by James Knapp
“He’s awake,” I heard a voice say. “Call the Agency and get them off our backs.”
“Doctor Pellwynne, process him, then get him out of here,” another voice said under his breath. “We’ve had two hacks into our system, looking for info on him, already. And anyway, we need the bed.”
Most media reports agreed that the transmission that triggered the carriers had come from Heinlein Industries, and the FBI’s information backed that up. There were unconfirmed reports of a security breach over at Heinlein as well. An automated emergency call had gone out, then been cancelled. No one at the campus had called out since, and all incoming calls were being bounced to the messaging system. Even JZI traffic was blocked.
“Agent Wachalowski?” a woman’s voice said. A cold hand gently touched my forehead. I opened my eyes and saw a pretty woman with skin the color of chocolate and black hair grouped in short twists. She looked down at me with tired eyes. As the report scrolled by between us, she smiled.
“Welcome back,” she said. “I’m Doctor Pellwynne.”
“Where am I?”
“The VA Hospital.”
I looked around. It was crowded, but the facility was first tier. It was a far cry from Mother of Mercy.
“Why here?”
“You needed some special work done,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She approached the bed and sat down in a chair next to it. I saw an orange flicker inside her pupils.
“What do you remember about the attack?” she asked.
“You don’t have time for this,” I said, “and neither do I. I’m sorry.”
“We have time,” she said. “What do you remember?”
“They mobbed us,” I said. It was sketchy, but I remembered the room filling up with bodies. They were revivors. “How many of them are out there?”
She kept her face calm, but there was fear there, in her eyes.
“A lot. That’s all I know. I haven’t had time to think about it; we’re running at triple capacity. The hospital is secure—for now.”
“I need to get out of here.”
“I understand, but I need to speak with you first.”
“Why?” I didn’t understand.
“What do you remember about the attack?”
“I …”
I remembered falling down into the water. I’d been hit in the head. I was disoriented and went down on my back. I fired as one of them lurched toward me.
The ax. It had taken the ax from the wall.
Under the blanket, I’d closed my right fist and felt no pain. I stretched the fingers and made the fist again.
I looked down and saw a crease near the joint of my right shoulder where some kind of major work had been done. It was deep, and the skin there was thick and white. The scar that had been there since my last tour ended abruptly at that crease. I heard the tempo on my vitals monitor pick up.
“Before you look,” she said, “I want to prepare you—”
I pulled the blanket away and held up the arm in front of me. It was gray. Under the skin, I could see a network of black veins.
A cold feeling sank in the pit of my stomach. The sound of the heart monitor sounded faraway as it began to blip faster.
“Calm down,” Pellwynne said.
I flexed the fingers again. The muscles worked under the skin, but the hand wasn’t mine. The arm wasn’t mine. My tattoo from the service was gone. The scars, the calluses, even the body hair …they were gone. In their place was the smooth, gray limb of a dead man.
“Calm down,” she said again. She reached out and took the gray hand in hers, then placed her other over the back of it.
“Feel that,” she said. Her hands felt hot, like warm wax.
“They’re warm,” I said, but it wasn’t true. The fingers she had touched my forehead with were cold.
“You’ll get used to the temperature difference.”
“Who authorized this?” I asked. It was all I could think to say.
“It was at the Agency’s discretion,” she said.
“Who, specifically, authorized it?”
“I can’t tell you that. I’m sorry.”
She gave my hand one last squeeze and then let go of it.
“You will get used to it, Agent. I promise.”
I checked my JZI, and it had detected the new system. Information regarding the nerve interface and the paper-thin filter that separated the living tissue from the dead popped up and scrolled by. System vitals appeared and provided feedback on the arm’s condition, right down to the nanoblood version.
“Where is …” I started to ask.
“By the time anyone got there, it was gone,” she said. The revivors had taken it.
