by Jack Heath
Kyntak must have known what was going through Six’s mind, but there was no time to stop and reassure him. The air was already vibrating with energy as the plane approached, and the warehouse was illuminated in the headlights.
Kyntak started to pull, and Six pushed himself up into the air with his hands. He watched the warehouse roof zoom past his face as Kyntak completed the first rotation. The blood was already pounding in his ears, having rushed to his head with the centrifugal force. Six’s venous valves were excellent at preventing reverse blood flow, but the current pressure on his brain was equivalent to doing a handstand for four hours.
The roof rushed sideways past Six’s face again—Kyntak had completed the second rotation. The aluminum surface was farther away now—Six estimated that he was being spun at around Kyntak’s shoulder height.
The dizziness was unbearable. Six choked down the bile rising in his throat—vomiting mid-flight would make this already unlikely attempt impossible.
Whoosh. The roof was almost two meters away as Kyntak completed the third spin. Six heard the howling of the approaching engines, and was blinded by the lights…
…then Kyntak let go.
Six spun out into the void, heart pounding, ears aching, and braced himself for impact. The light from the plane swept out across the tarmac far below; he twisted his head around to get his bearings. He could see Kyntak, distant now, standing on the roof of the warehouse. His legs twisted around in front of him again, and he tried to keep his muscles as limp as possible—too much struggling in midair would change his trajectory, and his best bet was to trust Kyntak’s aim.
The roar of the engines seemed to be right in his ear. He spread his arms out to their full span, then bent his legs to absorb the shock of the impact. His body swung smoothly around as the plane rushed up to meet him; its nose swept past his face, seeming to miss him by mere centimeters.
He had microseconds to find a handhold, something on the plane to grab. The jet was forty meters long, and traveling at about seven hundred kilometers per hour, which meant there would be less than 0.3 second between when the nose rushed past Six and when the tail did.
Six shoved an arm out against the body of the plane, hoping to snag an emergency exit. The metal was speeding by so fast that it burned his fingers, and he missed the exit closest to the cockpit. There should be another one over the wing, he thought.
Suddenly he was pulled away from the body of the plane. His eyes widened as he realized what was happening. The sheer amount of air being dragged into the engines created a vacuum, and it seemed that he had just been caught in it. He was being sucked into the engine.
Instinct directed Six to put his hands and knees out in front of him to protect his torso—but he knew that that would be no use against the spinning blades. Instead, he stretched his arms and legs out sideways to their full span, spinning through the air like a throwing star.
The engine loomed up in front of him, roaring with deadly energy, dragging him towards the center like a black hole drawing cosmic debris into its event horizon. Six opened his mouth to scream and felt the engine suck the air out of his lungs.
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 sku
lls 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.
LOST AND FOUND
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,” Vanis
h 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.”
