For a moment, the world was completely still.
“Are you hit?” Kyntak whispered.
“No,” Six replied. “What happened?”
They scrambled to their feet. The two cockroaches were lying facedown on the floor. Each had a single bullet wound to the head.
Six stared around the warehouse. It was deserted. The cars sat around the jet, dark and empty. The giant door was open. There was no movement in the night outside.
“The shots were separate,” Kyntak said, confused. “They can’t have shot each other.”
“No,” Six agreed. He started searching the bodies of the cockroaches. “It was a sniper.”
“Deck agents on the perimeter?” Kyntak said skeptically. “That’s a long way.”
“No.” Six thought about the girl who’d been at the apartment building and followed him to Insomnia. “I think it’s my guardian angel.”
Kyntak frowned. “What are you talking about?”
“There’s a girl who’s been following me all day,” Six said. “I don’t know who she is, or why she’s doing it. But she’s saved my life a few times.”
He pulled a phone out of one of the soldiers’ pockets and dialed.
“Who are you calling?” Kyntak asked.
“Queen of Hearts. I need someone to get the clone out before ChaoSonic finds him. The Spades must be almost here, but I can’t let them see him or they’ll find out about Project Falcon. Queen was outside when they initiated the lockdown, so she can do it.”
“How’s she going to get to him?”
“Through Vanish’s escape tunnel,” Six said. “It must come out on the surface, or there would be no point building it.”
“Then why don’t we go back for the clone?”
“Vanish has got to be here still,” Six said. “After escaping from the cell, he wouldn’t have left the facility altogether—he figured his soldiers would be able to trap us. And by the time the cockroaches arrived, there would have been no way out. Even if he could get past them somehow, there will still be a line of Spades between him and freedom.” He continued searching the warehouse with his eyes. “Queen can get the clone. We have to find Vanish.”
Queen answered immediately. “Who is this?” “It’s Six.”
“I figured I’d be hearing from you,” Queen said. “I just called King. He said Kyntak was kidnapped eight hours ago, you’ve been missing since seven PM yesterday, the Spades called lockdown and then left, and the Deck’s funds have been almost completely depleted somehow. Something about a beacon being used to track ransom money piercing the firewall. Why didn’t you tell me what’s going on?”
Six’s jaw dropped. He remembered Grysat explaining that he had put an irremovable time-activated beacon on the ransom money for Kyntak, which would broadcast the name and password of the account it was in at 6:00 am—ten minutes ago, he saw, looking at his watch. When Vanish hadn’t delivered Kyntak to the Timeout, they had put the money back in the Deck account—and its details had been broadcast instead.
Vanish had been a step ahead of them the whole way. He had known they would bug the money, and he’d used it against them. Now the Deck was broke.
“I’m fine, and Kyntak’s fine. I’ll explain it all later,” Six said. “Right now, all you need to know is everything will be okay if you do what I say.”
“I’m listening,” she said. Technically she shouldn’t have been taking orders from Six. But apparently she had decided to sidestep that rule.
Six told her the coordinates. “It’s a warehouse by an airfield. There’s a war raging underground, and the Spades will establish a hidden perimeter, which you’ll need to avoid. But that shouldn’t be too hard—they’ll be looking for people trying to get out, not in.”
“How do I get inside?”
Six was remembering something. When he’d first arrived at the warehouse, the construction vehicle he’d used as a ramp for his motorcycle had seemed to be in mint condition—but the lights on the dash hadn’t worked, implying that the battery was dead.
A car, never used, hand brake on, no battery. Obviously not intended for driving. And the area was otherwise completely featureless and empty.
“I think there’s a secret entrance under a vehicle parked outside near the warehouse wall. It should lead you down to a cellblock three levels below the surface. I think it’ll be deserted, but be careful.”
“Got it,” Queen said. Her voice was as calm as ever. “What do I do once I’m in there?”
“There’s a clone of me, probably in the sixth cell from the south end. I need you to get him out.”
