Apparently there were no surveillance cameras in the room. Kyntak couldn’t see any, and the neck clamp was loose enough to allow his head to turn and scan the whole area. He figured that Vanish had weighed the risks of putting additional equipment in this otherwise sterile room against the benefits of watching him lie on the table and decided that it was better to make the cell featureless.
All the better. Kyntak wasn’t sure what he’d do once he got off the table, but being watched would severely limit his options.
The wrist clamps were tight, but they’d been left loose enough to keep his circulation flowing. Kyntak gritted his teeth as he pulled. His theory was that if he tugged with enough force, he could dislocate the bones in his hand and make it slip through the clamp. Then he could reset the joints with his teeth and use the hand to hit the buttons that unlocked the clamps around his other joints. Then he would wait for Vanish to come in, kick the stuffing out of him, and run.
One, two, three. Pull! He drew his breath in sharply as the flesh of his hand was squeezed between the metal and his bones. He stopped before there was a risk of the cuff cutting him—this was hard enough already without having to worry that his skin would be scraped off his hand. Not to mention that if Vanish came back too early, he might notice that Kyntak was bleeding.
One, two, three. Pull! He crushed the base of his palm against the rim of the clamp, and a whimper of pain escaped his lips. His freakishly strong bones and joints withstood the pressure. He stopped once again. I’ll have some impressive bruises if I live long enough, he thought.
“Yeeaargh!” He tried to throw his body into the air, hips first—there were no restraints around his torso. He held himself up like a crooked bridge, straining against the clamps at his knees and elbows, the restraint around his neck choking him.
Thud. He landed back on the table, the impact sending a shock of pain into his coccyx. He breathed quickly and deeply, saturating his brain with oxygen to numb the pain, and flexed his aching wrist.
One, two—
The wall started rolling aside. Kyntak immediately slumped limply against the table, heart pounding. He lifted his head as the door opened, as if he had just woken up.
“We must stop meeting like this,” he said as Vanish and the red-eyed woman entered. She stood silently in the corner, gun in one hand.
Vanish approached the table. “How do you feel?” he asked. “Headache gone? Any nausea?”
“My back is a little itchy in a spot I can’t quite reach,” Kyntak said.
“Cold?” Vanish asked, ignoring him. “Thirsty?”
Kyntak was thirsty, but he doubted that saying so would get him anything to drink. “Your torture methods suck,” he said. “It’s like the water torture, but with dumb questions instead of drips.”
“I don’t want you damaged,” Vanish said. He began to pace slowly from one side of the room to the other. “Not yet.”
“You want me to win a beauty competition first?” Kyntak asked. “The kidnapping makes sense now—you’d never win one on your own.”
Vanish smiled. “No, I’m just waiting for Agent Six to get here.”
Kyntak’s heart thumped faster, and he was suddenly certain Vanish could hear it. He kept his voice level. “I don’t get it,” he said.
“Yes, you do,” Vanish said. “Your twin brother? Or should I say triplet brother—Sevadonn may be dead now, but he was part of Project Falcon too.”
“Now I am thoroughly confused,” Kyntak said. “The Deck didn’t pay up, so you assume I’m not the real deal?”
“You know what the secret to a good plan is, Kyntak?” Vanish pierced him with a cheery grey gaze. “Fluidity. Let’s say I want to capture the remaining two Project Falcon kids. I stage a prison break as bait, and leave a trail to an empty apartment building by planting the blood of one of the residents I’ve disposed of. So far, so good. But then what happens?”
He laughed. The noise bounced off the walls, hitting Kyntak from all sides. “They both show up! Not just the one from the Deck, but the freelancer too! And, of course, I’ve given my troops orders to take the agent with the superhuman abilities, but I’ve never imagined two would show up and confuse them. After all, when every scientist wants you dissected and every vigilante wants you dead, you don’t expose more than you have to, right? Sending two Falcons to a job that only requires one is stupid, correct?”
