The Cut Out

by Jack Heath

  She did her best to make the bedroom look lived-in. Rumpled blankets, discarded clothes. A nailfile and some reading glasses she didn’t need on the nightstand. A diary under the bed, which she sometimes updated with purely fictitious information, written in Besmari: Lunch with Milla today. She and Hans have broken up.

  She tried to make the whole apartment look normal. Average. Boring. When someone broke in looking for a Librarian, she wanted them to be convinced they had the wrong address. Shopping lists on the fridge, mostly vegetables. Coffee mugs printed with terrible puns in the cupboard. A wedding invitation from a fictitious couple in a torn envelope on the kitchen bench. Scented candles gathering dust in the bathroom. Wrapping paper and gold ribbon in the wardrobe, along with fabulous dresses and high-heeled shoes too conspicuous to ever wear.

  Eventually the anxiety had faded. There were no visitors to her apartment, no strangers following her from the train station. No neighbours asking more questions than they should. No one was coming after her.

  The Library didn’t know where she was, and the Bank didn’t know who she was. As long as the two sides never shared information, she was perfectly—

  Plink.

  She looked at the piano just as the highest key rose back into position. Something had moved on the top floor landing.

  The piano would produce complex, atonal sonatas between 7.30 and 8.30 a.m., as the building’s other occupants left for work. But it was rare to hear anything this early – particularly from the top floor. Mr and Mrs Peil were retired, and tended not to leave their apartment until 9 a.m.

  Another key plinked. Whoever was coming down the stairs had just passed the twelfth floor. Cormanenko’s apartment was on the seventh.

  Plink. Eleventh.

  Plink. Tenth.

  Cormanenko walked into the closet, opened the panic room door, and stepped inside. She didn’t close it yet. Reopening the door was time consuming. If this was a false alarm, she didn’t want the hassle.

  The piano kept playing, one note at a time, down and down until Cormanenko recognised the note associated with her floor. Then it paused. She waited to hear a knock, or to hear her neighbour’s doorbell ring.

  There was silence. Someone had descended to this floor and stopped, without trying to enter either of the apartments.

  Cormanenko knew she should lock herself in the panic room. She had enough canned food to last for months. But if she did, she might never discover if this person was a Teller or a Librarian, and how he or she had found her after all this time. She might never be safe again.

  She walked into the kitchen and pulled a fruit knife out of the rack. The blade was short and sharp. She took it to her front door and peered through the peephole. No one waited on her doorstep, or on her neighbour’s welcome mat.

  She knew someone was on the landing. Therefore the intruder was pressed against the wall on the right-hand side of the door, ready to grab Cormanenko from behind when she turned left towards the stairs.

  She tiptoed into the laundry, opened the cupboard under the sink and picked up a box of matches and an aerosol can marked ‘Insect repellent’. The metal was dented from the pliers she had used to open it and replace the contents.

  Cormanenko sprayed a neat rectangle on the wall, as though designing a second door. The spray came out grey and foamy, hardening quickly against the laminated plaster.

  Cormanenko struck a match and jammed the unlit end into the foam. The wood fizzed and hissed as she took a few steps back.

  She didn’t have to wait long.

  Boom! A chunk of the wall blasted outwards onto the landing, cracking the wooden floorboards as it settled. When the dust cleared, a gloved hand protruded from beneath the block of masonry.

  She stormed through the hole in the wall and heaved the rubble aside. Beneath it lay an unconscious man wearing black fatigues woven from bulletproof spider silk, with a microphone and a GPS tracker attached to the wrists. He had a SIG Sauer 9mm semiautomatic pistol clenched in his right hand.

  A Teller, she thought.

  She dragged him back through the hole, into her apartment. Tore off his helmet. Slapped him in the face. ‘Hey! Wake up.’

  The Teller’s eyes swivelled behind closed lids.

  Cormanenko wondered why the Bank had sent just one man. And what, she thought, was he waiting for? And why did he come down from the top floor, rather than up from the ground?

  It took her a few seconds to figure it out.

  She whirled around in time to see the other Teller, hanging from a climbing rope outside the lounge room window, swinging boots-first towards the glass.

  She ran straight at him, drawing her knife and covering her face with her forearms.

