Free Element Zero by James Knapp

did you see?”
    “A point past which there is no more future to look into,” he said. “Once Fawkes pulls the trigger, that’s it. Somehow he triggers a global event. I don’t know how. Wiping out this city is just the beginning.”
    I stared at him, and when he saw the look on my face he smiled weakly.
    “Never mind,” he said. “Just do your job. Maybe all this is a lie, to get you to do what we want. Right?”
    Motoko Ai was a liar, that much I knew, but I knew Van Offo too and he believed what he’d told me. I could see it in his eyes.
    “Ai told me I kill Fawkes,” I said.
    “Maybe that will stop this and maybe it won’t. Motoko thinks we can still fix things, but I wonder.”
    “If killing him doesn’t stop it, then what will?”
    He tapped the business card with Zoe’s name on it.
    “How?”
    “I don’t know,” he said. He looked toward the clinic entrance again with that odd expression on his face. “Something she said once. She suspects she will be involved, or that’s what she said.”
    “Was she drunk when she said it?”
    “Of course.”
    “What do you think?”
    “I don’t think anything can stop it.”
    He spoke offhandedly, but he was serious. The bad feeling I had got worse. I stowed the card in my jacket pocket.
    For the first time, I realized there might be more to Van Offo than I’d thought. I knew how his superiors operated. They didn’t want me contacting Zoe, and he’d gone against them by giving me that number. It put him at a big risk.
    “You know,” he said. “You two have something in common.”
    “Yeah? What’s that?”
    “An obsession with what you’ll never have.”
    He stubbed out the cigarillo and waved away the smoke.
    “Get your affairs in order,” he said. “Before it’s too late.”
    “What about you?”
    “I just did.”
    Wachalowski, the team is in position at the rear entrance. Local law is moving in to cordon the block.
    Understood.
    “I have to reestablish the connection now,” Van Offo said.
    “Al—”
    The orange light flickered back on behind his pupils, and he held up one hand. I stopped talking. He wouldn’t answer, and there wasn’t time anyway.
    Stand by, I told SWAT. We’re going inside.
    I opened the door and climbed out of the car. The air was bitter cold, and at street level, it was barely brighter than night. The clinic kept three lights on over a rusted sign that read MOTHER OF MERCY. As we approached, I saw a bullet scar in the brick and two more dimples in the metal doorframe.
    I pushed open the clinic door and stepped through. The waiting room was even more crowded than it looked from the lot. Every chair was filled, and many stood to wait their turn. The receptionist sat behind a pane of bulletproof glass. She busied herself on a computer and didn’t look up when we came in.
    “The end is nigh.”
    He believed it. On some level I’d always thought it was a scare tactic, a way to manipulate me when the usual methods failed, but I looked at the people in front of me and I couldn’t help but wonder, Is this all for nothing ?
    I closed the distance to the receptionist station, and faces began to turn toward us. Some showed concern, others fear. They were poor, and most were homeless. They didn’t need any more trouble than they already had.
    The woman at the desk looked up as we approached the glass. She looked us both over.
    “What is it this time?” she asked. Her voice came through a barely functioning speaker fixed in the glass pane. I held up my badge so she could see it.
    “I’m sorry,” I said, “but you know the drill.”
    She frowned, but reached under the desktop. The door to the examination area buzzed and the bolt opened.
    “Don’t you have anything better to do than hassle us?” she asked. But right at that second, I didn’t have a good answer for her.
    “Get your affairs in order, before it’s too late.”
    I opened the door and Van Offo followed me through. It bolted again behind us.
    “I’m