Code Zero Read Online Free PDF Page B

Church had mentioned something about the Red Knights’ computers being hacked, but it was a comment in passing. And I’d assumed it was Arklight using Oracle. Assumptions, assumptions.
    “How’s any of that connect with Mother Night?”
    “Ah,” she said, smiling faintly. “One of the technicians at the lab said that it was Mother Night. It was all he said, though. Just that.”
    “You couldn’t get any more out of him?”
    Her smile never flickered. “Alas, he was unable to say more. However, a few days later we hit a second site in Vilnius. A testing facility for genetic enhancement. When we broke in, though, everyone was already dead. Four Red Knights and sixteen technical staff. All dead.”
    “How? It would have taken a hefty strike team to—”
    “No,” she said. “They had not been shot. Someone had released a toxin into the system. Specifically, a radically weaponized strain of enterohemorrhagic E. coli. It was like nothing we’d ever seen before. Our scientists tell us that it triggered a quick-onset form of hemorrhagic colitis. The victims bled out through their rectums.”
    “Christ, that’s disgusting.”
    Violin’s eyes were ice cold. “They were Red Knights and their servants.”
    I said nothing to that. The women of Arklight had suffered indescribable indignities, torture, rape, and worse at the hands of the Knights, and this went back centuries. Whatever mercy they might have had for their former oppressors was long since beaten out of them. They were now the most vicious and efficient kill team anywhere in the world. Second to none, and I do not exaggerate. I was very, very glad they were on our side.
    She said, “All of the computers had been stripped of their data and there were no viable materials left. It was all gone, except for empty cabinets, ransacked computers, and the bodies of the dead. Those, by the way, had been piled up and set on fire. There was a message painted with blood on the wall that read: Mother Night Says that you have to Burn to Shine .”
    “Oh, man…” I shook my head. “But even so, how does that connect Mother Night to me and the DMS?”
    “Since we found that site, Arklight has been asking around. We’ve managed to conduct a few interrogations of Knights we captured, and with people connected to them. No one knows much, but several of them told a story about a senior scientist for the Knights who’d been found at the point of death. He’d been severely tortured and left for dead.”
    “Tortured by whom?”
    “By a woman who called herself Mother Night,” said Violin. “She asked him a lot of questions and most of it was about the Knights, their former connection with the Red Order, their more recent connections with the surviving members of the Seven Kings, and a mutual enemy of all of then—the DMS. Your name came up in the interrogation. The scientist said that he was aware of you, and of your role in killing Grigor, king of the Red Knights. Unfortunately, that was the extent of the questioning. The scientist died shortly after that. So … all we have is a small, fragile connection between you and someone who has been doing significant harm in order to steal computer files and research. A group who has either developed an E. coli –based bioweapon or who has stolen it for use.”
    “I’ll have to share this with Church, and he’ll probably want to talk to you or to your mother.”
    Lilith, Violin’s mother, was the leader of Arklight. I have never met a more formidable woman. She and Church had some history, but I didn’t know what it was or how deep it went.
    “Of course,” she said.
    Violin stood up. When I began to rise too, she touched my shoulder to keep me seated.
    “If I hear anything else I’ll let you know,” she said. “Goodbye, Joseph.”
    “Goodbye, Violin,” I said.
    She began to move away, but she stopped and looked over her shoulder at me. “Joseph…?”
    “Yes?”
    “This woman … Junie