Dead Man Running (21 page)

I need to see King, Six thought. Will he let me in? Protocol says he's not supposed to. But I'm his son – he trusts me.

Six didn't bother pushing the call button for the lifts. They would have been deactivated. He headed for the nearest stairwell.

The door was impossible to open quietly – the hinges squeaked and the rubber impact-softeners made a resounding
thud
against the wall. The sound bounced away up and down the stairs, coming back quieter and quieter until it was gone.

Six was suddenly spooked by the emptiness, the silence. If he hadn't seen Ace and Ten only moments ago, he might have believed himself to be the last person on Earth. He was overwhelmed by the impression that if he went back, he might find the morgue empty, his friends having vanished – or having never been anything more than imagination.

He rubbed his eyes. It had been a long day. He was exhausted, physically, intellectually and emotionally. Just keep it together, he told himself, for a few more minutes. Long enough to tell King what you've learned. Then you can rest.

Each stair seemed as impossible to climb as a wall of solid ice. He did it just the same. When he got to King's floor, he hauled the stairwell door open – and hesitated. He'd heard something. A scuffle, innocuous enough, but having almost convinced himself that he was the only human being in the world, it was unnerving to hear anything at all.

One of the agents, he thought, moving around in their offices.

Or the dead man, lurking somewhere on this floor.

Six crept down the corridor, half of his brain more alert than ever before, the other half somehow barely awake. The sound was not repeated. There was no way to prove to himself that he'd actually heard it.

The door to King's office was ahead, closed. Six walked up to it and touched the handle. He heard the usual buzzer inside, but no movement. Perhaps King had been in someone else's office when the lock down began.

Another shuffle. Six whirled around to face the door to the armoury. He was sure he'd heard something this time. He thought about calling out, but stopped before the sound could escape his lips. If whoever was in the armoury was friendly, he'd find out soon enough. If they weren't, he didn't want them to know he'd heard them.

The armoury door should have been locked too. It wasn't – Six could see that it was slightly ajar, leaving a crack of darkness. Six quickly sidestepped so that anyone looking through the crack wouldn't be able to see him.

He pressed his hand against the door and pushed. It swung open. Six strained his eyes against the gloom as he fumbled for the light switch.

He found it, switched it on – and his heart skipped a beat.

King was here. So was Ten, Ace and everybody else. Every single Deck agent was lined up in front of him, trembling. It might have looked like a surprise party, if it weren't for the presence of the living dead.

There was one behind every Deck agent, holding hooks, knives, saws. Every blade was pressed against a human neck.

Six should have known that one walking corpse couldn't take over the Deck – but it could let fifty others in.

Only one man had no Revived poised to slit his throat. Retuni Lerke.

SHOWDOWN

‘Sorry I lied, before,' Lerke said. ‘About there being no way out. I just didn't want you to leave.'

Six kept his voice quiet and even. ‘Let these people go,' he said. ‘They have nothing to do with this.'

The Deck agents were standing as still as scarecrows. The only sign that they were any more alive than their captors was the fear in their expressions.

‘I agree,' Lerke said. ‘But they mean something to you, and I've run out of ways to make you listen.'

‘I'm listening. You can let them go.'

‘Later.' Lerke lifted Ace's chin and contemplated the spot where the hook tip was drawing a drop of blood.

Six was screaming inside his head. How did he get them up here so fast? he thought. If only I hadn't taken so long to climb those damn stairs.

‘Pretty soon,' Lerke said, ‘I'm going to receive signals from all the major branches of ChaoSonic, telling me that my troops have taken over. I'll have complete control over the company, and through it, the City.'

‘That's not how companies work,' Six said. ‘You can't just kill the CEO and become the leader.'

Lerke spread his upturned palms as though reading a menu. ‘I don't have to. My troops are securing the server farms. Once that's done, ChaoSonic will have to choose between giving me what I want or losing all their data. And I don't want much.'

‘You've killed their employees,' Six said. ‘A lot of them. You think they'll just let that go?'

