by Jack Heath
“I have a job to do,” Six said. “I don’t like to waste time.”
He snatched up the mp3 player and made to leave the room.
“I found out who Sender J. Lawson was,” Jack said.
Six grimaced. He touched his dog tags reflectively and stopped moving, his hand on the door handle.
“The files say he was caught in the firing line of his own squadron,” Jack said. “That’s why he was never on your mission stats.”
Six was silent.
“I’m sorry, Six. I didn’t mean to be so tactless. Sometimes you get stuck between a rock and a hard place, and you have to do something you might not like. It happens to the best of us. Why do you wear the dog tags?”
Six turned and made eye contact with Jack. “I wear them,” he said, “to remind myself that I have to be better than the best of you.”
The door swung shut.
SENDER J. LAWSON
This had to be a joke. Or a mistake, or something. Because, the fourteen-year-old boy thought, I can’t just die down here, they won’t just let me die, and someone will be coming to rescue me.
The sound of a hundred booted feet down the stairwell towards the office was deafening to Six’s ears.
“I’m sorry, Six,” the radio buzzed. “I’m sorry.”
Sorry is wrong. Sorry must be a mistake, thought Six, because sorry isn’t the cavalry. Sorry won’t stop bullets.
The only door was the one he had come in. He searched the floor. About four meters by five meters—wood paneling, over sixmeter-deep concrete, no trapdoors. No good. The ceiling was steel, with no service holes, and above it there were at least twenty-five meters of limestone between him and the night outside. Limestone was a soft rock, but even if Six could get through the steel, he’d have nothing to dig with.
Six threw the bookshelf to the floor. It cracked against the panels, sending books and chunks of mahogany skittering to the corners of the room. He punched the wall where the bookshelf had stood, shattering the surface plaster, crying out when the bones in his hand fractured against the concrete.
The footsteps had stopped. Had the soldiers given up?
No. They were right outside the door.
Desperate now, he picked up a chunk of bookshelf and threw it at the light globe. The light fizzed out as glass tinkled to the floor. Darkness would at least give him some advantage when the troops stormed the room.
Six almost laughed at the thought of a hundred soldiers trying to fit into a four-by-five-meter office with a bookshelf on the floor and only one doorway. He actually did laugh, bitterly, when he heard the night-vision goggles click on outside the office door. Killing the light had been a waste of time.
He drew his Raven X59 pistol for the first time. Although it was an old model, the Deck had given it to him brand-new, and until now it had never been used. The grip felt alien.
I hope it works, he thought. I’ve never tested it. If it jams up, I’m dead for sure.
Six’s thoughts were suddenly shattered as the door was broken down.
A PGC387 stun grenade was thrown in. Six caught it with his left hand and threw it back over the commando blocking the doorway, then shot him in the head with his right.
Instinct had made the decision for him.
The soldier slumped forward uncomplainingly as Six squeezed his eyes shut, moments before the PGC detonated.
Like black roses blown over by a gust of wind, the troops outside fell backward. The blinding shock wave rippled through them, a lethal splash of light. Many of them had very quick reflexes and turned away before the flash. Some didn’t, and were nearly knocked unconscious by the shocking light, amplified by their night-vision goggles.
Six hesitated, then dropped his Raven to the floor. No more guns, he thought numbly. Ever. He ripped off the dog tags from around the neck of the soldier he had killed before springing into action.
The blinded soldiers were pushed forward in the struggle to get through the door. But when the troops who could still see arrived in the office, it was empty. Six had slipped outside among the others.
It was only a moment before a commando noticed that a man dressed like one of his colleagues was pushing in the direction opposite from the rest of them. He saw that the man wasn’t wearing goggles or carrying any weapons. He opened fire with his Owl.
By the time the soldier’s finger had hit the trigger, Six was no longer in front of him. Instead, four other commandos were shot in the back. One was protected by armor, and he turned around, searching for the source of the attack.