Kyntak tried one last time. “You got me,” he said, slipping a little sarcasm into his tone. “I’m not Agent Six of Hearts, I’m just an impersonator. Guess you’re going to have to let me go now, huh?”
Vanish shook his head. “I’ve known who you are since you first spoke to me,” he said. “I’ve studied both of you. The real Agent Six would have pretended to be another Deck agent, a generic. A regular human being. But not you. ‘My reputation precedes me?’ you said. Because secretly, and I find this fascinating, you were glad when I mistook you for him. He’s becoming a big name in the criminal underworld, and you’re jealous. And the fact that Six sees it as a liability, that he wishes he could remain anonymous, that’s conducive to celebrity, and that just makes it worse.”
“Yeah,” Kyntak said. “I’ve been knocked out, abducted, clamped to a table, drained of my blood, bored to death by this empty room and by your ranting. But it’s really hard to concentrate on all that when I’m so busy wishing I was my brother.”
“But when the two of you showed up,” Vanish said, ignoring him once more, “did my plan collapse? Of course not, because it was fluid. I was originally expecting to take one and get the other when he came to the rescue, and Six’s surprise appearance didn’t stop me. I sent the ransom demand as planned and told my troops to take Six alive if they could. The fact that Six showed up to collect you instead of you showing up to collect him didn’t change a thing.”
“Yeah, it did,” Kyntak said. “You obviously didn’t catch him.”
Vanish’s grin broadened. “You’re right. He’s evaded my capture twice. He must be the competent one. He brought a friend with him who killed a few of my troops. But did this mess up my plan? No. Because it’s fluid.”
He leaned down close to Kyntak. “Six has been headed our way for the better part of an hour. He’s in this facility right now, looking for you. I didn’t need to bring the trap to him—he came to it. And as soon as he’s on the floor…” Vanish’s white teeth showed as he smiled. “See? Both the Project Falcon kids are mine.”
Kyntak’s breaths were becoming tighter. It was as if his lungs were slowly crystallizing, or caking over with ice. “You think the Deck will give you more money if you hand over both of us? After you let down your end of the bargain last time?”
Vanish sighed, as if disappointed in Kyntak. “You thought this was about money? The ransom was a secondary objective—there are easier ways to get a hundred million credits.” He beckoned to the woman and walked towards the wall. She muttered something into her radio and the wall rolled aside.
“I don’t want the Deck’s money,” Vanish said on his way out. “I want you.”
Six found the remote of the soldier he’d knocked out, held it against the man’s skin, and hit the button marked SYNCAL. There was no outward sign of change, but Six hoped this meant he wouldn’t wake up anytime soon. He dumped the soldier on his bunk, straightening his limbs so his posture was identical to that of all the other sleeping troops. Six saw the shirt and pants on the floor where the soldier had dropped them and, after a moment of hesitation, he put them on. The soldier had placed his boots neatly under his bunk. Six slipped them on too.
The whole outfit was too big for him. The bulletproof plastic in the shirt hung below his collarbone instead of reaching his throat, the pants bunched up slightly around his ankles, and the soles of his feet lifted off the insoles in the boots every time he took a step. But it was a better disguise than nothing, and he didn’t have time to check all the bunks for a shorter soldier.
He jogged clumsily back to the armory and took a sample of the standard gear: knife, pistol, Eagle, grenades, spare magazine. Lastly he jammed a helmet onto his head.
He hesitated before leaving. His job might be made easier later by a little sabotage. He swept his arm across the row of Eagles, hitting the eject button on each one. All the magazines fell to the floor. He gathered them up and dumped them in the darkness behind the pipe with the belts hanging from it. The automatic rifles now each had only one bullet in them, the one that was loaded into the chamber. They would click empty almost as soon as the triggers were pulled.
He grabbed a hundred or so of the spare magazines, quickly emptied the bullets into an upturned helmet, and put it underneath the spares. He put the empty magazines back on the shelves, at the front.
