The Silent Army (15 page)

Using the backscatter, I peered through the plastic casing of the phone until a fuzzy image of the LCD appeared. From my side the text was backwards, but I captured a piece of it before she moved.

. . . anawa tracked . . . IMO 1092

Takanawa, maybe. IMO stood for International Maritime Organization. The message might have had to do with an incoming shipment. Were they tracking Fawkes’s supply lines themselves?

“It’s easy sometimes,” Ai continued, “to stop seeing your enemy as human. In battle, it can be easy, maybe even convenient, to remove yourself from the human cost your struggle inflicts on your enemy. You understand that.”

I nodded.

“Sometimes war necessitates ugly choices, but Mr. Fawkes is not a nation and he is not a soldier. Mr. Fawkes is an individual. Strictly speaking, he is not even a citizen of this country any longer. No matter what his beliefs are, he had no authority or right to do what he did.”

“I agree.”

“Fawkes is still a threat. We both know what he recently acquired, and we both know he’ll use them.”

“Miss Motoko, if you have specific information—”

“I have specific information,” she clipped. “I have more specific information than you would believe. The devices he acquired are just part of his plan; he is gathering an army, and when he is ready, he will unleash both on us. He means to wipe us out completely, Agent, and it doesn’t matter to him who gets in the way. It doesn’t matter to him if he has to destroy this entire city to get rid of us.”

“Fawkes has an army of revivors?”

She nodded.

“Where? How?”

“We don’t know how yet,” she said. “We don’t know where, either—not yet. We’re closing in on their location, but what I said before about probabilities is true; stopping Fawkes is not a certainty. There is a very real possibility that this entire city and everything you see around you will cease to exist in a matter of days.”

Her eyes stared at me evenly from across the table, while a bad feeling began to sink into my gut. Zoe’s eyes were wide, and her mouth had parted slightly.

“The city gets destroyed?” she whispered.

“It will start here, but it won’t end here,” Ai said. “There will be almost no survivors.”

I wasn’t expecting that, but again, she was deadly serious.

“What do you mean ‘It won’t end here’?” I asked.

“Just what it sounds like,” she said simply. “Fawkes will destroy this city, and then, one by one, the rest will begin to fall.”

“That’s impossible—”

“I’ve seen it too,” Zoe said quietly. Her face was pale. She looked scared.

“When?” I asked her. “When does this supposedly happen?”

“Soon,” Ai said.

“Fawkes has most likely been destroyed by now,” I said. “If not, he will be soon. Haven’t you seen to that?”

She raised her thin eyebrows a little, like she was surprised I was so dense.

“Fawkes doesn’t get destroyed with the rest of his obsolete generation,” she said. “You kill Fawkes. The cull will locate him, but you, the one who is immune to our control, will kill him. That’s why you’re here.”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. I looked to Zoe, wanting to ask her how accurate these visions really were, but doubted she knew herself. If there was any truth to it . . .

“How long before he attacks?” I asked.

“An exact time frame is difficult to pinpoint,” she said, “but soon. We were unsuccessful in intercepting the weapons; he has them, or most of them.”

“Do you have any leads as to where they went?”

“We’re looking for them as hard as your agency is. We haven’t located them yet.”

“If Fawkes is operating out of the city, then give me something to go on,” I said. “I can’t just take your word for it.”

Penny reached across the table and handed me a data spike.

“We recorded that less than six hours ago,” Ai said.

I opened a connection to the spike and accessed the recording that was stored on it. It was a text message, repeated in a loop. The message used a revivor’s transponder code.

Nico. This is Sean. I’m here. Help me.

“Several of our people have gone missing,” Ai said, “and we recently tracked them to several locations. One is a facility called Rescue Mission. It is a nonprofit medical center for the homeless, which is run by the group known as Second Chance. Have you heard of them?”

“I’ve heard of them.”

“I believe they’ve taken your friend, Agent.”

Nico. This is Sean. I’m here—
I stopped the loop.

