Authors: Jack Heath
Wham!
His wrists and ankles slammed into the curved rim of the engine, jarring every bone in Six’s body. He found himself face-to-face with the whirling blades in the engine, sweeping by only centimeters from his eyeballs.
But he wasn’t dead. He’d managed to catch the edge of the engine with all four limbs, and so now, in a sense, he was on the plane. Craning his neck back, tilting his head to the side and peering down, Six saw the warehouse and the airfield disappear, replaced by the lights of the City, muffled by the omnipresent fog.
Six had no idea where the plane was headed, but he knew he wouldn’t last the whole journey in his current position. Sooner or later his muscles would become fatigued and he’d be dragged into the thrumming blades of the engine. It was taking all his strength to pull away from the suction.
Pushing as hard as he could, he managed to throw his whole body over to one side of the engine, keeping his hands on the rim but leaving his legs flapping in the relative safety of the outside wall. He clung tightly to the edge as the blasting wind tried to tear him off.
Don’t look down
, he told himself. The plane was flying low to stay under the radar, but if he fell, the height and speed of the plane would still be enough to dash him to pieces.
He shifted his hands up across the rim of the engine, higher and higher, until he was holding the corner where it met the lip of the wing. He could hear faint thuds as the ailerons at the rear of the wing lifted up and down, keeping the plane at a constant altitude and direction.
He dragged his torso over the lip, the wind crushing him against the wing. For a moment he was flying backward without
handholds, with only the g-force to keep him against the plane. Then he swung his legs up, grabbed the lip again, and suddenly he was stretched out flat across the wing, with his hands gripping the front edge.
If I had a cape
, he thought,
I’d look like Superman.
The wind pushing against his face was freezing; it stung his nose and his lips. He started to work his way closer to the body of the airplane, hand over hand. There was an emergency exit above the wing, as he had expected, with a bright red handle on the outside. He hoped that because the plane was flying so low, when he opened the door there wouldn’t be a significant drop in cabin pressure and the instruments in the cockpit wouldn’t register it.
He had reached the spot where the wing met the body. He couldn’t stand up to open the door—the wind would blast him off the plane. Instead, he rose into a crouch, with one palm gripping the wing, and reached out to grab the handle with the other.
He expected it to be stiffer than it was. It turned smoothly, and the door popped open with a hydraulic hiss. The hinge was at the back, so Six had to duck aside as the door swung outward, caught by the wind. He slipped into the plane, pausing just long enough to grab the inner handle on the door and heave it closed.
The inside of the plane was luxuriously furnished. There were hardwood cupboards to one side, with a minibar built in to the paneling underneath them. A soft, synthetic leather sofa stood opposite a giant LCD television screen on the other side. The floor around the sofa and the exit was covered by a soft white carpet; the rest was gleaming dark floorboards. Six heard music
wafting out from hidden speakers above his head and was surprised that after a few bars he recognized it—one of Samuel Barber’s cello concertos. A painting that hung on the wall was familiar to him too, although he didn’t know the artist.
Six knew better than to think that his knowledge of art and music was broad, or to think that Vanish had intentionally filled the plane with things Six would recognize.
It still has its original furnishings
, Six realized. This model of plane was marketed to rich customers, and would have been purchased with this classical MP3 disk in the player and that painting on the wall. Vanish hadn’t decorated it with items he liked—it was an emergency escape vehicle, and today might well be the first time he had set foot in it.
There were square seams stretching across some of the uncarpeted floor, and there were four small silver plates next to the corners. Escape hatches, Six guessed.
You open the plate, there’ll be some controls, and then you can open the door to a pod that will fall out the bottom of the plane.
He considered trying to lift one of the plates to test his hypothesis, but decided against it. They could easily be alarmed, and it wasn’t relevant right now. He could safely assume that Vanish thought he had escaped, and he was probably in the cockpit rather than one of the escape pods.
Six made his way to the rear of the cabin, where there was a narrow cupboard next to the bathroom. He opened it and discovered dozens of firearms, mostly pistols. Six grabbed an Owl, checked that it was loaded, and shut the cupboard. He turned away to head for the cockpit…
…and saw Vanish standing in the middle of the cabin, eyes wide.
They both raised their weapons and stood still, guns trained on each other’s skulls for a tense moment. Six noticed that Vanish
had a remote control in his other hand, but it looked bigger than the ones the soldiers had had.
“How did you get in here?” Vanish demanded, after a stunned silence.
“There’s nothing we can’t do,” Six said. “Drop the gun.”
Vanish smiled. “Do you know how dangerous it is to fire a gun on an airplane?”
