Six told Thaldurken most of the things he had learned about Vanish since reading the dossier. Not just the nanomachines and the body switching, but also further details about his past crimes: that Vanish had purchased a bot from Earle Shuji, now destroyed, and that he had broken into the Lab to steal Chelsea Tridya’s drug.
He didn’t reveal that he himself worked for the Deck, or that he was one of the Project Falcon kids. He also left out the parts about the self-replicating telomeres and the clone in the cell. The last thing he wanted was ChaoSonic abducting the clone and starting its super-soldier project all over again.
He listed the information he knew about the facility and its inhabitants. Thaldurken seemed keen to let him talk—probably so the call could be traced. That didn’t bother Six. Even if the trace was better than Harry’s shielding mechanism, it would just lead ChaoSonic forces to the facility, which was exactly where he wanted them to be.
“If I were you, I’d get to the facility ASAP,” Six finished. “Something tells me Vanish isn’t going to be there for much longer.” He terminated the call before Thaldurken could say anything else.
Six knew that he and Kyntak could never fight their way out through so many Vanish commandos. And there was nowhere to hide, which ruled out his usual strategy. So the plan was to give those troops bigger problems to worry about. If the base was being attacked by ChaoSonic forces, hopefully the two of them could get out during the confusion.
The battery was in his left hand and the wires leading to the vacuum tube filled with C-4 were clenched in his right. He peered out around the edge of the tank, looking at the tube on the floor, and trying to calculate which direction it would fly off in when the plastic explosive inside detonated. Impossible to tell, he thought—it’s completely sealed. I hope it doesn’t crack. That will fragment the pulse and make it useless.
A large enough EMP would short out any electronic device switched on within its blast radius. Six hoped it would kill the nanomachines. But even if it didn’t, it would shut down all the remote controls. That would be almost as good. Vanish’s soldiers would no longer have the advantage.
“Are you ready?” he asked Kyntak.
Kyntak put his fingers in his ears. “Why do I get the feeling that this is going to hurt?”
“Here goes nothing,” Six said. He jammed the wires against the nodule on the battery.
Nothing happened.
Six frowned. What had he done wrong? The battery was charged, the wires were embedded in the C-4, no air was in the tube, the coil was firmly attached. Why hadn’t the EMP gone off? He tapped the wires against the battery a few more times.
“Six,” Kyntak said, pointing at the battery, “that side’s positive; the other side’s negative.”
Six grudgingly turned the battery over and held the wires near the correct nodule.
“Where would you be without me?” Kyntak asked smugly.
Six touched the wires to the metal.
With a noise like a giant champagne cork being popped, the vacuum tube exploded upward, slamming into the roof of the warehouse. The wires burst out the end, cracking backward towards Six and Kyntak like a burning bullwhip. They both spasmed as the EMP fried the microscopic circuits in their nanomachines, blasting throbs of electricity through their arteries.
The vacuum tube clanked to the ground and the burning wires twisted slowly down through the air like streamers at a party.
Kyntak raised an eyebrow. “Okay, that was pretty cool.”
Six picked up the remote and reattached the battery. He pointed it at himself and clicked ACCELERANT.
Nothing happened. He waved a hand in front of his face and it appeared to move at normal speed. He pointed the remote at Kyntak and pushed SYNCAL.
“Hey!” Kyntak yelled, snatching it away from Six. He didn’t fall asleep, and it looked like his limbs were responding normally.
“Well, it worked on us,” Six said, dropping the remote. “Now let’s just hope it worked on the guys outside.”
Six walked over to the glass cube, sandwiched between the doorway and the bus. He could no longer see the silhouettes on the other side; either the soldiers had given up and gone away or, more likely, they were momentarily stunned by the EMP. From now on they would be functioning without accelerant, morphine, or locators. He and Kyntak might make it out alive after all.
Kyntak was approaching behind him. “Well done for making it this far, but there’s one part of your insane plan I still don’t quite get. Why’d you call the psychoanalyst? Isn’t the presence of
ChaoSonic soldiers going to make it harder for us to walk out of here, rather than easier?”
