by Jack Heath
Has something gone wrong? Six thought. Allich doesn’t look worried.
Then the girl’s smile faded. Her eyes widened in alarm. Her head whipped from side to side, like a cornered animal. Then she ran over to the window and started pounding on it with her fists. Six could see her mouth moving, and the flecks of saliva appearing on the glass, but he couldn’t hear her screams.
Ace’s breathing had accelerated. Glancing across, Six saw that her expression remained blank, but the tendons in her wrists were bulging through her skin. Like him, she didn’t want to see this.
The hum from the rocket was higher and louder than before. Instead of wind rushing through the room, this time the air itself seemed to shudder and vibrate like the strings on an electric guitar. Sending used up more energy than receiving, Six figured.
The girl smacked her palm flat against the glass, and she stared up at Six. Help me, he saw her say.
I will, Six thought. I promise.
Then there was another explosion of light, and suddenly she was gone. The tube was empty – even the saliva and the handprints on the glass had disappeared.
It was as if she had never existed at all.
EXFILTRATION
Allich picked up the girl’s yellow envelope from the bench. She tossed it into the crowd like a Frisbee. A group of people reached up, trying to catch it. There were smiles on everyone’s faces – visible excitement that was almost childlike. Six frowned. What was the point of this?
Something that always fascinated him about truly monstrous people, whether they were murderers, torturers or terrorists, was how many of them seemed so ordinary. When they weren’t inflicting suffering on others for pleasure or money or power, they were watching movies they’d seen before, sharing home-cooked meals with friends, or going on family holidays to artificial island resorts beyond the Seawall. For every raving homicidal nut like Straje Sammers, there were ten sociopaths who could pass for normal.
Everyone in this room had just seen a girl get blasted to bits – and they looked as if they couldn’t be more delighted.
Do they think about it? Six wondered. When these people are doing ordinary things like shopping for groceries or helping their children with homework, will they be thinking of the innocent girl who mouthed ‘Help me’ before the machine they financed ripped her apart?
Or do they compartmentalise? Can they separate the person from the monster so well that it’s like two different beings, taking turns at controlling the one body?
Ace leaned towards Six. ‘There’s nothing more we can do,’ she whispered shakily. ‘You think now might be a good time to get out?’
Six looked around. No-one else looked as if they were ready to get up. Everyone was looking intently at the envelope. Leaving now might be suspicious, but he knew that the longer they stayed, the higher the risk they would be exposed.
‘Yes,’ Six said. ‘But not together. Pretend your phone is ringing, and go out to the foyer to answer it. I’ll make sure no-one is following you, then I’ll come out after sixty seconds. Got it?’
Ace nodded. She stood up, and started fumbling with her purse, exactly like someone whose phone was ringing in a situation where it should have been switched off. Six watched her move towards the entrance to the ballroom.
She took the phone out of her purse and held it to her ear. ‘This is Sera,’ she whispered, placing a finger in her other ear as she walked.
The guards by the door barely glanced at her – they just stepped slightly aside to let her through into the ballroom. Good, Six thought. The security is built to stop intruders getting in, not out.
The sixty seconds he had promised Ace felt like sixty minutes. He watched guests tear open the yellow envelope and stare at the contents. It looked like another card, similar to the one that had been passed around before.
Six would have liked to know what they were doing, but he wasn’t going to risk his or Ace’s life to find out. He stood, smoothed down his suit at the front as he had seen some of the guests do, and walked towards the ballroom.
The guards by the door eyed him.
‘Bathroom?’ Six asked as he approached.
‘On your right,’ one of them replied.
Six stepped back into the ballroom. It somehow seemed smaller without all the people in it.
Ace was standing in the centre, still whispering on her phone. ‘He’s not being discriminated against,’ she was saying. ‘Just tell him that I expect all my staff to live up to their commitments.’
She looked at Six. ‘I’ve got to go,’ she said. ‘Call me tomorrow.’
Six made a mental note never to trust her again – she was too good at this.
