by Harrison, S.
The men begin moving, fanning out in formation. Their torsos are rigid, and their assault rifles are propped under their chins as they stride through the snow toward me. It isn’t long at all before I’m facing a semicircle of guns. One of the men aims his rifle at my chest as the other four sway their guns from side to side, scanning the forest around them.
“Where did you come from?” barks the man.
“I was with my brother. We were gathering wood when a bear found us. He told me to run, and now I’m lost.”
“Show me,” grunts the man. “Show me what is in the bag.”
I unsling the sack from my shoulder and reach into it, feeling the ridges on the sides of the logs.
“Slowly!” shouts the man.
I pull one log out of the sack, and as I do, I press a piece of bark on its edge and begin counting slowly down from ten in my head. I throw all three logs on the snow in the middle of the half circle, then show the man the sack is empty and raise my hands.
“What should we do with her?” asks one of the men.
“We have our orders. We shoot her and leave her for the wolves.”
“I can’t just shoot a peasant girl for no good reason,” protests another man.
“We were ordered to kill anyone who walks into this forest. That’s reason enough for me.”
“And what if her family comes looking for her?” asks another.
“Then we shoot them, too,” says the man. “Radio Viktor. Tell him to come back now.”
“Viktor won’t be coming back.” The moment I say the words, the man standing in front of me looks me right in the eyes.
“What?” His expression changes as he goes from simply being on edge to suddenly being highly suspicious. “Who are you?”
“The last person you will ever meet.” I dive onto my stomach as the spring-loaded log launches into the air. With a pressurized hiss, it spins like a lawn sprinkler, spraying thick blue gel in a wide circle before crunching softly back down on the snow beside me. Molecular acid eats through flesh and bone faster than molten steel burns through Styrofoam, and all around me that fact is proven true as I hear guttural croaking and wet gurgling sounds coming from every direction. The wildly contorting men desperately clutch at their faces as their noses, eyes, lips, tongues, and vocal cords are rapidly liquefied. One man claws at his collapsing skull, and his jaw detaches into the palm of his hand as his skin drips like molten wax from his disintegrating fingers. Only one of them manages to make any kind of stifled scream as they all drop one after the other, crumpling into heaps as what remains of their heads dissolves into mushy pink puddles of hair and blood. It’s pretty gross, but very effective. I must admit, Onix sure can fabricate some pretty nasty gadgets, but I’m not gonna let him take all the credit. After all, I did design this one myself.
No need to hide these bodies; there’s no one left to find them. I throw the empty acid log into some nearby thicket, put the other two logs and one of the men’s pistols in my shoulder sack, and head through the trees into their camp.
There’s a steaming pot of hot water hanging over a lazily flickering fire surrounded by a ring of stones. There are three self-assembling enviro-shelters, six folding stools, and two open plastic footlockers with cans of food and field rations. Two of the shelter doors are open, but the third is closed and secured with a padlock. I kneel beside it, unscrew the end of a log, retrieve my multitool, and easily pick the lock. Inside, there are two folding beds and a small table with a tidy stack of books, a computer slate, and a manila folder. I open the folder and sort through the documents inside.
Halfway through the files, I find what I’m looking for: a map. It shows the forest, a red circle indicating the position of this camp, and, farther in, two and a half kilometers northeast of here, a small building. That’s where my target must be. Harold Rachtman, the ex-Blackstone board member who stole highly classified computer files on Richard Blackstone and fled into hiding. I want those files. I need to know all I can about the man so I can get close to him . . . and kill him with my own two hands. I memorize the map, step out of the shelter, fish a compass out of my pocket, and start running.
I crunch through the snow as quietly as I can, but I also keep up a good pace. It isn’t very long before I see smoke rising out of the chimney of a small wood cabin up ahead. I cautiously approach, circling around through the trees skirting the side of the rustic building. As I get closer, I see movement from the corner of my eye and quickly dart out of sight. I carefully peer around the side of the tree and see two men with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders walking from behind the cabin. One offers the other a cigarette, and they stand at the corner smoking and talking quietly.
