by Jack Heath
‘Where’s my purification device?’
‘You’ll never see it again,’ Six said.
‘You are an incarnation of the devil,’ Sammers whispered. ‘Here to halt the Lord’s work.’
‘There’s no such thing as the devil,’ Six said. Make him mad, he thought. It’s my only shot. ‘You’re not anyone’s saviour, and there’s no afterlife waiting for you,’ he continued. ‘You’re just a lunatic. But if it makes you feel any better, it’s not your fault.’
Sammers’ eyes blazed. ‘You are a liar and a heretic, filled with hatred. Have you no faith?’
‘See, you can believe any crazy thing you want,’ Six said. ‘I don’t care. It’s when you start forcing your beliefs on others that I have a problem. Like, for example, trying to murder everyone on earth because you think they’re sinners. Or brainwashing your children.’
King’s voice in Six’s head. Sammers’ father was the leader of a doomsday cult.
‘What did you just say to me?’ Sammers hissed.
‘Children,’ Six repeated, and suddenly he wasn’t speaking to Sammers at all. He was speaking to Nai.
‘Small children believe everything they’re told,’ he said. ‘Particularly if it’s their parents doing the telling. They don’t have the mental aptitude to defend themselves against nonsense. That’s why it’s not your fault – when your father started filling your head with rubbish, you believed every word he said.’ He paused. ‘So I don’t hate you. I feel sorry for you.’
‘My father was a saint!’ Sammers screamed.
‘He was berserk,’ Six shouted. ‘And now here you are, trying to destroy the world, because –’
Six just had time to twist his torso out of the way as Sammers pulled the trigger. There was an enormous crump of displaced air, and the heavy depleted-uranium spear shot out of the barrel at over 1000 metres per second. And as it rocketed past, Six grabbed the shaft with one gloved hand and squeezed it as tightly as he could.
His shoulder dislocated again, but he barely heard the crunch over the roaring of the wind in his ears. The g-forces almost broke his neck as the APFSDS swept down the aisle, dragging him behind it. There was a chattering of machine-guns behind him as the disciples who had been on either side of him opened fire on reflex, and then shouts of agony as they hit each other.
The metal rod was smooth and hot in his fist. Six could feel it trying to slide forwards out of his grip. No, he thought. Not yet.
The wall was approaching rapidly. The servers were flitting past like fan blades. Six squinting against the blasting wind.
Now!
He let go of the spear and fell to the floor, sliding along with leftover momentum. The rod slammed into the wall in front of him, and the stupendous force became heat instantly. The wall exploded outwards, chunks blasting into the night sky and falling out of sight. Six scrabbled desperately at the slippery floor as he slid over the edge.
His fingertips snagged the jagged side of the wall as his legs tumbled out into the darkness. He yelped as his injured shoulder took most of the impact, but he managed to hold on. He glanced down, watching his body fail in the fog-stained air. He peered into the shifting darkness below. Something moving. What the hell was that?
He knew he had to drag himself back up. Sammers and the disciples would be coming.
He swung his good arm up onto the ledge. Pulled. Clambered over the precipice, and stood.
Sammers was storming towards him. Unable to reload the APFSDS cannon fast enough, he had thrown it aside and was drawing a pistol.
‘You will be punished for your blasphemy,’ he howled.
Six stood with his heels on the edge and turned his head, looking back down into the void. Then he turned back to Sammers.
‘I really doubt that,’ he said.
Sammers had almost reached him – he tugged at the slide of his gun as he walked, jacking a round into the chamber. ‘You will be ascending early,’ he said, raising the barrel until it was in line with Six’s eyes.
Got to time this right, Six thought. He said, ‘Hey, Straje.’
Sammers’ left eye twitched. ‘What?’
Six allowed himself a slight smile. ‘Look behind you,’ he said.
Sammers didn’t look. So he was completely unprepared when the first of a fourteen-year-old boy slammed into the side of his head. And before Young Six could see him, Old Six stepped backwards off the ledge, and fell into the black.
