Third Transmission

by Jack Heath

  Not yet, Six thought. Please, not yet.

  Directly below him there was still more ocean. More, and more – and now he was above the ship.

  No time for hesitation. Six let go of the landing ski and plunged down into space.

  Gunfire sparked against the bottom of the helicopter above him before he heard the shots from down below. He curled into a ball, minimising the target he was presenting. Air rushed noisily past his ears.

  One second.

  Two seconds.

  Three.

  Six looked down. The deck of the Gomorrah was maybe 15 metres below him.

  He was close enough. He pulled the cord.

  The parachute whoomped into shape above him, jarring his shoulders as the freefall was abruptly arrested. He stopped dead-still in the air for half a second, and then squeezed the clips on the sides of his parachute pack. They came loose, and he plummeted the rest of the way as bullets shredded the canvas above him.

  Bang! He was on the deck, and running. He had to get to the hangar, down the manhole, so he could lose any pursuers in the maze of corridors below.

  A bullet clanged against the wall of the hangar up ahead. Someone was shooting at him from behind. Six ran in a zigzag pattern, hoping the gunman wasn’t as good a marksman as him. His stomach was clenched tight like it was trying to make itself bulletproof.

  The door to the hangar was up ahead. He crashed through it – not locked. It took him a fraction of a second to reach the hatch, pull it up, and dive down into the wet darkness of the ship’s innards.

  Six slid down the ladder without touching the rungs and thumped onto the floor. He looked left, then right.

  They’ll be right behind me, he thought. Got to hide somewhere.

  Then he corrected himself. No – got to get to the SARS canisters. Then plant them somewhere secluded with the warhead, steal a lifeboat, and get off this ship before it sinks.

  He ran away from the hatch into the gloom. Dim lights swept by above his head. There was a pickaxe on the wall under a sign that said In case of emergency.

  Six was unarmed, and this was definitely an emergency. He took it. The badly sandpapered wooden handle was rough against his palm.

  Footsteps. Voices. Six ducked into an alcove, and waited until they had faded. Then he stepped out and kept moving.

  He was starting to feel sick again – not from the physical toll of time travel, but the mental one. He was standing in a ship that had already sunk, carrying a bomb that had already been destroyed. How could he not be confused?

  He suddenly wondered if he had dreamed the last two days. This might in fact be his first mission on the ship – he might just have imagined the cocktail party and the invasion of the Deck and the time-soldiers and meeting Sammers again and the feeling of Ace’s lips against his own . . .

  Movement!

  Six froze. There had been a soldier up ahead – he’d seen the cap and coat. But had the soldier seen him?

  Yes. The soldier reappeared, ran towards him. He was short, but quick. Six raised the pickaxe.

  And then he recognised his own face under the hat.

  He was about to fight himself.

  The younger agent was throwing a punch towards Six’s torso. Six nudged the oncoming wrist, pushing it off-course. As the boy tumbled forwards in surprise, Six swiped the pickaxe at his neck, knowing the blow would miss.

  Young Six dodged as expected, and struck Old Six’s knee, but Old Six managed to pin him to the wall by his coat.

  Dodging a vicious kick, Old Six grabbed the throwing knives on Young Six’s belt. He must believe I’m going to kill him, he thought. Why didn’t I scream?

  Oh, right. He clamped a hand over Young Six’s mouth.

  It was weird, touching his own face at a distance – like reaching into a mirror to stifle your own reflection. Old Six couldn’t look himself in the eyes. It was too disturbing.

  He pinned Young Six’s arms to the wall with the knives. Took the oxygen bottle and the scuba mask, partly because he might need them to escape, but mostly because he remembered them being taken.

  He hesitated.

  What can you say, when you meet your past self? ‘See you round,’ he said finally. Then he ran towards the room with the SARS.

  Young Six will be right behind me, he thought. I need to hurry.

  Then he thought, no, wait. I know I didn’t catch myself. So I don’t need to worry about that.

  Then he saw the two guards sprawled on the ground, unconscious. Next to the door that led to the SARS containment chamber.

  No, he thought. No!

