The door slid shut and the clamps popped open. The strap around Six’s neck slithered away into a hole in the table. He rolled off and fell slowly, as if he were on the moon. He landed on his feet and stood up.
“Harry?” he repeated. “Is that you?”
The bot didn’t reply. It stood stock-still, staring impassively at the wall.
Six remembered Earle Shuji telling him that Niskev Pacye had approached her to buy bots. She had known the address Vanish used for deliveries. And Six remembered that she had seemed nervous, as if she were hiding something from him.
Now he knew what. Vanish has a prototype bot too, he thought. If he’d sent a human soldier for me to fight, I’d have won, accelerant or no accelerant, and then I might have been able to coerce him or her into opening the door. There’s no chance with a robot. It can’t be threatened, bribed, or reasoned with.
The oxygen valve hissed above him, but it seemed to take longer than before. His heightened consciousness stretched the sound out—from a burning fuse to a hissing snake.
He bounced restlessly on the balls of his feet, feeling the accelerant sweep into full effect. With every thrust he seemed to hang in the air, as though he were moving in real time but the universe had slowed to a crawl. Gravity barely seemed to touch him. His hands curled into fists that felt tougher than ever before. But his tongue was burning and his already sensitive retinas stung with the light blazing through his dilated pupils.
The robot still hadn’t moved. Six assumed that it was waiting for a radio signal from Vanish. Probably less time had passed than it seemed, considering his accelerated thought processes.
He braced a foot and a hand against the table and gripped one half of a clamp with the other hand. He pulled with all his might and felt his turbocharged muscles strain. With a shriek that seemed to last forever, the copper tore at the base, and Six fell slowly backward. He drifted towards the wall and smacked into it, clutching his prize: a thick, square blade. It glinted reddish-bronze in the bright light.
Six waited.
The bot waited.
Then it lifted its arm and fired at him with its builtin Swan.
Six launched himself sideways into the air as bullets streaked around him. The accelerant had pumped so much power into his reflexes that he could actually see the bullets coming—fast and blurry, but visible.
The first few rounds hit the glass wall behind him, drilling holes into it and sending fine cracks spiraling outward. The glass was too thick to shatter, and there was a layer of metal behind it—probably steel, Six thought, like the door. No way out there.
As he fell behind the table and smacked onto the ground, he couldn’t see the bot, which stopped firing immediately and walked towards the table. Thud, thud, thud.
The first time Six had met Harry, he’d challenged him to combat. But Harry had been in a nonlethal mode. He couldn’t use his gun. This was a far more dangerous situation.
Six didn’t know how many bullets remained in the clip of the Swan, but he suspected it would be more than he could dodge—and the bot might be capable of reloading.
He had two plausible strategies. One: Keep circling the table in a crouch, never giving it a clear shot. Two: Charge. Shuji’s bots were programmed to use hand-to-hand rather than gunfire if their opponent was closer than two meters.
The thumping footsteps had stopped. Six listened carefully.
The table groaned noisily, then lurched to one side with a sickening crack. The bot ripped it out of the floor with both synthetic arms and held it above its head, cords with loose wires trailing to the floor. It threw the table towards the wall. To Six’s eyes it seemed to drift as slowly as a cloud before slamming into the glass with a shower of sparks.
With an earsplitting thunk, the table landed on its side, propped up against the cracked wall. Now nothing separated Six from the bot except a flat square of plastic on the floor with a few tufts of shredded steel poking up from it, where the table had been attached.
The bot raised its gun and Six lunged forward, stopping just inside the two-meter mark. The bot swung a fist at him; Six ducked underneath it. The bot’s arm whipped over Six’s head like a helicopter blade.
I know things about this bot that Vanish may not know, Six realized. Like the code that shuts down all its systems. What was it—something that sounded like Latin?
“Cerfitipus talotus!” he shouted triumphantly.
The bot punched him in the stomach.
Six doubled over and slid backward across the floor.
Kyntak looked up as Vanish entered his cell. This time, the red-eyed woman didn’t stand in the corner; instead, she stood beside the table and held her gun close to the left side of Kyntak’s head. Vanish walked to the other side of the table, holding a syringe and two large vials filled with dark-red liquid.
“I’m going to return some of your blood,” he said, pocketing one of the vials and removing the cap from the syringe.
Kyntak said nothing.