“About-face,” he roared, seeing Six vanish into the crowd. He pulled the trigger and sent a hail of bullets after him. Two soldiers were hit in the legs, and they went down firing. Confusion and fear took over as those who had been blinded or disoriented by the flash started firing, too, and soon the air was shredded by the gunfire.
Six gasped as a few rounds pierced his left thigh. He thrashed his way out of the line of fire, but his movement caught the eye of a commando in front of him, who suddenly leveled his Owl. Six grabbed the man’s knees and threw him to the ground as sparks flew off the body armor of soldiers above his head. By the time he had hit the floor, the soldier was already dead, shot by his comrades. Six found himself standing in front of another commando, who learned from the mistake of the previous one and scurried out of Six’s way like a cockroach caught in the light as the bullets of his colleagues sliced the air around him.
By the time the other Hearts had arrived at the entrance to the underground base, there was no movement on the floor below.
Only a cold, bleak silence.
No one stopped them from breaching the outer door and no one raised the alarm when they crossed the polished threshold. Even when they were inside, the only sound was of neon bulbs humming softly and indifferently.
But before they climbed downstairs to see the aftermath, they witnessed a miracle.
When Six dragged himself out of the elevator, he had two broken knuckles, a shattered femur, five bullets in his body, and a pair of dog tags around his neck.
Six kept seeing the bullet, his bullet, disappearing into Lawson’s face over and over again. His imagination worked like a slow-motion X-ray—he could see that fatal, perfect shot breaking Lawson’s nose, cracking a hole in his skull, and finally separating his spine from his brain.
Inside he was pulling that trigger repeatedly, like a psychopath, with each shot striking him like an accusation.
Murderer. Murderer. Murderer.
NO ONE MUST ESCAPE
Six’s fingers played idly on the record button as he sat at the bus stop in the City Square. With each tap he gave the player, there was a resounding click from the speakers in his ears. He had deliberately adopted a slumped and relaxed pose—head back, shoulders loose, legs spread—but his eyes were keen and alert behind his dark glasses.
The Square was a relic from pre-Takeover times, a rash of red clay tiles providing temporary relief from the monotonous fields of huge grey buildings that surrounded it. Because it was right in the middle of the City, there were many people passing through it at any given time. No one stayed. Few even lingered, except for those who sat on the benches briefly, for one reason or another. But people seemed to be drawn towards the Square from all over the City, led to it by all the old roads and paths and rusted signs. The tiles were worn smooth by millions of feet. The Square was never silent—voices and footsteps always spread through it, duplicating and dividing, bouncing off walls, replicating like a disease.
Across the Square, Six saw a chicken salesman gesticulating wildly at his stock, trying to be noticed by pedestrians. Inside their tank, the boneless, legless, beakless birds splashed in the water, trying to flap with bald, floppy wings. Their gills heaved, and their empty eye sockets stared at the prospective customers.
Modern chickens were designed before Six was. The fast-food branches of ChaoSonic had saved a fortune by lacing normal chickens with altered DNA, removing all the inedible pi
eces and adding gills to make them more hygienic and cost-effective. There was no longer a need to scrape the meat from the bones—chicken was now just meat: muscles and organs. There was nothing inedible inside a chicken, so they were blind, deaf, dumb creatures, cloned on demand and ready to be thrown in a deep fryer.
Things haven’t changed much for centuries, Six thought, looking at the struggling chickens. Humans have been using living things as tools since the invention of the horse and cart for heavy loads, or the caged canary for testing air. They’ve been improving on these tools for almost as long—selective breeding for better crops, or special training to make guide dogs. The chickens are not a testament to a more exploitative human nature, but to the new and better technology to exploit nature with.
And, of course, I’m just like the chickens, he thought. A tool, but used as weaponry instead of food. Unlike the chickens, the humans made me stronger and better than I once was. But the purpose was the same—I was also modified to be more useful.