“When there’s no pressure difference outside and inside the cabin?” Six said. “No more dangerous than firing a gun anywhere else. Besides, I never miss.” He held the pistol steady. “Drop the gun and you get to live.”
Vanish pointed the remote at him, as well as the gun. “Not a chance.”
“Sorry,” Six said, “but your nanomachines don’t work anymore. We fried them with an EMP.”
“That’s a shame,” Vanish said. “They were expensive. But this remote doesn’t control nanomachines. It controls the plane.”
He pushed a button and Six fell sideways as the cabin lurched around him. He tried to keep his gun trained on Vanish, but it was hard enough just keeping his eyes on him.
He rose into a crouch as the plane righted itself, and steadied the gun on Vanish’s head once more. “You haven’t thought this through. If you crash the plane, we both die.”
“Who said anything about crashing the plane?” Vanish asked. He pushed another button on the remote.
Nothing happened. Six expected Vanish to hit the button again, but instead he advanced slowly towards Six, gun first. Six didn’t know what Vanish thought he could achieve once he was within arm’s reach, but he wasn’t keen on finding out. He backed away at an equal pace.
As his foot reached for floor that wasn’t there, Six realized
that this was just what Vanish had wanted him to do. He had used the remote control to open the escape hatch behind Six’s feet. He tumbled backward into the pit, but reacted quickly, springing off the padded seat in the pod as if it were a miniature trampoline. He whooshed back up through the air and landed on the other side of the hatch, leaving the hole between him and Vanish. He steadied the gun on Vanish’s head.
“I’m not going to ask again,” Six said grimly.
Vanish pushed a button and the escape hatch closed itself. “If you shoot me, you’ll never find the vial of Kyntak’s blood.”
Six aimed at the left pocket of Vanish’s jeans and pulled the trigger. The gunshot was sudden and loud in the enclosed space, but it didn’t echo—most of the sound was absorbed by the carpet and the sofa. Vanish hissed through his teeth and stumbled backward, the wounds in his thigh already starting to bleed. Six could see shards of the broken vial poking through the shredded denim. “I think I just did,” he said.
Vanish was half doubled over now, grey-green eyes blazing with malice. “You’ve damaged my body,” he grunted, keeping his pistol trained on Six. “I’ll make you pay for that.”
“You were lucky,” Six said. “Anyone other than me would have shot you in the head. Now drop the gun.”
Vanish stared at Six for a long moment. His hands shook with the pain from his leg.
What’s he thinking?
Six wondered.
He’s wounded now, he can’t possibly expect to fight me and win; he’s got no leverage, nothing to bargain with.
Vanish dropped his gun on the floorboards with a clunk. He fell forward onto his hands and knees.
“Slide it over,” Six said. He wasn’t going to risk approaching while the gun was that close to Vanish’s hands.
Vanish put his hands on top of the gun and held it there. Then he slid the gun across the floor. Six put his foot on it, then picked it up and hooked it into his belt.
He stepped forward. Vanish’s head was hung low; Six couldn’t see his face.
Vanish’s hand was inching towards the remote control.
“Hold it right there,” Six shouted. But it was too late.
Vanish pushed the button and the plane lurched; Vanish had thrown it into a steep upward climb. Six fell back as the floor tilted beneath him, rolling towards the weapons cupboard and the bathroom. He smacked into the wall and immediately spun aside, dodging the barrage of glasses from the minibar, which exploded against the wall like tiny fireworks.
Six rose to a crouch, one foot on the floor and one on the wall, and jumped out of the way as the couch slid down the cabin towards him. It hit the wall behind Six with a thump, and Six heard the crunch as a beam in its fiberglass skeleton snapped.
He had managed to hold on to the gun, and he pointed it back at where he had last seen Vanish. But Vanish wasn’t there any longer. Six started to half walk, half climb across the shuddering dark floorboards.
Where is he?
he thought. Either Vanish had made it into the cockpit, or…
As Six got closer, he saw the hatch covering one of the escape pods smoothly folding closed. He dived forward, trying to get to it before it swung completely shut, but he had no chance. The hatch became an impenetrable wall of hardwood-covered steel before his eyes.
The plane leveled out, resuming a constant altitude.
No
, Six thought.
No! I’ve come too far to let him get away now.
He knew better than to try to force the hatch open; escape pods
were always airtight and reinforced, much like the black box in a plane. Instead, he tried to pry open the silver panel next to the hatch. No luck. The seam was too fine to get his fingers into.
“For the record, you’ve done well,” Vanish’s voice said. Six looked up—Vanish had appeared on the giant television. The proximity of the camera made his looming face swell to fill most of the screen, but Six could just make out the interior of the escape pod surrounding him. In the corner, he could see a keyboard and a monitor—the display read 27 seconds to dispatch.
