by Jack Heath
Kyntak was silent for a moment. ‘How long before it blows?’
‘No timer,’ Six said.
‘Can you defuse it?’
‘Hang on.’ Six took a deep breath, and ran back into the kitchens. He stared at the bomb through the wobbling air.
All the wires had been spray-painted blue. There was no way to tell which was which.
Six ran back out again. ‘No,’ he gasped. ‘They’ve coloured the wires, and maybe trip-wired the mechanisms too.’
‘What about moving it?’
‘It looked like it had a pressure-sensor link to the table.’
‘Damn. I’ll get everyone out the west exit.’
‘Except the soldier,’ Six said. ‘Maybe as long as he’s here, the bomb can’t go off.’
‘Good thinking,’ Kyntak replied. ‘I’ll stay here with him. Otherwise, he could wake up and escape.’
‘I can’t ask you to do that.’
‘You don’t have to.’
Six could hear the wry smile in Kyntak’s voice. ‘I’ll meet you at the west exit,’ he said.
‘Wait.’ Kyntak spoke quickly. ‘If I’m keeping the soldier in the building, couldn’t you cut random wires and defuse the bomb? Because it can’t go off?’
Six thought about it. Maybe that was true. But him cutting the right wires in the right order sounded less likely than the soldier somehow surviving the blast. ‘No,’ he said. ‘That feels too much like toying with fate.’
‘Your call,’ Kyntak said. ‘See you at the exit.’
Six closed his phone, and headed for the door.
Outside in the corridor, Six was still watching for soldiers. There was a chance that some of them were still here – trawling the halls with purposes unfathomable to him.
Emptiness. Silence. Gas still detectable in the air.
Six walked down the corridor swiftly and stealthily. He glanced in Jack’s of?ce as he passed it. No sign of Jack, or any soldiers.
Six wondered if he should take the lift to the ground floor, and then decided that was too enclosed. He would take the stairs.
Six paused just before he reached the corner of the corridor. He listened. No footsteps, no voices, no movement.
But that didn’t necessarily mean anything. A time-soldier could be waiting for him, lead pipe in hand, knowing the exact second Six’s head was going to appear around the corner.
Six rounded the corner. No pipe-wielding soldier.
He ran down the hallway, unpleasantly aware of the bomb he’d left behind. Would the presence of the unconscious time-soldier really protect the building? How long did Six have to get out?
The stairwell door was up ahead. He jogged towards it, eyes scanning the surroundings.
He pressed his ear against the door. Nothing but the groan of a distant air-conditioner, carried down from the roof.
He put his hand on the handle.
And crack! Something stabbed him in the back.
The first thing Six felt was the pain in his teeth as they slammed together against his will. The muscles in his arm tensed up and started shuddering, making his hands quiver. He smelled burning, and his eyeballs ached.
He was already on the floor by the time he realised he was being electrocuted. The pain in his back had been two needles, fired by an M26 Taser. He could hear the zapping sound it made, sharp and regular, like a CD skipping.
With tremendous effort, he turned his shivering head. How many time-soldiers were there? How far away? Could he stand, and fight them off?
But it wasn’t time-soldiers. It was the Spades. Four of them, walking towards him. Two had guns drawn.
The Spade holding the Taser released the trigger, and the current ceased to blaze through Six’s veins. His back slumped out of its arch, and a blob of foamy drool rolled out of his mouth and down his cheek.
‘I gave him a double dose,’ the Spade with the Taser said. ‘He’s down for a while.’
‘Boss,’ another one said into her radio. ‘We got him.’
‘Location?’ the radio squawked. Six recognised the voice – it belonged to the Queen of Spades. But now that he knew Vanish was inhabiting her body, the voice sounded alarmingly like his, too.
Maybe the Spades had been lied to. Got to warn them, Six thought. He slurred, ‘Your boss is Vanish.’
The Spade with the radio stared at Six for a moment. Then she held the radio up to her face again and said, ‘He knows.’
‘Be right there.’
They know, Six thought. And he’s coming. Vanish is coming. I have to get out of here.