There was a pause. The one time I’ve managed to surprise Queen, Six thought, and I don’t even get to see her face.
“Okay,” she said. “How will I know him? Will he look just like you?”
An image of the clone’s frightened face appeared before Six. “No,” he said. “He only has one arm and one eye. He doesn’t speak English and he might not want to follow you. But you’ll be able to overpower him.”
“Anything else?”
“Come quickly,” Six said. He hung up.
“Six,” Kyntak said. “Vanish had a sample of my blood with him when he left.”
Six rubbed his hand over his eyes. “So he’ll be able to get your DNA from it?”
“Best-case scenario, he uses it to grow another clone,” Kyntak said. “Then he uses the clone for whatever he wanted from us. Worst-case scenario, he sells the DNA to ChaoSonic afterward.”
“Then finding him is even more important than I thought,” Six said. “But there’s no way out past the Deck agents on the perimeter, and the airfield is crawling with cockroaches. If I’m right, and the tunnels do lead to an exit under the vehicle outside, he’s probably hiding somewhere in this room.”
They started moving through the warehouse, peering under the cars and in the tinted windows. There aren’t many places he could be, Six thought. If we can’t find him in here, we’ll have to check outside. But if he’s not there either, then we’ll have to go down into the tunnels ourselves to search.
The warehouse suddenly blazed with light, and Six squinted against the reflections from the walls. The headlights of the jet plane had clicked on, and the blades in the engines were starting to turn.
He’s in the plane, Six thought. He forced his tired legs into a run, his boots slapping against the concrete. Kyntak was in front, apparently not as exhausted. But the plane was already accelerating at a reckless pace towards the door. They were losing ground.
The plane shot through the door and its left wing almost scraped the asphalt as it wheeled around to face the runway. Six and Kyntak gained on it as it turned—Six could see Kyntak racing towards the left wing as though he intended to jump onto it and run along it until he reached the body of the plane. He remembered seeing Kyntak run across the top of the wall and jump into the helicopter less than eighteen hours ago, and had a sudden horrible feeling that if Kyntak got onto the plane, he would never see him again.
The plane was facing the runway now, and the pilot had turned the engines on full blast. The wheels thundered across the tarmac and the air behind the plane melted into a dark haze.
Kyntak and Six stopped running. Kyntak hung his head and rested his hands on his knees. Six stared as the plane lifted off the ground farther down the runway.
“What do we do now?” Kyntak asked him.
“There’s nothing we can do,” Six said. “He’s gone.”
“We can call the Deck,” Kyntak said, walking towards him. “They can track the plane on radar.”
“Neither the Deck nor ChaoSonic has noticed Vanish using this airfield before,” Six replied. “He must always fly under the radar and have some way of shielding the thermal signals.”
They watched the plane. It was now curving around back the way it had come. Six thought for a moment that it was going to attack them, but he knew that made no sense—the plane didn’t have weapons. It was just changing course to get to where Vanish wanted to go.
“But he’s right there!” Kyntak roared. “Right there!”
“There’s nothing we can do, Kyntak,” Six said. “He’s gone.” He stared down at the tarmac under his boots.
Kyntak was rapping his knuckles against his bald skull. “We can follow him. There must be something we can do!”
Six shook his head. “No. He won.”
Kyntak stared at Six for a long moment. “What happened to ‘there’s always a way’?”
“Not this time,” Six insisted. “He’s gone. It’s too late to change that.”
“But what about the vial of my blood—our blood—in his pocket? What about when he sells it to ChaoSonic and the City is flooded with super-soldiers? Is it too late to change that?”
“What am I supposed to do?” Six was shouting now. “I tried my best and it wasn’t good enough. Okay?”
“Think harder!” Kyntak shoved him in the chest. “We can’t always win, but we can’t just give up! There must be some way we can follow that plane.”
Six shoved him back, with force that would have knocked a normal human flat. “Like how? It has a top speed of more than nine hundred kilometers per hour—about nineteen times as fast as I can run.”
