by Jack Heath
Red eyes? Six thought. Could be contacts, surgery, gene therapy—or just computer graphics. But not an accident.
“Can we check her facial focal points against our database?” King asked Ace. “And hack into the ChaoSonic one if we don’t have a match?”
“Sorry,” Ace said. “The picture is stretched—that’s why her face looks so narrow—and I don’t know what ratio was used. That’ll mess up the stats of the program; she could be any of a million people.”
“These people have histories, though,” King said, with a meaningful glance at Six. “Whoever she is, she’s experienced, smart, probably rich, and distinctive in both style and appearance. This isn’t her first job. There are people who will know her.”
Ace gaped. “You’re going to go door-to-door in the cell blocks, showing inmates a picture and asking for a name?”
“No need,” Six said, hitting print. “We have a contact she’s already worked with.”
“How can you know that for sure?”
Six was already on his way out the door. “Our contact has worked with everyone.”
The sun had passed its peak behind the burnt sky, and shadows were starting to creep back along the oily concrete as Six eased his car to a halt.
The house was bigger than he’d expected. When he’d last checked the surveillance records, the owner had been living in a one-room apartment near the City steelworks. By contrast, her current residence had turrets: narrow spines of grey synthetic wood rising out of a dark concrete hut which admittedly seemed too small to support them.
That’s Earle Shuji, Six thought. Regardless of practicality, she always has to live in style.
Six had met Shuji eight months earlier on an undercover mission. She had been kidnapping engineers and soldiers to help her produce robots. The engineers had designed and programmed the bots, and the soldiers had tested them by fighting for their lives. The soldiers were all dead by the time Six arrived, but he had rescued the engineers and shut down her operation. And he had taken home one of her robots, Harry, who had proven himself useful a few times since.
But less than forty-eight hours after shuffling her, Six had set Shuji free in return for information—information that had helped him save the lives of his colleagues. He hadn’t seen her since, but the Deck had been watching her carefully. Apparently she’d found an honest job—as honest as they came in the City, anyway. Under a new name, she was working as a consultant for ChaoSonic in their shoe-design sector, abandoning her extensive knowledge of robotics and biomechanics.
There was a bullnecked guard by the door, dressed in immaculate pre-Takeover clothes—a clean-pressed charcoal suit, with polished leather loafers and opaque dark glasses.
Six had expected Shuji’s security to be inside, not guarding the door. He was going to have to change his plan.
He looked at his watch. 16:03:58: less than three hours until the deadline. No time for an elaborate plan. He just needed to get inside.
Six had parked the car on the opposite side of the street, about thirty meters farther along from Shuji’s house, so it would be out of her surveillance range. He locked it and examined the house next door to Shuji’s.
There was a square protrusion running up the front wall, which led to a chimney behind the guttering of the slightly sloped roof. Too easy, Six thought.
He glanced around the empty street to check that no one was watching him. He could hear the distant sound of traffic on the highway.
Six sprinted towards the house and jumped before hitting the wall. After landing momentarily on the sideboards he sprang out again, ricocheted off the chimney, and swung one-handed from the gutter to the roof.
He crouched there, pausing for a second to watch and listen. The front door was opening below him. Someone was investigating the noise.
He ran across the roof, jumped when he hit the edge, and flew across the divide between the neighbor’s house and Shuji’s, before thumping into one of the turrets and grabbing the window so he didn’t fall.
He examined the latch on the window. It looked unlocked, but rusted and probably stiff. He gave the frame a hefty shove, and paint around the hinges cracked and crumbled as the window swung inward. He slipped through into the darkness.
Six found himself on an oak-paneled spiral staircase, leading up to a distant attic door. There was a picture hanging in a simple chrome frame on the wall. A handsome man in his thirties smiled out at Six from the black-and-white photo.
Six turned around and started to shut the window, but froze when he saw a green laser slash across the glass. An alarm system, he thought. Why didn’t I trigger it when I broke in?
