by James Knapp
What is this place? I asked as I followed him. He led me through a large, rusted metal door, into the darkness beyond. The doors slammed shut behind us with a loud thud, and we moved down the dark hall. Farther on, we descended an old stairwell.
It used to be a factory.
Used to be?
No one has come here in a very long time. That’s why Samuel picked it.
You said his name before. Who is Samuel? I asked.
Samuel Fawkes. He organized all of this. He was the one who first realized what was happening, and he knew he would need someplace like this. Someplace no one would look.
Who is he?
He was an important figure at Heinlein Industries. He was the one who figured out Zhang’s Syndrome.
Zhang.
My memories sparked, and a point of light rose. It opened to reveal the face of a burned woman, a revivor. It moved its mouth, whispering that name to me.
Who is Zhang? I asked him. What does the name mean?
We didn’t realize the trafficker’s pleasure models were outfitted with surplus communications nodes, he said. They joined our network. It’s why they had to be destroyed before they could be questioned. You set a lot of things into motion when you passed that name on to the FBI.
From somewhere up above came muted gunfire. A few shots turned quickly to sustained fire, echoing down the hallway.
What is that? I asked.
The military has arrived to destroy this place.
So you’ve failed? I asked, but his face didn’t change.
They’ll never find Fawkes, he said.
A boom shook the floor and rumbled through the air. Grit sifted down on my head from the ceiling.
Come on, he said. Your partner was one of them. You were his puppet. You’ve been a puppet your whole life. I freed you.
He took me down into the lower levels, where huge cables ran down narrow corridors. They hung from the walls and tracks on the ceiling. The spaces were tight and cramped. There were few lights, just pinpricks in the distance, but he seemed to know the way, and I followed.
You were your partner’s puppet.
I remembered standing in the Valle home, looking down on the bodies of the family. Investigator Reece was talking to me.
A phone call would have been a neat trick, tied up like that. Do you believe his account?
Then I saw that small trace of interference; right around that time frame, something had been changed. Shanks leaned in, giving me an intense look. Then his eyes changed, the pupils growing wider.
A witness, he said. That’s promising.
The witness didn’t see anything.
Go and talk to him, and I will look around the apartment , he whispered, leaning closer. Do not disturb me for the next several minutes. Justify it any way you need to.
Got it.
You will remember this only as a product of your own intuition.
Right.
Someone is targeting us, Shanks said to himself. He looked worried. I’m sorry, but I’m on that disc. No one else can know about this. Not even you. I’m sorry.
He glanced past me then, and his eyes flashed hunger. He made sure none of the others could see us; then he slipped one of his hands into my coat. I felt the warmth of his palm on my left breast. He squeezed it, and rubbed the nipple with his thumb.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said, removing his hand. He stepped back, away from me. The memory resumed from the point of the splice. I straightened out my jacket. My face was flushed.
Shanks, check around. I want to talk to him, I said.
Yes ma’am.
I knew the memory was wrong. I used to talk to myself, that much was true, but Doyle Shanks never whispered in my ear. He never touched me; I would have remembered.
This way, the revivor said.
He pushed aside a large sheet of thick plastic, then passed through it to where the air was warmer. I could see rows of large, metal cylinders, stacked sixty feet to a rusted iron grid. Above it was a huge mechanical arm, where a length of thick, black cable still hung. He led me past, through another plastic sheet. Through a doorway, I spotted rows of people; they were all sitting in chairs. All of them were bent over. I made out IV racks and surgical tubes. We passed them and came to a flight of stairs. They led up to a small door.
Through here.
He opened it and pulled me along after him. Unlike the rest of the factory I’d seen, it was clean and brightly lit. Air whistled between my toes as I stepped through. It was some kind of clean room.
It was filled with lots of high-tech equipment. Screens displayed different parts of the factory. In some I could see different people’s faces, trailing electrodes. One showed the concrete ramp where I first entered. The vehicles there were twisted and burned black. A fire raged out of range of the camera. I stared at it while words formed in from of my eyes.
Database Synchronization Pending …Header mismatch: Auerbach, Lillian. Murder. Header mismatch: Fifield, David. Murder. Header mismatch: Tang, Hsu. Murder. Header mismatch: Ury, Kate. Murder. Header mismatch: Ng, Gillian. Murder. Header mismatch: Rios, Carlos. Murder. Removing …Removing …Removing …Removing …Removing …Removing …
More names streamed by, filling my field of vision. I counted dozens, then hundreds of them. They were all being removed.
“What is this?” I asked out loud. “What’s happening?”
“They’re too late,” the revivor said. “It’s already begun.”
12
Descent
Nico Wachalowski—The Lab/Factory Clean Room
Despite the beating she took, Calliope was still going full tilt. That was pretty good considering she didn’t have the benefit of any augmentation. As I eased adrenaline into my bloodstream, I wondered how much longer my body would hold out, but it was the only way to keep up with her. By the time she hit the last landing, I was a half flight behind her, my vision starting to tunnel around that dark spot that floated in front of my eyes. She shoved open the door at the base of the stairs and barreled through.