“Six!” Kyntak bellowed. “We’re following that plane, even if I have to pick you up and throw you after it!”
There was a long silence. Six stared at the jet as it finished its curve and started heading back towards the opposite side of the warehouse, flying low, under the radar.
Hope was dawning in Kyntak’s eyes. Yes, Six thought. This could actually work!
“Hammer throw?” he asked.
“Hammer throw,” Kyntak confirmed.
We have to hurry, Six thought. The plane will pass the warehouse in less than a minute. They both sprinted to the cadmium ladder welded to the side of the building. Six reached it first. He started climbing, slamming his hands and feet against the rungs at a blistering pace. Kyntak jumped on after him as soon as there was room, and the ladder started shaking under their combined weight.
Within seconds they had reached the top. The plane was coming closer; the whining of the engines was already painful. Six ran to the corner of the warehouse roof closest to where the plane would pass if it continued on its current trajectory. He dropped into a push-up position, and Kyntak grabbed his ankles.
“Where did Vanish put the blood sample?” Six yelled over the screaming of the approaching jet.
“In the left front pocket of his trousers,” Kyntak shouted. “Are you ready?”
“Ready.” Six hoped that Kyntak knew what he was doing; Six weighed sixty-nine kilograms more than the average throwing hammer. And the timing was important. If Kyntak let go too early, Six would be hit head-on by the approaching jet, which would kill him as surely as free-falling a kilometer and landing on concrete. But if Kyntak let go too late, Six would fall short of the plane’s tail and plummet to his death on the tarmac. He hoped Vanish didn’t pull up. The plane was only about fifteen meters higher than them, but that was about as high as Kyntak would be able to throw him.
Kyntak must have known what was going through Six’s mind, but there was no time to stop and reassure him. The air was already vibrating with energy as the plane approached, and the warehouse was illuminated in the headlights.
Kyntak started to pull, and Six pushed himself up into the air with his hands. He watched the warehouse roof zoom past his face as Kyntak completed the first rotation. The blood was already pounding in his ears, having rushed to his head with the centrifugal force. Six’s venous valves were excellent at preventing reverse blood flow, but the current pressure on his brain was equivalent to doing a handstand for four hours.
The roof rushed sideways past Six’s face again—Kyntak had completed the second rotation. The aluminum surface was farther away now—Six estimated that he was being spun at around Kyntak’s shoulder height.
The dizziness was unbearable. Six choked down the bile rising in his throat—vomiting mid-flight would make this already unlikely attempt impossible.
Whoosh. The roof was almost two meters away as Kyntak completed the third spin. Six heard the howling of the approaching engines, and was blinded by the lights…
…then Kyntak let go.
Six spun out into the void, heart pounding, ears aching, and braced himself for impact. The light from the plane swept out across the tarmac far below; he twisted his head around to get his bearings. He could see Kyntak, distant now, standing on the roof of the warehouse. His legs twisted around in front of him again, and he tried to keep his muscles as limp as possible—too much struggling in midair would change his trajectory, and his best bet was to trust Kyntak’s aim.
The roar of the engines seemed to be right in his ear. He spread his arms out to their full span, then bent his legs to absorb the shock of the impact. His body swung smoothly around as the plane rushed up to meet him; its nose swept past his face, seeming to miss him by mere centimeters.
He had microseconds to find a handhold, something on the plane to grab. The jet was forty meters long, and traveling at about seven hundred kilometers per hour, which meant there would be less than 0.3 second between when the nose rushed past Six and when the tail did.
Six shoved an arm out against the body of the plane, hoping to snag an emergency exit. The metal was speeding by so fast that it burned his fingers, and he missed the exit closest to the cockpit. There should be another one over the wing, he thought.
Suddenly he was pulled away from the body of the plane. His eyes widened as he realized what was happening. The sheer amount of air being dragged into the engines created a vacuum, and it seemed that he had just been caught in it. He was being sucked into the engine.
