pushed him back, away from the lockers, against a wall.

  The person that stood in front of him was male. The face was familiar. He'd seen it before on the island, again in San Francisco, and again among the frozen bodies in the valley outside.

  Logan watched as the male unloaded the submachine gun, first removing the magazine, then the remaining round in the chamber. The male tossed the ammunition in one direction, the gun in another.

  Another shape emerged from the shadows and the hellish red glow of the emergency lights. Eliza. She stepped forward, shoulder to shoulder with her companion. She looked at Logan, hard. Her face had one gleaming eye, one ragged X-shaped scar where another eye should have been.

  Logan expected her to say some cathartic words. He expected her to say her dead lover's name for him to hear before she punched his ticket.

  But she said nothing. She spit on the ground in front of him, aimed her rifle at his face, and pulled the trigger.

  CHAPTER 48

  Logan saw what was about to happen a fraction of a second before it happened. The rifle in Eliza's hands was the same one she'd carried in from outside. She hadn't switched weapons when she'd moved out of the cold and into the warm. The barrel and chamber and firing mechanism were wet with condensation.

  She pulled the trigger. The gun misfired.

  Instead of traveling down the barrel, the bullet exploded out the side of the chamber, blasting bits of shrapnel through the shooter's face.

  Logan was already drawing his handgun.

  He put two bullets into the male's chest before the gun was knocked from his grip.

  Powerful hands seized him by the straps of his flak jacket and slammed him against the wall. He stomped at his opponent's knees and shins and feet. Hacked and smashed elbows and wrists with his uninjured arm. Jabbed at his opponent's throat and eyes with his fingers.

  None of it worked. His opponent was immoveable. Muscles as hard and unyielding as tire rubber.

  A hand closed around Logan's throat. He tucked his chin. Flexed every muscle and tendon in his neck. Managed to keep the grip from crushing his wind pipe.

  His skull throbbed. His face went hot. Iron fingers were pressing into his arteries, halting the blood flow to his brain. In less than a minute, he'd lose consciousness.

  He straightened his left arm and pressed his left hand against his opponent's face. His opponent turned away, protecting his eyes, maintaining the grip on Logan's throat.

  With his right hand, Logan reached across his chest, to the tricep on his left arm and the piece of shrapnel embedded in the muscle. He pinched it in his fingertips and pulled. It stuck, a sensation that reminded him of bacon clinging to a hot skillet. Skin and muscle tore as the shrapnel came free. The metal shard was a rough triangle, like a shark's tooth, its longest edge an inch.

  Logan pinched the makeshift dagger between his thumb and forefinger. He stabbed the point of the dagger hard into the inside of his opponent's elbow and then pulled his hand toward his own chest, feeling flesh separate around the blade.

  A scream, inches from his face. The grip around his throat released. His opponent stumbled back, forearm gutted from elbow to wrist. The gouts of liquid pumping from a torn brachial artery looked as black as ink under the red emergency lights.

  Logan pushed forward, off the wall, staying with his opponent. He stomped his boot heel into a knee, followed with an elbow that turned his opponent's jaw to glass, reversed the momentum of that strike to whip his arm back in the opposite direction, extending and reaching and slashing his opponent across the eyes with the crude blade still pinched between thumb and forefinger.

  Fast, vicious strikes delivered without thought or planning. Reaction and instinct developed through countless hours of training.

  If he could have stopped to think, Logan would have seen the man was dead on his feet; the deep gash down the forearm had been a fatal wound.

  A final lunging knee strike to the sternum put his opponent on the floor. The dead man landed in a tangle of twitching limbs, a few feet from where Eliza's body lay with half its face blown off.

  Logan breathed. Deep, painful breaths. Sparks danced in his vision. His hands shook from adrenaline.

  He thought, It's over.

  And for a moment, it was.

  Then Eliza stood up.

  Her left eye was an X-shaped scar.

  Her right eye stared out from a mess of seared and shredded flesh.

  But these injuries were superficial. She was close to full strength, which is more than he could say for himself. His left arm was numb from the shrapnel wound. His head was fuzzy with concussion. He was barely standing after the fight with the man who lay dead at his feet.

  He watched her draw a knife from a sheath on her chest. The steel shimmered red under the emergency lights, ten times as long and sharp as the pitiful piece of shrapnel h
e held.

  Logan turned and ran.

  CHAPTER 49

  Eliza smiled with what was left of her face. The smile felt like blisters popping and scabs tearing as muscles moved under skin that was burned and shot through with shrapnel and swollen from the bruising force of the exploding round.

  She passed her knife from her right hand to her left and knelt to pick up the handgun. Logan's gun, stripped from his hand by Adam.

  Ahead of her, Logan disappeared into the red light and shadows.

  She followed.

  CHAPTER 50

  Logan knew his odds of outrunning Eliza were about equal with his odds of beating her in a one-on-one fight. He thought of the island, how he'd left her standing in that village, miles from the coast, no vehicle, less than thirty minutes before the whole landmass would be wiped off the map. He thought of how fast she would have needed to run, and then swim, to get clear of the island before the bombs started to fall. And that was after she'd been run over by a half-ton robot.

  Logan pushed through the first door he found, into a narrow corridor made narrower by the shelving units that stood against one of the walls.

  He slammed the door closed, blinked his eyes to adjust to the bright white lights that felt unbearably harsh after the dark red room behind him.

  He couldn't outrun her, but he didn't need to. He only had to stay ahead of her for a little while longer, enough time to get his hands on a weapon he could use to kill her.

  The shelving units were tall freestanding structures made of lightweight metal and loaded with heavy-looking boxes. He took hold of the nearest unit and heaved, putting to use the extra muscle and weight he'd packed on in the past weeks. The torn triceps in his left arm screamed. But the shelving unit began to tilt. Gravity took over and Logan let go.