Hollow Read online

  Combat veterans often speak of a cognitive switch that is thrown at some point during the fire of combat, when the slower higher brain functions are suppressed, and the brainstem’s superior speed and reflexes take primary control. In this realm of twitch reflexes, millisecond timing, and decisions from the gut, sometimes decisions are reached that are inexplicable later. Jackie didn’t feel it this time, but she was so long in the industry now that this switch had worn to the point where there wasn’t always that near-audible click. She became aware that the brainstem was in charge only after she pushed herself away from the wall and brought the rifle out; after she raised the weapon and engaged her target with four quick three-round bursts; not until after she was committed to her inexplicable path and facing the consequences.

  Down the block, the panel van squealed into a fishtailing turn right as the air filled with the stuttering explosion of Jackie’s rifle. It seemed all the louder, booming through the quiet street like the arrival of judgment day, because all of the other weapons had been subsonic .45 caliber pistol rounds fired from the suppressed guns. Riding the wave of the sound, the twelve rounds of OSI-enhanced Heavy Urban slugs streaked down the street. These specialty rounds, marked in all OSI weapons caches with a loop of red tape, were 7.62 NATO depleted uranium core titanium alloy tipped armor piercing slugs wrapped in a breakaway jacket of crenellated expanding lead behind a thin magnesium alloy ring. The rounds punched holes in almost anything, lit anything flammable on fire, and the crenellated jacket caused the round to tumble wildly through unarmored flesh. The rounds were standard for heavier weapons caches like the trunk of the cab. The teams in the OSI called them robot killers, though to Jackie’s knowledge there had never been a robot rebellion they’d needed to put down… but she realized that said nearly-averted mechpocalypse might have just been need-to-know.

  Jackie’s shot placement against a moving vehicle at this distance was excellent. Eight of the rounds found their target, and two even impacted within five inches of the stranger’s tight grouping. Sure, compared to the stranger, her marksmanship was laughable, but dammit, she was only human, and her superior ordinance did its job far better than the stranger’s vanilla .45 ACP rounds. The clean holes in the armor and bursts of sparks from the titanium/magnesium ammo were lost in the chaos as the fuel tank blew and the truck deformed with the explosion.

  Looking only at the burning remains of the truck, Jackie shouted “Cover!” then, with a slow and deliberate fluidity, she unclipped the rifle from the harness, grabbed it with her left hand on the rails in front of the optics, and raised the rifle one-handed over her head. Her right hand joined her left in the air, but she kept it as far as possible from the rifle, open palm forward, fingers spread. Only when she had made herself look as unthreatening as possible did she allow herself to look to her right at the priest.

  He was using the car between them as cover, only his face and hands visible. He was pointing a familiar-looking 9mm M&P Shield at what Jackie was sure was the exact center of the bridge of her nose, and inspecting her like she was made of something only slightly more mystifying than glowing orange marzipan.

  “You.” He said in a flat voice, devoid of any implication that Jackie could perceive.

  “So I’ve heard.” Jackie commented. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  He kept up his hard appraisal of her and his unwavering aim at the center of her face. She stood motionless, thinking passive thoughts, staring at his chest without raising her eyes to challenge him.

  He stepped carefully around the back of the car, keeping his gun trained on her, an unreadable expression on his face. Finally, he stopped a little less than ten feet away and considered her from the perspective of the sight picture over his small but aggressively held pistol. For a moment, he said nothing more, so she used the time to get a better look at him, her gaze avoiding only his eyes.

  He was a bit taller than six feet, and though he didn’t have the bulk of a professional body builder, she saw the hardness of disciplined exercise in his face and posture, and in the subtle pull of the fabric of his clothes over the muscles of his shoulders and chest. His solid frame was covered with simple black shoes, slacks, and shirt. Over that, he wore a light, long black coat that was unbuttoned in front and fell loosely down to his knees. Several scars crept from under his white priest’s collar and up his neck, one continuing over the jaw, across his left cheek, finally disappearing into his hair at the temple. Another smaller scar twisted his lips slightly where they met at the right of his mouth. A large, ugly scar crossed all the knuckles of his right hand, which was wrapped around the small pistol.