“Sean told me this started with the Concrete Falls bombing,” I said. “Do you know what he meant by that?” She shook her head.

“If Mr. Pu made that determination, he never got a chance to report it to me.”

She looked over at Zoe then. She spoke again, but when she did her tone had changed, becoming softer.

“Someone has to stop it,” she said. “You will be part of this too.”

“How many of you are there?” Zoe asked. The nervousness was gone. She looked excited.

“Us,” Penny said.

“How many of us are there?”

“More than you think,” Ai said. “You are not alone.”

The whole thing happened in the blink of an eye. Zoe opened her mouth to answer her when a wineglass on the table popped and something hissed loudly from directly in front of Ai’s face. The air rippled, and there was a loud crack that made everyone in the dining area turn. Outside the restaurant, a low boom echoed down the street.

A small object spun in the air in front of Ai, then dropped onto the tablecloth, trailing smoke. It was a piece of smooth, black metal, in the shape of a bullet.

“What the hell?” Zoe squawked.

She’s wearing an inertial dampening field.
It was the only thing that could stop a round cold like that. The slug looked like it came from a gauss rifle.

I turned to follow the trajectory. A thin trail of smoke led to a window out front where four inches of bullet-proof glass had a neat hole bored straight through. A waiter walked through the smoke trail, disrupting it without even noticing.

Back at the table, Penny recovered quickly. She used a cloth napkin to grab the bullet, then stowed it in her purse. As I stood, I saw her hand off the purse to a passing woman. The woman disappeared into the crowd with it.

This is Agent Wachalowski. We have an unknown weapon fired from the street at Suehiro 9, possibly a magnetic rail gun.

Roger that.

I stood up and as I turned, I saw Ai sag in her seat, just a little. She stared at the air in front of her, looking very tired.

“Go,” Penny said.

I left the table and headed for the front entrance. When I got closer, I could just make out something through the window, a ripple in the air just past the glass. A gust of wind sprayed rain against the passersby, and for just a second there was a gap in the mist.

“Stop!” I yelled, drawing my weapon. The crowd was in the way. I struggled through them, but the gap in the rain was gone.

“Stop!”

I shoved past the hostess and through the front entrance, onto the sidewalk. People were moving in every direction. I couldn’t pinpoint him.

Damn it.

There was an alley alongside the restaurant and I ducked down it. Even if the shooter couldn’t be seen, he’d need to get off the street and away from the crowd. People parted in front of me as they saw the gun; one man backed into a woman, who slipped off the curb and landed in the street. A car stopped short, and I heard the crunch of metal behind me as he got rear-ended.

Horns started blaring, people shouting, as I passed the valet. He followed me with his camera as I turned into the alley. Immediately, someone grabbed me.

Two hands gripped my lapels and spun me, shoving me back against the brick wall. I brought the gun around, but something I couldn’t see blocked it.

“Wait!” a voice said from in front of me. “Nico, wait!”

The air in front of me rippled and Faye’s face appeared, staring up at me from under the hood of an LW cloak. Her eyes glowed dimly in the darkness.

“It’s me,” she said. The rain drizzled off the cloak, and for a second a gust of wind whipped it around her. Her hair was gone, and her skin was the color of ash, but it was her.

I tried to move the gun, but she still had my arm. I let go of the grip, the weapon sliding free of my hand until it hung from my finger by the trigger guard. The pressure eased up on my wrist.

“Did you do this?” I asked her. She shook her head. Her face was a few inches from mine, but I couldn’t see her breath in the cold. No warmth came off of her.

“No,” she said.

“Then why—”

“He sent me. I was following you.”

She stood up on her toes and put her arms around my neck. She hugged me gently, the way she used to sometimes. Her cheek was cool against my neck as rain trickled down my collar.

“I’m glad you’re alive,” she said.

I could feel the low vibration in her chest through my coat. I meant to push her away, but I didn’t.

Who sent you?
I asked.

