by Jack Heath
Lucky for me, Ash thought. Because if I steal the ununoctium, and he doesn't disappear–
An alarm shrieked from the checkpoint. Even at this distance, Ash had to clamp her palms over her ears. Whirling red lights appeared on the tip of each fence post.
The soldiers were well-trained. They hesitated only a fraction of a second before springing into action. Some worked on opening the razor-wire gates, while others disappeared into the bunker to help the scientists evacuate. By the time the civilians stumbled out in flannelette pyjamas and bath robes, the gates were open. Everyone fled the checkpoint across well-worn paths in the dust.
The radio crackled. 'Are they leaving?'
'Like frightened rabbits,' Ash said. 'Worst security procedure ever.'
'In fairness, every sensor is telling them that the tower is about to explode. Is Six ready?'
'He's–'
Ash turned around. Six was gone.
She looked back at the tower. Six was sprinting toward the razor wire fence, and had already crossed an impossible distance. He must have started running as soon as she took her eyes off him.
He vaulted over the fence rather than diverting toward the open gate. When he landed inside the compound, he pulled the coat hook off his belt and swung it on the climbing rope, around and around, so fast that it looked like the propeller in a jet engine.
Then he let go.
The hook rocketed upwards with much more velocity than Ash had expected. It sailed past the fifth-floor window for which she had advised him to aim, and kept shooting up into the darkness until it was out of sight. The rope kept unspooling from the coil over his shoulder.
After a moment, the rope stopped unravelling. Six gave it two brisk tugs and then started climbing, hand over hand. After only a few seconds, he was so high that Ash couldn't see him any more.
'Six is in,' Ash said.
'Great,' Benjamin replied. 'I may lose radio contact with you when you get inside, but you can phone me if you need to. In ten minutes I'll be outside the front gate with the car. In forty-five minutes, the scientists will return to shut off the alarm. Make sure you're out before then.'
'Got it.'
Ash dashed across the dust toward the open gate, hoping Six had done his part. Otherwise, she would find herself trapped on the lower levels while he was up the top, looking for–
Ash froze. She could see a shadow, clambering up the smooth wall of the tower like a gecko. Could that possibly be a person? The outfit was a dull grey, so it was hard to get a good look as he or she scrambled up the concrete surface.
We're not alone, Ash thought.
'Benjamin,' she hissed. 'Someone else is here.'
'Who?'
'No idea. They're climbing up the wall after Six. They must be looking for the ununoctium.'
Benjamin cursed. 'We should leave. We're not prepared for this.'
'We can't leave Six behind.'
'He's superhuman. He can take care of himself.'
'Not when he doesn't know he's in danger,' Ash said. 'I have to go in.'
'Ash–'
The shadow disappeared into the darkness up above. Ash ran through the gate, and approached the door to Vepa Tower.
Chapter Eight: The Stranger
Six shook the last of the broken glass from his clothes and listened. The alarm wailed. The breeze moaned outside the broken window. There was no other sound. This floor was empty.
The inside of Vepa Tower was more cramped than he had expected, with a low ceiling of iron girders, and dirty walls made of reinforced concrete. The window through which he'd entered appeared to be the only one on this level. The floor was strewn with kipple.
It seemed wasteful to have a whole tower of unused floors. Perhaps it had been built with other occupants in mind, but once the top level's purpose had been determined, no-one wanted an office in a tower which might explode. Or perhaps there was some other reason.
Six found the fire door. The hinges groaned as he pushed it open and found himself in a pitch black stairwell. He couldn't see the steps, but he could hear them with echolocation – the screeching alarm echoed through the darkness, outlining each concrete slab, each dented hand rail.
He trotted down through the darkness until he reached the bottom floor. The last door was locked with a bulky steel bolt, but it was designed to stop intruders from getting in, while still allowing evacuees to escape. It would be a matter of seconds to drag it aside and pull the door open. The girl should be waiting on the other side.
He hesitated. Why should he let her in?
He doubted that he needed her help to find the ununoctium. And he certainly didn't need her to destroy it. Why was she so determined to join him? She had said she felt guilty about the thefts, and Six knew better than most people that guilt was a strong motivator. But he sensed that something else was afoot here.
Unfortunately, he had no choice but to let her in. If he didn't, she would simply wait outside the door until he came out with the ununoctium – assuming he didn't accidentally blow it up, killing them both. He had to stick to the plan. Let her in, find the element, get it out of the building, take it to the lifeless centre of the nearby desert, and leave it to destabilise itself.
He pulled back the bolt and opened the door.
'What kept you?' the girl asked.
Six ignored the question. 'You'll need a flashlight.'
'Someone else is here.'
'What? Who?'
'Don't know. Not one of the soldiers. He or she climbed up the wall of the tower, somehow. I think they're after the ununoctium.'
Sounds like someone with Deck training, Six thought. Perhaps Soren Byre sent herself back in time after me. But why? To stop me from getting to the ununoctium? How does she plan to get back to the future afterwards?
'We need to move quickly,' he said, and started running up the stairs. A flashlight clicked on behind him, and he heard the girl's footsteps behind him. He expected her to fall behind fairly quickly, but she didn't.