  During and after her military career, Jackie had known a lot of soldiers and vets. She had spent considerable time rehabilitating in a military hospital during a time of war, had seen scars as severe as any on this priest, but she had never seen such an accumulation of them on one person, at least not until recently. On the soldiers she’d known, almost all the scars were the same age, a marker of a single traumatic event that often ended the soldier’s combat career, but this stranger’s wounds seemed to be layered on top of each other, as if accumulated over time.

  Jackie only knew one other person with scars like that, and that woman had jumped out of her cab maybe ten minutes ago.

  Curiosity finally drew Jackie’s attention to a closer examination of the priest’s face and even with the empty gun barrel hanging distractingly between them, his eyes managed to shock her. It wasn’t the unnatural ice-blue color, or the intelligence that burned there, what shocked her was the innocence. She wasn’t sure what physical feature it was that implied youthful innocence where obviously none could exist, but still… she knew. Maybe this was part of his theoretical vampirism—part of his hypnotic gaze that he was now using to make her his thrall or something, but it felt less irresistible and more genuine. She could imagine confessing her sins to a priest with eyes like that.

  Youthful face, deep scars, deeper eyes.

  It was only seconds that passed like this, but to Jackie, it felt like an eternity of impending judgment. When she could stand it no longer, she took a deep breath, then said, “I’m very much hoping we have more in common than a hatred for industrial vans.”

  She’d said it as conversationally as she could with her heart in her throat and jitters threatening in her fingers and electrifying her spine. He continued to stare, testing the tenuous hold that Jackie had on her fear, then finally he asked, “Where is she?”

  His voice was the oddest mixture of insecurity and absolute control. He sounded like death’s awkward teenaged son before he rose to claim his true destiny.

  “I’m assuming you’re talking about my friend, Jo…”

  “Your friend?” his voice dripped sarcasm, “Where is she?” He repeated, his voice harder this time—did his hands tighten slightly around the pistol?

  “She jumped out of my car… right over there.” Jackie nodded her head toward the blue line station.

  “What did you do to her?”

  “Tried to protect her, but we had a disagreement about that.”

  “What disagreement?”

  “Well, apparently she thought it was her job to protect me.” Jackie shrugged, “She jumped out of the car trying to save the driver and me. She figured that the guys in the van were after her… I guess she was right about that.”

  “How much does she know?”

  “I can’t tell you that. In fact, I can’t tell you anything more, as I don’t know you from Moses.”

  “And where’s Moses?” Completely deadpan delivery.

  Jackie couldn’t restrain the smirk completely. “Are you for real?”

  The boom of the small pistol filled the universe.

  ***

  Jo’s eyes had adjusted to the near dark of the tunnel almost instantly. The gravel at the side of the tracks crunched under her pumping feet. She’d been running for five minutes and thirty-two seconds, and she was no nearer to exhausted than when she�
��d started. On reflection, her lack of exhaustion seemed less odd to her than the fact that she knew down to the second how long she’d been running. She set those dual mysteries aside, along with the many other mysteries of her first girls’ night out and just ran.

  It occurred to her that running was the most exciting, enjoyable thing she could remember doing… she made a mental note to ask Dr. Smith if she had been a runner in her former life. But she let that thought slip from her as well, releasing it into the slipstream of the joy of motion and purpose. As she’d entered the tunnel and began her run, there had been a short time of tight discomfort as her less-used muscles and ligaments had stretched, lengthening and warming, into the new configuration required by her continued sprint, but now she was in the zone.

