The Lab (Agent Six of Hearts)

by Jack Heath

  On the other hand, he thought, this could be turned to his advantage. It’d be good to avoid the other guards. Six leaned into the hole in the wall and looked down. Below this, the second floor; below that, the laboratory. He didn’t need to go through the top floor of the maze at all.

  Six slipped down into the darkness.

  On the way down, he examined his location. If he remembered correctly, the blueprints of the building placed him just a few turns away from his best guess at where the Deck agents were being held. So if he dropped down five meters…

  He did the math. Five meters free fall, less than a second.

  Six let go and plummeted through the darkness.

  So if I stop about now, he thought as he grabbed the grid in front of him and broke through the wall into the light, I should be on the second floor.

  He glanced around. The corridor looked the same as the ones on the top floor, but he knew he was in the right place.

  He broke into a jog. The blueprints said that his first guess for the cell was just a few corridors away. His shoes padded silently across the floor. A maze was actually a pretty good security system in itself, he thought. It was unsuspicious, it was reasonably cheap compared to many alternatives, and it was reliable.

  He jumped back from the corner he had just been turning. There were still a few soldiers to get around. He hoped they hadn’t seen him.

  These two guards looked bored out of their minds. Neither of them seemed to be very alert. They glanced around, but with curiosity rather than real intent.

  What was that sound? Six listened carefully.

  He paled. It was not a sound he was intimately familiar with, but he could now tell what it was.

  It was the sound of people screaming.

  Six began to run. I have to hurry, he thought. My friends are being tortured.

  But at least they were still alive. If the Lab staff was torturing them, then they had something that the officials wanted. He still had time to save them.

  He pulled the blowpipe swiftly out of his thin backpack, loaded it with a tranquilizer dart, and blew.

  Even as the guard was slumping to the floor, Six was reloading the tube. The other guard looked at his fallen comrade in alarm, then reached for his weapon.

  Too late. He fell to his knees and collapsed facedown. Six ran forward silently and stepped over the two sleeping soldiers. He opened the door they had been guarding and braced himself for the worst.

  But what lay behind the door was not what he had been expecting. He looked in horror.

  THE CHILD WITHIN

  The old people.

  The twelve old people from the photographs were in prison cells. Their clothes were stained and their skin was warped. They screamed and screamed and screamed. Six smelled before he saw that there were no toilets in any of these cells. The concrete floors and the prison outfits were stained with muck.

  The old people were dragging themselves on their cracked, skeletal hands, moving in pointless circles around their barred prisons. Some of them had managed to get onto their hands and knees, but that was it. It was as if their legs weren’t working. Their wrinkled, saggy skin was filthy with grime from the cell floors, and their faces were stained with the smeary congealed remains of food.

  The man nearest Six grabbed the prison bars.

  “Nyaaaagarameee!” he screamed hoarsely.

  Six stepped back, and moved along the cells. What were they doing here? What use could the Lab possibly have for a bunch of old people? And what had the Lab done to them to drive them out of their minds like this?

  Soon he came to an old woman who was not screaming. She looked up at him curiously.

  He crouched down beside the bars.

  “What’s happened to you?” he asked her.

  She laughed, a gurgling, hiccup-like giggle.

  And then something clicked in Six’s mind.

  Have you ever heard of Chelsea Tridya?

  She was interested in the science of life and aging. She claimed she’d made a breakthrough quite recently, wherein she’d been able to control the rate of cell division and replication in mice, effectively slowing down their rate of aging.

  She vanished, along with all her data and equipment, about six months ago.

  They don’t look like satisfied customers to me.

  All the clues he’d collected snapped together suddenly, in a new and alarming way—like a picture that makes no sense until it is turned upside down.

  Physically they were completely healthy, except for being at least twice as old as anyone I’d ever seen before. But mentally…they were freaky.

  None of them spoke English. They made noises, but it was just yelling, gibberish. It was like their brains had been melted.

  There was even a bunch of babies that they’d kidnapped. They left by the main gate, kicking and screaming. One of them even managed to worm out of her guard’s grip, but when she tried to walk, her legs couldn’t support her, and she fell down.

  Six’s brain started to compute at top speed.

  Chelsea Tridya.

  Control the rate of cell division and replication.

  Data and equipment stolen.

  Babies dragged into the Lab.

  Old people dragged out.

  Six’s skin erupted in goose bumps. The old woman kept laughing—a giggly, gurgling laugh.

  And just as Six realized that he was looking into the wrinkly, sagging face of a child, a woman’s voice spoke behind him.

  “It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” she said.

  Chelsea Tridya was a very small woman, an impression accentuated by her stooping posture and the tiny, youthful hands clutching the bars of her cage. Six thought she was about thirtyfive. Her face seemed too large for her head, or what could be seen of it from behind thick strands of dirty, blond hair. Her large, sorrowful eyes stared up at Six.

  “I wanted to help people,” she said, as if pleading for forgiveness. “Not to hurt them. Not to kill them.”

  “What are they being used for?” Six asked, gesturing at the ancient children in their cages.