There wasn’t much else he could do without being too obvious, and he didn’t want to waste any more time. He moved quickly back through the barracks and headed to the other end of the aisle.
There was no elevator at this end, just a giant stairwell with concrete walls and thick, strong stairs. It looked like it was designed so all the soldiers could run down at once. But there were only four flights—Six reached the bottom in a matter of seconds.
The stairwell led directly into a short corridor. He peeked around the corner, checking for soldiers—and froze.
There was another entire warehouse beyond the opening, identical in construction to the one two floors above. But this one held more than a few cars and an airplane; it was a massive labyrinth of equipment.
Six could see four huge motors and two electrical generators propped up on metal stilts, with tables covered in repair equipment underneath them. The hollowed-out shell of a bus was resting upside down, and an enormous spiderlike machine was poised over it, steel claws locked around the one remaining axle. There were dozens of airtight Plexiglas chambers, with rubber gloves built into the framework. Judging by the shrink-wrapped lumps of grey plastic next to them, these were for making bombs. In the center of the warehouse there was a giant cube of thick tinted glass, through which Six could see a web of tubes and valves, occasionally lighting up as sparks blasted back and forth along exposed wires.
Six didn’t have enough general mechanical experience to recognize the functions of everything in this room, but he had a gut feeling that the device in the enormous glass box was manufacturing nanomachines. If there’s time, he thought, I should smash the glass to break the vacuum seal on my way back. The more I can do to sabotage Vanish’s operations, the better.
A huge creature of iron and steel rested in the corner of the warehouse. Six stared, unsure of what he was seeing. There was a short, hollow tube attached to the front, like a pitiless black eye on a stalk, and instead of wheels or legs, the thing had great rollers covered by strips of armor plating the color of engine grease.
An illustration from a history website flashed through his mind, and Six’s eyes widened as he realized what he was looking at—it was a tank. It didn’t look quite finished—the hatch on the top had no seal, and the gun was only half as long as it should be. But there was no mistaking the shape. Vanish had acquired a tank, and was restoring it for some reason.
There were five soldiers in the warehouse, pacing slowly back and forth like the ones upstairs. Six adjusted his overly large costume self-consciously as he scanned the warehouse for the exit. On the opposite wall there was an elevator, just like the one in the previous warehouse. Six checked the positions of all the guards. If he timed this right, he wouldn’t have to walk too close to any of them.
He took a deep breath. Now!
He strode into the warehouse, at a pace that felt neither urgent nor aimless. He passed one of the bomb-making chambers on his right and resisted the urge to glance at it, focusing his gaze on the elevator doors up ahead.
There was one soldier walking past the elevator, and another one patrolling in Six’s peripheral vision. Neither of them had stopped to look at him—either they were unconcerned by his presence or they hadn’t seen him yet. He kept walking, passing the giant glass cube on his left.
Four of five soldiers were now behind him. He kept his eyes on the elevator doors, but listened carefully, waiting for the sound of approaching footsteps. His breathing seemed painfully loud inside the helmet.
Almost there. He passed another of the bomb-making chambers on his left. He was almost level with the hollow bus. He forced his gaze away from the mechanical spider, as if looking at it would draw the focus of one of its many plasma lenses. He was ahead of all five soldiers, but one would reach the elevator in less than a minute. He planned to get there first.
He kept his carefully measured pace. Left foot, right foot. Not too fast, not too slow. You’re fine, he told himself. You’re invisible to them. They’re not expecting any trouble, and you’re nothing out of the ordinary. Unless you do something stupid, like running. So just keep walking and you’re okay.
He reached the elevator doors and pushed the button, just once. Then he waited patiently. The next guard wouldn’t pass him for at least twenty seconds. Relax.
His breaths boomed against his visor. He imagined that he could feel the eyes of the five soldiers watching him. That he could sense them slowly creeping towards him, rifles raised, communicating with hand signals and slowly surrounding him.