“I’ve more or less condemned Six to death,” he explained, jamming the needle into the lid of the vial he was still holding, “or serious injury, at least—which means it’s probably you I’ll be using for the surgery. So it’s safest if I start bringing your stats up slowly.”
Kyntak didn’t ask what surgery Vanish was talking about. He threw his head to the left, stretching his neck strap. The gun was just out of reach of his teeth.
Vanish stayed back. “Kyntak, you’ll live longest if you cooperate with me.” He signaled to the woman, who stepped back. Her gun was still pointed at Kyntak’s head but was now above his hand. He stretched his fingers up but wasn’t even close to reaching it.
The phrase hadn’t worked. Shuji’s bots must have had individual shutdown codes.
The bot lowered its arm to shoot again, and Six scrambled to his feet and dived forward. He reached the two-meter perimeter just as he heard the bot’s internal safety catch click off. The bot immediately lowered its arm and lifted its leg, aiming a kick at Six’s chest. Six stepped aside at the last moment, letting the metal and plastic foot swish into the air beside him. He wrapped his arm around it and twisted. The bot lost its balance and slammed face-first into the floor.
Six aimed a stomp at the bot’s head. Maybe I can damage some of its eyes, he thought. But the bot swiped an arm out at Six’s other ankle, and he had to jump over the blow. The stomp missed. Six stepped back, and the bot rose to its feet. Six kept the two-meter distance—close enough so it wouldn’t use the gun, but far enough away that punches would fall short and he would see kicks coming.
The bot lunged forward, and Six ducked back. It swung a kick in his direction, and he sidestepped. It feinted a right hook, and Six dodged again.
It’s figured out my strategy, Six realized. And now it’s trying to drive me into the corner farthest away from the door.
He threw a punch at the bot’s head, which connected. The accelerant didn’t completely mask the pain in his knuckles, and the bot seemed unharmed. It drove an elbow towards his ribs, and he had no choice but to retreat farther.
Six drove his copper blade forward, and it scraped through the plastic shell covering the bot’s metal chassis, but did no more damage—the bot just shoved him backward. His eyes widened as he hit the wall and the bot aimed a skull-crushing punch.
And then, in his moment of necessity, Six came up with a plan. He ducked to one side, and the bot buried its fist in the glass where Six’s head had been. While it was extricating itself, Six leaped up and tore the oxygen hose from the seam between the wall and the ceiling. The long-dried glue made a sucking sound as it was ripped away. Six immediately jammed his thumb over the valve, just as it opened.
He could feel the pressure building up against his thumb as the steady flow of pure oxygen looked for a place to escape. He held the hose tightly as he approached the bot again. It started towards him, but as soon as its rear foot left the ground, Six kicked it in the chest and it stumbled backward. Without giving it time to recover, Six drove a fist into its abdomen, ignoring his aching knuckles. The bot tried to kick his head, but Six ducked under its leg and charged forward, pushing it back farther until it was pressed against the door.
Six kept his forearm against the bot’s chest, pinning it against the glass-covered metal. His face was so close to the bot’s that he could see synthetic irises spinning in its silvery eyes. The bot tried to claw him off, but he grabbed its arm and pressed it against its chest.
He couldn’t hold it much longer, and the pressure against his thumb was becoming unbearable. He held the hose up to the door and released the valve. In the same instant, he slashed the copper blade down against the bot, creating a shower of sparks.
He jammed the hose into the groove he’d made in the robot’s chest, and some internal mechanism squealed with protest as the oxygen combusted and the sudden heat expanded and softened the metal. The bot drove a plastic fist towards Six’s head as its internal cooling mechanism kicked in.
Six ducked the blow and, before the metal could harden again, drove his copper spike into the bot’s exoskeleton.
It didn’t go right in—the blade stopped just a few centimeters after punching the chassis. Six released the blade and it fell to the floor as the bot twisted its torso, trying to land a blow on Six.
The stabbing didn’t appear to have done any serious damage to the bot. Six put his foot on its chest, slammed it back against the door, and hoped his plan would work.
There was a sudden beeping sound.
The robot looked down foolishly at its torso.
Six was hurled backward across the cell as the thirteen hundred grams of C-4 detonated, the primary force of the blast exploding out of the exhaust valve beside the robot’s spine. Half of the roller-door was smashed out into the corridor, leaving the other half shaking on crooked tracks. The glass on the walls and ceiling splintered under the pressure, sending pricks of light out all over the cell. The noise exploded through the enclosed space. Six slammed into the rear wall shoulder first and watched with accelerant-enhanced vision as the robot tumbled lifelessly through the air, surrounded by spinning shreds of glass, like a planet among the stars. Its back was twisted and melted, and its luminous eyes had faded to a dull grey.
