by Jack Heath
The footsteps faltered—the soldier had hesitated. Six threw the roller-door aside and exploded into the corridor. He lashed out with his foot, the heel slamming into the soldier’s visor and cracking the shatterproof glass.
The soldier reeled back with the impact, his shoulder slapping against the wall, but he recovered quickly. Six dived after him, not wanting to give him time to aim his Eagle. He shoved the soldier against the wall and held him there, forcing the wrist of his gun arm against his torso. The barrel of the gun was trapped sideways, pointing at the empty end of the corridor.
The soldier had reached for his knife with his free hand. Six yelped as it slashed up across his forearm, slicing through the sleeve of his disguise. Droplets of blood splattered onto his visor, and he whirled around, twisting the guard’s arm out in front of him and holding the blade at a safe distance.
Now he was facing away from the soldier, crushing him between his back and the wall. The soldier’s gun was pressed flat between them, and Six was squeezing the wrist of the hand that held the knife, trying to cut off the circulation.
Apparently realizing that he was going to lose this scuffle, the guard pulled the trigger of his Eagle, firing into the empty corridor. The noise of twenty rounds being discharged right behind Six’s back was deafening, and he could feel the burning of the muzzle against his arm. He twisted around, reached down, and grabbed the soldier’s remote, tearing it off his belt. He leaped backward, pointing the remote at the soldier, who was swinging his Eagle to face Six, and jammed his thumb down on the SYNCAL button.
The soldier went limp instantly, falling against the wall. Six was already turning back towards the elevator as he slid heavily to the floor.
The other guard was running towards Six, presumably sounding the alarm with his helmet mike. Six couldn’t hear it—his radio was either off or on the wrong frequency. The guard had raised his Eagle, but Six lifted his Raptor and fired three shots. The first round missed, but the second hit the armor on the soldier’s left shin, and the third clipped his right ankle, punching straight through. He tumbled over as his leg gave way underneath him, sprawling on the floor of the corridor. He stretched out a hand towards his fallen gun, but couldn’t reach it. As Six ran towards him he retracted the hand and flopped awkwardly onto his side like an asphyxiating fish, reaching for his Raptor.
“Don’t,” Six yelled as he ran. “Put your hands on your head.”
The guard ignored him and pulled his gun out of its holster. He fell back onto his front, bracing his elbows against the ground and aiming at Six. Six fired immediately, the first two rounds splintering the guard’s fingers and the third shooting over his head and grazing his ankle.
The guard howled as the gun fell from his ruined hand. “Why doesn’t anyone ever do what they’re told?” Six muttered as he approached him.
Does one remote work for any soldier’s nanomachines? he wondered. He pointed the stolen remote at the guard and hit MORPHINE. The whimpering quieted, and then stopped. The guard writhed slowly on the ground, apparently disoriented by the drug. Six hit SYNCAL and the guard’s head fell to the floor, face-first, and all his limbs went slack.
Six made only a cursory examination of the guard’s wounds. He might limp for the rest of his life and never be able to shoot again, but the bleeding wasn’t life threatening. Good, Six thought. If he raised the alarm, I don’t have time to be dressing wounds.
He started running back up the corridor, heading for the room that the soldier had been guarding. That was the most probable location for Kyntak, and they needed to get moving.
The elevator doors slid open as he was approaching them. Soldiers started pouring out, enough to block the corridor. Six immediately dropped into a gunman’s crouch, dropping the Raptor and the remote and raising his Eagle instead. He opened fire, sending forty rounds into the legs of the soldiers.
They wobbled, but none fell. Their armor hadn’t been penetrated. “Freeze,” the team leader ordered as the soldiers advanced on Six, raising their weapons.
Six ran towards them, drawing the two halves of his quarterstaff out from behind his back. No time to put them together. He could have used the remote, but its range was very short, and he didn’t know the technology well enough to trust it with his life.