His head was still vibrating like an arrow that had just hit a bullseye. There was a humming in his ears.
‘What’s that smell?’ one of the Spades said. ‘Doesn’t matter,’ the one with the Taser said. ‘We’ll be out of here soon.’
‘ETA?’ the one with the radio asked Vanish.
‘One minute.’
Six tried to fiex his fingers. They were slow and clumsy, but they felt like they were responding. He tried his toes. They wriggled inside his shoes. He got to work on his wrists and ankles.
A normal human being might take hours to recover mobility after a blast from a Taser. Six had less than a minute.
‘He’s moving. Fry him again,’ a Spade said to the one with the Taser.
Then the stairwell door opened. Six’s heart felt bloated in his chest. Vanish was early! He started dragging his left hand towards his pocket.
But it wasn’t Vanish. It was Ace.
She looked down at Six, then at the Spades pointing guns at him. Her eyes widened, and one hand crept towards the gun tucked into the back of her jeans.
‘What’s going on here?’ she asked.
One of the Spades took aim at her. The other one with the gun kept it trained on Six. There was a moment of silence.
‘Ace,’ Six said, his tongue still wobbly in his mouth. ‘Shut your eyes.’
He took his hand out of his pocket, clutching the flashbang Jack had given him. Then he shut his eyes and pushed the button.
Nothing happened.
One of the Spades said, ‘Hey! What’s that in –’
BANG!
Even though Six knew it was coming, the sound was deafening. He’d pushed the flashbang across the floor away from his body, but the heat of the blast still stung the exposed skin on his hand and arm.
He opened his eyes. The Spades were hunched over, clutching at their faces. As the sound of the explosion faded, Six could hear them yelling in panic.
He clambered to his feet, still shaky and disoriented. Jack had said that the blast would confuse them for ten or twelve seconds. He grabbed Ace’s hand and pulled.
She pulled back. ‘Stairs are right here,’ she said.
‘I know,’ Six said. ‘This way.’
He pulled again, and this time she followed.
Six was in no condition to outrun Spades in a stairwell. They’d have recovered and be after him before he’d staggered down two flights. And Ace wouldn’t be strong enough to carry him at speed.
Instead, they ran towards Jack’s office.
The yelps of pain behind them had become shouts of anger. ‘Where are they?’ ‘After them!’ ‘Which way?’
Six shoulder-barged through the office door, pulling out his phone with one hand and flipping it open. He hit the call button without looking as Ace followed him into the room and shut the door behind her.
The phone dialled rapidly. ‘Hello?’ Kyntak said.
‘Get the soldier out of the building,’ Six yelled, as he pulled open the door to Jack’s safe. He swept the box of nuclear batteries out and slammed his fist down on the plastic shelves inside, breaking them into halves.
‘But then –’
‘Just do it!’ Six pushed Ace into the safe, dived in after her and yanked the door shut behind him. It sealed with a resounding boom.
The sudden quiet was incredible. The yelling of the Spades and their clattering footfalls vanished as instantly as a c
hannel change on the TV. Now all Six could hear were Ace’s breaths, quick and shallow, bouncing noisily around the suffocating blackness.
‘How much air is there in here?’ she whispered. ‘Maybe three or four minutes worth,’ he replied. He could feel her knees squished into his back, so he tried to shuffie forwards, only to realise that he was already pressed up against the door. He hoped she wasn’t claustrophobic.
‘You really think they’ll stop looking that quickly?’ Doonk. Doonk.Fists pounding on the outside of the safe.
‘Not a chance,’ Six said.
‘So what’s the plan?’ Ace asked. Her voice was controlled and even.
‘Any moment now, the Deck is going to explode,’ Six said. ‘I’m hoping that the lead is thick enough to protect us, and that it happens before we run out of air so we can get out.’
‘What about the other agents?’
‘They’ve been evacuated. Don’t touch the walls with your bare skin, it’s about to become very hot. If you can, curl into a ball to protect your face.’
He tried to remember what she was wearing. A T-shirt, jeans, boots. Her legs and feet would be fine – but her arms were naked. Six started wriggling out of his suit jacket.
Doonk. Thump. Doonk.