  When she heard the glass break, she jumped—

  Crashing into the soldier and locking her arms around him—

  Hurling them both out through the window frame, where they dangled six floors above the street.

  Cormanenko punched the startled Teller in the throat. By the time he recovered she had grabbed the rope and shimmied upwards out of his reach. The road swayed dizzily far below them.

  Her carefully chosen apartment, her complex security systems, her half-finished book. It was all gone. She could never come back here.

  But if she could work out what had led the Bank to her doorstep, she could stop it from happening again.

  She glared down at the terrified Teller. ‘How did you find me?’ she roared.

  And she pressed the fruit knife against the rope.

  FRANKENSTEIN

  The interview room was small and bright. A mirrored wall reflected Fero’s grimy face back at him and a camera watched from the far corner. The chairs were welded to the table, forcing him to lean forward. His mug of tea had gone cold without him taking a sip.

  There was no clock, but it felt like he had been waiting for hours. Had Maschenov already contacted Vartaniev? Right now, was Vartaniev deciding whether or not to kill Fero? Beads of sweat crawled down his back.

  The door opened, and Vartaniev entered. ‘Thanks for waiting,’ he said. He handed over a plastic sack – Fero could see his clothes and his bag bundled up inside. ‘We’ve checked them. They’re clean.’

  Fero nodded, mentally congratulating Sloth. He opened the sack and started putting his clothes back on. ‘You don’t mind?’

  ‘Go ahead.’ Vartaniev sat down. ‘I’m sorry about this, but we need to formally debrief you before you can go home.’

  That suited Fero. He didn’t want to go to Maschenov’s house, where his mother would almost certainly realise he was an impostor.

  ‘No problem,’ Fero said. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Let’s start with what went wrong on your last mission.’

  ‘I got caught and locked up for two years.’

  Vartaniev chuckled. ‘At least you picked up a sense of humour.’

  Fero smiled nervously. Did Maschenov never make jokes?

  ‘More specifically,’ he said, ‘my target never arrived home. Instead, the house was gassed. By the time I noticed the smell, it was too late to get out. The next thing I remember is waking up in Velechnya.’

  ‘Someone questioned you, I assume?’

  ‘The Chief Librarian herself.’

  Vartaniev raised his eyebrows. ‘She must have taken the assassination attempt personally.’

  ‘Must have,’ Fero agreed. He finished dressing and checked the bag. It still had the toothbrush, toothpaste, phone, deodorant stick and map inside. He sat opposite Vartaniev.

  ‘Was she the one who told you about Biala Yordic?’ Vartaniev asked.

  ‘No. But she knew my name, and yours. It was obvious that she had someone on the inside.’

  ‘I see. How much did you give her?’

  Fero glared at him. ‘You know me better than that, sir.’

  ‘Anyone can break under harsh interrogation,’ Vartaniev said. ‘I wouldn’t blame you – but I do need to know if we’ve been compromised.’

/>   ‘You haven’t. I gave her nothing.’ Fero scratched his scalp. ‘My plan was to stonewall her until she got rough and then give her some misinformation. But she never got rough. I ended up in a cell, never having said a word.’

  ‘Good job, soldier.’ Vartaniev leaned back in his chair. ‘So if it wasn’t her—’

  ‘My cellmate was a guy named Quan Ser. Heard of him?’

  Vartaniev shook his head.

  ‘Well, Yordic turned up to interrogate him once. Later he told me she was the one who arrested him while he was planning an attack on the Stolkalny shopping complex.’

  ‘Is Ser one of ours?’

  ‘No. Kamauan rebel. He said Yordic never showed up to testify at his trial. He thought that would help him escape a conviction – but when the judge was told that she was undercover in Besmar . . .’ Fero turned his palms upward. ‘Anyway. When he told me all this, I put two and two together.’

  ‘She’s undercover here,’ Vartaniev said, ‘but she went to Kamau to interrogate a former collar?’

  A bead of sweat crawled down the back of Fero’s neck.

  ‘It must have been an emergency,’ he said. ‘It was the middle of the night, and she didn’t stay long. Ser wouldn’t tell me what it was about.’

  ‘I see.’ Vartaniev folded his hands on the table. ‘Why is Biala Yordic hiding here under her real name?’