The doors slid apart. Six started to walk in, and then paused—there was a soldier in it already. Six stepped aside, leaving him room to walk out. The soldier’s helmet turned to Six in acknowledgment, but there was no nod of approval or grunt of thanks. He kept walking, disappearing behind one of the machines.
Six stopped watching and turned to the elevator again. Behave normally, he told himself. Like you do this every day. He stepped into the elevator and waited for the doors to close, ignoring the security camera. Through the opening he watched the soldiers slowly pace the perimeter of the warehouse until the doors slid shut.
The elevator hummed smoothly downward. Now there were three floors of enemy soldiers between him and freedom. How did I expect to get away with this? he wondered. Once the alarm is raised, I’m as good as dead—even if they don’t shut down the elevators, there will still be a hundred or more troops after me. And this facility is too small and linear to hide in.
He clenched one hand into a fist and thumped it lightly against the back wall. He didn’t want to die like this. His body would never be found, so King would never know what had become of him. Kyntak would suffer the same fate. The Spades would continue hunting for him, but he would be unable to prove his innocence and be branded a traitor forever. Harry would wait loyally outside the warehouse fence for hours, days, maybe even weeks—however long it took for him to get spotted by bystanders or soldiers. And who knows what would happen then? Nai would never be rescued, wherever she was, and she would grow up believing that he and Kyntak had abandoned her.
It’s not too late to turn back, he thought. He was well disguised, and certain that the alarm hadn’t been sounded yet. But he was immediately ashamed. To abort the rescue now would almost certainly mean condemning Kyntak, his brother, his closest friend, to death. Logically, he knew it was the best course of action, because there was almost no hope of both him and Kyntak making it out of here alive. But it would also be the most selfish thing he had ever done.
The elevator stopped and the doors slid open. Six hesitated. Could he walk right back out the way he came, and still live with himself?
No, he decided. I’m doing this. There’s nothing left for me out there. Nai is missing, Two is dead, King is under investigation, and the Deck has disowned me. If I leave now, Kyntak dies and I’m completely on my own.
He was ashamed of that thought too. I consider backing out for selfish reasons, then I decide to stay for even more selfish reasons. “Everyone was right about me,” he whispered to himself. “I am a monster.”
He stepped out of the elevator and turned left instinctively. He was in a long corridor with only one wall. Instead of the other, there was a row of huge roller-doors with dark alcoves in between so they had room to slide. They didn’t end at the floor or the ceiling—they disappeared into narrow trenches at each end, giving Six the impression that they were probably several meters taller than the corridor.
Cell doors, he guessed. More surface area than the walls, almost impossible to open from the inside. He felt a thrill of adrenaline run through his veins. He was close.
He could see one soldier patrolling the corridor, walking slowly away from him. Six figured he had perhaps three minutes before the soldier reached the end and turned around. He risked a quick glance over his shoulder. There was a guard behind him as well, standing impassively in front of one of the roller-doors. He wasn’t looking in Six’s direction.
One soldier patrolling, one stationary, he thought. What are the chances that the one standing still is outside Kyntak’s cell?
But there was no sense in approaching the guard until he knew for sure. Doing so would almost certainly lead to the base being put on alert status, and if Kyntak was in a different cell, then soldiers would be coming down ten at a time in the elevator while he searched all the others.
Each giant door had a circular blue button on the edge. Six pressed the first one and heard a solid click as the mechanical dead bolt disengaged. He put the palm of his hand against the edge of the door and pushed.
The door was heavy, but it rolled aside in silence. Six didn’t open it all the way—just enough to peer through. This room looked less like a cell than an infirmary or a surgical operating room—there were two people-size tables with padded headrests on the ends, two long white desks with several drawers, a stainless-steel sink in the far corner, and a polished glass cabinet filled with sharp instruments.
No Kyntak. No anyone. Six retreated into the corridor and pushed the door slowly closed.
He glanced up and down the corridor again. One soldier still patrolling, one standing guard. Each a fair distance away, and neither facing him. So far, so good. He walked to the next door, pushed the button, and rolled it open.