Crexe and Ludden were due to arrive at any minute now. Six had been in the area for more than half an hour, but he hadn’t sat down at the bus stop until the last bus had left.
His finger twitched rhythmically against the player. Six could stay completely motionless if he had to, but that would have looked unnatural. A boy sitting motionlessly on a bench is much more suspicious than one wiggling his fingers for no apparent reason. A good agent could sit immobile for days, and Six was a very good agent. He could stay motionless for weeks if he wanted to. Boredom was for humans, he had always thought.
I wonder if Kyntak ever gets bored, he wondered suddenly. How long has he been copying humans? Has he begun to think like one as well?
Six shook his head. He had to stop this. The more he thought about the events of the last two days, the more he seemed to lose control of his thoughts. He had to concentrate on the mission.
Suddenly he saw what he was looking for. A man in the crowd: leather jacket, light sneakers, sunglasses, and the telltale bulge of a radio in his pocket.
They’re here, Six thought. Though he displayed no outward signs of change, he now began to search the crowd with feverish intensity. So far, three guys with radios. No, four. Three of them had guns, too—he could see the shapes in their jackets. Probably from Ludden’s side. Then there were two more guys, neither with guns.
Six paused. One of the new men on the scene was staring straight at him. Six slowly and casually turned his head away, but kept examining the starer from behind his sunglasses. The man was of average height, and lithe, with close-cropped dark hair, deep blue eyes, and powerful muscles hidden under his clothes. He had a long scar on his neck, evidence of a vicious gash. He was staring at Six incredulously, as though he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.
What’s going on? Six wondered. Has he recognized me from yesterday? He must know me from somewhere.
Maybe he was the one watching me in the parking lot the other day.
The scarred man moved first.
Six was on his feet instinctively, drawing a silenced gun from his belt. The man was reaching for his radio, but Six was quicker. As the man’s fingers touched the switch on the radio, two bullets pierced it. The man dropped the ruined receiver to the ground and turned to run, with Six already hot on his heels.
“Six, what are you doing?” Queen crackled through Six’s radio.
He ignored her, roughly pushing people out of his way as he tore after the stranger. Amazingly, he found that he wasn’t gaining any ground at all on the other man. This guy was fast. He was better than fast—he was getting away!
The chicken salesman lunged forward, reaching into his tank and pulling out a Crow KOT45. Water dripped off his arm as he aimed for Six’s skull and pulled the trigger. Six dived forward, ducking his head and turning his shoulder. The bullets whined over him as he rolled along the tiles and jumped back to his feet.
KOT45s fired from a closed bolt, making them impervious to wet or sandy conditions. However, this slowed the firing rate, and Six dodged the bullets without too much trouble. He barely noticed the soldier—he was still chasing the scarred man.
The other Deck agents, however, did take note of the gunfire directed at Six. So did the civilians, who panicked.
“Move in! Go!” Six’s radio buzzed. “Lock and load!”
Their original mission now abandoned, the other Hearts agents moved into action, clambering up from manholes, leaping out of shops, and drawing pistols from their civilian outfits. The ChaoSonic agent ducked behind the steel base of his chicken tank. Pedestrians screamed and fled the scene, jamming the streets around the Square.
Six snarled and pushed through the throngs of bystanders. He could still see the scarred man sprinting away. No one must escape, Six thought. The tiled Square became a crimson blur beneath his feet. The people around him lost their human shapes and became flying blobs zipping past his body like comets. Still the man ahead remained out of his reach.
Soon they were each moving so fast that everything else seemed to be happening in slow motion. The people were like shop-window dummies, frozen in place as Six darted in between them.
They were out of the Square now. No more clumsy civilians to barge through, only narrow side streets and randomly parked vehicles. This is where I’ll get him, thought Six. I’ll catch him, knock him out if need be, and take him back to the Deck.