  He spun the valve. Shoved open the door.

  The room was exactly as he’d seen it when he was a day and a half younger. The SARS was already gone.

  Someone else was on the CNS Gomorrah. And now they were armed with the deadliest virus since the Black Death.

  Six walked out and shut the door. Young Six would be here any second. Time to leave. He would have to stick with the original plan. Hide the warhead, then get off the ship before the SOL-bomb sank it, taking the nuke – and, he hoped, the SARS canisters, wherever they were – down with it.

  Six ran, searching for somewhere to conceal the warhead. Unlike with the SOL-bomb, he wanted it as far away from the hull and as close to the centre of the boat as possible, so the explosion was contained. But deep down he knew that it wouldn’t help much – it would be like wrapping a paper bag around a hand grenade.

  There was a cleaning supplies closet up ahead. Six thought that would be relatively safe. The alarm would be raised in a couple of minutes, and then noone would care how clean the ship was.

  Six opened the door and set the warhead down in a bucket. The timer had reached 00:22:21. Six shut the door again.

  Time to get on deck, find a lifeboat, and get out of here before the rain started. He didn’t have long.

  Then he realised there was one more person he had to save.

  He remembered stumbling across the pantry the first time he was here, catching the soldier stealing food, and welding him into the fridge. If that soldier was still in there when the ship sank, he would drown. And there was no way he could break out by himself.

  If I don’t go to rescue this guy, Six thought, then I killed him.

  He sprinted towards the pantry.

  The valve on the door was still hot after the welding Young Six had done on it. Six was able to crack the soft metal after only a few seconds of heavy twisting.

  The pantry, like the SARS room, was exactly as Six remembered it. Open boxes, potato chips sprinkled all over the floor. He ran over to the walk-in freezer. The soldier was pounding on the door from the other side.

  Six grabbed the handle, braced his foot against the frame, and pulled. His muscles burned with the effort. The welded steel moaned, and then the door exploded open.

  Apparently overcoming his confusion at being rescued by someone who, despite the sudden change of costume, was clearly the same boy who had imprisoned him, the soldier lunged at Six. Six shoved him back, and the unfortunate soldier slipped on the freezer floor and landed on his butt.

  Six said, ‘Get out of here. The ship’s sinking.’

  Rescue complete. He ran back out the way he came.

  Six heard the first booms of thunder as he was climbing a ladder back up to the deck. No, no, he thought. Not yet! Damn it!

  He was too late. He shoved open the hatch, and saw freckles of acid already appearing all over the deck. Soldiers were screaming and burning and dying, and the air stank of scorched skin. Six pulled the hatch almost all the way closed again, leaving him with a roof over his head and a widescreen view of the carnage.

  He gritted his teeth. His hand clenched the top rung of the ladder so tightly it hurt. The nearest row of lifeboats was too far away. By the time he’d run over there, picked the locks on one of them, loaded it into the pulley, and lowered himself down into the water, he’d be lucky if the acid hadn’t melted his face off.

  But what
was the alternative? Go down with the ship? Trap himself inside a vessel that now had not only a SOL-bomb ticking away in the engine room, but a nuclear warhead stashed in a cleaner’s closet?

  Spat. Spat. The rain was hitting the hatch above his head.

  There was a soldier moving towards the lifeboats, apparently in no particular hurry. She was holding up an umbrella, which seemed to be somehow neutralising the acid – the liquid drizzled off the rubbery flaps and splattered harmlessly against the deck. It was as if she had somehow known it was going to rain.

  She was carrying a bag, with three cylindrical bulges in it.

  Six’s eyes widened. The SARS canisters, he thought. The soldier reached down to fiddle with the locks on the nearest lifeboat. And then she paused. As though she could sense Six looking at her, she turned to face him – and smiled.

  Six’s jaw dropped. It was Vanish – still wearing the body of the Queen of Spades.

  How can that be? he asked himself. While I was on this mission, Vanish was at the Deck with King!

  Unless . . .