This wasn’t a cell either, just a dark, empty room with a window and a small button panel on one wall. The window looked into the next room, which did appear to be a cell—it had reflective walls and a block in the center, topped with restraining clamps and a headrest.
One-way glass, Six realized. This was where Vanish officials could watch the prisoners. But why? If they were clamped to a table, what would they be doing that was worth watching? Perhaps one of the buttons on the panel released the clamps.
Again, no Kyntak. He stepped back and closed the door.
He skipped the next door, knowing that it led to the empty cell. He pushed the button on the door after that, opened it, and poked his head inside. Another cell, identical to the one he’d seen through the one-way glass of the observation room. Empty again. There was probably another observation room on the other side.
He stepped back, about to roll the door closed, when he heard a noise—a thin wheeze. He turned his head sharply. The patrolling soldier hadn’t turned around yet, and the stationary one hadn’t even glanced his way. He looked back into the cell and frowned. There was someone—or something—inside.
He stepped across the threshold and bent down. A figure was crouched beside the table, a skinny teenage boy who scampered backward across the floor as Six moved. There was something ungainly and graceless about the way he was crawling, something not entirely human, and as soon as he hit the corner and could retreat no farther, Six saw what it was. The boy had only one arm—his left one had been amputated at the shoulder.
Six approached him slowly and carefully. The boy in the corner didn’t look up at him. He had some kind of mask over his mouth, a clear plastic bulb with a valve on the side—the wheezing gasps Six had heard were coming from it harder and faster now. A respirator, Six realized. Something had to be wrong with his lungs.
As the boy’s long, greasy hair slid aside, Six saw that the missing arm wasn’t his only physical oddity. Half of his face and neck was scarred a dull brown, as if he’d had first-degree burns on one side of his body. Both of his ears were missing. The eye on the burned side of his face was cheap glass and didn’t even match—it was chocolate-brown instead of blue. There was no eyelid to cover it—it stared crazily over Six’s shoulder.
“What happened to you?” Six asked, aghast.
The boy let out a rasping squeal, shoved off the wall, and scurried across the cell to another corner, farther away from Six. Six kept walking towards him. “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said quietly. “I’m here to help.” Inside, his horror was slowly being eaten away by fury. Who would do this to a child? And why?
With a thin groan, the boy threw himself at Six, arm outstretched, fingers clawing at Six’s face. He didn’t quite make the distance, and Six had to step forward and catch him as he fell. The boy’s respirator hissed again and he looked up at Six, his real eye widening with fear.
Six gasped, icy spiders crawling up his spine. The eye was the same as his own. The undamaged half of the boy’s face was a precise copy. And now Six saw that the boy was exactly his height. He considered again the respirator mask, the missing ears, the missing arm—the skin which had not been burned, as he first thought, but stolen for grafts. And he was willing to bet that if he removed the boy’s shirt, he would see surgical scars over the heart and lungs.
He didn’t know how the boy had come to be here, and he didn’t know why, but there was no doubt about it—he was a clone of Six. He’d been created just eight months ago, solely for the use of his organs and limbs. Six stared in horror at his own left hand, flexing the fingers unconsciously, as its previous owner howled and tore himself out of Six’s grip.
Six had wondered how Vanish had got a sample of his DNA to compare to Kyntak’s, given that the Lab computers had been wiped. Now he knew. After making the clone and taking parts of it to heal Six, Crexe had kept it alive with a respirator, a pace-maker, and probably some kind of artificial kidney. When Crexe was arrested and his soldiers had either fled or been incarcerated, the clone must have been left lying forgotten on a hospital bed at the Lab. Vanish troops broke in less than a month later and probably brought him straight here. He had doubtless been carefully studied and relentlessly tested since then.
The clone whimpered and bashed his fist into the floor; the blow was pathetically weak. Six’s pity was almost unbearable—It’s so unfair, he thought. His eyes are barely open before surgeons cripple and disfigure him for life, then he lives off an IV drip until he’s abducted and locked up. He can’t speak English. He can’t hear, or see, or breathe properly. All he’s ever felt is pain, fear, and confusion.