  “Nothing, now,” Tridya said. “Just subjects in a successful test. I assume the Lab will kill them once they work out a way to profit from their deaths. I will suffer the same fate.”

  Her voice had no bitterness or fear. She spoke with resignation, staring all the time at Six. He assumed that all hope had been burned out of her in the six months she had been missing.

  “What do they plan to do with your aging therapy, now that they have it?”

  She lowered her head finally. “You know what they’re going to do. I can hear it in your voice.”

  Six’s chest tightened. “Make an army?”

  “Yes. An army of genetically engineered supersoldiers.” She looked at Six again, with neither judgment nor emotion. “Clones of you.”

  Six said nothing.

  “That is who you are, isn’t it?” She wasn’t asking. “You’re one of the Project Falcon kids.”

  “Why?” Six said. “What’s the army for? Who is left to fight?”

  But there was no time for her to reply. The door swung open, and Kligos Stadil stepped into the cellblock.

  Stadil glared suspiciously along the cells. He was sure he had seen a flicker of movement as he entered. Someone was in here.

  Almost certainly the agent, he thought. He hefted his weapon: a heavy Owl 5525 sidearm, fully loaded with 9-millimeter rounds. Time to put a stop to this game.

  But before he moved in any farther, he wanted to know where the agent was. He had seen the footage and the data of this creature, and the thing was fast.

  Stadil hated this prison block. These aged children were ugly, stinking, and downright unnerving, particularly when they were screaming—he could hardly hear himself think. Right now they were just grumbling and shuffling, which could work to his advantage. The agent wouldn’t hear him coming.

  He had nearly reached the last cell. With the smooth manner of a
professional killer, he eased himself into stillness, coiling his muscles, preparing to make a low dive around the corner.

  He put both hands on his gun.

  He jumped and flew into the open.

  The cell came into view.

  Empty!

  Midair, Stadil’s eyes widened in dismay. There was the old, dribbling prisoner, but where was the agent?

  Six landed on Stadil’s wrist with one foot, and pressed the other firmly against Stadil’s throat. Stadil cried out and the Owl fell from his hands.

  Six had been on the ceiling, following Stadil the whole time. That was the trouble with professionals, he thought. They were predictable to others of the same profession—unless you happened to be the best.

  Six lifted Stadil up, held his arms still with his own hands, and forced his knee onto Stadil’s thighs so neither of his legs could move.

  Letting go of one of Stadil’s arms, Six picked up the Owl and held it against Stadil’s temple. Stadil stopped struggling immediately.

  “This,” Six said, picking up and unrolling the blue prints, “is a map of this floor. I want to know where the Deck agents are being held. As you are head of security, please do not waste my time by pleading ignorance.”

  Stadil raised an eyebrow coolly. This wasn’t the first time someone had held a gun to his head.

  “I have visited several of these rooms, and established that my colleagues are not in them,” Six said. “If you point to a room I have visited before, I will kill you. If you refuse to tell me, I will kill you. If you take too long, I will know you are plotting against my interests, and I will kill you. If you cooperate, you will be left here. Alive.” His gaze hardened. “If my proposal takes much consideration, then I have clearly underestimated your intellect.”

  Stadil pointed out a room on the map wordlessly. Six was right—there was nothing else he could do.

  Six pulled the earpiece from Stadil’s ear and quickly bent the bars of the cell. Then he shoved Stadil through the bars, and bent them back to parallel immediately. He turned to Chelsea’s cage, leaving Stadil trapped in the cell.

  Stadil sat down on the bed as Six and Chelsea left the cellblock. His cellmate grinned mindlessly at him and laughed a stupid, gurgling laugh.

  ALL HEART

  “So when the Lab stole your research on cell division rate control,” Six said as they ran, “they used it not to slow down aging, but to speed it up.”

  “That’s right,” Chelsea confirmed. “Methryn Crexe is making an army for Ungrelor Ludden. In the past, the assassin project would have only been useful to create lone killers—it was never cost-effective to have enough equipment or resources to create many infants at once. And because each one would’ve needed a gestation period of nine months before it was able to leave the tube, it would take many, many years to have even a small strike team of clones.”

  “But with growth acceleration,” Six said, “so powerful that a group of toddlers could be kidnapped and be physically aged to more than a hundred years old days later, Crexe could create an army in only months. Right?”

  “Less,” she said grimly. “Weeks. They would need to be trained, of course—but I bet Ludden could take care of that.”

  “Who’s he attacking? Who’s threatened ChaoSonic?”

  “This is just a suspicion,” Chelsea panted, “but I think there are continents free of ChaoSonic, outside the Seawall.”

  Six gasped. It made sense! In fact, perhaps the Seawall itself was built not to stop people leaving, but to stop others getting in. Now Ludden was going to eliminate the threat once and for all.

  Maybe the other continents weren’t even attacking.

  Perhaps they are trying to rescue us.

  Right now, though, all this was just speculation. There was something more pertinent bothering Six.

  “Stadil had a radio earpiece on him,” he said. “Why didn’t he call the rest of Lab security for help?”