  As her hands pumped, she felt the weight of the pistol pulling at her right hand. Odd, she thought, that the weight in that hand didn’t feel odd… it felt odd that it was the only weight she was carrying. It seemed that her clothes should be heavier, that she should have something in both hands, that running should be accompanied by a rattle of equipment, that her tennis shoes were far too light and offered no real protection for her feet.

  But then again, she was running. And it was amazing!

  If Jo was still being pursued, she couldn’t tell. She’d looked back a lot as she’d sprinted the first few hundred yards of the subway tunnel, but hadn’t seen anything. Once, she might have imagined the sounds of gunfire over the roar of a passing train, but if it was gunfire, it was far away.

  In addition to possibly constructing gunfire from the rattling roar of the train, her imagination was also trying to make her laugh like always; filling her mind with the images of two armored figures limping after her with great effort and truly earnest expressions on their faces. She had a feeling that if she was being followed through the tunnel, that it wouldn’t be the two soldiers (or whatever they were) with the wounded legs, but probably their much-less-shot companions. Jo noticed again that she thought the serious injuries she’d inflicted on her pursuers seemed less tragic and more funny in retrospect, and she felt bad about that, but maybe it was the mania of the adrenalin or maybe wounding people who were shooting at you was always hilarious… she had no frame of reference.

  A hundred yards ahead, the tunnel brightened and seemed to open up. It wasn’t the harsh, even threatening, glare of another oncoming train, but the softer glow that likely indicated another station. Jo had passed four such stations so far.

  Figuring that her pursuers would try to reacquire her at the first station, she’d repressed the desire to shoot more folks in the leg and kept running. As she’d passed the second station, she’d resolved to run until she got tired then exit at the next station and melt back into the city. Now, as she approached the fifth station feeling like a triathlete might feel after walking to the refrigerator for a midnight snack, she realized that maybe getting tired would be an impractical test for when to exit the subway. She did want to get out of here before she reached the airport… or China.

  Without slowing, she ran until she emerged into the cramped openness and brighter light of the station. Like the other stations she’d passed through, this one was long, narrow, overly encumbered with large, squared support columns, and mostly empty. There was a pair of men probably Jo’s age and a heavy middle-aged woman in a windbreaker over what was probably a janitor’s uniform. They all had the detached look of functional travelers, commuters jaded by long daily experience. Compared to them, Jo probably looked like an ultra-tourist, dazzled by her first subway experience. She resolved to try riding the train next time.

  And to bring a camera, she wanted to take pictures.

  There was a blue sign on the wall announcing that this was the LaSalle station, which sounded familiar to Jo… then she remembered that she’d seen it once while walking with Jeremy near the Chicago Board of Trade… wait, his apartment was maybe five blocks south.

  With a slightly louder crunch of gravel, she vaulted easily from the track onto the long central platform. All three pairs of now less-bored eyes were fixed on Jo, and one of the men’s mouths was actually hanging open. Jo guessed it wasn’t often that armed women came sprinting out of the subway tunnel, but again… she had no frame of reference.

  Giggling like a moron, Jo enthused “DidYouKnowThatRunningIsAWESOME!?”

  She didn’t slow as she dodged through the field of heavy columns and sprinted down the length of the narrow platform then vaulted up the steps to the street three at a time.

  First Incursion

  Chicago 2119

  Ash had to admit that the tinny martial music was working this time. She was pumped.

  “Then enter, Child! Enter and serve!” the cleric concluded, voice rising through the horrible speakers.

  “Victory is life! Victory is life! Victory is Life!” Ash enthused, concluding the Liturgy of Invocation. She lay still as death on the worn foam padding in the heart of the bulky machinery of the Womb, her mind filled with dreams of purpose and—perhaps for the first time ever—feeling hope beyond the rudimentary hope of distraction. She was off to save the world. The whole world! And she was going to feel Crow’s hand.

  The interface wires stretched from a panel on her left to electrodes on her head, neck, and left wrist. Around her, the machinery of the womb began to hum then thrum as the room’s lights dimmed.

