The CMC Tower, the TransTech Center, and the Alto Do Mundo …they were the largest structures in the city. The UTTC was the largest in the world. I tried to picture destruction on that scale, that kind of terror unleashed on the city, but it was impossible. I recalled the suicide bombing I’d seen, staring through the storefront window with Nico at all the blood and pain that one bomb had caused. It made something stir inside, something I thought I’d completely forgotten. I thought what I felt was dread.
“When?” I asked. The many eyes jittered, unaware of us.
“Soon.”
When I was alive, I’d hunted Lev Prutsko. Or, rather, I’d hunted him and his comrades, thinking they were the same man. The murders they’d committed seemed glamorous to the media machine. I’d begun to see my face on the news bands, each time looking older and more desperate. I’d thought I was just driven, looking for a way out of the second tier, but my obsession had been manufactured. Fawkes’s enemies had been pulling my strings, stressing me like an engine ready to fail. In a way, Lev had saved me.
Fawkes went on to kill six hundred of what he’d termed the mutations, but it hadn’t been enough. Ai hit back, and destroyed almost everything.
Lev’s hand gripped mine and he helped me from the chair. For some reason, he only ever touched me.
“He wanted to speak to you when you woke up,” he said.
“Fawkes?”
“Yes.”
I hadn’t expected that. They were looking hard for him, and he knew it. If Fawkes would risk direct communications, he planned to attack before it would matter.
Incoming message: Fawkes, Samuel.
“What does he want?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” He wouldn’t say any more. He moved to the wall to join the rest of them. A moment later his eyes began to move, tuning into that wave of random jitter and leaving me there, alone.
Incoming message: Fawkes, Samuel. The words flashed in the darkness.
Accepted.
Hello, Faye. How are you feeling?
Better. My blood version has changed.
Yes.
I’ve also had a secondary communications node installed.
Yes.
I don’t recognize the specifications. What is it for?
It’s experimental. You’ll all receive one. You’ll need it soon.
Where did you get them?
They were stolen from Heinlein’s supply lines overseas and smuggled back.
Isn’t that dangerous?
Yes, but you’ll need them to communicate with the others.
Others?
I’ve nearly gathered the forces we’ll need to finish this. You know about the surplus nodes; they will come by sea. The second wave will strike from inside the city.
From inside? How?
They are also experimental. You will use the secondary communication nodes to communicate with them; previous models will be incompatible.
I don’t understand.
Hold on. I’m going to bring the new node online to help explain. It may be disorienting at first.
Disorienting how—
Link established.
Information came flooding across the link. At first it seemed like a stream of junk data, but as it piled in the new node’s buffers, I realized it wasn’t random at all; it was hundreds of individual links. The node sorted through the jumble of circuits, assigning a connection point to each thread. As it did, I understood what those links were.
It’s a revivor network. Once I’d gotten over that initial rush, I could view each of the separate connections. It was a revivor band, but not anything like the one that I knew. The data streams were constant but out of sync. Each one was a soft but chaotic trickle that I could sense but couldn’t decipher.
Do you hear them? Fawkes asked.
Yes, but I can’t understand. What do they mean?
Right now they’re still asleep. Maybe they’re dreaming. Do you want me to turn it off?
No.
They reminded me of waves at the shore, like hundreds of whispers rising and falling. They were almost as compelling as the void.
They’re inside the city? I asked.
Yes, but like the rest, they must remain hidden for now. When the two forces combine, they will be unstoppable.
When will that happen?
The ship is on its way now.
That soon, I thought. What do you want me to do?
I have a special task for you. I want you to offer a deal to Nico Wachalowski.
For a moment, I was stunned. His name stirred something inside me, something I couldn’t define. I waited for the swirl of embers to calm, for my memories to reorganize themselves. When faced with it, I saw how much I’d loved him. The ache that I’d spent so much time denying was clear enough to me now, though I could no longer actually feel it. I had truly loved this man.
I didn’t ask Fawkes why he had chosen me. It was because he thought Nico loved me, too.
What kind of deal do you mean? I asked.
I will explain to you how I want it phrased, he said. He needs to understand that he can’t stop this, but he can minimize it. He will have the power to save many lives, if he will do the right thing.
You think he’ll listen to me?
Yes. He is still looking for you. I think he will listen.
If he agrees, will we hold up our end?
Yes.
Under the tent, a circuit closed with a snap. Restraints were pulled tight as the buzz rose in pitch.
“Hold,” the electronic voice said. “Gathering for iteration three-six-two.”
And if he doesn’t agree? I asked.
Then you will have to kill him.
I nodded, though he wasn’t there to see it.
Do you understand, Faye?
I nodded again, by myself, in the dark.
Yes. I understand.
4 Reap
Nico Wachalowski—Suehiro 9
Pleasantview Apartments were ironically named. They weren’t the worst I’d seen, but the upkeep was a problem and it had gotten worse over the past two years. Trash was piled up in bags near the main entrance, and with all the rain, you could smell it from the sidewalk. Not for the first time, I wondered why someone with Zoe’s abilities would live in a place like this, but then she didn’t seem to find anything wrong with it. Her downstairs neighbor, Karen, was a good friend too. That might be a factor now. Karen was better for her, in many ways, than I was.
I approached the front, stepping over a pothole filled with water. As I made my way up the stairs, I checked in with the home office.
Any word yet on Takanawa?
Nothing yet.
We needed to bring him in soon; he was the only concrete link left to the missing case. His apartment was empty, with no sign of it or the device he’d left the hotel with. Travel records indicated he hadn’t left the country, at least not legally, but he was nowhere to be found.
The door recognized my ID and let me in when I flashed my badge. The elevator inside was out of order, so I hiked the six flights before I remembered that Zoe had moved back into her old place. She was on the seventh floor now. I still hadn’t gotten the full story on that.