Six turned to survey the room again. His eyes settled on the almost-finished tank. “Who said anything about walking?” he asked.
The controls were nothing like those of a car. Six didn’t know what the cabin of a tank was supposed to look like, but the interior seemed new. Vanish had probably designed his own control mechanism. There were two levers with a wheel in between, and Six had spent almost a full minute trying to move the tank using the wheel before realizing that it was probably designed to aim the gun, which hadn’t been completely built yet. After that it only took him a moment to establish that the two levers controlled the treads on either side. He could make the tank roll forward by pushing them both and backward by pulling them, and he could rotate the tank on the spot by pulling one and pushing the other.
This seemed to be the first time the tank had been switched on, which made sense given that it was incomplete. The EMP hadn’t busted any of its circuits, but the downside was that Six had no idea which functions would work and which wouldn’t. The missing gun wasn’t the only handicap. The interior had no seats, so Six had to operate the controls standing up. There was no lock on the inside of the roof hatch. If someone outside wanted to open it, all they would have to do was pull. The screen for observing the outside world wasn’t connected to any digi-cams, so Six had to make do with the narrow view through the dark strip of bulletproof glass that circled the cabin. Kyntak was providing additional surveillance—he was currently testing a pull-down periscope he’d found.
But it was still a tank—and Six was confident that it could take them out.
They had pushed the bus out of the way. Now only the nanomachine-manufacturing cube stood between them and the stairwell. They had decided not to move it—pushing it aside would leave a gap wide enough for soldiers to pour through long before it was wide enough to drive the tank past. Besides, the cube was made of glass—thick enough to repel bullets, but not to stop a tank. And ChaoSonic soldiers would be arriving any second—Six knew that the nanotechnology was not much safer in ChaoSonic hands than in Vanish’s.
“Ready?” he called to Kyntak. He could feel the engine growling beneath his feet.
“Ready,” Kyntak said. He gripped the sides of the periscope with both hands—the closest thing possible to bracing himself in the seatless cabin.
Six threw both levers ahead, and the front of the tank lifted slightly off the concrete as the treads spun into motion. Six braced his feet against the floor as he leaned forward, making sure that the momentum didn’t throw him over backward or weaken his grip on the levers. Dust and grit exploded out from under the tank as it thundered towards the glass cube. Six watched it rush up to the nose of the tank through the darkened glass.
The wall of the cube didn’t shatter; it cracked into jagged splinters, and the tank bounced slightly backward. Six was hurled against the controls, and he used the extra momentum to push the levers as hard as he could. The treads kept whirring underneath the tank, and it shoved against the glass, bending the fragments inward with an earsplitting creak. Soon they were crumbling to the floor and the tank crushed them under the treads.
“Are you okay?” Six yelled back as he plowed the tank through the matrix of machinery inside the cube and slammed it against the opposite panel of glass.
“I’m fine,” Kyntak shouted. “Keep going!”
Through the web of cracks in the remaining pane, Six saw the soldiers raising their guns as they retreated. Sparks exploded out from the nose of the tank as it scraped against the shuddering glass.
The drive through the first panel had taken away too much momentum. Six pulled both levers back, and the treads shrieked as they changed direction. The tank rolled backward until it was half-outside the cube, spitting shreds of machinery from underneath as it went.
The soldiers were apparently smart enough to realize that Six and Kyntak weren’t giving in—the tank was taking a run-up. They started to flee up the concrete stairs. Six threw the levers forward, the giant motor roared beneath him, and the tank thundered across the debris-strewn floor.
This time the glass did shatter. Huge blades of it exploded out into the stairwell, and the tank smashed through, knocking out chunks from the sides of the doorway as it went. Bullets crashed against the steel roof, fired by the soldiers on the flight above. Kyntak left the periscope and stumbled across the cabin to the hatch, where he employed all his weight to keep it firmly closed. Good instinct, Six thought as the gunfire stopped and he heard boots land on the roof of the tank. They know they can’t penetrate it with weapons, so now they’ll try to board us.
