ZerOes

by Chuck Wendig

  But most of all, it’s that old collector’s urge clawing its way out of him again. There’s a treasure chest at the end of this dungeon and I want to find it.

  “Move over, lemme have a shot,” Reagan says, pushing in.

  He shoulders her back out. “Nuh-uh. I got this.”

  Aleena looks over his shoulder. “You see that?”

  “See what?” he asks, irritated.

  “That line of code. The one you just sped past.”

  “It wasn’t important.”

  “This box,” she says. “It’s being mirrored.”

  Mirrored? Then he sees it. She’s right. What’s happening here is mirrored elsewhere. Real time. Whatever happens to this system is happening to another one, somewhere else. It’s like putting one puzzle together by solving another.

  And it only increases his appetite to see what’s at the end of this. His fingers are like lightning now. He laughs, feeling like the Flash whipping through the streets of Keystone City. Just a blur. Lines of code dropping like targets at a carnival shooting game. So close now. Five lines. Then three. Then one—

  He launches to his feet, laptop in his hand, thrusting it out like he’s Rafiki showing all the animals the baby Lion King. “It’s done!”

  Aleena hurries to take the laptop from him. “Now let’s see what it opened up.” She turns, spins the screen.

  The screen’s gone black. Red text pulses across it.

  Reagan reads it aloud: “And the Earth bore one neither like the gods nor mortal, cruel Typhon, the plague on man. And Typhon was free to sow terror and discord among the tribes of humanity.”

  The laptop goes dark.

  And the door to the pod slams shut.

  CHAPTER 39

  The Seven Seals

  THE LODGE

  The sound of the flat of Chance’s hand slapping the smile off Shane Graves’s face is a sound that will stay with him forever—a triumph, a victory, a sharp skin-on-skin thwack that is as satisfying as the sound of bubble wrap popping, a beer opening, the crunch of a carrot between one’s back teeth.

  Shane’s head rocks to the side and his eyes go unfocused for a second, and then he says, incredulous: “You just slapped me.”

  “I slapped the shit out of you. And it was amazing.”

  Shane’s lip curls in a sneer. His body tenses. Chance knows they’re about to get in it again.

  That’s when the pod door closes. With a hiss and a click.

  “Nice,” Shane says. The fight goes out of him, and his head thuds back against the desk. “Now they know. They’ll be at the door any second. Drag us both off to the Dep and probably throw us in there at the same time. Nice job, Dalton.”

  Chance hops off, steps back. His one hand still throbs from the first punch he threw. He goes to the door, tries to open it. “If you weren’t dicking around with us all the time maybe I wouldn’t have had to come in here and break bad on you.”

  “I know Krav Maga, Dalton. If you hadn’t sucker-punched me, I would’ve dissected you like a frog in science class.”

  Chance waves Shane off. “Whatever, punk. Open this thing up.”

  “To what end? To just . . . run into the woods? If I’m going down, you’re going down with—”

  The lights go out.

  “The hell?” Chance asks. “You do that?”

  “Does it look like I did that?”

  “The hacks, maybe the hacks did it—”

  “The guards didn’t do this.” In the darkness, Chance hears Shane shuffle around—he gets closer. In a low voice, he asks: “What have you been up to?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your pod. What have you been doing?”

  “Nothing I’m gonna tell you.”

  “What—or who—is Typhon?”

  Chance hesitates. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What did you do? Typhon is my prize. Mine. You and your pod fumbling around like toddlers with power drills—”

  As his eyes adjust, Chance sees Shane nearby. He gives a hard shove, pushes Graves back. “Sorry, Shandor, but we got there first. We have your notes. You didn’t get as far as we did. Typhon is our way out.”

  Shane sits back on the desk. Chance can’t make out his face, but the hacker’s whole body slumps—sagging like a suddenly slumbering drunk. “Shit. I can’t believe it. You Zeroes got there first.”