'Flashlight,' she said as she ran. 'It's all American English in the future, huh?'
'Amerwhat?'
'Never mind.'
By the time they reached the top floor, Six's heart – grown from a fusion of horse and falcon DNA – was pumping at an accelerated rate. Behind him, it sounded like the girl was struggling to breathe.
Six put his hand on the fire door. 'You should wait here.'
The girl shook her head.
'If the intruder is who I think it is,' Six whispered, 'she won't hesitate to kill you.'
'I'm going in,' the girl panted.
There was no time to argue further. Six nodded and pushed the door open.
The room was unlike the rest of the tower. The walls and floor were panelled in a sleek white material. Sterilised power cables hung from the ceiling, secured by safety chains, ready to be attached to equipment. In the centre of the room, panes of reinforced glass formed a cube around a steel box.
There it is, Six thought.
A sound from behind him. He peered back into the darkness of the stairwell.
'Get behind me,' he told the girl.
* * *
Ash skipped deeper into the experimentation chamber, leaving the boy from the future to stare into the stairwell, his hands shrinking into fists, his stance settling into a kickboxer's crouch.
The glass enclosure had a latch on the side. Probably magnetic. She could open it with the positively charged iron attachment in her pocketknife.
She crept closer, sneaking a glance back at the boy. He wasn't watching her. Getting the box out would be easy. Getting it past him would be harder – she might have to knock him out with the ether-soaked cloth in her pocket.
She put one hand on the glass. Hesitated.
Six's voice echoed through her mind. There was no sudden catastrophe. Just greed, eating civilisation one small bite at a time.
Had she created the grim world from which he came?
Ash gritted her teeth. T
he ununoctium was worth millions of dollars. She couldn't not take it. She needed the money. Benjamin needed it. Her father needed it.
If she donated a hundred thousand dollars to Oxfam, surely that would offset any damage she did?
But still her palm stayed frozen against the enclosure. Whoever she sold the element to, they were unlikely to use it for good. It would probably end up in a bomb.
Cursing her conscience, she stepped away from the glass and turned to face the door. Whoever would coming, she and Six would stop them. Together.
A footstep reverberated through the darkness. A face emerged from the gloom in the doorway.
Six swung his fist toward the apparition–
And froze.
Ash's eyes widened. The boy in the stairwell was Six. His hair was different, his clothes were different, but the face was identical. But how could there be two of him?
She looked from one Six to the other, baffled.
'Kyntak?' Six demanded.
'Six,' the other boy said. Even his voice sounded like Six's. 'We're in trouble.'
'What are you doing here in the past?'
'I'm not in the past,' Kyntak said. 'Neither are you. We're both inside the index of everything.'
* * *
Six's mind was whirling. 'I don't understand.'
Kyntak spread his arms wide. 'This is all a simulation of the world as it was in the early 21st Century.'
Six looked back at the girl. All the colour had drained from her face.
'Six,' she said. 'Who is this?'
'This is my brother, Kyntak,' Six said. 'He–'
Kyntak interrupted him. 'She's not real. She's software. A recreation of a real historical figure, assembled based on photographs, phone conversations, emails...'
Six stared down at his hands. They looked real. They felt real.
'Why would Soren Byre put me inside the index?' he demanded.
'Because she needed ununoctium,' Kyntak said. 'And the index knew where the last stockpile was – deep within the radioactive wastelands, on the top floor of Vepa Tower, forgotten by everyone for more than a century.'
'But Byre already had the ununoctium,' Six said.
'I'm guessing she told you that,' Kyntak said, 'so you would try to destroy it when you thought that you were in the past. Now that you've found it in the index, she knows where it is in real life. You've led her right to it. And now she can build the machine for real.'
'I'm not software,' the girl whispered. 'I'm a person.'
Six glanced back at her. She looked like she believed herself to be telling the truth. But so did Kyntak.
'Why didn't Byre just put herself in the index to find the ununoctium?' Six said.
'She was probably worried that you would find her body while her mind was in here. She'd be defenseless. By putting you into the index instead of herself, she achieved two goals – tracking down the ununoctium and incapacitating the person most likely to stop her.'
'Six,' the girl said. 'Don't listen to him. It's a trick.'
Kyntak ignored her. 'Six,' he said. 'When I found your body, Byre was nowhere to be found. By watching your progress, she must have already found out where the ununoctium is, and now she's gone to get it. We have to stop her.'
'But you came in after me,' Six said. 'Now we're both stuck.'
'No,' Kyntak said. 'There's a pass phrase. When you say the words, you're ejected from the index.'
'What is it?'
'Listen carefully, because I can only say it once. Ready?'
'Ready.'
'I've been searching high and low. Now it's time for me to go.'
Kyntak flickered, and vanished.
Six stared at the empty air where his brother had been standing.
'You think it's true,' the girl said. 'You think that this isn't the real world.'
Six nodded.
'But... But everything is so...'
'I don't have time to discuss this with you,' Six said. 'But if it's any consolation, one of my best friends is a robot. Just because you're artificial doesn't mean you're not real.' He took a deep breath. 'I've been searching high and low. Now it's time for me to go.'
