by Jack Heath
He could go a little closer and open fire. Disable all the sentries before they raised the alarm, and get inside before their command realized anything was wrong. Then use the same strategy when he got inside—keep his gun out and shoot anyone who got in his way.
Would he turn into a killing machine, exactly what the Lab had designed him to be, in the hope that Kyntak might be saved? Was that any worse than condemning Kyntak to death so he could keep his vow to never take a human life again?
It was 20:01:45. Every second decreased the likelihood that Kyntak was still alive. Six drew out his Owl and aimed it into the darkness by instinct alone, lining up the sights with where the sniper’s head had been.
The gun felt heavier when it was aimed at a person—as if the bullet itself was already weighed down with the life it might be about to take. Six slipped into his firing crouch. He felt Harry’s gaze on his back: not judging, but watching nonetheless. He pictured the sniper, staring coolly down the barrel of his rifle, unaware that his skull could be shattered at any moment by a bullet.
Six holstered the Owl. “We’re going back,” he said.
“No, we are not,” Harry said. “We’re standing still.”
Six rubbed his eyes with his empty gun hand. “We’re going to go back to the fence,” he said. “We’re going to get my bike.”
THE SLEEPERS
“Agent Six has reached the warehouse,” Nai said.
The phone hissed quietly. She pictured her father thinking.
“Is he inside yet?” Lerke replied eventually.
“No. Should I stop him?”
Nai knew that Lerke had hoped Six wouldn’t come this far. He’d sent her to warn him at the apartment block. He’d called the Spades to try to trap him at the Deck. He’d posted her at the rendezvous point to protect him from Vanish’s soldiers.
She watched Six through night-vision lenses as he and the robot lifted the motorcycle over the fence. Lerke had wanted him to give up, to leave Kyntak for dead, before Vanish got him too. But now here he was at Vanish’s base of operations. Apparently planning to break in.
“Can you do it safely?”
Nai thought about it. She could overpower Six if she caught him by surprise. But there were guards, so she would have to do it silently and invisibly, or they could both die. And he had a robot with him, who would presumably try to intervene.
“Seventy percent chance of success,” she told him.
She waited for him to think about the numbers. If he told her to proceed, there was a seventy percent chance that she and Six would survive, but Kyntak would die. There was a thirty percent chance that none of them would survive. But if he told her to stay back, Six’s and Kyntak’s chances dropped to less than twenty percent, and hers went up to a hundred percent.
She didn’t weigh up the pros and cons in her head. That was his job. The decision was his to make. She waited patiently.
“Don’t follow him,” Lerke said finally. “But stay on the perimeter. If he and Kyntak make it out alive, you know what to do.”
“Understood.” Nai hit end. She lay down on the asphalt and trained her sniper rifle on the warehouse. She wriggled until she was comfortable. It could be a long wait.
The giant construction vehicle had been well maintained. The joint of the tailgate was lightly oiled and turned in its socket as easily as if it had never been used. Six lowered the tailgate gently until its edge was resting on the concrete, and climbed into the bed. The sides were almost a meter high, which would provide good cover from the door guards if the security light was switched on again. But the snipers would see him instantly. He tried to be as quiet as possible.
Six wriggled cautiously towards the front of the bed until he was touching the rear window of the cabin, then peered down through the Plexiglas. The battery must be dead, he thought. There should be a warning light blinking on the driver’s display, stating that the tailgate is open. It didn’t matter.
Looking down, he saw that the hand brake was on. He climbed out of the tray, leaving the tailgate on the ground. He bent down to look at the angle it made—about fifty degrees. Good enough. He put his palm in the center of it and pressed. It didn’t bend—probably cadmium, he guessed.
He stared into the inky blackness where he knew the nearest guard tower to be. No sign that anyone could see him. But if he was spotted, he knew there would be no warning—just a gunshot that would kill him before he knew it had been fired. With a deep breath, he slipped back into the darkness to where he had left the bot and his bike.
“You understand what you have to do once I’m inside?” Six asked as he approached.
“Yes,” Harry replied.
“You’ll have to go back to the fence the same way we came,” Six said, “or else you’ll trigger the security lights.”
“Yes,” Harry repeated.
Six climbed onto the motorbike and started the engine, arming the ChaoSilent fittings as he did so. He clicked a switch so only the engine noise was canceled out. If the sensors near the tires were activated, they would pick up the sound from Harry’s jet pack and interfere with the bot’s own noise cancellation equipment. This left a risk that the guards would hear the rolling of the wheels, but with their helmets on and the security light out of commission, Six was confident that his plan would work.
“This time, do hang on tight,” he said. Harry’s arms squeezed his torso and Six gunned the motor. The clicking of the guitar amp grew louder for a moment. Here goes nothing, he thought.
He twisted the throttle and the motorcycle shot out across the concrete. The silhouette of the warehouse grew larger before them. Six’s hair was blasted back by the acceleration and his triceps strained to keep him close to the handlebars. He kept accelerating. He couldn’t see the speedometer, but he knew that if he hit the construction vehicle too slowly the guards would be the least of his worries.