  Memories flashed through Six’s mind with epileptic intensity. Vanish at the Deck. Vanish watching his every move. Vanish hearing about the SARS. Vanish hearing about Chemal Allich’s teleport – and maybe doing some research of his own.

  The man in Six’s house. There was no way he could have broken in while Six and Ace were there. Therefore he was there already, waiting for them to arrive and fall asleep. But he couldn’t have gotten in without the code for the door.

  Six thought of the unexplained transmission on the time machine’s logs:

  T: 07:06:11 0000 D: 00:00:01:09:23:17

  Vanish had gone back just one day. Just far enough to send a commando into Six’s house, having watched Six type in the door code as he and Ace arrived in the future. Far enough to get on board the CNS Gomorrah and steal the SARS.

  Vanish waved to Six, as though he’d spotted an old friend. Six could hardly hear the rain over the blood roaring in his ears.

  It had all been Vanish. And now, Six thought, he’s going to get away with the deadliest virus known to humankind.

  Unless I do something about it.

  Six pushed the hatch all the way open and charged up out of the hole. A drop of rain hit him immediately, just above the collarbone, and Six felt the acid start to bore down through his flesh.

  He ignored it. His mind had room for only one thought, not a complicated one, but massive in its importance:

  Stop Vanish.

  His feet slammed down against the deck, splashing acid and seawater into the air. He kept his head down, protecting his eyes from the deadly wind. He didn’t need to look. He knew where Vanish was. All he had to do was run.

  A raindrop seared his arm. One stung the back of his hand. One sizzled into his kneecap, and he exhaled, like he could push all the pain out of his system. Just a few more seconds.

  Stop Vanish.

  Stop Vanish.

  His heart thundered in his chest, and he could feel the drop of acid from his collarbone tunnelling down towards it. He had only seconds before the voracious drip hit something important, like a lung or a vertebra.

  He kept running.

  Snap! A sudden stab of agony on his head. He realised a drop of acid had hit him there, and would soon burrow down through his skull.

  It didn’t matter. STOP VANISH!

  Six looked up just in time to see the bafflement and alarm in Vanish’s stolen eyes before Six dived into him in a wild flying tackle. Vanish was knocked backwards off his feet, dropping the umbrella, and they both crashed to the deck, sliding sideways across the slippery metal. Vanish screamed as the first millilitres of acid burned his skin, and Six roared as he felt the raindrop on his head scrape the bone, and then they were falling, tumbling off the edge of the CNS Gomorrah, down towards the ocean far below.

  DEATH

  Splash.

  The icy water swirled around Six’s body, bonding with the acid and washing it away. The salt stung his open wounds, and bubbles of muffled agony escaped his lips.

  His lungs ached. He was dizzy. He needed air. But if he surfaced, more acid would land on his head and face and inside his mouth.

  The scuba mask! Six grabbed it and held it to his face. He fumbled for the oxygen bottle.

  Air! Need air!

  He fought to stay conscious. If he blacked out, his body would start breathing automatically and he would drown.

  He plugged the cord from the mask into the oxygen bottle. Unscrewed the valve to get air flow. Used his last breath to clear the water out of the mask, shouting, ‘Tooh!’

  And then he closed his eyes and breathed in. Rich, cold air was sucked into his lungs. The mask hissed pleasantly. Six didn’t exhale, just kept breathing in and in and in until it felt like he might burst. When he was full, he held the oxygen in for as long as he could before the first few bubbles dribbled up out of his mouth.

  And then a hand closed around his throat.

  Six’s eyes popped open and he saw Vanish in the murky water, teeth clenched and neck tendons bulging, hair drifting and curling around his face like black flames.

  Vanish ripped the mask off Six’s face. He fumbled with the straps, trying to get them out of the way so he could breathe through it.

  The bag with the SARS canisters tumbled away, spinning down into the gloom.

  Six made a grab for the cord, missed – – and then a titanic rumbling shuddered through the water. Six felt a rush of heat behind him as the SOL-bomb inside the CNS Gomorrah exploded, melting a colossal hole in the side of the ship. Water rushed in to fill the gap, and the ship lurched downwards. The massive, barnacle-scarred hull grumbled slowly past them as the ship began its final journey into the blackness far below.