“You shouldn’t be disheartened by your failure—I have ninety years more life experience than you.”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Six said grimly. He put the gun against the floorboards next to the silver panel and pulled the trigger. The bullet punched a hole through the wood. Six dropped the gun and immediately slipped his finger into the hole. It burned his skin. He tugged and the panel cover came free, revealing a narrow screen and a polished black keyboard with a series of commands.
Twenty-four seconds until the pod ejects
, Six thought.
Twenty-three.
He searched for the right key, skipping past
LOCK, UNLOCK, LAUNCH, CLOSE
, and
ALARM
. The button marked
OPEN
was on the left. He tapped it twice.
The CPU beneath the keyboard emitted a beep—the text
POD LOCKED
blinked on the screen. Six hit
UNLOCK
. The text changed to
REMOTE OVERRIDE ACTIVE
. He growled, reached down into the panel, grabbed the keyboard, and started pulling.
“I’ll have to change bodies soon, thanks to you,” continued Vanish. “I’ll keep doing it until I can find an immortal one. If you don’t want that on your conscience, I have a proposition for you.”
The keyboard came free, exposing a tangle of wires. Six checked quickly which colors led to which buttons. Blue led to
UNLOCK
. He traced them back to the wall of the pod.
Nineteen seconds
, he counted.
Eighteen.
“Give me Kyntak,” Vanish said. “I’ll take his body, and you can work for me. I’m impressed by your ingenuity and range of skills. I could use you on my team.”
“Every psychopath I meet offers me a job,” Six said as he pulled the wall panel free, exposing a switch marked
MANUAL OVERRIDE
.
Eleven, ten.
He pulled it, and the CPU beeped again.
MANUAL OVERRIDE ACTIVE
, the screen said.
Eight, seven.
He pushed
UNLOCK
on the keyboard. “I’ll tell you the same thing I tell all of them.” The screen blinked:
POD UNLOCKED
.
Five, four.
“No way,” he said, pushing the
OPEN
key.
The floorboards folded down as the hatch opened. Six swung his gun up, training it on the interior of the pod.
It was empty.
Six stared up at the screen and saw that Vanish was still holding the remote control. He must have climbed into a different escape pod and used the remote to open and close the hatch of this one. And Six had taken the bait.
“Think about it, Six,” Vanish said. “I’ll be watching you.” And then the feed cut out as his pod was ejected from the underbelly of the jet. The floor shook a little as the plane’s mass was altered.
With a howl of rage, Six smacked his fist down onto the floorboards concealing the hatch. The steel didn’t budge beneath the impact. He ran through the options in his mind. He could leave via one of the other escape pods, but they had no sensory apparatus and no controls—it wouldn’t help him follow Vanish. And the plane would crash, killing anyone who had the misfortune to be nearby. He could call the Deck instead and ask them to search for the escape pod on the ground nearby, but Six was sure that by the time they found it Vanish would be long gone.
He was beaten, and he knew it.
He punched the floor again. The pain in his knuckles momentarily distracted him from the agony of failure.
“I doubt that will help, Agent Six.”
Six whirled around, gun first. He found himself facing the sniper from the Timeout, the girl who’d asked him to dance in Insomnia. There was a gun in a holster at her hip, but she made no move to draw it.
“How did you get on board?” he demanded.
“With less dramatic effect than you,” she replied. She looked around the cabin as she spoke, constantly scanning for threats, Six realized. “I stowed away in the bathroom before takeoff.”
Now Six was thoroughly confused. “Why?”
“I knew Vanish would get on the plane when he saw he couldn’t get past the Deck, and I knew you’d try to follow him.”
“Why have you been trailing me?”
“My father’s orders,” the girl said. “My mission is to protect you.”
“Why does he care? Who is he? And who are you?”
“Put the gun away, Six. I could easily kill you before you had the time to pull the trigger.”
She looked him in the eye and, in a flash, all the pieces snapped together in Six’s head.
Retuni Lerke disappears off the face of the earth. Armed men break in to Kyntak’s home and steal the baby. The aging drugs left behind in the Lab go missing. Then a few months later, a superhuman teenage girl surfaces.
“Nai?” he breathed. “Is that you?”
She ignored the question. “Can you fly a plane?”
Six’s brain fought the truth, and he slowly lowered the gun. “Why does Lerke want me protected?”
She pushed past him, walking towards the cockpit. “You’re not making my job any easier, Six.”
Six followed her through the door as she sat down in the pilot’s seat. Hundreds of questions bubbled in his brain, and
the least important one surfaced first. “How’d you learn to fly a plane?”