Lerke gestured at the undead soldiers. ‘I have hundreds of people who wouldn't hesitate to take a bullet for me,' he said. ‘I'm safe. And besides, ChaoSonic kills their own employees all the time. Frankly, I don't think they'll care.'

The armoury had clearly been raided, but there were still some weapons on the shelves. But I can't get to them, Six thought. If I move towards the guns, Lerke will make his slaves kill my friends. Even if I was armed, I couldn't possibly take out all the Revived before they killed the agents.

‘Fine,' Six said. ‘You control the company. So go give them your demands. What are you doing here?'

‘I want you to come with me,' Lerke said.

‘No problem. Just let these people leave and I'll go anywhere you want.'

He sighed. ‘It's not that simple. I want you to
stay
, as my son.'

‘Sure,' Six said. ‘That's fine. Just let them go.'

Lerke continued as though Six hadn't spoken. ‘But it won't work, because eventually you'll come back here. As long as you have something to come back for.'

It took a moment for Six to realise what Lerke meant. He was going to kill the Deck agents, all of them, no matter what. Just so Six wouldn't have anyone but him to turn to.

There was a gun on a nearby shelf, about three steps away. The magazine was beside it. If Six ran over, grabbed it and loaded it, he might have time to shoot just one of the Revived before the others killed their hostages.

I could save one Deck agent, Six thought. I could save Ace.

But her husband would die. She'd have lost two loves in less than five years.

What's the first thing you're going to do when we get back?
Ten had asked Six, so happy to be alive.

He'd want me to save her, Six told himself. But he wouldn't want to die.

‘I already have nothing to come back for,' Six said, fighting to keep the panic out of his voice. ‘Most of my friends are dead already. I'll come with you – there's no need to hurt anybody.'

‘I know this is hard,' Lerke said. ‘But someday you'll see that it was the right thing to do.'

For the first time, Six noticed that the other Agent Six was here, the copy he'd made before he left for Surabaya. Six Beta. There were two undead behind him, holding a combined total of four blades to his neck.

Lerke followed Six's gaze. ‘Oh, him. Of course, he'll come with us too. You're a few days older, so I hope you'll set a good example for him.'

Beta didn't look frightened. He looked alert, ready for something. He made eye contact with Six, and then curled some of his fingers.

Hand signals, Six realised. Beta was sending him numbers – thirty-one on one hand, twenty-seven on the other.

Fifty-eight, Six thought. More than enough.

To Lerke he said, ‘When were you expecting to hear from your troops at ChaoSonic?'

Lerke beamed. ‘Any minute now. Why?'

‘Because I don't think you're going to.'

‘Explain,' Lerke said.

‘Even if they really have taken over all the ChaoSonic facilities, they can't have set up much security. Now would be the perfect time for someone else to step in, leaving you
and
ChaoSonic in the dust.' He looked at Beta. ‘I know that's what I'd do.'

Beta nodded slightly.

‘But there
is
no-one else,' Lerke said. ‘The Deck is ChaoSonic's only rival, and all its agents are right here.'

‘You're wrong,' Six said. ‘Since you've been gone, a third force has shown up.'

Lerke said, ‘You're stalling. Trying to keep your friends alive a little longer.'

‘Yes,' Six said. ‘But I'm not lying.'

‘Then who is this third force?'

‘Me.' Six gestured at Beta. ‘Us.'

Lerke chuckled. ‘It's great that you're so proud of yourself – yourselves – and don't get me wrong, I'm proud of you too. But you can't match my army. I don't see how you thought making a duplicate of yourself would change that.'

‘It wouldn't,' Six said. ‘That's why I told him to make a thousand more.'

Lerke's expression barely had time to change from triumphant to alarmed before the gunshots sounded. They came from every shadowy corner of the room, every hidden recess in the ceiling, every dark space under the racks and shelves. The Revived soldiers went limp instantly and crumpled to the floor with bullet holes in their necks.

The Deck agents dropped too, avoiding the next volley of shots – but there was none. All the corpses had been killed in the first burst.

Fifty-eight copies of Agent Six stepped and crawled and dropped into view, the barrels of their guns still glowing. Some helped the Deck agents to their feet and started checking them for injuries. Others examined the fallen undead, checking that they would not be rising again. Several moved towards the bewildered Retuni Lerke, grabbing his arms and shoulders.

