Agent Six rode in the vehicle with Kyntak, Two, and Nine. Agent Two was driving. The grimy, crumbling City rolled past the windows of the cabin and the omnipresent fog leaked in through the floor.
Pedestrians had started wearing gas masks and goggles—not so much for their safety, Six knew, but as part of a new fashion trend. He’d seen women wearing various types of masks on the covers of several magazines lately, and that was usually a good indicator of what would become fashionable in the next few weeks.
“So,” Two said. “What’s our current theory?”
“I think that Methryn Crexe has been pulled back into operation by ChaoSonic,” Kyntak said. “They don’t really know a lot about what happened at the Lab. They never got a chance to debrief Crexe before we shuffled him. Retuni Lerke was the one who knew the most about the experiments they’d been doing, but they never found him and neither did we. So if they really wanted information about Project Falcon, how else could they get it besides freeing Crexe?”
Six shivered. He’d been hoping that ChaoSonic had dismissed Project Falcon as a failure. If that wasn’t the case, he and Kyntak could be in even greater danger than he’d imagined.
“But if ChaoSonic has worked out where the Deck is, why haven’t they attacked it?” Nine said. “There are heaps of shuffled ChaoSonic operatives in the cells. Why rescue Crexe and none of the others?”
“And why use a low-life, ex-Lab security guard to do it?” Two added.
The truck screeched to a halt as a black sedan roared past in front of it. The blaring of horns followed it into the grey void, and the truck rumbled forward again. Two barely blinked. Traffic was rough everywhere in the City. To a trained Deck agent, a few sudden stops and swerves were nothing. Despite the crisis Six could feel building around him, he was touched by a hint of satisfaction as he watched Two drive. He wasn’t close to any of the other team members, and maybe he would always feel isolated, but they were well trained and reliable, like a parachute that he could feel on his back no matter how fast he was falling.
“What if it’s a diversion?” Nine said suddenly. “We’ve got our eight best agents on this mission, including you two!” He gestured at Six and Kyntak. “If there was a perfect time to attack the Deck, wouldn’t it be now?”
Six snapped back to reality and held his radio up to his mouth.
“This is Six of Hearts. Come in, King.”
“Copy that, Six, this is King. What’s up?”
“It’s been suggested that the rescue operation was staged to draw us away, leaving the Deck undefended. I’m just checking that you’ve implemented all security measures. Over.”
“We’re walled in tight,” Six’s radio crackled. “The Spades and Clubs aren’t on-site, obviously, but Queen, Jack, all the Diamonds, and I are sealed in the Audiovisual Surveillance room. Ace, Three, and Seven are patrolling outside. We’re keeping our eyes on the screens, and everything seems okay. Over.”
“I suddenly have a very bad feeling about this,” said Six.
“At least you have feelings,” Kyntak said. “That’s an improvement.”
“We can take care of ourselves, Six. Keep us posted.”
“Copy that.” Six clipped the radio back onto his belt. “I doubt ChaoSonic has found the Deck—we’d know by now if they had. Any other theories?”
“Debtors?” Nine suggested. “Maybe Crexe owed someone.”
“Friends or relatives who wanted him back, maybe,” Two said with a shrug. “Not everything is motivated by money.”
The apartment block had come into view—a blackened slab of concrete, crumbling at the joints, rising into the fog. The charred walls were peppered with windows, mostly grimy, broken, or boarded up. Six couldn’t see any doors.
Moments later he discovered why. The cabin of the truck sank forward until it was rolling down a concrete ramp into a parking lot underneath the building. There was no door, no boom gate, no security of any kind. A scattering of cheap neon bulbs on the low ceiling struggled to pierce the fog which poured down the ramp. The silence was smothering, as if the place had been empty for years and every last echo of life had faded to nothing.
Agent Two parked the truck in one of the bays. Six watched through the window as the second truck parked beside it.
“This is Agent Five; we are good to go.”
Two glanced at Nine, who nodded. “This is Agent Two,” he said. “We’re ready.”
