The Silent Army (3 page)

The revivor had gone back down the corridor, but it had too much of a head start. If it left through the closest exit, then it would come out near the loading dock. I made for the freight entrance instead and slapped my palm on the button.

The stim wouldn’t last long, but if I didn’t beat him down there, it wouldn’t matter anyway. The door began to rise on its track and I ducked through the gap, my muscles starting to tighten. It was getting hard to breathe. A cold gust of wind and rain hit me as I crossed the dock and slipped on the steps. People stopped on the sidewalk a few feet away from me and stared. Sirens had begun to wail, and I saw red-and-blue lights flash down the length of the street.

The map put me on the western side of the building. If the revivor made a run for it, it would be through the alley out back. Rain pummeled me as I tacked left past a pile of trash and between the buildings. Water was running down in a stream from a clogged gutter up ahead, and I headed toward it, looking for signs of the radiation signature. It was getting harder to move. The side of the building was veering away. I shook my head, trying to focus. Something splashed in a puddle near a pile of trash bags. I stood there, trying to keep my balance, and watched it.

Where is it?

Every time I took a breath, my chest got tighter. Looking back and forth down the alley, I didn’t see anything.

It’s gone. I missed it.

I watched the rain stream down from the gutter, splashing into a puddle formed around a crack in the pavement. The stims weren’t working anymore. My arms and legs started to get heavy again.

I’m going to need a medic, Sean.

There was no answer. I was still staring at the water kicking up droplets when I realized the words never appeared in the HUD. I hadn’t sent the message. The coupling to the JZI had dropped.

Sean?

The air blurred in front of me. The water was streaming in slow motion, and for just a second I saw it stop about five or six feet above the ground. Water sprayed off something I couldn’t see; then it continued like it never happened.

Sean?

Something moved next to the pile of trash bags; then a dark shape flew toward me. A large plastic bag hit me and tore open, scattering garbage as I heard feet hit the pavement, running for the street.

“Stop!”

I couldn’t get a bead on it. I lunged and felt cloth under my hand. I grabbed a fistful of it, but it slipped through my fingers as the footsteps moved away. My chest burned. When I took a step, my leg crumpled under me and I went down on the wet pavement.

From the blacktop, I could see the crowds of people moving down the sidewalk. Wind blew sheets of rain across the street as I watched them pass. One of them glanced over at me, but kept walking.

Everything was going blurry. The blind spot floating in front of my eyes started blooming, getting bigger until everything began to go dark.

The revivor had gotten away. Along with the one Takanawa had taken, twelve nuclear devices had just left the hotel and disappeared into the city.

Zoe Ott—Outside Empire Apartment Complex

I’d been sitting on the bench, watching it rain for, like, an hour, and even with an umbrella, it was pretty miserable. The slicker kept me mostly dry, but it was cold enough that I could see my breath coming out through my nose. I figured I’d probably end up getting sick. I don’t know why I didn’t just go home.

Everything had changed, back when I first met Nico. I still don’t remember a lot of it, since I had been drinking nonstop then, but I know at some point I had gotten sucked into whatever he was involved in, and I almost got killed. A lot of it was a blur, but I remembered a revivor came into my house and dragged me away. My downstairs neighbor almost died trying to save me. Nico brought that woman—the one from my dreams—back to life, and she almost killed him. I think I might have actually killed someone myself.

After, when the FBI questioned me, I told them I didn’t know anything. I made them believe me, and I went home. It seemed like a long time ago.

Nico kind of took me under his wing after that. He started bringing me to help with interrogations at the FBI, which, in a weird way, was kind of how we first met. No one knew how I got my results. They just knew I did. I got cleaned up, sort of, and got semiregular work there. I moved with Karen downstairs, and we got to be good friends. The roommate thing was doomed to fail, though, and I was back upstairs in four months. The drinking just got to her after a while, and she never said it, but I think the visions did too.