They started walking to the checkpoint they had entered through. ‘Who was that?’ Six asked, still in character.
‘Just my PA,’ Ace said. ‘You wouldn’t believe what one of the junior associates is trying to pull.’
‘It wouldn’t be Andon Hathey, would it?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘Well, I was chatting to ...’
Six kept talking, but without giving much thought to his words. He was listening to one of the guards near the theatre door behind him, who had just answered his phone.
‘Say again?’ the guard was asking.
His phone crackled. Six couldn’t quite make out the words.
‘Can you repeat your name, sir?’
Another short squawk from the phone. Six imagined the voice saying Ciull Yu.
The checkpoint was just ahead. They could make it if they ran – but the guards would never let them through if they blew their cover.
Maybe he was worrying about nothing. Maybe the guard was talking to someone else about something entirely unrelated. Ciull Yu should still be unconscious behind the dumpster, under the influence of the gas.
‘Can you describe the man who attacked you?’ the guard said.
Damn it, Six thought. Someone must have found him, woken him up. Either that, or Yu has an innate resistance to sevofluorane.
‘We’re in trouble,’ Six murmured to Ace, interrupting himself.
‘What?’ Her eyes widened. ‘Why?’
‘I think the real Ciull Yu is awake, and has found a phone.’
‘Excuse me,’ the guard said behind them. Not talking to the phone anymore.
‘You ready to run?’ Six asked.
‘There’s too many of them,’ Ace said, staring at the checkpoint guards. Vulture shotguns strapped to their backs.
‘Excuse me, sir,’ the guard said, closer now. ‘And madam.’
‘We’re not going that way,’ Six whispered. ‘We’re going to the fire door, on your left.’
Ace nodded. ‘Just say when.’
‘Ready,’ Six said, ‘set ...’
The guard put a hand on Six’s shoulder. Six whirled around and slammed his fist into the guard’s jaw.
‘Go!’ he yelled.
The guard drew his pistol as he fell backwards. Six ducked, and shoved the guard’s gun arm upwards. The guard pulled the trigger, four times, blam-blamblam-blam, probably not because he thought he would hit anything, but to alert the rest of Allich’s security force.
In his peripheral vision, Six saw the seven guards from the checkpoint turn as one to face him. He hoped Ace was running for the fire door – he didn’t have time to look.
The guard he was grappling with wasn’t letting go of his pistol. Six bent the guard’s wrist downwards, so the knuckles nearly touched the inner wrist, and his grip loosened. Six wrenched the pistol out of his grasp, and clubbed him across the brow with it.
The guard hit the floor, hard, face first. He wasn’t getting up again.
Six turned. The checkpoint guards had started running towards him. They were nearly at the threshold to the ballroom.
One-handed, Six ripped the Vulture shotgun off the unconscious guard’s back, pumped a shell into the breech, and aimed up at the wire that connected the chandelier to the ceiling. He pulled the trigger.
>
Boom!
The recoil nearly blasted him off his feet. He had hoped to sever the wire, making the chandelier fall to the floor and block the path of the checkpoint guards. Instead the entire chandelier exploded into a storm of glass and sparks, which seemed to fill the room instantly. Six saw the seven guards duck and cover before he scrunched his eyelids shut, stopping the tiny, razor-sharp snowflakes from scratching out his eyeballs.
The noise of glass raining down onto the floor was piercing. Eyes still closed, Six turned to face the fire door, and started running towards it.
Tap-click. The sound of a safety catch being clicked off, back near the theatre entrance. The other guard. Apparently the glass shockwave hadn’t reached that far, and he was taking aim at Six.
Eyes still closed, glass fluttering down onto his hair, Six crunched the numbers coming from his remaining senses. The sound came from about 14 metres away, the guard had been roughly 190 centimetres tall, Six’s pistol felt like it weighed 1200 grams, give or take ten. No wind, no other combatants.