“What are you waiting for?” Kyntak demanded, dragging the hatch down as hostile fingers pried at it from above. “Let’s go!”
Six slammed the levers against the panel, and the tank lurched on towards the staircase. He heard stumbling from above as the soldiers on the roof lost their balance. “Hang on,” he yelled back to Kyntak as the treads reached the steps.
The whole cabin lurched as the tank mounted the concrete stairs, treads clanking as they fought for grip. Six heard panicked screams as the soldiers who’d been trying to pull open the hatch flew backward off the roof. The first step crunched when the weight of the tank cracked it, but there was more concrete underneath; the stairs were climbable. Six crouched with his knees bent, the balls of his feet pressed against the lopsided floor of the cabin as if he were waiting for the starter pistol. His knuckles were white around the control levers.
The staircase was huge, but only just wide enough for the tank. Sparks flew off the stairwell wall as the armored shell scraped past. The tank ground its way to the top of the flight of stairs, and Six heard bullets ricocheting off the hull once again. He ignored them—he was headed for the wall. Turn left!
He pulled the left lever back, but kept the right as far forward as it could go—the tank spun left with surprising agility, turning towards the next flight of stairs. The right treads mounted the wall and tilted the cabin sideways—Six pulled the left lever back even farther, making the left treads roll backward. The ground shivered as the tank smacked down onto the landing with a thud.
The motor growled in anticipation as Six rotated the tank to face the next flight. The bullets rained down from above and star-bursts of sparks fizzed near the window. Wasting no time, Six pushed the levers against their hinges again, and the tank thundered up the second flight of stairs, cement dust shooting out from under it as it went.
Six thought back to his original journey down these stairs. There had been four flights. The tank lurched as it reached the second landing—two to go.
Kyntak was looking into the periscope. Suddenly he staggered backward and grabbed the hatch again. “Six,” he roared. “Incoming!”
A pair of boots landed on the roof, and footsteps clanked above Six’s head. He pulled the right lever back and thrust the left one forward, spinning the tank to the right, and then pulled them both back, reversing into the wall. The cabin shook and the concrete gave way with a crack; Six heard the thumps as the soldier stumbled backward and hit the wall. He shoved both levers forward again, and the tank climbed the third flight of stairs.
A trench was splintering its way up the wall. The stairwell was crumbling. Sturdy though the steps were, they had been designed to carry people, not tanks. Six kept the treads spinning as fast as they would go, and the tank bounced upward as the concrete cracked beneath it. It mounted the third landing, and Six turned it around again. He couldn’t see the last landing and the doorway through the narrow window, but he knew the soldiers must be on it. The hail of bullets chipping the nose of the tank had intensified.
Why haven’t they retreated through the door to the barracks? he wondered. That could be much more easily defended than this last landing, and they’d be closer to the armory. Without heavier artillery they had no hope of stopping the tank.
But if they didn’t want to retreat to a more easily defended location, that wasn’t his problem. He jammed the levers forward, and the tank clambered up the first few steps of the last flight.
An ominous creaking noise reached Six’s ears, muffled by the tank’s thick shell. He saw the stairs shudder, and a chunk of concrete snapped off the side of the stairs and tumbled down into the dusty darkness. Six’s instinct was to reverse—this flight of stairs wasn’t solid—but he knew their best chance was to drive up it quickly, before it had a chance to collapse completely. If he drove the tank back to the third landing, the stairs might crumble anyway, leaving them trapped there.
The bullets stopped hitting the nose, and now that the tank was facing upward Six saw that the soldiers were ducking for cover as they raced through the doorway. They didn’t want to be in the stairwell when it fell to pieces under the strain.