“I’m so stupid....” I muttered, watching the rain fall.

The rain was supposed to go all week, I’d heard. It was so dark and gray all the time that most places kept their lights on even during the day. It was the most depressing time of year, and it was the first time I’d tried to face it when I wasn’t drunk. So far, I’d hated every minute of it.

Something hissed next to me on the bench, and when I turned to look, I saw a woman sitting beside me. She was hunched over with her hair covering her face, and her coat was black and burned. When the rain hit her body, it sizzled, and smoke drifted off her. The ends of her sleeves still smoldered. She wasn’t real.

They never were.

She didn’t look at me. After a minute, she looked up at the apartment building across the street, and I saw her face was scalded and covered in soot. The rain that fell on her face turned black, streaming down her neck. She looked sick and in pain.

“Why?” she whispered.

A line of cars went by, almost splashing me. The last one in the row rolled to a stop and I saw it was a police car. When I looked back at the bench, I was alone again.

Great.

I waited to see if it would just drive off, but it didn’t. The window went down and an officer with a square face and a mustache looked out at me. He waved for me to come over.

There was no point in trying to ignore him. I got up and went over to the car. Warm air drifted out through the window, and I could smell his cologne when I leaned over.

“Evening, ma’am,” he said.

“Hi.”

“Hell of a night, huh?”

“I guess.”

“Security camera has you watching that building for over an hour,” he said. “You want to tell me why that is?”

“A friend lives there.”

“A friend?”

“Yeah.”

“If you know someone who lives there, why are you out here in the rain?”

“He didn’t come home.”

“Was your friend expecting you?”

He wasn’t, but I didn’t want to say that. I felt my face getting red. The cop sighed. He looked like he felt sorry for me.

“Okay,” he said. “What’s your friend’s name?”

“Nico.”

“Last name?”

“Wachalowski,” I said. “Agent Nico Wachalowski.”

He raised his eyebrows, and I could tell he didn’t believe me.

“Hold on.” He leaned back into the car and I saw the computer screen light up his face. He fiddled with it for a while and said something into his radio.

I looked back at the apartment building. His window was still dark. He said if I ever needed to talk to him I could, and I just needed to talk to him. I should have left when I saw he wasn’t there, but I figured I’d wait a few minutes, and then, somewhere along the line, it turned into longer than that. I didn’t even think about the security cameras. If he saw a recording of me standing out there, he’d think I was some kind of stalker or something.

The cop leaned over again. The expression on his face was a little different.

“How do you know Agent Wachalowski?” he asked.

“I work with him sometimes.”

“Doing what?”

“It’s classified.”

He looked tired. “Lady—”

“I really do work with him sometimes. Look,” I said, fishing out my contractor’s badge. It had my picture on it. He looked between the picture and me for a minute.

“Look, ma’am, it’s late. Other people live here besides just your friend, and I can’t have you just hanging around watching the place from across the street because then I have to check it out. You get me?”

I shrugged.

“If you don’t clear out, I’m going to have to come back and ask him about it directly. Is that going to be okay with you?”

My face got even hotter. He got that pity look again.

“Ma’am, come on. It’s raining out—”

I focused on him and everything got bright around me. The raindrops looked crisp and sharp, like little pieces of ice, as they dripped off the edge of the umbrella between us. The lights came up around his head and I eased them back, smoothing them down until they were all a calm, deep blue.

“Sleep,” I told him. His eyelids drooped.

“Can you hear me?” I asked. He nodded, barely moving his head.

“Did anyone call this in or did security just see me on the camera?”

“Just the camera.”

“Go back and tell whoever sent you that you checked it out and it was nothing. It was just a woman waiting for her friend, but she got tired of waiting and left. Understand?”

“I understand.”

“You have better things to do than check out stuff like this. You should get back to doing real police work.”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

The colors faded and the light dimmed back down again. The cop looked out of it for a second and then his eyes cleared. He picked up his radio and spoke into it.