“You’ll have full use of the new arm in two weeks, and it will be stronger than the original,” she said. “Until then, you’re running at near ninety percent. You can go back in the field, but be careful.”
I nodded. I’d seen replacements fitted in the field before. I’d told myself it was the next best thing. The reality of what had happened hadn’t hit home yet. It buzzed at the edge of my mind, like a fly at a window that couldn’t get in. I felt weirdly distant and calm.
“How long was I out?”
“You’ve been in surgery for four hours.”
Four hours. Fawkes had issued the code four hours ago, and we were still at a standstill. I had to get out of there.
Van Offo was offline. I tapped into the hospital records and checked the inpatient list; he’d been brought in to have the bullet removed from his neck, and was discharged two hours ago.
The man arrested at the site, Rafe Pena, hadn’t fared as well; he was still checked in. He’d suffered broken bones, internal injuries, and multiple bite wounds. He was listed as being in serious but stable condition.
I found the FBI records for the lockdown at Mother of Mercy and brought them up. According to them, Van Offo and one SWAT team member were taken out, along with me, by the EMTs. The SWAT officer died in transit. There were no other survivors from the basement.
“Where’s Pena?” I asked. Pellwynne frowned.
“He’s not ready for transport yet,” she said. “His injuries were fairly traumatic. Don’t worry about him right now.”
I watched one black vein bulge in that gray arm. I tried, but I couldn’t look away from it.
“You know, it may not seem that way now,” Pellwynne said, “but you’re very lucky, Agent Wachalowski.”
I cycled through the footage. Bodies lay in a foot of water that had turned red with blood. The cages had been torn open and the captives inside ripped apart. There was blood spatter painted across the walls, punctuated by bullet marks. It had been a slaughter.
“I found you a good match,” she said. “The nerve interface …it’s some of my best work. I know that doesn’t make this any easier to swallow. There was enough residual tissue to use with the growth accelerators. The join is solid. The blood is the latest version. It’s field upgradable, so you won’t have to report to Heinlein for transfusions. You shouldn’t experience any of the tingling or phantom muscle ticking usually associated with the older variants, and you’ll have full—”
“When can I leave?”
“As soon as you want. I’ll be honest, Agent—we could use the room.”
I sat up and put a call into the Bureau to let them know I was back on my feet. Fawkes could have played this card at any time—he didn’t choose today at random. I had to find out what the reason was.
“You can sign for your weapon when you check out,” she said. “I’ve left my contact information on your JZI, should you have any questions or need anything.”
“Thanks,” I said, but I barely heard her. She lingered for another minute; then I was vaguely aware of her leaving the room. The fly continued to bounce at the window as I stared at the black vein, following it as it branched out beneath the stranger’s cold, dead skin. Though terror was brewing somewhere inside me, I couldn’
t look away.
4
FIRST STRIKE
Nico Wachalowski—VA Hospital
I left the hospital room in a daze. The circuit request still flashed in the corner of my eye. MacReady hadn’t picked up. Maybe he wasn’t going to.
Because of the trouble in the streets, the halls were crowded. Patients sat, holding bloodied gauze in place, outside doors while doctors rushed by. People were shouting, but I barely heard it. I felt like I was moving through the chaos in a bubble. Numb. Blood dotted the floor in a wandering line, and I followed it, heading toward the elevators.
I eased relaxant into my system, but even with the drugs I couldn’t shake the jitters. One of those things had cut off my arm. While I’d lain there, bleeding to death, they’d carried it away and eaten it. The last man I’d seen with any link to what was happening out there was somewhere in the building right now.
Halfway down the hall, I stopped, and an angry looking nurse brushed past me. I accessed the hospital’s records again.
Rafe Pena. Room 9E-C.
He was on that same floor, being held for questioning. The next time someone in scrubs moved past, I grabbed his arm. He looked irritated, but winced a little when I applied pressure.
“Room 9E-C,” I said.