I watch and wait. It doesn’t take very long before they finish their cigarettes, share a drink from a flask, and separate, heading in opposite directions around the outside of the cabin. One disappears from view around the back, and I wait a little longer, until the other man is almost to the corner at the far end. I’m about to make my move to the closest outer wall, but I instantly freeze in my tracks as a man’s voice suddenly bellows into my mind.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”
I press my back against the tree and swear under my breath. My Operations Commander has found me.
“How did you find me, and how are you transmitting a signal so far from base?” I reply in my mind.
The Commander laughs, but he’s clearly not amused. “Is that all you’ve got to say for yourself? You’re supposed to be in Belarus, and yet I discover that the tracking software has been hacked and you convinced Onix to pilot a transport to Siberia! Now, tell me, how on god’s green earth do you think it’s in any way acceptable to undertake an unauthorized mission? What the hell are you thinking?”
“I just need to do this,” I say in my head.
“Shut up,” barks the Commander. “Ever since the mission in Paris last week, you’ve been lashing out at everyone in sight. I don’t know what bug you’ve got up your ass, and frankly, I don’t care, but you’d better get that insubordinate ass back here right now, or I’m gonna find a way to twist your brain until you do exactly what I want, exactly when I tell you to!”
“I’ll come back in when my mission is over,” I reply.
There’s a moment of silence before the Commander speaks again. “I thought you might say that. That’s why I’ve sent someone to retrieve you. Stop what you’re doing, and head to the landing zone at the southern edge of the forest. A transport will be arriving in six minutes. After that, we can discuss your punishment.”
“No. I’m resuming the mission,” I respond.
“Follow my orders, or so help me, I’ll stuff you right back into the test tube you came from!”
I ignore the Commander and peek around the tree. I can’t see the two guards. “I’ll see you when I get back,” I say in my mind as I dash from cover and sprint toward the cabin.
“Stop, Infinity One! We have new information!” shouts the Commander as my shoes crunch through the snow. “Harold Rachtman is not in that cabin! He only wanted us to think that so he could draw you out into the open!”
I keep going. If he thinks piping lies into my head is going to stop me from getting those files on Richard Blackstone, then he’s sadly mistaken. I’ve almost reached the edge of the clearing surrounding the cabin when a blinking red light at the base of a tree catches the corner of my eye.
“Get out of there!” shouts the Commander. “It’s a trap!” The words echo through my head, but the warning comes too late as the blinking red light on the proximity mine becomes a ball of roaring fire.
BOOM!
I’m thrown through the air as splinters of wood and ball bearing shrapnel pelt through my clothes and into my body. I hit frozen dirt and roll, speckling the snow with blood. Warning tones of damage ping-pong back and forth through my head, and a rasp
ing groan escapes my lips as I attempt to blink my wavering vision back into focus. I try as hard as I can to concentrate on healing my wounds, but the damage bells are blaring from every conceivable direction, and my rattled mind is having trouble wrangling them into any kind of manageable order. I’ve never been injured this badly before.
I can feel a voice transmission broadcasting into the back of my mind, but the words won’t formulate; they’re clashing and distorting with the thrumming tones of warning, and I can’t discern anything coherent from the chaotic jumble of gibberish. Contact with base has been lost. I try to get up, but my damaged body protests. I can hardly move.
The two men that I saw outside the cabin are shouting and running in my direction. The front door of the cabin flies open, and six soldiers with rifles come pouring out. All eight men hurry to where I’m lying, and soon I’m completely surrounded. Only two of them are pointing their weapons at me; the rest are gazing down with mixed expressions of pity and confusion.
“A farm girl?” asks one of the men.
“Perhaps. Perhaps not,” says another. “It doesn’t matter either way. She will not survive long from those injuries.”
“Someone should put her out of her misery,” murmurs one of the men.
“I will do it.” I see boots step toward me and hear the snap-clack of an automatic rifle being cocked.