“This is car seven-oh-one.”

“Go ahead, car seven-oh-one.”

“She checks out. It’s nothing.”

“Copy that.” He switched off.

“Be careful out there,” I told him. He nodded.

“You too, ma’am.”

The window went back up and he drove away. I watched him go until his taillights got lost with all the rest; then I figured I’d better get going. At that point, it seemed like it would be worse if Nico actually did come home and found me.

I made my way back to the subway entrance, and the closer I got, the more crowded it got. A few blocks away I saw the first dealer, or maybe prostitute. There was more and more neon until between the cars and traffic lights and signs, it was nothing but squiggles of bright color. It took the edge off the rain, but there were too many people. I found the stairs and made my way down into the tunnel.

Once I was through the turnstile I started to smell food and coffee. I followed a row of stands selling anything and everything, and headed for the platform. The whole area smelled like a mixture of meat, bread, and spices. Places like those stayed open all night.

The next row of stands sold drinks, with all the same variety: one sold beer, the next one sold absinthe, the next whiskey. One sold sake. I slowed down and stopped for a minute.

Stopping something you’ve done forever is hard, especially something like drinking. Even if you take away the shakes and the sweating and just the physical need to do it, there’s still this other part that’s almost harder to let go. It’s hard not to do what you’ve always done. I couldn’t remember a time I lived in the city when I passed by a row of those stands and didn’t have a drink. Even if I was already drunk and even if I had a bottle in my hand, I always stopped. I just always did. Now I had to just walk by, and so far I’d managed, but every time I did, I wondered how much longer I’d make it.

Why weren’t you home?
I thought.

I wondered where he was and what he was doing. I wondered if he knew that I thought about him, or if I was just invisible to him like I was to everyone else. I wondered if he’d met someone, and if that wasn’t why he had drifted off like he had lately.

The sake stand was run by an old Asian guy who kept a little TV mounted in back of the little bar. He filled the little ceramic glasses in front of the people sitting there, steam rising off the tops of each one while the TV flickered. I could smell it from where I was standing.

The nights were too long now. I stayed in my apartment as long as I could, but I couldn’t sleep. I wanted to go down and bug Karen but she’d gotten back together with that asshole and I could hear her down there with him.

I stared at the big ceramic jug in front of the Asian man, and the steam coming out of its spout. I wanted to talk to Nico. I wanted . . .

A hand touched my shoulder and I jumped. When I turned, I saw a woman, about my size with straight black hair and bright blue eyes. She was wearing a red rain poncho with a wool hat, and around her neck was the tattoo of a snake. It went all the way around, until it swallowed its own tail. Its red eye stared from over her jugular.

She pinched my shoulder and my arm locked up as she turned me around so we were face-to-face. One second she wasn’t there and the next she was, right up in front of me. She was looking right at me.

Without thinking, I focused on her and everything went bright, but only for a second. In that second, I saw the colors come up around her and something else, a band of white that circled her head like a halo. As soon as I saw it, it was gone. The lights went back to normal and it was just her, standing there staring right into my eyes. Her lips curled just a little bit.

My breath caught in my throat. I’d first seen a halo like that after I got kidnapped. I’d seen it down in the cages, where there were others like me. This weird woman was like me.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “I just wanted to say hello.”

Her hand moved away from my shoulder and my arm came unstuck. I looked around to see if anyone else thought what was happening was weird, but no one was paying any attention to us. When I looked back at her she was still staring at me.

“Who are you?” I asked.

“I’m Penny,” she said. She had this calm, quiet voice that was a little creepy.

“What do you want?”

“Just planting a seed,” she said. “I’m going to be your friend soon.”

I felt like I was falling all of a sudden, and stumbled a little. She reached out and steadied me. I felt dizzy for a second, and she held my arm until it passed. Then, before I could say anything else, she winked at me and walked away. She merged with the rest of the crowd, and then was gone around the corner.