The Silent Army (27 page)

Back at my old place, I’d had an old shot glass I liked to use, but on top of my new liquor cabinet I’d found a smoked-crystal glass that I really liked. It was twice the size of a regular shot glass, and had a fancy emblem carved into it. I picked it up and drained half of it in one gulp.

I didn’t know where to start, so I just surfed around to try to get the hang of their system. I tried to follow single threads, but there were so many of them and they branched out so often, I didn’t know how anyone could make any sense out of it all. There had to be some kind of data miner. . . .

After some fiddling, I found it. I entered in my name and set it going, but right away parts of the nebula changed color as hundreds of little green points appeared.

Do all those reference me?

More kept coming. There were still too many. I tried again:

Nico W.

I didn’t know how to spell his last name. What I punched in got a similar result . . . worse, actually.

I thought for a minute, then entered in the phrase:

Green room.

I set it going, but that time nothing popped up, at least not right away. I let it spin in the background while I brought up one of the dream entries at random:

. . . I’m sitting in the dark, in some kind of cage. I’m sitting in a couple inches of cold water, and there are wires connected to the base. I know he can electrocute all of us if he wants, from wherever he is. They did something to us, I can sense that, but I don’t know what. Some of the people in the cages around me seem disconnected, almost lobotomized. . . .

Someone named Petra Loeb had made the entry. I opened another one:

. . . a flash that lights up the street as bright as day, and then the noise comes. The first boom is like a hammer in my chest, and I feel like my heart skips a beat. It keeps getting louder and louder, until it feels like my head is going to split apart and I’m screaming and staring as the tower begins to fall into the fire. I can see it’s the CMC Tower. It’s so big it doesn’t seem possible, but it’s falling, and everyone is screaming as that cloud of fire begins to expand through the streets, toward us.

That was by a Daniel Moser. I picked out one more:

. . . from the balcony of Alto Do Mundo, and watch as one by one the buildings turn to shadow and blow into ashes. It’s nukes; I know that. It probably happens in seconds, but to me it seems slowed down, so I can see every goddamned detail. Nuclear fire, cleansing it all, and wiping the slate clean . . .
The miner popped up. It was pretty quick, but nothing seemed to happen. I panned back until the grid took on the shape of that big ring, the nebula with the dark center, and the star sitting on its edge. At that distance, I saw three green points scattered across the map, and unlike the others, they were inside the dark part. I touched the first one.

THE GREEN ROOM. Location of significance.

Frequency: Extremely Rare.

As of this time, location N1071 (the green room) has been seen by only Element One potentials and is the only known vision time-wise to breach the void after the Event takes place. The few existing reports all describe common dimensions and common fixtures.

A picture appeared, and my mouth parted slightly. It was the room—the green room where I first saw the dead woman. The table in the middle looked a little different, but it was the same rectangle shape and the same gray color. The folding chair was there in front of it. It faced the far wall, where three lights hung overhead against the cinderblock. The walls were all painted dark green.

The image displayed here is a computer rendition modeled on verbal descriptions. So far, no attempt to locate this room in the real world has been successful, leading us to believe that it may not exist in our reality at this time.

The common room elements are:

The switchbox, observed to control the lights at the far end of the room.

The call box, on a swivel system set in the wall. It presents a blank metal panel when closed, and a single handset with no keypad when opened. The location of the remote connection is unknown.

The table and chair, which together form what appears to be an observation area, focused on the far wall beneath the lights.

The scanner, which appears to be concealed in the wall behind the observation area. It has been observed on one occasion to direct a laser reader of some sort toward the far wall. Its schematics and purpose are unknown.

The room has a single metal door with a glass pane affixed at eye level. It leads to a short corridor, but it is not known where that corridor leads.

As of this time, the location has been seen by only Element One potentials, and it seems often to overlap with visions of other key Elements; these human Elements may appear in the observation area, or on the other side of the room. Whether or not the others who appear there truly have, or will, appear inside the room itself is a subject of some debate. It may be the viewer’s mind combining the jumbled information.

It is believed that the rarity of this vision is tied to the fact that it may exist only after the Event occurs. That would imply that potential Element One candidates may be among the few who will survive it.

This is also the only vision in which subject Vagott has appeared.

The purpose of the room has not been determined.

I just stared for a minute. It wasn’t in my head; other people had seen it. Not many, but some. It was real.

... it may not exist in our reality at this time.
What did that mean? And Vagott . . . was that a name?

There was a knock on the door, and I jumped in my chair. I screwed the cap on the bottle and stowed it under the desk, then headed over to the door, stumbling a little. I was drunker than I thought.

I got on my tiptoes and looked through the peephole. It was Penny. I opened the door.

“Hi,” I said. She looked around. It hadn’t taken me long to mess up the place. There were pizza boxes stacked up on the floor next to the door, and clothes draped over all the furniture. The boxes with my notes, still taped up, were stacked along one wall. The sink was filled with dishes, and I hadn’t made the bed in days.

“Sorry about the mess,” I said. She didn’t look pissed or even surprised, though.

“It’s homey.” She nodded over at the computer. “Reading up?”

“Yeah.”

She walked over to the computer and sat down. When she did, her foot clunked against the bottle I put underneath, but she didn’t say anything. She just reached under and grabbed it, then took a swig before putting it back down on the desktop. She looked at the entries I had up.