As he was running, he unscrewed the silencer from his Hawk and fired a shot up into the air. The explosion echoed loudly around the streets.
“Freeze!” Six yelled, but the man ahead of him had suddenly disappeared.
One moment he’d been running up ahead, and then the street was empty.
“What the…” Then Six saw the side street on the left. The man must have gone down there. Six slipped between the buildings and kept sprinting. But still he couldn’t see his quarry. The street stretched out ahead of him for at least three hundred meters, but it was empty. It was a very narrow street, with no doors or windows in the buildings on either side. Where did the guy go?
He looked up. The scarred man was hopping quickly between the two walls, moving higher and higher out of Six’s reach.
“Oh, no you don’t,” Six whispered. He jumped into the air, soaring between the buildings. He stretched up and grabbed the man’s ankle. The scarred man cried out in surprise and lost his foothold on the wall. They both fell down towards the concrete. Six shoved his feet against one wall in midair and was propelled back towards the other, briefly slamming the other man against it. Then they landed, and Six hit the ground. He immediately scrambled to his feet but was knocked down when a lean muscular fist hit him in the face.
Immediately he sprang up again, but the other man was gone, sprinting down the street.
Who is this guy? Six wondered.
He powered along after his quarry, gaining velocity with each step, going faster and faster until it felt like nothing and no one could ever stop him. Suddenly he was out of the alley and the man was still running; he’d turned a corner and was speeding alongside the building. Six continued the chase, and realized he could now overtake the man. The blasting wind whistled past him as he put his feet on the wall and continued running, with the sky on his left and the ground on his right, and the running man in front of him still. Six ran up the wall a little farther, putting all his energy into the sprint. The speed levitated him, holding the ground at bay just out of arm’s reach. Within a moment he was directly above the man, and he deftly reached down and grabbed his fluttering dark hair. The man looked up, and his jaw dropped as Six overtook him, whirled around on the wall, and flipped his feet down to the ground. Then he stopped dead, and the man cannoned into him, unable to turn around in time. Six stayed still as he took the impact, and the man fell to the ground. Six whipped out the Hawk as the man scrambled to his feet.
“No more games—you’re coming with me,” Six panted. He swallowed. “Understand?”
The man looked him in the eye, apparen
tly unafraid, and nodded.
“Good. Tell me—”
There was a whirl of hair, a flash of white teeth, and suddenly the man was gone again. Six gasped. The front half of his gun had completely disappeared.
It had been bitten off.
Six looked up. The other man was rapidly receding into the distance. He gave chase again, discarding the useless weapon. His feet pounded the dirt into dust behind him as he saw the man dive into a ChaoSonic Chariot and start it up.
Six sighed, and jumped over the door of a nearby convertible, an old ChaoSonic Landmark. Car security systems were simpler than ever before—by skillfully jamming a clip of bullets in between the card slot and the exposed side of the cube, and using all his strength, Six was able to prize the lid off. He slid the ignition tube out swiftly, slipped his long fingers inside the hole, and connected the battery to the coil wire. The lights on the dashboard flicked on. With a little more wire crossing, the engine started, the motor roared, and suddenly he was in pursuit of the man again.
The hot-wiring had taken eighteen seconds.
The other driver was already far ahead of Six, but the Landmark was well built and powerful, and he had no difficulty closing the distance. Within moments he had slammed into fifth gear and was screaming after the smaller car.
“No one escapes Agent Six,” he muttered. “Ever.”
Six watched the car ahead tearing up the road and matched its every move. At a T-intersection it feinted left and turned right, but Six spun the wheel and screeched after it without losing any ground.
He saw his quarry’s eyes flick to the rearview mirror.
“Yep,” Six said aloud, “I’m still here.”
As if in response, the Chariot swung left and screeched into the entrance of a shopping center parking lot. Other drivers honked as they swerved aside to avoid him.
Six followed unhesitatingly—a second later his car was zooming up the ramp.