I ducked through after her, and the cold in the stairwell gave way to air that was warmer and damper. There were some lights mounted farther down the corridor, but not many. I bumped up my visual filters to allow more light in. How could she even see where she was going?
A sheet of clear plastic hung across a doorway ahead, cut down the middle, and Calliope swiped it to either side as she punched through. I got past it in time to see her darting through another sheet across the room, but before I could close the distance, my foot collided with something and I fell forward, crashing down onto the concrete floor.
“Cal!” I shouted. Somewhere not too far away I heard the buzzing and squealing of the electric lift coming to a stop and the gate rising open. Radio chatter began to echo down the dark corridors.
Damn it …
Bleeding again, I got back onto my feet and looked behind me to see that I had tripped over a body. There were a pile of them stacked along one wall, arms and legs sprawled. They were all nude, facedown, and arranged in rows. Some of them had the flesh cut away from the backs of their necks and heads. A woman’s body had slid off one of the stacks and was lying faceup, tangled black hair plastered to the floor and a series of electrodes stuck to her forehead.
Sean, are you getting this?
I’m reading you, but they’re blocking the visual feed. What do you see?
I’m not sure. There are a lot of bodies down here.
Leaning in to one of the bodies that had the skin stripped away from the back of its head, I zoomed in on a square hole that had been sawed through the skull to expose a section of glistening brain matter. Scanning the tissue, I saw several thin objects, like tiny rods or tubes, embedded inside. I looked back to the corpse’s face; it was a young man, his blue eyes clouded over.
These aren’t revivors; they were human beings.
I jumped as a few bursts of gunfire went off not far from where I was. Several mor
e single shots followed.
“Hold!” a voice barked over an amplifier.
“There!” another voice shouted. It was the Special Forces team. They were getting closer.
I pushed the plastic aside and ran down the hallway, where a series of thick cables snaked along the floor and walls. Through another sheet up ahead I saw a cloud of flame shoot through the air, accompanied by a high-pitched hiss. I heard the roar and crackle of fire as hot air began to blow through the seam and down the corridor.
When I pushed through the last sheet of plastic, I immediately smelled burning flesh. The air was heavy with a stinking mixture of charred hair and meat. Ahead I could see stacks of huge, rust-corroded cylinders that were used to store long-distance cable. They towered up into the darkness where I could just make out a giant mechanical arm reaching across them, sixty feet overhead.
A doorway to my right led into a large open area where I could still register a bunch of human thermal signatures, in spite of the rising heat. As I watched, another jet of flame arced through the room and lit up rows of figures strapped down into chairs before fading again. Just past the doorway against the wall, I could see a stairway leading up to some kind of control room. I ducked through into the room and hugged the wall on the other side as the smell of blood, urine, and antiseptic hit me.
Shit …
The room was filled with dozens of people, all sitting in chairs and each with a small table in front of him or her. They were all bent over, foreheads touching the tabletops where their heads and shoulders were strapped with bands of packing tape. Each of them had a surgical opening cut along the back of the head and neck that exposed the muscle and bone underneath, and the back of the skull was cut away in a neat square to expose the brain tissue inside, like the bodies I had seen piled in the back room. It looked like each hole contained a bundle of neuron probes that were inserted into the brain.
The people were arranged in rows that stretched off into the shadows. In the far corner, a fire was beginning to rage.
Sean, I found the bodies you picked up on the satellite scan.
Are they still alive?
I think so.
Each body had an IV rack next to it, the tubes trailing down under the hospital robes they wore. At each station, a wire connected a high-voltage battery cell to a thick needle embedded into the occupant’s chest. A throw switch allowed them to be jolted on cue. Beneath each chair was a plastic bucket stained with human waste. The bottom of each chair had been bored through so they could eliminate without being moved.
This is bad, Sean.
One of the victims, a young woman with a cluster of star tattoos near one eye, was dead. Her vitals monitor showed a flatline, but the others were alive. Crouching next to the man sitting closest to me, I pulled the packing tape away from his face so I could see one of his eyes. When I shined a light in it, the pupil contracted. His limbs were atrophied and pocked with bedsores.
I don’t know if these people can be saved.
A high-pitched hiss screamed through the air again as another jet of flame lit up the room and washed over the bodies in the rows. In the swell of light, I saw skin wrinkle and blacken before being peeled away, IVs bursting open in the heat. None of them moved as their flesh was seared away.
“There and there!” a voice boomed, as two rows of the hooded Special Forces soldiers began filing in from across the room, each taking one side. More flames shot through the air, and heat singed my nostrils.
There was no way to stop it from happening. If I gave my position away, they’d turn on me as well, and there was nowhere to take cover from the flames. The smoke was getting thick; it wasn’t safe to stay down there without protection. I had to find Calliope and get her back up to the surface.
My knees buckled under me without warning and my stomach twisted. For a second my vision blurred around that blind spot, and I felt sweat trickle down my back.
Sean, the Special Forces soldiers are here. They’re burning everything—
Get out of there, Nico.