Six swung half of the staff down in a vicious arc, slamming the end onto the helmet of the team leader. The fiberglass snapped, denting the helmet and popping out the visor; Six drove his elbow into the back of the soldier’s head, cracking his face down onto his knee. Satisfied that the leader was out for the count, Six spun around and smacked the other half of the quarterstaff into a soldier’s chest, winding him, then slammed a gloved fist up into his jaw.
He hadn’t even hit the ground when Six thrust a leg over him in a mighty kick, knocking the soldier behind him into the wall. He lashed out backward with half of the quarterstaff without even looking, and heard a yell of pain as it connected. He whipped a fist out to the side, and it thumped into armored flesh. Four or five down, he thought.
There was a sharp buzzing in his ears, and the flesh all over his body tingled for a moment. He stumbled forward. What was that? he wondered. Do they have tasers?
He spun around, his muscles suddenly slack and unresponsive, searching for the threat. As he turned, every single soldier in the corridor fell to the floor and lay still.
Six’s eyes widened. He walked slowly and awkwardly backward into the wall, his legs feeling numb. He barely registered the impact.
“Think,” he mumbled, tongue loose against his teeth. “Think! What’s going on?”
Syncal, he thought. Someone hit a remote, and the nanobots flushed Syncal into all the soldiers’ bloodstreams. So where’d this person go?
He suddenly realized that he was on the floor. He tried to push it away and stagger to his feet. Someone hit a big remote, he thought. A mass transmitter, or a satellite—it knocked out all the troops on this floor. I’m safe—or I would be, if I could walk. What’s happening to me?
A memory echoed through his head. I dug out the dart they hit you with, Ace was saying. Less like a dart than an automatic syringe. Her voice faded and he remembered wondering how Vanish’s man in Insomnia knew where to find him. He saw again the other soldier running across the Timeout, pointing a remote at him.
Now he couldn’t even lift his head off the floor. The linoleum smelled faintly of grease. There were robots in the tranq gun, he thought wildly, and now they’re in my blood! Broadcasting my location—they knew I was here; knocked me out at the push of a button…
His entire body was numb. His eyelids were dragging themselves closed. He tried to scream, but only heard the noise in his head. No, he thought. Fight it! Don’t sleep. Find Kyntak—open the door and he’ll help you out. He’ll carry you. It’s just a few meters. You can do it.
He saw his arm slap against the floor, and saw it slide back towards him. He couldn’t tell if he was dragging himself along or just wriggling his arm. The whole image was fading. No corridor, no soldiers, no arm.
Don’t give up!
Six’s eyes slid closed.
Fight it!
So tired…
And then there was nothing.
IMMORTALITY
This can’t be happening. You were so careful.
The soldiers are storming the house, rifle barrels swinging from side to side, orange goggles glowing like bonfires. You usually call them cockroaches, because of the clawlike gloves and the tubes leading from their black masks to the air purifiers on their chests.
They’ve smashed in the front door, sending walnut-brown fragments of wood skittering into the hallway. The windows have been shredded to razor-sharp glitters of dust that seem to hang in the air much longer than they should. Dozens of holes have been punched in the roof so more troops can abseil in. The helicopter is still overhead, dropping more—you can hear the thundering of its blades, and see the spotlight slicing across the windows.
You were prepared f
or this. You bought the City’s best security devices and reconstructed them to make them even better. You turned your whole house into an elaborate booby trap, preparing for the day they would come for you.
But this isn’t your house. This is Kyntak’s house, and it was a mess even before ChaoSonic troops showed up. How can you defend it on your own?
Forget the house. Nai needs you. She should still be in her bedroom. Her cot could be knocked over, she could be crushed under their boots. You have to find her, get her out of here before she’s hurt. You try to run down the hall, but there are cockroaches blocking the way. One of them knocks you to the ground with the butt of his rifle. He’s bigger and stronger than you are. Stronger than any man has a right to be.
You scramble back onto your feet, shove him aside. The corridor stretches to an impossible length—no matter how hard you run, the bedroom seems just out of reach. And somehow you know what’s happening in there—a soldier scooping Nai out of her cot, ignoring her thin squeal of protest, and walking slowly back towards the shattered windows.