Instinct directed Six to put his hands and knees out in front of him to protect his torso—but he knew that that would be no use against the spinning blades. Instead, he stretched his arms and legs out sideways to their full span, spinning through the air like a throwing star.
The engine loomed up in front of him, roaring with deadly energy, dragging him towards the center like a black hole drawing cosmic debris into its event horizon. Six opened his mouth to scream and felt the engine suck the air out of his lungs.
Wham! His wrists and ankles slammed into the curved rim of the engine, jarring every bone in Six’s body. He found himself face-to-face with the whirling blades in the engine, sweeping by only centimeters from his eyeballs.
But he wasn’t dead. He’d managed to catch the edge of the engine with all four limbs, and so now, in a sense, he was on the plane. Craning his neck back, tilting his head to the side and peering down, Six saw the warehouse and the airfield disappear, replaced by the lights of the City, muffled by the omnipresent fog.
Six had no idea where the plane was headed, but he knew he wouldn’t last the whole journey in his current position. Sooner or later his muscles would become fatigued and he’d be dragged into the thrumming blades of the engine. It was taking all his strength to pull away from the suction.
Pushing as hard as he could, he managed to throw his whole body over to one side of the engine, keeping his hands on the rim but leaving his legs flapping in the relative safety of the outside wall. He clung tightly to the edge as the blasting wind tried to tear him off.
Don’t look down, he told himself. The plane was flying low to stay under the radar, but if he fell, the height and speed of the plane would still be enough to dash him to pieces.
He shifted his hands up across the rim of the engine, higher and higher, until he was holding the corner where it met the lip of the wing. He could hear faint thuds as the ailerons at the rear of the wing lifted up and down, keeping the plane at a constant altitude and direction.
He dragged his torso over the lip, the wind crushing him against the wing. For a moment he was flying backward without handholds, with only the g-force to keep him against the plane. Then he swung his legs up, grabbed the lip again, and suddenly he was stretched out flat across the wing, with his hands gripping the front edge. If I had a cape, he thought, I’d look like Superman.
The wind pushing against his face was freezing; it stung his nose and his lips. He started to work his way closer to the body of the airplane, hand over hand. There was an emergency exit above the wing, as he had expected, with a bright red handle on the outside. He hoped that because the plane was flying so low, when he opened the door there wouldn’t be a significant drop in cabin pressure and the instruments in the cockpit wouldn’t register it.
He had reached the spot where the wing met the body. He couldn’t stand up to open the door—the wind would blast him off the plane. Instead, he rose into a crouch, with one palm gripping the wing, and reached out to grab the handle with the other.
He expected it to be stiffer than it was. It turned smoothly, and the door popped open with a hydraulic hiss. The hinge was at the back, so Six had to duck aside as the door swung outward, caught by the wind. He slipped into the plane, pausing just long enough to grab the inner handle on the door and heave it closed.
The inside of the plane was luxuriously furnished. There were hardwood cupboards to one side, with a minibar built in to the paneling underneath them. A soft, synthetic leather sofa stood opposite a giant LCD television screen on the other side. The floor around the sofa and the exit was covered by a soft white carpet; the rest was gleaming dark floorboards. Six heard music wafting out from hidden speakers above his head and was surprised that after a few bars he recognized it—one of Samuel Barber’s cello concertos. A painting that hung on the wall was familiar to him too, although he didn’t know the artist.
Six knew better than to think that his knowledge of art and music was broad, or to think that Vanish had intentionally filled the plane with things Six would recognize. It still has its original furnishings, Six realized. This model of plane was marketed to rich customers, and would have been purchased with this classical MP3 disk in the player and that painting on the wall. Vanish hadn’t decorated it with items he liked—it was an emergency escape vehicle, and today might well be the first time he had set foot in it.
There were square seams stretching across some of the uncarpeted floor, and there were four small silver plates next to the corners. Escape hatches, Six guessed. You open the plate, there’ll be some controls, and then you can open the door to a pod that will fall out the bottom of the plane.