He swung his arm and hurled the pistol like a baseball, and a split second later he heard a yelp and the sound of a breaking nose. The guard hadn’t ducked fast enough.
Six turned and ran. He smacked his palms against the fire door, pushed it open, and kept running.
Six had guessed right – the fire door led to a stairwell, freshly painted in industrial white. Ace was waiting for him on the first landing.
‘Keep moving,’ Six said as he approached. ‘They’ll be right behind me.’
Ace started running up the next flight of stairs. ‘The only exit is on the ground floor,’ she said. ‘How are we going to get out?’
‘There’s always a way,’ Six said as he caught up to her.
There was another fire door on the second-floor landing. Six shoved it open and they ran through, just as they heard the one on the ground floor burst open.
The guards from downstairs had recovered, and were in hot pursuit.
The second floor was shadowy and deserted. The walls were grey, bare. The concrete floor was littered with giant cardboard boxes, benches adorned with power tools, and neatly bound blocks of piping. Allich was clearly planning to build something here, but Six wasn’t sure what. It was hard to believe that the luxurious, sparkling ballroom was just below his feet.
Six and Ace ran into the darkness and ducked behind a pile of cardboard boxes. They started weaving through the maze of benches and building parts, staying low.
Six heard the fire door bang against the wall as the guards pushed it open. There was a short pause, and then he heard soft footfalls, the kind made by soldiers as they sweep their surroundings.
He and Ace crawled through the gloom, making as little noise as possible. With their shotguns, the guards wouldn’t need a clear shot. If they heard a noise, they could just open fire in their general direction, and Six and Ace would probably be pulverised.
Six still had the Vulture he’d stolen downstairs, but there was no shell in the breech. He’d have to pump the action before firing, and that would make a noisy crunch-crunch, alerting the guards.
He imagined chambering a shell, standing up, finding a target, taking aim, firing, pumping the action, firing again, and hoping he got all the guards before one of them got him.
Six didn’t like killing people, even bad guys. He especially didn’t like getting blown apart while he was doing it.
Click. A finger snap echoed around the room. Six pictured one of the guards clicking his fingers to get the attention of the others. Then pointing at something, maybe.
There were no more footsteps. No sound at all except Ace’s soft breaths.
Six debated whether or not it was worth risking a peek over the boxes to see what the guards were looking at. He glanced at Ace, and she nodded.
He raised his head silently. One of the guards was pointing at his own eyes with two fingers: Look at this. Then he pointed at the ground, where Six and Ace had ran past before.
At first Six couldn’t see what the guard was pointing at. It looked like an ordinary patch of gritty concrete. Then he saw it, and fear squeezed the air out of his lungs. He ducked down again, and looked back the way they had come.
He was leaving a trail of broken glass. Tiny fragments of the chandelier had followed him all this way.
The guards started moving again, this time with a purpose. The footsteps became steadily closer. Six gestured to Ace that they should keep going, and she started crawling again. Before following, Six carefully lifted one of the giant cardboard boxes and placed it gently across the sparkling trail, creating a dead end. That might confuse the guards for a few precious seconds.
Ace and Six crept as fast as they dared, soon reaching the edge of the floor. Plexiglass windows framed the City skyscrapers above their heads. Six could still hear the guards shuffling around somewhere behind them.
Six stood slowly in front of the windows. None of the guards appeared to notice him yet. He looked outside. Streetlight, parked cars, a couple of pedestrians. No-one who looked like Allich’s security.
He crouched down again. ‘When I say,’ he whispered, ‘fill your lungs about halfway and hold it. Relax all your joints, and close your eyes if that helps.’
Ace’s eyes widened. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Trust me,’ Six said. He slowly slid a chunk of piping out of one of the nearby stacks, and hefted it with the hand that wasn’t holding the shotgun.
Then he threw it across the room at the guards.
After all the silence, the noise of the pipe clanging against the floor was deafening. So loud that the sound of Six pumping a shell into the chamber of his Vulture was completely inaudible.