His answer came in the form of a punch to the lower back, which knocked him forward against the stairs. I did trip it, he thought. It’s a silent alarm.
The bullnecked security guard had a taser in one hand, which he now aimed at Six. Six jumped, and the electric barb sparked harmlessly off the stairs. The guard lunged forward in a crash tackle as Six was about to land, but Six slammed one foot against the banister and pirouetted in midair, kicking the taser out of the guard’s hand, then rebounding off the wall and landing behind his opponent.
The guard tried to turn around, but he was too slow. Six caught the taser before it hit the ground and blasted him in the back of the neck.
The guard thrashed backward into Six’s bear hug, and Six jammed his thumbs up beneath the big man’s jaw. The guard went limp instantly.
Six crept the rest of the way down the stairs.
He found Shuji in her lounge room, sitting on a pristine white couch with her feet up on the cushions beside her, watching a cream-colored television. She no longer had the ponytail or business suit that Six remembered. Her hair was short, dyed red, and scruffed up carefully at the back. Her clothes resembled a silk jogging suit.
“I don’t suppose running would do me any good,” she said without looking at Six.
“A waste of time for both of us,” he agreed.
“We had a deal.”
“We still do.” Six glanced around. “Nice house.”
“I have a good job,” she responded, “and just as my suffering won’t undo my crimes, my indulgences do nothing to worsen them.” She switched off the television and looked him in the eye. “Are you here to recapture me?”
Six shook his head. “I want information.”
She sighed. “You could have just e-mailed. I wouldn’t have needed workplace comp for Dwayne, whom I assume is lying unconscious upstairs?”
“I was in a hurry,” Six said. He pulled the picture of the red-eyed woman out of his pocket. He handed it over. “Who is this?”
Shuji took the photograph, and glanced at it. Her eyes widened and she dropped it as if it were on fire. “Where did you get this?”
“You know her?” Six asked. There’s still hope, he thought. He looked at his watch. 16:16:05. “She kidnapped an agent; I need to find her.”
Shuji seemed to shrink into the couch. Six saw goose bumps rise on her arms. “You’re in way over your head,” she said.
“I don’t have time for this,” Six said icily. “Tell me who she is.”
“It’s not who she is that’s important,” Shuji said. “It’s who she works for.” She glanced around the room uneasily, as if her words alone could bring forth enemies from the shadows. “Vanish.”
THE CELL
“No way,” Six said. “I’m not leaving without—”
“It wasn’t an instruction,” Shuji hissed. “It’s his name—the only one anyone knows. He’s called Vanish because he’s so good at disappearing, even when you think you’ve got him completely cornered.”
“Who is he?” Six asked. “And what does he want with a Deck agent?”
“I assume there was a ransom,” Shuji replied. “If money is what he asked for, that’s what he wants; and believe me, if that’s what he wants, that’s exactly what he’ll get.”
“There are easier ways to get rich,” Six growled. “And he could’ve asked for
a lot more than he did. The kidnapping alone must have cost him a fortune.”
“He used to be a scientist,” Shuji said. “A nanotechnology expert, or so the story goes, and he still has a thirst for data. He doesn’t want to get rich the same way as everyone else, or any of the ways he already knows he can. He wants to learn.”
“I need details,” Six said.
Shuji shrugged. “I’ve never met him. Everything I know is hearsay.”
“How do you know she works for him?” Six asked, picking up the photograph.
“She came as a potential buyer for my bots last year,” Shuji said. “The day before you showed up, actually. I checked her out and discovered she worked for Vanish. I figured he was interested in saving money by replacing his private army with bots.”
A private army, Six thought. That would explain this morning’s disaster. “Did she turn you down, or the other way around?”
“She said she couldn’t negotiate on her employer’s behalf. She took the specs and stats and said she’d get back to me.”
“But the Deck shuffled you first,” Six said.
Shuji nodded and scraped her feet nervously across the sofa cushions. She’s not telling me everything, Six thought. “Is there any way to track them down?”