The whole world went black.
* * *
Ash leaned back against the glass enclosure. She was alone. The boy from the future – or the boy from the present – and his twin brother had both disappeared before her eyes.
She knew that the soldiers would be coming back soon. But they weren't real. She wasn't real. What did it matter if she got caught?
I'm an app, she thought. I'm nothing.
She looked at the steel box. Inside was not ununoctium, but a digital representation of it. If she could get it out, she could still sell it. A fake buyer would purchase it with fake money. And then probably use it to kill fake people, like her.
She took her hand away from the glass. Even knowing that there would be no real-world consequences, she couldn't take the box. It wasn't right.
A humming noise brought her to her senses, and she realised that her phone had been vibrating in her pocket for some time. She looked at the screen. Benjamin.
What will I tell him? she wondered.
She answered the phone. 'Hi.'
'Ash, where are you? The soldiers will be back in ten minutes!'
'Benjamin,' Ash said. 'If something really bad happened, and there was nothing you could do about it, would you want to know?'
He laughed nervously. 'No. We've had this conversation before.'
Ash said nothing.
'Why?' Benjamin said. 'What's happened?'
'Nothing,' Ash said. 'It was just a hypothetical – everything's fine. I'm coming out. I'll see you soon.'
Chapter Nine: Awake
Six's eyes snapped open. He let out a long, desperate gasp. His heart thumped painfully against his lungs as the cold air washed over him. The world inside the index hadn't felt fake, but now that he was in reality, he could feel the difference. The dim light of the fallout shelter was so vivid. The acrid smell of the concrete left him gagging.
He lifted his arms. The chains were gone. Kyntak must have freed him before going under–
Kyntak. Six looked around, but could see no sign of his brother.
He rolled off the table, and hissed as a set of needles was yanked out of his scalp, and presumably his brain. Depending on the size of the holes they had left behind, blood and airborne parasites could be leaking into his cranium. Without prompt medical attention, he might die.
But if Soren Byre activated her time machine, the resulting explosion could kill thousands of people. There was no time to see a doctor.
Six staggered to his feet, alarmed by the shaking of his limbs. How long had he been in the index, without food or water?
'Kyntak,' he rasped.
There was no response.
Six clamped his mouth shut. What if Soren Byre was still here? What if she had come back? She had learned all she needed to from Six. She had nothing to lose by killing him.
He staggered across the dusty concrete toward the door. Opened it. The only sound was the whirring of the servers, as the duplicate Ashley Arthur and her friend and her father and billions of others ran around inside.
Did they cease to exist when I left? he wondered. Or is she still in there, knowing that she's fake?
Six had known for most of his life that he was artificial. It wasn't so bad. But knowing that everyone else was, too – it would be enough to drive someone insane.
He stepped into the corridor, turned right–
And then heard a noise to his left.
He whirled around, fists raised.
The corridor was empty, but there was a door. A room adjacent to the one from which he had emerged.
He crept closer. Tried the handle. Unlocked.
He pushed the door open and jumped back, in case Soren Byre was inside, waiting to attack.
She wasn't. Instead, Kyntak lay face down on the floor in a puddle of blood.
'Kyn
tak!' Six ran over and crouched beside his brother. 'Can you hear me?'
Kyntak groaned.
Six turned him over, gently. Kyntak's face was streaked with blood, but the only wounds seemed to be a pair of tiny holes on the top of his head.
'No-one to put me in,' Kyntak mumbled. 'Had to do it myself.' He smiled, revealing pink teeth. 'Think I did it wrong?'
'Damn it,' Six muttered. He tore some of the rubbery fabric out of Kyntak's outfit and used it to plug the holes. 'You need a doctor.'
Kyntak let out a gurgling chuckle. 'We both need doctors. But, no time. Right?'
Six nodded reluctantly.
'Always no time,' Kyntak groaned. 'Let's go.'
* * *
Neither of them could run, but they could jog through the debris-strewn plains. Six's head pounded with every shuffling footstep. He could only imagine how Kyntak felt.
'Once Byre has the ununoctium,' Six panted, 'is there any chance she could get her machine working?'
'I don't think so,' Kyntak replied. 'It'll just explode. And the further in time she tries to go back, the bigger the blast radius will be.'
'But if it worked–'
'Even if it worked, it would still explode. Anyone within eight kilometres would still be fried.'
Six jumped over a laser tripwire, his forehead throbbing. The inside of his throat was coated with dust. Irradiated wind blasted his skin.
'How long will it take us to get to Vepa tower?'
'Eight minutes to get to the car,' Kyntak said. 'Another ninety-five to drive there.'
'Too long. She probably left the moment I found out where the ununoctium was. She's got a head-start of five hours.'
Kyntak dug his phone out of his pouch. 'I can summon a chopper,' he said. 'But it would get to the tower only fifteen minutes before we did.'
Six shook his head. 'Going to the tower is a waste of time. We need to get to her time machine.'
'But it could be anywhere.'
'Wrong,' Six said. 'It's only been two months since her last attempt. She didn't have time to start building it from scratch.'