The sudden silence was refreshing. He could feel the breeze billowing through his clothes.
He didn’t fall far. He landed face down on the nose of a jump-jet hovering 5 metres below. He’d seen it when he looked down, dangling from the precipice – but he wasn’t sure why it was here.
To his right, the hatch buzzed open. He crawled across and climbed down into it.
Harry watched in silence as he sat down.
When he had caught his breath, Six said, ‘I told you to go home.’
‘You did not specify when,’ Harry said.
‘Thanks,’ Six said, ‘old friend.’
‘We are not friends yet,’ Harry said.
Six nodded and looked up through the glass of the cockpit at the hole in the wall. Sammers would be doing battle with Young Six, exactly as he remembered it.
‘Do we need to go back?’
‘No,’ Six murmured. ‘Everything’s under control up there. Take us to the Tower.’
Harry twisted the controls and the jet swooped away into the night.
The street was filled with people. Running, screaming, packed so tightly together that they became a single substance. The jet hovered so low that Six could see the panic in their faces.
The nuke wasn’t a threat – he knew for a fact that it wouldn’t go off. But ChaoSonic would start dropping their own bombs on the area in less than fifteen minutes, and the overwhelming majority of these people would be killed.
And it’s my fault, he realised. I’m stealing the nuke, therefore ChaoSonic won’t find it when they search CVHQ, so they bomb the place. I’m responsible for this whole mess.
Part of him knew that wasn’t true – the air strike was ChaoSonic’s fault, the nuke was Sammers’ fault, the madness that led Sammers to steal it was his father’s fault. But looking at the terrified horde, it was hard not to feel guilty for the part he had played.
He wondered briely how many Harry could take out of the hot zone in the jet. Probably no more than half a dozen.
‘Open the hatch,’ he said.
Harry complied.
Six recalled Vanish making light of the situation, and him giving a stern lecture: The irony is probably lost on the thousands of people who were vaporised on that day.
He frowned. Vaporised. Blasted into pieces so fine they may as well never have existed. The death toll had been calculated not by finding bodies, but by counting the missing.
Missing. Presumed dead.
Maybe, just maybe, there was a chance he could save these people.
Six started to climb out of the hatch. ‘Fly back to Shuji’s facility,’ he told Harry. ‘As soon as I’m on the ground.’
‘Understood.’
Six stood on the wing of the plane and surveyed the panic around him.
He rehearsed a speech in his mind. Don’t worry, I have the nuke in my backpack. It won’t go off. But ChaoSonic is about to bomb this place to hell, so we need to get to my time machine and teleport ourselves to the future.
No-one would believe the truth. He’d have to lie.
‘Citizens,’ he roared.
No-one was listening.
‘I have a bomb shelter!’ he continued.
The people closest fell silent and looked up, hope in their eyes. The ones further away noticed the change and started shushing one another. Soon he had the attention of perhaps a hundred people, with more on the horizon turning to face him.
‘And it’s big enough for all of us,’ Six said. ‘So follow me, and you will be safe!’
Then
he jumped down off the wing.
He landed on a bed of outstretched hands. He was passed from group to group, fingers and elbows pressing against his spine and the backs of his legs. Crowd-surfing, he thought nervously. This is new.
Then there was a hole in the crowd, and he fell, landing in a crouch.
‘This way!’ he yelled, and started running towards the alleyway around the back of the Tower, with enough people following him to fill a passenger jet.
The buzz baton was still holding the door to the tunnel ajar. Six pulled the door wide open and ran through, shouting, ‘Come on, this way!’
The whimpering of the horde of panicked civilians was deafening in the tunnel. Six maintained a steady pace – too fast and they might get too scared and turn back, but too slow and he might be trampled.
The second door was up ahead. Again, the buzz baton was still holding it open. Lucky, Six thought. He ran through and started climbing the ladder. Seconds later he heard the clanking of someone coming up behind him. The civilians were still following.