The motor screamed softly. Harry switched on his jet pack, and Six’s cheeks rippled with the extra burst of speed. The vehicle appeared out of the darkness just ahead—Six tightened his grip on the handlebars, squeezed the bike between his calves, and lifted his rear slightly off the seat.
Thump! The front wheel slammed into the lowered tailgate, which acted as a ramp, and the bike shot up into the air, the wheels spinning wildly as they lost their traction. Harry held Six’s torso tightly as the jet pack added to their upward momentum. Six gripped the bike with his hands and legs to stop it from falling out from underneath them.
They reached the peak of their trajectory above the sentry tower and rapidly began to fall. Harry braced one mechanical palm against the bike to stay upright, directing the thrust from his boosters downward to slow their descent. Six swung his legs off the seat as the roof of the warehouse reared up out of the gloom below, hanging his feet as low as he could underneath the bike.
His shoes clunked against the aluminum roof, and he bent his knees to soften the impact as he reached up and wrapped his arms around the chassis of the motorcycle. He held it in the air, letting the wheels spin themselves down to a halt as Harry hovered next to him, then slowly lowered himself down to the roof.
Six put the bike down, keeping one foot against it to stop it from sliding backward down the sloped metal. He listened carefully; there was no audible movement from below.
He turned to look at Harry. Flames were licking up his clothes. “You’re on fire!” Six whispered urgently.
Harry turned invisible, using his cloak to suffocate the flames on Six’s trench coat, and reappeared a second later. Six looked down ruefully at the ragged ends of the coat. “Last time I lend you my clothes,” he muttered. “Has your skin melted?”
“I am undamaged,” Harry said.
“Good,” Six said. “Go back to the fence and wait for me to come out.”
Harry picked up the motorbike, walked to the edge of the roof, and jumped off, switching his jet pack on again once he was in the air. He and the bike glided down quickly into the gloom.
Six paced slowly from one end of the roof to the other, checking for weak points. A roof this large and thick wouldn’t be a solid piece of metal—it would be giant slats, held together with rivets. All he had to do was find a seam.
He discovered what he was looking for exactly in the center of the dome—it was made from four aluminum plates, overlapping one another by a meter where they met in the middle. Six braced his feet against the metal and pulled as hard as he could on the lip of one of the plates.
The giant shard of metal bent slowly, the edges grinding softly against girders underneath it. Soon Six had folded the corner up, exposing a triangle of light large enough to squeeze through. He put his head into the hole, checking that the coast was clear, and then slithered inside.
Six tried to hang as still as possible from the girder. All the giant halogen lights dangling from the roof by chains were underneath him and pointed downward, keeping him in shadow, but he wasn’t kidding himself—a loud noise or a sudden movement would be enough to make the soldiers in the warehouse below look up, and he’d be spotted.
And there were plenty of troops around. In stark contrast to the deathly stillness of the night outside, the floor of the warehouse was a matrix of slow activity. Soldiers stalked along the perimeter wall, their boots making hardly a sound. Four guards paced in pairs from side to side by the main door, and another three were stationed next to the side entrance.
Most warehouses looked much the same. This one closely resembled the one he and Kyntak had raided fourteen hours earlier, except for the contents. There were no crates here. No cranes. Only a few ground vehicles—three vehicles like the two outside and a large sedan.
But there wouldn’t have been room for much else. Not with a forty-meter, four-engine jet plane resting in the middle.
Six stared down in disbelief. He could believe that Vanish could get away with employing a few hundred troops without ChaoSonic cottoning on. But a plane?
When he had discovered that the warehouse was right next to an airfield, he had assumed this meant the troops could travel by air easily—but by buying tickets from ChaoSonic, like everyone else. Even a small airplane flying over the City without a ChaoSonic permit would be picked up on dozens of radar screens only seconds after it reached useful altitude. How did they manage to fly this plane without being detected?
It didn’t matter. Six couldn’t think of a way to make it relevant to his current situation. It might be a plausible escape vehicle for him and Kyntak, except that to use it they’d have to open the warehouse door, and if they were going to do that, they might as well leave on foot.
On the wall of the warehouse opposite from the doors there was a metal panel about three meters square. It had a seam down the center—A door, Six thought. Looks like iron. Strong, tough. It would lead to the rest of Vanish’s facility—the only other doors in the warehouse led outside. There was a guard standing by it, weapon holstered.
Six reached up and slowly folded the aluminum roof back into place. It was more flexible the second time. He had the feeling that stealth would not be an issue by the time he was back here, so the hole wouldn’t be a useful exit. But if it started raining between now and when he found Kyntak, the soldiers would notice it and sound the alarm.
He swung out across the roof, slinging his body carefully from one girder to the next as if he were on a giant maze of monkey bars. The temptation was to move his legs to increase his momentum and keep his center of gravity steady, but he was afraid that waving them might attract attention.
One of the bars rattled in its slot as he gripped it. He lifted his body up on top of the girder immediately and lay still. There was no cry of alarm from down below. He waited five seconds before peering over the edge.