Fawkes.
I stiffened, and she squeezed tighter, just a little, before stepping back. It was true. He was still out there. He was still out there, and she’d joined with him.

I’ve come to offer you a deal,
she said. Her eyes glowed softly in the dark. I stood there, one hand on her waist, getting soaked by the rain.

What does he want?
I asked.

He wants you to kill the woman Ai, and her main operatives.

Someone just took a shot at her with a rail gun and she walked away. What makes him think I’ll be able to do it?

He knows you’re immune to their influence. He knows she is bringing you in close. Someone like you could manage it.

I shook my head.

Whatever else she is, she’s a private citizen who hasn’t, as far as I know, broken any laws. I don’t even have grounds to arrest her. I’m not going to assassinate her. Not for Fawkes, or you or anyone else. Understand?

She was telling the truth. Fawkes is building his forces,
she said.
This is your only chance to stop it.

No one would be able to smuggle hundreds of revivors into the country, especially after what happened. Fawkes’s trick where he took control of the National Guard units wasn’t going to work a second time either. The only other option was to manufacture them locally, but the procedure wasn’t simple. In the current climate, gathering the hardware it would take for a large-scale operation like that would raise too many flags.

Where is he hiding them?

Just listen. The assault will begin soon.

Is that what his offer is? Kill Ai and he’ll call off the attack?

No. He won’t stop the attack.

Then what’s he offering?

He’s willing to take the nukes off the table.

That stopped me for a second. Rain rolled down her face as she stared up at me.

Faye, those weapons will kill hundreds of thousands of people—

We’ve learned a lot about Ai and her people,
she said.
More than you have. They’re strong, but not as strong as they’d have you think. They’re a relatively new phenomenon, and they’ve organized only very recently, but already they control this whole city. Soon they’ll control everything.

I thought about that.

If they defeat Fawkes
, she continued,
then their way will be clear. If this window closes, then nothing will stop them. Eventually, their control will be total.

She paused, glancing down the alley toward the street. People were beginning to take notice of us. I moved my hands away as she went back on the soles of her feet.

If it’s true, then show me what he knows
, I said.
Give me something concrete.

She slid her arms from around my neck and put her palms on my chest. When I looked in her eyes, for a second her expression seemed human. It seemed . . .

She reached into her cloak and the air warped around her. There was a flicker; then she was gone.

Connection closed.

“Faye?” I reached in front of me, but she wasn’t there anymore.

I turned and started back through the fog and out of the alley. As I walked, I brought up the stats on the program to decommission the obsolete revivor stock; it was ninety-seven percent complete. There was only three percent to go, and the son of a bitch wasn’t in there.

Somehow, he’d managed to avoid the ax. Fawkes was still out there, and he was coming.

Calliope Flax—Pleasantview Apartments, Apartment #613

If the address was right, the stick lived in a shit hole called Pleasantview. There was trash piled on the curb, and someone had used bolt cutters on the chain-link fence around the lot. I parked my bike on the street and killed the engine. The rain tapped on my helmet while I sat for a minute, watching; then the reminder to check my hidden file popped up in the dark in front of me.

She had me paranoid. Any time I did anything I wanted to remember, I wrote it in the file and I checked it twice a day. I knew the stick could make me forget, and I wasn’t taking chances. A lot of people knew a JZI could record, but I kept the text file under my hat. No one could make me erase it if they didn’t know it was there. There were four messages there:

Back from TSP. Wachalowski bailed early, but might help.

Scored Zombie Maker from Eddie.

Called Buckster. He said he’d drop by sometime.

I remembered all those—meeting Wachalowski, Eddie hooking me up with the drugs, then roping in Buckster, who the drugs were for. People had a way of blabbing when they were on Z, and that went double when they didn’t know they were on it. If he had any inside intel Wachalowski could use, I’d get it out of him and he’d never be the wiser.

All that I remembered. The last message, though—that I didn’t remember:

Found a door behind the flag. Checking it out.