Nai was tapping keys on the NavSearch. “I read the manual while I was hiding in the bathroom. I like to be prepared.”
Six almost asked her how she had learned to read, but stopped himself. Various feelings grappled inside him—relief at finding her safe, but confusion at the circumstances, sadness that he’d missed her growing up, and dawning horror that she appeared to be the kind of soldier he himself had narrowly avoided becoming.
“How did you escape from ChaoSonic after they took you from us?” he asked.
“Escape?” She shot him a withering glance. “Those soldiers
rescued
me, under orders from my father. I wasn’t safe with you; that event proved it. My father warned me that I have enemies out there. You weren’t even training me. If I had grown up with you, I would never have been prepared.” The NavSearch bleeped and Nai shifted the thrust levers on the control panel, banking the plane to the right. They were turning around.
“Training you?” Six demanded. “You were two months old!”
“I’m sorry, Six,” she said. She sounded sincere. “If Crexe had let our father raise you instead of setting you free, you’d be stronger and smarter. As it is, I doubt you’ll live much longer. There are too many people who want you dead.”
“Nai,” Six said, “Lerke is a madman. He’s not your protector. He’s the one you need protection from!”
“He said you’d say that,” Nai said. She straightened the levers and pushed the thrust up to full blast, sending the plane back the way it had come at more than two hundred kilometers per hour faster than it had originally been traveling. “It hurts him that you’re so misguided.”
“Listen to me,” Six said urgently. “He doesn’t see us as people. We’re like…pets to him.”
“He’s looked after me,” Nai said coldly. “Better than you could. He wants me to be strong.”
“He’s crazy!”
“He’s my father.” Anger was creeping into her voice.
“Come back to the Deck with me,” Six said. “You’ll find you have more friends than you think.”
“There’s no such thing as a friend,” Nai said. “Just people who treat you well because they want something.”
“Why do you think Kyntak and I rescued you?”
“Perhaps you thought I could be useful later,” Nai said.
The spires of the buildings piercing the fog were thinning; Six realized that they were already approaching the airfield near the warehouse. The dim glow of the sun began to paint the grey-streaked air as it rose above the distant Seawall.
“Why do you think Lerke looked after you?” Six demanded. “Is everyone in the City selfish except him?”
“He’s my father,” Nai said again. “He loves me.”
Six shivered. Lerke had brainwashed her thoroughly, and she clearly wasn’t going to be disillusioned quickly. But maybe Six could get her thinking.
“Nai,” he said. “There are people out there who will help you not because they want something, but just because they can. I know plenty of those people. I’ll be glad to introduce you. I understand if you’re not ready for that yet, but please listen to what I have to say.”
Nai pushed a lever forward, and the plane began its descent. There was no indication that she was listening. He took a deep breath and continued.
“Just because someone says they know what’s best for you doesn’t mean they do. And just because you think you can make it on your own doesn’t mean you can. And just because you’re born a soldier, and raised a soldier, that doesn’t mean you have to die as one.”
Six sat down in the copilot’s seat. “Those three things won’t always agree,” he admitted. “Sometimes you won’t be sure whether to trust someone or question them and, sometimes, it’ll be hard to tell whether it’s better to fight or walk away. But now you have enough information to make your own choices.”
There was a long silence. Nai extended the landing gear and lowered the flaps on the wings.
“That’s it,” Six said finally. “I’m not going to force you to come with me. But if you ever decide you need a friend, you’ll be welcome.”
“You couldn’t force me to do anything,” Nai said, as the wheels touched the runway.
Six sighed. “I know.” His words were lost in the roaring of the plane’s reverse thrust as it shed its velocity against the tarmac.
Nai taxied the plane back into the warehouse and applied the brakes harder than necessary. Like a flash she was out of her seat, ducking back into the cabin. Six stood up slowly and watched her pull the handle on the emergency exit. It popped open and she stepped out onto the wing. She jumped down to the floor of the warehouse, catlike, as Six climbed out behind her.
“Don’t come looking for me,” she said, walking away. “This time my orders were to protect you. Next time you might not be so lucky.”
“Hey,” he said. “Do you know why we named you Nai?”
She stopped and half turned, her dark eyes roaming the warehouse. “No,” she said.
“I’ll make you a deal,” Six said. “Call me sometime, and I’ll tell you.”
He thought he heard a scuffle behind the plane, but he couldn’t see anything. When he turned back, Nai had gone, with no evidence that she had ever been there. For a moment he even thought that perhaps he had dreamed the encounter, and she was still just a baby waiting to be found. But he didn’t know how to fly a plane, so she had to have been there, saving his life again.