The soldiers were patrolling as normal. It suddenly struck Six how quiet they were. Not only were their footsteps almost silent, but not a single word had been uttered since he’d entered. There was something almost mechanical about all the troops he had fought today. They had superfast reflexes and incredible accuracy, and were also uncannily professional. He knew that they were human—he had almost strangled one to death eight hours ago and had felt his pulse. And he doubted that they could be genetically enhanced, like he was. Project Falcon was the first major development in that field, and it was only twenty years old. Vanish had been employing highly trained crack troops for at least fifty years, according to the ChaoSonic file.
But there was definitely something strange about them. Despite their differing physical attributes and voices, they all seemed somehow the same. Identical training regimes never produced identical soldiers, Six knew. Some would be better than others; all would have particular strengths and weaknesses. But there was no human error here. No mistakes, no disloyalty, and no unprofessional conduct.
Six had reached the wall, so he tied his climbing rope around the girder in a highwayman’s hitch, and threaded the free end through the protruding loop. He looked down. The iron doors were right beneath him, the guard standing impassively in front of them.
He thought about his options. He could drop straight down from the ceiling onto the guard’s head, hoping that the blow would knock him out before he made a sound. But that was risky—he’d have to catch the guard before he hit the ground as well, or else the noise would attract attention.
He could lower himself down on the rope and grab the guard by the throat to stifle the scream. But he’d need one hand for that and the other to hold on to the rope, so he’d have no way of stopping the guard from drawing his weapon.
He was a little relieved that he didn’t have to consider shooting the guard with his Owl. The silenced pistols weren’t actually silent. Indoors, they made a dull thud which was easily audible at a range of many meters. In a quiet environment like this, with no soft surfaces dampening the acoustics, the noise would reverberate around loud and long enough to get the attention of every soldier in the warehouse.
Before he had time to think about it any longer, the guard put his hand to his ear, apparently receiving an order. He pushed a button beside the doors and they slid aside immediately. He walked through them, out of sight, and they slid closed once again. The door was now unguarded.
Six swept his gaze around the warehouse. There were three guards patrolling the perimeter at a speed of approximately one meter per second. The warehouse was sixty meters long and forty wide, and the soldiers were patrolling one meter away from the wall. Therefore each guard walked 192 meters in each lap. They were evenly spaced, which made it sixty-four meters in between each one, and one had passed the door five seconds ago. Fifty-nine seconds before the next patroller passes the door, Six thought. Make it thirty before he’s in visual range.
Plenty of time.
Six slid down the climbing rope and landed gently on the cement floor of the warehouse. He tugged the other side of his giant loop to undo the knot up above and gathered the coils of the rope quickly as they fell. He pushed the button with his thumb.
The doors didn’t open.
Six pushed it again. An orange light blinked; there was no other response.
A countdown started automatically in his head, recording the number of seconds remaining before the patrolling soldier would spot him.
Twenty-six, twenty-five, twenty-four…Six didn’t panic. He squeezed his eyes shut and pictured the guard opening the doors. The guard had reached down, pushed the button, and the doors had opened immediately.
Six looked at the button panel. There were no other buttons on it. He pushed it again, and the orange light blinked again. The doors still didn’t open.
Nineteen, eighteen, seventeen…
He rewound his memory. Before the soldier pushed the button, what did he do?
Nothing. He was standing there, then he put his hand to his ear, then he pushed the button, then the doors opened. Was the order he’d received significant? Was it a message from someone in control—someone who’d disarmed the doors so they could be opened?
The patrolling soldier was walking alongside the adjacent wall, getting closer and closer to the corner. When he reached it in perhaps ten seconds, he would see Six. Give him another three, maybe, to determine that Six wasn’t the door guard. Another two to raise the alarm, then one to fire.
Eight, seven, six…
Six looked around for a hiding place. The plane was too exposed; the soldiers would see him moving towards it. There was no way back up to the roof—he had no grappling hook to go with his climbing rope, and it would take too long to improvise one.
Six slid the two halves of his quarterstaff out from under the straps on his back and clicked them together smoothly. If he ran towards the patroller, he might be able to knock him out before he could raise the alarm. He dropped into a sprinter’s crouch.
The doors slid open behind him, and Six dived backward through them without even checking what was on the other side.
The doors slid shut a moment later. Six disassembled the quarterstaff as he took a look around. Now he saw why the doors had not opened for him immediately. He was in an elevator.
There were no buttons inside. Apparently the elevator only traveled between this floor and the one below. This made Six nervous—the fewer floors there were, the more likely it was that there would be someone on the other side of the doors when they opened. He scanned the elevator for a hiding place, but except for the doors it was a featureless cadmium box. The ceiling was a single plate of stainless steel with a coin-size puncture in it, containing a low-watt bulb. The corners were—
Six flattened himself to the floor and dragged himself back to the wall. There was a tiny surveillance camera in the corner, pointed at the doors. He had been standing right in front of it. He hoped that he hadn’t noticed it too late. A monitor somewhere would have displayed an image of him as he jumped backward into the elevator. He could only hope that no one had been watching.
The elevator hadn’t stopped, which was a good sign. If I’d been spotted, Six thought, surely they would stop the elevator. Or they could just mobilize the troops outside the doors on whichever floor the elevator is headed to.