The Silent Army (10 page)

The people around you don’t understand you
, Jan typed.
They can’t.

I shrugged as her fingers moved over the screen.

You need to understand what it is you can do—how to do it and when to use it. Let us show you.

“Maybe,” I said.

These people and the way they treat you make you sad, but these people, the ones who aren’t like you, what they think doesn’t matter. They don’t deserve to hold this power over you—

“Stop.”

She deleted the message. She didn’t look disappointed or mad or anything. She just stopped typing.

Nico didn’t trust them; that was the thing. Sometimes, the way he talked, it was like he thought that all those people that got killed back then deserved what they got. Sometimes, the way he talked, I wondered if maybe he didn’t trust me either, and I really wanted him to. I wanted him to believe in me. I wanted him to know that whatever side he was on, I was on it too.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

It’s okay.

I looked back at the paper Nico gave me, the one with the questions, but I knew I wouldn’t ask them. I crumpled it and shoved it in my pocket.

“Is the city really going to burn?” I asked. Her eyes got very serious.

Yes.

“Why? How?”

Meet with us and you’ll get your answer.

As I read the words, a bad feeling came over me. I started feeling really dizzy, so bad it made me sick to my stomach a little.

“I can’t ...”

If you don’t, she’ll be forced to—

I practically jumped out of my skin as a loud popping noise went off right near my head. At the same exact time, one of her eyes blew up. It just blew apart and caved in, leaving a big red hole behind. Her whole body jerked on the bed, and the eye she had left rolled in the socket, looking off at a weird angle.

The tablet slipped out of her hand and clattered onto the floor. She slumped back onto the pillow, and the machine she was hooked up to was beeping over and over. Someone was shouting from down the hall. A puff of smoke was rising from a spot in front of the bed.

I was still trying to figure out what the heck just happened when the IV rack next to the bed shook all by itself, then tipped over and crashed onto the floor. When I looked over, I saw the air ripple there, just for a second. For just a second, I saw a guy standing there. He was bald, and his skin was gray. His eyes glowed a dull yellowish color, and for that quick flash, they were staring right at me. He moved, and I saw a gun in his hand before the air flickered again, and he was gone.

What just happened?

The doctor came through the doorway. He looked from the woman on the bed to me. The look on his face snapped me out of it.

“What happened?” he asked. When I concentrated on her, just the barest blue light appeared, like a pilot light, and then even that flickered out. The vitals monitor started droning a steady beep, and the doctor’s eyes widened.

“Jesus, what did you do?”

Other people started filling up the room, pushing me out of the way. I grabbed the tablet and backed away.

“What the hell did you do?” the doctor demanded.

“Nothing, I . . .”

“Call the police!” someone yelled.The doctor reached for me and I focused on him, stopping him before he could grab me.

“Leave me alone,” I told him. His eyelids drooped, and his hand began to lower back by his side.

“Leave me alone.”

I slipped out the door and ran.

Nico Wachalowski—Sigil Veranda Apartments, Apartment #901

Mist gave way to a short squall of snow as I inched down the street. The strip of sky above the buildings had turned dull gray. Sean’s place was on the other side of town, and by the time I got there, the commuters were in full swing. Traffic had piled up in front and behind. People trudged along the sidewalks on either side with their collars turned up and their heads down. I nosed past a group of people waiting impatiently at the curb, crept down the side street, then took a concrete ramp into the garage below.

According to the apartment’s security logs, Sean got in late the night before. The timing suggested he’d gone straight home after we spoke. That put three hours or so between when he arrived home and when he sent the message. Another two had passed since then, and he never showed up at work. He was in trouble.

Heading up the front entrance, I checked the logs for visitors. There had been a handful, but none were signed in by him. Cameras didn’t record anyone who was unaccounted for, coming or going.

Inside I took the express elevator up, and then made my way to Sean’s unit. I gave the door a knock, but no one answered. I knocked again.

“Sean, open up.”

Using the backscatter to scan through the door, I could make out his coat on a rack. Next to that, I could see his shoes. Nothing moved in the gray space behind them.

“Sean, if you’re there, open up.”

I listened for a minute, but didn’t hear anything. I took my badge from my pocket and put a call in to Noakes.

Noakes, I’m at Sean’s apartment, and I need a silent entry. I also need a warrant related to possible crime in progress.

Done and done, Agent.

He stayed on the line while I held my badge to the door scanner and the bolt released, suppressing any voice or electronic response. When I pushed open the door, I saw that the apartment was dark. I went inside and closed the door behind me.