Shuji shook her head. “You can’t find him—that’s his defining characteristic. ChaoSonic’s been searching as far back as their private records go. He has hundreds of secret employees, and almost all of them have worked for ChaoSonic. ChaoSonic doesn’t take kindly to that.”
“How old is he?” Six asked. Shuji could probably have accessed ChaoSonic records as far back as fifty years. Surely Vanish couldn’t have been in the business that long.
“No one knows,” Shuji said. “No one knows anything about him for sure, except that he’s rich, a lot of people work for him, and everyone else is either scared or oblivious. But there are stories—”
“I’m not interested in stories,” Six said. “I’m interested in keeping my friend alive.”
“Then pay the money,” Shuji said. “No one gets the better of Vanish.”
Alarm bells rang inside Six’s head. What if this was a setup? What if the woman in the video had expected him to go to Shuji and had already coerced her into telling him to pay up?
“What about the woman?” Six asked. “Can I find her?”
“Her name is Niskev Pacye,” Shuji said, looking at her feet. “There’ll be an address she uses for deliveries on my old company mainframe, if you still have it.”
“Why did she give you that when she hadn’t agreed to buy the bots?”
“I research all my contacts thoroughly,” Shuji said. “I couldn’t find a home address for Pacye, but a drop-off point is better than nothing. I needn’t have worried about her, though. It was you who turned out to be a fed.” She looked at him. “You’re going to get yourself killed, Six.”
“I’m sure you’d be really upset,” Six said sarcastically, pocketing the photograph.
“You’re the only reason I’m not in a cell right now,” Shuji reminded him. “Even though I have an honest job, I’m sure the other agents would gladly lock me up again.”
“Your information saved their lives.”
“You saved their lives,” Shuji corrected. “I was just lucky I had the intel to offer. And besides, Methryn Crexe saved your life, and you still locked him up.”
Methryn Crexe. Even after death, his name still haunted Six. Eight months ago, Six had been caught in an explosion. There had been little between him and death. Methryn Crexe had grown a clone of him, matured it with Chelsea Tridya’s aging formula, then harvested organs and limbs from it and transplanted them onto Six to save his life. But Six felt little gratitude; the explosion had been Crexe’s fault. He was surprised Shuji knew about it. She must still have a network of some kind.
It was 16:29:28. Six headed for the door.
“Six,” Shuji said. “Do you still have that prototype bot?”
Six froze. “Everything in the factory was dismantled and sold as spare parts.”
“Harry wasn’t in the warehouse,” Shuji said. “And you wouldn’t destroy him. Not when he could be so useful to you.”
Six turned around. “You’re insane. If you think I’ll let you anywhere near—”
Shuji shook her head. “That’s not it. I wanted to warn you—all my test prototypes had a self-destruct mechanism—there’s thirteen hundred grams of C-4 set to go off if the exoskeleton is pierced.” She made eye contact. “I installed it so no one could look at the inner workings and steal my design.”
Six frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because if you tried to open Harry, his CPU would explode, and if you happened to be in the way of his exhaust valve, you’d be fried. And I don’t want you to die. So shut down all his systems first by saying ‘cerfitipus talotus.’”
“Thanks,” Six said. He was unsettled by Shuji. She seemed forthcoming with information, warnings, and advice, without needing bribes or threats. But was that because she’d been compromised, or had she genuinely turned her life around?
“Whose picture is that on your stairs?” he asked, remembering the man he’d seen on his way in. The Deck hadn’t been able to find any family before arresting her. “Your husband? Your brother?”
“It came with the frame,” she said.
“Why do you have it?” he asked.
“To remind me,” she said, “that someday there might be someone I can put in there. If I work hard.”
Six raised an eyebrow. This was not the arrogant, confident
Earle Shuji he remembered. “Will you tell him you’re a mass murderer?”
“That’s none of your business.”
“I spared you your punishment. I’m involved.”