  Six and Vanish were sucked towards the sinking ship by all the displaced water. Six tried to grab the cord again, and succeeded, but Vanish wasn’t letting go of the mask.

  The survival instinct was the core of Vanish’s personality, Six knew. Almost all his actions were motivated by fear of death. He would know he couldn’t go to the surface. And he would know the oxygen bottle couldn’t sustain both of them until the storm passed.

  So there was absolutely no way he was going to let go of the scuba mask.

  Six could feel the drag of the ship getting stronger, and he could see the rain-shredded surface of the water getting further away. It was getting darker. They were going down. And Vanish was using up the last of the oxygen.

  He kicked at Vanish’s legs. Vanish ignored him. Six tugged sharply at the cord, pulling it away from Vanish’s face. Vanish choked as water filled his mouth.

  The pressure was starting to build in Six’s brainpan. They were getting deeper.

  Him or me, Six thought. One of us is going to die.

  So he punched Vanish in the gut.

  Vanish’s eyes bugged as the air exploded from his lungs. Six caught the mask, stuck it to his own face, and breathed in as he started to swim away.

  He felt a hand grip his foot. He kicked it off. Tried to keep swimming. The hand came back. Crushing his ankle like a bear-trap. Six kicked and flailed. Vanish wouldn’t let go.

  Six was facing the distant surface now, trying to swim up while Vanish tried to grab the oxygen bottle with his free hand and the ship tried to drag them both down to the ocean floor. It was Six’s superhuman strength against Vanish’s all-encompassing desperation.

  Six struggled upwards. The grip on his ankle was loosening. He kept kicking – looser still. Then there was a last panicked squeeze before the hand slipped away altogether.

  He swam up, free, out of reach, and then turned to look. He knew he should keep swimming until he was close to the surface, so he could come up as soon as the storm stopped. But he needed to see this. He needed to know that he and Kyntak and Ace were finally safe.

  Vanish was behind him, eyes wide, mouth open, hands outstretched like tree branches. He was dead, sinking backwards towards the dull, shrinking silhouet
te of the CNS Gomorrah.

  And then there was a white-hot flash as the nuke went off.

  Six squeezed his eyes shut against the lethal glare. He scrabbled desperately at the water, trying to swim up, get as far away from the blast as he could. He could feel a volcano of boiling water rushing up behind him.

  The sound reached him first. A sharp, loud thud. Then a moment of silence, broken up by distant echoes as the thud rebounded off the various cliffs and mountains of the ocean floor. And then there was a roaring, growing louder and louder and louder still, until Six wanted to cover his ears to shut out the sound – but he needed both arms to swim.

  The water around him went from murky and still and cold to bright and churning and scorched in a fragment of a second. It was like the acid, but all over his body. Six clamped his teeth down on the mouthpiece and kept swimming, thrusting each of his limbs against the ocean with all the force that he could muster.

  The explosion had instantly evaporated several cubic kilometres of water, leaving a vacuum that the entire ocean was trying to fill. Six could feel the dragging again, so much worse than that of the ship, this time like he was chained by his feet to a sinking bus. His arms and legs whirled through the boiling water.

  His brain was on fire. His skin felt like it was being scraped off with a cheese grater. Don’t give up, Six. Keep swimming!

  The light was so bright he couldn’t tell whether his eyes were closed. The wounds from the acid weren’t just neutralised anymore – they were cauterised. His jackhammering heart and heavy breathing mixed with the bellowing of the explosion to become a horrible white noise that felt like spikes were being driven through his ears.

  And then he reached the surface.

  Sudden silence and gentle daylight. The storm had passed. The ringing in his ears was already fading to uncover the popping and gurgling of bubbles floating to the surface all around him.

  Six spat out the mouthpiece and sucked in a lungful of the air, polluted and grey but it wasn’t out of a can and so he was relieved to have it.

  He turned around, splashing gently. The Gomorrah was gone. Kyntak’s helicopter was gone. The ocean was bare all the way to the horizon.