He pulled Ace to her feet, and wrapped his free arm around her waist. He pointed the Vulture at the window.
‘Now,’ he said.
He pulled the trigger.
The recoil pushed the shotgun out of his hand as the window was blown to pieces. Six put his other arm around Ace so as she was in a bear hug and then he jumped backwards out the window, just as the guards opened fire, blasting chucks of concrete into the air outside.
Ace screamed in Six’s ear as he plummeted backwards into the void. Her dress billowed above him. He forced her hands against his chest, so her arms would absorb some of the shock and protect her torso.
He resisted the temptation to turn his head and watch where they were falling. The human skull can take much more force to the front or the back than to the side, and a high-speed impact with a turned head could lead to a broken neck.
The streetlight buzzed past. They’d fallen about four metres, with another four to go. Impact would come in a fraction of a second.
Smash!The roof of the parked car crumpled underneath them like a saucepan lid underneath a speeding truck. The Kevlar vest protected Six’s spine, but the impact still hurt like hell – the air burst out of his lungs, the back of his head smacked against the car roof, and Ace’s weight was quintupled by her momentum as she crashed down on top of him.
‘You okay?’ he gasped.
Ace coughed. ‘I’ll live. You?’
‘Always do.’ Six rolled off the car, and landed on the asphalt. He staggered sideways for a second, legs weak and bruised, but regained control within a few moments.
‘We’ve got to go,’ he said, as he helped Ace down from the roof. ‘They won’t be finished with us yet. Can you run?’
Ace winced as she stood. ‘Yeah. How far?’
Six held up the keys to Ciull Yu’s limousine. ‘Not far.’
They started running. Every step sent a shock of pain up Six’s legs.
‘They’ll be back on the ground floor in ten seconds,’ Six said. ‘Out the door and looking for us in twenty. They were probably radioing for land vehicles as we hit the ground, and those will reach the surface in about thirty seconds. But that’s not our real problem.’
‘What’s our real problem?’
‘They will have called for
air support as well. The nearest air base is 13 kliks away – that means choppers will be here four minutes from now. If we haven’t lost them by then, we’re toast.’
Ace nodded. ‘I’ll drive.’
‘No,’ Six said.
‘I came first in my squad at vehicular training as a Club,’ Ace said, as they reached the limo. ‘But I was only fourth in firearms. I’ll drive, you shoot.’
There was no time to argue. Six tossed her the keys. She hit the disarm button, jumped in, and jammed the keys into the ignition. Six climbed in the passenger side, and started rummaging through the glove compartment. The car launched up the road, pressing Six back into his seat.
Yu’s Raven X59 was still on the floor in the back, but Six was hoping for something better. As Ace pulled out from the kerb and stamped on the accelerator, Six found Yu’s bodyguard’s pistol – a Woodpecker 45LW automatic pistol with two spare mags. The Woodpecker would fire 45 mm slugs at a rate of 1200 per minute when the trigger was depressed – 20 bullets per second. It was fitted with a laser sight, which suited Six. He wouldn’t need it, but the extra weight would stop the gun from kicking upwards as he fired.
If he had to fire it. The way Ace was driving, they might just escape without –
‘Here they come,’ Ace said, glancing in the rear-view mirror.
Six turned. Two black 4WDs screeched around the corner behind them. The ChaoSonic logo on the grille of each didn’t mean much, since every car was manufactured by ChaoSonic, but the licence plates both began with CSV. ChaoSonic Vehicle. Any doubts Six might have had that the cars weren’t chasing them were dispelled as one of the cars reared forwards and swung across sideways, smashing a green sedan out of its way.
Ace swung out across two lanes, throwing Six against the door. The limo powered up an exit ramp towards a bridge that stretched up over the highway.
No luck. Both 4WDs turned in time, and soon they were all speeding across the bridge.
The clock was ticking in Six’s head: 3 minutes and 10 seconds until the ChaoSonic air support arrived. He opened the passenger-side door, leaned out, and took aim with the Woodpecker.