by James Knapp
“Could he still have been right?”
MacReady sighed. “You can always make a case for these things,” he said. “Not long after the events of two years ago, a new law was passed. It ensured that revivor consciousness would revert to pre-generation seven levels—basically removing some of the higher functions to make them more obedient but less self-sufficient. Now all revivor models of Fawkes’s generation or lower are being scrapped and replaced. One could look at those things and see how it might fit into Fawkes’s thinking.”
I couldn’t tell if he believed it or not. In the light of the monitor, his face was hard to read, and maybe he wasn’t even sure what he believed himself.
“Do you have concrete proof of Fawkes’s communication?” I asked.
“No. You’ll have to trust me on that, but it worries me, and that’s part of why I’m here. It was one thing to have Fawkes infiltrate Heinlein’s systems and access our data without anyone’s knowledge …it’s another for someone inside Heinlein to be willingly communicating with him. Before, he controlled revivors that he’d smuggled into the country to do what he needed done, but if he’s making allies inside the city who are human …”
He didn’t have to finish. That would mean Fawkes had managed to get people, regular flesh-and-blood legal citizens, to buy into his conspiracy theory and help him. That would give him a much, much wider reach. Maybe even wide enough to try to acquire weapons like the ones uncovered at Royal Plaza.
“Does Heinlein know you’re here?” I asked.
“No,” he said, “and they can’t. I don’t know who on the inside might be compromised. I won’t communicate with you over the wire for the time being, until I know, but I’ll try to help you if I learn more.”
“Thanks, MacReady. Looks like I owe you again. Be careful.”
“And you, Agent.”
He got up and headed for the door, stopping to turn back before he left. Silhouetted in the light from the hallway outside, he looked like a shadow himself.
“Even if he was right about Zhang’s Syndrome,” he said, “I would be very cautious of Samuel Fawkes.”
He left, and when he closed the door, the only light left was the soft glow from the vitals monitor. I began to fall back into sleep.
I could almost have dreamed him.
2
Whispers
Nico Wachalowski—Mercy Greaves Medical Center
Outstanding message: Pu, Sean.
The words lit up in the dark behind my eyelids. I brought the time up next to them and saw it was morning.
Opening my eyes, I found myself looking at a foam-tiled ceiling. A fluorescent light flickered off to my left.
The hospital.
The vitals monitor wasn’t beeping anymore, and my strength had returned, for the most part. I stretched. My muscles felt stiff, but I could move.
Outstanding message: Pu, Sean.
The message had come in on the channel we used to use back in the service, during silent operations. He’d never used it since. None of us had.
The message was sent at a little past three in the morning. It was flagged as an emergency transmission. I opened it.
31 03 76 11 52 57 81 1
That was it—just a list of numbers, with no accompanying text or voice.
It could have been a glitch, but it didn’t look like it. Whatever the numbers were, he meant to send them to me. I put in a call to him on the JZI, but he was offline.
I closed my eyes again and brought up the footage from the night before. The data I pulled during the raid had been removed, but I still had the visual recording up to the point I’d entered the basement. I skipped through, marking off key sections.
In a window, I watched as I tailed Takanawa down the stairwell. The view moved slowly in the darkness, letting him stay well ahead. His thermal signature trailed across the floor, and I followed it. Smaller signatures scurried here and there as a group of rats were startled. The marks intermingled for a second, and something flickered.
I stopped the recording. I remembered the distortion, but at the time I thought it was a trick of the light; I didn’t expect to see it show up on the recording. Going back, I slowed it down for a better look. The patterns from his footsteps were steady; then the rats scattered. I saw the flicker again. The glow from the footsteps disappeared for a second, then came back.
I checked again to be sure. Something blocked them out temporarily, moving right to left. Something crossed in front of them. Something I couldn’t see had been sticking to the right wall. It startled the rats, and when it did, it crossed over to the left, causing a skip in the patterns.
The Light Warping field. It would bend visible light, but not the radiation signature from the case, and not thermal radiation either. Whoever took the case wasn’t already in the basement, waiting. I hadn’t been the only one following Takanawa.
I cut back to when SWAT first broke in on him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, still dressed. Unlike the others who’d been caught, he was alone. There was no revivor with him.
“Where’d the revivor go?” I asked him.
He shrugged. “I don’t see one here. Do you?”
Bringing up the SWAT report from the raid, I cycled down the inventory of revivors that had been impounded. There were twelve total: the eleven active ones, plus the defunct one I’d found under the bed.
“She put her there.” The revivor I found in the bathroom had said that when I discovered the body.
“Who did? Who put the revivor under there?”
“She did.”
The revivor specified “she,” but it seemed unlikely Holst had done it, and no other women were found in the hotel. The only females at the site were revivors.