Then everything hit the floor—the roller-door, the robot, and the million chips of glass. It all came crashing down in a deafening symphony of shrieks and crunching thuds. Then there was silence. Six was alone with the ringing in his ears.
“Don’t get in the way of the exhaust valve,” Six muttered to himself. “Thanks, Shuji.”
Vanish paused, the needle above Kyntak’s flesh. “Did you hear something?” he asked the red-eyed woman. Kyntak turned his head towards her. She was still pointing the gun at him. He aimed very carefully.
The woman yelped as Kyntak’s tooth hit her in the ear at a speed of ten meters per second. She dropped the gun and it fell towards Kyntak’s shoulder. He threw his torso up into the air and the gun bounced off his collarbone, landing in his left hand.
Vanish dropped the syringe as he jumped back to get out of Kyntak’s range. But Kyntak wasn’t aiming at him. He fired four shots into the mirrored ceiling in quick succession. They ricocheted back down; the first one missed the table altogether, and the second narrowly avoided his bicep. But the third and fourth punctured the clamp around his other arm, and Kyntak ripped his wrist through the fractured copper like it was paper.
The red-eyed woman was reaching for her Eagle but Kyntak shot the magazine, making it unusable. He swung his free arm over to his gun hand and slapped the release button. The clamp popped open with a clank, and now both his arms were free. Vanish and his assistant lunged forward to hold Kyntak down. Kyntak lifted Vanish up with his right arm and threw him over the table, onto the woman. Kyntak sat up and slammed his right hand on the button operating the right knee clamp, and the gun butt on the button for the left.
Clank. Clank. Clank. Clank. His legs were free. He rolled off the table and dropped into a firing crouch.
Vanish had recovered quickly. His jeans had apparently concealed a gun, which was now trained on Kyntak’s heart with a perfectly steady hand.
“Drop it,” Kyntak said.
Vanish laughed. “I think I’m the one with the advantage in this situation,” he said.
“I have Project Falcon reflexes, agility, and strength,” said Kyntak. “There’s nothing to stop me from killing you.”
“But you’re weakened,” said Vanish. “Hungry, thirsty, exhausted. Not enough oxygen is reaching your brain. I’m healthy and alert, and I’ve had eighty years of marksmanship practice. And if you kill me, there’s no way out of this room.”
“Eighty years?” Kyntak snorted. “Yeah, right. You must really cleanse, tone, and moisturize. You can tell your incompetent assistant to radio out and get this door open, or else I’ll take a few shots at you.” He kept his gaze level. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I will. And I’d rather hurt you than her.”
“You’re bleeding,” Vanish said, and suddenly Kyntak knew it was true. His wrist hurt, and there was a warm wetness on his forearm. “You shot yourself,” Vanish continued. “The bullet went right through the clamp and hit your wrist. Or maybe the pieces of the clamp were sharp, and you cut yourself on them. Either way, you’re already weak and getting weaker.” He smiled. “Kill me and you’ll bleed to death in this room. Get back on the table and I’ll stitch you up.”
He was right. Kyntak could feel his arm becoming numb. The gun was starting to tremble in his grip.
“What’s more important, Kyntak?” Vanish asked. “Your dignity or your life?”
Kyntak smiled. “I’m going to die anyway. But I’m keeping the sights on you as long as I can lift this gun—because I know that inside you’re scared to death.”
Vanish’s smile faded. “I can save your life, Kyntak. And I want to. I wanted both the Project Falcon kids, but Six is probably dead by now, so you’re all I’ve got.”
“Tough,” Kyntak whispered. Then he shouted at the red-eyed woman, “Hey, butterfingers. Open the door or you’ll need someone else to sign your paychecks.”
The door slid open behind him. She hadn’t spoken a word, so Kyntak backed away towards the wall so he could see the doorway while keeping his gun trained on Vanish.
Six was standing there, clothes shredded, face blackened, scratches all over.
“Six,” Kyntak rasped. “You look terrible.”
“At least I still have my hair,” Six pointed out.
“Okay, now you’re fired,” Kyntak replied. Then, to Vanish, “Stop right there!”