Kyntak looked at Six. As the reconnaissance part of the team, they would be separated from the rest of the group. Their independent confirmation was needed before dealing.
Six held Kyntak’s gaze nervously. He was still uneasy. They didn’t have sufficient information to do this mission. They didn’t know what the risks were.
But what choice did they have? Methryn Crexe was on the loose. He was being used for something by someone—someone with the resources and motivation to break in to a high-security cell block to get him out.
This is our only lead, Six thought. So this is our only choice.
He nodded to Kyntak.
“This is Kyntak,” Kyntak said cheerfully into the radio. “Six and I are ready to deal.” He grinned at Six. “Let’s get this party started.”
Six looked at his watch. It was 11:52:50.
The doors to both trucks opened simultaneously. The agents swarmed out, guns at the ready, their rubber-soled shoes carrying them across the filthy parking lot floor without so much as a scuffle.
Six was to take the north stairwell; Kyntak, the west. The rest of the team was to wait by the south stairwell, ready to move up to the first floor when Six and Kyntak gave them the all-clear, or when they were needed as backup. Six was glad King had given those instructions. The Hearts agents were tough, but he and Kyntak were tougher, and he didn’t want to put anyone in unnecessary danger.
Before peeling off towards the west stairs, Kyntak clapped Six lightly on the back. “Good luck.”
Six nodded and ran for the north stairs. Behind him, the other agents melted into the shadows, splitting off towards darkened corners of the parking lot.
Six read the grease-stained sign on the door through the flickering neon light. FIRE DOOR—DO NOT PREVENT CLOSING. He eased it open gently.
The hinges didn’t creak as much as scrape—years of rust being scratched away as the door moved. Six peered through the gap. There was no movement on the other side.
He pushed the door the rest of the way open very quickly to minimize the noise. The stairwell was tiled in white, but was stained grey, yellow, and brown at the corners. The steps were dark aluminum and nearly as rusted as the door. There was a lightbulb above his head, but it was off, and there was no apparent switch.
The chamber was empty. Given the state of this stairwell and the door he had entered through, Six guessed that no one had been in this part of the building for years. He eased the door shut behind him.
He peered up the stairs, gun in hand. No movement.
Six climbed the steps two at a time. He felt slight vibrations under his feet and sensed that if he didn’t tread gently enough, every step would boom through the stairwell. He kept his feet close to the wall, where the stairs were structurally strongest and where his footfalls would make the least noise. The longer he and the other agents remained undetected, the better their chances of success. He didn’t want Dehayt, Crexe, and whoever else lay hidden in this building to have time to prepare a counterattack.
The first landing was empty. Six saw nothing unusual above, just a tunnel of darkness between the rusted flights of stairs.
He heard a deep, quiet groan, a shifting metallic ache as one might hear on the inside of a submarine.
The noise faded away into the darkness. Six held still for a moment longer, but no other sounds followed.
This is a very old building, he thought. A noise like that could be made by weather conditions outside, causing the structure to shift slightly, or by someone moving somewhere within its walls.
But Six had no way of knowing whether that someone might be his friend or foe.
“Are you on the first floor yet, Six?” crackled Kyntak through the earpiece.
“Just reached the landing,” Six whispered. “Why?”
“I’ve found signs of a struggle. A recent one. Tables overturned and cartridges on the floor, but no dust settled on them yet. And no bodies. There’s a pile of cheap mobile phones in one of the rooms.”
Six frowned. “How many?” he asked.
“Eleven,” Kyntak said. “Any ideas?”
“Just a second.” Six changed frequencies. “King, do you copy?”
“I read you, Six. What’s happening?”
“Kyntak’s found a pile of phones. How many other drifters were living in this building that we know of, besides Vidar Dehayt?”
“Ten or eleven. How many phones?”
“Yeah, it matches.” Six balled his hands into fists. “Someone didn’t want to be seen, so they disposed of all the previous occupants.”