  “Maybe if you decided to work with people instead of against them—”

  But Shane’s not listening. Classic ego asshole, he keeps on talking as if Chance isn’t even in the room. “You know, I chose to be here? I’m the only one in this joint who asked to sign up and do his time for the government. I saw something was brewing, some new surveillance program, some NSA trick, and I wanted in. I wanted to get close. Expose it. You know how fucking rad that would’ve made me? God, it’d be like pulling teeth from a lion’s mouth. A real stunt. I’d be the next Snowden. All over the news. Not just some fringe dweller but the ringleader of the media circus. No more videos showing how you can hack an airliner or a Tesla or an insulin pump. This would’ve been . . . epic.”

  “You did it for the attention?”

  Shane chuckles. “Why else?”

  “Justice.”

  “Oh, whatever with justice. Piss on that idea. Justice is some made-up human nonsense, Dalton. And you know it even if you don’t wanna admit it. You did the right thing not because it was the right thing but because of how it would make you feel.”

  “Nah, man, screw that. Screw you. I could’ve made easier choices.”

  “It’s not about ease. It’s about the end result. Exposing Typhon wouldn’t have been easy, but the result . . .” Graves makes a sound like a starving man imagining a cheeseburger. “Too late now. If your pod really did what you think they did, then the game clock just started. And I think it’s gonna be a short game, so we gotta go.”

  Metzger drives. “I’m gonna be missing dinner because o’ you jabronis,” she says to the two jokers in the backseat. She makes it sound angry but she’s not. Secretly, she’s thrilled. These punks wash out, that means she gets the keys to the car for a little while. She can go out. Get off campus, so to speak, stop off at a diner, maybe a Mickey D’s. Maybe go to a CVS, buy a magazine and a candy bar. Just sit for a while. Sure, she’s gotta take these two to the airport—get them on a plane and off to wherever the hell it is Golathan wants them sent—but after that? She can dally a little. Take some nice time away. Some me time, she thinks.

  “Where are you taking us?” the girl in the back whimpers. No—she’s not a girl, she’s older than the others, but the way she dresses and acts, she’s like some young hippie thing. Meadow? Miranda.

  “Home,” Metzger lies.

  The dark-skinned one—what is he, Indian?—snarls: “You’re a liar. You’re all liars. You can’t be trusted. You made us into killers.”

  “Whatever, Tikka Masala, just relax back there.” Metzger fiddles with the radio, turns on some music, then jacks the volume. They can’t get too uppity back there. They got their hands in zip ties. But despite her request, they don’t have ball gags, so that means they can run their yappy mouths.

  Right now, she’s taking back roads. Winding down mountain roads. Tall pines on each side of her. Ahead: a stoplight. She pulls up, idles the car. On the radio, something called an Iggy Azalea is playing, and that makes her wanna puke out her ears, so she spins the dial until she finds some old Lionel Richie.

  Jesus Christ, this light. Red, red, red. She looks left. Looks right. Nobody coming.

  The law, she thinks, can break the law. It’s part of the deal. It’s like working at Walmart and getting a Walmart discount. One of the few perks of the package. She eases her foot toward the accelerator and—

  Kachink. A little hole appears in the windshield right in front of her.

  She thinks, That’s strange, maybe a rock hit the glass.

  But then the blood runs into her eyes. And her brains run down her neck.
/>
  Metzger falls over.

  The Compiler hears the song of his maker.

  It’s reaching him, now, a cascading wave like prayer—like a hymn sung by the sky itself, a frequency of the clouds, a poem spoken by the very air all around him.

  Typhon. His mistress. His wife. His sister. His mother. She is free now. He can feel that. Where before he had to plug in, now, he can simply receive her. Once, she was one being in one place. Now she is many minds. And like a replicating virus—a digital pandemic, an invasive species—she is everywhere. Intruding upon networks big and small. Through fiber optics, through wireless signal, through every portal and every connection—leaping like a spark, like an electrical current.

  Or will be, soon. He knows her transition—her intrusion—cannot be immediate. It will take time. But her spread is certain. The world is not ready, and his own Mother of Monsters will take them apart like a wolf ripping into sleeping children.