Six had known he would eventually be confronted by this. His instructions to Beta had been to keep making copies of himself until the machine's element tanks ran dry. Beta had text-messaged him to tell him that he'd successfully made 1884 copies. But even after the Revived, the shark and the gorilla, this was the most unnerving sight Six had ever faced.

His eyes, his face, his hands, all over this room. Doing what he would do if he were standing there.

Ace's eyes were flitting across the faces of all the duplicates. Six wondered if she was looking for him, and then realised that it didn't matter. There is no
me
any more, he thought. There is only
us
.

Retuni Lerke seemed to be sobbing as the copies dragged him towards the door. That struck Six as a strange reaction, so he went closer. Then he realised that Lerke wasn't crying – he was laughing. Lerke made eye contact with the original Six. In between sobs, he said, ‘See? This is all I ever wanted – for my legacy to live on.'

Six shivered. So did all his duplicates, which was disturbing to watch.

‘You're going to be shuffled forever,' several said in unison. Six hadn't spoken the words, but he'd been thinking them.

The copies dragged Lerke through the doorway.

I have to get out of here, Six thought. He collided with a few copies on the way out, who seemed to have had the same idea.

Six went to the roof, running to get ahead of the other Sixes. He figured that the roof would seem like a good idea to all of them, but not if they could see that he was already on his way there. They, like him, would want to be alone.

He pushed the rooftop door open and used a rock to hold it ajar so that any duplicates who climbed the stairs would see him and leave him alone. He walked over to the edge of the rooftop and sat down, his legs dangling over the side.

The streets below were quiet now. In addition to taking over every branch of ChaoSonic, his copies seemed to have dealt with the Revived roaming the roads and alleyways of the City. It had become a comparatively peaceful night.

King's voice ran through his head.
We haven't got the resources to police the whole City. ChaoSonic does. We need them, to prevent society from descending into anarchy. And the people need us, to stop ChaoSonic from making this into a totalitarian state. It's a delicate balance.

Not any more, Six thought. ChaoSonic is crippled. The Deck has more manpower than ever before, with 1888 superhuman agents at its disposal. Enough to effectively fight organised crime, environmental damage, poverty – enough to cure the City's diseases instead of just treating the symptoms.

Six picked up a pebble and dropped it over the edge. It landed with a distant
clack
. If I fell, he thought, and died, it wouldn't make any difference to anybody. There'd be 1887 people of identical intelligence, experience and ability to replace me. This was the cost. He might have saved the City, but he'd made himself worthless.

A footstep behind him. He turned his head and saw that one of the copies had come up to the rooftop after all. Six guessed that this duplicate was one of the ones who'd been out taking over ChaoSonic facilities – his nose was misshapen after a recent break and there were bandages around one of his arms.

Six didn't say anything. It didn't seem necessary to greet himself.

The copy approached him, carrying a pistol. ‘I'm sorry,' he said as he got closer. His eyes were sad. Somehow he looked older than the other duplicates.

Something clicked in Six's brain. Broken nose. Shot-up arm. Pistol.

No, he told himself. It's not possible.

He remembered the trapdoor in the time machine, and what he'd thought when he discovered it:

If only I'd spotted it six years ago. Just after I'd stolen the warhead and sent a copy of myself to the future. I could have hidden under the trapdoor to avoid being atomised, and then climbed out again after all the civilians had transmitted themselves. That way, there would have been two of me. Then when the copy came out two years later, I could have saved him, preventing my own murder.

What if he
had
seen it, and used it? What if a copy of him had been hiding in the shadows these past six years? Watching, waiting, knowing the future but unable to change anything – and slowly going mad?

Six thought of the way all Double Tap's victims had been people he knew. The way the killer hadn't been able to get into the Deck until after Six's biometrics were added to the database.

He finally knew the truth. Why Kyntak had been avoiding him, and what he hadn't wanted Six to know.

I
am Double Tap, he realised.

The killer raised the gun and pointed it at Six's face.