‘Why is the Deck going to explode?’ Ace breathed. Her words boomed in Six’s ears.
‘Because the soldiers put a bomb in it,’ he said.
He couldn’t get the jacket off – his shoulders were too broad for the enclosed space. He gritted his teeth, stretching every tendon and muscle in his torso, but his arms wouldn’t twist back far enough.
The air was already paper-thin. If the explosion didn’t happen soon, they were dead. But if it did come soon, Ace would get second-degree burns all over her arms and hands.
Six squeezed his eyes shut, reached behind his back with his left hand, grabbed his right bicep, and pulled. Pain knifed through his right shoulder as it popped loose of its joints with an ugly crunch. The sound was magnified by the enclosed space.
‘What was that?’ Ace whispered.
‘Nothing,’ Six replied. He pulled the jacket off his loose shoulder and passed it to her. ‘Put this on. It’ll protect your arms.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. Six felt her moving in the darkness, slipping into the jacket. ‘How chivalrous.’
‘You’re welcome.’ Six grimaced as he realigned his shoulder and forced the joint back into place.
The thumping outside had stopped. Six pressed his ear to the door, and heard only silence. Had the explosion gone off already? No, the metal was still cool. Then what –
There was a piercing mechanical shriek, and Six slammed his hands against his ears. He recognised the noise. It was a power drill. The Spades were drilling through the hinges of the safe.
‘Damn it,’ he hissed.
‘Six,’ Ace gasped behind him. ‘I can’t breathe.’
And then there was a rumbling sound. The drilling stopped, and the rumbling became a thunderous crescendo. And suddenly the safe was rattling and shuddering, and when Six inadvertently pressed his palm against the floor it was white hot. There was a booming sound, like the Spades’ fists times a million. And then somehow Six felt that they were upside down and the air burned his lungs and his stomach lurched and Ace was screaming something and then he blacked out.
ON THE RUN
Because of the darkness, it took Six a moment to realise he was awake. His head felt like it had been squeezed in a vice. He could taste blood from a cut on the inside of his cheek. His dislocated and relocated shoulder was dislocated again, and he couldn’t feel his right hand at all.
I’m breathing, he thought. How can I be breathing?
‘Ace,’ he whispered.
Silence.
‘Ace!’
Panic squeezed his lungs. He reached out with his good hand, bumping the wall, and felt his way around the metal until he touched something that felt like hair.
‘Ace,’ he said again. ‘Are you okay?’
He found her face and prodded it. It was warm, but slack and unresponsive. He touched her eyelids. They were closed.
No, he thought. No, no, no!
He could see that her mouth was open, but there was no visible sign of breathing –
Wait. He could see. Where was the light coming from?
He turned to the left, and saw a single tiny star of light. He reached out for it, and realised it was in the corner of the safe, where the door met the wall.
The hinges. The Spades had drilled through one of the hinges, creating an airway. They had probably saved Six’s life. Maybe they had saved Ace’s too.
Six braced his back against the wall and started kicking the door. It took four strikes before the other hinge broke and the door fell open, hitting the ground with a dirty clunk. Light from a streetlamp poured into the safe, momentarily blinding him. He turned back to Ace, and as his eyes adjusted he saw an ugly purple bruise swelling across her brow.
He grabbed her ankles and dragged her out of the safe – he wouldn’t be able to do CPR in a tight space like that. But as the light fell on her face her eyelids flickered open.
Her pupils focused on him. ‘Morning, Six,’ she murmured. ‘What are you doing here?’
Six didn’t realise he’d been holding his breath until he let it go. He hugged her tightly. ‘You’re okay,’ he said. ‘Wait – spell espionage backwards.’
‘I know how to spell espionage backwards,’ she said. ‘I wrote the damn test.’ She looked around. ‘Where are we?’
Six turned to scan his surroundings. He couldn’t see the Deck anywhere; the safe must have been thrown clear by the explosion . . .
Or not. He looked down, and saw that they were standing on a mountain of blackened rubble. The safe was half buried in a pile of twisted steel and crumbling concrete.
This was the Deck.