Six looked at the sinews in the boy’s arm and legs—he was skin and bone. Six knew that his own genes weren’t the sole cause of his incredible strength and speed; they had only provided potential. It had taken years of strenuous exercise, training, and dieting to make the most of them. This boy had been fed minimally and had probably never even been outside.
Then Six heard footsteps, approaching slowly. They were distant—presumably coming from the soldier patrolling the corridor outside. Six’s three minutes were up. The soldier had reached the end of the corridor and turned around.
Six pressed his palm against the roller-door, thinking. If the door is still slightly open when the soldier passes, he’ll raise his gun and open the door the rest of the way. I’ll be completely exposed.
I could slide the door closed now, he thought, but then I’d be trapped in here until they bring the clone his next meal, and that could be hours—someone could easily see me through the one-way mirror before it happens. Not an option.
Six approached the opening and pressed his back against the edge of the door. The footsteps drew closer.
Six knew that perceptions were affected by expectations. A person could search for something right in front of him and fail to see it, simply because it wasn’t where he thought it would be. An obscurely shaped scribble or an inkblot could reveal things about the viewer, who would perceive it differently depending on his thoughts. And a soldier who saw an open door which he expected to be closed would experience a split second of confusion as his brain tried to reconcile his vision with his imagination.
The footsteps faltered—the soldier had hesitated. Six threw the roller-door aside and exploded into the corridor. He lashed out with his foot, the heel slamming into the soldier’s visor and cracking the shatterproof glass.
The soldier reeled back with the impact, his shoulder slapping against the wall, but he recovered quickly. Six dived after him, not wanting to give him time to aim his Eagle. He shoved the soldier against the wall and held him there, forcing the wrist of his gun arm against his torso. The barrel of the gun was trapped sideways, pointing at the empty end of the corridor.
The soldier had reached for his knife with his free hand. Six yelped as it slashed up across his forearm, slicing through the sleeve of his disguise. Droplets of blood splattered onto his visor, and he whirled around, twisting the guard’s arm out in front of him and holding the blade at a safe distance.
Now he was facing away from the soldier, crushing him between his back and the wall. The soldier’s gun was pressed flat between them, and Six was squeezing the wrist of the hand that held the knife, trying to cut off the circulation.
Apparently realizing that he was going to lose this scuffle, the guard pulled the trigger of his Eagle, firing into the empty corridor. The noise of twenty rounds being discharged right behind Six’s back was deafening, and he could feel the burning of the muzzle against his arm. He twisted around, reached down, and grabbed the soldier’s remote, tearing it off his belt. He leaped backward, pointing the remote at the soldier, who was swinging his Eagle to face Six, and jammed his thumb down on the SYNCAL button.
The soldier went limp instantly, falling against the wall. Six was already turning back towards the elevator as he slid heavily to the floor.
The other guard was running towards Six, presumably sounding the alarm with his helmet mike. Six couldn’t hear it—his radio was either off or on the wrong frequency. The guard had raised his Eagle, but Six lifted his Raptor and fired three shots. The first round missed, but the second hit the armor on the soldier’s left shin, and the third clipped his right ankle, punching straight through. He tumbled over as his leg gave way underneath him, sprawling on the floor of the corridor. He stretched out a hand towards his fallen gun, but couldn’t reach it. As Six ran towards him he retracted the hand and flopped awkwardly onto his side like an asphyxiating fish, reaching for his Raptor.
“Don’t,” Six yelled as he ran. “Put your hands on your head.”
The guard ignored him and pulled his gun out of its holster. He fell back onto his front, bracing his elbows against the ground and aiming at Six. Six fired immediately, the first two rounds splintering the guard’s fingers and the third shooting over his head and grazing his ankle.
The guard howled as the gun fell from his ruined hand. “Why doesn’t anyone ever do what they’re told?” Six muttered as he approached him.