He considered trying to lift one of the plates to test his hypothesis, but decided against it. They could easily be alarmed, and it wasn’t relevant right now. He could safely assume that Vanish thought he had escaped, and he was probably in the cockpit rather than one of the escape pods.
Six made his way to the rear of the cabin, where there was a narrow cupboard next to the bathroom. He opened it and discovered dozens of firearms, mostly pistols. Six grabbed an Owl, checked that it was loaded, and shut the cupboard. He turned away to head for the cockpit…
…and saw Vanish standing in the middle of the cabin, eyes wide.
They both raised their weapons and stood still, guns trained on each other’s skulls for a tense moment. Six noticed that Vanish had a remote control in his other hand, but it looked bigger than the ones the soldiers had had.
“How did you get in here?” Vanish demanded, after a stunned silence.
“There’s nothing we can’t do,” Six said. “Drop the gun.”
Vanish smiled. “Do you know how dangerous it is to fire a gun on an airplane?”
“When there’s no pressure difference outside and inside the cabin?” Six said. “No more dangerous than firing a gun anywhere else. Besides, I never miss.” He held the pistol steady. “Drop the gun and you get to live.”
Vanish pointed the remote at him, as well as the gun. “Not a chance.”
“Sorry,” Six said, “but your nanomachines don’t work anymore. We fried them with an EMP.”
“That’s a shame,” Vanish said. “They were expensive. But this remote doesn’t control nanomachines. It controls the plane.”
He pushed a button and Six fell sideways as the cabin lurched around him. He tried to keep his gun trained on Vanish, but it was hard enough just keeping his eyes on him.
He rose into a crouch as the plane righted itself, and steadied the gun on Vanish’s head once more. “You haven’t thought this through. If you crash the plane, we both die.”
“Who said anything about crashing the plane?” Vanish asked. He pushed another button on the remote.
Nothing happened. Six expected Vanish to hit the button again, but instead he advanced slowly towards Six, gun first. Six didn’t know what Vanish thought he could achieve once he was within arm’s reach, but he wasn’t keen on finding out. He backed away at an equal pace.
As his foot reached for floor that wasn’t there, Six realized that this was just what Vanish had wanted him to do. He had used the remote control to open the escape hatch behind Six’s feet. He tumbled backward into the pit, but reacted quickly, springing off the padded seat in the pod as if it were a miniature trampoline. He whooshed back up through the air and landed on the other side of the hatch, leaving the hole between him and Vanish. He steadied the gun on Vanish’s head.
“I’m not going to ask again,” Six said grimly.
Vanish pushed a button and the escape hatch closed itself. “If you shoot me, you’ll never find the vial of Kyntak’s blood.”
Six aimed at the left pocket of Vanish’s jeans and pulled the trigger. The gunshot was sudden and loud in the enclosed space, but it didn’t echo—most of the sound was absorbed by the carpet and the sofa. Vanish hissed through his teeth and stumbled backward, the wounds in his thigh already starting to bleed. Six could see shards of the broken vial poking through the shredded denim. “I think I just did,” he said.
Vanish was half doubled over now, grey-green eyes blazing with malice. “You’ve damaged my body,” he grunted, keeping his pistol trained on Six. “I’ll make you pay for that.”
“You were lucky,” Six said. “Anyone other than me would have shot you in the head. Now drop the gun.”
Vanish stared at Six for a long moment. His hands shook with the pain from his leg. What’s he thinking? Six wondered. He’s wounded now, he can’t possibly expect to fight me and win; he’s got no leverage, nothing to bargain with.
Vanish dropped his gun on the floorboards with a clunk. He fell forward onto his hands and knees.
“Slide it over,” Six said. He wasn’t going to risk approaching while the gun was that close to Vanish’s hands.