“No one can spare me my punishment,” she said in a whisper. “And it has nothing to do with you.”
Awake.
Kyntak opened his eyes to a bright light. I must be dead, he thought. This isn’t so bad. He tried to sit up.
Pain slashed into every nerve in his body, and he gritted his teeth to stifle a scream as he fell back to his original position. Okay, I take that back, he said to himself. It is bad. What happened? Where am I?
He could remember one of the soldiers punching him in the face; he still had the wobbly tooth to prove it. He could remember jabbing the soldier in his solar plexus, and knocking him over, and then hearing gunshots nearby, and going to investigate—and soon after that, seeing some goon about to jump onto Six from a helicopter, crash-tackling him, and then…and then…
…and then nothing, he thought. Someone must have hit him with a tranq, and now he was captured. But he was alive. Whatever they wanted from him, they hadn’t gotten it yet, and until they did, he was safe. So where was he?
He rolled his head to the side, trying to ignore the aching of his neck and the pounding pressure in his brain as he did so. Mirrored walls, polished to a pristine gleam. Great, he thought, that narrows it down. Which places have shiny walls? How about every single ChaoSonic institution in the City?
There didn’t seem to be a door. How did I get in here? he wondered. Maybe there’s a trapdoor in the floor.
His arms were stretched out to either side as if he had been crucified, and as he stared up at the mirrored ceiling, he saw that his feet were almost half a meter apart. He had been clamped to a white table by his wrists, knees, and ankles. There was something he couldn’t see restraining his neck. It was looser than the other clamps, but tight enough so he couldn’t lift his head completely off the cushioned pad beneath it. He was wearing a garish orange undershirt and matching shorts, and they’d shaved his head. He shuddered. I look ridiculous, he thought.
There were two needle marks in his right arm, each puncturing the radial artery. Not enough to shoot me with a tranq, Kyntak thought, they have to pump me full of drugs as well. And who are “they,” anyway?
There was a sudden hissing noise from above, like t
he burning of a fuse. Kyntak’s gaze snapped towards the source. At first he saw nothing, but as his eyes focused he could see that a narrow clear, plastic tube ran along the seam between the walls and the ceiling. It ended in one corner with a kind of rubber nozzle, which sealed itself as he watched. The hissing noise ceased. The cell lapsed into icy silence.
Okay, Kyntak thought, what do I know? They have good-quality manpower and equipment, therefore money. But they’ve been hiding, operating under the radar, so they’re not ChaoSonic.
Vigilante? He didn’t think so. If there was a vigilante group better funded and bigger than the Deck, he would’ve heard of it before now.
So, a private company. One that liked rescuing shuffled criminals, shooting Deck agents, and imprisoning people in rooms that hissed. Man, he thought. This is turning out to be one lousy day.
“Good afternoon, Agent Six.”
Kyntak flinched. The voice seemed deafening after the silence. There were now two men in the corners of the room beyond his feet, which surprised him. He still couldn’t see a door. One man wore the same fatigues as the soldiers from the apartment block. He cradled a Hawk 9-millimeter.
The other man wore a loose white T-shirt and grey jeans. He had a pleasant, roundish face, with stubbly brown hair and wide-spaced grey-green eyes, which stared inquisitively at Kyntak. There was a faded scar stretched across his forehead, just below the hair-line. A rugby player’s neck led to a bulky, broad-shouldered torso, but his hands were narrow and delicate. He looked as though he was in his midtwenties.
He thinks I’m Six, Kyntak realized. Great. “My reputation precedes me?” he asked.
The man smiled broadly. “Of course. But even as we speak, I am learning more.”
Kyntak closed his eyes and groaned inwardly. Abducted by a crazy Six of Hearts fan in a case of mistaken identity, he thought. Six will never let me hear the end of this.
There was a pause. What do you say, Kyntak wondered, to your kidnapper? What are you doing to do with me? maybe, or the slightly less weak-sounding abbreviation: What do you want with me? But neither of those felt right.