Six gritted his teeth as he held the levers as far forward as they would go, pressing them against their hinges—he actually felt the steel bend slightly under the pressure. Chunks of the concrete wall rained down upon the roof of the tank, some small enough that they merely bounced down into the stairwell, and some so large that Six felt the cabin shake as they hit. The treads squealed as they scraped against the stairs, the motor howled as gravity dragged the tank backward, and the concrete boomed like thunder as it splintered under the tank’s weight.
Six kept pushing. They had almost reached the landing. The treads were about to touch it. Almost…there…
The flight of stairs snapped off the landing completely and plummeted down into the gloom. The tank remained, half on the landing, half hanging out into open space, the treads skidding uselessly against the ground. Six eased the levers back slightly and the treads caught. The tank rolled forward, away from the precipice, coming to rest a few meters away from the stairwell doorway.
Six exhaled a deep breath that he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. “You all right?” he called.
Kyntak appeared by his side. “Sure. That was the coolest thing ever!”
Six grimaced. No matter how many near-death experiences they went through, Kyntak never seemed to take things seriously. But then he remembered the look of despair in Kyntak’s eyes when he had first been resuscitated, when he’d thought that they were both doomed. He hadn’t been talking about how cool it all was then. It was impressive that he’d bounced back so quickly…
And suddenly Six realized something about Kyntak that he should have already known. His smiles were convincing, but they weren’t real. Like Six, Kyntak had been in constant pain since his awakening sixteen years ago and, like Six, he had hidden it from everyone else. But while Six had done it by limiting his social interactions, Kyntak had done it by forcing them—creating a happy image that would conceal his misery at a distance, as a mirage conceals hot, dry sand. His jokes were a shield, a last line of defense against the grim world outside and the sadness within, a brave face to put on his numerous troubles.
Six understood now. He had been doing the same thing. These days, when people asked how he was, he said, “Good, thanks, how are you?” Kyntak had been doing it for much longer. He’d been forcing his smiles for so long that they seemed completely genuine—perhaps even to himself.
Kyntak hadn’t bounced back from the despair he’d felt two floors below. He’d simply re-created the illusion of contentment.
“You know what?” Six said.
Kyntak looked at him.
Six grinned. “That was pretty cool.”
Kyntak laughed and slapped a hand against Six’s shoulder. Six smiled.
But they’d wasted enough time. The next part of their escape was going to be the most dangerous. “We have to get out of the tank now,” Six said, stepping towards the hatch.
Kyntak raised an eyebrow. “Why?”
Six pointed through the dark window. “The doorway isn’t wide enough,” he said.
Kyntak stared at Six. “We’re driving a tank, Six, not a golf cart. If the doorway isn’t wide enough, we’ll make it wide enough.” He reached over to the levers and threw them both forward.
Six grabbed the handles on the periscope as the tank powered across the landing. The cabin shook, and Six was wrenched forward as the nose smashed into the doorway. Through the glass he saw concrete shatter outward as chunks of the wall were crunched into dust under the treads.
The tank rolled out of the stairwell into the barracks. But the room didn’t look at all like when Six had seen it last—it was a war zone.
Most of the bunks in the middle of the room still stood, although the mattresses had been shredded by gunfire. But the ones near the stairs had all been overturned to make cover; Vanish’s soldiers were crouched behind them, firing single shots from their Owls over the top. Their Eagles lay discarded on the floor. Six’s earlier sabotage had made them useless.
The soldiers weren’t firing at the tank, although they scrambled away from its path as it thundered out of the stairwell. They were firing in the opposite direction, towards the armory. And as Six swung the periscope around and put his eyes to the viewer, he saw why.
The ChaoSonic troops had arrived. Cockroaches had toppled bunks to make their own barricade at the opposite end of the barracks. They were blasting bullets right back at Vanish’s soldiers.