“It’s a head full, huh?” she said. I nodded.

“Did you ever see that room?”

“No. It ruled me out as a potential. I don’t survive long enough. Almost no one does.”

She tapped the screen and an image appeared of an intense-looking guy with stubble and thick black hair. He had on a white shirt and tie, but he looked like he hadn’t slept or bathed in a couple days.

“That man is Element Zero,” she said. “His name is Samuel Fawkes.”

I’d never seen him before in my life. This was the man I was supposed to stop? I looked at the screen, not quite sure I believed it.

“What am I supposed to do?” I asked.

“Look, I know it’s hard for you to swallow right now,” Penny said, “but believe it or not, you stop the event.”

“How? I don’t even know what it is.”

“The amount of data they’ve been crunching would make your head explode,” she said. “Most of it is still varying degrees of probability, but some things are pretty much certain. Element One stops the event. Ai’s been looking for that person. She thinks you’re it.”

“Thinks?”

“It’s not easy to pinpoint one person in a city this size when you don’t know their exact identity, but like I said, we have a ton of data on this.”

“She’s been wrong before, though?” I said it kind of hopefully.

“Not this time,” she said.

I looked at the strange man on the screen, and wondered what he was thinking when the picture was taken. His eyes looked wild, scared, and determined all at once, and they shone a little, like they had started to tear.

“What happened to the first Element One?” I asked. Penny frowned just a little.

“She did something she shouldn’t have done,” she said. “Just stick to the plan. You’ll be fine.”

Don’t cross Ai.

“Right now, this is the important part,” she said. She touched the screen and brought up an event that was close to the current date. I looked over her shoulder at the screen, and saw a big block of text written there. Something about a boat. My eyes jumped to the end:

This alignment may represent our best chance to circumvent the disaster.

“That looks like it’s soon,” I said.

“It is.”

“Will I be part of it?”

“In a way,” she said, “but that’s not why I’m here tonight.”

“Why are you here?” I asked. She snapped off the computer, and the screen went dark.

“Sorry to do this,” she said, “but we’ve got to go out.”

“Go? Go where?”

“It’s a surprise,” she said. “Come on, get your coat on.”

I stretched and cracked my back. The room spun a little, and I stood there for a second until it passed and I could make my way to the closet. I really didn’t feel like going out, but she had me curious. I grabbed my coat and shrugged it on.

“I don’t usually go to bars or clubs or anything,” I told her.

“That’s not where we’re going,” she said. She reached into her purse and pulled out a smoked-glass flask in a leather case.

“Ouzo, right?” she asked, holding it out. I took it. “You can keep the flask. Come on, let’s go.”

She walked to the front door and opened it.

“Am I in trouble?” I asked.

“No. This is a good surprise.”

On the way out, I saw two guys in suits. They were against the wall on either side of the door, where they’d been standing out of the range of the peephole. Penny started down the hall and I followed her, while the two men followed me. She took us down the elevator and outside, and one of the two men held an umbrella over my head as we walked over to a big car with tinted windows. He held the back door open, and I slid into the warm interior. Penny scooted in next to me; then the two men got in up front. The driver started the car and pulled out.

“When we get there, don’t freak out,” Penny said.

“Freak out why?”

“I can’t say. Just don’t.”

“I won’t.” I opened the flask and took a swig. “I haven’t seen you around here much.”

“You miss your friend.”

I didn’t say anything. My ears got hot and I shrugged.

“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything by that. I just meant to be there for you a little more, that’s all. She’s got me doing something, so I’ve been staying somewhere else for a while. I would have come by sooner.”

“That’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. You shouldn’t be alone right now.”

She was looking out the window while she talked. She actually looked a little upset.

“It’s okay. I’m always alone.”

“Not anymore.”

She looked over at me then and smiled a little, which she didn’t usually do.

“Believe me. I’ll be glad when it’s over,” she said. “I’d much rather be getting loaded with you than doing the other thing.”

I handed her the flask, and she took a big guzzle off of it.

“Thanks.” She handed it back.

“Can’t you tell me where we’re going?”

“Sorry. I’m not trying to be a bitch. It’ll make more sense once we’re there. Just enjoy the ride.”

I decided to go with the flow and just watch the city go by out the window, until after a while, I lost track of where we were. We went through some really nice sections, filled with people, and I felt giddy as the neon trailed by over my head. The inside of the town car was big and comfortable, and talking with Penny was easier than I was afraid it might be. She was a lot like me. We even joked about the visions, and when the flask ran out, she had the driver stop at a corner store so we could pick up more.

It was almost an hour before the car finally slowed down, and by then the lights had tapered off. It got darker outside and the rain was starting up again when I saw a concrete train platform up ahead. It was lit with a single light, and there were three men—one big guy in the middle, and one to either side of him—standing at the edge of the tracks, facing us; there was a black limousine parked in the small area next to the platform.

“We’re here,” Penny said. The car stopped a little ways across from the limo, and the two men got out. One came around and opened the door for us again, and we both got out too.

“Where are we?” I asked. Penny waved to the limo, but the windows were dark and I couldn’t see in.

“Somewhere where no one will bother us,” she said, reaching into her coat and handing me a big white envelope. “Here. This is from her.”

It had my name written in little black script on the front. I opened it, and found a card inside. A message was written on it: