by Jack Heath
Three of the four guards had standard cockroach armour – gleaming shells of interconnected carbon-fibre plates and proboscis-like breathing tubes. They trained heavy eight-gauge Vulture shotguns on the ambling line of citizens, waiting for someone to flee.
It was the fourth guard that caught Six's eye. He was twice as tall as the others, with impossibly broad shoulders and meaty, three-fingered hands. He was naked but for a bulletproof apron and a giant helmet of tinted glass. A patchwork of greyish pink skin and short black fur covered his bulging muscles. He looked like a visitor from another planet.
A Taur, Six thought. They have them at checkpoints now.
Six had heard about Taurs, but had never seen one. They were violent, hulking creatures grown from human embryos infused with cattle DNA. Fewer than one hundred had been made, and all were sent to the mines on the western side of the City, where they ripped out the remaining coal and oil at depths the human body wouldn't withstand. Their skin was fireproof and probably bulletproof. Six guessed that the earth must finally be empty, and the Taurs who had survived the fumes and pressure had been put to work elsewhere.
ChaoSonic's promotional material said that they were three times as heavy as "purebred" humans, but twice as fast and four times as strong. Six had also heard that they were fairly stupid, but he had never been able to confirm this.
If his triple C was rejected, his usual backup plan was to beat up the guards and run to the nearest subway entrance, where the drones wouldn't be able to follow him. But he couldn't outrun or outfight a Taur. He could only hope that the card would work.
Only eight people stood between him and the checkpoint. He would find out soon.
Someone shouted up ahead. Peering over the shoulder of the person in front of him, Six saw that the three cockroaches had aimed their shotguns at a wiry, dark-haired man.
Six gasped. It was Agent Two of Hearts.
* * *
'Wait,' Agent Two said, his hands raised. 'There must be some mistake.'
'Counterfeit identification is a serious offense,' one of the cockroaches said.
The Taur growled. Twin streaks of steam appeared on the inside of its helmet.
Six watched the commotion, heart pounding. If he did nothing, Two would almost certainly be arrested, tortured and executed. But if he tried to intervene, they might both die.
'If you'll just check again...' Two began.
'Lie down on the ground,' the cockroach said. 'Now.'
Two fell to his knees, defeated.
I can't let them do this, Six thought.
He drew a Hawk 9mm semi-automatic pistol from under his trench coat. The woman behind him screamed. He ignored her, taking aim at a dark shadow in the foggy sky, and pulled the trigger.
The gun kicked in his hand, over and over until only one bullet remained. The shots echoed around the street as the other pedestrians ducked and shouted. The cockroaches whirled around to face Six. The Taur raised its giant arms like a weight-lifter. Six could just make out a pair of giant black eyes behind the tinted visor.
Two was quick. He launched himself at the nearest guard, fracturing the proboscis with a brutal head butt even as he wrestled the shotgun out of his hands. The other cockroach took aim at Two, but couldn't shoot him without hitting his colleague.
The aerial drone wheeled down out of the sky, smoke puffing from the bullet holes, and slammed into the road on the other side of the checkpoint. The impact distracted the second cockroach, but the Taur didn't even look. It thumped toward Six like a rampaging elephant, shoving people out of its way with its mighty paws.
Six turned and ran back the way he had come. He caught up to the rest of the crowd without difficulty, but he wasn't fast enough to outrun the Taur. He could hear its massive feet thudding across the asphalt toward him, closer and closer...
He had one bullet left. He trained his pistol on the third-floor window of a nearby office building, and pulled the trigger.
A spiderweb of cracks spread across the glass. Six sprinted toward the building, taking longer and longer strides, and then he launched himself into the air.
The wind blustered in his ears as he sailed through the fog, keeping his feet forward and shielding his face with his arms. The window was too high for the Taur to reach – he hoped it wasn't also too high for him to jump to.
Smash! Six plunged through the glass and tumbled onto the plush blue carpet. His clothes jingled as he stood and shook the broken glass out of them.
A forest of desks and chairs surrounded him. The office was deserted, but the computer monitors were all switched on. A few half-empty coffee mugs decorated the desks. The employees must have fled when the bullet struck the window.
Six ran over to the polished titanium door, and pulled on the handle. Locked. A swipe card reader was mounted on the wall. He would need an access card to get out this way. But there must be a fire exit somewhere.
Something metal shrieked outside the window. By the time Six worked out what it sounded like – a skip bin being dragged across the concrete – the Taur's enormous hand had already appeared on the window sill. It was climbing up after him.
Six looked around for something he could use to fight the monster. The chairs and desks would bounce off its flesh without slowing it down. The kitchen had a kettle, but there was no steam above the nozzle. Burning it wasn't an option.
A second three-fingered hand gripped the sill. Six was running out of time.
A brown leather jacket was draped over a nearby chair. Six shrugged off his trench coat, unhooked his respiration filter and threw them both across the room. Then he pulled on the jacket and hid behind one of the desks.
He heard the Taur haul itself through the window and stand up. The floor creaked under its weight. He could hear its helmet scraping the ceiling as it walked.
It won't see me, Six told himself. It'll walk right past.
The beast shuffled closer and closer. Broken glass crunched under its feet. Six could hear it snuffling like a bloodhound.
Suddenly the desk Six was crouched behind vanished, swept aside so fast that Six didn't know where it had gone until he heard it shatter against the far wall.
The Taur loomed over Six, peering down at him like a child inspecting an ant. Six didn't need to hide his terror.
'Please,' he said. 'I just work here. Please don't hurt me!'
The Taur squeezed the hem of the stolen jacket between its massive fingers. Then it looked at the trail of broken glass, leading all the way from Six's feet back to the window.
It's smarter than it looks, Six thought.
The Taur looked back at Six. Its wet black eyes met his.
It gave him a barely perceptible nod.
Then it let him go and walked away.
Six watched the Taur rip through the titanium door as though it were made of rice paper. It disappeared through the doorway.
It saw the jump, he thought. It knew what I was – and decided to let me go.
He listened as the Taur stomped away through the corridors of the building. Then he clambered to his feet and returned to the window. The two cockroaches lay unconscious beside the razor wire. Two was nowhere to be seen.
Yes, Six thought. Much smarter than I realised.
Chapter Two: The Index
'Everything?' Six repeated.
Kyntak nodded.
'Everything,' Six said again.
'That's what I said.'
They were in Kyntak's office at the Deck, hundreds of metres below street level. Kyntak sat in one of four swivel-chairs, his feet resting on another. Six remained standing, as usual. Years of unexpected flights from sudden dangers had left him feeling vulnerable whenever he was seated.
The office was decorated according to Kyntak's unusual sense of humour. A tattered poster read You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps to have a rocket launcher. Most Deck agents mounted old photographs of landscapes on their walls to take their minds off the fact that they were undergro
und, but Kyntak had hung a picture of tightly packed dirt instead.
Six still wasn't sure he understood. 'Hoth Amet wanted to make an index of everything.'
'That's right.'
'Every place, every person–'
'Every book ever written, every advertisement ever broadcast, every sentence ever typed,' Kyntak said. 'Everything.'
'Why?'
'Some people said he was trying to make a point about the information age. Others thought he was just crazy. I suspect we'll never know.'
'But the index of everything already exists,' Six said. 'It's called the internet.'
'You're only sixteen, so I'll forgive that remark–'
'We're twins.'
'–but Amet's index was way, way bigger than the internet,' Kyntak said, ignoring him. 'It covered all aspects of everyday life, including–'
'Wait. He actually did it?'
'Yep. He programmed what might be the most successful computer virus in history, which turned more than ninety-four per cent of the world's electronics into 24-hour recording devices. He was able to catalogue almost everything which was transmitted through cyberspace, anything which went near a camera lens and every word spoken within range of a phone. No-one even noticed what he'd done until the early 20th century.'
'The early–' Six broke off. 'So this guy's been dead a long, long time.'
'Oh, yes. He was assassinated in 2029. Several governments still existed then, all with secrets to keep, so any one of them could have been responsible. But no-one ever found the server farm which hosted the index itself.'
He looked at Six expectantly. Six said nothing.
'Until now,' Kyntak added dramatically, not bothered by his brother's lack of input.
'So where is it?'
'A fallout shelter in the City North East.'
'Who found it?'
'No-one. It switched itself on. We detected it when it tried to index our employee database.'
Six exhaled. 'So you want me to go out there and destroy it?'
'Destroy it?' Kyntak looked horrified. 'It's an important historical artifact! Just disconnect it from the internet before ChaoSonic finds it. We don't want them to know what it knows.'
'Which is?'
Kyntak smiled. 'Everything.'
* * *
It didn't look like a fallout shelter. The crumbling walls were dotted with holes. The gate had rusted away to almost nothing. It looked like the ruins of a toilet block, an artefact from when the City still had trees and camping grounds.
Irradiated dust swirled in the headlights. Six pulled up the handbrake and shut off the engine. If he was in the wrong place, he would know soon enough.
The silence was overwhelming. As crowded as it was, the City still had deserted spots, usually because of a bad smell – or, in this case, the half-life from a long forgotten nuclear test.
Six got out of the car, closed the door, and moved quickly toward the shelter. The index had probably tried to break into the systems of various other organisations. There was always a risk that someone else might show up. He had to move fast.
The gate screamed as he pulled it open. A startled rat darted between Six's feet and scuttled away into the fog. He hesitated for a moment, but heard no other movement. So he slipped through the gap and crept down the concrete steps toward the shelter.
A titanium door stood at the bottom of the staircase. It looked thicker than Six had expected. He hoped there was enough gas in his cutting torch to slice through it.
But when he got closer, he realised that he wouldn't even need the torch. The bolts weren't engaged. He gripped the handle and heaved, dragging the door open centimetre by centimetre.
The darkness loomed before him. He could hear hundreds of tiny fans whirring, keeping the servers cool. The building wasn't connected to the power grid, so he could only assume that a reserve battery had somehow kicked in. If he waited long enough, the index would probably switch itself off.
But he didn't want to give ChaoSonic the chance to find it. So he crept forwards, eyes adjusting to the blackness–
Click. A harsh neon glare filled the room. Six ducked, looking for the motion sensor which had triggered the lights. There could be an alarm, he thought. I have to shut it down.
He didn't see a sensor or an alarm panel. Instead, he saw row after row of server towers, connected to the concrete ceiling by a coloured web of cables. And he saw the person standing in the shadows – but not before she saw him.
Two barbs punched through his clothes and dug into his skin. He didn't have time to feel pain. Suddenly his limbs were shivering, his fists clenched, his teeth rattling in his mouth as thousands of volts ran up the wires and darted through his body.
He couldn't move as the woman approached him. He couldn't avoid the approaching syringe. He couldn't even widen his eyes as he recognised her.
'Agent Six,' Soren Byre said. 'You're right on time.'
The syringe plunged into his neck. Everything went black.
* * *
When he woke, the cuffs were so tight around his wrists that his hands had swollen up. His ankles were chained. He couldn't lift his head to look at the restraints – a metal band around his forehead held his skull to the operating table – but they felt strong. He wouldn't be able to break free.
The ceiling was made of pockmarked concrete. He could still hear the servers running, so he hadn't left the fallout shelter. How long had he been unconscious? Long enough for Kyntak to come looking for him?
Soren Byre's face floated into view above him. 'You were right,' she said. 'I did need ununoctium.'
Six stared at her as though her presence were an astonishing magic trick. There was no sign of scarring on her face. 'How did you survive?'