It hit me then. I hadn’t seen a revivor in the room with Takanawa, but maybe there had been one there. The revivor under the LW cloak could have been female; I never actually saw it. Sean told me Holst and Takanawa were there to intercept the weapons, but the original buyer might have already had an operative inside. A revivor from the outside could have deactivated the pleasure model and taken its place, stowing it under the bed of another room.
That could have put the operative in the room with Takanawa. It had an LW suit and used it to disappear when the raid began. When we let him go, it followed him, hoping he would lead it to the case before it left the hotel.
No. Upgr …forget the target …the case.
…about the …
Kill her.
Forget the target. Get the case. “Target” might have referred to Takanawa. “Kill her” must have referred to Holst.
Sean had said she was being treated here at Mercy Greaves. I brought up the inpatient records for the hospital.
HOLST, JAN—she was there, in another wing. Her condition had been upgraded from critical to stable, but the damage to her larynx was severe. She couldn’t swallow and was being fed intravenously, but, amazingly, her attacker had missed both jugulars. I checked her records to see if she was wired for Posthumous Service. She wasn’t.
“Mr. Wachalowski?”
I opened my eyes. The doctor had come in. I packed the recording away.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
“Good morning to you, Agent,” he said. “But I don’t think you should be accessing those records. Is Miss Holst classified as a terrorist?”
“She’s a person of interest in an ongoing investigation. Under the current alert status, I have authorization,” I said. His face said that he already knew this, but disagreed.
“Can I convince you to stop the records access, at least until you’ve checked out?”
I nodded. “How is she?”
“Miss Holst is in stable condition, as you now know,” he said. “She is shaken, but except for her voice box, she’ll make a full recovery. The rest will require more specialized attention, but although she won’t sing, I think she’ll speak again before it’s over.”
“That’s good news. Is she well enough for a visito
r?”
“She’s not well enough for an interrogation.”
“She’s stable, though?”
The doctor nodded.
“Thank you. Am I clear to go?” I asked.
“There is no trace of the substance left in your bloodstream, and there appears to be no long-term damage. Aside from that, you have some lumps, but nothing serious.”
“Thanks.”
When he was gone, I checked in at the FBI, but Sean hadn’t checked in. I tried his cell, but there was no answer.
31 03 76 11 52 57 81 1
The numbers floated there in front of me. Something was wrong.
I put in a call to Assistant Director Noakes. He picked up immediately.
Wachalowski, you’re awake. Good.
Noakes, where is Sean Pu?
I don’t know. In the field, I think. Why?
Did he log out?
Hold on. He went idle for several seconds. No. What’s this about?
Maybe nothing. I’m trying to track him down.
Are you checking out of the hospital today?
Yes.
Then get down here. Looks like we got another survivor from the raid last night.
Who?
Your gunshot victim in the basement—son of a bitch lived. The medics are clearing him now, and then Vesco’s going to take a crack at him.
I want to bring someone in on that, I said. He knew I meant Zoe. I waited to see if he’d argue, but he didn’t.
Then you’d better hurry.
Understood. I’m on my way. Noakes cut the connection.
I sat in the hospital bed, thinking for a moment longer. Zoe could help me get information I might not otherwise get access to. She might be able to help me in more ways than one.
I made the call. Her voice mail picked up.
“Zoe, this is Nico. I need your help,” I said. Then, after a second: “Keep this one under your hat. I’ll meet you at the Federal Building.”
I hung up, and began to get dressed.
Zoe Ott—Pleasantview Apartments / FBI Home Office
I opened my eyes, and the first thing I saw was her. I was sitting in a folding chair, angled away from a gray conference table, and that woman, that dead woman, was standing in front of me. The concrete wall behind her was painted green.
“It’s you,” I said.
The first two buttons of her blouse were undone, and I could see she still had the big scar there, right in the middle of her chest. She was wearing a wig—a straight, black, shoulder-length deal—and her eyes glowed a little as they stared out from under the straight bangs.
A big boom came from somewhere above us but it was muted, like we were deep underground. The overhead light flickered, and dust sifted down from the ceiling. It had been a while since I’d fallen asleep and ended up in the green room. I’d been hoping that dream was over for good.
“God, just kill me …” I said.
“You don’t die here. You die in a tower.”
“I hate you.”
“I know.”
I was more lucid these days, and I tried to make a point of looking around when I got stuck in a vision. The room looked the same as it always did, more or less; the table was there, and the chair, along with the three hanging lights at the far end. The electric switch box was mounted on the wall next to the metal door, and the steel panel that hid the handset was next to that. Something was a little different, though. Had the switchbox and door been on the opposite wall last time?
The boom came again, and more dust sifted down from the ceiling. Something flickered then, a red band of laser light that reminded me of a bar scanner. It shone through the dust from behind me, but when I turned around, it was gone. I couldn’t see where it had come from.
“I came to tell you something,” she said.