  ‘I don’t think that is her real name,’ Fero said. ‘I think she arrested him under the same false identity that she’s using in—’

  The mirror shattered.

  Fero’s body reacted before his brain. He dived sideways away from the exploding glass as another shot came from the observation room, smashing the camera into thousands of sparkling pieces. He skidded across the ground and scrambled behind the table, hoping to avoid a third shot.

  Vartaniev drew his gun and took aim, but he was too slow. His head jerked backwards as a bullet slammed into it. He slumped to the ground.

  Dessa Cormanenko stepped through the broken mirror and turned her gun on Fero.

  ‘Troy Maschenov,’ she growled. ‘I should have guessed.’

  Fero didn’t look at Vartaniev’s body. He raised his hands. ‘Don’t shoot,’ he said, in Kamauan.

  ‘How did you know where I was?’

  ‘I’m not Troy Maschenov.’

  Cormanenko didn’t lower the gun. ‘No? What are you calling yourself these days?’

  She wore a nylon harness with a grappling hook launcher strapped to the back of it, as well as a vacuum flask and a black longboard with urethane wheels as big as saucers. She was older than in her photograph, which Fero supposed was always true. But she didn’t have grey hairs or wrinkled skin. The difference was in her mouth, which looked like it hadn’t smiled in a long time, and her eyes, which were as merciless as those of a tiger after many years in a cage.

  ‘I was out,’ she said. ‘For good. Now you’ve dragged me right back in. Why?’

  ‘My name is Fero Dremovich. I’m just a high school student. Noelein recruited me because I look like Maschenov, and she thought I’d be able to get across the border.’

  Cormanenko walked towards him and pressed the barrel of the gun against his temple. It burned his skin, hot from the three shots. Was this how his life would end? Murdered by the woman who was supposed to save him and everyone else in Kamau?

  ‘Last chance,’ she said. ‘Tell me the truth.’

  I am telling the truth! Fero thought. His mind was whirling. What could he say to make her believe him?

  He could hear her finger tightening on the trigger.

  ‘Quan Ser!’ he said. ‘Quan Ser.’

  Cormanenko’s eyes narrowed. ‘What did you just say?’

  ‘Quan Ser. Noelein said that if I gave you that name, you’d know that I’d come here to bring you home.’

  ‘To bring me – why?’

  ‘Because Besmari terrorists are about to set off a bio-bomb, covering Stolkalny in toxic debris and killing millions of people,’ Fero said. ‘They’re barricaded inside Melzen Hospital.’

  Cormanenko flinched. After a pause, she lowered the gun.

  ‘So,’ she said eventually. ‘Noelein sent you to come here and blow my cover so I would come back to Kamau and break into Melzen. Is that about right?’

  Fero nodded.

  Cormanenko slammed her fist down on the table, rattling Fero’s tea mug.

  ‘Yeah,’ she muttered. ‘That’s exactly the sort of crazy thing she would think of.’

  ‘She said there were no other options.’

  ‘And I assume she’ll have me arrested if I come back without you?’

  Fero gaped. It had never occurred to him that Cormanenko might want to leave him behind.

  Cormanenko got tired of waiting for a response and began rummaging through the dead man’s pockets. The sight shocked Fero. There was no blood, but the casual grave-robbing felt wrong.

  He didn’t stop her, though. She was the only one who could get him out of here. Cormanenko took Vartaniev’s ID badge, but left his phone behind. Fero got a quick look at the ID – a laminated card with just a surname and a grim headshot – before it disappeared into Cormanenko’s pocket.

  Cormanenko detached the rope from the grappling hook launcher, tied one end around Vartaniev’s chest and hooked the other end onto the back of her belt. Then she put the longboard on the ground and heaved him onto it. The carbon deck bent under his weight and his limbs flopped on the ground, but when she tugged on the rope, he rolled along fairly smoothly.

  ‘We’re taking a dead body?’ Fero was pulling on his shoes and his coat. He dropped his phone and his toothbrush bag into his pockets.

  ‘Unfortunately, he’s not dead.’ Cormanenko held up the pistol. ‘I took this from one of the men he sent after me. It was loaded with rubber bullets.’

  Fero saw the bruise spreading across Vartaniev’s forehead. ‘Why?’

