“Hold.”
“Gathering for iteration six-three-two.”
I felt a low hum through the floor. The gurneys creaked as the bodies arched their backs; then I picked up a signal on the JZI. It warbled and snapped into the waveform of a revivor’s heart signature. Another one quickly followed, then another as the hum’s pitch increased.
“Active,” the computer said.
Back on the gurneys, several sets of eyes had cracked open, creating softly glowing slits in the dark.
Moving the flashlight beam, I caught the face of one of the revivors who had lifted its head off of its gurney. One of its eyes was missing, leaving only a dark slit between the collapsed lids.
“Sean.”
He didn’t answer. His eye stared up from the dark, not recognizing me.
He’d been turned, and there was no way he’d gotten wired for it willingly. Sean was like me on that score. If we hadn’t decided when we joined up, then a few years of dealing with those things settled it for both of us. Sean turned out to have a secret, but I knew the man and I knew he was afraid of revivors. He never voiced it, but something he saw when he looked at them scared him. Whoever took him wired and then killed him.
I looked in his remaining eye for some trace of Sean, but it wasn’t there. Unlike Faye, he hadn’t been processed at Heinlein, and it looked like a hack job. As he worked at the restraints, I watched and I couldn’t look away, even though it felt like a block of ice was sitting in my gut. I’d known Sean longer than anyone else in my life. He’d pulled me out of that hole back in the grind and saved my life. Even if he had lied, he’d …
“Sorry, Sean.”
I moved next to the gurney and removed the probe from inside my coat. Turning his head away, I pushed it through the skin near the base of his skull.
The system tree came up, but only partially. For some reason it was having trouble reading the components. For the ones it could identify, none were tagged with manufacturing codes.
I managed to isolate his JZI. I found a socket and opened a connection.
Link established.
The connection triggered something; a routine executed, sending a text message across the link.
If you’re reading this, they’ve taken me. I have verified; Fawkes will launch a major strike in the next twenty-four to forty-eight hours. I wasn’t able to learn specific targets, but he will attack on two fronts; part of his army will come by sea, most likely by way of Palm Harbor. I intercepted the ID of a ship, ISO 10927718240, and I believe the bulk of his forces are there. Find the ship and you’ll find them. The second part of his army is already here, inside the city. I have no idea where he’s managed to hide so many, but there are already hund—
The message ended abruptly. I felt Sean’s jaw clench underneath my palm. His skin was cold.
His heart signature drifted in the periphery of my vision. There was something different about it. It had an arc that was more elegant than the standard waveform.
Hundreds. It didn’t seem possible, but I knew Sean. Something made him believe it. If Fawkes really had hundreds of revivors already inside the city, with potentially thousands more coming in by sea, it was going to be a bloodbath.
I managed to locate Sean’s revivor communications array, and opened the spoke connection.
Link established.
Immediately, a rush of data came streaming in. Before I could react, half the JZI’s buffers had filled up. It was as if hundreds of individual data streams were bleeding back over the connection. My systems weren’t designed to handle an influx like that, and I struggled to abort the link before—
“And stop,” the soft, synthesized voice said. The connection broke, and the flow stopped.
What the hell was that?
The bodies all relaxed on their trays. The light in their eyes began to fade. One by one, their signatures winked out.
“Checking signature …”
“Signature is gone.”
“Commencing cool down.”
I removed the probe. The revivors had gone dormant again.
They’re being cycled over and over, between animate and inanimate. Why?
I checked the rest of the bodies. Besides Sean, there were four others. One looked well kept, a first or second tier. The other three showed signs of exposure and malnutrition. One had track marks in his forearm. One had a thick scar running along one side of its face, trailing from the chin, up over the cheek, all the way to the ear. It looked like a cut from a knife, maybe.
Wachalowski, head’s up; we just got a report of an explosion across town. They think it’s tied to your location.
What was it?
A free clinic was just bombed. Healing Hands, over in Dandridge. Second Chance runs that one too. They know we’re on to them and they’re covering their tracks. Get out of there now.
“Initiating download and purge,” the metallic voice muttered from off to the side. I looked over and saw the counters had all reset to zero. The data was no longer being collected. The green lights had turned red again, and I was watching when they all went dark.
Hang on.
Wachalow—
I cut the connection as an electric snap came from the bank of electronics behind me, and the low hum began again. The metal gurneys creaked under the bodies. One by one, the heart signatures reappeared.
“Active,” the computer said. Their toes began to arch, fingers curling into fists. The glow behind each set of eyes got brighter.
The lights on the equipment went dark, and the hum stopped suddenly. One of the revivors sat up on the tray, the electrode wires growing taut, then snapping. The one next to it sat up as well.
Keeping the flashlight trained on it, I fired a burst at the first one, and it crashed back onto the gurney. I managed to get the second one before it could get up, and caught a third as it placed its bare feet on the floor. It staggered, then fell into the rack of electronics before landing on a rolling tray and scattering surgical tools.
Sean and the remaining revivor were on their feet. They split up and moved toward me.
I backed through the plastic curtain, and Sean followed. The three revivors along the walls still weren’t moving, but the jittering of their eyes had gotten more frantic.
Through the gap in the plastic tent, I saw white smoke billow up from the floor. The revivors I’d put down were dissolving.
Sean took another step toward me and I fired, putting a bullet into the middle of its chest. He didn’t stop. There was no recognition in his eyes as he lunged, clamping one cold hand down between my neck and shoulder. With his other hand, he tried to grab my gun. Twisting the barrel down, I shot him in the kneecap. Revivors didn’t feel pain, but the joint gave out and it started to fall to one side.
I lost my footing and came down on top of him. He tried to get up as the second revivor approached from my left.
I aimed and fired a burst. The first bullet caught it in one eye, and the next two tracked across its face, blowing out the back of its skull as it fell backward into a rack of equipment. Sean’s hand reached up, pawing at my face.
My JZI flagged a warning as it picked up heat signatures from around the room. They were sourced from the three revivors along the walls. In each one, a ton of energy was being rerouted to a component inside the torso. I fired several more shots as warning codes began spilling by. Sean’s hands slipped away as I staggered back from the body.
“Shit!”
The eyes of the three revivors began to glow brighter. Their faces turned dark, black veins standing out as pressure built up somewhere inside.
I stood up and scrambled past the chair, back out through the heavy door. Grabbing the handle, I pulled it shut as a set of fingers slipped through and the metal crunched down on them. Another hand wormed through the crack and began to pull it open. I stuck my gun barrel through the space and fired several rounds, then turned and ran for the fire exit.