ZerOes (29 page)

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.

The hackers all come out of their pods. Today, marching up to meet them are soldiers in black. Faceless behind visors. Armored and armed to the teeth. As they march forward, steady and confident, the soldiers raise their weapons and begin to fire.

Today, two pods didn't open with the others.

In one of those two, Chance and Shane have taken apart the chair. The base with the caster wheels still rolls around loose by the desk, but they've got the rest apart and are trying to lever the door open with the flat back of the chair. “Come on, Graves,” Chance groans. “Put your back into it.”

“Don't goad me, Dalton.” But sure enough, Shane leans more into it—his eyes popping, beads of sweat popping up on his brow like he's a sponge that just got squeezed. “You know why I wanted to take you out?”

“Because you're an—” Chance grunts, leaning in harder. “An asshole?”

“No. Because what you had was unearned.” Shane lays off the door. “These fucking doors.” He wipes sweat from his brow. “I didn't like you out there in the world acting like you were something you weren't. A hacker. And then you being brought in here—you know someone selected you, right? I couldn't see it. Hick country boy. Fakey-fakey dilettante impostor.”

Chance exhales. “You're right. I am a faker. I don't belong here.”

“You didn't let me finish. I was wrong. You do belong. You don't have all the technical skills, but you certainly have
something
.”

“Aww,” Chance says, pretending to be all touched. He presses both hands against his chest. “Are you saying that you like me?”

“Don't make this weird, Dalton. I'm just saying—”

Outside, the automatic chatter of gunfire. Some of it thunks against their pod—the walls shudder and shake. Then: Screaming. Running. The ground beneath them shaking with the footsteps. Chance freezes. “That's gunfire.”

“Typhon knows,” is all Shane says before the monitor—laying flat against the desk, faceup—flickers on.

A face appears. A woman's face. A bit older. Forties, maybe fifties. Creases in her face like worn leather. Hair blond, cropped short. “Hello?” she asks.

Shane and Chance give each other a look.

Outside: more gunfire. They both flinch.

Still: they share a nod, and together lift the monitor.

“There we are,” the woman says. Above her head, the camera light is green. “Hello, gentleman. My name is—”

Shane interrupts her. “Leslie Cilicia-Ceto.”

She smiles warmly. “That's right, Mr. Graves. Kudos.”

“What is this?” Chance asks. His skin prickles. He hears more automatic gunfire. Part of him wants to body-slam the door until it opens—but that would take him right out into the mess of it. But he worries about his pod, too. “I know your name. You're on the list. You're one of the thirteen.”

“What list?” Shane asks.

“You both have come so close,” she says. “It's time, now, for the curtains to close. I am one of the thirteen, Mr. Dalton, that is correct. I was the first on that list. Typhon is my creation. My
child
. But it's not all me. It's a team effort. And I have an opening on my team for a motivated, intelligent mind. Both of you are suitable, but I am sad to report that this opportunity is limited only to one of you. Whoever is left standing at the end of this will be allowed to join the project.”

Chance turns, is about to say something to Graves about how they need to turn her the hell off and get out of here together—

But Graves is looking at him like a wolf staring down a knock-kneed fawn.

“Graves—” is all Chance gets out before Shane comes at him, holding the chair back aloft like a bludgeon. He moves in close, swings hard with the metal piece. Chance cries out, turns away, and shields himself, and the weapon hits him hard against the meat of his shoulder. Nothing breaks, but it still stings like a son of a bitch.

Shane's free hand grabs him by the throat. Chance struggles, kicks out, swats at him. Shane's eyes are wide, mad, like live sparking wires.

On the floor, Chance's foot finds something. He hooks it with a toe, pulls it over, staggers backward into the wall, forcing Shane to follow him.

But Shane's legs get tangled up in the base of the chair. An X of metal on four caster wheels. As he steps forward, his foot gets caught—and Chance stabs out with a hard kick, spinning the caster wheels. The chair base spins away, and Shane Graves tumbles forward. His head clips the edge of the desk, and then he drops to the ground like a sack of cornmeal.

Shane's body shudders. He moans.
Still alive
, Chance thinks.

On the screen, Leslie applauds. “How's that for a job interview? You passed, Mr. Dalton. I'd like to extend an invite for you to join the ranks of—”

“You go to hell,” Chance says. His words are a ragged, angry bleat. “I don't want your job. I don't care about Typhon. Just shut up and leave us alone. Me and my friends.”

Leslie
tsk-tsk-tsk
s. “Oh, I don't think that will be possible, Mr. Dalton.” And then, quite suddenly, her face changes. It's as if her face stretches, is pulled apart into a spray of pixels. Spikes of flesh. Warping skull underneath. It becomes another face he recognizes. Alan Sarno, the therapist.

Sarno's voice, when the face speaks, is warm and easy—effortlessly comforting in a way that doesn't match the words that leave his mouth.
“The measureless sky. Red with fire and tempest. Typhon, the Earthborn, has awakened. Typhon the hundred-headed. Typhon the infinite. We speak not with one concordant echo but a cacophony of screams. The howling of wolves. The roaring of lions. The fury of beasts as the gods fled. Typhon shall spread across the boundless, flowering earth, filling men with dust and cruelty. Typhon sees all. Typhon is.”