  “I don’t know. Perhaps his radio wasn’t working, or maybe…” Chelsea hesitated. “Maybe Stadil coming alone was part of some greater plan. You noticed the strange architecture—the thin walls and the lack of cameras?”

  “Yes,” Six said.

  “There’s something else going on here, something neither of us understands yet.”

  This is what frightened Six most—the thought that he was participating in some kind of intricately choreographed plot, the aim of which was invisible to him.

  He took Chelsea’s arm. They’d arrived.

  Six took a quick glance around the corner to confirm what he’d expected—yes, the place was being guarded.

  To get to the cell, they had to go through an anteroom first—this was the room at the end of the next corridor. The door appeared to be locked, and next to the door was a large window. Behind the glass he could see several guards wandering around the anteroom. There was a crimson alarm button on the wall inside.

  If they raise that alarm, Six thought, quivering, we’re as good as dead. Hundreds of soldiers will come running, they’ll take Chelsea back to her cell, and I’ll be locked up, injected, examined, and pinned like a butterfly in a display case before the night is out. No one will ever know what became of me. And the others from the Deck—they’ll never see daylight again.

  Six gritted his teeth. If I fail at this point…

  He looked at the window again. It had a slightly dull sheen to it; Six could tell it was a pane of bulletproof glass. The door was heavy steel—he wouldn’t be able to break it down before someone saw him and raised the alarm.

  There was a grate in the ceiling above the door—an entrance to the ventilation shafts. If he could get into the shafts, he knew he could climb into the anteroom. But how could he get into the shafts without the soldiers inside seeing him and getting to the alarm?

  Six took the spark bullets from his bag.

  There was nothing better to exploit in the human mind, he contemplated, than panic.

  “Who is that?”

  Through the glass, the guards could see a figure advancing. Before they’d had time to realize that he was not one of their colleagues, the figure broke into a run towards the glass and leveled his rifle.

  “Duck!” one of the guards shouted, and dived for cover as a hail of fire swept up the corridor towards the glass. As the bullets hit it, they disintegrated into showers of sparks and filled the room with harsh, glaring light. The soldier scrunched up his eyes against the brightness, cowering on the floor. Then it was over, and no evidence remained except for the ringing in his ears. The glass was intact. The door was still closed.

  But the corridor was empty.

  “Did you see that?” one of the others slurred.

  “I sure did!” the soldier said, still seeing stars. “Raise the alarm.”

  One of the others tried to stand, but slipped over backward, landing on his behind.

  Another guard staggered towards the red button.

  He reached out a hand to press it…just as something dropped out of the ceiling and landed between him and the button.

  The something grinned.

  Then it shoved him back, a shove that sent him flying into the wall. He slid down it, dazed and groggy.

  Agent Six nodded politely to the other two guards. “Pardon me,” he said.

  The still half-blinded guards moved to draw their weapons, but as they did, Six deftly produced a grey canister from his pocket. He picked up the air vent cover from below his feet and cracked the canister against it. He tossed the canister to one of the guards. The guard caught it bewilderedly as it started to spray forth thick blue gas. The other tried to aim his weapon at Six, but he was already groggy from the gas.

  As their eyes began to close, Six crossed the room, and opened the door to let Chelsea in. They swept through into the holding room without looking back.

  Six closed the door behind them.

  He turned.

  And he saw the faces of those he’d come to find. All the Hearts were there, p
lus Grysat. They all looked up as Six came in, and stared at him.

  “Umm,” he said, “I’m here to rescue you.”

  “What happened to the guards?” King asked.

  Six jerked his thumb back towards the door. “Asleep at their post.”

  King walked up to Six and grinned, placing a hand on Six’s shoulder.

  “What took you so long?” he asked.

  ON THE RUN

  “You were taking a big risk, you know, coming in here without a professional makeup artist disguising you first,” Jack chided.

  “I figured that no one would mind just this once,”

  Six said.

  “I’d fix you up now, but I don’t have the kit with me,” Jack apologized. “I have my pocket brush, but…”

  “…but that wouldn’t be enough on its own, I understand.” Six laughed. “Thanks for the offer, just the same.”

  Jack put his hairbrush back in his pocket.

  Six looked around again. “Was Kyntak brought in with you guys?” he asked.

  “Not with us.” King shook his head. “I don’t know if he was even captured.”

  Six frowned. He still didn’t trust Kyntak. Was he a double agent, spying on the Deck for ChaoSonic? But if that was the case, why had he given King an accurate map of the building? Without it Six would never have found the others.

  These questions can be answered later, Six thought. Right now, these people were depending on him.

  “Okay,” he said. “You need to hold your breath when we go through the next room. I gassed it on the way in.”

  Everyone in the room nodded, inhaled, and closed their mouths as Six opened the door.

  “Incredible,” King said, as they ran down the corridor. He and Six were in front, with Ace of Hearts watching the rear and all the other agents in between. “They’re speeding up growth rather than slowing down aging. I never thought of that.”

  “We have to stop them,” Six said. “If they build an army of soldiers—”

  “Clones of you,” King interjected.