The only thing standing between ChaoSonic and total control of the City was now a puzzle of stones crunching under Six’s shoes.
‘Game over,’ he muttered to himself. ‘We lose.’
There were people moving in the distance. Evacuated Deck agents, probably. Six wanted to go over and check that they were all right – but he couldn’t leave Ace.
‘Can you move?’ he asked.
Ace tested her limbs. ‘Yeah, I think I’m okay.’ She stared at the people on the horizon. ‘Are those the other agents?’
Six looked again. Uh-oh. ‘No,’ he said. ‘They’re Chao-Sonic. Let’s get out of here.’
They ran, stumbling at first, but quickly recovering their balance. The ChaoSonic troops didn’t seem to notice them, content to pick through the wreckage.
A few blocks away from where the Deck had stood they found a car – a grey Equator 79. Six felt bad about stealing it, but his car had been buried under the rubble – along with every other vehicle in the underground car park.
The Deck was gone. Six hadn’t really absorbed that fact yet. He knew it, consciously, but it hadn’t registered. There was no emotion as he thought about it. Just plans and strategies for the immediate future.
Six picked up a thin stone and wedged it between the door and the window of the car. Then he dipped a broken piece of chain-link fence into the gap, searching for the locking mechanism.
‘You want to tell me who those guys were?’ Ace said. ‘The ones posing as Spades and pointing guns at you?’
She’d recovered surprisingly quickly – quick and alert, showing no signs of shock. Fourth in her squad for firearms training, Six reminded himself, first in the vehicular course. She was tough.
‘The Spades have been compromised,’ Six said. The door came open with a click. ‘Vanish has taken control.’
Ace didn’t get in the car. ‘Wait – what? The body-stealing guy?’
‘Yes,’ Six said. ‘Get in.’
Ace didn’t. ‘We have to go back,’ she said.
‘No we don’t,’ Six said. ‘We have to get as far away from him as possible.’
‘I have to go back,’ Ace insisted. ‘I have to find my stepmother, and warn her.’
‘Your step –’ Six hesitated. A horrible feeling was growing in his gut. ‘Your stepmother works at the Deck?’
‘She got me the job,’ Ace said.
‘And your father’s been missing for how long?’
Ace stared at him. ‘Two weeks.’
Six’s knuckles were white over the top of the door.
‘Who is she?’
‘Queen of Spades,’ Ace said.
Six’s throat closed up. There was no good way to tell her. Maybe Kyntak or Grysat or Agent Two could have come up with some phrasing of this terrible news that made it seem less terrible.
But they weren’t here. Six was.
‘Your parents are dead,’ he said. And Ace fell to her knees, gulping for air like she was drowning.
Ace’s father had been an artist.
He made sculptures out of old car parts and sold them to ChaoSonic offices to put in their foyers. He had a false tooth, slightly greyer than the others, so he always put a gold cap over one on the other side of his mouth to distract the eye.
He’d knocked out the tooth as a teenager, landing on his face after falling off the fence surrounding an abandoned textile factory. Since then his jaw clicked noisily as he ate, and the discomfort of those within earshot delighted him. His full name had been Vinn Tad Dante.
Ace told Six all this during the drive, staring straight ahead, eyes dry and cold. He’d asked her to tell him about her parents, figuring that nothing he said would distract her, so it was better to get it all out. But now he wasn’t sure if that had been a good idea.
Ace’s stepmother, the Queen of Spades, had married Dante when Ace was only five years old. Six had only known the QS as a cold, suspicious enforcer of what she saw as the law. But as Ace spoke, he got to hear about a different side of her.
Her name had been Sirah Wen Tallim, and she kept it when she married. Because her husband worked from home and had raised Ace there, Tallim had made it her mission to give Ace as much life experience as possible. She had taken her stepdaughter all over the City, to museums and historical monuments and obscure corners of the continent where people spoke in strange languages. At the time she’d been a science teacher, so she was able to take Ace on short trips on the weekends and long ones in the school holidays. She often marked her students’ work while Ace sat next to her on the train, watching the red pen scratch across the paper as they rattled towards some unknown land.