Byre scoffed. 'You should know better,' she said. 'We were trained by the same people. It takes more than a collapsing building to kill me.'
'I watched you die,' Six insisted.
'It doesn't matter what you saw, or what you think you saw. What matters is that the machine has been rebuilt. My work can continue, and this time, you won't be able to screw it up.'
'Byre,' Six said. 'Time travel is impossible.'
'Just because we can only perceive one moment at a time, that doesn't mean that the past is gone. Every particle in your body is entangled with every other object that has ever existed or will ever exist in the universe–'
'Listen to me. If you try to send yourself back in time–'
'Myself?' Byre smiled. 'I'm sending you.'
'Me?' Six's heart accelerated in his chest. 'Why?'
'Because I know the machine will work, but I can't calibrate it without a test subject. I don't know if it will send me back ten seconds, or a hundred years. And you owe me, after making such a mess last time.'
'You'll kill us both,' Six said. 'The machine won't work.'
'It will, now that I have the ununoctium. Thank you for the suggestion, by the way.'
'The last stockpile of that element disappeared a long, long time ago,' Six said. 'I don't know what you have, but it's not ununoctium.'
'You think I tracked down Hoth Amet's index of everything just so I could hack into the Deck and lure you here?' Byre smirked. 'No. I used it to locate the missing stockpile. And once I've sent you into the past, I'll use it to determine when and where you showed up, and whether or not you survived the journey through spacetime.'
She pressed a cylinder into one of Six's hands. By the time he realised what she was doing, she was already duct-taping it to his palm. He kept his other fist squeezed shut, but she just taped the second cylinder to the back of his hand. Apparently it didn't matter which part of his skin the machine touched.
'You'll cause a massive explosion,' Six cried. 'You'll die before you get the chance to see if it worked.'
Byre shook her head. 'I fixed that bug. You're not going to explode. Like I said, using ununoctium was a really good idea. It solved all sorts of problems.'
She left Six's field of vi
sion. Her footsteps became more distant.
'Where are you going?' he demanded.
'Okay,' she called. 'You caught me. I'm only ninety-nine per cent sure you won't explode.'
A heavy door creaked open, then slammed closed. Six heard an electric lock engage.
'Byre,' he yelled. 'Byre!'
There was no reply.
Something hummed and whirred beneath Six. The electromagnet. He struggled against his bonds, but they were too firmly fastened. Even the duct tape around his hands was painfully tight. He couldn't shake off the cylinders.
The humming was getting louder. Six threw his body sideways, hoping to tip over the table. But he could tell from the sound that it was bolted to the floor.
'Byre!' he screamed. 'You can't–'
A deafening roar filled the air. The lights went out. A sickening dizziness flooded through Six, and suddenly he felt himself spinning down, down, down into the icy darkness of a bottomless pit.
Chapter Three: The Heist
'So you're telling me,' Benjamin said, 'that you can't play the drums at all.'
Ash gritted her teeth. 'I wasn't supposed to have to. Tognetti was supposed to be on before me.'
'Then what were all those lessons for?'
She was about to reply when the stage door swung open. Applause echoed through the halls of the conservatorium. A man with an earpiece and a lanyard leaned through the gap. 'You'll be on in two minutes, Miss Burnett.'
Ash tried to look confident and aloof. 'Thank you.'
The man disappeared and the stage door swung shut, muffling the claps and whistles of the audience. Ash put the phone back to her ear.
'What am I going to do?' she hissed.
Benjamin sounded amused. 'My guess is, you're going to go out on stage and play the drums.'
'But I don't know how!'
'Then do what you do best,' Benjamin said. 'Fake it.'
'Thanks. You've been really helpful.'
'Any time.'
Ash looked up at the TV, which displayed footage from inside the auditorium. Her drum kit had been set up by the backstage crew. The master of ceremonies was speaking from behind a podium. Ash guessed he was introducing her.
The stagehand opened the door again and beckoned silently. Ash followed him into the wings, dread curdling in her guts.