  The Link began with a tingle that started in the base of her skull and quickly spread to fill her body. This was not the empty, fading tingle of damaged nerves, but the first spark of life, the promise of a glorious vibrancy that was the nature of “life” of the Hallow. Of course now Ash understood that the Hallow was life—not figurative life, not simulated life—real life. Now Ash understood with her mind what the most primitive parts of her heart had always known.

  As the Link deepened, her vision dimmed and she closed her eyes. The martial music became thinner, more distant until it, and the rest of the dead world of 2119 seemed a dying echo of an unremarkable dream rather than an actual place and time.

  Then the spike: like a railroad spike forged of purest lightning driven with a God’s hammer into the center of her head, she exploded from sleep into full awareness.

  ***

  Chicago, 2019

  The first experience wasn’t touch, though she could clearly feel bruising nearly everywhere her restraints held her.

  The first experience wasn’t smell or taste, though the concentrated smell of gasoline was thick enough to fill both senses.

  The first experience wasn’t sound, though she could hear a crackling static from her earpiece and the tick and pop of recently tortured metal as it acclimated to its new configuration in the aftermath of some catastrophic event. The first experience wasn’t sight, though the Spike had driven her eyes fully open and the scene before her was dire indeed: around her the Hallow-side Womb interface was nearly destroyed, dim lights flickering, metal deformed, gravity pulling her up and to the right. Another operator was strapped into his harness across the zebra-striped walkway of the womb, clearly dead: his neck snapped and hanging at an unnatural angle in the strange up-angled pull of gravity.

  As always, the first experience was thought. When the Spike drove her here, it exploded in her mind first and foremost. Like Hyde rising in power from Jekyll’s passive slumber, Ash was awake. The Clerics said that the average transform from life to the Hallow was from an IQ of maybe eighty to about one hundred eighty… which Ash knew was better… especially now since she was so much smarter than a minute ago.

  She sat, or rather hung upside down, in the death and destruction, with the crackle of the radio in her ear and the heavy smell of gasoline filling her head, smiling like a schoolgirl who’d just been told her first real secret. This seemed an apt analogy, considering the magnitude of the secret she now carried into this very real past.

  She looked around, wincing at the painful stiffness in her neck. She was sitting in her normal transit position, but the dead operat
or across from her wasn’t Crow and the other two corpses strapped in at her left weren’t Shadow or Tink. This knowledge flowed like a warm tropical river through her heart: though she hoped that this mission would erase or change her timeline, the relief of not having to see her teammates dead bodies, or their real bodies dead, or maybe robot bodies, or past clone bodies—she really wasn’t clear on that account— lying dead around her filled her with a warm gratitude.

  She knew the dead operator sitting in Crow’s normal seat. She’d never run a mission with his team, but knew his face and, unfortunately, his League stats. He was in the bottom quartile of operators, currently suspended following a mission that had failed and left two of his teammates dead. She didn’t recognize the other two dead operators, or maybe it was more accurate to say “couldn’t recognize them”, as their injuries were catastrophic.

  Ash hung in her harness, waiting. She was acutely aware that at any second a spark could ignite the gasoline that filled the air, but she knew the plan. After six minutes and thirty-eight seconds that seemed to stretch out forever, she heard them. Soft footsteps approaching the destroyed van from six different directions, the slight rattle of their equipment indicating that these weren’t noncombatants. Ash began to struggle against her restraints… not really trying to free herself, but enough to make them aware that someone was alive in the destroyed van. She tugged at the harness kicked against the floor above her… even grunted a time or two for authenticity.

  Outside, the footsteps halted. She struggled on. After another thirty-two seconds, she heard muttered acknowledgement from outside as the team presumably received new orders. Ash held her breath. This was the key moment, the lynchpin of the plan. They were either going to kill her now, maybe just firing into the van until the gasoline exploded, or they were going to take a risk.