There were only two dozen troops there, fighting more than fifty Vanish soldiers. But as Six watched, another eight cockroaches ran through the armory to join the ranks, having taken the elevator down. There was an explosion up above, and Six tilted the periscope, watching as a square chunk of the ceiling fell, crushing three bunks into twisted metal debris, and crashed to the floor. More ChaoSonic troopers emerged through the hole in the ceiling, abseiling rapidly towards the floor and firing as they came. Within seconds another five troops were on the ground, knocking over more bunks to make firing positions, and plenty more were raining down from the ceiling.
Six looked at the scene with horror. The concrete floor was already littered with fallen soldiers from both sides, some writhing in agony as they pressed their hands against their wounds, some slumped lifelessly on the floor. Six hoped that they were merely unconscious rather than dead. He watched as a Vanish soldier clamped one hand around a gunshot wound on his arm to stop the bleeding and used the other to repeatedly press the morphine button on his remote. It was useless.
We caused this, Six thought, guilt squeezing his stomach painfully. I caused this. This is my fault.
“Six,” Kyntak yelled. “We have to go, and I don’t know how to drive this thing.”
Six nodded grimly. If nothing else, the presence of a tank in their midst would distract the soldiers from killing one another for a while. He shoved the levers.
The treads spun to life again, and Vanish soldiers ran aside as the tank plowed through their ranks, grinding their makeshift barriers into the floor. The ChaoSonic troops opened fire with their Crow KOT45s, and Six flinched instinctively as the bullets slammed into the hull of the tank, sparking harmlessly off it and the glass. He kept the pressure on the levers. Row after row of bunks toppled over as the tank slammed through them.
Vanish’s side had been panicked by the loss of their nanomachines and radios. The cockroaches had no such hindrance. Instead of scampering aside, they retreated slowly, facing the tank, concentrating their fire on the windows. Six doubted that they would have much luck. If the windows could be broken by bullets he would have seen signs by now.
The tank kept rolling forward, and the soldiers kept retreating backward towards the armory. Now the tank had passed the halfway mark—the troops abseiling down from the ceiling were behind it. But they weren’t retreating, Six saw as he stared through the back window. They were following the tank, step after smooth, swift step, Crows raised.
“Hit the deck!” Kyntak roared. Six looked through the front windows long enough to see a PGC387 grenade spinning through the air towards the tank. He ducked and dived, hitting the floor of the cabin with a graceless thump that was lost beneath the sound of the treads pounding the floor.
The throw had been accurate and well timed. Six heard the tap of the grenade clipping the window only a split second before it detonated, smashing the thick glass into thousands of deadly slivers. The light burst through the cabin, which rocked as the explosion pushed the tank backward. Six wrapped his arms over his head and kept his eyes shut, face pressed against the floor. The sound of the treads squealing as they scraped backward over the concrete was almost masked by the shrieking din of the explosion.
Six scrambled up from the floor, ears ringing. He checked himself for injuries—he was clean. The control panel had shielded him from most of the blast and the flying glass. “Kyntak! Are you all right?”
Kyntak was at the far end of the cabin, apparently having been blown back by the force of the blast. He climbed to his feet, and Six saw that his hands were bleeding. “I’m fine,” he yelled. “Just cuts and bruises. Keep going!”
Six pushed the levers, wincing as the still-hot metal singed his palms. The ChaoSonic troops kept retreating, but now they were all aiming at the windows. Six tried to draw one of his AM-92s, but it was caught in his belt and he was too slow. “Incoming,” he yelled back to Kyntak as he ducked down, keeping his hands on the levers.
A storm of bullets sprayed through the window into the cabin, most hitting the roof and ricocheting down. Kyntak crawled forward across the floor towards Six, who was shielded by the control panel.
The firing stopped for a moment, and Six had a pretty good idea why. He rose to his feet, drawing the AM-92 in one smooth motion and pointing it out the window. He was right. There was a soldier about to throw a second grenade. Six pulled the trigger. The dart hit the soldier in the shoulder, and his throwing arm flopped as he lost consciousness. The grenade bounced half the distance between him and the tank. The other cockroaches dived for cover as the grenade hit the floor.