He emerged in the hall with the machine, right next to the transmission chamber. A man climbed up behind him, stared around the hall, and said, ‘What is all this?’
‘Keep moving,’ Six said, as he opened the transmission chamber door.
His Deck agent instincts told him to send all the civilians through the machine first – protect others before yourself. But he had a ticking nuke in his backpack. No time for chivalry.
There were maybe fifteen people standing around the top of the ladder now, with more ascending as Six watched. Time to tell the truth – or some of it.
‘Okay,’ Six said loudly. ‘This is going to be a little hard to believe, but this machine is a WMTD – a wireless matter-transmission device. It’s going to teleport us all to safety.’
Someone laughed nervously. Most people just stared. A voice said, ‘You’re kidding, right?’
‘I don’t kid,’ Six said. ‘And to prove it, I’m going first.’
He stepped into the transmission chamber, walked over to the keyboard, and started programming in the date of the day he and Ace had gone to the Tower cocktail party. He chose 9 am – plenty of time to get everyone through before the party started.
‘The machine has a maximum capacity of 500 kilograms, so you can go five at a time,’ he said. ‘There are syringes in this cabinet marked technetium-99m. Inject yourselves, like so.’ He tapped the syringe, stuck it into his arm, depressed the plunger. ‘There’s enough for everyone. Then all you have to do is push this button next to the keypad, then stand over here and wait.’
There were now about fifty people standing around, and more were coming up. Six said, ‘Shuffle outwards so you don’t block the ladder.’
Someone said, ‘You’re crazy! You actually expect us to believe –’
‘No,’ Six said. ‘Not until you see it. When you hear the words “Scan complete”, you can wait ten seconds and then come in. I’ll be gone.’ Then he shut the door of the transmission chamber, blocking them from view. He hit the button, and stood in the centre of the floor.
The magnets started spinning around him. The CT scanners clicked.
Six’s heart raced. Any moment now, he was about to die – for the second time today.
The machine hummed as it warmed up. Six figured the process of sending someone forwards in time would be much simpler than backwards – the machine just had to store the scanned data until he was scheduled for replication. It was –
ZAP!
Six hissed in pain. For an agonising split second his skin felt like it was onfire. His head was pounding and his heart felt like there was a bone lodged through it.
And then the sensations faded.
He looked at the clock. He was back in the present – well, one day in the past. His other self would be getting strapped into the inside of a torpedo right about now. In fact, he realised, there would be two of him until the other Agent Six came here to use the machine tomorrow.
He managed not to puke this time – maybe because he was getting used to time travel, maybe just because he hadn’t eaten anything.
He opened the transmission chamber door. The crowd was gone. The hall was still and empty – and intact. His Semtex hadn’t destroyed it yet.
Six unzipped his backpack. The warhead was still there. The timer read 01:06:43.
He couldn’t disarm it. There were no buttons other than arm, and the casing was almost certainly rigged. And unlike before he was transmitted, now it wasn’t safe. He’d known the nuke couldn’t go off two years ago – in the present there was no such guarantee.
Sixty-six minutes from now, it was going to explode. And there was nothing he could do about it.
Where could he take it where it wouldn’t hurt anybody? Six shut his eyes and scrunched a hand into his hair. There was nowhere in the City with a low enough population density. He could have the Deck launch it into space, but if it detonated too close to the atmosphere the nuclear fallout could kill millions. And in any case, he couldn’t call the Deck – they had their own Agent Six to deal with.
Six opened his eyes. There was a battleship that he knew would be at the bottom of the ocean in sixty-six minutes.
He could even steal the SARS along the way.
Six heard a faint pop as something materialised in the chamber. He opened the door and saw four women and a man staggering about.
‘Come out,’ he said. ‘So the next group can come through.’
‘I feel sick,’ the man faltered.