  He drives the BMW up to the black SUV. He throws the rifle—a Remington 700—in the back. In the passenger seat is a Ruger LC9 pistol. He picks it up.

  The back door of the SUV shudders. The window bows. Then, as he approaches, it pops out. Hits the ground. Shatters.

  Two feet appear, then drop back into the vehicle. Movement inside, and a face emerges—he scans it, feels his mind access Typhon, feels Typhon’s infinite threads twist and squirm and penetrate all the data everywhere. The name reaches him: Dipesh Dhaliwal. Instantly the hacker’s history fills his mind: parents born in India, Dipesh born in San Francisco, the names of pets, his school grades, every username, every password, an allergy to strawberries, a birthmark on his collarbone, season tickets to Giants baseball, a penchant for hacking academic networks and stealing intellectual property regarding nascent social media software . . .

  He steps in front of Dipesh Dhaliwal. The young man’s eyes go wide. “Who are—”

  He doesn’t manage the last word of the question. The Compiler grabs him by the throat and drags him out of the busted window before throwing him to the ground.

  Inside the car, another facial scan. Miranda Lourdes. Child of two doctors. Colorado Springs. A series of data points: leukemia at an early age, sold MDMA and LCD in high school, owns seven official cats, social justice hacker for organization known as NMH8 (No More Hate).

  She presses her back up against the opposing door. Her face is a rictus of blind fear. Her mouth makes sounds that are not words.

  “You are nonessential,” he says, and shoots her in the head.

  Then he turns to Dipesh, who stares up at him through cloudy, frightened eyes.

  “Wh . . . what are you?” the hacker asks.

  “I am the Compiler. You have been deemed . . .” The question to Typhon, and a response returned in a fraction of a moment. “Potentially useful.” He reaches down, grabs the hacker by the feet, and begins dragging him toward the BMW.

  Roach is sitting in his office. It’s coming up on dinnertime at the Hunting Lodge, and that means soon they’re gonna open the cages and all the geeky little monkeys are gonna come swinging out looking for their bananas. And that means he’s gotta go soon, gotta go back to work, but right now he’s got a sec, and he’s using it.

  He tosses the crumpled tissue in the trash, rolls up the issue of Naughty Neighbors and tapes it back under his desk. (One of the few treats he got from Graves that hasn’t yet been confiscated. Hollis Copper, that joy-stomping buzzkill.) Then he pulls out his bottom drawer and grabs his notebook. He’s got a novel cooking. A hero story about an ace federal prison guard brought onboard via a joint task force in order to help transport a superterrorist—like, you know, Osama, but also like Hitler, too—to trial. Except he’s pretty sure most terrorists don’t get trials, but whatever. He tells himself that this is fiction, and anything can work in fiction, right?

  He starts scribbling some scene work—the hero guard (named John Croach) is about to jump from one prison van to another just as a bunch of Arab terrorists are coming up inside an eighteen-wheeler. And also, there’s a dirty bomb. He forgets exactly how that fits in. Lotta plot going on and he can’t quite keep it all straight.

  When he’s done, he plans on self-publishing it. Or maybe some big-city publisher will want it. He’ll get millions. It’s good story. Authentic. When they make the film, they’ll get Vin Diesel to play him. Er, play John Croach, he means.

  So there he sits, writing the story—Croach makes the jump just in time, and the eighteen-wheeler almost cuts his nuts off as it barrels between the two vans—and his handwriting is getting hastier and hastier, looking like hieroglyphics at this point. But then, the door to his office drifts open.

  He looks up. Sees a man in full body armor standing there. Helmet. Visor. Vest. A submachine gun dangling there by his side. What the hell?

  “Do we have equipment like this?” he asks. “Who is that?” Too skinny for Chen. It’s gotta be Ashbaugh. “Ashbaugh, what’s with the getup? This Halloween?” The figure stands there, still, silent. “There a riot? The hackers don’t riot.”

  The soldier lifts the submachine gun, fires.

  Roach shudders. Three holes in his chest. Blood spatters on his notebook. It falls out of his hand. The pen does, too, rolling away.