All mobile phones broadcast a passive signal, traceable within a few meters. Professional attack teams always left the phones of their victims behind so no one could use that signal to find the bodies. A pile of phones probably meant that all the residents of the building were dead.
He switched frequencies again. “Kyntak, be careful.”
“Now, where’s the fun in that?” Kyntak’s cheer sounded slightly forced. “Let me know if you find anything. Over and out.”
The door to the first floor was immediately in front of him, but Six was distracted by a silver box bolted to the wall. It was about the size of an ice-cream container, with a small antenna out to the side, and a few control dials on the front. It had caught Six’s eye because it looked newer than the rest of the building; the omnipresent grime and dust had yet to settle on its gleaming surface.
Six touched the chrome hinges thoughtfully. It looked like a signal relay—the ground-based equivalent of a communications satellite. Data from a mobile phone could be sent via a relay instead of a tower, provided the sender and recipient were within its operational radius. The advantage was that the signal couldn’t be intercepted except by someone within that radius. Relays were often installed at secret bases of operations.
But this building doesn’t look like someone’s base, Six thought. It looks abandoned. So who installed the relay, and why?
He turned back to the door. After they had scoured the building for other clues, he would examine the box more thoroughly. If need be, he could take it back to the Deck for analysis. But right now, he had other things to do.
He hefted his pistol and eased the stairwell door open a crack. He listened. Nothing.
He swung it all the way open. The corridor was empty—the grinding of the door hinges echoed and bounced away into the distance. The wind blew through shattered windows.
There were more neon bulbs on the ceiling, but none appeared to have power. Broken glass crunched underneath Six’s shoes.
There were entrances to apartments on his right. Most had no doors, just empty door frames with half-attached hinges. Six peered into each room as he crept past, but saw only broken furniture and dirt. He suspected the building was used as a squat by homeless people.
The economics of the City were fragile. ChaoSonic needed to sell goods and services to the public to keep making money. But because the giant corporation owned almost everything, its only customers were its own employees. No one else had any funds. Six had heard it called the CFC, or cash flow cycle. ChaoSonic officials paid their employees, who paid their employees, and so on. Money filtered down through the ranks of the company until everyone with a ChaoSonic job had some. Then they all bought ChaoSonic meals and ChaoSonic clothes. They paid the rent on their ChaoSonic apartments and put ChaoSonic fuel in their ChaoSonic cars. The money all found its way back to ChaoSonic officials.
But like all companies, ChaoSonic demanded growth and profit. To save money, it replaced its workers with software, machines, and even slaves. To survive, the suddenly penniless former employees now had to steal ChaoSonic goods instead of buying them. This decreased ChaoSonic revenue, leading to more job losses.
Six didn’t know if there was a name for that cycle. But he knew where the jobless people ended up. They could be found all over the City, living in rags, sleeping on concrete.
Six could see an empty paint can in one of the rooms, scorch marks on the floor under it. Someone had obviously tried to make a hot meal.
The shredded mattress and sticks of firewood could have been undisturbed for weeks or years. The only sign of recent occupation was the lack of current occupation. Places like this never stayed empty for long.
Kyntak rounded the corner ahead of Six. “Nothing,” he said.
Six nodded. “This way too. Call up the agents.”
Kyntak tapped his earpiece. “This is Kyntak. The first floor is clear. Move up—we’re going to the second.”
“Copy that,” Two said in Six’s ear.
Kyntak headed back towards the west stairwell. “See you in a minute.” The fog swallowed him up.
Six turned back to the north.
The stairwell didn’t get any cleaner with altitude. Six hoped that the steps were still capable of supporting his weight.
The second landing was in a similar state of disrepair to the first. If this floor yielded no evidence of Methryn Crexe or Vidar Dehayt, they would have to check the roof and then leave.
Six was getting worried. The blood of Vidar Dehayt on the floor of Methryn Crexe’s cell was their only lead in this case—and beyond searching Dehayt’s last known place of residence for clues, there wasn’t much they could do.