“Back down the hall and to your right,” he said, pulling his arm free. Before I could say anything else, he was gone. I turned away from the blood trail and began moving back the way I’d come.
The room had three gurneys, but only one was occupied. The empty ones were still dressed in bloodied sheets, and on the third lay a whip-thin man. His pockmarked face was slack, and there was gauze covering the right side of it. I watched my hand push the door closed and then lock it.
“Wake up, Mr. Pena,” I said. He didn’t respond right away, and I kicked the gurney. One of his eyes cracked open, and when he saw me, the other one followed suit.
He sat up as I approached him, and when I breathed in, my nose filled with the stink from my clothes: rank blood and sweat, combined with the fouled basement water. I unbuttoned my jacket, the thick, gray fingers tripping me up for a second, then removed it and tossed it onto one of the empty gurneys. Sprouting from the rolled-up sleeve underneath, the thing that took the place of my arm didn’t look human. Muscle striations stood out in bands under the gray skin, webbed with a network of black veins. Just the sight of it brought back memories I’d give anything to forget, memories of that damp, dark pit and the cold hands that held me down as they …
I overrode the JZI and eased another dose of relaxant into my bloodstream. Warmth and numbness crept through my body as I closed my eyes and counted back from ten. My teeth chattered as I sucked air through my teeth and let it out slowly.
“You can’t—” he started to say; then I clamped that gray hand down on his neck. His skin felt hot underneath it, the signals jumping up through the grafted nerves like sparks of electricity. His eyes popped open as the fingers squeezed.
“What was going on in that basement?” I asked him in a low voice.
“Fuck you.” He grunted. I willed the dead hand to squeeze tighter, and it responded. His face turned darker, and blood began to bloom through the gauze over his right cheek.
“Tell me,” I said.
“Fuck …”
He grabbed the forearm and pushed, but I leaned into it. As he struggled, in my head I heard Sean’s voice from long ago, back in the grinder. I was underground, where they’d dragged me. Their cold fingers dug into my skin from all around.
“Wachalowski! Wachalowski, where are you?”
In my mind, I heard the crunch as the first set of teeth bit down. I felt the impact of a knee in the side of my head, and that cold hand that clamped down on my face.
“Wachalowski!”
Rafe threw a punch that thumped into my ribs, but there was no power behind it. He threw two more, then tried to kick me, but got tangled in the blanket.
“I want to know what was going on down there,” I said. I eased up on his throat, and he gasped in a breath, then coughed through strings of spit.
“I don’t know anything,” he wheezed.
“You know who you worked for.”
He got one leg free from the blanket and thrust his knee into my side, but again, there was no power behind it. He was weak and injured. An IV tube still trailed from one of his arms. I didn’t need to strong-arm him, but something was building inside me, out of my control.
Still feeling like I was moving through a haze, I let go of his neck and reared back the fist. I fired it down like a piston, and his teeth broke against the knuckles of the dead hand. A front tooth and canine disappeared into his mouth and he coughed through a spray of blood, both red and black. He held one hand between us as I hammered his face again.
“Hey!” someone shouted from the hall. The person worked the handle and found it locked.
This is wrong, a faint doubt whispered in my ear. Al can make him talk without hurting him. Something inside me had tipped over the edge, though, and I was beyond listening to the voice.
I grabbed Pena and hauled him off the gurney, carrying him across the small room before slamming him back into the wall. My fist thudded into his cheek, and the gauze tore away to show a deep bite wound underneath. I fired my other fist into his gut and the breath went out of him. He slid down onto the floor, where he doubled over and vomited.
I raised my foot and stomped down on his left shoulder. He screamed as his collarbone broke and the joint dislocated. Blood was running from his mouth and nose, drops bleeding into the splash of puke in front of him. He put his other hand down in it and slipped forward on the floor.
“Get that door open!” a voice shouted outside.