Boom! Concrete dust spurted up towards the ceiling and the blast carved a deep trench into the floor. The explosion only slowed the tank down this time, and it rolled forward slowly before toppling into the blast crater. Six jammed the levers forward, but the nose was stuck against the other side of the trench, and so the treads ground uselessly against the rubble.
Six heard the thunk of boots on the roof and turned to see soldiers clambering up across the rear window. The cockroaches who had abseiled down from the ceiling and followed the tank were making their move now that it was stuck. They were boarding.
Six swung the gun alignment wheel, and the turret on top of the tank spun wildly. One soldier lost his balance and tumbled off the top. The other howled with pain as the half-finished gun stump slammed into his hip, knocking him down onto the concrete. Six heard the clumping of footsteps above. More were coming.
“Kyntak!” he yelled, but Kyntak moved too slowly. The hatch was torn open from above, and a grenade fell through.
It bounced on the floor of the cabin. The stomping across the roof indicated the hasty retreat of the soldiers. Six scanned the cabin for possible exits. If they were still inside when the grenade went off, they’d be vaporized.
The grenade bounced a second time. The only exits were the hatch and the smashed window. The hatch would take too long—they had perhaps two seconds before detonation. He turned to the window—and recoiled in horror. The last explosion had not only deepened the trench—it had breached right through the floor! There was a gaping chasm through which Six could see the shattered remains of the glass cube, the hollowed-out bus, and the unconscious soldiers on the floor below. They were lucky the tank hadn’t already fallen through the hole. And if they tried to climb out that way, they would both fall to their deaths.
The grenade drifted downward through the air, ready to bounce a third and final time—and Kyntak caught it. Six watched him throw it back up into the air, through the hatch, and then reach up and pull the hatch closed behind it.
He only had to pull it halfway—the explosion slammed it closed with a metallic clank. The muffled boom was like a thunderclap, and the cabin shook wildly, stirring up the dust from the floor.
Kyntak grinned smugly. Why didn’t you think of that? his expression asked.
Six turned to the controls again. There was still no way to cross the hole in the floor. He doubted the tank could drive at a fast enough speed to jump the gap, and if he tried, it would either get stuck or fall right through. And suddenly he realized that this had been the reason the last few grenades had been thrown—to trap the tank on the other side of the gorge, forcing him and Kyntak either to retreat or to get out of the tank and continue on foot.
He pulled both the levers back and the tank rolled out of the trench. He drove it backward about twenty meters and stopped. He looked at the hole, at the soldiers behind them, and at the controls.
Then things suddenly got a whole lot worse. Two ChaoSonic soldiers marched forward out of the armory carrying a giant square cannon—an EMU D-38. Six gaped. He’d only seen an EMU once before in his life, in a secret ChaoSonic weapons bunker—and he’d never seen one in action. But he knew of its destructive capabilities—it fired thirty-millimeter depleted uranium bullets at a rate of ninety per minute.
The tank could shrug off rounds from Crow KOT45s as if they were spitballs. An EMU would tear it to pieces.
“Six,” Kyntak said, moving away from the window.
“I know!” He pulled the levers back, and the tank rolled back towards the barricade Vanish’s soldiers had made. They were by far the lesser threat now.
“Six!” There was an urgency in Kyntak’s voice.
“I know!” There was no cover. Nothing for them to hide behind. The hull of the tank was thick steel, reinforced with tungsten, and therefore the toughest surface in the room by far, but the EMU bullets would tear through it as if it were paper. Their best chance was to either back up to the stairwell they had just emerged from and hope the gunners weren’t expert marksmen—or to get out and run…
“No, behind us!” Kyntak insisted. Six turned, and his jaw dropped. Silver eyes stared impassively at him through the back window.
“Harry?” Six said, although he doubted that the robot could hear him.
The cabin lurched up at a crazy angle, and suddenly the front window was facing the ceiling. Looking out the back, Six found himself staring at Harry’s torso and upper arms.
“He’s lifting the tank!” Kyntak shouted.