Did Crexe or Dehayt know they would be coming? Six wondered. Was murdering the neighbors of accomplices just a precaution because they knew Dehayt’s blood had been left behind at the crime scene? Or was it standard operating procedure for these people, whoever they were?
He cracked open another rusty door. He was on the second floor.
It looked the same as the previous floor, but better lit. Daylight and fog leaked through small holes that seemed to cover the whole ceiling.
Dust billowed silently around Six’s feet and he felt a sneeze building up in his sinuses.
He held his nose, suppressing it, then moved on.
As on the lower floor, few of the apartments had doors, and those that did had broken locks. A mattress leaning against one wall of the corridor indicated that someone had been moving in or out—but there was no sign of them now.
There was an apartment with an undamaged door on Six’s right. He gripped his gun tightly and reached out to touch the greasy handle.
A hand snaked out from behind him and clamped over his mouth, while another ripped his pistol from his fingers.
Six tried to struggle, but he was held from behind in a crushing bear hug. He was completely powerless.
He kicked backward, aiming for the legs of his assailant. He missed and was hoisted into the air, facing the ceiling. The hand pulled his head backward.
“Shhhhh…”
Six stopped moving. It seemed pointless. He was being held by someone much stronger than him, but someone who apparently didn’t want him dead.
“I thought you would know a trap when you saw one,” a voice whispered behind his ear. “I thought by now you’d been tricked enough times to know when you were being manipulated.”
The voice was female. Six couldn’t determine the age of the speaker while she was whispering.
“Apparently,” she continued, “I was wrong.”
Six couldn’t reply. The woman’s hand was still firmly clamped over his lips, like a car parked on his face. Six’s first thought was that she might be a machine. The only sentient being who’d ever overpowered him, besides his superhuman brothers, was Harry, his robot. But the hand was as warm and yielding as flesh.
“He wants you to shoot before you think. To decide on instinct, so he will have the upper hand. It seems like a game, but it’s not. He’s trying to put you off balance because he knows that’s the easiest way to beat you. He aims to deceive.”
Who? Six thought. Vidar Dehayt? Methryn Crexe? He tried to speak through the palm of his captor. She responded by pulling harder against his face.
“All hell is about to break loose,” she continued, “but you can survive it, if you’re careful. He knows you. He knows the assumptions you’ll make. So assume nothing.
“I’d tell you to go home. But I know you wouldn’t listen. So don’t go in the front door. Go back to the apartment you just passed, go inside, and enter the closet. There’s a hole leading to this apartment.
“Don’t trust your instincts today, Six. Think before you act.”
The hand left Six’s mouth, and he fell to the floor. Landing feetfirst, he whirled around to see…
…an empty corridor, gritty and gloomy, with pale dust stirred from the floor by a faint breeze.
After searching the immediate area and finding no trace of the mystery woman, Six decided to take her advice. Alarmed as he was by the fact that he seemed to have been overpowered by a ghost, he realized that if she’d wanted to hurt or kill him, she would have done so when she had the chance. If she’d wanted to exploit him somehow, she would have given more specific and suspicious advice than “think before you act” and “don’t go in the front door.”
The last possibility was that she was trying to help him, for whatever reason—and Six lost nothing by changing his search route slightly.
He went inside the apartment she had suggested. It was unremarkable—glass and grit on the floor, wallpaper yellowing at the edges, a boarded-up window on one wall, and a single lightbulb above his head. There was a dirty sledgehammer lying in the corner, surrounded by brick dust. Perhaps someone had planned some renovations that never took place.
The closet door was leaning against its frame rather than attached to it. The closet was empty except for one crinkled shirt, with a large coffee stain, on a coat hanger. Six slid it gently aside and saw that there was indeed a hole—about one meter square and presumably made with the sledgehammer—leading to the next apartment.
And through it, he saw the face of Methryn Crexe.
The former Lab boss was sitting on a rickety wooden chair, facing the door to the apartment, with a Hawk 9-millimeter pistol in his hand. Crexe hadn’t seen Six yet. His eyes stared straight ahead at the door. His gun hand was perfectly still.