Through the thermal filter I could make out faint traces of footsteps, but none of them had been recent. None approached the door. No one had come or gone for hours.

Creeping into the main hall, I drew my gun and adjusted my visuals to let in more light. Nothing looked disturbed. The apartment was completely quiet.

“Sean?”

No one answered. The thermal signatures were very faint, but got stronger through the living area. He had sat on the sofa for a while, and there was an empty glass on a marble-topped end table. Fresher footsteps headed toward the bedroom. I followed them in.

The bed was still made, but I could make out a warm spot in the middle, as if he had lain there on top of the covers at some point. I recorded the image, then followed the footsteps through a door and into the master bath.

In the bathroom, he’d stood in front of the sink. There were drops of brown liquid on the porcelain and bunches of tissues in the trash, stained with something black, maybe ink. There was a thermal handprint on the toilet lid.

Lifting it up, I looked in and saw the water was stained pink. A wad of tissue was clogging the bowl, and floating above it was a wrinkled white orb that trailed red tissue.

Noakes, are you getting this?

I zoomed in on the eye. It looked like it had been cut out. The iris was clouded and scarred.

I got it. Is it his?

Checking . . .

I tried to scan the retina, but it was too damaged. Something had scorched it.

Kneeling in front of the sink, I fished through the trash. Under the tissues was a small, glass bottle with a dropper. It was unmarked, but had a sharp, chemical smell.

What is it?

I’m not sure. Hold on.

Back in the bedroom, I noticed some scoring on the frame next to the bathroom doorknob, and pinprick burn marks on the carpet. When I zoomed in on the latch, I saw the metal bolt had been burned through. Someone cut their way in to get to him.

Someone broke in.

I’m sending a forensics team over
, Noakes said.
Keep me informed.

Roger that.

He closed the connection.

Rain drummed against a window next to the bed. I switched to the backscatter and searched the room, looking for anything that might have gotten left behind. When I scanned across the floor, I found a safe concealed under an area rug next to the bed.

Moving the rug aside, I raised the panel to find it fitted with an electronic lock. I remembered Sean’s message.

31 03 76 11 52 57 81

I keyed the sequence into the safe’s keypad, and a moment later I felt a thump through the floor as the bolts retracted. Whatever he was trying to tell me, whatever he wanted me to know, it was inside.

I turned the arm and pulled open the heavy door. The only thing inside was a small recording device. A yellow LED flashed on one side of it.

It looked like the recorder was receiving from a wireless source, or at least it had been. I tapped into the recording buffer, and a window came up in my field of vision, displaying a test code. The recording came from a camera eye, a version of a JZ implant’s optics, or a revivor’s eye. News peddlers and paparazzi used them. The eyes had a recording buffer, but they could also transmit to an external recorder.

Sean had one implanted, then. The eye would be inferior to the recorder he already had, but whatever it recorded wouldn’t end up in the JZI buffer. The only reason for him to do that was so that he could record things without anyone at the FBI seeing them.

I played the recording. There was no sound, just a streaming image from Sean’s point of view. He was standing in the bathroom, looking into the mirror in front of the sink. I knew the expression I saw on his face; he was in trouble at the time the recording was made.

He looked into his own eyes in the mirror, giving the illusion he was looking out at me. He reached up with an erasable marker and began writing on the mirror in black ink.

I know we can’t influence you anymore.

I don’t know why.

He wiped the message away with a tissue. He dropped it in the trash next to the sink and wrote again.

I’m sorry.

He frowned, and his eyes looked sad as he added:

I tried to protect you.

He wiped the mirror clean, then looked back through the bathroom doorway like he heard something. After a second, he turned back to the mirror again. He held the marker up to it, and began to write again as a light flickered somewhere behind him.

Motoko Ai believes you are an important element. She’s been looking for you. She will contact you soon. Be careful; she lies.

Motoko Ai . . . I didn’t know that name. He wiped the mirror clean, and began writing more quickly, glancing back through the doorway again. Sparks were spitting out from the seam next to the knob of the bedroom door. A cutter was being used to slice through the bolt.

Fawkes has the nukes. He was the buyer. The same buyer was behind the first attack. Fawkes was behind the bombing of Concrete Falls.

He underlined the last part, then stopped writing and turned around as the bedroom door opened and a figure stepped through the smoke. He pulled the bathroom door shut and locked himself inside. Just before it closed, I caught a glimpse of a pale face moving toward him. It was only for a second, but the soft glow behind the eyes was unmistakable. As he turned back to the sink, I saw sparks begin to fly from the door seam as the cutter began making its way through.