“I can see that!” Six yelled as he grabbed the control panel for support. “Why?”
Harry staggered forward, one slow step at a time—Six heard the synthetic legs groan under the strain. Earle Shuji had told Six that the bot could lift weights of up to one ton—surely the tank must weigh more than that? Then Six saw the smoke from Harry’s exhaust valve. His jet pack was on. He wasn’t flying, but he was removing some of the strain from his legs—probably at least a hundred kilograms’ worth, Six thought.
The floor shook with each step Harry took. For a moment Six thought it couldn’t be Harry after all. Harry was instructed to protect his owner, and moving Six closer to the EMU didn’t seem to fit with that.
Thump. Six’s second thought was that Harry didn’t know he was inside the tank—but he had seen Six through the window. So why would…
“Grab hold of something,” Six called to Kyntak suddenly. “He’s going to throw us over the gap!”
Kyntak immediately gripped the periscope handles. Six grabbed the wheel that controlled the half-made gun. The cockroaches had apparently worked out what was happening before he had—bullets were already pinging off the tank’s underbelly in thousands. Harry’s footsteps kept a steady pace. Through the window Six saw a few rounds hit Harry’s torso—they chipped away the plastic skin to reveal the steel abdomen.
Six heard an electronic bleep—the EMU was loaded and ready to go.
“Kyntak!” he roared. “Take cov—”
The rest of the warning was lost as the EMU opened fire. Bullets punched through the underside of the tank and kept enough momentum to rip through the ceiling. Six held on to the wheel with one arm and curled the rest of his body into a ball. Kyntak did the same with the periscope.
Most of the EMU bullets hit the rear end of the tank, which was closer to the ground—Six suspected that this was no accident. The gunners expected him and Kyntak to have tumbled down to that end as Harry lifted the tank. They didn’t know that they were hanging from objects closer to the front.
The storm of bullets stopped. Six heard another bleep—presumably the EMU was out of ammo. This was only a minute’s reprieve—if they were prepared to expend an entire magazine that quickly, they probably had plenty to spare.
Thump. Thump. Harry kept walking. Six guessed that they had almost reached the hole in the ground, but it was hard to tell with one window at the ceiling and the other at the floor.
Thump. Thump. He was willing to bet that when the EMU fired next, it would be at the middle of the tank’s hull—right about where Kyntak was dangling from the periscope. The same thing had obviously occurred to Kyntak—Six could see the panic dancing in his eyes.
Six stretched a hand down and hung as low as he could from the wheel. Kyntak executed a one-armed chin-up on the periscope handle and grabbed Six’s outstretched arm with his free hand. Six dragged him up to the wheel.
Harry’s footsteps stopped. We’re about to get thrown, Six thought. He hugged the wheel tightly.
A mechanical howl boomed out from Harry’s speaker as the robot heaved the tank over the hole. Six was suddenly weightless, and he bumped into Kyntak as they flew through the air. He guessed that they probably wouldn’t be going very high—Harry had struggled to lift the tank, let alone throw it. He watched the warehouse spin by through the shattered window.
The crash of the treads smacking down onto the concrete floor was deafening. Six was dragged off the wheel by the impact as if he had been kicked in the chest, and his body smacked down painfully onto the floor. His vision sparked and crackled as if he were watching an old movie. The ringing in his ears disoriented him until it was replaced by the sound of the EMU firing.
Six reflexively took cover—but the tank didn’t seem to be the target. He looked out the rear window and saw Harry’s arm tear off at the shoulder as the depleted uranium bullets shredded it. Another volley stripped the synthetic flesh off his leg—and a single round thudded into the center of his chest, where the heart would be if he were human.
Harry beeped, the same as the robot Six fought earlier had done when its exoskeleton had been pierced. Then the C-4 inside Harry detonated, blasting pieces of circuitry out of the exhaust valve. The electric luster drained from the silver eyes, and Harry hit the ground face-first with a lifeless clank.