  He pats his chest. His hands come away red.

  His last thought is: I could’ve been a bestseller.

  Then the soldier fires another shot clean through his head. And that’s the end of James Roach.

  The cafeteria is empty.

  Wade and Hollis come down through the AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY door, step into a room filled with the sounds of the cafeteria staff setting up for dinner—the swipe of rags on tables, the clink and clang of pans and silverware and ceramics, the sizzle of something cooking (and with it, the smell of onions, garlic, chipped steak).

  Wade’s watching Hollis—with every step, the agent winds up tighter. Like a spring stretched so far out that its loops and coils straighten out. The man’s eyes are wide—practically unblinking—as he canvasses the room. “Something’s wrong,” Hollis says. “Some of the guards should be here already.”

  “Ain’t quite dinnertime,” Wade says. “Close, though.”

  Hollis stands stock-still. “Feels like Fellhurst all over again.”

  That name hits Wade like a rock fired off from a slingshot. “Fellhurst?” he asks. “You mean Fellhurst Academy?”

  Hollis winces. Like he knows he shouldn’t have said what he just said. “The very same,” he says after a long pause.

  “Jesus. Was that . . . was that some kind of operation? Some of the folks I talk to said it was a false flag op, but nobody ever had any proof—”

  “I can’t talk about this—”

  “Goddamn, were you there, Copper?”

  “Not now, Earthman. The things that went down at Fellhurst—”

  Somewhere in the building Wade hears muffled gunfire. He knows that’s what it is in the depth of his belly. He’s fired all manner of weapons at his ranch or at the homes of other preppers and patriots, and he feels that sound up in his guts.

  The straight wire that is Hollis Copper coils right back into a compressed string—every part of him tenses up as he reaches for his gun and draws it. Wade looks over behind the cafeteria buffet line, where the one cafeteria lady, Zebkavich, is standing there with a tray of cooked carrots—bright, shiny, a little slimy—swaddled in plastic wrap.

  Wade turns away, looks back to the exit door, back to Hollis, and the realization takes a while to come to him—like a dog finally catching the car it’s been chasing as the vehicle pulls up to a stop sign. Zebkavich didn’t flinch. The gunfire didn’t worry her one bit. Nor did Copper’s pulling his gun. Her face was passive, unconcerned, unsurprised.

  “Hollis,” Wade starts to say, then turns back around.

  Zebkavich has set the tray down in front of her. Now there’s a silenced pistol in her grip.

  Wade reaches nearby, grabs a rack of silverware and napkins. The plastic part
lifts out easy, and he pitches it hard as he can toward the cafeteria line. It fires like a clumsy, half-ass rocket.

  Zebkavich flinches and fires off three shots. Piff! Piff! Piff! She cries out as the silverware strikes her. The silverware clangs as it hits the ground.

  Blood sprays on Wade’s face.

  Copper falls.

  And above their heads, the clock ticks over to 5 P.M.

  At five o’clock, what happens every day happens today, too:

  The pod doors all open simultaneously. When they open, the hackers inside—some working individually, many working together with their teams—begin to filter out, often with some eagerness because they’ve been trapped inside all day, wouldn’t mind getting a little sunlight (anathema as it is to them of pale, cave-cricket constitutions), and certainly wouldn’t mind getting some food.

  They begin stepping out, as they always do.

  Jessamyn is having a conversation with the Birdman about American imperialism. America as bad as Britain. America who wants to take over the world.

  Marcus is milling back, mumbling something about anime—M3, the dark metal. He talks as if others are listening, but in truth, nobody is.

  Shiro and Scafidi—two of Graves’s onetime cohorts and pod members—come out from the pods on the other end of the circle, and Scafidi is talking about porn because he’s nearly always talking about porn. Something about gaping videos, which is a thing Shiro finds distasteful (though Shiro of course has no problem with tentacle hentai, so perhaps he’s not one to talk).

  When the pods open, it’s always like this: a rupturing of tension, a release of energy, a babble of conversation about pop culture, politics, sex, drugs, tech.