Sean turned back to the mirror and started to scrawl one last message:

Second Chance—

Light flashed behind him and he stopped, throwing the marker aside. He opened the medicine cabinet and I watched him remove the small brown glass bottle I found in the trash. The camera looked up at the ceiling as he held the dropper over it. A fat drop swelled at the tip, then fell and the image immediately warped. A second later, it went blank. From the look of it, whoever came for him removed the eye, but was too late. He’d destroyed it.

The mirror above the sink was wiped clean. Either he’d done it after he destroyed the camera, or the intruder had.

Fawkes was behind the bombing of Concrete Falls.

It wasn’t some kind of terrorist protest, then. If it was true and Fawkes was behind it, he wouldn’t have staged a strike like that without a very specific reason. If Sean hadn’t taken the chance to say what that was, then he either didn’t have time or didn’t know.

I rewound the footage, looking for the revivor’s face. The recording was hectic, but he managed to pick up a few frames’ worth anyway. The skin was Caucasian but definitely revivor, with its characteristic gray tinge. It had a complete lack of hair. Follicle dissolution was usually associated with assembly-line revivors. I cleaned up the image, canceling out the motion blur. When I did, I stopped cold.

Faye.

In the image, she was stalking through the smoke, toward the door. Her eyes stared dispassionately but with purpose. She was still out there, and for whatever reason, she had come for him.

I took the recording chip from the unit in the floor safe and slipped it in my pocket. At least for the time being, no one else knew about it. I meant to keep it that way.

She hadn’t been lost in the fire. I’d hoped to track her down one day, but the circumstances couldn’t have been much worse. Sean wasn’t just a federal agent; he was more than that. In another circle, one I wasn’t allowed to ever see into, he was something else entirely.

If it got out who had taken him, it was going to mean trouble, and not just for her.

3

Rise

Faye Dasalia—Alto Do Mundo

I sat in a wooden chair and I waited. A man in the next room spoke on his cell phone, his voice easy and certain. Somehow I felt sure he was speaking to her . . . that physically frail woman with the oversized head and the fishlike face; the woman he answered to, both his leader and master.

His suite was inside the Alto Do Mundo. The third largest structure inside the city, it housed much of the elite. In life I had seen it only from afar, watching it from the rail that took me to work. Once I investigated a murder there. Part of me had always envied those inside, even then.

His apartment suite was big and very cold. It conveyed his privilege and power to all, no matter where they might look. The design he’d chosen was minimalist, open rooms integrating high-end appliances and electronics, where each line and edge was arranged perfectly. I admired what he’d done, the oasis of order that he’d fashioned away from the chaos of the streets below. My eyes followed the room’s flow, and I found comfort in it, even though I knew that it would soon be gone. Very soon the man on the phone would be dead. Very soon the Alto Do Mundo itself, and everyone inside it, would exist only as fading memories.

Normally, I’d never have gotten inside, but we were a vice of his, and he’d had me brought in, bypassing security. When I arrived, I found the door was open. In the entryway he’d left a cardboard gift box for me, with a note card. The gift box contained a series of items: an elaborate set of silk lingerie, a black wig, and an array of cosmetics. There was a computer printout, explaining what he wanted.

It should have been humiliating to me, applying makeup to my lips and nipples, cinching in my waist, and pushing up my breasts, then sitting and posing while he took his time. It should have been an affront, but as I sat on the chair, I felt nothing. The truth was that I’d hoped I would feel something. I wanted to feel some sense of humiliation, even excitement, but the reality was that I did not. The closest I came was the wanting itself.

What drove me now were purpose and survival. Not survival in the traditional sense—I’d already lost my life—but my mind was still aware. It knew that it was finite, and that whatever came after was unknown ... dark and empty and endless.

That unknown was like a void. Beneath my consciousness and my memories, it yawned like a black hole in the depths of space. With each passing second, it pulled me deeper, away from all that I knew. Any second I might fall across that rim, that dark event horizon, and plunge down through the field of my memories to the one thing left that scared me to my core. Life and death were just concepts, but not that endless unknown. That bottomless void was real.

The man on the phone was speaking Japanese. I tuned my hearing a little as he spoke, and watched the translation scroll at the bottom edge of my periphery:

No. Wherever it came from, it wasn’t supposed to be there. I was already out of the building when . . .