You round the corner, swinging through the bedroom door with one hand on the door frame. Someone grabs you and shoves you away, but you push right back. The soldier carrying Nai has just disappeared through the window. You run and jump, but as soon as you’re outside you see that it’s a long way to the ground. A freezing wind scrapes your skin as you plummet through the night air, briefly catching the beam of the helicopter’s spotlight.
Thud. Your bones crack, but you feel no pain. There’s a ringing in your ears, and Kyntak’s house vanishes into the darkness. The soldier with Nai has gone, but there’s another—a Vanish trooper. He’s aiming his pistol at your head.
You try to throw yourself at him, but you’ve fallen too hard—it’s like you’re glued to the concrete. The soldier fires once, and a trapdoor opens beneath you. You tumble into the darkness.
Solid ground appears beneath your feet. It’s black and silent here. There’s a ladder leading back up to the light, but it’s twisted; the rungs are straight but the sides spiral around one another as they rise. It looks as if it’s made of bone—you’re not sure you want to climb it. You’re alone right now, but maybe Kyntak is on his way. Nai might be too.
Hiss. The noise is painfully loud. It echoes out of darkness which is steadily becoming brighter. You try to cover your ears with your hands, but there’s a sudden pain in your wrists and you can’t move your arms…
Six woke suddenly, thrashing against his bonds. The copper clamps around his wrists and ankles scraped his already tender skin, and the restraint around his neck choked him. He slumped back against the table, coughing, and squinted into the bright light.
He didn’t need to look around to know where he was. He could see his reflection in the mirrored ceiling. He was wearing orange shorts and an undershirt, and he was clamped to a table. He was in a cell, probably only a few meters away from where he had fallen.
He hadn’t rescued Kyntak, and now they were both doomed.
He scrunched his eyes shut for a moment. No, he told himself. Don’t think like that. You’re alive. You don’t know what they want from you, but they obviously can’t get it once you’re dead. There’s still hope.
The hissing stopped, prompting him to look up. There was a clear plastic hose with a valve on the end attached to the ceiling—providing oxygen, he guessed. They didn’t want to give him an air vent to escape through. But the room couldn’t be completely airtight, or the pressure would be increasing each time there was an oxygen burst, and sooner or later the valve would stop opening.
If there was a way out of here, he’d find it.
The roller-door slid open and two men walked in. One was a Vanish trooper, dressed in the same fatigues that Six had been wearing; he slid the roller-door shut behind them. The other was a large man wearing a T-shirt and jeans. He was smiling broadly.
“Six of Hearts,” he said. “It’s a pleasure.”
Six twisted his head from side to side, stretching his aching neck. “Who are you?”
The man rested his hands in his pockets. “They call me Vanish.”
“So you’re on the board of directors?”
Vanish blinked. “I’m sorry?”
Six snorted. “I worked it out. Vanish isn’t one person; it’s an organization, operating as an individual so ChaoSonic doesn’t exterminate it. How else could Vanish have been operating for more than fifty years?”
There was a long silence. Six held Vanish’s gaze. His heart thudded softly in his chest, like a ticking clock.
“Do you know what telomeres are?” Vanish asked finally.
Six frowned. “Scraps of DNA?”
“Close enough. They are strings of DNA at the ends of chromosomes, making sure your cells don’t lose genetic information as the chromosomes are replicated. Every time that happens, the telomeres get a little shorter, and eventually they run out, causing every age-related ailment from wrinkles to cancer.” He paused. “Your telomeres, however, are self-copying.”
Six drummed his fingers against the table, confused by this change of topic. “How?”
“I don’t know!” Vanish shrugged. “Theoretically it should be impossible. But when I acquired the one-armed clone of you and started testing him, it only took a few months to notice that his telomeres weren’t getting any shorter. So I put a microcamera into him and watched it happen. His telomeres were copying themselves right in front of my eyes!” He smiled hungrily. “And I needn’t remind you that you have the same DNA.”
Six stared at him. “So what are you saying?” he asked. “That I’ll always be young?”