“Good,” I said, still distracted by the laser. I’d never seen that before. “Start by telling me what this place is.”
She just stared and didn’t answer.
“Where are we? Where is this place? What’s with the explosions? What’s happening up there?”
“I came to tell you something,” she said again.
“I know you’re real,” I said. “I’ve seen you in the real world…. Is that who I’m talking to now? Or are you just who I picture when the information comes?”
She didn’t answer, and I could see she wasn’t going to. I shook my head.
“Fine. Just …say what you came to say.”
“The city is going to burn.”
I shrugged. “Yeah. I’ve seen it. I saw it years ago. Did you come to tell me something I already know? What do you want me to do about it?”
“The day will come when everything will fall on you. The fate of everything will be in your hands.”
I smiled and shook my head. It was almost funny. Not quite, but almost.
“Then the fate of everything is in big trouble,” I said.
“That’s true.”
She turned and threw the big electrical switch on the wall. A buzzing sound came from the ceiling and three lights snapped on at the far end of the room. Two people were standing there, not moving, one under the left light and one under the right light. The spot under the middle light was empty.
The person on the left was Nico. The person on the right I recognized too. She was there that night in the factory.
“This one could be your salvation,” she said, pointing at Nico. The number 3 was pressed into his forehead in black ink.
“What happened to him?” I asked, moving closer. That scar of his usually covered a big patch on the right side of his chest and right shoulder, but now it was just on his chest. Before it got to the shoulder it stopped in a neat line, like it had been painted over or something. The other half was just gone. Everything on the other side, the shoulder and arm, were the wrong color. Unlike the rest of him, his shoulder and arm were pale and gray. They were the same color as the dead woman.
“Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is sixty percent,” she said. When I looked at her, she was staring at him, but I couldn’t tell what she was thinking. After a minute, she pointed to the woman.
“This one is a destroyer. She will cause you to lose something very dear,” she said.
She was a mean, muscle-bound woman with a bent nose and black lipstick. She had the number 2 inked on her forehead.
I got a flash, then, from that place with the cages and the dead men, the place where they tried to study us. There were other people there, people like me, all locked up, and the dead men forced us to do things…. When I thought it was all over, a small woman appeared to me and told me something …something important. She showed me how to take control of a woman I’d never met; this woman with the mean face and the broken tooth. I brought her down there to me, and she saved my life.
“What will she make me lose? Why?”
“Your chance of successfully navigating this relationship is ten percent.”
“Lose what? What does she have against me?”
Another boom went off overhead, making the light fixtures sway and shadows play over the walls.
“Goddamn it. What is that noise?” I asked.
“Some people are more susceptible than others,” she said, ignoring me. She was still pointing at the woman.
“I know.”
When I looked closer at the muscle-bound figure, I saw her left hand was a pale gray, just like Nico’s arm. It triggered a flash of memory.
“She was there that night. I’ve seen her here before too,” I said to myself. A lot of what happened two years ago, I never really got clear on. The shakes were hitting me really bad by then, and everything was happening at once. I remembered a woman peeking through a hole from the cell next to mine. I remembered being hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, and then ending up in the green room….
“I called her,” I said, remembering. “I could sense her, and I called her, and she came.”
I remembered her s
hooting the lock to my cage and pulling me out.
“She rescued me.”
The dead woman nodded. “She may save your life a second time.”
“What about the middle spot?” I asked, but as soon as I said it, it came back to me. We’d had this conversation before.
“The middle spot is where—”
“You stand,” I said.
“We will meet two more times, before this is all over,” she said. “Your chances of successful navigation are, respectively, one hundred and zero percent.”
“Can those be changed?” I asked her. “If I can pass or fail, can the percents be changed? Can I change them?”
She wasn’t listening, though. She moved away, back toward the table, and flipped the switch back down. The lights over Nico and the other one went dark.
“You said I die in a tower. Can that be changed?”
“You die in a tall tower.”
With the lights out, I saw something flickering through the glass window in the room’s door. I got on my toes and looked out into a dimly lit hallway, where a bunch of people were sitting, leaning against the walls. They were all looking at the floor, their clothes and skin burned black. Orange and red spots glowed under the ash on their coats and boots. One, a woman, looked up, her face covered in soot. Her skin was cracked and raw. She mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear her.
“What do you want from me?” I asked the dead woman. Three men in uniform stepped into view down the hall and started tromping past them, toward the door, dragging a scrawny, dirty man in handcuffs between them.
“It’s too late for us,” the dead woman said, “but not for you.”
I turned, forgetting about the people in the hallway.
“What?”
“He still needs you. He will call to you again,” she said.
“What do you mean, ‘It’s too late for us’?” I asked.
“Should he fail, it will fall to you.”
“Wait!”
The metal door opened, and dust swirled in from the hallway. The uniformed men shoved the one in handcuffs toward the far wall where the three lights were.