‘That’s normal. Get out.’
They all stumbled through the doorway. Six closed it behind them.
‘What the hell?’ The woman’s voice was shrill. ‘This is the same place!’
‘Yes,’ Six said. No point lying to them now. ‘But it’s two years, four months and nineteen days later. You’re safe.’
‘You tricked us!’ the man said.
Six didn’t know if the man thought the machine had done nothing, or if he meant Six had tricked them into thinking the time machine was a teleport. But he didn’t care very much. ‘I saved your lives,’ he said. ‘When they arrive, tell the others where they are, and when. Leave by the tunnel you came in through.’ He shouldered the backpack again. ‘I’ve got a helicopter to catch.’
MISSION
FIVE
Day 1
YESTERDAY’S FORECAST
Kyntak stared down through the window at the choppy sea below. The pounding of the helicopter blades was muted to a deep rumbling by his headphones.
‘Hey,’ he shouted to the pilot. ‘How far away did you say we were?’
‘Flyover in five,’ the pilot said, his voice crisp and cold in the headphones. ‘And you don’t need to yell.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Kyntak said. ‘My bad. Sorry.’
He could see a smudge on the horizon – could be the CNS Gomorrah. Black clouds rolled back and forth in the sky above it. I hope that’s not a storm coming in, he thought. That would suck.
‘Is that ve minutes exactly,’ he asked, ‘or is it give or take a minute or two?’
‘Four minutes and fifty-one seconds exactly,’ the pilot said.
‘Thanks,’ Kyntak said. ‘Good to know.’
The pilot didn’t reply.
Getting conversation out of this guy is like wringing a dry sponge, Kyntak thought. He’s as bad as Six.
He knew it would be screened by the fog, but Kyntak gazed towards the top of the Seawall anyway. Six would be in the water somewhere beneath it, cocooned in steel and pressurised oxygen.
He’ll be okay, Kyntak told himself. He’s always okay.
‘How much further now?’ he asked the pilot. ‘In kilometres, this time.’
At that very moment, Agent Six was clinging to the underside of the helicopter, stretched out so his hands were gripping one landing ski, his ankles hooked over the other. The backpack containing the warhead was strapped to his chest, making room for a parachute pack on his back.
> It hadn’t been too hard to sneak into the Deck – he knew all the weak spots of the security systems. He put on a ski mask, rigged up a flying fox and sailed along the powerlines from the roof of a nearby building to the roof of the Deck. He dodged all the hidden sensors and digicams, found the helicopter Kyntak would use, and stole a parachute from inside it. He felt guilty, but told himself that they wouldn’t need it – he knew for a fact that the helicopter wouldn’t crash, and none of the occupants would need to bail out.
And then he concealed himself in the darkness beneath the helicopter and waited. Soon Kyntak and the pilot were running across the roof towards him. They opened the door, jumped in, and started the engine. Six barely had time to reposition himself so he was holding onto the landing skis before they lifted off the ground.
His arms and legs had been sore since about five minutes into the journey, but he dared not risk falling by attempting to adjust himself.
Six’s eyes watered against the ragged wind as he looked out towards the CNS Gomorrah. A ship no less doomed than the Titanic, growing larger in the distance.
He heard Kyntak’s voice in his head – words Kyntak hadn’t said yet: We did a flyover a few minutes ago to see if the ship was carrying aircraft. Some of the crew took pot shots at us with assault rifles, but no damage was done.
No damage done to the helicopter, maybe, Six thought. But what about to me?
Undoing the zip with his teeth, he checked the timer on the warhead: 00:34:03. The other Agent Six would place the SOL-bomb in the engine room in about twenty minutes. He would set the timer for ten minutes.
This was going to be close. Six zipped the pack up again.
The Gomorrah was looming larger now. The helicopter was almost above it. Six could see soldiers emerging onto the deck, pointing, staring through binoculars. He saw one of them raise an assault rifle. Another followed suit.