  ‘They wanted to take me alive, I guess.’

  ‘I mean, why are we taking him with us?’

  ‘Because I don’t have the tools to cut off his finger,’ Cormanenko said. She lifted Vartaniev’s arm and swiped his fingertip across the scanner. The door unlocked.

  Fero did have the tools – his phone could cut Vartaniev’s finger off. But he kept quiet.

  ‘Okay, “Fero”,’ Cormanenko said. ‘Let’s go.’

  Fero looked left and right along the corridor. There was no sign of anyone coming, yet.

  ‘I cased this place years ago,’ Cormanenko said. ‘Not many exits.’

  ‘Which way did you come in?’ Fero asked.

  Cormanenko pointed. ‘But I made a mess. It’ll be swarming with soldiers by now.’

  Fero thought about the smashed-up interview room, and wondered what her definition of a mess was. He pointed in the opposite direction. ‘Vartaniev took me in through an entrance up there,’ he said. ‘Let’s try that. You want me to pull the rope?’

  Cormanenko shook her head as she dragged Vartaniev along the floor. ‘You’ll only slow me down.’

  Fero gritted his teeth, but she was right. Even with his spring-loaded shoes, he struggled to keep up with Cormanenko and her unconscious passenger.

  ‘Those are Sloth’s,’ Cormanenko said, pointing at his shoes.

  Fero nodded. ‘He made me run around in them while he shot at me with a paintball gun.’

  ‘That sounds like him,’ Cormanenko said, with a calculating look at Fero. ‘You’re really from Kamau?’

  ‘Yes,’ Fero panted. ‘Really.’

  ‘When we get back,’ Cormanenko grumbled, ‘Noelein and I are going to have words.’

  Fero wasn’t sure what she meant, but he didn’t have enough breath to ask any more questions.

  They stopped at a locked door. Vartaniev kept rolling until his head bumped into it. Cormanenko grabbed his wrist and swiped his finger across the scanner.

  A red light flashed.

  She tried again. The door didn’t open.

  ‘Th
ey’ve revoked his access,’ she hissed. ‘We’re trapped.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Fero said. He pulled the phone out of his coat pocket, pulled it in half, exposing the miniature saw.

  ‘I used up most of Sloth’s gadgets,’ Cormanenko said. ‘Did he give you a flammable passport too?’

  Fero didn’t reply. He was concentrating. A steel panel covered the lock. He would have to cut through that first.

  The blade hummed as it spun faster and faster. Fero pressed it against the panel, creating a shower of sparks. He pulled it back and looked at the pitifully small notch in the metal.

  ‘It’s not sharp enough,’ he said.

  ‘It’s plenty sharp. Push harder.’

  Fero applied more pressure. The blade screeched as it sliced through the steel, exposing the bolt inside the frame.

  ‘If you had that,’ Cormanenko said, ‘why didn’t you cut Vartaniev’s finger off?’

  ‘Like I keep telling you, I’m not Troy Maschenov. I’m a regular kid with one day of spy training.’

  ‘Then—’

  A bullet struck the wall next to Fero’s head. It ricocheted off the ceiling and hit the floor, a scrunched-up ball of metal. Not rubber, not a paintball. A real bullet.

  Cormanenko whipped around to face the soldiers flooding up the corridor towards them. Dozens of them, filling the corridor, with a tide of armour and weaponry. She raised her gun.

  ‘Cut faster, Fero,’ she yelled. She squeezed the trigger twelve times in quick succession. Eight soldiers collapsed, or covered their faces with their arms. The row behind them raised riot shields, deflecting further shots.

  Sweat poured down Fero’s brow. The bolt was stronger than the panel had been. The blade was cutting too slowly.

  Cormanenko ejected an empty clip, slid a new one into the grip and kept firing. ‘Hurry!’

  The bolt splintered.

  Fero shoved the door open. ‘Come on!’

  Cormanenko kicked Vartaniev off the longboard and dragged it through the gap before slamming the door shut behind them. It clanked as two more bullets hit it from the other side.

  ‘Keep running,’ Cormanenko shouted. She hooked the longboard back into her harness, unscrewed her vacuum flask and rolled it back towards the door. As she ran after Fero, a silvery liquid spilled out onto the floor, polishing it to a mirror sheen.