Vanish had moved behind the table. His gun was still pointed at Kyntak; Six was unarmed. “That wasn’t a good strategic move,” Kyntak said. “You can’t beat both of us, and we’re between you and the door. How long do you think that table’s going to protect you?”
“Longer than you think,” Vanish said. A mad smile flitted across his face.
“Toss me your radio,” Six said to the woman. She didn’t move.
“Do it,” Kyntak said. “Or I shoot your boss and then take it from you. You don’t have a whole lot of leverage here.”
The woman threw the radio. And as it was in the air, Vanish opened fire. Two bullets had hit the ceiling before Kyntak squeezed off his first shot, which missed Vanish, who had ducked behind the table. Kyntak and Six stooped into identical crouches, minimizing surface areas as the ricochets sparked off the ceiling and the walls.
The bullets ground to a halt after their second or third deflection, and clinked harmlessly on the floor.
Kyntak was feeling weak, and his aim was shaky. He threw his gun to Six, who caught it and aimed it at the table.
“Put down your weapon,” Six said. “Hold up your hands. You have until I count to five, then I come around the corner firing.”
There was no response from behind the table. “One,” Six began. “Two.”
“He’s gone,” the woman interrupted. Her face was white and sweaty—there was fear in her expression. “He’s disappeared.”
Something in Niskev Pacye’s voice struck Six as raw truth. All her icy confidence from the ransom video was gone. She was scared. Six leveled his gun and walked around the table in a slow circle. There was no sign of Vanish anywhere.
“Cool trick,” Kyntak whispered from his position on the floor. “How’d he do it?”
Six remembered the plastic plate he’d seen on the floor when the bot picked up the table in his cell. He kicked the side panel of the table. It didn’t budge. “The doors to the cells can’t be opened from the inside,” he said, pressing his palms against various spots on the panel. “And he wanted them closed while the prisoners were inside, even while he was in there with them, to minimize the risk of escape. Therefore there was some small chance that he’d get trapped in one.” A part of the table depressed under the pressure from his hands, and the side folded in, exposing the hollow inside of the table. Six rapped his knuckles on the plastic square embedded in the floor underneath. It sounded hollow.
“So he built tunnels,” he finished, standing up. “Escape routes, well hidden and hard to open without the know-how.”
“Do we follow him?” Kyntak asked. He had clamped his hand over his wounded wrist, trying to slow the bleeding.
“No,” Six said. “We don’t know where it leads, and he’ll be waiting for us. We have to get out of here.”
He ripped the tattered shirt off his chest and knelt down beside Kyntak. “Let go.”
Kyntak released his wrist, and Six wound the shirt around it. He looked at Kyntak’s face. He was pale, and his eyes were unfocused. He’s lost too much blood, Six thought.
“Kyntak,” Six asked. “Can you hear me?”
“It’s not that bad,” Kyntak whispered. “Barely hurts.”
Six glanced around for something he could use. He’d stopped the bleeding, but he might have done it too late. He saw a syringe lying on the ground, filled with blood, and he reached over and grabbed it.
“Kyntak,” Six said. “Stay with me. Is this your blood?”
“Stole it,” Kyntak breathed. “Wanted me weak…”
Vanish was draining him, Six realized. That’s why the blood loss seemed so bad—he was already depleted. He rolled up Kyntak’s shorts, tapped the syringe, pushed the valve to get the oxygen out, and put the needle in Kyntak’s femoral artery. “Can you feel that?” he asked as he pushed the valve.
“I knew you’d show up,” Kyntak said. “You always…you…” His eyes drooped. He was still as white as a sheet.
“Stay awake,” Six said. “Stay awake!”
The syringe was empty, and Six took it out, pressing his thumb against the needle mark. He’d never done a blood transfusion before—he hoped he had done it right. But it didn’t look like enough; Kyntak’s lips were still blue, and he was now unconscious. Six felt for a pulse. It was faint and slow.
Of course, he thought. Kyntak and I have the same blood type! He pushed the needle into his arm, ignoring the sharp sting, and filled it with his own blood, then tapped it again and pushed it into Kyntak’s leg. “Come on,” he whispered. “I didn’t come this far to watch you die.”
Kyntak’s chest was no longer visibly rising and falling. Six filled the syringe again from his arm, and gave Kyntak another transfusion. He was starting to get dizzy now, and his head ached from dehydration. I can’t give any more blood, he thought, or I’ll lose consciousness myself.
He felt for a pulse again.
There wasn’t one.