“Wait!” calls a voice. Boots crunch through the snow, and the circle is broken by yet another man. He’s dressed in the same winter-camouflage uniform as the others, but this man is heavyset and older than the rest. His face looks weathered by experience, and his large belly makes his padded jacket bulge over his belt. He looks down at me and appears to be pondering my fate as he sips hot liquid from a steaming metal cup.
“Bring her . . . ,” he says in a low, gravelly tone, “and link the computer to the satellite. If they sent this girl, our employer may want to see her face before she dies.”
The fat man turns and walks away while I’m rolled onto my back and lifted into the arms of two men. I don’t have the means or the energy to struggle. It was a mistake to come here. I know that now. My new obsession with Richard Blackstone is going to cost me my life. I look at the sky while I’m being carried. As gray as it may be, it looks so clean and clear and beautiful. I wish I could rise out of the grasp of these men and fly away to safety. Fly into the air, free like a bird. Like the bird I see flying above me, its wings black against an expanse of gentle gray. I watch it move across the sky, and my heavy eyelids close for a moment. When I open them again, the bird has stopped in midair and, strangely, has doubled in size. In fact, it’s getting bigger by the second.
That’s when I receive another message.
I don’t hear it in my head like I do when the Commander transmits orders to me. This is different. This is a message that I sense with my whole body. It’s a stern feeling of reassurance, a feeling of hope, and an urgent, almost angry insistence to hold on and not give up. There’s only one person I know who communicates without words like that. I manage the faintest of smiles. My combat partner has arrived.
Zero is here.
I try to keep my eyes on the dark shape overhead, and as it steadily grows larger, a faint hum causes the men to look skyward. There are pointing fingers and heated questions as they discuss who the transport might belong to. Is it friendly or not? Is this their employer paying a visit? No one seems to know. Even the fat leader is unsure. Rifles aim warily toward the shape as the two men carrying me quicken their pace, jostling me roughly as they go. All of a sudden, the transport descends so quickly it seems to fall from the sky, and the hum of the engines becomes the droning roar of thrusters as the huge aircraft comes to a hovering halt just above the treetops. The men are still watching it closely when a flare of light erupts from the transport’s undercarriage and a thudding line of pockmarks drums across the frozen earth. Puffs of snow and dirt burst all around the soldiers, and three of them are instantly cut down in the hail of heavy gunfire. Through the sound of whining turbines, I can hear the panicked shouts and the rapid beats of machine guns as the remaining men shoot into the air.
Another feeling ripples through me. “Hold on,” it seems to say.
“Hurry,” I whisper out loud, and almost as if my plea has been heard, two points of light flash on the side of the transport, and two black dashes streak through the air.
One of the soldiers bellows, “Get down!” and my captors suddenly dive away, dropping me roughly onto my stomach as the missiles hit the cabin and detonate with a bone-shaking explosion.
TA-TOOM!
I feel the heat on my face. Wood and masonry fly in every direction. Soldiers shield their heads with their arms, and debris peppers the snow as the cabin is completely obliterated in a giant plume of fire.
As the echo of the blast subsides, I peer through the gap in my narrowed eyelids. All around me, men are prone on the ground. A few begin to move and get to their feet. From the corner of my darkening vision, I see a streak of white fall from above and land in the midst of the remaining soldiers. There are quick movements, pistol shots, grunts of pain, one plea for mercy, and then silence.
I hear boots crunching through the snow toward me. Someone kneels beside me, and hands grasp my shoulders, rolling me over onto my back.
I look up at the silver visor of a stark-white combat mask. He doesn’t speak a word. In the two years that I’ve known him, he never has, but I can feel a wave of angry concern radiating from him and washing through me.
“I know, I know. I should have told you,” I rasp.
He pulls me up into his arms, and as he carries me, groaning and bleeding, toward the lowered ramp of the transport, I let my heavy eyelids slowly close as I drift away into the blissfully silent darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
I gasp. My heart races at a hundred miles an hour as my eyes dart wildly in every direction. The icy air of the forest has vanished as quickly as it came, replaced once again with the relentless rushing wind of the darkness. What the hell just happened? One moment, I was trying to focus on Infinity; the next moment, I was her!