The words passed by over the swell of my breasts. I’d been attractive in life, and I’d known that. Men had stared at those breasts, compelled by their curves, but they were just meat now. The blood that moved through them was black and cold. The veins could be covered up with body paint, but the flesh was not alive.

The man who had me brought to him did not care.

. . . knew where I was, it was arranged beforehand. I didn’t do anything wrong. . . .

He moved past a doorway, through my line of sight. He wore a gold watch and an expensive suit of which the tones matched my lingerie. He glanced at me, and I captured his image. He was a powerfully featured Asian man, with long hair that was thick and luxurious. His skin was smooth and pampered.

Identity confirmed: Takanawa, Hiro.

He moved out of view and continued speaking. My mind drifted as I watched the words go by.

. . . should be thanking me. I managed to keep one of them. You only really need one. . . .

The field of my memories stirred like embers, a field of lights that were tagged and catalogued. I could access each at will. I saw images of him at the hotel. During the raid, the agents had let him go. He’d left with something of ours.

My memories were now of two different types: those formed before my death and those formed after. A laser line cut between, and it was there that I found my new purpose. Each second that passed, it was a reminder. In my first living memory, I was five, and for a time my memories had been pure. As my life went on, they became fragmented. Bits and pieces were stolen. They were manipulated and sometimes changed. I had been rewired by an unseen force and lived two lives, and not known. Approaching the memory separation between my life and my death, the embers came to contain more lies than truth.

Until my last, when I lay on a sofa and blood pumped out of my chest. I saw the face of the man in front of me, and heard the last words I would hear in my life.

“What a waste.”

Too much of my life had been just that: a waste. I’d worked so hard for a shot at moving up, not knowing it was all lies. I’d pushed myself until there was nothing left. I did it because I regretted my choice, and because I was afraid. Once I was dead, I didn’t want to come back. I’d have done anything to get out of it, but I never got the chance.

The name of my killer turned out to be Lev—Lev Prutsko, the last of four Slavic recruits brought in for key terror strikes. Samuel Fawkes had bought him through a broker for the price of a new car. He was the closest I had now to a friend.

Fawkes’s purpose was Lev’s purpose, and now mine: preserve the free will of all humanity. Stop any more people from sharing my fate. It was clear and absolute. An echo from my old mind latched on to it as a justice to be served and also, more secretly, as a distraction from that dark void, below.

Yes. Yes. Good-bye.

Mr. Takanawa stepped through the doorway and slipped his cell phone into his suit jacket. I sat still and did not breathe as he approached and faced me at arm’s length. I couldn’t read the expression on his face. Men had stared at me before, but this was unlike anything I recalled. He inspected me like he might a statue, not yet certain what he thought. Only his erection betrayed something more. After a minute or so, he came closer and knelt down in front of me. He moved his face close to mine.

An orange light coursed up each side of his neck, thick, hot lines that branched out before fading. I followed them down below his shirt collar, to the heavy coal that pulsed inside his chest. A thin line appeared in my periphery. It spiked each time his heart beat.

“You’re a beautiful woman,” he said, so close that I could feel his breath on my face.

Another of them once said those words to me. Later, I’d be told to forget what I’d heard, and I would, like I was told. Every time I heard them it was like the first time, unexpected and welcome.

Nothing stirred inside me when I heard them now. As best I could interpret, he was earnest, but I was not beautiful, nor a woman. I was something different now.

“I said you are beautiful,” the man said again, his eyes narrowing a little.

“Thank you.”

He looked into my eyes for a bit longer, their soft, moonlit glow reflected on his face.

He likes that,
I thought.
It’s part of it, for him.

“May I ask you something?” I said to him softly. His face changed, just a little. It wasn’t interaction that he wanted; it was something else, but I was curious.

“One question,” he said.

“Why revivors?”

He was known to be suddenly violent, and I was ready for that, but he stayed calm. In answer, he just smiled. He moved so close I saw the glow from my eyes reflected in his own.

His pupils opened to two dark, glassy spots. It happened when they exerted their power. He was trying to control me, I could see. When he failed, I saw fear creep into his eyes. The heat in his chest pulsed faster and harder, and the orange glow up the sides of his neck grew hotter as the veins there became engorged. The line monitoring his heart spiked higher. What he saw scared him, but it was more than that. It was exhilaration.

“There’s a darkness inside of you,” he said. “All of you. I can’t control you or know you, and that . . .”

He reached forward and took my hands in his own. They were dry and very warm. He stood, and pulled me up gently to face him. His eyes went back to normal.