Keeping low, I scanned the room for an exit. There were three options; back the way I came, up the stairs to the control room, or another door on the far wall where a series of wires trailed from the direction of the burning bodies.
The backscatter showed more people through that doorway, along with rows of what might be computer equipment. The bodies were seated, except for one that might have been Calliope.
Looking to the top of the stairwell, I could clearly make out two figures through the wall, both of them revivors. I picked out their signatures; one of them wasn’t on file, but the other one I knew.
It was Faye’s.
“Hit each one!” the radio voice barked. Over the racket, a gunshot boomed and I saw the commanding soldier stride down a row of captives. Smoke drifted from the barrel of his gun as he placed it to the temple of the next one in line, even as her flesh burned. He fired, blowing out the opposite side of her face.
“Nothing left behind, people! That means nothing!”
Faye was there. When Samuel took control of her, he brought her to this place, for whatever reason.
Wachalowski, get out of—
I cut off the communication feed. The fire was consuming half of the bodies by then, and the air in front of me was rippling crazily in the heat. The cacophony of voices, gunfire, and roaring flames began to sound as if it was underwater, punctuated by the high-pitched screams of the flamethrowers.
A warning message appeared in front of me, then another. Warning me about the temperature, warning me about my wounds and the chemical imbalances inside of me that were beginning to hit critical. A choice had to be made. I had to go one way or the other.
My legs felt like lead as I moved up the stairs, wondering whether I would be shot or burned before I ever got to the top. I didn’t turn around to see what was happening behind me; I just moved forward until my palm touched the door and I pushed it open. Everything seemed to slow down as a blast of cool air blew over me, condensing the sweat covering my face and neck into cold, hard drops. Inside, everything was white and clean and crisp.
Faye was there, sitting in a chair and looking up at me, while a large figure stood behind her. The warm hazel of her eyes had been replaced with that cold synthetic light, but it was close enough. Even without her hair, and the dark veins that branched beneath her skin, at that moment, I felt as if it was close enough.
Faye was dead. I walked away from her a long time ago, and by the time I regretted it, she was gone for good. She was dead; I had seen it with my own eyes, but the figure sitting in that chair and that face looking up at me were hers. That voice and the memories in that cold brain were hers. It was close enough.
Wasn’t it?
I fired, the muzzle flash lighting up the right side of her face for an instant before the figure behind her jerked and began to fall.
Her face was specked with black, and an oily drop began to roll down her cheek like a tear.
Stop, Agent Wachalowski.
The warning messages filled my entire line of sight, scrolling by until everything else was blocked out and I felt myself falling. The warnings flickered and snapped off just before everything in front of me went white except that one black blind spot. After a moment, that dissolved too, and I felt my head hit the floor.
Who is this?
Faintly, I heard what sounded like my gun landing nearby.
This is Samuel, Agent.
Nothing hurt anymore. I was disoriented, but I thought that I had finally pushed it too far. I had finally gone as far as I could go, and my body failed me.
His words floated in front of me: This is where it ends.
Calliope Flax—The Holding Pens
I followed a bunch of wires away from the strapped-down bodies and through a metal door that led into another big room, and that’s when I stopped. I was where I needed to be.
Across the room, the back wall was stacked top to bottom with big, clear plastic boxe
s, all with a door on the front. There were people in the cages, some up against the glass and some on their sides. Wires were spread out over the floor and up the sides of the plastic boxes, where they dropped through to connect to the heads of the people inside.
A loud screech came from behind the door in back of me, then another. I heard flames pop and burn. The goons were right behind me.
The room spun, like I got a head rush, and I heard screaming. It hit like a wave. It felt like the noise came from the people in the cages, but they weren’t moving. Their mouths were shut. There were no screams, not really, but the one who called me was there.
Eyes watched through the plastic as I went to the cage on the far bottom left and looked in. There was a girl in it, some scrawny little bitch I’d never seen before. She looked like she weighed ninety pounds, if that, with long, greasy red hair and a big beak nose. She sat on the floor and looked out at me.
“Who are you?” I asked. She just stared over that beak. Her hands were shaking in her lap, and she was sweating like a pig. Blood had come out of her right nostril in a big fat drop on her sweaty top lip.
Somewhere nearby a gun went off, and snapped me out of it.
“Hey!” I said thumping the glass with the gun I forgot I had. “Who are you?”
She put her face to the glass, and all of a sudden her eyes went freaky. The black part twitched, getting bigger and smaller. The blood drop got fatter and ran down her chin. With one bony finger she tapped the glass next to the lock, and I knew what to do. I pointed the gun at the bolt housing and pulled the trigger.
The plastic was tougher than it looked; I had to shoot it three times. I pulled open the door and went to grab her when she flinched, and all of a sudden I felt like a hand pushed me back. I stood there with my hand out.
“Who the hell are you?” I asked.
“Zoe,” she said, and right then the goons came piling in. Our own guys …they just came in, guns out, and started shooting.
Bullets punched through the cages in front of me and I saw blood spatter inside. A woman’s head blew apart as specks of shattered plastic came falling down over us.