Does one remote work for any soldier’s nanomachines? he wondered. He pointed the stolen remote at the guard and hit MORPHINE. The whimpering quieted, and then stopped. The guard writhed slowly on the ground, apparently disoriented by the drug. Six hit SYNCAL and the guard’s head fell to the floor, face-first, and all his limbs went slack.
Six made only a cursory examination of the guard’s wounds. He might limp for the rest of his life and never be able to shoot again, but the bleeding wasn’t life threatening. Good, Six thought. If he raised the alarm, I don’t have time to be dressing wounds.
He started running back up the corridor, heading for the room that the soldier had been guarding. That was the most probable location for Kyntak, and they needed to get moving.
The elevator doors slid open as he was approaching them. Soldiers started pouring out, enough to block the corridor. Six immediately dropped into a gunman’s crouch, dropping the Raptor and the remote and raising his Eagle instead. He opened fire, sending forty rounds into the legs of the soldiers.
They wobbled, but none fell. Their armor hadn’t been penetrated. “Freeze,” the team leader ordered as the soldiers advanced on Six, raising their weapons.
Six ran towards them, drawing the two halves of his quarterstaff out from behind his back. No time to put them together. He could have used the remote, but its range was very short, and he didn’t know the technology well enough to trust it with his life.
Six swung half of the staff down in a vicious arc, slamming the end onto the helmet of the team leader. The fiberglass snapped, denting the helmet and popping out the visor; Six drove his elbow into the back of the soldier’s head, cracking his face down onto his knee. Satisfied that the leader was out for the count, Six spun around and smacked the other half of the quarterstaff into a soldier’s chest, winding him, then slammed a gloved fist up into his jaw.
He hadn’t even hit the ground when Six thrust a leg over him in a mighty kick, knocking the soldier behind him into the wall. He lashed out backward with half of the quarterstaff without even looking, and heard a yell of pain as it connected. He whipped a fist out to the side, and it thumped into armored flesh. Four or five down, he thought.
There was a sharp buzzing in his ears, and the flesh all over his body tingled for a moment. He stumbled forward. What was that? he wondered. Do they have tasers?
He spun around, his muscles suddenly slack and unresponsive, searching for the threat. As he turned, every single soldier in the corridor fell to the floor and lay still.
Six’s eyes widened. He walked slowly and awkwardly backward into the wall, his legs feeling numb. He barely registered the impact.
“Think,” he mumbled, tongue loose against his teeth. “Think! What’s going on?”
Syncal, he thought. Someone hit a remote, and the nanobots flushed Syncal into all the soldiers’ bloodstreams. So where’d this person go?
He suddenly realized that he was on the floor. He tried to push it away and stagger to his feet. Someone hit a big remote, he thought. A mass transmitter, or a satellite—it knocked out all the troops on this floor. I’m safe—or I would be, if I could walk. What’s happening to me?
A memory echoed through his head. I dug out the dart they hit you with, Ace was saying. Less like a dart than an automatic syringe. Her voice faded and he remembered wondering how Vanish’s man in Insomnia knew where to find him. He saw again the other soldier running across the Timeout, pointing a remote at him.
Now he couldn’t even lift his head off the floor. The linoleum smelled faintly of grease. There were robots in the tranq gun, he thought wildly, and now they’re in my blood! Broadcasting my location—they knew I was here; knocked me out at the push of a button…
His entire body was numb. His eyelids were dragging themselves closed. He tried to scream, but only heard the noise in his head. No, he thought. Fight it! Don’t sleep. Find Kyntak—open the door and he’ll help you out. He’ll carry you. It’s just a few meters. You can do it.
He saw his arm slap against the floor, and saw it slide back towards him. He couldn’t tell if he was dragging himself along or just wriggling his arm. The whole image was fading. No corridor, no soldiers, no arm.
Don’t give up!
Six’s eyes slid closed.
Fight it!
So tired…
And then there was nothing.