“Come with me,” he said, and walked past me. When I turned, I saw him cross toward the bedroom. As I followed, I pulled the wig from my head and let it fall to the floor. Cold air blew across the skin of my bare scalp. When we were inside he turned, frowning as I placed my cold hands on his chest.

“That’s wrong,” he said. “Put it back on.”

I slid my left hand up the side of his neck, running my fingertips through his coarse black hair. He didn’t pull away, but was still frowning.

“You heard me,” he said. “Do what I sa—”

My hand split along an invisible seam and splayed between the middle and ring finger. His body, so alive, jumped. His eyes darted to the cavity and stared. Fear returned when the blade inside caught the light.

I could have impaled him before he could move, but the blade was not for him. A thin plastic tube shot out from beneath it. The needle locked on the heat inside his neck and plunged into the branching orange band of light.

By the time he slapped his hand over the sting, the tube had reeled back and my arm had snapped shut. He just stared at me, confused.

“What—”

The toxin acted fast and paralyzed him. His arms fell to his sides, and he staggered back. The muscles in his face began to loosen.

I stepped in and supported him as he fell. I reached into his jacket and took the gun, then tossed it onto the bed.

“What . . . are you . . . doing?” he gasped, as I eased him back onto the plush comforter. I recorded and transmitted his vitals. The excitement he’d shown before was gone now. All that was left was his fear.

Subject secured.

Good. Site 1 confirmed secure. Transmitting collection point.

Takanawa could see the gun, out of reach. His eyes locked on to it, but he couldn’t move. I watched him try to, and fail, as I sat down on the bedspread next to him. I waited for him to look back up at me.

“Where is the last one?” I asked him. He could still speak, but he tried to shake his head.

“You know what I mean,” I said. “We got the other eleven, but you were seen to take one. Where is it?”

“. . . don’t know,” he breathed.

“If it’s here,” I said, “I will leave with that and nothing else. Do you understand?”

He understood. I could see it in his eyes.

“Where is it?” I asked again.

“... not here . . .”

I’d search just to be sure, but I believed him. He’d have handed off the device before now. Lev would find out what he knew.

I left the room and changed back into street clothes, then stowed the lingerie and wig in my bag. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror, and wiped the makeup away.

It had taken time to find myself again, after reanimation. There’d been a disconnect with my reflection, like it was somebody else. At first I thought it was the physical change; the grayish skin tone or dark veins that showed through. As time passed, though, I saw it was something else.

The image in the mirror was someone else; Faye Dasalia had been lost long ago. She had been lost before she was ever killed. All that was left of her existed in me. She’d been revived, in me, when Nico woke me. All that she truly was and ever would be had emerged only in death. I’d only recently made her face my own. The woman from before was not really Faye. My memories formed from across that divide, and they were not corrupted. I was Faye Dasalia, more complete than I ever had been in life.

Beginning transport.

Acknowledged.

I went back into the bedroom where he lay, his chest rising and falling very slowly. He was awake and aware. His eyes bargained with me as I approached him.

“It’s time for you to come with me,” I said in his ear as I got a grip on him. I pulled the LW suit over us, and lifted up his body. He was frightened, but he didn’t need to be.

Whatever answer he’d sought in revivors, he’d understand soon enough.

Nico Wachalowski—The Shit Pit, Bullrich Heights

I approached the place where Calliope suggested we meet, thinking maybe I should have picked the spot myself. The narrow street outside had a row of motorcycles hugging a brick wall under an overpass where everything was covered in graffiti. Heat rose from a metal grate next to the curb, and a patch of fog drifted across a broken sidewalk littered with cigarette butts.

Information request complete.

The results of my dig on Concrete Falls came up as I crossed the street. The miner found a lot of media noise about the bombing, but most of it was commentary. The limited footage of bomber didn’t provide a positive identification. That fact alone suggested he’d known where the security cameras were. There were only a few seconds of footage, and even taken from different angles, they could show only so much. The bomber was male. He had dark skin. He appeared to be between thirty and forty. No thermal images or X-rays were taken. It could have been a revivor.

Whoever he was, he’d moved past the recruitment stations and through a door that led into the back offices. When this was noticed, two guards moved to follow, but never reached him.

Given his movements, it was thought that the bomber had specifically targeted the offices where the Heinlein reps were set up. If Sean was right, though, and Fawkes was actually behind the attack, then it wasn’t just to make some political point or to hurt Heinlein. It wasn’t easy for Fawkes to make a move like that, and it put him at huge risk of being discovered. There had to be a reason for it.

Hey, you showing up or what?
Calliope.