The dead hand grabbed him under the armpit and I heaved him up until his toes brushed the floor. Red drops pattered down onto my shirt as I flipped him over my shoulder and down onto his back. His head struck the tiles and his eyes swam.
“Wait—” he started to say, but I hit him again. The dead fist went up, leaking black blood, then hammered his face again and again. Even when his hand stopped clawing me and his body went slack, I kept driving that gray fist down. In my mind, I was back in the grinder, back down in that hole, and they were around me, pushing their faces in closer.
“Wachalowski! Wachalowski, where are you?”
Pins and needles pricked through my knuckles, pulsing each time they connected with meat and bone. The sensation was muted and flat, as if the nerves in the skin registered pain, but not like before. It reached my brain through a filter, sanitized and scrubbed.
Distantly, I remembered once telling Faye that revivors didn’t feel pain. She hadn’t looked sure then. There had been some part of me that was never sure either, but I knew now. I was right.
Faye. I wondered where she was now.
“Stop!” a voice shrieked, a woman’s voice.
I felt blood under my fists with each impact. I’d forgotten who Pena even was or what he was. He became the thing that had transformed a piece of me into what I hated and feared more than anything else. Something primal wanted to destroy the thing underneath me, to pull that meat from the bone, like they had done to me.
“Stop!” the woman screamed again.
There was panic in her voice, and it snapped me back. I blinked something salty from my eyes and registered the scene in front of me.
I was kneeling on the floor over Pena, who wasn’t moving. His lips were split, and his mouth was filled with blood. His face and the floor around it were a mess of red and black, and I saw thick drops of nanoblood dripping from between the fingers of my closed revivor fist that was still poised for another strike. At some point, they’d gotten the door open and come inside. A crowd of people had gathered to my left.
My jaw was pulled open, teeth bared. A string of drool hung from my lip.
Bite …
It was like an itch, deep in my brain. When it registered, I felt my stomach begin to turn. I wiped the drool awa
y and closed my mouth, resisting the urge I couldn’t explain. Having a revivor limb didn’t make you a revivor. It didn’t …
Do it …bite …
I slammed my good fist into the wall, and the people around me jumped. One of Pena’s eyes was sealed shut, but the other one moved. He was still conscious, barely. I leaned in close so he could hear me.
“Names,” I said in his ear. He gagged and choked up blood onto my collar.
“Deatherage,” I heard him whisper.
“Who else?”
“Let him go, Agent!” the woman’s voice shouted.
“What were they doing down there?” I said.
“He’s …going to …wake them …up …”
“What?”
He choked again. He couldn’t speak. I scanned through his wrecked face, past hematomas and chips of bone. I was looking for augments—a camera eye, anything that might give me more information. A small object stood out behind two teeth lodged near the back of his throat. He had an implant, some kind of slimmed-down JZI.
I used a ’bot to drill through its security and began pulling data. There wasn’t much stored there, but I got three names: Harold Deatherage, Ang Chen, and Dulari Shaddrah.
“Ang Chen,” I whispered. I knew that name. Ang Chen was one of the high-level Heinlein researchers that was helping to develop the virus that would hopefully shut down Fawkes’s network, when the time came. How did his name end up in Pena’s JZI?
“What about Ang Chen?” I said in his ear. He didn’t answer. “Who is Shaddrah?”
The connection between us dropped as the implant shut down. Rafe’s vitals began to dip.
“Damn it! How are they involved in this?”
Pena’s remaining eye closed, and blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth. My fist, still in the air, tightened.
“I said, ‘stop’!” the woman’s voice screamed again. I turned to my left and saw several men and women dressed in hospital scrubs. In front of them was Doctor Pellwynne, her eyes wide with shock. Her expression was horrified. Tears had formed in her eyes.
A few feet away, I saw my reflection in the side of a polished steel cabinet. My face was as pale as the revivor’s arm next to it. My cheeks looked drawn, and there were dark circles under my eyes. My face and neck were spattered with Pena’s blood.