“Yes!” Vanish exploded. “You can’t die of old age!” His hands fidgeted excitedly in the air. “Your DNA will never corrupt!” He lowered his voice. “That was Retuni Lerke’s secret gift to you. He never told Methryn Crexe about it—Crexe would have tightened his leash, because he didn’t need soldiers who never got old. But Lerke rigged up your genes so if you stayed away from external danger, you would live forever.”
Six was starting to feel claustrophobic. He was clamped to a table in a sealed room with a raving lunatic. “So you have the same thing?” he asked. “You can’t grow old, so you’ve been a thorn in ChaoSonic’s side for more than fifty years?”
Vanish laughed. “No, not quite the same,” he said. “My genes are very average—but not for long.” He walked over to the side of the table and rolled up Six’s left sleeve, tracing his finger across the line where the clone’s arm had been attached.
Six shivered at his touch. “You’re going to steal my DNA?” he demanded. “But how? Genes are inseparable from the body.”
Vanish rolled the sleeve back down and withdrew his narrow fingers. “Oh, I know that. So I’m going to take your body, too.”
Six’s eyes widened in alarm. “What are you talking about?”
“Well, perhaps Kyntak’s rather than yours. That’s why I was hoping to get both of you, so I could make sure I got the best one. Sure, your genes are the same, but genes aren’t everything. You’re probably fitter than he is—you’ve had a stricter diet and training regime, I’ll bet—but I need to see if the surgery the Lab did on you last year has adversely affected your health.”
“You can’t take my body! That’s impossible!”
Vanish raised an eyebrow. “No, it’s not. My surgeon will remove your cerebral cortex and most of your limbic systems, then replace them with mine. You’ll get a stem cell injection to make sure the neurons remap and the cells bond properly. The parts of your brain that keep your heart beating will be untouched, and we’ll put you on a respirator to keep the lungs going during the surgery. Your sensory systems and motor system will be unchanged, so that I can use your body more easily when I have it. But my hippocampus, my orbitofrontal cortex, my nucleus accumbens, and my amygdala will all be stitched into your skull, so I’ll be able to keep my memories, emotions, thought processes, and feelings, as well as my likes and dislikes. Things will tas
te different to me, look different, and feel different—but I’ll still be me.”
Six’s heart was racing. It felt like there was a block of ice inside his stomach. “A successful brain transplant has never been done before. You’ll die.”
Vanish smiled. “Do you honestly think I’d risk this if it had never been done before? The whole point is living, after all.” He leaned down close to Six’s face, and Six shrank away from his luminous grey-green eyes. “Forget the fifty years of crime that ChaoSonic knows about. I’m more than a hundred years old; this is my fourteenth body. But I’m sick of all the surgery, the searching for new bodies, and the fear that someday I won’t find one and old age will finally catch up with me. So now I’m going to live forever. In your body.”
One, two, three. Pull! Kyntak howled as the bones in his hand were crushed against the copper clamp. He had concluded that the room was soundproof—he never heard Vanish and his guard coming, and his ears were hypersensitive. This meant that he was free to yell and scream as much as he liked as he mutilated his hand.
His bruised skin stung with the pressure. He could feel the thick copper bending slightly, but that wasn’t what he needed—he knew that the copper would never stretch far enough to let his hand slip through. He needed his bones to become disjointed.
One, two, three. Pull! Pain throbbed through his wrist, and suddenly he couldn’t find the energy to pull anymore. He slumped helplessly against the table, fatigued and miserable. He stared up at his reflection in the ceiling through watering eyes. He hadn’t expected to die like this: pale, bruised, bald, and dressed in mandarin underwear. Statistically it had been more likely for him to be killed by a bullet—a lucky head shot by a ChaoSonic grunt. So many people had fired guns at him in his pitifully short sixteen years that one of them was bound to hit him eventually.
How long had he been in this cell? He hadn’t been fed or given water to drink, and he was still alive despite having had several liters of his blood removed, so that meant less than a week. It felt like longer—like months or years. And how much longer would it be? How long would this psychopath keep him before killing him?