In between measured breaths, I try to gather my senses, and it doesn’t take long to realize what I just experienced. That was one of Infinity’s memories. And judging by what she said, it happened only three weeks ago. I let out a long exhale, trying to calm my nerves, which is easier said than done when I have questions stampeding through my mind like a herd of wild elephants. Why is Infinity so obsessed with my father? What does she know that I don’t? How did she hear that voice in her head, a voice that I swear I’ve heard before, and who saved her? The person dressed in white? The one she called . . . “Zero”?
I absolutely must know more—more about Infinity’s experiences and her memories, more about her life. It might be the only way to find her, and it could also be the key to waking her up and reasoning with her. I screw my eyes shut and do my best to order my thoughts.
Take me back into Infinity’s mind; take me back. I repeat the words over and over in my head. Take me back to her; take me back into her memories, back into her life.
Nothing happens.
With so few clues to work with, I decide to focus on details of the memory I just saw while it’s fresh in my mind. Maybe, with a little luck, it will lead me somewhere new. I try to remember what it felt like to be her again, to remember how strong and determined and capable she was to begin with, but then how vulnerable and afraid she felt when she was lying wounded, bleeding in the snow.
It seems to do the trick, because I’m not waiting for very long when an unfamiliar swell of raw emotion rears in my gut. The flurrying of the wind in my ears begins to ease, and the rippling void softens, gradually giving way to a mild breeze gently wafting over the bare skin of my legs.
I think it’s working. Take me back.
I open my eyes and scan the darkness all around, hoping to not
ice some kind of visual change. Everything seems to be just as dark and boundless as before, but it feels very different, almost like I’ve hit a pocket of cool mist. I take another deep, focusing breath and try to distill the thought of Infinity even further. I remember her surrounded by trees, completely in her element on the field of combat, at home in the turmoil, at ease with her deadly purpose. I slowly breathe out, holding the thought in my mind, and with the very next inhale, I’m rewarded with the fresh, woodsy scent of pine needles.
It is working! Take me back to her.
I try to feel her relief when the one she called “Zero” arrived. I picture the instance in my mind, and there he is, clad in stark white from his mask to his boots, dropping out of the sky to save her. He’s falling from the transport overhead, his body as straight as an arrow, but when he’s almost halfway to the ground, the transport suddenly vanishes, the sky disappears, and the snow on the forest floor beneath him turns as dark as volcanic glass, perfectly smooth and glossy black. The pure-white silhouette of his body slows and floats in midair before it bizarrely begins collapsing in on itself, silently folding and scrunching and condensing until it’s little more than a small, pale circle. The circle spins, slowly tumbling down farther and farther before completely disappearing into the liquid black below, rippling rings across its surface like a pebble plopping into a pool of water.
I can feel my frustration building. The image doesn’t make any sense and isn’t leading me anywhere. I screw my eyes shut and try again, but this time Zero doesn’t appear at all, only darkness and the same small, white pebble. I try to ignore it, wiping it away into the void, but the image persists, sharpening at the edges, becoming clearer and clearer in my mind with every passing moment. I snort into the dark, irritated, and when I open my eyes, to my bewilderment, the imagined pebble is there; I can actually see it in front of me. Small and smooth, it’s floating in the emptiness right beside me.
I slowly reach out and cup the pebble in my hand. I bring it to my face and study it, rolling it between my fingertips, and suddenly, like a cell dividing, the pebble splits into two, its identical twin dropping into the palm of my other hand. As strange as this is, I don’t feel surprised in the least; instead, and without really knowing why, I whip my arm out and throw one of the pebbles out into the void. It tumbles in a wide arc, curving through the dark. I can even see its shadowy reflection on the liquid black below, rising up in an opposite arc to meet its falling double. The pebble and its reflection collide without a sound, breaking the surface of the black water together, sending dim white ripples spanning out from the shining droplet where they met. What is this? What’s happening?