Vanish put his hands on top of the gun and held it there. Then he slid the gun across the floor. Six put his foot on it, then picked it up and hooked it into his belt.
He stepped forward. Vanish’s head was hung low; Six couldn’t see his face.
Vanish’s hand was inching towards the remote control.
“Hold it right there,” Six shouted. But it was too late.
Vanish pushed the button and the plane lurched; Vanish had thrown it into a steep upward climb. Six fell back as the floor tilted beneath him, rolling towards the weapons cupboard and the bathroom. He smacked into the wall and immediately spun aside, dodging the barrage of glasses from the minibar, which exploded against the wall like tiny fireworks.
Six rose to a crouch, one foot on the floor and one on the wall, and jumped out of the way as the couch slid down the cabin towards him. It hit the wall behind Six with a thump, and Six heard the crunch as a beam in its fiberglass skeleton snapped.
He had managed to hold on to the gun, and he pointed it back at where he had last seen Vanish. But Vanish wasn’t there any longer. Six started to half walk, half climb across the shuddering dark floorboards. Where is he? he thought. Either Vanish had made it into the cockpit, or…
As Six got closer, he saw the hatch covering one of the escape pods smoothly folding closed. He dived forward, trying to get to it before it swung completely shut, but he had no chance. The hatch became an impenetrable wall of hardwood-covered steel before his eyes.
The plane leveled out, resuming a constant altitude.
No, Six thought. No! I’ve come too far to let him get away now. He knew better than to try to force the hatch open; escape pods were always airtight and reinforced, much like the black box in a plane. Instead, he tried to pry open the silver panel next to the hatch. No luck. The seam was too fine to get his fingers into.
“For the record, you’ve done well,” Vanish’s voice said. Six looked up—Vanish had appeared on the giant television. The proximity of the camera made his looming face swell to fill most of the screen, but Six could just make out the interior of the escape pod surrounding him. In the corner, he could see a keyboard and a monitor—the display read 27 seconds to dispatch.
“You shouldn’t be disheartened by your failure—I have ninety years more life experience than you.”
“Don’t celebrate yet,” Six said grimly. He put the gun against the floorboards next to the silver panel and pulled the trigger. The bullet punched a hole through the wood. Six dropped the gun and immediately slipped his finger into the hole. It burned his skin. He tugged and the panel cover came free, revealing a narrow screen and a polished black keyboard with a series of commands.
Twenty-four seconds until the pod ejects, Six thought. Twenty-three. He searched for the right key, skipping past LOCK, UNLOCK, LAUNCH, CLOSE, and ALARM. The button marked OPEN was on the left. He tapped it twice.
The CPU beneath the keyboard emitted a beep—the text POD LOCKED blinked on the screen. Six hit UNLOCK. The text changed to REMOTE OVERRIDE ACTIVE. He growled, reached down into the panel, grabbed the keyboard, and started pulling.
“I’ll have to change bodies soon, thanks to you,” continued Vanish. “I’ll keep doing it until I can find an immortal one. If you don’t want that on your conscience, I have a proposition for you.”
The keyboard came free, exposing a tangle of wires. Six checked quickly which colors led to which buttons. Blue led to UNLOCK. He traced them back to the wall of the pod. Nineteen seconds, he counted. Eighteen.
“Give me Kyntak,” Vanish said. “I’ll take his body, and you can work for me. I’m impressed by your ingenuity and range of skills. I could use you on my team.”
“Every psychopath I meet offers me a job,” Six said as he pulled the wall panel free, exposing a switch marked MANUAL OVERRIDE. Eleven, ten. He pulled it, and the CPU beeped again. MANUAL OVERRIDE ACTIVE, the screen said. Eight, seven.
He pushed UNLOCK on the keyboard. “I’ll tell you the same thing I tell all of them.” The screen blinked: POD UNLOCKED.
Five, four. “No way,” he said, pushing the OPEN key.
The floorboards folded down as the hatch opened. Six swung his gun up, training it on the interior of the pod.
It was empty.