He jumped down off the wing, landing on the cement with barely a sound. He heard the scuffling noise again, and turned around to see Kyntak emerging from behind one of the cars.
“Who was that?” Kyntak said. “You managed to get yourself a girlfriend while I was kidnapped and out of the picture?”
Six grimaced as he turned around. “She’s a murderer,” he said. “And she’s only eight months old. And she’s our sister.”
Kyntak stared. “That was Nai?” he demanded.
Six nodded silently.
“But what’s happened? She must be—what, fifteen? Sixteen?”
“Retuni Lerke took her, not ChaoSonic,” Six said. “I think he loaded her up with Chelsea Tridya’s aging formula—I’m not sure why, exactly. Maybe because he needed a new operative or an assassin. She seems to work for him now.”
“That’s terrible,” Kyntak said after a long pause.
“It could be worse,” Six said. “She’s alive, I guess. And who are we to decide her path?”
“We’re the good guys,” Kyntak said. “He’s a bad guy.”
“I almost left you behind,” Six said. It came out suddenly, unexpectedly. “So many times today, I thought about giving up. About running.”
“But you didn’t do it,” Kyntak said firmly. “You came through.”
“You don’t understand,” Six whispered. “When you were kidnapped, I thought about running, finding a faraway corner of the City, and hiding there. When the Spades were coming after me, I wanted to give myself up and let them put me in a cell just so I could rest. And when Vanish’s plane was taking off, I wanted to let him go so he could be someone else’s problem.” Six shut his eyes. “I’m not one of the good guys,” he finished. “I just do good things.”
Kyntak put a hand on his shoulder. “What’s the difference?” he asked.
Six didn’t reply—he wasn’t sure how to. His confession and Kyntak’s forgiveness had relieved the weight on his soul. His feelings of guilt were slipping away faster than he could work out how to express them.
“So Vanish got away,” Kyntak said. It didn’t sound like a question.
Six sighed. “Got into an escape pod, ejected it from the plane. He’s wounded, but he could be anywhere by now.”
“No,” Kyntak said. “He’s got no vehicle and no troops, and probably no accommodation. He needs medical treatment, right?”
Six nodded. “Gunshot wound to the thigh. But he’s got money. Almost all the Deck’s funds plus whatever he accumulated over his century of stolen life.”
“Could be a lot if his interest rate is good,” Kyntak conceded, “but we know more about him than anyone ever has before,
and so does ChaoSonic. The City isn’t big enough for him to hide in anymore, not after what he’s done to us.”
“I’ll chip in to replenish the Deck’s account,” Six said. “I have at least sixty million across a few of my own—”
“Sixty million?” Kyntak gaped. “How did you get that much money?”
“My job pays well, I walk most places, I grow my own food, and I don’t buy gifts.” Six shrugged. “Look after the pennies and the dollars look after themselves. How much of this facility will ChaoSonic leave intact?”
“They’ll probably strip it bare,” Kyntak said. “But they won’t know about the tunnels underneath it, and with all the weaponry, medical supplies, clothes, electronics, and surveillance equipment down there, we should be able to make another few million, easy.”
Six stared into the grey air, watching the fog slowly acquire a crisp whiteness as the early-morning sun touched it. “It doesn’t feel right,” he said. “We’re not supposed to lose.”
“We didn’t.” They started walking out onto the tarmac, heading for the Deck extraction team. “Vanish wanted to do his brain-swap operation and we didn’t let him. We just wanted to stay alive, and we have. He lost, not us. We haven’t caught him yet, but in a way that’s just a formality.”
“He offered me a job,” Six said. “Why do they always do that?”
“Did you say, ‘No, thanks, I know you only want me for my body’?” Kyntak laughed. “I would’ve said that.”
“Did Queen find the clone?” Six asked.
“No,” Kyntak said. “The whole cell block was empty. He decided to run after all.”
“Good for him,” Six said. “I guess. I hope he’s okay.”
Six could see the Deck extraction team on the other side of the fence now. They were supposed to be hidden, but he knew their training and the likely hiding places. The QS must have lifted the lockdown. He couldn’t see her anywhere, but there were numbered Hearts agents lurking in the darkness. He could see King casually walking a dog around the perimeter.
“So we’re immortal?” Kyntak said as they walked. “The telomeres…”
“No, we can still die,” Six said. “We just don’t age.”
Kyntak grinned. “So I could be the best-looking guy in the City forever.”
Six raised an eyebrow. “You wish.”
“Oh, you think you’re competition? The dark, mysterious look isn’t as cool as you think it is.”
“Shut up,” Six said gruffly.
“I could have you demoted, Agent Six of Hearts.”
“Shut up!”