“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 the 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.
When he had been Six’s captor in a cell last year, the first thing Six had said was, “I’m not buying this,” before proceeding to mock the quality of his surroundings. That’s fine for an arrogant snob like him, Kyntak thought, but it doesn’t suit me.
“Can I help you?” he asked finally. It was meant to sound levelheaded, even threatening; but he thought he sounded more like a shop assistant approaching a hesitant customer.
“I expect so,” the man said. “At the moment, I only want to learn.”
“Loosen my chains,” Kyntak offered, “and I’ll teach you jujitsu.”
The man’s smile vanished. “I’m serious.”
Kyntak laughed. “So am I.”
“First impressions,” the man said. “You’re either hiding your fear behind a façade of good humor, or you’re not afraid. If you’re not afraid, you’re either crazy or stupid. If you are afraid and you’re hiding it with jokes, then that makes you either self-conscious or impulsive.” He walked slowly around the table, keeping a half-meter distance from its edge. “You know, I’ve studied your history and it seems to rule out stupid. Impulsive is unlikely too.”
He bared his teeth in a curious smile. “So, are you self-conscious? Everyone who knows you is either an admirer or an enemy, so that would be a reasonable cause. On the other hand, it’s been a long sixteen years for you—pain, confusion, constant peril. No one could blame you for being crazy.”
“Give me some boots,” Kyntak said. “I’d like to shake in them.”
“This,” the man said, “will be an interesting two hours.”
Kyntak knew he was being baited, but he couldn’t resist. “What happens in two hours?”
“Ah, you are impulsive,” the man said. “In two hours, I’ll know all I need to know.”