Was this what the mystery woman had been trying to warn him about? Six thought. He wants you to shoot before you think, she had said. It seems like a game, but it’s not.
Why would Crexe want Six to shoot him? And why lie in wait in a room of this ancient apartment building? Crexe would probably know that Six abhorred killing, and that he was hesitant to use lethal force, even in self-defense. But would he stake his own life upon that?
He wants you to shoot, she’d said. None of this made sense.
Six thought he heard a distant rattling sound. He took his eyes off Methryn Crexe for a moment to look over his shoulder, but the apartment was still empty.
Could be Kyntak, he thought. Could be the other agents on the floor below. Could be just the wind, or the building shifting.
Crexe didn’t seem to have heard the noise. His knuckles were white around the grip of the Hawk.
Six leaned forward very slowly and put one leg through the hole in the closet, keeping his Owl trained on Crexe the whole time. His foot touched the dirty concrete without a sound. He slipped his torso through the hole into Crexe’s apartment.
Six lifted his other leg through the hole, and stood in a defensive crouch, his gun aimed at Crexe’s temple.
“Don’t move a single muscle,” he hissed.
Crexe was still.
“Drop the gun, and put your hands behind your head,” Six said. “Slowly.”
Crexe ignored him completely. His gaze didn’t falter.
Six lunged and grabbed the Hawk out of Crexe’s hand. He met no resistance. Crexe’s empty hand fell into his lap. His skin was ice-cold.
Agent Six pressed two fingers against Methryn Crexe’s throat, searching for a pulse. There was none.
Crexe’s narrow, focused eyes turned from the door to the ceiling as he pitched sideways off his chair, his delicate balance disrupted by Six’s touch. He landed with a thud on the concrete floor.
He wants you to shoot before you think, the woman had said. He aims to deceive.
So “he” was not Methryn Crexe, Six thought. And if I’d entered through the front door, I would’ve seen Methryn Crexe pointing a gun at me.
I probably would have shot him.
So “he” wanted Six to think that he’d killed Methryn Crexe? He’s trying to put you off balance, she had said. To unnerve him, confuse him?
“Six, where are you?” It was Kyntak. “My half of the floor is clear.”
“Copy that,” Six said. “The rest of the team can move up. I’ve found Crexe—he’s dead. I’m in the room with the closed door. Come and meet me.”
Six’s earpiece crackled. “This is Agent Two; we’re on our way.”
If someone was trying to confuse or unnerve me, Six thought, they’ve succeeded. Methryn Crexe escapes from the Deck. Blood at the scene leads us to an abandoned apartment block. All the occupants have vanished, leaving only a pile of phones and Methryn Crexe’s corpse behind, arranged in such a way as to try to force me into a one-sided gunfight…and in the middle of it all, a strong, fast, seemingly invisible woman gives me a warning that is too cryptic to be useful.
This is too weird for ChaoSonic. It must be something else.
What if I had fired? Six thought. Crexe’s body would’ve been damaged—perhaps there was a clue which could’ve been destroyed by the shot. But why leave the body here for them to find if it had evidence on it?
He thought of the mystery woman’s words. All hell is about to break loose, but you can survive it, if you’re careful.
What else would have happened if he had shot Crexe? The noise would have carried—and the other agents would have heard it. They would have raced up here to the second floor to back him up…
Kyntak and Agents Two, Four, Five, Eight, Nine, and Ten would all have been on this floor, where they were headed right now anyway…
There was a scuffle, close. Six whirled around, but the room was empty. Crexe stared blankly up at him.
“Two,” Six hissed into his radio. “Wait! Are you on the second floor yet?”
“I think—” Six broke off. He was looking up at the ceiling, at the small holes that riddled it.
In one of them, just for a moment, he had seen an eye staring at him.
“We have hostiles,” Six yelled. “There are hostiles on the roof!”
And then the ceiling exploded into millions of tiny concrete chunks.